The Unifying Force Read Free Page A

squares of leather. “Did I hear right that someone’s interested in a game?”
    Page motioned for everyone to form a circle in the center of the hut, and to raise the noise level. The guards had grown accustomed to the boisterous activity that would sometimes erupt during card games, and Page was determined to provide a dose of the real thing. A dozen prisoners broke out in song. The rest conversed jocularly, giving odds and making bets.
    The human gambler, three Bith, and a Jenet were passedthrough the falsely jubilant crowd to the center of the circle, where Page and Cracken were waiting with the holowafer.
    Coruscant began to dole out cards.
    Highly evolved humanoids, Bith were deep thinkers and skillful artists, with an ability to store and sift through immense amounts of data. The Jenet, in contrast, was short and rodentlike, but possessed of an eidetic memory.
    When Page was satisfied that the inner circle was effectively sealed off, he crouched down, as if to join in the game. “We’ll get only one chance at this. You sure you can do it?”
    The Jenet’s muzzle twitched in amusement, and he fixed his red eyes on Page. “That’s why you chose us, isn’t it?”
    Page nodded. “Then let’s get to it.”
    Deftly, Page set the small wafer on the plank floor and activated it with the pressure of his right forefinger. An inverted cone of blue light projected upward, within which flared a complex mathematical equation Page couldn’t begin to comprehend, much less solve or memorize. As quickly as the numbers and symbols appeared, they disappeared.
    Then the wafer itself issued a sibilant sound, and liquefied.
    He had his mouth open to ask the Bith and the Jenet if they had been successful in committing the equation to memory, when S’yito and three Yuuzhan Vong guards stormed into the hut and shouldered their way to the center of the circle, their coufee daggers unsheathed and their serpentine amphistaffs on high alert, ready to strike or spit venom as needed.
    “Cease your activities at once,” the subaltern bellowed.
    The crowd fanned out slowly and began to quiet down. Coruscant and the ostensible card players moved warily out of striking range of the amphistaffs.
    “What’s the problem, Subaltern?” Page asked in Yuuzhan Vong.
    “Since when do you engage in games of chance at nourishment hour?”
    “We’re wagering for second helpings.”
    S’yito glared at him. “You trifle with me, human.”
    Page shrugged elaborately. “It’s my job, S’yito.”
    The subaltern took a menacing step forward. “Put an endto your game—and your singing … or we’ll remove the parts of you that are responsible for it.”
    The four Yuuzhan Vong turned and marched from the hut.
    “That guy has absolutely no sense of humor,” Coruscant said when he felt he could.
    Everyone in the vicinity of Page and Cracken looked to the two officers.
    “The data has to reach Alliance command,” Cracken said.
    Page nodded in agreement. “When do we send them out?”
    Cracken compressed his lips. “Prayer hour.”

TWO
    Shortly before its public immolation in a fire pit located just outside the prison gates, a silver protocol droid that had belonged briefly to Major Cracken had put the odds of escaping from Selvaris at roughly a million to one. But the droid hadn’t known about the Ryn syndicate, or about what the clandestine group had set in motion on the planet, even before the first chunks of yorik coral had been sown.
    Cracken, Page, and the others knew something else, as well: that hope flourished in the darkest of places, and that while the Yuuzhan Vong could imprison or kill them, there wasn’t a soldier in the camp who wouldn’t have risked his or her life to see even one of their number survive to fight another day.
    First sunrise was an hour away, and Cracken, Page, the three Bith, and the Jenet were crouched at the entrance to a tunnel the prisoners had excavated with hands, claws, and whatever tools they had