Conquest: Edge of Victory I (27 page)

The Yuuzhan Vong’s eyes widened. “You would graft a living servant to your machine?”

“A lightsaber isn’t exactly a machine.”

“It isn’t alive.”

“In a way it is,” Anakin said.

“In a way dung is the same as food, at the molecular level, perhaps. Speak plainly.”

“To do that, I have to tell you about the Force, and you have to listen.”

“The Force is what you
Jeedai
kill with,” Rapuung said.

“It’s much more than that.”

“Why do you wish to explain this to me?”

“Because when I use my lightsaber, I don’t want any surprises from you like I got when I lit the fire. I want to have this out here and now.”

“Very well. Explain your heresy to me.”

“You’ve seen me use the Force. You have to admit it is real.”

“I’ve seen things. They may have been tricks. Talk.”

“The Force is generated by life. It binds all things together. It’s in everything—the water, the stone, the trees in the forest. I am a Jedi Knight. We’re born with an aptitude for the Force, an ability to sense it, to control it—to guard its balance.”

“Balance?”

Anakin hesitated. How to explain sight to a blind man? “The Force is light and life, but it is also darkness. Both are necessary, but they have to be kept balanced. In harmony.”

“Putting aside the stupidity of that whole idea,” Rapuung said, “you’re telling me you
Jeedai
Knights keep this ‘balance’? How? By rescuing your comrades? By killing Yuuzhan Vong? Does fighting my people bring
balance in this Force? How can it, when you admit we do not
exist
in it? You can move a rock, but you cannot move me.”

“That’s sometimes true,” Anakin admitted.

“Very well. If your superstition demands you seek to balance this mysterious power, why are the Yuuzhan Vong your concern? Why bother with us at all?”

“Because you’ve invaded our galaxy, killed our people, stolen our worlds. You don’t expect us to fight back?”

“I expect warriors to fight, to embrace pain and death, to sing the song of slaughter with bloody lips. That is what Yuuzhan Vong do, and we do it not to bring balance, but
truth
. What you describe makes no sense. Tell me—are the Yuuzhan Vong part of this ‘dark side’ you speak of?”

Anakin looked at him frankly. “I think so.”

“Does your magical Force tell you this?”

“No. Because—”

“Because we do not exist in it. It is not a part of us or we a part of it. So again, how do you judge us a part of your dark side?”

“By your actions,” Anakin said.

“Actions? We kill in battle. You kill in battle. We kill in stealth. You kill in stealth. You fight for your people. I fight for mine.”

“It’s
our
galaxy!”

“The gods have given it to us. They have commanded we bring you the truth. This Force of yours is for lesser beings, those who do not know the gods.”

“I do not accept that,” Anakin said.

“And yet you would have me accept something I cannot see or smell? Something you merely tell me exists? Do you believe in the gods?”

Anakin hesitated, then tried again. “You’ve seen me use the Force.”

“I’ve seen you do amazing things. I haven’t seen you
do anything that we Yuuzhan Vong could not accomplish. Our dovin basals can move planets. Our yammosks and even the lowly lambent you hold there can speak mind to mind. I admit what I see—that you have powers I do not have. I need not believe your superstitions as to where these powers come from.”

“Then don’t,” Anakin said hotly.

“And what does all of this have to do with building your abominable weapon?”

“A lightsaber is more than just an ordinary weapon. Each Jedi builds his or her own. The pieces are bound together by the Force and by the Jedi’s will and make something greater than the sum of its parts. It becomes a thing alive in the Force.”

“It is made of inanimate parts. It cannot be alive.”

“All living things are made of inanimate parts, if you look small enough,” Anakin pointed out. “Nothing is really inanimate. As I said, the Force is in everything. There will be something of me in my lightsaber, and something of this lambent in me.”

Vua Rapuung nodded thoughtfully. “I begin to see the roots of your foul heresy, now. You make use of abominations because you somehow think them alive?”

Anakin stood abruptly. “I’ve explained what I’m going to do. Will you oppose me? Are you going to snap when I start fighting your people with my lightsaber?”

Vua Rapuung glared at him in the dim light of the lambent. Anakin could hear his teeth clicking together.

“The gods led me to you,” he said at last. “Not Yun-Shuno, that many-eyed mother of snivelers, but Yun-Yuuzhan himself. He told me in a vision that the
Jeedai
infidel with his blade of light would lead me to my revenge and vindication. That is why I followed you down here, when my instincts screamed against it. It is why I did not kill you when you used the first abomination. Everything you say sounds to me as a lie. The reasons
you give for me to accept your weapon make no sense. But Yun-Yuuzhan has spoken to me.”

“Then you accept what I told you about the Force?”

“Of course not. As I said before, I can admit that what my senses tell me is true without believing your delirious justification of it. Your weapon may be acceptable to the gods; your heresy is not. Build your blade.”

With that, Rapuung stalked off into the darkness.

“And you say
I
don’t make any sense,” Anakin sighed.

   Disappointment edged at Anakin, but he fought it back.

He could feel the lambent, but not in the Force, not the way he could feel everything else about his weapon. Everything was in place, fitted, ready to work. But what he had told Rapuung was the truth; the real moment a lightsaber became a Jedi’s weapon was when the first amperes of power trickled through it, when each piece became a part of the other and a part of the Jedi building it.

But the lambent was resisting that. Well, not resisting actually, but not going along with the whole scheme, either.

And time was passing, each moment bringing Tahiri closer to something terrible.

Concentrate
, he thought.
There is no try
.

But there was failure, especially here. Master Yoda’s words, his entire philosophy, required the presence of the Force in everything.

But the Force wasn’t in the Yuuzhan Vong. It wasn’t in their biotech. They could be fought only indirectly, with things that
could
be sensed in the Force.

Something slapped him, then, something that had been cocking its hand back for a long time.

Master Yoda was wrong
.

The Jedi were wrong, and Vua Rapuung was right. If the Jedi stood for nothing but seeking balance in the Force, then he
did
have no business fighting the Yuuzhan
Vong. Oh, he could rescue Tahiri; after all, preventing her from becoming a dark Jedi was at the core of the philosophy. But were actions—however bad or evil they seemed—were the actions of the Yuuzhan Vong in and of themselves worth opposing if they had no effect on the Force?

To be sure, the aliens were killing people, which always disturbed the Force. But did it unbalance it? The Yuuzhan Vong weren’t gathering dark energy about themselves. If anyone ran the risk of doing that, it was Jedi like Kyp and maybe even himself. Seen like that, fighting the Yuuzhan Vong was more likely to unbalance the Force than any action they themselves might take.

Sure, that all made sense. It almost sounded like something Jacen or Uncle Luke would say. But that was all predicated on the certainty that the Force was in everything.

And it wasn’t. And while the facts of the matter were staring them all in the face, no Jedi had had the guts to confront the new reality. Instead they were acting like spoiled children, complaining that the Yuuzhan Vong didn’t play fair, weren’t following those black-and-white rules. So Kyp went out to shoot them, to try to make the problem go away by killing it. Jacen huddled away in indecision. Maybe he was right.

No
. It wasn’t right for the Yuuzhan Vong to kill whole planets. It wasn’t right for them to enslave people. Those actions were evil, they were wrong, and they had to be fought. If the Force did not draw that line and set great dark-side alarms wailing, then maybe Anakin didn’t serve the Force. Or to put it more precisely, he served something more fundamental than the Force, something of which the Force was a manifestation, an emanation—a tool. Not Rapuung’s gods, or any god, but some fundamental truth built into the universe at a subatomic level. In his galaxy, the Force was the servant of that truth. Wherever the Yuuzhan Vong were from, some other manifestation
must prevail. But light remained light, and dark, dark. And whatever had happened to the Yuuzhan Vong, they had turned to the dark side long ago. If the Empire of Palpatine had prevailed and traveled to another galaxy on an errand of conquest, a galaxy where the Force was not known, what evidence would the people there have of the light side of the Force? Could they know that the Empire was an aberration of what ought to be? No. Similarly, Anakin didn’t know—couldn’t know—what manifestation of the light the Yuuzhan Vong had left behind them. But they
had
left it behind.

Maybe this was even the result of a whole people turning entirely to the dark side. Maybe the Force simply rejected them, or they it.

That didn’t make them all evil, any more than everyone who served the Empire was evil. But it made them worth opposing. Without anger or hatred, yes. But they had to be stopped, and Anakin Solo would never turn his eyes from that.

With a sudden surge of confidence, he reached for the parts of his lightsaber in the Force and then pressed deeper.

So he had to work indirectly with the Yuuzhan Vong and their things. Fine. But behind the seeming disunity, there must be unity.

And in a flash of epiphany he had it. The link between the rest of his lightsaber and the lambent was Anakin Solo. It was in
him
the changes had to happen.

Power surged and crackled, and the cavern echoed with a
snap-hiss
, and somewhere Vua Rapuung snarled.

Anakin opened his eyes to the purple glow of his lightsaber and felt a grin slash his face in half.

“I am Jedi again,” he said quietly.

Perhaps a new kind of Jedi altogether.

   “Two cycles have come and gone,” Vua Rapuung growled, a few moments later. His features were hollow
in the violet glow. “Your abominable weapon works, it seems. Are we done with skulking? May we at last embrace our foes?”

“
You
embrace them,” Anakin said. “I’m going to knock them down. Your shapers want Jedi? One is coming to them.”

CONQUEST

Mezhan Kwaad curled her headdress in recognition at Nen Yim as she entered the laboratory.

“Detail your progress, Adept,” the master said. Her tone was curt and her tendrils suggested irritation.

“We made good progress in your absence, Master,” Nen Yim said cautiously. “I think with only minor genetic adjustments, the memory implants will be permanent. She resists them less than she did when last you were here.”

“Yes,” Mezhan Kwaad replied, anger twitching her tendrils. “Valuable days, missed.” She turned to Nen Yim. “But at least you were here, my adept, and competent to carry on.”

Nen Yim watched Mezhan Kwaad cross to the vivarium. The
Jeedai
still had a blank look most of the time, but now and then Nen Yim thought she saw something working behind those alien green eyes. Something more Yuuzhan Vong than human.

“Can you tell me your name?” Mezhan Kwaad asked the
Jeedai
.

Only a slight hesitation, this time. “Riina,” the
Jeedai
said. “My name is Riina.”

“Very good, Riina. Did Nen Yim explain what has been done to you?”

“A little.”

“Tell me what you remember.”

“The infidels captured me as a child, at the rim of their
galaxy. They made me look like one of them and gave me false memories with their
Jeedai
powers.”

“This seems right to you?”

“Not always. Sometimes I think I am—” She gasped and clenched her hands. “—someone else.”

“The infidel conditioning was excellent. Before we rescued you, they tried to wipe your mind clean. There was much damage.”

“I feel that,” the
Jeedai
answered.

“There is something I need to know,” Mezhan Kwaad replied. “You were born with certain powers. You were taught lies about these powers, but we are attending to that. What I fear, Riina, is that your injuries may have crippled those powers.”

“I cannot even think of them,” the
Jeedai
said. Small droplets of water formed in the corners of her eyes and ran down her face.

“I’m going to help you with that,” the master said. She gestured to make the vivarium opaque to sound and spoke to Nen Yim. “Quiet the provoker spineray.”

Nen Yim started. “Master, that might not be wise. She still has moments when she asserts her real identity. We have closed most of those neural paths, but if we remove the promise of pain—”

“The new memories are in place for now, yes? They seem to be working quite well. They will keep her in check. This will not take long.”

“This will confuse her,” Nen Yim argued. “It might set us back.”

“Who is master here, Adept?” Mezhan Kwaad asked brusquely. “Are you seriously questioning my expertise?”

Nen Yim quickly genuflected. “I am pitiable, Master. Of course I shall do as you say. I merely wished to voice my concerns.”

“They are noted. Now, silence the spineray.”

Nen Yim did so, and Mezhan Kwaad once again made the membrane permeable to sound. She produced a small
stone from her oozhith’s pouch and placed it on the chamber floor.

“Once you could lift a stone like this with your will,” she told the
Jeedai
. “I wish to see you do so now.”

“I will have to call upon false memories,” the
Jeedai
moaned. “Painful ones.”