Remnant: Force Heretic I (12 page)

“Why is that, Jag?” Mara asked.

“Two reasons, really,” he answered. “One is that I’m not in a position to know who holds what rank in any of the appropriate families. I know who
represents
each, but they are just political positioning. Who actually
does
the work, I have no idea. It’s these people you would need to speak to; and it is they who will seek you out when your intentions become known.”

Luke nodded thoughtfully. “And the second reason?”

“Even if I did know,” Jag said, maintaining steady eye contact with the Jedi Master, “I wouldn’t tell you. You see, the Chiss are taught from the earliest days of training
that it is not the person holding the position that is important, but rather the position itself. Individuals must allow themselves to be subsumed into the role society expects them to play. If you asked for someone by name, they would on principle not talk to you. If you asked for them by rank, however, they would not hesitate.”

“Then what rank should I ask for?” Luke asked.

“In the first instance, the matter of this planet you seek, you should ask for the chief navigator of the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet. Regarding closer ties with the Galactic Alliance, you would need the assistant syndic in the same department.”

“Isn’t that the position currently held by your father?” Mara asked.

Jag didn’t dignify the question with a response, even though it was correct. He was becoming increasingly irritated that they knew as much as they did. “If you address your inquiries through those avenues,” he said, “then I am sure you will be heard.”

“And in your opinion, will we get what we want?” Luke asked.

“It depends on too many factors to say for certain. Whether we’ve seen this planet you’re looking for is an obvious one; how badly the Yuuzhan Vong are hurting us is another.”

“I was under the impression they weren’t hurting you at all.”

Jag allowed himself a half smile at that. “I think it’s safe to admit that the Yuuzhan Vong are hurting everyone to some degree or another. It’s good that you are attempting to address this as a galaxywide problem, for that’s precisely what it is.”

Mara came around the display now, as though to look at him properly. “So you’d like our help, but you won’t
even tell us who to talk to in order to offer it to you? I find that—interesting.”

Jag recognized the deliberate provocation, but wasn’t offended by it. “I apologize if you think I’m being unreasonable.”

“You are being unreasonable. But you’re being what your culture expects of you, and to be honest, I admire you for that. It’s just not how we would operate, that’s all.”

“No doubt time will reveal many such differences between our people.”

Mara smiled; there were clearly no hard feelings there, either. “No doubt.”

“There’s one other question I’d like to ask, though,” Luke said. “The Galactic Alliance doesn’t have a vast amount of resources to spare at the moment, as you are surely aware. In fact, in places we’re as thinly spread as the Yuuzhan Vong. What are the chances, do you think, of procuring aid from the CEDF?”

“I imagine that would depend on how your other negotiations went. If you can convince the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet that your mission is of strategic value to the Chiss, then they might give you an escort of some description. But then, they might not, also. If your mission is valuable
enough
, you might end up in competition with the CEDF.”

Mara raised her eyebrows in mock alarm. “They’d steal it out from under us?”

“Depending on what
it
is,” Jag shot back.

Luke chuckled. “Well put.” He leaned against the transparent display and folded his arms across his stomach. “You’re holding yourself very well here, Jagged. It can’t be easy, caught between two different cultures like this—twice over, if you like: a human raised by the Chiss, then sent back to deal with the Galactic Alliance.”

“No,” he replied, thinking of Jaina. “Sometimes it isn’t easy.”

“But it’s good, I think. For all of us. We need another example of the Chiss to help us judge their nature, and you are as good as one of them. Thrawn was brilliant, but not the best ambassador a culture could wish for.”

Jag stiffened defensively. “The Chiss do not ask to be judged, Master Skywalker. Not by you; not by anyone.”

“But you judge us.” There was no acrimony in the Jedi Master’s tone. “We all do it, Jag. It’s only natural. And we know enough of your foreign policy to know your opinion of ‘lesser’ civilizations. We might be one of them.”

Jag could feel himself being led out onto treacherously thin ice. “Neither Grand Admiral Thrawn nor myself was an ambassador, as I’m sure you both realize. He was simply doing what he thought most appropriate in a particular military situation.”

“As are you. I understand,” said Luke. “Thank you for your help, Jag. I appreciate it.”

Jag was surprised that the meeting had taken so little time. He had expected a more determined interrogation. But as Luke guided him to the door, he realized it wasn’t quite over yet. A small but strong hand gripped him by the shoulder, and Mara said: “Look after my apprentice, won’t you?” Jag looked down into the startlingly green eyes of the woman beside him. “I know she’s a Jedi Knight in her own right, but in some ways she’s still very much a child—albeit a precocious one.” The green eyes smiled. “I hope you can be a beneficial part of her education.”

“I intend to be.”

“Good,” she said, withdrawing her hand and nodding. “I’m glad.”

*  *  *

There were many other things Jag still had to organize with his second in command, and he went straight to the barracks she had been given to discuss them with her. Eprill was ready and waiting, in full uniform.

“What did you tell them?” she asked, almost reproachfully. She had known about the meeting with the Skywalkers and disapproved of their intentions.

“Nothing they didn’t already know,” he said.

“That alone might be too much.” Red eyes blazed at him from a blue face.

He opened his mouth to snap at her, but discipline took over before the words emerged. He couldn’t be angry at her for simply doing her job. The Chiss Squadron may have originally come on a fact-finding mission, but now it was here—at his instigation—to fight the Yuuzhan Vong. The negotiations and information bartering should be left to the Chiss Expansionary Defense Fleet.

But at the same time, he couldn’t in good conscience let Jaina’s uncle, aunt, and twin brother go blindly into a potentially tricky situation. They meant well, and their goals were admirable. Part of him wanted to give them every assistance he could, even if it did mean violating the oaths of secrecy he had sworn to the Chiss.

He didn’t know what his father would think. The Baron was human, too, but he had embraced the Chiss culture as completely as it had embraced him. If his father
had
been in contact with the Skywalkers, then Jag doubted he would have told them anything of substance. They might simply have been bluffing to see what he would say in response. Jag wished he could ask his father what was going on—but that would have been seen as a sign of weakness. It had been his decision to keep the Chiss Squadron in Galactic Alliance space; he alone had to deal with the consequences of that decision. He hoped
his father would be proud of the way he had handled himself.

But there was more to it than that. The military situation was too complex for one person alone to handle. He wanted his government involved, and he hoped that Master Skywalker would manage to achieve this.

Shrugging the problem aside, he sat down with Eprill, his second in command, and attempted to decide on a roster for the coming weeks. She would remain behind to take command of the Chiss Squadron. There would be six pilots left, enough to work as an independent unit alongside new pilots from the training program.

Jag knew that Eprill was as tired as he was. He also knew that she would be offended if he didn’t leave her behind to take on the job. This was a big break for her, a chance to demonstrate her ability to command in combat, instead of just following orders. Looking at her now—at her pressed uniform, her perfectly straight posture, her black hair pulled severely back to the nape of her neck as per regulation standards for a Chiss soldier—he knew that she deserved every success. She was the epitome of what a Chiss officer should be.

She reminded him, in fact, of his childhood friend Shawnkyr, who had returned to Chiss space after Ebaq 9. Shawnkyr was almost
too
perfect—as a pilot, as an officer, and as a Chiss. She was exactly the sort of person he should have ended up with—not someone like Jaina, the headstrong, stubborn daughter of parents who openly spurned military authority. He had known Shawnkyr ever since their victory over looters during their academy training; he had known Jaina only a couple of years. Shawnkyr had a perfect understanding and acceptance of the chain of command; Jaina was known as something of a loose blaster, following orders only when they concurred
with her own moral code. The contrast couldn’t have been more extreme.

What his family would think of Jaina, he had no idea. Given their own background, they might accept her perfectly well. But then again, they might not. And if they didn’t, then how would it affect his standing among the Chiss, that he had chosen one from outside? He wasn’t certain which he would choose if forced to decide between Jaina and his own people. He envied Luke more than he could say; his heart ached to see the three moons of Csillia again. But would his heart have ached more to leave Jaina behind? He didn’t know, and a large part of him didn’t particularly want to find out, either.

“Jag?”

“Huh?” He snapped out of his thoughts. “Oh, I’m sorry, Eprill. My mind was elsewhere.”

“Obviously.” There was a hint of disapproval in her voice. “I asked if you thought Sumichan should go with you, or if you’d like me to keep her here to work on her maneuvers.”

He sighed. Jaina occupied almost every thought these days. He doubted he could be rid of her, even if he wanted to be.

“She can come with me,” he said. “She just needs time to practice—and where we’re going, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of spare time on our hands.”

Then again
, he added to himself,
the way the Solos operate, maybe not …

In the previous years, much had been learned about the infidels who occupied the galaxy promised by the gods to the Yuuzhan Vong. Nom Anor had played an important part in gathering and interpreting that knowledge. As a result, he felt justified in thinking that he understood the enemy better than anyone else. But even
he failed to get his mind around a culture that would allow a planet’s natural surface to be buried under lifeless metal and transparisteel—and not just once, but thousands of times over, so that it was almost impossible for any living thing larger than a rodent or more persistent than moss to survive beneath it.

Yuuzhan’tar was not a world Nom Anor would have chosen to conquer. Had it not been the center of power in this galaxy, he would have happily left it to choke in its dust and smog while the rest of the galaxy came alive with the glorious Yuuzhan Vong invasion. The hardiness of the vile encrustations smothering the planet—the
built things
and the obscenities called
machines
so loved by the enemy—was such that the dhuryam responsible for turning it into a more suitable world seemed to be unable to overcome them. Hundreds of thousands of years of habitation had their own momentum, and mere klekkets of Yuuzhan Vong occupation couldn’t turn that back overnight. The roots of these
built things
went deep into the planet, and it would take time to extract them fully.

Nowhere was this more obvious than underground. Buildings had been built upon older buildings, which in turn had been built upon buildings older still, until a crack in one’s basement might open up on what had once been an attic in another. And since construction in this fashion was rarely seamless, there were millions of narrow paths that had never been mapped. It was through such ways that Vuurok I’pan led Nom Anor, descending carefully along steep traverses that appeared to be tiled underfoot, as though they had once been roofs. He took them through areas immensely wide, though barely high enough for them to crouch—areas compacted between enormous slabs of ferrocrete and time-flattened piles of rubble. None of which sat easily with Nom Anor. He was
not a coward, but the idea of scuttling through such spaces was distinctly unnerving.

Soon they came to an impossibly large vertical tunnel that plunged into depths of darkness that Nom Anor hadn’t imagined possible. They spiraled down the interior of this tunnel for what felt like an eternity, walking upon metal steps that constantly creaked and groaned under their weight. It was so large that it could have easily held an entire transport carrier, except that it was almost totally filled with a mysterious silvery column. The thing stretched up high into the darkness above them, taking up so much of the space that there seemed only enough room for the stairs on which they descended. What purpose the column served, exactly, Nom Anor couldn’t tell. Perhaps it was the outside of another pipe built within the old one. It, too, was probably abandoned, like everything else in the empty spaces—dead metal left to die, left to
rust.

Rust.
Now that was a concept the Yuuzhan Vong knew about. The reaction between the elements iron and oxygen was an important one in biology. But the abhorrence with which the process was held by these machine builders had been unexpected. Sometimes Nom Anor thought it a good metaphor for how the Yuuzhan Vong invasion
should
have been conducted: slowly, insidiously, the machine builders could have been eroded from beneath until all their glittering, unnatural towers fell and crumbled to dust. But here, underground, he could see the fallacy of the plan. Rust took time, and the Yuuzhan Vong were not known for their patience. The worldships were dying; their people needed homes. If the basements of Yuuzhan’tar could still stand, even after being so long untended, then invasion by rust would simply be too slow.