Conquest: Edge of Victory I (25 page)

“Yes. I have known Jedi. They protect all life.”

“Not Yuuzhan Vong.
Jeedai
kill Yuuzhan Vong.”

“Only when they must,” Anakin replied. “Jedi do not like to kill.”

“They are not warriors, then?”

“Not exactly, not from what I know. They are protectors.”

“Protectors. And they protect everyone?”

“Everyone they can.”

She chuckled again, a bit uneasily. “An amusing lie. The sort of lie that gives hope to those who do not deserve it. A destructive lie. Some Shamed Ones even—” She broke off again, this time angrily. “How is it you make me talk so, infidel? Work, and do not speak. Ask me no more questions.”

   That night Anakin crept from the slave quarters. It was no great task. For most slaves, there was no escape from the camp itself. If they wanted to waste the precious hours of sleep they were allotted, the Yuuzhan Vong didn’t prevent it.

Reaching the fields was more difficult, but Anakin had plenty of experience with stealth. In a few moments, by the light of the orange gas giant, he knelt in the lambent field. The plants lisped softly, like a nighttime breeze through dark treetops. Beyond the perimeter of the camp, across the river, he faintly felt the life of the jungle. Somewhere inside of it, in a bed of aches and misery, he knew Tahiri’s fading touch.

He found the last of the harvested lambents and knelt beside the first of the next day’s harvest, staring for a long moment at the faintly illuminated stalk. Then, hardly daring to breathe, he reached for the swollen blossom and began to stroke exactly as he had seen Uunu do hundreds of times.

The petals were as soft as silk, rubbing easily from his fingers, and Anakin felt a faint touch, like an electrical shock traveling up his arm. It was neither pleasant nor
unpleasant, but more like the first taste of a food so exotic his tongue had no baseline for judging it.

As he stroked, the feeling deepened, and finally he felt not just his fingers rubbing the flower, but also the blossom being
rubbed
. He
was
the lambent, for a moment, and not only felt it wakening but felt himself awakened.

He continued until the small hum in his head was louder, more obvious than any impulse from the other plants, until the pod was smooth, then he blinked and carefully searched around him for movement. Here, in the camp, he was nearly blind and deaf. He couldn’t even use the jungle moon’s native life to sense what danger might be coming. If he couldn’t see it and hear it, it wasn’t there.

But his eyes found no shadows creeping, his ears registered no faint susurrus of motion, and so, producing his spurred thumb, he cut into the plant and stripped away the husk until he had the gem inside. He gripped it tight in his fingers, and almost without him asking it, it flared into gentle radiance.

“Yes!” he hissed.

Willing it dark, he clenched his fist tighter around it in a gesture of triumph.

Then it was back across the fields and through the houses. They were not silent at night; he passed the shrine of Yun-Shuno and heard moaning within. Whispers drifted from other doorways, and here and there someone paced in the darkness, restless.

Anakin kept going until he reached the edge of the star-shaped compound where he had exited the living boat. He slipped within.

The pool shone with a gentle phosphorescence that did not reach far below the surface. Anakin felt with the Force, hoping desperately his lightsaber was still there, where he had placed it days before.

The water was murky. He could sense it in the Force, but as if through a cloud. The crawlfish and their aquatic
cousins were sensible, too, but somehow diffuse. It took longer than it should have for him to feel the play of life and current and energy in the heart of the shaper damutek. But at last he had it in his mind, wavering like a mirage, but there. The current had carried his lightsaber to fetch at the edge of the compound, against a barrier that kept the fish in. He exerted his will, and his light-saber shifted, moved, broke the surface, and came to rest in his hand.

“Who’s there?” a voice asked, from the shadows around the pool. Anakin stepped back quickly, heart running toward lightspeed, and withdrew into the darkness in the far corner of the compound.

“Your pardon,” he rasped, grateful for the tizowyrm in his ear. He tried to make his voice sound as much like a Yuuzhan Vong’s as possible. “I am no one, a Shamed One.”

The figure in the darkness shifted, and he could suddenly see more of her silhouette. Something was strange about her head. It wriggled like a nest of snakes, like nothing he had yet seen among the Yuuzhan Vong.

“This is the compound of the shapers,” the woman’s voice said. “You have no business here, Shamed One.”

“I beg pardon, great one,” Anakin said. “I wished only—I had hoped the waters of the succession pool would inspire me to beseech Yun-Shuno persuasively.”

The silence stretched. “I should report you, you know. Only those Shamed Ones with passage pheromone are allowed here. I—” He heard a little gasp of pain.

“Is anything the matter, great one?”

“No,” she replied in a strained voice. “It is only my suffering. I came here to contemplate it. Go, Shamed One. I would not interrupt my reverie over you. Go, leave me in peace, and count yourself fortunate.”

“Thank you, great shaper. As you will.”

And with that, he withdrew. Sweat was coursing down
his brow, and his limbs trembled slightly, but triumph was a supernova inside of him. He had what he needed, now.

The supernova cooled a little as he left the damutek and padded back into the village of the Shamed Ones. He needed more than the lambent and the lightsaber. He needed time, and solitude, and even the lenient Uunu wasn’t likely to give him that. But he also couldn’t wait for Vua Rapuung any longer. Uunu was suspicious of him. Hul Rapuung had voiced a similar suspicion, that very first day.

And Vua Rapuung might be dead.

So he needed to hide somewhere. Where?

Puzzling over that, he ran headlong into someone. A Yuuzhan Vong cursed, and a strong hand knotted in his hair. Startled, Anakin dropped both his lightsaber and the lambent, which flared into sudden light.

In the illumination, a mutilated face stared down at him.

“Vua Rapuung!” he gasped.

“Yes,” the other growled. “Quiet that lambent.”

“Let go of me, then.”

The Yuuzhan Vong did so, and Anakin dropped to one knee, retrieving both items.
Be still
, he thought at the lambent, picturing it dark.

The light paled and vanished.

“What are you doing with that?” Rapuung snarled.

“Never mind. I’m glad to see you. I’ve heard—”

“They tried to kill me,” Rapuung said shortly. “We must act now. Tonight, or never.”

“We can’t!” Anakin said. “There’s something I still have to do.”

“Impossible.”

“No, listen. You said one reason you wanted me was because of my lightsaber, right?”

“It would help us a great deal,” Rapuung growled reluctantly. “Without it I am not certain how we will circumvent the portals and safeguards.” He cocked his head. “You lied to me? You have the weapon?”

“It doesn’t work. But I can fix it. With the lambent I can fix it.”

“Do so, then, and hurry.”

“Even if I hurry, it could take a day or two.”

“Again, impossible. We cannot hide for two days here, and if we go beyond the perimeter, we will never come back in.”

“I need two days,” Anakin said stubbornly.

“Tomorrow they will realize I am alive,” Rapuung said. “Unless you have a
Jeedai
sorcery to make us invisible …”

“No,” Anakin said, “but—listen. The temple that was here, the one built of stone. How was it destroyed?”

“What? A damutek was landed on it. Its substance was dissolved and used to nourish the coral.”

“But did they fill in the caverns below it?”

“Caverns?”

“Yes,” Anakin said excitedly. “If they just flattened the temple with one of these damuteks, the caverns underneath might still be there. Didn’t you say the damuteks drive down roots, or something—for water and minerals?”

Rapuung swore. “Of course,” he said. “If there are indeed caverns of size below, and if the gods are with us—but of course they are. I am Vua Rapuung.”

He said this last as if repeating a mantra, and Anakin felt renewed apprehension, remembering Uunu’s opinion of Rapuung. If there had indeed been an official attempt on his life, he might have gone from being a solenoid short of a transformer to a fused mess of circuits.

But did it matter? Mad or not, Rapuung was the closest thing to an ally Anakin had. Right now, he would take what he could get.

Rapuung kept talking, almost to himself it seemed. “They will think we have run into the jungle again. She will search for us there, never in the very roots of her stronghold. Never below her very feet. But we will need gnullith breathers.”

“You can get those, right?” Anakin asked.

“I can get them. But this is a risk,” Rapuung warned him. “If we are noticed entering the roots, we will be sealed there to die very long, very ignoble deaths.”

“More ignoble than dying a Shamed One?” Anakin shot back. “Besides, it never occurred to me you were worried by risk.”

He couldn’t see Rapuung’s face, but he could imagine the glare there.

“A good thing you never thought that,” Rapuung replied. “A very good thing. As I said. Wait here.”

And he was gone, leaving only his putrid scent and the shadow of his anger. Anakin was once again alone.

“Adept Nen Yim?”

Nen Yim searched the darkened laboratory grotto for the sound of her name and found it coming from a young male with the forehead marks of Domain Qel—one of the smaller minor shaper domains. He lacked a shaper’s hands, which placed him below her in rank.

“You have my name, Initiate,” she said, letting a bit of irritation show. “And my attention.” Her head throbbed and occasionally spiked with the pain of the Vaa-tumor thriving in it, but she embraced the growing discomfort. It would not interfere with her work, or this conversation.

The male’s headdress was knotted in respect, but something about his face remained annoyingly bold, if not challenging.

“My name is Tsun,” he said. “I have been assigned by Master Mezhan Kwaad to aid you today in our glorious work.”

Nen Yim braided tendrils in skepticism. “The master said nothing of assistants,” she noted. “She was to meet me here herself.”

Again, Tsun trod the outskirts of perniciousness in the studied ease of his answer. “Mezhan Kwaad sent me, Adept, to explain that she will meditate today rather than labor. Her Vaa-tumor is to be removed next cycle, and she wishes these last periods to contemplate her pain.”

“I see. Your message is delivered then. But how am I to recognize her authority in it?”

Tsun’s eyes flashed with a certain mischievous light. “I must say,” he purred, “I am honored. I have much wished to meet you, Adept Nen Yim.”

That had a strange effect. She felt a slight warmth creep up her neck. Was this another side effect of her Vaa-tumor? She commanded her headdress to remain quiescent. “Oh?” she replied.

“Yes. I was once a companion to a friend of yours. Yakun.”

This time she had to clench her tendrils to keep her emotions hidden. This was suddenly a very dangerous and painful nestling of history and words to be a part of.

“Yakun?” she said, as if just remembering that there was such a name. “He was a Domain Kwaad initiate in Baanu Kor?”

Tsun nodded. “Yes. He introduced me to you once, when you tended the mernip breeding pools together.”

“That was before his heresy,” Nen Yim said.

“Yes,” Tsun agreed. “Before they took him.”

“We shall not speak of him, then, shall we?” Nen Yim replied. “For he is a heretic and not to be spoken of. I will forgive this mention of him. Once.”

Tsun genuflected. “I knew him well, Adept Nen Yim, in the days after your reassignment. He spoke of you often. He often wished to hear from you, especially near the end.”

She kept her tongue and tentacles as still as unliving stone, but she remembered. Remembered hearing the news of Yakun’s accusation and sacrifice. She remembered private, forbidden moments with him before, and her vain prayers to Yun-Txiin and Yun-Q’aah to protect him.

How she had tried not to think of him at all.

Perhaps Tsun understood her posture, or her headdress betrayed her, for through the sudden renewal of pain behind her eyes, she saw he
knew
.

“I do not mean to sadden you,” he said. “It is only that Master Mezhan Kwaad asked me to tell you I knew him, that we were confidants.”

The flash of agony released as suddenly as it had come.
Mezhan Kwaad did send him
, Nen Yim thought, her growing panic taking a step back.
This is her message I am to trust him. Yakun was a heretic. My master is a heretic. So is Tsun
.

“Initiate Tsun,” she said firmly. “I said we should not speak of that person. I mean it. Now let me show you our work.”

   The
Jeedai’s
eyes had lost much of their focus; she no longer glared like a predatory beast. Instead she stared for long hours at nothing, a look of puzzlement on her face.

“She seems stunned,” Tsun noticed.

Nen Yim signaled the vivarium to become opaque to sound. “She can hear us, and she knows the tongue of the gods. Even in that state she might remember anything we say. Or nothing.”

“She is being drugged?”

“Not precisely. We are altering her memories.”

“Ah,” Tsun said knowingly. “The protocol of Qah.”

“No,” Nen Yim corrected, “not exactly. That protocol was ineffective on her human brain.”

“How can that be?”

“It is a simple biotic protocol in which clumps of memory neurons are introduced into a Yuuzhan Vong brain. The
Jeedai
’s brain is too different.”

“And yet you
are
modifying her memory.”

“A bit at a time. Soon we will be able to do so much more efficiently.”

“You have prayed for a new protocol?” Tsun asked slyly.