Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime (5 page)

At his post, Yomin Carr, as he did every night and most days when he could inconspicuously hang out about the pod, dialed down the volume so that only he would hear any telltale signals, and covertly locked his dish on sector L30, the location he knew to be the entry point: Vector Prime.

“You want to play?” came Bensin Tomri’s call an hour later, his tone making it clear to Yomin Carr that Tomri was not faring well in the strategic battle.

A part of Yomin Carr wanted to go up there and engage in the game, particularly waging against Danni, who was a strong strategist. Such competitions were good; they kept the warrior mind sharp and focused.

“No,” he answered, as he had for every night in the last few weeks. “Work to do.”

“Work?” Bensin Tomri scoffed. “Like the greatest scientific discovery of the last millennium will happen at any second, to your waiting eyes.”

“If you feel truth to that, on the next shuttle you should go?” Yomin Carr politely returned, and he saw by their curious expressions that he had mixed up his sentence structure again. He made a mental note to review with his tizowyrms later on.

“Newbie,” Bensin muttered sarcastically under his breath.

“He’s got a point,” Danni said, and Bensin threw up his hands and turned away from the table.

“Are you sure?” Danni asked Yomin Carr.

“I enjoy this,” he replied haltingly, paying careful attention to every word, then settling comfortably into the pod’s chair.

Danni didn’t argue; in fact, Yomin Carr understood that she respected his dedication, that she wished some of the others would follow his example.

And so it went as the night lengthened. Bensin Tomri was soon snoring contentedly, while Tee-ubo and Garth Breise argued
and tittered about everything and nothing at all, and Danni continued to play dejarik, but against three computer opponents.

Then it happened.

Yomin Carr caught the slight blip on the very edge of the pod’s viewscreen out of the corner of his eye. He froze, staring intently, and dialed up the volume just a bit.

It came again, accompanied by the rhythmic signal that could only emanate from a ship.

Yomin Carr could hardly find his breath. After all the years of preparation …

The Yuuzhan Vong warrior shook such distracting thoughts from his head. He waited a moment longer, to confirm the positioning, Vector Prime, the predetermined entry point into the galaxy, then he quickly shifted his dish all the way over to Sector L1. That would buy him a couple of hours on this screen. He looked up at the main viewer, repeating the image of the central pod, and breathed a sigh of relief to see that it had already cycled past Pod 3 and wouldn’t be back for at least an hour—and even then, it would not overlap past L25, and the signal would be long past that point.

With the dish angle changed, Yomin Carr dialed his volume back up to normal, then stood up and stretched, his movement attracting Danni’s attention.

“Walk I—” he started to explain, and realized that he was confusing the sentence structure once more. “I need to take a walk,” he corrected.

The woman nodded. “It’s quiet enough,” she replied. “You can knock off for the rest of the shift if you want.”

“No,” he answered. “I need jus—jus—only to stretch out a bit.”

Danni nodded and went back to her game, and Yomin Carr walked out of the room. As soon as the control room’s door was closed behind him, he removed his hard boots and broke into a dead run.

He had to pause for a long while when he got into his private quarters, forcing himself to steady his breathing. It would not do for the executor to see him so obviously rattled.

Nor would it do for the executor to see him in this horrid human disguise, he reminded himself. Never mind that humans did not typically appropriately paint their skins or mutilate any part of their bodies to show their worship to a worthy pantheon—human eyes did not droop with the appealing bluish sacks beneath them, as did Yuuzhan Vong eyes, and the human forehead was flat, not enticingly sloped, as were those of the Yuuzhan Vong. No, even after these months as an advance agent of the Praetorite Vong, Yomin Carr could hardly stand the sight of the infidels.

He stripped off his clothing and moved to the full-length mirror at the side of his room. He liked to watch this, to use the visual stimulation to heighten the sensation of exquisite agony.

He moved his hand up beside his nose, to the little crease beside his nostril, his fingers working at the obscure seam at the side of his left nostril, the contact point for the ooglith masquer. Sensitive to his touch, and well-trained, the creature immediately responded.

And Yomin Carr clenched his teeth and fought hard to steady his trembling as the thousands of tiny grappling tendrils pulled free of his pores, the ooglith masquer rolling back over his nose and separating across his cheeks. The seam widened down his chin and neck and the front of his torso, his fake skin peeling back, rolling down until he merely stepped out of it.

The ooglith masquer shuffled across the floor toward the dark closet, making slurping, sucking sounds as it moved, and Yomin Carr stood at the mirror, regarding his true form admiringly, his taut, strong muscles, his tattoo pattern, nearly complete upon his body, a sign of high rank in the warrior class, and mostly, his intentional disfigurements, the oft-broken nose, the extended tear to his lip, the split eyelid. And
now, showing his ornamental disfigurements and tattoos, he was ready to address the executor on this most important matter.

He moved to the side of the room, to his locker, and he was trembling so badly that he could hardly work the combination. He finally did manage to open it, though, and as the top rolled back, the platform inside raised up, showing a brown cloth covering a pair of ball-like lumps.

Gently, Yomin Carr removed the cloth and considered the lumps, his Villips. He almost went to the one on the left, the one joined with Prefect Da’Gara’s villip, but he knew the protocol and wouldn’t dare disobey.

So he went to the one on the right and gently stroked its ridged top until the single break in the membranous tissue, a hole that resembled an eye socket, puckered to life.

Yomin Carr continued to stroke the creature, to awaken the consciousness-joined villip more than halfway across the galaxy. He felt the pull of that creature a moment later and knew the sensation to mean that the executor had heard his call and was likewise awakening his own villip.

Yomin Carr moved his hand back fast as that central hole puckered and then opened wide, and then rolled back over itself, the villip inverting to assume the appearance of the head of the executor.

Yomin Carr bowed respectfully. “It is time,” he said, glad to be using his native language once more.

“You have silenced the station?” the executor asked.

“I go now,” Yomin Carr explained.

“Then go,” the executor said, and with typical discipline, not even inquiring about the details of the incoming signal, he broke communication. In response, Yomin Carr’s villip rolled back in on itself to once again appear as a nondescript ridged membranous ball.

Again, the warrior resisted the urge to utilize the other villip, reminding himself that he had to move fast, that the executor would not tolerate any failure from him at this critical
juncture. He rushed across the room, back to his closet, and took out a small coffer; he kissed it twice and muttered a swift prayer before opening it. Inside sat a small statue of a creature, the most beautiful creature of all to Yomin Carr and to all the warriors of the Yuuzhan Vong. Its mass resembled a brain, with a single huge eye and a puckered maw. Many tentacles extended from that bulk, some thick and short, others fine and long. This was Yun-Yammka, the Slayer, the Yuuzhan Vong god of war.

Yomin Carr prayed again, the entire litany of Yun-Yammka, then kissed the statue gently and replaced the coffer in his closet.

He wore only a skin loincloth, as it had been in the purer days of his warrior people’s dawn, showing all of his remarkable tattoos and his rippling muscles, and he carried only his coufee, a crude, but ultimately effective, large double-edged knife, again, a ceremonial throwback to the early days of the warrior Yuuzhan Vong. Yomin Carr thought all ceremony appropriate for this particular mission, the linking salvo between the advance force and the actual invasion. He poked his head out into the hall, then moved through the complex, his bare feet making not a whisper of sound. He knew that getting out of the place without his human disguise might be difficult, but realized also that if he was discovered without the masquer, no one would recognize him as their associate. Besides, he figured, if he was discovered, that would only be an excuse to kill someone, an appropriate sacrifice to Yun-Yammka on this momentous night.

The night was chill, but that only invigorated Yomin Carr. His blood pumped furiously from the excitement, from the danger of this mission to the understanding that the Great Doctrine was at last under way. He ran to the wall and sprinted up a ladder, scrambling over the top and dropping, with hardly a thought, to the cleared ground outside.

The distant roar of a redcrested cougar gave him no pause. He was in that creature’s element now, but he, too, was a
hunter. Perhaps one of those 140-kilogram animals, with 10-centimeter fangs, huge claws, and a tail that ended in a lump of bone as solid as any crafted cudgel, would provide him good sport this night. And Yomin Carr was ready for such a challenge. His blood pounding, his strong heart racing, a terrific fight would be a wonderful release.

But not now, he reminded himself, for he was indeed drifting toward the thick jungle canopy in anticipation of meeting a redcrested cougar. He straightened his line and ran flat out to the tall girder-work tower, the only structure outside the compound. He considered the thick cable that crawled out from the compound to the base of the metalwork, and almost started for it with his coufee.

Too easy to repair, he realized, and his gaze drifted up, up. Fortunately, the gridwork pattern of the girders was not wide spaced, so up Yomin Carr went, hand over hand, his strong, toned muscles working furiously, propelling him fast to the top of the hundred-meter tower. He didn’t look down, was not afraid, was never afraid, and focused solely on the junction box and the cable.

Chill winds buffeted him, giving him an idea, so he went to work on the connection between cable and box gently, easing out one rivet, turning open one screw. The others, if they ever managed to get this far along in their repairs, would think this damage to be the result of the constant wind and the often harsh Belkadan weather.

Secure that the connection was broken, Yomin Carr started down the tall tower, again working fast, reminding himself that the incoming signal was likely nearing L10, and that he had a long way yet to go. He dropped the last few meters, landing in a roll and coming up right beside the cable. This time he couldn’t resist; he knew that these were just communication wires and nothing carrying substantial power. He brought the cable to his mouth and chewed it viciously, taking perverted pleasure in the tingle of pain as he got through the insulation and sparks erupted all about his mouth and face.

Let them find this break and repair it, he thought, and then return inside to learn that the system still would not function!

Mouth, cheeks, and chin bloody, his nose—already permanently misshapen and flattened to one side—torn along both nostrils, the warrior started back for the compound, but he stopped fast, noting a movement along the ground not far away. He hustled over and fell to his knees, and then smiled widely as he held up a reddish brown beetle with hooked mandibles and a single protruding tubular tongue. “My pet,” he whispered, for he had not seen any of the beetles since coming to Belkadan, since bringing them to Belkadan, and he was glad to learn that they had already traveled this far across the planet’s surface.

Danni Quee would soon learn the reason that her precious sunsets were becoming somewhat tinted.

Yomin Carr set the dweebit down again and, reminding himself of the dangers of delay, sprinted back for the compound, catching the top of the three-meter wall in one great leap, then running on, back into the main structure, padding quietly along darkened, silent halls. In his own room, he went to the closet, bidding the ooglith masquer back to him.

The pain as the creature enveloped him, thousands of tiny tendrils boring into his skin, was perfectly exquisite, bringing shudder after shudder of edgy pleasure to Yomin Carr. A quick trip to the mirror showed him that the disguise was complete.

Then he took out another small coffer and carefully removed the top. Inside was a single wriggling creature, a small worm. Yomin Carr eased the coffer up near to his ear and tilted it, and the worm responded, crawling forth and burrowing right into the Yuuzhan Vong’s ear cavity. Yomin Carr put his finger up there a moment later, to ensure that the tizowyrm had crawled all the way in, and also to signal the creature to begin its work. He felt the low vibrations a moment later. Tizowyrms were decoders, a creature bred by the Yuuzhan Vong alchemists to translate other languages. Despite
their diminutive size, they could store enormous amounts of information and could emit that information subliminally. Thus, as Yomin Carr left his room, he was getting yet another lesson in the language most commonly used in this galaxy.

A few minutes later, he was back in the control room, to find Tee-ubo and a very unsteady Garth huddled about Pod 3, with Danni working to reposition Pod 4 to the same alignment.

“Yomin,” Danni called, noting his return. “Come here, quick. I can’t believe you missed this!”

“Missed?” Yomin Carr echoed.

“A signal!” Danni explained breathlessly.

“Static,” Yomin Carr offered, running to her side.

And there it was, on the screen and through the audio lead, the clear signal of something—something very large—crossing through the galactic rim, into the galaxy.

“Extragalactic,” Danni said seriously.

Yomin Carr bent low over the instruments, studying the data, calculating the vector, though he knew, of course, that Danni’s description had been accurate. He looked up at her solemnly and nodded.