Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [101]
Nom Anor shifted his troubled gaze from the departing ships, and at the same moment Onimi shifted his, to needle Nom Anor with a meddlesome look. Nom Anor wondered if Onimi’s olfactory sense was so keen that he could smell the fear coming off him. Perhaps that was just one of the reasons why Onimi’s rhymes were so biting: because he could read subtle signals in all those who appeared before Shimrra.
Nom Anor stiffened in disgust and something close to dread as Onimi wobbled over to him from across the throne chamber.
“Be encouraged, Prefect,” Onimi said in confidence. “As is true between the gods and the Yuuzhan Vong, Shimrra’s strength flows from the combined certitude of his subjects. Falter, display doubt or weakness, and the careful balance may tip …”
Nom Anor sneered. “Who are you to address me, Shamed One?”
Onimi’s uneven mouth twisted into a frigid smile. “Your conscience, Prefect. The still-small voice that reminds you how tenuous your position is.”
Still wearing her silver-locked wig, Leia was deflating Han’s and her sleeping pad when she saw Sasso drop something by the smoldering campfire. A leathery creature about the size of a shock-ball, it looked like a villip with wings—and this one had been pierced by a wooden quarrel fired from the Rodian’s crude bowcasterlike weapon.
“That’s one that won’t be able to report on us,” Sasso said, examining his fresh kill with the thoroughness of a born hunter.
Leia went over to the fire to have a closer look at the dead creature. “The biot we saw yesterday?”
“Maybe not the same one, but from the same flock.” Sasso’s green snout twitched. “Got it on the first try. That’s never happened before.”
Leia regarded him questioningly. “I hope you’re not thinking of cooking it.”
“I am curious … but no. I’m trying to decide whether to burn it or bury it.”
“I vote for burning it,” Han said from behind them. “Otherwise the bissops might be able to sniff it out.”
Caluula’s sun had been up for an hour, but the ravine’s forest of cane trees was still waking up. Birds were abundant, and the flitnats—Leia’s personal flitnats—had returned. Thanks to the netting supplied with the bedrolls, she and Han had slept flitnat-free and wonderfully, waking frequently if briefly to watch for shooting stars or listen to the calls of nocturnal creatures. Han had prepared breakfast over the fire, while she and Wraw had broken camp. It was an elemental life, but one she thought she could get used to.
Under cover of darkness, Sasso and the Ryn, Ferfer, had sneaked off to a nearby supply cache, and returned by first light with the bowcaster and a couple of weapons old enough to have been carried by Leia’s adoptive father’s bodyguards, including a thick-barreled blaster with a large hardwood handgrip; another with a finger-contoured grip and built-in scope; two black military-grade hand weapons with trigger guards and top-mounted heat radiators; and a rifle Han identified as a DC-15, with a folding stock.
The blasters were now stashed in the duffels, but not so deeply they couldn’t be retrieved in a hurry.
Meloque and the mustachioed Ferfer returned to camp just as Han and Wraw were about to secure the gear bags to the timbus. The docile animals were foraging for food in the tall grass.
The stately Ho’Din female looked disappointed.
“Couldn’t find any winged-star shells?” Han said.
She shook her head. “We found hundreds, but all of them were inactive. At least some should have opened by now.”
“The weather has been off,” Sasso said. “Hotter than usual for this time of year.”
Meloque considered it. “I suppose that could account for it.”
By firelight the previous evening, she had given everyone a biology lesson on the Nocturne of the Winged-Stars. Similar in appearance to the drone-flitters found on countless worlds, winged-stars emerged from chitinous shells. Unique among flitters, however,