Chapter 2- First Blood
The first battle between Yuuzhan Vong and the Kar'shan Legions occurred over the third moon of Yuuzhan'tar, Tar'Dalya, or, the Crèche of Stars, as the Yuuzhan Vong name it. It was a fairly well-sized globe of solid volcanic glass that shimmered with blinding reflected beams of blue sunlight, turning space around it into a pantomime of moonbeams mingling with the distant stars.
The Kar'shan Legions had targeted the outermost satellite because of the traces of iron and crystallized minerals embedded in its crust, materials that could prove useful for the technologically advanced warfleet. The Yuuzhan Vong had no use for the moon, but Yuuzhan had predicted it as the first likely target of the stalwart mechanized aggressors, and so coralskippers and one larger vessel, a thamalok, comparable in shape to a spiny fish of great size, had been based upon its surface.
Thus far, the Kar'shan Legions had neither detected nor anticipated any resistance from the peaceful Yuuzhan Vong that populated the planet. So it was that when the first troop carriers descended to the moon's surface, they were completely unprepared for attack.
The cubical drop ships, basically troop racks with engines, had barely begun to disgorge their cargo of half-flesh, half-metal warriors when a front wave of thirty coralskippers, striated in green and blue, the colors of life, boiled over a nearby ridge, plasma cannons flaring with orange discharges of energy. One of the massive troopships disintegrated almost immediately under combined fire from the living ships, and many of its warriors were crushed under its falling mass.
The other five of the first wave hurriedly released the last of their holding clamps as they withstood multiple impacts of magma missiles, the heavier weapons of the biological assault group, and the sea of mechanized soldiers streamed away from the drop point, raising weapons and preparing to die bravely facing the deadly airborne assault.
It readily became apparent, however, that either the pilots or leaders of the enemy attacks were unused to the concept of battle. Once deprived of the easily visible troop carriers as targets, the coralskippers wavered, clearly unsure about what to do next. The warriors shouted encouragement at each other, and began to fire at the living vessels. The shouts quickly fizzled as energy bolts disappeared into nothingness, bending and flickering out like flames as they drew near to the coralskippers' skins.
One of the warriors, D'harhan, strode forward, unimpressed with the strange alien craft. His laser cannon activation panels blinked in an instant from pacified green to a burning, angry red, and all the nearby troops backed away in fear. Bracing himself against the ground, D'harhan triggered his cannon and shook as it discharged a heavy laser bolt.
Unprepared for such a concentrated attack, the coralskipper D'harhan had aimed at was unable to raise sufficient void power in time, and the dovin basals failed to stop the attack. The red energy beam punched straight into the main body of the vessel, spearing through the plasma storage gullet located underneath the cockpit. The living ship had less than one point five seconds to communicate distress to its pilot before the superheated material exploded out of its confinement, reducing the craft to shreds.
A rallying cry rang out from the rest of the robotic troops, and suddenly, the coralskippers found themselves facing a storm of red and green laser bolts pouring skywards in their direction. Several, shaken by either fear or indecision, exploded into large pieces as the hail of energy proved too much for their voids. Most of the others simply pushed their dovin basals to rocket them skywards, levering them up above the aim of the warriors on the ground.
Then, the thamalok cruised over the ridge.
The massive ship was close to four hundred meters in length, all of it arched smoothly and radiating fins and spines bristling with plasma cannons and dovin basals. All of the firepower of the mechanical invaders immediately shifted to concentrate on the capital ship, but the thamalok shrugged off the firestorm and opened fire.
Round after round of massive plasma balls tore deep into the ranks of the Kar'shan Legions, leaving charred bodies where it did not vaporize them where they stood. Weapons and armor melted away in the extreme heat of projectiles even passing near the troops, and they screamed in anguish as their own protection cooked them inside a boiling, hardening shell of molten metal.
As the thamalok brought itself about for another pass, several lights appeared on the horizon; the drive glows of approaching ships. Content with the destruction it had wrought, the thamalok and coralskippers turned and powered away from Tar'Dalya, the Crèche of Stars.
Commander V'g'no'kor stood, a towering, quivering edifice of power made more dangerous by the rage in his eyes, looking down upon D'harhan and the few survivors of the Tar'Dalya landing squads. Blades emerged from his fists without his having realized they did, and when he struck the nearby ship's bulkhead in anger, the three foot razor-sharp stilettos punched through hardened steel as though it were plastic. His minions quailed at the visible display of their commander's fury, fearing that they might be the next victims of the sharp blades.
"How?" V'g'no'kor finally hissed, spraying spittle from clenched teeth to spatter D'harhan like droplets of blood, causing a rare flinch to erupt from the mechanized being's shoulders. "They have no combat capability! The scouts were perfect! How could this happen?"
The voice synthesizer built into D'harhan's chest cavity spoke slowly, mechanically, and without inflection or emotion to represent his distress. "My lord, we cannot say. Somehow, the Yuuzhan Vong have acquired a means of defense, and faster than we could have feared in our darkest dreams. The ships are... strange, my lord. They are not constructions of steel and alloys, but living creatures in their own right. The warriors are confused."
"I will not suffer this insult!" V'g'no'kor raged. "They defy the Cremlevian Order without knowing their peril. The Order demands that this system be taken, and quickly! How strong are their forces?"
"Not strong enough, milord," D'harhan responded ponderously. "All we observed were flights of the smaller ships aided by a larger defense craft."
"Observed?" V'g'no'kor screamed. "What if there are more? What have you NOT observed? Whom shall the blame for defeat fall upon if we are bested? Be sure or be slain!"
"They are not capable of withstanding an all-out attack at this point in time, lord," D'harhan said relentlessly, clinging to whatever dignity he could.
"At this point?" If it were possible, V'g'no'kor's voice grew shriller. "What of the future?"
"If we stall, lord," D'harhan admitted. "It is likely we shall need reinforcements."
"Then destroy them!" V'g'no'kor exploded. "Take all the ships, prepare all weapons, I don't care what it costs, I want that planet extinguished!"
"They will be coming for us, soon," Yuuzhan's sad voice filled the Hall of Confluence, ringing with gloomy echoes from the high ceiling and carved pillars. Ten thousand of the warrior caste and one hundred priests stood restless before the world consciousness, their newly inflamed warrior hearts aching for a chance to show the enemy that they were not soft as they appeared to be. "It is inevitable. We do not have the strength to hold against them."
"Then we will fight!" interrupted an unidentified voice from deep in the crowd. "If the shapers need time to create more weapons, then we will give them that time! Yun-Yammka will be drunk with the blood of our enemies!"
Yuuzhan's head lifted in alarm. "We cannot hold back the storm!" he said, trying to calm the crowd that was slowly inching over the critical mass necessary to form the boiling flame of a howling mob of killers, bent on destruction.
"Then we shall die proving we are faithful!" shouted another zealot, finally letting loose the pent-up fear, rage, and battle lust nestled in the heart of nearly every Yuuzhan Vong in the chamber.
"Yun-Yammka!" screamed a group of warriors near the front, and those closest to them took up the cry. "Yun-Yammka!"
Soon the entire hall was shaking to the battle chant, and Yuuzhan sank to his knees on the platform, weeping tears of bitter regret. Better that his children should have died than sweep along the terrible path this new culture seemed to be leading them.
Suddenly, the Hall of Confluence vanished around Yuuzhan, and he looked up in startlement, noting an abrupt change in scenery. Massive stands of boras surrounded him, though different enough from the ones he knew that he wondered if he had been mysteriously transported to some other planet. He cautiously felt at the Force- the one thing he possessed mastery of without the participation of his children. The Yuuzhan Vong had no real understanding of the Force, and they had none of its restraining influence on their life to warn them of the dark path they were straying towards.
Then, a gap opened in the trees, and a smiling youth came forward to peer up into Yuuzhan's eyes. He was of a species unknown to Yuuzhan, and his sandy hair and blue eyes seemed very innocent.
Then, the boras vanished, and so did the child, and Yuuzhan found himself floating in empty space, staring at a pinwheel of stars, a massive galaxy rotating in the darkness of space. Suddenly, a shadow fell across the swirl of light, and it dimmed to a diffuse red glow that nevertheless shone with evil light. A line of people of the same species as the youth appeared, clad in robes and brandishing staffs of pure light, all the colors of the rainbow.
He saw a Yuuzhan Vong child before them, saw the blades of energy poised at its neck... and remain still, merely preventing the child from moving. The Yuuzhan Vong child, weeping now, rose to his feet and looked the leader of the light-wielders in the eye. The being smiled, and reached out to take the Yuuzhan Vong's hand. Breaking into a smile, the child took it, and stepped forward to land on a platform of flowers and dancing insects. Playing happily, the child receded into the distance, and Yuuzhan felt himself slide out of the vision, back the pandemonium of the Hall of Confluence.
Even though he confronted the spectacle of a well-intended decision racing horribly out of his control, Yuuzhan felt somewhat comforted by the mysterious vision.
The first battle between Yuuzhan Vong and the Kar'shan Legions occurred over the third moon of Yuuzhan'tar, Tar'Dalya, or, the Crèche of Stars, as the Yuuzhan Vong name it. It was a fairly well-sized globe of solid volcanic glass that shimmered with blinding reflected beams of blue sunlight, turning space around it into a pantomime of moonbeams mingling with the distant stars.
The Kar'shan Legions had targeted the outermost satellite because of the traces of iron and crystallized minerals embedded in its crust, materials that could prove useful for the technologically advanced warfleet. The Yuuzhan Vong had no use for the moon, but Yuuzhan had predicted it as the first likely target of the stalwart mechanized aggressors, and so coralskippers and one larger vessel, a thamalok, comparable in shape to a spiny fish of great size, had been based upon its surface.
Thus far, the Kar'shan Legions had neither detected nor anticipated any resistance from the peaceful Yuuzhan Vong that populated the planet. So it was that when the first troop carriers descended to the moon's surface, they were completely unprepared for attack.
The cubical drop ships, basically troop racks with engines, had barely begun to disgorge their cargo of half-flesh, half-metal warriors when a front wave of thirty coralskippers, striated in green and blue, the colors of life, boiled over a nearby ridge, plasma cannons flaring with orange discharges of energy. One of the massive troopships disintegrated almost immediately under combined fire from the living ships, and many of its warriors were crushed under its falling mass.
The other five of the first wave hurriedly released the last of their holding clamps as they withstood multiple impacts of magma missiles, the heavier weapons of the biological assault group, and the sea of mechanized soldiers streamed away from the drop point, raising weapons and preparing to die bravely facing the deadly airborne assault.
It readily became apparent, however, that either the pilots or leaders of the enemy attacks were unused to the concept of battle. Once deprived of the easily visible troop carriers as targets, the coralskippers wavered, clearly unsure about what to do next. The warriors shouted encouragement at each other, and began to fire at the living vessels. The shouts quickly fizzled as energy bolts disappeared into nothingness, bending and flickering out like flames as they drew near to the coralskippers' skins.
One of the warriors, D'harhan, strode forward, unimpressed with the strange alien craft. His laser cannon activation panels blinked in an instant from pacified green to a burning, angry red, and all the nearby troops backed away in fear. Bracing himself against the ground, D'harhan triggered his cannon and shook as it discharged a heavy laser bolt.
Unprepared for such a concentrated attack, the coralskipper D'harhan had aimed at was unable to raise sufficient void power in time, and the dovin basals failed to stop the attack. The red energy beam punched straight into the main body of the vessel, spearing through the plasma storage gullet located underneath the cockpit. The living ship had less than one point five seconds to communicate distress to its pilot before the superheated material exploded out of its confinement, reducing the craft to shreds.
A rallying cry rang out from the rest of the robotic troops, and suddenly, the coralskippers found themselves facing a storm of red and green laser bolts pouring skywards in their direction. Several, shaken by either fear or indecision, exploded into large pieces as the hail of energy proved too much for their voids. Most of the others simply pushed their dovin basals to rocket them skywards, levering them up above the aim of the warriors on the ground.
Then, the thamalok cruised over the ridge.
The massive ship was close to four hundred meters in length, all of it arched smoothly and radiating fins and spines bristling with plasma cannons and dovin basals. All of the firepower of the mechanical invaders immediately shifted to concentrate on the capital ship, but the thamalok shrugged off the firestorm and opened fire.
Round after round of massive plasma balls tore deep into the ranks of the Kar'shan Legions, leaving charred bodies where it did not vaporize them where they stood. Weapons and armor melted away in the extreme heat of projectiles even passing near the troops, and they screamed in anguish as their own protection cooked them inside a boiling, hardening shell of molten metal.
As the thamalok brought itself about for another pass, several lights appeared on the horizon; the drive glows of approaching ships. Content with the destruction it had wrought, the thamalok and coralskippers turned and powered away from Tar'Dalya, the Crèche of Stars.
Commander V'g'no'kor stood, a towering, quivering edifice of power made more dangerous by the rage in his eyes, looking down upon D'harhan and the few survivors of the Tar'Dalya landing squads. Blades emerged from his fists without his having realized they did, and when he struck the nearby ship's bulkhead in anger, the three foot razor-sharp stilettos punched through hardened steel as though it were plastic. His minions quailed at the visible display of their commander's fury, fearing that they might be the next victims of the sharp blades.
"How?" V'g'no'kor finally hissed, spraying spittle from clenched teeth to spatter D'harhan like droplets of blood, causing a rare flinch to erupt from the mechanized being's shoulders. "They have no combat capability! The scouts were perfect! How could this happen?"
The voice synthesizer built into D'harhan's chest cavity spoke slowly, mechanically, and without inflection or emotion to represent his distress. "My lord, we cannot say. Somehow, the Yuuzhan Vong have acquired a means of defense, and faster than we could have feared in our darkest dreams. The ships are... strange, my lord. They are not constructions of steel and alloys, but living creatures in their own right. The warriors are confused."
"I will not suffer this insult!" V'g'no'kor raged. "They defy the Cremlevian Order without knowing their peril. The Order demands that this system be taken, and quickly! How strong are their forces?"
"Not strong enough, milord," D'harhan responded ponderously. "All we observed were flights of the smaller ships aided by a larger defense craft."
"Observed?" V'g'no'kor screamed. "What if there are more? What have you NOT observed? Whom shall the blame for defeat fall upon if we are bested? Be sure or be slain!"
"They are not capable of withstanding an all-out attack at this point in time, lord," D'harhan said relentlessly, clinging to whatever dignity he could.
"At this point?" If it were possible, V'g'no'kor's voice grew shriller. "What of the future?"
"If we stall, lord," D'harhan admitted. "It is likely we shall need reinforcements."
"Then destroy them!" V'g'no'kor exploded. "Take all the ships, prepare all weapons, I don't care what it costs, I want that planet extinguished!"
"They will be coming for us, soon," Yuuzhan's sad voice filled the Hall of Confluence, ringing with gloomy echoes from the high ceiling and carved pillars. Ten thousand of the warrior caste and one hundred priests stood restless before the world consciousness, their newly inflamed warrior hearts aching for a chance to show the enemy that they were not soft as they appeared to be. "It is inevitable. We do not have the strength to hold against them."
"Then we will fight!" interrupted an unidentified voice from deep in the crowd. "If the shapers need time to create more weapons, then we will give them that time! Yun-Yammka will be drunk with the blood of our enemies!"
Yuuzhan's head lifted in alarm. "We cannot hold back the storm!" he said, trying to calm the crowd that was slowly inching over the critical mass necessary to form the boiling flame of a howling mob of killers, bent on destruction.
"Then we shall die proving we are faithful!" shouted another zealot, finally letting loose the pent-up fear, rage, and battle lust nestled in the heart of nearly every Yuuzhan Vong in the chamber.
"Yun-Yammka!" screamed a group of warriors near the front, and those closest to them took up the cry. "Yun-Yammka!"
Soon the entire hall was shaking to the battle chant, and Yuuzhan sank to his knees on the platform, weeping tears of bitter regret. Better that his children should have died than sweep along the terrible path this new culture seemed to be leading them.
Suddenly, the Hall of Confluence vanished around Yuuzhan, and he looked up in startlement, noting an abrupt change in scenery. Massive stands of boras surrounded him, though different enough from the ones he knew that he wondered if he had been mysteriously transported to some other planet. He cautiously felt at the Force- the one thing he possessed mastery of without the participation of his children. The Yuuzhan Vong had no real understanding of the Force, and they had none of its restraining influence on their life to warn them of the dark path they were straying towards.
Then, a gap opened in the trees, and a smiling youth came forward to peer up into Yuuzhan's eyes. He was of a species unknown to Yuuzhan, and his sandy hair and blue eyes seemed very innocent.
Then, the boras vanished, and so did the child, and Yuuzhan found himself floating in empty space, staring at a pinwheel of stars, a massive galaxy rotating in the darkness of space. Suddenly, a shadow fell across the swirl of light, and it dimmed to a diffuse red glow that nevertheless shone with evil light. A line of people of the same species as the youth appeared, clad in robes and brandishing staffs of pure light, all the colors of the rainbow.
He saw a Yuuzhan Vong child before them, saw the blades of energy poised at its neck... and remain still, merely preventing the child from moving. The Yuuzhan Vong child, weeping now, rose to his feet and looked the leader of the light-wielders in the eye. The being smiled, and reached out to take the Yuuzhan Vong's hand. Breaking into a smile, the child took it, and stepped forward to land on a platform of flowers and dancing insects. Playing happily, the child receded into the distance, and Yuuzhan felt himself slide out of the vision, back the pandemonium of the Hall of Confluence.
Even though he confronted the spectacle of a well-intended decision racing horribly out of his control, Yuuzhan felt somewhat comforted by the mysterious vision.