Star Wars_ Darth Bane 02_ Rule of Two - Drew Karpyshyn [40]
Suddenly realizing he was in grave danger, Bane made a lunge for the Holocron. As his hand closed around it, the colony of crustaceans broke free en masse and cascaded down on him in a chitinous swarm. With one hand clutching the Holocron, he swiped at them with his lightsaber and deflected others with the power of the Force. But there were too many to keep them all at bay; it was like trying to ward off raindrops in a storm.
One struck him on the shoulder and latched on, instantly burning through his armor and clothing with an acidic secretion before fastening itself to his skin. Bane felt a thousand tiny teeth burrowing into the thick meat of his back, followed by the searing pain of the acid secretion melting his flesh.
He screamed and slammed his back up against the wall hoping to jar the creature loose, but it held fast. As he struggled to dislodge it, a second struck him square in the chest. He screamed again as the burning acid and tiny teeth dug through clothes, skin, and even his thick pectoral muscles to fasten directly to his breastbone.
Bane staggered under the onslaught of pain, but managed to strike out with the Force. The rest of the creatures were sent hurtling away from him like leaves swept up by a fierce wind; they clacked and clattered as they struck the walls of the room. The brief reprieve gave Bane a chance to drop to his knees and scamper through the cramped opening and back into the small room from which he had originally entered.
Ignoring the agony of the two creatures still attached to him, he reached out with the Force and hoisted the stone block on the far side of the room up into the air. His powers were enhanced by both pain and a desperate urgency, and the block moved easily for him this time, flying across the chamber to plug the entrance before any more of the strange crustaceans could scuttle out after him.
For a second he just lay there panting, clutching the Holocron and trying to ignore the pain coming from the two parasitic organisms feeding on his body. He could hear the rest of the colony on the other side of the wall, the wet gurgles of their grasping mouths mingling with the sharp clacking of their hard shells as they crawled up the walls back to their roosts on the ceiling.
He imagined he heard another sound, as well: the harsh, mocking laughter of Qordis and Kaan echoing off the walls of Freedon Nadd’s tomb.
8
Chancellor Valorum will see you now,” the Twi’lek assistant said from behind her desk.
Seeing Farfalla rise, Johun did the same, tugging awkwardly to reposition the unfamiliar ceremonial robes his new Master had insisted he wear for the meeting. Johun had protested that his wardrobe had nothing to do with who he was or why they were here, but Farfalla had merely replied, “On Coruscant, appearance matters.”
Johun had never been to Coruscant before—or any of the other Core Worlds, for that matter. He’d been born and raised on Sermeria, an agriworld in the Expansion Region between the Inner and Mid Rims of the galaxy. His family had worked a farm a few kilometers outside of Addolis, one small cog in the great Sermerian agricultural complex that produced an overabundance of food and sold it to more developed worlds that lacked enough arable land to support their own populations.
He’d left Sermeria at the age of ten to begin his Jedi training. In the decade since he had accompanied General Hoth to dozens of worlds, though his former Master had preferred to stay on the Outer Rim, far from the politicians and urban culture of the Republic’s capital. The planets they visited tended to be less developed rural worlds, much like Sermeria itself. As a result, Johun had never seen anything even remotely resembling the planetwide metropolis that was Galactic City.
On their initial approach to the world, Farfalla had tried to point out to him the location of important structures, like the Senate’s Great Rotunda and