Star Wars_ Traitor Part 17

One of the arachnoids scampered along a strand that pa.s.sed through Anakin's chest at an angle from shoulder to floating rib. Neither paid the slightest attention to the other. Jacen looked at Anakin for a long time, then sighed.

"What are you this time?"

this time?

Jacen closed his eyes. "You remember Uncle Luke talking about his Master? About how he could feel Master Obi-Wan in the Force sometimes, even after he'd seen Darth Vader... seen our grand father--kill him on the first Death Star? How he could hear Master Obi-Wan's voice giving him advice, and a couple of times even see him?"

sure. everybody knows those stories.

"I guess I kept expecting you to help me like that. I mean, I know: you're not my Master. And I saw your body. I saw--what they did to you.

But still... I guess I kept hoping, you know? I just--I just wanted to hear your voice again. One more time. See you grin.

Smack you one on the top of the head for doing something as stupid as get yourself killed."

not that you ever needed all that much of a reason, huh?

Jacen's closed eyes filled with tears. "Yeah. One last time, you know?"

sure.

"That's why I fell for it. Both times."

both times?

Jacen tilted his head in a sketch of a shrug. "Back in the Nursery, when Vergere stopped me from killing the last dhuryam. She used the Force to fake your voice, and I..."

how do you know?

Jacen opened his eyes, frowning. "What?"

you sure it was a fake?

Anakin's grin was as playfully lopsided as it had ever been.

she was using the force, right? how do you know the force wasn't using her?

"I guess I don't," Jacen admitted slowly. "But it doesn't really make any difference."

if you say so.

"The last time, you had nothing to do with the Force. You were telepathic bait."

maybe i was. are you sure that's all i was?

Jacen frowned without answering.

what would have happened if you hadn't seen me there on the balcony?

He lowered his head. "I... I don't know. I might have let myself.."

fall, he finished silently. He couldn't say it. He had let himself fall.

He had fallen faster and farther than any mere drop to his death.

so seeing me there saved your life, huh?

"Yeah. I guess. But what you led me to... I mean, what it, the telepathic projection, what it led me to..."

it, me, whatever. Anakin waved a dismissive hand. don't get bung up on meaningless distinctions.

"But down there... down inside the cavern beast..." Bitter acid slid up the back of Jacen's throat. He couldn't go on.

you saved the girl, didn't you?

"Oh, sure. Saved her. I sure did." Jacen coughed, gagging on the memory.

"But the others..." There had been other people in the belly of the beast: a lot of people, fifty or more, nearly all human. They had come crowding to the mouths of the stomach chamber gullet-tunnels only a moment after Jacen had freed the girl. None of them was happy. With raw Force rolling through him in dark waves, he had been able to seize his own hands telekinetically, using them like tools to peel back the clamped-shut lips of the stomach-mouth. He could feel every centimeter of the girl in the Force, could feel her terror and hope and the agony of her acid-scorched skin, and with the Force he'd lifted her effortlessly, setting her safely on the bowl rim above. A Force-a.s.sisted leap had carried him neatly to her side, then he'd lifted her in his physical arms and leapt to the gullet-tunnel down which he'd come.

Her clothing had hung in tatters, her skin reddened, peeling, seeping fluid, cooking in the slow heat of the acids that still coated her; Jacen had swiftly stripped off the remnants of her clothing, replacing them with his own robeskin. It's all right. You'll be all right, he had told her. The robeskin will take care of you. It would not only absorb and eliminate the leftover acids, but also eat necrotic skin on her burns and probably save her from serious infection, even gangrene.

He hadn't told her that, of course; despite the darkening thunder of the Force rolling through him, he hadn't been thoughtlessly cruel enough to tell her--after what she'd been through--that the clothing he had given her was already eating parts of her flesh. And then, clad only in his breechclout, he had looked up and seen the others. The cavern-beast people, fifty-odd of them. Some of them had blasters. Some of the blasters had been pointed at him.

"It was so... so sick. I couldn't believe it." Jacen shook his head.

"I didn't want to believe it." Anakin stared at him patiently.

"Worse than Peace Brigaders. Worse than anything I can think of." Jacen shut his eyes against the memory. "They were living in there." The cavern beast was a conservative predator: if its telepathic bait captured more animals than it needed for food, captured survivors could live for a considerable while inside. The moisture that had dripped continuously from the "stalact.i.tes" was actually an internal food reserve, a.n.a.logous to a human's stored fats and glycogen, that could both hydrate and nourish creatures in the cavern beast's multiple crops. The cavern beast processed waste matter ultra-efficiently, extracting nutrition from its captives' feces and water from its captives' urine, and the body heat given off by captives helped the cavern beast regulate its internal temperature. When it needed the extra nutrition of a living body, it could squeeze one of its inhabited crops, forcing captives down the gullet to the stomach chamber.

"They were mostly downlevel refugees who'd missed the evacuation--but some of them were escaped slaves, from the seedship. The Yuuzhan Vong are familiar with cavern beasts, and they avoid them; it wouldn't surprise me if these were the original unshaped baseline from which they bred their worldships, like the one where you... the one at Myrkr."

He coughed, obscurely embarra.s.sed. "Sorry."

it's okay, jace. Anakin's grin was easy, friendly. don't worry about me.

i'm not sensitive.

Jacen nodded. "I guess I am, though."

you always were. go on.

Jacen sighed sadly, but anger began to trickle through his guts again. "So it makes a perfect hiding place from the Yuuzhan Vong patrols.

The cavern beast hides them, gives them shelter, water, food--sometimes it lures in animals that can be killed and eaten, or traps a refugee who's carrying a stash of protein squares or whatever. There's only one problem. Every once in a while it gets hungry. Sometimes there's an animal or two that can be thrown to the stomachs." Jacen swallowed and looked at the ceiling. Brilliant green fingers of moss had crept in through the crack forced open by the immense taproot. "And sometimes... "

His voice came out thick, hoa.r.s.e with remembered fury. "...sometimes there isn't."

Anakin nodded gravely.

the girl.

"Yeah, the girl. They had a rule: last to arrive is first to go.

First to go... in. The girl had gotten there only a few hours before me. But some of them--the ones who did that to her--" His breath went hot, and his vision began to haze subtly red. "Some of them had been in there for weeks. Weeks, do you understand? Do you understand what they were doing? How many--how many people--" He had to stop, panting, until he could force the rage back down below his throat.

Anakin watched him expressionlessly. Finally, he could go on. "They didn't even kill her, just knocked her on the head and threw her in."

Muscle bulged at the coners of his jaw. His voice dripped loathing.

"I guess they didn't kill her because they didn't want her murder on their consciences."

Anakin shrugged.

people are capable of rationalizing just about anything.

"But she woke up before the stomach closed over her, and almost got out.

Made it halfway. Far enough to scream." Jacen's voice dropped to just above a whisper. "That's where I came in."

so what happened?

"I sure wasn't about to let them put her back in. I wasn't about to let them put anyone in--but all the stomachs were opening, and the crops were forcing everyone down the gullets. The cavern beast wanted to be fed, and if they didn't take care of it, it'd just take care of itself."

and the last one in...

"Was me. Right."

they tried to feed you to the cavern beast?

Jacen said, "It never got that far."

no?

"I've changed, Anakin. I've... I can't excuse it. I can't even explain it. But you--you should know--"

it's okay, jace. no matter what happened--no matter what you've done, or what's been done to you--you're still my big brother, y'know?

you always will be.

"Big brother," Jacen echoed tonelessly. His eyes ached. He leaned his elbows to his knees, and rested his face in his burned hands.

"Funny...

these past couple of years, I felt like you're the big brother."

that's kinda silly.

"Is it? You--Anakin, you were so sure of yourself. So sure of everything.

So strong. I really--I looked up to you, Anakin. You always seemed to know what to do next. Things were so easy for you."

everything's easy when you have no doubts.

"But that's what I wanted. To be sure. That's what I thought being a Jedi was."

He lifted his face, and his eyes were wet. He laughed bitterly through his tears. "Don't you get it? You're exactly what I want to be when I grow up."

what, dead?

"You know what I mean."

i didn't question things because i was never the questioning kind of guy.

i was never thoughtful, like you. i was more like uncle luke: a human weapon. point me at the bad guys and turn me loose, i knock 'em down and everybody cheers. but things are different now. doing things the old way--my way, uncle luke's way--that's just getting people killed.

look at what happened to me. what's happening to all of us.

"Better that than what's happening to me," Jacen whispered. "Better off dead."

you think so?

Regret welled up inside him, building a pressure of guilt and self-loathing that he could no longer lock away. He looked at his hands: at the burn-cracked flesh in the middle of his palms, roasted in the lightning of his rage.

"Anakin, I went dark."

did you?

"Under the old Jedi Temple, when Vergere handed me over to Nom Anor--what I did was bad, but it wasn't evil. It was panic, and exhaustion, and suddenly finding the Force again when I thought it had been taken from me forever. Saving the girl... I'm not sorry for that.

Anger was all I had left. And I didn't hurt anybody."

except yourself.

"But that's okay, isn't it? Isn't that part of being a Jedi, to sacrifice your own welfare to save others?"

Anakin turned one palm upward.

you tell me.

Jacen looked away. Remembering hurt. Talking hurt even more. But not talking about it--not admitting what he'd done, rationalizing it, justifying it--that he would not do. I haven't fallen that far, he thought. Yet. He had used the darkness for strength, letting it course through his veins like blood to keep him upright and functioning while the cavern-beast people appeared, while he learned who they were and what they had done to survive. He might have been able to hold on to his temper, if it had only been that. What they had done-- what they had become--sickened him, but he was not a judge. He was a Jedi. He might still have found some way to help them. Even as the stomach-mouths gaped around them, fogging the chamber with their acidic gases, and the cavern-beast people had closed in around him, blasters leveled, coldly murderous while faking regret, he might still have resisted his dark l.u.s.t to do them harm. The final ounce of pressure on Jacen's trigger had come from the girl.

He's the last, he's the last! she had shouted. Take him--him! He's the last!

"She turned on me," Jacen said quietly.

do you blame her?

He shook his head. "How can I? She's just a girl. A girl who knows what it feels like to be digested alive. A girl who knew that if it wasn't me, it'd be her. Again."