by James Luceno
Baffled, Kalenda finally asked about it.
“A serendipitous result of the Debble Agreement,” Showolter said while they walked. “The agreement stipulates that any works of art—formerly the property of Palpatine—found in or around Mount Tantiss can be reclaimed by the cultures that produced them. Ever since it was put into effect, curators and acquisition types from hundreds of worlds have been coming here to retrieve artifacts that survived the explosion and have since been discovered in the course of New Nystao’s expansion. Off-worlders need to be housed and fed, of course, so hotels and restaurants started springing up, which in turn has led to the growth of the town.”
“And to the discovery of yet more cultural artifacts,” Yintal added.
Showolter nodded. “Treasure hunters have become as common as vine snakes.”
As the NRI team neared the Noghri section of the settlement, the primitive dwellings of the Myneyrshi and the rock fortresses of the Psadans gave way to basic but well-constructed huts of lumber and stone. The village had been transplanted from Honoghr after the official razing of Mount Tantiss had commenced.
A short but steep uphill walk brought them to an inconspicuous Noghri-style dwelling nestled against the mountainside and shaded by flowering trees. Mobvekhar and Khakraim stationed themselves outside, while Showolter escorted everyone else into a sparsely furnished, windowless front room.
“The back door opens onto one of the tunnels that honeycomb Tantiss,” the major explained. “About as hardened a site as you’ll find between Wayland and Borleias.” He gestured to a side room. “Our would-be defector’s in here. We’ve got the other one—the pet—stashed downstairs.”
“Is that her term or yours?” Eicroth asked.
Showolter turned to her. “What she actually said was ‘familiar.’ ”
The four operatives entered the side room, where the Yuuzhan Vong female was sitting in a meditative posture on a pillow she’d borrowed from the cot. In place of the exotic garb she was wearing in the 2-D opticals Kalenda had seen, Elan was now attired in drawstring trousers and a hooded overshirt. Though outlandishly tattooed, she was even more striking and statuesque in person than she looked in the photos.
Her oblique eyes—a vivid blue—snapped open and darted from face to face.
“Elan, these are some of my associates,” Showolter said smoothly.
She glared at him. “Where is Vergere?”
“Downstairs—eating, when I last saw her.”
“You’ve deliberately separated us.”
“Just for the time being.”
“What is Vergere to you, Elan?” Eicroth said, moving to the cot and sitting down.
“She is my familiar.”
Kalenda and Eicroth traded brief glances. “We understand the term, but perhaps in a different context. Do you mean that Vergere is something more than a companion?” Kalenda asked.
“She is that, as well.”
“So, an aide and a comrade.”
“She is not a comrade. She is a familiar.” Elan rearranged herself on the pillow. “You’ve come to test me further?”
Kalenda sat down alongside Eicroth. “Just a few questions.”
“Questions your despicable scanners and analyzers failed to answer?” Elan smiled maliciously. “How can machines be expected to communicate with a living being?”
Kalenda forced a smile. “Suppose we consider this a means of getting acquainted.”
“We Yuuzhan Vong have no such protocols. We know who others are. We wear who we are.” She ran her fingertips across her patterned cheeks. “What you see reflects what is inside. You are fools to suspect that I am other than what my face and body declare me to be. Why do you refuse to grant me political asylum?”
“The Yuuzhan Vong would accept one of us without question?” Yintal countered.
Elan looked hard at him. “Where doubt or suspicion exist, we have the breaking.”
“What is the breaking?” Yintal asked, clearly intrigued.
“An expedient way of arriving at the truth.”
Eicroth waited for Elan to go on, but instead Elan fell silent. “You say that you wear who you are. Are you referring to your body markings?”
“Markings?” Elan repeated with unconcealed revulsion. “I am a priestess of Yun-Harla.” She touched her broad forehead, then her cleft chin. “This is Yun-Harla’s forehead; this is her chin. These are not markings. I am elite.”
“Why would an elite desert her people?” Yintal asked bluntly.
Elan narrowed her eyes in apparent deliberation. “There is dissension. Not all Yuuzhan Vong believe that we should have journeyed across the void to come here. As many believe that this war is not one the gods wish. Because I am a priestess of the high arts, I would have you see the light in other ways.”
“You don’t condone the mass murder and sacrifices that have characterized your campaign so far?” Kalenda said.
Elan turned to her. “Sacrifice is essential to existence. We Yuuzhan Vong sacrifice ourselves as often as we do infidels. Whether or not your galaxy is the chosen land, it must be purified to be made habitable.” She paused briefly. “Death is not what we wish for you, however. Only that you accept the truth.”
“The truth as revealed by your gods,” Eicroth said leadingly.
“The gods,” Elan corrected her.
Yintal made a sound of disdain. “You’re not a priestess. You’re an espionage agent—a pretender. The ship you jettisoned from was destroyed much too easily.”
Elan’s eyes flashed. “Vergere and I had already concealed ourselves in the escape pod when the battle began. We didn’t know the ship would be destroyed. Our launch was … fortuitous.”
“Even if that’s true, why would your military leaders deploy such a small warship against our own, when a much larger ship was in the vicinity?”
Elan sneered at him. “Should I judge you by size, little man? The smaller ship was the more well armed of the two. Why else would the larger have fled with the destruction of its spawn?”
Yintal looked at Kalenda and Eicroth. “She’s lying.”
Elan sighed wearily. “You are a suspicious species. I’ve come to do good.”
“In what way, Elan?” Kalenda asked.
“You must take me to the Jedi. I can supply information about the malady.”
Yintal stepped closer to Elan and appraised her openly. “What does a priestess know about disease?”
She shook her head. “It is not a disease. It is a reaction to the coomb spores. The Jedi will know.”
“Why can’t you simply tell us?” Kalenda said. “Why is it so important that you meet with the Jedi?”
Elan sharpened her gaze. “Tell them what I have told you and they will understand.”
Yintal paced away from her, then whirled. “We need proof that you’ve come as a benefactor and not as a spy.”
Elan spread her arms wide. “You see me. What more proof can I offer?”
Yintal tightened his lips and squatted before her. “Military data.”
Elan’s face clouded over with perplexity. “Is that what you wish?”
“Give us something we can take to our superiors,” Kalenda urged. “If what you give us can be corroborated, we might be able to do as you request and arrange a meeting with the Jedi.”
Elan considered it for a moment. “My order works closely with the warriors to assure that the auguries are advantageous. We forecast which tactics to employ …”
“Then tell us where your fleet will strike next,” Yintal demanded. “Name the world.”
Elan had her mouth open to respond when a crashing sound issued from the front room, followed by muffled shouting, in Basic and Honoghran.
While Kalenda and Eicroth were rising from the cot, a tall, powerfully built man slammed into the doorjamb and fell to the floor, but quickly regained his footing. Dressed in spacer’s garb, he stood swaying in the doorway for a moment, taking in the room. Blood seeped through rips in his jump
suit and ran from slashes that crisscrossed his face. Eyes fixed on Elan, he wedged the forefinger of his right hand into the crease aside his right nostril and launched a blood-curdling, Yuuzhan Vong scream to the ceiling.
“Do-ro’ik vong pratte!”
Then several things happened at once.
As if possessed of a will of its own, the man’s skin peeled back from his face, revealing a macabre, misshapen mask of whorls and undulating lines. Undercurrent to his scream, ripping and popping sounds emanated from beneath his clothing; then two torrents of gelatinous muck poured from his pants legs, consolidated into one mass, and streaked away like an animated oil slick.
Elan leapt to her feet and reared back against the wall, hissing and snarling at the intruder and curving her long fingers into claws.
“Assassin!” she shrieked through bared teeth. “They’ve found me!”
Yintal swung around and stepped in front of the assassin, only to take a backhand to the face that snapped his neck like a twig. The small man flew clear across the room, colliding with Showolter and dropping him to the floor.
The assassin was preparing to throw himself at Elan when he was suddenly attacked from behind by Mobvekhar and Khakraim, their sinewy limbs and lumpy craniums displaying scarlet bruises and wounds. The two Noghri drove the Yuuzhan Vong forward into the side wall of the hut, narrowly missing Elan, who ducked at the last moment and rolled herself under the cot.
The Yuuzhan Vong met the wall facefirst with bone-shattering force, and for a moment it seemed that he would succumb to the Noghri’s slashing assault. All at once, however, he straightened, propelling the two commandos off him with such power that they sailed to the far sides of the room, crashing into opposite walls and collapsing to the floor.
The Yuuzhan Vong whipped around, flinging blood in all directions, his closely set eyes searching the room. Barreling between Kalenda and Eicroth, whom he toppled like rag dolls, he overturned the cot with one hand and grabbed hold of Elan with the other. His fingers vised around the priestess’s long neck, and he lifted her off her feet and pressed her to the wall.
At the same instant, Mobvekhar regained consciousness. Powerful legs launching him off the floor, he caught the assassin around the waist and sank his teeth into the enemy’s back.
The Yuuzhan Vong howled. Swinging a flailing Elan to one side, he used his free fist to rain hammer blows on the Noghri fastened to him. Mobvekhar grunted and moaned as the air was driven from his lungs, but he clung tenaciously to his prey.
Dazed, Kalenda struggled to her feet, gave her head a clearing shake, then leapt onto the assassin’s pumping arm, which she rode up and down for a moment, until the Yuuzhan Vong hurled her aside like some minor inconvenience. Her head struck something solid, and she blacked out. Bright shapes punctuated the momentary darkness; then, contorted in a corner of the room, she had an upside-down view of Showolter, his poncho twisted around his neck, crawling out from under Yintal and drawing a small blaster from a shoulder holster.
From a prone position—and careful to miss Mobvekhar, who had been driven to the floor—the major fired, catching the Yuuzhan Vong between the shoulder blades. Smells of ozone and burned flesh mingled in the air, but the assassin barely reacted. Showolter fired again, catching the Yuuzhan Vong in the back of the neck and setting his hair on fire.
Showolter fired a final time.
The assassin stiffened and crumpled to the floor in a scorched heap, his left hand still clasped to Elan’s throat. Bleeding from her nose and eyes, the priestess pried open his thick fingers and slid down the wall, gasping for air.
Gracelessly, Kalenda somersaulted, and was bellying forward to help Elan when the hut was rocked by a powerful explosion. Showolter’s comlink chimed, and he fumbled it out of his pocket.
“Yuuzhan Vong coralskippers,” someone reported over the link. “Maybe half a dozen, executing strafing runs over New Nystao. Soothfast has been alerted. Starfighters are on their way.”
Showolter clamped his hand around Kalenda’s forearm. “Move her into the hardened area,” he rasped, coughing up blood. “Now!”
At the cold edge of the star system in which Wayland orbited, a solitary Yuuzhan Vong gunboat lurked. On the bridge, Nom Anor stood before a visual field fashioned by distant signal villips, observing coralskippers and New Republic starfighters exchanging fire in the skies over New Nystao.
“Don’t try too hard,” he said aloud to the pilots who manned the coralskippers. “Just enough to convince them.”
ELEVEN
Through the Happy Dagger’s wraparound slit of cockpit viewport, Han gazed queasily at the mottled indifference of hyperspace. Alongside him Roa dozed in the pilot’s seat, snoring softly, and behind him one of the ship’s droids was monitoring the navicomputer.
If only time were as easily outraced as light, Han thought. Then he might jump forward to a point where Sernpidal was a distant memory, or perhaps backward to a point before that harrowing day on the planet, so that he might restructure the events and put things right.
As it was, he was trapped in a tragic moment, compelled to relive it over and again …
The Falcon, taking on evacuees, hovering just above the bucking surface of Sernpidal. The small moon called Dobido caught in the grip of a Yuuzhan Vong monstrosity and descending.
Chewie on the ground with a kid under each massive arm, the wind tearing at his coat. Then Chewie and Anakin using blaster bolts and the Force to free a downed shuttle of rubble that held it fast.
The Falcon holding its own in a deafening wind, as Chewie rescued another child, thrusting him up into Han’s arms as he dangled from the extended ramp.
Sernpidal heaving and breaking apart.
Chewie lifting Anakin in his arms. His resigned expression as he tossed Anakin to Han. The frightful wail of the Falcon’s repulsorlift engines; the ship drifting up and to one side as Han, a group of evacuees holding him by the legs, reached desperately for Chewie.
The pitching surface carrying Chewie away.
Anakin hurrying to the bridge, weaving the upended Falcon through quickly narrowing alleys and around collapsing buildings. A fleeting view of Chewie, his back to the Falcon and his long arms upraised to Dobido, a plummeting streak of fire.
The arrival of Tosi-karu.
A searing wind that burned Han’s face and hands and sent Chewie flying and buildings toppling. The Falcon’s shields groaning in protest.
Chewie once more, his blood-matted coat … regaining his footing … standing high on a pile of rubble, roaring defiantly at the seized moon, as if to hurl it back where it belonged.
The Falcon, still in Anakin’s hands, clawing for space, abandoning Chewie to fate.
Han’s first utterance to his son: “You left him.”
The memory of those words as heartrending, as piercing, as Chewie’s death. A condemnation uttered in grief, and impossible all these months later to rescind.
Hollowed by anguish, Han squeezed his eyes shut and balled his hands. How long might he remain thus: still dangling from the Falcon’s ramp, arms extended to Chewie—
Beside him, Roa stirred, yawned loudly, and stretched his arms over his head. He blinked and swiveled to the droid at the navicomputer.
“Are we nearly there?”
“The ship will shortly revert to realspace, Master Roa.”
Roa grinned at Han. “Like old times, isn’t it, you and me on a run?”
Han forced himself from harsh reflection, his blood rushing like acid through his veins. “I remember that first Kessel Run like it was yesterday.”
Roa’s smile became enigmatic. “Speaking of Kessel, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Now, granted, stories can change quite a bit in traveling from Tatooine to Bonadan. But the way I heard it, you claimed to have made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.”
Han said nothing in a blank-faced definite way.
“Well?” Roa pressed.
“Ancient history, Roa. And that was al
ways my worst subject.”
“Think hard. I’ll grade you on a curve.”
Han showed the palms of his hands. “Look, Jabba was breathing down my neck for dumping a load of spice. Chewie and I needed the work, and sometimes you do or say whatever you have to.”
“But it’s true—you actually made it under twelve?”
Han brought his fingertips to his chest. “Would I make up something like that? When I brag, I mean every word of it.”
Roa regarded him for a moment, then burst out laughing. “Ah, Han, whatever became of those days? Whatever became of chasing fortune and glory?”
“There’s no future in it.” Han gave his head a quick shake. “Still, the idea that decent guys like Reck would willingly throw in with the enemy … The Yuuzhan Vong make the Hutts seem like schoolyard bullies. They make Palpatine seem like an enlightened despot.”
“Perhaps. But the winning side is paying better,” Roa said soberly. “Besides, credits don’t have to come from clean hands to be appreciated by Reck and his ilk.”
Han smiled. “You’ve become quite the philosopher in your old age.”
Roa’s shoulders heaved in a shrug. “When your partner dies, you suddenly have a lot of time to think.” He looked at Han. “You’ve probably found that out.”
Han said nothing.
The navicomputer chimed.
“Master Roa, we are emerging from hyperspace,” the droid announced.
Roa and Han swiveled to the control console to prepare the Happy Dagger for sublight.
“Sublight engaged,” Roa said shortly.
Han flipped a final switch. “Shields are enabled.”
Elongated, blue-shifted light tunneled them into realspace. Abruptly, the lines collapsed to pinpoints, rotating slightly before coalescing into a star field, each distant sun like a piercing to an alternate reality. Save for a brief shudder, the ship executed the transition smoothly.
“Entering the Anobis system,” the droid reported.
“Anobis?” Han said in surprise. “This place is the back end of nowhere. I can’t see even Reck wanting to hide out here.”
