"WITNESS!" he thundered.
The echo cried: Tchurokk!
"WITNESS THE WILL OF THE GODS!"
Before the echo finished roaring Tchurokk Yun'tchilat, Jacen had already turned and walked briskly through the Great Door; a swirl of the Force drew Ganner after him. Nom Anor and the Shaper Lord made to follow, along with the priests and the vanguard band, but as soon as Ganner was clear of the doorway, Jacen turned and made a small gesture that Ganner felt as another swift, incredibly powerful rush in the Force. The Great Door boomed shut.
Echoes faded. Slowly. The Atrium had become a vast cavern of living yorik coral. The immense statues that had once represented the varied species of the New Republic had become unidentifiable, misshapen pillars like boils of old lava. Shadows huge and black masked every fold of coral, and the mouths of the Grand Concourse to either side yawned bottomless depths of night; the sole light--a pulsing, sulfurous glow mingling reds and yellows--leaked into the Atrium from an archway opposite the Great Door.
"What's making that light? And, and, and, wait..." Ganner said numbly. "I don't remember any door there... that was, uh, the Information Services office, wasn't it?..."
"Maybe you've noticed: things have changed." Jacen was already trotting toward the archway. "Follow me. We don't have much time."
Ganner stumbled after him. The arch led to nearly half a kilometer of yorik coral tunnel. The roof and sides formed a rough semicircle, a little less than five meters wide at the base and the same in height. Pulsing red-orange light filled the far end, flaring sometimes to an eye-burning yellow.
"How are you doing?" Jacen asked as he jogged along; Ganner was lagging, breathing hard. "Keeping up okay? You need any more help?"
"I'm... I am..." not going to screw this up, Ganner swore to himself. "...okay. I'm okay. I'm right behind you."
The tunnel's roof opened to a vast cavernous red-lit space overhead, and the walls, too, fell away; the tunnel's floor became a cantilevered bridgeway out to a circular platform ten meters across, which hung unsupported in great swirls of sulfurous mist that burned Ganner's throat and scoured tears from his eyes.
"What is this place?"
"Look around," Jacen said grimly. If the scorching heat or brimstone-reeking fog bothered him at all, he didn't show it. He seemed to be listening for something. "Give me a minute. I have to concentrate."
Ganner barely heard him. He gaped, turning in a slow, dumbfounded circle.
This used to be the Senate's Grand Convocation Chamber.
A hundred meters below, where once had stood the pillar of the Chief of State's Podium, there now boiled a great pool of glowing slime; huge bubbles roiled to the surface, bursting into flares of scarlet and starflower yellow--it was from this pool that the light came.
Rising around the pool, a gargantuan bowl of yorik coral climbed the staggered rank upon rank of Senatorial platforms, slowly scaling the walls toward the dim, shadowed vault of the ceiling. And down in that pool of glowing slime, a vast fleshy bulge moved, breaching the surface in a slick black curve before submerging once more.
Ganner jolted back from the edge.
"Gyahh...! Jacen, there's something down there!"
"Yeah." Jacen stepped to the front edge of the platform. "Don't worry. It's a friend of mine."
"A friend?" Ganner looked down again--and again the creature breached: black, bloated, a ghastly stomach turned inside out, swollen with malice. A yellow eye the size of an X-wing glared up at them, blinking, wiped by a triple layer of transparent eyelids that slid across its surface at different angles to scrape it free of slime. Then a second eye appeared, blinked, and fixed on them: a parallax, for ranging.
A spray of tentacles shot upward from the slime. Ganner threw himself backward as tentacles hissed through the fog around them, impossibly flexible ropes of muscle slicing the air so fast he couldn't even tell how many there were. Tentacles slammed against the platform, knocking Ganner half off his feet, chipping away head-sized hunks of coral.
Jacen never moved.
"This... uh, friend of yours," Ganner said shakily. "It doesn't seem too happy to see you..."
"Yeah, well, I can't say I'm surprised. The last time we saw each other, I was trying to kill it."
"To kill... uh, your friend?" Gazing downward in a daze of horrified revulsion, Ganner tried a laugh; it came out too high, too tight, too close to a hysterical giggle. "How do you treat your enemies? "
Jacen cocked his head, his brown eyes suddenly thoughtful, then he shrugged. "I don't have any enemies."
"What?" Jacen pointed at an angle, down across the Well. "See that platform--the one sticking out under that fold of coral? That's the platform for the Kashyyyk delegation. They like manual doors. I know you're not as strong as a Wookiee, but with the Force you should be able to get them open."
"Down there?" Ganner clutched his guts again. "You want me to go in there?"
"Listen: straight back on your right you'll find the Kashyyyk Senator's private office. There's a turbolift shaft behind a concealed door by his desk. Just slide down the inside of the shaft; it'll take you right into the tunnels."
Tunnels? A secret turboshaft? When was Jacen going to start making sense?
"What would the Wookiees be doing with a secret turboshaft?"
"I think all the delegates' offices had them: They go into concealed tunnels that are full of shielded conference rooms for secret meetings and stuff. They even connect with Fey'lya's offices in the Imperial Palace."
"How do you know all this?"
"Ganner," Jacen said dryly, "those offices used to be my mother's."
"Uh, yeah."
"If you can reach the tunnels, you should at least be able to find a place to hide for a while. You might live a few days. You might even escape."
Ganner went cold. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about making a run for it, Ganner. Give yourself a chance."
"Oh, no no no," Ganner stepped back, shaking his head. "Oh, no you don't...!"
"We've only got a minute or two before Nom Anor decides he can't keep pretending nothing's gone wrong. About two minutes after that, they'll blow open the Great Door. They'll kill me about thirty seconds later."
"What can you do in here that's worth your life?"
"I don't have time to explain. I'm not even sure I can explain."
"You expect me to make a run for it and let you die? For something you can't even explain? You're coming with me, or I'm not going!"
"Still playing the hero, Ganner?"
Ganner winced--that had hit too close to the bone--but he stood his ground. "No. I'm just the sidekick here. You're the hero, Jacen. We need heroes like you. That's why I came looking for you. The New Republic needs you." He lowered his voice. "Jaina needs you. If there's even the faintest ghost of a chance, you have to live, Jacen. You have to at least try!"
Jacen shook his head. He had that Skywalker durasteel on his face again. "No, I don't. The only thing I have to do is be who I am."
"What are you talking about?"
"Anakin had his path. Jaina has hers." He spread his hands, as though to indicate the futility of arguing with fate. "I have mine."
"I don't care about any stupid path!" Ganner said desperately. "They'll blow the door any second--we have to go!"
"No. You have to go. I have to... Ganner, listen. I need you to understand. The only power I have--the only power any of us have--is to be who we are. That's what I'm going to do here. Be who I am."
"You're not making any sense! How old are you? Seventeen? Eighteen? You don't even really know who you are!"
"I don't have to know. All I have to do is decide," Jacen answered serenely. "Choose, and act."
"I am not leaving you here!"
"That's up to you."
"How long is it going to take, Jacen? How long?" Ganner stepped toward him. "What if they kill you first?"
Jacen shrugged. "Then I lose. When you start to become who you are, the
first thing you learn is that there is nothing to fear." A ripping roar of thunder behind him blew away Ganner's reply, and the bridgeway jounced sharply, smacking his feet, making him stagger. Whirling, he saw a roil of smoke belch out from the tunnel's mouth, a reeking gust like burning swamp gas.
"That's the door," Jacen said distantly. "We're out of time. I guess we both lose."
Ganner didn't move. Illumination burst within his brain. In that instant, everything finally made sense. He understood what Jacen had been talking about. There was nothing to fear. He understood the power of being who he was. He didn't even really have to know who he was. He could decide. He could choose, and act. Suddenly, his life made sense. His life had been a story of pretending to be a hero. Well, he thought. Okay, then. His nausea had vanished.
It wasn't even a memory. No more weakness. No more uncertainty. Doubt and fear had disappeared along with the nausea. He hefted Anakin's lightsaber.
"We both lose unless"--he spoke slowly--"unless somebody doesn't let them in."
"You have to play the hero," Jacen said sadly. "Even if it kills you."
Ganner squeezed the blade to life, and stared at its sizzling purple shaft.
Here was the weapon of a hero. A real hero. Not a playactor. Not a pretend-hero, like Ganner had always been. But this weapon was now in Ganner's hand. I don't have to be a real hero, he thought. A dazzling, old-Ganner, forget-the-consequences-and-have-some-fun smile dawned on his face. He shook himself and years fell from his shoulders; his eyes lit up, sparking like arc gaps in the red-lit gloom. He felt shiny as a war droid and twice as tough.
I don't have to be a hero, he thought in silent wonder. All I have to do is pretend.
"Like I said, I'm just the sidekick here," he said carelessly. "My job is to make sure the real hero lives long enough to do his. That whole ‘needing to be a hero' thing has always been my greatest weakness."
Jacen stared at him, into him, through him, as though he knew him to his very core, and he nodded. "But you should know that it can also be your greatest strength. Give yourself permission to use that strength, Ganner. You'll need it."
"Yeah." Ganner looked into the lightsaber's blade as though his future could be read in its amethyst shaft. He grinned at what he saw. "You know, I never liked you, Jacen. I thought you were soft. Wishy-washy. An over-intellectual bleeding heart."
"I never liked you either."
Ganner looked up to find Jacen answering his grin with a gentle, knowing smile. "I thought you were nothing but a grandstander. A playacting glory hunter, more concerned with looking good than with doing good."
Ganner laughed out loud. "You were right."
"So were you." Jacen held out his hand. "So: here's our chance to show the Yuuzhan Vong what a grandstander and a bleeding heart can do."
Ganner took Jacen's hand and gripped it fiercely. "It'll be a show they'll never forget."
Jacen stepped back and lifted his arms, and the pulse of scarlet and green glow from the arterial sigils on his robe synchronized with the shifting light of the bubbling slime below. Tentacles coiled upward behind him, beyond the lip of the platform, arching high overhead, trailing slime that shone and pulsed, framing him with a living corona: Jacen's silhouette became a shadow cross within a bramble of light.
"Jacen...!" Ganner gasped, reaching toward him. "Behind you!"
"I know." Jacen turned his face upward. The tentacles curved down to meet him; he lowered his hands to accept them as their shimmering coils settled across his shoulders. "Don't be afraid. This is all part of it."
The tentacles now lifted Jacen in their grip, bearing him up and off the platform, cradling him gently--almost lovingly--as they lowered him toward the bubbling slime, but down there those immense yellow eyes still glittered alien malice.
"Buy me ten minutes," Jacen said. "That should be enough."
The clatter of booted feet grew from the tunnel. Ganner paused for one last moment, watching Jacen be pulled beneath the surface of the slime. He felt a burst of power in the Force, a shove from below, an impulse: Go.
He bunched the front of his robe in his free hand and tore it off his body. The dark-glowing arterial sigils spasmed, leaking black light. He tossed the robe into a heap on the platform.
He went.
Nom Anor squinted through the smoke that boiled from the shattered gape of what had been the Great Door. Squad after squad of warriors slipped close around the twisted durasteel wreckage that pinged and groaned as it cooled. They spread out within the smoke-and shadow-filled Atrium, weapons at the ready, eyes straining for any glimpse of a target. A squad of warriors had sprinted down the coral tunnel toward the Well, to reconnoiter. That had been five minutes ago. None had returned. Nom Anor hung back in the doorway. He had not survived so much of this war by underestimating Jedi.
Red-gold slimelight pulsed through the smoke from the Well archway. A figure solidified in that archway: a silhouette approaching lazily through the smoke, haloed by the slimelight.
A human silhouette. Bonelessly powerful: a sand panther, out for a stroll. Relaxed but alert. Poised. Predatory. A superstitious chill climbed Nom Anor's spine. Warriors fanned out, officers glancing back to their commander, who looked to Nom Anor.
"This is your event, Executor. What would you have us do?"
"You! You there!" Nom Anor called nervously in Basic. "What are you doing there?"
The answer was a deep, mockingly cheerful growl. "Isn't it obvious? I'm standing in your way."
Ganner Rhysode. Nom Anor began to relax; this was Ganner Rhysode, the weakling who could not even mount the causeway. Ganner Rhysode who got no respect from the other Jedi. Ganner the poser, the playactor. The joke. Nom Anor snorted. He should just order the fool cut down--but Ganner didn't sound weak now or foolish. And what had happened to the missing recon squad? And did Nom Anor really want to be responsible for starting a brawl in the Well of the World Brain? He bit his lip so hard he tasted blood.
"Stand aside! There are thousands of warriors out here! You cannot hope to stop us."
"I don't have to stop you. All I have to do is slow you down."
A sharp buzzing crackle made Nom Anor jump. From the shadow's hand sprang a meter-long bar of vividly sizzling amethyst. "You want me to move?" The shadow beckoned with the blade of light. "Come on and move me." The smoke thinned, and cleared, and the human within the archway didn't look at all like the Ganner Nom Anor remembered. This Ganner wore only faded brown leggings and battered leather boots. This Ganner was tall, broad-shouldered, and the light from his weapon gleamed on the sculpted muscle of his bare chest.
The blade in his hand was steady as the roots of a mountain, but it was not this that made Nom Anor hesitate, made him run his thin yellow tongue nervously between his filed-sharp teeth. It was the light in Ganner's eyes. He looked happy.
"There are thousands of warriors out here," Nom Anor repeated, waving a futile fist. "You are only one man!"
"I am only one Jedi."
"You're insane!"
The man's answering laugh was deep and long and bright, full of joy and freedom.
"No. I am Ganner." He spun his shining blade in a dazzlingly complex flourish that illuminated the arch around him, making it shine like a rainbow frame for the pure, animal grace of his body. "This threshold," he announced through a happy grin, "is mine. I claim it for my own. Bring on your thousands, one at a time or all in a rush. I don't give a damn." His flourish ended with the blade slanted before his chest, and his teeth flashed in the gloom.
"None shall pass."
FOURTEEN
PATH OF DESTINY
They come at him one at a time, an endless stream, each warrior in turn charging toward honorable single combat. Then--They come two at a time.
By the time they begin to come in groups, they have to scramble over bodies of their dead comrades to reach him. A pile of bodies. A pile that becomes a wall, a rampart. Ganner Rhysode builds a fortress of the dead. From a safe vantage poi
nt--behind a twisted curve of durasteel that had once been part of the Great Door--Nom Anor watched with appalled fascination. All he could see through the smoke and the mass of warriors who pressed forward to engage the mad Jedi were flashes of brilliant purple, sometimes joined by the Jedi himself as he leapt and whirled and spun, always in motion, always attacking, stabbing and slashing, littering the Atrium with corpses and severed limbs.
"This is insane!" Nom Anor turned to the warrior commander at his side.
"Can't you simply blow him up? Gas him? Something?"
"Nay." The commander's facial scars flushed pale blue. "He faces us with honor. Would you have warriors of the Yuuzhan Vong show less honor than an infidel Jeedai?"
"Space your honor! Don't you understand? There's a Jedi in the Well of the World Brain--and that Jedi is Jacen Solo!" He used the name as though it could conjure devils... and perhaps it could. Only a devil could have slain the voxyn queen. Only a devil could have slaughtered the dhuryams and shapers and warriors in the Nursery, yet still wormed its evil way into Nom Anor's trust, to the point where he--he, Nom Anor himself--had ushered this terrifyingly lethal Jedi into the one place on Yuuzhan'tar where he might slay the whole planet!
"Jacen Solo is alone with the World Brain..."
"The World Brain is well able to defend itself."
To Nom Anor's other side stood Ch'Gang Hool the Shaper Lord. "Matters of honor aside, we cannot use overpotent explosives, nor poison gases. The World Brain would be in greater danger from a clumsy attempt at rescue than it could ever be from a single Jeedai."
"This is no ordinary Jedi," Nom Anor said feelingly. "You have no idea what he is capable of! We have to get in there! We have to stop him!"
The commander snapped a series of orders, and a squad of heavy infantry lumbered toward the archway, their head-to-toe overlapping plates of vonduun crab armor gleaming in the slimelight. He glanced back at Nom Anor. "We will be in soon enough. Remain calm, Executor."
"Space your calm, too!"
"You do seem a bit... mm, overwrought," Ch'Gang Hool murmured. His mouth-tentacles twitched. "One might wonder if you felt, in some way... mmm, responsible for this?"
Star Wars - The New Jedi Order - Traitor Page 22
