Enemy Lines II_ Rebel Stand - Aaron Allston [12]
Charat Kraal offered a warrior’s smile, broken teeth visible through slitted lips. “They do not, great priest.”
“When my audience with Czulkang Lah is done, you will come with me and tell me of your plan.”
Coruscant
As his group entered a long gallery that had once been flanked by stores and emporiums, Luke again felt a twinge, some distant wrongness in the Force. The sensation had come to him before and he had steered toward it, hoping that it was the source of the unease, the visions that had brought him to Coruscant on this mission. But his fellow Jedi had not always seemed to share his perceptions.
He glanced at them. Mara was already looking his way, nodding. Tahiri stared off into the distance, in the direction of the twinge, alert as a hunting beast.
Even Danni was gazing in that general direction, a hint of confusion evident even through her Yuuzhan Vong makeup. “Did any of you feel something?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Kell said. “Hunger. Time to break?”
Luke shook his head. “Not in the open like this.”
“Awww. Explosive charges are so much more vivid when they go off in the open.”
Tahiri stared up at him, scornful. “Do you only ever think about one thing?”
“One thing at a time, sure. Now it’s my stomach.”
Another feeling intruded on Luke’s finely tuned senses, a whiff of danger, far more immediate than the previous sensation. He whispered, “Trouble.”
In a moment, the others moved to form a circle, Mara, Tahiri, Kell, and Face on the outside, the others within. No one brought out a technological weapon, but Luke felt to make sure that his lightsaber was still hanging at hand, and Face and Kell snapped their false amphistaffs out into rigidity.
A great roar of voices sounded from ahead and above. Out of two storefronts at this level, and one on either side on the first balcony level above, came a stream of beings, shouting, charging toward Luke and his party.
They were humans and humanoids, male and female, their clothes largely filthy and in tatters, carrying primitive spears and knives and crude swords in their hands. In moments at least a score were charging Luke’s position, and more were pouring out of the doorways.
Luke breathed a sigh of relief. “Time to make contact,” he said. He reached up for his helmet.
“Run,” Bhindi said.
“What?”
“Run.” Bhindi suited actions to words by turning back the way they’d come and racing away from the oncoming mob.
Luke looked at Mara. Both shrugged, then turned to follow Bhindi, the rest close after them.
They charged out through the broad archway that had heralded the opening into the shopping gallery, quickly outdistancing their pursuers. They took a right at the next broad cross-corridor, charged a considerable distance along it, and then Bhindi angled into a doorway that led to an emergency stairwell. She led them up the stairs two at a time until they’d climbed five flights; then they could emerge into a much darker, narrower corridor. There they stopped, many of them panting.
Kell leaned over to put his hands on his knees as he struggled to breathe. “I’m too old for this.”
Danni leaned against the wall. Sweat poured down her face but did not mar her Yuuzhan Vong makeup. “Would you mind telling me why we ran? I thought you wanted to make contact with pockets of survivors! Something about setting up resistance cells?”
Bhindi offered her an unlovely smile. “Two reasons. First, normal people who want to stay alive don’t charge Yuuzhan Vong warriors that way, even if they outnumber them a hundred to one. Meaning that they probably had some way to kill those supposed warriors, like retreating before us and leading us to a spot where fifty tons of scrap can drop on our heads.”
Danni considered that and her expression relented. “Good point.”
“Second,” Bhindi continued, “we don’t have any reason to believe that any of the Vong warriors who attacked us on the walkway are still alive. Some are chopped up, some are blown up, some are flat as a roadway accident three hundred meters down, and some are all three. So our secret, the fact that we’re