Dark Journey (35 page)

A quick, glad surge lifted Jaina’s heart. Wistfully, she wondered if someday she could merit the friendship of someone like Jag, someone whose gaze, like Leia’s, never seemed to swerve from a hero’s path.

If Kyp picked up on Jaina’s thoughts, he was tactful enough not to let on. “You ready?”

She responded with a firm nod, and then turned her eyes to the challenges ahead.

   Khalee Lah strode into Harrar’s chamber and dropped to one knee.

“The battle was a failure,” he said bluntly. “The
Jeedai
escaped. It would seem that I was infected with the heresy, or the gods would have allowed me to die in glorious battle. My failure can only serve to tarnish my domain. The name of the warmaster, whom you name friend.”

The priest absorbed this in silence. This request went far past hinting. In response, he reached for the mechanical abomination and handed it to the warrior.

“I will report to Tsavong Lah that his kinsman died in battle, through the trickery of the
Jeedai
, sacrificed by his own men. Put this upon your ship, and it will be so.”

Khalee Lah bowed his head and accepted the device. He rose and strode from the room.

Left alone, Harrar took his villip and reported to Tsavong Lah what he had promised to say. “Jaina Solo proved to be a far more worthy foe than anticipated,” he
concluded, “and it may be some time before the twin sacrifice can go forward.”

“The gods willed it so,” Tsavong Lah said. “Continue pursuit, and we will speak of this matter again.”

The villip inverted abruptly, leaving Harrar deep in speculation. His failure was not dealt with as harshly as he expected, and the priest of deception wondered if perhaps he was not the only one who had failed.

Was it possible, he wondered, that Jacen Solo might not have survived, after all?

A former music and history teacher, Elaine Cunningham has written 15 fantasy novels and many short stories. She is currently co-writing a book with Forgotten Realms creator Greenwood, and is also working on
Shadows in the Darkness
, the first book of a new dark fantasy series in a contemporary urban setting. In her free time, she plays Celtic harp and Irish fiddle, reads Arthurian lore and Scottish history, and works in her gardens. She lives in a coastal New England town with her family and a pair of eccentric Siamese cats. Visit Elaine’s website at
www.ElaineCunningham.com

Also by Elaine Cunningham

Forgotten Realms: Songs and Swords

ELFSHADOW

ELFSONG

SILVER SHADOWS

THE DREAM SPHERES

THORNHOLD

Forgotten Realms: Counselors and Kings

THE MAGEHOUND

FLOODGATE

THE WIZARDWAR

Forgotten Realms

EVERMEET: ISLAND OF THE ELVES

Forgotten Realms: Starlight and Shadows

DAUGHTER OF THE DROW

TANGLED WEBS

WINDWALKER

Spelljammer: The Cloakmaster’s Cycle

THE RADIANT DRAGON (book 4 of 6)

First Quest

THE UNICORN HUNT

You saw the movies. You watched the cartoon series, or maybe played some of the video games. But did you know …

In
The Empire Strikes Back
, Princess Leia Organa said to Han Solo, “I love you.” Han said, “I know.” But did you know that they actually got married? And had three Jedi children: the twins, Jacen and Jaina, and a younger son, Anakin?

Luke Skywalker was trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. But did you know that, years later, he went on to revive the Jedi Order and its commitment to defending the galaxy from evil and injustice?

Obi-Wan said to Luke, “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.” Did you know that over those millennia, legendary Jedi and infamous Sith Lords were adding their names to the annals of Republic history?

Yoda explained that the dreaded Sith tend to come in twos: “Always two, there are. No more, no less. A Master, and an apprentice.” But did you know that the Sith didn’t always exist in pairs? That at one time in the ancient Republic there were as many Sith as Jedi, until a Sith Lord named Darth Bane was the lone survivor of a great Sith war and created the “Rule of Two”?

All this and much, much more is brought to life in the many novels and comics of the
Star Wars
expanded universe. You’ve seen the movies and watched the cartoon. Now venture out into the wider worlds of
Star Wars
!

Turn the page or jump to the
timeline
of
Star Wars
novels to learn more.

One Month Ago, Pyria System:
Borleias Occupation, Day 1

“A god cannot die,” Charat Kraal said. “Therefore it can have no fear of death. So who is braver, a god or a mortal?”

Charat Kraal was a pilot of the Yuuzhan Vong—humanoid, a little over two meters in height. His skin, where it was not covered by geometric tattoos, was pale, marked everywhere by the white, slightly reflective lines of old scars. Some years-ago mishap had eaten away the center of his face, eliminating even the diminutive nose common to the Yuuzhan Vong, leaving behind brown-crusted cartilage and horizontal holes into his sinus passages. His forehead angled back less dramatically than many of the Yuuzhan Vong and looked a trifle more like the forehead of a human, for which two warriors had taunted him, for which he had killed them. He disguised the trait as much as he could by yanking out the last of the hair on his head and adding skulltop tattoos that drew the eye up and back, away from the offending forehead. One day he would earn an implant that would further mask his deformity and end his problem.

He wore an ooglith cloaker, the transparent environment suit of Yuuzhan Vong pilots, over a simple warrior’s loincloth. Both garments were living creatures, engineered and bred to perform only the tasks demanded of them, to aid the Yuuzhan Vong in their pursuit of glory.

He sat in the cockpit of his coralskipper, the irregular rocklike space fighter of his kind, but he did not wear his cognition hood at the moment; the masklike creature that kept him in mental contact with his craft, that allowed him to sense with its senses and pilot it with the agility of thought rather than muscle and reaction, was set to the side while his coralskipper cruised on routine patrol.

He and his mission partner, Penzak Kraal, were in distant orbit above the world Borleias. The planet had been recently seized from the infidels native to this galaxy so that it could be used as a staging area for the Yuuzhan Vong assault on the galactic throneworld of Coruscant. Borleias was an agreeably green world, not overgrown with the dead, crusty dwellings of the infidels, not strewn with their unnatural implements of technology; only a military base, now smashed, had affronted the Yuuzhan Vong with evidence of infidel occupation.

The voice of Penzak Kraal emerged from the small, head-shaped villip mounted on the cockpit wall just beneath the canopy. Though most coralskippers were not equipped with villips, relying instead on the telepathic signals of yammosk war coordinators for all their communications, long-distance patrol craft did call for a means for direct communications. “Don’t be an idiot. If a god is the god of bravery, then by definition he must be braver than any Yuuzhan Vong, than anything living.”

“I wonder. Let us say then that you could become immortal as the gods, and never die, but remain one of the Yuuzhan Vong. You would never face death. Could you then be as brave as the Yuuzhan Vong? You could kill forever but never truly risk death, defy death, choose your time and place of death. Which is better, to be brave for a lifetime or to kill forever?”

“Who cares? The choice is not ours. But if I were to choose, I think I would choose immortality. Live long enough, and you might learn how to be brave as a Yuuzhan Vong again. Kill long enough, and you could perhaps learn to kill a star.”

Charat Kraal sobered. “I have heard …”

“What?”

“That the infidels did that. Learned to kill a star.”

He heard Penzak Kraal hiss in irritation; in the villip he saw his partner’s lopsided features go even more off center as his mouth pulled down in an expression of contempt. “So what if they did? They killed it the wrong way, with their wrong minds and their wrong devices. And, like idiots, they must have lost the secret. Or they’d be destroying the worldships one by one.”

“I have also heard …” Charat Kraal lowered his voice, a foolish instinct, since no one but Penzak Kraal could be listening to him. “That gods may smile upon them, too. On the infidels.”

“Ridiculous.”

“Can you know the minds of the gods?”

“I can no more know the minds of the gods than summon one of the enemy battleships to destroy for my personal glory.”

In the distance, away from Borleias, many kilometers from them, an enemy battleship winked into existence, its bow pointed toward them. The ship was already up to speed; it grew rapidly as it neared them, as it approached Borleias.

“Penzak, you
fool.
”

“My words did not summon it, you idiot.” The villip’s face blurred and adjusted, reflecting a change to Penzak’s features; Penzak had pulled on his cognition hood. Charat did likewise. His surroundings, the cockpit interior, seemed to become transparent, giving him a view in all directions through the senses of the coralskipper, showing him in breathtaking detail the onrushing enemy ship.

No, now it was
ships
. More and more of the loathsome things of metal were dropping out of hyperspace, all aimed at Borleias. At Charat and Penzak.

A moment later, Charat could feel a buzz through the cognition hood, a telltale sign that Penzak was sending a warning to the Domain Kraal commander on Borleias.

The foremost New Republic ship, a sharply angled triangle in white, passed over the two coralskippers, blotting out the sun, casting them into shadow. Nowhere near so large as a Yuuzhan Vong worldship, it was still of impressive size, and so near that Charat felt he could reach out and drag his finger along its hull as it passed.

Penzak Kraal sent his coralskipper into a dive and turned to match the larger craft’s course. Charat paced him. Above, he saw thruster gouts from the ship’s belly herald the launching of the hated infidel starfighers.

“How do we hurt them worst?” Charat asked.

“Follow me in,” Penzak said. “While they’re launching. Don’t engage the fighters; bait them so they follow us. The ship won’t fire on us with the fighters in close proximity. We’ll enter their launching bays and destroy the facilities there, then gut the ship from within.” He looped around, rising and angling in toward the ship’s belly. Charat followed.

   
Mon Mothma
, one of the newest cruisers in the New Republic’s fleet, a Star Destroyer refitted with gravity-well generators capable of interfering with the short jumps made by Yuuzhan Vong craft, cruised straight toward Borleias from the point where it had dropped out of hyperspace. This hadn’t been a timed drop—they’d plotted a course straight for the planet Borleias, and the planet’s gravity well had dragged them into realspace when they’d come close enough. And now before them was the blue-green world they had come to recapure.

“No sign of a Yuuzhan Vong worldship in orbit,” reported the sensor officer, a Mon Calamari male with deep blue skin. “The two coralskippers are turning to engage.”

General Wedge Antilles, a lean man with a careworn face and military posture, commander of the fleet group for which
Mon Mothma
was the flagship, nodded. “Gunnery, stay on them, vape them if they come against us. Fighter control, continue launching starfighter squadrons.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir.”

Data screens lit up with colored blips as New Republic starfighters—X-wings, A-9s, B-wings, E-wings, and more—streamed out of the docking bays and turned toward the planet. Wedge, standing at the captain’s station toward the rear of the spacious bridge, ignored the screens. He concentrated instead on the live view of Borleias, which filled the main viewport at the bow end of the bridge.

I hope the Vong here have come to love this world
, he told himself.
Because I’m going to take it from them. They’re going to learn what it is to lose the things they love
.

   Luke Skywalker hit his thrusters. His X-wing roared out of the main docking bay, losing altitude relative to the
Mon Mothma
. Behind him, eleven pilots of Twin Suns Squadron, the temporary X-wing squad that was his command, formed up on him. “Twin Suns away,” he said.

“Twin Suns, copy.” That would be the controller on
Mon Mothma
’s bridge. “Be advised, two coralskippers are maneuvering into your flight path.”

Luke glanced at his sensor board. Two red blips were indeed turning from below to head toward them. “Squadron, follow me out, let’s give these two the gauntlet treatment.”