The tunnel they were following curved around to hit another, broader one, with a higher roof. Light streamed down, and Luke thought that perhaps they'd found another path to the surface until he looked up to see the ceiling packed thick with phidnas, each glowing gold and illuminating the path below. Shadows dripped down the walls. The marching feet of the droids grew less distant and grated against his teeth. His heart hammered in his chest.
The walls were lined with alcoves here too—not alcoves disguising a long drop below them, thankfully—and the three of them ducked into one when they paused, in case a droid passed them. It wasn't much cover, but it was the best they could get.
"So, the queen's chamber is right behind this wall," Aphra whispered, pointing to the wall they were nestled against. "This whole corridor is designed like the spokes of a wheel—a bunch of tunnels lead into it, and there are a bunch of entrances into the queen's chamber itself. We need to split up."
Luke frowned. "The queen?"
Aphra grinned. "The Geonosian queen."
"She's still alive?" That would change things. If their leader was alive that meant she could talk to the Rebellion directly. They could get some answers, rather than settling for whatever scraps Luke could pry out of Aphra and the sands around them. And if the queen still had the strength for pomp and ceremony, that could only be a good sign, surely?
Or perhaps pomp and ceremony would be all she had left.
"The droids all report to her, according to Switchy here. She's the one that built them, based off of old skeletons and designs. An entire"—she shuddered—"robot womb and everything. I don't know how it works, but…"
The clanking got louder. She glanced over her shoulder and peered around the corner, but it continued on, into the chamber. It was going through one of the entrances, then. "Luke, I'm sorry."
He stared at her. They'd argued less than half an hour ago. "What?"
"I'm really, really sorry," she repeated.
"That's… alright." It wasn't, really. Luke swallowed. "That is—I forgive you. You didn't know."
The sincerity he could feel from her wavered, then came back in full force when she smiled tentatively. "You were right. This is gonna be dangerous. I can't tell you what's going on, I'm sorry, but… I need you to trust me."
Luke hesitated. His stomach was twisting into knots about this entire situation, but Aphra did know more about this than he did. Following her lead was his best way out.
"Alright." He nodded. "I trust you. What's your plan?"
"I'm gonna go out in the open to talk to her."
"What?" He said that a little too loudly; he glanced around, checking if someone had heard. "You just said—"
"I know it's gonna be dangerous. But that's the best way to find out what's happening here. We both want answers to that, don't we?"
That was surprisingly similar to Luke's own thoughts. But Aphra wasn't one for diplomacy.
After a reluctant moment, Luke nodded. "We do."
"Then you and Switchy come in." She pointed. "Switchy says that the main entrance, directly opposite the queen's throne, is to the right of us here. I need you both to sneak around towards the back of the hall—no, actually, about halfway around. Wherever you think has a good vantage point. Hang out next to that entrance and get your blasters ready. I'll give you a signal if the negotiations break down."
"You'll scream?" he asked dryly.
She snorted. "It won't come to that, don't worry."
Bravado. Aphra was nothing but bravado.
"D'you understand?"
Luke nodded reluctantly again. "I understand."
"Then go." She waved a hand. "No—wait."
"What—"
Aphra hugged him.
Enormous affection washed over him. Luke, staring over her shoulder, blinked several times before he registered it. His eyes filled with tears, and he had to blink some more when he hugged her back. He could sense her genuine regret over their argument. He could sense…
Aphra had never hugged him before.
"Alright, maybe I am a little worried," she admitted in his ear. "But it'll be fine. I trust you."
Luke relaxed, unable to keep the fond smile off his face. "Thank you," he said earnestly. "And… I know."
"You know what?" She drew back, saw the look on his face, and scoffed. "Oh, get lost. Go, now. Scoot!"
Luke exchanged a look with Switchboard—though the droid didn't have enough personality yet to provide the sort of look Luke was giving—then crept away. He pressed himself along the wall when they got to the next archway and peered inside. The room was full of shadows, but he thought he could see something at the other end of it. Something massive.
It was dark enough that he had to lean forwards and squint, though he didn't dare turn on his headtorch—that would reveal his location. The room was clearly a throne room, oval-shaped with eight angular arches stretching towards the domed ceiling, four on each side. Aware that his hair was light enough to catch any light moving in the darkness, he ducked back and lifted his brown hood to cover him.
Switchboard followed. The clanking of his limbs seemed deafening in the silence, but there were other droids clanking about inside the chamber. He could hear them, and others, farther away. Switchboard would draw less attention than Luke.
He ducked back into the corridor and crept right along, to the arched entrance closest to the other end of the hall. His breathing hitched with every step; it seemed as loud as a thunderclap, but no one noticed him. He even tried to wrap the Force around him, clumsy though his untrained attempts were: I'm not here. You don't see me. You don't hear me.
When he reached the last archway, he shuffled alongside it and peered into the chamber.
From here, he had a much better view of all the droids. They stood at the edges of the chamber the same way Biggs used to meticulously line up his toy stormtroopers, unmoving until called for. To the left of this archway and to the right of the opposite one, occupying almost the entire half-circle of the floor, was an enormous throne.
Luke noticed the tail, first. An enormous, bulbous thing: the soft tip of it was as thick as his fist when resting, but the rest was comprised of increasingly large segments, like beads on a necklace—provided that the smallest bead was large enough to come up to Luke's knee. They only swelled from there, until they reached his waist. His shoulder. His head. Taller.
His gaze followed the tail but arrested on the tooth-like crenellations surrounding the throne. They were gorgeous in the way that all Geonosian architecture was gorgeous: geometric, sharp, and not a little ominous. Diamond-shaped points made of the same stone as everything else sat atop spires that jutted out from the throne, forming a sort of barrier or fence. It was almost shaped like a crown.
Cuffs dangled from each tooth. Luke swallowed, but they looked thoroughly rusted and worn—a relic of a bygone age of glory.
The tail he'd been following with his eyes vanished behind those crenellations and onto the wide, circular dais that served as the throne, then reared up into the queen. When Luke finally let his eyes track up to her, he didn't register what he was looking at.
The back of the throne soared up into an arch that pinched at the top. It was plated in what looked like gold or another precious, shining metal, scuffed and worn for so long that it reflected everything in the cavern back and scarred it with the warps and blurs of time.
At the centre of it all loomed the queen. She sat in the centre of the throne-dais, the segment of her body that she sat on—her abdomen? It had been a long time since Luke and Biggs chased bugs around Tatooine and learnt to guess which ones were poisonous—at least a head taller than Luke, and just as wide. From there, rose another, smaller segment, then her spindly torso. Three pairs of legs thrust from either side of her: her lower two were tense and fisted, drawn inwards as if to protect her body. The top pair were spread, ready to fight.
Her head, with its gaping mouth and bulging eyes, perched on her neck, precariously balancing a vast crest above it. The crest precluded the need for a crown: it stretched so wide Luke thought her neck must snap from the weight of it, forming a nocked fan shape with detailed patterns that he had no hope of understanding. It shifted, her arms shifted, and the hairs on the back of Luke's neck shifted too as she looked up and stared straight ahead.
"Invader!" she shrieked in a high, grating voice. Luke shuddered. She tested out the Basic word as if it was as alien to her as Aphra was: "In-va-der!"
"Now, there's no need for that kind of language," Aphra objected, strolling forwards. Luke peered towards the other end of the chamber—she'd just waltzed in. She'd just waltzed in. "I'm not here to invade. I just came to explore."
"Invader," she repeated, hissing. "Murderer—you have killed our children, you have attacked our creations—"
"Our?" Aphra asked, not unsympathetically. Luke was pretty sure the sympathy was a front, but at least it was in her voice. "You mean, there are more of you? Somehow, I doubt that."
"Invaders have stolen too much from us." She lifted all her arms at once, and the droids lining the walls all snapped to life in unison. They cocked their blasters and stamped their feet. The tunnels trembled. "Have you come here to bargain? To converse? To trade?"
Luke glanced up and regretted it: sand trickled into his eye from the arch above him. It stung like hell. His vision was swimming in seconds, the scene blurring in front of him.
It didn't matter. He could still see Aphra take a step forward anyway, like the brave, bold madwoman she was, and keep talking.
"I love bargaining. I love conversing. And I especially love a good trade." Luke, blinking fiercely, still couldn't see her through his right eye, but he could imagine the wink she gave as she said that. "I think we can help each other. You're totally on your own here, right? I get that. I was alone for a long time too."
Aphra glanced to her side—in Luke's direction—so quickly it was easy to miss. But Luke didn't miss it. He noticed, and despite himself, his heart ached. He smiled a little.
"I'm sorry about what we did to your home," Aphra said. She'd put her fake voice on again. The queen, clearly, noticed as well. "We're looking for something."
"I know what you are looking for, rogue. And I know what you would give for it."
His vision hadn't cleared yet. Luke frowned and grabbed the edge of his jacket, bringing it up to wipe his eye with. It did the job, but when he let go of the jacket again, something fell out of his pocket.
He'd thought that pocket was empty.
He crouched down to pick it up. It was small enough to fit in his palm, black, and made of something adjacent to metal. It wasn't until he turned it over and saw the blinking red light that he realised it was a charge.
There was a ringing in his ears. Guilt, panic, tension, resolve flooded him, momentarily eclipsing his capacity for emotion. The galaxy seemed to slow in its spin, come to a stop, then spin the other way. Everything clicked together with the finality of a trigger set in motion. He saw, in his mind's eye, what had happened, as clearly as if it was happening in front of him all over again.
He recognised the calculating mind that clung to this charge.
He put it back in his pocket.
Aphra's smirk was audible. "So… I take it you'll accept my deal?"
Switchboard grabbed Luke. Before he could even shout, he dragged him out of the shadows into the centre of the room. His blaster clattered out of his left hand; Switchboard kicked it away. The rough ground ate at Luke's trousers and scoured his knees, his elbows, but no amount of kicking broke the durasteel grip around his wrists—not until he was out in the open, exposed, and thrown to the floor.
He scrambled to his feet, heart hammering, and stared around. Switchboard kept his grip on his left wrist but let his right wrist free, so Luke could twist his body to gawk at how terrible his life could be. Aphra was standing about ten metres behind him, hands casually in her pockets, still smirking in that unaffected way of hers.
"Your deal," the queen intoned, her voice so much louder this close, "and the manner in which you initiated it… was unexpected."
Luke looked up and flinched. She was so much taller than him—she leaned down, over the teeth of her throne, to peer more closely at this new captive, her eyes the size of his fist and gooey as exploded womp rats. Her six arms reached out, clawing towards him, and he backed away into Switchboard's hard shoulder.
Aphra shrugged. "He was unconscious. The droids kept trying to stun, not shoot him, so I figured you must want him pretty bad. And I figured all your droids were using some form of collective intelligence—you Geonosians are really big on your hiveminds, aren't you?—so sending you a message seemed a lot faster than reprogramming one droid. Besides, what was one droid gonna do against an army of them?"
Good question, Luke wanted to ask, teeth gritted.
"No, I think," she cocked her head, "we can come to an agreement that will satisfy the both of us. As I said, I know what it's like to be all alone. Only droids for company… Until I met Luke." She nodded at him. "He's exactly what a lonely queen like you needs!"
"Aphra," Luke said, twisting his neck to look back at her.
She met his gaze head-on. That was perhaps the worst part—at least, it was until she added, "He's a little annoying—morals and all that—but I've heard you Geonosians are good at getting rid of that sort of individuality anyway, huh?"
She spread her arms. There was something in her right hand—Luke squinted to see what it was, but it was too dark, and her fingers moved to cover it. He had his suspicions, though.
"C'mon. You gotta admit, it's a great deal. A teeny tiny bit of information for an entire person? Killer." She winced. "Possibly literally. I dunno what you want with him—but don't worry! I don't care. I only care about one thing."
"It is evident that you care for nothing," the queen hissed.
"Do you have the Death Star plans?"
The queen stretched to her full height. "I know what you seek, rogue. You will not acquire it from us."
"Yeah, I know you know. I told you. So, is that a no, you don't have them?"
"That is none of your concern."
"A Death Star?" Luke burst out. He stared at Aphra. "What the hells even is that? What— is that what you've been looking for? Another weapon? Is that what you'd sell me out for?"
Of course it was, he realised. Luke was just a blip in Aphra's life. Weapons, she'd dedicated it to.
But the questions were coming, and they wouldn't stop.
"And you!" He glared up at the Geonosian queen, in his anger no longer flinching at the sight of her repulsive face. "What do you want with me? I'm not a—" He stumbled. "I'm not a slave! I won't let you kill me, I won't—"
"We will not allow language to corrupt your comprehension of your purpose, Jedi," the queen said. It was almost gentle, which made Luke want to vomit. "Soon, you will understand."
All the fight slumped out of him. "Jedi?" he asked, resisting the urge to glance at Aphra. "I'm not a—"
"We have no need to bargain," the queen said to Aphra. "You are on our planet. You will follow our will, or you will feed our young."
Aphra raised her eyebrows. "I tried. It's a bummer to have to play this card, but…" She sighed and lifted her right hand, exposing what she was holding.
Luke had been right. It was a trigger.
"You're right—you can just take Luke, if you want. But whether you want him whole, or as a splat of blood and bone not even whole enough to feed your… young…" Aphra lingered over the word, a moment of discomfort shining through. She recovered, though. "Well, that's up to you!"
The queen said nothing, but her massive eyes narrowed.
Aphra grinned. "I shoved eleven charges into his pockets when we hugged. Sorry, kid." She glanced at him. "If I push the trigger, he's useless to you. But answer my question, and we'll both be happy."
Luke closed his eyes.
The queen hissed out a breath. Then, in a low, rasping voice, she said: "We do have the Death Star plans."
Aphra's grin widened. "Thought so. Pleasure doing business with you."
"Remove these eleven charges."
She mockingly inclined her head, then strode forwards. All the droids tensed to attention, every blaster in the chamber trained on her, but she walked with her easy slouch as if she hardly noticed. When she reached Luke, she gave that same mocking nod to Switchboard, then didn't wait for his permission to start patting him down.
"Hey—"
"One." She fished one out of his hood. "Two. Three. Four." More out of his pockets. "Five, six, seven"—his boots and trouser pockets—"eight, nine, ten"—his sleeves—"aaaaand… eleven."
Number eleven was literally stuck to his back with a sticky, gum-like substance. Luke stared at it like it was the traitor here.
"That's him safe, Your Highness," she declared, switching each charge off and pocketing them again. She was lying.
The charge Luke had found—the one in his right jacket pocket—was still there.
Had she miscounted? It was the first thought that came to mind, but with a heart that weighed as much as a boulder, Luke dismissed it. This was Aphra. She didn't lose count of anything.
He grabbed her sleeve with the hand still cuffed in Switchboard's grip. "Aphra," he begged. "Aphra, please—"
She neatly disentangled herself and stepped back. "He's all yours," she said, meeting his eye unerringly. His stomach twisted. "For… whatever you want to do with…"
A wet, squelching sound made them all turn.
The tip of the queen's long tail, the part the size of Luke's fist, was swelling. Before his eyes, it became twice its previous size, bulging with something spherical inside it. A hole opened up at the end, dark and slimy, and stretched. After a long, squelching moment, a spotted orange egg rolled out of her and across the ground.
"…him," Aphra finished.
"Our child," the queen said.
The egg cracked.
Luke sucked in a breath. The egg cracked so neatly—more neatly than he'd ever seen Aunt Beru crack eggs while she was cooking. He tried to picture her aged hands around an egg, beating it, confident, mundane, and loving. He tried to draw strength from that stupid, stupid memory of her cracking eggs—tried to be brave, like she always had been, like she had taught him to be.
But the horror of his situation eclipsed everything else. One moment the egg was whole, the next a small network of hair-thin cracks spread across the top, and out of it pushed a worm, and he could not remember happiness in the face of this.
The pieces of the egg fell away, rocking. The worm pushed out, finding purchase on the hard ground. It was a yellow-green colour and seemed to glow in the dim light of the chamber. The segments of its body stretched as it moved, smoothly and wetly, leaving a trail of its own mucus on the ground behind it, sand clumping on its squishy body. At its longest, in motion, it looked to be at least half a metre long.
It was the same as the worms they'd seen in the pit earlier.
"So, you literally mean those worms are your children," Aphra observed. "The larval stage of Geonosians? Your baby is so cute!" It kept slithering towards them. Aphra took a big, incredibly unsubtle step back. "You do want to use Luke for food, then? Well, that's not what I expected, but hey! Go ahead!"
"He will not be our food. He will live."
"Marvellous! I still don't care." She backed away a little more. "I'm just gonna need those Death Star plans—"
"We will not give you the Death Star plans."
Aphra jerked her head up. "What? You just said—"
"You asked us if we had them, and we confirmed that we do. But we will never agree to trade them." The Geonosian queen rose up to her full height, her posture as rigid as it could go. She cast a very long shadow, and Aphra was right in the middle of it. "And you will not escape to inform anyone of what we have. Your body will feed us."
Aphra snapped her head around. The droids all raised their blasters in unison, and this would be the end for Aphra, Luke saw in one clear moment: there were dozens of them in here, and she couldn't dodge all of their blasts when she was right in their sights. She'd implode from all those shots at once—
"Wait!" She held up the trigger again. "You got any decent first aid resources for humans, Your Highness?"
"What?"
She laughed. It was a wild thing, slightly insane, but still full of joy. Aphra was a bizarre person. "You think I removed all of the charges from Luke's pockets? Nah. I'm smarter than that. I wanted some insurance."
"You…"
She started to back away. The queen didn't stop her.
"You're gonna let me go, Your Highness," Aphra intoned. "If you don't, that Jedi of yours is dead."
The queen narrowed her eyes at Aphra, all six of her fists clenched in rage. Then, to Luke's shock, she did. Aphra backed away untouched, her hand with the trigger still raised. The queen's eyes narrowed further.
"You will not escape," she promised.
"Do you know how many times I've been told that over the years?" She reached the archway she'd entered through and planted her feet, lifting the trigger even higher. "Don't feel bad. You're not the only one who's lost to me."
Smiling broadly—mockingly—she stopped in the doorway. "So, are you gonna give me the Death Star plans? I don't have all day."
"You may leave unmolested. But we will not give you the plans."
"Aphra…" Luke warned.
Aphra ignored him. "That only leaves us with one ending, unfortunately," she said. "Sorry, Luke. Bleeding out from one charge won't be quick, but I bet it beats getting eaten alive, right?"
Before the queen's droids could reach Aphra, she pushed down the trigger.
The explosion was small, but plenty powerful. Luke gritted his teeth. Aphra, to her credit, didn't shout; it was more of a whimper. Her pain clogged her throat.
She pressed her hand to her side—the pocket in her jacket. Blood wept through her hands' desperate attempts to cage it. She bent over, staggering against the wall of the archway.
When she looked up, it was straight at Luke. He lifted his free hand—the one she hadn't been watching when he had grabbed her. "I told you," he said. "You're not as subtle as you think you are."
The snarl that took over her face was horrifying. But then the queen gave an order in the clicks and shrieks of the Geonosians' hivemind, and a barrage of red bolts occupied the space she'd been standing in a half-second before. He could hear erratic, limping footsteps sprinting away, down the corridor, away from here, as entire platoons gave chase. She shouted more after them, the horrible clicking grating on Luke's ears. Nausea roiled inside him.
He didn't know how far she'd get.
He didn't want her to die.
"Now," the queen turned to him, "you."
Luke's heart hammered. "Please," he asked. "I didn't want to hurt you—"
"You will not hurt us," she assured him, words slow, rasping, and enunciated. "You will help us. Our empire is forever."
"I can help you," Luke agreed. "So—please—let's…"
Something brushed his foot. He looked down.
He had forgotten about the worm.
It looked up at him now, eyeless and blind, but still twitching like it could feel his regard. It nudged the edge of his foot; Luke tried to kick at it, tried to stamp it, but Switchboard twisted his grip and lifted him, until both of Luke's arms were in a tight lock. His legs dangled, a bare inch above the ground, but enough to rob him of any leverage, any power—he kicked, but the worm ducked underneath his foot smoothly.
Then it crawled onto his boot.
Luke's breathing hitched. It was so long, trailing mucus, and it wound its way over the leather of his boot, expertly clinging on even as Luke kicked and kicked. When it reached the top of his boot, it slipped under his trouser. He felt its cold, wet body slide against his skin.
He closed his eyes and went still. There was nothing he could do. His every muscle was frozen, waiting for it to sink its teeth in and feast.
It took its time. It circled his calf like a backwards helter-skelter, leaving its clinging, clammy trail in its wake. Luke's paralysis was only broken by full body shivers of revulsion: he rattled in mid-air where Switchboard held him, as the worm slithered along the back of his knee—and that had the nerve to tickle—and then his thigh, and then up the soft flesh of his belly…
And still, it kept going. Luke opened his eyes when it reached his heart—and flinched to see the queen bent down low to stare at him, her black eyes unblinking. He was so distracted by her that it wasn't until at least a half of it was in front of his face that he realised the worm had reached his neck and emerged from his shirt.
He flicked his eyes back to that, the writhing in his peripheral vision. It slunk up the side of his neck, invoking another set of full-body revulsions. His hands were trembling with the fear he wouldn't let himself show. His crotch felt hot and wet.
The worm caressed his cheek carefully—very, very carefully. A climber that respected the rockface they challenged. Anchoring itself by wrapping part of its body around his ear, it crept along his cheek, over the bridge of his nose. And again, it seemed to peer at him: its skinny head drew back to look into his eyes. Head on like this, it looked like the head of a spear.
"No," Luke muttered. "No, no, no…"
Luke yanked his head away, as if he could escape from it, as if it wasn't on him. That tilt was exactly what the worm was waiting for. He leaned his head back—and it shot up his nose.
It punched through his sinuses and into the space behind his eyes. Pain rang like his skull was a bell and the worm was the clapper, building and building until it was deafening, all-consuming, and the worm entangled itself in every part of his mind, his will, his body, his soul. Voices murmured, then chatted, then shouted in his inner ear. He cried out.
The queen started to laugh.
His strangled cry lasted for five, four, three, two, one seconds. His throat rasped; his nose ached; his hands twitched. Luke blinked, the galaxy fracturing in front of him and stitching back together. The queen loomed in front of him, dark eyes glittering. She was the most gorgeous thing he had ever seen. Her laughter sent relief flooding through his veins.
He started laughing with her.
It shook his whole body, from his core to his digits, until he rocked in Switchboard's cold metal grip. Finally, Switchboard let go.
Cackling with the glee she ordered him to share, Luke stumbled forward, fell to his knees, and bowed before his queen.
Do not fear betrayal here. Here, all minds are known as one. Here, we see your thoughts. We control your thoughts. We devour you, and through this we know you to your core.
You are not one for betraying others. Perhaps one day, you would have learned: you picked your companion unwisely. But you have no need for your failed wisdom now. We have you. And you will never be able to betray us.
Are you confused? The minds of outsiders—particularly humans—are often weak, easily overwhelmed. We understand that is the basis of a Jedi mind trick, though your memories reveal you know not what that is. Human minds are so weak and malleable, but we had hoped yours would be stronger. No matter. If what you see here drives you insane, we shall simply puppeteer your body to do what we need.
We love our creations. But they are not our children, nor can they care for our children. For years, we have built in our catacombs, as builders do, but our resources have been limited. Stolen from us by outsiders long ago. We built a weapon to destroy worlds for them and, though indirect, the first world it destroyed was our own. They feared what we could tell other outsiders. They took steps to protect what they stole.
We too took steps to protect our empire. It was not enough.
Since then, we have built our creations in our image, as if that can stem the absence. We have dug farther, constructed ever-grander catacombs, shaped that which was left behind into something that was ours. We have the resources for this: parts and power, stone and sand. But these all corrode. They move poorly. We have missed the resource of flesh.
Did you admire the palace we have made out of our tomb?
We have done much, but we must do more. Your betrayer told you we were sterilised. She was not wrong, but nor was she right. We cannot produce living children. And this is a state we must reverse.
As a task, it is one that requires unusual skills. We have never understood the outsiders, whose language distorts their meaning in ways that allows for betrayal. But our ambassadors have.
You understand? You know we expected you to. Good. Your mind is not as weak as we feared, but we expected that too: ambassadors have always been robust, to understand the communications of the living galaxy as well as the communications of the hive. We can command the dead, given the correct circumstances. But you can speak to them.
You know what we must do?
We are pleased. You know that too.
We welcome you to our hive, ambassador. You are the speaker we have needed for a long, long time.
