Star Wars_ Traitor Part 8

"I believe--" She nodded toward the viewspider's image sac. "--that you are about to find out."

Jacen stands in the amphistaff grove, watching. The slave seed shrieks flame through every nerve in his body: sizzling commands for him to run, to scramble and sprint for the coraltree basal only thirty meters away.

He burns in this fire, but is not consumed. The fire is an alembic that has distilled everything he is, has ever been, ever will be, into one eternal instant; like the white before it, the fire has washed away time. All of Jacen's time has become one single now, and the fire inside him feeds his strength. Out of the shadows, out in the blue-white glare of the Nursery's constant noon, four slaves suddenly step away from the nearest coraltree basal, letting its fronds drop from their hands. They do this casually, efficiently, without haste but with no wasted motion, and they glance toward the amphistaff grove, toward the deep shade where Jacen stands.

They don't seem to be in pain. This, Jacen knows already, is because they're not really slaves. He wonders fleetingly if Anakin had felt this way: calm. Ready. Looking at the price he was about to pay, and deciding he'd gotten a bargain. Out in the blue-white noon, the four slaves press the sides of their noses, and the ooglith masquers they had worn peel apart, filaments unthreading from pores to leave smeared beads of blood like sweat. The masquers ripple and flow down the revealed warriors, then squirm away to vanish in the gra.s.s.

The warriors walk toward the amphistaff grove. Jacen closes his eyes, and for one second he is among his family: his father's hand ruffles his hair, his mother's arm is warm around his shoulders, Jaina and Lowie groan and Em Teedee makes a sarcastic comment as Jacen tries one more time to tell a joke to Tenel Ka... But Chewbacca is not there.

Neither is Anakin. The four warriors stop just beyond the fringe of the grove. Juvenile amphistaffs whip the air threateningly, and the polyps'

groundmouths gape wide, mutely antic.i.p.ating a rain of blood and flesh.

One warrior calls out in harsh, guttural Basic: "Jeedai-slave, come out!"

Jacen's only response is to open his eyes.

"Jeedai-slave! Come out from there!" They wear no armor; the only vonduun crabs within reach are the wild ones that infest the bog beyond the coraltree basal, coming out at night to feed on the polyps at the edges of the grove. Unarmored warriors could not survive even seconds within the hissing swirl of juvenile amphistaffs.

Jacen adjusts his stance, organizing his thoughts and his breathing into a Jedi meditation that reaches deep within himself, beyond the searing pain from the slave seed, into memories of what he has learned through his mental link with the dhuryam: memories so vivid they are like a waking dream.

Now the fully armed warriors who guard the shreeyam'tiz are taking notice. Some begin to move deliberately toward the amphistaff grove, and the warriors who ring the hive-pond shift uneasily and adjust their weapons.

"Jeedai-slave! If we must come in, it will go worse for you!"

Jacen is deep in the meditation now; he can feel the thrum of emotive hormones through the rudimentary brains of the amphistaff polyps around him. He can taste their blood hunger like a mouthful of raw meat.

The warrior turns and barks a command in the tongue of the Yuuzhan Vong.

Two more false slaves step away from a coraltree basal and allow their ooglith masquers to slither down their legs. The newly revealed warriors grab a real slave; one holds him while the other crushes the slave's throat with a knife-hand strike. They step back and let the slave fall, watching dispa.s.sionately while he writhes in the dirt, choking to death.

"Jeedai-slave! Come out, or another will die. Then another; and another, until finally only you are left. Save their lives, Jeedai. Come out!"

Now Jacen's waking meditation dream interpenetrates with the memory of another dream, a real dream, a Force dream so vivid he can still smell the coralskipper buds, can still see the scarified faces of the warrior guards and the coral-maimed bodies of the slaves: a dream he had two years ago, on Belkadan. A dream in which he freed slaves of the Yuuzhan Vong. How astonished he felt, how bereft, when that dream did not come true. When his attempt to fulfill its promise ended in disaster, in blood and death and torture, he felt as though the Force itself had betrayed him. Now he sees that he had not been betrayed. He'd merely been impatient.

"Jeedai-slave! Come out!"

Jacen sighs, and surfaces from the meditation.

"All right," he says quietly, a little sadly. "If you insist."

His still shadow becomes a shade in motion, drifting noiselessly through the grove of blood-hungry polyps. He stops at the penumbra bordering the blue-white noon beyond. The amphistaffs whirl lethal halos at his back.

"Here I am."

"Farther," the warrior commands. "Move beyond the reach of the grove."

Jacen opens his empty hands.

"Make me."

The warrior turns his head fractionally toward his companions.

"Kill another."

"You," Jacen says, "are no warrior."

The warrior's three companions jabber excitedly among themselves.

The leader's head snaps around as though yanked by a tractor beam.

"What?"

"Warriors win battles without murdering the weak." Jacen's voice drips acid contempt. "Like all Yuuzhan Vong, you make war only upon the helpless. You are a coward from a species of cowards."

The warrior stalks forward. His eyes glitter a crazed, feral yellow.

"You call me coward? You? You simpering Jeedai brat? You shivering brenzlit, cowering in the shadow of your den? You slave?"

"This Jeedai brenzlit slave," Jacen says distinctly, clinically, "spits upon your grandfather's bones."

The warrior lunges, taloned fingers reaching to tear the eyes from Jacen's face. With an exhausted sigh, Jacen collapses before the warrior's rush, falling to his back--while lightly taking the warrior's outstretched wrists and planting one foot in the pit of the warrior's stomach to make a fulcrum. Jacen rolls, kicking upward, and the warrior flails helplessly as he flips through the air into the blade-storm of the amphistaffs. Jacen lies for a moment in the sudden rain of Yuuzhan Vong blood and gobbets of warrior flesh.

He turns his head to watch the juvenile amphistaffs rake chunks of the warrior's corpse toward the salivating gape of the polyps'

groundmouths.

Then he rises. He faces the remaining three.

"Well?"

They exchange uncertain glances. At Jacen's back, the polyps slurp and gurgle, and the amphistaffs whirl hungrily. The warriors stand their ground, calling out in their own tongue. In answer to their call, two of the squads who guard the shreeyam'tiz lumber heavily forward bearing amphistaffs of their own, bandoliers of thud bugs and other less familiar weapons, and wearing full vonduun crab armor. The sh.e.l.l of a vonduun crab can stop a lightsaber; it can resist even the atomic-diameter edge of an amphistaff blade. One of the three nearby shows Jacen his teeth: long and needle-sharp, curving inward like a predator's.

"Nal'tikkin Jeedai hr'zlat sor trizmek sh'makk," he spits. "Tyrokk jan trizmek, Jeedai."

Jacen doesn't need to speak their tongue to understand: no trick of wrestling will help a lone unarmed man against two squads of warriors, Jedi or not. The warrior is advising him to prepare to die.

Jacen smiles. It's a sad smile: melancholy, resigned. He nods. In a part of his mind far from the pain and the blood and the harsh blue-white glare, he can feel the dark satisfaction of the amphistaff polyps behind him as they swiftly, almost instantly digest the fallen warrior. He feels their glittering antic.i.p.ation, and the shuddering release as they use the meal of warrior's flesh to give themselves the strength to reproduce.

Amphistaff polyps breed as.e.xually; the amphistaffs themselves become a polyp's offspring, released from their nodules to squirm away in search of the proper ground to take root and begin their transformation into polyps themselves.

Through his empathic connection, Jacen shows them the ground he recommends.

Trusting their friend, the amphistaffs take his advice. He stretches forth his arms. The warriors can only stare in openmouthed awe as amphistaffs fall like leaves from the polyps at his back; as amphistaffs wriggle down the polyps' k.n.o.bby leathern trunks and slither through the gra.s.s. Amphistaffs twine about Jacen's ankles and climb his body like vines enveloping a forgotten jungle idol. They twist around his legs, his hips, his chest, coiling the length of his arms, shrouding his neck, curving up to embrace even his skull.

The approaching squads of fully armed warriors slow uncertainly, not quite sure, now, how to attack. Because the vonduun crab is not the only creature that can resist the cut of an amphistaff blade.

Jacen brings his hands together before him, and offers the warriors a solemn bow. When he parts his hands again, a mature amphistaff stretches between them, blade and spike, fully envenomed. As is every one of the seventeen amphistaffs that make up his armor.

Jacen says, "I'd like you all to meet some friends of mine."

Nom Anor hurled his sacworm across the chamber. It splattered against the wall, then slid to the floor, where it gave out a tiny whistling sigh, and died.

Instantly Nom Anor mastered himself again, wiping his lipless mouth with the back of his wrist.

"So it is over," he muttered darkly. "We have failed. You have failed," he amended, wondering if he could get far enough away in his coralcraft to escape Tsavong Lah's anger at this new disaster, wondering if he could give himself up to the New Republic, if there was any way he could persuade the surviving Jedi not to slay him on sight.

He still knew many secrets, valuable secrets...

Vergere interrupted his speculation. "Executor, let me go to him."

"Absolutely not. I can't have you running around in the middle of the tizo'pil Yun'tchilat, you foolish creature. Don't you remember that our Solo Project is secret? How secret will it be after you run through the Nursery trying to save his useless skin?"

"Hardly useless, Executor. As I said before, his education has proceeded very well indeed. Though I admit it could be going better right now."

"Could be better?" Nom Anor flicked his wrist at the viewspider's optical sac, where the dim silhouette of Jacen Solo armed himself. "He has learned nothing! He is about to throw his life away in a futile battle. Over mere slaves! He is as weak as any other Jedi--weaker!"

"He is not a Jedi," Vergere replied imperturbably. "And it is not his life that concerns me."

"Are you mad?" Nom Anor stomped furiously around the viewspider, which danced nervously to keep its delicate feet out from under the executor's human-style boots. "He cannot possibly win such a battle! How can he expect to fight two squads? Even if he goes back to hiding in the grove..."

"Winning," Vergere said, her crest fanning a solemn blasterbore gray, "is not the same as fighting. Watch." The shadow suddenly vanished, and the image within the optical sac shifted and flickered liquidly as the viewspider sought new visual sources.

"What's happening?" Nom Anor demanded uselessly. "Does he flee? Is he running away like the broken Jedi brat he has always been?"

"Executor." Her fingers wrapped his elbow, astonishingly strong.

"Jacen Solo no longer has the Force, but that is not his only weapon. He is a warrior born: eldest son and heir to a long line of a warriors. He has trained since birth in the combat arts. He has been tested and tried, bloodied in battle, and he..."

"He's nothing but a boy." Nom Anor stared at her. "Have you lost your wits? I know this boy. Humans do not honor warrior lineage. His means nothing. He is nothing."

Vergere spoke without the faintest hint of irony. "I tell you this: though neither he nor they yet know it, he is the greatest of all the Jedi. Jacen Solo is the living Jedi dream. Even without the Force, he is more dangerous than you can possibly imagine. You must let me go to him.

He must be stopped."

"Stopped from what? Soiling his robeskin as he runs away?"

"Stopped from destroying the tizo'pil Yun'tchilat. Stopped, very likely, from destroying the seedship itself."

Nom Anor's mouth came open, but from it came only a fading hiss.

The calm certainty in Vergere's eye silenced him as effectively as a punch in the throat. He couldn't seem to get his breath.

"Destroy the ship?" he was finally able to gasp.

"Don't you understand, Executor? He isn't running away." She gestured at the viewspider's sac, where it had recovered enough image to show a lone shape sprinting headlong to meet the oncoming thunderclouds of warrior squads. Vergere said, "He's attacking."

FIVE.

SEEDFALL.

Jacen Solo sprints into battle. As he runs, he makes an image in his mind. The amphistaff he carries matches itself to this image, coiling more than half its length around his forearm. An internal pulse from its linked chain of power glands generates an energy field that rigidifies its semicrystalline cell structure, locking it in that form: a meter of it extends from his right fist, tipped with a double-handspan blade. The same field that rigidifies the amphistaff extends a fractional millimeter beyond the blade, giving it an edge no thicker than an atomic diameter.

So it is that when one of the unarmed warriors springs to bar Jacen's path, hands wide to grapple, the blade pa.s.ses with only a whisper of resistance through flesh and bone. One arm spirals lazily through the air, showering droplets of blood; one leg topples sideways, twitching in the gra.s.s. Jacen does not even break stride.

The remaining two unarmored warriors decide they should leave him to their better-equipped comrades. Thud bugs hum through the air around him, but the eyespots of the amphistaffs wrapped around Jacen's body are infrared - and motion-sensitive; he is able to integrate their empathic reactions into a full-surround field of perception that is not dissimilar to the Force itself--and he has trained for years to avoid weapons that he can only barely perceive.

The greensward blossoms with scarlet detonations as he dodges, dives and rolls, comes to his feet, and keeps running. Dozens more thud bugs curve toward him, homing like concussion missiles as he sprints straight at the oncoming squads of heavily armed warriors. The nearest warrior thrusts his amphistaff at Jacen like a force pike.

Jacen dives beneath its point, rolling forward on his shoulder, stabbing upward; his blade enters the warrior's body at the joining of pelvis and thigh. The pursuing thud bugs denotate ma.s.sively, scattering warriors like toy soldiers swiped away by the invisible hand of a giant child as Jacen's momentum completes the roll, bringing him to one knee and driving the blade upward through the warrior's groin and entrails and chest. Only energy fields like its own can withstand the amphistaff's edge; the sh.e.l.ls of vonduun crabs are intricately structured crystal, reinforced by a field generated by power glands very similar to those of the amphistaff itself. But that field protects only the sh.e.l.l; beneath their sh.e.l.ls, vonduun crabs are soft, and when Jacen's blade slices through the crab's field-nerve cable from the inside, the armor might as well be made of bantha b.u.t.ter.

A multiple blast bug detonation slaps the warrior forward, and Jacen's blade shears through spine and armor alike to burst from the warrior's back in a fountain of gore--and slices as well through the warrior's blast bug bandolier. As Jacen rolls backward with the concussion and kicks free of the shuddering corpse, he grabs the severed bandolier. An instant later, he is up again, running, staggering, stumbling, deafened and half stunned by the explosions. Behind him, the warrior squads scramble and regroup. Jacen ignores them. All his attention, all his concentration, all his will, is focused on the blast bug bandolier in his hand.

The bandolier is bleeding from its severed ends; dying, its sole wish is to release its children--the blast bugs locked in its linked belt of hexagonal germination chambers--so that they might fulfill their explosive destiny.

Jacen can keenly feel its desire. In the emotional language of his empathic talent, he promises the ultimate satisfaction of this desire, if the bandolier will only wait for his signal. Ahead, the remaining two squads draw themselves into a tight wedge, its point toward Jacen, its broad base covering the bacta-tank-sized tub that holds the shreeyam'tiz.

As more blast bugs hum toward him from all directions, Jacen heaves the bandolier overhand like a proton grenade; it twists lazily, high through the stark noon. With his empathic talent, he projects a pulse-hammer thrill of antic.i.p.ation teetering over the brink to fulfillment, a shuddering surge of adrenaline that would roughly translate as - - Now!

The bandolier flares into a starsh.e.l.l over the base of the wedge at the same time as the blast bugs targeted on Jacen arrive in a thundering swarm, striking him and the ground and the warriors nearby indiscriminately, concussion bursts battering them all helplessly this way and that, ending with Jacen finally blown off his feet into a high spinning arc through the air. As the inside-out world wheels around him in a darkening blood-tinged whirl, Jacen has time to feel the agony from his slave seed - web suddenly ease and to push an exhausted empathic invitation down through the slave seed.

All right, my friend. Now it's your turn.

The blood-tinged darkness swallows him before he hits the ground.

"There, you see?" Nom Anor nodded contemptuously toward the suddenly vivid image in the viewspider's optical sac, showing Jacen lying unconscious, bleeding on the blast-shredded Nursery turf, still within his improvised armor of amphistaffs.

"Your 'greatest of all the Jedi' has succeeded in killing a mere two or three warriors.

A useless, weak fool..."

"You are not paying attention," Vergere chimed. "I ask you again: let me go to him before we are all lost."

"Don't be absurd. There cannot possibly be any danger. We'll watch the end of this little farce in full color. He is unconscious; the warriors will restrain him and deliver him as ordered."

Vergere's lips curved upward like a human's smile, and she opened her hands toward the sharp, detailed image, which showed Jacen stirring, shaking his head, struggling to rise.

"Then why are they not doing so already?"

Nom Anor frowned.

"I... I am not sure..."