Reunion (48 page)

Moving very slowly, Tahiri shifted in the direction of the voices. She could make out several figures through the understory, but not distinctly.

“At some point we must, I suppose,” the tracker said. “Else she will think we wish her harm.”

What
? Tahiri frowned, trying to fit that into her presuppositions. She couldn’t.

“
Jeedai!
” the tracker called. “I think you can hear us. We humbly request an audience.”

No warrior would do that
, Tahiri thought.
No warrior would use such honorless trickery. But a shaper …

Yes, a shaper or a priest might, a member of the deception sect. Still—

She leaned out for a better view, and found herself staring straight into the yellow eyes of a Yuuzhan Vong.

He was perhaps six meters away. She gasped at the sight of him, and revulsion jolted through her. His face was like an open wound.

A Shamed One, despised by the gods. He dared—her hand went to her lightsaber.

Then the shadow was back, and suddenly something sleeted through the branches, shredding the leaves and vines around her. She snarled a war cry and ignited her weapon, swirling it up to send two thud bugs burning off through the jungle.

Above her, through the now open canopy, she saw a Yuuzhan Vong tsik vai, an atmospheric flier, huge and ray-shaped, and from it snaked long cables. To each cable clung a Yuuzhan Vong warrior. One passed less than two meters from her, and she braced for the fight, but he went on past, oblivious to her presence, striking the jungle floor and uncoiling his amphistaff in the same motion.

A terrible wail went up from her pursuers. She could see them now, all horribly disfigured, all Shamed Ones. They raised their short clubs and faced the warriors.

They didn’t have a chance—she saw that immediately. For an instant, the tracker held her eye, and she thought he would give her away, but instead his expression went grim.

“Run!” he shouted. “We cannot win here!”

Tahiri hesitated only an instant longer, then made a series of steplike leaps to the ground. The first of the Shamed Ones had already fallen when her feet touched the spongy soil.

A warrior caught her motion from the corner of his eye and turned to meet her, snarling a war cry. His face transfigured in surprise when she answered it in his own language. He whirled his amphistaff toward her, a lateral strike aimed at her scapula. She caught the blade and cut toward his knuckles, but he parried with distance, pulled his weapon free of the bind, and lunged deep with the venomous tip. She caught it in a high sweep and stepped in, cut to his shoulder where the vonduun crab armor shed its fury in a shower of sparks, then dodged past, reversing the weapon and plunging its fiery point into the vulnerable spot in the armpit. The warrior gasped and sank to his knees, and she whipped the weapon around to decapitate him even as she launched herself at the next foe.

Combat was a blur, after that. Eight warriors had dropped from the flier. Seven were left, and fully half the Shamed Ones were bleeding on the ground. She had an image of the tracker, his arms knotted in a neck-breaking hold. She saw another Shamed One strike a warrior on the temple with his club only to be run through from behind. Mostly she saw the lightning-quick amphistaff strikes of the two warriors trying to flank her. She cut at a knee, smelled the scorch of flesh as the blade severed through armor. An amphistaff whipped toward her back and she had to roll beneath the blow.
Parry, thrust, and cut
became her entire existence.

Spattered with Yuuzhan Vong blood and bleeding from several cuts of her own, she suddenly found herself back to back with the tracker. He was all that remained of the six who had initially been following her, but there remained only three warriors.

For a moment, they stood like that. The warriors backed away a bit. The leader was massive. His ears were cut into fractal patterns; great trenchlike scars stood on his cheeks.

“I’ve heard of you, abomination,” he snarled. “The one-who-was-shaped. Is it true what they say? These pathetic maw luur excretions worship you?”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Tahiri said. “But I know when I see a dishonorable fight. They were not only outnumbered, but poorly armed. How can you call yourselves warriors, to attack in such a way?”

“They are Shamed Ones,” the warrior sneered back. “They are outside honor. They are worse than infidels; they are heretic traitors, not to be fought but to be exterminated.”

“You fear us,” the tracker rasped. “You fear us because we know the truth. You lap at Shimrra’s feet, yet Shimrra is the true heretic. See how this
Jeedai
has laid you low. The gods favor her, not you.”

“If the gods favor her, they do not favor you,” the warrior snapped.

“They are delaying us,” the tracker told Tahiri. She noticed he had blood on his lips. “They delay us while another tsik vai arrives.”

“Quiet, heretic,” the war leader bellowed, “and you may yet live to snivel a little longer. There are questions we would ask of you.” His expression softened. “Renounce your heresy. This
Jeedai
is a great prize. Help us win her, and perhaps the gods will forgive you and grant you an honorable death.”

“No death is more honorable than dying by the side of a
Jeedai,
” the tracker answered. “Vua Rapuung proved that.”

“Vua Rapuung,” the warrior all but spat. “That story is a heretic’s lie. Vua Rapuung died in disgrace.”

For answer the Shamed One suddenly bolted forward, so quickly he took the leader by surprise, bowling into him before he could raise his weapon. The other two turned to help, but Tahiri danced forward, feinting at the knee and then cutting high through the warrior’s throat when he dropped his guard to parry. She exchanged a flurry of blows with the second, though it ended the same, with the warrior flopping lifeless to the ground.

She turned to find the tracker impaling the leader with his own amphistaff. For a moment they stared at each other, the Shamed One and she. Then the Yuuzhan Vong suddenly dropped to his knees.

“I prayed it was you!” he said.

Tahiri opened her mouth, but heard the stir of treetops that could only be another flier arriving.

“Come on,” she said. “We can’t stay here.”

The warrior nodded and bounded to his feet. Together they ran from the clearing.

An hour or so later, Tahiri finally halted. The fliers seemed to have lost them for the time being, and the tracker had been gradually dropping behind. Now he staggered against a tree and slid to the ground.

“A little farther,” she said. “Just over here.”

“My legs will no longer bear me,” the tracker said. “You must leave me for the time being.”

“Just under this shelf of stone,” she said. “Please. It may hide us from the fliers if they sweep here.”

He nodded wearily. She saw he was clutching his side, and that blood covered his flank.

They scooted up beneath the overhang.

“Let me see that,” she said.

He shook his head. “I must speak to you first,” he said.

“What are you doing here? Did you follow me?”

His eyes widened. “No!” he said, so vehemently that blood sputtered from between his lips. Then, more quietly, “No. We thieved a ship from an intendant and came here to find the world of prophecy. We saw you land—is this the place, one-who-was-shaped? Is this the world the Prophet saw?”

“I’m sorry,” Tahiri said. “I don’t know what you mean. This is Dagobah. I came here for … personal reasons.”

“But it cannot be coincidence,” the tracker said. “It cannot.”

“Please,” Tahiri said. “Let me see your wound. I know a little about healing. Maybe I can—”

“I am dead already,” the tracker gruffed. “I know this. But I must know if I have failed.”

Tahiri shook her head helplessly.

The tracker straightened a bit, and his voice strengthened. “I am Hul Qat, once a hunter. Or I was, until the gods seemed to reject me. I was stripped of my title, my clan. I was Shamed. My implants festered and my scars opened like wounds. I gave up hope and waited for dishonorable death. But then I heard the word of the Prophet, and of the
Jeedai
Anakin—”

“Anakin,” Tahiri whispered. The name twisted a blade in her.

“Yes, and you, whom Mezhan Kwaad shaped. And Vua Rapuung who fought—you were there, were you not? ”

A deep chill ran through Tahiri. She had been Riina, then, and Tahiri, and she had nearly killed Anakin.

“I was there.”

“Then you know. You know our redemption belongs with you. And now the Prophet has seen a world, a world where there are no Shamed Ones because it will redeem us, where the true way can be—” He coughed violently and slumped again, and for an instant Tahiri thought he was already dead. But then his eyes turned toward her.

“My companions and I wanted to find the planet for our Prophet. One of us, Kuhqo, had been a shaper. He used a genetic slicer to get access to an executor’s qahsa and steal its secrets. He found intelligence gathered about the
Jeedai
, and evidence that there was some connection between you and this world. Some of your greatest came here, yes? And now you. And so please, tell me. Have I found it?”

He shuddered, and his eyes rolled. “Have I?” he begged again, so weakly this time it might have been no more than a breath.

Tahiri reached out and took his hand. “Yes,” she lied, not even knowing exactly what lie she was telling. “Yes, you’re right. You found it. Don’t worry about anything now.”

His eyes filled with tears. “You must help me,” he said. “I cannot take the news myself. The Prophet must know where this world is.”

“I will do it,” Tahiri said.

This time she was not lying.

Hul Qat closed his eyes, and even without using the Force, Tahiri felt him leave.

Tahiri glanced at the opening of the cave, so near, and she knew that was not what she had come for at all.
This
was why she had come. The Force had brought her here, to meet this man, to make this promise.

She rose. The fliers would find her if she remained still for too long. She hoped they hadn’t discovered her ship yet, but figured the odds were against it, since they hadn’t been looking for her and she had concealed it pretty well. Even so, she might have a little trouble getting out of the system, depending on how many and what sort of ships were orbiting overhead.

It didn’t matter, though. She had a promise to keep.

Even if she could figure out exactly what she had promised.

Long—
long
—ago in a galaxy far, far away … some twenty-five thousand years before Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin in
Star Wars: A New Hope
 … a large number of star systems and species in the center of the galaxy came together to form the Galactic Republic, governed by a Chancellor and a Senate from the capital city-world of Coruscant. As the Republic expanded via the hyperspace lanes, it absorbed new member worlds from newly discovered star systems; it also expanded its military to deal with the hostile civilizations, slavers, pirates, and gangster-species such as the slug-like Hutts that were encountered in the outward exploration. But the most vital defenders of the Republic were the Jedi Knights. Originally a reclusive order dedicated to studying the mysteries of the life energy known as the Force, the Jedi became the Republic’s guardians, charged by the Senate with keeping the peace—with wise words if possible; with lightsabers if not.

But the Jedi weren’t the only Force-users in the galaxy. An ancient civil war had pitted those Jedi who used the Force selflessly against those who allowed themselves to be ruled by their ambitions—which the Jedi warned led to the dark side of the Force. Defeated in that long-ago war, the dark siders fled beyond the galactic frontier, where they built a civilization of their own: the Sith Empire.

The first great conflict between the Republic and the Sith Empire occurred when two hyperspace explorers stumbled on the Sith worlds, giving the Sith Lord Naga Sadow and his dark side warriors a direct invasion route into the Republic’s central worlds. This war resulted in the first destruction of the Sith Empire—but it was hardly the last. For the next four thousand years, skirmishes between the Republic and Sith grew into wars, with the scales always tilting toward one or the other, and peace never lasting. The galaxy was a place of almost constant strife: Sith armies against Republic armies; Force-using Sith Lords against Jedi Masters and Jedi Knights; and the dreaded nomadic mercenaries called Mandalorians bringing muscle and firepower wherever they stood to gain.

Then, a thousand years before
A New Hope
and the Battle of Yavin, the Jedi defeated the Sith at the Battle of Ruusan, decimating the so-called Brotherhood of Darkness that was the heart of the Sith Empire—and most of its power.

One Sith Lord survived—Darth Bane—and his vision for the Sith differed from that of his predecessors. He instituted a new doctrine: No longer would the followers of the dark side build empires or amass great armies of Force-users. There would be only two Sith at a time: a Master and an apprentice. From that time on, the Sith remained in hiding, biding their time and plotting their revenge, while the rest of the galaxy enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace, so long and strong that the Republic eventually dismantled its standing armies.

But while the Republic seemed strong, its institutions had begun to rot. Greedy corporations sought profits above all else and a corrupt Senate did nothing to stop them, until the corporations reduced many planets to raw materials for factories and entire species became subjects for exploitation. Individual Jedi continued to defend the Republic’s citizens and obey the will of the Force, but the Jedi Order to which they answered grew increasingly out of touch. And a new Sith mastermind, Darth Sidious, at last saw a way to restore Sith domination over the galaxy and its inhabitants, and quietly worked to set in motion the revenge of the Sith …