New Home
The space at the edge of the Belkadan system was calm, as was to be expected of empty space. The system itself was distant and calm. Two comets from the Belkadan's shell were visible, tracing their silent ways through the void. The system's primary was little more than a distant glow, a star slightly brighter than its brothers.
Then, out of nowhere, an immense construction sprang into existence. It was a gigantic ovoid of yoric coral, a disk some ten kilometers across; it was a flattened globe with nine helix arms sprouting from the core, as if to reach out and embrace the galaxy in which it had come to reside. The vessel was one of a type that hadn't been seen in the Belkadan system for some seven years. It was a Yuuzhan Vong worldship.
But it was different. Gone was the scabrous appearance of a freshly rotted piece of meat. In it's place were obvious features of Sekotan refinement. The hull, now the dark green of a healthy leaf instead of the mottled brown and gray of an old carcass, was smooth; though it was still graced by irregular rolls and gentle dips in the surface, it no longer looked as though it had been caught in a meteor shower. And there were machines. Not in the usual Galactic Alliance frame of mind, but not totally incompatible. There were still lambent crystals, and patches of glowing lichen, and villips, and dovin basals, but they were modular. Still part of a whole, but now with a measure of independence. There were great transparencies in the hull, looking in on concourses and buildings, the likes of which even a Coruscanti would have been impressed with.
Behind one of these transparencies stood Harrar, a priest of the Yuuzhan Vong. Once the homeworld of Zonoma Sekot had been found, they had immediately started adapting, and had been doing so ever since. Although they had kept their reverence for life, the constant presence of Sekot had apparently changed them. Though they had continued to prefer all things organic, they no longer had quite such an automatic distrust of all things mechanized. In fact, technology could be found in almost all Yuuzhan Vong homes now. Anything from villip-comm signal adapters, to holo-net transceivers, to hypercomm stations. You could even find civilian coral craft with backup ion engines.
All these things were pondered by Harrar as he watched the stars. This was a gathering of the worldships, an event over which Priest—no, High Priest Harrar had been asked to preside. As the priest of Yun-Harla recognized this last though, he had to suppress a chuckle. He had never asked for rank. He could just as well do without it. Unlike Nom Anor, he had been content with his post.
But, as had happened everywhere, the government needed its heroes, and Harrar had been held up as an example of total morality. So had the unusually tolerant Commander Hag'ruch Lian. He had been one to rescue soldiers off of damaged Galactic Alliance warships at Coruscant—and smuggle them to the heretics. They had formed the backbone of the resistance on Coruscant, which had been an amazing help when Shimrra had been toppled. He had seen them as warriors, not unlike those favored of Yun-Yammka himself.
Regardless, Harrar had found himself shoved to the front of situations, over which he had no control. At the moment, that suited him just fine, i.e., he had no huge moral quandaries, torrents of weapons fire, or treacherous plots being shoved into his face. All he had was a simple speech to make.
Soon, all the civilian worldships had been assembled. And then a different on entered the array. It was one of the old worldships. It was the ship that Prefect Vishtu had brought to Coruscant, the Ne'shel.
"We are gathered here today, the people of Yun-Yuuzhan, from the domain of his daughter, Sekot, to cast aside an old mantle and recognize a new life!" Even as he said this, his image was being relayed by villip choir to every concourse, every plaza, every home. In those areas where a villip choir could not be fit, they listened to the speech while they continued their work. Even outside Zonoma Sekot, the Yuuzhan Vong worldships, and every Yuuzhan Vong settlement, there were watchers, provided with images by villip adapters that were built into the hull.
"We came to this galaxy as conquerors, determined to cleanse this new domain, or to perish in the act. We were brought here by Shimrra, who had deposed Quoreal, so that we might gain him glory. Yun-Yuuzhan promised us a home, Yun-Yammka promised victory, and Yun-Shuno promised redemption to all: Warrior or shaper, honored or shamed, believer or infidel, all would find their way back to Yun-Yuuzhan and the domain of the gods!"
"But this was false. We had been banished from the ancestral home for aggression, and yet we assumed that we would be rewarded for conquest. We had been stripped of Yun-Yuuzhan's breath—the jeedai force—and we did not see the connection. How could we have overlooked this? How could we have been so easily lead astray?"
"We now return to the rim of this galaxy, this land for which so many died. Here, where we not long ago tried to force our ways upon the denizens of this domain. Now we send ourselves back as a gesture of repentance. Here, we banish the old ways, and step forth into our future! This is the start of our legacy!"
At his words, a signal was sent to the unmanned Ne'shel. Once the command was sent, all the dovin basals on the mighty vessel came to bear on a distant galaxy, one unknown to those of this land. The ship silently surged into motion. Were there anything near to it to compare it with, it would have seemed impossibly swift. As it were, however, it seemed to be a gigantic hunk of scabrous coral growing slowly smaller. Then, five hundred coralskippers flew out and encircled it, an honor guard on its final voyage. The gargantuan disk had just reached the point of being invisible when it jumped into darkspace with a silent bang. Their tasks thus completed, the coralskippers returned to their hangers on their respective worldships.
And as the ceremony was over, the warships began to disembark. This time, however, they were not trying to find home. They were home.