Star Wars: The New Jedi Order: Vector Prime Read Online Free PDF Page B

understood that she respected his dedication, that she wished some of the others would follow his example.
    And so it went as the night lengthened. Bensin Tomri was soon snoring contentedly, while Tee-ubo and Garth Breise arguedand tittered about everything and nothing at all, and Danni continued to play dejarik, but against three computer opponents.
    Then it happened.
    Yomin Carr caught the slight blip on the very edge of the pod’s viewscreen out of the corner of his eye. He froze, staring intently, and dialed up the volume just a bit.
    It came again, accompanied by the rhythmic signal that could only emanate from a ship.
    Yomin Carr could hardly find his breath. After all the years of preparation …
    The Yuuzhan Vong warrior shook such distracting thoughts from his head. He waited a moment longer, to confirm the positioning, Vector Prime, the predetermined entry point into the galaxy, then he quickly shifted his dish all the way over to Sector L1. That would buy him a couple of hours on this screen. He looked up at the main viewer, repeating the image of the central pod, and breathed a sigh of relief to see that it had already cycled past Pod 3 and wouldn’t be back for at least an hour—and even then, it would not overlap past L25, and the signal would be long past that point.
    With the dish angle changed, Yomin Carr dialed his volume back up to normal, then stood up and stretched, his movement attracting Danni’s attention.
    “Walk I—” he started to explain, and realized that he was confusing the sentence structure once more. “I need to take a walk,” he corrected.
    The woman nodded. “It’s quiet enough,” she replied. “You can knock off for the rest of the shift if you want.”
    “No,” he answered. “I need jus—jus—only to stretch out a bit.”
    Danni nodded and went back to her game, and Yomin Carr walked out of the room. As soon as the control room’s door was closed behind him, he removed his hard boots and broke into a dead run.
    He had to pause for a long while when he got into his private quarters, forcing himself to steady his breathing. It would not do for the executor to see him so obviously rattled.
    Nor would it do for the executor to see him in this horrid human disguise, he reminded himself. Never mind that humans did not typically appropriately paint their skins or mutilate any part of their bodies to show their worship to a worthy pantheon—human eyes did not droop with the appealing bluish sacks beneath them, as did Yuuzhan Vong eyes, and the human forehead was flat, not enticingly sloped, as were those of the Yuuzhan Vong. No, even after these months as an advance agent of the Praetorite Vong, Yomin Carr could hardly stand the sight of the infidels.
    He stripped off his clothing and moved to the full-length mirror at the side of his room. He liked to watch this, to use the visual stimulation to heighten the sensation of exquisite agony.
    He moved his hand up beside his nose, to the little crease beside his nostril, his fingers working at the obscure seam at the side of his left nostril, the contact point for the ooglith masquer. Sensitive to his touch, and well-trained, the creature immediately responded.
    And Yomin Carr clenched his teeth and fought hard to steady his trembling as the thousands of tiny grappling tendrils pulled free of his pores, the ooglith masquer rolling back over his nose and separating across his cheeks. The seam widened down his chin and neck and the front of his torso, his fake skin peeling back, rolling down until he merely stepped out of it.
    The ooglith masquer shuffled across the floor toward the dark closet, making slurping, sucking sounds as it moved, and Yomin Carr stood at the mirror, regarding his true form admiringly, his taut, strong muscles, his tattoo pattern, nearly complete upon his body, a sign of high rank in the warrior class, and mostly, his intentional disfigurements, the oft-broken nose, the extended tear to his lip, the split