Star Wars®: Dark Nest I: The Joiner King

by Troy Denning

  But Luke was careful to keep those feelings hidden, buried deep inside where they would not show in the Force and complicate a discussion already sure to be difficult and full of emotion for both sides.

  “Raynar Thul may be in hiding,” Luke said carefully. “But he is not gone. I feel that clearly.”

  “We are surprised, Master Skywalker, that you cannot feel the difference between a ghost and a man.” The same murky presence that Luke had felt in the Lizil cantina rose within Raynar’s body, not forcing Luke out, but preventing him from feeling anything else. “Raynar Thul vanished with the Crash.”

  “And then UnuThul was born?”

  “The Kind are not born, Master Skywalker,” Raynar said. “An egg drops, a chrysalis is spun.”

  “You mean there was a metamorphosis?” Leia asked. Along with Mara and Saba, she was sitting cross-legged with Luke on the dais floor. Han, of course, could not be talked into sitting. He was pacing the edge of the dais, keeping a wary eye on the attendants below and grumbling about the heat and mugginess and too-sweet smell of the nest. “Is that the story on the walls?”

  Leia gestured at the colorful mosaics that decorated the interior of the Prime Chamber, and Raynar’s eyes flashed in delight, a pair of blue embers flaring back to life in that melted wreck of a face.

  “You are as observant as we recall, Princess,” he said. “Others are not usually observant enough to perceive the Chronicle.”

  “The Chronicle?” Luke asked.

  Raynar pointed over Luke’s shoulder, where a red streak arced down the domed ceiling to a white smear opposite the main entrance to the chamber.

  “A star wagon fell from the sky,” Raynar said.

  As Luke twisted around to look, he glimpsed the blocky hull of an overturned YV-888 light freighter protruding above the rim of a still-smoking crater. But as soon as his gaze fell directly on it, the image dissolved into the same blur of semi-random color that had been there before.

  “I don’t see anything,” Han complained.

  “Only a wall of rockz,” added Saba, whose Barabel eyes were incapable of seeing nearly half the colors in the design.

  “You can’t look directly at it,” Mara explained. “It’s like one of those air-jellies on Bespin. It only shows up when you look away.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Han said.

  Saba hissed in frustration.

  Luke let his gaze slide to the next image and glimpsed Raynar kneeling over a wounded insect, his palms pressed to its cracked thorax.

  “No, Master Skywalker. Over there.” Raynar pointed to a pinkish blotch on the adjacent wall, eliciting a loud rustle as all the insects in the chamber turned to look in the direction he was pointing. “The Kind do not order such things in the same way you Others do.”

  When Luke turned his head, he saw a scorched figure lying in the bottom of the crash crater, surrounded by waiting insects.

  “Beside the star wagon Yoggoy found Raynar Thul, a scorched and dying thing,” Raynar continued. “We climbed down to wait for the Last Note so we could share his flesh among our larvae.”

  Raynar pointed across the room again, to another mosaic depicting the insects carrying him toward a small enclave of spires similar to those in the city outside.

  “But he touched us inside, and we were filled with the need to care for his body.”

  The next image showed Raynar’s burned body in the bottom of a large six-sided basin, curled into a fetal position and tended by two human-sized insects.

  “We built a special cell, and we fed him and cleaned him like our own larvae.”

  Luke had to slide his glance past the following scene three times before he could be sure of what he was seeing. The mosaic showed only Raynar’s face, surrounded by the walls of a much smaller cell, his neck craned back and his mouth gaping open to accept a meal from a nearby insect.

  “After a time, Raynar Thul was no more.”

  The picture he pointed to next showed Raynar rising from the cell much as he was now, a knobby, faceless, melted memory of a man, arms crossed across his chest, feet together and pointed downward, eyes shining beneath his heavy brow like a pair of cold blue moons.

  “A new Yoggoy arose.”

  The following image showed Raynar splinting the leg of a wounded insect, and the one after that showed several Yoggoy tending to an entire chamber of sick and injured nest members.

  “We learned to care for the infirm.”

  Several pictures showed the Yoggoy nest expanding and growing, with Raynar supervising the construction of irrigation aqueducts and a drying oven.

  “Before, only the nest mattered. But Yoggoy is smart. Yoggoy learned the value of the individual, and Yoggoy grew stronger.”

  Then came the crucial set of images. The first showed Raynar trading with other nests for food and equipment, the second depicted several insects from different nests gathered around listening to him, and in the third he was leading an even larger group of insects—all different in color, size, and shape—off to start their own nest.

  “The Unu was created,” Raynar said.

  Before he could point to another mosaic, Leia asked, “What exactly is the Unu? The governing nest?”

  Raynar tilted his head and gave a short, negative click. “Not in the way you think. It the nest of the nests, so that Yoggoy may share our gift with all of the Kind.”

  “Yeah?” Han asked. “And how’s that work?”

  “You would not understand,” Raynar said. “No Other would.”

  There was more, an attack by a disapproving nest, a time of starvation as the flourishing nests stripped their worlds bare, the beginning of the Colony as the Kind began to spread across local space. But Luke paid little attention. He was struggling with what he had learned already, with the fear that Raynar remained as lost to them as ever, and that Jaina and the others would soon be just as lost—and with the growing alarm he felt over what the young Jedi Knight had become. Jedi should not be leaders of galactic civilizations; it was too easy to abuse the power they wielded, too easy to use the Force to impose their will on others.

  He felt Mara touching him through their Force-bond, urging him to keep his disapproval in check.

  To Raynar, she said, “What happened to the Dark Jedi who abducted you?”

  Raynar lowered his fused brow. “The Dark Jedi?”

  “Lomi and Welk,” Luke prompted. He was careful to keep his disapproval well buried within himself, in case Raynar could sense his feelings better than he could Raynar’s. “The Jedi whom you rescued on the Myrkr mission.”

  “Lomi and Welk…” Raynar’s eyes grew restless. “They were…trouble. You say they abducted us?”

  “They stole the Flier with you aboard,” Mara said. “You must have figured this out by now. They tricked Lowbacca into leaving the ship, then stole it while you were unconscious inside.”

  As Mara spoke, Raynar’s gaze kept sliding away from her face, then back again, and his presence in the Force grew confused as well. The familiar part, the part Luke recognized, rose repeatedly to the surface, only to be swallowed a moment later by the murkier, more powerful essence that confronted him every time he tried to probe a Colony member.

  After a few moments, Raynar said, “We remember the Crash, but not the Dark Jedi. We think they…they must be dead.”

  “You don’t remember them on the Flier at all?” Luke asked. “You must have seen them before you crashed.”

  The murky presence rose inside Raynar and pushed Luke out with such power that he felt as though he were falling.

  “We remember the Crash,” Raynar said. “We remember flames and pain and smoke, we remember fear and loneliness and despair.”

  The finality in Raynar’s voice brought a tense silence to the dais—a silence that Han broke almost instantly when he whirled on Raynar with an outstretched finger.

  “What about Jaina and the others?” he demanded. “Do you remember them?”

  “Of course,” Raynar said. “
They were our friends. That is why we called them.”

  “Were?” Han stepped toward Raynar. “Has something happened? If you’re trying to make Joiners of them—”

  “Han!” Leia stopped Han with a gesture—she was probably the one person in the galaxy who could do that—then turned to Raynar. “Well?”

  “Jaina and the others are well.” Raynar addressed himself to Han. “But they were Raynar Thul’s friends. We are unsure how they feel about us.”

  “You haven’t answered the question,” Luke observed.

  “The Colony has need of them,” Raynar replied. “Only Jedi can prevent a war with the Chiss.”

  Han started to complete the threat he had made earlier, but Leia quickly rose and drew him to the edge of the dais.

  “The Chiss have told us that there is a border conflict,” Luke said. “But not why.”

  Raynar’s scar-stiffened face showed twitches of suspicion. “We do not know why. The system we have entered is over a light-year from the nearest Chiss base, and we have established nests only on food sources. Their explorers are alone on all the ore planets. We have even offered to work in their mines, in exchange for food and supplies.”

  “Let me guess,” Han said from the edge of the dais. “The Chiss aren’t interested?”

  “Worse. They have poisoned our food worlds.” He tilted his disfigured head and made a clicking sound deep in his throat—a sound that was echoed by the tapping mandibles of the attendant insects below. “Our nests our starving, and we do not understand why.”

  Luke found Raynar’s confusion odd. “You’re only a light-year from their border. You don’t think they might be worried about your intentions? Or want to claim the system for their own?”

  “The Colony is not stopping them,” Raynar said. “They are free to take what they need.”

  “As long as you’re free to take what you need?” Leia asked.

  “We do not need the same things,” Raynar answered. “There is no reason to fight.”

  “No reason you can see,” Mara said. Luke sensed that she was as mystified as he was by Raynar’s blindness to Chiss territorial concerns. “Maybe we should go take a look at what’s happening there. Where is this system?”

  Raynar’s unblinking gaze shifted to Mara. “You wish to go there?”

  “You said you needed help,” Luke reminded him. “Perhaps we can resolve the situation.”

  “We know what we said.”

  Raynar’s eyes grew very dark around the edges, and suddenly Luke could see nothing else. The murky presence began to reach into his mind, trying to push its way inside his thoughts to read his intentions. Luke was astonished by its power and had to reach deeply into the Force to bolster his own strength. Though the probe was hardly subtle or refined, it felt as though it were being driven by a thousand Raynars, and he feared for a moment that in his surprise he would be overwhelmed by its sheer might.

  Then he felt Mara pouring her own strength into him, and Saba and even Leia. Together they pushed the dusky hand back. Luke found himself looking once again into the blue, lidless eyes of their host, and he finally began to comprehend just how difficult it was going to be to reach Raynar Thul.

  “What are you waiting for?” Han demanded, apparently not noticing his companions’ sweaty brows and trembling hands. “Tell us where the system is…unless you’re afraid of what we’ll find.”

  “We have nothing to fear from you, Captain Solo. Jaina and the others are free to leave anytime they wish.” Raynar floated to his feet, then tipped his head to Luke and the other Jedi. “As are you, Master Skywalker. We will assign a guide to escort you back to the Lizil nest.”

  “We won’t be going back to the Lizil nest. Not yet.” Luke met Raynar’s eyes, this time ready to meet a probe with a Force wall of his own. “We came to investigate what Jaina and the others are doing.”

  “You’re welcome to stay on Yoggoy as long as you like,” Raynar said. “But we’re sorry. You can’t see our Jedi.”

  “Your Jedi?” Han snarled. “When the Core goes dark!”

  Leia motioned Han back, then stepped toward Raynar, her chin raised in challenge. “Why not? Because we’ll discover you haven’t been entirely honest? Because the Chiss are more in the right than you’re telling us?”

  “No.” Raynar’s mouth straightened, perhaps in an attempt at a smile. “Because we know how good you are, Princess Leia—and because you serve necessity instead of virtue.”

  “Just hold on,” Han objected. “Leia has been out of politics for a long time. This is just us.”

  “Really?” Raynar turned to Luke. “What do the Jedi seek?”

  “Peace,” Luke answered instantly.

  “Peace in the Galactic Alliance,” Raynar amended. “We know where the new Jedi Temple has been built.”

  “That doesn’t mean we are the Galactic Alliance’s servants,” Luke said.

  “Master Skywalker, remember who Raynar Thul’s parents were. We know how money works.” Raynar stood. “You must bow to the needs of those who pay your bills—and, at the moment, the Galactic Alliance needs you to turn your back on what is right.”

  “Right from whose viewpoint?” Luke countered, also standing. “Right and wrong, good and evil, light and dark—most of the time, they are illusions that prevent us from perceiving the greater reality. The Jedi have learned to distance themselves from these illusions, to seek the truth beneath the words. Let us go—”

  “No.”

  Raynar stepped toward Luke, and suddenly the dark presence returned, pressing against him, trying to push him toward the edge of the dais. Luke opened himself to the Force and pushed back, standing firm until Raynar came toe-to-toe with him, and they stood glaring into each other’s eyes, two strangers who had been, in another life, Master and pupil.

  “We have heard about this new Force of yours,” Raynar said. “And we despair. The Jedi have grown blind to the dark side itself.”

  “Not at all,” Luke said. “We have learned to see it more clearly than ever, to recognize that the dark side and the light side spring from the same well—inside us.”

  “And which side is it that wishes to find Jaina and the other Jedi Knights?” Raynar asked. “The side that knows what is right? Or the side that serves the Galactic Alliance?”

  “The side that the serves the will of the Force,” Luke answered. “Everywhere.”

  “Then you will serve it best by leaving Jaina and the others to settle this,” Raynar said. He turned his back on Luke and started toward the steps. “As we said, you are welcome to stay on Yoggoy as long as you like.”

  “I’ll bet,” Han said, going after him. “And when we get to be Joiners—”

  “Thank you.” Leia grabbed Han’s arm and jerked him back. “We look forward to learning more about the Colony. After we have, perhaps we can discuss this further?”

  Raynar stopped on the top step and glanced back, his scorched face tipped at a slight angle. “Perhaps, but you won’t change our mind, Princess. We know you too well.” His gaze shifted back to Luke. “We know you all too well.”

  ELEVEN

  Were it not for the golden gleam of C-3PO’s head—bobbing along through a forest of feathery antennae as he questioned their guide about the Colony languages—Leia would never have been able to tell which scarlet-headed insect they were following. The route back to the hangar was swarming with Kind, and at least half of them were Yoggoy, proud and bustling and identical in every way she could see to the guide that had been assigned to escort them.

  The passage took a sharp bend, and Leia lost sight of C-3PO. Waving the others to follow, she started to walk faster.

  “What’s the hurry?” Han said, catching her by the arm. “We could use a few minutes alone.”

  “Alone?” Leia tipped her head at the steady stream of insects clattering past. “Take a look around!”

  Han was careful to avoid doing as she suggested, but gave a little shudder anyway. “You know what I
mean. Without Raynar’s spy listening in. I’ve got a plan.”

  “Planz are good,” Saba agreed from the back of the group.

  “But we don’t want to look suspicious,” Mara said. She waved the group forward again, and they set off with Leia and Han in the lead, Luke and Mara next, and Saba bringing up the rear. “Let’s keep moving while we talk.”

  “I’m pretty sure I can talk Juun into giving us a copy of that list of nests on his datapad and any charts he does have on the Colony,” Han said. “Between that and your Jedi senses, it shouldn’t take us that long to figure out where Jaina and the others are. After all, Raynar practically told us where to look—a light-year or so from the frontier.”

  “If he was being honest,” Mara said. “He was always clever, but now…we should be careful. This new Raynar is a lot more formidable than the kid we remember. I have a feeling he’s already ten steps ahead of us.”

  “And that’s why we should accept his offer to stay on Yoggoy for a while,” Leia said. They rounded the bend in the corridor, and Leia spotted C-3PO’s golden head fifteen meters ahead—far enough away that no matter how good the guide’s ears were, it should be impossible to eavesdrop over the clicking and thrumming that filled the passage. “We need to learn as much about Raynar—and the Colony—as he knows about us.”

  “We know enough,” Han grumbled. “We know that Raynar joined minds with a bunch of bugs, and that if we don’t get to Jaina and Jacen and the others soon, the same thing’s going to happen to them.”

  “Han, we have time,” Luke said. “A Jedi’s mind is not easily dominated.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Han glanced back. “Raynar was a Jedi.”

  “A much younger and inexperienced Jedi—and a grievously wounded one,” Mara said. “Luke and Leia are right. We need to answer some questions before we go.”

  “Yes,” Saba said. “This one would like to know why they are lying about the Dark Jedi.”

  Mara nodded. “I noticed that, too.”

  “Even I picked up on it,” Han said. “But I don’t see what difference it makes to finding Jaina and the others.”