• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

An inside-out world stuffed with terror, agony, slaughter—

He had done this.

All of it.

And: he saw Vergere.

Panting harshly, he watched her scramble up the last few meters of the dhuryam hive. Below, armored warriors struggled to hold off a mob of shouting, scrambling, bleeding slaves—slaves Jacen could feel, through his link with the dhuryam beneath his feet. He could feel it whipping them on, driving them upward.

He could feel it shrieking for them to kill him.

He heard a low, feral growling, like a wounded rancor cornered in its den. It came from his own throat.

“It was you,” Jacen rasped.

Vergere looked up. She stopped, well away, out of amphistaff range.

“I heard him,” he panted. His breath came hot and painful. “Anakin told me to stop. But it wasn’t Anakin. It was you.”

Vergere flattened her crest against her oblate skull, and there was no trace of cheer in her eyes. “Jacen,” she said slowly, sadly, “in the story of your life, is this your best ending? Is this your dream?”

My dream …

He remembered hazily his hope of freeing the slaves; he remembered his deal with the dhuryam: it had agreed to spare the lives of the slaves, transport them safely planetside in the shipseeds, in exchange for Jacen’s help in destroying its sibling-rivals. But in the slaughterhouse he had made of the Nursery, that memory seemed as indistinct as his dream on Belkadan: a ghost of self-delusion, a wisp of hope, lovely but intangible.

Unreal.

The savage chaos of blood and pain and death Jacen had spread throughout this inverted world—that was real. The bitterly clear light inside Jacen’s head showed him all the stark shadows of reality: he saw what he had done, and he saw what he needed to do now.

He lifted his amphistaff over his head and let it swing to vertical, blade down.

“Jacen, stop!” Vergere took a step closer. “Would you kill your friend? Is that who you are?”

“This is no friend,” Jacen said through his teeth. “It’s an alien. A monster.”

“And what does that make you? Did it betray your trust? Who is the monster here?”

“I can kill it right now. And when I kill it, I kill the Yuuzhan Vong homeworld.” The amphistaff writhed in his hands. He tightened his grip until his hands burned. “Letting it live—that would be a betrayal. That would betray the New Republic. All the men and women the Yuuzhan Vong have murdered. All the fallen Jedi … even my … even …”

His voice trailed away; he could not say Anakin’s name. Not now. But still he did not strike.

“And so you face a choice, Jacen Solo. You can betray your nation, or you can betray a friend.”

“Betray a friend?” He lifted the amphistaff once more. “It doesn’t even know what a friend is—”

“Perhaps not.” Vergere’s crest rippled, picking up scarlet highlights. She took another step forward. “But you do.”

Jacen staggered as though she had punched him. Tears streamed from his eyes. “Then you tell me what to do!” he shouted. “Tell me what I’m supposed to do!”

“I would not presume,” Vergere said calmly, taking another step toward him. “But I will tell you this: in killing this dhuryam, you kill yourself. And all the warriors, and shapers, and Shamed Ones on this ship—and every one of these slaves. Weren’t you trying to save lives, Jacen Solo?”

“How do I—” Jacen shook his head sharply to clear tears from his eyes. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“You don’t. But if what I say is true, would that change your mind?”

“I—I don’t—” Snarling red rage welled up inside him. They had put him through too much. He had passed beyond questions; all he wanted now was an answer.

An end.

“Everything—” Jacen forced words through his teeth.

“Everything you tell me is a lie.”

Vergere spread her hands. “Then choose, and act.”

He chose.

He raised the amphistaff—but before he could bring it down, Vergere sprang forward into his way: to kill the dhuryam, he’d have to spear through her. He hesitated for an eyeblink, and in that instant she reached up and caressed his cheek, just as she had the very first time her touch had drawn him down out of the Embrace of Pain’s blank white