Traitor by Matthew Stover (chrome ebook reader txt) 📕

his spine and made his leggings stick to his knees. The air was as humid as a Priapulin’s breath, and smelled like the whole planet had been a monkey-lizard den that somebody had buried in rotting honeyflowers.

The processional spiraled through a titanic hedge maze that was still growing, knitting itself into place around them, huge curving walls of interwoven branches that sported needle-pointed thorns ranging from half a centimeter to as long as Ganner’s arm. Thousands of Yuuzhan Vong of unknown caste clambered up and down and across these walls, festooning them with brilliantly colored epiphytes and flowering vines, hanging living cages and nests occupied by a bewildering variety of creatures so alien Ganner couldn’t even really see them clearly: his eyes kept trying to interpret them as insects or reptiles, rodents or felines or some other type of animal with which he was already familiar, when these were really nothing like anything he’d ever seen before.

He caught some of Jacen’s explanation, that this hedge maze would serve a dual purpose: not only was it a ceremonial avenue, but it would also double as an antipersonnel defense surrounding the all-important Well of the World Brain if Yuuzhan’tar were ever invaded. When mature, the hedge thorns would meet overhead, forming a tunnel twenty meters high and thirty wide, hard as durasteel, fireproof, and resilient enough to minimize the effects of explosives—and the thorns would contain a neurotoxin so potent that a single prick could destroy the central nervous system of any unfortunate creature who touched one. Groundborne invaders would be forced to trace the same route along which the processional now marched, facing dozens of ambush points along the way.

Occasionally, through gaps in the half-completed maze, Ganner could catch glimpses of their destination.

Enveloping the Well of the World Brain was a mountain of yorik coral half a kilometer high, spreading in a shallow dome nearly two kilometers across. Even buried, the shape that underlay the coral mountain was, to anyone who’d ever been to Coruscant, unmistakable.

Ganner knew exactly what it used to be. That might have been part of what was making him feel sick, too.

The Well of the World Brain used to be the Galactic Senate.

The Senate had come through the planetary bombardment with only cosmetic damage; its original architect, a thousand years before, had claimed that any weapon powerful enough to destroy the Galactic Senate would crack the planet itself. While this was a boastful exaggeration, there was no doubt that the Galactic Senate was one of the most durable buildings ever designed. Even the total destruction of the original Senate Hall ten years before had left the structure itself barely damaged; the Grand Convocation Chamber of the New Republic had been built directly upon the bones of the old. The Senate’s honeycombed construction gave it incredible structural strength similar, in engineering terms, to yorik coral itself. Only direct hits could do any damage at all, and the interior had been designed in crumple zones, localizing damage by minimizing shock transmission.

Jacen explained: once the yorik coral enzymatically digested the Senate’s duracrete and transparisteel and finished using the digested minerals to build its own skeleton, the Yuuzhan Vong would have taken that long-forgotten architect’s boast and made it into prophecy.

Any weapon that could harm the World Brain would have to be so powerful that it would destroy the planet, too.

Not that they were content with this: they had also seeded the dome with a defensive array of dovin basals. Even if the New Republic somehow delivered a planet-buster, the Well might survive the planet’s destruction as a self-contained vessel, preserving the Brain, with its irreplaceable genetics and invaluable skills.

But the coral conversion was not yet complete. There were still some weak points in the structure—for example, the area damaged by the proton bomb that had detonated in Borsk Fey’lya’s office.

“Somebody bombed Fey’lya’s office?” Ganner muttered to the back of Jacen’s head. “Before or after the invasion?”

Jacen’s soft answering chuckle was dry as summer on Tatooine. He nodded toward the jungle-clutched ruin of the Imperial Palace, enough structure still visible to show the half-kilometer bite the bomb had taken from one corner. “They say Fey’lya set off the bomb himself. They say he took out something like twenty-five thousand crack troops and a bunch of high-ranking Vong officers—including the drop commander.”

“They who? Who says?”

“The Yuuzhan Vong themselves. They admire that kind of thing. They look on Fey’lya as a kind of minor hero.”

“Huh. They didn’t know him like we did.”

Jacen’s shoulders twitched in what might have been a shrug. “And maybe we didn’t know him as well as we should have.”

Ganner shook his head. This conversation wasn’t making him feel any better; just the opposite. “How do you even know this isn’t all a test?” he asked. “How do you know there won’t be a company of warriors waiting inside the Well to kill you at the first sign you’re not going to go through with this?”

“I don’t. But I’ve been told that the Yuuzhan Vong would regard such a ‘test’ as sacrilege. Warriors would never be allowed to lie in ambush in the Well.”

“Told? Told by whom?”

“My—a friend. Her name’s Vergere.”

Ganner scowled, remembering the alien in his dream. “Is this the Vergere? The same one who was the pet of that Yuuzhan Vong assassin?”

“The same one who healed Mara with her tears. The same one whose tears have healed you.”

“The one who turned you over to the Yuuzhan Vong.” Ganner didn’t like the sound of this at all. “You’re sure she’s on our side?”

“Our side?” Jacen said distantly. “You mean the New Republic side? I doubt it.” Suddenly Ganner was overtaken by a stingingly potent wish that he might see Jacen’s face; there was something about the angle of his head … “I’m not sure whose side she’s on,” Jacen continued. “I’m not sure she’s on anybody’s. I’m not sure she believes in ‘sides’ at all.”

“But you told her what you’re planning? How can you trust her?”

“Because I have decided to believe