forearm blade thrust toward him, and kept his guard up in time to intercept the
right-hand elbow blade. Mara leapt forward, unleashing two fast blows that the
thing's left-elbow blade caught, then folded over nearly double as she leaped
back from a strike from its left knee.
The Yuuzhan Vong warriors unloaded handfuls of thudbugs and razorbugs,
heedless of which of the targets they might hit, but the two Jedi and Lord Nyax
flicked the weapons out of the air or dodged them entirely.
Two Jedi? Three. Suddenly Tahiri was in their midst, coming up on Luke's
left, blocking a follow-up blow from the elbow blade on that side.
"Bad,"Kell said.
Face nodded. "Bad bad." He pulled his blaster rifle from the wrappings on
his back. "But who to shoot first?"
"We're no good here." Kell gestured toward the stairwell. "Let's see what
they're doing down below. If it's important, I can blow it up."
"That's our Kell."
Kell set Viqi on her feet, then hauled her up over his shoulder. Following
Face, he descended the stairwell.
Denua Ku watched the palejeedai, and for a moment admiration almost drowned
out the revulsion he felt at the notion of having abomination-machines like
light-sabers touching one's own flesh.
The pale thing fought with a savagery and speed unlike those of any warrior
he had ever seen. And it was untrained. With his experienced warrior's eye, he
could see that its movements were instinctive, a fact revealed in the creature's
failure to throw effective combinations of blows, its inability to gauge which
way its enemies would leap when it attacked them.
If it had been born Yuuzhan Vong, if he'd been able to train it for a year,
even half a year, he could have turned this thing into the greatest warrior who
was not himself a god. As it was, he'd have to kill this thing.
Even if the Jeedai, too, wanted it dead, it was still an abomination. And
it was the greater threat. It had to die first. He threw his last razorbug, then
lunged forward into hand-to-hand range, probing at the pale thing's back with
the tail-tip of his amphistaff.
The pale thing spun, sending its knee blade toward Denua Ku's guts. He
blocked the sweep with his amphistaff, but the impact was tremendous; it threw
him back off his feet. He rolled backward and came upright, saw one of his
warriors perform a similar probing assault... and this warrior took a forearm
blade through the throat.
Nine Yuuzhan Vong warriors down. Sixteen to go. The numbers were becoming
worse.
A tremendous mechanical roar shook the chamber. It lowered slightly in
volume but became steady, filling the air.
FOURTEEN
"It's a delaying tactic!" Mara shouted over the roar.
"I know!" Luke shouted back. "It's working! I'm being delayed!" He stopped
a forearm-swing and was driven back a step, stopped the follow-up elbow swing
and was driven back a step, jumped back to avoid the knee-strike and discovered
it was only a feint; Lord Nyax's leg snapped back and caught a Yuuzhan Vong
warrior in the crotch, collapsing the warrior despite its armor.
Every step took the Jedi and the warriors toward the center of the chamber.
The floor vibrated beneath their feet.
"What?" Mara said.
"I didn't say anything!"
"Not you! Speak up, Face!"
Luke waved Mara back. She jumped up and backward in a somersault, taking
her out of Lord Nyax's range, and took out her comlink, holding it up to her
ear. Tahiri took her place, swinging her lightsaber defensively, eyes wide as
she analyzed her attacker's motions and patterns.
* * *
"I said, it's a big machine," Face shouted. Here, at the source of the
vibration, the noise was much worse.
He, Kell, and their struggling cargo were on a catwalk two levels down from
the floor where the Jedi and Yuuzhan Vong fought, one level down from the side-
passageways by which the Vong must have arrived. And the catwalk itself was the
top level of a deep, deep chamber-a chamber that housed a single vehicle.
been considered a skyscraper. It was hundreds of meters tall. At its base were
treaded appendages that could roll like tank treads or lift and move
independently like feet. All along its surface were hydraulic arms; some ended
in what looked like plasma cutters, others in huge ball-like weapons, still
others in manipulator hands.
At the top was a sensor station surrounded by trans-paristeel panels, and
packed into that station were living beings. Many of the workers who had not
been on the floor above at the onset of the Yuuzhan Vong attack were here, and
more were shoving their way way along a catwalk extension that led to a door in
that station.
Down below were more beings, tirelessly carrying hunks of debris away from
the machine's base.
The whole thing roared like a fleet of antiquated Pod-racers. The vibration
cut into Face's skin wherever the vonduun crab armor did not cover it.
"Tell her it's a construction droid," Kell shouted. "It looks completely
functional."
Face shouted that information into his comlink.
"Did she hear you?"
"I don't know."
"Tell her it's moving."
Far below, the treads spun into action. The construction droid's machinery
whined as the gigantic machine J lurched into action... and then crashed into
the dura-crete wall before it.
Unable to hear, Mara bit off a curse. She tucked her comlink away and
jumped back into the fight, deflected a pair of thudbugs, took a swipe at Lord
Nyax's hand; its arm rotated and it caught the attack on its lightsaber blade.
Luke flipped over the pale thing, striking as he went; his blow was
blocked.
Tahiri, in front, lunged forward... and stumbled, right into the path of a
knee blade. Mara reached out, an effort to shove with the Force, knowing that
she was too late, knowing that the knee-blade would emerge in a fraction of a
second from the back of Tahiri's skull-but Tahiri whipped to the side, still in
control, still in balance, even as Luke crashed feetfirst into Lord Nyax's neck,
forcing its head down toward its own knee-blade.
The blade turned itself off. Lord Nyax's head passed through empty space.
Luke, backflipping to his feet, offered up an expression of bafflement and
frustration.
Mara sighed. It had been a feint, an effort to trick the thing into
spearing itself with its own weapons. But its designers had been too thorough.
There were fail-safes.
The floor rocked under their feet. Mara felt the crash from below as much
as she heard it.
Lord Nyax leapt upward a half-dozen meters and then, impossibly, just hung
there in space, smiling down at the Jedi and the Yuuzhan Vong.
Mara realized, a fraction of a second too late, that it had merely grabbed
the same cord by which she and Luke had descended. Then the floor went out from
under her.
The construction droid plowed into the wall before it, smashing steel and
duracrete out, allowing blue
-white sunlight to spilt in. It lurched and wobbled
as it continued, internal balance compensators having a hard time keeping up
with the irregularity of the surface it moved across.
The catwalk under Face's feet rippled. "C'mon!" He turned back toward the
stairs they'd descended, but the catwalk mounting on the corner nearest the
droid's exit hole snapped and dropped, snapping the next mounting toward him and
the next mounting after that. The catwalk fell all along one wall, except for
the mounting behind Face and Kell, turning their footing into a steep ramp.
Face managed to get his hands on the catwalk railing. As his feet went out
from under him, he held on. He looked up, could see Kell holding on above him,
could see the ceiling of this chamber split and collapse as one of its
supporting walls gave way under the droid's destructive exit.
Bodies began spilling through the split in the ceiling. Some were bodies of
workers. Others were Yuuzhan Vong warriors.
Then there were the bodies of his Jedi friends.
As he felt his footing give way, Luke sprang, with the last bit of traction
the flooring gave him, toward Mara and Tahiri. He hit them like an overly
aggressive ballplayer, catching one in each arm.
The patch of floor they were heading toward opened, giving him nothing to
land on. With the Force, he shoved at his own back, propelling him through the
rent, toward the metal wall he saw before him, the wall and the catwalk there...
He saw that their arc was going to miss the catwalk. They would hit the
wall and plummet. But in that instant, the left end of the catwalk broke free of
its moorings and dropped, bringing it beneath their ballistic arc. A moment
later, they hit the swaying thing, bending it down still farther, but Mara and
Tahiri grabbed its trailing end and held on with their considerable strength.
Gasping for breath, Luke looked around. He and both of the others had
switched off their lightsabers midleap. "Good instincts," he said.
"Good teacher," Tahiri said. She looked up, past Luke. "Hey, Face, is that
you?"
"Hold on, hold on, I'll get a line down to you."
Face tied off the cord he'd once used to safeguard his passage across an
elevated walkway. He dropped the other end down the swaying catwalk toward the
Jedi. In moments, Luke, Mara, and Tahiri swarmed up to join them. The
construction droid was only just pulling out onto the avenue beyond the
building.
"Did you see Viqi Shesh?" Mara asked.
Kell jerked a thumb up toward the stairwell behind them. "She was still at
the bottom of the steps when the big boom hit. She took off."
Mara clambered up to the base of the stairs. "I'm going after her."
"Mara, no." Luke's voice did not carry a plea; his tone conveyed simple
truth. "Lord Nyax is more important. I can feel him moving up there. Moving
away. We have to go after him, bring him down."
Mara sighed, shut her eyes. After a moment, she nodded.
"I lost her, I'll go after her," Kell said.
Face pressed the locator into his hand. "No. You go after this, Mechanic
Boy. It could be our ticket out of here."
"You go after her, then."
Face gestured toward the construction droid, which leaned at an alarming
angle toward the next building over as it turned rightward onto the avenue. "I'm
going after that. Nyax sent it off for a purpose. We need to know what that
purpose is."
Mara pounded her fist on the bottom step, then stood. "Let's go," she said.
Up on the half-collapsed floor above, Denua Ku hung, unable to climb,
unable to descend.
A three-meter length of rebar emerged from his gut. It was slick with his
blood. He knew that his lung had been punctured.
The pain was extraordinary. He did not mind pain, did not fear it, but it
was beginning to fade in a way that suggested imminent death rather than
recovery.
In the silence left by the infidel machine's departure, he heard feet
padding softly across the remaimng floor. He looked up. Viqi Shesh, most of the
way around the chamber toward the hole by which the pale monster had entered,
her hands tied behind her back, paused and looked at him.
"Tell them I died well," Denua Ku said.
"I'll tell them," she said. "I'll tell them you died whining, that you died
begging for infidel medicines, anything to alleviate the pain."
Denua Ku snarled. He reached for his pouch, for his last remaining
razorbugs.
Viqi laughed at him. Before he could bring out the weapons, she reached the
corner and ducked through the hole there.
Lord Nyax led the three Jedi on a high-speed run through the ruins of
Coruscant. He could travel faster than they could, because from time to time
he'd simply leap from one building to the next one over, usually a leap too
great for them to match. Yet they could always feel him in the distance, sense
his movements, sense a feeling of expectation and even anxiety from him.
Once they caught up very close. The bodies of five lightly scarred Yuuzhan
Vong warriors, young ones, lay in a brightly lit corridor, their wounds still
smoking. In the distance, the Jedi could hear the footsteps of Lord Nyax
fleeing.
"Where's he going?" Mara asked.
Luke thought about where they started this fight, where they'd been since
then. "It's a big arc. Maybe part of a big circle."
"Why?" Tahiri asked. She breathed more easily than Luke or Mara, the energy
and resilience of youth standing her in good stead.
"He's not fleeing," Luke said. "He could have left us behind some time ago.
So he wants us to follow him. Into a trap?" He shook his head. "He would have
gone straight. No, he's just leading us on a chase. A diversion."
"So where does he want us not to go?" Tahiri asked.
Mara turned abruptly, headed back the way they'd come. "To wherever it sent
that construction droid." She pulled out her comlink. "Mara to Face. Come in,
Face."
Face ducked behind a pillar between two smashed-in panels of
transparisteel. He got out of sight just in time. Outside, a wingpair of
coralskippers flew by at his exact altitude-the same altitude as the top level
of the combat droid. "Face here. I hear you."
"Are you still with the construction droid?"
"Well, yes and no." He leaned out of the shattered viewport next to him. In
the distance, he could see the coralskippers hovering outside the mound of
rubble the construction droid made when it plowed into the side of a giant
ziggurat of buildings. "It's ahead of me. It's digging through construction.
Moving a lot faster than those things are rated to move, I'll bet. I'm cut off
from it for the moment. I'm going to have to track it from floors above and hope
they don't fall out from under me."
"Leave a tracking signal open. We need to find you."
"Done. Face out." He sat there for a few more moments, gasping in the warm,
moist, cloying air of Coruscant, then rose again. "I hate this job."
The Jedi circled around the growing accumulation of coralskippers hovering
outside the collapsed hole the construction droid had bored into the ziggurat's
s
ide. On an upper floor half a kilometer from the gathering, they met up with
Face and peered at the ziggurat. "Interesting," Luke said.
"What?" said Tahiri.
"This is one of the monolithic blocks that served the Old Republic as a
government center," Luke said. "A lot of it belonged to secondary bureaus, to
embassies and legations from non-Republic worlds, and to businesses and
organizations more or less allied with the Old Republic."
Tahiri gave him a skeptical look. "How do you know that?"
"Because, youngster, the few surviving databases and filemaps that
mentioned the old Jedi Temple indicated that it was-" Luke pointed. "-somewhere
there. I've been all through it, kilometers and kilometers of it. By the time I
got to look at it, of course, Emperor Palpatine had long destroyed every
remaining trace of the Jedi."
"Maybe not every trace," Mara said. "Why do you suppose Lord Nyax is
digging there?"
"Because..." Luke considered. "Because he has some kind of implanted
memories or instincts? Perhaps he wants to destroy any remnant of the Temple
because of lingering emotions. Or maybe he knows about some portion of it that
was never on the public databases."
"Either way," Mara said, "we have to find out."
Luke smiled. "One of the advantages about having been all through that
region is that I know quite a few ways in and out. C'mon, let's bypass these
skips."
Deep in the guts of the ziggurat, the construction droid leaned against the
sloping black wall, driving its plasma cutters into the smooth surface,
hammering the glossy wall with its mechanical limbs. Chunks of dense stone fell
away from the impact points, but the wall yielded only very slowly.
Luke and his companions peered at the action through a crack in a duracrete
wall a couple of stories up. Much of the construction that should have been
beneath them had collapsed as soon as the construction droid had plowed its way
to this point, meaning that the creaking and sagging of the floor beneath them