Raynar looked into the pit and dipped his head. “We’re grateful.”
The ground trembled in reply, and Raynar led the way around the pit and started toward the palace. The air was arid and choking hot, and with a haze of blue dust obscuring everything below their waists, it was difficult to find the best path across the plain. Twice, Raynar sank to his thighs when he inadvertently stepped into another pit.
Several times, Raynar glimpsed a ridge rising in the dust ahead as one of Thuruht’s giant guardians burrowed across the plain to greet him and his companions. Usually, the greeting consisted of little more than coming alongside them and emitting a subterranean rumble so deep they felt it in their stomachs. But about three hundred meters from the palace, a huge head burst from the ground, blocking their way and clacking its mandibles.
It had been a long time since Raynar had been part of a Killik hive mind, but he didn’t think the creature was trying to threaten them. He motioned his companions to lower their weapons and stepped forward. Keeping his prosthetic arm at his side, he raised his flesh-and-blood hand in greeting. The insect responded by dipping its head and rubbing its wormlike antennae across his forearm. Then it emitted a soft, muffled boom and withdrew.
As soon as the creature vanished into the ground again, Tekli stepped to Raynar’s side. “You’ll be coated in pheromones now,” she observed. “You still have your nasal filters in place, yes?”
Raynar sniffed hard. Finding it difficult to draw air, he nodded. “No worries,” he said, starting toward the palace again. “No one who’s been a Joiner wants to become a Joiner again—including me.”
Lowbacca observed that no one ever wanted to become a Joiner in the first place. The pheromones just made it happen.
“We’ll be okay,” Tekli assured the Wookiee. “Even if the filters overload, the counteragents will give us enough protection to get through a week of exposure.”
Lowbacca turned to Raynar and growled a question.
“Hard to say,” Raynar answered. “But a week is probably long enough.”
“And if it isn’t, I have more counteragent aboard the Long Trek,” Tekli said. “We can always return and take another injection.”
Lowbacca glanced over his shoulder, looking back toward the distant ridge where they had landed the scoutship, then grumbled unhappily.
“I quite agree,” C-3PO replied. “That’s a very long walk, indeed. My actuators simply won’t tolerate it.”
“You won’t need to,” Raynar said. “Pheromones don’t affect droids. You can just wait with Thuruht.”
“Alone?” C-3PO objected. “I’m quite sure that’s not what Princess Leia had in mind when she offered to send me along.”
“Probably not,” Raynar agreed.
As they entered the channel at the base of the dust-mountain, Raynar realized that the scale of the place was even larger than it had appeared from the landspeeder. The channel stretched two hundred meters to the gate, and its walls were easily seventy meters high. The archway at the far end was large enough to accommodate a Lancer frigate, and the enormous support columns flanking the entrance rose a hundred meters before vanishing into an overhang of wind-packed dust.
The figures on the pillars were largely hidden by the dust. On the left-hand column, all that could be seen were a pair of sharp-taloned feet dangling beneath the overhang, tangled in the coils of what was either a serpent or a tentacle. On the right-hand column, even less could be seen, only a single wing dipping out of the dust, wrapped in what was either a length of vine or rope.
The air grew dank and humid as they drew within two dozen steps of the archway. Raynar sensed the fused Force-presence of a group of Killiks loitering in the passages near the entrance, and his pulse started to pound in his ears.
“Don’t worry,” Tekli said, stepping to his side. “We’re here with you.”
Lowbacca added his own reassurances, promising to drag Raynar out by his feet at the first hint he was becoming a Joiner again. The words were offered in kindness, but Raynar found them to be little comfort. There was something to fear. If becoming a Joiner again was the only way to learn what Thuruht knew of Abeloth and the Celestials, then become a Joiner he would. And he knew the same was true of Lowbacca and Tekli. The Order needed the intelligence they had been sent to gather far more than it needed them.
The trick, of course, would be making sure that at least one of them stayed sane enough to report back to the Council.
Together, the Jedi stepped through the archway into the cool darkness of the ruins. Raynar heard the clatter of approaching insects, and a moment later he began to feel their antennae brushing over him. They were careful to avoid the prosthetic arm, however. Killiks did not like artificial body parts. The devices blurred the line between living being and droid, and Killiks did not like droids. Droids were alien and never to be trusted, because droids never became Joiners.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Raynar found himself facing a trio of Killiks with mottled-blue exoskeletons and four delicate arms. They had the same heart-shaped heads as their giant hive-mates outside, but they were only about one-and-a-half meters tall and lacked the huge mandibles of the guardians. When they saw Raynar studying them, all three folded their arms against their thoraxes and dipped their heads.
“Ruur ubb unuwul burur,” said one. “Uru rur rruru bub.”
“Thuruht welcomes the wise UnuThul and his followers to the Celestial Palace,” C-3PO translated. “The hive is honored that he has chosen to rejoin the Kind through them.”
Lowbacca let out a quick growl, informing Thuruht that they weren’t there to join anything.
“Are you certain you wish me to translate that, Jedi Lowbacca?” C-3PO asked. “You’re actually being rather—”
Thuruht interrupted with a short thrum, and the droid turned to face the insect. After a moment, he looked back to Lowbacca.
“Thuruht says it doesn’t matter why you came, the hive will be honored to have you.” He shifted his attention to Raynar. “We are asked to attend the Queen in her chamber.”
Had his burn scars permitted it, Raynar would have raised his brow. Modern Killik hives were no longer organized around a queen, but he supposed it only made sense that Thuruht’s social structure would reflect its great age. He inclined his head to the blue insects.
“If you’ll show us the way.”
All three turned and led the way up a stale-smelling passage that ascended along the outer walls of the palace. The climb was steep and lonely, rising in a rough spiral that felt five kilometers long.
They frequently passed through musty-smelling areas where a side tunnel led into the depths of the palace. The few insects they encountered seemed to be wandering about aimlessly rather than executing the business of the hive. Most of the time, the balls of luminescent wax hanging along the walls were too dim to see much more than the silhouettes of the three guides ahead. Every so often, however, they would pass one of the huge windows they had seen from outside, and the light would spill in to reveal archways decorated with bas-relief carvings of plants and animals from a thousand different worlds.
But it was the panels between the arches that put a flutter in Raynar’s stomach. The images depicted the grandeur of deep space, always with some peculiar twist that seemed unlikely to occur in nature. There was a supernova exploding in only one direction, a ring of nine planets circling their sun along a single orbital path, a nebula hanging like a curtain between two star systems. Finally came a scene that looked all-too familiar—a system with five planets orbiting the same star in very similar orbits, with the third and fourth planets locked in a tight twin-planet formation.
Raynar stopped and asked, “What’s that picture?”
The insects answered without stopping or looking back. “Urrub.”
“Our work,” C-3PO translated. The droid paused, waiting in vain for a more thorough explanation, then said, “I’m sorry, Jedi Thul, but Thuruht doesn’t seem to be in a very in
formative mood right now. Perhaps they’ve been offended by Lowbacca’s rudeness.”
Lowbacca moaned a half-hearted apology.
Thuruht continued to ascend the corridor. Raynar remained where he was and called, “Is this one the Corellian System?”
The insects stopped five meters up the passage, then reluctantly turned around. “Buurub uu ruub ur ru ub.”
“Thuruht wouldn’t know what it is called by lesser beings,” C-3PO translated. “But to Thuruht, it is known as Five Rocks.”
Tekli stood on her toes, reaching up to wipe the dust away from the twin planets, then asked, “Does Thuruht know its original purpose?”
“Ub.”
The insects turned and walked on.
“Thuruht said yes,” C-3PO translated. “May I suggest we follow? They seem to be growing impatient with us.”
Lowbacca shrugged and started up the passage. Raynar and Tekli fell in behind the Wookiee. A few minutes later they turned toward the center of the palace, traveling down a long hall even larger and more ornate than the one they had just ascended. The air grew warmer and more humid. The glow-balls started to shine more brightly, and they began to see more worker insects, scurrying in and out of side passages carrying tools, bales of a stringy yellow fungus, and waxy orbs of one of the Killiks’ favorite nourishment, golden membrosia. Raynar started to feel thirsty, and he noticed Lowbacca eyeing a membrosia bearer as she crossed the corridor ahead.
“That I miss about being Taat,” Tekli said. Taat was the hive she and Lowbacca had inadvertently joined years before, after Raynar had summoned them to help the Killiks fight the Chiss. “It will almost be worth the trip to have some again.”
“They sell it in Restaurant Galatina on Coruscant, you know,” C-3PO offered helpfully. “I understand the Horoh is especially fine this year.”
“And a thousand credits a liter,” Tekli said. “I’m a Jedi Knight, not an investment banker.”
They reached the end of the hall, where two huge guardian insects stood to either side of the corridor, their long mandibles locked across an entrance ten meters wide. The insects looked much the same as the one that had eaten the landspeeder, except there was nothing vestigial about their eyes. The pair glared at the procession as it approached, and Raynar began to fear that he and his companions would not be permitted to enter the queen’s chamber.
Then a deep drumming sounded from the interior. The guardians lifted their mandibles, and the guides led the way into a vast chamber containing hundreds of empty floor pits. In a healthy hive, the pits would have been filled with incubation cells. But the deep drifts of dust in the bottom of these suggested they had not been used in centuries. Unlike the rest of the palace, the room was well lit, the sun’s orange light spilling in through a transparent membrane stretched across the vaulted ceiling.
The guides stopped a few steps inside, leaving Raynar and his companions to continue down a large center aisle toward the queen. Almost as large as the entrance sentries, she lay stretched across a massive dais, with six sturdy legs curled against a Bantha-sized abdomen and a mouth flanked by a pair of multi-jointed mandibles. Standing on the floor in front of her were four guardians identical to those outside the entrance.
Closer to the dais were a pair of floor pits filled with the familiar comb of incubation cells. Raynar saw no more than thirty compartments, and only three nursery Killiks to attend them. The hive wasn’t quite dead, but it wasn’t thriving, either.
As Raynar and his companions passed the last nursery pit, the guardians shuffled away from the center of the dais, revealing a wide set of stairs. The queen’s abdomen rippled, filling the chamber with a long, low rumble barely audible to human hearing.
“I must say, this is quite unexpected,” C-3PO said. “The queen is inviting Lowbacca and Tekli to groom her.”
Lowbacca emitted an uncertain groan.
“It means you remove her external parasites,” Raynar explained. Lowbacca and Tekli’s old hive, Taat, had been much more egalitarian in social structure, so they had probably never participated in the ritual. “It’s an honor. Yoggoy used to groom me—”
Lowbacca huffed in disgust.
“Just think of it as a medical procedure,” Tekli whispered. “And remember why we’re here.”
The Wookiee sighed and dropped his head, and the group ascended the stairs. An attendant emerged from behind the queen, appearing atop her giant abdomen with a bucket in one hand and a cloth and bottle of antiseptic spray in two of her other hands, then motioned for the groomers to join her. As former Joiners themselves, Lowbacca and Tekli had enough experience to realize Killiks weren’t shy about crawling over one another, so they scrambled up to join the attendant.
Raynar watched them ascend, then stepped over to present himself to the queen. Her head was small compared to the rest of her body, but it was still half the size of Raynar himself, with eyes as big as shock-balls and slender mandibles the length of a Wookiee’s arm. Raynar raised his flesh-and-blood hand in greeting. In return, the queen dipped her head, then rubbed a feathery antenna along his wrist.
“Wuur uu rur uu,” she thrummed. “Ubub ruub uru.”
“Thuruht welcomes you back to the Kind,” C-3PO translated. “The hive will be honored to have you.”
Raynar felt a nervous flutter in his stomach. Lowbacca had clearly stated they had not come to join the hive, yet Thuruht was speaking as if it were already fact. All Killiks had a tendency to confuse belief with reality, so the queen might simply be saying she believed the three Jedi would eventually become Joiners again. But her tone was insistent, and it struck Raynar as an assertion of will—a warning that Thuruht would not be defied.
Raynar continued to hold his arm aloft until the queen withdrew her antenna, then said, “You know we are not here to join the hive.”
The queen lifted her head above his, then clapped her mandibles together and let out a short rumble.
“Yes, but it will happen,” C-3PO translated. “She seems quite sure of it.”
Raynar let out his breath, taking a moment to calm himself, then looked into the queen’s nearest eye. “That can’t happen,” he said. “You remember last time, when I became UnuThul.”
The queen dipped her head a little, and let out a series of soft booms.
“You won’t make the same mistake again,” C-3PO translated. “You have grown in years and in wisdom.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Raynar said. “The Chiss wouldn’t like it. They would go to war.”
The queen’s reply grew a little softer.
“What the Chiss don’t know will never hurt us,” C-3PO said.
“They already know.”
A low rumble sounded from the insect’s thorax, and C-3PO translated, “You told them?”
Raynar shook his head. “No, but they have spies everywhere.” As he spoke, he was trying to figure out why Thuruht seemed so determined to have him as a Joiner. Visitors became Joiners after they had been exposed to Killik pheromones for enough time. But hives rarely engaged in deliberate recruitment—not unless they were in need of something a new Joiner could provide. “If I don’t return to the Galactic Alliance soon, the Chiss will mobilize for war—and they will attack the Kind.”
The queen studied him for a long moment, then tipped her head and rumbled a question.
“Thuruht asks why you came, if your presence is such a danger?”
“Because a greater danger threatens the Galactic Alliance, and we need Thuruht’s help to defeat it,” Raynar explained. “We need to know everything Thuruht can tell us about the Celestials—and a being who calls herself—”
The queen’s entire body shuddered. “Ruur ub?”
“It seems we’re in luck, Jedi Thul,” C-3PO said. “She asks if the name is Abeloth.”
Raynar nodded. “Then you know who Abeloth is?”
The queen gave several short, nervous booms.
“Indeed she does,” C-3PO responded. “Thuruht is the one who impris
oned her.”
Raynar’s heart began to pound. “Good. The Jedi need to know everything Thuruht can tell us about her.”
“Ub?”
Raynar needed no translation. “Because Abeloth has escaped,” he said. “And we don’t know where she went.”
The queen raised her head and let out a rumble so thunderous that Raynar’s own torso began to reverberate. Workers started to pour into the chamber from all sides, some bearing orbs of membrosia and others rushing to clean the dust from the cell pits in the floor. The nursery attendants dropped into the nearest clean pit and began to exude wax, creating a comb of fresh incubation cells.
Raynar turned to C-3PO, who was watching the sudden flurry of activity with an attentiveness that suggested a major portion of his processing power was engaged to make sense of it.
“Threepio,” he shouted, trying to make himself heard above the rumbling queen. “What’s all the booming about?”
“I’m afraid it makes no sense, Jedi Thul,” the droid replied. “I must be misunderstanding.”
“Tell me anyway,” Raynar ordered.
“Very well,” C-3PO said. “Thuruht keeps saying that the hive must spawn and prepare.”
“Spawn?” Raynar echoed. “Prepare? For what?”
“That’s the part that makes no sense, considering her determination to restore her hive,” C-3PO answered. “Thuruht keeps saying that the galaxy is dead. She keeps saying that the end of times is here.”
THE OLD REPUBLIC
(5,000–33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)
Long—long—ago in a galaxy far, far away … some twenty-five thousand years before Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars: A New Hope … a large number of star systems and species in the center of the galaxy came together to form the Galactic Republic, governed by a Chancellor and a Senate from the capital city-world of Coruscant. As the Republic expanded via the hyperspace lanes, it absorbed new member worlds from newly discovered star systems; it also expanded its military to deal with the hostile civilizations, slavers, pirates, and gangster-species such as the slug-like Hutts that were encountered in the outward exploration. But the most vital defenders of the Republic were the Jedi Knights. Originally a reclusive order dedicated to studying the mysteries of the life energy known as the Force, the Jedi became the Republic’s guardians, charged by the Senate with keeping the peace—with wise words if possible; with lightsabers if not.
Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Ascension Page 43
