Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 05_ Agents of Chaos 02_ Jedi Eclipse - James Luceno [63]
“It tried to kill me! It wants to kill me!”
Having lost its fury, the war coordinator was bobbing on the waves its own actions had stirred. Many captives were pressed to the rim of the tank. Most of those flung outside by the creature’s abrupt spin were picking themselves up from the deck, dazed but not seriously hurt. Except for Fasgo, who was sprawled lifelessly in an expanding pool of blood.
Even Chine-kal seemed wary as he approached the yammosk. Skidder had to believe that not all the creatures developed as planned, and that despite the bioengineering that went into them, some could be flawed, as was sometimes the case with skips and other examples of Yuuzhan Vong organic technology.
Seeing or perhaps sensing the commander’s approach, the yammosk extended two tentacles to him, then a third, which the yammosk curled around Chine-kal’s neck. The commander’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he might have collapsed except for the support of the tentacles. Then, blinking back to consciousness, he turned and stared wide-eyed at Skidder.
Skidder couldn’t begin to guess what the yammosk had related about Randa, or about Skidder himself. But the words that flew from Chine-kal were the last thing he expected to hear.
“A Jedi!” The commander eased out of the yammosk’s embrace and approached Skidder. “A Jedi!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Skidder saw Roa and Sapha hang their heads in defeat.
Chine-kal stood before Skidder, shaking his head in both disbelief and wonderment. “A valiant effort, Jedi. Truly inspired. But what you failed to realize is that yammosks are not grown but spawned. Each passes the sum total of its learning on to the next.” He glanced at the creature. “This one’s progenitors have had experience with Jedi.”
Chine-kal turned back to Skidder and rested his hands on Skidder’s shoulders. “But be proud, Jedi, for you have pleased me greatly. In fact, you will be my gift to Warmaster Tsavong Lah, who will one day arrive to govern Coruscant.”
FIFTEEN
The tempo of the rousing march that welcomed Supreme Commander Nas Choka aboard the Yuuzhan Vong warship Yammka was kept by warriors with drums, but the theme itself was supplied by a menagerie of bioengineered insects and avians, droning, trumpeting, and whistling from within cages and atop perches situated throughout the great hold.
Enormous villip-choir transparencies broke the obsidian monotony of the starboard bulkhead, providing a star-strewn panorama of the anchored fleet, as well as a distant view of the Hutt space world known as Runaway Prince, remade for the sowing of yorik coral, villip shrubs, and other necessities of war. To the ships that resembled asteroids, marine behemoths, and tumbled and faceted cabochons had been added an even more massive and sinister specimen: a flattened lapidary orb of glossy black, from the dense center of which spiraled half a dozen arms, as if in dark imitation of the galaxy the Yuuzhan Vong were determined to conquer.
Supreme Commander Choka, along with his commanders and foremost subalterns, moved on levitated dovin basal cushions in tiered heights above the deck. In advance of them floated four smaller cushions, their diminutive riders screened by flutters—living creatures that resembled squares of patterned cloth. Arrayed on either side of the arriving group stood five thousand warriors dressed in battle tunics and armed with amphistaffs and coufees.
Confined to a small space among the starboard-side group cowered two hundred prisoners taken from Gyndine and already purified for sacrifice. Bony growths affixed to voice boxes and jaws prevented them from giving voice to their fear.
Behind Choka marched troops of his own command, their precision footfalls crushing an ankle-deep carpet of maroon flowers, whose aroma—wafted about by the rhythmic beating of wings—had aroused the insects to song. Their stridulations intensifying