Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 08_ Edge of Victory 01_ Conquest - J. Gregory Keyes [61]
“We go down,” he said.
“I go up,” Anakin replied. He started up the trail. He didn’t look back, but after he had gone perhaps thirty strides, he heard what he guessed to be a Yuuzhan Vong profanity and the sound of footsteps pacing up behind him.
“Gee,” Anakin breathed. Tears stung his eyes.
He stood at the crest of the height, where he could see the familiar meander of the Unnh River. He’d seen this spot from the air maybe fifty times, and knew it as well as he knew any place.
Except that things had changed. The Great Temple—which had stood for untold thousands of years, watching the passage of the people who built it, of Jedi dark and brilliant, the destruction of the Death Star—was gone without a trace.
In its place near the river were five spacious compounds formed like many-rayed stars. The walls were thick and perhaps two stories high, and probably had chambers in them. The inner courtyards were open to the sky. Two seemed to be filled with water, another with a pale yellow fluid that probably wasn’t water. Another had structures in its central space—domes and polyhedrons of various shapes, all the same color as the larger structure. The fifth was full of coralskippers and larger spacegoing ships. Lots of them.
It looked like canals had been dug from the river to connect the compounds.
“We must descend before they scent us,” Vua Rapuung insisted again.
“I thought that stuff you rubbed on us fools the sniffers, or whatever they are.”
“It causes confusion. It gives us time to hide. There is no place to hide here, and they will see us. There is no fooling that.”
There is for Jedi, usually, Anakin thought. But he could no more cloud a Yuuzhan Vong mind than he could dance on the surface of a black hole.
“There’s cover,” he said. The hill was blanketed mostly in scrub and lacked the high canopy that grew over most of the moon’s land surface, but the bushes were usually more than head-high.
“Not from heat-pit sensors,” Rapuung demurred. “Not from netting beetles. No water.”
Anakin nodded thoughtfully, but he was really still examining the shaper base, barely paying attention to the Yuuzhan Vong beside him.
“Outside of the big compounds—all of those little structures that look like somebody just threw them down and let them grow—what’s all that? It looks like a shantytown.”
“I don’t know that word, shantee. That is where the workers and slaves and Shamed Ones live.”
“Support colony. They do the drudge work.”
“If the tizowyrm translates correctly, yes.”
“Workers and slaves I know. What are Shamed Ones?”
“Shamed Ones are cursed by the gods,” Rapuung said. “They work as slaves. They are not worth speaking of.”
“Cursed how?”
“When I say they are not worth speaking of, how do my words confuse you?”
“Fine,” Anakin sighed. “Have it your way.”
“My way is to leave this ridge, work spiralwise toward where the gas giant sets. Quickly.”
“That’s the wrong direction! We’re only a few kilometers away!”
“All the forest below is trapped,” Rapuung said. “The river, too. There is only one way in for us, and I know it.”
“Tell me what it is, then,” Anakin said. “Convince—” But he stopped. “Listen.”
Rapuung nodded. “I hear them. They are weaving the lav peq. I was foolish to trust you. You think with something other than your brain.” He pressed his frayed and ulcerous lips together in an expression of contempt.
“We aren’t caught yet. Is there a weak spot in this search pattern?”
“No.”
“We’ll make one, then. These fliers they’re using—”
“Tsik vai.”
“Right. Are they the same as we’ve seen before?”
“Yes.”
“They’re just atomospheric fliers, right?”
Rapuung looked wary. “How do you know that?”
“They look like they have some sort of air intake vents—gills—on the side.”
“Correct.”
“Come on, then.” Anakin started down the hill. Rapuung started after him, for once without objection.
Anakin was feeling considerably better today. Jedi healing and relaxation techniques