Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 08_ Edge of Victory 01_ Conquest - J. Gregory Keyes [66]
But maybe all Yuuzhan Vong were like that. It was not like Anakin had chatted with a lot of them. Maybe Rapuung was as normal as normal could be. Maybe he kept his motives and plans secret because that’s just the way Yuuzhan Vong were.
Or maybe he was afraid—afraid that if Anakin knew what he was up to or knew how to get into the shaper base, Anakin would kill him or abandon him.
He sneaked a glance at the fierce, flat-nosed visage and gave that a silent negative. He couldn’t imagine Vua Rapuung being afraid of anything. Maybe prudent was a better word.
So Anakin waited, quietly, and found himself gradually mesmerized by the gentle flow of the stream. He stretched out tentatively to the life around him, feeling again the shadow of the pain and death he had caused.
I’m sorry, he told the forest.
How close was he to the dark side? Was Rapuung right?
He’d argued with Jacen that the Force was a tool that was neither good nor evil, but that could be used, like any tool, to do good or evil with. Could evil be as simple as not thinking? He supposed so. Corran Horn had once told him that selfishness was evil and selflessness good. In that light, selfishly causing death to save himself was evil, regardless of the fact that he simply hadn’t considered the consequences of his actions at the time. And yet he wasn’t just fighting for himself, was he? Tahiri’s life was at stake. Maybe more than her life, because if the Tahiri of his vision ever came to be, it could mean the end of a great many people.
If he was honest, he had to admit he hadn’t been thinking about those larger consequences, either. He’d had a problem to solve, and he’d solved it, the same as he might solve a mathematical equation or a problem with the hyperdrive motivator in his X-wing. He just hadn’t thought about the problems his solution might cause, which seemed pretty typical of him lately.
Mara Jade had pointed out this tendency of his ages ago, when they were camping together on Dantooine. Apparently he hadn’t learned anything. Maybe it was time he started to.
Which brought him back to Vua Rapuung. The man was self-admittedly out for revenge, and if there was one thing that had been drilled solidly into Anakin, it was that revenge was of the dark side. If he continued working with Rapuung, would he be implicated in that revenge? What tragedy was he helping to bring about by cooperating with this half-crazed Yuuzhan Vong?
Something stirred the life of the forest. A thousand voices changed slightly as they smelled and heard something unfamiliar, something not included in their limited vocabulary of predator and prey, hunger and danger.
Something new to Yavin 4 was approaching, on the river.
“Are you expecting someone?” Anakin asked.
“Yes.”
Anakin didn’t ask who. He was tired of asking questions that he knew wouldn’t be answered. Instead he sharpened his senses and watched.
Soon something appeared on the river, coming upstream.
At first he thought it was a boat, but reminded himself that if it was a Yuuzhan Vong boat, it was something organic, as well. Studying it, he picked out the details that proved him right.
The major visible portion was a broad, flat dome poking up from the water, banded with scutes or plates. Whatever moved it was below the surface of the water, but it did move. Now and then something that might be the top of a head broke the water in front of it. If it was a head, it was a big one, nearly as wide as the visible portion of the shell, and scaled and dull olive in color.
Sitting on top of it was a male Anakin could not feel in the Force, but the closer he came, the less he looked like a Yuuzhan Vong. At first Anakin didn’t understand why he got that impression; he had the same sharply sloping forehead, and his nostrils were set nearly