A spike of pain drove through Anakin’s forehead, so unexpected and strange that his legs buckled and he fell to his knees on the black jungle soil, grasping for the wound in his forehead. It felt as if it had been gashed from his hairline to the bridge of his nose. The blood stung his eyes and brimmed his nostrils.
But when he brought his hands down, they were clean. Chapped, blistered, and friction-burned from days of pulling tough weeds from the soil, but not bloody.
Cautiously he felt his head again. The pain still throbbed, but now he felt only unbroken flesh.
“You! Slave!” the tizowyrm chittered in his ear, apparently translating the brutal shout from one of the guards. The coral growth on his neck gave him a faint shock, and he knew he was being given the force of command. He went rigid and fell to the ground, jerking spasmodically. It was easy, given the agony already creeping into his head.
When he thought he’d played that role long enough, he climbed back to his knees and went back to work, knotting his chapped, raw hands around plants and uprooting them.
The Yuuzhan Vong did not care for machines even as complicated as a lever. They had biotic methods of clearing fields other than slaves, but they seemed determined to go through the slaves they had, first.
Grab weed, wriggle, pull. For the ten billionth time.
The pain reverberated behind his eyes, fading a bit, and he began to pick out details through the static.
Not his forehead, not his blood, not his senses. It was Tahiri who had been cut. Scarred like a Yuuzhan Vong.
It was almost too much. He had been feeling her pain sporadically since her capture. Sometimes it was like an itch, sometimes like burning methanol poured down his nerves. But this time it was somehow real, intimate. He could smell her breath and taste her tears. It was like holding her, in that last moment of peace they had had together.
Except she was bleeding, and here he was pulling weeds. If his lightsaber was working …
But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Or one of them. And it was days before he would see Rapuung again.
“Slave.” An amphistaff lashed lightly across his back, and it took everything in him not to leap up into the guard’s face, take his amphistaff, and kill every Yuuzhan Vong in sight.
What are they doing to you, Tahiri?
But he didn’t. Instead he stood compliant, arms at his side.
“Go with this Shamed One,” the guard told him.
He then turned to the person indicated, a young female with no obvious scars. She had a deeply worn look to her, but her eyes had a certain brightness many of the other Shamed Ones’ did not. “Go to the third lambent field, nearest the perimeter. Show him how to harvest.”
“I will need more than one faltering slave to make my quota,” she said.
“You feel it is your place to argue with me?” the warrior snapped.
“No,” she replied. “I think it is a prefect’s place to assign workers.”
“The prefect is busy today. Would you rather make your quota alone?”
She maintained an expression of defiance for another beat, then grudgingly hung her head. “No. Why are you doing this to me?”
“I treat you as I treat everyone.”
She narrowed her eyes, but did not reply. Instead she beckoned Anakin. “Come along, slave. We have a long walk.”
He followed her, trying to reestablish contact with Tahiri. She was still alive, he could get that much, but more distant than the stars.
Almost as if she was fighting contact.
“What’s your name, slave?” the woman asked. It so shocked Anakin that his step actually faltered. “Well?”
“Begging your pardon, but when did any Yuuzhan Vong care to dirty her ears with the name of a slave?”
“Where did a slave get the idea that insolence would go unpunished?” she responded.
“My name is Bail Lars,” he replied.
“What’s wrong with you, Bail Lars? I saw you nearly collapse. So did that filth-bather, Vasi. That’s why he sent you with me, so I’ll fail to meet my quota.”
“He has something against you, personally?”
“Puul. It’s what he couldn’t get against me that bothers him.”
“Really? I would think—” He suddenly thought better of what he was saying and didn’t finish the sentence.
The female did, however. “Would think what? That I wouldn’t refuse a warrior?”
“No, that’s not it,” Anakin said. “I suppose I thought they—the rest of the Yuuzhan Vong, I mean—were … well, that they didn’t think Shamed Ones were, you know, desirable.”
“We aren’t, not by normal people. Not even by each other. But Vasi is not normal. He likes sick things. He can command a Shamed One to do things that no true caste would ever do, or want to do, or want done.”
“But he commanded you and you didn’t?”
“He knows if he commands me, I will make him kill me. So he didn’t command me. He wants me to come to him.” She stopped and dropped her eyeridges angrily. “And this is not your business. Never forget—what I am to them, you are to me. One day Yun-Shuno will grant me redemption, and my body will take the scars and implants. I will become true caste, while you will forever be nothing.”
“Do you really believe that?” Anakin asked. “I don’t think you do.”
She slapped him then, hard. When he did not react to the pain, she nodded thoughtfully. “Stronger than I thought. Maybe we can meet my quota,” she said. “If you help me do it, I will find some reward for you.”
“I would do it for no other reason than to disappoint Vasi,” Anakin replied. “Though I may feel differently if you keep slapping me.”
“You say filthy things, and don’t expect to be punished?”
“I didn’t know it was filthy.”
“I have heard you slaves are infidels, but even infidels must know the gods and their truths.”
“I would think that not knowing that is exactly what makes me an infidel,” Anakin said.
“I suppose. It makes no sense, and I’ve never spoken to an infidel before, not like this.” She hesitated. “It is … interesting. Perhaps as we work, we can pass the time. You can tell me of your planet. But restrain yourself—Shamed I may be, but I have not abandoned myself to shame.”
“It’s a deal,” Anakin said. “Will you tell me your name?”
“My name is Uunu.” She pointed ahead, to a low coral wall. “We’re nearly to the lambent field now. They are just past there.”
“What is a lambent?”
“Another moment, and you shall see. Or, rather, you shall hear them.”
But suddenly he did, a faint, buzzing rattle, like the voices of small animals.
And yet this didn’t come from the Force, not exactly. It didn’t have the familiar touch, the depth. It was more like having a staticky comlink in his head.
They rounded the wall. Beyond was a field tilled into concentric circular ridges. On them, spaced perhaps a meter apart, grew plants that resembled a nest of short, thick, green knives. From the central clump two, three, or four short stalks grew, and at the end of each of these was a sort of hairy, bloodred bloom. The blooms were roughly the size of his fist, and it was from these that the telepathic murmur seemed to come.
“What are they?”
“Start working now. I’ll explain what they are later, if it looks as if we are approaching our quota.”
“What do I do?”
“You will follow me. I will stroke the down from the blossoms—like so.” Almost tenderly she rubbed away the red, hairlike petals until all that remained was a yellowish bulb. “This attunes it. Once that is done, you must harvest it. That is more difficult. Hold still, please.” She withdrew something curved and black from a pouch in her garment.
“Place it on your thumb.”
He looked at it. It resembled a spur, about eight centimeters long. It looked very sharp. It was hollow, and when he slipped his thumb into the hollow he winced as what felt like many small teeth bit into him.
“It’s alive,” he muttered.
“Of course it is. Who would use a dead—” Then her eyes narrowed. “I told you not to talk like that, didn’t I?”
“I didn’t say anything wrong,” Anakin objected.
“No. You just implied it and let my mind do the dirty work. Stop that.”
Anakin held up his newly spurred thumb and looked at it.
“Don’t get airs,” she said. “It’s not a real implant. Even I can wear one for a little while before the reaction sets in. It’s not permanent. And in case you’re getting any unslavelike ideas …” She took his wrist in a surprisingly strong grip and jabbed her palm at the sharp tip of the spur.
It immediately went flaccid.
“You might cut another slave with it,” she said softly. “I’ve heard of such things, done for the amusement of the guards. But you will not cut a Yuuzhan Vong with such a tool.”
“I would have taken your word for it.”
“Good. You’re learning. So, you take your spur and split the lambent casing at the top. Go ahead.”
He knelt by the plants and pressed the sharp tip into the yellow bulb. It split, and a pale milky substance oozed out.
“Now cut down the side. It will be difficult.”
It was. The husk was tough. When he had scored three sides, he managed to peel the skin away. The entire time he did this, he was acutely aware of the thing’s telepathic voice, a quiet peeping somehow different from its companions, probably because of Uunu’s “attunement” of it.
The big surprise was the inside. When he had cut it free, Anakin held it up, fascinated.
It looked very much like a gem of some sort.
“What is it?” he asked again.
“Later. Go, now. You will be slower at cutting them than I am at attuning them. You must work to keep up with me. Normally two or three huskers come after the attuner. When you have a rhythm, and I am certain you are not losing ground, then we will try talking. Not before.”
It didn’t happen that day. While Anakin eventually caught the rhythm of the work, it was only after he was far behind Uunu. The lambents distracted him. They could tickle his mind and he could touch them, but not through the Force, not in the conventional sense. He was told that Wurth Skidder had had a similar experience with a Yuuzhan Vong yammosk, the creatures that coordinated the actions of Yuuzhan Vong warcraft. Yammosks bonded telepathically with their daughter ships and with the crews of its fleet. It then protected them as it would its own offspring, directing their battles to minimize loss. Skidder had apparently achieved some sort of metalinkage between the Force and yammosk telepathy, at least according to his surviving companions.
Were these lambents yammosk relatives? Uunu was doing something to them; they changed as she stroked them, became more distant to Anakin. Because she was bonding them to herself? Could Anakin bond with one? Maybe if he did, he would find out what their function was. Were they what they looked like and felt like? They couldn’t be exactly, of course, because they were alive, but still!
He hadn’t realized how much hope he had lost until he started to get some of it back.
He slept in a dormitory for slaves, a low-roofed, creeping building with four sleeping areas carpeted in a spongy, mosslike growth. A total of eighteen slaves occupied the building, sleeping as thick as stintarils. It was nearly impossible to sleep without being in contact with someone.
To Anakin’s relief, they weren’t all Peace Brigade. In fact, Anakin gathered that while most of the Brigaders in the system had indeed been captured, most of those had been sacrificed to the Yuuzhan Vong gods. The slaves he shared his quarters with were from various points along the route of conquest and seemed to represent members of some sort of slave core population, one that the malcontents and firebrands had been largely eliminated from. None of them had the old style of slave implants like those Anakin had seen on Dantooine.
“They use those mostly for the ones they send into battle,” a Twi’lek named Poy told him, when he asked about it. “The thing is, if they fit you with the stuff, it takes a lot out of you. Makes you dumb. The shapers don’t want dumb slaves that keep forgetting directions. The warriors just need bodies to absorb blasterfire, so it doesn’t really matter there.” His lekku twitched pensively. “But act up, or act stupid, and they’ll fit you with it and send you to the front.”
The most comforting thing about the slaves was that Anakin could feel them in the Force, but other than that, he didn’t see much hope for help in them, and indeed, enormous potential for betrayal if they had any hint of who or what he might be. He gave it out that he had been captured on Duro and suggested to the more inquisitive that they didn’t need to know the details.
Uunu collected him for the second morning, while it was still dark. He’d slept sporadically, trying to locate Tahiri in the Force. She was still withdrawn, difficult to find, but he was pretty sure he knew which damutek she was in.
He was a little groggy as he fell into step with the Shamed One.
“Here,” she said a bit gruffly, holding out something in her hand.
“What?”
“Just watch, infidel.”
A wisp of phosphorescence appeared in her palm and quickly sharpened into a substantial light. As it fleshed out, Anakin could see that it was a lambent crystal, like the ones he had been harvesting the day before.
It grew brighter until it was almost hard to look at, then faded away.
“You control the brightness with your mind,” Anakin guessed.
She nodded. “Yes. We use these as portable light sources. They can also be configured with photosensitive biots to form the controls of various superorganisms, especially of the spacegoing sort.” She closed her hand on the gemlike organism. “Come.”
“It’s still alive, though, right?” Anakin asked, as they continued toward the fields.
“Yes, of course.”
“What does it eat?”
“A lambent’s substance is mostly silicon and metal fixed from the soil. They transpire when gas is available, but most of their sustenance comes from the bioelectrical fields of the life around them.” She stopped, staring at him. “What is that expression on your face?”
Anakin realized suddenly that he was grinning from ear to ear.
“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just amazing, I suppose.”
“As are all gifts of the gods,” Uunu replied. Anakin thought he still heard suspicion in her voice.
They worked for six hours without stopping, but Anakin had his rhythm now. He told Uunu he’d been on a freighter crew, and described Coruscant and Corellia. She was mostly disgusted by this, since it was impossible to talk about such high-tech worlds without multiple mentions of abominations. He changed the subject to lost Ithor and the moon of Endor, which were less touchy subjects.
After six hours of work, they took a short break for water and to suck a pasty pap from something Anakin knew was an organism but preferred to think of as a warm, distended bag.
“It’s difficult to imagine all of those worlds, each as big or bigger than this one,” Uunu said between sips. “I grew up on one of the poorest worldships. There was little room. We lived very close together. Here, there is nothing but space.”
“There are plenty of uninhabited worlds,” Anakin agreed. “The New Republic would have been happy to make room for you.”
Uunu gave him the puzzled expression he had come to expect in their conversations. “Why should Yuuzhan Vong beg for what the gods have ordained we may have? Why should we tolerate abominations in the galaxy Yun-Yuuzhan has decreed shall be the end of our wanderings?”
“How do you know the gods have decreed this, Uunu?” Anakin asked, trying to keep the edge from his voice.
Her lips tightened. “Your mouth will be the death of you, Bail Lars. I have come to understand you are ignorant rather than stupid, but others will not be so forgiving.”
“I just want to understand. From what I can tell, the Yuuzhan Vong spent centuries if not millennia in space. Why now, why our galaxy? How did the gods make their will known?”
A slight frown creased Uunu’s face, but she did not berate him again. “The signs were many,” she said. “The worldships began to die, and there was much unrest. Caste fought caste and domain fought domain. It was a time of testing, and many thought the gods had abandoned us. Then Lord Shimrra had a vision of a new home, of a galaxy corrupted by heresy, of a cleansing. The priests first saw his vision was true, then the shapers, then the warriors. The time of testing gave way to the time of conquest.” She looked up at him. “That is all. It is how it must be. Ask no more about it, for there is nothing else to say. The people of this galaxy will accept the will of the gods, or they will die.”
Anakin nodded. “And the Shamed Ones? You didn’t mention them. How do they fit into this?”
Her gaze wandered away again. “We have our own prophecies. In this new galaxy, Yun-Shuno has promised us redemption.”
“In what form?”
She did not answer but instead looked off at the horizon. “Look how far it goes,” she said. “On and on.”
Anakin thought the conversation was over, but after a long pause Uunu suddenly caught his gaze and held it. Her voice dropped almost below the range of his hearing.
“Bail Lars,” she said. “Are you Jeedai?”