Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 09_ Edge of Victory 02_ Rebirth - J. Gregory Keyes [14]
Nen Yim was a heretic. Her master, Mezhan Kwaad, had been as well, before the Jeedai child Tahiri took her brilliant head from her neck. Together Nen Yim and she had dared to formulate hypotheses and test them. With her death, Mezhan Kwaad had absorbed most of the blame for both the heresy and the failure. Even so, Nen Yim had been spared only because shapers were already too scarce.
Baanu Miir was dying, as a single glance at its decaying chambers made clear her first day within it. For a brain this ill, no protocol she knew would serve, and as an adept she could not access the mysteries beyond the fifth cortex of the qahsa. She would have to make her own protocol, despite already being tainted with heresy, despite the fact that she was certainly being watched.
Her first duty was not to the calcified shaper codes, but to her people. The gods—if they existed at all—must understand that. If the worldship failed, twelve thousand Yuuzhan Vong would die—not in glorious battle or sacrifice, but smothered in carbon dioxide or frozen by the chill of space. She was not going to let that happen, even if it meant this would be her last shaping and her last act in this life.
She replaced the pouch-creature on her abdomen and rolled the oozhith back over it, feeling the tiny cilia of the garment digging into her pores and resuming their symbiotic relationship with her flesh. Then she left the dying brain and returned through dim and opalescent chambers and corridors to her laboratory suite.
FIVE
“Arrest us?” Mara asked Hamner as the droid set his drink down. Her voice was radium at absolute zero, and Luke shivered. It was the voice of the woman who had once tried to kill him and very nearly succeeded.
“What’s the charge?” Luke asked.
“Fey’lya has evidence that you were behind the unsanctioned military action at Yavin Four a few months ago,” Hamner said. “That opens you to a variety of charges, I’m afraid, especially since as chief of state he expressly forbade you to engage in any such activity.”
“What evidence?” Luke asked.
“The Yuuzhan Vong released a prisoner taken on Yavin Four,” Hamner said. “Fey’lya’s calling it a ‘hopeful sign of goodwill.’ The prisoner testified that Jedi were involved with and in fact led an unprovoked attack against the Yuuzhan Vong in a neutral system. He claims to have been a part of that force, which he asserts was led by Talon Karrde. He further maintains that Karrde had frequent communication with you, and that he witnessed those communications.”
Mara’s eyes had narrowed to slits. “It’s a lie. None of Karrde’s people would talk. It must be one of the Yuuzhan Vong’s Peace Brigade collaborators, coached in what to say.”
“But it is true, at the bottom of it all?” Hamner said.
Luke nodded tersely. “Yes. After the Yuuzhan Vong warmaster offered to stop with the worlds he had already conquered so long as all of the Jedi were turned over to him, I realized the students at the Jedi academy were in danger. I asked Talon Karrde to evacuate them. When he arrived, the Peace Brigade was already there, trying to capture the students and turn them over to the Yuuzhan Vong as a peace offering. Karrde wouldn’t let them do that. I pleaded with Fey’lya to send New Republic military. He wouldn’t. So, yes, I sanctioned his effort and sent what help I could. What do you think I should have done?”
Hamner’s long face nodded thoughtfully. “I don’t blame you. I only wish you had contacted me.”
“You weren’t around at the time. I talked to Wedge, but it was out of his hands.”
“But their witness is a liar,” Mara interjected. “We can prove that.”
“And become liars ourselves?” Luke replied. “He’s lying about who he is and what he saw, maybe, but most of his accusations are true, if a bit distorted.”
Hamner knotted his fingers together. “There’s more, anyway. Internal