Anakin arched his back and tried not to cry out as whatever the Yuuzhan Vong put on his wound sent cosmic flares of pain through his body.
“You hate pain,” Vua Rapuung said with evident disgust.
Anakin couldn’t and didn’t disagree. He just gritted his teeth and waited for it to pass. He knew the Yuuzhan Vong venerated pain in themselves and others. It was one of many unlikable tenets of their unhealthy religion.
“What hit me?” Anakin asked instead.
“A nang hul,” the warrior grunted. “Thud bug.”
“Poison?”
“No.”
The two sat in a damp cave behind a waterfall. It was slick with fungus and moss. The Yuuzhan Vong had evidently been hiding in the cave for a day or two, for various of his possessions were already in it, including the patch he had just applied to Anakin’s shoulder. He’d peeled it from a pale green, roughly rectangular pad several centimeters thick. The pad consisted of many thin layers, like leaves of flimsiplast glued together. Rapuung had pressed one of these detached skins over Anakin’s wound. Like everything else the Yuuzhan Vong used, it was alive. Anakin could feel it squirming, digging into his wound. It occurred to him that the warrior might be poisoning him or something even worse. But if Vua Rapuung wanted him dead, he could have accomplished that anytime. After all, he had made short work of two Yuuzhan Vong warriors, and Anakin didn’t have the strength to fight off a wokling.
“You saved my life,” Anakin said reluctantly.
“Life is nothing,” Vua Rapuung said.
“Yeah? Then why take the trouble?”
Vua Rapuung’s black eyes glimmered murkily. “You, Jeedai. You fight your way toward the shaper compound. Why?”
“Your people have a friend of mine. I’m going to get her back.”
“Ah. The female Jeedai. You wish to save her life. How pitiful. What a pitiful goal.”
“Yeah? Well, I didn’t ask for your help, you offered it. So explain or kill me. I haven’t got time to waste.”
“Revenge,” Vua Rapuung said, his voice low, his eyes slitted. “Revenge, and to prove that the gods—” His eyes suddenly went hard and glittering. “I need not tell you, human. I need explain nothing to you, unsanctioned offspring of machines.” He spat the last word out as if it were poison he’d suddenly discovered in his mouth.
“You need know only this,” he continued. “I will stand at your side or your back. Your foes are my foes. We will kill together, embrace pain together, embrace death together if such is Yun-Yuuzhan’s wish.”
“You’ll help me rescue Tahiri,” Anakin said dubiously.
“It’s a stupid goal, but finding her will serve my purposes well.”
Anakin searched that black diamond gaze, trying to understand. There was nothing there, nothing. The Yuuzhan Vong was more like a holo than a person, an image, an appearance. How could such a thing have feelings to be understood? Without the Force, how could he hope to comprehend such an alien creature?
“I don’t understand,” Anakin said. “What did your people do to you? Why do you hate them so?”
Vua Rapuung slapped him, hard, and bounded to his feet, chest heaving.
“Do not mock me!” he shrieked. “You have eyes! You see! Do not mock me! The gods did not do this to me, they did not!”
As the Yuuzhan Vong started toward him again, Anakin hefted a rock with the Force and sent it straight for the warrior’s sternum. It caught Rapuung completely by surprise, smacking him against the side of the cave. He sank down, looking a bit dazed.
Anakin hefted the rock again and poised it over Rapuung’s head.
The Yuuzhan Vong looked up at the stone and suddenly started hacking as if he had the Dagobian swamp cough.
It took half a minute of this before Anakin recognized it as laughter.
When he calmed down, Vua Rapuung fixed the young Jedi with a curious gaze. “I saw what you did to the hunters, but still, to have it turned on me—” His face hardened again. “Tell me the truth, one warrior to another, if you can. In the warrior caste there are rumors. It is said your Jeedai powers come from machine implants. Is this true? Are your people that sick?”
Anakin returned the challenging stare. “Our powers do not come from machines. Furthermore, some of your people must know that, because they’ve had ample opportunity to dissect some of us. Your rumor is a lie.”
“Yes? Then the Jeedai Master does not have a machine hand?”
“Master Skywalker? He does, but—” He broke off. “How do you know this?”
“We hear many stories from converts and spies. So it is true, then. The leader of the Jeedai is part machine.” Rapuung’s face probably couldn’t have shown more disgust without being surgically altered.
“One has nothing to do with the other. Master Luke lost a hand in a great battle. He had it replaced. But his power, like mine, flows from the Force.”
“Do you have implants like your master?”
“No.”
“Will you receive them as you attain rank?”
Anakin laughed briefly. “No.”
Vua Rapuung nodded. “Then it is as I said. We will fight together.”
“Not if you keep flying off course like you did a minute ago,” Anakin replied. “I may be injured, but as you’ve seen, I’m not without resources.”
“I see,” Rapuung growled, “but do not challenge me. I dislike it.”
“You keep the same thing in mind, pal. Now. You say we’re going to fight together but you won’t tell me why. Can you at least tell me how?”
“The shapers have planted five damuteks on this moon. That is where your Jeedai companion is held.”
Anakin let pass the precise definition of damutek for the moment. “Why? What will they do to her?”
Murder flashed in Rapuung’s eyes again, but this time he mastered it without an outburst. “Who can know the mind of a shaper?” he said, softly. “But you can be sure they will shape.”
“I don’t understand. What is a shaper?”
“Your ignorance is—” Rapuung stopped, blinked his eyes slowly closed, open, closed, and started again. “The shapers are a caste, the caste nearest the great god, Yun-Yuuzhan, who shaped the universe from his body. It is they who know the ways of life, who bend it to our needs.”
“Bioengineers? Scientists?”
Rapuung stared at him for a second. “The tizowyrm that translates for me makes no sense from those words. I suspect they are obscene.”
“Never mind. There was a Jedi named Miko Reglia. Your people tried to break his will with a yammosk. They tried to do the same to another Jedi named Wurth Skidder. Is that what you think they’ll do to Tahiri?”
“I do not care what they do to your Jeedai. But what you describe is—” He grimaced. “I once knew a shaper who spoke of such things, of warriors who thought they could do the task of shapers, as you describe. But breaking is not shaping. It is a child’s parody of it. Understand, the shapers make our worldships. They make the yammosk. They will not try to break your Jeedai—they will remake her.”
A chill seeped into Anakin’s veins, and he remembered his vision of an older Tahiri.
He knew what they would make of her. And they would succeed, if Anakin failed.
What Rapuung offered might be a cruel trick, a part of some devious plan; Anakin would have to take that risk. Without the Force to guide him, he could never be certain the Yuuzhan Vong wasn’t telling the truth. Now was no time to dither. Any course that would take him closer to Tahiri was worth plotting, even if he had to let someone he didn’t trust do some of the figures.
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go back to an earlier vector. You said something about damuteks?”
“The sacred precincts within which the shapers live and work.”
“How many of them? How many shapers?”
“I don’t know for certain. Around twelve, if initiates are included.”
“That’s all? That’s all the Vong on this world?”
Rapuung spat something Anakin didn’t understand. He didn’t seem to be so much angry as in genuine shock.
“Do not—never refer to us in that way,” he sputtered. “How can you be so ignorant? Or do you wish to insult?”
“Not that time,” Anakin said.
“To use the word Vong alone is an insult. It implies that the person so addressed does not have the favor and kinship of gods or family.”
Rapuung didn’t answer, but stared out into the forest.
“We should go,” he said, “I have hidden our scent from the trackers, but they will find us soon enough if we stay still.”
“Agreed,” Anakin said. “But first—how many Yuuzhan Vong on this moon, total, would you think?”
Vua Rapuung considered briefly. “A thousand, perhaps. More warriors in space.”
“And we’ll fight our way through all of them?”
“Was that not your plan?” Rapuung asked. “Does the number we face mean anything to you?”
Anakin shook his head. “Only in terms of tactics. Tahiri is there. I’ll find her and get her out, no matter how many Yuuzhan Vong I have to walk through.”
“Very well. You can walk, now?”
“I can walk. Soon I can run. It might hurt, but I can do it.”
“Life is suffering,” Vua Rapuung said. “We go.”