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:
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