Star Wars_ Traitor Part 3

"Mind your tongue, if you would keep it in your mouth.

The shaper caste is holy unto Yun-Yuuzhan."

"Of course, of course. No disrespect intended, naturally.

I only mean to point out, with the warmaster's permission, that the methods used in the Tahiri disaster were crude physical alterations--possibly heretical. "

Nom Anor leaned on the word.

Tsavong Lah's face darkened.

"They were performing sacrilegious research," Nom Anor went on.

"They tried to make her into a Yuuzhan Vong--as though a slave can be altered into one of the Chosen Race. Is this not blasphemy?

The ensuing slaughter was far kinder than they deserved, as the warmaster will no doubt agree."

"Not at all," Tsavong Lah countered. "It was precisely what they deserved. Whatever the G.o.ds decree is the definition of justice."

"As you say," Nom Anor conceded easily. "No such heresy will take place in the Solo Project. The process with Jacen Solo is precisely the opposite: he will remain fully human, yet acknowledge and proclaim the Truth. We will not have to alter or destroy him in any way. We merely demonstrate; he will do the rest himself."

The warmaster's image chilled over with calculation.

"You still have not made clear why I should desire this. Everything you have told me implies that he would make an even greater sacrifice than I had dreamed. Explain why I should await this promised conversion.

Should he die in the process, I will have broken an oath to the True G.o.ds: cheated them of their due sacrifice. The True G.o.ds are unforgiving to oathbreakers, Nom Anor."

You couldn't prove it by me, Nom Anor thought smugly, but he spoke with utmost respect.

"The symbolic importance of Jacen Solo cannot be overestimated, Warmaster. First, he is Jedi--and the Jedi stand in place of G.o.ds in the New Republic. They are looked to as surrogate parents, gifted with vast abilities that legend further magnifies beyond all reason; their purpose is to fight and die for the New Republic's debased, infidel perversions of truth and justice. Jacen Solo is already a legendary hero. His exploits, even as a child and a youth, are known throughout the galaxy; together with those of his sister--his twin sister--they rival even those of Yun-Harla and Yun-Yammka..."

"You utter such blasphemies too easily," Tsavong Lah grated.

"Do I?" Nom Anor smiled. "And yet the True G.o.ds do not see fit to strike me down; perhaps what I say is not blasphemy at all--as you shall see."

The warmaster only glared at him stonily.

"Jacen Solo is also the eldest son of the galaxy's leading clan.

His mother was, for a time, the New Republic's Supreme Overlord..."

"For a time? How is this possible? Why would her successor let her live?"

"Does the warmaster truly wish a disquisition upon the New Republic's perverse system of government? It has to do with a bizarre concept called democracy, in which ruling power is given to whoever is most skillful at directing the herd instincts of the largest ma.s.ses of their most ignorant citizens..."

"Their politics are your concern," Tsavong Lah growled. "Their fighting strength is mine."

"The two are, in this case, more closely related than the warmaster might suspect. For a quarter of a standard century, the Solo family has dominated galactic affairs of all kinds. Even the warmaster of the Jedi is none other than Jacen Solo's uncle. This uncle, Luke Skywalker, is popularly considered to have singlehandedly created the New Republic by defeating an older, much more rational government called the Empire. And, I might add, it is fortunate for us that he did; the Empire was vastly more organized, powerful, and potently militaristic. Lacking the internal divisions we have exploited so successfully in the New Republic, the Empire could have crushed our people utterly in their first encounter."

Tsavong Lah bristled. "The True G.o.ds would never have allowed such a defeat!"

"Precisely my point," Nom Anor countered. "They didn't. Instead, Luke Skywalker, the Solos, and the Rebel Alliance destroyed the Empire, leaving the galaxy in a state of disarray, a power vacuum that we could exploit--for even then, the Solo clan served the True G.o.ds without ever knowing it!"

For the first time, Tsavong Lah began to look interested.

"Now, imagine," Nom Anor said, scenting blood, "the effect on the morale of the remaining New Republic forces when this Jedi, this hero, this scion of the greatest clan of their entire civilization, announces to all his people that they have been deceived by their leaders: that the True G.o.ds are the only G.o.ds... that the True Way is the only way!"

The villip conveyed perfectly a spark kindling in the warmaster's eyes.

"We hurt them when we took their capital, but we did not kill their spirit, " he murmured. "This would be gangrene in the wound of Coruscant."

"Yes."

"The New Republic could sicken, and finally die."

"Yes."

"You are certain that you can make Jacen Solo submit to the Truth?"

"Warmaster," Nom Anor said intensely, "it is already happening.

Jacen and Jaina Solo are twins, yet male and female, complementary opposites. Don't you see it? Yun-Yammka and Yun-Harla. Warrior and Trickster. Jacen Solo will become one half of the Twin G.o.ds--to fight in service of the G.o.d he is! He will be proof no creature of the New Republic could ever refute."

"This may have value," Tsavong Lah admitted.

"May?" Nom Anor said. "May? Warmaster, you have personally performed every sacrifice the True G.o.ds demand for victory... every sacrifice save one..."

The spark in the warmaster's eyes suddenly blazed into a fusion furnace. "The Great Sacrifice--you speak of the Sacrifice of the Twins!"

"Yes. You yourself, Warmaster, must have wondered in your heart of hearts, must have doubted the True G.o.ds' promise of victory, when the final sacrifice could not be performed."

"The True G.o.ds do not mock, and They do not promise in vain," the warmaster intoned piously.

"But Their gifts are not given," Nom Anor said. "You know this.

They require that we earn them: that we bring Their prophecies to pa.s.s."

"Yes."

"And so on that great day, Jacen Solo will himself capture his sister, his twin--he will drag her to the altar, and he will himself take her life in the Great Twin Sacrifice, and the will of the True G.o.ds shall finally be brought to pa.s.s."

"The True G.o.ds' will be done!" Tsavong Lah thundered.

"The True G.o.ds' will be done," Nom Anor agreed.

"You will do this."

"Yes, Warmaster."

"You will not fail."

"If it be within my power, Warmaster..."

"No," Tsavong Lah said. "You do not understand. I tell you, Nom Anor, you will not fail. The True G.o.ds are not mocked. Should Jacen Solo not turn to the True Path, no breath of this can be whispered; no hint of this can be thought. For Nom Anor, there is only victory; lacking victory, the creature that is currently called by the name Nom Anor shall be sacrificed to the True G.o.ds as a nameless thing."

Nom Anor swallowed. "Ah, Warmaster...?"

Tsavong Lah went on inexorably. "All who have breathed the air of this plan shall die, screaming and without names, and their bones shall be scattered to drift between the stars. In every Name of all True G.o.ds, this is my word."

Abruptly, the villip inverted to its quiescent state, folding in upon itself with wet slaps like raw meat smacking bone.

Nom Anor sat back, and discovered that he was trembling. This was not quite how he had expected matters to go. There's the trouble with fanatics, he thought. They're easy to manipulate, but somehow they take everything five steps too far.

He took a long sip of the dragweed broth in the sacworm that he had held, forgotten, throughout the interview. He turned to the other occupant of the small chamber.

"Well, now we are partners in truth: together, we face either total victory or utter destruction," he said heavily. "We are, as the Corellians say, off to a flying start."

Across the quiescent villip, his partner met his gaze with unblinking avian calm.

"Well begun," Vergere said neutrally, "is half done."

TWO.

THE NURSERY.

Deep in the infinite s.p.a.ce above the plane of the galactic ecliptic--in the spark-scattered velvet so far from any stellar system that the place was not, strictly speaking, even a place at all, only a statistical array of vectors and velocities--a small vessel of yorik coral dropped from hypers.p.a.ce. It was so far from any observable point of fixed reference that its motion was arbitrary: on an Obroa-skai referent, the vessel streaked away at a respectable fraction of lightspeed; referent to Tatooine it swung in a long, lazy arc; referent to Coruscant it infell, gathering velocity.

Its twin dovin basals pulsed, emitting expanding ripples of gravity waves; some considerable time thereafter, those same dovin basals registered other s.p.a.ce-time ripples in reply.

The vessel was not alone.

These answering ripples had a direction; the dovin basals of the small vessel were sensitive enough to register the femtosecond-scale difference between the instant one dovin basal detected a wave of s.p.a.ce-time and the instant that wave reached its twin.

The small vessel of yorik coral altered course.

The object toward which it curved was a sphere of extravagant construction, hundreds of thousands of times the volume of the small vessel, featureless save for an array of black fins that girdled the globe and intersected at random, like mountain ranges on an airless moon.

These fins glowed in the deep infrared, radiating waste heat into the void.

The vessel of yorik coral slowed to intercept the sphere, angling toward one of the smooth fleshy expanses between the radiating fins. As it closed the final few meters, a docking claw like the chelicerae of a spider-roach extended from its nose and gripped the semi-elastic surface.

A few moments pa.s.sed while dovin basais s.h.i.+mmered s.p.a.ce-time at each other, and the signals thus exchanged were interpreted by specially bred cousins of villips, which pa.s.sed on the information to the creatures who served as the guiding wills of the two living structures: shapers of the Yuuzhan Vong.

The smooth plain to which the vessel had attached itself bunched into sudden landscape, gathering into a spasmic impact crater whose rim reached out and out and out. A hundred meters beyond the nether tip of the coral vessel, the rim became lips, the crater a mouth that closed around the vessel, slowly contracting to vacuum-fit itself to the vessel's every angle and curve.

The sphere swallowed.

Within seconds, the place where the vessel had rested was once again a broad, smooth plain of semi-elastic flesh, featureless and warm.

Jacen opened his eyes as the hatch sphincter dilated. Vergere stood outside. She did not seem inclined to enter.

"You're looking well."

He shrugged and sat up. He chafed the new scars around his wrists, where the Embrace of Pain had rasped away his skin. The last of his scabs had peeled off two sleeps ago.

"I haven't seen you for a while," he said.

"Yes." Vergere's crest fanned an inquiring green. "How have you been enjoying your vacation from the Embrace? I see your wrists have healed. How do your shoulders feel? Your hips and ankles? Can you walk?"

Jacen shrugged again, looking down. He had lost track of how many times he had slept and awakened again since the Embrace of Pain had finally released him. While his body had knit, he had never been able to make himself do more than glance at the branches and tentacles and sensory orbs of the Embrace of Pain. They were still up there, coiled around each other in eel-basket knots, pulsing faintly. Waiting. He didn't know why they had released him.

He was afraid that if he stared at them too long, they would remember he was here.

Vergere extended a hand. "Arise, Jacen Solo. Arise and walk."

He met her gaze, blinking astonishment.

"For real?" he asked. "You're taking me out of here? For real?"

A liquid shrug rippled along her too-flexible arm.

"That depends," she said sunnily, "on what you mean by here.

And what you mean by real. But to stay where you are, while this chamber is--I believe the Basic word isdigested, yes?

This you would not enjoy."

"Enjoy... Oh, right. I forgot," he muttered. "I'm supposed to be having fun."

"You mean you're not?" She tossed him a crude robe that seemed to be woven of coa.r.s.e, unbleached fiber. "Let's see if we can find you a residence more entertaining, hmm?"

He forced himself to his feet and slipped the robe over his head.

The robe was warm to the touch; it writhed gently as he struggled into it, fibers bunching and unbunching like sleepy worms. Putting it on hurt. Slower to heal than his skin, his shoulders and hip joints grated as though packed with chunks of duracrete, but he didn't so much as grimace.

This was merely pain; he barely noticed.

She held something in her other hand: a baling hook of sun-yellowed bone, long and curved and sharp.

He stopped. "What's that?"

"What's what?"