Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 14_ Traitor - Matthew Woodring Stover [93]
Jacen explained: once the yorik coral enzymatically digested the Senate’s duracrete and transparisteel and finished using the digested minerals to build its own skeleton, the Yuuzhan Vong would have taken that long-forgotten architect’s boast and made it into prophecy.
Any weapon that could harm the World Brain would have to be so powerful that it would destroy the planet, too.
Not that they were content with this: they had also seeded the dome with a defensive array of dovin basals. Even if the New Republic somehow delivered a planet-buster, the Well might survive the planet’s destruction as a self-contained vessel, preserving the Brain, with its irreplaceable genetics and invaluable skills.
But the coral conversion was not yet complete. There were still some weak points in the structure—for example, the area damaged by the proton bomb that had detonated in Borsk Fey’lya’s office.
“Somebody bombed Fey’lya’s office?” Ganner muttered to the back of Jacen’s head. “Before or after the invasion?”
Jacen’s soft answering chuckle was dry as summer on Tatooine. He nodded toward the jungle-clutched ruin of the Imperial Palace, enough structure still visible to show the half-kilometer bite the bomb had taken from one corner. “They say Fey’lya set off the bomb himself. They say he took out something like twenty-five thousand crack troops and a bunch of high-ranking Vong officers—including the drop commander.”
“They who? Who says?”
“The Yuuzhan Vong themselves. They admire that kind of thing. They look on Fey’lya as a kind of minor hero.”
“Huh. They didn’t know him like we did.”
Jacen’s shoulders twitched in what might have been a shrug. “And maybe we didn’t know him as well as we should have.”
Ganner shook his head. This conversation wasn’t making him feel any better; just the opposite. “How do you even know this isn’t all a test?” he asked. “How do you know there won’t be a company of warriors waiting inside the Well to kill you at the first sign you’re not going to go through with this?”
“I don’t. But I’ve been told that the Yuuzhan Vong would regard such a ‘test’ as sacrilege. Warriors would never be allowed to lie in ambush in the Well.”
“Told? Told by whom?”
“My—a friend. Her name’s Vergere.”
Ganner scowled, remembering the alien in his dream. “Is this the Vergere? The same one who was the pet of that Yuuzhan Vong assassin?”
“The same one who healed Mara with her tears. The same one whose tears have healed you.”
“The one who turned you over to the Yuuzhan Vong.” Ganner didn’t like the sound of this at all. “You’re sure she’s on our side?”
“Our side?” Jacen said distantly. “You mean the New Republic side? I doubt it.” Suddenly Ganner was overtaken by a stingingly potent wish that he might see Jacen’s face; there was something about the angle of his head … “I’m not sure whose side she’s on,” Jacen continued. “I’m not sure she’s on anybody’s. I’m not sure she believes in ‘sides’ at all.”
“But you told her what you’re planning? How can you trust her?”
“Because I have decided to believe she won’t betray me.”
Ganner heard the echo inside his head: Trust is always an act of faith. That swelling ball of nausea in his stomach was getting heavier with every step. The world swam around him like a slow whirlpool of gelatin.
The thorn maze abruptly ended, opening onto an immense wedge-shaped causeway of curving pale ribs that seemed to be the smoothly interlaced horizontal trunks of living trees; leaf-bearing branches tangled toward the sun to either side. The foot of the causeway spanned at least a hundred meters between the branch-walls. It tapered like an arrowhead as it rose, forming a ramp whose point touched the Great Door of the Galactic Senate: a double leaf of durasteel layered like