The Unifying Force (2 page)

Shirtless, the prisoners were slick with sweat, and kilos lighter than when they had arrived on Selvaris two standard
months earlier, after being captured during an abortive attempt to retake the planet Gyndine. Those who wore trousers had cut them off at the knee, and likewise trimmed their footwear to provide no more than was needed to keep their feet from being bloodied by the coarse ground or the waves of thorned senalaks that thrived outside the walls.

S’yito only sneered at their insolence, and waved his left hand to disperse the cloud of insects that encircled him.

The short human cracked a smile and laughed. “That’s what you get for using blood as body paint, S’yito.”

S’yito puzzled out the meaning of the remark. “Insects are not the problem. Only that they are not Yuuzhan Vong insects.” With uncommon speed, he snatched one out of the air and curled his hand around it. “Not yet, that is.”

Worldshaping had commenced in Selvaris’s eastern hemisphere, and was said to be creeping around the planet at the rate of two hundred kilometers per local day. Bioengineered vegetation had already engulfed several population centers, but it would be months before the botanical imperative was concluded.

Until then, all of Selvaris was a prison. No residents had been allowed offworld since the internment camp had been grown, and all enemy communications facilities had been dismantled. Technology had been outlawed. Droids especially had been destroyed with much accompanying celebration, and in the name of benevolence. Liberated from their reliance on machines, sentient species might at long last glimpse the true nature of the universe, which had been brought into being by Yun-Yuuzhan in an act of selfless sacrifice, and was maintained by the lesser gods in whom the Creator had placed his trust.

“Maybe you should just try converting our insects,” one of the humanoids suggested.

“Start with threatening to pull their wings off,” the short human said.

S’yito opened his hand to display the winged bug, pinched between forefinger and thumb but unharmed. “This is why you lose the war, and why coexistence with you is impossible. You believe we inflict pain for sport, when we do so only to demonstrate reverence for the gods.” He held the pitiful
creature at arm’s length. “Think of this as yourselves. Obedience leads to freedom; disobedience, to disgrace.” Abruptly, he smashed the insect against his taut chest. “No middle path. You are Yuuzhan Vong, or you are dead.”

Before any of the prisoners could reply, a human officer stepped from the doorway of the nearest hut into the harsh sunlight. Thickset and bearded, he wore his filthy uniform proudly. “Commenor, Antar, Clak’dor, that’s enough chatter,” the officer said, referring to them by their native worlds rather than by name. “Carry on with your duties and report back to me.”

“On our way, Captain,” the short human said, saluting.

“That’s Page, right?” the Gotal asked. “I hear nothing but good things.”

“All of them true,” one of the Bith said. “But we need ten thousand more like him if we’re ever going to turn this war around.”

As the prisoners moved off, S’yito turned to regard Captain Judder Page, who held the subaltern’s appraising gaze for a long moment before stepping back into the wooden building. The body bearer had spoken the truth, S’yito thought. Warriors like Page could snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

The Yuuzhan Vong held the high ground in the long war, but only barely. The fact that a prison camp had had to be grown on the surface of Selvaris was proof of that. Normally a battle vessel would have served as a place of detention. But with the final stages of the conflict being waged on numerous fronts, every able vessel was deployed to engage hostile forces on contested worlds, patrol conquered systems, defend the hazy margins of the invasion corridor, or protect Yuuzhan’tar, the Hallowed Center, over which Supreme Overlord Shimrra had now presided for a standard year.

In any other circumstance there would have been little need for high walls or watchtowers, let alone a full complement of warriors to guard even such high-status prisoners as the mixed-species lot gathered on Selvaris. At the start of the war, captives had been fitted with manacles, immobilized in blorash jelly, or simply implanted with surge-coral and enslaved
to a dhuryam—a governing brain. But living shackles, quick-jelly, and surge-coral were in short supply, and dhuryams were so scarce as to be rare.

Were S’yito in command, Page and others like him would already have been executed. As it was, too many compromises had been made. The wooden shelters, the disposal of bodies, the food … No matter the species, the prisoners had no stomach for the Yuuzhan Vong diet. With so many of them succumbing to their battle wounds or malnutrition, the prison commander had been forced to allow food to be delivered from a nearby settlement, where the residents plucked fish and other marine life from Selvaris’s bountiful seas, and harvested fruits from the planet’s equally generous forests. Against the possibility that resistance cells might be operating in the settlement, the place was even more closely guarded than the prison.

It was said among the warriors that Selvaris had no indigenous sentients, and in fact the settlers who called the planet home had the look of beings who had either been marooned or were in hiding.

The sentient who delivered the weekly rations of food was no exception.

Covered with a nap of smoke-colored fur, the being walked upright on two muscular legs, and yet was graced with a useful-looking tail. Paired eyes sparkled in a slender mustachioed face, the prominent feature of which was a beak of some cartilaginous substance, perforated at intervals like a flute and downcurving over a drooping polar mustache. He was harnessed to a wagon that rode on two yorik coral wheels and was laden with baskets, pots, and an assortment of bulging, homespun sacks.

“Nutrition for the prisoners,” the sentient announced as he neared the prison’s bonework front gate.

S’yito ambled over while a quartet of sentries busied themselves removing the lids of the baskets and undoing the drawstrings that secured the sacks. He sniffed at the contents of one of the open bags.

“All this has been prepared according to the commander’s instructions?” he asked the food bearer in Basic.

The being nodded. The fur on his head was pure white,
and stood straight up, as if raised by fright. “Washed, decontaminated, separated into flesh, grains, and fruits, Fearsome One.”

The honorific was usually reserved for commanders, but S’yito didn’t bother to correct the food bearer. “Blessed, as well?”

“I arrive directly from the temple.”

S’yito glanced down the unsurfaced track that vanished into the high jungle. To provide the garrison with a place of worship, the priests had placed a statue of Yun-Yammka, the Slayer, in a grashal grown specifically for use as a temple. Close to the temple stood the commander’s grashal, and barracks grashals for the lesser officers.

S’yito lowered his flat-nosed face to an open basket. “Fish?”

“Of a kind, Fearsome One.”

The subaltern gestured to a cluster of hairy and hard-shelled spheres. “And these?”

“A fruit that grows in the crowns of the largest trees. Rich flesh, with a kind of milk inside.”

“Open one.”

The food bearer inserted a hooked finger deep into the seam of the fruit and pried it open. S’yito gouged out a fingerful of the pinkish flesh and brought it to his broad mouth.

“Too good for them,” he announced, as the flesh dissolved on his thorn-pierced tongue. “But necessary, I suppose.”

Few of the guards accepted that the prisoners couldn’t tolerate Yuuzhan Vong food. They suspected that the alleged intolerance was a ploy—part of an ongoing contest of wills between the captives and their captors.

The food bearer placed his hands, palms raised, just below his heart, in a position of prayer. “Yun-Yuuzhan is merciful, Fearsome One. He provides even for the enemies of the true faith.”

S’yito glowered at him. “What do you know of Yun-Yuuzhan?”

“I have embraced the truth. It took the coming of the Yuuzhan Vong to open my eyes to the existence of the gods. Through their mercy, even your captives will see the truth.”

S’yito shook his head firmly. “The prisoners cannot be converted. For them the war is over. But eventually all will kneel before Yun-Yuuzhan.” He waved a signal to the sentries. “Admit the food bearer.”

In the largest of the wooden huts, all of which had been built by the prisoners themselves, there was little to do but tend to the sick and dying, pass the daylight hours in conversation or games of chance, or wait ravenously for the next meal to arrive. Harsh coughing or the occasional laugh punctuated a grim, broiling silence. The Yuuzhan Vong hadn’t required any of the captives to work in the villip paddies or anywhere else in or outside the yorik coral walls, and thus far only the top-ranking officers had been interrogated.

A diverse lot, most of the prisoners had been taken at Bilbringi, but others had arrived from worlds as distant as Yag’Dhul, Antar 4, and Ord Mantell. They wore the tattered remains of starfighter flight suits and combat uniforms. Their battered and undernourished bodies—whether hairless, coated, sleek, or fleshy—were laminated in sweat and grime. They had Basic in common, and, more important, a deep, abiding hatred for the Yuuzhan Vong.

That they hadn’t been killed outright meant that they were being saved for sacrifice—probably on completion of the worldforming of Selvaris, or in anticipation of an imminent battle with Galactic Alliance forces.

“Chow’s here!” a human standing at the entrance said.

A rare cheer went up, and everyone capable got to their feet, forming up in an orderly line that spoke to the discipline demonstrated ceaselessly by the captives. Eyes wide, mouths salivating at the mere thought of nourishment, several of the prisoners hurried outdoors to help unload the food wagon and carry everything inside.

A Twi’lek with an amputated lekku studied the short being who had delivered the food, while the two of them were hauling sacks and pots into the hut.

“You’re Ryn,” the Twi’lek said.

“Hope that doesn’t mean you won’t touch the food,” the Ryn said.

The Twi’lek’s orange eyes shone. “Some of the best food
I’ve ever tasted was prepared by Ryn. Years ago I ran with a couple of your people in the Outer Rim—”

“Ten-shun!
” a human voice rang out.

Everyone in earshot snapped to, as a pair of human officers in uniform approached the hut. The prisoners had abandoned all notions of rank, but if it could be said that anyone was in command, it was these two—Captain Judder Page and Major Pash Cracken.

Hailing from important worlds—Page from Corulag, Cracken from Contruum—they had much in common. Both were scions of influential families, and both had trained at the Imperial Academy before defecting to the Rebel Alliance during the Galactic Civil War. Page, the more unremarkable looking of the pair, had established the Katarn Commandos; and Cracken—still ruggedly handsome and muscular in midlife—Cracken’s Flight Group. Both had managed to become as fluent in Yuuzhan Vong as Subaltern S’yito was in Basic.

“Make room for the major and the captain at the front of the line,” the same human who had announced them ordered.

The officers deferred. “We’ll eat after the rest of you have had your share,” Page said for the two of them.

“Please, sirs,” several of those on line insisted.

Page and Cracken exchanged resigned looks and nodded. Cracken accepted a wooden bowl that had been fashioned by one of the prisoners, and moved to the head of the food line, where the Ryn was stirring the gruelish contents of a large yorik coral container.

“We appreciate your bringing this,” Cracken said. His eyes were pale green, and his flame-red hair was shot through with gray, adding a measure of distinction to his aristocratic features.

The Ryn smiled slyly. Plunging a ladle deep into the gruel, he bent over the pot, encouraging Cracken to do the same in order to get his bowl filled. When Cracken’s left ear was within whisper distance of the Ryn’s mouth, the being said, “Ryn one-one-five, out of Vortex.”

Cracken hid his surprise. He had learned about the Ryn syndicate only two months earlier, during a briefing on Mon Calamari, which had become Galactic Alliance headquarters
following the fall of Coruscant. An extensive spy network, comprised of not only Ryn but also members of other, equally displaced species, the syndicate made use of secret space routes and hyperlanes blazed by the Jedi, to provide safe passage for individuals and covert intelligence.

“You have something for us?” Cracken asked quietly while the Ryn was ladling gruel into the wooden bowl.

The Ryn’s forward-facing eyes darted between the container and Cracken’s lined face. “Chew carefully, Major,” he said, just loud enough to be heard. “Expect the unexpected.”

Cracken straightened, whispering the message to Page, who in turn whispered it to the Bith behind him in line. Surreptitiously, the message was relayed again and again, until it had reached the last of the one hundred or so prisoners.

By then Cracken, Page, and some of the others had carried their bowls to a crude table, around which they squatted and began to finger the gruel carefully into their mouths, glancing at one another in understated anticipation.

At the same time, three prisoners moved to the doorway to keep an eye out for guards. The Yuuzhan Vong hadn’t installed villips or other listening devices in the huts, but warriors like S’yito, who displayed obvious curiosity about the enemy, had made it a habit to barge in without warning, and conduct sweeps and searches.

A Devaronian hunkered down across the table from Page made a gagging sound. Faking a cough, he gingerly removed an object from his slash of dangerous mouth, and glanced at it in secret.

Everyone stared at him in expectation.

“Gristle,” he said, lifting beady, disappointed eyes. “At least I think that’s what it is.”

The prisoners went back to eating, the tension mounting as their fingers began to scrape the bottoms of their bowls.

Then Cracken bit down on something that made his molars ache. He brought his left hand to his mouth, and used his tongue to push the object into his cupped hand. The center of attention, he opened his hand briefly, recognizing the object at once. Keeping the thing palmed, he set it on the table and slid it to his left, where, in the blink of an eye, it disappeared under the right hand of Page.