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Shedao smiled and caught the reflection of his twisted visage in the transparisteel. “Do you know what you ask, what you suggest?”

“In your mind, apparently not.”

The Yuuzhan Vong gestured toward Elegos with his right hand. The tsaisi slithered down into his grasp, then stiffened into a blade the length of Shedao’s forearm. “You know that I could kill you at my whim. Praise would be heaped upon me for slaying you, for you traffic in abominations. To some of us, there is no redemption for your kind.”

Elegos bowed his head. “Already I learn. And, yes, I knew my life could be forfeit in coming here. This did not deter me.”

“A commitment to mission above the preservation of self—this I understand. This I respect.” Shedao spun the baton in his hand, then flicked it back so it slapped against his forearm. The tsaisi flexed, then coiled around his vonduun bracer. “What you are willing to teach me will contain no tactical information that would be of use.”

“I am not a tactician, nor am I privy to their counsels.” Elegos regarded him closely. “What I would learn from you would likewise be useless.”

“Is knowledge ever useless?”

“No, and this is another place we agree.”

Shedao Shai nodded slowly. “I will place you under my protection. I will teach you. I will learn from you. We will understand each other.”

“And find a new path to bring our people together?”

“Perhaps. You will know if this is possible when you know us better.”

Elegos clasped his hands together at the small of his back. “I am prepared to learn.”

“Good.” Shedao Shai nodded once. “Your lessons will begin now. Follow me. To understand us, there is but one place to start. I will introduce you to the Embrace of Pain.”

CHAPTER TEN

Corran Horn glanced up from his datapad. “Everything on the checklist is covered. I think we are ready to go.”

Admiral Kre’fey nodded slowly and escorted Corran across the Ralroost’s deck. The proximal docking bay had been cleared of starfighters, leaving a decrepit freighter as the sole occupant. “My engineers have assured me that the Lost Hope will be able to make it off the ship. How much longer it will hold together after that they will not say.”

“I understand, Admiral. We’ve all known this was a gamble from the start.” Corran sighed and slipped the datapad into a thigh pocket on his flight suit. “If it works, great. If it doesn’t, well, make sure others learn from our mistake.”

“Certainly.”

The problem of inserting a scouting team onto an enemy planet was one that had perplexed military strategists for ages. Ships often tried to slip in disguised as space debris, streaking toward a planet like a meteorite, then veering off under power once they were too low to the ground to be tracked. While the lack of an impact would tip the enemy to the fact that something was odd, the scout team could be well away from the area and safely gone to ground by the time investigators tried to puzzle out where they had gone.

With the Yuuzhan Vong, things got a bit more complicated because the New Republic wasn’t certain about the technical capabilities of their scanners. The fact that the Yuuzhan Vong used biologically based tools suggested severe limitations, but without actually knowing, there was no way to put together a sure plan to slip in unnoticed. Absent the ability to go in unseen, the New Republic decided to go for the other extreme and make sure the Yuuzhan Vong knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that their security had been penetrated.

Corran boarded the Lost Hope and retracted the gantry. He went up front to the bridge and waved at the admiral. He refrained from touching anything in there. Since the Yuuzhan Vong would undoubtedly investigate the crash, the New Republic knew they’d need trace biological matter in the ship to make the enemy believe the crew had not survived insertion into Garqi. Biomatter had been synthesized and sprayed around in all the logical locations, so any inquiry would have plenty of data to sort out in reconstructing