Star Wars_ Traitor Part 9

"Perhaps the warriors have more pressing matters to attend to."

"More pressing," he said heavily, "than following my orders?"

"Executor, Executor," she chided. "You see, but you do not see." In the viewspider's image sac, the quality of light had changed: the Nursery's stark blue-white noon now took on highlights of red, gold, yellow that danced and flickered and played over Jacen's hair and face and his tattered, blood-soaked robeskin.

Nom Anor frowned at this, uncomprehending, until a thick twist of black, greasy-looking smoke drifted through the image. The new colors came from fire. His frown darkened into a scowl; his anger and disgust curdled into a ball of ice in his stomach.

"What is going on?" he demanded. "Vergere, tell me what is happening in there!" Now in the image sac, two crab-armored warriors staggered into view, scorched, bleeding from multiple wounds. One pa.s.sed too close to Jacen's back, and one of the amphistaffs braided around the human's torso lashed out convulsively, spearing the warrior through the side of the knee. The other warrior kept running headlong, fleeing without a backward glance, and Nom Anor soon discovered what the warrior fled from: a limping, snarling, shouting mob, bearing a variety of improvised weapons, from spade rays to malledillos to writhing wild amphistaffs as much a danger to their wielder as to an enemy, which descended upon the hamstrung warrior to beat and chop him to death with savage triumph.

"Those are slaves..." Nom Anor breathed. "How can slaves have gotten so far out of control?"

Vergere's crest shifted to a brilliant orange, rippled with green.

"Answer me this, Nom Anor: why is the viewspider's image so suddenly clear? "

He stared, drop-jawed and panting.

"The warriors were never his target," she said as though offering a hint to a puzzled child.

Finally, belatedly, he understood. The ball of ice inside his stomach sent freezing waves out to his fingertips. "He has killed the shreeyam'tiz!"

"Yes."

"How could he...why didn't you... he, I mean, you..."

"You will recall that I warned you."

"You... Vergere, you... I thought you were..."

Her black, fathomless eyes held his.

"Have you not yet learned, Executor," she said expressionlessly, "that everything I tell you is the truth?"

The tizo'pil Yun'tchilat dissolved in slaughter. Each dhuryam, severed from its telepathic links by the shreeyam'tiz, had been forced to wait, blind and deaf, sizzling in a rolling boil of stress hormones, burning with the desperate hope that the next sensation it would feel might be the awakening of sense and power and the pure clean knowledge that it, alone of all, had been chosen the pazhkic Yuuzhan'tar al'tirrna: the World Brain of G.o.d's Creche. But each had been secretly consumed by deep, gnawing terror: that instead it would feel only a slice of unstoppable blade, delivering the devouring fire of amphistaff venom to rip it out of life and into the eternal suffering the G.o.ds inflict upon the unworthy.

And so when the blast bug bandolier had burst, sending dozens of the explosive creatures rocketing into the tank that held the shreeyam'tiz--where the fluid bath that supported and nourished the shreeyam'tiz had multiplied their concussive force, sending an immense gout of fluid and blood and shredded flesh reaching for the fusion spark that was the Nursery's sun--all but one of the dhuryams could not begin to guess what was going on.

All but one of the dhuryams were shocked, stunned, shattered to find their slave-based senses returning; all but one were more than shocked, more than stunned--minds blasted away by black panic--to find that their siblings had also recovered their senses and their slaves in a Nursery that echoed with explosions and reeked of fresh blood, filled with terrified, cowering shapers and heavily armed warriors shivering on the edge of combat frenzy.

The one dhuryam that knew what was going on was not shocked, or stunned, or panicked. It was simply desperate, and ruthless. Dhuryams are fundamentally pragmatic creatures. They do not understand trust, and so have no concept of betrayal. This particular dhuryam, like all the others, had long been aware that its life hung upon the outcome of the tizo'pil Yun'tchilat, and that its chances were no better than those of each of its dozen siblings.

That is: twelve to one. Against.

None of the dhuryams had ever liked those odds; this one had decided to do something about it. It had made a deal with Jacen Solo.

When the telepathic interference from the shreeyam'tiz had suddenly vanished, the dhuryam not only knew exactly what had happened, it knew who had done it and why. And it knew what to do next. While echoes of the blast bug bandolier still rang within the Nursery, the dhuryam sent its slaves scrambling away from the coraltree basals, scattering toward a number of ooglith hummocks. A touch upon the nerve plexus that serves--in the shaped oogliths known as masquers--as the release caused these wild oogliths to retract similarly... but what these wild oogliths had enclosed was not their usual hollow skeleton frames of stone. These oogliths had been coaxed to conceal stacks of crude, improvised weapons.

Certain tools had been stockpiled surrept.i.tiously over some few days, concealed in the ooglith hummocks nearest the coraltree basals: mostly broad-bladed spade rays, long and heavy for the breaking of the ground, and armored malledillos as tall as a warrior, dense and tough enough to shatter stone with every blow. The oogliths had also concealed a number of sacworms, filled to bursting with sparkbee honey; sparkbees were the wild baseline from which thud bugs and blast bugs had been shaped, uncounted years ago. Each sacworm's gut had also been injected with a tiny amount of a digestive enzyme from the stomachs of vonduun crabs.

By swinging a spade ray like a catapult, a slave might hurl one of these sacworms a considerable distance. Accuracy was not a consideration.

The sacworms burst on impact, spraying gelatinous honey in every direction.

The enzyme-activated sparkbee honey clung to whatever it struck; on contact with the Nursery's air, it burst into flame. In seconds, fire was everywhere.

Warriors roasting to death within their useless armor were unable to protect themselves, and even less able to defend the shapers they had escorted.

The shapers, having no experience or training for warfare, could only scramble for the nearest breath vein. Many died: splashed with flame, or crushed by blows from malledillos, or hacked by spade rays swung like vibro-axes. On the surface of the hive-lake, burning sparkbee honey spread like oil. And all but one of the dhuryams shared a single thought: to gather to itself the slaves who were its eyes and hands. They had to pack their slaves onto the hive-island, to surround themselves with walls of flesh. None of them had any other hope of self-defense.

Except for one.

And so when all the slaves belonging to all the other dhuryams sprinted from throughout the Nursery, whipped onward by the coral seed-webs savaging their nerves, converging upon the hive-lake to drown the double ring of warrior-guards in waves of shuddering, clutching, bleeding bodies, the slaves belonging to one particular dhuryam did not.

Instead, they fanned out in teams of five. One team cl.u.s.tered around Jacen Solo, and waited while he dragged himself brokenly to his feet. Bleeding from a dozen wounds, he swayed as though faint or dizzy, then moved toward the lake with the five slaves around him. The other teams raced through the smoke and flames, skipping over corpses and slipping on spilled blood, until they reached the coraltree basals. In seconds, the coraltree basals became towering columns of flame, fueled by sparkbee honey. The slaves did not wait to see if the flames would suffice, but went to work with spade rays and malledillos and captured amphistaffs, chopping and pounding and hacking each and every coraltree basal to death.

Nom Anor stared at the universe of b.l.o.o.d.y carnage within the viewspider's sac with numb, uncomprehending horror.

"What...?" he murmured blankly. "What...?"

"Executor. We're running out of time."

"Time? What time? This... this disaster... We are dead, don't you understand? Tsavong Lah will slaughter us."

"Ever the optimist," Vergere chirped. "You a.s.sume we'll live out the hour."

Nom Anor glared at her speechlessly. Once again, that unexpectedly strong hand of hers clasped his arm.

"Have the warriors outside this chamber escort me to the Nursery.

And call your commander, if he still lives. I'll need someone with enough authority to get me through the guards, onto the hive-island--if any of the hive guards live that long."

"The hive-island?" Nom Anor blinked stupidly. He couldn't get any of this to make sense. "What are you talking about?"

Vergere opened a hand at the viewspider's optical sac.

"Do you think he's finished, Nom Anor? Does our avatar of the Twin seek only confusion and slaughter... or does he produce confusion and slaughter as a diversion?"

"Diversion? To accomplish what?" Then his good eye bulged wide--in the viewspider's image sac he saw Jacen and the five slaves who accompanied him wade into the chest-deep murk of the hive-lake, hacking their way through the churning, struggling, bleeding tangle of slaves and warriors. One of Jacen's companions fell, speared through the throat by a warrior's amphistaff; another was dragged under the water by the clawing hands of unarmed slaves. The three remaining swung their spade rays wildly, trying not only to keep warriors and slaves at bay but also to splash a path through the flames that floated on the surface of the lake.

Jacen slogged grimly on, half swimming, without a glance at the slaves who defended him. Any warrior or attacking slave in his path fell to lightning slashes and stabs of the amphistaffs he wielded in both hands.

He didn't even bother to wipe from his eyes the blood that flowed from a deep scalp wound. All he did was walk, and kill. He turned toward the center of the lake.

Toward the hive-island.

And kept walking.

Nom Anor breathed, "The dhuryams..."

"They are the brains of this ship, Executor. He has already shredded the tizo'pil Yun'tchilat, and he cannot hope to escape. What other target is worthy of his life?"

"You sound like you're proud of him!"

"More than proud," she replied serenely. "He surpa.s.ses my fondest hope."

"Without a World Brain to direct the separation and atmospheric insertion, the whole ship could be destroyed! He'll kill himself along with everyone else!"

Vergere shrugged and folded her arms, smiling. "Wurth Skidder."

Nom Anor's stomach roiled until he tasted blood. The Jedi Skidder had given his life to kill a single yammosk--and the dhuryams were vastly more valuable.

Beyond valuable.

Indispensable.

"He can't," Nom Anor panted desperately. "He can't, the life-forms aboard this ship are irreplaceable..."

"Yes. All of them. Especially: he himself."

"He couldn't! I mean... could he? Would he?"

"Ah, Executor, what a happy place the universe would be if all our questions were so easily answered," she chimed, opening her hands toward the viewspider's image sac.

It showed Jacen Solo on the hive-island's sh.o.r.e, driving one of his blades through the chest of a maddened shaper while with the other he opened what might have been either a slave or a masqued warrior from collarbone to groin.

Two of his escort survived; they had turned just at the waterline, where their blurring swipes of spade rays could not quite hold back a mob of suicidally fierce slaves. The two gave ground, forced backward up the beach, while Jacen scrambled up onto the nearest of the huge dhuryam chambers of calcified coral. He paused there, hesitating, standing atop the waxy hexagonal plug that sealed the birth chamber's end, his amphistaffs raised, again swaying as though he might faint. Below, blunt edges of spade rays hacked into slave flesh, and Jacen flinched as though jolted by a near-miss blaster bolt, seemingly only now remembering where he was and what he had come here to do.

Then he drove his twin amphistaff blades downward through the plug.

"A less tractable question, as you see," Vergere said, "is, 'Can we stop him?'"

Nom Anor staggered, fingers working uselessly as though he thought he could reach through the viewspider's image sac and grab Jacen's throat. "Has he gone completely mad?"

Vergere's only reply was a steadily expectant stare.

He covered his face with his hands.

"Go," he said, his voice weak, m.u.f.fled. "Kill him if you must. Save the ship."

She gave a sprightly bow. "At your command, Executor."

He heard the hatch open, then close again, and instantly he dropped his hands. In his eyes shone the clear light of simple calculation. He stroked the villip, snapped orders, then let it fall. When he opened the hatch sphincter, a swift glance a.s.sured him the tubeway was empty.

Executor Nom Anor ran for his coralcraft as though pursued by krayt dragons. He had not survived so much of this war by underestimating Jedi.

Particularly the Solo family.

Killing dhuryams got easier after the first one. The first one was murder. Jacen could feel it. Standing on the plug that sealed the mouth of the dhuryam's hexagonal birth chamber, the wax warm under his feet, almost alive, he felt the searing terror of the infant dhuryam trapped beneath him: smothering in panicked claustrophobia, nowhere to run, no hope to hide, screaming telepathically, begging bitterly, desperately. He could feel the life he was about to take: a mind as full of hopes and fears and dreams as his own, a mind he was about to rip out of existence with a slash of blade and caustic burn of amphistaff venom.

His every instinct rebelled: all his training, his Jedi ideals, his whole life absolutely forbid him to slay a helpless cowering creature. He swayed, suddenly dizzy, suddenly aware how badly wounded he was--aware of the blood that poured down his face, aware of broken ribs stabbing every breath, aware of numb weakness spreading down his thigh from a slash he could not remember taking, aware that the concussion he'd suffered from the blast bugs had left his eyes unable to properly focus. He had fought his way to the island in something like the battle frenzy of a Yuuzhan Vong warrior, where pain and injury were as irrelevant as the color of the sky; he had taken lives of warriors and crazed shapers, perhaps of the very slaves he was fighting to save...

He looked down at the beach. Beside the shaper he had killed lay another corpse. It looked human. He didn't know, couldn't know, if that had been one of the masqued warriors. He'd never know. The only truth he had was that this corpse had once been a person who had stood against him with violence. A warrior? Or a slave--innocent, driven to attack Jacen against his will, helplessly maddened by the lash of seed-web agony? Why did he feel like it didn't matter? That feeling scared him more than dying did. If that's who I've become, maybe it's right that I should die here. Before he killed anyone else. But each time the two slaves covering him, the ones trying to hold back the crush of slaves pressing up the beach, hacked into somebody's side or leg or head with a hard-swung spade ray, he felt those wounds, too.

Already, the inflowing tide of slaves had swamped the warriors guarding the hive-island; it would be only a matter of moments before the dhuryams turned their slaves against each other in a savage winner-take-all bloodbath. Dozens, maybe hundreds of slaves had been driven to their deaths already, thrown recklessly against the lethal ring of warriors.

Once the dhuryams turned on each other, thousands more would die.

To the dhuryam beneath his feet, these people were only tools.

Fusion cutters. Glow rods.

The death of a slave brought no more emotion to this dhuryam than the absentminded curse Jacen's father would use if a hydrospanner broke while he struggled with the Falcon's balky hyperdrive.

As though Vergere whispered in his ear, he remembered--The gardener's choice. He raised his twin amphistaffs over his head, then sank to one knee to drive them downward through the wax plug. He felt the blades enter the flesh of the infant dhuryam below as though they sliced through his own belly; he felt the caustic snarl of venom spreading into the dhuryam's body as though it coursed his own veins. He yanked the amphistaffs free and scrambled for the next birth chamber.

Killing the next one doubled the weight of his empathic pain, for the first one was still alive, still suffering, screeching telepathic terror and despair; killing the third buckled his knees and drew red-veined clouds across his vision.

And behind him, slaves who had been driven to suicidal madness by the relentless burn of seed-web pain now began to stop, gasping, blinking, to stand in stunned wonder, to turn to each other with hands out to ask for help or to offer it, rather than to wound and maim and kill. First the whole gang who had forced their way up the beach--then another gang, and another, as dhuryam after dhuryam thrashed, convulsed, death throes cracking birth chambers like eggsh.e.l.ls. Jacen kept moving. A red haze closed in around him, a b.l.o.o.d.y mist that might have been real smoke and fog and copper-flavored fire, or might have been inside his head, or both. The hive-island became a nightmare mountain, all jagged rock and killing and an endless scramble toward a peak that he could never see. Figures rose up, indistinct blurs lurching at him through the red haze, swinging weapons, clutching, clawing. He cut at them, cut through them, killing and scrambling and killing, falling to hands and knees to drive blades again and again through one wax plug and another and another, casting aside amphistaffs with their venom glands exhausted, drawing new weapons out from his own armor, his armor that lived and saw and struck these red-blurred shapes with death-soaked accuracy. Then he was up high, close to the top; he couldn't tell who might be around him or where he might be but he knew he was high up a mountain, cresting the uttermost peak of the galaxy, beyond the atmosphere, beyond the moons, taller than the stars.

He raised his last amphistaff like a battle flag. Before he could plant it down through the blood-smeared plug beneath his torn and cut bare feet, a supernova flared inside his brain... And burned down the universe.

There was nothing left.

Nothing but white.

Hungry white: eating everything he was. But he had been in the white before. He knew its secrets, and it could not stop him. Beneath this hexagonal lid was the source, the well-spring, the fountain of white. He could feel it down there: squirming alien tentacles bathed in slime and terror. He could cut off the agony. One stroke more would end it for everyone.

Forever.

He lifted his amphistaff.

"Jacen, no! Don't do it!"

He whirled, staggering, white-blind and gasping. The voice had been his brother's.

"Anakin--?"

"You can't kill this one, Jacen," Anakin's voice said from beyond the white. "This one's your friend."

Like a finger flick against a beaker of supersaturated solution, Anakin's voice triggered a phase change in Jacen's head: the white clouded, condensed, became crystalline, translucent, transparent...

Invisible. The pain was still there, smoking through his veins, but it did not touch him: it pa.s.sed through him unchanged like light through empty s.p.a.ce. He could see again. Clearly. Perfectly. He saw the scarlet rags of meat that were the remains of three shapers caught before they could reach a breath vein on the far side of the Nursery beyond the sun.

He saw the smoking ring of charred coraltree basals around the hive-lake. He saw the rivulets of blood trailing down his arms to drip from his knuckles.

Birth-chamber plugs all over the hive-island, pierced and leaking the blue milk of dhuryam blood...

Tangled corpses of warriors and slaves and shapers...