Enemy Lines II_ Rebel Stand - Aaron Allston [87]
The thing with Irek Ismaren’s face stopped just short of the nearest work crew and was now looking toward the corner of the chamber immediately beneath Luke’s entry point. There were shrieks from the stairwell there.
Figures burst up from the stairwell—armed and armored Yuuzhan Vong warriors emerged, moving fast, and the fifth one out of the stairwell was being dragged by a leashed voxyn. That was the hunger, the desperate craving of the voxyn to find and destroy all Force-users.
The voxyn’s head turned as its gaze swept the room. Mara saw its attention flash across Luke, across her—she felt its awareness of her like a physical touch—and then come to rest on Lord Nyax. It lunged in his direction, its handler unable to hold it back despite the leash. A second warrior grabbed the leash, added his strength to that of the first, and they managed to drag the voxyn to a halt.
Lord Nyax smiled as the warriors, twenty of them now, spread out in a semicircle. They approached him, amphistaffs ready, some of them handling thudbugs or razorbugs. They moved through the crowd of workers, contemptuously shoving those beings aside, hurling them off their feet.
The beam Mara was on bobbed more deeply as Luke arrived. He stretched out behind her and pulled out his own macrobinoculars.
Mara felt a sudden surge of hatred—not for Luke, not for Lord Nyax, but for the Yuuzhan Vong. She knew it to be a sentiment from outside her, and that kept it from being quite as compelling as it could have been.
And in that same instant, the workers screamed in rage of their own and swarmed the Yuuzhan Vong warriors.
The warriors swung and stabbed. Mara saw workers pierced through heart and gut and brain. When those attacks were not instantly mortal, they continued running and leaping at the Yuuzhan Vong, crashing into them, bearing them to the floor by weight of numbers.
The voxyn handlers went down. The voxyn leaped free and charged Lord Nyax, its growl of rage rumbling through the chamber.
A lightsaber, a red one, ignited in Lord Nyax’s hand. Then Mara took another look. This wasn’t a normal lightsaber; the energy blade emerged from the back of his metallic glove. It pivoted as he flexed his right hand. Another emerged from his left glove.
The voxyn, canny and old, charged to within three meters of Lord Nyax and then arched its back. It made a noise like a bedchamber’s worth of carpet being suddenly ripped in two, and a gout of dark, smoking liquid sprayed from its mouth.
A portion of flooring between the voxyn and Lord Nyax tore free, lifting into the fluid’s path. The voxyn’s acid splashed across it, almost instantly burning through it, but its momentum was arrested. It and the flooring fell, the sound of the chemical reaction of the acid audible even at this distance.
Fallen Yuuzhan Vong warriors were rising now, having torn themselves free of the masses of people bearing upon them. Mara saw limbs being severed from torsos by expert amphistaff blows, saw trails of blood, some of it jets of arterial blood gouting high into the air, from the frenzied but ineffective workers as they were cut down.
More red lightsaber blades sprang forth from Lord Nyax’s body. Mara saw blades emerge downward from his elbows, upward from his knees.
“We have to help,” Luke said.
Mara turned. Luke was wrapping the cord of his beltgrapnel, long abandoned but definitely a useful tool for the exploration of Coruscant’s lower reaches, around the metal beam.
“Help who?”
“Help the Vong. Yeah, I know, I know, it’s something you’ve never heard anyone say before.” Luke rolled off the beam and fell, his descent arrested by his hand on the cord; more cord deployed from his belt as he descended. “I’m not worried about the fate of the Yuuzhan Vong,” he told her. “But we desperately need any resources we can use against Lord Nyax.”
Mara hissed in vexation. She tucked her macrobinoculars away, grabbed Luke’s cord, and swung out over open space, then slid down after her husband.
In the corner of her eye, she saw the voxyn charge Lord Nyax.