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By Root 370 0

again shortly after the Jedi’s arrival, trapping them in the cavern with the field team. Corran quickly established that he and Ganner would take watches at the cave mouth, especially at night, when their Force senses could make picking out the approach of slashrats much easier. The fact that these watches also tended to be cold meant none of the students lamented giving them up. Because the students had infrared monitoring equipment that allowed them to spot the heat that slashrats gave off—thereby rendering them technologically visible at night—an undercurrent of comments started about how stupid the Jedi were to rely on archaic practices and the Force when technology worked just as well and allowed a full division of labor.

The criticism annoyed Ganner, but Corran didn’t mind it. As he explained to Ganner in the dead of the night, “If they think we’re a bit slow, they’ll believe themselves superior. This makes us much less of a threat in their eyes. Since we’ll be living with them for a while, having them think us more buffoon than brute won’t be bad.”

Ganner had his own ideas about how to improve relations with the students, which resulted in Trista spending part of the watches talking with him in hushed tones that were punctuated by far too many giggles. Ganner’s getting along with Trista did have a curious effect on the rest of the company. Males in the group who found her desirable didn’t pick on the Jedi too much, lest they risk offending her. Her female friends remained neutral toward the Jedi, or at least toward Corran. The others, including Dr. Pace, seemed to take the budding romance as a sign that Ganner was human—or manipulable—and that eased some tension.

The week of storms did allow Corran to learn more about the Yuuzhan Vong body and artifacts the team had discovered. At his suggestion they looked at the artifacts and confirmed that the weapons and armor were, or once had been, living creatures.

The fact that the Yuuzhan Vong had been on Bimmiel before and, perhaps significantly, during the exit half of the orbit, suggested to Corran that if they returned, they would be very well suited to local conditions since they knew what to expect. He felt certain they had returned and were in the area: as martial a people as they seemed to be, he could easily imagine them coming to recover the remains of their fallen comrade. Corran had no idea why it took the Yuuzhan Vong fifty years before returning to recover the body. Perhaps this one was an early scout. However, if his hunch was true, everyone in the university field team was in serious jeopardy.

As the gales died down, Corran made plans for himself and Ganner to recon the area. They waited until nightfall, strapped on sandshoes, and headed out to the east, toward the shores of what, during the time of the Imperial survey, had been a lake. Their progress was not fast, but the sandshoes did allow them to keep moving without having to dig themselves out of deep sand.

Corran and Ganner crouched downwind of a discovery. Two dunes over, painted in silver and gray by the moon’s light, there boiled a ball of slashrats savaging some other creature. The predators made angry little growls as they shot up through the sand and dived back down into it, or slithered back and forth, wagging their heads in fights over scraps of carrion. Watching them feed, Corran almost felt sorry for the Yuuzhan Vong they’d attacked.

More curious than the battling was a sharp, sour scent that wafted to them on the wind. Corran wrinkled his nose. “That’s worse than stink.”

Ganner nodded. “That’s killscent. Trista says the slashrats exude it when they’re making a kill. It lets others know food is in the area. They’ll close in, herding the shwpi back toward the main kill site. Some experiments showed that the slashrats will ignore stink to get at killscent. While the students could synthesize it, they don’t for fear of inviting a feeding frenzy.”

“Wise idea.” Corran got up and started moving around to the south. “We skirt the killball and keep going. I’m getting faint glimmerings of stuff