Conquest: Edge of Victory I Read Free

that.”
    “Bantha fodder.”
    Dacholder sighed. “I’m giving you a three-count, Uldir.”
    “Don’t, Doc.”
    “One.”
    “I won’t go with them.”
    “Two.”
    “Please.”
    “Thr—”
    He never got it out. By the time he got to the end of the word, Dacholder was in vacuum, twenty meters away and still accelerating. Uldir sealed the cockpit back up, ears popping and face tingling from his brief brush with nothingness. He glanced at the missing acceleration couch.
    “I’m sorry, Doc,” he said. “You didn’t leave me much of a choice. I guess it’s just as well I never told you about
all
of my modifications.”
    He opened the throttle, gaining quick ground on theyacht. By the time they overcame their inertia and started to gain, Uldir had punched into lightspeed and was gone.
    To where, he didn’t know. If he survived the hyperspace jump, would he be safe?
    And if
he
wasn’t safe, what about the real Jedi? His friends from the academy?
    He couldn’t hide from this. Master Skywalker had to know what was happening. He could think about himself after that was done.
       Swilja Fenn tried to stay on her feet. Such a basic thing, standing. One rarely gave it a thought. But the long pursuit on Cujicor, copious blood loss, and a foul, cramped incarceration on a Peace Brigade ship rendered even such basic things a struggle. She drew on the Force for her strength and lashed her lekku in helplessness.
    The Peace Brigade goons had dumped her, bound and half senseless, on some nameless moon and hauled gravity out of there. Not much later, the Yuuzhan Vong had shown up. They had cut away her bonds and then replaced them with a living, jellylike substance, all the while spitting at her in a language that seemed made entirely of curses.
    After that, more travel in dark places and finally here, barely able to keep her feet under her, in a vast chamber that looked as if it had been carved inside of a chunk of raw meat. Smelled that way, too.
    Swilja squinted at someone approaching from the murk and shadows at the far end of the room.
    “What do you lylek-dung-grubbers want with me?” she snarled, momentarily forgetting her Jedi training.
    The lapse got her a cuff in the face hard enough to knock her off her feet.
    When she rose,
he
was standing over her.
    The Yuuzhan Vong liked to scar themselves. They liked cut-up faces and tattoos, severed fingers and toes. The higher up the food chain they were, it seemed the lessthere was of them. Or at least, what had
started
as them, because they liked implants, too.
    The Yuuzhan Vong standing above her must have been
way
up the food chain, because he looked like he had fallen into a bin of vibroblades. Scales the color of dried blood covered most of his body, and some sort of cloak hung from his shoulders. The latter twitched, slowly.
    And like the other Yuuzhan Vong, he wasn’t
there
. If he had been Twi’lek or human or Rodian, she might have stopped his heart with the Force or snapped his neck against the ceiling. Dark side or not, she would have done it and rid the galaxy of him forever.
    She tried to do the next best thing—hurl herself at him and claw his eyes out. He was only a meter away; surely she could take just one of these gravel-maggots with her.
    Unfortunately, the next best thing was exponentially less effective than the best. The same guard who had struck her a moment before lashed out faster than lightning, grabbing her by the lekku and yanking her back. He held her up to the monster confronting her.
    “I know you,” Swilja said, spitting out teeth and blood. “You’re the one who called for our heads. Tsavong Lah.”
    “I am Warmaster Tsavong Lah,” the monster confirmed.
    She spat at him. The spittle struck his hand, but he ignored it, denying her even the minor victory of irritating him.
    “I congratulate you on proving yourself worthy of honored sacrifice,” Tsavong Lah said. “You are far more admirable than the cowering scum who delivered