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Wedge smiled. “The Advisory Council doesn’t know we’re at war with them.”

“They know they’re at war with us; they just don’t know we know it. But they may figure it out more quickly than you imagine. Even without Borsk to lead them, they have a lot of political smarts. Which means that Yuuzhan Vong spies aren’t the only spies you have to worry about. One of my jobs is going to be leaking information and seeing how our supposed allies respond to it … so we can use them for our own purposes or eliminate them as a threat.”

“I knew I was keeping you around for a reason.”

“At least two reasons.”

“Don’t tickle.”

FIVE

Yuuzhan Vong Worldship, Coruscant Orbit

The villip stared at Viqi Shesh with the face of a human man, large-boned, the angle of his head suggesting fear and pain. “I’m not in a position to learn any secrets,” the villip protested. “I just follow Wolam Tser around, recording his observations and interviews.”

Viqi made her voice a purr. She hoped its tones and nuances would carry across the villip. This voice excited men, made them long for her, and the notion that desire for her would torment this man amused her. “You met Danni Quee. Become her friend. Her lover, if you’re capable of it. Convince her to confide in you. Volunteer for additional duties when Tser isn’t making use of you. You can do simple electronics repairs, can’t you?”

Tam’s voice sounded pained. “Yes.”

“Get a job doing that. Put recorders or transmitters in devices that will go in critical places. Iella Wessiri is good enough to find anything you might plant, so don’t try to harvest the information those devices might bring you; instead, leave counterpart objects where blame will fall on people within their command structure, people Antilles and Skywalker don’t quite trust yet. Cause paranoia. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Prove it, simpleton.” Viqi stroked the villip and it contracted, cutting off the communication.

She sighed and stretched. The skin of her back, still healing, protested, but she did not let that minor pain show on her face. Then she turned, the bloblike material that served her as a chair accommodating itself to her motion, and faced her own controller.

He was dressed in the loincloth of a warrior, amphistaff in hand. His nose had been smashed flat, an oddly symmetrical mutilation for a Yuuzhan Vong, and part of his right upper lip was gone, revealing teeth beneath. His skin was decorated extensively with tattoos.

But his most extensive mutilation was a single puckered scar. In most places it was an angry red, sometimes graduating to a scabrous brown, everywhere standing out starkly against his skin. It started out at the top of his bald head, wound down his right cheek to his chin and up the other side, then turned downward again just short of his left eye. It continued down his neck and wound back and forth across his chest before disappearing beneath his harness. It reemerged on his right thigh, ending in a circle around his knee. It must have been among his earliest decorations, for his tattoos paralleled it, never running across it.

His name was Denua Ku, and Viqi knew from the few words she had exchanged with him that he had no grasp of Intelligence operations. He was here to guard her, not to help her with her assignment. She gave him a smile that was all contempt and mockery. “All done,” she said.

“Then you will return to your quarters.” His voice suggested mutual contempt, even through the tizowyrm, an organic translator of the Yuuzhan Vong, implanted in her ear.

“I’m sick of my quarters. I do half an hour’s worth of work a day managing this idiot of an operative and spend the rest of my time in chambers that smell like half-cooked bantha tripe. I want something to do.”

Denua Ku said nothing. Viqi took that as a good sign. If he’d been under strict orders to keep her in her quarters, he would have immediately demanded that they go there. But he wasn’t going to suggest any sort of recreation to her; she’d have to find her own diversion.