[Dark Nest] - 1(29)

Jacen’s guide, a chest-high insect who had been waiting at the Lizil nest to serve as his navigator, scurried to his side and began to rumble objections.

“You’re the one who said we didn’t have time to wait in line,” Jacen reminded him.

“Rububu uburu,” the guide responded. With a yellow thorax, green abdomen, and bright red head and eyes, it was one of the more colorful strains that Jacen had seen. “Urb?”

“I told you,” Jacen answered. “I might know this ship.”

Jacen reached the crash crater and climbed to the rim. Ten meters below, in the crash bottom, a sagging tangle of heat-softened durasteel so covered in crawling insects that it took a moment to realize he was looking at a small starship bridge. The vessel had crashed upside down.

The guide thrummed impatiently.

“Not yet.” Jacen pointed at a place near the bow where a dozen Jawa-sized insects were sticking their antennae through a twisted rip in the hull. “Ask the ones near that breach to clear a space. I need to see if I can read its name.”

“Ub Ruur” [The Crash.]

“I need to know the name of the freighter,” Jacen explained. “It’s written on the side of the hull. In letters.”

Like most species of intelligent arthropods in the galaxy, the Colony insects recorded their language in pheromones instead of writing, but Jacen felt certain the Joiners would have explained the concept of letters.

“U.” The guide curled its antennae forward. “Burubu ru?”

“Maybe,” Jacen said uncertainly. He was relying the Force and his empathic connection with other life-forms to infer his guide’s meaning, and he could not always be sure that he understood all the nuances. “But we’ll certainly be on our way sooner than if I have to piece the letters together through their legs.”

The guide clacked its mandibles in frustration. It drummed its chest loudly, then the insects near the rip began to mill about in confusion. Jacen did not understand what they got out of crawling over the wreck, but insects were very tactile creatures, and he

suspected

they

were establishing some sense of connection to it. Finally, a space began to clear where Jacen had requested. The durasteel was so caked

with carbonization that he could barely make out a handful of dark, upside-down letters.

… ACH.. ON F… ER

“Tachyon Flier,” Jacen said. It was the ship in which the strike team had planned to depart the Myrkr system-until they were betrayed by two Dark Jedi they had rescued from the Yuuzhan Vong. Jacen turned to his guide. “What happened to the people aboard that ship?”

“Bu ruub ubu buubu,” the guide said.

“And he’ll keep waiting until I have my answer.”

“Ubu buubu ru ruubu.” [Unu must not be kept waiting.]

“Your rules,” Jacen answered. “Not mine.”

Seeing no easier way down, Jacen stepped off the rim and used the Force to slow his descent. The insects on his side of the Flier watched in stunned silence as he caught hold of the rip in the hull and brought his fall to a gentle stop.

The guide boomed a question from above.

“The people who brought this ship here had a friend of mine with them, ” Jacen said. “I’m not leaving here until I know what happened to him.”

“Rur ruru rr ubu buubu bub!” the navigator drummed.

“I don’t wish to see Unu at once.” Jacen knew he was being rude, but he had learned from the Fallanassi to see through the illusion of authority, to free himself of the expectation of blind obedience by respecting his own desires first. “It makes no difference to me if Unu can’t wait.”

Jacen pulled himself up and peered through the hull breach. The Flier’s presence certainly lay at the heart of the mysterious summons that had brought him here, but that told him little. Before he allowed himself to be drawn farther along this current, he needed to find out what had happened aboard the ship. He needed to know who had called the strike team survivors here… and why.

The interior of the vessel was dark and acrid smelling, lit only by the shafts of light pouring through several dozen hull breaches. A few of the holes were large and twisted, like the rip beneath the vessel’s name, and had probably resulted from the crash. The rest were oblong, small, and surrounded by the metal spatter-beads associated with hits from Yuuzhan Vong plasma cannons. The Tachyon Flier had clearly taken a beating as it left the Myrkr system. It was surprising the ship had held together long enough to fly into the Unknown Regions.

As his eyes grew attuned to the dim light, Jacen realized that he was looking into the hold area. The adjustable cargo decks had left their tracks in the crash and fallen into what had been the top of the ship, burying the bridge and crew quarters beneath a tangle of twisted, half-melted durasteel. Seeing that no insects were crawling over the inside of the ship, he closed his eyes and listened for any stirrings in the Force that might explain their reluctance to enter. He heard the whisper of a long-spent inferno and the faint scream of twisting metal, but nothing to alarm him now.