• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“It’s possible.”

The five Jedi had yet to emerge from reflection when someone hurried out of the storm into the dwelling’s anteroom.

“Danni,” Luke said, even as he was turning toward her.

Danni Quee’s blond hair hung loosely around her face, but her green eyes shone with excitement.

“Tekli and Tahiri …” she said in a rush.

Mara shot to her feet. “What’s happened?”

Danni motioned behind her, as if to something just outside the entrance. “They’re with him now, the Yuuzhan Vong Priest—Harrar.” She blinked and stared at Mara and the others. “He’s alive.”

EIGHT

Giving in to what had become a routine of self-loathing, Malik Carr thought back to his arrival at Obroa-skai in the early days of the invasion. There he had met with Commander Tla, the priest Harrar, tactician Raff, and Nom Anor. Ever faithful to Yun-Harla, the Trickster goddess, Harrar and Nom Anor had hatched a plot to surrender a female member of a deception sect to the New Republic government as a means of infiltrating the Jedi, and assassinating as many of them as possible. Carr had had grave misgivings about the plan, but had given his blessing nevertheless, in part because of something Eminence Harrar had said to him.

The success of our plan will result in your being escalated to the rank of Supreme Commander, with a space vessel of your own to wield against our newfound enemy. From this, too, I will be permitted to sit at the right hand of Supreme Overlord Shimrra, on re-created Yuuzhan ’tar …

That was before Elan had been killed and Harrar had been recalled to the Outer Rim, and what was to have been a surprise attack on the enemy shipyards at Fondor had ended in failure—another of Nom Anor’s plots, but for which Nas Choka and Malik Carr had been forced to shoulder the blame. And yet since then, Nas Choka had been escalated to warmaster, Harrar to high priest, and Nom Anor—against all odds and the better judgment of many—to prefect of Yuuzhan’tar.

As for Malik Carr?

A custodian of enemy captives, stripped of his rank, a mere passenger in a vessel commanded by a warrior to whom he was once superior!

“I want one thing understood, Malik Carr,” Commander Bhu Fath was lecturing him from the high seat of the war vessel Sacred Pyre. “The prisoners are our first priority. Supreme Overlord Shimrra holds them in even greater regard than any of the relics and idols our convoy bears to Yuuzhan’tar.”

Standing stiffly in the murky green light of the command chamber, Carr managed to remain abject and straight-faced, despite the fact that only days earlier more than fifty of the prisoners in his charge had suffocated in Selvaris’s immolation pit.

Carr snapped his fists to his shoulders in salute. “I understand, Commander. The prisoners first and foremost.”

The convoy was made up of thirteen ships, most of them property of the Peace Brigade, but under the escort of five Yuuzhan Vong war vessels, the largest of them carrying two broods of coralskippers apiece. A circumstance that would have been unthinkable at the start of the war, the convoy was not accompanied by a yammosk. Worse, Fath’s vessel was tethered to a Brigader ship by an oqa membrane, to facilitate the transfer of prisoners collected from Selvaris to Sacred Pyre. Some of the captives transported from internment camps distant from Selvaris would remain aboard Peace Brigade ships until the convoy reached Yuuzhan’tar.

“Commander,” Carr said as he prepared to take his leave, “are you satisfied that the Peace Brigaders have a similar grasp of the priorities? Having met with some of them, I would suggest that their only allegiance is to the spice they smuggle from Ylesia and dose themselves with.”

Fath grunted. He was exceedingly tall and corded with muscle, but was seldom granted the fealty such size would have guaranteed another.

“In times like these, we are forced to ally with scoundrels and villains,” he said in a tired voice. “And by Supreme Overlord Shimrra’s decree do our vessels fraternize. But this won’t long be so. Another year,