Hero's Trial: Agents of Chaos I (2 page)

The X-wing pilots executed their attack with impressive precision. Laser bolts and brilliant pink torpedoes rained from them, taxing the abilities of the gunship’s dovin basals. For every bolt and torpedo engulfed by the gravitic collapses the dovin basals fashioned, another penetrated, searing fissures in the assault craft and sending hunks of reddish-black yorik coral exploding in all directions. Stunned by relentless strikes, the gunship huddled inside its shields, hoping for a moment’s respite, but the starfighters refused to grant it any quarter. Bursts of livid energy assailed the ship, shaking it off course. The dovin basals began to falter. With defenses hopelessly compromised, the larger ship diverted power to weapons and counterattacked.

In a desperate show of force, vengeful golden fire erupted from a dozen gun emplacements. But the starfighters were simply too quick and agile. They made pass after pass, raking fire across the gunship’s suddenly vulnerable hull. Gouts of slagged flesh fountained from deep wounds and lasered trenches. The destruction of a plasma launcher sent a chain of explosions marching down the starboard side. Molten yorik coral streamed from the ship like a vapor trail. Shafts of blinding light began to pour from the core. The ship rolled over on its belly, shedding velocity. Then, jolted by a final paroxysm, it disappeared in a short-lived globe of fire.

It looked as if the X-wings might attempt to take the fight to the warship itself, but at the last moment the pilots turned tail. Salvos from the warship’s weapons crisscrossed nearby space, but no missiles found their mark.

His scarified face a deeply shadowed mask, Harrar glanced over his shoulder at the acolyte. “Suggest to
Commander Tla that his zealous gunners allow the little ones to escape,” he said with incongruous composure. “After all, someone needs to live to speak of what happened here.”

“The infidels fought well and died bravely,” the acolyte risked remarking.

Harrar pivoted to face him fully, a bemused glint in his deeply set eyes. “Is that respect I hear?”

The acolyte nodded his head in deference. “Nothing more than an observation, Eminence. To earn my respect, they would have to embrace willingly the truth we bring them.”

A herald of lesser station appeared in the roost, offering salute by snapping his fists to opposite shoulders. “
Belek tiu
, Eminence. I bring word that the captives have been gathered.”

“How many?”

“Several hundred—of diverse aspect. Do you wish to oversee the selection for the sacrifice?”

Harrar squared his shoulders and adjusted the fall of his elegant robes. “I am most eager to do so.”

The transport gullet’s diaphanous seal opened on an immense hold, packed to the bulkheads with captives taken on and in the skies above Obroa-skai. Harrar’s entourage of personal guards and attendants moved into the hold, followed by the priest himself, perched atop a levitated cushion, one leg folded beneath him, the other dangling over the edge. The throbbing heart-shaped dovin basal that kept the cushion aloft answered to Harrar’s quiet prompts, attracting itself to the hold’s vaulted ceiling when the priest called for greater elevation,
drawing itself toward one or another distant bulkhead when Harrar wished to be borne forward, backward, or to either side.

Well illuminated by bioluminescent patches that rashed the walls and ceiling, the hold had been sectioned off into a score of separate inhibition fields, arranged in two parallel rows and maintained by larger dovin basals. Pressed shoulder to shoulder in each field stood scholars and researchers from a host of worlds, humans and others—Bothans, Bith, Quarren, and Caamasi—all jabbering at once in a welter of tongues, while black-clad wardens armed with amphistaffs supervised the winnowing process. Meant for coralskipper sustenance rather than living cargo, the immense space reeked of natural secretions, blood, and sweat.

Mostly, though, fear was in the air.

Harrar hovered on the cushion, surveying the scene with hooded eyes. His retainers fell back so that he could proceed directly down the center aisle and inspect prisoners to both sides. In order to reach the first pair of inhibition fields, however, the priest was obliged to circumvent a large access shaft that had been filled to overflowing with confiscated droids, hundreds of them, heaped together in a mound of entangled limbs, appendages, and other mechanical parts.

When Harrar ordered a halt alongside the small mountain of machines, those droids that constituted the summit began to tremble under his scrutiny. With a whirring of strained servomotors, domed, rectangular, and humaniform heads swiveled, audio sensors perked up, and countless photoreceptors came into sharp focus.
A momentary avalanche sent several machines screeching and tumbling to the base of the pile, far belowdecks.

Harrar’s intrigued gaze fell on a contorted protocol droid whose upper right arm boasted a band of colored cloth. He commanded the cushion to bring him within reach of the immobilized machine. “Why are some of these abominations affecting garments?” he asked his chief attendant.

“They appear to have functioned as research assistants, Eminence,” the attendant explained. “Obroa-skai’s libraries could be accessed only by those who had contracted with trained researchers. The symbol depicted on the machine’s armband is that of the so-called Obroan Institute.”

Harrar was aghast. “Do you mean to say that serious researchers consorted with these things as equals?”

The attendant nodded once. “Apparently so, Eminence.”

Harrar’s expression changed to one of contempt. “Allow a machine to think of itself as an equal and it will soon come to consider itself superior.” He reached out, tore the armband from the droid’s arm, and threw it to the deck. “Include a representative sampling of these monstrosities in the sacrifice,” he ordered, “and incinerate the rest.”

“We’re done for,” a muffled synthetic voice whined from deep within the pile.

Living arms of sundry lengths, colors, and textures reached imploringly for Harrar as the cushion carried him toward the closest inhibition field. Some of the prisoners begged for mercy, but most fell silent in stark apprehension.
Harrar regarded them indifferently, until his eyes happened on a furred humanoid, from whose bulging brow emerged a pair of ringed, cone-shaped horns. Bare hands and feet were hardened by physical labor, but the calluses belied a deep intelligence evidenced in the creature’s limpid eyes. The humanoid wore a sleeveless sacklike garment that fell raggedly to the knees and was cinched at the waist by a braided cord fashioned from natural fiber.

“What species are you?” Harrar asked in flawless Basic.

“I am Gotal.”

Harrar indicated the belted sackcloth. “Your attire befits a penitent more than a scholar. Which are you?”

“I am both, and I am neither,” the Gotal said with purposeful ambiguity. “I am an H’kig priest.”

Harrar twisted spiritedly on the cushion to address his retinue. “Good fortune. We have a holy one in our midst.” His gaze returned to the Gotal. “Tell me something of your religion, H’kig priest.”

“What interest could you have in my beliefs?”

“Ah, but I, too, am a performer of rituals. As one priest to another, then.”

“We H’kig believe in the value of simple living,” the Gotal said plainly.

“Yes, but to what end? To ensure bountiful harvests, to escalate yourself, to secure a place in the afterlife?”

“Virtue is its own reward.”

Harrar adopted a puzzled look. “Your gods have said as much?”

“It is simply our truth—one among many.”

“One among many. And what of the truth the Yuuzhan Vong bring you? Aver that you recognize our gods and I may be inclined to spare your life.”

The Gotal stared at him dispassionately. “Only a false god would thirst so for death and destruction.”

“Then it’s true: you fear death.”

“I have no fear of a death suffered in the cause of truth, the alleviation of suffering, or the abolishment of evil.”

“Suffering?” Harrar leaned menacingly toward him. “Let me tell you of suffering, priest. Misery is the mainstay of life. Those who accept this truth understand that death is the release from suffering. That’s why we go willingly to our deaths, for we are the resigned ones.” He scanned the captives and raised his voice. “We ask no more of you than we do ourselves: to repay the gods for the sacrifices they endured in creating the cosmos. We offer flesh and blood so that their work might endure.”

“Our god demands no tribute other than good acts,” the Gotal rejoined.

“Acts that raise calluses,” Harrar said in disdain. “If this is all that is expected of you, it’s no wonder your gods have abandoned you in your time of need.”

“We have not been abandoned. We still have the Jedi.”

Murmurs of fellowship moved through the throng of captives, reticently at first, then with mounting conviction.

Harrar regarded the disparate faces below him: the labrous and the thin-lipped, the rugose and the smooth, the hairless and the hirsute, the horned and the furrowed. In their home galaxy, the Yuuzhan Vong had attempted to eradicate such diversity, prompting wars that
had raged for millennia and had claimed the lives of peoples and worlds too numerous to count. This time, though, the Yuuzhan Vong planned to be more circumspect, destroying only those peoples and worlds necessary to complete the cleansing.

“These Jedi are your gods?” Harrar asked at last.

The Gotal took a moment to answer. “The Jedi Knights are the trustees of peace and justice.”

“And this ‘Force’ I have heard about—how would you describe it?”

The Gotal grinned faintly. “It is something you will never touch. Although if I didn’t know better, I would swear you were sprung from its dark side.”

Harrar’s interest was piqued. “The Force contains both light and dark?”

“As do all things.”

“And which are you with regard to us? Are you so sure you embody the light?”

“I know only what my heart teaches.”

Harrar deliberated. “Then this struggle is more than some petty war. This is a contest of gods, in which you and I are but mere instruments.”

The Gotal held his head high. “That may be so. But the final judgment is already decided.”

Harrar sneered. “May that belief comfort you in your final hour, priest—which, I assure you, is close at hand.” Again he addressed the multitudes. “Up until now your species have faced only Yuuzhan Vong warriors and politicians. As of today know that the true architects of your destiny have arrived.”

He beckoned his entourage forward. “This Force is
a strange, stubborn faith,” he said quietly as one of his attendants came alongside the dovin basal cushion. “If ever we’re to rule here, we need to understand just how it binds these myriad beings together. And we need to vanquish the Jedi Knights, once and for all.”

In a galaxy fraught with wonders, the convergence of columnar tree trunks and forking branches that supported the Wookiee city of Rwookrrorro enjoyed a place of special honor. Viewed from above against its backdrop of fathomless forest, the city appeared to have been rescued from the planet’s harsh underworld and submitted to Kashyyyk’s scudded sky as an example of nature and technology in consummate poise.

At the outskirts of the city, distant from the circular buildings that rose from its spongy floor and scaled the trunks of the giant trees themselves, atop a massive fallen branch that spanned several treetops, a ceremony was in progress, enacted in observance of nature’s timeless cycle of life and death.

The participants, including two dozen Wookiees and humans of both sexes, were arranged in a loose circle around a wooden table that happened also to be circular. Some stood, others sat on their haunches or on the ground, but all wore solemn expressions, save for the group’s only nonliving members, the droids C-3PO and R2-D2, whose alloy countenances remained, in all circumstances, essentially neutral.

C-3PO stood with his bulbous head tilted slightly to one side and his arms bent at angles rarely adopted by the life-form after which he had been modeled. To the droid the rigid posture seemed entirely natural, a consequence of the way he was put together and the ever-changing demands of the servomotors that permitted him to gesticulate and move about. Beside him, R2-D2 stood still as a fixture, locomotion struts planted firmly on the fallen wroshyr tree branch and center tread retracted.

In passing, C-3PO noted that the view from the fallen branch was really quite extraordinary. Fog was thick in the treetops, concealing the nearest of the Wookiee nursery rings and diffusing the morning light as might a prism. The view could even be said—though certainly not by him—to be
breathtaking
.

[We gather in memory of Chewbacca: honorable son, beloved mate, devoted father, loyal friend and comrade in arms, champion and clan uncle to all of us in spirit, if not in the traditional way.]

The Wookiee speaker was called Ralrracheen, though C-3PO had often heard him referred to simply as Ralrra. He was tall and aged, even for his arboreal species, but it wasn’t the graying muzzle that distinguished him so much as his curious speech impediment. On any other occasion C-3PO would have been tasked to serve as translator and interpreter, but none of the humans present had need of his polyglot faculties that particular morning.

[In Chewbacca, the defiant flame burned brightest,] Ralrra went on, black nose twitching and long arms dangling at his sides. [On Kashyyyk or farr afield on
distant worlds, he was never less than courageous and incorruptible—a Wookiee with heart enough for ten and eagerr strength enough forr fifty.]

Chewbacca had died six standard months earlier, during an ill-fated rescue attempt on the planet Sernpidal, after it had been targeted for destruction by the Yuuzhan Vong. The fact that it hadn’t been possible to retrieve his body was a source of sorrow to all, for had Chewbacca been returned to Kashyyyk a funeral would have been held—though for honor family members only. What Wookiees did with their dead remained a closely guarded secret. Some experts speculated that the dead were cremated; others, that they were either buried within tree knots or lowered by kshyy vines into the murky depths from which the species had risen. Still others claimed that the dead were hacked to pieces with sacred ryyyk blades and scattered on select wroshyr branches to be carried off by predatory katarns or kroyie birds.