Star Wars_ Darksaber - Kevin J. Anderson [86]
“Let’s do this fast,” Burrk said, leading them to the outer shield doors. “We can make a dash for it … since we don’t have to worry about the motion sensors anymore.” He scowled at Luke.
“Leave the door partially open as a fallback option,” Drom Guldi suggested, “in case we need to make a hasty retreat.” Burrk nodded.
Luke sensed an interesting shift in command. Burrk was the nominal leader, but Drom Guldi—a hardened administrator—was equally proficient in making decisions under stress. The two men seemed to have formed a team for their own survival.
The shield door opened, and freezing air and snow gusted in. The sky had turned a hazy purple as the day drew to a close. Together, Luke and Callista led the five survivors in a sprint past the wreckage of the exploded poachers’ ship to their own small space yacht.
Luke focused his senses on Burrk and the others, concerned that the desperate refugees might try to blast him and Callista in the back and take their ship—but he sensed only a gnawing fear. These people were too frightened to worry about treachery.
As Luke and Callista approached their ship sitting calmly on the snow, Luke saw that the hatch stood open, like a dark mouth. Callista said, “Hey, I didn’t leave the door like that.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Luke muttered. The Cathar looked at each other and snarled.
“Bad news,” Drom Guldi said, already guessing what they would find. Luke bounded up the ramp, while Callista stayed outside to prevent the others from entering the ship.
Inside in the cockpit, Luke stared. The comm system had been torn to shreds, the panels ripped open with a silver scoring of claws. The navicomputer was gone, torn from its housing and smashed to a tangle of wires and broken chips. Severed cables dangled loose from the other controls.
It was as if the monsters knew exactly what they were doing.
A coil of fear tightened in the pit of his stomach. He turned behind him to the locker where the environment suits had hung—and found that the snow creatures had slashed both of the suits, making them unusable.
Then came a shout from outside, a panicked outcry and sudden blaster fire. Luke charged out of the cockpit, leaping down the ramp. Callista already had her lightsaber drawn, its topaz beam crackling and spitting in the cold.
Luke could barely distinguish the creatures that blended so perfectly with the snow and rock. Their white pelts made them only a blur of movement, curving horns sweeping from their heads, claws like knives extended as they boiled up, slashing and tearing and roaring.
Burrk drew both of his blaster pistols and fired, leaving a huge wampa dead in the snow with smoking holes in its fur. The two Cathar snarled, waving their blaster rifles. Burrk tried to fire again, but one of his pistols had been drained dry. The wampas bellowed, setting up an odd howl that careened across the empty steppes like a tidal wave of terror.
Drom Guldi fired carefully and precisely, taking out another wampa. The remaining monsters pushed forward. One of the two Cathar shot indiscriminately, lancing the snowy distance with blaster fire until his rifle also ran out of charge.
With an echoing roar that seemed somehow familiar, Luke turned to see a huge wampa standing on a rock outcrop, larger than the others, howling into the night as if directing the battle. Luke saw that this monster had only one arm; its other ended in a cauterized stump. It slashed its single fistful of claws through the icy air when it saw the Jedi lightsabers.
In unison, the army of wampa ice creatures surged toward their victims.
NAR SHADDAA
CHAPTER 29
The Taurill Overmind did not pause, did not rest. So many of the little interchangeable bodies swarmed over the zero-gravity construction site that work progressed at a relentless pace.
Bevel Lemelisk was ecstatic to see that in only two days the busy creatures had managed to disassemble their erroneous work, erasing the mistakes and