Enemy Lines II_ Rebel Stand - Aaron Allston [11]
Janson sighed, defeated. “I guess I’d better apologize to her and then throw myself on her lightsaber.”
Wedge shook his head. “No, just ask Han to shoot you. It’ll be more merciful and it is his right as a father.”
“You’re still a nasty commanding officer, you know.”
Wedge merely smiled.
Domain Hul Worldship, Pyria System
The Yuuzhan Vong warrior Czulkang Lah was old, far older than any who had been seen by the natives of this galaxy; under the scars, tattoos, and mutilations that rendered his face almost black and his features almost unrecognizable were deep wrinkles of age. The frailty of his form was concealed by the augmented vonduun crab armor he wore, armor that added the strength of its own muscles to his.
He stood in his preferred control chamber of the Domain Hul worldship. The walls were thick with the stations of his various advisers and subordinate officers, including his personal aide, the warrior Kasdakh Bhul. Most of the stations were series of shelflike recesses in the yorik coral wall, and upon those recesses were villips, the preferred communications method of the Yuuzhan Vong; some were in contracted form, featureless blobs, while some were everted to look like glossy, colorless Yuuzhan Vong heads whose lips moved and voices emerged in perfect synchronization with distant officers and spies.
Above Czulkang Lah’s seat was a great membranous lens, in diameter three times the length of a tall warrior; it gave him an unparalleled view of the space before Domain Hul, and could contract to magnify very distant objects.
Before the old warrior was a priest. He was tall, his leanness suggesting self-deprivation, and he wore the ceremonial robes and head wrap of the order of the Trickster goddess, Yun-Harla.
“Welcome, Harrar,” Czulkang Lah said.
“It is my honor to come before you again.” The priest offered the sort of bow that equals exchange, then straightened. “And to find you engaged in work benefiting the gods and befitting your status. I bring you ships and ground reinforcements to help you in your aims.” Indeed, the reinforcements had made a flyover to announce their presence to, and respect for, the old warrior, commander of Yuuzhan Vong forces in the Pyria system.
“I am directed by my son to offer you every assistance in capturing Jaina Solo.” The old warrior beckoned to a much younger male who waited near the wall. The younger warrior stepped forward and knelt. “Harrar, I bestow upon you Charat Kraal. He has been in charge of special operations where Jaina Solo and other matters are concerned. He leads an inventive and well-motivated unit made up of Kraal and Hul pilots and knowledge harvesters. My burdens of command will be lightened, rather than increased, if you simply take him off my hands and assume direct control of those operations.”
Harrar addressed the younger warrior. “Do you feel you can readily transfer your service?” The question was a matter of life and death; should Charat Kraal, in honesty, say he could not, he would naturally be killed and a more agreeable commander installed.
Charat Kraal raised his head to look into Harrar’s face. The warrior’s nose was not just deformed, a mutilation common to Yuuzhan Vong warriors, but entirely missing, with ragged, reddened edges all around to suggest the violence with which it had been removed. His forehead was high, more like a human’s than that of a Yuuzhan Vong, and elaborately tattooed with perpendicular lines and stripes that drew the eye back along it and made it seemed flatter. “My duty is to the gods, our leaders, and Domain Kraal,” he said. “I will serve gladly.”
“Good,” Harrar said. “What are your most current operations?”
“We have recently lost our human spy within their great abomination-building. So I have engineered a plan to introduce one or more new spies into their camp. We will do this on the next occasion that an assault is made against their camp.”
“Just like that?” Harrar asked. “The infidels get no opportunity to refuse