by Greg Keyes
ours. The phenotype is radically different, but the genotype is similar. More
similar than anything in this galaxy thus far. And the protocols have in them
certain weapons that seem designed peculiarly well to deal with it.
Shimrra claims the gods must have anticipated our need. What do you
think?"
Again, that long moment of consideration, but this time accompanied by an
excited writhing of tendrils on her headdress.
"I think that is not true," Ahsi said softly. "The protocols have not
changed in hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. They have not 'anticipated'
anything else in this galaxy. Why should they anticipate this?"
"Perhaps nothing else here required the intervention of the gods."
Ahsi made a dismissive motion. "There is much here we could have used the
help of the gods with. The Jeedai, for instance. And yet there is nothing in
the protocols that even hints of them."
Nen Yim nodded. "I grant I believe as you do. Then what explanation do
you offer?"
"Our ancestors met this technology in the past. We bat-tled against it,
and the weapons from that battle remain in the Qang qahsa."
"And yet no record of any such event exists." Ahsi Yim smiled faintly.
"Even the Qang qahsa can be made to forget. More recent events have been
elided. Have you ever tried to learn of Shimrra's ascension to Supreme
Overlord?"
"Yes," Nen Yim replied.
"The record of that seems implausibly thin."
Nen Yim shrugged. "I agree that records can be erased. But why erase
knowledge of a threat?"
"You think this ship a threat?"
"Oh, yes. Shall I tell you a tale?"
"I would be honored."
"I have in my possession the personal qahsa of Ekh'm Val, the commander
who brought this ship to Lord Shimrra. He was sent years ago to explore the
galaxy. He came across a planet named Zonama Sekot."
Ahsi Yim's eyes narrowed.
"What? This means something to you?"
"No," she said. "But the name disturbs me."
Nen Yim nodded agreement. "Ekh'm Val said the planet itself was alive,
its life-forms symbiotic, as if shaped to live together."
"They shape life as we do?"
"They shape life, yes. Not as we do. And the sentient race there is
nothing like Yuuzhan Vong-indeed, from the records, I think they must be a
race native to this galaxy-Ferroans."
"Then I retract my earlier statement. Our ancestors can hardly have met
this world before."
"It seems unlikely. And yet, at the same time, it seems the only possible
answer to the puzzle."
"What happened to Commander Val?"
"He was attacked and repelled, but he managed to capture the ship before
leaving the system."
"And the planet?"
"Shimrra claims it has been destroyed."
"You do not believe him?"
"No. I've been asked to create weapons that might affect it. Why should I
do that if the danger has passed?"
"Perhaps he fears there are more such worlds."
"Perhaps. Perhaps he merely fears."
"What?"
"If we have met this race before, and fought them - perhaps they remember
it better than we. If we have the key to attacking their biotechnology,
perhaps they have the key to ours as well. Ekh'm Val was defeated, after all."
"A few ships against a world."
Nen Yim smiled thinly. "Tell me-what sort of memory do you think our
glorious ancestors are more likely to have purged from the Qang qahsa? A
glorious victory or an igno-minious defeat?"
Ahsi Yim pursed her lips. "Ah," she said. "And you think Shimrra knows
something we do not."
"I think he knows many things we do not."
Ahsi Yim's tendrils curled in agreement. Then she leveled her liquid gaze
directly at Nen Yim. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because," Nen Yim replied, "I think you know things / do not. Have
connections that I do not."
"What sort of things?" she asked, stiffly.
"For one, I think you have heard of Ekh'm Val before."
A long silence, this time. "Are you asking something of me?" she said at
last.
"If this planet exists, I must see it for myself. The ship alone is not
enough. I must know more."
"Why?"
"Because I think if I do not, our species is doomed."
Ahsi pursed her lips. Her tendrils knotted and waved. "I can promise
nothing," she said, "but I will see what can be done."
SIX
From the bridge of Yammka, Nas Choka surveyed the ruins I of the
occupation forces from Fondor. They weren't much j to look at.
He turned slowly to face Zhat Lah.
"How did this happen?" he asked. His voice was low, pitched only for the
commander.
"Duro was attacked, Warmaster, as our intelligence sug - I gested it
would be. The executor there requested reinforce - I ments. My men were hungry
for battle, and I complied."
His eyes narrowed. "Then they came. I recalled the ships j when I
understood the ploy, but they were prevented from leaving the Duro system by
their interdictors. The infidels I kept our forces pinned in the planet's
gravity well and then I fled. They are cowards!"
"Are you telling me cowards took the system you were entrusted with from
you? You were beaten by cowards?"
"Warmaster, we were outnumbered. We fought until there was no hope."
"No hope?" Nas Choka asked, in scathing tones. "You were yet alive, and
had ships, and say there was no hope? Are you Yuuzhan Vong?"
"I am Yuuzhan Vong," Zhat Lah growled.
"Then why did you not fight to the last? Might you not I have taken a few
more of their ships with you to the gods?"
"A few, Warmaster."
"Then why did you flee? Where is the honor in that?" Zhat Lah's split
lips twitched. "If the warmaster wishes my life, it is his to give to the
gods."
"Of course. But I asked you for an explanation."
"I thought our remaining ships might serve better than to be cut to
pieces in a battle we could not win."
"Did you?" Nas Choka asked. "You had no thought for your own life?"
"My life belongs to the gods. They may take it as they will. I do not
flinch from death. If the warmaster wishes me to take my personal coralskipper
back to Fondor, I will die in battle. But given the numbers, the rest of my
ships would have been destroyed with relatively little damage done to the
enemy. If this was wrong, the responsibility is mine. My men own none of it."
Nas Choka looked back out at the wreckage.
"Two frigates, all but undamaged. A battle cruiser with only minimal
damage." He turned to Lah. "You did well," he said.
The commander's eyes widened fractionally with surprise.
"We have spread ourselves too much, over too many star systems," Nas
Choka said. "We have lost too many ships because too many commanders have no
more sense of strategy than to fight to the death."
He clasped his hand behind him and regarded Lah.
"We have the late leader of your domain to thank for this situation."
"Warmaster Lah conquered most of this galaxy," Zhat Lah protested. "He
&
nbsp; gave us their capital, now our Yuuzhan'tar."
"Yes, and he spent warriors like so much vlekin doing so, and gave little
thought as to how we would hold such vast territories." He waved his hand.
"Things are changing, Zhat Lah. Things must change. The infidels have adapted.
They have undermined many of our strengths, but we have undermined ourselves
even more. The pride of our warriors weakens us."
"But the pride of our warriors is what we are," Zhat Lah protested.
"Without our pride, without our honor, we are as the infidels."
"And yet you retreated because you thought it best."
"Yes, Warlord," he replied, his tone finally subdued. "But it was not...
easy. I take the stain on myself, yet there is a stain."
"Listen to me," Nas Choka said. "We are the Yuuzhan Vong. We have been
entrusted with the true way, the true knowledge of the gods. Our duty is to
bring every infidel in this galaxy to heel and either send them screaming to
the gods or bring them to the true path. There is no middle ground, there is
no faltering. And there can be no failure. Our mission is more important than
you or me, Com-mander, and it is more important than your honor or mine. Lord
Shimrra himself has said it. And so, feel no stain. To win this war, we must
set aside much we cherish. The gods ordain the sacrifice. We are blameless. We
are those who do what must be done. And so I tell you again-you did the right
thing."
Lah nodded, understanding lighting behind his eyes.
"Now," Choka went on, "these tactics-these feints and sudden withdrawals,
these strike-here-and-hide-there maneuvers-what enables this? The infidels
have no yammosk to coordinate their movements."
"They have communications, Warlord. Their HoloNet allows them to
communicate instantaneously over the breadth of the galaxy."
"Precisely. But without their HoloNet, such precise coor-dination becomes
much more difficult, yes?"
Lah shrugged. "Of course," he said. "But destroying the communications
system is difficult," he said. "There are many relay stations, not always
placed so as to be easily found. When one is destroyed, another may function,
and the infidels have managed to repair or replace many we have destroyed."
"The destruction of the HoloNet has never been a pri-ority before," Nas
Choka said. "Now it is. And the gods have given the shapers a new weapon, one
that should per-fectly suit our needs."
"That is well, Warlord."
"It is." He paced a moment.
"I'm giving you a new battle group. You will remain here, at Yuuzhan'tar,
on alert to strike quickly. The infidels are growing confident; they will
attack again, soon. I can feel it. And when they do, we will have something
new to show them. Something quite new."
SEVEN
Beneath the black sky of Yuuzhan'tar, Nen Yim moved invisibly. The guards
at their posts did not blink as she passed; the singing ulubs stayed silent as
she moved lightly across the grounds of the Supreme Overlord's compound.
Damuteks glowed with faint luminescence, and ships coming and going were pale
viridian or blood-colored mists of light in the sky. Yuuzhan'tar had not
always been dark at night. For millennia, it had been the brightest world in
the galaxy, never knowing true darkness. Unliving metal had pulsed with unholy
energies, hemorrhaging light and heat and noxious fumes to burn the womb of
night.
Now that unnatural work had been undone, and any brightness came from the
stars alone. Tonight, not even they troubled the closed eyelids of the gods,
for a tarp of cloud had been drawn overhead, blotting even the fierce beauty
of the Core. So long controlled by machines, the climate of Yuuzhan'tar was
also finding its natural state. To Nen Yim, it seemed paradoxically unnatural.
She had been born and raised on a worldship, nurtured by an or-ganism so larg e
that she had been like a microbe in its belly, kept warm and secure. The
vagaries of weather were only recently known to her, and though her mind
rationally recognized that on some long-ago day the Yuuzhan Vong had lived on
a world where seasons came and went, where rain fell when it wished or not at
all-that this was, indeed, the natural course of things - her instincts
rebelled at the capricious variability of it all. She was a shaper. She
preferred shaping to being shaped.
And she despised being cold. She was cloaked in a creature of her own
modification, a variant of the special ooglith cloakers that hunters wore. Its
billion tiny sensory nodes gazed at the night, heard it, tasted it-and made
her a part of it. For the first time in many, many months she was free of her
guards, of her damutek. She did not fool herself that the freedom was real. If
she did not emerge from her sanctum in a few hours, questions would be asked,
and then a search would commence. Being invisible would not be enough, then.
But the illusion was heady.
Though she had created the cloak for herself long before, there had never
been any reason great enough to risk using it. Now there was. A cryptic
message, a meeting place, a possibility.
She passed from Shimrra's fortress compound easily enough. Even a hunter
could not have managed that, but the cloak of Nuun she wore was better than
the usual sort. It hid her very thoughts, it disguised her mass as a movement
of air.
She moved on rougher ground now, down a slope and then up to the platform
where a shrine to Yun-Harla, the Trickster goddess, overlooked a vast pit that
had once been sky-reaching buildings. Dark waters filled it now, and the
burring cries of p'hiili rose in shrill chorus with the bass cooing of large-
wattled ngom. Like the lim tree in her hortium, they were re-created creatures
from the homeworld. A single figure awaited her in the shrine, beneath a
statue of Yun-Yuuzhan that had been made from the skulls and long bones of the
conquered. It, too, carried a message from Yuuzhan Vong history-like the
creatures of the pool, it proclaimed,
This world is ours now.
The one waiting was male, lean, his hair knotted in a pat-terned scarf.
All but three fingers had been cut from each hand. Nen Yim stood watching him
for long moments. His eyes held a contained and fierce intelligence. Priest,
she thought.
What could you want with me?
She stood on the vua'sa's spine. Death seemed near. She wasn't sure what
she had expected, but it wasn't a priest, alone, in the dark.
She moved out of his sight and removed the cloak, then walked back to the
shrine.
This time his gaze found her instantly. His body remained still.
"You've come at a strange time to perform your ablu-tions," the priest
said.
"I come when I am called," Nen Yim answered.
"So must we all," the priest answered. "I am Harrar." Nen Yim's spine
prickled. She knew that name. So not just any priest. A very important one.
"I am called Nen Yim, Honored One," she replied.
"You are a master. Our ranks are equivalent, so we may dispense with
honorifics. My time is short, and I suspect yours is shorter still."
Nen Yim nodded.
"There are rumors of you, shaper," he said. "You labor alone, under heavy
guard in the Supreme Overlord's compound. It is said you are most favored by
the gods, and yet so few know you exist at all. Even a whisper is too loud a
tone to speak of you in. It is said that some have died who could not keep
that whisper in."
"And yet you know of me."
"I know when and whom to whisper to." He smiled thinly. "You, apparently,
do not."
"I don't know what you mean."
"I mean your attempts to contact the Quorealist under-ground have been
clumsy."
"I do not even know who or what the Quorealists are," Nen Yim asserted.
"Quoreal was the Supreme Overlord before Shimrra. Many do not think the
gods chose Shimrra to take his place, they believe that Shimrra dishonorably
murdered him. Quoreal's old followers are understandably a reticent group, but
they still exist."
"These are new facts to me, if facts they are."
The priest shrugged one shoulder. "It does not matter who you thought you
were trying to contact. The point is that if you persist, Shimrra will
discover you, and I doubt that anyone is so favored by the gods as to survive
that." He clasped his hands behind his back. "What I wish to know is this Why
is Lord Shimrra's most favored shaper trying to contact the pitiful remnants
of his political enemies?"
"I know nothing of these politics," Nen Yim replied.
"Shimrra is the Supreme Overlord. I owe allegiance to none other. I
desire allegiance to none other."
Harrar cocked his head. "Come now. Why else contact us?"
"Us?"
Harrar's fierce grin expanded a bit. "Of course. Clumsy you may have
been, but you have succeeded. Shimrra has enemies. You have found them. What
do you want from us?"
"I've just told you, I seek no enemy of my Supreme Overlord."
"But you move in secret, without his knowledge. What do you want?"
Again, Nen Yim hesitated. "There is something I must see," she said.
"Something I believe to be of vital impor-tance to the Yuuzhan Vong."
"How intriguing. Shimrra will not let you see it?"
"I cannot ask him."
"More intriguing still. What is this thing?"
"It is very far from here," Nen Yim said. "I need help get-ting there. I
need help finding it."
"You obfuscate."
"I am cautious. You tell me you are the enemy of my Lord Shimrra. In that
