Traitor by Matthew Stover (chrome ebook reader txt) 📕

“They have slashed and slaughtered everyone within their reach for weeks: slave, warrior, and shaper alike. But this Solo—he’s like one of those, what do you call them, triggerbirds, that sail along in perfect safety within the feeding tentacles of a Bespinese beldon.”

“Perhaps he and the polyps have reached some … understanding.”

“I do not find the prospect reassuring.”

“No? You should, Executor. It is for this that I have trained him, yes?”

Nom Anor pulled his knuckle away from his mouth and squinted at her. “For this?”

“Of course. Here, now, at the crisis point, at the Day of Decision, Jacen Solo does not stand with others of his kind. Despite the worst pain his nervous system can suffer, he has chosen to stand among the life-forms of an alien galaxy. Our galaxy, Executor. He has more in common with the masters than he does with the slaves, and he begins to recognize this.”

“Are you sure?”

“He may have journeyed so far along the True Way already that the fate of slaves no longer concerns him.”

“I don’t believe it,” Nom Anor growled. “I don’t believe it for a nanoblip. You don’t know these Jedi as I do.”

“Perhaps not.” Vergere’s crest fanned a faintly self-amused green. “Does anyone?”

Abruptly, Nom Anor reached into a head-sized bubbleden in the wall near his knee and grabbed a villip. “There is a slave in the amphistaff grove,” he said into it. “Pick him up. Bind him and return him to my coralcraft.”

The villip whispered with the reply from the commander of Nom Anor’s ooglith-masqued warriors. “I hear and obey, Executor.”

“As you value your father’s bones, do not fail in this. This slave is a Jedi infiltrator who must not be allowed to disrupt the tizo’pil Yun’tchilat.”

“If he resists?”

“I would prefer that he lives—but I do not require it. Do not risk damage to the seedship. Minimize any disruption.”

“I hear and obey, Executor.”

Nom Anor commanded the villip to revert to its original form. “So.” He turned again to Vergere. “As you say: our Solo Project has progressed well. The Nursery has served its purpose. We’d have to remove him before the executions anyway; better to get it taken care of now, in case he still harbors any illusions of heroism. The ceremony must continue without any risk of interference. You should be planning the next phase of his training; you’ll want to continue as soon as he’s safely aboard my coralcraft.”

“My people, Nom Anor,” Vergere said meditatively, “have a proverb about counting glitterflies when all one has is maggots.”

“What?” Nom Anor scowled. “What does that mean?”

“I believe—” She nodded toward the viewspider’s image sac. “—that you are about to find out.”

   Jacen stands in the amphistaff grove, watching.

The slave seed shrieks flame through every nerve in his body: sizzling commands for him to run, to scramble and sprint for the coraltree basal only thirty meters away. He burns in this fire, but is not consumed.

The fire is an alembic that has distilled everything he is, has ever been, ever will be, into one eternal instant; like the white before it, the fire has washed away time.

All of Jacen’s time has become one single now, and the fire inside him feeds his strength.

Out of the shadows, out in the blue-white glare of the Nursery’s constant noon, four slaves suddenly step away from the nearest coraltree basal, letting its fronds drop from their hands. They do this casually, efficiently, without haste but with no wasted motion, and they glance toward the amphistaff grove, toward the deep shade where Jacen stands.

They don’t seem to be in pain.

This, Jacen knows already, is because they’re not really slaves.

He wonders fleetingly if Anakin had felt this way: calm. Ready. Looking at the price he was about to pay, and deciding he’d gotten a bargain.

Out in the blue-white noon, the four slaves press the sides of their noses, and the ooglith masquers they had worn peel apart, filaments unthreading from pores to leave smeared beads of blood like sweat. The masquers ripple and flow down the revealed warriors, then squirm away to vanish in the grass.

The warriors walk toward the amphistaff grove.

Jacen closes his eyes, and for one second he is among his family: his father’s hand ruffles his hair, his mother’s arm is warm around his shoulders, Jaina and Lowie groan and Em Teedee makes a sarcastic comment as Jacen tries one more time to tell a joke to Tenel Ka …

But Chewbacca is not there.

Neither is Anakin.

The four warriors stop just beyond the fringe of the grove. Juvenile amphistaffs whip the air threateningly, and the polyps’ groundmouths gape wide, mutely anticipating a rain of blood and flesh. One warrior calls out in harsh, guttural Basic: “Jeedai-slave, come out!”

Jacen’s only response is to open his eyes.

“Jeedai-slave! Come out from there!” They wear no armor; the only vonduun crabs within reach are the wild ones that infest the bog beyond the coraltree basal, coming out at night to feed on the polyps at the edges of the grove. Unarmored warriors could not survive even seconds within the hissing swirl of juvenile amphistaffs.

Jacen adjusts his stance, organizing his thoughts and his breathing into a Jedi meditation that reaches deep within himself, beyond the searing pain from the slave seed, into memories of what he has learned through his mental link with the dhuryam: memories so vivid they are like a waking dream.

Now the fully armed warriors who guard the shreeyam’tiz are taking notice. Some begin to move deliberately toward the amphistaff grove, and the warriors who ring the hive-pond shift uneasily and adjust their weapons.

“Jeedai-slave! If we must come in, it will go worse for you!”

Jacen is deep in the meditation now; he can feel the thrum of emotive hormones through the rudimentary brains of the amphistaff polyps around him. He can taste their blood hunger like a mouthful of raw meat.

The warrior turns and barks a command in the tongue of the Yuuzhan Vong. Two more false slaves step away from a coraltree basal and allow their ooglith masquers to