Remnant: Force Heretic I (46 page)

But it was becoming increasingly clear to him that at this rate the message would never reach Shimrra directly. It had been irrelevant to the warriors who had attacked the communities in the underworld of Yuuzhan’tar; heretics, if the warriors even knew they existed, ranked lower than thieves in terms of priorities. For the message—as well as Nom Anor—to reach Shimrra, it would have to break out of the underground, and it would have to do it soon.

“Perhaps we are too careful,” he said, thinking aloud and testing their responses as he spoke. “We hold our revelations close to our chests, much like the priests guard their secrets. We hide the light under cloaks of fear and timidity so that no one else may see it. As long as we continue preaching to the converted, we will never grow, never be strong like the Jedi are strong. The millions like us who deserve to know that there is a better way to live, a freedom that counters everything we have ever been taught—they will remain forever in the darkness. Perhaps the time has come, my friends, to shine our light into the darkness.”

Shoon-mi looked even more nervous than before. “But if we speak openly about the
Jeedai
, we will be killed!”

“You’re right, Shoon-mi,” Nom Anor said, turning to face him in the shadows. “We
would
be killed. Therefore we must find new ways to spread the message, to recruit new followers. But we must expand only through the ranks of the Shamed Ones before we dare take our message higher up. As we stand now, we are weak and poorly organized; we will never make a difference like this. We must find strength and take our fate into our own hands—and when we are strong, then we may break free.” He came to stand in front of Shoon-mi and placed his hands on his shoulders. The Shamed One continued to tremble beneath his grip. “To gain everything, my friend, we must
risk
everything.” His one eye bored deep into Shoon-mi’s own eyes until the Shamed One had to turn away in discomfort. “Are you with me?” Nom Anor whispered close to Shoon-mi’s ear.

The Shamed One nodded uneasily. “I-I shall do what I can, of course,” he said. “I don’t know how to fight, but I do know lots of people.”

“Good,” Nom Anor said, nodding and smiling his pleasure at the Shamed One’s response. “That is indeed good. Word of mouth is our greatest weapon right now.” He turned to face Kunra. “And what of yourself? Are you with us, too?”

The ex-warrior’s eyes glistened in the gloom. This was the crucial moment, Nom Anor knew. If Kunra defied him, he would have to kill both of them and start again from scratch, finding and infiltrating another cell of heretics to turn to his vengeful cause. He might never find one so perfectly primed for the task.

The ex-warrior hesitated, shuffling uncertainly from foot to foot.

“Decide,” Nom Anor prompted as he placed a hand inside his robes. Almost eagerly, the pommel of the coufee found his fingers.

Kunra’s gaze fell to the robe as he nodded slowly. “I am with you,” he said. “For Niiriit and I’pan, and for all of those who have died, I am with you.”

But not for me
, Nom Anor thought. It didn’t matter, though. The ex-warrior’s compliance would be enough for now. The task ahead of him would be difficult, and he needed all the help he could get, in whatever spirit it was offered. The heresy as it presently existed was disorganized and internally inconsistent, and would never get any farther than the Shamed Ones. He would need to give it momentum if it was to serve his purposes. Several circular references had developed through numerous retellings; some stories took place on different planets, with different names, at different times. He would need to refine the tale so it suited his needs best, and spread it efficiently enough so it would eradicate the other versions, if only by sheer volume.

It was a long shot, he knew, but it was the only one he had. Nom Anor had dealt with religious fervor before, on Rhommamool, and he knew how to turn a smoldering thought into flames of resistance. But did he dare do it among the Yuuzhan Vong, his own species? This was rank heresy, after all. The Jedi, no matter what good they might do for the Shamed Ones, were still
machine users.
His conscience—atrophied though it had been by years of treachery—continued to nag at him.

But not for long. He had tried unsuccessfully to climb the social ladder imposed by Shimrra, despite being resourceful and intelligent. If he was ever to succeed, he would have to find another way to climb that same ladder that had refused to let him ascend.

Shoon-mi began to say something, snapping him out of his thoughts. “Amorrn—”

“I told you not to call me that!” he snapped. He had
told Kunra that a time would come when he would need to choose a new name; perhaps that time had come now. He needed one to carry him in this new direction.

Shoon-mi took an anxious step back. “Then—then what should we call you?”

Nom Anor thought about this for a moment. What name
should
he choose? Certainly one that would symbolize the work he needed to do in order to ensure his survival, and one that Shimrra would recognize also.

He smiled, then, at a thought. There was a word from an ancient tongue, rarely spoken except in the older worldships. It had connotations for all castes, no matter which god they worshiped. Its meaning was an unmistakable stab at Shimrra, and would be recognized as such by the Shamed Ones he would have to rely on to make the dream possible.

“From now on,” he said to his first two disciples, “you shall call me Yu’Shaa.”

There was a moment’s silence; then Shoon-mi stepped forward a pace, his face creased in consternation.

“Yu’Shaa?” he echoed. “The
prophet
?”

Nom Anor smiled, nodding. “The Prophet.”

When Grand Admiral Pellaeon convened a brief meeting on the bridge of the Imperial Star Destroyer
Right to Rule
, twenty-four standard hours after the battle of Borosk, all the surviving Moffs attended, along with those navy admirals and senior officers not committed to the defense of the Empire from the retreating Yuuzhan Vong. Jacen agreed with Pellaeon that there would be a brief period after Vorrik’s defeat during which it would be safe to tie up so many leaders from across the Imperial Remnant; not until the Yuuzhan Vong had regrouped and obtained new orders from Shimrra would there be
any serious counterattack from the enemy. The strafing of Yaga Minor on their way out had been little more than an afterthought, easily repelled.

For those Moffs who disagreed, who thought that now was the perfect time to consolidate their strong-holds against both the Yuuzhan Vong and a Grand Admiral who would dare defy them, Pellaeon circulated a rumor that anyone not in attendance would forgo the right to navy defense. The Yuuzhan Vong was a problem the Empire had to confront as a whole, and the composition of that whole had to be determined as quickly as possible. No one was compelled to attend, but everyone knew the consequences if they didn’t.

That there would be retaliation, Jacen didn’t doubt. B’shith Vorrik had been humiliated in front of both his army and that of his enemy. Somehow, the Yuuzhan Vong commander
would
return. It was just a matter of how soon that would be, and how much of a force he would bring with him.

Jacen stood to one side with Luke, Mara, Saba, and Tekli, making their presence known but not contributing to the discussion. It was another calculated provocation engineered by Pellaeon. Luke had expressed reservations about flaunting the old enemy before so many Moffs, but through the Force Jacen could tell that the Jedi Master was secretly enjoying the situation.

When everyone was seated, Pellaeon rose from his chair and stood before those assembled.

“The reason I have brought you all here is quite simple,” he said, forgoing the formalities of introduction. “I wish to share with you a realization I have come to, and to tell you what I intend to do about it.”

Pellaeon walked around the table with hands clasped behind his back. It was a simple psychological ploy, intended
to intimidate those seated by forcing them to either crane their heads around to see him or stare dumbly forward at nothing as he talked. It was a cheap trick, but Jacen understood that the Grand Admiral needed every advantage he could get.

Gilad Pellaeon had donned his full battle uniform, and his general appearance had been cleaned up prior to the meeting, but there was no hiding either his age or the fact that he had recently been on the verge of death. He would carry a slight limp for as long he lived.

“In the last forty-eight standard hours, the Imperial Navy has fended off the greatest threat it has ever faced.” He studied the Moffs before him with penetrating eyes. “You’ve seen the reports and studied the breakdowns, so I’m sure you can understand the significance of what happened at Bastion and, hopefully, will have some appreciation of the seriousness of the decisions we must now make.” He paused further for effect. “Until we rebuild Bastion, the Empire is temporarily without a capital; the Moff Council has lost several of its most important members and, with them, I suspect, its short-term cohesion. Many of our citizens have been enslaved by the Yuuzhan Vong, and our borders are no longer safe.

“But the threat we have repelled is not the Yuuzhan Vong. It is something far more insidious. Indeed, we didn’t know we were facing it until the very last, when it was almost too late to fend it off. That threat can be summed up in one word. It is a word that has more fear for me than extinction. It is
irrelevance.”

Jacen caught a flicker of annoyance as it passed across the jowled face of Moff Flennic. For a moment he thought Flennic might interrupt, but the Moff remained silent, brooding.

Pellaeon had completed a circuit of the table and returned to where he started. He put his palms down on
the table and leaned forward. “When we first heard about the Yuuzhan Vong,” he said, “we blithely observed their passage through the galaxy and assumed that when they didn’t attack
us
, they did so out of caution. We were too strong, too determined, too
superior
for them to risk a confrontation. We believed ourselves to be too formidable an opponent. But when we sent support to the Battle of Ithor, we saw just how strong the enemy’s fleets really were. Afraid that we would be unable to defend ourselves, we pulled in our heads and dug in, waiting for an attack that never came.”

He straightened now, his expression briefly betraying his weariness. “And it never came,” he said slowly, “because we simply didn’t matter to the Yuuzhan Vong. We weren’t considered a threat. We had demonstrated an unwillingness to become involved in someone else’s fight, and a propensity for sitting back and watching our neighbors being destroyed. Why
should
they attack us? We weren’t hurting them; if anything, we were making their job easier. In effect, we made ourselves irrelevant, and for that I feel the greatest shame of all.”

Pellaeon looked up and caught Jacen’s eyes. An understanding passed between the two men that sent a shiver down Jacen’s spine. Pellaeon was talking about war, but the same principle could be applied to all aspects of life. The greatest crime a being could commit, against itself and those around it, was to withdraw from the living. Jacen had seen this when his father had withdrawn from his mother after the death of Chewbacca; he had felt it in himself when he had retreated from battle to find an answer to his doubts; and he was seeing it now, on a much larger scale, in the actions of the Imperial Remnant. Life was involvement; being part of the Force meant participating in the evolution of the galaxy. It was not just sitting back and observing. The only question of importance
that anyone
truly
intending to live needed to ask themselves was,
how
did one become a part of that process?

Unfortunately, the answer to that question still eluded him.

“Well,” Pellaeon went on, “we’ve been attacked now. No one could’ve missed that. But does that mean we’re relevant?” He shook his head. “No. It means that Supreme Overlord Shimrra took a moment to stamp out a potential threat lingering around his rear lines. A
potential
threat, mind you, not an
actual
threat. The force he sent wasn’t sufficient to disable us, even with surprise on its side, but it was nothing compared to the resources he committed to Coruscant. B’shith Vorrik, furthermore, is no Tsavong Lah or Nas Choka. Had we really mattered to the overall war, Shimrra would have wiped us out years ago, not tried now as an afterthought.

“But we refused to roll over and be destroyed, even when we were grievously injured. We insulted the enemy as he retreated, and we liberated some of those taken captive. We showed them that we are not easy prey, and that we will not be so easily dismissed.

“If Shimrra didn’t consider the Empire a threat before, he will now. How
long
he considers us a threat, however, is entirely up to us.”

“And why is that?” Moff Flennic asked, obviously unable to contain his disapproval of being lectured at any longer. Jacen could feel the resentment radiating from the man.

“Isn’t that obvious, Kurlen?” Ephin Sarreti said from across the table. The Moff, recently released from a medical barge evacuated from Bastion, sported one arm in a sling and a dour expression. “If we sit here expecting to defend our territories indefinitely, we’ll all be dead within months.”

Pellaeon nodded. “And giving Vorrik time to petition another strike force from Shimrra—fresher, larger, and certainly more eager for our blood—would be suicide. We remain a threat only so long as we remain alive.”

Flennic inclined his head slightly. “I can’t help but feel apprehensive about the alternative you’re about to propose.”

“It’s the only alternative that I can see,” Pellaeon said softly, regarding each of the Moffs around the table before continuing. “We must take the fight to the Yuuzhan Vong.”

A murmur of unrest immediately rippled around the room, but it was Moff Flennic again whose voice was heard. “You would have us leave our worlds behind?” he asked disbelievingly. “Undefended?”

“Not entirely,” the Grand Admiral said. “Every planet would retain a token defense force—at least enough to repel the sort of attack Yaga Minor suffered.”