Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 06_ Balance Point - Kathy Tyers [15]
Yun-Harla, the Trickster goddess, seemed to smile on Nom Anor.
“Warmaster.” The villip gave a good imitation of Nom Anor’s voice. Its bass undertones suggested deference and submission.
“How many have they added to your herd?” Tsavong asked.
“Six thousand four hundred since we spoke. Many came from Fondor. Another dome is under construction.”
“Abominable, but temporary. Be careful not to tip your hand.” Tsavong’s fringed lips, slit many times in devotion to Yun-Yammka, curled in a smile. Fondor had resisted one of his supreme commanders, Nas Choka, less than a klekket ago—two months by the infidels’ calendar. In the process of destroying its ghastly mechanized shipyards, Choka had taken only a few hundred captives.
Then a torrent of starfire wiped out half of Choka’s flotilla and three-fourths of the enemy’s own ships. Tsavong’s tacticians still were trying to decide whether that had been a deliberate sacrifice on the enemy’s part. The infidels’ usual urge to preserve life had been their greatest weakness, their most heinous spiritual perfidy. Were they learning? Had they discovered that sacrifice was the key to victory?
According to spies, the torrent originated in the system the infidels called Corellia, at a monstrous mechanical installation they named Centerpoint. Until Tsavong Lah’s strategists could explain the weapon’s hideous power, they advised him to find a Coreward staging point that lay behind multiple gravity wells from Centerpoint’s direct line of fire.
By happy coincidence, the disgraced executor had been sent to just such a world.
“Watch for worthy ones,” Tsavong reminded him.“With better sacrifices, we might be cleansing the inner worlds now.”
Nom Anor ducked his head. “And Jedi,” he promised, pronouncing the difficult word well. He’d lived among these people for years. “Difficult to catch, but some seem worthy.”
Tsavong Lah nodded and touched the ridge crest of Nom Anor’s villip. The face faded and smoothed out. The villip retracted, sucking itself back through its mouth hole.
On his distant world, Nom Anor would be putting his new masquer back on—not an ooglith, but a newly bred type that imitated a nonhuman species. Anor’s human contact, on the enemy’s capital world, had agreed to deliver shiploads of captives to his current system.
As soon as Tsavong arrived there, he would have the glad task of sorting the worthy from the unworthy. A reverent mass sacrifice might convince mighty Yun-Yammka to let Tsavong reach the Galactic Core, where fertile gardens—tended by fecund slave races—were promised by the supreme overlord.
Six thousand more infidels would enhance the sacrifice, bringing him that much closer to the world he truly wanted to offer his gods.
Coruscant.
CHAPTER FOUR
Mara Jade Skywalker had been a wide-eyed child when Emperor Palpatine brought her to Coruscant. She’d survived Palpatine’s training one hour and one day at a time. Now, everyone tended to think of Coruscant as ground zero again—this time, as the Yuuzhan Vong’s ultimate objective.
Meanwhile, her husband was training another apprentice—obviously assuming there would be peace and justice to defend in the future. She wondered, though, if it was hope or just habit that kept them all sticking to business.
She stared over folded hands at her younger nephew. Seated next to Luke, wearing a light-brown tunic under his Jedi robe, dark-haired Anakin Solo had a saturnine intensity, a Corellian surname, and his father’s wry lift to one eyebrow. Still, his blue eyes simmered with the eagerness to save the galaxy—alone, if necessary—and that was pure Skywalker.
Recently returned from Yavin 4, Luke had formed a habit of gathering several Jedi every few days in some secluded but public place. All Jedi had fallen under public scrutiny in recent months. Ithor was lost, despite Corran Horn’s sacrificial effort. Renegade battle squadrons led by young Jedi Knights dived in and