The Joiner King (58 page)

“Impossible,” Raynar said, far too quickly. “There are no Gorog in the Kind. How could the nest influence us?”

“The same way
you
influenced Jaina and the others when you called them to help the Colony,” Leia replied. “Through the Force.”

Raynar’s voice grew soft. “Through the Force.”

“That’s right,” Leia said. “The same way you convinced Tesar to visit Bornaryn Trading. The same way you convinced Tahiri and Tekli to argue the Colony’s case to the Jedi Order.”

Raynar’s eyes flared in understanding, but Unu’s protest rose to a crescendo. He closed his eyes as though trying to concentrate, but Leia could see in the twitching muscles of his face some internal struggle, some insect argument she would never understand. She began to have the unpleasant feeling she was attempting the impossible.

Leia glanced over at Saba and mouthed Welk’s name. The Barabel’s eyes narrowed, but she nodded and quickly slipped away.

At last, the insect din quieted, and Raynar opened his eyes.

“Even if you are right about the Dark Nest, conquering is not our way,” he said. “The Kind seek only to live in harmony with the Song of the Universe.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t have to conquer something to take it over,” Han said. “And the Dark Nest had more in it than just Killiks.”

“I assume you remember the Dark Jedi,” Leia pressed. “Raynar fought them as a young man at Yavin Four. And Welk and Lomi Plo abandoned the strike team on
Baanu Rass.”

Raynar studied her for a moment, then nodded. “We remember. And you think …” He let the sentence trail off as the Unu
began to rustle and clack; then his voice grew stubborn again. “But you must be wrong. Welk and Lomi Plo died in the Crash.”

“Then who is this?” Saba asked.

She emerged from shadows dragging Welk’s badly slashed body. He was still dressed in his chitin-and-plastoid armor, with a new insect arm grafted to his shoulder. His face looked even less human than Raynar’s, but he clearly wasn’t Chiss.

Saba sent the corpse gliding toward Raynar’s chest.

Han waited until the thing hit, then said, “He’s got some pretty bad burn scars, but that tells you something right there.”

Once it was in front of him, Raynar seemed riveted by the corpse, his blue eyes slowly sliding back and forth beneath his scarred brow, his breath coming in ever-raggeder rasps.

“Jacen investigated the Crash,” Leia said. “He saw you pull Welk and Lomi out of the flames.”

The Unu fell deathly quiet, and Raynar’s gaze swung to Leia. “
Saw
us?”

“Through the Force,” she clarified.

“Yes—we remember.” Raynar nodded and closed his eyes. “He was there … on the bridge … for just a moment.”

“You saw
Jacen
?” Han gasped.

“That’s impossible,” Leia said. “He would have had to reach across time—”

“We
saw
Jacen. He gave us the strength to continue … to pull them …” Suddenly Raynar stopped and turned toward the center of the nursery. “Where is Lomi?”

He had barely asked the question when the Unu entourage began to disperse across the nursery, their shine-balls illuminating the vault in a spray of whirling light.

“
Where is Lomi?”
Raynar repeated.

Relief washed over Leia like a Rbollean petal-oil shower. She had broken through to Raynar’s memory. “Then you recall saving her?”

“We remember,” Raynar said. “She was afraid that the Yuuzhan Vong would find us again, or that Anakin would come looking for her, or Master Skywalker. She was afraid of many things. She wanted to hide.”

“Well,” Han said, “that sure confirms Cilghal’s theory.”

“What theory?” Raynar asked.

“The way Cilghal sees it,” Han said, “when a Killik nest swallows up someone who’s Force-sensitive, the nest takes on some of his personality.”

“In your case, the Yoggoy absorbed the value you place on individual life,” Leia said. “They started to care for their feeble and provide for the starving, and it wasn’t long before their success led to the creation of the Unu.”

“That’s much how we remember it,” Raynar allowed. “But it has nothing to do with the Gorog.”

“You said you remember pulling Welk and Lomi Plo out of the fire,” Han pointed out. “But then they just disappeared.”

“You said Lomi was afraid and wanted to hide,” Leia added. “That was what Yoggoy absorbed from her. Isn’t it possible that she also created a nest of her own—a nest hidden from everyone else?”

As Raynar considered this, the color seemed to drain from his face.
“We
caused this?”

“That’s not what we’re saying,” Leia said. “Only that the Dark Nest is influencing—”

“If we saved Lomi and Welk, we are responsible.”

An eerie tempest of clacking and muffled booming rolled through the nursery as the Unu again started to protest. Raynar turned from Leia and the others and slowly glided along the wall, peering into each cell he passed and shaking his head in despair.

“If we saved Lomi and Welk—”

Han caught up and took Raynar by the arm. “Look, kid, you couldn’t have known.”

Amazingly, Raynar did not send Han tumbling across the room or silence him with a gesture or even pull away. He merely continued to float along, seemingly unaware of Han at all, staring into the cells.

“If we saved Lomi and Welk,
we
did this.”

“You should get a medal for saving them,” Han said. “What happened later, that’s not your fault.”

That
got Raynar’s attention. He stopped and turned to Han. “This is not our fault?”

“No way,” Han said. “All you did was save their lives. That doesn’t make you responsible for what they did later.”

“We are not responsible.” Raynar’s voice was filled with relief, and Unu’s clacking died away. “That’s right.”

The spray of shine-ball light slowly began to contract back toward Raynar, and Leia felt Kyp reaching out to her, demanding an explanation, but she could not sense what he wanted explained.

“Maybe this is a Chiss ruse,” Raynar said, talking more to himself than Han now. “It must have been a trick to convince the Jedi that the Colony is in the wrong.”

Saba shined her helmet lamp into one of the cells. “To this one, it lookz like the trick was on the Chisz.”

“The Chiss are ruthless,” Raynar said. There was an ominous note of insistence to his gravelly voice. “They would sacrifice a thousand of their own kind to turn the Jedi against us.”

“That doesn’t explain the Gorog that attacked us on the way in,” Leia said. She was alarmed by how Raynar was trying to reshape reality, by how he seemed to be searching for a story that worked. “They weren’t Chiss—and neither are all these larvae.”

“Yes, it was a very insidious plan,” Raynar said. “The Gorog must have been brain-slaves. They were
forced
to fight—and to feed on Chiss volunteers.”

“Perhaps,” Leia allowed carefully. In a human mind, she would have called Raynar’s thought process a psychotic break; in the collective mind of the Colony, she didn’t know what to make of it. “But there is another explanation.”

“The Chiss are creating Killik clones?” Raynar asked.

“I don’t think so,” Leia said.

The Unu entourage began to return, many of them drawing the helpless, wide-eyed forms of the Chiss survivors that the rescue team had been pulling out of the cells. Kyp and the other Masters were also approaching, pouring their displeasure into the battle-meld. Saba reached out to them, urging them to stand by, assuring them Leia was in control.

Thanks a lot
, Leia thought.

“Do you remember what we were talking about?” Leia asked, continuing to address Raynar. “The Dark Nest?”

“Of course. Our memory is excellent.” Raynar’s eyes turned bright and angry. “Han said we were not responsible.”

“That’s right,” Leia said. Her vision began to dim around the edges again, and the heavy presence she had experienced before returned to her chest. “But that doesn’t … mean …”

The murky weight inside grew heavier, and Leia began to understand that Raynar had been damaged as much on the inside as on the outside. Hopelessly marooned, in unimaginable anguish, dependent on a bunch of insects—the shock had just been too much. Raynar had dissociated from the situation, literally becoming UnuThul so he would not recall all the terrible things that had happened to Raynar Thul.

“We understand what
not responsible
means,” Raynar said. “It means that just because the Dark Nest exists, we are not the ones who created it.” He pointed to the nearest captive, a frightened-looking male wearing the black shreds of a CEDF gunnery officer’s uniform. “The Chiss did.”

The officer’s face paled to ash, and his eyes grew even wider—the only signs of fear that his paralyzed body could still exhibit.

“What we do
not
understand,” Raynar said, “is the purpose of this nest.”

An unintelligible groan rose from the Chiss’s throat, so weak and low that Leia took it to be more of a pained whimper than an attempt to speak.

“Tell us!” Raynar commanded.

The officer moaned again, but the noise sounded even less like words than before.

“We know you are lying.” Raynar’s tone was ominous, and the officer’s face grew white. “Do not insult us.”

“I don’t think he means to,” Leia said. She felt certain that the officer had not said anything at all; Raynar’s shattered psyche was just imposing its own meaning on the Chiss’s incoherent groans. “I’m sure he doesn’t even know that the Chiss created this nest.”

Raynar turned back to Leia. “You are
sure?
”

“Perhaps
confident
is a better word,” Leia corrected. Again, the weight pressed down inside, and she knew she had to tell Raynar something he wished to hear—something that would
make him agree to her plan. “What if the Chiss didn’t even
know
they created the Dark Nest?”

“How could they create the Dark Nest without knowing it?” Raynar’s voice was doubtful. “We don’t see how that could work.”

“By
accident
,” Han said, picking up on Leia’s plan. “That’s the only way it could happen. The Chiss would never intentionally do something like this to themselves—not even to volunteers. They have too many honor codes.”

“That’s right,” Leia said. The weight inside was decreasing. “Chiss society is defined by war. They’re always fighting— against the Vagaari, the Ssi-ruuk, even each other.”

“And the Qoribu nestz are filled with Chisz Joinerz.”

Saba let the statement hang, leaving it to her listeners to draw their own conclusions. Under normal circumstances, it would have been perfect persuasive technique. But with Raynar, Leia did not want to take any chances. There were too many dangerous turns available to a dissociative mind—especially a dissociative
collective
mind.

“Remember what Han said about Cilghal’s theory?” Leia asked. “She believes that when a Killik nest absorbs a Force-sensitive being, the nestmates assume a portion of that being’s personality.”

“When the Yoggoy absorbed you,” Han added, “they started to value individual life. When they absorbed Lomi Plo and Welk, they assimilated the desire for secrecy and—”

“We are not responsible for the Dark Nest!” Raynar protested. “Lomi Plo and Welk died in the Crash!”

“That’s right,” Leia said, cringing inwardly. “Welk and Lomi Plo died in the Crash.”

It was growing more apparent that dragging Welk and Lomi Plo out of the burning
Flier
had been just too much for Raynar to bear; that whenever he remembered it, he also remembered how much
he
had suffered—and all that he had lost—by doing it.

Leia continued, “But the Yoggoy absorbed your respect for living things, and it wasn’t long before their success led to the creation of the Colony.”

“That is how we remember it,” Raynar agreed. “But we do not see what that has to do with the Dark Nest—”

“Everything!” Saba waved her scaly arm at the nursery again. “Look at how many Chisz Joinerz they had!”

Raynar’s eyes brightened with anger. “The Kind are not cannibals. Our nests do not feed on our own Joiners.”

“
Something
happened in this nest,” Saba pointed out.

“And the Chiss are bloodthirsty warriors,” Leia added. It was a wild exaggeration, but one that Raynar would be eager to believe. “Really, I’m surprised this hasn’t happened to the other Qoribu nests.”

“This?” Raynar shook his head. “This could not happen to another nest of Kind.”

“It happened here,” Saba pointed out.

“Maybe there’s some sort of balance point,” Han added, feigning contemplation. “When a nest gets too many Chiss Joiners …”

He let the sentence trail off and turned toward Raynar, his expression growing steadily more concerned.

Raynar finished the thought. “It becomes a Dark Nest?” The Unu broke into a distressed drone, and he nodded. “That could explain what happened here.”

“The Chisz
are
great believerz in secrecy,” Saba offered helpfully.

“Yes.” Raynar spoke with an air of certainty. “The Kind will take no more Chiss into our nests.”

“That’s one solution,” Leia agreed. She caught Han’s eye, and they shared one of those electric moments of connection that made her wonder if he was Force-sensitive after all. “But what are you going to do with all your prisoners?”

A nervous clatter rose among the Unu, and Raynar asked, “Prisoners?”

“
Chisz
prisonerz,” Saba said. “As the war spreadz, you will have hundredz of thousandz.
Millionz.
”

“Only one thing
to
do.” Han shook his head in mock regret. “Of course, that’ll only make the rest of the Chiss fight that much harder.”

Raynar turned to glare at Han. Leia found herself holding her breath, hoping she had not made a mistake reading Raynar’s
warped psyche—that he had not grown ruthless enough to accept Han’s suggestion.

At last, Raynar said, “The Colony does
not
kill its prisoners.”

“No?” Han returned the glare for a moment, then shined his helmet lamp on a half-eaten body. “That’ll change soon enough.”