Star Wars_ Traitor Part 22

And me." That strange sadness leaked back onto his face. "And you."

Ganner let that pa.s.s. It was clear that Jacen wasn't firing on all thrusters--and after what he must have been through, Ganner couldn't blame him.

"What if she had shown up on the camp s.h.i.+p after all?"

Jacen's eyes closed and opened again, a motion too slow and deliberate to be called a blink.

"Then I'd be having this conversation with her. And you'd have the chance to live to a ripe old age." Jacen had felt Ganner coming days before he arrived, and had done everything he could--under the circ.u.mstances--to discourage him.

The freezing dread, the growing conviction that he was going to his death, finally even the outright compulsion to turn and run, had all been Jacen's doing, reaching through the Force to push Ganner away.

"But nothing worked."

Jacen sighed and shook his head. "If you weren't so b.l.o.o.d.y brave, you might have lived through this."

"Uh... yeah. Right. I guess," Ganner said hesitantly. "But... uh, Jacen? You do understand that I'm not really dead, don't you?"

"You're the one who needs to understand, Ganner. You are really dead. When you came back to the chamber in the camp s.h.i.+p: that's what killed you." Jacen sagged exhaustedly against the wall, and rubbed his reddened eyes. "The warriors who were with me were going to slaughter you on the spot. The only way you could have escaped is if I'd helped you...

and if I had, if I'd shown them I was still a Jedi at heart... the pilot would have triggered the dovin basal and wiped out the whole s.h.i.+p."

"And themselves along with everybody else?"

"Suicide missions are an honor for the Yuuzhan Vong. That stuff about the Blessed Release? That's not just dogma. They really believe it."

And the sad, dark distance in his stare made Ganner wonder if maybe Jacen believed it a little himself.

"We've both been dead for a long time, Ganner. And today..." Jacen drew new strength from somewhere. He pushed himself off the wall and stood like a man who knew fatigue only by reputation. "Today is the day we stop breathing."

Ganner scrubbed at his face as though he could ma.s.sage understanding in through his skin.

"Then why not just let them kill me?"

"Because I need you. Because I can use you. Because we both have a chance to make our deaths count for something." Jacen explained that the "sacrifice" was a sham. It was nothing more than an excuse to get into what he called the Well of the World Brain.

Ganner understood this "world brain" to be some kind of organic planetary master computer, shaped by the Yuuzhan Vong to manage the ecology of their re-created homeworld. Jacen had been racking his brains for weeks, trying to figure out a way to get inside the Well, which was some kind of reinforced bunker, a sort of impenetrable skull designed to protect the World Brain from any possible harm. The Yuuzhan Vong--especially Nom Anor, who was Jacen's control--hadn't let him anywhere near the place.

They didn't entirely trust that Jacen's "conversion" was real.

Ganner understood. He didn't entirely trust that it wasn't.

"I've been waiting a long time for a chance to steal ten minutes alone in the Well of the World Brain. You, Ganner--your 'sacrifice'--you're my key in the door to the Well. All I need is to get in there."

"What's so important about this world brain? What are you going to do once you're in there?"

Jacen stood very, very still; his face settled into an unbendable durasteel determination that was pure Skywalker "I am," he said with quiet, absolute conviction, "going to teach the Yuuzhan Vong a lesson about the way the universe actually works."

A wave of chill s.h.i.+vered through Ganner then, as though some cold shadow had flowed into the Force.

"I don't understand."

"You don't have to. Repeat after me: have seen the Light of the True Way, and go to the G.o.ds with joy in my heart, full of grat.i.tude for Their Third Gift.'"

"You must be crazy."

Jacen nodded thoughtfully, as though he'd spent some time considering that possibility and had come to the conclusion that it could not be denied.

"What makes you think I'd go along with this?"

Jacen's durasteel stare fastened on Ganner.

"I'm not asking, Ganner. I'm offering. I don't need your cooperation.

Ten minutes after I walk through the door of the Well, we'll both be dead whether you play along or not."

"So why should I?"

Jacen shrugged. "Why shouldn't you?"

"How do I know I can trust you? How do I know I shouldn't jump you right now?" Ganner s.h.i.+fted his weight onto the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, reaching a balanced stance from where he could spring in any direction.

"I know you're stronger now, Jacen--stronger than I've ever been. I felt it on the camp s.h.i.+p. I know you can kill me if you want. But I can make you kill me here."

Jacen spread his hands. His face was blankly expectant. "Choose, and act."

"Choose? What do you mean, choose?"

"Choose to die here for nothing, or choose to die in the Well of the World Brain: where your death can change the galaxy."

Ganner licked his lips. "But how am I supposed to decide? How do I know whether I can trust you?"

"You don't." Jacen's face softened again, and a hint of the Solo half smile traced itself ruefully onto his lips. "Trust, Ganner, is always an act of faith. "

"Easy for you to say...!"

"I guess it is. You want to see how much I trust you?" He reached again within his robe. When his hand came out, he opened it toward Ganner, offering.

"Here." On his open palm balanced the handgrip of a lightsaber.

Ganner blinked. He rubbed his eyes. When he looked again, it was still a lightsaber. "Take it," Jacen said. "Use it, if you must. Even if you choose to use it on me. "

"You're giving me your lightsaber?"

Jacen shook his head. "It's not mine." He lifted his hand. "Go ahead.

Take it."

"So what is this? A fake? Another trick? Is it going to blow up in my hand? "

"It's not a fake," Jacen said with a sadness so profound it could only be expressed with quiet, dry exact.i.tude. "It's not a trick."

For the third time, he extended the lightsaber toward Ganner. "It's Anakin's."

"Anakin's...!" A sharp, hot thrill shot through Ganner's whole body, as though he'd been narrowly missed by a stroke of lightning. "How did you get Anakin's lightsaber?"

"A friend kept it safe for me." Jacen squinted as though mildly surprised to hear those words come out of his mouth--then he nodded, reluctantly agreeing with himself. "A friend."

Ganner could only stare, drop-jawed. Dazzled. Awed. "And you want to give it to me?"

"You might need one. Since I destroyed yours." Ganner's hand shook as he took the lightsaber. It was warm in his hand, warm with Jacen's body heat, smooth and gleaming. He could feel its structure in the Force, could feel the way it fit together, the individuality of design that made it Anakin's. He could feel Anakin in the handle. And he could feel a gap: where his own lightsaber had held a Corusca gem, this one had only a void, an empty s.p.a.ce in the Force--but to his eye and hand, the handgrip held a s.h.i.+ning amethyst that seemed to flicker with its own interior light. He triggered the activator and the blade snarled out to full extension, brilliant, eye-burning, buzzing with a hum he could feel in his teeth. It lit the whole room with a vivid, unnatural purple glow.

"What about you? Where's yours?"

Jacen shook his head. "I haven't seen my lightsaber since Myrkr.

For what I have to do, weapons are irrelevant."

"But--but " A dull thudding penetrated one wall, a wall dominated by a huge knurled pucker like a pursed mouth carved from wood. Voices came thinly from outside, snarling in the guttural retching hacks of the Yuuzhan Vong tongue.

"They're here," Jacen said. He nodded toward the lightsaber in Ganner's hand. "Better put that away. If they find it on you, they'll kill us both." A gently ironic smile quirked his lips. "I mean, they'll kill us both too soon."

Ganner was floundering, choking on unreality. His dream had made a great deal more sense than did his waking. He waved Anakin's lightsaber as though he'd forgotten what it was. "You have to help me understand--!"

"Just remember: have seen the Light of the True Way,' " Jacen repeated firmly, meaningfully, " and I go to the G.o.ds with joy in my heart, full of grat.i.tude for Their Third Gift.' "

As Ganner stood gaping helplessly, the puckered mouth on the wall suddenly yawned into a hatchway that opened on an enormous vaulted hall beyond. He jerked, nearly dropping Anakin's lightsaber in his haste to deactivate it and stuff it into one of his white robe's voluminous sleeves. The hall was full of scarified Yuuzhan Vong warriors standing rigidly at attention, weapons extended in present arms. Just beyond the opening stood a pair of nervous, sweating Yuuzhan Vong of a caste Ganner did not recognize. Both held leashes attached to reptilian creatures the size of banthas; the reptilian creatures crouched on their haunches while their taloned forelimbs forced the hatch sphincter to full dilation.

Several steps farther in, a dozen or more impressively costumed Yuuzhan Vong, caparisoned in identically fantastic arrays of clothing that shone and s.h.i.+mmered and writhed with restless life, formed a half circle that framed two individuals. One of these wore the immense spiny headdress Ganner had heard was favored by shaper masters; the other wore a long black robe, and grinned a lipless, needle-toothed smile Ganner recognized from his dream.

Nom Anor.

Jacen faced them without the slightest appearance of concern. "What signifies this interruption?" he intoned, once more in the rolling-thunder mode of his Avatar-of-G.o.d voice. "How do you dare disturb Me as I share the Light?"

Nom Anor stepped forward, and leaned close to Jacen to murmur, astonis.h.i.+ngly, "Very good, Jacen Solo. You wear the mantle impressively."

Then he stepped back, and said more loudly, so that those nearby could hear, "The monitor creatures suddenly lost consciousness. We were concerned. Is all well?"

"Your concern is an insult," Jacen snapped with magnificent arrogance.

Nom Anor's eyebrows quirked as though he struggled to suppress a smile, but the master shaper and the ring of fancy-dress Yuuzhan Vong--priestly caste, Ganner guessed--seemed to take him considerably more seriously.

Several of them flinched openly.

"Nothing can occur that is not My Will. If these creatures slept, it is because I made it so!"

Ganner blinked. Funny, he thought, how he can take pure truth and make it come out a lie. Jacen turned to Ganner grandly. "Tell these weak, faithless creatures what has transpired within this chamber."

Ganner blinked some more. "I, uh, I uh, I mean..."

"Speak! For I so command!" On the side of his face turned away from the vaulted hall, one of Jacen's eyelids momentarily drooped again.

Ganner experienced an instant of perfect clarity. He didn't have to know.

He just had to decide. Death waited for him no matter what. It wasn't a question of whether he'd die. It was only a question of how.

"I have seen the Light of the True Way!" His voice came out surprisingly steady, considering the flutter in his chest and the way his guts had turned to water. Hands within his sleeves, he squeezed Anakin's lightsaber as though it were a talisman that could lend him strength.

"And I, uh, I go to the G.o.ds with joy in my heart, and, uh, and grat.i.tude for Their Third Gift!"

Do you indeed? Nom Anor mouthed silently, a wicked gleam in his eye as though he were not in the least deceived, but one of the priests called out in a voice like an air taxi's blarehorn: "Tchurokk sen khattazz al'Yun! Tchurokk'tiz! "

The a.s.sembled warriors answered with an avalanche roar. "TCHUROKK!"

Enthusiastic little beggars, aren't they? Ganner thought unsteadily.

They sounded like they were leading a cheer. He muttered softly to Jacen, "What are they saying?"

"They offer me a shadow of my due respect," Jacen replied with regal a.s.surance. "The words mean 'Behold the avatar of the G.o.d.' "

"Tchurokk sen Jeedai Ganner! Tchurokk'tiz!"

"TCHUROKK!".

"And they, uh, like me too, huh?"

"They do not like you," Nom Anor interjected, as cheerfully malicious as a well-fed Hutt. "No one likes you; they merely honor your willing sacrifice to the True G.o.ds."

"Yeah. My, uh, willing sacrifice. The True G.o.ds. That's right. So--what are we waiting for?"

"Nothing at all," Nom Anor said. "Let's get this show started, shall we?"

THIRTEEN.

GLORY SICKNESS.

Ganner walked one pace behind Jacen's left shoulder, trying to look solemn and dignified rather than scared out of his mind. He was so nauseated his eyes were watering. He fought to pay attention to something else. Anything else. If he kept thinking about how sick he was getting, he'd drop to his knees right here and vomit his guts out. A broad ring of those Yuuzhan Vong who'd led the cheers back in the vaulted hall--whom Ganner had correctly guessed to be of the priestly caste--surrounded them at a respectful distance of about ten meters.

Ahead, ringed at a similarly respectful distance by an honor guard of warriors, walked Nom Anor and the shaper who'd been in the hall: a big ugly beggar with a cl.u.s.ter of tentacles growing out of one side of his mouth. The vanguard of the processional was a wedge of bizarrely mutilated warriors who carried various creatures of all sizes and indescribable shapes, creatures that the warriors stabbed and squeezed and twisted in time with their march, producing a kind of rhythmic music from their antiphonal screams of agony.

And then behind the priests who ringed Ganner and Jacen marched an immense parade of warriors, rank upon rank marching in lockstep, carrying unit banners that were some kind of sapling whose tops sprouted multicolored snakes' nests of writhing cilia, each different, distinctive, weaving patterns of color and motion that made Ganner's queasiness decidedly worse. But there was more to it than this.

The whole business was making Ganner sicker and sicker. He hated it.