Read Rebel Dream: Enemy Lines I for Free Online Page B

lives, however short, would probably be longer than hers.
    She was Viqi Shesh. Once the Senator representing Kuat before the New Republic, she had for a long time also been a spy for the Yuuzhan Vong, funneling them crucial information about the planet Coruscant and the workings of the New Republic’s government. Long and faithfully had she served her new masters.
    But long and faithful service hadn’t meant much to them. As the Yuuzhan Vong invasion of Coruscant had begun, she had attempted to carry out her latest assignment—the kidnapping of Ben, the infant son of Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker—and had failed. Her enemies had been a step ahead of her and had swept thebrat off to safety. She had pursued and had been within meters of retrieving the baby, but a counterattack by Lando Calrissian and his combat droids had left her disgraced and friendless, in the grip of the Yuuzhan Vong she had failed.
    Until that moment, she’d confidently anticipated receiving great rewards from the Yuuzhan Vong for her service and effort. Instead, her reward had been to be arrested and hustled up to Domain Dal, the worldship that served Tsavong Lah, Warmaster of the Yuuzhan Vong, as his flagship.
    She was in pain. Neathlats, a sort of living bandage, clung to her right forearm, where Princess Leia’s Noghri bodyguard had bitten her to the bone, and to her back, where Leia’s lightsaber had slashed and burned her. Neathlats promoted healing but did not diminish pain. That was not the Yuuzhan Vong way. Instead, they irritated nerve endings, causing the pain of injuries to be sharper.
    She was without allies. No one would speak for her. She had failed to produce Ben Skywalker for the Yuuzhan Vong, and her betrayal of the New Republic was by now certainly common knowledge among the refugees from Coruscant.
    But she was not weaponless. Not while she had her intelligence, her political experience. She still had a weapon she could aim at Tsavong Lah.
    The guards led her along a lengthy corridor. Its lines were not truly straight, its corners not quite right angles. Its surfaces were a mottled red reminiscent of muscle tissue. It smelled like raw meat, and Viqi forced herself to keep an expression of disgust from her face.
    It was deep within the Yuuzhan Vong worldship. It had to be well away from the ship’s centers of command,for there was no other traffic along it. Viqi was pleased that she could still think analytically.
    They reached a large chamber, its walls identical to those of the corridor, with an ivory-colored set of double doors opposite, a matched pair of Praetorite Vong guards standing before them. The guards drew the doors open to let them pass.
    Beyond was a large oval chamber in the same mottled red. Its floor sloped downward in a gentle curve, its lowest point being a circular opening some three meters across. The opening surrounded blackness; Viqi found she could not focus on the darkness. It seemed fuzzy somehow, rising above the level of the floor a quarter meter or more.
    Beside the pit stood Tsavong Lah, the great planner and guiding light of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion of this galaxy. A heavily scarred and tattooed example of highranking Yuuzhan Vong, his lips had been slit into tatters that stirred whenever he exhaled heavily, and his body was marked everywhere with bloodred scales, implants that spoke of his importance. His left arm had been replaced at the elbow by a radank claw, all reddish scales and spines, with fingers that were segmented and articulated in a manner not natural for Yuuzhan Vong or human; spines and scales were emerging from the flesh above his elbow as well, and small black dots, carrion-eaters, swarmed around them. She repressed a shudder. Despite all of Tsavong Lah’s mutilations and decorations, she had found him somewhat attractive—power and ambition in males being a lure for her, a secret weakness—but the rot that afflicted him, which threatened both to rob him of both his radank claw