Ylesia (12 page)

In Jacen's mind he could feel the Jedi pilots in their patrolling craft, scattered up and down the thinned-out enemy line. He felt their perceptions layered onto his, so he knew as well the positions of most of the fleet. And through their unified concentration on their own displays, he understood where they were in relationship to the enemy.

Why?
Why was the Yuuzhan Vong commander maneuvering this way? It was almost as if there were a piece missing.

A missing piece. The piece fell into place with a
snap
that Jacen felt shuddering in his nerves. With some reluctance he banished the Force and the comforts of the meld from his mind, and he called up his Vongsense, the strange telepathy he had developed with Yuuzhan Vong life-forms during his captivity.

An immeasurably alien sense of
being
filled his thoughts. He could feel the enemy fleet extending its wing out into space, the implacable hostility of its every being, from the living ships to the breathing Yuuzhan Vong to the grutchins that waited packed into Yuuzhan Vong missiles . . .

Jacen fought to extend his mind, extend his senses deep into space, into the void that surrounded the Ylesia system.

And there he found what he sought, an alien microcosm filled with barbarous purpose.

He opened his eyes and stared at Kre'fey, who was standing amid his silent staff, studying the displays.

“Admiral!” Jacen said.
“There's another Vong fleet on its way!”
He strode forward among the staff officers and thrust a pointing finger into the holographic display. “It's coming right
here
. Right behind our extended wing, where they can hammer us against the other Yuuzhan Vong force.”

Kre'fey stared at Jacen from his gold-flecked violet eyes. “Are you certain?”

Jacen returned Kre'fey's stare. “Absolutely, Admiral. We've got to get our people out of there.”

Kre'fey looked again at the display, at the shimmering interference patterns that ran over Jacen's pointing finger. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, that has to be the explanation.” He turned to his staff. “Order the extended wing to rejoin.”

A host of communications specialists got very busy with their microphones. Kre'fey continued staring at Jacen's pointing finger, and then he nodded to himself.

“The extended wing is to fire a missile barrage
here
,” Kre'fey said, and gave the coordinates indicated by Jacen's finger.

The capital ships on the detached wing belched out a gigantic missile barrage, seemingly aimed into empty space, and scurried back to the safety of the main body. When the Yuuzhan Vong reinforcements shimmered into realspace the missiles were already amid them, and the new arrivals hadn't yet configured their ships for defense, or launched a single coralskipper.

In the displays Jacen watched at the havoc the missiles wrought on the startled enemy. Almost all the ships were hit, and several broke up.

Kre'fey snarled. “
How can I hurt the Vong today?
We've answered that question, haven't we?”

One of his staff officers gave a triumphant smile. “Troopships report the landing party has been recovered, Admiral.”

“About time,” someone muttered.

Since the wing was contracting inward anyway, Kre'fey got the whole fleet moving in the same direction. The newly arrived Yuuzhan Vong were too disorganized, and too out of position, to make an effective pursuit. The first arrivals charged after Kre'fey, but they were strung out while Kre'fey's forces were concentrating, and their intervention had no hope of being decisive.

But even though Kre'fey had assured the escape of his force, the battle was far from over. The Yuuzhan Vong commander was angry and his warriors still possessed the suicidal bravery that marked their caste. Ships were hard hit, and starfighters vaporized, and hulls broken up to tumble through the cold emptiness of Ylesian space, before the fleet exited the traitor capital's mass shadow and made the hyperspace jump to Kashyyyk.

“I don't want to do
anything
like that again,” Jaina said. She was in the officers' lounge of
Starsider
, sitting on a chair with a cup of tea in her hand, her boots off, and her stockinged feet in Jag Fel's lap.

“Ylesia was like hitting your head again and again on a brick wall,” she went on. “One tactical problem after another, and the solution to each one was a straightforward assault right at the enemy, or straightforward flight with the enemy in pursuit.” She sighed as Jag's fingers massaged a particularly sensitive area of her right foot. “I'm better when I can be Yun-Harla the Trickster,” she said. “Not when I'm playing the enemy's game, but when I can make the enemy play mine.”

“You refer to sabacc, I take it,” Jag said, a bit sourly.

Jaina looked at Jacen, sitting opposite her and sipping on a glass of Gizer ale. “Are you going to take Kre'fey up on his offer of a squadron command?”

Jacen inhaled the musky scent of the ale as he considered his answer. “I think I may serve better on the bridge of
Ralroost
,” he said finally, and thought of his finger floating in Kre'fey's holo display, pointing at the enemy fleet that wasn't there.

“Ylesia,” he continued, “showed that my talents seem to be more spatial and, uh, coordinative. Is
coordinative
a word?”

“I hope not,” Jag said.

Jacen felt regret at the thought of leaving starfighters entirely. He had joined Kre'fey's fleet in order to guard his sister's back, and perhaps that was best done by flying alongside her in an X-wing. But he suspected that he'd be able to offer a higher order of assistance if he stayed out of a starfighter cockpit, instead using the Jedi meld to shape the way the others fought.

“Look,” Jag pointed out, “Jaina's got it wrong. Ylesia wasn't a defeat. Jaina's downed pilots were rescued, and so were mine. We hurt the enemy a lot more than they hurt us, thanks in part to Spooky Mind-Meld Man, here.” He nodded toward Jacen. “We destroyed a collaborationist fleet and captured enough of the Peace Brigade's upper echelon to provide dozens of splashy trials. The media will be occupied for months.”

“It didn't
feel
like a victory,” Jaina said. “It felt like we barely escaped with our necks.”

“That's only because you don't have a sufficiently detached perspective,” Jag said seriously.

Mention of the Peace Brigade had set Jacen's mind thinking along other channels. He looked at Jaina. “Do you think Thrackan's really innocent?”

Jaina was startled. “Innocent of
what
?”

“Of collaboration. Do you think the story he told about being forced into the Presidency could possibly have been true?”

Jaina gave a disbelieving laugh. “Too ludicrous.”

“No, really. He's a complete human chauvinist. I know he's a bad guy and he held us prisoner and wants to rule Corellia as diktat, but he hates aliens so much I can't believe he'd work with the Yuuzhan Vong voluntarily.”

Jaina tilted her head in thought. Jag's foot massage had put a blissful expression on her face. “Well, he
did
call Pwoe a Squid Head. That's a point in his favor.”

“If Sal-Solo wishes to prove his innocence,” Jag said, “he need only volunteer for interrogation under truth drugs. If his collaboration was involuntary, the drugs would reveal it.” Grim amusement passed across his scarred features. “But I think he's afraid that such an interrogation would reveal how he came to be in the hands of the Yuuzhan Vong in the first place.
That's
what would truly condemn him.”

“Ahh,” Jaina said. Jacen couldn't tell if she was enlightened or, in light of the foot rub, experiencing a form of ecstacy.

Jacen, sipping his ale, decided that whatever the truth of the matter, it wasn't any of his business.

Thrackan Sal-Solo paced across the durasteel-walled prison exercise yard, his mind busy with plans.

Tomorrow, he'd been told, he would be transferred to Corellia, where he would undergo trial for treason against his home planet.

He'd accept the transfer peacefully, and behave as a model prisoner for most of the way home. But that was only to lull his guards.

He'd catch them at a disadvantage, and bash them over the head with an improvised weapon—he didn't know what exactly, he'd work that out later. Then he'd take command of the ship—he hoped it was an Incom model, he could fly anything Incom made. He'd crash the ship into a remote area of Corellia and make it appear he died in the flames.

Then he'd make contact with some of the people on Corellia he could still trust. He'd reorganize the Centerpoint Party, strike, and seize power. He would
rule the world
! No,
five
worlds.

It was his destiny, and nothing could stop him. Thrackan Sal-Solo wasn't meant to be condemned to a miserable life on a prison planet.

Well. Not more than
once
, anyway.

An Interview with Walter Jon Williams

DR: How did you get the opportunity to write a Star Wars novel, and what attracted you to the idea? Are you a longtime fan of the series?

WJW: I got the job because, well, they asked me. I'd like to think it was because they'd read my other books and liked them. I was a fan of the films, but had never read any of the books. Imagine my surprise to discover that Han and Leia had produced three children and that Luke had married a woman who wasn't in any of the movies!

DR: How much input and creative freedom did you have in writing
Destiny's Way
?

WJW: There is a NJO series arc, and the arc demanded that certain things take place in
Destiny's Way.
The rest of it was up to me. The demands of the story arc were fairly flexible, and I experienced little difficulty building a story around them.

DR: Was this the first time that you've worked in someone else's universe? What are some of the difficulties involved in this kind of corporate collaboration?

WJW: I've worked in the
Wild Cards
shared-worlds universe—some of those books are coming back into print—and I've also written for films and TV, which are collaborative media. I was used to the give-and-take, so I experienced few problems in working within the shared-worlds format.

DR: What can you tell us about
Destiny's Way
? To what does the title refer? What is the destiny, and whose destiny is it?

WJW: Fate has a good deal in store for the Jedi twins! Jaina's destiny is revealed in the book, and we find out more about what the universe has in mind for Jacen.

DR: The character of Vergere is one of the most interesting to appear so far in the New Jedi Order series. A Jedi Knight who has lived with the Yuuzhan Vong for more than fifty years, she seems to have shaped herself into a Jedi Master unlike any seen before, with new insights about the light and dark sides of the Force, as well as the mysterious absence of the Vong from the Force. Are we seeing an evolution in the official definition of what constitutes the Force? Does Vergere's understanding of the Force go beyond Luke's?

WJW: Vergere was an enormously fun character to write, because she's so extreme. She tortured Jacen Solo for
eons
in hopes of turning him into an enlightened being! She lets absolutely nothing stand in her way. In
Destiny's Way
, I was able to reveal a good deal of her personal philosophy and the rationale behind her actions.

 Luke's understanding of the Force was shaped by the Galactic Civil War, which was in large measure a struggle between the light and dark aspects of the Force. In contrast, Vergere's understanding was shaped by fifty years spent with the Yuuzhan Vong, beings who are apparently outside the Force altogether. This forced her to engage with fundamental questions regarding the nature of the Force itself, and her solution was to develop a theory of the Force that was so all-embracing that it included even the Vong.

 There
is
an evolution in the conception of the Force going on. That doesn't mean that Luke's understanding is obsolete, just that it's incomplete, as Vergere's understanding, for all its subtlety, is
also
incomplete. Vergere has obviously been aiming Jacen at producing a more comprehensive understanding of the Force and its meaning. Whether this is his true destiny will be revealed as the series progresses.

DR: Jacen has been trained by both Luke and Vergere. What are some of the challenges he faces in
Destiny's Way
in balancing their often very different teachings and in charting his own path?

WJW: One particular problem that Jacen faces is that Luke, his master, has no reason to trust Vergere. Her treatment of Jacen in
Traitor
is a complete refutation of Luke's understanding of compassion. She obviously has her own agenda that may not be compatible with Luke's. Luke wants to get Jacen as far away from Vergere as he can. For Luke, compassion is the highest virtue. For Vergere, the greatest virtue is the attainment of knowledge. Can Jacen balance the quest for knowledge with the need for compassion? At the end of
Destiny's Way,
he's forced to choose between one path and another.

DR: At one point in the novel, Luke calls Jaina the Sword of the Jedi and predicts a life in which she will know very little peace or happiness. I know some fans are going to be thinking, “Hasn't the Solo family suffered enough?”

WJW: When I sat down to write that scene, I had no idea that those words were going to escape Luke's lips. I think it was the Force that spoke through me in that scene. Who am I to contradict the Force?

When you get right down to it, I don't think that the Force cares whether you're happy or not. And as long as you're at peace with the Force, I don't think it cares whether you're peaceful in any other way. The Force never asks your opinion. The Force doesn't take polls on whether or not you get a happy ending. The Force just presents you with a destiny, and makes you take a choice. In
Destiny's Way,
Jaina makes her choice.

DR: Both your novel and
Traitor
, the mass market paperback by Matt Stover that takes place directly before it, hint that the Vong may not be outside of the Force after all. Vergere postulates that the Vong simply register in Force frequencies outside the range of Jedi perceptions. I'm sure you've been sworn to secrecy on this point, but can you give us an idea of whether or not she's on the right track?

WJW: In
Destiny's Way,
Vergere asks Luke, “If the Force is life, and the Yuuzhan Vong are alive, and you cannot see them in the Force—then is the problem with the Vong, or is it with your perceptions?” Vergere clearly believes that the perceptions of the Jedi are at fault. Whether she is correct in this belief will be revealed later in the series.

DR: Jacen makes the point that the Vong aren't inherently evil: they've just got bad leaders, who have molded them into religious fanatics. Two questions. First, isn't that a little bit like absolving Nazi soldiers for their actions because they were “just following orders”? After all, the Vong have killed tens of billions of intelligent creatures since their invasion! And second, was the ongoing war against al Quaeda, whose members would certainly have to be counted as fanatical, in your thoughts as you were writing this novel?

WJW: Well, of course most Nazi soldiers
were
absolved, and the Allies prosecuted only the leaders and those footsoldiers who were guilty of the greatest brutality. The Yuuzhan Vong seem to have the same emotional and moral equipment as human beings, only warped by countless generations of brutal leadership and religious fanaticism. There's no indication that if you took a Vong child and raised it in a human household, that it would have an innate tendency to slaughter billions of people.

The novel was about 95 percent finished on September 11, 2001, so the war on terror really was not much in my thoughts for the greater part of the book. But there was one scene at the end that was
very
difficult to write after September 11. I don't want to give away what happens in the scene, but it was gut-wrenching.

DR: One aspect of the Vong civilization, culture, and psychology that you elaborate on in your novel is their use of biologically engineered lifeforms as equivalents to the machine-based technology of the Republic. In a way, the Vong revere life as much, if not more, than any Jedi . . . yet their reverence is twisted by its extremity.

WJW: The Vong believe that life originated from sacrifice—that Yun-Yuuzhan tore himself to bits and scattered himself through the universe in order to bring about the living world. So the Vong
do
revere life as much as the Jedi, but they believe that the way to honor life is through sacrifice and self-mutilation. The Vong reverence for life, however twisted and perverse, might well be a starting point in bringing about some kind of understanding between the Vong and the people of the galaxy.

DR: You've written a novella,
Ylesia,
set during the events of
Destiny's Way
, that is being released as an eBook by Del Rey. Is this your first experience with eBooks? How do you think eBooks will affect the future of publishing . . . or will they have much of an effect?

WJW: 
Ylesia
is the second story I've written specifically for an online forum, the first being an 850-word short-short for the online magazine
Infinite Matrix.
(A number of my older stories, written originally for print, are available online at
www.fictionwise.com
, and my most popular novel,
Hardwired,
will soon be available online at
www.scorpiusdigital.com
.)

E-text will be important in the future, but the technology doesn't seem to be quite there yet. I want to be able to read my e-book in the bath without fear of it short-circuiting, and I want a
lot
more literature available in e-formats.

DR: What can you tell us about your forthcoming novel,
The Praxis
? Will there be another eBook tie-in?

WJW: There won't be an e-book tie-in, but a sample chapter is available on my Web site, www.walterjonwilliams.net.

The Praxis
is a far-future space adventure set thousands of years from now, after humans and other aliens have been conquered by a dictatorial species called the Shaa. It's the first book in a series called Dread Empire's Fall
,
and I hope that
Star Wars
readers will find a lot in the series they can enjoy.

DR: I know I'm not the only reader eager for you to continue the series begun in
Metropolitan
and
City on Fire.
Do you have any plans to do so in the near future?

WJW: I'd love to continue that series, but my editor was fired and his whole line canceled. Obviously there will be a delay in writing the third book. But it
will
be written, I just have to find the right place in my busy schedule.

DR: When did you realize that you were a writer? Who are some of the writers that influenced you? And finally, what writers do you admire most today?

WJW: I probably left scribbles in my mother's womb. Quite seriously, I've wanted to be a writer from the earliest time I can remember. Before I knew how to write, I would dictate stories to my parents, who would write them down for me.

My literary influences are diverse. Thomas Pynchon, Vladimir Nabokov, Joseph Conrad, P.G. Wodehouse, and a lot of the New Wave SF writers of the Sixties, people like Samuel R. Delany and Roger Zelazny. I'm currently on a Dorothy Dunnett binge.

Contemporary writers I admire are those with a unique voice, who can bring something completely individual to the table. Writers like Gene Wolfe, Howard Waldrop, or Bruce Sterling. None of these writers have
anything
in common, and that's what I like about them.

DR: How is written science fiction changing due to the influence of movies like
Star Wars
and computer/video gaming?

WJW: Movies, television, and games can only skim the surface of the great body of SF. Most great science fiction can't really be turned into successful cinema—the ideas are too dense and complex for a mass audience, and the backgrounds too strange and alienating.

Science fiction is like a little village of weird, cranky philosophers, where everyone knows everybody and where certain arguments have been going on for generations. And every so often barbarians from Media City, the community over the hill, come through and plunder everything they can carry off. Sometimes they leave big pots of money behind, but usually they don't.

So in answer to your question, movies and games haven't changed science fiction at all: They've just popularized certain ideas that were once the province of science fiction alone.

DR: Any advice for aspiring writers in the audience?

WJW: Network. Get together and share information and workshop each other's stories. Online forums are great for this. Also, you can save a lot of time by finding out what publishers actually want. Usually they'll tell you on their own Web sites. There's a lot of great advice for aspiring writers on the Science Fiction Writers of America Web site,
www.sfwa.org
.