The Final Prophecy (10 page)

“Correct.”

“Wait one vaping minute,” Corran said, before even Han
could object. “I thought we’d agreed she would only advise beforehand.”

Leia turned to the Corellian. “You were already briefed on this, Corran?”

“Yes,” the pilot admitted. “Admiral Sorr reassigned me to the mission, but we didn’t discuss
this
.”

“I’m laying it on the table now so we can talk about it,” Kenth said. “Tahiri speaks their language and knows their ways. She’s flown ships like this before. I doubt very much this mission could succeed without her.”

“Well, it’s blinking well going to,” Corran replied. “Or I’m out.”

“I’ll do it,” Tahiri said.

“No, you
won’t
,” Han exploded.

Tahiri sighed. “You mean a lot to me, Captain Solo. Both of you do. I’ve never really had parents—not human ones, anyway—and I respect you. But this is something I have to do. Jaina and Jacen do their part. Anakin did his part.”

“And look how that turned out.” Han was trying to sound flip, but she felt the stab of Han’s pain at the mention of his youngest son.

“That’s the chance we take,” she said softly. “It’s the chance you’ve been taking all your life. I know you don’t want to lose anyone else. I know you worry about Jaina and Jacen, and you don’t want to add worry for me to that. But this war has gone on far too long. If things keep going like they’re going, it will only end when one side is exterminated. We have to find another way. That’s why Luke and Jacen went to find Zonama Sekot.”

“Yes, about that,” Leia said. “Hasn’t it occurred to anyone that this might be more than a trap for a Jedi or two? That it might be a prelude to another attack on Zonama Sekot?”

“That’s why I’m here,” Corran said. “If I figure this
‘Prophet’ isn’t operating in good faith, I’ll do what’s necessary to fix things.”

“Luke should have something to say about this.”

“I tried to contact him,” Kenth said. “But there is some problem with the HoloNet in that sector.”

“We just finished
saving
that relay,” Han said. “It should be working.”

“But it isn’t,” Kenth said. “We’ve sent a team to check it out. In any case, we can’t talk to Luke.”

“We’ll have to use our own common sense, then,” Han said. “You’re walking into this playing by Yuuzhan Vong rules, Corran.”

“Maybe. That’s why I want to do it alone.”

“Maybe you don’t trust me,” Tahiri said.

Corran smiled. “I didn’t trust you even when I knew who you were. Your impulsive actions nearly cost me my life on a couple of occasions, remember? I know you mean well—”

So much for there being plenty of blame to go around
, Tahiri thought.

“I’ve helped betray the Yuuzhan Vong once already,” she pointed out.

“You helped betray a military commander to save yourself and your friends. Tell me—if we discovered the only way to win this war was to kill every Yuuzhan Vong, would you do it?”

“No. Neither would Luke or Jacen.”

Corran nodded and stroked his beard. “Don’t dodge. What if it really came down to them or us?”

“There
is
no them or us, Corran. Do you really think the Shamed Ones want this war? Do you really think that malice is built into the Yuuzhan Vong at the hereditary level?”

“It’s built into their culture.”

“Exactly. And culture can change.”

“Sometimes,” he said. “If people want it to, and work at it.”

“And that’s what this mission is all about, right? If we let this door close, we may never see another one open.”

“Now wait,” Han said. “We’ve gotten a little off track here. We never settled that Tahiri can
do
this.”

“Yes, we did,” Leia said. Her voice was equal parts pride and sadness, and it sent a chill up Tahiri’s spine. For an instant, looking at Han in his frustration and Leia in her acceptance, she felt a love for them so powerful it nearly made her cry.

“Thank you,” she said.

Han crossed his arms and puffed out a breath of air. “Well, fine—then we’re going, too.”

“We’d rather have you here, in reserve, when we start the new action,” Kenth said.

Han’s brow wrinkled in consternation and Tahiri felt a sudden new ambivalence. Whatever was coming up, Jaina would probably be involved. Would Han want to be away, in unfamiliar territory, protecting her, when his own daughter might need him?

But he was Han, and he’d already started. “Hey,” he said to Kenth. “Don’t start thinking I’m regular military. If Corran won’t go—”

“Oh, space it,” Corran said. “I’ll go. Now, let’s see this ship we’re going to use.”

“I’ve got blips on the horizon,” Corran muttered.

“I see them,” Tahiri said, her heart sinking slightly. Everything had gone fine, up until now. The holes in Yuuzhan’tar’s planetary defenses had been where they were supposed to be. They had come through the upper atmosphere fine. Corran hadn’t even complained about her flying. But now, just when they were almost there, trouble came hunting like a qhal.

“They haven’t seen us yet,” she told him. “They’re atmospheric fliers—they don’t have the legs we do.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Corran said. “The minute they figure out something is bogus, this mission is over. And you’re coming in
way
too steep.”

“I know,” Tahiri said. She could feel the yorik coral hull of the ship beginning to blister. She straightened out infinitesimally, but that sent them bouncing violently across a thermal boundary.

“I thought you knew how to fly these things,” Corran grunted.

“I do,” she said, feeling her irritation grow. “You want to avoid our blip friends, don’t you? That means coming to ground
fast
, before they come in range to scent us out.”

“They’re going to
see
us,” Corran said. “Because we’re going to burn like a meteor if you don’t slow up.”

“All the better,” Tahiri said. “You saw the system chart. There must have been half a billion satellites in orbit around
Coruscant. Without anyone to maintain them, they must fall by the dozens every day.”

“Good point,” Corran conceded. “They won’t notice us as we disintegrate.”

“Right.”

“We’re only ten klicks from the ground now.”

Tahiri nodded. “Hang on, and hope the dovin basals in this thing are healthy.”

She nosed up ever so slightly, and now her goal came in sight—Coruscant’s single sea. It didn’t look like the holos she’d seen. There, it had been a sapphire in a silver setting, an artificial bathing pool on a planetary scale. Now it was a vast jade bezeled in a landscape of rust and verdigris.

The fliers were almost in range.

“This is going to be really, really close,” she told Corran.

“Great,” Corran said, teeth gritted.

“From what I’ve heard, you’ve done crazier things than this,” Tahiri said.

“Yes. Me. I’m a highly trained pilot. You’ve flown, what, three times?”

“The controls are yours if you want them.”

The controls, of course, consisted of a cognition hood that fit on Tahiri’s head. She guided the ship by becoming a part of it. A non–Yuuzhan Vong could fly one—Jaina had proven that—but it helped to have the language and the instincts.

And her instincts told her she couldn’t wait any longer or Corran really was going to have cause for complaint. She cut in the dovin basals, pushing them away from the planet, killing their velocity. She nudged the applied force up quickly, so quickly that the living gravitic drives couldn’t also fully compensate for the g’s they were pulling. She felt her weight double, then triple, and the blood in her brain started looking for a way out of her toes.

Hang on
, she thought.
Hang on
.

Blotches of darkness filled her vision, and her chest felt like a bantha was sitting on it. She saw the blips coming into range, entering—

Then the lozenge-shaped craft hit the water and skipped like a stone. Everything went crazy for a moment. She didn’t quite black out, but the ship’s pain jammed through her own thoroughly confused senses. She growled, then howled.

When it all made sense again she saw green.

They were sinking.

“Well,” Corran said. “That was—interesting. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Now let’s see if it was worth it.”

The blips—or, rather, the projected symbols that represented the approaching craft—continued to get closer.

Something in the ship creaked as they continued to sink.

“I wonder how deep it is here,” Corran mused.

“Not too deep, I hope,” Tahiri said. “If I use the drive with them this close, they’ll notice. The hull should be able to take a good bit of pressure.”

The blips were right overhead, now, and they suddenly broke their pattern.

“Not good,” Corran said.

“Khapet,”
Tahiri snarled. She’d screwed up. Now they would have to fight, run, and hope to make it to a safe place to jump to hyperspace before they were overwhelmed.
Nice going, Tahiri. Prove to Corran you really are the stupid little girl he remembers
.

“They’re going,” Corran breathed. “They must have just been investigating the splash. Or the burn trail.” He nodded. “Good call. I don’t want to do it again anytime soon, but …”

“That’s two of us,” Tahiri said, sighing and watching the fliers continue on their patrol.

Somewhere, something cracked. It sounded like ceramic breaking.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s just ease us up a little.”

“Do that,” Corran said, “but don’t surface—wait, how well can this thing work underwater?”

“Well enough. Unless I have to use voids.”

“Yes, let’s not do that,” Corran said. “Can you disable the function?”

“Sure. But why?”

Corran tapped his datapad and pulled up a chart.

“The Western Sea is like any sea—it’s fed by rivers. But because Coruscant is Coruscant, the rivers are artificial. Big pipes, to be exact. If we take this one”—he indicated a spot on the chart—“it will get us pretty close to where we’re going.”

“Assuming the tubes are still there,” Tahiri said. “Yuuzhan’ tar isn’t Coruscant.”

“It’s worth a look,” Corran said. “Anything that will keep us below the level of detection—and between what Jacen and our best intelligence tells us, they don’t have very secure control of a lot of the old underground. That’s why our Prophet is there, presumably.”

“It’s not the way he told us to come.”

“No, it isn’t,” Corran said. “Which gives it another mark, as far as I’m concerned.”

Tahiri nodded and changed her heading. “I hope we don’t bump into anything,” she said. “I can only see ten meters or so.”

“Just go slowly. We’re not in a hurry anymore—the rendezvous is hours away.”

They found the river, a mammoth tube whose diameter the ship’s radar analog suggested was a hundred meters or so. Tahiri kept them centered in it, and worked her way slowly up its length.

“That’s funny,” she said, after a few minutes.

“Funny
ha-ha
or funny
we’re about to die
?”

“Odd. What were these tubes made of?”

“Duracrete, mostly. Why?”

“That’s what the sensor signature was like when we started in. But it’s changed, now.”

“Changed how?”

“It’s irregular.”

“Maybe it’s decomposing,” Corran suggested.

“And not metal,” she added.

“Let me guess. It’s alive.”

“Probably.”

Corran scratched his beard. “The Yuuzhan Vong must be replacing the abiotic drainage systems with biotic ones. That would be typical.”

“Yes.”

“How far back was the boundary? How long have we been in this new part?”

“We just passed it. We’re only a few tens of meters in.”

“Right,” Corran said. “Back up. I want to think about this for a moment.”

Tahiri shrugged. “You’re in charge.”

“Yes, I am. I was wondering if you knew that.”

It didn’t quite sound like he was kidding.

Tahiri reversed direction until they were back in the old tunnel.

“What would they be using in place of the old pipe?” Corran asked. “Were we about to swim up the gut of a giant worm?”

Tahiri considered. “I’m not really sure,” she said. “The shaper damuteks have succession pools in their centers. Waste goes into them to be purified, and they have roots that go down into the planet to draw up water and minerals.”

Corran nodded. “I remember hearing that Anakin crawled down through one of those ‘roots’ so he could hide in subterranean caves long enough to build a new lightsaber.”

“Yes, he did.”

“And you think the Yuuzhan Vong are converting the Western Sea into a huge succession pool?”

“Maybe. Or it might be more like a ship’s maw luur. It’s the same idea—a combination nutrient bank and sewage treatment plant—but the technology is a little different because a ship’s maw luur is a closed system. Here, I’m not sure which they would use—but in a lot of ways, Coruscant was more like a worldship than a normal planet, right? No natural ecosystem?”

“Yes. In fact, the Western Sea served something of the purpose you describe anyway.”

“Sure. So while they’re still deconstructing the place, maybe their interim design is based more on worldship than planet.”