Enemy Lines II_ Rebel Stand - Aaron Allston [46]
Viqi, walking alongside Denua Ku behind them, shuddered. The voxyn were the most ill-tempered and evil things she had ever encountered, Yuuzhan Vong included. At least the Vong could reason, even if their logic was alien. The voxyn had been cloned to sense the Force, to hunt and kill Force-wielders. Many Jedi had fallen to their fangs, their teeth, the corrosive stomach acid they could bring up at a moment’s notice.
These voxyn didn’t look particularly healthy. In places their dark green scales were fading to a yellow that reminded Viqi of plants withering from lack of sunlight. Though they were alert and had lost none of their intensity, their movements often seemed listless.
Not that Viqi would have dared to venture within reach of their teeth or claws. She suspected that either of them would bite her in two just to hear the clack of their teeth meeting in the middle.
The party neared the end of a lengthy access corridor. Ahead, a hole in the building’s exterior wall admitted dim sunlight and a breeze. Two Yuuzhan Vong warriors, novices from the lack of decoration their faces carried, stood on duty, one to either side of the gap.
Raglath Nur, the leader of the hunting party, addressed them. Viqi didn’t bother to listen. She knew they’d address her if they needed her. She was correct; after less than a minute, Raglath Nur beckoned her forward, to the very lip of the hole; Viqi could lean out and see countless stories of crumbling habitat beneath her, and a simple step forward would send her falling to her death.
“This warrior,” Raglath Nur said, indicating the novice warrior on the right side, “saw the walkway fall; he was a great distance away. First it erupted in flames as though from one of the infidel torpedoes, then it fell. Searching, he found bodies below—burned, some of them in pieces. Explain.”
“If he didn’t see a starfighter fire a missile or torpedo, then it was probably a bomb,” Viqi said, indifferent to his curiosity. “Something like a torpedo, but carried by a man, put into position, and then persuaded to explode a few seconds later—seconds in which the one who planted it runs to safety.”
“And?”
“And what?”
Raglath Nur drew a hand back as if to strike her. Viqi steeled herself against the blow. But Denua Ku positioned his amphistaff between them. “He means, what do you conclude?” Denua Ku said. “You are here for your knowledge of infidels, their tactics.”
“Yes, yes.” Viqi fumed, but thought about it. “The bomb didn’t just blow a hole in the walkway. It took the whole thing down and singed both edges. I conclude that it wasn’t an improvised weapon. Either the people who did it had access to military equipment, or they’re proficient at building such things. This suggests that they’re not ordinary survivors—they’re elites of some sort.”
“Jeedai?” asked Raglath Nur.
Viqi shook her head. “I don’t know if Jedi are among them, but Jedi don’t normally use high explosives. So this was something different, or something additional.”
“What else?”
“If I were in their situation and had to use an explosive device—something sure to give away my position—I’d move away from here very fast, to elude any Yuuzhan Vong parties that came to investigate. Meaning that if we can figure out the route they took, we could search it thoroughly and see if they dropped anything. If they dropped something, we might obtain more information.”
“How will we know the difference between an infidel object left here by the planet-dwellers and one dropped by your ‘elites’?”
Viqi shrugged. “I will know,” she lied.
The party’s searches turned up no objects that Viqi felt had been dropped by their prey. But as they reached the next building over in the direction the trackers felt the infidels had traveled, the voxyn became more alert. They left off the eternal, searching sweeps of their heads; instead, they both stared in one direction, outward