“My name,” the man said, “is Sharr Latt. I’m a Wraith.”
He was a bit over average height, with hair that was just a few degrees of color away from pure white, worn in a slightly shaggy haircut. His eyes were blue and amused; his features belonged to the sort of comic entertainer who abused his audience and got laughs from it. He wore red pants and vest, a sky-blue long-sleeved shirt and boots; a broad red swath of cloth, more decorative than functional, served him as a belt, and a matching headband circled his brow. His accent belonged to the lower-class humans of Coruscant, and the smile on his face could have been interpreted as insincere or mocking—or both.
Jaina turned to the man’s companion. This being was a Gamorrean, one of the thick-bodied, snout-nosed, tusk-mouthed humanoids to be found fighting battles or doing low-complexity jobs all over the galaxy. This Gamorrean wore anonymous brown garments of human styling. “And is this one a Wraith, too?” Jaina asked, joking.
“I am,” the Gamorrean answered. Jaina jumped. Many Gamorreans understood Basic, but their vocal cords were not adequate to let them speak it. The Gamorrean continued, “My name is Voort saBinring. You can call me Piggy.”
There was a certain mechanical inflection to Piggy’s voice that led Jaina to believe his speech was artificially augmented. That would explain things. To cover for her sudden discomfiture, she shook each of their hands in turn, then asked, “So, what are we doing today?”
Sharr pointed through the blue-tinted window out into the jungle beyond the blackness of the kill zone. “We’re going out there. We’ll find a pool fed by cool underground springs. We’ll bathe one another while Piggy stands guard, and see what develops from there.” He shrugged. “Or, we can talk about psychological warfare and how it is applied to the Yuuzhan Vong.”
“I’ll take the psychological warfare.”
He nodded. “That’s pretty much what I figured. And since Piggy won’t need to guard us, I expect he’ll be tutoring you in small-unit starfighter tactics.”
She gave Piggy a narrow look. “Did you used to be a starfighter pilot?”
The Gamorrean nodded, causing his jowls and rolls of belly fat to wobble. “I did. I served your father on one campaign.”
“I think he told me about you when I was very young. One of those ‘you can be whatever you want when you grow up’ stories. ‘The Gamorrean Who Became a Fighter Pilot.’ I thought he’d made it up.”
“I have kept a low profile since those days. I have not done much flying.”
“That sort of suggests that you might not have much to teach me about small-unit tactics.”
The Gamorrean smiled, a broadening and curving of his mouth that revealed more teeth—teeth far cleaner and straighter than most Gamorreans enjoyed, Jaina saw. “I think I will surprise you,” Piggy said.
“Your work in the Hapes Cluster was pretty good,” Sharr said. The three of them were now on top of the biotics building. Below them in the near distance were the landing fields; beyond, stretching to the horizon, was jungle. The afternoon sun bore down upon them, but Jaina welcomed the heat after the coldness of space she’d experienced in the morning’s mission.
They were in clear sight of any Yuuzhan Vong observers that might be lurking at the jungle’s edge, but the Yuuzhan Vong traditionally did not employ snipers.
“ ‘Pretty good,’ ” Jaina said. “Meaning you think it could have been better.” She lay facedown on a blocky duracrete protrusion, staring off into the ship berthing area of the killing field, and watched the mechanics working on the Record Time. The surface she lay upon vibrated; within it was air-circulation machinery.
Sharr, leaning with his back against a smaller protrusion housing pumping equipment, kept his attention on his datapad and nodded absently. A few meters away, Piggy lay sprawled on his back on the roof surface, hands behind his head, eyes closed, enjoying the sunlight. His shirt was off, his belly expansive enough that Jaina suspected she could probably set a landspeeder down on it. She entertained the notion of painting landing stripes on it.
“How?” she persisted.
“Your tricks were good ones,” Sharr said, and met her gaze. “But they weren’t layered. You’d have one trick, and it would baffle them and kill them, and that would be it. Sometimes two. You need to have trick after trick available, so there’s never any end to them; that’s what they expect of their Trickster goddess.
“The second problem is that the Yuuzhan Vong could eventually figure out how you performed your tricks. That bit with the tracers, where each Yuuzhan Vong ship broadcast the distinctive signal of your ship, so they’d fire on one another—good thinking. But if you’d had a little charge in each one that would detonate it, leaving behind a scorch pattern like a laser hit—then they’d never have understood how you caused them to fire on one another. And it’s incomprehension, never figuring out the trick, that fills them—or us, for that matter—with supernatural dread.”
“I like the sound of ‘supernatural dread,’ ” Jaina admitted. It was a pleasing enough thought that she didn’t take offense at Sharr’s criticism of her efforts.
“We want them to suspect, not that you’re somehow associated with Yun-Harla, not that you’re a priestess or something, but that you are her.” Sharr closed his datapad and tucked it into a pocket. “Everything you do should promote that impression, even in extremely minor ways. In fact, you’re doing it now.”
She gave him a curious look. “How?”
“A goddess does not work. And here you are, lounging around, being lazy in clear view of all the pilots and mechanics in the field below. A goddess does not fear. And here you are, in plain sight of the Yuuzhan Vong, unconcerned. A goddess is superior to mortals. And here you are, resting on a higher level than your two companions. Speaking of companions, goddesses have strange ones. Hence a Gamorrean and some idiot in nauseatingly bright colors.” Sharr looked down at his outfit and shuddered.
“I get it,” Jaina said. “This is why Piggy is here even though he’s not talking about starfighter tactics yet.”
“Very good.” Sharr nodded. “From now on, you’re on stage every minute of every day. We’re not going to say you’re a goddess. We’re just going to treat you as though you are one, and you’re going to act accordingly.”
“Never ask when you can order,” Piggy said.
“Never work—except the work Yun-Harla would perform,” Sharr said. “Putting together tricks, that is. Don’t carry things for yourself. We’ll get you a porter if you don’t have someone who’ll do it for you.”
“Don’t be subtle in your motions,” Piggy said. “Big, generous gestures, as though you were used to conducting an orchestra.”
Jaina grimaced. “People are going to hate me. They’re going to think I’ve become horribly stuck up.”
“That’s right.” Sharr gave her another smile, this one more genuine, though still definitely tinged with mockery.
“But in private—”
“In private,” Piggy said, “you continue the illusion. Though you can tell anyone you trust absolutely.”
“No, she can’t,” Sharr said.
“Yes, she can.”
“I’m the psychological warfare expert here, and I say she can’t.”
“I’m three times your mass, and can take off your head with a single bite, and I say she can.”
“Excuse me? ” Jaina let a little shrillness creep into her voice. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m still here.”
Piggy opened his eyes to glance at her, then he and Sharr exchanged looks.
“She has us on that one,” Sharr said to Jaina.
“She is indeed still here.”
“Listen, Great One,” Sharr said.
“Don’t call me that.”
“I need to. We all do. The thing about telling people—inevitably, the Yuuzhan Vong will have spies here. In our camp, in our base. The more people who know that you’re not really becoming as arrogant as a Kuati merchant-princess, the more likely it is that those spies will notice. Tell whomever you want—but be aware that every extra person means the chances increase that the truth will spread.”
“General Antilles has already broken Twin Suns Squadron out of the normal command structure,” Piggy said. “Which makes sense, as a goddess wouldn’t have a formal rank within New Republic hierarchy.”
“Good point.” Sharr pulled out his datapad and keyed in a few words. “That means we can arrange for your pilots to be called by whatever maximum rank they’ve attained, since it has no bearing on your unit’s command structure. Colonel Jagged Fel. Jedi Master Kyp Durron.” He frowned. “No, not just Jedi Master. Kyp Durron, the Destroyer of Worlds, is subordinate to Jaina. To the Yuuzhan Vong, that will be significant.” Then he returned his attention to Jaina. “What do you think?”
She gave him a smile. She hoped that, to some distant observer watching her through organic optics, it would look as wicked as it felt. “You mentioned a porter. Can I have anyone I want as my manservant?”
Sharr nodded. “That’s what it is to be a goddess.”
“No,” said Jag Fel. He didn’t raise his voice or even look at them. He continued ratcheting the hydrospanner on the lower starboard claw of his TIE clawcraft, improving, with millimeter-by-millimeter precision, the alignment of that claw’s laser.
All around them, mechanics tinkered with damaged starfighters, pilots lifted off in courier shuttles, messengers flashed by on landspeeders; the cacophony kept their words from carrying very far across the docking bay.
“It’s important.” Sharr leaned against the claw. At Jag’s glare, he straightened away from it. “Don’t give us some sort of idiotic excuse that your pride won’t take it. Lives may depend on it.”
Jaina, a couple of steps back, not deigning to speak directly to a mere mortal, merely smiled. She held up her hand as though to admire her nails; Yuuzhan Vong spies were not likely to see that they were unpainted, cut short, and—she finally noticed—dirty.
“I’m happy to participate in any plan so long as it’s the best plan to accomplish its goal,” Jag said. He straightened and slapped shut the hatch that had allowed him access to the claw’s internal systemry. He ignored Sharr and addressed Jaina directly. “This isn’t the best plan. You haven’t thought it out.”
Jaina gave him a cold stare. “Yes, it is. You just don’t want to do it.”
“No, I have a better idea.”
Sharr snorted. “Better than what an expert on psychological warfare and a Jedi Knight have assembled. Of course.”
Jag turned an unfriendly smile on him. “Kyp Durron.” Sharr’s expression changed as he considered the suggestion.
Jag continued, “To your presumed Yuuzhan Vong spies and observers, I’m just an unknown quantity—a pilot from a place the Yuuzhan Vong haven’t encountered yet. But Jedi Master Kyp Durron, if they see him bowing to her, carrying her baggage, digging dirt from beneath her nails—”
Jaina tried very hard to keep her outrage from being reflected in her expression. She didn’t think she succeeded very well.
“—they’ll be impressed. Who else would a Jedi Master bow to but a goddess, right? It’ll create rumors among our people, as well as theirs.” Jag turned half away from them and dogged down the panel he’d shut.
More than just finishing his point, Jag had also signaled an end to the discussion. But to turn away and leave with no further discussion would be to lose points. Jaina waited until she was sure she had her voice under control, had lowered it to something like Leia’s political voice, and said, “I’d like you to work up the events of two days ago as a sim. Maybe more of us can learn to save extravehiculars just with vehicle maneuvering.”
Jag tucked his hydrospanner into a belt loop, turned toward her, and executed a salute so sharp and meticulous that Jaina could detect no sign of resentment or irritation in it. “It will be done,” he said.
She returned the salute, spun on her heel, and headed back to the main building.
Sharr caught up with her. “I’ve only known him for five minutes and already I hate him,” he said.
Jaina made an exasperated face. Despite the irritation she felt, she had to admit—to herself, anyway—that Jag had been right. “Oh, he’s not so bad.”
Luke’s Coruscant expedition came together with startling speed.
Iella offered him the services of the Wraiths, the most experienced Intelligence cell on Borleias. Luke met Face Loran, the unit leader, and already knew Kell Tainer. Face introduced him to the other Wraiths who’d been on Coruscant when it fell.
Elassar Targon was a middle-aged Devaronian with a bounce to his walk that suggested a much younger man. He wore a flamboyant jacket, military in its cut, in reflective black with gold fringe, red piping, and numerous medals hanging from it; the fringe and medals swung as he walked, and he accentuated the effect by often making a circular gesture—“To ward off bad luck,” he explained. “It really works. Try it.” But Luke noted that the man’s shirt, trousers, and knee-high boots were a matte black, and suspected that Elassar could lose or reverse the jacket to become instantly inconspicuous. Inconspicuous, that is, anywhere Devaronians were to be seen.
Baljos Arnjak was a human; he spoke with the clipped, precise accent of a Coruscant native, or one who aspired to Coruscant ancestry. He was tall and lean, with dark hair, mustache and beard that made his pale skin seem absolutely pallid. He was dressed in a multiply stained orange pilot’s jumpsuit that suggested he was a mechanic who wore only hand-me-downs, but Face introduced him as the team’s biological expert—a man with nearly as much expertise in Yuuzhan Vong technology as Danni Quee.
Piggy saBinring was the Gamorrean pilot assigned to tutor Jaina in battle management. Perhaps the only one of his kind, he had, in childhood, been modified by a biologist working for the Warlord Zsinj. The biologist had altered his brain structure, giving him patience and an extraordinary mathematical acuity, the latter being necessary for him to learn the complex astronautics and astrogation required of starfighter pilots. Sharr Latt was the pale-haired Coruscant native who had been assigned to work with Jaina on her role as avatar of the Trickster goddess; he and Piggy were just back from their first session with her.
Bhindi Drayson was a human female. She spoke in the same deliberate way, and with the same innocuous accent, as the late and former Chief of State Mon Mothma, suggesting a background on Mon Mothma’s homeworld of Chandrila. Bhindi was unlovely, as lean and sharp-featured as a naked vibroblade, with dark hair and eyes that contributed to a perception of her as someone brooding and menacing, but Luke felt no aura of menace from her, just a quiet watchfulness.
“Are you any relation to Hiram Drayson?” Luke asked her. Admiral Hiram Drayson was a former military officer and Intelligence leader, and a friend of Mon Mothma.
“His daughter,” she said.
“You have a noble family history.”
She gave him a brief smile. “And that’s only the parts you’ve heard about.”
“Bhindi is one of our two tactics experts, with Piggy,” Face said, “and she’s been learning whatever she can about Yuuzhan Vong tactics. Unfortunately, we’re going to lose her on Coruscant.”
Luke frowned, wondering for a moment if Face was somehow both prescient and extremely inconsiderate, then realized what Face meant. He turned to Bhindi again. “You’ll be staying there when we leave?”
She nodded. “I’ll be setting up Resistance cells on Coruscant.”
Luke suppressed a shudder. Going into Coruscant would be bad enough. The thought of being left behind among enemies so antagonistic and alien, deliberately staying there, was not a pleasant one. Bhindi looked faintly pleased at having discomfited a Jedi Master.
They’d gathered, the Wraiths and Luke, in a chamber deep within the Borleias complex—a chamber that, from its pristine condition, had not, Luke suspected, been found by the Yuuzhan Vong during their brief occupation. How the Wraiths had discovered its existence was not something he knew; all he did know was that it was accessed through a sliding panel in the back of a laboratory. The hidden chamber, too, had been a laboratory; on the shelves on its walls were the left-behind remnants of biomedical gear. Luke saw bacterial culture dishes, injectors, neural monitors … at the back of the chamber was a full-sized bacta tank, empty, the transparisteel of its main compartment scuffed and abraded through hard use so that many portions of it were almost opaque.
“So,” Face said, seating himself on one of the stools at the chamber’s main table. “Let’s show him what we’ve got. Kell, you first.”
The big man hefted a green cloth bag roughly two meters long. From its open top he pulled an object like a very shallow one-person boat. It was thick, perhaps thirty centimeters in depth for most of its length, thinning to some ten centimeters all along the edge. Its red underside was both gummy and reflective; it took Luke a moment’s study to see that a thick layer of transparent red material had been closely fitted over a smooth silvery surface. Its top side was a dull gray, with two shoe-shaped clamps protruding from it.
Kell dropped this apparatus on the table in front of Face. It made a boom as it hit the table; it had to be heavy. Face shot Kell a sardonic look and said, “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” Kell turned his attention to Luke. “This is something we’ve been working on for some time. We mount them in shells resembling meteorites or debris. Together with the shells, they act as individual atmospheric intrusion pods.”
Luke gave them a skeptical look. “Meaning what, exactly?”
“Meaning you ride them from orbit into a planet’s atmosphere.”
“In what?”
“In the shells I mentioned. Nothing more. The red stuff is an adhesive that affixes to the interior of the shell. The shell doesn’t even have to be airtight. One person rides it in a vac suit, his feet gripped here.” Kell indicated the clamps. “The underside is an ablative heat shield. Slowly ablative, you understand. Layered between the heat shield and the top are a simple repulsor unit and a power cell. The repulsor keeps it angled correctly toward the planet’s surface. You drop into atmosphere at the correct angle and ride it all the way down. The shell burns up from friction with the atmosphere—it’s designed to keep the heat from cooking the occupant. The heat wash also conceals your true nature from most sensors—ours and theirs. When the shell gives way, the silvery surface is your secondary heat shield; it’s ablative, too, so the visual illusion that you’re a burning meteorite continues. In other words, you look and act just like a piece of space debris punching into the atmosphere.”
“Until you get near the planet’s surface,” Face added. “At which time the repulsor puts out its final effort and slows you down so you crash quite slowly into the surface.”
“Crash,” Luke said.
“Quite slowly.”
“And these have been successfully tested.”
Face glanced around, looking a bit nervous. “Well, tested, sure. They’ve been tested. Each time they’re tested, we assemble what data we can, and the next generation of pods comes back just a bit more intact.”
“We’re sure they have them right this time,” Bhindi said.
Luke looked among them, and it was Bhindi who broke first, losing her worried expression, snickering at Luke’s.
“We’ve made insertions with them,” Kell said, relenting. “They’re pretty new, but Sharr and I have used them twice, Face and Elassar three times. We’ve never fried anyone yet.”
Luke shook his head. “I have to say, this sounds like the worst idea in a thousand generations of bad ideas.”
“You haven’t heard all our ideas,” Bhindi said.
“Next,” Face interrupted, and nodded at Baljos.
The scientist rooted around in a bag of his own. From it he drew something that he threw atop the atmospheric intrusion unit. It looked like what would result if someone carefully removed all the skin from the head of a Yuuzhan Vong and meticulously reattached it into the shape of a head. It twitched when it hit the pod, then settled into stillness.
“An ooglith masquer,” Luke said.
“Right the first time,” Baljos said. “I’m the inventor. Well, the developer. I was working from captured ooglith masquers.”
“But this one looks like a Yuuzhan Vong face.”
Baljos nodded. “Each one is unique. I give them all names. That’s Brand. So called because most of the mutilation decorations come from a technique that resembles branding. They hurt like anything to remove … but you can wear them for hours or days, unlike holoshrouds, where your batteries give out after a few minutes.”
“This, I like,” Luke said. “It’ll help us move among them without being detected.”
“Next,” Face said.
Bhindi rooted around in her own pack. From it she extracted a brown object made up of a thick, curved disk at the top, bent down into the approximate shape of a canopy, mounted atop a thick stem that grew thicker at the other end. It was approximately the size of a human head.
Luke gave it a close look. “It’s some sort of fungus.”
“We’ll all be carrying them,” she said.
“In case we get hungry?”
“It’s not a fungus,” Bhindi assured him. “It’s a droid.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“It looks like a type of fungus found in dank places in Coruscant’s undercity,” Bhindi said. “We’re hoping that the Yuuzhan Vong won’t destroy them, precisely because they look like something organic. In fact, their covering is organic, a type of mold. Their circuitry is heavily shielded. They have an epoxy reservoir so they can cling to whatever surface they’re on if they get grabbed, and an epoxy solvent so they can detach themselves later. They’re mobile and have very advanced sensor arrays and tactical programming.”
“Meaning,” Elassar said, “that they’re going to sneak around, find Yuuzhan Vong installations, try to get inside, and relay information to one another. They’ll establish a relay chain up to the surface, and the one on the surface will transmit to surviving comm stations there.”
“It’s a long shot,” Bhindi said, “but any piece of information we get could prove vital at some point. And we have four different shape and coloration schemes on these, including two that look like Yuuzhan Vong worldshaping plants. If the Yuuzhan Vong discover that one is a droid and destroy everything that looks like it, the others could survive undetected.”
“Fungus droids. I always thought that Intelligence work was supposed to be, I don’t know, sophisticated and charming.”
Face snickered. “That’s what you told me the first time we met.”
Luke frowned. “When did we ever meet before?”
“It was …” Face reconsidered. “Oh, that’s right. I was in disguise. You wouldn’t recognize me now.”
“But when was it? Now I’m curious.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“We have a few sets of vonduun crab armor,” Bhindi interrupted, “and a few more sets of armor faked up to look like the real thing. If they get close enough to touch it, they’ll know the fakes are made of manufactured materials, of course. And we have lots of tizowyrms—their translator worms.”
“And we have explosives,” Kell said. “Lots and lots of explosives.”
“And a Jedi,” Piggy said, his voice a mechanical rasp.
“Three Jedi,” Luke corrected. “Mara and Tahiri are going with us. All right. Let’s figure out exactly how we’re going to get into Coruscant orbit, where we want to land, and what our priorities are. If we’re crazy enough to do this, we need to be sane enough to do it well.”