By noon of the local day, the Sekotan spacecraft had arrived in the Corellian system. Onimi had first landed the organic ship in the Corellian capital of Coronet, there to confer with the new, old President of Corellia, Thrackan Sal-Solo, and to have lunch with him and Viqi.
The sumptuous meal was interrupted by a Villip call and Onimi promptly left the table.
"What is it?" he hissed at the subaltern, whose face he saw on the villip.
"A New Republic ambassador has arrived at Centerpoint to negotiate with you," the subordinate reported. "It's about a human named Dean Jinzler."
After learning a number of details about the newcomer, Onimi decided: "Dean Jinzler is welcome to join our company after we demonstrated our power. In the aftermath he is welcome to negotiate with me."
"Where should I take him?"
"Show him the view of the Corellian twin worlds of Tallus and Trallus, if you please. Set him up a chat with some local Mrlssi if he doesn't mind, but make sure the guy doesn't get up here for three hours, okay?'
"Of course, jester."
Meanwhile in the dining room
"It's a shame we didn't meet sooner," Han Solo's cousin said, moving a little closer to Viqi. "I knew you worked for the Vong, but that it is sooo tight..."
Viqi made a face and Thrackan changed the subject. "I guess you miss your homeworld."
Viqi nodded silently.
"You know, Senator..."
"I'm not a senator anymore," she snapped at the Corellian. "Not even when Fey'lya was still Head of State and Coruscant was still called Coruscant."
"What would you call yourself then? Are you some kind of..." he winked suggestively, "Counselor?"
"I'm a shaper now," Viqi explained snootily.
"But are you happy, Viqi?"
She looked into his brown eyes, which matched his cousin's when he had glared at her after Viqi had tried to abduct little Ben on Coruscant ... Somehow her mind kept coming back to that ugly incident over and over again.
"So if you ever need a vacation from Onimi's ugliness..." he moved even closer to Viqi and put his arm on the back of the chair behind her shoulders, "then you can contact me at any time. You must know that he and his ilk once made me lose the love of my life."
Viqi smiled sweetly. "I suppose I should pity you now, Thrackan."
"I feel sorry for you, Viqi", he said in a melancholy voice. "I can already sense the great sacrifice you make every day to ensure that your home world, which is brimming with weapons and technology, has so far been spared by a Vong attack."
With that, he leaned toward her, and before the stunned Viqi could react, Thrackan took her head between his hands to kiss her.
His lips had barely touched hers when the dining room door hissed open and the court jester returned from his villip talk. Thrackan immediately flinched from Viqi's face, but Onimi had already seen enough. He first stopped in the doorway and glared at the ruler of Corellia with his yellow eyes. He then pulled his tsaisi from a pocket and approached Thrackan with it.
"Arise, Thrackan Sal-Solo - you spawn of meanness and depravity!"
"It wasn't what it looked like," the Corellian defended himself, but got up from the table as requested and turned to Onimi. "It was just that a speck of dust caught the senator's eye..."
"She's not a senator anymore!" Onimi slashed in a round ricochet, hitting the human on the side of the left hip with the shortened and slimmed-down version of an amphistaff. Thrackan fell to the ground in a line to the right and lay there unmoving, awaiting further punishment.
Onimi ignored him. "Did you like it, my dear Viqi Tsup?"
"You will no longer call me that, Onimi, but from now on I am the adept Viqi Shesh for you."
He laughed derisively. "You don't even have a shaper's hand."
"And you?" Viqi's red-lacquered index fingernail pointed at the jester's right hand. "And such one calls himself my master!"
Onimi grabbed his tsaisi anew and raised his palm to strike again.
"It's probably not enough for you to be ugly and shamed," Thrackan interfered from the ground, "no, you also hit women who are physically inferior to you. What a coward you are, Onimi!"
"I'll come to you later, President Sal-Solo!" Onimi sneered, then turned back to Viqi. "And you, my pretty adept Viqi, come with us now and dance for us."
Viqi followed him silently as she left the dining room behind Onimi, wishing someone other than the seedy Corellian had taken her side. After all, Onimi really hadn't hit her again, but that could still come.
They climbed back into the green spaceship and took off. Viqi saw the Centerpoint Station with the sphere in the middle and the two spurs to the right and left, and wondered how much had changed since her last inspection tour in the days, when Fey'lya was still Chief Of State.
They landed and a technician, who introduced himself as Antone, ushered the high-ranking guests into the control room, where the Rodian Salkeli from the Peace Brigade, other technicians, and some Yuuzhan Vong were already located. A woman of the latter stood by a large sphere covered with a cloth.
"What are you looking at, Viqi?" Onimi asked sneering. "You yourself recommended that Tsavong Lah breed such large villips at the time."
He turned to Antone. "Where is the Warmaster anyway?"
"Nas Choka refuses to enter what he sees as a technical monstrosity," reported Antone. "He literally said it was bad enough for him to be in the same system as Centerpoint and not be allowed to destroy it."
"The Warmaster will soon be out of any system if he keeps this up," Onimi grumbled in his native tongue, then whipped out his villip.
"Warmaster, I expect you to come to the Ballroom at Centerpoint Station immediately. Think about to bring with you the seized local cultural heritage as required and now… Guvvuk!*"
Onimi and Viqi exited the cramped control room to go next door into a larger hall decorated with garlands, while a neatly polished dance floor in the center awaited dancers. In the corners of the room, Viqi could see similarly sized villips as in the control room. They were still overcast, but Viqi was sure that there would soon be a live transmission to the entire galaxy. She would be seen on the Holonet, as so often, but this time it wouldn't flatter her. And then there were those purple hearts that were placed on either side of the dance floor. Viqi recognized the Dovin Basals, which would soon unfold a gravity field from which there was no escape.
But it wasn't just the Dovin Basale and the Villips that Viqi didn't like in the ballroom. There were already guests present, mostly humans, but also Rodians and Trandoshans, and other species that had been drawn to the Peace Brigade, the accomplices of the extragalactic invaders, in recent years. A smaller humanoid caught her eye, with bronze skin, pricked ears, purple eyes, and two mouths. She had already heard the name of the species, but she couldn't think of it.
It lasted about a quarter of an hour, then Nas Choka entered. The Warmaster did not sport opulent scale armor like his predecessor Tsavong Lah. He was clad in a plain black robe and carried his baton of a Tsaisi with the dignity of one who no longer needs to prove himself. In the other hand he held a bundle, which he handed to the court jester.
Onimi pointed to an area screened off with a shielding. "Viqi, my sweet little adept, you will change there."
Viqi walked behind the screen with the Warmaster's Bundle, marveling at how solid and rigid the contents felt, not at all as supple as she was used to from the organic body shells of the Yuuzhan Vong. When she was alone behind the screen and opened the bundle, she spontaneously shuddered. It contained the two-parter in which former Head of State Leia Organa Solo, when she was young and yet unmarried, once danced for Jabba the Hutt! There were holovid recordings of this, which regularly provided good entertainment in certain tap cafes and cantinas, and Viqi dreaded following in Leia's footsteps. Yes, the coppery-brown frock would have to suit her perfectly, but what if she was seen like this on her home planet?
She hesitantly put on the bra and the loincloth panties and wanted to go back to Onimi, but he immediately directed her onto the dance floor. After all, he had finally shed that unspeakable pilot's suit and wore instead a long, black robe, the fabric of which was so dark that Viqi thought the court jester's dress would absorb all the light in the room - and it wasn't particularly bright anyway.
Floodlights awakened to live on both sides, Onimi carrying an organic microphone, a miri'zip, and started to speak. "Today you will all witness the Yuuzhan Vong triumph over the Galactic Alliance – ironically through their own weapons, which are notoriously powerful. But first, as our Overlord's jester, I see it as my duty to provide some entertainment. Our current Warmaster, as many of you already know, had been traveling in Hutt space for a number of years before succeeding Tsavong Lah; and there in the Hutt's worlds Nas Choka at least managed to secure this extremely valuable and historical two-parter as a cultural heritage of this galaxy for posterity. So now see the former senator and current adept of our Shaper Caste, Viqi Shesh, dancing in it, not only to show off this showpiece of entertainment apparel, but also to dance the next goal of this battle station we're on to select."
The dance floor began to light up and was divided into three segments by strips of light. Each of these segments had the name of a world written on the floor in holographic letters, and Viqi read the names Kashyyyk, Mon Cala, and Kuat.
"Why now Kashyyyk?", Viqi wondered.
"The inhabitants of this planet have always been unpredictable and the Wookiees are generally sympathetic to the New Republic," explained Onimi. "As a poet, I also like the literary figure of the tricolon, so all good things come in threes."
The self-proclaimed adept stared at the vividly colored orb of the planet Kashyyyk. "I hope the Overlord appreciates your literary wisdom, Onimi."
"Viqi, you will dance until you fall from exhaustion, and where you lie down, we will attack," announced the court jester.
She moved to the edge of the dance floor to feel the power of the Dovin Basale pushing her back onto the area marked by the light strips.
Music blared out in the manner of the Hutt courts of yore, and Viqi began to dance. As she progressed from one of the three segments to the next, she found that sometimes the names got reversed no matter how she danced, or in which direction—it was always unexpected—just like the jester earlier on Coruscant had done in the shaper lab with the three Villips. She wondered if it was possible to somehow get hold of Grutchins to release them to cause as much damage as possible on Centerpoint, but she hadn't taken any shaper stuff from Coruscant and she didn't know, if Onimi had such anywhere nearby. For some reason she feared that the station might be made operational, contrary to her beliefs, since the Yuuzhan Vong would not want to afford another debacle like the one three years ago.
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Somewhere on the planet Devaron
Borga the Hutt did not like the planet Devaron very much, for the planet was far too cold and dry for her liking, even in the equatorial zone, but on this world she had access to the messages she couldn't receive in her original place of exile, where she had been since she fled Nal Hutta and lived with the newborn Huttling. She was just feeding her offspring some living frogs that locals had supplied for lunch for many credits.
"What do you mean, dearest? Is this program of the enemy at all suitable for children?" asked their host, licking his lips with relish with his broad tongue.
Borga stared at the holoscreen with the running news.
"Never before has the announcement of the destruction of a planet been so exciting and entertaining at the same time," commented the green Twi'lek reporter, while Viqi Shesh danced behind him in her skimpy two-piece suit, "because this seemingly innocuous cultural program of the enemy serves the choosing the next destination of the infamous Centerpoint Station."
"Why, it's only a human woman," Borga said snippily, "but I can understand that you Desilijics see it differently, Golga."
"I almost wish I was there on Centerpoint," the other Hutt murmured.
"Actually, I wanted to see the news and not dance, so I could have flown straight to Tatooine, it's much closer and the climate is better too."
Golga belched loudly. "Depending on how this turns out, you might be able to do that again soon."
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On the planet Kuat – capital city
"Emlee, your daughter has been dancing for over four hours now and we still don't know which planet she will choose for final annihilation."
Emlee Shesh had been in the garden of her villa cutting the roses herself when the messenger called her to the palace. And it was not the first call to the royal residence that had been shameful and humiliating for her.
"Your daughter tried to kidnap Ben Skywalker ... Your daughter tried to have a Galactic Alliance scientist murdered on Borleias ..."
These were all accusations that made her daughter look like a common criminal. She then always had made the excuse that Viqi Shesh had no official position, that her daughter had been missing for some time and that no one knew how voluntarily Viqi Shesh would serve the Yuuzhan Vong actually.
What had embarrassed Emlee Shesh most was the news that her daughter had last been seen on Coruscant in the company of the notorious enemy agent Nom Anor... That was long after Tsavong Lah's death. At first, Emlee was happy that her daughter was still alive. But since then, rumor has spread that for sheer survival, Viqi Shesh would please just any Yuuzhan Vong high enough in rank to give her a reasonably comfortable existence on enemy territory.
The sister of Kuat's Queen felt sick to her stomach as she was summoned to the assembly room of the planet's royal house. Ever since Coruscant had been conquered by the enemy, she had been spoken to, and winced, for those speeches usually began with, "You're the mother of the traitor who served the Warmaster ..."
Emlee Shesh stared at the screen, which showed her scantily clad daughter dancing. How often had she mocked the existence of such holovid recordings of former Head of State Leia Organa Solo. Viqi Shesh would never ... But that was a long time ago and Viqi hadn't become Head of State. And who was that light blue, misshapen Yuuzhan Vong, who was staring so suggestively at her daughter from the background with his yellow eyes?
Viqi Shesh fell down and never got up. And beneath her, the letters Kuat were clearly legible.
"This," the queen said reproachfully to her younger sister, "is the darkest hour of Kuat's existence. Your daughter should never have been a senator on Coruscant."
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Ten minutes earlier at the World Brain Pond on Yuuzhan'tar
A funny squeak sounded from the cave entrance and immediately C-3PO lurched towards it. "It's about time, R2D2. There must be at least one constant in the turbulent history of this galaxy if Master Luke, like his father before, is constantly putting himself in danger. And that constant is you and I, who always have to make sure that the technical requirements for saving this galaxy are also met."
Artoo chirped in amusement.
"Yes, yes, I know such an interstellar transmission is not particularly system-shattering at first glance, but I am sure that Mistress Leia would be only too happy to see what is happening on Centerpoint Station."
R2D2 extended a telescopic arm and used it to project a holo image into the air. From a few feet away, Han and Leia saw the human female dancing.
"You sure you got the right channel, Artoo?" Leia asked, nudging her husband in the side. "Though I'm sure Han would like that."
Han looked hard. "Yes, yes, it says in the corner up there: Centerpoint Station - Ballroom." He turned to his wife. "Tell me, Highness, the music is the same, and so is the two-piece bikini ... and could it be that we know the wearer too?"
Leia gaped at the dancing Viqi Shesh. "Well, I was already ashamed in front of Luke when I had to dance in front of everyone and pose for Jabba in this outfit, but that this naughty cow is now jumping around in my two-piece suit," she lifted her upper lip disparagingly, " I do feel humiliated in a certain way."
"But darling," Han said, "you don't fit that fumble anymore anyway."
She resolutely put her arms on her hips. "I've already given birth to three children... to you!"
"After all," Han pointed to the blue holo projection of Viqi Shesh, "you no longer need something like that, you later became head of state. In the case of Viqi Shesh, on the other hand, it seems that the career has been exactly the opposite."
Leia nodded and her face brightened a bit. "Her espionage for the enemy really paid off."
The dancing Viqi Shesh staggered and fell to the ground with the letters Kuat written beneath her on the lighted dance floor. And in that moment, any amusement left Leia's face.
"There you have it, dear viewers - the dice has fallen..." The green Twi'lek reporter, looking just as blue as Viqi Shesh in R2D2's holo-image, paused artificially, "… or rather, Viqi Shesh has fallen."
"If Grand Moff Tarkin had asked me to do such a thing, I would have slapped him with my own hand! Doesn't matter what he would have done to me after that," Leia hissed.
Han put a hand on her shoulder. "It seems that someone wants to do something with her right now."
The misshapen light blue Yuuzhan Vong knelt by Viqi and raised her head. An image of the planet Kuat was shown in the background of the odd pair. "Viqi," whispered the Yuuzhan Vong, as if he had known Viqi for ages and three days, "please tell me a good reason why we should spare your home planet?"
Viqi was silent and persistently looked past him to the picture of her home planet.
"Leia Organa Solo explained at the time that Alderaan didn't have any weapons, but Kuat..." the light blue man gestured with his foreshortened arms in the direction of the pronounced ring of factories and shipyards that surrounded Kuat, as other planets were circled with asteroid or ice lump belts. "Kuat is just about bristling with weapons... and that..." Onimi's blue finger pointed to a shipyard. "Won't that become a Super Star Destroyer soon?"
"What do you want so that my world is spared?" Viqi breathed.
"You," Onimi whispered, and then he kissed her in front of the cameras and now fully activated villips right on the open mouth - and the entire galaxy was watching.
This chapter contains events from the book series "New Jedi Order", Vol. 5 "Agents of Chaos II: Jedi Eclipse" by James Luceno (2000) and the short story "Ylesia" by Walter Jon Williams. (2002)
*Guvvuk means "Forward!" in the Yuuzhan Vong language.