Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [110]
“In that sense, all living beings are seed-partners, Jacen, passionate to unite with all life, and to help give birth to grand enterprises—whether a starship, a work of art, or a deed that will echo through history as a noble action. I am no different than you in wanting to play a part in the evolution of the spirit. My consciousness yearns for this.”
“Easier said than done,” Jacen said.
“Yes, it is a matter of balance. But we are balancing the universe constantly with every action we take, some tipping it one way, some another. To triumph over the Yuuzhan Vong we must simply go where we wish to go. That is also what I must do to return us to known space. But the task entails far more than simply focusing on a set of hyperspace coordinates. Unless the destination is a place I wish to go, nothing will work out. Even if I execute the jump flawlessly, my actions will come to nothing.
“For your interest, Jacen, that is something that Vergere taught me.”
Jacen was listening too intently to respond. Vergere had set him on the path to remaking himself. But unless he could complete the process, he would be ensnared by the very self-conscious uncertainties Sekot professed to have grown past, and prevented from merging fully with the Force.
“We must approach the turning points in our lives with purity of heart,” Sekot was saying. “We must look beyond ourselves, and when we see danger approaching or a difficult choice ahead, we must calm ourselves well in advance, so that we can navigate with a clear mind. Once we have mastered the technique, we can learn to trust that we’re doing the right thing, without thinking about it.”
“Do you know where you want to go?” Jacen asked when he realized that Sekot was waiting for him to say something.
“By analyzing Yuuzhan Vong biotech—by what I intuited from Nen Yim—I have learned much about augmenting Zonama’s hyperspace cores with energy derived from the planet itself. And the success of the trial jumps has encouraged me that I can safely return Zonama to known space. I begin to understand how the Yuuzhan Vong created what they call dovin basals, villips, yammosks, and other biots. Or perhaps I begin to remember.
“But I am worried about the potentially calamitous or destabilizing effects Zonama’s sudden appearance could have on any planet in close proximity to our emergence.”
From records stored in the Chiss library, Jacen and Saba had learned of the widespread seismic devastation Zonama Sekot had caused on Munlali Mafir, standard decades earlier, not only to the planet but to the indigenous Jostrans and Krizlaws, as well.
“My uncle thought you might be worried about that,” Jacen said. “He was going to tell you himself that you shouldn’t be.”
Vergere glided toward him across the water and ice. “Tell me what Master Skywalker has in mind.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Caluula’s reddish sun was cresting the ridgeline, limning the crowns of the tallest trees and warming the air. Leia began to rub her hands together, but stopped when she realized that the chill she felt had nothing to do with the temperature.
North of the trail, in an area of trees that were snapped in half, the team had come upon a crashed coralskipper. The craft’s translucent, mica-like canopy was cracked, and inside the cavity that served as a cockpit sat the dead pilot. The cognition hood that was the pilot’s living interface with the coralskipper was shriveled and stuck to his face like a sheet of flimsiplast. Han was squatting at the craft’s blunt nose, poking at a deep red heart-shaped mass, studded with pale blue projections, that had dropped from the fractured fuselage.
“Dovin basal’s dead,” he said.
“Same with the rock spitters,” Kyp