Wreckage of the Voice of Agony
Within the Kor Chokk Grand Cruiser Yammka’s Sword
Freefall, Baanu Amnan Orbit, Tingel Arm, Wild Space

The air was so clouded with dust that it was almost impossible to see more than a few feet ahead. Somehow, impossibly, Krag Muyel had survived, laying face down and shielding the baby beneath him as the ceiling rained down around him, the sound almost as painful as the coral knives that had torn across his back, tearing open his bodysuit across half of his left shoulder and down most of his left arm and leg. He was injured, but at least he was still alive. The baby's tears spilt down his chest as he rolled over onto his back, feeling the jagged coral now littering the floor scratch across his body as he moved, the debris crunching beneath this weight.

The arachnid spineray wrapped around his neck hissed and for a second he felt its tail tighten like a garotte, then it relaxed, going limp.

Krag reached forward and called on the Force to brush the cloud to one side so that he could see.

The skeletal remains of the Yuuzhan Vong that Vasi Khess had electrocuted were strewn around the chamber. At the far side, near one of the exits, Eckla Muyel was buried under a two meter high rib bone of yorik coral that had a few minutes before served as one of the ceiling supports. On top of the rib, the ceiling had caved in, pinning the Yuuzhan Vong down. She was not moving.

Opposite Eshin, the captive Sith appeared to finally be coming to.

There was no sign of Vasi Khess. Krag shut his eyes reached out into the Force—

The Shamed One's presence still glowed brightly, a facsimile of the Overlord himself. But he was gone. Probably to hunt down the Elite who had condemned the heretical shaper to slavery for seeking the truth.

Ashura groaned and Krag opened his eyes again. The Sith's eyes were still misty from the Force-dampening poison that had knocked him out, but it seemed to be wearing off.

The former prisoner looked at Remulus and breathed a sigh of relief; his eyes widened when he turned to Krag.

Ashura coughed, ‘You . . . saved him,’ his voice was dry enough to suggest he had not had a drink in days. He probably hadn't. ‘Why . . . why did you do it?’

‘I did what my Mistress asked of me . . . in service to the Light of the True Way.’

The spineray on Krag's back sissed softly again, its tail stroking his neck gently.

The proconsul glanced around at the mountains of wreckage. ‘This? Is this your True Way?’

A hoarse laugh coughed from across the chamber. Beneath the fallen rib bone, Eshin's arm quivered ever so slightly.

Krag put the baby down carefully and limped across the room to the Yuuzhan Vong, then began to lift the wreckage off her, rock by rock.

Eckla twisted her neck around at an unnatural angle. Her nose was broken, her left eye closed, and her face blackened with moist blood. ‘Don't . . . don't bother,’ she croaked.

‘But Mistress—’

Eckla cut him off. ‘I knew this day would come. I knew Vasi would rebel.’ What was left of her lips, which were now all but torn in half, pulled up into a half-smile. ‘Do you not see? I have killed us all!’

Krag frowned and put down the rock in his hand as Eckla began to laugh. ‘Mistress . . .’

‘I have revealed the True Way for the lie it is,’ she continued, then looked straight up into Krag's eyes, her smile vanishing. ‘Varesh, Drathul, Shimrra . . . you Jeedai and Sseeth are as blind as all the rest. Only Onimi ever understood the truth.’

Krag continued to frown but did not say anything.

‘I can die peacefully, knowing I have unmasked the truth for what it is,’ Eckla coughed, spitting blood across Krag's boots. Her voice grew weaker, but she carried on, ‘You will all die here. I, Eshin Shul, have doomed the Jeedai who humiliated me at Antei to die along with the Yuuzhan Vong who dared to label me a heretic for understanding what they could not. I have seen what you have all been too blind to see. Yuuzhan Vong, Jeedai, Sseeth. There is no difference! Vasi is proof! He is the Truth!’ Her neck drooped and she gazed at the floor instead as the pool of blood reached Krag's feet. She tried to laugh, though the sound came out more like guttural choke. ‘Vasi will kill you all.’

Krag stared down at the dying Yuuzhan Vong.

No, not at his Mistress, at Eshin Shul. The Shamed One who had failed at Antei four years ago. The traitor who had betrayed Domain Amnan at Telos three years ago.

The heretic who had defied the True Way.

The True Way that was now a lie.

Everything since the expedition to the Zhaetor-zhae a year ago, it had all been a lie, all of it. Krag closed his eyes and shook his head. He had been deceived. The Light of the True Way was false. There was no Truth, only the monster, Vasi Khess. With a thunderous roar, he reached behind and grabbed hold of the spineray embedded in the back of his neck. He screamed as the eight-legged hand-worm fought back, trying to choke him with its long tail as he worked to yank it free. His fingertips flashed with blue-white fire until the spineray finally yielded, then it leapt from his hand and started to scuttle across the floor towards the baby Remulus.

A snap-hiss and a thruum later and there was nothing but a smoking mound of ash by the time the lightsaber returned to Ashura's hand.

As if awakening from a long dream, Macron Goura opened his eyes and looked down at Eshin.

‘You got one thing right. You're going to die.’

Both of the alchemist's blades fired to life before he crossed them in front of the Shamed One's neck.

The Yammka continued to shake every time another suicide coralskipper slammed into her side as Macron and Ashura hurried towards the feeling in the Force that they prayed was salvation. The gravity was getting more and more uncertain, the alignment shifting every hundred or so feet. The collision seemed to have knocked the Yammka out of orbit, and it was now on a rapid re-entry towards the nearest planetoid fragment. On top of the erratic gravity, each footstep was another obstacle course as they stumbled past the mutilated bodies of the Yammka Vong who had been caught in the Shamed One uprising that must have surged through not long before. The handful of victims who were not quite dead did not remain that way for long—Macron saw to that, charging ahead whilst Ashura followed behind with Remulus in safely his arms.

‘Take that!’ the alchemist screamed, hacking his way through the carcasses beneath him. ‘Why! Won't! You! All! Just! Fracking! Die!’

Ashura grabbed hold of Macron's shoulder—and narrowly avoided having a lightsaber through his throat when Macron spun round.

The alchemist pressed his lips together. ‘Sorry.’

Ashura sighed sympathetically. ‘Easy, Mac.’

‘If only I had my supplies. I would kill for some Violator Gas vials right about now . . .’ Macron mused to himself distantly. ‘No matter. We're nearly at a hangar.’

And I can feel that freak show not far above us . . .

The pair continued to work their way through the twisting passages, passing through a number of torn or cindered sphincter muscles that Vasi must have ripped through on his rampage to the upper levels. It still seemed impossible how a Yuuzhan Vong, one of the so-called Force-dead Far Outsiders, could have absorbed the powers of the Sadow bloodline, have become an embodiment of everything the Overlord himself represented. It was like chasing after a dark mockery of Lord Sadow himself. Macron grit his teeth. It was heresy.

And Vasi Khess was a Heretic who had to die.

‘Woah!’Macron cried out when he stepped into the next chamber and suddenly fell towards the ceiling as the gravity inverted. Ashura tumbled after him, but called on the Force in time to steady their descent enough so that Remulus did not hit the ceiling-turned-floor. ‘I really wish it'd stop doing that,’ Macron grumbled.

He looked around to see they were in a large open chamber. A number of round, ball-shaped, T-16 skyhopper-sized asteroids were suspended from the ceiling in neat rows on one side. Tunnels were cut into the main hull wall in front of each ball. The hangar bay.

Suddenly, the chamber lit up from a torchlight at the other end and footsteps piled inside from the opposite entrance, blinking red photoreceptors of men clad all in black surrounding them.

‘Governor!’ one of the Special Operations troopers shouted in surprise, snapping to attention the instant he recognised Ashura's face. ‘SO Trooper 3305 at your command, sir.’

‘At ease,’ Ashura said once he and Macron had unwound themselves from the confused lump of arms and legs they had formed after falling off the floor onto the ceiling.

When the squad leader turned his eyes to Macron his unease seeped into the Force like a black cloud.

‘It's okay,’ Ashura added. ‘He's safe.’

After a brief moment, SO-3305 said, ‘If you say so governor,’ though he still sounded unconvinced.

‘How do we get off this hulk?’

The troopers parted and the squad leader pointed back at the corridor from where the team had emerged. ‘Our decoy shuttle is back the way we came, sir. The other battle teams are on the upper levels to plant the VGB.’

That got Macron's attention.

‘Did you say the VGB? Here?’

‘Correct . . . commander,’ SO-3305 said, still a little hesitantly. ‘Commander Pepoi is bringing it aboard right now with Sergeant Skye's assistance.’

Macron did not speak for a few moments.

Instead, Ashura asked, ‘Mac . . . by VGB . . . isn't that the Violat—’

‘Yes. . .’ Macron interrupted. ‘We need to get Remulus off the ship. Even if one of the Vong accidentally—’

‘We should get going back to the shuttle then,’ SO-3305 said.

Macron shook his head. ‘There's no time for that. You don't understand how dangerous that thing is. The trigger device—I never finished it. We need to get Remulus off the ship now.’

The alchemist pushed SO-3305 out of the way and stepped across to the other side of the chamber, where the skyhopper-sized rocks were lined up.

‘Mac, what are you doing?’

Macron ignored the proconsul and instead stroked his hand along the side of one of the nearest rock. The vine suspending it lowered the ball gently to the ground, then relaxed. The muscles underfoot rippled, rotating the asteroid until its front faced the alchemist, then a pink hatch on the side spread open, revealing a pair of throbbing polyp stools inside. Once the escape pod had finished opening, Macron turned back to the others.

‘You first,’ Macron called to Ashura.

‘I don't know how to fly one of—’

Macron smirked. ‘It's quite easy, really. You just have to tell it what to do,’ he paused, frowning for a moment. ‘Of course, you do need to know how to speak Vongese though. But you shouldn't have to do anything once I get it set up. Come on.’

Ashura swallowed, then joined Macron and reluctantly allowed the alchemist to strap him and Remulus inside the cramped asteroid. There was barely the room for the pair of them, but the polyps moulded to accommodate their unfamiliar body shapes. Ashura squirmed for a second when a pair of vines unwrapped from behind the polyp and embraced him in a disturbing reminder of his time in the Embrace of Pain, only this time they seemed to be meant as crash webbing.

Once the pair were secured, Macron stepped back.

The alchemist glanced back at the squad leader. ‘Trooper, have we got any fighters out there to escort the deputy governor-general and the viceroy's son back to your ship?’

‘I can comm one of the squadron leaders to guide them in to the Final Way, yes.’

‘Do it.’

Ashura frowned. ‘You only mentioned me and Remy . . .’

Macron slapped his hand against a rubbery nodule on the side of the pod. ‘That's because I've got to finish what I started.’

‘Macron, no, you don't have to—!’

Ashura started to stand up, but the translucent hatch sphincter pressed shut together like a pair of lips, leaving him hammering on the inside. Macron forced a smile as he stepped away to allow the escape pod room. A moment later, the tendril securing the asteroid to the hangar bay released and it rolled into the open maw in the wall, being sucked out the room and fired off into the loneliness of space.

Macron took a deep breath and held it in for a minute. He could still sense the Overlord's doppelgänger a few floors above, not far from the Hall of Confluence, where they would surely be taking the VGB.

And where Varesh would be as well. This was it. It would all end there.

He breathed out and then turned back to the special ops team.

‘Let's finish this. Take me to the Violator Bomb.’