they were twenty years ago."
"We could use the Force, make one of the guards take us to them,"
Tahiri said.
"Absolutely not," Corran said with a frown. "You're not going to the
dark side on my watch. Do it on Luke's."
"What, then?" Anakin asked.
"Consider also that the odds this room is being monitored are
extraordinarily high," Corran said.
"Since when did a Corellian ever care about odds?" Anakin muttered.
"Fine. No odds. They are listening to us. Count on it."
Anakin knotted his fingers in frustration. "Then I hope they hear me
when I point out how ridiculous this is. We came here to warn them, and this
is how they repay us?"
"Anakin, look at it from their point of view. We came
here in a Yuuzhan Vong vessel and acted as if we were going to attack
their station. Now we claim a huge fleet is on the way to conquer their
planet, and further we accuse them of having at least one faction
collaborating with the Yuuzhan Vong. It would be hard for me to swallow."
"Well, they have their proof by now."
"There is that," Corran admitted. "You can't tell how close the Yuuzhan
Vong are?"
Anakin shook his head. "No. It's not like that."
As if on cue, a deep tremor ran through the station.
"But if I had to guess," Anakin went on, "I would say they were really,
really close."
"Right," Corran said. "We have to get out of here."
"Haven't we just been saying that?" Tahiri complained.
"The difference is, now I'm saying it," Corran replied. Unhitching his
lightsaber, he went to the door.
It wasn't locked, and there were no guards outside.
"Interesting," Corran said, as the station trembled again.
Struck by a sudden suspicion, Anakin reached out in the Force once
more, this time narrowing his focus to the station itself. To his relief,
his suspicions were not confirmed. The Givin hadn't abandoned the station
and them with it.
In fact, at that moment, two Givin carrying blaster rifles entered
through the hatch at the end of the hallway,
"Jedi," one said, in clipped Basic. "You will come with us."
"We can take them," Anakin said, very low.
"Probably," Corran acknowledged. "But we aren't going to. Not yet,
anyway." He smiled at the Givin. "Lead on," he said.
They passed several more Givin in the hallways, all in a rush, none
seeming inclined to notice them. When they reached the command center they
found it in a flurry of activity and eerily silent. The viewscreen depicted
several large Yuuzhan Vong ships firing globs of plasma. Dodecian Illiet
glanced up at them as they entered, "It would appear you were correct," he
said tightly. "Congratulations."
"It would have been nice to hear that a few hours ago," Corran said.
"No doubt. You three will want vacuum suits. When the Yuuzhan Vong
board, we will empty the station of air."
"Aren't you fighting back?"
"We are, but this station has limited firepower. Our shields will not
hold much longer, and our fleet is assembling to protect Yag'Dhul. We can
expect no help from them. The Yuuzhan Vong force is indeed quite formidable.
I expect we have very little chance of victory."
"Don't be so hopelessly optimistic," Corran said.
"Perhaps I misphrased, somehow," the Givin said. "I did not mean to
imply optimism on my part."
"I was being sarcastic," Corran said. "Never mind. Where are the vac
suits?"
The dodecian gestured at another Givin. "In the old storage lockers at
what you may remember as designated ring one-C of the docking area. My
subordinate will take you to them in case your memory fails. I regret your
position in all of this. I regret further that an attempt was made to
bargain with your lives."
"They didn't bite?"
"On the contrary," Illiet said. "I reached a settlement with them. They
promised to spare our station if you were turned over to them."
"Then why . . . ?"
"I did not believe their promise," the dodecian said. "Go. There is a
small ship at docking port twelve, berth thirteen, if it has not already
been destroyed. I grant you use of it. The rest of our vessels were used to
evacuate unnecessary personnel before the attack commenced."
"Thank you," Corran said.
"Thank you for your efforts on our behalf," the Givin replied. He
looked back at the tactical readouts. "You should hurry." He didn't look
back up.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Nen Yim bathed in a sea of knowledge. Protocols glistened and swirled
in the depths, revealing the foundations and endless permutations of life in
intimate and splendid detail. Beneath the cognition hood her expression was
one of awe and wonder, and for the moment she was the eager, maze-eyed young
woman she had been only a few cycles before, loving and in love with the art
of shaping, with knowledge itself.
She had long since passed the fifth cortex into the realm of the
masters. Here were the living designs for the dovin basals, the
thought-seeds of yorik coral, and yes, the protocols governing the creation
of master hands. These she passed, navigating the shoals and depths with her
questions, steering with her determination.
She found the germ of the worldships and swam through its thick skin.
Parts she had seen before, of course-the outline of the recham forteps, the
pattern of the osmotic membranes of the endocrine cloisters-but these were
only components. She had never seen the profound logic of the vessels laid
out holistically. Her grasp of the organic relationships between organs had
been based mostly on deduction, and she found it instructive to observe
where she had been right and where wrong.
At the center of it, at the outer limits of the seventh and final
cortex, she found, at last, the brain. Its making uncoiled for her. She
opened herself in turn and absorbed the information, let it fill the places
her vaa-tumor had burned a place for. Strands of amino acid sequences flowed
by like twisting rivers, pooling in her enhanced memory. Neurons
divided, splitting and scrolling into million-branched ganglia that
further folded into cortical coils. Subsystems nomic and autonomic explained
themselves as the developmental process continued, finally settling into
stability, maintenance, reorganization, stasis.
And in the end, when it had all come and gone, when her own brain
strained at the rush of knowing, she understood at last.
The ship was doomed. The rikyam would die, and there was no protocol to
stop it. Wonder dimmed in her, and the vast living library around her
suddenly stood revealed to her not so much as a storehouse, but as a prison.
Or a mausoleum, for though it created the impression of being alive,
everything in the great Qang qahsa was desiccated, sterile, unchanging.
There was nothing new here. If the protocols truly came from the gods, the
gods had not seen fit to add anything to the sum of Yuuzhan Vong knowledge
in a thousand years.
But that was impossible. Since the invasion of the infidel galaxy,
new
protocols had been handed down from the gods to Supreme Overlord Shimrra and
thence to the shapers. The gods had been generous, especially in doling out
weapons. Where had that knowledge gone?
That thought stirred something in the Qang qahsa, as if it had been
waiting for someone to think it. The seventh cortex faded from her
consciousness, leaving her adrift in peace and dark, more confused than
ever.
There is nothing beyond the seventh cortex, she thought. I have moved
to a place the gods have not yet filled.
If there were gods. Mezhan Kwaad had denied them. Perhaps. . .
But even as she renewed her doubt, something changed in the void. Like
a light in the distance, or a tunnel opening.
And then she beheld something that could not be there.
An eighth cortex.
With renewed hope she moved toward it.
The membrane resisted her, filling her with pain that etched along her
every nerve ending.
This place is forbidden, even to masters, the qahsa told
her. It was the first time it had spoken to her in something resembling
language, the first time she felt its ancient sentience notice her. She
recoiled. Who may come here if not master shapers?
Return, the voice said.
/ cannot, she answered. Breathing hard, Nen Yim ignored the voice of
the qahsa and pushed forward with her mind, accepting the pain, making it a
part of herself. The agony grew, burning away her thought, but she held to
her purpose, made it an animal thing that pain only fed and could never
quiet.
Her heart beat unevenly, and her breath chopped. She tasted blood.
Beyond the cognition hood, she was distantly aware that her body was arching
in tendon-ripping spasms.
Open! she shrieked. Open to me, Nen Yim! Open or kill me!
And suddenly, like waters parting before swimming hands, the eighth
cortex opened.
She looked within, and all hope vanished. She collapsed into her grief
and was lost.
Light filtering through her open eyes woke her. A sour smell cloyed in
her nostrils, and she realized that it was her own congealed blood. She
tried to move and found her body almost paralyzed with pain.
Standing over her, grinning, was Kae Kwaad,
"What did you see, little Nen Tsup?" he asked gently. "Did you see it
all ? Are you satisfied, now?"
"You knew," she said.
"Of course I knew."
She looked groggily around. They were in the shaper laboratory.
"Mezhan," she said.
Nothing happened, except that Kae Kwaad grinned more broadly. "I
suspect that word was supposed to trigger something. The grutchin you
altered, perhaps? I took the precaution of destroying it."
Something about Master Kwaad's speech seemed very different. Wrong.
"Clean yourself up, Adept," the master said softly. "We have a journey
before us, you and I."
"Where?" she managed to ask, through lips her own teeth must have
gnashed and torn.
"Why to see him, of course. Supreme Overlord Shimrra. He is waiting for
you."
THIRTY-NINE
"Eleven, you've got two on your tail."
"Thanks, Ten," Jaina answered, "but tell me something I don't already
know." She jiggled the etheric rudder, watching the trails of superhot gases
whip soundlessly past. Off to starboard, she caught a glimpse of the battle
at Wampa, but the flashing lasers and long plumes of incandescence didn't
tell her anything except that someone was still trying to cook the rock.
She took a hit. The starfield tumbled crazily, and her cockpit was
suddenly hotter than the midday double suns on Tatooine. Sparks crackled
across her console, and every hair on her body stood at attention.
My engines are gone, she thought. I'm dead.
Interestingly, the thought did nothing to frighten her. Her only regret
was that she wouldn't get to see the big show at the end.
"Captain Solo, the Yuuzhan Vong ship is hailing us," C-3PO shouted
excitedly. "They must have a modified villip on board."
"You tell them I'm a little too busy shooting down their ships to
answer them," Han replied, flipping the Millennium Falcon ninety degrees to
squeeze thinwise through a tightly formed wedge of skips.
"They seem quite eager to communicate," C-3PO persisted.
"Well, tell them we'll call back." He'd been forced away from the
interdictor by seemingly endless swarms of coral-skippers. Now the monstrous
ship was following them,
trying to establish the dovin basal equivalent of a tractor lock. In
desperation, Han drove for the freighters, figuring he could at least use
them as shields.
He hadn't had time to check on Karrde lately, though the barked
commands over the open channel told him the information broker was still
alive, at least.
He made the largest of the freighters, dodging its insignificant
defensive lasers with ease, and once there looped around to face his
pursuit, a determined snarl on his face.
He blinked. There was nothing there. Not a single coral-skipper had
followed him.
"Sir," C-3PO said, "the commander of the Yuuzhan Vong warship Sunulok
has called his ships back. If we do nor answer his hail, he will commence
hostilities in sixty seconds."
Han checked his sensor display. The coralskippers had retreated to the
vicinity of the interdictor, which was now at a stop relative to the falcon.
He estimated he was outside of the Sunulok's tractor range-barely.
He eased back half a klick, to see what would happen. The ships didn't
port, that battle raged on. It looked like Karrde was losing.
"Better let me talk to 'em, Threepio," Han said. "I don't think letting
them speak to a droid is going to make them any happier."
"Indubitably, sir."
Keeping a careful eye on both the viewport and sensor displays, Han
keyed on the comm.
"Sunulok, this is Princess of Blood. You ready to surrender, yet?"
The Yuuzhan Vong were not.
"This is Warmaster Tsavong Lah. You waste my time with nonsense," the
warmaster grated.
"Hey, you called me. What do you want?"
"You deny me visual, skulking coward," he said. "But it avails you
nothing. You are Han Solo, and your vessel is the Millennium Falcon."
Well, ! wonder who he bought that information from?
Han thought. So much for the anonymity of piracy. "You're callin' me a
coward?" Han exploded. "You're the scum who had his underlings cut my wife."
"She was not worthy to fight me. Neither was your jeedai son."
"Listen, scars-for-brains, I couldn't care less how you explain your
weak knees and yellow belly. We had a good fight going here. You want to
finish it, or you want to call it quits? Either way is fine by me."
"Jacen Solo is with you. I want him. Alive. When I have him, you're
free to go."
"Oh, sure. I'll just put him in an escape pod and send him over."
"Dad?" Jacen's voice came up from the intrasystem channel. "Dad, maybe
it's not a bad idea. If I can
get him to duel me ..."
Han ignored Jacen and turned to C-3PO. "You got a read on that
radiation signature yet?"
"Yes, sir, but I'm afraid it's not very helpful. It's very low
grade-the cargo pod contains liquid hydrogen enriched with tritium."
"Cheap reactor fuel," Han grumbled. "Industrial waste. I was hoping for
a cargo of ion mines, or something."
"I'm sorry, sir," C-3PO said.
"Infidel," Tsavong Lah roared. "There is no sign you are preparing an
escape pod."
Han's jaw dropped. "This guy doesn't have any sense of humor at all. He
really thinks ..."
Well, let him think it, then. He opened the channel for a reply. "Just
give me a sec, will you? He is my son, after all."
"You have two minutes."
Han chewed his lip, thinking furiously.
Leia called up from below. "Han, couldn't you put a concussion missile
in the escape pod?"
"Nah, they'll catch that," he said. "Waste of a missile we'll probably
need."
"It's got to be me, Dad," Jacen said. "I'm going back there."
"Oh, no you're not." Han swung on C-3PO. "Jettison
both escape pods. Now. Right now. Aim them both at the Vong ship."
"Sir, I'm not sure which-
"There," Han said, pointing. He cut the engines back in and began
creeping back toward the freighter and the Yuuzhan Vong ship it nearly
eclipsed. Two escape pods suddenly went tumbling across his field of vision.
"Hopefully, it'll take 'em a few seconds to figure out there's no one
on board," Han said. He fired his forward lasers. "Goldenrod, take a deep
breath. If this doesn't work..."
"But, sir, I don't breathe, of course I-oh, no!"
Anakin, Tahiri, and Corran followed the Givin through the cramped
corridors of the Yag'Dhul space station, their footing upset by
ever-more-violent explosions.
"Do you have any idea where we're going?" Anakin asked Corran.
"The basic layout hasn't changed that much," Corran said. "We're headed
down toward the berths."
"Yes. Going to the berths," the Givin said helpfully.
They reached an axis a few moments later and piled into the turbolift,
which, at the Givin's command, whirred them down toward the anterior berths.
Power flickered, and the lift jarred to a halt, only to start again a moment
later when the lights came back on, albeit dimmed.
"I'll be sorry to see this place go," Corran murmured.