Traitor by Matthew Stover (chrome ebook reader txt) 📕

Jacen gestured, and Ganner felt a stronger mind than his take hold of the lightsaber and wrench it from his control. The lightsaber’s blade vanished.

The handgrip bobbed gently in the air between Jacen and the warriors.

“Do not soil yourself by touching the blasphemous weapon,” Jacen said.

The last thing Ganner saw as darkness swallowed him was an amphistaff snaking out from Jacen Solo’s sleeve, to slice the handle of Ganner’s lightsaber neatly in half.

“We will take this pathetic excuse for a Jedi to Yuuzhan’tar,” Jacen Solo said. “Then we’ll kill him.”

   Inside a camp ship, a chamber moved. This chamber had been grown specially, bred into this particular camp ship for this particular purpose. It had appeared to be just another chamber within the million-celled honeycomb—but now it cast itself loose and slid along under the camp ship’s hull like a parasite digging its way out through an animal’s skin.

This particular chamber enclosed a pod of yorik coral that had its own dovin basal. This dovin basal could have been used in either of two ways. With one command, it could have generated a gravity field intense enough to crush the entire camp ship into a point mass smaller than a grain of sand; but it had been given the other command, and so it would drive the chamber and its occupants across the galaxy.

The skin of the camp ship developed a small boil. This boil bulged on the ship’s dark side. When it burst, it spat forth the chamber, which instantly streaked away, accelerating frantically into hyperspace, heading for Yuuzhan’tar.

Within that chamber were four warriors of the Yuuzhan Vong, one pilot within the coral pod, and two humans. One of the humans sat in silent meditation. The other lay paralyzed, unconscious, but even in the dark void where he seemed to float, he held on to one thought. He didn’t know where he was being taken, he didn’t know what would happen to him; he didn’t even know, really, who he was. He knew only one thing.

This was the one lone thought to which he gave all his strength, to fix it forever in his memory:

Jacen Solo is a traitor.

TWELVE

THE LIGHT OF THE TRUE WAY

On the surface of an alien planet, a Jedi Knight lies dreaming.

Organisms that are devices join with devices that are organisms to tend the needs of his body; glucose and saline circulate through his bloodstream, along with potent alkaloids that sink his consciousness deep beneath the surface of the dream. The planet that holds him is scarred with splotches of riotous jungle over a skeleton of ruined city, and its sky is bounded by a Bridge woven of rainbow.

The Jedi Knight dreams of aliens and Yuuzhan Vong. He dreams of traitors who are Jedi, and Jedi who are traitors. And sometimes, in the dream, the traitor turns to him and says, If I’m not a Jedi, am I still a traitor? If I’m not a traitor, am I still a Jedi?

Another figure in his dream: a skeletal Yuuzhan Vong whom he somehow understands is Nom Anor, the Prophet of Rhommamool. The Nom Anor of Duro.

Of Myrkr.

And there is one more figure in the dream: small, lithe and agile, a feather-crested alien of unknown species, a white fountain of the Force.

The Jedi Knight also dreams himself, lying motionless as though dead, tangled in a net of vines and woody limbs that is half hammock and half spiderweb. He watches from outside himself, floating, far, far above in some astral orbit, too far to hear voices though he somehow knows what they say, too far to see faces though he somehow knows how they look—

And he somehow knows that they are talking about killing him.

He no longer pays close attention; he has had this dream many, many times. It replays in his head like a corrupted data loop.

The dream always begins:

Not that I question the sincerity of your conversion, the Nom Anor figure murmurs slyly to the traitor, but you must understand how this would look to, say, Warmaster Tsavong Lah. He might feel that if you were, in fact, devoted to the True Way, you would have slaughtered this pathetic Jedi without mercy back at the camp ship, rather than carting him all the way here.

The traitor counters expressionlessly, And deprive the True Gods of a full formal sacrifice?

The feather-crested alien nods in fond approval, and soon the Prophet must agree. Any Jedi is a worthwhile captive, he allows. We can sacrifice him this very day. In fact—Here fleshless lips draw back to reveal a smile like a mouthful of needles.—you can sacrifice him. To slaughter one of your former brethren will go far to ease … the, ah, warmaster’s doubts.

Of course. The traitor agrees with a nod, and here the Jedi Knight’s dream always becomes a nightmare: trapped once more inside his motionless, helpless, silent body, as though a corpse already, drowning in horror. He tries to reach into the Force, to touch the traitor’s cold and treacherous heart—and receives, to his astonishment, a distinct feeling of warmth and good cheer, as though the traitor has given him a wink and a friendly squeeze on the arm. But we can do better. We can make this a dry run: a rehearsal, with this one standing in for my sister.

In the way of dreams, the Jedi Knight understands that the trap into which he has fallen was set for Jaina. There’s something wrong with that, though; something he can’t quite remember. If they had really wanted to catch Jaina, there must have been a better option, but what it might be he cannot summon.

As always, the Prophet objects to the traitor’s plan: even the existence of the traitor is a closely held secret. Too many people, Yuuzhan Vong and slave, would participate in this rehearsal; the secret would inevitably be lost.

Secrecy has outlived its usefulness, the traitor counters serenely. My conversion to the True Way serves no purpose if it remains secret. I will