Rebirth: Edge of Victory II Read online

  And now she trembled, for the scent here was morbid.

  “The rikyam is dying,” she murmured to the novice at her side. “It is more than half dead.”

  The novice—a young man named Suung Aruh—twitched the tendrils of his headdress in dismay.

  “How can that be?” he asked.

  “How can it be?” Nen Yim repeated, anger creeping into her voice. “Look around you, Novice. The luminescent mycogens that once sheathed our halls in light now cling in sickly patches. The capillaries of the maw luur are clotted with dead or mutated recham forteps. The Baanu Miir worldship is dying, Initiate. Why should the brain be any different?”

  “I’m sorry, Adept,” Suung said, his tendrils knotted in genuflection. “Only … what is to be done? Will a new rikyam be grown?”

  Nen Yim narrowed her eyes. “Under whom were you trained before my arrival?”

  “I—the old master, Tih Qiqah.”

  “I see. He was the only master shaper here?”

  “Yes, Adept.”

  “And where are his adepts?”

  “He trained no adepts in his last year, Adept Nen Yim.”

  “Nor did he really train any initiates, it seems. What did you do for him?”

  “I …” His mortification deepened.

  “Yes?”

  “I told him stories.”

  “Stories?”

  “Crèche-tales, but with adult overtones. He insisted.”

  “He used you merely to amuse himself? As personal servants?”

  “Essentially, Adept.”

  Nen Yim closed her eyes. “I am assigned to a dying ship. At the mere rank of adept, I am the highest member of my caste, and I haven’t even a trained initiate.”

  “I have heard,” Suung said, “that the lack is due to the need for shapers in the battle against the infidels.”

  “Of course,” Nen Yim replied. “Only the senile, inept, and disgraced remain to tend the worldships.”

  “Yes, Adept,” Suung said.

  “Aren’t you going to ask which I am?” Nen Yim snarled.

  The novice hesitated. “I know you were once part of one of the holy programs,” he said cautiously.

  “Yes. A program that failed. My master failed. I failed. We failed the Yuuzhan Vong. The honor of death was denied me, and I have been sent here to do what I can for our glorious people.” Sent? she thought in her cloistered mind. Exiled.

  Suung made no answer, but waited for her to continue.

  “Your training begins now, Initiate,” Nen Yim said. “For I have need of you. To answer your question, no, we cannot grow a new rikyam for the ship. Or, rather, we could, but it would do the ship no good.”

  She glanced around. The inner torus of the worldship was sharply curved in floor and ceiling, the color of old bone, illuminated only by the lambents the two shapers carried with them. She looked back up at the rikyam, or what she could see of it. Its numberless coils of neurons grew in the still center of the ship, where neither up nor down existed—unlike the more affluent worldships, the Baanu Miir got its gravity from spin, not dovin basals, which had to be fed. Encased in multiple layers of coral-laced shell perforated by osmotic membranes, the brain could be accessed from the inner torus of the ship, where only shapers were allowed. Here, where the ship’s spin only imparted a vague rumor of artificial gravity, the membrane could be exposed by stroking a dilating valve in the shell. Only the hand of a shaper could pass through the membrane to the nerve curls within.

  “This ship is almost a thousand years old,” she told Suung. “The organisms that make it up have come and gone, but the brain has always been here. It has managed the integration of this ship’s functions for all of those years, developing outrider ganglia where they were needed, shaping the ship in its own unique way. It is for this reason that our worldships live so well, for so very long. But when the brain sickens, the ship sickens. Things can be done, but ultimately the ship, like all things, must embrace death. Our duty, Novice, is to keep this ship from that desired embrace for as long as possible, until new worldships can be grown or planets settled. In the case of this ship, we must await the former; Baanu Miir could never stand the strain of faster-than-light travel. It would take us decades or centuries to reach a habitable world.”

  “Couldn’t the habitants be transferred to a new world on swifter, smaller vessels?” Suung asked.

  Nen Yim smiled tightly. “Perhaps when the galaxy has been cleansed of infidels and the warriors no longer need every vessel available to carry on their war.”

  “Is there anything to be done now, Adept Nen Yim?” Suung asked. He had a certain eagerness in his voice that amused and even slightly heartened her. It wasn’t Suung Aruh’s fault he knew nothing.

  “Go to the qahsa, Initiate, where the knowledge and history of our people are kept. There you will find the protocols of shaping. Your scent and name will give you access to them. You will memorize the first two hundred and recite them to me tomorrow. You should be able to recall them by name, by indications, by applications. Do you understand?”

  His tendrils scarcely managed the genuflection, so disarrayed with excitement had they become. “Yes, Adept. It shall be done.”

  “Go now and leave me to contemplate this matter.”

  “Yes, Adept.”

  A moment later, she was alone in the inner torus. Even so, she looked about furtively before peeling down the front of the living oozhith that clung to her body and served to cover most of it from sight. Beneath the oozhith, clinging to her belly, was a film-flat creature. It retained the vestigial eyes of its fishlike ancestor but otherwise resembled an olive-and-black mottled pouch, which was more or less what it was—a very special sort of container.

  She reached back through the osmotic membrane to touch the fractal coils of the rikyam again. With the pincer on her smallest finger, she clipped off four discrete pieces of the brain and placed them in the pouch. The material closed lovingly around the coils, lubricating them with oxygen-rich fluids that would keep them healthy until she reached her laboratory and a more permanent way of keeping the neurons alive.

  She took a deep breath, contemplating the enormity of what she was about to do. The shapers were guided and strictured by the protocols, the thousands of techniques and applications given them by the gods in the misty past. To experiment, to try to invent new protocols, was heresy of the first order.

  Nen Yim was a heretic. Her master, Mezhan Kwaad, had been as well, before the Jeedai child Tahiri took her brilliant head from her neck. Together Nen Yim and she had dared to formulate hypotheses and test them. With her death, Mezhan Kwaad had absorbed most of the blame for both the heresy and the failure. Even so, Nen Yim had been spared only because shapers were already too scarce.

  Baanu Miir was dying, as a single glance at its decaying chambers made clear her first day within it. For a brain this ill, no protocol she knew would serve, and as an adept she could not access the mysteries beyond the fifth cortex of the qahsa. She would have to make her own protocol, despite already being tainted with heresy, despite the fact that she was certainly being watched.

  Her first duty was not to the calcified shaper codes, but to her people. The gods—if they existed at all—must understand that. If the worldship failed, twelve thousand Yuuzhan Vong would die—not in glorious battle or sacrifice, but smothered in carbon dioxide or frozen by the chill of space. She was not going to let that happen, even if it meant this would be her last shaping and her last act in this life.

  She replaced the pouch-creature on her abdomen and rolled the oozhith back over it, feeling the tiny cilia of the garment digging into her pores and resuming their symbiotic relationship with her flesh. Then she left the dying brain and returned through dim and opalescent chambers and corridors to her laboratory suite.

  FIVE

  “Arrest us?” Mara asked Hamner as the droid set his drink down. Her voice was radium at absolute zero, and Luke shivered. It was the voice of the woman who had
once tried to kill him and very nearly succeeded.

  “What’s the charge?” Luke asked.

  “Fey’lya has evidence that you were behind the unsanctioned military action at Yavin Four a few months ago,” Hamner said. “That opens you to a variety of charges, I’m afraid, especially since as chief of state he expressly forbade you to engage in any such activity.”

  “What evidence?” Luke asked.

  “The Yuuzhan Vong released a prisoner taken on Yavin Four,” Hamner said. “Fey’lya’s calling it a ‘hopeful sign of goodwill.’ The prisoner testified that Jedi were involved with and in fact led an unprovoked attack against the Yuuzhan Vong in a neutral system. He claims to have been a part of that force, which he asserts was led by Talon Karrde. He further maintains that Karrde had frequent communication with you, and that he witnessed those communications.”

  Mara’s eyes had narrowed to slits. “It’s a lie. None of Karrde’s people would talk. It must be one of the Yuuzhan Vong’s Peace Brigade collaborators, coached in what to say.”

  “But it is true, at the bottom of it all?” Hamner said.

  Luke nodded tersely. “Yes. After the Yuuzhan Vong warmaster offered to stop with the worlds he had already conquered so long as all of the Jedi were turned over to him, I realized the students at the Jedi academy were in danger. I asked Talon Karrde to evacuate them. When he arrived, the Peace Brigade was already there, trying to capture the students and turn them over to the Yuuzhan Vong as a peace offering. Karrde wouldn’t let them do that. I pleaded with Fey’lya to send New Republic military. He wouldn’t. So, yes, I sanctioned his effort and sent what help I could. What do you think I should have done?”

  Hamner’s long face nodded thoughtfully. “I don’t blame you. I only wish you had contacted me.”

  “You weren’t around at the time. I talked to Wedge, but it was out of his hands.”

  “But their witness is a liar,” Mara interjected. “We can prove that.”

  “And become liars ourselves?” Luke replied. “He’s lying about who he is and what he saw, maybe, but most of his accusations are true, if a bit distorted.”

  Hamner knotted his fingers together. “There’s more, anyway. Internal security went back over the records of star-ship comings and goings in that period. Of course, they already knew Anakin Solo had faked a clearance, but they also discovered you had had a visit from Shada D’ukal, one of Karrde’s top people. The transponder ID she used to land on Coruscant was a forgery. Finally, it’s clear Jacen and Jaina Solo also left for parts unknown, also circumventing planetary security—in your ship, Mara.”

  “Again, Kenth, what would you have done?” Mara asked accusingly. “We couldn’t leave our students to the Yuuzhan Vong just because the New Republic was too cowardly to act.”

  “And again, Mara, I’m not arguing with you. I’m just telling you what they have.”

  “I knew this was going to come out eventually,” Luke murmured. “I had thought it might be overlooked.”

  “The days when Fey’lya might have overlooked Jedi activities are long gone,” Kenth said. “It’s hard enough for him to hold back the tide of representatives who demand he acquiesce to Tsavong Lah’s conditions.”

  “You aren’t saying Fey’lya is on our side,” Mara said incredulously.

  “Mara, whatever else you might think of him, Fey’lya isn’t ready to throw all of the Jedi to the rancors. That’s part of the reason he’s taking this tack—damage control. By appearing to act against Luke, he can maintain a moderate position regarding more extreme anti-Jedi sentiment.”

  Luke nodded as if to himself, then directed his gaze at Hamner. “What’s your opinion here?”

  “Luke, I don’t think you’ll be brought to trial, or any such thing. The arrest will be a house arrest. You’ll be expected to make a general statement to the Jedi to stop any unsanctioned activity. Other than that, you won’t suffer any hardship.”

  “The Jedi are being hunted all over the galaxy. I’m expected to tell them not to fight back?”

  “I’m telling you how it is.”

  Luke locked his hands behind his back. “Kenth, I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t do that. I’ll try to keep my people out the way of the military, but other than that—well, the Jedi have a mission older than the New Republic.”

  Something snapped into place in Luke’s mind as he said that, solidified a thought as only a spoken word can. He suddenly realized that he meant what he had said with all of his heart and being. What had kept him from admitting it earlier? When had he confused the Jedi ethic with government at large? Why had he been apologizing for so long? Because he feared estrangement from the republic he had helped to build? But they were the ones doing the pushing, not him. Not the Jedi—not even Kyp and the other renegades. Luke might disagree with them in philosophical particulars, but not in the broad strokes—the Jedi were supposed to be helping people, working to bring justice and balance.

  “That’s why I wanted you to know in time to do something about it if you want to,” Hamner replied. He paused, as if considering his next words very carefully. “I don’t think Fey’lya imagines you will stand for it, either.”

  “You mean he thinks we’ll run and further implicate ourselves.”

  “Not exactly. He wants to be able to say you’re out of his reach and no longer his responsibility. To ‘pick you out of his fur,’ as the Bothans say.”

  “Oh,” Mara said. “He wants us out there, all right, in case he needs us one day, but until then he’s perfectly willing to turn his back on us.”

  “Something like that,” Hamner replied. “No move has yet been made to impound your ships.”

  “He wants me in exile,” Luke concluded.

  “Yes.”

  Luke sighed. “I was afraid this time would come. I had hoped it wouldn’t. But here we are.”

  “Yes, here we are,” Mara snarled. “Fey’lya had better pray I don’t—” Her impassioned diatribe halted in its birth, and a look of profound fear moved across her face. Luke had never seen anything like it on her features before. It was more terrible than he could ever imagine at that moment.

  “Ah!” Mara said, in a tiny voice.

  “Mara?”

  “Something’s wrong,” she said weakly, her face draining of color. “Something is really wrong.” She wrapped her arms around her belly and clenched her eyes shut.

  Luke sprang from his seat. “Get an MD droid, now,” he yelled toward the droid.

  In the Force, he felt Mara slipping away.

  “Hold on, love,” he said. “Please hold on.”

  SIX

  Anakin was busy underneath the supply transport Lucre, micro-adjusting the repulsor pads, when a pinkish pair of bare feet appeared. He couldn’t see the person the feet belonged to, but he knew who it was immediately.

  “Hi, Tahiri,” he called.

  “Hi yourself,” the indignant reply came. Knees squatted down onto the feet, then a pair of hands braced against the floor, and finally green eyes surrounded by a cloud of golden hair appeared. “Come out from under there, Anakin Solo.”

  “Sure. Just let me finish up.”

  “Finish up what? You have some reason to be tinkering with this ship?”

  Uh-oh. Anakin sighed and pushed himself out from underneath the transport.

  “I was going to tell you,” he protested.

  “I’m sure. When, just before you smoked jets out of here?”

  “Tahiri, I’ll be back. Corran and I are going for supplies, that’s all.”

  She was staring down into his face now. He could bump her nose with his own by raising up a few centimeters. Her eyes were huge, and not all green, but striated yellow and brown along her iris rims. Had they always been like that?

  She punched him in the shoulder, hard. “You could have told me yesterday.”

  “Ow!” He pushed farther away and sat up. “What was that for?”

  “What do you think?” She straightened, too, and the r
est of her face came into focus. Her forehead was etched by three nasty vertical scars, like crouching white worms. The Yuuzhan Vong had tried to make her into one of their own. The scars were the most superficial reminders of the process.

  “Look, I know I promised you I wouldn’t leave you yet, but this won’t take long. I’m getting jumpy.”

  “So what? Who cares? Didn’t it ever occur to you how I might feel?”

  “I thought I had considered that,” Anakin speculated. “Come on, Tahiri. What’s really the matter?”

  She pursed her lips. In the background, Fiver whirred and bleeped happily at his task of preparing the ship, with a strident note or two aimed at Corran’s astromech, Whistler. Across the broad bay, one of Terrik’s men cursed as something clanged against the ground. The pain of an insulted thumb wisped by the two Jedi.

  “They don’t like me here,” Tahiri said softly. “They all act like my skin is about to split open and a krayt dragon will step out.”

  “You’re imagining things,” Anakin soothed. “Everyone understands you’ve been through a rough time.”

  “No. No one understands it at all. Except you. Maybe not even you. They’re either afraid of me or repelled.”

  Anakin tried a sentence or two in his head, didn’t like the sound of them, and tried another.

  “Have you thought about having those scars removed?” he asked. “Booster’s MD droid could do it.”

  Oops. Anakin realized he should have replayed that one a few times before speaking, too. He saw Tahiri was about to erupt into a full-out verbal assault, and he braced for it.

  Wrong again. Her face calmed, and she shook her head. “I paid for them,” she said. “I won’t give them up.”

  “Maybe that’s what worries people,” Anakin said softly.