Enemy Lines II_ Rebel Stand - Aaron Allston [85]
“So you came here? Why?”
“I knew the people who lived here.” This lie came smoothly to her, too. “Hasville and Adray Terson, and their boy Hasray. They were wealthy. I knew their quarters would have preserved food hidden in them, and I was right. I knew that would give me time to figure out how to return to the worldship without getting myself killed. How did you find me?”
He reached under his armor at the armpit and pulled forth a creature—an insect about the size of one of Viqi’s fingernails. It looked like some sort of beetle, but was the red color of arterial blood. Though its wings were folded along its back, perfectly shaped to its carapace, they vibrated, causing the little creature to buzz constantly.
“This is a nisbat,” the warrior said. “When it is near any of its hatchmates, it makes this noise, increasing in volume as it gets closer.”
“So?”
“So one of its hatchmates is within you.”
Viqi couldn’t keep her eyes from widening. “Something that size is inside me—”
“No. It was implanted in you when it was fresh-hatched. It cannot grow. It cannot even vibrate. But it can be felt by its fellows.”
“I am … grateful to it. That it has allowed you to find me.”
“Hmmm.” Denua Ku’s acknowledgment sounded neither accepting nor dubious. “Now you will be able to return to the worldship.”
“I am delighted.”
“After we find and kill the giant Jeedai.”
Viqi’s heart sank. She kept it from her face. “Shall I hold him down while you kill him?”
Denua Ku’s lips twitched up in a smile. “Amusing. Is that as funny in Basic as it is in our tongue?”
“If our two cultures share anything, it is irony.”
The warrior held up a hand. From other doorways in the corridor emerged more warriors—a party of two dozen or more, Viqi calculated.
And with them was another voxyn. This one was worse off than the previous one; it was a sickly yellow almost everywhere, and in places, its scales were flaking off completely. Its head hung listlessly, and it did not even bother to snap at the warrior nearest it.
“Ah.” Viqi forced a smile. “Even better.”
“Come along.” Denua Ku led the way toward the nearest emergency stairwell.
Viqi followed, her smile fixed, her mind racing.
She would find a way to elude them. She would pry the nisbat from her body, wherever it was hidden. She still had her locator tucked away, and the stairwell to the Ugly Truth was closed, hidden; she would be able to return here. She would clear that exit chute and blast off to safety.
And if it were humanly possible, she would see Denua Ku dead first, dead for daring to force her back into his plans when her plans were so much more important.
She kept her back straight and her manner haughty. No matter whom she aided, no matter what she wore, she was of the royal lines of Kuat.
THIRTEEN
Coruscant
In a deep tunnel, a maintenance causeway sealed off from the surrounding habitat areas, a passage constantly dripping with nearly opaque seepage from the levels above, the voxyn became more alert. It raised its head and began the familiar side-to-side sweeping gestures. The Yuuzhan Vong warriors became agitated and allowed the voxyn and its handler up to the front.
“Warriors, flank it,” Denua Ku ordered. “We cannot lose this one. They are too rare now.”
Two warriors moved up, one on either side of the voxyn. They stayed out of reach of its claws, even when it meant sloshing through black pools of liquid on the floor, but nothing would protect them from its acid if it decided to unleash some in their direction.
Two hundred paces farther on, the voxyn stopped. It stared upward and to the left.
“Find an access,” Denua Ku ordered.
Two warriors ran up the passage, and in moments found stairwells leading upward. The voxyn had to be dragged from its position, closest to the target it felt, to the stairway, but once hauled into that shaft it bounded up the stairs