Star Wars_ Traitor Part 20

Flirting with the dark--sure, lots of the Jedi had, since the war's beginning.

Some had even claimed it was the galaxy's only hope. At the Myrkr worlds.h.i.+p, the strike team had discussed it seriously, as an option.

But it was one thing for, say, a Kyp Durron to talk about the dark: he was a creature of tangled hostility and self-loathing, always had been--the incredible brutality of his childhood, and the unimaginable crimes it had driven him to commit, had twisted him to where holding on to the light was a struggle for him every single day.

It was another thing for young Jedi, in a desperate situation, to debate using dark side power. For Jaina Solo to look in his eye and threaten his life was something entirely different. It hurt him. Hurt him worse than he would have ever guessed it could. The Solo kids were supposed to be invulnerable.

They were the galaxy's new generation of legends: the clean, pure hope of the Jedi. Doing the right thing came naturally for them. It always had.

They had been, were supposed to be, Happy Warriors of the Force: all three of them had already, without even trying, been exactly the kind of heroes Ganner had nearly killed himself trying to imitate. They'd been born for it.

But now Anakin and Jacen were dead, and Jaina--Jaina was making Ganner frighteningly aware that she was the granddaughter of Darth Vader.

What hurt him the worst: there was nothing he could do about it.

Well, no, that's not entirely true, Ganner thought as he slowly heaved himself to his feet in the camp s.h.i.+p corridor. There is one thing I can do.

Maybe--just barely possibly--she had lost only one brother. Jacen could be alive. Maybe Ganner could prove it. Maybe he could even find him; it might not save her, but it would have to help. And if he failed...

well, no harm done. She had no hopes left to crush. Ganner nodded to himself, then leaned close to the curtain that served as the chamber's door.

"Excuse me?" he called softly. "h.e.l.lo? Does anybody here speak Basic?"

"Go away." The voice that answered from beyond the curtain sounded oddly-- vaguely, just barely--familiar. "There is nothing for you here."

The feeling he'd had, that he was about to get himself killed, swelled into an overwhelming premonition of doom. Ganner's knees went weak, and a very large part of him wanted to bolt down the corridor and get away--but though he hadn't been much of a hero, the one virtue he'd never had to fake was courage. He took another deep breath. The hand he lifted to pull aside the curtain trembled, just a little, and he stared at it until it stilled. Then he gently tugged a gap between the curtain and the wall.

"I'm sorry to intrude," he said. "I won't bother you for long. I just have a question for you. One question, that's all, and then I'll leave you alone."

From inside, a middle-aged, heavyset human stared at him stonily.

"Go away."

"In a moment, I will," Ganner said apologetically. "But I understand that someone who lives here claims he saw Jacen Solo alive, on Coruscant, after the invasion. Can I talk to whomever that might be?"

From what little he could see beyond the curtain, there seemed to be only one or two small rooms beyond, and almost no possessions of any kind.

The man who blocked his path wore only a long, shapeless white tunic, almost like a loose robe; the others within--all men--wore identical garments. Some kind of religious thing? Ganner wondered, because they all had some kind of aura in common, a similar way of carrying themselves, similar posture or some such, that you sometimes see among members of fanatic cults. Or maybe it's just poverty and desperation.

"I can pay," he offered.

"There's nothing for you here," the man repeated. One of the others moved up behind the man's left shoulder, and gestured toward the lightsaber that hung from Ganner's belt. He'grumbled something in a guttural tongue that Ganner couldn't understand.

"Not everyone who carries that weapon is a Jedi," the man replied without s.h.i.+fting his blankly hostile stare from Ganner's face. "Be silent."

Again Ganner was struck by some weirdly familiar resonance in the voice, though he knew he'd never seen this man before. Somehow he thought this voice should be higher, fresher, more cheerful. He shook his head.

He'd worry about that later. He might not be the best sabacc player in the galaxy, but he knew when to turn his cards face-up.

"I am a Jedi," he said quietly. "My name is Ganner Rhysode. I have come to inquire about Jacen Solo. Which one of you saw him alive?"

"You are mistaken. No one here saw anything. You had better go."

One of the others stepped forward and said something that sounded like s.h.i.+nn'l fekk Jeedai trizmek.

"Silence!" the man snapped over his shoulder. Hairs p.r.i.c.kled up the back of Ganner's neck, but his expression remained only politely curious.

"Please," he said, "tell me what you know." He reached out through the Force to nudge a little cooperation out of this man... And awoke to find himself jogging away down the pa.s.sage, with no memory of having turned aside, no idea how he'd gotten here.

What? he thought blankly. What? Dizzily, blurrily, he worked it out: that guy back there could use the Force--could use it as well as the most powerful of Jedi. That middle-aged, average-looking man had brushed aside Ganner's probe and blasted back with a Force compulsion so strong that even though Ganner knew what it was, it continued to drive his legs in a staggering lope away from the chamber. He wrenched himself to a stop, gasping, leaning on the pebble-textured wall. The dread he'd felt had vanished; it must have been a Force projection as well: subtle, undetectable. Now, too late, he wished he had broken his promise to Jaina and brought along a dozen Jedi for backup--because now he felt from the chamber behind him only one presence in the Force.

One alone. Of the other four in there, he felt nothing at all. His lightsaber appeared in his hand and its blade snapped to life. You're not the only one who can play games with the Force, he thought, grinning, feeling for a moment the old rush, the familiar buzz of happy antic.i.p.ation with which he'd always faced sudden danger. In the old days.

Leave that Ganner behind, he told himself. He released the activation plate and his blade vanished. I'm not like that. I'm cautious.

Cautious and un.o.btrusive. Slowly, gradually, he began to withdraw from the Force: shutting down his Force presence as though he were still moving away. This left him Force-blind--but also Force-invisible. He crept back toward the chamber, moving silently along the pa.s.sage wall. A powerful Force-user in the camp s.h.i.+p--along with what were very probably masqued Yuuzhan Vong.

And this Force-user had knowingly blown his cover when he'd put the compulsion on Ganner; in mere minutes, he could disappear forever into the anonymous millions who crowded the immense s.h.i.+p. Ganner had heard the stories from Yavin 4: he knew that the Yuuzhan Vong had been trying to turn Jedi to their service. If they had finally succeeded, the consequences would be literally incalculable.

He was in over his head. Way over his head. But what else could he do? This guy's stronger than I am. Cold dread p.r.i.c.kled up his arms, and this time it wasn't any Force projection. It was the real thing. And there are five of them. I really am going to get myself killed. But he kept moving, creeping along the wall, silent lightsaber loose in his tingling hand. How could he not? He could imagine all too well trying to explain to Skywalker: Well, um, actually... I didn't do anything about the Jedi traitor and the Yuuzhan Vong infiltrators because of, well, I mean, because of how, uh... well, I'd be really embarra.s.sed if people thought I got killed because I was playing hero again... He choked off the thought; he was at the chamber door, and his Force trick wouldn't fool this guy for more than another second or two.

No time to plan. Barely time to act. No killing, he told himself.

Not until I'm sure they're Vong. With a sigh he relaxed the mental tension that had held him outside the Force. Perception flooded him, and in its surge he felt the Force-user within the chamber blaze like a homing beacon in an asteroid belt. Ganner flowed into action without thinking, just moving, his blade sizzling to life, slas.h.i.+ng away the curtain's fastenings, gathering it as it fell, bagging the head of the nearest white-robe while he kicked a second aside. He faked another low-line kick and leapt high, whipping an overhand right to crash the handle of his lightsaber onto the top of a third's head hard enough to drive him to his knees, then used him like a pommel horse, vaulting his legs high for a double kick that flattened the fourth like he'd been shot with a bowcaster. He whirled back to the first just as the white-robe managed to claw the curtain off his head, and dropped him with an elbow across the jaw. He felt motion behind him and sprang into a Force-a.s.sisted back flip that spun him high and wide and ended with him in a perfectly balanced stance one arm's length from the middle-aged man, the tip of his lightsaber's blade half a centimeter from the hollow of the man's throat.

"n.o.body's dead and n.o.body's hurt," Ganner said coolly, voice as even as his lightsaber's hum, "but that can change. Anytime. It's your call."

The four Force-invisible white-robes, scattered around the small chamber off balance or off their feet entirely, hesitated. The middle-aged man stood motionless. Ganner couldn't restrain the hint of a smile.

Not only am I good at this, he thought reflexively, I do it with style.

He squashed the thought the instant it registered, exasperated with himself. Just when I think I'm making progress...

He gathered his caution in layers like body armor.

"All right," he said, calm, quiet, and slow. He held the eye of the middle-aged man and twitched the lightsaber; within the red-rimmed shadows cast upward on his face by the blade's yellow glow, the man's stare was as stony as ever. "Back up. Toward the door."

The man's stare softened into something like resignation, and he shook his head in sad refusal.

"I'm not bluffing," Ganner said. "You and I are going to have a talk in the corridor. As long as n.o.body does something stupid, there's no reason why we shouldn't all live through this. Now move."

Another twitch of the lightsaber, enough to shave a micrometer of skin off the man's collarbone--and the man only sighed.

"Ganner, you dope."

Ganner licked his lips. He says that like he knows me. "You don't seem to understand..."

"You're the one who doesn't understand," the man said tiredly.

"We're being watched. Right now. If I so much as step outside this chamber, a Yuuzhan Vong pilot watching us will trigger a dovin basal concealed not very far from here. It will take all of ten seconds for this whole s.h.i.+p to collapse into a quantum black hole. A hundred million people will die."

Ganner's mouth dropped open. "What... how... I mean, why, why would..."

"Because they don't trust me yet," he said sadly. "You shouldn't have come back, Ganner. Now you can't leave this room alive."

"I got in easily enough..."

"Getting out is different. And even if you do get away, knowing only what you know already..."

"If I get away? Who's holding the lightsaber here?"

"It's not a bluff, Ganner. I only wish it was." Ganner could hear the conviction in his voice, and in the Force he felt truth behind his words. But I already know he's stronger than me. He could be faking the truth I'm feeling, and I'd never know it. And even if it were true, he couldn't get any of this to make sense... He couldn't begin to guess what might actually be going on, or what he should be doing about it.

"I'm telling you this," the man went on, "because the same thing will happen if I am killed. In case my conscience tempts me to sacrifice myself. As I said, they don't trust me yet."

"But... but..." Ganner sputtered. That feeling of being in over his head thickened. He was drowning in it. Taking a two-handed grip on his lightsaber to keep the blade from trembling, he tried to recover control of the situation.

"All I want," he said, almost plaintively, "is to hear what you know about Jacen Solo. Start talking, or I'll have to take the chance that you're bluffing. "

The man looked at Ganner like he knew him, like he'd known him for years, like he saw through him with the melancholy perception of a disappointed parent. Again, he sighed.

"Talking won't help."

"You don't have a choice."

"There's always a choice." Slowly, deliberately, without any hint of a threatening speed, he lifted a hand. He pressed a spot on the side of his nose, and his face split in half. Ganner took an involuntary step back. The man's face peeled open like the rind of an Ithorian bloodfruit, thick meaty flaps pulling away from each other, taking with them his thinning lank hair, the defeated pouches under his eyes, the jowls that had thickened his jawline. A network of hair-thin filaments slowly retracted from the pores of the face revealed beneath, leaking blood.

Beneath the retracting masque; the face Ganner saw was thin, chiseled, fringed with a raggedly scruffy beard, topped with blood-matted hair that might have been brown. Even through the streaks of blood and the distortion caused by the withdrawal of the masquer's feeder filaments, Ganner knew this face... though it was a face too old, too lined with privation and pain, set with eyes too sadly experienced, to be the face he knew it was. Ganner's mouth dropped open. His fingers loosened as his hands fell to his sides; his lightsaber's blade vanished and the handle clattered on the floor. When he could finally speak, the only word that could pa.s.s through his nerveless mouth was "Jacen..."

"Hi, Ganner," Jacen said tiredly. He reached into his sleeve and withdrew a small pouch, which he teased open, turning it inside out as he drew it over his hand like a mitten, revealing a small fabric pad that had been inside the pouch. He tossed it to Ganner. "Here, catch."

Ganner was too astonished to do anything other than catch it reflexively.

The pad was damp to his touch, and warm with Jacen's body heat.

"Jacen? What's going on?" Numbness gathered in the center of his palm, and began to climb his wrist. He frowned down at the pad in his hand.

"What is this?"

"The tears of a friend of mine," Jacen said. "They're a contact poison."

"What?" He stared. "You're kidding, right?"

"I don't have much sense of humor these days." Jacen peeled the pouch off his hand and tossed it aside. "You'll be unconscious in about fifteen seconds." Ganner's hand was already dead, and his right arm hung limp; the numbness washed into his chest, and when it touched his heart it shot throughout his body. He pitched forward, unable even to lift an arm to break his fall--but Jacen caught him and lowered him gently to the floor.

"Wake the villip," Jacen said to one of the others--Yuuzhan Vong warriors, Ganner now knew they must be. "Tell Nom Anor that our trap has failed. Other Jedi will follow this one. We must return home."

Nom Anor? Return home? Ganner thought as darkness closed in around his mind.

They've done it. They got Jacen. They've turned him. One of the warriors barked in their harsh tongue. Jacen shook his head.

"No. We'll take him with us." Cough hack snarl--"Because I say so,"

Jacen answered. "Do you dare dispute my word?"

With a final convulsion of his will, Ganner reached out through the Force and seized his lightsaber, lifting it with his mind, squeezing its activation plate to snap the blade to sizzling life. One of the warriors barked a warning in their guttural tongue. Jacen gestured, and Ganner felt a stronger mind than his take hold of the lightsaber and wrench it from his control. The lightsaber's blade vanished. The handgrip bobbed gently in the air between Jacen and the warriors.

"Do not soil yourself by touching the blasphemous weapon," Jacen said.

The last thing Ganner saw as darkness swallowed him was an amphistaff snaking out from Jacen Solo's sleeve, to slice the handle of Ganner's lightsaber neatly in half.

"We will take this pathetic excuse for a Jedi to Yuuzhan'tar,"

Jacen Solo said. "Then we'll kill him."

Inside a camp s.h.i.+p, a chamber moved. This chamber had been grown specially, bred into this particular camp s.h.i.+p for this particular purpose. It had appeared to be just another chamber within the million-celled honeycomb--but now it cast itself loose and slid along under the camp s.h.i.+p's hull like a parasite digging its way out through an animal's skin. This particular chamber enclosed a pod of yorik coral that had its own dovin basal. This dovin basal could have been used in either of two ways. With one command, it could have generated a gravity field intense enough to crush the entire camp s.h.i.+p into a point ma.s.s smaller than a grain of sand; but it had been given the other command, and so it would drive the chamber and its occupants across the galaxy.

The skin of the camp s.h.i.+p developed a small boil. This boil bulged on the s.h.i.+p's dark side. When it burst, it spat forth the chamber, which instantly streaked away, accelerating frantically into hypers.p.a.ce, heading for Yuuzhan'tar. Within that chamber were four warriors of the Yuuzhan Vong, one pilot within the coral pod, and two humans. One of the humans sat in silent meditation. The other lay paralyzed, unconscious, but even in the dark void where he seemed to float, he held on to one thought. He didn't know where he was being taken, he didn't know what would happen to him; he didn't even know, really, who he was. He knew only one thing.

This was the one lone thought to which he gave all his strength, to fix it forever in his memory: Jacen Solo is a traitor.

TWELVE.

THE LIGHT OF THE TRUE WAY.

On the surface of an alien planet, a Jedi Knight lies dreaming.

Organisms that are devices join with devices that are organisms to tend the needs of his body; glucose and saline circulate through his bloodstream, along with potent alkaloids that sink his consciousness deep beneath the surface of the dream. The planet that holds him is scarred with splotches of riotous jungle over a skeleton of ruined city, and its sky is bounded by a Bridge woven of rainbow. The Jedi Knight dreams of aliens and Yuuzhan Vong. He dreams of traitors who are Jedi, and Jedi who are traitors. And sometimes, in the dream, the traitor turns to him and says, If I'm not a Jedi, am I still a traitor? If I'm not a traitor, am I still a Jedi?

Another figure in his dream: a skeletal Yuuzhan Vong whom he somehow understands is Nom Anor, the Prophet of Rhommamool. The Nom Anor of Duro. Of Myrkr. And there is one more figure in the dream: small, lithe and agile, a feather-crested alien of unknown species, a white fountain of the Force. The Jedi Knight also dreams himself, lying motionless as though dead, tangled in a net of vines and woody limbs that is half hammock and half spiderweb. He watches from outside himself, floating, far, far above in some astral orbit, too far to hear voices though he somehow knows what they say, too far to see faces though he somehow knows how they look--And he somehow knows that they are talking about killing him.

He no longer pays close attention; he has had this dream many, many times. It replays in his head like a corrupted data loop. The dream always begins: Not that I question the sincerity of your conversion, the Nom Anor figure murmurs slyly to the traitor, but you must understand how this would look to, say, Warmaster Tsavong Lah. He might feel that if you were, in fact, devoted to the True Way, you would have slaughtered this pathetic Jedi without mercy back at the camp s.h.i.+p, rather than carting him all the way here.

The traitor counters expressionlessly, And deprive the True G.o.ds of a full formal sacrifice?

The feather-crested alien nods in fond approval, and soon the Prophet must agree.

Any Jedi is a worthwhile captive, he allows. We can sacrifice him this very day.

In fact... - - Here fleshless lips draw back to reveal a smile like a mouthful of needles. - - you can sacrifice him. To slaughter one of your former brethren will go far to ease... the, ah, warmaster's doubts.

Of course. The traitor agrees with a nod, and here the Jedi Knight's dream always becomes a nightmare: trapped once more inside his motionless, helpless, silent body, as though a corpse already, drowning in horror. He tries to reach into the Force, to touch the traitor's cold and treacherous heart--and receives, to his astonishment, a distinct feeling of warmth and good cheer, as though the traitor has given him a wink and a friendly squeeze on the arm.