• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He didn’t see anything in any of their eyes he thought he could work with—no fear or uncertainty, just a nearly uniform and haughty anger. Still, with a species you didn’t know, it was hard to tell what facial expressions meant.

“Do any of you speak Basic?” he asked.

One of the shapers lifted his head, his orange-limned eyes fierce. “I speak your infidel tongue. It tastes like the waste excretions of an ill vhlor on my tongue, but I can speak it. Please, ask me something so I may deny it to you.”

Not too promising. “We infidels don’t normally sample the waste excretions of ill animals, so I don’t fully understand the reference,” Corran said. “I suppose that such delicacies are reserved for the Chosen.”

“It’s not possible for you to mock me,” the shaper said softly.

“Sure it is. You may be dense enough not to recognize it, but I can certainly mock you.”

“What do you want with me, infidel?”

“What’s your name?”

“I am Kotaa of the glorious Domain Zun-qin,” he replied.

“Who was designated to make contact with the fleet once this ship was in the Yag’Dhul system, Kotaa Zun-qin? What was he supposed to say?”

“He will say nothing. You killed him. The warriors are in charge of this mission, of course. And do not think I will aid you in any scheme to defraud my people, Jeedai. Our fleet is poised to strike, as you must know, and strike it will.”

Corran’s eyes narrowed—not at Kotaa’s words, but at something he had caught from the corner of his eye when the shaper had said the word Jeedai.

“I don’t suppose you want to tell me when they will strike if they don’t hear from us?”

“I would be happy to vivisect you,” the shaper offered. “So that your death might offer the Yuuzhan Vong knowledge and thus have meaning. I am inclined to do you no other favor.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Corran said. “I don’t get an offer like that every day. Every other day, maybe …” He turned away from the shaper and looked more closely at the others. “Anyone else care to insult me?”

“I alone am able to mutter in your tuneless language,” Kotaa Zun-qin said.

“That’s fine,” Corran said. “I have a translator.” He approached one of the Shamed Ones. This was a smallish female, her only identifying marks a trio of poorly healed puckered burns on each cheek. He cut her free of the med tape binding her to the bulkhead. The shaper yammered something at the Shamed One in Yuuzhan Vong, and she answered tersely.

Corran pulled his blaster and motioned for the Shamed One to go ahead of him. Together they went up the corridor and into the control room.

“What’s going on, Tahiri?” Corran asked.

“Not much. We’re still not noticed, so far as I can tell, and no more Yuuzhan Vong ships have jumped.”

“No news is good news. Can you talk to one of the Vong for me?”

“Yuuzhan Vong,” Tahiri corrected.

“Whatever. Can you translate?”

“Sure,” she said cheerfully, removing the control mask from her head.

When the Shamed One saw Tahiri’s scars, her eyes widened, and she gabbled something in her own language.

“What did she say?” Corran asked. He really hated having to rely on secondhand information. He hated having no information even more.

“She noticed my scars,” Tahiri explained. “She asked if I am the Jedi-who-was-shaped.”

“She’s heard of you?”

“I guess so.”

Very, very interesting, Corran thought. Unless this one was actually at Yavin—and what would the odds of that be?—word was getting around, even among the Shamed Ones. Maybe especially among the Shamed Ones.

“Ask her name,” Corran instructed.

“It’s Taan,” Tahiri said after consulting with the Yuuzhan Vong.

“Tell Taan I saw her make a strange face when the shaper called me a Jedi,” Corran said. “Ask her what that meant.”

Tahiri conversed with the Shamed One briefly, then turned her green eyes up to Corran.

“She wants to know if it’s true what they say about the Jedi.”

“What do they say?”

“That the Jedi are the salvation of the Shamed Ones.”

Corran considered that. “She thinks of you as something