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The Imperator took another hit, but a glance at the schematic told Thrawn the damage was negligible. Blasterfire and charric bolts vanished before they could touch a wall of shielding rocks. Thrawn ordered a swarm of TIE fighters out to destroy the falling line of defense and the fast-flying fighters were met by missiles and grutchin hoards. A yorrick coral battleship broke apart under a barrage from five Chiss vessels, but two were destroyed in turn by desk hai, which sped away before the other ships could return fire, shielded by asteroids. The dovin basal- equipped rocks locked on a collision course with the Chiss ships, so they had to devote their fire to destroying them rather than the planet killers.
Thrawn had to marvel at the tactics he faced: the Yuuzhan Vong were incredibly coordinated, the entire fleet seemed to function in perfect concert, adapting to new situations and strategy with the efficiency of white blood cells fighting off a disease. It must be the yammosk, what the Jedi called a war coordinator, that made this harmonic fighting possible. If he survived this, Thrawn intended to look for a coordinator of his own. The Jedi could touch the minds of other beings, perhaps a Force-user was what he needed. In fact, Thrawn had long suspected the Emperor employed just such a method in directing the Imperial fleet.
The asteroids continued to fall back, but Thrawn was not deceived into thinking victory imminent: Sang Anor's intent had been to thin the Imperial fleet before they faced the firepower of his worldship, and it had succeeded. Winning against the Long Reach's formidable weaponry would be difficult, maybe even impossible.
At least the planet-based weapon seems to have been destroyed in the massive explosions the fleet had detected in the enemy base. He had heard nothing to confirm this, though, either from the TIE fighters or Beyin's landing force.
Something else was also bothering him, something to do with Raine, his new phalanx commander. Thrawn sensed something strange about her, the commander's behavior and reactions to situations were just...odd. She was concealing something, Thrawn sensed, some secret that either involved him or was something he would take in interest in, but he couldn't figure out what.
Briefly, he wondered if Vraet ever had any luck outguessing this particular female. Personally, he doubted it.
Vraet...
Strange, to think of his son as if he were still alive, even for a moment there. During all his battles he had fought, against warlords, pirates, Ssi-Ruuk, the Vong themselves, he had held his image of his Homeworld, wife and child in him mind. He had fought against the chaos so they wouldn't have to be touched by it. He had failed.
Now there was nothing left to fight for, nothing but Palpatine's dream of order. And his own revenge.
***
Drash huddled behind a wall of boxes, listening to the sounds of searching on the upper floors. He glanced and Vlu, leaning dejectedly against a wall. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry for what I said," he offered. He felt like a fool, words meant nothing: Frae had a great many words in him, so did Thrawn and the Emperor's propagandists. So did the Vong. None of those words were worth more than the breaths of air that carried them. It was action that mattered. Action held the only truth.
He had learned that long ago.
"I'll be leaving you soon," Vlu said into the silence.
Drash smirked. "Of course you will. I'm glad you finally saw how you're wasting your time." He made his tone light, but he felt sick. The Eternal was giving up on him, now Drash would be left alone in this terrible place.
"I don't leave by choice, but because I must," the Eternal faded a little more. "My people are gone, I can no longer feel them. They have left this plane to await a better time, but I cannot follow. I cannot share in their hope."
"What are you going on about?" Drash whispered. This was a place for whispers and soft footsteps.
Vlu explained the Eternals' plan to Drash. "They've gathered energy from our world to live on while they wait, but I am away from the planet and my reserves are nearly gone. I could not survive a journey back to the planet, and even if I could the life there is being destroyed as we speak. I can feel it." Vlu's voice grew thin, the shade concentrated and Drash heard him clearly again. "We Eternals must draw on life-energy produced on our homeworld to exist, when mine are spent I will have no hold on this plane. I will go...beyond, to that place where all beings go when their lives end."
"Tell me about it."
"I can't," Vlu said. "I don't know myself: none who go there have ever returned."
Then Vlu had given up his chance to live, at least after a fashion, to stay with Drash. To try and help him when the pilot couldn't even help himself. Or maybe he just wouldn't help himself.
I don't want this, Drash thought, I didn't ask for this. It's too much responsibility, because after all he's done for me I can't just give up. And it would be so easy to give up, to just hide and hope the hunter passed over him, even while knowing he wouldn't. Drash had never been afraid to die, but he was terrified of what was behind that door.
"It's happening," Vlu said. "I can feel myself fading, like water draining out of a bucket." The Eternal quivered and held himself. The ancient being looked at him with the eyes of a child. "I'm so afraid, Drash."
Without being aware of it, Drash had transferred himself across the room with a thought. Now he was beside Vlu, and his hand tentatively touched the transparent reptilian shoulder.
Vlu wrapped his arms around Drash and the Imperial fought the urge to shove him away. The closeness, the contact, made him feel like he was suffocating. The quivering shape felt solid, and yet fluid at the same time. Malleable. Like a mold of rubber. He felt the Eternal quivering as he held onto Drash, onto this plane of existence.
"Ah," Drash muttered just to break the silence, "um, I've known a lot of pilots in the Empire, from a lot of different planets. Sometimes they would, you know, talk about what happens when you die." Religion was something of a taboo in the Empire: Palpatine had suppressed most faiths during his reign, desiring that his people would look to no higher power than the Emperor himself, but climbing into a cockpit and knowing you might not climb out again, especially given the shoddy design of standard Imperial fighters, put some folks in a spiritual mood. Drash had never given the matter much consideration.
"What did they believe?" Vlu whispered, his voice so small it could barely be heard.
"Different things, different faiths, but a lot of boiled down to you getting some kind of reward if you were good. Living in some kind of paradise with all your dead friends and relatives, that sort of thing." It took an effort for Drash to cast his mind back to those days: it was so hard thinking about the past when he lived entirely in the moment. "The arguments came from talking about who ran the place and what you had to do to get in.
"Some of them said doing good deeds was enough, but others said if you were good, really good, I mean good inside, then that was all it took." He gnawed his lower lip, remembering. During Drash's first year as a TIE pilot there'd been another recruit who'd talked about his people's beliefs, until an officer had overheard and notified COMPNOR. The dumb kid had been hauled off to reeducation. None of the other pilots would've turned him in: pilots who depend on their wingmen to live develop loyalties to each other.
"Like, if you were a good person then it didn't matter what you did. Since a good soul lead to good works then they take it for granted you did your best."
"Sounds nice," he was holding onto smoke now. Pale, formless mist. "Is that what you believe?"
"No," was his immediate reply, "that wasn't what Frae taught. He said life was all about being testing and proving yourself worthy of transcendence. From the day you're born the cosmos heaps trials on you. Suffer through it and you get to somewhere better." From the deep pits of his mind he heard Frae's gentle voice, telling the children how much he loved them all as they began their daily ordeals.
Drash licked his lips. "He talked a lot about transcendence too: it was in the middle of his whole religion."
"Tell me about it." Vlu huddled against him.
"If you're good as something and you do it so well you lose yourself in it, then your whole identity changes. He called that a moment of perfection. Get enough of those and you're soul's worth more in the afterlife. They've got a ratings system there, I guess." Drash shrugged. "I don't know, I've been looking my whole life and I-"
He broke off.
"So that's why you seek your own destruction so relentlessly," Vlu said, "Frae told you this life held nothing but pain, but that there was a better one for the worthy after death."
"Shut up." Drash snapped. He tried to push the shape away and stand, but his hands sank right into the unresisting mist. "Get away from me!"
"It was never death you wanted, but a new life. Don't you see?"
"Sithspawned liar!" Drash stood and backed away from the faintly-glowing mist. "I was supposed to be comforting you, not spilling stuff you could use against me!"
"I'm using nothing against you," the fading Eternal countered. "And I already knew most of what you told me. I just wanted you to realize it."
"You-" Drash looked at the fading cloud, then snapped his mouth shut. "You really are dying, for good this time I mean."
"Yes."
"And you..." he fell silent, you used your last moments to help me.
"It's time," the light said. "Goodbye Drash. Thank you, for trying anyway. I'll soon know for myself what waits beyond that final veil. Perhaps we will meet again there, but hopefully not for many years yet." The light was so faint, it was almost gone. "Remember, the only chains you wear are one you made for yourself. You have the key to your prison. You can use it anytime."
"No, no wait don't go yet!" Drash reached for the mist.
"You just need to see it..." then the voice was gone, and Drash's hand closed on nothing.
There was a crash and the security door suddenly bulged inward, as if shot by a projectile cannon. The noise of hunting and searching had stopped, and the one who made it waited just outside.
Frae had found him.
***
The rush of delight and satisfaction made Krelt feel decades younger. He'd found his reluctant convert at last.
The provoker held one talon just above the comatose human's right temple and the other above his left, neither quite touching the skin, while Krelt mapped the paths of his brain in an attempt to find just where the human's consciousness had hidden itself. The organic instruments had assured him the brain was still active. Very active in fact: Drash was having some sort of dream, and a vivid one at that.
Like a tracker on a scent, Krelt had followed the electrical impulses back to the source, all the while having the provoker send small charges into suspected nerve cells: the priest had to be careful, he wanted to stimulate Drash back into consciousness, not damage him.
And now Krelt had found the center of this mental activity: the last bastion of resistance against him. A few small charges should bring Drash back to the world of the living, where his shaping could finally begin.
***
In the midst of the battle, a lone coralskipper leaving the seed world caught Sang Anor's attention. Apparently damaged, the fighter's course would take it to the worldship. Hope flared inside him. Was it possible Nom Anor had escaped the destruction spreading across the surface? It could be, but there was no villip aboard so he couldn't ask. He ordered a dovin basal to take hold of the fighter and pull it into a bay for healing and refueling ships.
He hoped his son was aboard. If it was another member of the garrison he could make himself useful with the gunnery crews. If it was Ke'Nas then the prefect would find nothing but torture and death aboard the Long Reach.
***
The titan's fist bashed against the security door again, but that wasn't the way Drash now perceived the assault. In fact, his perceptions of everything had changed.
Vlu had done something to him before he died. Or perhaps he had simply left something behind. Not memories, exactly, nor any part of his fading soul. It was more an understanding. No, an instinct, that was the right term. Or maybe the Eternal had simply opened the pilot up to an ability he'd had all along. In any case, Drash no longer saw the illusion of a physical world for his mind to deal with.
He saw the Force.
He saw it in all it's splendor. The currents of energy arced and crashed against one another in conflict or smoothed and ran together in serenity. Waves of life energy coiled around one another, each current a different shade, indicating a different emotion.
But throughout it all there were cords and sinkholes of dark energy, radiating anger, resentment and, most of all, fear. The sinkholes filled what seemed like deep pits full of secret things, and the cords seemed to bind the rest of the energy, or at least restrict how it flowed. He felt one of the cords, not with his hand for he no longer had 'hands' or any kind of body, but with his mind. He quickly drew his will back. This power was wild, dangerous, it lashed at everything around it with feral strength.
The most incredible realization came when he saw that for all it's complexity the life-energy was, in reality, just a tiny pool surrounded by leagues of blank space. It was only then that he understood he was not seeing the greater Force, but only that energy produced by his own body.
The hunter struck at his defenses again and dark threads of pain and fear shot through him. Strangely, he couldn't perceive what was making these attacks: only the damage they did and the emotions they cause. Emotions that formed into the familiar shape of Zesir Frae.
But it was only a phantom devised by his own mind, he saw that clearly now. Whatever harmed him wasn't Frae. The old madman was dead and unmourned, and Drash Tevock had never feared death or enemies in battle. Without a second's hesitation he turned his attention back to the dark energy, and seized it.
It was like grasping a hurricane or trying to hold a bolt of lightning and use it as a sword. The power raged, it stung, it burned, but Drash could tame it. With the strength of his will he could control that power, he could make it obey him. This was amazing, almost like flying a TIE fighter. Electricity crackled through his blood. An inferno burned in his lungs.
Drash woke up.
The light from the lumin bugs shocked his eyes, but his pupils adjusted instantly. He saw the burn-scarred priest leaning over him first. Krelt's yellow olc'its widened in surprise. Four acolytes were with him, and the effigy of Yun Yammka towered above.
"Ah," Krelt smiled in satisfaction, "awake sooner than I expected. It seems you have finally decided to rush out to your pain instead of hiding from it." He glanced at an acolyte. "Bring the boiling gel."
Drash didn't pay attention to the priest's words, they might as well be the chattering of a lizard monkey. He was entranced by a view none of the Vong were able to partake of.
Beyond the nothingness of the worldship a battle was raging, and what a battle! Waves of anger and aggression roared and clashed, geysers of sudden fear and death plumed up. True, he could only sense one side of the fight, but the energy beyond the worldship was incredible.
He shifted his view to the dimension of the purely physical and tried to stand up. He found a pair of restraining claws locked his wrists to the alter he lay on. Child's play. He sent currents of dark energy into his arms and tried again, the claws tore free by the roots. He grasped each claw with the opposite hand, broke them in his fingers and ripped them off his wrists. When Krelt turned his attention back to Drash the Imperial had already hopped to the floor.
The priest blinked in surprise. "How-?"
Drash killed the closest acolyte before the word was out of Krelt's mouth. He stepped past the falling body, it was dead before it hit the floor, and backhanded another initiate of the priest caste. They seemed to fall in slow motion, Krelt and the other two moved like the room was flooded with tree sap, but that was only his perceptions. To the Yuuzhan Vong, Drash was a blur of movement to fast for their eyes to follow.
The third acolyte actually tried to fight; he stabbed at the pilot with his sacrificial coufee. Drash reached out, took the young Vong's wrist and broke his arm with a single twist. The Imperial pivoted his upper body slightly and flung the acolyte face-first into the wall. He bounced off and fell to the floor, but Vong didn't register in the Force so Drash couldn't tell if he was unconscious or dead.
The fourth was the one Krelt had sent to fetch the boiling gel. Throughout the brief fight he had stood still, holding the shell-bowl and staring stupidly. Drash took the container away from him and broke it over his head; the boiling ooze running down his face woke him up a little. To his credit, the acolyte threw a punch in Drash's general direction before the pilot hit him in the stomach. He doubled up and fell to the floor, curled in a fetal position.
Then he turned to Krelt.
"What infidel trickery is this?" The priest demanded.
"No trick," Drash strode toward him, walking neither slow nor fast, "just paying a debt."
"You are a fool, infidel. I offer you truth. I offer to give your life and death meaning."
"Yeah." Drash reached out and grabbed a fistful of the priest's living robe. "A lot of people have said that to me." He walked two more steps to the alter and swung Krelt onto the surface. The priest was nothing but skin and bones, Drash probably could have lifted him without the strength that coursed through him. Krelt grasped the pilot's wrist with his skinny fingers but didn't come close to breaking his grip.
"The thing is," Drash went on, "I think I've had all the help I can stand." An odd creature was perched at the head of the alter. Two prongs extruded from its body. Drash thought he could guess it's purpose. He pressed a point to either of Krelt's temples. "I think from now on I'll try looking for all that stuff on my own." The raised knobs on the thing's back looked like controls, trial and error should send a good jolt into the priest's brain. "But here's a token of my gratitude."
His fingers hovered over the knobs. Outside, the battle beckoned. Inside him, another storm raged. The power he held screamed and twisted in his grip, wanting nothing but to be given free reign, to use Drash to destroy everything around him, including Drash himself.
But the power whispered as well as screamed. It whispered to Drash, telling him to kill the priest. Kill for his fear of him, from his anger at what Krelt had done to him, or just for the sheer pleasure of killing. There was something foul about this energy, it was like a drug that gave delight as it rotted you from the inside out.
Krelt was talking again, but the pilot wasn't listening. Drash felt like he was being pulled in different directions. On the one hand there was no reason not to waste this old freak, but did he really want to? And there was something else, an instinct maybe, that told him it was stupid to do anything the dark side wanted. Stupid and unhealthy both.
Drash looked at Krelt then, really looked at him, and for the first time he didn't see a demon from his past or a ghoul from the shadows under a child's bed. He saw a crazy old man.
And that had been all Frae was, too. Maybe he had started out with a few decent ideas and good intentions, but that's all he was at the end. A sick, crazy old tyrant playing god over some gullible people afraid to live their own lives without someone to tell them what to do. And over the children unlucky enough to be born under his control. A man who though he could help people by killing them.
Krelt was looking at him. "Well?" The priest sneered. "What are you waiting for? You're mistaken if you think I'll beg, so you might as well kill me."
"I'm not going to," Drash opened his hand. Chains seemed to break and fall to the floor around him. He felt...he didn't know how he felt.
Krelt frowned. "Why not?"
"Because I don't need to," a question deserved an answer. "I'm not afraid of you any more," he shrugged. "I don't even hate you. You can't hurt me. You can't do anything to me," Krelt was nothing to him now, no different than one of the lumin bugs fluttering and glowing above them. No, the bugs were pretty things and the priest was a dry, withered husk. He would think of a better comparison later. "You've got no power over me."
Krelt reacted as though Drash had sent that jolt through him. Then he sat up, olc'its glaring daggers at the pilot. His mouth worked as he tried to form a response, but Drash saw none of this. He was already walking away.
There were important things to be done.
***
The coralskipper was pulled into a cavern-sized ridge in the worldship's surface, into one of many hanger mouths. Three shapers, an adept and two initiates, were waiting when the coralskipper set down in an empty cradle beside a few newly- repaired fighters. They hurried to the damaged ship and pried open the cockpit. The crystalline cover slid back and a violet blade flared up. Two seconds later three corpses lay around the coralskipper. Vergere and Oin climbed out.
"Much the same as I remembered," the Fosh said to herself. She shivered, feeling the emptiness around her. She was now cut off from the main body of the Force, only able to use the energy her own body produced. "I know where to go and the way to get there. If the Force is with us I'll soon be finished and gone."
"What do you want me to do?" Oin asked.
"Stay here, conceal yourself and wait. I'll return here for you after I've done what I need to do." She started for the doorway.
"No," Oin began following her.
"You can't help me," she spun to face him. "It's too dangerous." Her mind was full of problems enough as it is: if she succeeded in this, there was still something more that needed doing, something that would take a lifetime commitment, but at the same time she was honor-bound to see Oin safely to a world he could prepare for his people. "I'll finish this, then return so we can take one of the healthy skips and flee.
"And what if something happens and you can't get back here?" Oin challenged. "What about when someone investigates this place while you're gone and finds me? You said it yourself, the safest place is at your side."
"I can't afford to protect you and fight the Yuuzhan Vong," Vergere snapped.
"Maybe I'll be the one to protect you."
Vergere grimaced. There was no time to argue, no time at all, she might be too late already. "All right then, come on-" she turned and saw Drash Tevock standing in the doorway.
"Lt. Tevock?" Her feathers bristled in surprise.
"Hello there," the pilot said as he walked past them and headed straight for the coralskippers. Vergere stared. She had forgotten about the strange, Force-strong Imperial, and frankly she had no idea what to do about him, if she even could do anything about him: he could actively use the Force now. She had perceived it the instant she'd seen him, she had also sensed the dark power emanating from him. Drash hadn't fallen to the dark side yet, but he was on the brink.
"Where were you?" That was all she could think to ask.
"With a priest," Drash stepped over the dead shapers with out seeing them. He selected a healthy, fully-fueled skip and hopped into the cockpit, "but I decided I'd worn out my welcome."
Gradually, Vergere began to understand what he was doing. "How...how did you learn to touch the Force?"
Drash paused, for the first time something she said made an impression on him. "An Eternal taught me," he said softly, Vergere felt Oin stiffen beside her, "he called himself Vlu." She heard sadness in his voice.
"I knew him," she said in a soothing tone, "he was my friend. I'm a Jedi, I know about the Force. I can help you understand it. Come out of the fighter and we'll talk." This would disrupt her plans, she knew it, and the whole galaxy could well depend on a few minutes, but-
"No," Drash settled the cognition hood on his head. "There are things I need to do, and I have a feeling there are things you need to do. Let's not hold each other up. Maybe there'll be time later." The cockpit closed.
"I...I hope so," Vergere murmured. She was letting a Force- strong man on the brink of the dark side enter a battle that would determine the fate of billions. Mace Windu would have a few disapproving words for her. Yoda would probably bash her head with his cane. She didn't want to think of what Thracia would do. But they were gone, and she was all that was left of the Jedi.
The coralskipper lifted off, turned and sped through the gravity barrier and out the hanger mouth.
As she watched the situation spin further out of control, Vergere never felt less like a Jedi in her life.
***
We have lost.
That was Thrawn's first reaction when the Star Destroyers met the first volley from the worldship. The fleet had fought its way through the asteroids, but the Long Reach finish them. Exceptional leadership and training had seen them through the gauntlet, and losses that could have been critical were instead merely costly, but the diminished fleet just didn't have the numbers to take on the worldship's firepower.
He let none of this show, of course, he couldn't let his men see him falter.
"Worldship is trying to grab the Hammerblow with a gravitational anomaly," the tactics officer reported. Parck clenched his fists and actually licked his lips once, even after all this time Thrawn had to remind himself that such public displays of emotion were acceptable by human standards. The Admiral himself was perfectly composed, but he felt a chill creep over him. If the countermeasures he'd devised failed then the battle would be lost this very moment.
Powerful dovin basals seized the Star Destroyer and began to strip away her shields while coral missiles converged on the capital ship. The Hammerblow opened her fighter bays and released a hoard of probe droids. Following their programming, the small machines sent powerful gravitational pulses into the vacuum around the capital ship.
As Thrawn had hoped, the tractor beam lost its hold on the Star Destroyer and the conflicting gravity fields confused the Missiles' guidance. A volley from the Hammerblow and a few fighters and supporting ships quickly mopped up the alien projectiles.
Thrawn, meanwhile, had focused on the sensor reading of the worldship in his tactical display. "Priority instructions for all ships," Thrawn said, "target this area." A flick of a switch highlighted a region on the worldship's surface. Thrawn deduced that particular group of pits and ridges housed the dovin basals which had attempted to seized the Hammerblow, now that the gravity-producing organisms were tired out by the effort this spot might just be the weak point to insert the wedge.
Thrawn offered a mental prayer to his ancestors and his ruined Homeworld. This would be close...
***
Drash flew into the Force and a maelstrom of conflicting energy thundered around him, mirroring the chaos in his own soul. A thousand forces threatened to tear him apart, but he knew where to go. There was only one place where he'd ever known peace: a fighter's cockpit. There he ceased to be a mere human troubled by human failings and fears, he knew the purity of a single purpose: the kill before him, and the one after, and so on. Once again, he was the sharp edge of the knife.
His only worry had been that the Vong fighter wouldn't respond to him, but the coralskipper was even more incredible than he'd imagined. When he donned the cognition hood Drash Tevock was no longer a man piloting a fighter: he was the fighter.
Drash's body was the size of a rebel X-Wing and coated with durasteel-hard living armor. Instead of arms and legs he now had dovin basals that could propel him at awesome speeds or shield him from enemy fire. He had plasma spitters and launchers to hurl rocky projectiles, he could 'see' not only visible light but electromagnetic fields, gravity wells and heat signatures. He could 'smell' the chemical trails of ion engines. He felt the cold vacuum against his rocky skin and knew it could do him no harm.
The ship's intelligence was like a part of his own mind, and Drash sensed it was ready for battle: the fighter was fresh, rested, well-fed and fully armed. It was a young fighter, only just grown on the seed world. It felt its own youth, health and strength and yearned to be out in the fight like an athlete would yearn for a good, rough smashball game. It sensed Drash's intentions and eagerly put itself at his disposal.
The coralskipper responded to Drash's thoughts as easily as his own body. He felt the dovin basal's effort as it shoved away from the worldship, the scent of plasma and blasterfire in vacuum stung his nostrils. Without hesitation, he picked out his first target: a coralskipper flying close to the worldship.
Drash's first shot went a little wide, as he'd intended it to. Once he'd gotten the alien pilot's attention he shot a few lethally accurate blasts in his direction. Confused by the friendly fire, the pilot hesitated for a second before evading and throwing up a void to catch the plasma. That second cost his coralskipper it's rear dovin basal. Drash sent another volley as he passed below and the enemy broke apart.
The human turned his attention to other targets, he was lobbing a projectile at a coralskipper's canopy when, as if from a great distance away, he heard a voice making what sounded like angry demands in the guttural language of the Yuuzhan Vong. The coralskipper's villip must have activated and someone in authority probably wanted to know what he was doing. Without removing the cognition hood, Drash reached toward where he remembered the villip was situated. He found the leathery sphere and crushed it with one hand.
***
Sang Anor grimaced when the tactic of seizing, stripping and shooting failed, obviously you couldn't use the same tactic twice against Thrawn. He grimaced again when the Imperial barrages began to get through the weakened defenses and chip at the worldship's outer crust. He commanded the gunners to double their efforts and, with no other option, commanded the Long Reach to rotate.
Rotating would put the injured point out of range, but it would also tax the remaining dovin basals. More, the Star Destroyers were attacking from three sides, making it necessary to defend on three fronts at once.
No matter: the Imperials still didn't have enough ships to achieve a victory and the worldship's armament were still barely tapped. He commanded all the remaining asteroids to fall on the Imperial groups from behind and launched volleys of missiles and plasma from the Long Reach herself.
He had only just given the order when another disruption came to his attention: a coralskipper had apparently gone rogue, turned on its comrades and was attacking everyone and everything around it. More disturbing, the flight controller reported trying to contact the pilot, who destroyed his fighter's villip. She claimed she sensed a human mind in the instant of contact.
Sang Anor demanded an explanation and the yammosk quickly pieced together some relevant information and gave it to the Executor.
The priest, Krelt, had sounded an alarm moments ago, saying that his human prisoner, a pilot, had escaped. The internal sensors tracked his chemical trail, which lead in the direction of the hanger which had held that particular fighter.
Sang Anor rolled his eyes at the incompetence of the priests and sent a detail of coralskippers after the rogue.
***
Parck winced as three more frigates exploded and winced again when a desk hai destroyed another Star Destroyer. Those planet-killers were taking a heavy toll on the fleet, and they had few enough ships as it is. TIE fighters swarmed on the desk hai, but were met by coralskippers, grutchin and shielding rocks.
"Sir, they asteroids are moving to take us from the rear," Commander Veenir reported.
"I see it, Commander," Parck locked his eyes on the tactical display, where small red dots swarmed the three fleets.
Thrawn frowned. "There is a disruption in the enemy defenses," he said quietly. Parck followed the admiral's gaze and saw coralskippers flitting about in confusion over the worldship's surface. Thrawn seemed unperturbed by the dwindling fleet, though Parck couldn't imagine what he might have under his sleeve. The worldship's defenses would soon overwhelm the battered fleet.
"Admiral," a cool Chiss voice spoke up, "sensors indicate a large number of ships, mechanical ships, have exited hyperspace and are on a course for us."
Thrawn turned and raised a brow. "Reinforcements from Imperial Center?"
"No sir, they're Chiss vessels. The flagship commander is hailing us."
"Put him through," no sooner were the words spoken than a hologram of a white-haired Chiss materialized before the admiral. It took Parck a moment to recognize him: he no longer wore a Syndic's uniform.
"Syndic Taesk," Thrawn inclined his head and greeted him warmly, without a sign of surprise. Parck all but gaped in astonishment. Incredible! How had Thrawn convinced the Chiss to throw in with them? And at this time, when the fleet most needed ships? Parck could only stand amazed at his superiors' brilliance and planning.
***
Thrawn had barely kept his eyes from bulging out of their sockets when he heard the news, and Taesk was the last person he'd expected to show up.
"Syndic Taesk," Thrawn inclined his head and spoke in his own language, "from what do I owe the pleasure of your company?"
"A desire to do something useful for once in my life," Taesk replied in the Chiss tongue. "And it's not 'Syndic' anymore," he tapped his chest, at the uniform of a phalanx commander he now wore, "I abandoned my rank when I abandoned the Council's mad plan for war against the Ssi Ruuk, after telling those old fools what I truly think of them. I took all of my phalanx who wished to accompany me, as well as their families who should be requesting asylum at one of your worlds as we speak. My people and I are exiles now, we wish to join your phalanx, if we may."
"I am pleased to have you," even in the midst of battle, Thrawn was not one to forget his courtesies. "Deploy your ships and reinforce the battle-groups, you will receive further orders from my phalanx commander onboard the Sentinel."
"Thank you, Syndic," there was a flash in the old man's eyes that made him look decades younger. The hologram disappeared and Thrawn called up an image of Raine so he might inform her of the influx of vessels under her command. He could barely contain his buoyancy: none of the Chiss ships had the size and strength of a Star Destroyer, but with their numbers increased Unity Fleet actually had a chance at victory!
***
They traveled deep into the worldship, by side-routes that would make running into a Yuuzhan Vong unlikely, especially as most of them were out in coralskippers or manning plasma turrets. The only Vong they saw was a shamed one huddled and asleep in a corner, they passed by without waking him.
Eventually they neared the public areas at the center of the worldship, also deserted, where Oin saw amazing things: the deep pits of maw luur, pulsing, moist processing organs, artfully designed temples and a vast pleasure garden with songbirds that sang so sweetly the Nesz was struck dumb by the natural beauty.
Yet the garden was not a paradise, far from it: dead and dying corpses lined the walls and instruments of torture existed side-by-side with makers of beautiful things. The birds and beasts of the garden were not fed, but hunted and killed one another to live. He even saw a beast gnawing on the bones of a Yuuzhan Vong child.
"These creatures are mad," he said.
"Don"t dismiss their ways so easily," Vergere said, "there is nothing of madness about their ways: everything you see has been done by rational minds pursuing definite goals."
"Evil goals," Oin put in.
"Yes, I suppose that's true," they turned down another corridor, "Just a little further now, past the menagerie, and we should be there."
They walked through a series of large rooms, each one containing a few creatures native to this galaxy in a simulated environment similar to their native worlds. "The shapers have taken a few specimens from each world the Long Reach has visited in the Unknown Regions," Vergere explained. "The planets had no intelligent life, of course, but analyzing these creatures will give them an insight into the kinds of life that would best thrive on these worlds. That information will prove very useful when they begin their conquests: they want to make the most efficient use possible of their seed worlds."
"These don't look like laboratories to me," Oin saw a six- winged avian perched in a tree and a canine with a long, serpentine neck in one enclosure. He looked to another and saw insects almost as big as he in a pen that resembled a dry, desert cave.
"The shapers can get more information by observing how the creatures behave in their natural environments," Vergere said, "the menageries are open to the public, so they also provide some entertainment to Yuuzhan Vong on their leisure time." They continued walking.
Then a tunnel mouth gaped open before them with arches carved in fantastic, hideous shapes on either side. "This is as far as you go," Vergere commanded, and this time there was no arguing with her.
"Why?" Oin had to ask anyway.
"Because this is something I must face alone," the Jedi said quietly. "If I survive, I will return for you."
"And if not?" The last Nesz touched the seed packets gently with his claws.
"Then more than your people will die," she unhooked her lightsaber, "but there is no other way." She walked into the tunnel with a steady, deliberate pace.
"Vergere," the Jedi turned back, "whatever happens..." Oin said haltingly, "thank you, for everything. I'm glad to have known you," he met her eyes, "and may the Force be with you."
The Jedi was touched, at that moment she wanted to run back and embrace the Nesz, but that would only make leaving all the more difficult. Steeling herself, not allowing her emotions to have the mastery, she merely nodded. "Thank you," she said as she turned back to the darkness.
***
Beyin's ground forces encountered no enemy opposition in his march on the enemy base, which wasn't to say the trek was easy-going: the treacherous swamplands made it impossible to use the heavily-armed and armored AT-ATs. The General had to made do with repulser-powered hovering vehicles like tanks and speeders. He also had the use of AT-ST walkers, lightly armed and armored but fast and sure-footed even in the bogs.
The Chiss general commanded a mixed force of Imperial and Chiss phalanx ground forces, supported by wings of TIE and Chiss fighters overhead. His mission was simple: destroy the enemy base, though it seemed the Yuuzhan Vong had made that mission unnecessary. According to an advance group of TIE fighters the aliens had destroyed their own dwellings first, saving Unity Fleet the trouble.
It seemed the aliens had gone even further: if they couldn't have this planet, no one could. From his command center aboard a beautiful but functional Chiss hovering tank Beyin saw the trees withering to dry husks before his eyes. The water had turned into a thick, brownish substance and the native beasts were hacking their lives away on the dying grass. Sensors indicated the air was swiftly becoming toxic and the ground troops had donned encounter suits equipped with life-support.
Beyin kept a sharp eye on his troops, alert for any lapse in discipline: the TIEs informed him there was still one Vong structure standing, a tower in the middle of the ruined base, and even though there was no apparent opposition Beyin would never permit his men to be careless, especially when it might cost lives: he recalled the attack on Coerl's base and the Vongs' use of deadly traps. Those dishonorable barbarians wouldn't kill another soldier under Beyin's command through ambush or trickery, not if there was any way to prevent it.
"Sir, we have a transmition from one of the forward scouts," the tank pilot spoke.
"Put it through." The image of the AT-ST's human pilot filled a screen.
"General, we have come across a group of fifty humans and Chiss, they claim to be TIE pilots; survivors of a strike force the Grand Admiral dispatched here earlier," he paused. "They're not looking too good, Stent, their commander, says some of them have already died from the air toxins."
"You didn't let them onboard?" Beyin demanded quickly: there was a good chance this was another Vong trap, and even if the pilots were what the seemed and not aliens in masquers there was still the chance they carried some Yuuzhan Vong disease or weapon implanted in them without their knowledge.
"No sir," the pilot said immediately, "but we tossed out some breathing gear and a comm link." The image shifted to a camera-eye view from the walker's chin. Beyin saw a large group of ragged humans and Chiss passing around several facemasks and air tanks. They were huddled together under the walker's guns, with no visible cover for an enemy ambush. The general picked out Stent: he stood closer to the walker than the rest, with a comm link in one hand and a breathing mask all to himself.
"I'll speak to the commander," Beyin said. Seconds later a Chiss voice came through the speakers.
"General Beyin, sir," Stent's tone was clipped and businesslike, but didn't suggest any great emergency; if he was an imposter, he was well-schooled in Chiss protocol, "Commander Juhs'ten'trivah reporting. My men and I are at your disposal."
"Acknowledged, Commander," Beyin responded, "though you realized I cannot trust you or your men until team of Imperial medics have examined you all meticulously. Until then you must remain under guard."
"Of course, sir, I imagine you have a number of questions to ask. I am curious concerning a few matters as well: chiefly the Chiss fighters and tanks we have seen." Beyin felt a sick feeling in his stomach: they didn't know about alliance with Thrawn's old phalanx, and they didn't, couldn't, know about Homeworld.
"But in the meantime I request breathing gear and medical supplies be distributed to my pilots."
"I will arrange it, Commander."
"Thank you sir," Stent paused a moment, then allowed the barest hint of emotion to color his voice, "and if I may say, it's a great relief to see the Empire marching on these barbarians."
"The battle isn't over yet, Commander."
***
A score of coralskippers attacked Drash from every direction, plasma cannons and grutchin struck from the planet itself and filled the void around him with foes.
Drash was enjoying himself. He toyed with the attackers, leading them down coral canyons and flying perilously close to plasma geysers. Several skips had perished already, having misjudge and flown too close to a canyon wall or a geyser as it gouted up plasma at Imperial craft. Others he destroyed with his own weapons.
He didn't waste energy trying to shield himself but rather used all the dovin basals' power to propel his craft at high speeds. The other coralskippers had to do the same to keep up with him, leaving no strength to shield their own fighters, but while Drash was used to fighting in an unshielded ship the Vong pilots were used to having a void to call on.
Without warning Drash dropped his speed and opened fire when the coralskippers shot past him. He got three of them before the others could start an upward climb. Now the pursuer rather than the pursued, Drash climbed after them, lobbing plasma when he had a target in range. Tired dovin basals couldn't muster up a void and a fourth fighter died, its corpse spinning aimlessly through space. Three more tried to take him from behind, but he dodged the plasma and projectiles with minuscule swerves in one direction, then another. Now that he was fully aware of the Force his piloting skills put his prior ability to shame. True, the aliens and their creatures didn't register in the Force, but they had weight, mass and velocity, those had an effect on the Force.
The coralskippers and their weapons made ripples as they moved through that energy field, by paying attention to those ripples Drash could tell where they were, what they were doing and even what they were likely to do. Oh, not too far in advance, a few seconds at most, but that was more than he needed.
A turboblaster bolt from an attacking Star Destroyer streaked down to the worldship surface and tore up a small chunk of coral, 'small' being relative to the size of the Star Destroyer: coral segments twice the size of his skip erupted from the fresh crater. A coralskipper crashed into one and disintegrated. The human cast out with his senses, looking for other targets.
There were none.
To his chagrin, he saw that the coralskippers he hadn't killed had all gone off to fight the Imperials. He banked toward the fighting and only a last-minute warning through the Force saved him from taking a rocky projectile in the cockpit. He swerved away just in time, but the missile was followed by a plasma volley and he had to execute a sideways roll to save himself.
Drash winced as he skimmed the worldship's surface, coral peaks and valleys to either side of him and ground mere centimeters from his fighter's belly: there was a long score along his fighter's side. That skip had hit him!
Even more astonishing, the craft was gaining ground quickly, apparently using the same tactic Drash employed: using its dovin basals for propulsion only. The human began some fancy flying, steep climbs, sharp banks, sudden increases and reductions in speed, and astonishingly the other skip kept on his tail the whole way, and several of its shots almost hit him.
Under his cognition hood, Drash grinned: at last a challenge!
***
Wras pursued the rogue coralskipper with single-minded focus. He didn't recognize fear or failure, doubt wasn't a part of his makeup: since his shaping he had become a better pilot than his earlier self could have dreamed.
When the lights had gone out in the base, Wras hadn't hesitated: he'd run straight to the coralskippers and taken off for the space battle. The base was a lost cause, and Wras knew this was how he could best serve the Yuuzhan Vong.
There had been another reason he had run for the coralskippers: because he needed the cold focus they provided. When he flew there was no purpose beyond the enemies in his sights. Wras hadn't shown it, but seeing Stent, speaking to the Chiss, had shaken him. Being so close to one of his people again had awakened, not memories exactly, but sensations: the vague feeling that he belonged with the red-eyed infidels, which was utterly at odds with the not-at-all vague knowledge that his place was with his fellow Yuuzhan Vong.
Wras had experienced a moment of creeping dread: suppose that other personae, the weak, damned infidel he had once been, was resurfacing? Under normal circumstances he would have run to the priests and shapers, but none were available at the moment so he ran to his coralskipper: the focusing power of combat piloting would help with this division of his psyche. At the very least it would keep him sane until he could speak with Krelt and the shapers.
The infidel-infested coralskipper tried to shake Wras by following the worldship's landscape at high speeds, sometimes passing so close to coral outcroppings a sneeze would have meant crashing. Wras never hesitated in following.
The enemy dived into a canyon and Wras followed, lobbing two projectiles as he went. He almost hit the infidel, almost.
Wras didn't experience frustration at the miss: he would destroy the infidel eventually. He knew only the pure, overriding purpose of his mission and through the yammosk he experienced the group-sensation with his brother Yuuzhan Vong and their creatures. It didn't matter if he died: Wras was no longer an individual, he was an amphistaff with bared and venomous fangs, he was a sharpened coufee, thirsty for blood.
***
Sang Anor felt an instant of panic when he saw Thrawn's reinforcements. Had he miscalculated? Had his attack on the Chiss Homeworld incited them to throw in with Thrawn rather than let their pride lead them into a useless war, as the Executor had intended?
The distress vanished as soon as it appeared: the new ships constituted less than a single phalanx, and none of the Chiss ships was the equal of a Star Destroyer. Even better, none of them were equipped with Thrawn's countermeasure, the Executor quickly discovered this when the Long Reach grasped one of the bigger Chiss ships in its gravitational clutches and succeeded in holding it and stripping away the machine's shields. A volley of guided missiles demolished the infidel craft.
This changed nothing: the newcomers would be easily cleared away once the Imperials were dealt with. Sang Anor's victory would simply cost a little more effort and time, so he thought as the desk hai moved in to demolish more Star Destroyers.
Now all that remained was to deal with that rogue coralskipp-
Sang Anor's mind froze in midthought. The very synapses in his brain seemed to overload and surge. He literally could not believe what the yammosk had just shown him. He was hallucinating, that was it: the creature on the other side of the chamber door could not possibly be here. Sang Anor waited for the yammosk to replace this delusion with the real image the internal sensor-eyes had picked up, but the brown-robed avian remained. Not only did she remain, she activated her vile machine-produced blade of light and plunged the point into the door.
Still stroking the amphistaff around his arm and over his shoulders, Sang Anor slowly turned and looked down at the door. He caught the smell of sizzling flesh as the lightsaber roasted the door's tissue.
The damaged coralskipper from the planet, the one he had let aboard and then forgotten about in the heat of battle, the Jedi had been inside. Sang Anor knew it with sudden but total conviction. His mind drifted to the ruined seed world; so Nom Anor was dead after all. He had a flash of memory so strong it might have been qasa-induced; in this memory he was seventeen years younger and newly wed to his first and only wife. He had fewer scars and less tattoos, but for once rank and power were no part of his thoughts. All his attention was concentrated on the newborn infant he held, still slick with birthing fluids.
He looked at the newborn in his arms: a disgustingly soft- skinned creature, its wrinkly body unscarred and bare of tattoos, to Yuuzhan Vong, children too young to provide for themselves were looked on as burdens to family and domain. They weren't people, but potential; creatures yet to be tested and found worthy of life. The baby was nothing of great importance.
And yet Sang Anor loved him.
He had given the child to Lyrra before the attendant came to take little Nom to his creche, and seeing his beautiful wife and son together Sang Anor, a politician to the core, experienced a simple but powerful feeling he could never put into words. It was more than a feeling: it was a conviction.
He loved them both more than he could ever describe.
Oh gods how he loved them.
Gone, the shadows around him whispered gleefully, alone, alone, alone.
The blade continued its path through the door, it would take a few seconds more for her to get through. Sang Anor sent a thought to the yammosk and the portal simply irised open.
***
Vergere was caught by surprise when the door opened. She jumped back, blade raised to a guard position, but when no attack came she edged slowly into the doorway.
The chamber was large and round, with a high pedestal that but the yammosk in the exact center of the room. Beside the war coordinator, in full armor except for the masked helmet, was Sang Anor. The room was full of images of the space battle, but when the Jedi stepped into the room they all faded away and she was left with Sang Anor to concentrate on. He was more than enough.
The Executor's face was unreadable, his eyes without expression, his soul, if Yuuzhan Vong had souls, gave off no signature in the Force, but when Vergere met his eyes she felt her heart contract with terror as darkness and death washed over her. Not through the Force, but through some manner or instinct more basic and primal, something that reached into animal part of her brain and set off alarms. The smell of fire in the air, the feel of an earthquake building under your feet. Vergere knew which future had to be, and she knew what she had to do to make it happen, but looking at Sang Anor she very much doubted her ability to do so.
"Its been a long time, Jedi," the calm voice sent waves of icewater through her blood.
"Three years," somehow, her own voice was as composed as his, "not so very long in the grand scheme of things."
"Three years can be an eternity," Sang Anor replied. Three years in an empty bed. Three years living when a part of your soul has been cut away. He didn't speak these words, but somehow Vergere heard them.
"You know why I'm here," she raised her weapon.
"Of course. You're here for the same thing you did at Zonama Sekot, the same thing you did by saving Thrawn and helping the slaves and infidels on my seed world: you're here to interfere with your betters in matters not your concern."
"I am a Jedi," Vergere felt strength rising withing her when she said that, "I fight evil wherever I find it."
"And am I evil?" Sang Anor smiled, almost gently.
Vergere thought of the torments inflicted on the Nesz, of their dead world and dead ways. She thought of the plagues Sang Anor had loosed on the Unknown Regions, of the tortures, sacrifices and atrocities beyond count she had seen as a Yuuzhan Vong prisoner. Of the Executor's many deceits, treacheries and murders. "Yes," she said, "you are." Sang Anor was not as far gone as Palpatine, he not as lost to darkness as a Sith Lord, but he was getting there.
"Perhaps I am," he nodded slowly, "we will discuss this at length later, during your sacrifice." He cocked his head. "Take her."
Vergere didn't need to wonder who he was talking to for long: the yammosk attacked her immediately.
The war coordinator bent its will on her, seeking to overwhelm her mind with its telepathic might, to crush her will and break her spirit, leaving her a babbling, drooling thing.
Vergere shoved it off easily. Under normal circumstances a yammosk would be more able to break her defenses with ease, but this one was in the middle of a battle, with the bulk of its energy tied up in organizing and commanding the Yuuzhan Vong forces. It just didn't have the strength to spare.
"It wont work," Vergere shook her head, "if you want me dead you'll have to do it yourself."
Sang Anor watched her with those sharp, cold eyes of his. Then, slowly, he smiled.
"So be it," he said, "Jedi."
***
The Sentinel sent another volley of charricfire down on the worldships, and though many of the bolts were swallowed by dovin basals, more than half got through to the surface. A casual observer would think the Imperials were winning, but Raine knew better: the mass and size of the Long Reach was defeating them. Thrawn's forces were wearing themselves out against the worldship, which responds with its own seemingly inexhaustible armaments.
The worldship dominated half the viewscreen, the dying planet the other half. Her view was occasionally blocked by the Imperial probe droids Thrawn had provided. Barbarous devices, but she had to admit they worked: the worldship could no longer simply swat their fleet out of the sky. A few larger chunks were breaking off the Long Reach, but compared to the main body they were merely chips. Meanwhile, the desk hai continued to take out the biggest ships with impunity. It was only a matter time before the Imperials succumbed.
Abruptly, she spun to the comm station. "Hail the Imperator, I need to speak with the Syndic," the title stung her mouth.
"Commander," Thrawn's image flickered to life before her.
"Syndic, dividing our forces is a mistake," she didn't waste time with courtesies. "You need to combine the fleet and strike at one point on the worldship. If the worldship starts to rotate we need to follow the spin and keep firing. We're too few to inflict significant allover damage."
The Admiral nodded. "You are correct, Commander. I will recall the other two battle groups, and thank you for the input. In the meantime, concentrate your fire on the largest craters." The hologram dissolved.
That was quick, she thought. She had half expected Thrawn to reject her suggestion out of hand and had been ready with reasons to convince him differently. If anything, this only set off another flare of anger within her: Thrawn was apparently a living ideal, everyone perfect commander. No wonder Vraet was so insecure and resentful, so easily goaded into trying to prove himself. A lifetime of trying to live up to someone like Mith'raw'nuruodo would do that to anyone.
That was the way of Chiss nobility, where a child was just a commodity, shaped to fit a mold of unyielding cast. Thrawn would do the same thing to his grandchild if he ever found out such an heir existed, Raine intended that he never would.
"Commander," the tactics officer raised his voice, "incoming hostiles." A desk hai preceded by five shielding rocks approached the Sentinel from the port side. A wing of Chiss fighters hurried to intercept it, but the desk hai abruptly reversed course and began heading backwards, quickly picking up speed. Two of the rocks followed and the fighters pursued.
But the three remaining shield rocks not only kept their course, but increased speed once the Chiss fighters passed them. They locked their powerful dovin basals on the Sentinel and two other Chiss capital ships. Raine's red eyes widened when she saw ten more asteroids rushing towards them.
"Send a call to Red Wing," she somehow kept a level tone, "tell Red One's fighters to engage and destroy those three asteroids."
"Commander, gravitational anomalies have disabled our port shields and four asteroids are on a collision course."
"Lay down suppressing fire and roll the ship," she ordered.
The Sentinel began to roll, putting her shielded underside to the rocks, but they weren't rolling fast enough. The gravitational compensator maintained that the deck was still down, no matter how the ship rolled. Turbocharric bolts disintegrated two asteroids, but the others rammed the capital ship's unshielded hull.
The blast knocked Raine off her feet, but she rolled as she hit the deck and was back on her feet a few seconds later with only a bruise or two for her troubles. Many of the bridge crew weren't so skilled or lucky: the tactics officer had hit his head against the display, the screen was cracked and a cut on his forehead spilled red blood into red eyes, the rest were mostly cuts and bruises, the worst was a crewer who had broken his arm in the tumble.
"Status," Raine began to say when her booted feet left the deck, the gravitational compensator, it seemed, was one casualty.
The lights dimmed, but the screens stayed up as emergency power kicked in. "Heavy damage to the underside and lower levels," a crewer reported, life support is still operational, weapons are offline."
"Shields?" She asked.
"Gone," the crewer grimaced, "I'm trying to contact the technicians to-"
"Commander!" Another Chiss spoke up. "We're being boarded!" The viewscreen flickered back to life, showing a hoard of grutchin streaming into the Sentinel's wound.
"Seal all blast doors!" She ordered.
The sight Raine found even more ominous, though, was beyond the forward viewport where Night of Fire, a Yuuzhan Vong battlecruiser the size of a Star Destroyer, closed in on the drifting ship.
***
Thrawn immediately dispatched a Star Destroyer and supporting cruisers to rescue the crippled ships. He hoped Raine survived, but it looked doubtful: there was no way the reinforcements could arrive before the Vong cruiser finished off the Sentinel.
A pity, Raine had proven more capable than he'd suspected: consolidating the fleet was good strategy, Thrawn had been about to do just that when Raine had contacted him with the suggestion.
Even more disappointing, she would die before Thrawn had a chance to puzzle out her secret. Whatever it was, it seemed tied up with her intent to leave his phalanx directly after this battle. Try as he might, Thrawn couldn't convince her to stay. Clearly, this secret was important if it was compelling her to leave the phalanx she'd built and commanded for years. But what could be more important to this female than her duty to the Chiss and preserving the honor of her phalanx? What could-
The whole universe froze around him as an idea, a thought, an insight, bloomed in his mind.
Raine was female.
She had been Vraet's lover.
What was more important to a female than anything else?
Thrawn had no proof, it was only a hunch, but he knew the truth. He watched the battleship close in on the Sentinel, and the only time he'd felt more helplessness and fear was when he'd seen what the Yuuzhan Vong had done to Homeworld.
***
Sang Anor took three steps back from the edge of the pillar, his eyes drilling holes in Vergere. "Do," he thrust his right arm out sideways and spread his fingers wide. "Ro'ik," the amphistaff slid down his arm and crossed his palm. "Vong," he closed his hand and the serpent went ridged. "Praaaaaaatte!" He ran to the edge and leapt off the pedestal.
Sang Anor was a black silluete in the air, the amphistaff raised overhead and the war cry still on his lips as he arced down towards her. Vergere rolled out of the way as he landed, but Sang Anor executed a forward roll the second the balls of his feet touched the deck. When he came up he was in range and he lashed at her with the amphistaff.
Vergere jumped straight up, strong legs and quick reflexes saved her from a blow that would have shattered her bones. She arced her lightsaber in a downward slice at the Yuuzhan Vong's head, but Sang Anor wasn't to be taken that easily: at a twist of his arm and a flick of his wrist the other end of the serpent curved up, hardened and took the blow, then he tried to catch her blade in the curve of his amphistaff and rip it from her hands with a sudden pivot of his upper body. The Jedi barely kept her grip on the weapon. She somersaulted and kicked at the wall behind her, spun over Sang Anor's head and landed behind him.
She stabbed at Sang Anor, but the Executor was already turning and bringing up his weapon. The violet blade threw up sparks as it skidded across the amphistaff tail, then Sang Anor sprang at her, his amphistaff a whirlwind in his hands.
Vergere dodged and rolled. In this battle she had speed and fast reflexes, but those were her only advantages. She wore no armor and in the middle of a worldship she was cut off from the greater power of the Force; she had only her own life-energy to draw on.
Sang Anor was another matter altogether; as a member of the intendant caste he was a politician, not a warrior, but Yuuzhan Vong practice literal cut-throat politics. Sang Anor was a master of the amphistaff and he wore full body armor. He had a longer reach than Vergere, he was taller than her and much, much stronger.
The Yuuzhan Vong pressed his attack and Vergere gave ground. She ducked an amphistaff swing and slashed back with her lightsaber, Sang Anor blocked the strike with an armored forearm while the other hand twirled the amphistaff and drove its fangs toward her body. She pivoted and tried to tangle the snake's head in a fold of her robe, then feinted a thrust at the Yuuzhan Vong's neck. When he moved his staff to block she swung the lightsaber at his ankles, intending to sweep his feet out from under him.
Sang Anor saw the trick coming: he blocked the swing with the other end of the staff, then aimed a side-kick at her head. The Jedi ducked and rolled away, robe billowing around her.
***
The Vong battleship filled the viewscreen. Floating in zero-gravity, Raine kicked against a wall and launched herself at a control station. She caught the chair back as she sailed past and the uninjured Chiss at the station finally tore his eyes from the living ship and noticed her.
"Commander," he managed to maintain something like discipline in his manner, even if he had to brace his legs against the underside of the control console to keep from floating off his chair.
"Do we still have contact with the probe droids?" Raine asked. The crewer looked at her with uncomprehending eyes. "Crewer, report!" She made her voice sound like the crack of a whip, and the crewer turned to his station without thinking.
"We do," he reported.
"Good," her hands clenched on the chair back as she told him what to do. Raine turned to another officer. "I need a torpedo primed and ready to launch, now."
The officer blinked. "What good would one torpedo do-"
"That was an order, not a suggestion," the bright flare of her red eyes stilled all objections. At that moment, with her face framed by a stormcloud of black hair and her eyes burning with something more than the obligatory red inner light of the Chiss, Raine resembled one of the ancient war gods the Chiss once worshiped, or perhaps Grelm'ine'nethtu, the witch-queen of myth.
As the warship entered firing range a black cloud of probe droids rose to meet it, and the vessel seemed to stagger as the gravitational disruptions meant to defend against the worldship interfered with and confused Night of Fire's dovin basals. The plasma cannons loosed gouts of fire that atomized the small droids, but for a few seconds the ship was drifting, propelled forward by momentum alone, and in those seconds the Sentinel fired a torpedo.
The ship must have seen it, but before the recovering dovin basals could raise a void the missile struck a lumpish projection on the upper-forward area of the ship, which Raine hoped was the bridge, and disintegrated it.
For a long and hopeful moment the warship kept on barreling forward on nothing but momentum, then the vessel slowed and stopped as the dovin basals cut in. Night of Fire slowly turned, bringing its plasma cannons back on the Sentinel as its backup brain took charge.
"Ancestors embrace us," the officer began the prayer.
"That may be a little presumptuous," Raine said dryly as turbocharric bolts dug into the side of the Yuuzhan Vong ship. The officer looked to the display screen and saw the Ever Watchful, Syndic Taesk's flagship, closing in and attacking the much larger Vong ship.
***
Oin paced the deck with restless energy, with the passing of every second he seemed to feel the worldship shudder under his feet. He fingered the bandolier and it seemed the weight of a planet hung around his neck. The Nesz were depending on him, and if the Imperials destroyed the Long Reach the seeds, and the future of the Nesz, would die with it.
For the hundredth time he turned back to the archway, this time more than half ready to run after his friend. Vergere had told him to stay here, that it was dangerous, but if she got herself killed then Oin's chances of escaping weren't worth consideration.
Besides, he thought as he began running, I've gotten her out of a few tough spots before.
He wouldn't be any help to Vergere this time, though, as an amphistaff from behind struck at his feet, tangling in his legs so that he was pitched forward onto his face. His snout struck the coral deck and stars went supernova behind his eyes. He shoved himself around and on his back as the amphistaff reared up to bite his face.
"Well now," Krelt moved into Oin's line of vision, "they missed a slave during the sacrifices." He shook his head disapprovingly. "Such carelessness, and now I suppose it falls to me to finish their work."
***
Vergere parried a glob of venom that hissed and sizzled on her blade, then Sang Anor was charging her. The Jedi stood her ground and spun, the Yuuzhan Vong missed her by inches and she slashed at his back as momentum carried him past her, he spun and the slash took him across the chest. Vergere put all her strength behind the swing and the blade cut into the armor and scorched the flesh beneath.
Then Vergere was leaping to avoid the counterstroke. She ran until the curving wall blocked her path, then jumped and ran along the surface of the wall itself. The Jedi spun away from the wall and stabbed at Sang Anor's side, but the blow was blocked by the amphistaff. Sang Anor followed her with burning eyes, his anger beat down on the Jedi.
Vergere fought without anger, without despair, frustration or fear. Deep inside she felt the simple, powerful peace that came from the Force. She seemed to flow like water, moving one way, then another, blocking and giving ground before his attacks but moving in to strike when she saw an opening. Sang Anor was good, no question about it, but she danced around him and avoided his swings with ease. If not for his armor he'd have been killed three times by now.
The Fosh ducked a punch from the Yuuzhan Vong's guantlet-covered fist, pivoted to avoid the stabbing amphistaff then rolled under a kick. Patience was the key here: wait for Sang Anor to tire or make a mistake in his own impatience, then-
OIN!
The Nesz's fear was like a scream. He was in danger!
For the barest fraction of a second Vergere lost her concentration. Then she saw the attack coming, too late, and moved, too late.
The amphistaff caught her across the right leg and agony tore through her, shattering what remained of her focus. The Jedi's lightsaber slipped from her hand, deactivated and bounced across the floor. She knew the leg was broken, she shifted her balance to her left leg and hopped backwards, trying to call her lightsaber back.
Then Sang Anor was rushing her, and Vergere had neither the agility to dodge or the weapon to block and counterattack. Sang Anor rammed his shoulder into her chest and her entire body flew back and hit the coral wall. The impact knocked the wind out of her and the back of her head struck the wall. She fell to the deck.
***
The Ever Watchful shielded the damaged Sentinel with It's body as it traded volleys with the Night of Fire. Thrawn watched as the much larger Vong battleship poured plasma on the Chiss vessel. The Ever Watchful was faster, it could have evaded the living ship, but other than roll to present shielded sides to the Night of Fire it didn't move.
Taesk knew that if he moved his ship the Vong cruiser would immediately continue its assault on the Sentinel, and when Thrawn had seen the Ever Watchful was the only friendly ship of any strength near Raine's vessel he had immediately contacted the former Syndic and given him a direct command, Syndic to phalanx warrior: "Protect the Sentinel, protect her at all costs."
The Night of Fire attacked the Chiss ship brutally, oblivious to the Star Destroyers closing in on it. Its bridge crew dead, the battleship no longer had a Yuuzhan Vong to guide it and so the living vessel reacted as any large, fierce animal, injured and enraged, would. The Sentinel had injured the ship, it wanted to destroy the Chiss craft in turn, and if this other vessel got in the way Night of Fire would vape it as well.
Still, Taesk didn't abandon the Sentinel, even when Ever Watchful's shields finally gave out and it had nothing to block with but its hull. Plasma and projectiles struck the capital ship and it exploded under the onslaught.
Thrawn's heart sank. "...do something useful for once in my life." that was what Taesk had said. You have, my old friend, Thrawn thought as five Star Destroyers converged on the Night of Fire, their combined firepower overwhelmed its dovin basals and tore the Vong warship apart. "May your ancestors embrace you," he murmured in his own tongue, "and carry your soul into the stars." There was more to the ritual prayer, beseeching the deceased's decedents to look to his life for guidence and wisdom, but Taesk had died the last of his line. You have done more than you know.
***
"A disgrace," Krelt continued to shake his head, watching the struggling Oin with impassive olc'its as he talked, to himself, Oin knew, not him: a Yuuzhan Vong didn't speak to a slave. "I come to the yammosk's chambers thinking to sacrifice myself to Yun Yammka, to atone for letting an infidel convert slip escape me, only to find the worldship crawling with stray vermin," the burned priest sighed. "The gods will not be pleased." He walked forward, limping slightly, he must have injured his hip somehow, obviously why he needed the support of the amphistaff he'd cast at Oin.
The serpent twined around him and the Nesz struggled to pry the coils away with one hand while the other gripped the amphistaff's neck just below the head. With every breath he took the Vong creature tightened around him a little more.
Krelt drew a sacrificial coufee from his transparent robes. Oin struggled to free himself from the amphistaff's coils as Krelt closed in on him. The priest reached for Oin's head with his skeletal hand, but the Nesz jerked away and bit at his fingers, all the while still wrestling with the snake.
"Wait!" He yelled into Krelt's face and the priest paused, bemused to hear a slave speak with the tongue of the gods. "Tell me why first. Why did you come to our world? Why did you enslave and kill us? The Nesz did nothing to you, we did nothing to anyone, why did you do this to us?" He pried at the coils. "Answer me!"
Krelt frowned. "To you?" He repeated. "Foolish creature, this was never about you, and it was never your world. The gods have decreed all the planets in this galaxy belong to us, all life belongs to us. We took your world because we could use it, and we enslaved you because you were convenient. It's that simple."
Krelt tried to grab Oin a few more times, wanting to pull Oin's head back and slit the Nesz's throat in a reasonable clean kill, but when he kept moving he sighed and simply stabbed at Oin. The blade missed cutting the reptilian as Oin rolled away, but the edge cut his bandolier. Before his horrified eyes the cut end fell to the deck, spilling the seeds of his people's future. Krelt merely kicked the end away as he advanced on the Nesz.
Horror turned into white-hot rage when Oin saw that. For the Yuuzhan Vong to destroy his people's last hope so casually and then not even notice was just too much to bear. Without thinking, he pivoted his lower body and swung his tail. He knocked Krelt's legs out from under him and the priest fell to the deck with a yell of surprise, the coufee flew from his hand.
Oin saw the weapon spin through the air and clatter to the deck, almost within arm's reach. Oin could reach it, but he'd have to release his hold on the amphistaff to do it. He looked into the serpent's eyes, mere inches away from his own and kept away only by Oin's grip on its neck. If he didn't try for the weapon, though, the constricting snake would strangle him.
He released the serpent's head, rolled and seized the coufee as the amphistaff coiled around his neck. The creature was strangling him, cutting off his air, and Oin had a moment of panic before stabbing with the Vong blade.
Oin felt the edge bite into something, then heard a grinding sound and a startled scream from the amphistaff and saw the serpent's severed head flop onto the deck. The strength gone out of its body, Oin shoved the coils away and stood.
He spun and found Krelt, the priest was leaning against a wall, pulling himself upright and trying to stand. Oin felt a low growl build in his throat, then he was sprinting across the deck. He knocked the ancient priest to the floor and leapt atop his chest. Oin felt something snap under the Vong's burnt skin and the gasping priest clawed at him with bony hands, but the Nesz was too infuriated to notice.
"Boast now, you stinking monster!" Oin snarled at the priest and wrapped his hands around his scrawny neck. "Tell me how great you are, tell me we don't matter! Come on! Tell me! Come on!" He punctuated each sentence by ramming the back of the Yuuzhan Vong's head into the coral floor.
Krelt made no response, his mouth had gone slack, his eyes wide and expressionless and his hands limp at his sides. Oin shifted his feet, felt the broken bones in the priest's chest and understood. He opened his hands and the burned, bald head fell back against the deck.
Oin climbed off the body, then looked away in disgust as the yellow olc'its began climbing out of the dead body's sockets. Shuddering, he bent and gathered up the seeds.
***
Vergere's vision swam out of focus, for a moment it seemed she might pass out but the pain in her broken leg wouldn't let her lose conciousness.
Then a great, black shape towered over her. It stooped on her like a bird of prey with its kill and an armored hand tangled its claws in the front of her robe, then she was being hauled up and suspended in the air as if she weighed no more than a bag of feathers.
She barely felt the pain when the figure slammed her against the wall and held her there. She was busily engaged in a Jedi calming exercise, then something seemed to snap back in place in her head and Vergere saw Sang Anor's face take shape in the fog. She recovered her wits just in time to see the Executor draw his coufee and drive the blade through a fold in her robe and into the wall. He released his hold then, but Vergere stayed in place: dangling from the coufee with her face on a level with Sang Anor's.
The Yuuzhan Vong's face had taken on a semblance of calm, but the mad glitter of his bright eyes and the twitch at the corner of his mouth let the Jedi glimpse a trace of what the Force could not reveal to her. He pulled the gauntlet from his right hand and cast it to the deck.
Sang Anor smiled slowly and raised his bare hand, it was so close she could reach out and trace the tattoos on the back of his hand. The fingers were stiff but slightly curved, his talons, wicked and sharp, curved back toward his face. Vergere knew his intention as clearly as if she'd ready his thoughts: Sang Anor would slit her belly open with those claws, then, with his bare hand, remove her organs one at a time.
Vergere had failed, she knew it. She looked into the Executor's eyes and saw her own death, and this time there was no Nesz to save her and no Eternals to heal her. She was cut off from the Force and beyond even Thracia's reach. She was alone in the pits of hell, without weapons or friends.
"You stupid animal," Sang Anor shook his head, "did you learn nothing from living among us? The Yuuzhan Vong are invincible," he leaned closer to Vergere. "We cannot be stopped, not by any scheme or treachery you can devise, not by any allies you can muster against us, and not by your Jedi magic." He took another step toward her, he was close enough to-
To what? She felt like laughing at the part of her, shaped by long and intense training, that still sought a way to win. If I kick him he'll break my other leg, if I try to punch him he'll bite my fingers off.
"Today I will triumph here," he continued, "tomorrow I will triumph everywhere, in spite of you. I will crush any who stand in my way, the infidel Empire, the Rebellion and any stray Jedi that might live. I will shape all that live to my will, and the Force," his mouth twisted in contempt, "will die." He showed his teeth. "Your sacrifice will make it so."
But Vergere wasn't listening to him anymore.
She had seen something behind him that made hope spring to life in her breast.
Her lightsaber.
She reached out with her own life force, shaped with her will, and made the handle levitate. It slowly rose through the air until it hung on a level with Sang Anor's head.
But the Executor was no fool, and he wasn't so caught up in dreams of future conquests not to notice Vergere's expression of intense concentration, or that his victim was focusing not on him, but at a point over his shoulder. He spun around as the Jedi weapon ignited.
Sang Anor merely smirked as he raised his amphistaff in a guard position: let her launch her infidel blade at him, he would break the machine and then break the pieces into still-smaller segments.
The lightsaber didn't launch itself at him, though, but up and at a sharp angle, building up speed as it moved. Sang Anor frowned in confusion, then his eyes followed the blade's path: straight as blaster bolt to the yammosk!
"No!" He drew his arm back to throw his amphistaff, intending to knock the lightsaber off-course. That was his mistake: had he turned and killed Vergere or rendered her unconscious the lightsaber would lose its animation and fall back to the deck, but Sang Anor's first instinct was to deflect the attack.
While his back was turned, Vergere braced her shoulders against the wall, clenched her mouth tight against the pain and kicked out with her good leg. She wrapped her muscular leg around the Yuuzhan Vong's neck and pulled him back as he threw. The amphistaff flew wide but the lightsaber sailed unobstructed toward the war coordinator. The yammosk was so busy concentrating on the battle that it didn't notice the weapon until the blade buried itself in its body. Vergere grabbed the coufee that held her and struggled to pull it from the wall.
All the while she shoved the lightsaber deep and made it twist and swirl, destroying the mighty brain. The yammosk's black eyes bulged and it loosed a scream that Vergere heard with her mind, not her ears.
The yammosk's death-cry was deafening to Vergere, but to Sang Anor, linked so closely with the coordinator, it must have been beyond her comprehension. His eyes bulged and he screamed in pain and shock. He pitched his body forward, doubling up and tearing Vergere away from the wall in the process. She rolled across the deck and shrieked as someone seemed to pull her broken leg apart and pour molten rock over the pieces, but she kept hold of the coufee.
Sang Anor flung his torso backward until his back arched, his screams had become hoarse and ragged things. He pressed his hands to his temples and his talons dug into the skin over his forehead and scraped the skull beneath, crimson blood streamed over his face.
Afterward, Vergere could never explain where she had found the strength to do what she did then. In truth it wasn't Vergere at all who acted in those next crucial moments.
It was the Force.
Rather, it was the part of her that most belonged to the Jedi Order, the part that cared nothing for her own fears, weaknesses, indecisions or pain, the part of her that was a servant of the Force, nothing more.
In any case she didn't think before standing up and balancing on her good leg, she hadn't even made a conscious decision to do so. Her mind was empty as she took those five long hops toward Sang Anor, still holding his coufee in one feathery hand. She felt no fear, no anger, only the beautiful peace of the Force. She didn't even register the hell in her broken leg.
One last awkward bound placed her in front of Sang Anor. The Yuuzhan Vong was staggering blindly, but his screams were no louder than coughs now. Vergere relaxed, splayed her toes wide to keep her balance, and plunged the coufee into Sang Anor's lower chest, through the cut her lightsaber had earlier made across the armor covering his chest and abdomen.
She yanked the coufee up until she encountered the bones of his sternum and ribs, then plunged the thirsty blade deeper and bade it drink deep. She twisted the weapon and pushed it from side-to-side, blood and other fluids spilled from the cut in his armor as vital organs shredded under the Jedi's onslaught.
Sang Anor jerked, stiffened and fell to his knees. Once more their faces were on a level, Sang Anor's eyes rolled back and his mouth gaped slack. A low, groaning cry resounded from the cavern of his mouth. His shaking, shuddering arms slowly reached for the ceiling, perhaps to some presence revealed to his tortured brain, and he fell backward and lay still. Vergere looked down at him, at the great, twisted, bloody shape with a coufee jutting from its torso, then collapsed herself.
***
Thrawn saw the change instantly: one moment the alien forces were all fighting as one, the next their unbelievable coordination vanished. Before his amazed eyes the enemy formations fell apart, coralskippers broke formation, coral battlecruisers and asteroids no longer worked in concert but simply attacked whatever targets were nearby.
This must be some kind of trick! Was his first thought, but what purpose could Sang Anor have in throwing the battle?
No, some other force was at work here, and on thinking of the word 'force' Thrawn suddenly understood: it was Vergere's doing. She had destroyed the ground-based weapon that had threatened Unity Fleet, and now she had somehow disabled the yammosk.
"Press the attack," he ordered his commanders, "we've got them."
***
Using her arms and one leg, Vergere crawled away from Sang Anor. There was still one thing left to do, one thing to make certain the Yuuzhan Vong tasted utter defeat today. True, as things stood now Thrawn would almost certainly win, but the Jedi couldn't afford to chance it. Suppose some shaper or commander managed to access the worldship rikyam and order the Long Reach to withdraw and jump into hyperspace? If the worldship escaped then the danger would remain: it was a big galaxy, the Yuuzhan Vong could hide and grow strong again. They could make other seed worlds in secret and shape beings like Wras to replenish their losses. They could even grow another yammosk.
They could do all that, if the worldship survived.
Vergere was certain she would find what she needed at the base of the yammosk pillar. All she had to do was-
She screamed when Sang Anor's hand closed around her ankle. He began dragging her backward.
***
The tanks fired a fresh volley at the tower. Beyin watched as the base cracked, then the tower collapsed like a rotting tree. It shattered as it struck the blasted ground, and the last Yuuzhan Vong structure on this world died.
Along with everything else, it seemed.
The trees had mostly withered away, and the birds and beasts were hacking their lives away. Dead fish floated to the surface of poisoned ponds by the hundred. Beyin felt something crack under his feet, looked down and saw the charred bones of a Nesz. He grimaced and stepped away.
"We've encountered no resistance, sir," he turned to face the captain, a young Chiss phalanx officer eager to impress the legendary General Beyin.
"It seems someone has done our job for us," the general nodded. "Let's just hope the rest of the battle is going as well." The processed air in his breathe mask stung his sinuses, but it was better than breathing the tainted air. He adjusted his face mask and goggles, then turned back to the ruined tower. "Someone really didn't care for the Yuuzhan Vong."
"Sir," the comm link in his ear came to life, "commander Stent is requesting to speak with you."
Beyin grimaced, Stent and his group had given him an abbreviated report of their activities planetside, and the general would have been tempted to dismiss the story as delusional nonsense - lizard ghosts and underwater domes made with magic, ridiculous - if they all didn't tell the same tale. Also, the facts seemed to fit their explanation: something must have devastated the base.
"Put him through," Beyin no longer believed the stranded pilots were part of an alien trap: there was no one here to do any trapping.
"General, my men and I know the location of some alien artifacts the Grand Admiral might express some interest in," Stent's voice buzzed in Beyin's ear, "I suggest we take some samples for study before the alien pollution reaches them."
"I hardly think archeology is one of our chief priorities," the general admonished.
"These artifacts are special," Stent returned, "a study of them could lead to valuable technological breakthroughs." Stent paused for a moment, but Beyin could tell he was hesitating, unsure if he should continue to voice his thoughts.
"Also General," he continued, "the natives of this world were instrumental in saving our lives and ending the Vong threat their focusing tower posed. My men and I believe there should be something preserved to remember them."
Beyin frowned. "Very well, Commander, I'll send a detachment to retrieve this artifact, you can guide them."
He arranged the party, then climbed into the cockpit of a crouching Walker and ordered the pilots to head deeper into the coral fields. The ground forces were scouring the base for signs of remaining Yuuzhan Vong, so far without finding so much as a stray amphistaff or a segment of vonduun crab armor. The distinct shapes of AT-ST Walkers could be seen everywhere, and occasionally a TIE fighter passed overhead. Beyin turned his attention to the sensor readouts and the narrow, horizontal slits that serves as windows.
At this point, he was ready to declare this site officially secured. He wouldn't risk returning to the landers and trying to rejoin the fleet above, not with a battle in progress, so there was nothing to be done but dig in and wait. If Thrawn was victorious they could expect to return soon. If the savages won the day Beyin could expect a planetary bombardment to herald the Imperials' defeat.
"Sir, the sensors have found something," the pilot bent over the console, "not alien though: it's not organic." He turned to the general. "It's metal sir, durasteel. Looks like an Imperial ship."
Beyin raised a brow. "Curious, take us closer."
The object in question was covered by debris of dead coral and ash. "I want a closer look," Beyin said. "Crouch and dismount."
They exited the Walker and slowly circled the lump, from the sides of which two dirty metal fins jutted, meeting at the top to form a triangle. "It looks like a Lamda class shuttle," the pilot mused aloud. "How could it have gotten here?"
"I believe I know," Beyin said. "During the first official encounter with the Yuuzhan Vong there was an assassination attempt on Admiral Thrawn. The aliens actually penetrated the Admonitor using their ooglith masquers and tried to eliminate him in his own chambers, killing a Royal Guardsman in the process. Afterward the surviving infiltrators escaped by stealing a Lamda class shuttle. I believe this is that shuttle."
"The Admiral should be happy to have it back," the pilot ventured, "not that it will be much use after rusting here for over a month."
A month, Beyin thought, things of great import often occur swiftly. A month ago I had never heard the name 'Yuuzhan Vong,' two days ago my beautiful Homeworld was strong and alive. The universe must have the mind of a capricious child if it loves surprises so.
"The shuttle is probably in worse shape than it looks," Beyin said when the reached the other side. "The rampway has been left open," he shook his head, "ranats have probably nested under the control panels." He turned back, but the pilot paused.
"Sir, I hear something," he stepped close to the ship's body, pressed his head to the debris-covered hull, then pressed his palms against it. "This shuttle's activation sequence has been initialized," he started around to the walkway, "the engines are heating up, I'd say it's almost ready for takeoff."
Beyin's eyes widened, the pilot set one foot on the ramp. "Stop!" He shouted, too late.
The pilot's head snapped back and his legs skidded forward and kicked up. He fell on his back, a razorbug stuck out of his forehead.
Beyin stepped back and drew his blaster, his hand went to the comm link at his ear as two Yuuzhan Vong, faces covered by gnulliths, bounded down the ramp. Beyin fired and hit the taller savage in the chest as he threw another razorbug. The impact knocked him off the far side of the ramp, but the blade-edged insect flew its course and struck Beyin's hand as he reached for his comm.
The general felt a rush of agony from his fingertips to his elbow, glanced at his hand and saw a razorbug had impaled his palm. Blood spurted from the wound and the fingers he found it hard to think of the thing as his hand, with his fingers twitched uncontrollably. He cut his gaze back to the shuttle, the smaller Yuuzhan Vong had leapt from the ramp and was only a few steps away from him, and the one Beyin had shot was struggling to his feet.
Beyin was squeezing the trigger even before he took aim, but the savage's amphistaff flicked out and knocked the weapon from his hand. Beyin dropped into a defensive crouch and reached for his vibroblade, but the alien warrior merely advanced another step, spun the amphistaff around and plunged the serpent's head into Beyin's chest.
The universe is capricious indeed.
***
Sang Anor slowly pulled the Jedi toward him. Vergere flipped onto her back and braced her hands on the floor. She tried to shove away but the Yuuzhan Vong's pull was inexorable. He lay on his stomach, he must have rolled over while Vergere was crawling toward her own goal, his arm had been fully extended to grab her ankle with his bare hand, and he was pulling himself forward with his other hand even as he drew her toward him.
Sang Anor reached with his armored hand and grabbed a handful of her robes over her stomach. He released his hold on her ankle and pulled her with his gauntlet-covered hand. Her leg freed, Vergere could have kicked him then, but she didn't move. She had looked at Sang Anor's face, and she was frozen.
Blood flowed from his forehead cuts, obliterating his facial tattoos. The Executor's face was a mask of crimson save for his ivory teeth and bright eyes. The sharp teeth were stained pink now and more blood dribbled down his chin, but it was the eyes that held Vergere, that froze her like a bird trapped in a serpent's gaze.
Sang Anor's eyes were wide and bright with life, but devoid of intelligence. The yammosk's death had damaged his brain, perhaps permanently. He didn't know who she was, he probably didn't even know who he was, but on some level he understood two things: he was dying and this bird-creature had killed him, and his last act would be to take her with him.
It was the power of his will that held Vergere pinned: this terrible, inner strength that refused to die, that drove him on to his goals despite pain or injury, despite opposition, despite his own mortal wounds. How could she ever hope to win against a being that this? He would kill her. He would. He would. He would. His will reached out and drove that thought into her mind with every breath he took. For an eternity the chamber was silent, the only sound was Sang Anor's breathing: thick, wet noises that made his mouth foam pink.
He reached for her with his bare hand, his arm arced over her. The muscles in his face and neck stood out from his skin and every breath was forced through his clenched teeth with more effort than the last, but he never blinked. If he had, then perhaps the spell would've broken and Vergere freed to think and move again.
His talons hovered over her neck, there was a pause in which a thousand futures balanced on the tip of a feather, then Sang Anor's head slumped over and lay sideways on the floor. His hand slowly lowered to rest on her robes.
This time, Sang Anor was truly dead. Vergere couldn't feel him through the Force, but she saw him die all the same. She saw his face lose its tension and go slack, she heard his breathing still, but most of all she saw the life go out of his eyes. For a few moments more his will still held her in place, not understanding what was happening, still trying to drive muscles that just couldn't respond. Then, by increments, the light behind those eyes faded until it was gone.
Vergere looked on the corpse and found she could move again. She pushed the hand off her, not with any loathing, not with any feeling at all. He looked different now, smaller, befret of the will that had made him a force to be reckoned with. This wasn't Sang Anor, this was just a dead thing. The energy that had driven him, that snapped between the synapses of his brain, was gone. All that remained was meat.
The Jedi crawled away from the corpse, she could not think of it as Sang Anor. She noticed her robes were bloody and touched them. No torn flesh, it came from the body.
She knew she still had work to do, yet she lingered a moment more. "I never hated you," she said. "I suppose I had a right to, but I never did. I was afraid of you. I felt anger at what you did to Oin and the Nesz. And now," a tear slowly ran down her face, "now I pity you. Wherever you are, I hope you're reunited with Lyrra Anor. And I hope you're shown more mercy than you deserve."
She turned away.
And gasped in shock.
***
While the rest of the alien forces fell apart, Drash was happy to see his own opponent remained fixated on the target: the target being Drash and his coralskipper.
Asteroids, plasma and turboblaster fire spun and flashed around them, but Drash was exhilarated as he led his pursuer on a merry chase through the chaos. The Force was a raging maelstrom around him as Chiss and human lives flashed into nothingness, the feeling was beyond anything he'd experienced before. He glanced back with his sensor-eyes and was surprised to see the other skip was no longer chasing him, was nowhere to be seen in fact. Had his opponent succumbed to a stray bolt of blasterfire or-
Instinct and a flash of light his sensors caught in their peripheral vision made him roll right just as a bolt of plasma shot past from beneath him. The alien-controlled skip had hidden itself in the mass-shadow of an asteroid hurling blindly below, now it shot up at him like a bullet from a projectile-gun, blasting plasma. Drash increased speed and streaked forward to avoid the enemy skip, which passed through his path from behind and continued up.
Drash cut his speed and banked, turning his skip in the direction of his opponent. He saw the other living craft was doing likewise and they charged each other at top speed. Both held their fire, knowing that without shielding voids they would have to swerve at the first hint of plasmafire, knowing neither could afford to shoot until he was sure he would hit his target.
Then an asteroid spun through their path, blocking Drash's view of the other skip and vice-versa. Drash reduced speed and pulled up, intending to gain a height advantage over the other skip only to find it doing the same. They were almost nose-to-nose and they fired and dodged, then they were both climbing and spiraling around on another, one moment Drash was behind the enemy skip, the next he was the pursued.
Drash had him in his sights, he was squeezing off a shot, then the skip was beneath him and pain lanced up his 'side' as a plasma shot caught him.
He was spinning, out of control, one second he saw Star Destroyers floating in the starry night of space, the next the pitted surface of the worldship, and with every second the worldship was closer. He would shatter against the coral surface and there was nothing he could do about it. The coralskipper's mind screamed in panic, but Drash was strangely calm in these last seconds of life. He would die in the only place he'd been remotely happy: a fighter's cockpit. More, he had experienced flying firsthand through the cognitian hood's interface. He'd been one with his fighter. After this, yes, he could let go of the struggle.
For the first time in his life a sense of peace came over Drash, peace both complete and profound, and with the coming of that peace the dark side lost its hold on him. And everything changed.
No, Drash changed. With that act of surrender he opened himself to the truth of the Force, a truth that wasn't found only in conflict or rooted in the expression of power. His calm spread into the mind of the coralskipper and they were again one.
Without knowing why, or needing to, Drash used his dovin basals to reach for a point below and to the right of his path of descent, just as the worldship launched a missile. The organic- generated tractor beam latched onto the projectile as it sped toward the Imperials, pulling Drash away from the worldship and out of his spin. He released the missile and propelled himself under his own power, straight at the enemy skip.
The Force understood conflict: the struggle to live was a part of life, and even Jedi recognized the need to fight evil when there was no other option left.
"Thank you," Drash murmured to the enemy pilot as he loosed a volley of plasma blasts and projectiles, the skip dodged one shot but flew into the path of another and fragmented into melting, freezing segments, spinning through space. Drash flew through the wreckage.
***
Vergere fell backwards to the coral deck, gasping in shock, her violet eyes wide and staring. It was not pain or fear that stunned her so, but wonder: she was experiencing the Force for the first time.
Since before she was born a shadow had lain over the Force, slowly growing in strength over the decades, disrupting the balance of the Force and slowly tilting it towards the dark side. It lurked at the corners of their vision, just out of sight, encouraging war and conflict, undermining and perverting the noble ideals of the Republic, hastening its fall into decadence and corruption.
The Jedi were the guardians of this balance and for long years they had sought the source of the shadow that so threatened the Force, but not even the wisest Masters could discover the nature of the menace they all felt, like the first chilling winds before a hurricane.
When they finally percieved the being who cast this shadow it was too late and the tides of war and hatred swept them away, leaving the Sith unopposed. From Coruscant, where the Sith lord dwelled like a spider in a vast, black web, waves of darkness rippled out to the farthest planets in the Rim.
Misery, pain, hatred and fear increased, feeding the dark side, and as the dark side grew in power beings found themselves more inclined toward violence, conflict and despair, which in turn fed the dark side and made it still stronger in a cycle that pushed the Force further and further out of balance.
But today, this very moment, something monumentous had occurred: the being who cast the great shadow, who had been like a stormcloud over the bright sun, was gone. Vergere felt the true power and beauty of the Force at last. She felt like a slave who had worn heavy chains for so long she no longer noticed them, only to have them finally struck off, or a patient who has carried a parasite coiled in her guts for decades, then at last having it excised. There could be only one reason for this.
The Emperor was dead!
For a long moment Vergere wanted to sleep, to allow the euphoria and shock to carry her into oblivion, at least for awhile. She had journeyed so far, done so much, and now that the great battles were over she could afford to rest. Her eyelids creeped down-
-and her eyes snapped open again. No, there was still work to be done. The worldship had to be finished, and Oin...she had forgotten about Oin...was he safe? Dead? She had no way to know: her vision had come to pass and the Force gave her no hint of what the future held for her friend. She would have to look for him.
But first things first. Vergere dragged herself to the base of the pedastal, a few seconds of searching yielded up the touch-pad. She stroked the surface and a compartment mouth opened in the base, she reached in and found a cognitian hood and attaching umbilical cord. She slipped the hood on and felt it make the mental connection.
Command ships had such creatures in case an emergency occurred with the yammosk that put the war coordinator out of commission and the commander needed to issue orders quickly. The hood linked her to the Long Reach's rikyam, which could send out messages via its own villips to any ship, asteroid or coralskipper.
Vergere didn't try to contact the gunnery commanders or the coralskippers: she would never be able to fool a Yuuzhan Vong into thinking she was Sang Anor, but the desk hai were another matter. She quickly found those seven distinct life-signs. Confuses and frightened, they were retreating to the comforting mass of the worldship. Perfect.
Thinking in the Yuuzhan Vong language, Vergere issued her orders. The semi-intelligent desk hai didn't question her, they were happy to have some kind of guidence again. They moved into position and prepared to fire one last time.
Now all she had to do was find Oin, get him to a safe planet, then find a way to return to the Yuuzhan Vong and try to guide events so that the right future, the future she had glimpsed in her visions, came to pass.
Oh, and she had to do all this with a broken leg.
"Well," she muttered, "no one ever said being a Jedi was easy." She crawled to the stairs spiraling up the pedastal and used them to pull herself up to a sitting position. Reluctantly she looked down at her leg and winced on seeing how it bent. She had to use Jedi pain suppression techniques just to keep functioning. The Fosh braced her hands against the pillar and stood upright. She was able to keep her balance with no difficulty, thankfully she was not humanoid and her sense of equilibrium was such that she could function perfectly well with one leg. She would have to hop.
Now she reached out with the Force and called her lightsaber. With some difficulty it began to work its way out of the yammosk's body. She had to work fast, soon the desk hai would-
"Vergere!" The Jedi spun, grimaced at the pain in her leg, and laughed in joy and relief at seeing Oin framed in the doorway.
The Nesz laughed and ran toward her, arms flung wide to embrace the Jedi. Vergere understood the feeling well: they're losses were great, but at least they still had each other, at least they didn't have to face the future alone.
Oin stopped at arm's length from her and refrained from hugging his friend. He saw her broken leg he suspected she had other injuries, it might be dangerous to play too rough with her. The Fosh took a hop toward him and threw her arms around him. Oin relaxed and embraced Vergere in turn, he twined his long neck around her.
But they had little time and they both knew it. Vergere broke off the hug and resumed calling her lightsaber. "You're well?" She asked Oin.
"Yes," the Nesz nodded, "and you?"
"I can get around," the Jedi weapon flew into her hand and she buckled it to her belt. "We need to move, now."
Oin nodded and turned to the door, but paused a moment when he saw Sang Anor's corpse. "Is this him?" He nudged the body with his clawed toe, so that he could get a good look at the bloody face.
"Yes," Vergere said, "that was Sang Anor."
"He doesn't look any different from the rest of them," Oin's slit-eyes were unreadable, "but they all look alike to me anyway." The dead Executor's amphistaff had returned to him, it coiled around its master's corpse and reared, baring its fangs at the possible defilers.
"He looked different when he was alive," she took Oin's arm and gently propelled him to the doorway, "you would've been able to pick him out in a crowd of thousands. But we have no time for this, we must-"
The worldship shuddered and bucked beneath them, Oin was cast to the deck and Vergere barely kept her balance. The ceiling cracked and she hopped out of the way to avoid a falling chunk of coral.
"What's happening?" Oin cried.
"The death of a worldship."
***
Thrawn's one remaining worry had been the desk hai: with his Star Destroyers packed so close together it was conceivable the planet-killers could shoot into the mass and take out multiple capital ships. He was counting on the fighters and smaller picket ships and frigates to prevent them from getting within firing range, but he still expected to lose several more capital ships before this was over: larger segments were breaking off under the fleet's barrage, which was digging a deep crater in the Long Reach, but the worldship had mass to spare. Thrawn's greatest concern was that Sang Anor would attempt a retreat using the desk hai as cover. If the Long Reach of Death escaped then this war in the Unknown Regions could drag on for years.
"Sir," Parck reported, "Commander Raine is onboard and heading for the bridge."
"Thank you, Captain," Thrawn tried not to sigh in relief. If what he suspected was true, then he would be doubly thankful for Taesk's sacrifice.
"Admiral," Commander Veenir spoke up, "the planet killers are moving!" Thrawn felt Parck tense beside him.
"Toward which of our vessels?" He would need to send the fighters to run interference and the picket ships to make the kill.
"None, their falling back to the worldship, and sensors detect a gravitational surge. They're preparing to fire."
At what? There was no way their projectiles could reach the Imperial ships from their current positions.
Thrawn didn't need to wonder for long, as the seven desk hai fired all at once, into the worldship.
The fired into roughly the same spot, and before the Imperials' eyes cavern-sized cracks radiated from the spot. Abruptly, the plasma cannons were silenced and the dovin basals went dead. Segments of dead coral twice the size of the Imperator spun away from the impact, and that still wasn't all.
Unbelievably, the Long Reach of Death began to split in half. 'Skin' of kilometer-thick coral crust peeled back and vital organs the size of Star Destroyers spilled out into the void. Thrawn looked under the skin and glimpsed a skeletal structure of curving bone pillars, endless tubes that must comprise a circulatory system and a hivework of insect-sized halls, floors and rooms. But the insides were already breaking apart and drifting into space. A swarm of coral escape pods and other ships flew from the worldship's craters and canyons.
He heard the turbolift doors open behind him, then Raine was walking down the long bridge deck to stand beside Thrawn and Parck. "Homeworld is avenged," she whispered.
"So it is," Thrawn nodded, but the victory seemed empty, inconsequential even. Homeworld was still ruined and Vraet still dead, what mattered wasn't revenge, but that the devastation would never be repeated. Those under his protection wouldn't have to fear the Yuuzhan Vong and their bloodthirsty ways.
"Pull the fleet back," he ordered, "the debris could be dangerous. The Long Reach can finish itself off," and he needed time to consider how he would handle a certain...delicate...subject.
***
Drash swerved to avoid chunks of dead coral. Under ordinary circumstances he wouldn't have cared whether or not he crashed. He might even seek out a piece of debris to ram into: after being part of a kill this big, what was left? Now, however, he found he had no desire to give up on living just yet.
Everything had changed, or maybe he was seeing the universe with new eyes. All his life he'd sought the trancendence Frae had promised, and in excepting death he had found it. He was no longer that frightened little boy, cowering in the basement of his own mind, hiding from the world. He was no longer a frightened anything, the fear that had ruled his life was gone and, for the first time in his life, Drash Tevock was free.
His heart surged with joy and the coralskipper echoed the sensation as they soared through the wreckage. Drash was free, mind and body, and he had a fighter who felt the same way. They could go anywhere, do anything, the whole galaxy was theirs. He wasn't exactly sure where he would go now, but he knew it wouldn't be back to Unity Fleet: he'd had enough of the Empire.
Besides, they would take away his coralskipper, dissect it maybe, and Drash already loved his new fighter. Yuuzhan Vong escape pods were drifting around him, Drash's sensors saw a giant's shadow and he swiftly flew behind a coral segment as a Yuuzhan Vong battlecruiser, perhaps the last one left, sailed near to hurriedly gather up the pods. If Drash didn't intend to return to the Empire, that went double for the Vong.
Drash put some distance between his fighter and the larger ship. He'd need to jump as soon as possible, he was on his way to just such a route when he heard a call through the Force. More, it was a call for help.
For a moment Drash considered ignoring it. He was free now, why risk himself, and there was sure to be risk, for someone he probably didn't know? Best not to get involved.
Vlu took a risk for you, a cold voice he felt rather than heard, the voice of the Force, or perhaps from somewhere within himself, Vlu died for you, is this how you will honor his sacrifice? If so then it would be better had you died in that temple.
He turned toward the call and found its source: a coral escape pod caught in the dead planet's gravity well. It was heading into the atmosphere and would soon be out of the battleship's reach. Now that he was closer, he could sense two presences aboard, not one. And the one who'd called him was familiar.
"Vergere," he breathed.
***
Stent felt sick.
As sick as poisoned Homeworld must feel, his skin shuddered as Homeworld's quake-beset crust must be. Learning of his home planet's fate was like seeing his own heart cut from his chest and burned in front of him, and now, seeing Beyin's corpse sprawled on the blasted, ash-covered ground, it was all he could do to hold onto his Chiss control.
"The artifact is secured in the lander," the voice from his comm link might have come from another galaxy.
"Thank you," was that his voice? How could it be so steady? "Send a sensor team to my position, the general has been killed." He was a Chiss, that was how.
"Commander-?"
"You heard me correctly, lieutenant. Home in on my position."
One of the ground troops he was with, a Chiss, knelt to arrange the body in a more dignified position. "Leave him," Stent said, "the investigators will need him to remain undisturbed."
The soldier looked up, the eyes behind the face mask held some of the disdain ground pounders had for flyboys. "He was our commander," he said coldly.
"And he would be telling you the same thing if he could," Stent replied.
The soldier frowned, Stent could tell it by his eyes. "Yes, he would." He stood and waited.
A hovering tank arrived with an investigative team. Stent entered the tank to make his report. He was instructed that, since the planetary attack was officially a phalanx mission, he would be patched through to the phalanx commander. Strange, how a Chiss household phalanx was in the Grand Admiral's service, and that he was a Syndic again.
With all these surprises, it was no wonder he started when the image took shape in the holoprojector's light. It was a female, a female in a uniform!
"Commander Stent," she greeted.
"Who are you?" Stent blurted the question.
The female narrowed her glowing eyes slightly, "Phalanx Commander Haar'ain'ellena," she said, "I will hear your report now."
"But I should tell someone..." he trailed off with the word male hanging unspoken. Raine's expression didn't change, but he got the creeping sensation she had heard his thoughts, "in the Imperial fleet," he concluded lamely.
"I will see that your news reaches the Syndic," Raine replied.
"Of course," Stent wanted to end this conversation quickly, there was something in her manner that made him feel he was behaving inappropriately, but surely it was the entire situation that was inappropriate. Females could not become officers; it wasn't...well...it wasn't how things were done.
"General Beyin has been killed," he said. "An investigative team is looking into it. The enemy base is secured and the General and his pilot were the only casualties, but there may be at least one active Yuuzhan Vong remaining. I personally doubt it: there is a shallow depression near the general's corpse, I suspect it housed a buried Vong craft that has since taken off. We cannot know for sure, the sensors on the General's AT-ST were making a visual recording of their progress, but the assailants entered the General's AT-ST after the assault and destroyed the recordings. We have also obtained an alien artifact from the time my flight group spent here. A native artifact, not Yuuzhan Vong. It is loaded and ready for transport, pending investigation by Imperial scientists to determine its safety."
"Thank you, Commander," Raine reached for the controls, "I will look forward to reading a more detailed report from you later." The image vanished and Stent breathed a sigh of relief, only then realizing he had actually been intimidated by a female.
He shook his head, things had changed indeed.
***
"Thank you for the use of your comm system," Raine said as Stent's image was replaced by a piece of holographic art. She frowned, "This Stent seems an able enough individual, but his attitude might need adjusting."
Sitting at apparent ease in his command chair, Thrawn barely heard her. So Beyin was dead. He and Taesk both. It seemed hard to believe; in spite of everything his intellect could provide about the dangers Beyin exposed himself to in combat, or of Taesk's advanced age, in his heart he had believed they would live forever, those two constants in his life.
He could recall the many evening they had spent together on Homeworld before his exile, that was Thrawn's gift: to remember everything with perfect clarity. Beyin had been one of Taesk's pupils, as Thrawn had been one of Beyin's, and Thrawn's House had always been close friends with Taesk's, it was natural those three should gravitate together.
They had spent hours discussing battle strategies, history, art, literature and politics. Away from the disapproving stares of the Syndics, the three of them had expressed their disgust at the backward policies of the High Families. Their inward-looking nature, their favoritism of lineage over ability, their refusal to look at anything beyond their boarders and their prejudice against anything not Chiss.
Truthfully, young Thrawn was often frustrated with Beyin and Taesk as well, for they seemed convinced that nothing could change things. He was convinced he knew better: Taesk and Beyin were intelligent and open-minded, yes, but they were old. Thrawn grimaced as he recalled himself in those days: young and full of passion, brilliant and knowing it, ready to go out and conquer the universe.
He had learned some hard truths since then, change was rarely easy or without opposition for one. He'd experienced that in the Grand Council, when all the Families had turned on him. Thrawn had leaned of something of his own limitations as well, when he'd first come into the Emperor's service. He had looked into those yellow eyes and seen wisdom, and hunger, millennia older than the ancient, hooded frame they sat in. A terrible wisdom that perceived all the hidden places in a being's mind, a hunger for lives to dominate and other wills to crush. In the Emperor's gaze Thrawn had seen a power as old as life itself. The power of the dark side.
And look how far he had come since then: Homeworld was gone, his people committed to a war that would destroy them, his family was gone, and Taesk and Beyin were dead.
I'm the last one left, he thought, the last of our little club.
"-I'll require a ship or the funds to purchase one," Raine was saying. "I trust you still have those recommendations I made for my successor?"
"So you are still intent on leaving?" Thrawn folded his hands.
"As I've said before, I will remain in your service long enough to see the aliens defeated and Homeworld avenged. That done, I will go my own way."
"Indeed," suspecting what he did, Thrawn had to appreciate her courage and will, "there is no need to hurry, though. If any of this haste is due to your present condition you