Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime (18 page)

“Fumes?” Yomin Carr asked calmly.

“No time to explain,” Jerem said. “We have to get out of here.”

Yomin Carr yanked Jerem about and slammed him hard into a tree. Jerem, held there motionless, stared at the larger and suddenly imposing man in sheer disbelief.

“I could let you go to them,” Yomin Carr said. “I could scramble into the compound beside you, yelling frantically that we must get the Jolian freighter up into the air.”

“You don’t understand,” Jerem said. “The plague advances at a tremendous rate. It will be here in a matter of hours.”

“Within three, to be more precise,” Yomin Carr remarked.

Jerem started to respond, but then the weighty implications of Yomin Carr’s last statement hit him fully and stole the words from his mouth.

“The gases will overwhelm the compound within three hours,” Yomin Carr stated. “And all the planet in two days—sooner if favorable weather allows the atmospheric levels to hit critical mass.”

“Favorable weather?” Jerem Cadmir echoed with confusion. “How do you know?”

Yomin Carr reached a finger up beside his nose and tapped the sensitive area of the ooglith masquer, signaling the creature to peel away.

Jerem Cadmir tried to retreat, tried to push himself right into the tree at his back when the masquer flaps receded and he saw the disfigured, tattooed face of Yomin Carr.

The Yuuzhan Vong warrior stood perfectly still, reveling in the exquisite tingles of agony as the masquer pulled away fully and slipped down beneath his loose-fitting clothing.

“I could take you back there and wait with you and the others for your doom to fall,” Yomin Carr explained. “For of course, I’ve disabled the freighter beyond repair—not that you would have been able to get the rusted thing off the ground in any case. I could let you battle valiantly against the transformation, which you call a plague, and let you die dishonorably, at no warrior’s hands, but simply from lack of oxygen.”

Jerem was shaking his head, his lips moving as if he was trying to respond, though no words came out.

“But I feel that I owe you this, out of respect for your perseverance and resourcefulness in getting all the way back here,” Yomin Carr went on.

Jerem exploded into movement, rushing off to the side, but Yomin Carr, his muscles toned by years of warrior training, caught him easily, one hand clamping under Jerem’s chin, the other grabbing the hair at the back of the man’s head. With frightening ease, Yomin Carr pushed Jerem low and tilted his head back so that he was looking up into that horrid, disfigured face.

“Do you understand the honor I offer you now?” Yomin Carr asked in all seriousness.

Jerem didn’t respond.

“I offer you a warrior’s death!” the Yuuzhan Vong cried. “Yun-Yammka!” He gave a sudden twist of his arms and shattered Jerem Cadmir’s neck bone.

Yomin Carr let the limp man fall to the ground. He stood solemnly over Jerem for a long, long while, uttering prayer after prayer for the Slayer to accept this sacrifice. By Yomin Carr’s reckoning, he had indeed granted Jerem Cadmir a tremendous amount of respect this day; he even went somewhat against orders by not allowing the scientists to battle the plague unimpeded.

But Yomin Carr could justify that. Jerem had seen too much of the plague and knew, and said as much, that they could not hope to battle it. Jerem would have prompted only a desperate flight attempt, and no real countering of the plague. The Yuuzhan Vong warrior nodded, agreeing with that reasoning, and reached down to inspect Jerem’s body, finding the three valuable items.

He’d bring them back for inspection, allow the remaining six scientists to try to find some solution. That would satisfy his duties regarding the plague, for one of his goals here was
to discern if the scientists could find some way to battle this powerful Yuuzhan Vong biological weapon.

Completing that duty would justify his showing respect to Jerem Cadmir.

Satisfied, the Yuuzhan Vong started back for the compound. All his rationales were in place, but he knew the truth in his heart.

He had killed Jerem Cadmir, not simply out of respect, not simply because the man had deserved a warrior’s death, but also because he had wanted to, because he had enjoyed it. For too long, Yomin Carr had lived among the infidels, had spoken their language and accepted their strange and sacrilegious actions. Now the day of glory was almost upon him, the day of the Yuuzhan Vong, and he was eager, so eager.

At first Danni thought she was dead, but as her consciousness gradually returned, before she even opened her eyes, she not only knew that she was very much alive, though painfully wounded, but also sensed somehow where she was, and that thought—that she was within the living mound she had seen from the Spacecaster’s viewscreen—filled her with dread.

Her right shoulder, dislocated, throbbed; both of her arms were held out straight. She could feel strong hands gripping her wrists, and the light touch of a poncho about her bare shoulders, and a wet stickiness about her feet as if she was standing in a gooey pool of mud.

She heard a gurgled cry, recognized the voice of Bensin Tomri, and forced open her eyes.

She saw the multicolored, rough-face walls, the hulking men—no, not men, she instinctively understood, but some other humanoids—disfigured and covered with tattoos, holding her arms out to either side, out straight, and so tightly that she could not move. She saw Bensin off to the side, standing, but with his head pulled back, another hulking humanoid beside him. That tattooed warrior lifted one hand up high, clawed it like a bird’s talon, and drove it down into Bensin’s
throat. The warriors let go, and Bensin fell limp, too limp, and Danni knew that he was dead.

The hulking warrior, his hand still wet with Bensin’s blood, came over toward her slowly, deliberately. Danni tried to struggle, but the two humanoids holding her gave sudden jerks, and waves of pain overwhelmed her, rolling out from her dislocated shoulder as the joint snapped back into place. She nearly swooned and rolled her head, and then he was before her and she saw him clearly, and she recognized him from the impersonating creature that had invaded the Spacecaster.

“Yomin Carr demand respect for Danni Quee,” Prefect Da’Gara stated. “Do you und-under—” He paused and crinkled his face, struggling for the word.

“Understand,” the woman said through clenched teeth.

Da’Gara nodded and smiled. “You understand the honor?”

Danni looked at him helplessly.

Then she felt the tingling pain, and the goo at her feet came alive and began to roll up her naked legs. Danni’s eyes widened with horror and pain as the creature began its attachment, rolling higher and higher to cover all of her body beneath the poncho. She struggled and flailed.

Da’Gara slapped her across the face. “Do not dishonor Yomin Carr request,” he growled in her face. “Show courage or I put you out to die in empty air of surface!”

That sobered Danni. She still squirmed—who could not as the creature attached itself, tendril by tendril into her pores?—but she bit down on her lip and stood firm, eyeing Da’Gara sternly.

The prefect nodded his approval. “Glad I that Danni not dead, as was Cho Badeleg, when we bring you down,” Da’Gara said. “I expect to kill you myself and now, but honorably, this day.”

Danni didn’t blink.

“Reconsidered,” Da’Gara explained. “Perhaps it better
you stand with me to see
zhaetor-zhae
—” He shook his head, recognizing that he was using the Yuuzhan Vong word. “To see glory of Praetorite Vong.”

Danni shook her head, unable to comprehend what this was all about.

“You like see galaxy die?” Da’Gara asked bluntly. “That made long ago, for you see us enter, worldship. The begin of end.”

Danni crinkled her face; she was getting the gist of Da’Gara’s meaning, and the thought seemed absurd.

“Yes,” the prefect said, and he brought his hand in and gently stroked Danni’s cheek, which repulsed her more than if he had clenched his fist and punched her. “You see with me, and you see truth, the
zhaelor
, the glory of Yuuzhan Vong. Might you come to see and believe, and you join. Might you hold
viccae
—anger in pride—and you die. No matter. In thinking, I make Yun-Yammka more happy.”

Danni wanted to ask what or who Yun-Yammka might be, but she just shook her head, too overwhelmed by it all.

Da’Gara turned away from the stunned woman and motioned to another warrior, who approached Danni holding a soft lump of star-shaped flesh. She recoiled instinctively, tried to fight with every ounce of her strength. But they were too strong, and the cry of her protest was muffled as the fleshy creature was put over her mouth. Her horror only intensified as its tendril snaked down her throat, gagging her at first, but then joining with her, becoming a part of her breathing system.

Eyes wide with shock and pain, Danni was hauled through the chambers of the worldship, to a large room with a circular hole in the floor. The actual opening was larger than that, Danni understood, seeing the ice all about that hole, and she couldn’t understand why she wasn’t colder, why they weren’t all freezing.

That thought flew away, though, in an instant of sheer
terror, when Da’Gara walked up behind her and unceremoniously shoved her headlong into the hole and she fell down a long tubular worm to the watery depths below.

The prefect jumped in after her.

“I wouldn’t have expected anything less of Lando,” Han remarked when the
Millennium Falcon
came out of hyperspace and into view of the planets Lando Calrissian had taken for home and office. All the region about the two planets looming before them was littered with spacecraft, everything from small starfighters to the huge freighters and even larger shieldships Lando had used to protect other vessels when he had been mining on Nkllon, a planet too close to its sun.

“More traffic than at the Core,” Luke’s voice piped in over the comm as the
Jade Sabre
came out of hyperspace right beside the
Falcon
.

That left only Jaina and the X-wing still to be counted, and Han glanced at his wife, noting her concern. The trip from Reecee had taken a week, and while that was no problem in the comfort of the
Millennium Falcon
or the
Jade Sabre
, such a journey could tax an X-wing pilot to her limits. To say nothing of supplies. Jedi going on long journeys usually slipped into a self-induced nearly comatose state, slowing their metabolism and, for all intents and purposes, sleeping through the journey. Jaina had learned the technique and had proven she could do it well, in her training with Mara.

But doing it in a training room was very different from doing it in an X-wing on a long and lonely journey.

Even Luke had questioned his wife repeatedly about whether Jaina was really ready for this or not. Mara had insisted that she was, and no one could doubt Jaina’s piloting prowess. Since Mara was Jaina’s official tutor, there could be no debate, not even from Leia and Han, neither of whom were especially thrilled about putting their daughter into any kind of danger.

So Jaina had flown out here in the X-wing, same course, same destination, same speed, as the other two ships.

Why wasn’t she out of hyperspace yet?

That question hung palpably between Leia and Han, neither speaking it aloud, neither having to.

“Let me guess which planet is Lando’s,” came Luke’s call, his tone dry and sarcastic. The answer was obvious. One of the planets before them was brown and appeared quite inhospitable, while the other was blue and green, with white clouds floating through its sky. The scene reminded both Leia and Mara of the two planets they had recently visited: hospitable Osarian and rugged Rhommamool.

“Luke, where is Jaina?” Leia called, doing well to keep the concern out of her voice. She heard laughter from the other ship—Mara’s.

“Why isn’t she out yet?” Leia pressed.

“Because Mara fed Artoo the wrong coordinates,” Luke replied.

“A little test,” Mara explained, coming on-line. “Jaina’s nearby, but far enough out of the system so that she’ll have few reference points to use in righting her course.”

“She’s probably panicking,” Leia replied, and she could easily visualize the grin spreading on Mara’s pretty face.

“For a while, no doubt,” Mara answered. “But all she needs to do is look inside herself, to seek out the Force and its connection between her and us, and particularly to Jacen, and she’ll fly in at any minute.”

“And Artoo knows the real way in any case,” Luke quickly added.

“You’ve got a mean streak in you,” Leia remarked with a helpless sigh.

“Toward Jaina or toward you?” Luke asked, and again, Leia and Han could hear their sister-in-law laughing.

“Yes!” Mara answered.

Leia just sighed.

“If anything happens to Mistress Jaina, I shall personally scold Artoo-Detoo,” a nervous C-3PO piped in. “Oh, he’s the real troublemaker, you know. I am sure that he is quite enjoying this.”

Leia glanced at the golden protocol droid. “Not like Mara,” she muttered, and considering her present fears and feelings, she was only half kidding.

“Jaina’s fine,” Luke remarked. “If you reach out with the Force, dear sister, you’ll feel her, very much alive and well.”

Leia was about to do just that, but she didn’t have to, for the sensors on the
Falcon
’s panel beeped, and sure enough, Jaina’s X-wing streaked into view a moment later.

“Took you long enough,” Mara called to her, and she left the channel open so that the folks on the
Falcon
could hear her, as well.

“A little problem with Artoo,” Jaina remarked dryly, and they heard R2-D2 beep out his vehement protest.

Mara bade Jaina to take them in, and she did just that, but in a roundabout manner, circling wide of Lando’s home planet of Dubrillion to take a look at the operations going on at the other planet, Destrillion. A stream of small ships flowed down to this planet, bringing raw minerals from the asteroids to the great processing plants Lando had set up. Another, smaller stream of larger ships flowed off world, heading for the huge freighters that were sitting in orbit.