The Unifying Force Page 23

  "Here come our guides," Page said.

  A Rodian and a Ryn, they were wearing rustic trousers and shirts, lt-up footwear, fabric belts, and tight-fitting woven skullcaps. And

  Wy they were comfortable around the saddled mounts they rode 'ed. The size of small dewbacks, the long-snouted quadrupeds

  ^ nearly as shaggy as banthas, but lacked horns or tusks of any sort.

  of

  "I'm Sasso," the Rodian said as the pair came within earshot Han and the others.

  one-

  "Ferfer," the Ryn said under his breath, adding: "Gatherer six-four, out of Balmorra."

  Han reached up to shake hands with the Ryn. "How's your boss>"

  "On the run," Ferfer said.

  Han nodded, thinking of Droma, the Ryn who had befriended him at Chewbacca's death, and who was rumored to head the Gath erers. "That figures."

  As introductions were being made all around, Han found himself thinking that Sasso and Ferfer reminded him of many of the folk he had had dealings with during his early years in the Corporate Sector-on Duroon, Deltooine, and other worlds. Folk who were often hardened by circumstance but true to their word.

  Lately when he wasn't thinking about the war or dwelling on the deaths of Anakin and Chewbacca, he would often catch himself reminiscing about the old days, or wondering what it would be like to return to the worlds of his youth without his tall, thick-furred sidekick, but with Leia and the kids. The person who had scammed his way through half the Outer Rim was very much alive inside him, and for all the lavish parties on Coruscant, the diplomatic affairs, state dinners, and royal weddings he'd been obliged to attend during the past twenty-some years, he was still more comfortable around beings like Sasso and Ferfer than he was around Senators and princes, the wealthy and influential. Weather-beaten faces and hands callused from hard work; the great outdoors instead of some refresher; food dug from the soil or yanked from the trees instead of factory-produced foodstuffs. • •

  Maybe someday he and Leia would get the chance, he told himself.

  Sasso pointed him to his mount, which was known locally as a timbu. Han planted his foot in the stirrup and pulled himself onto the immense saddle. The timbu grunted and turned his big, floppy-eared head to regard Han through a liquid-black eye.

  "Whatever you do, don't jerk the reins too hard," he told Leia as she nimbly mounted a smaller timbu.

  "Why, what happens?"

  "Think about the worst gob of spittle you ever saw a tauntaun nch, then multiply that times ten."

  "Scary."

  "You've ridden a timbu before," Sasso stated rather than asked.

  Han nodded. "On Bonadan."

  The Rodian's tapered snout wiggled in a kind of smile. "Terrific

  place."

  Team Meloque moved out. Four-member bands of Yuuzhan

  Vong patrolled Caluula City's mostly unpaved streets, but the alleged cientists were allowed to pass without incident. On a lush common, two priests were overseeing a mixed group of locals and Yuuzhan Vong workers who were erecting a temple to Yun-Yuuzhan. Street and storefront electric lights had been ripped from their supports, and there wasn't a droid or a speeder to be seen.

  "Welcome to the new galaxy," Kyp said.

  "No slave coral," Leia said quietly.

  Sasso nodded. "That was one of the conditions of the surrender."

  "How'd everyone feel about the surrender?" Page asked carefully.

  "Let me put it this way," the Rodian said. "The governor no longer appears in public, and she's had the walls of her compound reinforced."

  Han noticed that Page appeared to be right at home. He rode his timbu with practiced ease, and he knew which way to direct the beast even before the guides said anything. It was as if he had already memorized the layout of the streets and the topography of the planet. Han guessed that Page would be able converse in Caluulan if necessary, eat the food and drink the water without getting ill, catch the eye of the local women, make do as if he had been born and raised there.

  Wraw, in contrast, was clearly out of his element. The bristly-bearded Bothan had a habit of looking at everyone with what seemed hke bemusement or mild derision, but his head fur betrayed none of e changes that were a characteristic of his species. But Han had ncountered the style before in individuals who had built their lives °und inveigling secrets from others, and then seeing to it that those Secrets reached the proper ears.

  "How far to the yammosk?" Kyp asked Sasso.

  "The installation is practically the new city center—probably t discourage attempts at orbital bombardment. But our safest approach is from the south, which means crossing two ranges of hills to

  o^C

  there."

  "The weapons are cached along our route?" Page said.

  "There are weapons buried everywhere," Sasso told him. "A soon as it became obvious that the Vong were interested in occupyine Caluula, we began hiding as much as we could: blasters, foods, droids you name it. You can't dig a hole in the hills without uncovering one supply dump or another. By the time Caluula Station fell and the Vong were coming down the gravity well, we were already living like homesteaders."

  "Surely the Yuuzhan Vong are aware of your actions," Meloque said.

  "They are. But so far they haven't done much investigating. A few caches of arms and droids were discovered, and twenty Caluulans were sacrificed. But aside from that incident, things have been relatively quiet." Sasso nodded his snout to indicate a change in direction. "We go this way."

  "How soon before we'll begin to see winged-star shells?" Meloque asked.

  "As soon as we gain some elevation."

  Sasso brought the train of eight timbus to a halt at the foot of a steep, uphill track that disappeared into a thickly forested ravine. A winged creature passed soundlessly overhead, disappearing into the trees before Han could get a good look at it.

  "Yuuzhan Vong biot," Ferfer said nervously. "We're being watched."

  • irroring the sweeping curve of the planetary

  ring, the war vessels of the armada were spread above bright-side Yuuzhan'tar like fine grains of crystalline sand. Arrayed in battle groups and reprovision flotillas, each cruiser, carrier, and tender analog had been branded with domain emblems and daubed with blood preserved from the sacrifice of the Alliance captives. Some of the vessels flew battle standards earned over countless generations. Others were necklaced hundreds strong with coralskippers. Behind the mica transparencies of observation blisters and resupply balconies, commanders and subalterns crouched on one knee, their heads lowered in obeisance, and their right fists pressed to the yorik coral decks. There lazed Realm of Death, Blade of Sacrifice, River of Blood, Slayer's Conceit, Serpent's Kiss, and the pennant vessel, Tammka's Mount, commanded by Warmaster Nas Choka.

  Closer to orbitally altered Yuuzhan'tar, closer to the massive

  dovin basals that were the planet's first line of defense, closer to the

  rainbow bridge—symbolic of Yun-Yuuzhan's traffic with the species

  e had created—floated the oblate yacht that had carried Shimrra and

  'e nonwarrior elite from the surface. Smeared with blood, the throne

  amber of the yacht was also festooned with wreaths of thorn-vine

  213

  and adorned with hundreds of delicately wrought fans, sacred to Yn Yammka. In honor of the launching, all present in the chamber vvr> glistaweb armor, including Shimrra's prefects and seers, Qelah Kva and her chief shapers, High Priest Jakan, even preposterous Onimi The Supreme Overlord stood tall and self-possessed before unique villip that forwarded his visage and words to every villip Co tained in every vessel, dedicated or choir member, warship or coral skipper.

  "Yun-Yuuzhan, Great Maker," Shimrra murmured, "we beseech your blessing for these vessels we dispatch into the void, for their mission is yours also by injunction. With this final battle we fulfill our obligation to cleanse the realm you saw fit to provide us, to make it worthy, and in turn to be made
worthy by victory of claiming it as our home. From this moment forward, we will set ourselves to the task of taking these humbled species under our wing, and of instructing them in the truth you bade our ancestors hear at the dawn of time.

  "We pledge that from these beginnings we will carry our task through to completion, purging this realm of machines, and replacing them with our biological partners. When Yuuzhan'tar has been fully reshaped according to the ancestral architecture, and when temples to you and your sacrosanct domain crown the tops of the highest mountains and dominate the principal population centers of every occupied world, we will petition that you judge our work one final time.

  "The grand moment has arrived—the culmination of generations of voyage and discovery. Even now, in these unfamiliar skies, the ancestral galaxy moves into beneficent aspect with this newfound home. What was distant is near at hand; what was completed is begun anew."

  In a blinding display of honor and power, the largest of the war vessels launched five thousand plasma missiles toward Yuuzhan'tar s primary. Then in groups, and led by Tammka's Mount, the armada began to move out, building momentum for the transition t darkspace.

  Nom Anor watched from his assigned place in the holy yacht, wondering what Nas Choka might be thinking. The outcome or t war and the future of the Yuuzhan Vong hinged on what would occu

  he next quarter klekket. The warriors and priests, lifted to

  , ^v jays of fasting and dancing, were sanguine that the armada ecstas) .

  would prevail.

  gut not everyone was so assured.

  The consuls under Nom Anor's command, and the executors ier their commands, had brought to his attention rumors of grave

  ehension and doubt among the high caste. And beneath those

  e rumblings, Nom Anor could feel the more sinister roiling of hatred among the dispossessed.

  From beneath the bridge, from the dark underworld of Yuuzhan'tar, he could hear the clamor of angry voices, the words of the heretics growing louder and more forceful, venomous in the aftermath of the executions, the dissent spreading through the ranks, among not only the Shamed Ones but also others who had lost or were beginning to lose the faith in Supreme Overlord Shimrra. A vast wave, building and building, threatening to break against the Yuuzhan Vong's every shore, to wipe the armada from the sky, and to pull into the depths the holy yacht and everyone aboard.

  Shimrra had told Nom Anor that his war was with the gods. But Shimrra had overlooked the real enemy—the enemy that surrounded him and on whose shoulders he stood. Even Quoreal in his final days had not been the object of such suspicion and loathing. If it were left to the Shamed Ones, Nas Choka's mighty force would be routed at Mon Calamari, and Shimrra would be dragged from the throne by Yun-Shuno himself, to be devoured in public by packs of starved bissop hounds . . .

  Nom Anor shifted his troubled gaze from the departing ships, and

  lt the same moment Onimi shifted his, to needle Nom Anor with

  meddlesome look. Nom Anor wondered if Onimi's olfactory sense

  18 so keen that he could smell the fear coming off him. Perhaps that

  s just one of the reasons why Onimi's rhymes were so biting:

  luse he could read subtle signals in all those who appeared before

  Shimrra.

  ^om Anor stiffened in disgust and something close to dread as

  'mi wobbled over to him from across the throne chamber.

  "R

  encouraged, Prefect," Onimi said in confidence. "As is true

  between the gods and the Yuuzhan Vong, Shimrra's strength fl

  from the combined certitude of his subjects. Falter, display doubt

  weakness, and the careful balance may tip ..."

  Nom Anor sneered. "Who are you to address me, Shamed On >» Onimi's uneven mouth twisted into a frigid smile. "Your

  science, Prefect. The still-small voice that reminds you how tenuo

  your position is."

  Still wearing her silver-locked wig, Leia was deflating Han's and her sleeping pad when she saw Sasso drop something by the srnol dering campfire. A leathery creature about the size of a shock-ball it looked like a villip with wings—and this one had been pierced by a wooden quarrel fired from the Rodian's crude bowcasterlike weapon

  "That's one that won't be able to report on us," Sasso said, examining his fresh kill with the thoroughness of a born hunter.

  Leia went over to the fire to have a closer look at the dead creature. "The biot we saw yesterday?"

  "Maybe not the same one, but from the same flock." Sasso's green snout twitched. "Got it on the first try. That's never happened before."

  Leia regarded him questioningly. "I hope you're not thinking of cooking it."

  "I am curious . . . but no. I'm trying to decide whether to burn it or bury it."

  "I vote for burning it," Han said from behind them. "Otherwise the bissops might be able to sniff it out."

  Caluula's sun had been up for an hour, but the ravine's forest of cane trees was still waking up. Birds were abundant, and the flitnats Leia's personal flitnats—had returned. Thanks to the netting supplied with the bedrolls, she and Han had slept flitnat-free and wonderfully, waking frequently if briefly to watch for shooting stars or listen to the calls of nocturnal creatures. Han had prepared breakfast over the fire, while she and Wraw had broken camp. It was an elemental life, DUt one she thought she could get used to.

  Under cover of darkness, Sasso and the Ryn, Ferfer, had sneake off to a nearby supply cache, and returned by first light with the

  and a couple of weapons old enough to have been carried by ' adoptive father's bodyguards, including a thick-barreled blaster

  laree hardwood handgrip; another with a finger-con toured grip vith ^ !**•*•£?

  built-in scope; two black military-grade hand weapons with

  guards and top-mounted heat radiators; and a rifle Han identi-ielus a DC-15, with a folding stock.

  The blasters were now stashed in the duffels, but not so deeply they couldn't be retrieved in a hurry.

  Meloque and the mustachioed Ferfer returned to camp just as Han and Wraw were about to secure the gear bags to the timbus. The docile animals were foraging for food in the tall grass.

  The stately Ho'Din female looked disappointed.

  "Couldn't find any winged-star shells?" Han said.

  She shook her head. "We found hundreds, but all of them were inactive. At least some should have opened by now."

  "The weather has been off," Sasso said. "Hotter than usual for this time of year."

  Meloque considered it. "I suppose that could account for it."

  By firelight the previous evening, she had given everyone a biology lesson on the Nocturne of the Winged-Stars. Similar in appearance to the drone-flitters found on countless worlds, winged-stars emerged from chitinous shells. Unique among flitters, however, Caluula's had but one day to perform their mating dances, display their celebrated luminosity, mate, and lay eggs, which would hatch 299 years later. The larval stage lasted less than a local week, at the end of which the surviving larvae would be encased in durable cocoons. Those newly emerged winged-stars that weren't immediately devoured by flying lizards and other predators would die of natural causes by the time the sun set on the day of their emergence.

  "Correct me if I'm wrong, Meloque," Wraw said, "but unless '°u're aging more gracefully than a Wookiee, you've never actually observed a Nocturne."

  "That's true," she told him. "But on Moltok we have been able to s"nulate the life cycle in controlled settings."

  "Maybe the Yuuzhan Vong have something to do with the cas-;s not opening on schedule," Han suggested. "They might have

  introduced some organism that's affected the ecology. Look wh they did on Tynna and Duro."

  "I find that very improbable," Meloque said. "Those worlds wer altered for strategic and logistical reasons, where a world like Caluu] must please the Yuuzhan Vong to no end. For all the barbarity they'v demonstrated,
they have a reverence for life."

  Wraw snorted. "You sound like a sympathizer, Professor."

  "Wraw," Leia said sharply, but Meloque only waved her sucker-equipped hand in dismissal.

  "What other attitude can be expected from a member of a species that has declared its intent to exterminate the Yuuzhan Vong?" Meloque was referring to the Bothan doctrine of ar'krai, or total war

  Wraw laughed. "I was only joking."

  His head fur betrayed nothing. Leia waited until Meloque and Ferfer had left to search for additional shells before she went over to Wraw. "I don't think Meloque appreciates your sense of humor."

  Wraw shrugged. "What can I say? We're worlds apart."

  "Then your cynicism doesn't stem from your commitment to an amoral, unprofitable career?"

  "Amoral, maybe, but certainly not unprofitable."

  "In terms of credits, you mean."

  "What other terms are there?"

  Leia glanced at Han, who merely spread his hands. "Go ahead and poke him if you want to. I won't try to stop you."

  Just then Page and Kyp returned to camp. Page looked from Han to Leia to Wraw, then back to Han. "We interrupting something?"

  "Just a little campfire sing-along," Han said.

  Page didn't ask for an explanation. "We found signs of a Yuuzhan Vong patrol—tracker beasts and a couple of those twelve-legged mounts."

  "Bissops and quenaks," Sasso said, getting to his feet. "We d better get moving. The sooner we cross the next ridge, the better.

  Everyone pitched in to load the remaining gear. With Ferrei riding point, they climbed to the crest of the ridge, then began a slow, switchback descent through dense forest. Sasso, Page, and Kyp ro^e