The Unifying Force (34 page)

Kyp whirled and brought the blade down like an ax. Evading the strike, the warrior rose to one knee and unfurled his amphistaff. The serpentlike creature elongated and wrapped itself around the hilt of the lightsaber. But Kyp wasn’t about to surrender his weapon. In a virtual tug-of-war with the creature, he spun and backflipped, but to little effect. At the same time, a second amphistaff lassoed him around the waist and arms and yanked him roughly to the ground.

Han put three bolts into the second warrior, driving him two steps backward with each, but without killing him or persuading the amphistaff to loosen its constricting hold on Kyp. Han yelled for Wraw’s help, but in a glance saw that the Bothan was trying desperately to keep the other pair of warriors from grabbing Page.

Without really thinking about it, Leia judged that Han and
Kyp were in greater jeopardy. Holding her blade at her right hip and pointed slightly downward, she moved against the warrior whose amphistaff was flinging Kyp from side to side.

Han felt rather than saw Leia race past him.

“Leia!” he screamed, firing constantly while he rushed to catch up with her.

A quartet of bolts holed the warrior Leia had targeted. But at once, the other warrior commanded his amphistaff to withdraw from the pommel of Kyp’s lightsaber and fly toward Leia.

Seeing what was coming, Han dived forward in a frantic attempt to place himself between Leia and the attenuating weapon. Leia watched in horror as the amphistaff struck Han solidly in the neck—and not merely with its rounded head.

The jaws of the living weapon gaped, and it sank two long fangs into Han’s flesh.

Han landed hard on his side, but quickly got to his knees. He managed to squeeze off three more bolts before the blaster slipped from his trembling hand. He slumped backward on his heels in shock, then tipped to one side, his body curling inward, with his shaking hands close to his chest.

Kyp raced forward, only to be set upon by three of the warriors.

Leia’s mouth fell open in a silent scream. She dropped the lightsaber and ran to Han. Gazing in horror at the twin punctures in his neck, she vised his spasming right hand between hers.

“Han,” she cried. “Han!”

Meloque was suddenly by her side, lifting Han’s head from the ground. His face was a bloodless mask of pain and sorrow.

“I k-knew from the s-s-start this wasn’t my war,” he stammered. Twin rivulets of blood coursed from the wounds in his neck.

“Han!” Leia said, wide-eyed with terror.

She looked up at the advancing warriors, two of whom had a tight hold on Kyp, almost as if expecting them to come to Han’s aid. Instead one of them dragged her and Meloque to their feet.

“No, no,” Leia said, shaking her head back and forth.

Han extended his hand to her, but the warrior kicked it aside. Han’s eyes rolled up, his eyelids fluttered, and his body went limp.

“No!” she screamed as the warriors were hauling her away.

“Casualty assessment of the first engagement, Warmaster,” Supreme Commander Loiric Kaan said, gesturing to a wall niche in the command chamber of
Yammka’s Mount
.

Nas Choka turned from the observation transparency to study the commotion of blaze bugs. “Acceptable,” he pronounced after a moment.

“A clever use of machines,” Loiric Kaan remarked.

The warmaster’s finely haired upper lip curled and he glowered at his Supreme Commander. “Another act of cowardice. Stop thinking in terms of the weapons our enemy employ, and concentrate on how they fight. Think of the machines as living beings if it will help you view the matter with more clarity.”

Loiric Kaan bowed his head. “Warmaster.”

Nas Choka moved to the blaze bug niche that displayed the disposition of the enemy battle groups.

“They seek to spare the new capital,” Loiric Kaan said, “but they cannot save it now.”

Nas Choka beckoned to one of his subalterns. “Escort Supreme Commander Loiric Kaan from the command chamber. If this war could be won by words of confidence, we would have already vanquished them.”

The warmaster kept his back turned to Kaan while he was being led to the chamber’s iris membrane.

“The number of ships is significantly lower than calculated,” the chief tactician said when the membrane had resealed itself.

“Of course,” Nas Choka said. “Trusting to the effectiveness of their deceptions, they decided to keep additional ships in reserve to execute their secondary objectives.”

“Starfighter wings forming up for strikes,” a subaltern reported.

Nas Choka sniffed. “Like a swarm of insects that can’t be outdistanced or repelled. The pests can, however, be eradicated.” He turned to the female stationed at the villip-choir.
“Order Domains Vang and Pekeen to spray the contaminated areas. Then command the yammosks to spruce up our formations with auxiliary coralskippers.”

The warmaster and the chief tactician swung to the transparency to see brilliant plumes of plasma discharge omnidirectionally from the core. Dozens of the small fighters disappeared, and as many others were shocked into submission.

“Again,” Nas Choka ordered.

A second torrent of molten death poured from the war vessels, obliterating yet more starfighters.

“Now, assign yorik-akaga and yorik-vec to the rear. Let mataloks serve as our spearhead.”

The subaltern snapped his fists to his shoulders in salute.

“Warmaster,” the villip-choir tactician interjected judiciously. “Communication from Supreme Overlord Shimrra.”

Nas Choka turned to the array and genuflected in front of Shimrra’s dedicated villip. Everyone else in the command chamber kneeled, with foreheads pressed to the deck.

“It bodes well, Dread Lord,” Nas Choka began. “We will deliver victory to you this day, or die in the attempt.”

“Better for you, Warmaster, that you die delivering victory.”

“Understood, Lord.”

Shimrra’s villip spoke again. “You have my blessing, and the blessings of the gods. Yun-Yuuzhan and Yun-Yammka soar at your sides, as your right and left hands.”

“I sense their presence, Great Lord.”

“Does the enemy cower before us?”

“For the moment their fleet holds fast.”

“Then they have mustered the courage to meet us toe to toe? It will be their downfall. You have my full confidence, Warmaster. I leave you to your business.”

The dedicated villip inverted to its original leathery appearance. Nas Choka rose and paced to the transparency to observe the matched fury of coralskippers and starfighters, yorik-vec and Scimitar bombers.

“Sovv and Kre’fey are fighting with their minds, not their bodies,” he said to the chief tactician. “They are the smaller individual who engages a larger one. Even if he is swift
enough to get inside his opponent’s defenses, his hands are too small to cause severe damage, and his muscles lack the power to bring his opponent to his knees. So he plans more carefully. Perhaps he goads the bigger warrior to swing first and miss, hoping then to unbalance him with a precisely timed shove or kick to the knee. Or perhaps he brings his equally small friends to stand at his back, and he strikes first, confident that his cohorts will be ready to find openings. He offers them as a distraction, so that when the larger warrior risks a glance to the right, a blow arrives from the left.”

Nas Choka’s expression hardened. “This battle is not the last stand. It has nothing to do with honor or a willingness to meet death. This is a feint. Fortunately, I have my suspicions about where the would-be surprise blow is coming from.”

The tactician nodded knowingly.

Nas Choka turned to the villip-choir mistress. “Alert domain groups Shen’g, Paasar, Eklut, and Taav. On my command they will separate from the armada and prepare to go to darkspace.”

She bowed. “To Toong’l and Caluula, and from there to Yuuzhan’tar.”

Nas Choka sneered. “Play with your villips, Mistress. Leave strategy to those who live to fight.” He summoned the chief tactician forward. “Command her, tactician.”

“To the Perlemian Trade Route,” the slight Yuuzhan Vong told the villip mistress, “and from there to Contruum!”

Leia was still in shock when the three surviving warriors led her, Kyp, Page, Wraw, and Meloque into the yammosk installation. Sasso and Ferfer had been left to die in the forest. Han they dragged behind by his wrists, like a slaughtered animal. He was alive but unconscious or comatose from the venom delivered by the warrior’s amphistaff.

Even in her dread, however, Leia was not too oblivious to notice that only one weary guard was posted at the minshal’s eastern dilating membrane, and that the membrane itself looked thin and weak, and oozed a viscous liquid. The guard struggled to rise as the trio of warriors approached. Barely strong enough to cross his arms in salute, he said something to them in a feeble voice.

“He’s telling them that the commander is waiting,” Page translated quietly.

One of the warriors stumbled a bit as they crossed the threshold into the gloomy interior of the minshal. Oddly, he was the only one of the three who hadn’t been wounded during the brief action.

Kyp noticed the stumble as well. “Something’s not right.”

He received a hard jab in the ribs for speaking.

Inside, the smell of rot was overpowering. Pools of sallow liquid had collected on the spongy floor, and the bioluminescent wall lichen was rashed with black spots. Thousands of dying arachnidlike insects—similar to the ones Leia had seen in the living cofferdam—crawled about in seeming confusion.

Dead flitnats littered the ground. A female shaper was borne into the antechamber on a litter, carried by two more of the squat, dark-complected warriors. Her skin was as pale green as Leia’s falsely colored face, and the many-fingered hand that had been grafted to her wrist hung limply at her side. The warriors shoved Leia and the others forward, and rolled Han onto his back nearby.

Leia’s heart leapt when she saw him stir.

The shaper was addressing the warriors from atop her litter.

“She’s congratulating them on capturing us,” Meloque whispered to everyone. “She says we will contribute greatly to the sacrifice.”

The shaper called two of the troops forward and spent a long moment looking them over, inspecting their faces, limbs, and torsos. One of the warriors indicated a tumorlike growth on his neck, and dropped to one knee at the foot of the litter, in what appeared to be humiliation.

“What’s going on?” Kyp asked Meloque.

She listened for a moment. “The warrior thinks he has become a Shamed One, because his body is rejecting some sort of … enhancement he received.” Meloque listened for a moment more, then added: “The shaper’s telling him that he is not Shamed. That the growth of the tumor has nothing to do with the gods, and everything to do with this world—everything to do with Caluula.”

“Caluula?” Page repeated in bafflement.

The warrior looked relieved. Rising, he drew his coufee and turned toward Leia, only to be restrained by the shaper’s touch.

“He wants to kill us,” Meloque explained.

“I got that much,” Kyp said.

“She’s reassuring them that we will die before sunset.”

“That’s a relief,” Wraw said. “For a minute I thought they were going to let us go.”

Kyp glanced at the Bothan. “Get out all your jokes while there’s still time.”

The shaper was speaking again. Leia recognized the word
Yuuzhan’tar
.

Meloque translated. “She’s ordering the special warriors—the slayers, she calls them—to return her to Yuuz—to Coruscant immediately. She says it’s imperative that she apprise her master of what has happened here to render everyone ill. She is promising the slayers that the commander is going to see to us personally.”

“Yun-Harla succors me in my time of need,” a male voice said in Basic.

The accent was familiar to Leia, and clearly to Page, who craned his neck to see who had spoken.

A tall, rail-thin Yuuzhan Vong elite entered the antechamber, his scarified arms draped in support around the shoulders of two large but plainly enervated warriors.

“Welcome, Jedi, Ho’Din, and Bothan. And to you, Captain Page. Did I not promise that I would see you on a funeral pyre?”

Leia suddenly recalled where she had seen him before—aboard the Yuuzhan Vong convoy vessel.

It was Commander Malik Carr.

With the armada’s rotation, the distal ends of several tentacles had whipped themselves into ensnaring loops. Starfighters trapped in the loops twisted and swerved to avoid scudding coralskippers, but they were fast running out of maneuvering room.

The overwhelmed deflector shields of Jaina’s X-wing were barely viable, and Cappie was probably beyond repair. Each tongue of plasma or missile of molten rock landed like a punch. Despite the harnesses that fastened her to the padded seat, she was flung like an insect trapped in a shaking bottle. Singularities yawned to all sides, ready to swallow anything she launched, but that hardly mattered, since the starfighter’s fire-control computer had yet to shed enough heat to come back on-line.

A numbing explosion jolted the ship.

Jaina glanced out the right side of the triangular canopy to see the mated ends of the starboard S-foils disintegrate, and the laser cannon go whirling off into space. The power of the blast sent the starfighter into a wing-over-wing roll that the fusial thrusters and attitude jets were unable to correct. Flights of coralskippers pinwheeled in front of her, and fireballs geysered inward on spiraling trajectories.

The out-of-control tumble reeled her out of a follow-up deluge of plasma from the core formation of capital ships. The E-wings took the brunt of it, along with Ijix Harona’s Scimitar Squadron of highly vulnerable A-wings, and Gavin’s Rogues. Caught by the inferno, two dozen craft were blown clear of the tentacles, half of them vanishing before they reached clear space. Farther out, Star Destroyers and attack cruisers raced alongside the armada, but with so many star-fighters
churning between them and the enemy war vessels, they couldn’t risk firing without destroying countless Alliance craft.

Jaina’s flailing right hand found the inertial compensator and dialed it to maximum. As the cockpit instruments came back into focus, she saw that the display screens were white with noise. The battle net was unadulterated static.