Rebel Stand Page 13

  running? Can they be aware of us?"

  Viqi shook her head and took a moment to breathe. She tamped back on her

  resentment; a merchant-princess and Senator of Kuat should not have to exert

  herself in this unseemly fashion. "The voxyn detect the Force, correct? Perhaps

  what they're detecting is very strong-and faraway."

  Raglath Nur offered up a noise of vexation, but it was, for a member of the

  Yuuzhan Vong warrior caste, sufficiently mild that Viqi suspected he had come to

  the same conclusion-that he had merely hoped Viqi would offer some more

  satisfying answer.

  Another half-hour put them much farther down in the building level. From

  the general atmosphere of antiquity and seediness, from the driprot that

  afflicted the dura-crete walls, from the stench of decay and increased incidence

  of corrupting bodies, Viqi could tell that they were nearly at bedrock level.

  They passed a side-corridor that sloped downward; it was mostly filled with

  dark liquid and bodies floating atop it. Viqi skidded to a halt and turned back

  to give it a second look, putting her hand over her nose and mouth as if to

  reduce the stench. Denua Ku joined her, and other warriors turned back to see

  what had drawn her curiosity. She pointed at one of the bodies. "Get that one,"

  she said.

  Denua Ku and one of the others splashed into the water. The body Viqi had

  pointed out raised its head. He was a male human, young and frightened. He

  scrambled around in the shallow water and tried to dive away, but Denua Ku

  caught him by the ankle and yanked. He dragged the screaming, flailing youth

  back up to the dry cross-corridor, then hauled him up by the collar of his tunic

  and held him against the corridor wall. "How did you know?" Raglath Nur asked.

  Viqi gave him a superior smile. "He wasn't bloated tike the rest."

  "Question him," Denua Ku ordered.

  Viqi sighed, then turned to their prisoner. The young man was obviously

  terrified but knew better than to struggle now that he was surrounded by Yuuzhan

  Vong warriors. He had long black hair; dark fluid from the pool they'd hauled

  him from ran from it, pouring from his garments to puddle on the floor. Viqi

  reflected that, in better circumstances, he would have been pretty enough to

  serve her as a toy.

  "Where are the Jedi?" she asked.

  The young man shook his head. "I don't know about Jedi."

  Viqi gave him a chill smile. "These warriors would like to kill you. In

  fact, killing you fast is one of the nicest things they're considering doing to

  you. So you'd better find some reason, any reason, to give me so I can persuade

  them not to. Do you understand?"

  The young man nodded. "I know something. I'm going to take something out.

  Don't kill me." He reached into a pants pocket.

  The voxyn roared and surged farther down the corridor, dragging their

  handlers behind them, drawing the attention of the other Yuuzhan Vong warriors.

  The young man held out his hand. Viqi reached for him, and he dropped

  something into her outstretched palm. "It's the ugly-"

  "Our prey is close," Raglath Nur said. "We don't need him."

  Viqi turned toward him and crossed her arms, a gesture she hoped would hide

  the object the prisoner had given her. "I'm not through."

  But Denua Ku exerted himself, and Viqi heard the snap of the young man's

  neck.

  Denua Ku dropped the corpse back into the dark pool. "Now he will bloat."

  Viqi glared at him.

  Raglath Nur set the warriors into motion, following the frantic voxyn.

  "What did the human want to show you?"

  Viqi shrugged. "I might have found out, if Denua Ku hadn't been so quick to

  exterminate him." She waited until Raglath Nur's attention was on the voxyn

  before she tucked the object out of sight under the neckline of her robeskin.

  She got a glimpse of it before it was concealed; it seemed to be a tiny remote,

  one with a pair of buttons on one side, another button and a screen so small as

  to be nearly useless on the other.

  The ugly what?

  The handlers, dragged by the voxyn, were first to pass through the ruined

  metal doors, which were three times the height of a human and broad enough to

  permit ten pedestrians walking side-by-side. The lettering above the door read:

  ELEGAIC FABRICATIONS

  THE COMFORT YOU DESERVE

  Raglath Nur paused outside the doorway and stared with suspicion at the

  darkness beyond. He whirled on Viqi. "What is this?"

  "A manufacturing plant," she said. "They manufacture furnishings. Very

  expensive, very functional furnishings."

  "Such as what?"

  "Such as chairs that convert into extravagantly comfortable beds, chairs

  that carry their owners about in the air, furnishings that massage those who sit

  in them..."

  "Massage?" Evidently that didn't translate well through Raglath Nur's

  tizowyrm. "Inflict pain?"

  "Inflict pleasure."

  The warrior gave her a revolted look and led his fellows into the darkness.

  Viqi, alongside Denua Ku, followed.

  Though the manufacturing concern had seemed pitch-black from outside, once

  her eyes began adjusting, Viqi discovered that it was not so. There were light

  sources everywhere, but dim ones, mostly at floor level-emergency lighting, she

  decided, probably running low on battery power. In the faint glows from the

  light sources, she could see looming production-line machinery and immobile

  fabricator droids, some of them huge.

  She wondered if any samples of their stock were still in existence. But

  doubtless her Yuuzhan Vong companions would not let her enjoy such a chair, not

  even for a moment.

  She heard the voxyn's hisses go from excited to ferocious, heard their

  handlers call after them as they yanked leashes free from the handlers' grips.

  "Jeedai!" called one of the warriors. "Now you die!"

  Viqi heard the distinctive snap-hiss of a Jedi lightsaber igniting. One

  point on the far wall of the manufacturing chamber and the ceiling above it were

  illuminated by red light-moving light. The claws of the voxyn scrabbled as they

  charged for their prey.

  Then there was another snap-hiss, and another, and another. The distant red

  glow brightened. Viqi saw the silhouette of a voxyn leaping high, vaulting

  intervening machinery, backlit by the glow-and then something rose to meet the

  voxyn in mid-flight.

  It was not a Jedi, not a lightsaber blade. A block of machinery two meters

  on a side flew up from below and crashed into the leaping voxyn, striking with

  such force that Viqi heard the creature's bones shatter. The impact smashed the

  voxyn back through the air, a wobbly caricature of a once-living beast. The

  voxyn's body crashed onto the factory's duracrete floor and the block of

  machinery landed upon it, breaking more bones, and stuck there, not bouncing or

  rolling forward as it should have. "Forward," Denua Ku said. He whipped his

  amphi-staff free from his waist and charged after the other Yuuzhan Vong

  warriors, who now howled in rage and anticipation.

  Viqi took two steps in Denua Ku's wake and then something crashed into her,

  took her from her feet, slapped he
r to the duracrete.

  It was not a physical thing. It was despair and hatred, loathing and

  worthlessness, fear and howling rage. It was as though Viqi had spent every one

  of her years packing all the hateful emotions an ordinary person felt into a

  storeroom-and suddenly all the pressure had burst through the door and swept her

  away. She could only lie there, her arms and legs twitching outside her control,

  her stomach rebelling, her heart hammering inside her.

  She heard the howl of the second voxyn, heard the ripping noise of the

  creature vomiting its acid at its prey. Then there was the sound of lightsabers

  swinging, hacking. Meat in great quantities slapping down onto duracrete.

  Viqi writhed in time with the war cries of the Yuuzhan

  Vong and, one by one, she heard them die under the almost musical tones of

  the lightsabers.

  Then there was only the sound of lightsabers cutting, and cutting, and

  cutting.

  The emotional agony that had gripped Viqi lessened-only a little. She

  managed to roll over onto her stomach and slowly, painfully came upright.

  She knew the beings on the other side of the chamber had just killed

  everything that had entered the chamber with her. She wanted nothing more than

  to charge at them, to rip them to pieces with her bare hands.

  But as she stood, some faint instinct of self-preservation rose within her,

  and one thought made up of words emerged: Run, or die.

  She turned toward the doorway, and lurched out toward the light.

  As she reached the doorway, she put her hand out to steady herself against

  the metal door that had once protected the factory's interior. It fell away from

  her grip, crashing down onto the duracrete with a tremendous clang.

  The lightsabers in the distance switched off. Viqi froze. She waited, ears

  straining at the sudden silence.

  Then she heard it, the padding of feet coming her way.

  A noise like a sob escaped her and she ran, her speed enhanced by

  adrenaline and fear.

  Luke came awake and rose in a single smooth motion. He didn't have to ask

  if Mara had felt it, too. She was awake, gripping her lightsaber, ready to

  ignite it.

  Luke stepped out into the corridor. It was dimmed for sleeping, but Danni,

  too, was emerging, and Tahiri, who had been on guard in the corridor as the

  others slept, stared into one wall, through the wall, at something that was far

  away and toward the ground. "It's there again," she said, her voice faint.

  Luke took a few deep breaths. He couldn't remember what he had just been

  dreaming-only that, for a moment, he had been filled, even saturated, with a

  desire to rise and kill every living thing in his vicinity. Absurdly, he still

  felt loathing and contempt for his companions, for his wife, but as his mind and

  memory struggled to assert themselves, those emotions began to fade. "What did

  you feel?" he asked.

  Tahiri shook her head, and Luke could finally see the lone tear flowing

  down her farther cheek. "Awfulness," she said. "More awful than when I was

  coming out of my conditioning and started to figure out what I'd almost become.

  It was all through me, through the Force. It almost had control of me. I think

  maybe it could have had control, if it had known I was here." The despair in her

  voice was heartbreaking.

  None of the Wraiths had emerged from their new quarters. That made sense.

  This was a Force sending, a Force problem, and the Wraiths, largely oblivious to

  the Force, were not troubled.

  Mara, dressed, moved down the corridor, rapping on doors. "Everyone up. Get

  into your armor. It's time to hunt."

  Four stories up from the manufacturing chamber, Viqi came off a pedestrian

  ramp at a dead run. Her legs trembled from her flight hut she could not afford

  to rest-she'd heard her pursuers crash through doors she'd dragged shut behind

  her.

  She rounded a bend in the corridor and abruptly there was an arm in front

  of her, stretched at just under neck height. She hit it at full speed, her legs

  going out from under her, and suddenly she was on her back, looking into two

  human faces illuminated by dim glow rods, at two blaster pistols pointed at her

  face.

  It was a man and a woman. The man had an ill-trimmed beard. The woman's

  eyes were a startlingly pretty blue in eerie contrast to her unsympathetic

  expression. The two stank and seemed as thin as plasteel support beams.

  "Look at you," the man said.

  "About fifty kilos, I'd guess," the woman said. "Good eating, looks like."

  "How'd you stay so clean?"

  "Never mind that. Just kill her."

  There was a distant noise, a low-pitched roar that raised the hair on

  Viqi's arms and the nape of her neck. The man and woman hesitated, looking back

  the way Viqi had come.

  Then it washed across her again, the feeling of hatred and lowness that had

  brought her down in the manufacturing chamber. It had the same effect on the man

  and woman; they paled and sank to their knees, the woman gagging, perhaps

  prevented from vomiting only by near-starvation.

  Viqi scrambled around on the floor, turned toward her original direction of

  flight, and crawled as fast as paralysis gripping her arms and legs would let

  her. It occurred to her that it would be better to die than flee, better to face

  her tormentors rather than have to continue running, but the rational side of

  her mind, forcing its way to the forefront, kept her moving.

  She made it a few meters, until the curve in the corridor made it

  impossible to see the man and woman.

  She heard them scream, heard the snap-hiss of light-sabers igniting.

  There was a maintenance panel ahead of her, set in the wall at ground

  level. She reached it and tugged at its handle. It resisted, probably held in

  place by simple magnetic bolts or locks.

  She put all her slight frame into it, yanking, and the panel came loose;

  her effort sent the panel skittering across the floor. Beyond the new hole was a

  vertical shaft not more than a meter in diameter, steel rungs making a ladder of

  the far side.

  Viqi crawled into the shaft and climbed. Her arms and legs trembled,

  threatening every instant to fail her.

  She heard the man and woman scream again, then heard the noise of

  lightsabers chopping. As she ascended, the noise faded, but the fear and

  loathing did not.

  By Luke's chrono, it had taken them four hours to find the first evidence

  of the thing or things they sought. They stood in the main manufacturing chamber

  of a furnishing concern and looked down at the dismembered bodies of Yuuzhan

  Vong warriors-and voxyn.

  It was not evidence or deduction or luck that had led them here. Luke and

  the other Jedi could feel lingering dark-side energy imbued in the walls, the

  machines, the corpses. The sensation, so like what Luke had experienced within a

  certain cave on Dagobah, caused the hair on the back of his neck to rise.

  Mara dispassionately looked at the body of a Yuuzhan Vong warrior who had

  been cut into at least eight pieces, The wounds were all burned, cauterized.

  "Our Dark Jedi again. Or whatever they are."

  "Da
rk Jedi might be able to impose their will on normal people," Tahiri

  said. She had her arms crossed, and Luke suspected her pose was an effort to

  keep herself from trembling. "But not on fully trained Jedi. This was like

  jumping into an ocean of the dark side of the Force. It was like feeling Anakin

  die again. And wanting again to die with him." More tears came, and she looked

  away so that the others would not see them.

  "I wonder," Luke said, "what it's going to be like to confront them face-

  to-face." He prodded a severed Yuuzhan Vong leg with his toe. He hadn't always

  done well when faced with the dark side. "The Yuuzhan Vong are invisible to the

  Force. They couldn't feel it. We aren't. Especially the Jedi."

  "I had a thought on that." Face was on guard duty, blaster rifle in hand,

  his attention on the entryway. "A tactic I've used from time to time in bad

  situations."

  "What's that?" Luke asked.

  "Snipers. Set up a couple of kilometers away in a blind with a laser rifle

  and someone who really knows how to use it, and when your enemy wanders by,

  'zap.'"

  Luke smiled. "Not exactly fair."

  "Who wants to be fair?"

  Viqi woke up in absolute blackness and thought for a moment that she might

  be dead. In a panic, she sat up, but before she came upright her head banged

  into something, resulting in a sharp pain to her forehead and a hollow metallic

  noise.

  Then she remembered. She'd climbed and climbed, hearing the roars and the

  lightsaber hums of her pursuit. Her pursuers had cut their way through durasteel

  bulkheads to follow her, but she'd found side channels from the access duct-

  ventilation ducts that were smaller and smaller, adequate for a diminutive Kuat

  woman but too constricting for whatever followed her.

  After a long time of groping along in the dark, she had let exhaustion

  overcome her.

  Now she was alone, weaponless and friendless, surrounded by kilometers of

  crumbling duracrete and metal in all directions.

  Not to mention thirsty, hungry, and blind. She forced herself to become

  calm and went through a ritual checklist that helped her regain control of

  whatever situation troubled her. Checklist, she began. One extravagantly capable