Dark Nest_ The Joiner King Part 22

And Tahiri continued, "It wasn't something we could ignore, especially at the last."

"We had to come," Tesar rasped. He looked to his mother. "It was like the Mating Call. We could think of nothing else until it was answered."

They stopped, as if that had answered the question.

"That explains why you came," Leia said. "It doesn't explain what you're doing."

A chest-high Killik with a green thorax and tiny wings came over and brushed Jaina's arm with an antenna, then thrummed something with its chest.

"She says the StealthXs are fed and rested," C-3PO translated proudly.

"Fueled and armed," Jaina corrected. She ran her arm down the Killik's antenna, then said to it, "Thanks. We'll be leaving shortly."

"Lowie had to go EV" Zekk explained. "We're getting ready to bring him back."

"With shadow bombs?" Mara asked. She pointed to a rack of proton torpedoes being dragged away from the StealthXs by several Killiks. Even from ten meters away, it was apparent that the propellant charges had been replaced with packed baradium. "That's not exactly rescue equipment."

"We might need to create a little diversion," Alema admitted.

"No kidding?" Han scoffed. "You mean to get past all those Chiss?"

"n.o.body's going anywhere." Mara directed this to Jaina. "Not until we have some answers. Things are too far out of control."

Jaina's face grew hard. "I'm sorry, but I'm not leaving Lowie out there another minute-"

"Lowbacca has dropped into a Force-hibernation," Luke interrupted.

His eyes were half closed, his chin raised. "He's safe for now."

Jaina scowled and looked as though she wanted to argue, but she knew better than to doubt her uncle's word.

"The sooner we get those answers, kid, the sooner we get to Lowbacca," Han said.

Jaina and the others exchanged a few tense looks, then she nodded.

"Fine. You want to see what this is about, come with us."

She led the way deeper into the hangar cavern, past rack after rack of darts.h.i.+p berths. Stacked a staggering fifteen berths high, they were strewn with fueling lines and swarming with Killik technicians. Their technology was unsophisticated, but the insects were incredibly efficient, working a dozen at a time in cramped s.p.a.ces that would have had just two human technicians throwing hydrospanners at each other. The fuel-tinged air was permeated by a low, rhythmic rumble that sounded like machinery, but Mara soon realized it was coming from the creatures themselves.

She turned to Tahiri, who was walking beside her, and asked, "That sound... are they singing?"

It was Alema-walking at Luke's side-who answered. "It's more like humming."

"They do it when they concentrate," Tesar added. "The harder they work, the louder it growz."

"It's their part in the Song of the Universe," Tahiri explained.

"Doesn't sound like any song I've ever heard," Han said from a step ahead of Mara. "In fact, I've heard more rhythm in a bantha stampede."

"That's because you can't hear the whole song," Zekk explained helpfully. "Only insect species hear it all."

"Yeah?" Han scowled and turned to Jacen. "Can you hear it?"

"No." Jacen flashed an imitation of Han's roguish smile. "Then again, I've only been here about a month."

"Relax, Dad," Jaina called from the front of the group. "We don't hear it, either."

Han let out an audible sigh of relief, then Jaina suddenly stepped into an empty berth and ducked down a waxy pa.s.sage that led out the back.

C-3PO stopped outside the berth. "That doesn't look like a proper corridor, Mistress Jaina."

"You could always stay here, Threepio," Han said, watching six Killik workers carry a damaged darts.h.i.+p past. "I'll bet these guys are always looking for spare parts."

"I was just commenting, Captain Solo."

C-3PO dropped into an awkward crouch that was half squat and half hunch, and they all followed Jaina into the pa.s.sage.

"Sorry about this," Zekk said from behind Mara. "They weren't thinking of larger species when they dug these tunnels."

"No problem. We're not that old." Mara was bent over nearly double, so Zekk had to be crawling on all fours. "Where are we going?"

"You'll see," he said. "We're almost there."

The Force ahead grew heavy with pain and fear, and the humid air began to smell of blood, burns, and bacta. A moment later, they emerged into a large oblong chamber lined by hundreds of hexagonal wall bunks. In the open areas of the room, hand-sized Killik healers were swarming over casualties from both sides, spitting antiseptic saliva into their wounds, spinning silk sealant into cracked chitin, slipping tiny pincers into torso punctures to pull shrapnel from internal organs. Low purrs of grat.i.tude reverberated from the chest plates of the insect patients, but the Chiss- those who were still conscious-were staring at the creatures in horror.

As the rest of the group stepped into the chamber behind Mara, a green triage nurse rushed over and brushed its antennae across Jaina's arm, then looked at Luke and thrummed a question.

"Oh, dear," C-3PO said. "She doesn't seem to know what's wrong with Master Luke!"

"Nothing's wrong with him, Taat," Jaina said to the insect. "We're all fine. We just wanted to see the infirmary."

The triage nurse stepped closer to Luke and scrutinized him with its bulbous gaze, then clicked its mandibles doubtfully.

"I'm sure." Jaina glanced at Mara. "Right?"

"Oh, yeah," Mara said. Even had there been something wrong with him, she would not have trusted the insects to fix it-not after what had become of Raynar.

"I'm just a little burned out," Luke a.s.sured the Killik.

The nurse spread its antennae in doubt, then scurried off to hold down a screaming Chiss. The patient did not seem pleased to have three Killik healers rummaging around inside his torso.

"They are not being cruel," Tesar said. "But the Taat are very stoic. They don't use anesthesia themselvez."

"And when they have it available for other species, they never get the dosage right," Jaina added. "They've decided that it's just faster and safer to do without."

"I'll bet," Han said, eyeing the carnage. "Because it kind of looks like they're enjoying it."

"They're not," Zekk a.s.sured him. "The Kind are the most gentle and forgiving species I've ever met."

"They have no malice," Alema added. She pointed to a nearby bunk, where a trio of Killik nurses clung to the wall, hovering over a half-conscious Chiss, holding a casted leg in traction. "Once the fighting's over, they care for their attackers as their own. They don't even imprison them."

"I can't imagine that works very well with Chiss," Leia said. "What happens when the prisoners attack?"

"Their escortz bring them here for evaluation," Tesar rasped. "They think other speciez are aggressive only because they can't stomach pain.

So they look for the source of the pain..."

"Eventually, the Chiss figure it out and stop attacking," Tahiri said.

"Yeah, well, a little bug-probing would stop me," Han said. His gaze was fixed on a Killik healer, whose four limbs were straddling a Chiss face as it extracted something from the patient's red eyeball. "At least until I could escape this creep show."

"Dad, the Chiss don't need to escape," Jaina said. "They're free to leave whenever they like, if they can find a way."

Han nodded knowingly. "There's always a catch."

"Always," Alema agreed.

"But it's not what you think," Zekk added.

"The Chisz won't take back their MIAz," Tesar finished.

"I'm sure," Mara said. The young Jedi Knights' habit of talking fast and completing each other's thoughts was beginning to make her edgy.

It was almost as if they were sinking into a permanent battle-meld. "I can't imagine the Chiss are much for prisoner exchanges."

"Oh, we're not talking about exchanges," Jaina said.

"The Chiss won't take them back at all," Tahiri explained.

"Before we got here, they used to steal transports and try to go back on their own," Alema said. "The Chiss just turned them away."

"How awful for them," C-3PO said sympathetically. "What happens to prisoners now?"

"A few hitch rides out, then who knows what happens to them," Jaina said. "Most end up staying with the nest."

Alarm bells began to ring inside Mara's head. She glanced toward the heart of the chamber, where Tekli and several Chiss medics had set up a makes.h.i.+ft surgical theater beneath the jewel-blue glow of a dozen s.h.i.+ne- b.a.l.l.s, then looked back to Jaina.

"Doesn't that worry you?" Mara asked.

"No," Zekk said, frowning. "Why should it?"

"Because they're Joiners," Han said. "They don't have their own minds. "

"Actually, they have two minds," Jacen said, speaking for the first time since entering the infirmary. "They still have their own mind, but they share the nest mind as well."

Han grimaced, but Mara was relieved. At least Jacen still sounded as though he were considering matters from outside the Killik perspective. Maybe his odyssey had given him an extra resistance to the Killik influence... or maybe he had just arrived later than the others.

Either way, it made him an a.s.set when dealing with the rest of the strike team.

After a moment, Han said, "You'd better not be trying to tell me this is a good thing."

"It's not a good thing or a bad thing, Dad," Jacen replied. "It just is. What disturbs you is that the Will of the nest mind is more powerful than the will of the individual mind. They appear to lose their independence."

"Yeah." Han's eyes flashed to Jaina and the other young Knights.

"That disturbs me. A lot."

"And it would certainly disturb the Chiss," Leia said. "They would feel very threatened by anything that limits their self-determination."

"That doesn't justify speciecide," Jaina countered.

"Speciecide is a harsh accusation," Luke said. The calmness of his voice, and the fact that he had been even more quiet than Jacen so far, commanded the attention of the entire group. "It doesn't sound like the Chiss. They have very strict laws regarding aggression-especially outside their own borders."

"You don't know the Chiss." Alema's voice was full of bitterness.

"They keep Kind prisoners in isolation cells in a free-drifting prison s.h.i.+p and starve them to death."

"How can you know that?" Leia asked. "I can't see the Chiss letting anyone inspect their prisons."

"A Chiss Joiner revealed it," Jacen explained.

"The prison s.h.i.+ps I believe," Mara said. "But I can't see the Chiss starving any prisoner. Their conduct codes wouldn't bend that far."

"The starvation is incidental," Jacen said. "The Chiss are trying to feed their prisoners."

"It can't be that hard to figure out what bugs eat," Han said.

"Not what, Dad-how," Jacen said. Motioning the group after him, he started toward the infirmary's main entrance. "Come on. This whole problem will make more sense if I just show you."

Jacen led the group into a huge, wax-lined corridor bustling with Killik workers. Most were bearing large loads-beautiful jewel-blue s.h.i.+ne-b.a.l.l.s, multicolored spheres of wax, wretchedly small sheafs of half-rotten marr stalks. But some carried only a single small stone, usually quite smooth and brightly colored, and these insects moved slowly, searching for the perfect place to affix their treasure amid the scattered groupings on the walls.

'So this is how they make the mosaics," Leia commented.

"One pebble at a time," Jaina said. "Whenever one of the Killiks comes across a pretty stone, she stops whatever she's doing and rushes back to the nest to find the perfect place. It can take days."

Mara was surprised to hear a tone of awe in her niece's voice; normally, Jaina was too preoccupied with tactics or readiness drilling to even notice art.

"She?" Leia asked. "The males don't contribute to the mosaics?"

"There aren't many males," Zekk explained.

"And males only leave their nest when it's time to establish a new one," Alema added.

The corridor branched, then ended a short time later at the brink of a huge, sweet-smelling pit so dimly lit that Han would have plunged over the edge had Jaina not caught him with the Force and pulled him back. Mara and the other Jedi had more warning. The Force inside the chamber ached with a hunger so fierce that they instinctively hesitated at the entrance.

"This is the busiest place in the nest," Jacen said over the din of clacking mandibles and drumming chests. "The grub cave."

As Mara's eyes adjusted to the dimness, she saw that the chamber was swarming with Killiks, all carefully crawling over an expanse of hexagonal cells. Half the cells were empty, a handful were sealed beneath a waxy cover, and the rest contained the thick, squirming bodies of Killik larvae.