Star by Star Page 27

  “Of course, it’s impossible to know the significance of twins to the Yuuzhan Vong,” C-3PO babbled on. “But in approximately ninety-eight point seven percent of the cultures in our own galaxy, they represent the dualistic nature of the universe: good and evil, light and dark, male and female. When the twins are in harmony, there is balance to the universe …”

  In the hologram, Mif Kumas fluttered forward with a pair of stun cuffs, his three protection droids arrayed in a triangle around the Yuuzhan Vong. To Luke’s great surprise, the Yuuzhan Vong extended his arms and brought his wrists together—then grabbed his own little finger and tore it off. A string of black vapor sprayed out of the base, billowing up around Nom Anor and Mif Kumas in cloud of inky miasma.

  The event seemed to lie outside the parameters of the protection droids’ programming, for they did not open fire until the Yuuzhan Vong thrust the stump of his finger into the Calibop’s startled face. Luke saw the first bolts strike Nom Anor’s shimmering robe and blink out without causing him harm, then both figures vanished inside the expanding cloud of darkness.

  Paying no attention at all to what was happening in the hologram, C-3PO continued, “But whatever the significance of twins to our enemies, I fear it will only make Jacen and Jaina’s captors all the more vigilant. Nom Anor’s reaction suggests—”

  “See-Threepio!” Leia barked, returning to the room with Ben still quiet in her arms.

  “Yes, Mistress Leia?”

  “Silence yourself before I decide you need a memory wipe.”

  “A memory wipe?” C-3PO echoed. “Why in the world would I need a memory wipe?”

  R2-D2 tweedled a suggestion.

  “Well, I didn’t mean to alarm Mistress Leia,” C-3PO objected. “I only thought—”

  Han reached behind the droid’s head and tripped the primary circuit breaker.

  “Thank you,” Luke said, though he knew Han had silenced the droid for Leia and himself.

  The scene in the hologram was confused, dark, and rapidly growing more so. Nom Anor’s cloud quickly filled the holocam’s view, and the protector droids stopped firing as they lost contact with their target. The operator pulled back to a wider view of the chamber, but the black fumes continued to expand, and even that view was obscured within a few seconds. The audio was filled with panicked screams and the sound of coughing and the thunder of running feet.

  There was a moment of static as the chamber’s ventilation and fire suppression systems activated, then the image began to clear rapidly. As the stairs and galleries grew visible again, they saw prone bodies lying everywhere—on the stairs, slumped over conferencing consoles, sprawled on communications ramps.

  “Sith spawn!” Corran gasped. “He wiped out the entire senate!”

  “Knocked out,” Luke corrected. He was still trying to puzzle out Nom Anor’s strange reaction to Fey’lya’s accusation. Luke knew for himself that the attempt on the chief’s life had occurred, since both Han and Leia had been at the proving trials when the assassins struck. Yet the Yuuzhan Vong had reacted as though it were political fiction. “This wasn’t about destroying the senate. That kind of outrage would draw the New Republic together, and so far the Yuuzhan Vong have been trying to split it apart.”

  It grew apparent that Luke was correct as the image zoomed back to the chamber floor. Even there, where the cloud had been thickest, the bodies were beginning to stir, hoarse throats to rasp for air. Kumas’s wings began to flutter again, while Fey’lya and the other councilors dragged themselves up and punched at their consoles, barking orders that made sense only to their confused minds.

  The three protection droids lay inert on the floor, the last swaddled in the still-shimmering robe Nom Anor had been wearing. Of the Yuuzhan Vong himself, there was no sign.

  “Got away clean,” Han observed. “Probably had one of those masquer things around his waist.”

  “Maybe palace security will pick him up.” Leia turned to Corran, who, as an ex-member of Corellian Security, had more experience in such matters than anyone else. “What do you think?”

  Instead of answering, Corran only looked at her and Han with an expression of infinite sadness. He spread his arms and came around the table, Mirax following close behind.

  “Han, Leia … I’m so sorry.”

  “Hold on there, fella.” Han backed away, one hand raised to ward off the embrace of the former CorSec officer who, a few decades earlier, might have been hunting him down instead of offering him comfort. “There’s something you ought to know.”

  Corran stopped, looking equal parts hurt and confused.

  Luke chuckled. “Corran, there’s a reason I’m asking the Jedi to gather.” He glanced in Booster’s direction, then said, “But this has to stay secret—very secret.”

  Booster spread his palms and looked around the cabin. “Who am I going to tell?”

  Luke explained what Anakin and the strike team were doing, and how Eclipse was trying to put together a group of Jedi to defend the Talfaglion hostages.

  “Do you remember what you told Jacen after the fall of Ithor, that if there ever came a time when folks looked forward to the return of the man who killed Ithor—”

  “Master, I was a little, uh, disappointed then,” Corran said. “I didn’t mean to sound bitter.”

  “And you didn’t,” Luke assured him. “But, Corran, the time has come. The invasion is out of hand, and the Jedi need someone of your experience to help us prepare … to teach our young pilots how to fight as a unit and survive.”

  Corran considered this for a moment, then cast a querying look in Mirax’s direction.

  “What else are we going to do?” She hooked a thumb at her father. “Hang around with this old grouch?”

  Booster scowled and started to retort, then threw up his hands. “I’m sworn to secrecy.” He eyed Luke. “I suppose you’ll be needing a Star Destroyer for this fleet of yours?”

  “Not yet—where could we hide you?” As tempting as the offer was, Luke still wanted the academy students kept out of harm’s way. “Admiral Kre’fey has converted that old smugglers’ hole at Reecee into a rear base. He’d welcome an extra Star Destroyer there, and you’ll be close enough to Eclipse to come running when things start to look bad.”

  Booster fixed Luke with a sour glare. “I know what you’re doing, young fellow.”

  Luke smiled. “Good. I was starting to think you were slipping.”

  NINETEEN

  The assault on Arkania began quietly enough. A few sensor alarms chimed in warning, then the silky voice of a female tactical controller reported the coordinates of the invasion fleet. A circle of darkness smaller than a thumbnail appeared at the indicated place and blocked the light of the distant stars. The dark area expanded quickly to the size of a human hand, then a head. The stars reappeared, winking in and out of sight as thousands of yorik coral ships passed in front of them.

  A flurry of lightpoints sprayed out from the fleet, then swelled into the blue-white dots of plasma balls. They passed harmlessly through the mine shell—the droid brains were programmed to ignore weapons—then flared out of existence against the planetary shields. A volley of magma missiles followed. A storm of low-power stutter lasers flashed out from Arkania’s new Balmorran Arms defense platforms to intercept and destroy the missiles on the far side of the mine shells. When the fire inadvertently struck and detonated one mine, the shell instantly realigned itself for optimum coverage.

  Finally, what looked like an entire asteroid belt burst into the blue light of Arkania’s sun. Dozens of large clearing ships went straight for the mines and opened their pointed noses, spewing rocky decoys into the shell. The rest of the fleet swirled out to surround the planet, spewing magma missiles and grutchins at the orbital defense platforms.

  The TacCon’s silky voice came over the blastboat’s comm channel. “Guard ships take cover behind your platforms. Turbolasers will commence fire in three seconds.”

  The battered blastboat slid into
the sensor shadow of the Wild Knights’ assigned platform, and Danni’s readouts went to zero. She slammed her palm against the console.

  “How can I correlate anything from here?”

  “You will have your chance, Danni Quee.” Their platform opened up with its variable-pulse turbolasers, filling the darkness outside with sheets of colored light. Saba, sitting in her command chair near the front, half turned so she could fix a reptilian eye on Danni. “Use the wait to calm yourself. It is dangerous to enter a fight angry.”

  “I’m not angry.”

  “You feel angry to me,” Wonetun rumbled from the pilot’s seat. “And that’ll get someone killed. Calm down or close up.”

  “You were angry when Mara came to tell us about Anakin’s plan,” Saba said. “Perhapz you wished to go along?”

  “You’re smarter than that,” Danni retorted, “or this bunch of grutchin traps wouldn’t have lasted this long. The last place I want to be is another Yuuzhan Vong holding cell.”

  “No anger there,” Wonetun observed sarcastically.

  “She is upset with Master Ssskywalker.” Izal sat in the topside turret, his long tongue flicking the pale salt crust clinging to his upper lip. “She thinks he should have asked her.”

  Danni glared up at the Arcona. “Stay out of my mind.”

  “It is in your face, not your mind.”

  Danni was not certain she believed him—Izal could be a little sly when he was holding back on the salt—but there was no denying the irritation she felt at the suggestion.

  “He shouldn’t have let Anakin talk him into it,” Danni said. “Those kids have no idea what they’re getting into.”

  “The voxyn must be exterminated,” Saba said. “Master Skywalker has surely considered the riskz.”

  “Master Skywalker has not seen a breaking,” Danni shot back. “He has no idea.”

  “The strike team will commandeer the ship before the breaking,” Saba said.

  “Sure they will,” Danni said.

  Saba’s scaly tail slapped the floor. “What would you have us do? Go after them?”

  The sudden apprehension in the Force reminded Danni of what she was saying. Saba’s face was so stoic and fearsome-looking that it was easy to forget she had emotions, too, and it had completely slipped Danni’s mind that Saba’s apprentices and son were with the strike team. Knowing the Barabel did not really understand the concept of an apology and would probably have found it disingenuous if she did, Danni did not even try. She simply gave a small nod.

  “If we could find them, Saba, that’s exactly what I’d do,” Danni said. “I’d go after them.”

  Saba studied her with a black eye for a moment, then the TacCon’s voice came over the comm channel. “Guard ships forward. Remember your areas, and stay close to your platforms.”

  “Let us do our own jobz first.” Saba gestured at Danni’s instrument panel. “Knowing how the yammosks communicate does us no good until we understand their language. Did you not say that?”

  Without awaiting a reply, the Barabel turned away and ordered the squadron forward. Though Danni’s anger was gone, the Force was now filled with grimness and apprehension—and not only Saba’s. Though the exchange in the blastboat had not been transmitted over the comm channels, the rest of the Wild Knights could sense their leader’s anxiety. Danni instantly felt ashamed of her anger and regretted her thoughtless words even more than before. In a squadron that relied on empathy to bind it together, runaway emotions could get someone killed.

  Danni focused her attention on her instruments and promised herself that she would coax every bit of data possible out of the battle. It was the only apology Saba Sebatyne would understand.

  They emerged from behind the platform shields not into the maelstrom of whirling fighter craft that Danni expected, but into a meshwork of streaking missiles and flashing laser bolts. Having penetrated the mine shell, the Yuuzhan Vong capital ships were laying off, firing salvos of plasma balls and magma missiles at the orbiting defense platforms. One platform, an older KDY system designed for the turbolaser exchanges of the Rebellion era, was jetting a long plume of boram coolant into space. Otherwise, the enemy barrages were proving remarkably inefficient.

  On the other hand, the motley assemblage defending Arkania—the planet’s military, volunteer squadrons like Saba’s, and a small New Republic task force rushed in to attempt a delaying action—were doing remarkably well. The slow but powerful KDY platforms were breaking up concentrations of enemy ships, preventing the invaders from mounting any sort of planetward thrust. The smaller but newer Balmorran Arms platforms used their long-range stutter lasers to destroy incoming missile volleys and pepper the big Yuuzhan Vong capital ships with showers of random-intensity attacks. Whenever a low-power laser struck yorik coral, a sensor detected the strike and automatically fired a pair of devastating blasts from the platform’s charge-storing turbolasers. The system was as deadly as it was efficient, and there were already scores of lumpy derelicts spinning off into space.

  What Danni did not see was a swarm of coralskippers rushing to disable the platforms. She checked her instruments and found all readouts hovering down near the bottom.

  “What do they wait for?” Wonetun grumbled. “I see the skips on my sensor screen—clouds of them.”

  “Perhaps they fear the battle platforms,” Saba said.

  “No,” Danni said, suddenly feeling relieved. “They never intended to come in. This is a feint.”

  “A feint?” Saba turned to look at Danni. “You cannot know that.”

  “Can’t I?” Danni gestured at her instrument panel, where all of the data bars continued to hover near the bottom. “If the attack had truly stalled, don’t you think the yammosk would be going wild?”

  Saba left her chair and peered over Danni’s shoulder for a long time, then finally said, “This makes no sense. They would conquer at half the strength.”

  “But not without cost,” Danni said. “Perhaps their resources are not as limitless as we think.”

  Saba considered this for a moment, then turned to Wonetun. “Calculate a course for Eclipse.”

  “What about the Yuuzhan Vong?” Wonetun asked. “They’re not going to let us—”

  “The Yuuzhan Vong are going to withdraw,” Saba said. “They are saving their fleet for something else—something we must warn Master Skywalker about.”

  TWENTY

  The door valve drew open, and Nom Anor stepped into the sweltering dazzle of the Glory Room. The warmaster, tethered into his cognition throne thirty meters away, could hardly be seen for all the blaze bugs warming the chamber with their crimson abdomens. Some of the creatures moved slowly through the air, and a few winked out or blinked on, but most hovered in place, each representing the known location of a capital starship or significant concentration of smaller craft. The scene was confusing to the eye alone, but a careful listener could identify a blaze bug’s affiliation by the sound of its wings—low thrum for Yuuzhan Vong vessels, sharp drone for the New Republic, steady buzz for Imperial Remnant, and shrill whine for other infidels.

  With the hum of the invading core enveloped on all sides by the high-pitched whirring of infidel forces, the situation sounded precarious at best. Had not a sour odor filled Nom Anor’s nostrils as he moved through the enemy blaze bugs near the entrance of the room, he might have worried. As it was, the reek of disorganization and poor battle preparedness assured a swift Yuuzhan Vong victory, and the executor’s success in dividing the New Republic Senate was undoubtedly responsible for the strongest part of that smell. Certainly, that was why the warmaster had left orders for him to report the instant of his return—or so Nom Anor hoped. The alternative was too horrible to contemplate.

  He passed through the infidel areas into the Yuuzhan Vong invasion column, where the sour reek of confusion was replaced by the clyriz-like odor of organization and purpose. Instead of swirling about in confusion when he passed through, as had the blaze bugs in the New Repu
blic section of the room, the bugs here simply fluttered aside, then returned to their places once he was gone.

  As Nom Anor drew near the center of the chamber, the warmaster’s cognition throne grew more distinct. A little smaller than an infidel landspeeder, the chair lumbered about on six squat legs, flashing a constant series of instructions to the blaze bugs via the soft glowtips at the ends of its hundred antennae.

  The warmaster himself sat atop the throne in a neural cusp, his head swaddled in wormlike sensory feeds, his hands thrust into control sacks on the armrests alongside his body. Though Nom Anor had never himself mounted a cognition throne, he knew a skilled rider could join the creature so completely that he experienced the totality of the strategic situation at once. Each blaze bug’s coded wingbeats identified not only the class and name of the vessel represented, but also the ship’s condition and estimated combat effectiveness. The subtle undertones of odor suggested the morale of the captain and crew—estimates based on a complicated formula of known experience, effectiveness in previous battles, and the general tactical situation. Though Nom would never have said so aloud, he suspected the estimates tended to rate Yuuzhan Vong ships unduly high and infidel ships outrageously low.

  The usual crowd of apprentices, subalterns, and readers parted to let Nom Anor pass, but only the apprentices and subalterns crossed their arms over their breasts. An amalgam of diviners and military analysts, the readers were responsible for gathering information on enemy capabilities and translating their knowledge into the blaze bug swarm. Each was also a priest of one of the many different gods to whom the Yuuzhan Vong paid homage, and as such technically subordinate to the Sunulok’s priestess, Vaecta, rather than the warmaster—a fact they took every opportunity to emphasize. Nom Anor knew the arrangement to be a constant fang in Tsavong Lah’s heel, but, at least to those who believed in such things, the precaution was necessary to avoid placing any of the other gods in symbolic servitude to Yun-Yammka the Slayer.