Tahiri stood in Mandala's cockpit, one hand on the back of Vjarna's chair and the other on Muro's, watching over their shoulders as the bright blur of hyperspace suddenly flared out and became a sweep of stars over blackness and the crescent of Euceron's waning nightside face.
"Well, here we are," Muro said. "Anything on the scanners, Revli?"
The Bimm shook his head. "Nothing. We're the only ships in orbit. Probably the only sentients beings in the whole damned system."
"I certainly hope so."
"Have either of you ever been to Euceron before?" Tahiri asked as Mandala drew closer to the planet.
"Nope," said Vjarna.
Muro shook her head.
"Well," Tahiri said softly, "Me neither."
She certainly hoped that would make things easier. The Yuuzhan Vong had spread across the galaxy conquering thousands of worlds, each with unique history and culture, and sought to erase all of that and replace it with their own bio-engineered life forms. Anything that had come before their twisted religion was seen as heresy.
Ever with the Yuuzhan Vong memories implanted in her head by a heretical shaper, Tahiri had a hard time mustering sympathy for the Yuuzhan Vong right now. When she'd been on Zonama Sekot for five years, helping to remake their society, it had been easier; she'd been able to see close-up how their twisted religion and rigid caste system had punished anyone who dared independent thought, and she'd come to realize that many of the workers and shamed ones, even intendants, warriors, and shapers, were as much victims of their leaders as the beings native to this galaxy.
Right now, though, thinking of them as victims was a lot harder. Euceron's past, its history and its people, were gone forever and could never be recovered.
"It almost looks normal," Vjarna observed as they dropped into the planet's lower atmosphere and curved toward its sunlit side. "I mean, it could just be a planet without any people, only natural vegetation."
"Natural probably isn't the right word, but I get what you mean," Tahiri muttered. "You're going to have to head for the northwest continent. Do you have that?"
"Well, we know where north is," Vjarna checked the scanners. His furry face dropped into a frown. "To tell the truth, I have no idea what I'm looking for."
"Start scanning surface topography. Also start doing infrared scans. See if you can't find any clusters that might indicate large groups of warm-blooded life-forms. We're trying to find the remains of a large shaper laboratory."
"Not sure what that looks like, but I'll give it a shot," the Bimm muttered.
"Dropping altitude now," Muro said. "We'll hang right above the atmospheric envelope."
Tahiri nodded. "That's good. Start doing atmosphere scans too. I want to know what the composition of the air down there is."
"Wouldn't it be primarily oxygen?" asked Vjarna. "The Vong do breathe the same stuff as us."
"They do, but there's no telling what's happened to this planet's ecosystem in the past decade. Without Shapers to oversee the process things might have gone out of control."
Muro shook her head. "Well, the atmosphere content seems normal. A little high in carbon monoxide but still plenty breathable."
"I'm showing lots of vegetation down there too," Vjarna said. "Euceron used to be pretty urbanized, right?"
"I think it used to have a few major cities," Tahiri nodded. Her thoughts flashed back to Yuuzhan'tar, as they'd called Coruscant its transformation. "I bet all that's been buried now. They probably seeded the atmosphere with pockets of Vongformed vegetation that covered the ground and spread."
"Sounds like someone laying out a new carpet," Muro muttered.
"It's the most efficient way to transform a planet large-scale. It still takes time for the Vonglife to take root, but once it does it starts eating away at the earth below, grinding it down so it can be replaced."
"Lovely," Vjarna muttered. "How do you know all this stuff, anyway?"
Tahiri swallowed. If the Bimm had any idea that she'd been captured by the Yuuzhan Vong on Yavin 4 and implanted with false memories that had nearly torn her apart, he kept a façade of merry ignorance. Muro might have heard that story too, but if she did, she gave no indication. Tahiri might have broken a little ice with her but the captain was still hard to read. Right now, she was holding the ship steady right above the atmosphere and checking scanners.
Eventually Tahiri said, "I was sort of the Jedi expert on Yuuzhan Vong."
"Long story?" asked the Bimm.
"And not a happy one."
She thought she saw something twitch on Muro's face but couldn't be sure.
Vjarna tapped his scanners. "How does this look? I see a big cluster of something. Topographical scanners show a sudden spike in elevation, more like a tower than a mountain."
"It could just be ruins from an old city," Muro said.
"I'm getting some heat signature too."
"Can we go further down?" Tahiri asked.
"Not a problem."
Muro kicked Mandala into a controlled dive and began vectoring toward the coordinates Vjarna had provided. Tahiri clasped the back of their seats again and looked at the surface of Euceron as it swelled into view. The entire surface was covered in vegetation, and for a second, Tahiri was reminded of Yavin 4 and Zonama Sekot. She had to remind herself that the vegetation on this planet was going be a lot nastier than anything on those worlds.
When they reached the coordinated, Mandala began to circle like a scavenger bird, which in a sense was what it was. Tahiri peered though the viewport at the unmistakable smooth domes of Yuuzhan Vong damuteks, and the high spire that looked so similar to the one the shapers on Yavin 4 had started to build during her captivity.
"That's it," Tahiri said. "Can you find a place to put us down?"
Muro frowned. "We might have to use the ventral laser cannon to burn a clearing."
"Is that all right?" asked Vjarna. "I mean, would it… I don't know… Make anything mad?"
"What kind of life-signs do you pick up down there?" asked Tahiri.
"I'm picking up mobile heat signatures, none of them very large. I don't think there's sentient life, but I can't be sure."
"It's a small risk, but I think we'll be okay. Captain Muro, try burning a hole in that vegetation to set down right next to the tower."
"With pleasure," Muro muttered, and reached out to activate the ventral cannons.
The weapons went off, sending mild reverberations through the freighter's hull. When she was done, Muro pulled up for one more wheel, giving Tahiri a chance to look the blaster-scorched clearing over. Smoke peeled away from burnt vegetation and dissolved in the wind; she couldn't see any creatures moving around the devastation's edge.
"Okay," Tahiri said. "Set us down. Give me a minute to get my things ready. Then drop the landing ramp."
Tahiri didn't have much to grab; only her lightsaber and a pack of foodstuffs and medical supplies she'd purchased at Junction Station. She'd already dressed in a rugged jumpsuit layered with pieces of plasteel armor before they left hyperspace. After tying her hair up in a tight bun, she went down to the loading bay the ramp was already lowered. Muro stood on one side, Vjarna the other, and both looked nervously outside.
"You don't have to come with me," Tahiri said as she adjusted the strap on her shoulder.
"I wasn't even considering it." Muro took a comlink from her pocket and tossed the cylinder to Tahiri. "If I do decide to abandon you, I'll call and let you know first."
"Much appreciated." Tahiri decided that was sort of a joke. "I don't know how long I'll be in there for. I might be a while. If you see anything unusual out here, anything you might have questions about, let me know."
"We will," Vjarna nodded. "Good luck."
Tahiri nodded back, genuinely grateful, and went down the ramp.
The air outside smelled of burnt vegetation, though beneath that Tahiri thought she could catch the familiar scent of Vongformed worlds. She went to the edge of the burnt clearing and examined the stalks of tall plants; each stem was thick, and the leaves jutting out at regular intervals had serrated edges. Blas'morn grass, she recalled. She couldn't remember if she'd seen those on Zomona Sekot, or if it was knowledge Meezhan Kwaad had implanted in her head long ago. It was scary, sometimes, how easily the two halves of her merged.
She took one last glance over her shoulder, then ignited her lightsaber and began hacking a clear path through the blas'morn. As she worked her way to the tower, a flock of flying creatures passed overhead. She tried to spot them, identify them, but could not.
When she reached the tower, she paced around its outside. One good thing about Vongformed structures was that they were all more or less the same, in the way that all trees of the same species were the same. She'd never seen one of these towers in completed form, but her implanted memories told her everything she needed. She walked around its base until she found the circular entry portal; a movable sphincter would have covered the hatch normally, but the tower had clearly decayed since being abandoned, and the flaps of dry tissue hanging limply from its edges made no effort to stop Tahiri.
That probably meant the movable platforms that functioned as turbolift analogs weren't going to be alive either. Tahiri swapped her lightsaber for a high-intensity glowlamp and scoured the inside of the tower. As she expected, the interior was largely hollow, and a winding staircase curved around the tower's interior, leading upward past level after level of portals.
The shapers called the eight layers of Yuuzhan Vong bio-forming knowledge 'cortexes,' implying one had to spiral upward to gain higher and higher levels of knowledge. Shapers generally weren't of poetic bent, but this tower was a pretty accurate physical represent-ation of that theory.
Tahiri began climbing, scouring the passages ahead of her, poking her head through limp portals, all the while searching for a place where she might interface with the tower's central consciousness, its chorrosk. Similar to a yammosk or a dhuryam, it lived far under-ground directly beneath the tower and would have been responsible for directing all Vongformed processes on this part of the planet. There was no way to tell for certain that the chorrosk was even still alive when the rest of the tower was clearly withering, but the surrounding landscape seemed full of Vonglife, and besides, chorrosks were engineered to be as durable as they were valuable.
Tahiri found what looked like a place where she could interface: a shaper's qahsa lay abandoned on a ledge, its palm-sized form attached by fleshy umbilical to the wall. She looked closer and saw something else attached to the same place: a translucent facemask like coralskipper pilots wore.
Tahiri had worn those more than a few times, both before she'd fully integrated with her Yuuzhan Vong half and afterward. Though she'd picked up some knowledge of qahsas from the shapers on Zonama Sekot, but she was more familiar with the facemask. She tentatively touched it; the skin was dry but not completely brittle, indicating that some life-giving fluids were still circulating through the tower. She picked it up in both hands, cradled it, and looked down at the mast.
"Char'lash morn Yun k'varsh b'korr," she muttered without thinking. It was an old shaper's incantation, used to beg the Gods for blessing before a difficult procedure.
It was, she supposed, the thing to say at a time like this. She braced herself and placed the mask on her face.
At first nothing happened; she felt a faint, vaguely familiar presence at the corners of her mind, and wondered if the chorrosk was too weak to properly interface with her awareness.
Then it came. She gasped against the soft tissue of the mask and her mind fell away.
She found herself lost, adrift in a sea of data that threatened to overwhelm her and deafen all her senses. For an instant it was like she knew every blade on every stalk of blas'morn on the planet, every amphi-staff growing in the nearby swamps, every Vong-formed creature scampering through the brush.
But that wasn't what she wanted.
She pushed all that away and drew strength from the part of herself that was still Yuuzhan Vong. Scant nerve-clusters, implanted and left behind from her time in captivity, made it easier for her to interface with Yuuzhan Vong lifeform, but it was still a trial to tame the chorrosk like a shaper would and get the inform-ation she needed.
She realized, with a touch of surprise, that this chorrosk was struggling to resist her. It was like the creature had gone feral after being abandoned by the shapers, and why wouldn't it? There were probably hundreds or thousands more like it, scattered on planets across the galaxy, no longer truly Yuuzhan Vong creatures but evolving into something else; sometimes, perhaps, even merging with the flora and fauna of native to conquered worlds to create something unique.
Maybe the hybrid worlds would thrive; maybe they would tear themselves apart. Tahiri was still trying to determine which one she was herself, over ten years on.
But finally, she found it: the place in the chorrosk's memory where the shapers had stored the catalog of all their projects. The chorrosks were incapable of communicating with other ones on distant star systems, but the shapers usually did a good job of using qahsas to update the memories of the individual creatures, creating a synchronized system documenting the research.
Normally, the higher levels of research were blocked to all but the most high-level shapers. But that had been a long time ago, and the feral chorrosk, though still chaffing at her intrusion, didn't seem to care much about hypothetical shapers' ranks.
Tahiri had to wrestle with it, but not for very long. The information spilled into her mind: the origins of Shimmra's Slayer project, the genome for the living seeker missiles that had nearly destroyed the all HoloNet transceivers toward the end of the war, the hideous voxyn project that Master Shaper Yal Phaath had overseen.
And, tethered by some strand of thought to the voxyn project, she found what she was looking for.
It was enough to stop her breath. She wanted to scream. She should have known it, should have expected it, but she'd come here in the desperate hope that there would be some other way.
But of course, the universe was not that kind.
Tahiri pulled off the mask and opened her eyes. Everything was dark around her, darker than before. She looked up to the top of the tower and saw, through crumbled holes in the ceiling, a field of twinkling stars.
She realized she was hungry, and her legs aching. She must have connected minds with the chorrosk for hours.
Her face was wet too; either through tears or whatever liquid was from the mask. She wiped it clean as best she could with her sleeve and fished out her comlink. Sure enough, a small light shone on the side, indicating that someone had been trying to call.
She immediately thumbed it on and said, "Mandala, do you read me? Captain Muro, please tell me you're still here."
She had to wait for what seemed like an awful eternity before the captain's dry voice replied, "We read you, Miss Veila. We tried coming as the sun went down but got no response."
"It's all right," Tahiri assured her. "I was just… busy, but I'm okay. Are you still where I left you?"
"We are, but we've noticed strange movement around the perimeter since the sun set."
"What kind of movement?"
"Nocturnal animals, probably. If you're coming back, be careful."
"I'll keep that in mind. Thank you. Veila out."
Tahiri thumbed off the comlink and seriously consid-ered passing the rest of the night here, midway up the tower. Of course, there was nothing to stop hungry Vongformed animals from crawling up the stairs to eat her, but it would at least be easier to defend herself here.
Unless the nasty creatures were airborne. She looked up at all those visible stars and didn't feel confident at all.
She needed to get off this planet. She needed to get to the source of Yal Phaath's bioweapon project, and she couldn't wait forever. For all Tahiri knew it had already fallen into the hands of rogue Hapans, scheming Imperials, or, for all she knew, old Daala herself.
Still, there was no need to be reckless.
Tahiri sat down on the steps, took out a ration bar, chewed it, and washed it out with some water. She made sure her lightsaber was still at her belt and checked the charge on her glowlamp.
Finally, she found the part inside her that had melded with the chorrosk and let it flow outward, feeling all the Vongformed life in the wilderness outside. Back during the war she'd learned to attune herself to her inner Vongsense, to treat it almost as an extension of the Force, though she'd never been able to reach out through both parts of herself at once.
Anakin had possessed a power like that. So, too, had Jacen Solo; in fact, he'd been the one who'd taught her how to embrace the Yuuzhan Vong half of her senses.
Thinking of Jacen wasn't helping anything. She stood up and took her lightsaber in one hand, her glow-lamp in the other. She began walking slowly down the stairs and out of the tower, keeping her senses attuned at all times to the myriad Vonglife around her.
Outside it was a deeper night than any she could remember. She could hear nothing, not even the distant whine of Mandala's dormant engines. The stars were incredibly vivid overhead. It was stunning to think that you were one of three sentient beings on an entire planet, and terrifying to know that there were so many more Vongformed worlds with no sentient life at all.
Knowing it would just attract attention, Tahiri turned off her glowlamp and waited for her eyes to adjust to the starlight. Once she was confident she could find her path back to the freighter, she began pressing forward, hands and arms held in front of her to keep branches and stalks from slapping her in the face.
She was able to spot the glow of Mandala's forward lights in the distance and vectored toward their corona. All the while she kept herself attuned to the Vonglife around her. She sensed some awareness, keen and hungry, somewhere in the dark, but when she stopped to listen and try to locate the creature she heard nothing and sensed nothing.
So, warily, grasping her lightsaber tightly in one hand, she trudged onward. The light from Mandala was getting closer and closer and but that carnivorous mind was closer too, and she braced herself to run at the slightest signal.
A breeze washed over the field, causing blas'morn to ripple and chatter. She paused and listened for some-thing more, like the snapping of branches before a moving body, but there was nothing.
She took another step, and then they came for her.
Her Vongsense gave her the half-second of warning that saved her life. She ignited her lightsaber and turned on her glowlamp and turned both to face the creature coming up behind her. It bounded forward on four legs, tail lashing behind it, stout jaws open to reveal double-layers of jagged teeth. She thrust her saber out, catching the creature in its throat; her blade sizzled and sparked against armored skin and the creature let out a long, painful wail.
Voxyn.
Then the creautre fell back and she got a better look at it. No, not a voxyn, but half of one: a fero xyn, the Vonglife creature that had been combined with a vornskyr to create the Jedi-hunting monsters that had gotten Anakin killed. It was smaller, it couldn't hunt with the Force, and couldn't spit acid, but its claws were still poisonous and its teeth could easily shred flesh off her bones.
And, she remembered, fero xyn always hunted in packs.
Tahiri turned around in time to catch another creature as it leaped toward her. Dropping the glowlamp so she could grip the weapon in both hands, her lightsaber thrust forward this time, piercing the rough skin under the animal's stomach and speaking into its gut. As she struggled to pull her blade free from the corpse the first one rebounded towards her, and another leaped out from the blas'morn grass. Tahiri ducked and rolled through the dirt then snapped onto her knees, facing them both, saber held horizontally to block the attack what was surely coming.
The fero xyn growled hungrily but neither attacked, and that meant friends were on the way- their friends. She tried to find her Vongsense again despite her panic, and this time she was able to pivot to the right and swipe her lightsaber out, bringing another fero xyn to a skidding halt before it could attack. That gave the first one room to charge again: it ran forward, kicking the glowlamp on the ground and sending it rolling, its light flashing over blas'morn stalks as it got further away. Seeing only by the blue of her lightsaber, Tahiri swung her blade back again, catching the first fero xyn across the eyes. The animal howled and of course the one at her right leaped forward. Tahiri dropped face-down in the dirt to avoid its claws but its strong tail still cracked like a whip over her back. She rolled onto her side and flashed her lightsaber up, trying to catch another creature in the belly, but this one scampered out of the way.
As the first fero xyn whimpered, the other two advanced. She lay on her shoulder, one leg stretched out into the dirt, feebly pointing her lightsaber at them both, wondering if this was what she deserved for everything she'd done: to be torn apart on this forsaken planet by these awful creatures that were so, so close to the voxyn that had begun her downward spiral all those years ago.
Then she heard the distinctive tang of blaster-shots being fired. The fero xyn halted, ears pricked up, hesitating. Then a red laser blast caught it right in the face. It flashed and smoked against the monster's armored skin and Tahiri used the opening to throw her lightsaber in the Force-controlled loop; its blade spun like a blue circle of light until it speared through the side of the fero xyn's stomach.
Scrambling to her feet, Tahiri called the lightsaber back to her hand. Only then did she turn and see Rahley Muro standing behind her, the glowlamp attached to her BlasTech T-14 rifle blazing ahead and catching the last fero xyn in the face. Light didn't scare the creature; its jaw hung low, hungry.
"Run," Tahiri said, and they did.
Both women sprinted through the remaining trail, their path lit by Muro's light. Tahiri stayed behind, waving her lightsaber to discourage pursuit, but she kept looking forward to follow the path and couldn't tell if the fero xyn was actually after them.
When they reached Mandala a nervous-looking Vjarna was standing at the top of the ramp, clearly eager to close it and fly off this rock. Muro ran halfway up, turned to fire a few shots over her should just in case, then kept running. She was almost at the top, Tahiri right behind her, when a dark body flashed out of nowhere and caught her in the side. Muro dropped her weapon and went clattering onto the ramp. The fero xyn's teeth snapped at her as she tried to pull herself out from under its claws.
Tahiri ran straight into it with her lightsaber pointing dead ahead. It stabbed into the creature's sides and it sent out its own yelp of pain. Tahiri pulled her saber out then gave the monster the strongest kick she could, throwing it off-balance and sending it tumbling down the ramp.
As Vjarna hurried to the controls and started retracting the ramp, Tahiri grabbed hold of Muro and held her by the waist to keep her from falling too. When the ramp finally settled in its horizontal position and sealed them inside the ship, both women collapsed on the hard deck.
"Are you all right?" Tahiri gasped. "Did it get you with its claws?"
"No," Muro replied, "No, I'm okay."
There was a pause, where the two women just panted while Vjarna looked on. Then Muro rasped, "I was going to say you owed me one, but I guess we're even now."
"Yeah," Tahiri said, "That sounds about right."