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[Dark Nest] - 1(169)



“Bugcrunchers?” Raynar said.

Leia was a little surprised, since she could not sense Raynar’s presence in the meld, but Han was nonchalant.

“No offense. We had to call ‘em something.”

Halfway through the cave, they found Saba waiting. Her vac suit and face scales were smeared with wax and offal from pulling Chiss out of larval cells, and the stench rising off her was enough to send a rustle of revulsion through the Unu.

Saba allowed Raynar and the entourage to stare at her for a moment, then said, “This one is sorry for her smell. The work in here is meszy.”

“What is your work?” Raynar asked.

Saba looked to Leia before answering.

“It will be better if we just show you,” Leia said, directing her comment more to Saba than Raynar. “Any sign of Alema yet?”

“None,” Saba said. “Perhapz she was disintegrated in a detonator explosion.”

“Maybe.” Having seen for herself how acute the Twi’lek’s danger sense was, Leia had her doubts. “What about Lomi Plo?”

Saba turned her palms up. “Vanished.”

“Lomi Plo is dead,” Raynar said, as if by rote. “She died in the Crash.”

Saba glanced his way, gnashing her fangs, then looked back to Leia. “You are sure about this?”

Leia nodded. “Unu needs to see this.” Silently, she added that it was still the only way to break the Dark Nest’s hold on the Colony.

Saba shrugged, then led Leia and the others into the darkness of the nursery. The air was hot and dank and so filled with the stench of decay that Raynar gulped and the Unu rumbled their thoraxes. Kyp and the rest of the rescue team were working along the far side of the chamber, the beams of their helmet lamps sweeping across the wall but revealing little more than the hexagonal pattern of the nursery cells.

A few meters in, Leia stopped and swung her helmet lamp toward the nearest wall. The beam illuminated the half-devoured corpse of a Chiss prisoner, still curled around a squirming Gorog larva.

Raynar gasped, and the nearest Unu brought their mandibles together in shock. Han shined his helmet lamp on a second cell, and Saba a third. Both of those cells also contained the bodies of Chiss captives.

“What is this?” Raynar demanded.

“Looks pretty clear to me,” Han said. As more Unu poured into the room with their shine-balls, the chamber brightened rapidly, and the true extent of the horror grew more apparent. “Kind of makes a fella see how the Chiss might have a point, doesn’t it?”

Raynar whirled on Han. “You think we did this?”

“Not you, exactly,” Leia said, silently cursing Han’s biting humor. “The Dark Nest did it. The Gorog.”

“Gorog?” Raynar’s gaze drifted back to the gruesome sight in the cells. “What is this Dark Nest?”

“This.” Saba waved her arm at the murk around them. “The nest that keepz attacking us. The one that has been feeding on Chisz captivez. The one that made you build more nestz at Qoribu.”

Raynar glowered at the Barabel. “The nests do not lead Unu. Unu leads the nests.”

“Really?” Leia cocked her brow. “Then all this is Unu’s doing?”

“No.” Raynar’s voice grew sharp. When his entourage began to clack and drum, he added, “This is not even a Colony nest. We do not have a nest on Kr.”

Han looked around pointedly. “Funny. Looks a lot like that nursery on Jwlio-except for all the Chiss captives, of course.”

“Actually, it can be a Colony nest,” Leia said to Raynar. “And you wouldn’t remember.”

This drew an even louder protest from the Killiks, but Leia spoke over it. “Cilghal thinks the Dark Nest serves as a sort of unconscious for the Colony’s collective mind. It would be able to influence the Kind without you knowing-just as the unconscious mind of most species influences their behavior.”

“Impossible,” Raynar said, far too quickly. “There are no Gorog in the Kind. How could the nest influence us?”

“The same way you influenced Jaina and the others when you called them to help the Colony,” Leia replied. “Through the Force.”

Raynar’s voice grew soft. “Through the Force.”

“That’s right,” Leia said. “The same way you convinced Tesar to visit Bornaryn Trading. The same way you convinced Tahiri and Tekli to argue the Colony’s case to the Jedi Order.”

Raynar’s eyes flared in understanding, but Unu’s protest rose to a crescendo. He closed his eyes as though trying to concentrate, but Leia could see in the twitching muscles of his face some internal struggle, some insect argument she would never understand. She began to have the unpleasant feeling she was attempting the impossible.