Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 20_ The Final Prophecy - J. Gregory Keyes [14]
“I’m aware of our diplomatic efforts,” Bel Iblis said. “As well as the Empire’s recent aid to us—in return for help we gave them, I might add. I’m also aware that they want some of our planets in return.”
Sovv’s brows lowered. “They aren’t ‘our’ planets anymore, General Bel Iblis. The planets in question belong to the Yuuzhan Vong now. Most are not even recognizable as the worlds they were a few years ago. I’m convinced we need the Empire’s help to win this war. If that means showing them a little goodwill afterward, I don’t see the harm. In any case, they aren’t making any specific demands at this time—this is an effort to establish their good intentions, nothing more.”
Good intentions that will place at least some of them as an occupation force spitting distance from Coruscant, Wedge thought.
Unfortunately, despite that, he agreed with Sovv.
“We can strike now,” Wedge said, “press our advantage while we have one, or we can wait—wait for the Vong to grow more ships, breed more warriors, invent new bioweapons. Right now, they’ve bit off a little more of this galaxy than they can easily chew, as we’ve shown them in the last few months. We have to keep it that way.”
He looked around. Everyone but Sovv was nodding.
“There is another solution,” the commander said.
“You mean Alpha Red, the biological agent developed by the Chiss?” Wedge said. “Not as far as I’m concerned. Genocide is what the Emperor did. It’s what the Yuuzhan Vong do. It’s not what we do. If it is, I’m fighting for the wrong cause.”
“Even if it’s our only choice for survival?” Sovv asked.
“It’s not,” Wedge replied, flatly.
“The Yuuzhan Vong will not stop after one defeat, ten, a hundred. They will fight until every last warrior is dead. Even if they win, the cost that will exact from our people will be tremendous—”
“That question is moot at present,” Kre’fey broke in, “and would seem a waste of our valuable time to discuss it.”
“Very well. I trust there are no other objections to pursuing the offensive against the Yuuzhan Vong at present?” the commander said.
There were not.
“Then let us discuss details.”
FIVE
Kneeling in the presence of Supreme Overlord Shimrra, Nen Yim believed in the gods. It was impossible not to.
At other times, she had her doubts. Her late master, Mezhan Kwaad, had flatly denied their existence. In the clear light of logic, Nen Yim herself saw no particular reason to give them credence. Indeed, the fact that she herself created, with her own mind and shaping hands, things that all but a few of her people believed to be gifts from the gods suggested that all such evidence of their existence was similarly tainted.
But in the presence of Shimrra, her mind could not tolerate doubt. It was crushed from her by a presence so powerful it could not have mortal origin. It pressed away the years of her learning, of studied cynicism, of anything resembling logic, and left her an insignificant insect, a crècheling terrified by the shadows of her elders and the terrible mystery that was the world.
Afterward, she always wondered how he did it. Was it some modification of yammosk technology? Something erased from the protocols entirely? Or was it an invention of some heretical predecessor of herself?
He was shadow and dread, awesome and unreachable. She crouched at his feet and was nothing.
Onimi leered almost gently at her as she rose, shaking, to speak to her master.
“You have studied the thing?”
“I have, Dread One,” Nen Yim replied. “Not exhaustively, as there hasn’t been time, but—”
“There will be more time. Tell me what you have discovered thus far.”
“It is a ship,” Nen Yim replied. “Like our own ships, it is a living organism.”
“Not at all,” Shimrra interrupted. “It has no dovin basals. Its engines are like the infidel engines, dead metal.”
“True,” Nen Yim agreed. “And parts of its structure are not alive. But—”
“Then it is an infidel thing!