To Draw a Line

----------------------------------------

XIII: Hurry

Ralroost led the pack, pushing up its slot in the capital's lower orbits on shimmering pillars of ionic efflux. First Fleet, present en masse, did not all follow the Bothan Assault Cruiser. Famous shapes of Imperial Star Destroyers, Mon Calamari Cruisers kept pace with the newer lines of the New Class: Nebulas and Majestics, Hajen and Sacheens. Starfighter patrols reeled back in, alighting into busy hangar bays. Last minute shuttles tucked in and scuttled aboard like beetles, fleet tenders broke off and rolled away from their charges. Guardian, monolithic, watched its smaller sisters go. The dreadnought had one purpose, and that purpose could only be fulfilled in the tracks of Coruscant's endless orbits.

Jaina's job was done. Anyone coming aboard was aboard and so far, neither she, nor Captain Winger, nor Colonel Hamner, had caught an inkling of an empty space where a being pretended to be, or a premonition of danger otherwise. Captain Winger flagged a duty crew, which had resulted in a small alcohol still being found in one of the machine spaces. But no Peace Brigaders. No Vong.

Any nausea from the lingering oncocidals was past. Her hair, buzzed to the skin over her ear, was long enough now to be bristly and itchy as it filled back in. She'd keep the new style, she had decided: the buzzed side and chin-length rest of it suited, when she looked in the mirror. She looked like a fighter jock. She didn't look like anyone else.

She looked like Jaina.

Any time now, Colonel Darklighter would ping her comm and she'd be back in the ready room. No one else was coming aboard. She'd done the job of a Jedi - all that was left was that of a pilot.

----------------------------------------

An earlier time, aboard Temerity

Tionne prepared two mugs of a hot, spiced and aromatic drink of steeped leaves - a sort of tea, he judged. If Aeonid had learned nothing else in his time among the Jedi, it was that there was a bewildering yet comprehensive array of beverages that the Masters, Knights and trainees found comforting and steadying. Master Skywalker, for example, had a sweetened and rich concoction that seemed more a dessert than anything else. Caf, of course, flowed easily, and Master Katarn carried a metal container of the stuff in their early morning lessons. Then there were teas, lactose suspensions, fruit juices and flavored waters.

Idly, he turned a thick, utilitarian mug stamped with an Imperial aquila back and forth atop the table. It was small enough to be engulfed by one palm; suited to the Navy sailors normally utilizing these spaces. Tionne sipped slowly, both hands wrapped around her own, her silver eyes watching him carefully through faint wisps of steam.

'You put a lot of stock on loyalty…' she began - or teased, rather, like she was coaxing a lagomorph from a burrow.

Aeonid glanced up, relaxing his grip on his mug.

'And the Jedi do not? And most beings do not?' He borrowed the word, avoiding 'xeno'.

'Did you know, among almost every being, one of the first real moral systems is guest rights and host responsibilities?'

'I did not,' Aeonid answered, though he could well believe it. Moral philosophy was an encouraged study, but his own education had not plumbed often into what might be considered the origins of such things. No; Macraggian discourse trended toward the dialectic.

'Different beings dress up these ideas in their own way, but they really all end up the same at their core. The host offers food and shelter, and the guest offers peace. You can work in much there, such as repayment or some kind of service, but at its core, it's about being gracious to others giving you aid.'

Aeonid hummed, having little to add. Tionne was in a more didactic mood, and he was curious where she was building towards.

'Like when Senator Shesh was invited to your planet, Eboracum. I understand why you reacted so poorly when the Ploo - or was it Plooriod? - task force interjected. That broke those codes. You gave the Senator safe passage, and even if it wasn't her fault, the New Republic overstepped.' Tionne paused, tapped at her chin. 'And you even fed them too. Which makes it break more levels of this contract.'

'I trust you are leading someplace?' Aeonid asked mildly, taking a small sip of his own tea. It was powerful and slightly bitter. He suspected for a baseline human, it might clear the sinuses. Tionne merely smiled.

'I am, of course. When all that happened, the Imperium chose to overlook the insult, even if one wasn't intended, and Senator Shesh made sure to make amends. That's part of the agreement; you break guest rights, or host obligations, and you have to pay it back.'

'Mm,' Aeonid hummed again.

'Have there been 'enemies' in your Great Crusade that tried to backstab the Imperium? Maybe they agreed to a deal, but then backed out? Or attacked from an ambush?'

'Many. Too many to count, I should imagine. From my own experience - there was Fifty-Two One Hundred and Six. A human world, which had pretended to accept compliance. You must understand. Nine times out of ten - ninety-five times out of one hundred, we were met with overwhelming joy, relief and welcome. Fifty-Two One-naught-six accepted Imperial rule and even welcomed Army and Astartes elements to the surface. They claimed that there were xeno outriders causing issues in their hinterlands. As it was, it was an artifice to confound our focus and draw down our forces to strike at our backs.'

Tionne winced, chewing at her lower lip.

'It was a slaughter. Not ours.' Aeonid concluded, succinctly.

'And they were human,' Tionne clarified.

'Well within deviation.'

The Jedi Master seemed to ponder this and Aeonid allowed her. After he concluded his recounting - limited though it was - of Calth, she had begged a moment to gather her thoughts again. As ever, Aeonid could sense strongly the impressions and feelings redolent about her. Not her thoughts; no, a Master was far too schooled and orderly for that. But he felt her sorrow, her horror, even her anger and indignation as he spoke of the treacheries of the XVIIth. It matched so closely what the ballad of Cay Qel-Droma had stirred within her that Aeonid had been moved, a little, that Tionne could extend the same charity and empathy to a world she had never known, a people she had never met; an empire she would surely stand against.

Ah, the crux of the Jedi problem.

She marshalled herself. Aeonid caught a glimpse - and raised one hand, stalling Tionne.

'Let me preempt you. I understand the parallels between humans acting with duplicity toward the Imperium and other beings doing so. I do. The Imperium is young, but it is not that young. This refers to my earlier point: humanity may understand humanity. You wished to avoid solipsism, but I would say instead that it is mirror-theory. We can peer at one another and know, with some empirical certainty, that the experience within the human we face bears out to the experience of our own.'

'Humans think like humans; aliens think like aliens.'

'Is that so difficult a concept? I don't wish to spin back to ground already trod, but this may be a gulf we cannot bridge.'

'I'm not sure, Aeonid. I've had a good look at the crew here on Temerity. Do you know what I have seen? I have seen every sort of type of human I can think of, and even more on top of that. All different heights and colors and shapes.'

'Race,' Aeonid bemoaned. 'A failing that has been noted on backslid worlds. Artificial divisions within the human gene-tree.'

'But take Zalthis and Solidian. They look different. Are they from different worlds?'

'I believe so. Macragge and…Parmenio, I should think. Prandium, perhaps.'

'Won't that mean they think differently? They already act differently.'

Old arguments, dead arguments. Ones long since plowed under by the empiricism of Enlightenment. Genetics spoke the deeper truth, and as the Emperor had proven, gene-expression of the human gene-tree could vary quite broadly while still remaining verifiably and justifiably human. The tone of skin, color of eye, type of hair - paled in comparison to drastic alterations of body-form and organ-plan.

'There is always variation. Evolutionarily, there must be variation.'

Tionne hunched forward, interlacing her fingers around her mug. She looked up at him, though kneeling he was again.

'You can understand why a human would do something like betraying another. You can't understand that for a 'xeno', because you can't - or won't - pretend to understand how they think.'

Aeonid exhaled a breath. Finally, she grasped it.

'Yes. Yes, that exactly. I cannot and will not attempt to rationalize the mind of a xeno. They may think precisely as I do - they may operate on abstruse thought-patterns that no human being could ever trace. I would term it chauvinism to even attempt to map our own experience onward. The only actionable practical, then, is to place human flourishing as a paramount imperative.'

'So the Imperium is being logically consistent in persecution of aliens, because of intellectual humility?' Tionne seemed to be holding back laughter; Aeonid bristled. 'Emphasize the 'alien' part of 'alien', no matter how like you they act? Come now, Aeonid. You're wiser than that. Isn't this…' Tionne frowned and cocked her head. 'I heard Danni talking about this idea, she was explaining some physics thing to - I think it was to - no, it doesn't matter. I remember because it stuck out to me, because I might not be a scientist, but it's something we deal with in history. That was it! Isn't this a hidden variable? You're looking at something walking like a hawkbat, squawking like a hawkbat, looking like a hawkbat, but saying that since you haven't sequenced its genes yet, you can't say it's a hawkbat. No - that it might be a droid pretending to be a hawkbat!'

'The point is to understand the universe, not to make assumptions-'

'Everyone makes assumptions at some point! We can't know everything. How do I truly know that Cay Qel-Droma lived, that Nomi Sunrider lived, that Exar Kun lived? I wasn't there. No one I know was there, and perhaps the holocrons and records were fakes. Aeonid, this is solipsism again. There's intellectual humility, and then there's being obstinate.'

'I am unsure a lecture on the investigative rigor of the Great Crusade is taking us anywhere,' Aeonid offered dryly.

'I think it is,' Tionne replied. 'You've said Astartes don't experience fear anymore, and that a great deal of other original emotions and urges are stifled or even removed.'

'This is so.'

'Then Aeonid, by your own standards, how can you assume anything you say or do is right, or even makes sense? You read philosophy, but human beings wrote those words, did they not? And you are not a human being anymore. You've changed so much that you might just be as alien to a human as a Wookiee is. How do you know how a human thinks anymore? Can they know how you think?'

Aeonid opened his mouth - closed it. This was ridiculous, he-

'I remember before my ascension,' he said softly.

'Memories,' Tionne said, narrowing her eyes. Sudden flashes burst into his mind: slender arms and a wildly different proprioception confused him, the 'saber in slender hands was unfamiliar, the dusty holocron that opened up - a twist of will, like slamming shut a hatch, and the memories vanished. He ground his teeth and scowled. 'Memories can be fickle.'

'Do not invade my mind again.' He spoke without much rancor; more frustration than anything coloring his words.

Tionne judged the threat in his voice and bobbed her head once.

'I'm sorry. But it was important. I'm a woman. Is my life the same as an Astartes? I'm a Jedi. Is my life the same? I am a wife too. And I am a teacher. Aeonid…Aeonid, what do we have in common in any way? How can you know that the words I say, that I mean what you understand? We are not even from the same galaxy. Am I not as alien as Cilghal is?'

The Imperial Truth said otherwise. Proof. Facts. Empirical evidence.

Yet he could not say so with confidence. What did Aeonid know, of any of what Tionne spoke of? He was Astartes - he did not even truly understand the life of a human man of comparable age, let alone a human woman. The rest? He was no teacher, nor instructor. He had been a Sergeant, yes, but not one such as Ascratus, who reared the neophytes. The complexities of human bonding rituals eluded him, outside of the sterile facts. Gently, he unfurled a fist, peering at his fingers. Scars laced them, from training and combat, from a crushed gauntlet some handful and a half of years ago.

As if invited, Tionne slid her hand into his. He marvelled at the discrepancy between his darker, more tanned and weathered skin, roughened and hardened, and her milk-pale digits, tiny enough that even together, they might not quite match one of his own.

'There are distances,' he eventually tried. 'And then there are chasms.'

'And I think those chasms are illusions. Mirages in the desert. I think we do understand each other, because we really are not so different in the end.'

'Make up your mind! Am I an alien creature divorced from my humanity, or a man as relatable as some six-legged creature from another star! We are moving in circles.'

She withdrew her hand, running her thumb over her fingers, then fiddling lightly with the sleeve of her robe.

'When the first Jedi turned away from the Order and found the Sith, becoming the first Lords of the Sith, they stewed in anger and bile until they couldn't help but return to war against the Republic and their former comrades. Kyp was seduced by Exar Kun and used to commit atrocities, and Luke was willing to dance along the line between the darkness and the light to stop the reborn Emperor. I stand against everything a Sith stands for and I stand against the Yuuzhan Vong, like I do against all conquerors and despots. All the same, Aeonid, I understand them. I have listened to their voices and I replayed their holocrons and it makes me weep to know the sorrows and the pain that drove them to betraying all that they were.'

Her silver eyes flicked up, catching his.

'That's why I have to ask: when the Word Bearers betrayed the Great Crusade, the Imperium, and the Ultramarines…do you understand why? Do you understand them?'

----------------------------------------

Now, on Yavin...

Fortunately, Vua accepted restraints without making a hassle of himself. Unfortunately, because of the biot squirming in his ear, the Vong could very easily let the both of them know exactly how he felt about it. Which he did so. Relentlessly. Unceasingly. Eloquently.

"Be silent," Zal groused, for the umpteenth time.

"I made no oaths of silence," the Vong retorted. "I made oaths of vengeance and oaths of blood, but you may take my tongue before I am silenced. I am Vua Rapuung, and I will speak as I see fit, and only the Gods may judge!"

"I think Zal is worried about us being overheard," Anakin suggested.

"Overheard? For my speech? Surely you jest, Jeedai? Between you and the Aistarteez, you are as drunk quednaks, stumbling about. A mewling child in the creche could track your clumsy steps."

"Yes, yes, you're the expert here. It's not like I've known this moon all my life."

"But you have? Why do you deny that you should show far greater stealth, in a place you are familiar with? Do you lie to me?"

"It's - never mind."

With Vua's fishing trawler lost down the river, he said the story he would spin was that he fell overboard - which wasn't wrong - because of an attack from some water beast - still wasn't wrong - and that he stumbled across Anakin in the jungle, wandering directionless. Not quite wrong. He hadn't let Vua put the damaged coral seed on his forehead yet, but Zal had been right that it had to be done before the three of them split up. That way, in case Vua was laying some kind of deep trap, Zal would still be on hand to put the Vong down and restrain Anakin.

The Praxeum was still a few days away on foot, through patrolled jungle, and they decided it would be best if they got as close as they could before Zalthis would go to ground and wait for Anakin's signal. The Astartes could bunker down somewhere and practically hibernate, hopefully avoiding any Vong and keeping close and ready for the jailbreak.

Maybe Vua did have a point about keeping his wrists tied, given that they were going with his plan and were going to trust him to, you know, not immediately shout 'Jeedai!' as soon as they were in the Vong compound. There was a difference though between trusting him then and having a Vong with his hands free around him when he slept. Even if Zal didn't sleep at all.

"Tsst!" Vua hissed through clenched teeth, throwing his hands up. "Stop! Stillness!"

Anakin froze, wobbling a little on one leg. He'd just been taking a step. Zal went as motionless as a carven stone. He strained to hear anything besides the usual ruckus of the jungle. The Force fed him the general aura of life all around them, but nothing too out of the ordinary…

"Tsik-vai," Vua hissed, almost inaudible.

"What?" Anakin mouthed back.

"Tsik-vai! Flier!"

Zal's hand crept down toward the bolter clamped to his hip. Anakin slightly shook his head, a little to either side. Those guns weren't loud, they were defeaning. Everyone on this side of the Unnh River would know they were there the second Zal pulled the trigger. To his relief, the Ultramarine drew back from the stock.

Vua cocked his head, screwing up his face with an ear to the sky. Still, Anakin heard nothing.

The Vong relaxed.

"It is passed. Hrn. Lav-peq hunt pattern. Chri-esh sweep? Or Bulgiln." His fringed lips peeled back from bloodstained teeth. "It matters little. A tsik-vai hunts us. Free my hands so that when we are caught, I may die with honor."

"When we're caught, huh?" Anakin rolled his eyes. "That's really optimistic of you."

"Are you stupid? Why is being caught good? We must pray to the Gods that they grant us their luck."

Zalthis, fingers tapping the butt of his bolter, swept the sky with eyes narrowed, his auspex in his other hand.

"I have no readings," he said. "What is a tsik-vai, and what makes you so sure it will catch us?"

Vua hissed.

"It is inevitable. The tsik-vai weave a lav peq search pattern. The lav peq will weave their cords in the trees, until we are surrounded. Then it will know where we are, and we will be captured."

"What's a lav peq?"

Vua muttered under his breath, glaring vibroblades at them both. "To be saddled with such ignorant allies. The Gods laugh at me. Lav peq are weaver-insects. Tsik-vai release them and they spin sticky cords between structures, until all a space is beneath their net."

Anakin thought of something he'd said to Tahiri, before all this mess. It brought a smile that melted away like snow in a furnace. Her corner of his mind was growing stiller and quieter. He'd lamented how everything seemed to be spiders. She'd laugh at this, now, proving him right.

"And let me guess, those cords are sticky enough that even Zal would get caught."

Vua judged the Astartes from foot to crown.

"Easily. If he was not, his struggles would alert the lav peq and they would gather. They would wave more cords, until he was bound. They would use a little of his flesh. It would not be fatal."

Anakin shivered. Did the Vong have a single creature that wasn't straight out of a horror holo?

They carried on, this time with Zal keeping his auspex scanner out and held aloft. Mercifully, Vua cut his quibbling and sniping in half, which was still one hundred percent too much. He must not've feared that 'tsik-vai' all that much, Anakin groused, if he still managed to keep up a running grumble under his breath. He was starting to fear the next step of this plan. Not because he truly expected Vua to turn traitor, but because the idea of being around the crazy Vong even longer filled him with despair.

----------------------------------------

Colonel Hamner called a meeting. Just the three of them, which meant Jedi business. He'd taken a small conference chamber, waiting right outside with his arms folded across his uniform. Kenth Hamner was a Jedi, but he was a career soldier first, and his rank pins and stern demeanour kept sailors moving with only a glance and salute. Jaina beat Captain Winger there first, offering her own smart salute.

"Lieutenant Solo," he said, as serious as ever. She was pretty sure Kenth Hamner's smile was a state secret.

"Colonel," she returned.

"If you like, you can head on in. There's some pastries and refreshments. Captain Winger should be here shortly."

She did so, finding the conference chamber to be one of those cramped holocom ones, meant for just a few people and an outbound connection. The transceiver was silent and switched off, the small desk set with a jug of caf and a few Bothan style pastries. Ralroost was a Bothan ship, after all, and she'd picked up a bit of a taste for them. A good blend of savory and sweet, since Bothans liked to mix meat into just about everything.

It didn't take too long until she sensed Winger outside, then the other two Jedi stepped in and the hatch sealed with a hermetic thump.

"Colonel."

"Lieutenant."

"Captain."

Winger smiled. "Jedi at every level," she laughed, shaking her head. "Just need a flag officer."

"Not me," Kenth demurred, raising both hands. "I'm back in for war and nothing beyond."

"Sure, Colonel. You keep saying that."

They settled into chairs; but nothing formal. The space wasn't really for that. They ended up facing each other, Jaina settled in with one leg tossed over the other, foot bouncing. She still hadn't heard from Colonnel Darklighter. The task force was in hyperspace, Coruscant well behind them, and still her datapad hadn't had the usual alert for morning briefing. She'd go tomorrow regardless, she decided, then and there. Maybe the Colonel was just assuming that when her detached service was over, that she would automatically just slip back into-

"So we have one more job," Hamner started, without any preamble. Winger raised an eyebrow, but Jaina's hovertrain derailed in a flaming pile.

"We what?"

"We have one more job," Hamner repeated. "The last one we had? Basically declassified, for how secret this one is. This is word-of-mouth only. It's not written down anywhere. This comes from Director Scaur and Master Skywalker, directly."

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

Her mouth was dry. She tried to imagine - a strike team? Is that what they needed her, and maybe Rogue Squadron for? Run interference to get the Colonel and Captain onto a Vong ship, maybe, like the Exiles did? Were they going for a decapitation - or a capture?

Winger sat forward, elbows on her knees.

"There's not a lot of time before we reach our target."

"Which is…? Sir?"

"Still under wraps, Alex."

"Damn," the Captain muttered.

"It's an important one, so don't worry about that. High Command set their sights lofty for this one, but I think we can pull it off. That's where we come in. The three of us."

Hamner reached into his breast pocket and produced two datacubes.

"Biocoded. There's some intel there that'll help cover things. We're going krakana hunting, ladies."

Jaina felt the same confusion from Winger that she herself felt.

"Yammosks," Hamner clarified, looking a little chagrined.

She frowned. Yammosks were the prize, anyone could tell you that. Those war coordinators were a force multiplier in every action. The way they made the Vong move like a perfect hivemind gave the Navy absolute fits and pilots like her knew all too well the nasty way that 'skips could vector in on threats halfway across the battlespace without any advance warning. So far, and it was a brutal fact, there were only two known yammosk kills. Once at Helska, and once on Obroa Skai. Both times it had been - ah. Hamner caught the blossom of understanding and nodded toward her.

"That's right, Jaina. The Navy has been trying to pinpoint the beasts, and you know there haven't been results. However they communicate with all the ships, we haven't been able to detect it. One died on Helska, but that was collateral when the planet froze. NRI and Director Scaur basically picked Master Skywalker's brain about Obroa Skai."

The one Anakin killed. Her little brother tried to explain it, after, but he'd grown more and more frustrated as he couldn't find the words for it. Somehow, their Uncle had managed to find and pin down the biot, allowing for Anakin to do something or another that killed the thing outright, all without either of them even laying eyes on it.

"But they didn't know how." she blurted out.

Hamner took it in stride.

"No, but we know it can be done. None of us are Master Skywalker, but I reckon you're a match for your brother, isn't that right Jaina?"

"Yessir," she said automatically.

"The three of us will form a meld when the battle starts. Our objective, our only objective, is to locate the yammosk. Kill it, if we can, like Anakin did. If we can't, we pass along to Admiral Kre'fey what ship it's on so the Navy can kill it."

She wasn't flying with the Rogues.

The first big operation of the war, the first counterstrike, and she wasn't flying with the Rogues. Fondor was supposed to be the start of a new operation, before that went belly up, which gave her a chance to be here. Now! Right now! At the start of the pushback, when they could kick the Vong right in their teeth and again in their tattooed groins. The Rogues would be out there. Major Forge, Major Varth, Colonel Darklighter - she should be there with them. Covering their six.

"Do you need me?"

She flushed. She'd just questioned a direct order from a Colonel. It didn't matter that she knew Kenth, because he'd been by their apartment more than a few times throughout her youth. It didn't matter that he'd been Master Hamner to her more than anything else. That Navy uniform, the rank pins -

"Never mind, sir, I'm-"

"It's fine. Jaina, right now we're all Jedi. It was a request from NRI, but your Uncle approved it. And you know what? Maybe we don't." Kenth's long face didn't give much away, but she felt a sense of sympathy from him. "I'm sorry this comes between you and the Rogues. Let's not make this an order. Jaina, you can back out if you wish. Think hard on it, before you do. Can you really do more good for the Rogues in a cockpit…or killing a yammosk?"

She wanted to grab the out with both hands. Of course it was better if she was in the cockpit. She could dance a snubfighter like nobody's business. She'd be vaping Vong by the dozens - all while a hundred more swirled in a kicked over strib ant hive. Moving like tendrils of a single beast, sleeting out plasma fit to blot out the stars themselves, until every Rogue had a dozen or more on their tails…

"No," she said, in a small voice. "You've got me, Colonel."

Damn her. And damn that little voice of Jacen's, in her ear. About how their power mattered.

----------------------------------------

The tsik-vai coasted by overhead, out of sight but apparently not out of hearing for Vua, even though Zal denied hearing anything at all. The Vong was annoyingly haughty about that.

In lower tones, Zal and Anakin spoke while Vua led them along. He claimed to know the best routes to avoid patrols, not to mention a better 'understanding' of the patterns the other warriors might be using. It could all be complete voidspoil, but short of going in guns blazing…again, Anakin had to admit that Vua at least had more of a plan than they did.

"I don't know if I can do it justice," Zal sighed. "What it feels like. To know that all of mankind is behind you. The galaxy itself. The homeworld, the Emperor…there is a hand of history at our backs. Eighteen Legions of Astartes. Can you imagine that, Anakin?"

He really couldn't. It was hard to imagine a thousand of Zalthis all in the same place. Sithspawn, but it was hard to imagine a hundred. That kind of army might even make the Mandalorian Wars seem small.

"There was a triumph, before I became a neophyte. Seven years ago, at the turn of the millenia. As M31 began, the Emperor gathered all His Legions…"

Vua was listening. They could tell. His grousing and griping faded and the Vong tarried a little closer to them.

Well, Anakin couldn't blame him. It was some tale. A whole world given over just to be a stage for a celebration. Hundreds of thousands of Astartes, tens of millions of the Army. Hundreds of those giant Titan walkers, like the one on Fondor. And the startling thing too: more Primarchs. Anakin assumed there were more, because Zal had hinted at it and he'd mentioned the one who led the Word Bearers, but Zalthis rattled off more names, then. Horus, Sanguinius, Mortarion, Magnus, Angron, Jaghatai Khan, Lorgar, Rogal Dorn, Fulgrim. Fantastical and strange names, and all of them Zal said were brothers to Roboute Guilliman.

He remembered the sensation, that moment of broken-crystal clarity when the Ultramarines Primarch entered the conference chamber. What would that many look like, all together like that? What would the Force look like? And if Zal was serious, they were all just children compared to the Imperium's Emperor.

Zal had a faraway look when he talked about it. Wistful. He didn't need the Force to sense the yearning.

"We were saving the galaxy," his friend said sadly. "We were saving the human race."

"Until Calth," Anakin said.

Zal licked his lips, drumming fingers on the stock of his bolter again.

"I don't understand. I don't understand."

----------------------------------------

Aeonid carefully set aside his mug. His spine straight, back erect, palms flat on the table, he willed Tionne to not just understand, but to comprehend what he spoke.

'We were to lead mankind out of the night, into the future. We were made to be loyal. We were made to be brothers and sons. Two hundred years of Crusade and no Astartes had slain another. No Astartes had drawn in anger on another.'

A white lie. A small one. The bout between Angron and his berserker horde and Russ' savages was infamous. But that had been a letting of blood and beating the World Eaters back into line. It had been like a bout to extremis. Angron hadn't been disloyal. It hadn't been rebellion.

'You don't understand.'

Aeonid could have paced, he could have ranted and raved. Energy tensed his limbs. His very being rebelled against the idea.

'It is not for us to understand. Everything that happened on Calth was wrong. It was - it was travesty. If I had a better word, I would use it, but I borrow this instead; it was sin. Understanding what caused the Word Bearers to break so thoroughly from every standard of decency could be poisonous. It could be ruinous. Do you understand?'

----------------------------------------

"Why would they do that?" Zal asked. Rhetorical as his tone was hollow, but Anakin knew that bereft kind of confusion.

"The dark side is seductive."

"This isn't your - the Force."

"Does it have to be? People fall to the dark side because they want more. Or they need more. More…power, or maybe security, or just some way of feeling like they have control."

Vua snorted. It sounded like a ronto hawking up phlegm. Anakin chose to diplomatically ignore it.

"Astartes are not made to want more. Duty is enough!"

Being a Jedi was supposed to be enough. Except that for far too many famous names, it wasn't.

"Maybe the Word Bearers found out that it wasn't."

----------------------------------------

Tension plucked out the tendons in his neck, his shoulders, his legs. Aeonid tensed and relaxed, tensed and relaxed. His hearts thumped louder. Tionne's gentle expression took on almost a mocking tilt to it.

'Aeonid! Please. Can't you see that we're finally asking the right questions? Aeonid! This is why you came looking for me.'

He gripped the edge of the table, hard enough that the metal warped.

'I have to draw a line somewhere,' he snapped, curt and hard. Entertaining moral debates around the worthiness of xeno lives, about the purpose or futility of some sort of personal abrogation of responsibility for a prosthetic morality granted by an ephemeral power; that was one matter. This - Aeonid did not wish to know why the Seventeenth did what they did. He had seen it. He had lived it. That way lay madness. The Emperor entreated to seek clarity and truth, but the Emperor, in His greatest, grandest wisdom, sealed away the study of the Warp.

He felt the phantom slash of glassy, venom-tipped fangs. He felt the thunderous, rolling booms of sinuous and oilslick flesh against doughty corridors. The stink of weird dreams that clogged the nose, the reek of fyceline, the wailing shriek as reality itself bent and bowed inward.

'I cannot understand them,' he repeated.

'You cannot, or you will not?'

'Either!' he snapped. 'The Seventeenth Legion does not need to be understood, they need to be expunged. Like my father said: Excommunicate Traitoris. Every last one hunted down to the ends of the stars until they are forgotten from all memory. There is nothing to understand, this is nothing like your Sith and your wars of dark versus light. This is right and this is wrong.'

Tionne had an unfamiliar expression of frustration across her elfin face. Her silver brows beetled and her lips drew tense and thin.

'If you do not study history, you will repeat it. Please, just think! What if the Word Bearers found something that terrified them so much that they tried to stamp it out, and just by doing that, they became what you saw? There can be a thousand reasons why they did what they did. Understanding is not agreement!'

----------------------------------------

The sun was sinking, sealing the fate of another day. Another day without Tahiri. Another day that felt no closer. Another day of words and talking and walking. Anakin could scream, but that would just call down their ever-present friend in the sky. He could rage, but that would feed the dark. Zal - Zal kept him sane. His friend was talking more than he ever had, even on Samothrace. He could feel the Ultramarine's hidden embarrassment, but also the growing calm that diffused outward in his thoughts.

"Did you ever learn the history of my name?" Anakin threw into a moment of quiet.

"Of 'Anakin'? I don't recall anything."

Well, it wasn't a secret. It just wasn't something he liked to talk about. To anyone. Including himself.

"My grandfather," he said. Credit where it was due, but Zalthis was quick. He felt the flash of realization.

"Which, as Master Skywalker is your uncle, would be the Sith 'Darth Vader'."

"The Jeedai is named for a Sith?" Vua called back. He had frustratingly good hearing. "I have heard rumors the Sith are great foes of the Jeedai. Were you named as an insult?"

Anakin barked out a laugh that hurt his chest. Yeah, it did feel like an insult sometimes.

"No, it was because Anakin was what Darth Vader's real name was, before he fell. Anakin Skywalker, once a hero of the Jedi."

"And this Darth Vayder, he was a potent warrior?"

"A monster and a butcher."

Vua gurgled what passed for laughter.

"A good name."

Anakin ignored him.

Zal eyed him strangely.

"Your parents had great respect for the Jedi he was."

That drew another laugh, this one more because of how truly ridiculous that idea was.

"He tortured my mom and blew up her homeworld. Tortured my dad too, and then sold him to a Hutt. They both kind of hate him."

Anakin paused, which made Zal pause too. Vua went on for several more strides, cursed, then turned back to rejoin them. Deep breath.

"Darth Vader was terrified. Of…well, everything. Losing people, probably. He was afraid, so afraid. That's what Uncle Luke said, at the end. He was afraid of the Emperor, he was afraid of death, he was afraid of himself. The dark side let him forget that under all that anger and rage. Uncle Luke said that when he died, that Anakin Skywalker felt relieved."

The Ultramarine, a head and half taller than Anakin, twice as broad, shifted his weight from foot to foot. Went to speak, stopped. Anakin felt his friend's earnest need to help. Somehow.

"It's fine, Zal. I've had a lot of time to think about it. But…get it? My mom and dad hated Darth Vader, but naming me Anakin…it was kind of saying they got it. Darth Vader was what Anakin let himself become, but Anakin wasn't just Darth Vader. Right? Anakin was a Jedi and he was a good man too and he loved someone, because mom and Uncle Luke are here. So he can't be all bad. No one can be."

Silence answered him. Zalthis, as he had in times past, simply rested his hand on Anakin's shoulder, a light pressure. His friend wasn't great with words, but he did know actions. Vua scratched at a suppurating scab at his cheek. His dark eyes, circled by bruise and sunken by ink-blue bags, held something in them Anakin didn't quite understand. For once, the Vong wasn't sneering or scowling or scoffing.

Of course - that was when the thud bug struck Anakin between the shoulderblades.

----------------------------------------

In her quarters, Jaina turned the datacube over and over again between her fingers. Little blinking status lights indicated it had already read her fingerprint and her serial number and that it was unlocked. All she had to do was plug it into a reader. NRI analyses of yammosks from combat operations across the galaxy, theories about how yammosks might be communicating, even a detailed write-up from her Uncle that she'd never read. It was hoped that it was enough to give them the edge they needed.

Do or do not, she thought wryly, and got up from her bunk before she could stop herself. The shared bunkroom was empty, the other Rogues out on patrol. Where she should be. The datacube slotted into the reader, her datapad hardwired in. There was a moment, then the flashing symbol of New Republic Intelligence, a quick scroll of the classification levels.

Then the documents revealed themselves. And, prominently, the one that leapt out and got her by the throat.

'Analysis of Yammosk Presence within the Boundaries of Hutt Space'.

A smile slowly curled her lips.

Feel that, little brother? Payback time.

----------------------------------------

With the armor plate Sol had tossed to him, the thudbug staggered Anakin forward, but didn't wind him. His lightsaber was already in his hand, lit, while Zal tore his bolter from his hip. Vua shouted something that wasn't anything intelligible. Whick whick went two razor bugs, snipped clean from the air.

"Patrol! May the Slayer torment the Trickster for a thousand eons! Misfortune and rot, free me you fools, you idiots-"

Yuuzhan Vong warriors, four in all, loped through the trees, just flashes and glimpses. Four, against an Astartes and a Jedi? It said a lot about the past few months that Anakin could say he honestly liked those odds.

"Don't shoot them," he warned. "They might not have called us in."

Zal grimaced, slamming his bolter back and ripping his power sword out. It lit with a humming crackle, lightning spattering up the blade. Vong shouts broke through the air, accompanied by bugs. They were so much faster than they used to be. He missed the comparatively lazy razorbugs at the start of the war. Now they were blurs, so fast that he drew on every scrap of training, honed by stingbolts and stunners slung out by darting drones.

Ceramite shrieked as Zal blurred forward, moving to close the gap. Anakin held back - Vua wasn't in a place to fight, and Vua was sort of the hinge to this whole plan. Plan B of 'go loud' seemed like it would be a lot more of a suicide mission by now.

"Blood of the Gods! Jeedai, do not compound stupidity with death!" Vua waved his bound hands and Anakin shoved him back.

"It's just a handful-"

"A patrol is twelve, idiot! Ghesh alg'n reg tuk!"

This time, the thudbug that hit Anakin laid him flat out. He thumbed off his lightsaber by reflex and avoided decapitation as he fell. For a moment he flailed sucking wind as he shuddered on his back in a tangle of limbs. It felt like a landspeeder had hit his chest, or maybe a bantha had kicked him. A dark shape flashed over him as he struggled to sit up. The chest of his armor was a crater. Cracked chitin and ichor dribbled down. He couldn't breathe. His lungs twitched and seized - he grabbed the Force and sucked in a breath.

And coughed, doubling over and wheezing. There were Vong, more Vong! Vua said twelve, he'd seen four already - Zal could take four, almost certainly, but Zal wasn't in his full armor -

The Force rang through his muscles. He'd seen Master Katarn do it before, use his own momentum…Anakin kicked into a spin, whirling back up to his feet. The galaxy-famous snap hiss doubled, almost overlapping. One long blue blade, like frozen ice. One short, green as grass.

Three Vong hemmed him in, spread across a hundred degrees in an arc. All three bore stocky tubes that swelled at the rear almost like the stock of a carbine. They'd shot him, he realized. They'd shot him with a bug. One scowled and barked out words, raising their carbine.

Not this time.

He'd sparred with Zal and been in the mind of Astartes during the long night. He'd never have their strength, but the Force was his ally. The barrel of the Vong's carbine was black, an eye of the void peering at him. It came up to the warrior's shoulder. His head cocked, aiming. Ten meters. Violence rang out in all its symphony around him. Zal was somewhere spreading death; the hiss-crackle of a power weapon carbonizing blood and rending flesh was familiar now. He heard Vua's voice, howling something and full of anger, but he had no time for that.

Tahiri would reduce the weight of something, and Anakin would move it with the Force. They were a team, synchronized, a rope-and-pulley and always greater than being alone.

Tahiri wasn't here. She would be. She would be again. So he did the trick alone. The other two Vong raised their own carbines.

Anakin crossed ten meters in less than a second. The first Vong toppled, armor smoking. The world swam around him and his pulse pounded. A headache pinched between his eyes, but he was there now. He was among them. The two Vong dropped their carbines, went for amphistaves that leapt for their master's hands.

Anakin was faster.

They fell. It was that simple.

Back where he'd been, Vua shoved himself off of a prone warrior, rising to his feet with blood caked up to his elbows. He shook himself out, wrists freed, and made a show of stretching. Zal loped back, flicking black blood from his blade.

"Anakin! You're uninjured?"

He grimaced, touched the crater in his chest plate.

"Probably going to bruise like you wouldn't believe, but I'm fine."

Vua joined them, walking - no, sauntering, over. Slowly, he licked dark blood from one of his remaining talons.

"It is as I said. Between you both, a mewling child could track us."

The warrior Vua had tackled lay still in death.

"You killed him, then."

Vua cocked his head.

"When I say my vengeance is in blood, what part is mistranslated? He was Iruysh, he was a fool anyway. Only a fool would attack a Jeedai and Aistarteez so blithely. And without a full patrol! Idiot. He leapt without looking. He laid no traps. Idiot. Had I his Warriors, you both would be dead on the ground."

Vua thrust out one blood-soaked hand. Toward Anakin. He eyed it suspiciously. Those fingers could be biots, ready to…do whatever horrible things the Vong thought up.

"Now we are blooded," Vua declared. "We have taken lives; we are warriors of a band. And you! Jeedai Anaykin, you seek redemption from Shame as well. The Gods do smile on me. I never doubted."

His hand was absolutely filthy. Anakin took it anyway.

"Now we make haste!" the Vong declared. "Iruysh was a fool, but an obedient one. He will have informed Harmae by villip. Tonight, you will sleep among the slaves."

The Vong patrol cooled behind them. Vua led them at a lope, crashing on through the underbrush, stealth forgotten. Zal and Anakin kept close. Dark blood dried on Anakin's palm. In that corner of his mind that was all Tahiri's, he pushed harder than he had since the Lady Starstorm fell.

Hold on Tahiri. We're almost there.

And from that place, one word:

Hurry.