The Unifying Force (54 page)

With the cavernous entrance at the base of the Citadel effectively sealed, Jacen saw Sgauru and Tu-Scart as the only hope. The beasts had to be coaxed into breaching the wall of the Citadel. Jacen sensed that his best chance of accomplishing this would require him to abandon the Force and give himself over fully to his Vongsense—something he had been unable to do since arriving on Coruscant. He felt like a switch being thrown between two poles; Force at one pole, Vongsense at the other. He understood further that the only way to compel Sgauru and Tu-Scart into action was by communicating with them through the World Brain.

It was while aboard the seedship that had delivered Jacen and the dhuryam to Coruscant that they had first reached an understanding. By destroying the brain’s would-be rivals, Jacen had essentially determined which of several dhuryams was to have the honor of transforming Coruscant into “Yuuzhan’tar.” More important, he had installed a World Brain whose very disposition was informed by the rapport it shared with him. All that the planet had become since then—beautiful and monstrous, delicate and coarse, symbiotic, and parasitic—owed something to Jacen. And yet when he reached out with his Vongsense he again found himself in competition for the brain’s attention. Some of that was due to the brain’s preoccupation with Coruscant. Over and above that, there was the energy the brain was pouring into executing Shimrra’s requests.

Aboard the seedship and afterward Jacen had found the dhuryam to be an intelligent creature, but specifically engineered to be intractable. Now the dhuryam was twisted by conflict and anger. Shimrra had succeeded in cajoling it into believing that the fires and drenching rains, the demolition and destruction were necessary to repair the damage done to Yuuzhan’tar by Zonama Sekot’s close passage. But in doing so, the brain understood that it was destroying much of what it had created, in addition to reneging on its pledge to compel Shimrra and the Yuuzhan Vong to accept
compromise
. Neither accustomed to being disobedient nor inclined to tolerate disorder, the brain was at war with itself for having brought harm to the world in its trust. As on the seedship, it understood that its domain was suddenly falling to ruin and
becoming a wasteland. The brain was struggling with the idea that it might do better by simply ignoring Shimrra.

Calling on his Vongsense, Jacen promised the dhuryam that he would help put an end to its inner conflict. He told it that he would force Shimrra to release his hold. In return he could feel it reaching out to him as one might a friend in time of need. A wave of gratitude, a plea for salvation washed through him …

Abruptly Sgauru and Tu-Scart turned toward him, clearly under the influence of the brain.

Jacen grasped that the moment had come for him to demonstrate his faith in the agreement he and the brain had forged.

Ignoring Luke and Jaina’s loud-voiced misgivings, he advanced on the coupled symbiots.

Almost immediately his waist was encircled by two twisting appendages. Then Sgauru picked him up off the demolished concourse and swung him out over the canyon. Not toward the Citadel, though, but as if to drop him directly into the midst of the slave soldiers and their artillery beasts.

From the
Falcon
’s cockpit comlink came the sound of blasterfire and cries for help. C-3PO recognized the voice of Captain Solo.

“Threepio, lower the landing ramp! Threepio! Threepio!”

The protocol droid stopped his worried pacing long enough to raise his hands in distress to R2-D2, whose extensible computer interface arm was inserted into an access port in the ring corridor, near the head of the ramp.

“Artoo, do something before its too late!”

Stiffly, C-3PO hurried into the cockpit. All he could see through the viewport panes was an impenetrable tangle of heavily thorned branches. He made a clumsy about-face and shambled back to the ring corridor, where he began to pound his hand against the landing ramp switch.

“Oh, it’s no use! The thorn hedge has the
Millennium Falcon
in a death lock! Captain Solo and the Princess will die, and we’ll be imprisoned like museum exhibits!”

R2-D2 toodled an encouraging phrase, and C-3PO ceased his pounding to stare at him.

“You can do what? Reroute power from the deflector shield to send a charge through the hull?” C-3PO’s hands flew up once again. “Well, why didn’t you say so earlier?”

The little blue-and-white astromech chirped and chittered in protest.

“Nonsense,” C-3PO rejoined. “You’re simply trying to frighten me. You’re never content until you’ve succeeded in working me into a frenzy.”

R2-D2 issued a series of solemn beeps.

C-3PO adopted an akimbo stance. “Don’t you start that again. ‘Everything terminates; face it bravely …’ I’ll have you know I’ve been facing my termination bravely since the beginning of this war. Indeed, long before I had the misfortune of meeting the likes of you. Now, do as you suggested and send a charge through the hull!”

Shuffling back to the juncture of the ring and outrigger corridors, C-3PO placed himself where he could peer through the forward viewport, as well as keep a photoreceptor on his counterpart. A moment later, R2-D2’s interface arm began to rotate—first in one direction, then the other—and an electrical crackling could be heard dancing across the
Falcon
’s skin. The olfactory sensor at the top of C-3PO’s chest monitored smells of ozone and singed wood.

“It’s working, Artoo!” he shouted. “The thorn hedge is retracting! Thank the maker, we’re
free!”

R2-D2 squawked a question.

“Yes, of course you should lower the landing ramp!” C-3PO said as he hurried for it. “The sooner we leave this ship, the better!”

Skidding through a left-hand turn, he stepped onto the canted ramp just as its foot was striking the paving stones of the plaza.

“Freedom, Artoo
—agghh!”

Without knowing precisely why, R2-D2 squealed in alarm. He might have squealed even louder had he realized that a tattooed and battle-scarred Yuuzhan Vong warrior was rushing up the ramp.

Too panicked to move, and certainly without thinking, C-3PO said, “You’re not allowed aboard!”

The warrior only growled in contempt and continued his
charge. He was halfway to the top when a blaster discharged behind him and a crimson-tinged blasterbolt burned its way through the front of his neck, sending him facefirst to the ramp, not a meter from where C-3PO was standing.

At the foot of the ramp stood Captain Solo, his aged weapon in hand. C-3PO saw his master staring wide-eyed at something off to his left, at which he began firing, even as Harrar, Princess Leia, Cakhmaim, and Meewalh were hastening up the ramp, all but crawling when they reached the body of the dead Yuuzhan Vong.

“Threepio, get ready to close the ramp!” Captain Solo yelled. He fired off several blasterbolts, then ducked a hurled amphistaff and threw himself onto the ramp. “Close it!”

“But, sir—”

“Leia, get into the cockpit! Raise the ship!”

Captain Solo was still bellying up the ramp when a sudden growth spurt sent the branches through the gap between the starboard docking arm and the ramp, preventing it from elevating entirely. Into the gap grew long, thick thorns.

“They’re lethal!” Harrar shouted.

While the priest, the two Noghri, and the two humans began twisting and contorting themselves to avoid the rapidly lengthening thorns, a hail of thud bugs slammed into the
Falcon
’s underside. In the confined space of the ramp, Princess Leia activated her lightsaber and started hacking at the lengthening branches.

“It’s no use! They’re growing back faster than I can cut them!” Deactivating the lightsaber, she scrambled past C-3PO, heading for the cockpit.

“Artoo,” C-3PO said, “charge the hull again!”

A second crackling jolt passed through the ship. The hedge branches retreated, but instead of closing, the ramp tilted down. Two more warriors leapt in, only to be dropped by bolts from Cakhmaim, whose right arm narrowly missed being pierced by a half-meter-long thorn. By the time the ramp started to close, the hedges had returned, stopping it from sealing.

C-3PO heard the
Falcon
’s repulsorlift come on-line, but the freighter levitated no more than two meters before the engines began protesting.

“Han, I can’t raise her!” Leia shouted.

Another electrical charge shot through the hull. Once again the vines withdrew, and once again the ramp lowered to the paving stones.

“Artoo, no!” C-3PO yelled.

There was no halting the warriors this time—or the branches, which grew back in such profusion that the ramp refused to budge. Cakhmaim and Meewalh did what they could to keep the invaders from entering the ship, but after shooting the first half a dozen, they were overwhelmed, disarmed, and pinned to the deck. Han shot a few more as they raced into the ring corridor, but reinforcements kept coming, backing him and Leia toward the forward compartment. Some warriors had the foresight to run through the
Falcon
and enter the main cabin space from the port side.

Pressed against the dejarik table with his blaster in one hand and his other gripping Leia’s shoulder, Han dodged lashes and amphistaffs and thrusts from coufees, but he refused to yield until at last one of the warriors managed to press the tip of his serpentine weapon to Leia’s throat. Then, grimacing, he dropped his blaster arm to his side in a gesture of surrender.

“All right, you’ve got us,” he said to the advancing warriors. “I’m sure we can work something out …”

It was unlikely that any of them understood Basic, but they took Han’s meaning when he set his blaster down and Leia did the same with her deactivated lightsaber.

Moments later a female Yuuzhan Vong with a crest of tentacles and an eight-fingered right hand edged through the tight press of warriors in the forward compartment. On seeing her, R2-D2 loosed a prolonged and mournful whistle.

C-3PO nodded his head. “You’re right, Artoo—a
shaper!”

The shaper appraised Han and Leia, then turned to one of her warriors. C-3PO understood her to say: “ ‘Gather their weapons, and bring everyone out of the vessel.’ ”

Cakhmaim, Meewalh, R2-D2, C-3PO, Leia, and Han were marched from the
Falcon
in single file. Harrar was already outside the ship. As they were being prodded toward the entrance of the yorik coral dome, two Yuuzhan Vong males
emerged, both of them finely clothed, and the shorter of the pair wearing a high turban.

“High Prefect Drathul and High Priest Jakan,” Harrar whispered to Han and Leia.

The shaper waved her hand in a way that flung droplets of sweat or some other bodily secretion on the thorn hedge, which immediately began to sprout new branches.

Within moments the
Falcon
was fully encased.

“I’m told that this particular ship has been the cause of much unrest,” the shaper told Drathul and Jakan. She gestured to her seven prisoners. “Worthy captives. Including a
Jeedai
, no less.”

Jakan’s eyes widened in delight when they fell on Harrar. “All of us thought you were in the Outer Rim!” He laid his thin hands on the priest’s shoulders. “You’re home now, my friend. In fact, you will have the honor of officiating at the sacrifice we will perform in the Well of the World Brain.”

Harrar held Jakan’s gaze but didn’t return his relieved smile. “You fail to grasp the truth, High Priest,” he said in Yuuzhan Vong. “I’ve come to neutralize the brain.”

Near the outer-system world of Muscave the battle was still raging. Hundreds of coralskippers and fighter craft, and dozens of war vessels had been sacrificed to an engagement that had degenerated into a shameless brawl. Local space was a constantly shifting web of fire and light, harnessed to ill purpose.

Warmaster Nas Choka couldn’t have been more pleased.

He stood in the most forward area of the command chamber’s blister transparency as if a bowsprit figurehead, his folded arms resting on his slightly protruding belly and his finely whiskered jaw raised in defiance.

“The enemy commanders continue to trade blows with us not because they are valorous, but because they believe that by feigning honor they hold us from returning to Yuuzhan’tar. They rely on the fact that we would never be the first to quit a contest of such magnitude.” He turned slightly to face his chief tactician. “We will encourage their blunder. Order our Supreme Commanders to allow their vessels to
fall back and begin to disperse. Let the Alliance admirals think they have us on the run.”

The command chamber shook as a burst of turbolaser fire evaded the vessel’s shielding singularities and blasted pieces of yorik coral from the starboard hull. Thick fluid poured from an already damaged area of bulkhead, and strips of the luminescent lichen died, increasing the gloom.

“How much more can
Yammka
endure?” Nas Choka asked of the vessel’s shaper.

“Six of our principal dovin basals are dead,” the shaper was quick to say, “and many of our plasma launchers have been destroyed. Perhaps, Warmaster, if you would consider withdrawing
Yammka
from the vanguard array—”

“No. I want the attention of the enemy focused on us. We must remain a primary target.”

“We could be destroyed, Warmaster,” the tactician said carefully.

Nas Choka nodded. “An acceptable risk. For today we serve our species as no Yuuzhan Vong have. We prove our worth to the gods who fashioned us. If we are to die, we do so discharging a transcendent obligation.”

The command chamber’s lock dilated and the vessel’s Supreme Commander entered, snapping his fists to his opposite shoulders in salute. “Warmaster, from our scouts:
Ralroost
and forty other warships have just reverted from darkspace.”

Nas Choka faced forward, his gaze directed toward the imperceptible enemy fleet. “That would be Traest Kre’fey.” He grinned faintly. “All this is as it should be. The gods look out for us.”

The Supreme Commander genuflected. “Warmaster, there isn’t a commander who wouldn’t gladly substitute his vessel for yours—or die in your stead.”