Han began to fire more rapidly now, always aiming for the perimeter of the battle. The two Masters used the Force to shove targets into his line of fire, and it was only a few seconds before the only Gorog between them and the Solos were dead ones.
Han stopped firing and waved them down. "Come on! Let"s get outta-"
Luke and Mara shook their heads, then turned toward the ceiling and vanished into a tunnel surrounded by the five largest, ugliest Killiks Leia had ever seen.
"Hey!" Han yelled, still trying to wave them back. "The ship"s this way!"
FORTY.
Jaina and Zekk knew they were getting close to the launching bay when the broken cylinders of derelict dartships began to appear in the ethmane fog. They could feel Leia and the other Jedi somewhere beyond, deep within Kr, awash in a battle whirl of anger and fear and pain.
They followed the shaft around a bend and, in the fog below, saw the hazy star of a blasted-out launching bay. From inside came the silver flicker of a small-arms barrage, punctuated at intervals by the brilliant bursts of laser cannons. Jaina and Zekk stretched their Force-awareness into the battle. They felt only four living presences aboard the Falcon, the Noghri and two others they did not recognize.
As their StealthXs slipped through the entrance, forks of white energy began to crackle across their forward shields. Jaina and Zekk activated their forward floodlights. The launching bay was filled with wrecked dartships and drifting insect parts. In the heart of the carnage floated the Millennium Falcon, taking fire from dozens of positions concealed in the flotsam. Perhaps two dozen insects in the chitin-and-insulfiber carapaces that served as Killik pressure suits had slipped inside the Falcon"s shields. They were blasting it with electrobolts at point-blank range, melting fist-sized pits into the hull armor.
Jaina and Zekk paused, struggling to grasp what they saw. Despite what they had sensed from Leia through the Force, they still found it difficult to believe that a nest of Killiks would attack the Falcon without reason... and all too easy to believe the Falcon might have provided a reason. Only the memory of the unprovoked attacks on the Shadow and Master Sebatyne earlier - and of the illogical explanations provided by the Colony-gave them the resolve to open fire.
Their laser bolts were blindingly brilliant in such a narrow s.p.a.ce, and their canopy flash tinting went to black. Jaina and Zekk instinctively reached into the Force to locate their targets, but the only presences they felt were aboard the Falcon. They had to settle for counterfire, allowing their R9 units to control the laser cannons and target the source of each electrobolt.
It took longer, but the result was the same. The positions in the flotsam fell silent, leaving only the Killiks on the Falcon"s hull to contend with. Jaina and Zekk sealed their vac suits and moved their StealthXs deeper into the launching bay.
Before they could pop their canopies, the Falcon"s rear cargo hatch opened and two Noghri in vac suits dropped out of the vessel with a pair of T-21 repeating blasters. The hatch closed behind them, and they turned in different directions, twisting and spinning like Jedi, working their way around the hull, burning the Killiks off the ship. As much as it pained Jaina and Zekk to watch the deaths of so many Kind, they had to admire the artistry.
The Noghri had almost completed their hull cleaning when the Falcon"s ion drives glowed to life. Jaina and Zekk stretched their awareness into the ship again, trying to figure out why the two presences aboard would do such a thing.
They did not like what they felt.
"Help!" C-3PO"s voice came over the emergency channel. "This Ewok is a criminal! He has the death mark on ten planets, and now he"s attemptttiiiing... tooooo... steeeeeeaa..."
C-3PO"s plea trailed off into a deep rumble as someone tripped his primary circuit breaker.
The Falcon spun her bow toward the exit. Still fighting the Killiks, the Noghri were thrown from the hull and began to drift.
Jaina swung her StealthX in behind her father"s beloved freighter and armed a proton torpedo.
Zekk began to wonder if this was not overkill.
The specifications of the Falcon"s military-grade shields rose to the top of their mind, and Zekk understood. He armed a torpedo of his own.
They activated their targeting computers.
The Falcon stopped spinning-no doubt as target-lock alarms filled the c.o.c.kpit.
A nervous Sull.u.s.tan voice came over the comm channel. "This is Jae.
run, second mate of the Millennium Falcon, requesting the two unseen craft to deselect us as targets."
Jaina and Zekk did not comply.
The glow died from the Falcon"s ion drives. "This is Jae Juun, second mate of the Millennium Falcon. See-Threepio was mistaken. Our only intention was to move the ship out of... the line... What the bloah is that?"
Jaina and Zekk did not need to see past the Falcon to know what Juun was talking about. They could feel it in the growing pressure of Unu"s will, in the growing weight inside them.
The Falcon slipped away from the exit, exposing the old Lancer-cla.s.s frigate now blocking the way outside. A small, well-armed launch was gliding silently through the jagged entrance, nosing aside ruined dartships and tumbling pieces of Killik.
Unu"s will grew crushing, compelling Zekk and Jaina to answer honestly-even before they sensed the question.
Who did this?
Mara and Luke were ten meters down a sticky, wax-lined tunnel, and every time Mara made the mistake of breathing, she came close to retching. The dank air stank worse than a Sarlacc"s belch, a cloying melange of decay, spice, and free ethmane. And the smell was only growing worse as they advanced.
"At least it keeps you from thinking about the burns," Luke said.
Mara"s awareness of her wounds-half a dozen aching circles where electrobolts had burned thumb-sized craters into her flesh-returned. She drew a little more of the Force into herself, using it to reinvigorate exhausted muscles, to keep her pain-crippled body functional.
"That"s what I love about you, farmboy," she said.
"I always look on the bright side?"
"Not really." Mara a.s.sumed a cynical tone. "You always know how to make a girl feel better."
The tunnel finally opened into a large vault where the air was so humid and hot that their faces grew instantly moist. An eerie whine permeated the chamber, barely loud enough to hear above the pounding of her own heart, and the Force grew heavy with the pain of the nearly dead.
Mara followed Luke into the vault, and suddenly she forgot the eerie sound, the horrible smell, even her own fiery pain. The entire chamber was lined by large hexagonal cells, some sealed with a wax cap, some containing a paralyzed Chiss captive curled around a Gorog larva.
Many of the prisoners were dead and mostly devoured, with the barbed mandibles of a nearly developed larva protruding half a meter above the cell walls. Just as many remained alive, groaning weakly as larvae gnawed at their immobile bodies.
"I"m beginning to understand the Chiss point of view," Luke said.
"I wonder if Raynar knows about this?"
"Maybe, on some-"
Mara"s neck p.r.i.c.kled with cold, and she spun around to find the wrong end of an electrobolt rifle illuminated in her lamp beam. Behind it, sighting down the stock, was a blue face framed by a pair of Twi"lek lekku.
Rather than taking half a second to ignite her lightsaber and another half a second to block, Mara pointed and released the Force energy she had been using to keep herself going. Her body erupted into pain and muscle tremors, but blue lightning shot from her fingertips and blasted the rifle, driving the stock back into the Twi"lek"s mangled shoulder and crackling deep into the wound. Alema cried out and let the weapon slip from her hands, then went limp and floated away into darkness.
Mara felt a hint of uneasiness in Luke. "What?"
"Nothing," Luke replied. Just thinking Luke"s lightsaber crackled to life and droned past Mara"s ear, blocking what sounded more like blasterfire than another electrobolt. She sensed a second attack coming and activated her own blade, sweeping it up behind Luke"s to bat away another string of bolts.
The blasterfire fell silent, but not before Mara could swing her helmet lamp toward its source. She glimpsed a hump-shouldered man with a half-melted face and one chitinous insect arm grafted to his shoulder; then he slipped out of the light.
"Force lightning." The man"s voice was raspy and sharp. "We had thought Skywalker"s Jedi considered themselves above that."
"We make exceptions." Again, Mara sensed a certain apprehension in Luke. She ignored it and swung her helmet lamp toward the voice, and again the dark figure slipped out of the light. "Especially in your case, Welk."
As Mara spoke, she and Luke moved apart, positioning themselves just within each other"s reach, where they could still take advantage of overlapping fields of defense.
A soft flutter sounded above Mara"s head.
"Hear that?" Mara asked.
"What?"
"I was afraid you didn"t." Mara reached out in the Force but felt only a shadowy sense of danger, so vague and ambiguous she could have been imagining it. "There"s something flying around over here."
"Welk?" Luke asked.
A string of blaster bolts erupted from Luke"s other side, directly opposite the fluttering. He brought his lightsaber around and sent the bolts tearing back toward the source.
"I don"t think so," Mara concluded.
She brought her own blade up, slashing through the darkness above her head, finding only dank air. Another flutter sounded behind her. She spun to attack and suddenly found herself in the Force grasp of someone else, twirling across the room and accelerating. Mara reached out, searching for her attacker. She felt only the horror and anguish that permeated the entire room.
Then she came to the wall, and a piercing agony blossomed low in her back. She looked down to find ten centimeters of mandible tip protruding from her abdomen, and the pain spread across her entire belly.
"Rodddddder!"
The second mandible closed, driving a pair of barbs deep into the flesh above her hip.
"That hurts"
Mara reversed her grip on her lightsaber, and a flutter arose in the darkness at her side. Suddenly the handle grew stinging cold, then the blade started to sputter, flicker, and fade. Mara attacked anyway.
The blade sank two centimeters and sizzled out. The larva began to shake its head back and forth, its mandibles tearing at her inside.
"Mara?" Luke had activated his second lightsaber-the one he had taken from Alema earlier-and was advancing on Welk, batting the Dark Jedi"s blaster bolts back at him. "Need the spare-"
"Fine here!" Mara returned her useless weapon to its clip. "Just take care of Welk."
Welk broke into an evasive tumble, firing as he moved and seldom going astray. Luke deflected a chain of bolts, but finished with his blades out of position and had to somersault away.
Trying.
Mara drew her blaster and put a bolt into the larva"s head. It shook even harder, drawing an involuntary cry from her as a barb sc.r.a.ped something inside. She fired a second time, then heard a soft throb in front of her and brought her weapon around.
The handle grew icy cold, then a depletion alarm sounded. When she squeezed the trigger, she heard only the soft pop of a gas charge moving into the XCiter chamber.
"Neat trick," Mara said to the darkness. "It isn"t going to save you."
The air pulsed above Mara"s left shoulder. She swung her helmet lamp toward the sound and-as always-saw nothing. Then a p.r.i.c.kle of danger sense raced up her spine, and she looked in the opposite direction.
Gliding out of the darkness, just at the edge of her light, was a meter-high Gorog with thick chitin armor and overlong mandibles.
Even had she not seen the splint fused to its broken leg, Mara would have known that this was the a.s.sa.s.sin she had fought on Ossus. Much smaller than a typical Gorog warrior, it was coming at her in a fury, mandibles clacking, thorax drumming, crooked proboscis foaming.
Mara finally hesitated, confused, unsure, angry. The nest would be reaching out to Ben now, using the Force to share all that was happening here, to make him feel every Gorog death.
A puff of dank air brushed Mara"s face. Her helmet grew biting cold and the lamp dimmed to darkness, then a soft phoot sounded from the direction of the approaching a.s.sa.s.sin bug. A glob of caustic-smelling acid hit the front of her ragged vac suit, and her flesh erupted with a new kind of burning.
Ben would have to get over it.
Opening herself completely to the Force, using her resolve to draw it in, Mara lifted her hand toward the a.s.sa.s.sin bug and squeezed. It popped with a long, sharp crackle and the rotten smell of dissipating methane.
A pair of blue bolts flashed up from Welk"s direction and streaked into the smashed body. Mara had just enough time to push out with the Force and create a small bubble of protection before the a.s.sa.s.sin bug exploded.
In the orange light, floating just beyond arm"s reach, she glimpsed a pale oval with little to suggest a face, only a few dark areas where there might have been a mouth and nose and eyes. Mara swung her hand toward it, but the blast light faded and the apparition was gone.
Luke barely felt the heat of the explosion, but the shock wave sent him cartwheeling into darkness. He kept his helmet lamp fixed on Welk"s tumbling form and brought himself to a halt a few meters later. Welk slammed into a sealed cell and crashed through the wax cap.
Luke Force-plucked the blaster from Welk"s hand and started toward him. He could feel that Mara was wounded but, at the moment, no longer under attack. The best thing he could do was keep the enemy too busy to worry about her-at least until Han and Leia arrived with the rest of the team.
Luke was still five meters away when Welk pulled his twisted body free of the cell. His black armor was smeared in yellow pulp, and the lipless slash of his mouth hung agape with what was either fear or disdain.
Luke reactivated his lightsabers.
The soft whiffle of wings sounded to his right, and the air suddenly grew as thick and heavy as water. He twisted toward the noise, but his body seemed to move in slow motion, and by the time he turned there was nothing to see but darkness.
A crimson blade ignited a few meters ahead, and Luke knew Welk was coming. He brought his lightsabers around in a cross guard and looked back toward the attack. Again, his actions seemed to take forever, and the glow of the crimson blade drew within striking range long before Luke was ready to defend.
The fight was about to get interesting.
Luke extended himself toward the glow, slamming his Force presence into Welk. It was like trying to push Qoribu out of orbit. Welk continued to come, bringing his blade around in a brazen full-reach attack.
Luke didn"t even try to block. The Dark Jedi was strong-even stronger than Saba had said-but great strength was like great power. It seduced those who had it, lulled them into relying on might when other tools were better. Luke reversed tactics, pulling his attacker toward him. Welk tumbled forward, his hoa.r.s.e voice croaking in alarm, his scarred face dropping toward Alema"s silver blade.
The low throb of wings sounded overhead, and the hilt of Alema"s lightsaber grew painfully cold as the thing causing the sound-he wondered if that could be Lomi Plo-drained the energy from its power cell. The blade sputtered and died.
Welk slammed into Luke headfirst, sending them both into an uncontrolled tumble. The Dark Jedi"s crimson blade flashed past Luke"s leg and burned a gouge into his shin, sending a fiery shaft of pain straight to the heart.
Luke righted himself, but he was still moving in slow motion, and Welk was already coming again. Luke reached out in the Force, bringing his thumb and forefinger together.
Welk"s lipless mouth fell open. Dire gurgling sounds began to rise from his throat-and then Luke remembered Alema"s sacrifice of the membrosia giver. Had he grown that casual about killing? So accustomed to the power he wielded that he would use it to kill when he had other means to defend himself?
Luke opened his fingers and released Welk.
The Dark Jedi"s breathing returned to normal, but he stopped where he was, rubbing his throat and eyeing Luke in suspicion.
Skywalker! Mara"s voice was a screech in the Force, but when she spoke aloud, it sounded weak and pained. "Are you crazy? Finish him!"
"Not that way," Luke answered. "The Force may have no light or dark side, but we do. We must choose."