The Unifying Force (24 page)

“If the Yuuzhan Vong evolved on a world like this,” Luke said, “what turned you to war?”

Harrar took a moment to reply. “The ancient texts are unclear. It appears that we were invaded by a race that was more technological than animate. We called on the gods for protection, and they came to our aid, providing us with the knowledge we needed to convert our living resources to weapons. We defeated the threat, and, empowered by our victory, we gradually became conquerors of other species and civilizations.”

Jabitha interrupted, instructing Kroj’b to steer the airship southwest. The terrain grew more and more rugged. Jagged mountains of crushed lava rose steeply into the clouds. Braided tails of orange-tinted water plunged from the heights into
thickly forested gorges. The wind blew fiercely, and the temperature began to fall below freezing.

At Jabitha’s direction Kroj’b and Saba piloted the airship down toward the expansive talus field of a mountain that struck Luke as being younger than Ben and twice as unpredictable.

“Here is where my father’s fortress once stood,” Jabitha explained, after the airship had been anchored to the denuded slope. “Sekot showed Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker a mental image of the fortress as it was before the advent of the Far Outsiders.”

“The Far Outsiders have a name, Jabitha,” Harrar said. “It is the Yuuzhan Vong who toppled your father’s fortress.”

“Of course,” she said. “Old habits are not easily broken.”

Luke asked Saba to remain with Kroj’b in the airship; then he and the rest emerged from the cabin and began to follow Jabitha uphill, fighting a cold, strong wind that swept down from the invisible summit. Luke saw the cave entrance before Jabitha drew everyone’s attention to it.

The air inside was warm and remarkably humid. The cave angled down into the mountainside, and Luke realized immediately that what they were in was actually an ancient lava tube. The floor was paved with coarse pebbles that crunched underfoot. Cooled magma from deep in the planet, the walls were composed of dense black stone, but in some places they glowed with a faint bioluminescence.

“How like the interiors of our space vessels,” Harrar said.

Luke could see the resemblance, but he was reminded of something entirely different—the cave on Dagobah that Yoda had dared him to enter. But while that place had been strong in the dark side, the lava tunnel felt enchanted—strangely maternal and enfolding. He began to sense the presence of the animating intelligence he had come to know during his short time on Zonama, the one helped to consciousness by the first Magister, Leor Hal, who had also named the planet in the Ferroan language “World of Body and Mind.”

“Could this be another of Sekot’s tests?” Mara wondered while they walked.

“I don’t think so,” Luke said. “Unless Sekot is testing itself.”

“Stop there,” the voice of Sekot said, speaking through a suddenly transfixed Jabitha. “Who walks with you, Jedi Master? Two I recognize, but the third …”

“He is called Harrar,” Luke said, not to Jabitha but to the tunnel itself. “He came to Zonama in the company of the one who sabotaged you.”

Jabitha turned to Harrar. “How is it I seem to know this one? My memories go back billions of turnings, and this one carries a message to me of distant times and distant events.”

“Harrar is of the people you know as the Far Outsiders,” Luke said. “The Yuuzhan Vong, who tried to conquer Zonama, shortly before the arrival of Vergere.”

Jabitha shook her head. “Those times are not distant, Jedi Master. But why can’t I perceive him? Not as I do the children of the Firsts; not nearly as I do the Jedi.… Yes, I recall having the same experience with the Far Outsiders—they seemed to exist outside the Force.”

“No, Sekot,” Luke said. “Even though you can’t perceive Harrar, he exists within the Force.”

Jacen’s right hand went to his chest, as if to touch the scar left from the piece of slave coral Vergere had implanted in him. He swung to Harrar. “Why did the Yuuzhan Vong leave their home galaxy?”

Harrar firmed his scarred lips, then said, “Some have interpreted the ancient texts to suggest that we were … banished.”

“For what reason?” Jacen persisted.

“Our infatuation with war and conquest. Some interpret our long journey as an attempt to win back the favor of the gods.”

Jacen thought about it. “Your ancestors were banished because they turned to war. They did the opposite of what was expected of them. Did … the gods banish you from
the Force?”

When Harrar lifted his head, his face was a mask of fearful confusion. “There is nothing in our legends about the Force.”

“But even you compared the Force to your gods,” Mara said.

Luke took Harrar by the shoulders, as if to shake him, but only eased him to his feet. “A power—call it the gods if you have to—may have separated you from the original
symbiosis
. Your people experienced intolerable pain, and pain has been the only way back to that symbiosis.”

Harrar nearly collapsed in Luke’s grip. “Separated from the symbiosis. From our primordial homeworld …”

Luke dropped his hands to his sides and turned in astonishment to Jabitha, as if waiting for Sekot to confirm what he was thinking.

“I now understand,” Sekot said finally. “This one—his people—has been
stripped
of the Force.”

There hadn’t been a ceremony to equal it in untold generations. As vast as the worldships were—and notwithstanding the views of distant stars and even more distant galaxies—they weren’t large enough to contain the magnificence of high ritual. Compared to Yuuzhan’tar’s Place of Sacrifice, the worldships were mere theaters.

And yet, for all the grandeur and spectacle, Nom Anor was too consumed by apprehension to appreciate a moment of it. He marched in step with the procession, but the expression on his face would have been better suited to someone on his way to be executed.

Located midway between Shimrra’s Citadel and the skull-shaped bunker that housed the Well of the World Brain, the Place of Sacrifice was dominated by a hundred-meter-high truncated cone of yorik coral, helixed with carved stairways and honeycombed with passageways that served to channel blood into fonts and other basins. On the flattened top the priests performed their rituals, and encircling the base were the yawning pits of the corpse-disposing maw luur. To one side of the spire sprawled a grouping of temples, oriented to the sacred directions; and to the other, a repository, in which were stored the holy relics Shimrra’s worldship had conveyed across the dim reaches of intergalactic space.

Constructed in accordance with the hallowed texts, and in homage to the ancestral architecture, the complex was dense with conifers, ferns, palms, and the like, wrong for the latitude but somehow thriving. The air hummed with the sounds of insects and crab-harps, and was heady with the smell of paalac incense, which wafted in thick, curling clouds from bone braziers.

Along the perimeter of the quadrangle were pens for the blood-sopping ngdins, and at each corner sat a mon duul, whose enormous tympanic belly was capable of amplifying the utterances of the various celebrants. Since the priests had not yet grown to trust Yuuzhan’tar’s World Brain, the matched pair of consuming beasts known as Tu-Scart and Sgauru waited in the wings with their handlers, in case the capricious dhuryam failed to command the maw luur to execute their tasks.

More specialized than yammosks, dhuryams had full responsibility for worldshaping. Their decisions were based on the continuous streams of data they received from planet-wide networks of telepathically linked creatures. But Yuuzhan’tar’s dhuryam had been behaving as if there were glitches in the data flow, and it had already ruined several sacrifices by spewing fetid-smelling wastes from the maw luur.

Shimrra, however, had apparently found a way to placate or otherwise bring the World Brain into line, because thus far the sundry biots were functioning smoothly. Nom Anor suspected that the Supreme Overlord had tricked the dhuryam into thinking that, by providing the maw luur with nourishment, it would be helping the gardens and copses of trees to flourish.

He and some of Yuuzhan’tar’s consuls entered the Place of Sacrifice to music that was at once solemn and celebratory. Sated on yanskac and snack beetles, and mildly intoxicated on sparkbee honey grog and other home brews, the crowds of onlookers applauded exuberantly. Thousands of warriors kneeled to both sides of the grand avenue, heads lowered and amphistaffs curled sedately around their extended right arms, fists planted solidly on the ground. With guards posted at all entry points and circulating through the crowd, it seemed improbable that any Shamed Ones could get within a phon of the place.

Regardless, Nom Anor continued to torment himself with worry.

Behind the intendants marched elites of the four castes—High Priest Jakan and his coven of savants; red-cloaked Warmaster Nas Choka and three dozen of his Supreme Commanders; Master Shaper Qelah Kwaad and her chief
adepts; and High Prefect Drathul, baton of high-office in hand, and leading his cabal of personal consuls. Last came Shimrra, without Onimi—for, as a Shamed One, Onimi was barred from attending such weighty proceedings—but accompanied by his quartet of hideous seers. Attired in a train of living insects and holding the royal scepter, the Supreme Overlord rode atop a yorik coral sled drawn by a pack of bissop hounds.

All fangs, talons, horns, and blades, female dervishes whirled at the base of the spire, while the elite arranged themselves in tiers below Shimrra’s moonbeam throne. Nom Anor sat close to the top, with an unobstructed view of the sacrificial platform toward which Jakan climbed, followed by a gang of executioners, priestesses, and young acolytes.

At the appointed moment—when the sun had reached a place in the sky from which it could set the rainbow bridge aflame—the captives were led into the complex by a parade of ngdin handlers and Chazrach troops, riding twelve-legged quenak beasts.

Counting what the Peace Brigaders had managed to deliver and those captured only three standard days earlier at Caluula, the captives numbered close to one thousand. Military officers, political officials, soldiers, and protestors from scores of worlds along the invasion corridor—men, women, even a few adolescents who had fought bravely enough to be rewarded with honorable death—they had been purged, bathed, perfumed, mildly sedated with sensislug gas, and blessed with tishwii leaf smoke. Manacled, they wore white robes that glowed with green designs and were veined in black along arterial networks down the sleeves and fronts.

The captives were brought to a halt at the foot of the spiral staircases that twisted around the spire. By then Jakan and the others had reached the top and were waiting eagerly.

At Shimrra’s nod of consent, Jakan raised his arms and spoke, and the bellies of the four mon duuls carried his invocation far and wide.

“Accept what we offer as evidence of our wish to render unto you what is rightfully yours,” the high priest intoned. “If not for you, we should not exist!”

Dedicated lambents illuminated statues of the gods, which
lined the quadrangle. The statues would be anointed with first blood. But because of the special nature of the sacrifice, Yun-Yuuzhan would receive only a healthy share, with much of the sacrificial blood going instead to Yun-Yammka, god of war.

Guards began to force the captives to ascend the staircases. Despite their sedation, they floundered and fought, showing no appreciation for the honor that had been bestowed on them. In the end, though, there was little they could do to affect their fate.

The first of the captives had reached the circular platform when a howl rose from below. With nearly half the audience of elites rising to their feet, Nom Anor couldn’t see what was going on. It sounded as if a battle had broken out among some of the guards stationed at the base of the spire—perhaps a domain dispute. He pitied those who lacked the self-control to delay their contest until after the sacrifice. But at least he wouldn’t be blamed.

Then he realized what was actually happening.

As if detonating, carefully camouflaged chuk’a caps were popping from the quadrangle’s hexagonal paving stones. The shells of an aquatic creature, the caps concealed the entrances to shafts that must have descended into the maze of canyons below the Place of Sacrifice—down to the wide thoroughfares that had once separated the tall edifices of Coruscant, down into the dusky underworld of scrub growth and meandering pathways the Shamed Ones had claimed as their own.

Out of the shafts were emerging hundreds of Shamed Ones—Yu’shaa’s flock of heretics—armed with amphistaffs, coufees, an array of homemade weapons, even a few blasters! Momentarily taken off their guard, the warriors—many in ceremonial armor only—were slow to react, and dozens were felled in an instant. As the Shamed Ones spread out into the crowd, the commoners began to panic, surging down into the quadrangle.

Fearing that the heretics had come for Shimrra, the slayers closed ranks around the Supreme Overlord, unfurling their amphistaffs, heedless of any who might be standing in front of them. But Nom Anor saw that only a small contingent of
Shamed Ones was closing on Shimrra’s dais, and that this group was clearly a diversion.

It was the prisoners the heretics had come for.

Oblivious, thinking perhaps that it was all a hallucination, the captives were being scooped off their feet by bands of heretics and rushed back into the labyrinthine underworld from which the pariah army had climbed. Not all of them made it to safety; scores were dropped by thud and razor bugs, along with three times as many Shamed Ones.

Shimrra’s black-smeared seers were flailing their arms in dread, and Jakan appeared to have been struck deaf and silent. The executioners, however, were rushing down the staircases and lashing out with their keen weapons, determined to administer at least a few decapitations—as if the gods could be satisfied with a snack, when they had been anticipating a feast!

What blood was running into the quadrangle, the ndgins were thirsty to absorb. Unable to contain themselves, they were wriggling free of their handlers, and, in so doing, providing slick patches of crushed bodies for warriors in pursuit of the heretics and the captives they had set free.