Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 14_ Traitor - Matthew Woodring Stover [27]
“So,” he said. “You say the second step is complete? The dhuryam has successfully seduced him?”
“Or he the dhuryam.” Vergere leaned to one side to meet his eye through the thicket of viewspider legs. “It is the same. To create the empathic bond, as he has done, requires each of them to downplay their differences, and focus on all they have in common. Yes: the second step is complete.”
“So.” Nom Anor leaned back, and folded his long, bony fingers across his chest. “Jacen Solo has, for the moment, an alarming degree of freedom.”
“Freedom is always alarming,” Vergere agreed.
“Though more alarming is that he is now aware of it. I wonder if Tsavong Lah may have been overconfident in agreeing to this phase of the plan.”
“Don’t you mean,” Vergere said with a sly half smile, “that you fear you were overconfident in proposing it?”
Nom Anor waved this aside. “Giving him room to act is one thing; giving him that room in this ship is another.”
“You believe he could threaten the ship? How?”
“I do not know.” Nom Anor shifted his weight forward, resting his chin on his knuckles as he stared into the optical jelly. “But I have not survived this much of the war by underestimating Jedi—particularly the Solo family. I am concerned. Even the slightest threat to this ship is far too great a risk.”
He had no need to elaborate; Vergere knew already that the genetic material that had gone into the creation of the seedship was irreplaceable: gene samples preserved through the incalculable millennia of the Yuuzhan Vong’s intergalactic voyage aboard the worldships. Samples preserved from a homeworld so long vanished in the dust of history that not even its name survived.
“Ease your mind, Nom Anor. Has not each step gone perfectly so far?”
He scowled. “I distrust such easy victories.”
“But easy victories are proof of the True Gods’ favor,” Vergere said in that irritating chime, a tone that may or may not have been intentionally mocking; Nom Anor had never been able to decide. “To distrust victory smacks of blasphemy—to say nothing of ingratitude …”
“Remember to whom you speak.” The executor waved a dismissal. “Leave me. Maintain your vigilance. In fact, intensify it. These last few days before seedfall will be especially dangerous. Take no chances.”
“As you say, Executor.” Vergere favored him with a millimetrically correct bow, then opened the chamber’s hatch sphincter and climbed out.
And Nom Anor, in his cautious, methodical way, took his own advice. As soon as Vergere left, Nom Anor sent a message by villip to the commander of a special detachment of warriors; this detachment had been brought aboard and specially trained for just such a moment as this. He issued a short string of orders.
Before the end of the day, warriors in ooglith masquers would begin to infiltrate the other slave gangs in the Nursery. They would stay well away from Jacen Solo, conceal their presence, and wait.
Before seedfall, there would be more than a hundred of them.
And meanwhile, Nom Anor made a mental note to have his coralcraft fed, groomed, and prepped for sudden takeoff.
He would take no chances. He had not survived so much of this war by underestimating Jedi.
When the Devaronian died, Jacen thought, Okay, maybe I was wrong.
He knelt on the hive-lake’s verge. A mob of injured, wounded, and sick slaves surged and shouted around him, hands and tentacles and talons reaching for him, tugging at his robeskin. His robeskin had soaked up a lot of blood before Jacen had managed to tourniquet the stump of the Devaronian’s arm; the Devaronian’s silver-based blood was black as tarnish, and smelled of burned sulfur. From his link with the dhuryam through the slave seed in his chest, Jacen could faintly perceive his robeskin’s primitive delight at the blood’s unusual flavor.
As weeks passed, Jacen and the dhuryam had learned to communicate more precisely, through the medium of