The Unifying Force (20 page)

Even mighty Nas Choka was not immune to petty jealousies, which is why he had tripled his complement of bodyguards—something Nom Anor had considered doing, but ultimately rejected. There was small advantage in announcing one’s apprehensions to one’s adversaries.

But how to keep those apprehensions concealed from the heretics …

He had mistakenly believed that the abrupt disappearance of Yu’shaa, the Prophet, would have weakened the movement. Instead, Nom Anor had only provided his gullible audience with a martyr, more so because many believed that Yu’shaa had been put to death on orders of Shimrra.

Tucked away in his residence was the original ooglith cloaker Nom Anor had worn when exhorting his followers to rise up against the system that had doomed them to become outsiders; a system that perpetuated a belief in gods who would deliberately shun their creations. It would be a different matter if every Shamed One was guilty of overreaching or pride, but in fact no one could explain—the shapers least of all—why implants were rejected. As a result, however, countless individuals were left wondering for the rest of their miserable lives where they had erred, when they had displayed pride or if they were paying for the transgressions of other crèche or domain members. The elite pretended sympathy, when in fact they fairly luxuriated in witnessing their competitors fall from grace.
How grievous what befell Consul Shal Tor at the last escalation—but how happy I am that it wasn’t me
.

Only a short time ago—before his life-turning decision on Zonama Sekot—Nom Anor, sufficiently inflamed by the inequity, had wished to see his entire culture tumbled down; to see Shimrra shaken from his polyp throne by the debased members of Yuuzhan Vong society. And he had very nearly succeeded. What might have come from that was unclear. If the war were lost, what would it mean for Nom Anor, since—save
for the Jedi—the inhabitants of the galaxy the Yuuzhan Vong had invaded were not above barbarity?

Flight, imprisonment, execution … he couldn’t take the chance.

Now the very movement born of rumors escaped from distant Yavin, and given order and embellishment by Nom Anor himself, threatened to deprive him of all that he had achieved by opting to foil Zonama Sekot, and thereby reinstate himself in Shimrra’s good graces.

The thought weighed on him as his living transport lumbered past the Place of Sacrifice, where priests and savants, adepts and initiates were busy preparing for the coming ceremony; past the shell-like shops of workers; and past solitary Shamed Ones, in their threadbare garments, begging for alms.

Before Nas Choka had been escalated, he had had occasion to reproach Nom Anor for pride, and counsel him look to Yun-Shuno, god of the Shamed Ones, for pardon.

All these years later, here he was their
prophet
.

The ychna led the attack on Caluula Station.

Towed into place by a special breed of dovin basal grown on faraway Tynna, the monster slug fastened itself to Caluula’s deflector shields like a leech, fattening as it absorbed every joule of ionized energy the generator could summon, then taking the suddenly vulnerable central module in its enormous mouth and crushing it like an eggshell. No sooner had the module depressurized than into the rend dropped hundreds of Yuuzhan Vong warriors, disgorged from landing craft and outfitted with armor and the star-shaped breathing creatures known as gnulliths.

Squadrons of battered starfighters streaked from the station’s launching bays to engage swift flights of strafing coralskippers. Close-in weapons traversed and fired, pouring storms of green energy at the approaching capital ships. In the intact modules, klaxons continued to wail, locks cycled, and blast shields descended to seal off corridors and vital enclosures. Against the barricades of solid durasteel, the Yuuzhan Vong splashed red-hot magma, and where that failed they loosed an improved stock of black-plated grutchyna, whose digestive acids were corrosive enough to burn through alloy.

Close to where the ychna was feasting, crouched behind a rampart of fuel-depleted loaders and stacked cargo crates, Han, Leia, and two dozen soldiers waited with hand weapons, assault rifles, repeating blasters, and a few grenades and rockets that had been scrounged from Caluula’s near-empty armory. Those droids that weren’t carrying ammunition or standing by to refresh weapons moved about in a daze, including C-3PO, who was walking in tight circles behind Leia.

“Don’t lose your head,” she told him. “Lend a hand.”

“But, Princess Leia, I’m scarcely a war machine. I’m useless for anything but protocol and translation. Oh, where is Artoo-Detoo when we need him?”

“Threepio, you’re forgetting that you’ve been as courageous as Artoo ever was.”

C-3PO came to a halt. “Have I? Well now that you mention it, there was that incident on—”

“Incoming!” a soldier yelled from down the line.

Fifty meters away something was burning an enormous hole in the lowered blast shield. Clouds of noxious vapor streamed from the ragged edges of a widening circle.

Han checked the charge of his DL-44 and drew a bead on the center of the circle. “Hold your fire,” he said. “Wait till they show themselves …”

First through the breach were a pair of grutchyna. The six-meter-long beasts leapt snarling from the acid clouds like apparitions, only to be cut to pieces by blasterfire before they had gone ten meters. Then the armored warriors came, rushing through in groups of three and four, hands gripped on amphistaffs or bandoliers of thud bugs.

“Now!” Han shouted.

Thirty blasters fired simultaneously, dropping the vanguard dozen, then a dozen more behind them. But the Yuuzhan Vong kept coming, treading on their fallen comrades in a mad charge and hurling plasma eels and amphistaffs on the run. The weapons thumped against the barrier and caught one or two of the defenders by surprise. But no razor bugs or airborne venom followed, making clearer than ever that the warriors wanted captives, not casualties. Advancing into the grid of laserfire with fists raised in overtures of personal challenge, they were mowed down by the fives and tens, seemingly ignorant of the fact that the Alliance soldiers were playing by a different set of rules.

The warriors would have called foul if they could—foul at being so dishonored. Their every action defied death and sowed confusion. And somehow that made them harder to kill, rather than easier targets.

Blasters fired nonstop, and the thrumming blade of Leia’s lightsaber batted away a hail of thud bugs. But the line
couldn’t be held. Outnumbered, the defenders were forced to fall back. The Yuuzhan Vong pressed the attack, stopping only to drag away and bind those they had stunned. The warriors exulted at the taking of each captive, even though six of their number might have died to gain one victim.

Withdrawing deeper into the station, Leia was glancing over her shoulder as she approached a corridor intersection when Han suddenly threw his left arm around her waist and twirled her off to one side. From the scarlet glow of the intersecting corridor dropped an amphistaff thick as a war club, slicing the air where she would have been and hitting the deck with a hollow
thud!
The warrior attached to the amphistaff howled and sprang forward, falling victim to a precisely placed bolt from Han’s sidearm.

“You do care, after all,” Leia said around a short-lived grin. Still in his one-armed embrace, she went up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek.

Han smiled and let her go. “What’s a star without his leading lady?”

“Combat always did bring out the romantic in you.” She started off after him, then stopped and turned to see C-3PO dithering at the intersection.

“This way, Threepio—hurry!”

He glanced at her, then gestured to the side corridor. “But, Princess—”

“Come on!”

C-3PO muttered something, then began to shuffle forward as fast as his squeaking legs would carry him. Leia and Han were waiting for him at the next blast shield. She palmed the operating stud as soon as C-3PO had crossed the threshold, but the shield closed only halfway. Han pounded the stud with his fist, then, stepping back a meter, fired a bolt into the control panel.

Leia ducked the ricochet and shook her head in dismay. “Anyone ever tell you you’re as hard on technology as the Yuuzhan Vong?”

The thick blast shield vibrated and slammed to the deck.

Han grinned smugly. “Only when technology puts up an argument. And speaking of which, where’d Threepio go?”

Taking a quick look around, Leia found him cowering in a corner.

“What’re you standing around for?” Han said. “You want to end up as a skewered droid?”

“No, Captain Solo, but the blast door—”

His words were garbled by the sound of approaching footfalls. Leia raised her lightsaber; Han, his blaster. But it was a dozen Alliance soldiers who showed up a moment later.

“You don’t want to go that way,” Han and one of the soldiers said at the same time.

“Yuuzhan Vong,” Han said, pointing toward the blast shield.

“Dead end,” the soldier said, pointing in the opposite direction.

Han stared at the blast shield, then whipped around. “Dead end?”

C-3PO raised his hands to his head. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”

Something rammed into the far side of the blast shield, and within seconds wisps of stinging smoke began curling from a series of small perforations. Han and Leia looked at each other.

“Weren’t we just here?” she commented.

Everyone moved back from the shield to take up positions in the corridor. Again, Han checked the charge of his blaster, which was down to 50 percent.

“I’m not letting them take me alive, Captain,” a soldier nearby said.

Han aimed his forefinger at the young man. “You’re not going to be
taken
. Leave it at that, soldier.”

The soldier gulped and nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

The center of the blast shield was rapidly dissolving. War cries and shouts of personal challenge echoed in the corridor.

Han listened for a moment, then swung to Leia. “I’ve got something that just might pass for an idea. Threepio, get over here!”

The droid rose unsteadily from behind a rodent’s nest of corroded ventilation ducts. “Coming, sir.”

Han looked straight into C-3PO’s photoreceptors. “Three-pio, I want you to talk to the Yuuzhan Vong in their own language.”

“Talk to them? But I wouldn’t begin to know what to say.”

Han’s nostrils flared. “What, suddenly you’re at a loss for words? Tell them that all warriors are needed for individual combat in the number one module. Tell them it’s lunchtime for all I care!”

“I don’t believe the Yuuzhan Vong have a word for—”

“Do as Han says, Threepio,” Leia interrupted.

C-3PO’s head moved in fits and starts. “How can I possibly mimic—”

“Boost the bass settings of your audio output modifier,” a soldier suggested.

C-3PO canted his head. “Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

“Yeah, and throw in some sound effects while you’re at it,” Han added.

It took C-3PO a moment to realize that Han was joking. “Sound effects, indeed,” he muttered. “Why doesn’t someone just paint a target on my recharge coupling.”

Han hurried him to a public address comlink mounted on the interior bulkhead. “Say something!”

Placing his vocabulator close to the mike grate, C-3PO began to speak.
“Bruk tukken Vong pratte, al’tanna brenzlit tchurokk …”

Almost instantly, the war cries ceased.

“That’s the idea!” Han encouraged. “Keep talking!”

The droid carried on for another minute, finishing with the phrase:
“Al’tanna Shimrra knotte Yun’o!”
—Long life to Shimrra, beloved of the gods!

“They’re withdrawing!” the soldier closest to the blast shield reported.

Han clapped C-3PO hard on the back, then wrung his hand in pain. “Good going, Goldenrod! You did it!”

C-3PO straightened. “I do have my moments.”

“Of course you do. Now let’s get out of here!”

They waited to make certain that the warriors were gone, then one by one they squeezed through the hole in the blast shield and took the corridor Threepio had wanted everyone to take to begin with. Not one hundred meters along, however,
they ran smack into an enemy hunting party. But this time C-3PO was prepared. Adjusting the audio output modifier, he began to speak, completing just two sentences before a storm of thud bugs whirled through the corridor, prompting Han, Leia, and the rest to hit the deck.

“What’d you say to them?” Han asked, up on one knee, with his blaster raised.

C-3PO thought for a moment. “Oh, my. I may have mixed up my words.” He looked down at Han. “I think I
insulted
them!” “Well, that’s just great.”

“Really, Threepio,” Leia said. “Now you’ve made them angry.”

Everyone raced back to the intersection, but with a dead end in one direction and Yuuzhan Vong in the other, there was no safe turn.

They had to make a stand.

The band of warriors C-3PO had insulted surged down the corridor. Forty strong, they outnumbered the defenders better than two to one. Fusillades of blasterfire improved the odds somewhat, but also depleted many of the weapons. Exhilarated by the sight of empty blasters being hurled aside, the warriors ordered their amphistaffs to curl about their forearms, and began to strut forward, determined to go hand to hand with their quarries. Several of them had their sights set on Leia, who was parrying the last of the thud bugs with nimble twists of her lightsaber.

Han broke for her side, shooting from the hip to drop two of Leia’s would-be contenders. Two others were quick to fill the gap. One lost his head to Leia’s blade. The other flew straight at Han, driving him clear across the corridor and hard into the exterior bulkhead. Dodging hammer blows, Han slid down the wall and squirmed between the warrior’s legs, hoping to be able to choke him from behind. But the warrior spun while Han was struggling to stand, vising his huge hands around Han’s neck in an
asth-korr
throat hold and whirling him back against the bulkhead.

Han saw stars; then darkness made a narrow tunnel of his vision. He was gasping for breath when the warrior’s head suddenly exploded. The hands on Han’s throat loosened, and
the body crumpled to the deck, taking Han with it. Certain that Leia had saved him, he tried to crawl out from under the Yuuzhan Vong, but the corpse wouldn’t budge. His outstretched right hand seized on a small object and he held it up to his eyes. As long as a human finger, and somewhat thicker, it was an older-generation rocket dart, with its obviously defective explosive tip still attached.