Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [96]
“Yes, I am Meloque,” she answered in Yuuzhan Vong.
The warrior extended a sinewy hand. “Your authentication.”
Meloque displayed the fist-sized nugget of flesh and fur that had been delivered to her on Obroa-skai. The warrior took the creature between his hands, squeezed it, and studied the pungent droppings it left on a piece of leathery parchment. Then he nodded and motioned to Han, Leia, Kyp, Judder Page, and the Bothan Intelligence officer, Wraw.
“The members of my support team,” Meloque said. “Their names should also be contained by the lumpen.” Having lived among the Yuuzhan Vong for close to four years on the enemy-occupied library world, she knew how to deal with them, as well as speak to them.
The warrior squeezed the lumpen so hard it squealed, and another batch of droppings fell to the parchment. It took a moment for the warrior to confirm that the names and descriptions detailed in the droppings matched the counterfeit identities of the humans and humanoids in front of him, but ultimately he nodded again.
“The lumpen will remain here until your departure. If all of you have not returned in three days, you will be hunted down, imprisoned, and punished for your insolence. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Meloque answered for all of them.
“Then proceed inside.”
A surprise to everyone—and some cause for suspicion—Yuuzhan’tar had granted permission for a few select scientists to visit Caluula, to observe what was called the Nocturne of the Winged-Stars, an allegedly extraordinary natural phenomenon that occurred once every three hundred standard years. As Han understood it, the local governor had cut the deal in secret, even while the orbital station was still under siege.
At the mission briefing on Mon Calamari only two days earlier, Han had voiced his misgivings, telling Dif Scaur that the last time he had checked, the Yuuzhan Vong weren’t in the public relations business.
The cadaverously thin Intelligence director, who had had a hand in organizing the mission to destroy Caluula’s yammosk, had offered other examples of the Yuuzhan Vong’s recent attempts to win the hearts and minds of defeated populations—as against their usual tactic of plucking them out at the first sign of resistance. Regarding Caluula, Scaur believed that the nature of the negotiation—centered, as it was, on the observance of a rare natural phenomenon—might have appealed to whatever priests had been tasked with ruling on the request. Not that it mattered. If the Yuuzhan Vong had refused consent, the execution team would have gone in, regardless.
The last-minute addition of Kyp Durron to the team had been cause for further concern, because yammosks were believed to have the ability to sense Jedi, as had happened aboard an enemy vessel to the late Wurth Skidder. Kyp had countered that being a Jedi had nothing to do with it. Yammosks could detect the Force, and Kyp maintained that Leia was as strong in the Force as he was.
Han was not at all eased by the explanation. “A Bothan and a Jedi,” he told Kyp. “We might as well be wearing Galactic Alliance insignias.”
On the other hand, having Kyp along on the mission made it something of a family affair, since Kyp had figured prominently in Han’s life for close to twenty years—ever since Han and Chewbacca had rescued the sixteen-year-old fledgling Jedi from imprisonment in the spice mines of Kessel. Han’s trust in Kyp had been tested by the many trials Kyp had himself endured—on Yavin, against the spirit of a long-dead Sith Lord; in Kyp’s feverish quest for vengeance against Imperial admiral Daala; in bringing the Sun Crusher to bear on the planet Carida; and in nearly destroying the Millennium Falcon, and Han, in the process. More recently Kyp had tricked Jaina into helping him annihilate a civilian Yuuzhan Vong worldship at Sernpidal.