Jaina turned and looked at him. “In theory you’re only two years older than me, but you’re talking like you’re old enough to be my dad.”
He nodded once. “Forgive me. I was judging you based on your accomplishments, not your age.”
She blinked and felt anger spike. “What is that supposed to mean?”
The flesh around Fel’s eyes hardened. “You are a Jedi. You are a superior pilot in an elite squadron. The dedication and skill required for these things are well known. I made the mistake of assuming too much about you.”
Jaina frowned. “I’m reading your tracking data, but still don’t have a lock on your target.”
Jag Fel sighed. “In Chiss society, there is no adolescence. Chiss children mature early and are given adult responsibilities very quickly. Those of us humans living with them were raised as they were raised. Intellectually I knew things were not the same here in the New Republic, but—”
“You think I’m a child?” Jaina gave him an icy glare. “You think I’m soft or something?”
Fel broke eye contact, and she noticed a blush rising on his cheeks. He raised a hand to ward off her comments, then shook his head. In doing that he peeled off a decade or two and seemed, to her, for the first time to be someone his own age.
“Not soft, no, not at all. You have determination and courage, but you lack—”
“Lack what?”
He frowned and glanced out at the shuttle. “You’re not grim.”
Jaina caught herself before she could proclaim that she was, in fact, grim—grim enough to outgrim him even. “Um, no, I mean, there are times, yes, but being grim takes such a toll.”
“It does at that.” He pointed a finger toward two men walking across the deck. They were wearing environment suits, but the clear headgear made them easily recognizable. “My, ah, uncle … when he hugged me at that reception … We’d met barely an hour before, privately, and he was surprised to learn who I was, but in no time after that … Where I come from, there are men that I have never seen smile before, and here he was, in the midst of a difficult situation, and he was happy to meet me. Not because I was an ally, but because I was his sister’s son. And he accepted me despite the fact that my mother’s departure from the New Republic hurt him deeply.”
Jaina reached out and rested a hand on Fel’s shoulder. “Wedge is like that. Most people are. Life is too harsh not to take what pleasure you can find in it, and certainly learning of his sister and how her life has gone would be wonderful to him. No matter how bad things might be, a joke, a smile, a pat on the back help break the tension.”
Fel raised his chin, and Jaina could feel his defenses repairing themselves. “Among the Chiss, celebration is saved until the job is done.”
“Even if it is never-ending?”
“If it isn’t ended, the celebration is false.”
“No, its necessary.” She looked at him, at his strong profile, at the determination on his face, and felt a shiver run down her spine. That he was handsome there was no disputing, and the cockiness, which was backed by fantastic skill as a pilot, had its charm. She admired the way he’d stood up to the New Republic’s politicians—most of whom disgusted her because of the way they treated her mother. Even the Imperial formality was attractive in a quaint sort of way.
I wonder if my mother saw my father that same way?
The second that thought occurred to her she pulled her hand back from Fel’s shoulder abruptly. Oh, no, I am not going to let myself fall for some guy who thinks grim is the normal state of being. Not the time or place to even be thinking about it.
Fel glanced over when she pulled her hand away, then half smiled. “The Chiss, despite the impression I might have given you, are a thoughtful people. Deliberate, calculating, but not above a flight of fantasy or two. They are not averse to wondering where they would be, had life been different. Whom they would have met, how they would have met, what would have become of them.”
“And you mention this because?”
“Because …” He hesitated, then looked out at the deck. “I was wondering what Uncle Wedge would have thought of my older brother.”
Jaina smiled and looked out at the deck. “The only problem with those flights of fancy are that life never works as cleanly as we’d like. Sometimes a meeting is just a meeting. Other times it’s a prelude.”
Fel laughed lightly. “Had I said that, you would have accused me of talking as if I were your father’s age again.”
“I might well have, but probably not.” She didn’t glance at him, but did look at his reflection. “The nice thing about being an adolescent is being able to make mature decisions when you need them and being able to just flow along with life when you don’t.”
Corran felt extremely uncomfortable in the environment suit. He was sweating, but wasn’t hot, since the suit’s cold temperature had him shivering. The way the growths on the shuttle changed its outline, the way scales trailed along edges, then blossomed into a gush of gray-brown mineral crusts just had his flesh crawling.
He glanced over at Wedge. “You don’t need to be here, Wedge. If anything happened to you, Iella and the kids would never forgive me.”
“Oh, sure, and you think Mirax would forgive me if anything happened to you?” Wedge laughed easily. “You and me, just like that trench run on Borleias, ’cept this time you go first.”
“Didn’t I get ordered out on that run?”
“Yeah, you did. You going to pull rank on me here, Colonel?”
“You’d listen to that order as well as I did.” Corran shook his head. “And you’re not feebleminded enough for some of the Jedi things to work. Okay, glad you’re on my wing.”
The two men approached the shuttle and walked to the area of the landing ramp. Techs had pulled up a wheeled set of steps that would allow one of them to climb up and touch the underside of the hull. A huge growth, looking to Corran a lot like a giant scab—complete with that dark-brown-tinged-with-dried-blood-purple color—covered the whole landing ramp. The growth changed color over by the access panel, becoming lighter in color and a lot spikier.
“What do you think, Wedge?”
“Well, your lightsaber ought to be able to core through the hull, but you never know what you’re going to be cutting above.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Since this is being presented to you with the Yuuzhan Vong commander’s compliments, I’m not inclined to think he wants you carving up his handiwork.”
“You’re right there.” Corran mounted the steps and took a close look at the growth covering the remote access panel. “This growth is a lot sharper than the others, with some of the edges looking serrated. And there are spines, almost like needles.”
He raised a gloved hand toward the growth, and one of the spines shifted to orient toward it. In an eye blink a slender needle shot out, but failed to penetrate the glove. Still, it hit with enough impact to knock Corran’s hand back a couple of centimeters. Corran aided and abetted it by leaping backwards and found himself on the deck, with Wedge steadying him.
“You okay?”
Corran nodded. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He sighed. “If you were to send someone a token of your esteem, you’d want to make sure he got it, right? You’d lock it up and give him some sort of combination or code to open it, wouldn’t you?”
“Makes sense.”
“I was afraid of that.” Corran freed his lightsaber from his belt with his right hand and ignited it, letting the silver blade splash cold highlights over the shuttle. He extended his left hand to Wedge. “Take my glove off. I’m going to touch it with my bare hand. Something weird happens, the hand goes.”
Wedge frowned. “Are you sure this is wise?”
“Of course not, but I don’t think I’ve got much choice.” The green-eyed Jedi smiled. “I left enough blood on Bimmiel that the Vong have easily got samples. I’m betting that thing there is keyed to open when it gets another taste of me.”
The older man stripped the Je
di’s left glove off. “Wouldn’t bleeding into a cup and offering that make more sense?”
“Um, sure, in a non-Corellian sort of way.” Corran shrugged and climbed back up and raised his left hand toward the shuttle’s belly. One of the spines shifted over and flicked a needle into his palm. It pulled back fast enough, and Corran stared at the bead of blood rising from the little wound. “Guess we should have thought about venom, shouldn’t we?”
Before Wedge could answer, the edges of the scab cracked, with little brittle pieces of it falling to the deck to shatter like ice. Thick, glistening lines of mucus flowed from around the edges, linking the hull to the descending ramp. The lines stretched thin, then broke in the middle, half of it retracting to drip from the hull, the other slowly flowing into a sluggish crystalline pool on the deck.
Corran climbed off the stairs and headed up the ramp, his lightsaber still lit. Wedge came close on his heels, with a blaster in his right hand. Save for some bioluminescent lighting, the shuttle remained dark, with the lightsaber’s blaze deepening shadows and stretching them into grotesques as Corran waved it about.
Throughout, the shuttle panels had been pulled open and smashed. Weird Yuuzhan Vong growths, some like roots, others just coral spikes, decorated the interior hull. They spread out in an ivylike pattern, but even as the two men entered the ship, the growths began to wither and sag. The external sheath on the long tendrils split, allowing black fluid to ooze out.
Corran shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
“I do. All that stuff was probably scanning us while we were scanning the shuttle. It was sending back information for as long as it took for the hull to be opened. Then it started dying, and dying so fast we aren’t going to get anything useful out of analysis.” Wedge pulled a piece of root from a wall, and it dissolved in his hand. “Something is metabolizing this stuff very fast. It’s like having a compost pile decaying at light speed.”
“Well, if that’s the message Shedao Shai wants to send me, I don’t know how to take it. I mean, I’m not the Jedi who was a farm boy, and I’m not planning on dying that fast, thanks.” Corran held his lightsaber high to spread the light out. “Wait, what’s this?”
Up toward the front of the passenger compartment, flush against the bulkhead that backed up to the pilot’s compartment, sat a large and semiovoid shape, lying on its side. It had a seam running around the middle parallel to the deck and looked very much to Corran like the shell of a sea creature. It had a rough tan exterior, with stripes running from the spine to fan out along the front edge. Another of the stony growths with spines sealed the seam at the front.
As the two men approached it down the aisle between banks of seats, the villip perched on top of it took on the features of Elegos. Though the protoplasmic ball lacked his golden down, it did take on a yellow hue and even had purple streaks around the eyes. It looked much akin to a static holograph where the lasers had been misaligned—recognizable, but only barely.
The villip began to speak in Elegos’s voice. “There is much I would tell you about the Yuuzhan Vong, but I have little time. Shedao Shai has taught me much. The Yuuzhan Vong are not mindless predators, but a complex species whose philosophy is much the antithesis of ours. I have not discovered the origin of their hatred for machines, but in other things I believe there is room for compromise. My mission to the Yuuzhan Vong has been difficult, but not fruitless, and I have hopes for continued progress.”
The image molded onto the villip smiled. “In our many discussions, Shedao Shai was especially intrigued by the tale of Grand Admiral Thrawn studying the art of the enemy and gleaning understanding from it. For you, Corran Horn, Shedao Shai has great respect. He knows you were at Bimmiel. The two warriors slain there were kin of his. He knows you were at Garqi. He believes the two of you will meet in the future, so he has prepared for you the enclosed, so you may study his handiwork as he has studied yours.”
“Every day here, my understanding of the Yuuzhan Vong grows, as does their understanding of us.” Elegos’s eyes softened. “It is my hope that I will be again with you, soon, in a time of peace. Please give my love to my daughter and friends. Fear not for me, Corran. Though difficult, this mission is vital if there is to be any chance at peace at all.”
At the message’s conclusion, the villip condensed back down into a ball, then rolled off to the left and dropped to the decking.
Corran looked over at Wedge and shivered. “I don’t think I like Shedao Shai thinking the folks on this side of the firing line are the same caliber of genius as Thrawn was.”
Wedge shrugged. “Well, it might make him more cautious.”
“And might make him come at us with enough force that even Thrawn would have run.” The Jedi shook his head. “Maybe we can talk the Vong into accepting some Noghri bodyguards.”
“I don’t think that’s likely.” Wedge nodded at the container. “You going to open it?”
“I guess. If Elegos had thought this was a trap, he would have found a way to warn me.” Corran held his left hand above the seal and tightened it into a fist, letting a couple droplets of blood drip down onto the Yuuzhan Vong device. The growth cracked slowly, then crumbled. The shell case slowly opened. The lightsaber’s glow flashed from gold in the interior.
“Sithspawn!” Corran felt his guts liquefy as he dropped to his knees. “Oh … oh, no … no.”
The opened case revealed a work of art that clearly had been the result of many hours lovingly lavished on it. A fully articulated skeleton sat cross-legged, each bone washed with gold. The sternum, and the smooth caps at the ends of long bones, were gleamed with platinum. Scintillating violet gems burned in the hollows of the eye sockets. Amethysts had been powdered and layered onto the sides of the skull, flaring back in the exact pattern of Elegos’s stripes.
The teeth, polished white, grinned coldly in the lipless mouth.
The Caamasi skeleton sat there, the head canted down to stare at the villip nestled in the triangle described by its legs. That ball of tissue hardened into mismatched features. The voice that emerged from it came equally harsh and halting. Its command of Basic was fine, but shaping its mouth around the sounds appeared to be difficult.
“I am Shedao Shai. You were at Bimmiel. You slew two of my kinsmen and left them to be gnawed by vermin. You stole the bones of my ancestor. These bones here I present to you so you may know the proper way to venerate fallen Yuuzhan Vong warriors.”
The voice softened almost imperceptibly. “I regret that your actions forced me to slay Elegos. I want you to know I did it myself, with my bare hands. As I strangled him, I read in his eyes betrayal, but only at the first. Before he died, he understood the necessity of his death. You must understand it, as well.”
The Yuuzhan Vong’s eyes narrowed on the villip’s surface. “We will meet our respective forces, at the world you call Ithor. If you have any honor at all—and Elegos assured me you did—you will return to me the bones of my ancestor. If you do not, then it is you who renders our friend’s death meaningless.”
Corran felt Wedge’s hands on his shoulders as the villip rounded itself again. The Jedi flicked off his lightsaber, sinking the cabin into darkness, all but hiding the skeleton displayed before him. He reached out with his left hand, seeking warmth, seeking something of Elegos’s essence, but just felt cold.
“Wedge … he was … Elegos was so peaceful. He … he saved me and my sanity when I was with the pirates. He helped save Mirax.” Corran hung his head. “And his murderer tells me that his death is my fault? Elegos never did anything to hurt anyone and is slaughtered to make a point?”
Wedge’s hands tightened on Corran’s shoulders. “To the Yuuzhan Vong, this was the only message they thought you would understand.”
“Yeah, well, this Shedao Shai made his point.” Corran heaved himself to his feet. “He wants those bones back, he’ll get them, and in a big box, too. I’m going to pack his in with them, then the Vong can carry the whole stinking lot back
to wherever they call home.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The light from the holographic representation of the Ithorian system splashed over the faces of the people gathered in the briefing room. Luke watched it shift and change as Admiral Kre’fey altered the perspective. The image’s center soared out around Ithor in a spiral orbit, flashing past the city-ships as they crept slowly away from what had been their home.
The Bothan Admiral froze the image there. “The evacuation is proceeding pretty well. The city-ships are not structurally sound enough to make the jump to lightspeed, even if they could be fitted with hyperspace drives. We can and will keep them screened from the Vong force, while any ships we can round up will evacuate the people.”
Admiral Pellaeon nodded solemnly. “I would have never thought it possible to evacuate a planet’s entire population.”
Corran frowned. “We’ve not got them all away, not by a long shot. And there is plenty of life left behind on Ithor. We’re just taking away the most mobile parts of it.”
Kre’fey nodded and glanced down at the datapad he was using to control the holoprojector. “Best estimates are that we need a week or so to complete the evacuation, but that’s provided the extra shipping I’ve requested can get here. Already the price of passage from worlds like Agamar is spiking, so anyone with a ship that can haul a load is heading up there to get ‘self-loading freight.’ It is a race against time, and the chances to win it are quickly slipping away.”
The Jedi Master sighed, the gravity of the Bothan’s words weighing his spirit down. “Nothing your cousin can do?”
Traest Kre’fey laughed aloud. “No, not really. His advisors fled back to Coruscant on one of the first ships to go.”
Corran arched an eyebrow in surprise. “Borsk stayed behind?”
“He did.”
The Corellian Jedi held both hands out, palms up, as if they were either side of a scale. “Brave, stupid. Brave, stupid. Not sure which I want to believe of him.”