Star Wars - New Jedi Order - Force Heretic III - Reunion - Book 19

by Sean Williams

  R2-D2 tootled as Saba went past. She tapped the droid's shining dome, but didn't stop. The smell of human uncertainty emanating from the fore of the ship was strong, and Saba breathed through her mouth to ensure her thoughts remained clear and focused.

  "can't be sure at this range," Mara was saying, addressing the others standing around in the passenger bay. "It could be anything. Massive psychic disturbances occur for all sorts of reasons."

  Master Skywalker nodded. "She's right, Jacen. When Alderaan was destroyed by the Death Star, Obi-Wan felt it from a great distance."

  "I know, but this is close," Jacen insisted, his voice thick with excitement. "I can feel it. What else could it be?"

  Saba could sense the others wanting to believe but remaining reluctant to gamble on the young Jedi's hunch.

  "Jacen iz right," she said, the words emerging in a rough approximation of Basic from her stress-tightened throat. "Zonama Sekot criez out in the void."

  The Jedi Master faced her. "But why?"

  "It feelz. . . distressed." The pained looks on the faces before her showed that they felt it, too. It was impossible to keep out.

  "Almost frightened," Danni ventured, hugging herself. "But angry, too."

  "Okay, suppose it is Zonama Sekot," Mara said. "What then? Do we attempt to contact it?"

  "That depends on whether you think you can follow this signal to its source." The red-haired woman frowned. "It's possible, but I'm not sure I like the idea of turning up uninvited. This thing sounds agitated as it is. Barging in there might only antagonize it further."

  "Maybe," her husband replied, "but I think that turning up and showing it our intentions rather than trying to explain them from a distance is the better option." He turned to the Barabel. "Jacen, Sabayou're our life-sensitives. What do you think?" Jacen looked uncertain.

  "I can no more read this mind than I could the entire contentz of the Chiss library," Saba told Luke, her tail tapping restlessly against her right ankle.

  "Won't going closer make the situation worse, though?" Danni asked.

  Master Skywalker looked uncertain. "All I'm sure of is that this our best shot at getting where we want to go. If we ignore it, we might never get another one."

  Mara inhaled deeply. "Okay, then let's do it while we still can."

  Luke reopened the line to the captain of the Widowmaker. "Arien, I want you to lock onto our navicomputer and prepare for immediate departure. We've got a lead, and if our hunch is right we'll soon be exactly where we need to be. We don't know what we might be getting into, so be prepared."

  "Ready when you are," came the immediate reply. "Yage out."

  Luke looked around the cockpit at the nervous faces watching him. "Maybe we should meld," he said. "Pooling our concentration might make it easier for Mara to trace the source."

  Danni had had only limited experience with the Jedi practice of mind-melding, but she nodded along with the others. Saba began the familiar exercises with a series of deep breaths. She felt the life-sparks of those around her, glowing like embers in a white-hot furnace. The strength of the signal was such that it almost totally blanketed them. But she concentrated, bringing them steadily into focus, and slowly their thoughts joined in a tight embrace.

  Mara's mind danced with hyperspace coordinates, instrument panels, and other space flight paraphernalia. Saba added her perceptions of the distant world-mind to the mix of thoughts and impressions gathering around Mara. Danni offered the clearest knowledge of astronomical forces. Saba imagined herself on the dark, red-lit world of Barab I, prowling low for shenbit bonecrushers, every sense keen. Zonama Sekot wasn't the same thing as a flesh-rending giant lizard, but the principle was the same. They were hunting, and she was a good hunter . . .

  Mara took everything she was given and plotted a course. Jade Shadow's hyperdrive roared into life, and Saba felt the familiar sensation of lights streaking past them and falling behind as the strange topology of hyperspace enfolded them.

  Here the territory belonged to Mara. Even with the Force to guide them, the way was tortuous and fraught with danger. Jade Shadow did her best to follow the path laid down for her, with the Widowmaker firmly in tow, but almost immediately she encountered the same barrier she had earlier. With a sickening wrench she was dumped back into realspace, only slightly closer to Klasse Ephemora than she had been before.

  Mara didn't give up. The signal from the distant mind was as strong as ever. Saba concentrated on it, feeling out the insubstantial pathways between it and them. There was nothing but vacuum in the way, she told herself. Crossing that vacuum should be as easy as leaping across a room. Her tail quivered with effort as she imagined that hyperspace leap in detail.

  Jade Shadow jumped again. The hull vibrated as Mara plunged the ship headlong through the strange spaces surrounding their objective. Saba received impressions of

  incomprehensible shadows sweeping by, bizarre n-dimensional membranes reluctantly unfolding to let them pass. She didn't know what they were or where they came from, but it seemed for a time as though Mara was making progress. They were getting closerthey had to be!

  Then, rattling like an old freighter, they were dumped back into realspace. They stopped long enough to check on the Widowmaker. The frigate limped from hyperspace seconds after Jade Shadow.

  "Is the Widowmaker holding up?" Mara asked. "It's seen worse," the Imperial captain assured her. "I imagine she'll keep going long after we give up."

  Satisfied, Luke gathered the Jedi minds around him for another try.

  "I think we can do it this time," he encouraged them. "Mara was right when she said before that there had to be a way in. All we have to do is find it."

  Grimly determined, they tightened the meld and tried again. Saba felt herself dissolving in the confusing sensations passing through and around her as hyperspace folded around them. The pull of Zonama Sekot was stronger than ever, and growing stronger with each passing second. She felt as though she were drowning in the massive outpouring of emotions, a mote of sand caught in a dust storm, swept up on a rising surge, unable to control where it took her.

  For a timeless moment, she completely lost all sense of herself. She was subsumed, absorbed, erased. The hunt consumed her. All her attention was focused on her quarryon tracking it, finding it, catching it...

  Then, abruptly, something changed. She didn't know what it was, but the thoughts changed in pitch. It was as if they'd reached the eye of a storm. Energy still swirled around them, but at the center there was a kind of peace-

  ful balance. Saba felt her thoughts regain a sense of normality, joining up again in a single coherent stream. They had emerged from hyperspace once more, only this time the screens were alive with data there was a sun blazing on one, a gas giant looming on another. A faint green-blue speck hung in the center of a third screenand it was to this that her senses clung. Green meant chlorophyll; blue meant water. If a world was ever to live, it had to have both.

  Zonama Sekot!

  But as the view zoomed in closer, she saw yellow and bright red clouds blossoming as energy weapons flashed and flared around the atmosphere. Thin-hulled spaceships burst open under the influence of stupendous forces, casting countless lives into the harsh vacuum of space.

  And that wasn't all. What Saba saw behind the space battle was completely beyond her experience. Bright feathery ribbons trailed from the planet's poles like liberated coronas. Fleeting sprites danced in the upper atmosphere, sending towering flashes of energy spiking far above. Massive sheets of lightning swept around the equator, gathering speed until they joined in a smooth ring; then, with a piercing crack, they lashed out and up like a whip of pure energy. Magnetic field fluxes measured by Jade Shadow accompanied what appeared to be tractor beam effects on scales Saba had never imagined possible.

  Zonama Sekot's attackers were obviously Yuuzhan Vong vessels two mid-size cruiser analogs and countless numbers of coralskippers. But they weren't the only ships in the air. Among them darted and
wove tiny points of light like no ships Saba had ever seen before. Every one was different; every one was beautiful; every one was deadly.

  Zonama Sekot was fighting back!

  Anger blazedugly in its ferocity, devastating in its

  efficacyand with it came a return of the storm. Saba barely had time to wonder what would happen when the mind they'd been seeking finally noticed them, when a wall of psychic energy struck them, tossing them into oblivion.

  "Spare me, Master! Spare me!"

  Supreme Overlord Shimrra gazed down with cold contempt at the squirming thing at his feet. The Shamed One had been tortured and beaten, but still she hadn't broken. If the godlike ruler of the Yuuzhan Vong found this puzzling, he didn't let it show.

  "Spare you?" he said, slowly pacing around the prostrate figure. "Why? So you can continue to pollute my chambers with your false protestations of innocence?"

  "Not false, Lord! You must believe me."

  "You dare to tell me what I must do?" Shimrra snarled.

  The object of his ire quivered piteously. "Forgive my ignorance! If I knew the answers to the questions you ask, I would surely tell you!"

  "But you do know. You are a pawn of the vile sect that dares follow the Jeedai."

  "Master, I swear by"

  "Spare me oaths to your infidel gods. I will hear no more of your foul lies." Shimrra gestured imperiously, and the Shamed One was dragged away. The charnel pits where the heretics were taken for dishonorable execution had been working day and night in recent times. A swarm of ravenous yargh'untoothy rodents as long as a Shamed One's legdevoured the victims in swift order. Crippled, their limbs broken prior to being tossed to their doom, those found guilty of heresy were shown no mercy, nor afforded any honor in the manner of their death.

  "Destroy the yargh'un," Shimrra ordered of the guards who had stepped forward to do his will.

  The guards stopped in their tracks, confused by the Supreme One's command. "Master?"

  "The beasts have been defiled by heretical blood," he said. "Take them from the pit and have them burned."

  "What shall we do with this one, Master?" The guards indicated the Shamed One quailing between them.

  "Deal with it as you normally would. Break its legs and throw it into the pit." Shimrra ascended his throne, climbing heavily across pulsating hau polyps. "It can die slowly of starvation and thirst, like an animal. Its body will stay where it lies to serve as an example of what will happen to anyone who dares allow this heresy to propagate. There will be no easy deaths for those who turn their backs on the gods."

  The guards obeyed Shimrra's will with grim determination, ignoring the plaintive cries of the condemned. The cries turned to shrieks as all hope fled, then faded to distant wails as the Shamed One was dragged away from the throne room.

  Shimrra waited until the last echo had passed before speaking again.

  "You do well, Ngaaluh. Once again your investigations have exposed the enemy within."

  The slender priestess bowed deeply. "I am honored by your acknowledgment, Supreme One."

  "You find success where many others have failed." Shimrra's baleful gaze scanned the faces of the priests, shapers, warriors, and intendants who had been assembled for the interrogation. "We must be ever watchful to ensure that the roots of heresy spread no farther than they already have. More than that we must actively seek out nests of perfidy and find their source."

  Assent came loudly and without hesitation.

  "Be assured, Great One," said High Perfect Drathul, senior intendant of Yuuzhan'tar, "that we are making every effort to arrest this terrible tide."

  "Your willthe will of the godsis not to be denied," seconded Warmaster Nas Choka, cutting the air with his ceremonial tsaisi. "We will not rest until the last heretic lies crushed beneath our soles!"

  "Nor would I expect anything less," the Supreme Overlord said. "In fact, henceforth anything short of enthusiasm for the heresy's eradication will be regarded as collaboration. And collaboration will be punishable in the same fashion as treachery. Is that understood?"

  The echoes of the Supreme Overlord's pronouncement rumbled around the throne room, and all who heard it bowed solemnly in agreement.

  "You will continue this work, Ngaaluh," Shimrra intoned. "I cannot personally oversee every interrogation and execution, yet it is my misfortune to be the one responsible for upholding all that the gods have entrusted to us. I am therefore glad to have someone in whom I can place my trust. Go forth and find me more bodies for the yargh'un pit. When it is full, I will build another, and another, until the curse of this foul heresy is erased from the galaxy once and for all, and the gods favor us again."

  "Yes, Supreme One." Ngaaluh's bow was even deeper than her first.

  The Supreme Overlord shifted in his throne and stared dispassionately over the heads of his minions. "Leave me now. I have much to contemplate."

  One by one the members of Shimrra's court filed out of the chamber. The priestess Ngaaluh was among the last to leave. She turned to glance back at Shimrra, giving the villip beacon she carried a final glimpse of the Supreme Overlord, seated atop his throne.

  To Nom Anor, watching the events on a villip choir far away, deep beneath Yuuzhan'tar's surface, Shimrra looked isolated yet undiminished. The Supreme Overlord's power and confidence was evident in his straight-backed posture and the indifference with which he dismissed his court. The ruler of the galaxy had weathered many storms in his time and, judging by the glaring determination of his stare, planned to weather many more.

  Nom Anor's smile, previously broad and triumphant, slipped at the sight. His gnarled hands curled into fists as he paced back and forth across his audience chamber the sixth he'd occupied in as many weeks. The transmission from Ngaaluh ended as she crossed the security perimeter of Shimrra's throne room.

  "Another success," Kunra murmured. The disgraced warrior, Nom Anor's adviser in all matters nonreligious, slouched by the door, to .all appearances perfectly relaxed. But Nom Anor knew better; Kunra was alert for trouble, listening intently to everything taking place on either side of the door. "We've gained a great deal of valuable intelligence since Ngaaluh joined us. She is instrumental in our growing influence."

  Nom Anor nodded distractedly. As though his silence were a challenge, Kunra persisted in his enthusiasm.

  "Not only does Shimrra find a traitor close to his throne, but then he fails to extricate a confession from her! Did you see the look on his face? He is frightened of us!"

  "I find it difficult to watch." Shoon-mi appeared from the shadows beside the Prophet's stately chair with a bowl of water Nom Anor had requested. The Shamed One was dressed in a faded priest's robe and wore his scarless face with something akin to pride. His expression, however, was forever glum, and seemed to become increasingly so with each passing day.

  Nom Anor understood his religious adviser's concern perfectly. "In all of us lurks a residual loyalty to the old ways, Shoon-mi. Sometimes even the truth finds it difficult to erase the programming of a lifetime."

  "That's not what I meant, Master." Shoon-mi looked almost sullen. "I'm referring to Eckla of Domain Shoolb." Nom Anor stared blankly at Shoon-mi for a few moments before comprehension dawned Eckla was the Shamed One who had just been sentenced to death in Shimrra's chamber.

  "Yes, of course," he said. "Her sacrifice was a noble one, and did not go unnoticed." The words flowed smoothly, covering the fact that Eckla of Domain Shoolb had ceased being of interest to Nom Anor as soon as the risk of her betraying him was no longer an issue. "She will be remembered as a martyr to our cause."

  "One of many, now."

  Nom Anor's instincts urged him to reprimand the impudent nobody daring to rebuke him, but he forced himself to speak calmly. "The way to liberation is long and hard, Shoon-mi. We all knew this when we joined, and we would all do the same as Eckla if our time came."

  "Without hesitation, Master." Shoon-mi made all the appropriate gestures, but still a hint of defiance
remained in his tone. "I remind each new novitiate that pain is often the only reward of faithfulness. Few seem deterred."

  "At least something lies beyond the pain," Nom Anor reminded him, feeding his assistant the spiritual fodder he craved. "The Jeedai promise a new life, whereas the old brings nothing but death and servitude. Freedom is worth the risk of pain, don't you think?"

  "Yes, Master."

  With nothing more to add, Shoon-mi bowed his way out of the audience chamber. Nom Anor could have used his advice on forthcoming novitiate selections, but he let the Shamed One go for now. Had he cared at all about the life of Eckla of Domain Shoolb, he, too, might have needed some time alone to think.

  He gestured for Kunra to shut the door. He felt restless, unnerved. If Ngaaluh's infiltration of Shimrra's court was so successful, why didn't he feel satisfaction? Why couldn't he be like Kunra, and blithely accept that Shimrra was feeling the full effect of the heresy undermining his authority?

  "Tell me about the ones you're training in this region," he said tiredly, when he was certain the room was secure. "What progress have you made?"

  "I have selected three of the more adept recruits, without Shoon-mi's knowledge." The disgraced warrior moved from his position by the door toward Nom Anor. The confident ease of his movements revealed that he had grown to enjoy his position as

  lackey-cum-chief-lieutenant for the Prophet. "Each shows the right balance of fanaticism and stupidity for the task. I'll let them fight among themselves to see which is successful."

  "Literally fight?" Blood sports didn't fit in with the Jedi Heresy, but Nom Anor knew that Kunra had a dark, rough edge that might go that far.

  Kunra shook his head. "The successful applicants must be able to meet the stare of Shimrra's lackeys unflinchingly, yet without resorting to violence. They will take their first steps toward true defiance against each other. The first to strike a blow will be the first to be dismissed." "And by dismissed you mean" Kunra nodded. "Eliminated."