Traitor by Matthew Stover (chrome ebook reader txt) 📕

He has become the battle.

He is not directly aware of the corpses that litter the tunnel, that his feet nimbly avoid of their own accord.

He is not directly aware of the warped sheets of durasteel that he has drawn from the wreckage of the Great Door, sheets that spin and tumble around him to become anvils for the hammer of thud bugs and shields to shelter his flanks.

He is not directly aware of the coral-embedded statues from the Atrium that he has caught in his Force-powered dance, immense figures of the species of the New Republic that seem to come to life to fight in his cause, statues that lumber and rock and fall, crushing dozens and hundreds, remaking Atrium into abattoir.

No more is he aware of the texture of the coral that lines the walls, or the quality of the light, or the number of his opponents. Has he faced a dozen? A hundred? How many have been pulled back to safety after taking disabling wounds? How many lie dead in the brimstone smoke?

He doesn’t remember, for there is no memory. There is no past. There is no future.

He is not even aware of himself. Nor of the Yuuzhan Vong. He has become the warriors he fights, slaying himself with each who falls. There is no longer any such thing as a Ganner Rhysode; there are no more Yuuzhan Vong, no more Jedi.

There are only the dancers, and the dance.

The dance is all there is: from whirl of quarks to wheel of galaxies, all is motion.

All is dance.

All is.

   Nom Anor motioned for Vergere to wait while he took one last quick look around. Before him rose the coral mountain of the Well. The half-finished thorn maze towered behind, empty of shapers—they’d all probably been drawn to the Well’s front by the noise of the battle. Distant explosions popped in stuttering arrhythm, punctuated by fainter shouts.

Satisfied that they were unobserved, Nom Anor pulled aside a soft, mosslike sheet of false coral to reveal a hatch sphincter’s nosetongue. He stuck his hand inside it, still glancing around nervously while the nosetongue tasted and analyzed the enzymatic secretions of his skin. A second later it recognized him, and a larger curtain of false coral nearby suddenly dimpled as a small concealed hatch sphincter opened behind it.

He motioned for Vergere to follow, and went in.

Yorik coral gave way to age-grimed duracrete; the corridor became a labyrinth. As they threaded their way along, Nom Anor congratulated himself on the cleverness of his escape plan. No one had been within the Well except master shapers and their assistants since its initial conversion had begun; no one was willing to risk the homicidal wrath of Ch’Gang Hool—except for one shaper whose greed had overcome his cowardice. Of all the Yuuzhan Vong, only that shaper and Nom Anor himself had been aware that immense chambers—once the offices of the Old Republic’s Chancellor—lay below the World Brain’s pool.

These chambers were blasted and broken. Damaged in the destruction of the Senate above, they had never been repaired. Nom Anor picked his way over mounds of rubble and through a jungle of twisted durasteel and dangling cable, leading Vergere through the wreckage. Down here some of the New Republic glow globes still functioned; they had not been destroyed as heresies because only Nom Anor and his pet shaper had known of their existence.

He pulled himself over a bent girder, and there it was: long and sleek, sculpted for atmospheric speed, twinned dovin basals—one for motion, one for defense—surfaces angled to deflect sensors, flat matte black, nonreflective to defeat visual targeting.

The shaper who had grown it had guaranteed this coralcraft would be as fast as any in the Yuuzhan Vong fleet; Nom Anor had used the concealed hatch sphincter above to secretly visit the craft on several occasions while it grew, so that its pilotbrain could be imprinted with Nom Anor’s mental signature. While visiting, Nom Anor had often amused himself by contemplating how he had found a new use for the chambers that had once belonged to the legendary Palpatine …

The defensive dovin basal would collapse a tunnel through the duracrete and yorik coral alike, opening it like a gate to the sky. The pilotbrain was trained with the necessary recognition codes to pass the fleet cordon around the planet, and had coordinates for the jump into New Republic space already memorized. Once inside, nothing could touch him.

Once inside, he would be safe.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he murmured as he put his hand to the coralcraft’s nosetongue. Its hatch gaped wide, instantly obedient. “This is the result, Vergere, of contingency planning. I never assume success. This is why I always survive. I always have a contingency plan, to cover any possible disaster—”

“Do you always?” Something in her voice froze him in place. “Any possible disaster?”

Before he could even draw breath to ask what she meant, his unspoken question was answered by a sickeningly familiar sound—

snap-hiss hummmm

Slowly, glacially, afraid of what he’d see but unable to stop himself, Nom Anor turned toward a new light in the ruined office: light that sizzled green and struck white highlights off the black curves of his coralcraft.

To find himself staring into the terminal curve of a lightsaber’s blade, one centimeter from his nostrils.

“A lightsaber is an interesting weapon,” Vergere said conversationally. “A blade unique in the history of warfare. A paradox, not unlike the Jedi who wield it: those peaceful warriors, who kill in the service of life. Have you ever noticed? The blade is round. It has no edge. But it is a lightsaber—which means it is nothing but edge. There is no part of this blade that does not cut. Curious, yes? Symbolic, one might say.”

“What?” His mouth opened, closed, opened again. He wanted to ask what she was doing. He wanted to ask where she had gotten a lightsaber. He wanted to ask any number of things, but all that would come from his mouth was “What?”

Again, Vergere seemed