• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Pavan, who had two of them hanging on to each arm, saw she was awake. “Cthons!” he shouted to her. “They’re cannibals!”

His words sent a chill of fear and repugnance down Darsha’s spine. Like most people who lived on Coruscant, she had heard the legends of the sightless subhumans, but had never considered them based in reality. Fear gave her new strength and focus, and once again she drove them back by throwing Force waves at them. But they were stronger than they looked, and extremely tenacious; though battered off their feet by her power, they picked themselves up and came back for more, moaning and howling.

Pavan was doing worse than she was, having only his fists and feet to fight with. The Cthons were dragging him toward one of the darker recesses of the chamber.

“I-Five’s been deactivated!” he called to her. “He can help us!”

Yes, of course! Darsha thought. She’d had firsthand experience of how strong the droid was when he’d carried both her and Pavan to safety after the skycar’s crash. She looked at I-Five and could just see in the dim light that the master switch on the back of his head was in the off position.

Could she reactivate him? She wasn’t sure. There was no way she could reach him physically, and she wasn’t at all confident in her control of the Force, particularly under these circumstances. It was one thing to use it like a bludgeon against an enemy, but quite another to flip a small switch several meters away.

She pushed the doubts away. She had to do it—or she and Pavan were quite literally dead meat.

She focused her mind on the droid, felt the tenuous, intangible connection between her thoughts and the cool metal of the control switch. She pushed against it with her mind, feeling the resistance.

A Cthon grabbed her from behind.

Darsha bit back a cry of shock and surprise. She felt her attenuated mental grip on the tiny nub of durasteel almost slip free, and with all the power of her will she thrust the Force tendril against it. Then the Cthon yanked her backwards, and she felt its clammy fingers, like the hands of a corpse, reach up and close about her neck.

A shrill screech, unlike anything she had ever heard before, suddenly filled the air. It was more than just unpleasant; it was actively painful. It drilled into both ears and expanded in the center of Darsha’s head like something alive and voracious. The Cthon released her and she staggered forward, clapping her hands over her ears. That helped somewhat, but not nearly enough.

But it was obvious that the stridency was causing the Cthons far more pain than she was feeling. Which made sense, certainly; here in the eternal darkness the creatures would have grown over generations to depend on their ears far more than their vestigial eyes. Their shrieks and moans of agony were barely audible above the continuing screech, which Darsha now realized was coming from I-Five.

The reactivated droid was standing. He moved quickly, pushing through the dazed group of subhumans toward Lorn Pavan while the earsplitting sound continued to emanate from his vocabulator. The Cthons who had been dragging Pavan away were writhing in pain like their comrades, leaving him free.

Darsha followed in the droid’s wake. I-Five grabbed Pavan and headed for the dark aperture of a tunnel in the chamber’s far wall. No matter where it led, it had to be someplace better than where they were now.

But the chances of their reaching it were not looking good. Though obviously still in pain, the Cthons were starting to rally, no doubt motivated by the sight of their dinner making an escape. Darsha hurled more invisible blows to either side, clearing a path for the three of them. But a large group was gathering ahead to block their escape.

Darsha looked about desperately for something to use as a weapon—and saw her lightsaber lying perhaps five meters away on a mound of mingled offal and techno-trash. With a gasp of surprise and gratitude, she reached out for it with her hand and her mind. The device flew from