Dark Tide: Onslaught Page 25

  “How bad is it?”

  “Pretty, ah, crusty, I guess.” Corran was thankful his sleeve had slipped down over the arm, but his blackened fingers told him more than he needed to know. He staggered upright, then hugged his left arm to his chest. “How are they?”

  “Out cold. We’ll have to drag them—”

  A sharp hiss and a whip crack cut Ganner off. Corran slowly straightened up and glanced at the stairway back to the lake bed. The two Yuuzhan Vong warriors stood on it, tall and daunting, their maroon armor and greenish leathery joints accentuating their alien nature. The lead warrior barked an order at the two Jedi and punctuated it with another whip crack of an amphistaff.

  Corran forced a bit of a laugh. “Looks like they don’t like the dragging idea, Ganner. Seems another plan will be required to get us out of here.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  From out of nowhere the image of her husband flashed into Leia’s head, and her question was answered. With a grim smile, she pulled her blaster and pumped two shots into the first of the Yuuzhan Vong. The red bolts hit him shoulder and chest, spinning him about. Thick pus sprayed from the ooglith masquer, drenching the second warrior. The third leapt toward Mara, his claws rending the air between them.

  The second warrior flicked a hand at Leia even as she brought her blaster to bear on him. Something thin and sharp spun through the air and caught her in the right forearm. Pain shot up to her shoulder, and she lost her grip on the gun. As it fell toward the ground, she stooped to get it with her free hand, then looked up to see her attacker leaping toward her.

  On her knees, Leia reflexively raised her left arm to fend off the Yuuzhan Vong, but the warrior never reached her. Bolpuhr, little more than a gray blur, tackled the Yuuzhan Vong in midair. The two of them hit the ground hard and rolled, with the Yuuzhan Vong finally succeeding in throwing the Noghri off him. Bolpuhr arced through the night and bounced once before rolling into the red tangle of tent and corpses.

  The Yuuzhan Vong he’d tackled got up and took a step toward Leia, then faltered. He fell to his knees, with the ooglith masquer sloughing off slowly. The hilt of a Noghri dagger protruded from the Yuuzhan Vong’s breastbone, and when the Yuuzhan Vong fell face forward, Leia caught the glint of the blade’s blackened tip stabbing out of the alien warrior’s back.

  Beyond the dead warrior, Mara faced her foe with a fierce expression on her face. She’d reversed her grip on the blue lightsaber, letting the blade parallel her right forearm. She extended her left hand, then crouched, waiting and watching. The Yuuzhan Vong likewise crouched, his hands flexing. He hunched his shoulders and shifted his weight.

  Mara took a half step forward and ducked her head toward him. The warrior leapt at her, but Mara had already pulled back from her feint. His claws flashed through where her head should have been. Mara pivoted on her right foot and brought her right arm around in a stroke that passed through where the warrior’s belly was. The ooglith masquer melted away from the blade’s searing touch, then the warrior’s flesh smoked as the blade opened him from hip to hip.

  Mara spun away from him, yet the Yuuzhan Vong still scratched her right thigh as he collapsed. Coming around full circle, she slashed the blade low and cleaved it cleanly through his neck. His body convulsed, and his head, which rolled a meter or two away, gnashed his teeth for the remaining seconds of life.

  Mara ran to Leia. “How badly are you hurt?”

  Leia shook her head, then started as the thing in her arm sprouted legs and tried to pry itself from her flesh. Mara reared back and tapped the razorbug with the tip of her lightsaber, killing it. Leia batted at the dead bug with her left hand and finally knocked it loose from her flesh. “Yuck!”

  Mara tore the sleeve from her robe and quickly wrapped it around Leia’s arm. “We’d better get that looked at.”

  “Later. There might be more Yuuzhan Vong with the refugees. We have to check—” Leia looked up. “Where’s Bolpuhr?”

  “I don’t know.” Mara stood and helped Leia to her feet. “He was back over here, wasn’t he, near the tent?”

  “Yes.” Leia ran over to the ruins of the tent, then stopped and sank to her knees again. “Emperor’s black bones, no.”

  The Noghri lay on his back, his sightless eyes staring up at the sky. The Yuuzhan Vong’s claws had sliced deeply into Bolpuhr’s neck and chest. The Noghri, who had been tireless and fearless in his duty, looked smaller in death, more childlike and fearfully innocent.

  Leia shivered. If the Yuuzhan Vong can kill Noghri with their bare hands . . . She shook her head and closed Bolpuhr’s eyes. “This is worse than anything we’ve faced before, isn’t it, Mara?”

  Her sister-in-law slowly shook her head. “If it is, chances are we won’t have much longer to worry about it. Look, go to the refugees and see if you can sort out who the Yuuzhan Vong are. Maybe these were the only three to get in. I’ll check tents in this area and hold the perimeter. I’ll comm if there is trouble.”

  “I don’t want to leave you here alone.”

  Mara gave her a brave wink. “I have the Force. I’m not alone. Move it. I don’t want you here stealing more of my fun.”

  Luke Skywalker stared out into the darkness. Detonations from proton torpedoes and concussion missiles were drawing closer. He could feel the shock waves vibrate through him. In the backflashes he saw the huge vehicles moving closer, ever closer. Plasma bolts filled the air with an orange glow and, more often than he wanted to acknowledge, exploded something in the air. Fiery wreckage would tumble from the sky and scatter fire and debris across the ground, doing some damage, but generally only illuminating the horde coming at them.

  Luke dried his left palm on his cloak, then unfastened the garment and whirled it off behind him. He gripped his lightsaber tightly in his right hand, again and again looking down to make sure the heel of his hand was over the activation plate. He reached out with the Force to gauge the distance to the front and could feel the line of Yuuzhan Vong slaves broadening as they approached the camp.

  One of the troopers stationed nearby looked over at him and smiled. “If you’re nervous, I guess there is no problem with me being nervous.”

  Luke thought for a second and then nodded. In all the battles he’d fought, even Hoth, he’d been involved in one-on-one, man-and-machine fights. Flying an X-wing or piloting a snowspeeder demanded neither less nor more courage than fighting on the ground, but it was more impersonal. His shots broke other fighters or brought down Imperial walkers, and if his foes survived, that was okay. It was part of the game, part of what made such combat noble in the eyes of many.

  But ground warfare was not noble. The object of the exercise was to kill as many of them as possible before they killed you. It was intimately personal because your target was another living being, not some machine encasing him. You succeeded when he dropped, and, yes, while an enemy might surrender, that was not viewed as anything nearly as noble as a pilot who was shot down and captured.

  This is just going to be killing, pure and frighteningly simple. Luke could feel the frayed troops coming in, only five hundred meters distant. Beyond that line, fighters made strafing runs on the ground troops. Hails of red and green splinter shots flickered through the night, vaporizing soldiers. Luke caught flashes of pain from those who died, but not a whit of anxiety or fear from the survivors. They’re marching to their deaths uncaring or unable to care about what will happen to them.

  Off to the right Colonel Bril’nilim gave a signal, and the freighters began opening up. Elegos’s shuttle rose and hovered in a forward position, with the fire from its laser cannons and blaster cannons pulsing out scarlet energy projectiles that warmed the night as they passed. The shipfire burned furrows through the Yuuzhan Vong ranks, thinning them, but not nearly enough. In the backlight of distant explosions or the burning of corpses, Luke could see the Yuuzhan Vong troops had come even closer.

  When the Yuuzhan Vong soldiers reached the two-hundred-meter mark, the troopers started
shooting. Their blaster fire came slowly, cautiously, fired without a hint of panic. Red bolts lanced out, striking silhouettes. Some of the Yuuzhan Vong troops spun before falling. Others just collapsed, and yet others sighed and sat, then flopped over as if exhausted and retiring for the day.

  At a hundred meters the Yuuzhan Vong troops began to run forward, so the troopers’ firing became more hurried. They still struck their targets, but gaps in the lines filled immediately as the wave of Yuuzhan Vong soldiers rushed ever closer. Smaller and stockier than the Yuuzhan Vong warriors Luke had fought, these troops looked reptilian, like Trandoshans but more compact. They did sprout a pair of calcifications from their foreheads, more domes than horns, and Luke suspected it was through these that the Yuuzhan Vong controlled them.

  The large vehicles began pulsing plasma out toward the breastworks. Shots pounded into the ground, shaking it, pitching dirt and debris into the air. Shots that fell short plowed through the mass of Yuuzhan Vong troops. Those shots that were on target splashed against shuttle shields or the fortifications. In the latter case the shots blasted the fortifications apart, scattering troopers and, worse yet, opening gaps in the line that allowed the Yuuzhan Vong troops to pour into the compound.

  Luke sprinted to the nearest gap and ignited his lightsaber. The green blade hissed and spat as he cut right and left, chopping down the reptilian troopers. The Yuuzhan Vong troops were armed with small amphistaffs, which froze themselves into a sharpened hook shape that clutched at arms and legs, cutting as the soldiers drew the amphistaffs back. The lightsaber couldn’t slice through the amphistaffs, but the troops were too slow to prevent Luke from lopping off limbs or stabbing through chests.

  Because he could feel the slave troops through the Force, killing them proved far too easy. He knew where they would be, what they wanted to do. A parry here and a stroke to the head, or a block, then a riposte to the heart. He wasn’t fighting troops as much as he was battling for time. If killing each one took three seconds or five, he couldn’t possibly stop them all. Meter by meter he was being driven back by the sheer weight of the assault, and even with the Force to strengthen him, he couldn’t kill them fast enough.

  Unless I can think of something to do, it’s over, it’s all over.

  Leia ran to the center of the camp and immediately appropriated a blaster carbine from one of the refugees standing guard. She found Danni and pulled the woman aside, then waved Lando over. “I need your help.”

  “You’re bleeding,” Lando said.

  “It’s nothing, for the moment anyway. I need you to use the Force. You can feel emotions, right?”

  Danni nodded stiffly. “I’ve been trying to shut things out. They’re all afraid here.” She glanced down. “Like me.”

  “Look, there may be Yuuzhan Vong among them, using ooglith masquers to pretend to be people. We have to find them.”

  Danni blinked and raised a hand to cover her mouth. “Yuuzhan Vong here, hidden here?”

  Leia grabbed the young woman’s left shoulder. “Steady yourself, Danni. You can do this. You must do this.”

  Lando drew his blaster pistol and checked the power pack. “How will we find them?”

  “If Danni can feel fear and hatred, she’ll be able to spot those who are feeling nothing. Follow my lead, then move through the crowd.” Leia looked at the four hundred assembled refugees and shook her head. “It’s not going to be exacting work, but note those who aren’t giving any fear off. We segregate them. Since we can’t feel the Yuuzhan Vong in the Force, they’re going to be the ones we want.”

  “I don’t know.” The young woman took a second, then swallowed hard and nodded. “I’ll do my best.”

  Lando nodded. “Let’s go.”

  Leia steeled herself, then triggered a series of blaster shots into the air. People reflexively ducked down, and a wave of terror pounded her. Leia looked out over the crowd and set her face in a grim mask. “The Yuuzhan Vong are incoming, and stopping them is going to be harder than we thought. If you have anything you want to say to others here, your last words, you’d better do it now and be quick about it.”

  A roiling storm of fear broke over the refugees, with wails and sobs punctuating it like soft thunder. Leia nodded at Danni and Lando, then the three of them began to move through the crowd, gridding it off, searching for those who found nothing to fear in Leia’s announcement.

  Jacen’s green blade slashed right and left as he and Anakin attacked the flank of the Yuuzhan Vong thrust driving Luke back. Jacen didn’t care about finesse or skill; he just set about butchering soldiers. What he was doing, he knew, had nothing to do with being a Jedi. Yes, he could feel it when the sparks of life winked out, but the Yuuzhan Vong slave troops felt less like living creatures to him than droids made of flesh and blood. They are alive in the same way plants are. They might once have been individuals, but now they are just puppets, lethal puppets.

  Jacen lashed out to his right with the lightsaber, burning a gap in a soldier’s spine. The soldier collapsed at Anakin’s feet. The younger Jedi leapt back, then scythed his blade low, though the legs of a Yuuzhan Vong trooper. That one went down and tripped up two others. Anakin dispatched them with quick thrusts to the backs of their necks, then flicked his left hand in Jacen’s direction.

  Beyond Jacen a trooper flew back, as if he’d been hit in the chest with a metric ton of transparisteel. The telekinetic blast cleared a path to Luke’s side. Jacen slipped into it, keeping the gap open, then Anakin joined him. In a line the trio of Jedi fended off the soldiers, cutting them down and pressing them back toward the gap.

  As their stand halted the thrust at that gap, Elegos’s shuttle ruddered around and laced an inferno of laser and blaster fire into the column of Yuuzhan Vong soldiery. Jacen raised a hand to shield his eyes as row after row of little reptoids vanished in a brilliant blaze of light. Those Yuuzhan Vong soldiers untouched by the shuttle’s lasers came on, but the Jedi dispatched them easily enough.

  Elegos’s action gained the Jedi some breathing room. Luke flicked his comlink on. “Thank you for the save, Senator.”

  “My fire was not effective against the larger vehicles, so I employed it where useful.” The Caamasi’s voice filled with gravity. “We are fortunate that the troops cannot shield themselves with voids.”

  Anakin laughed. “Are you joking? One good push and one would back into the void of the one behind him, and so on and so on. Pretty soon they’d be all gone.”

  Jacen frowned at his brother’s suggestion and would have made a comment, but Luke snapped his fingers. “That’s it!”

  “What is it?”

  “No time to explain, Jacen.” Luke looked up at the shuttle. “Senator, I need a ride.”

  The shuttle’s landing ramp descended, and Elegos brought the ship down to hover about five meters above the ground. Luke leapt up and quickly ran into the shuttle. It pulled up and headed out away from the compound.

  Anakin blinked. “What did I say?”

  Jacen shook his head and tightened his grip on his lightsaber. “I don’t know, but I hope it works.” He nodded toward the ramparts. “Until we see if it does or not, we’ve got work to do.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Before either Corran or Ganner could offer a new plan for escape, an explosion outside shook the giant shell building. The cloying odor of killscent wafted in and down the stairs. All around him Corran could feel slashrats gathering, coursing through the sand, looking for any morsel of food. Panic rose among the slaves, but, one by one, their weakening sense in the Force ended.

  Corran slipped past Ganner and ignited his lightsaber. “Okay, Ganner, here’s the new plan. You’re the telekinesis champ here, so you float the students to the rear of this shell, carve yourself an exit with your lightsaber, and get them out.”

  “You can’t possibly think, in your state, that you can beat these two.”

  “Immaterial, isn’t it? As they say on Tatooine, when being hunted by a krayt dragon, you do
n’t have to be faster than it is, you just have to be faster than the slowest guy in the group you’re with. I’m the slow guy here, and you’re getting them out.”

  Corran raised his left hand and extended two fingers toward the Yuuzhan Vong. He forced himself to ignore the pain and composed his face in an expression that suggested facing two Yuuzhan Vong was slightly less inconvenient than getting his beard trimmed. He bent his wrist to motion them forward, inviting them down to meet him in single combat.

  The lead Yuuzhan Vong let his amphistaff coil itself around his waist. He stepped to the side and waved his subordinate forward. The other Yuuzhan Vong, whom Corran thought of as the younger, bounced down several steps, then set himself in a pose of great martial grandeur. His amphistaff slithered down into his hand and stiffened itself.

  “Ganner, I still hear you breathing back there. Go! Now, go! Get them aboard and get the ship out of here.” Corran glanced back and gave Ganner as hard a stare as he could. “You’re the only one who can save them, and I’m the only one who can buy you the time you need to do it. Go!”

  The younger Jedi Knight nodded once, then gestured, and the two students rose from the floor as if on invisible stretchers. Ganner started walking backward into one of the many tunnels, with the two of them floating behind him. The younger Yuuzhan Vong came down two more steps and raised his amphistaff like a spear, ready to throw.

  The elder Yuuzhan Vong hissed something, stopping his subordinate.

  Corran twirled his silver lightsaber blade around in a humming circle, then moved to interpose himself between the Yuuzhan Vong and Ganner’s line of retreat. “I hope you two think this is a good day to die.”