Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 06_ Vortex - Denning Troy [165]
Luke was already on Abeloth, launching a vicious thrust kick. She took it like a durasteel wall, then her arm flew up to rake at his eyes. Luke was ready, and his blade burned through the limb as though it were nutripaste.
“Luke!” The cry came in Akanah’s voice, the terror unmistakable. “Don’t! It’s me! Akanah!”
Luke knew better than to believe her, even for a heartbeat. He continued his swing, sweeping the blade across at thigh level, and felt it slice into a leg. Abeloth shrieked in a dozen voices and spun away, falling toward the tiers of sunken seating. He used a Force nudge to send her arcing toward the cleft in the stage floor and lost sight of her against the glow of the magma.
Desperate to know what had become of Ben, Luke reached out in the Force and felt the frightened, groggy presence of someone who had taken a head-shaking blow. He turned and found his son trapped against a wall, defending himself from Vestara’s fierce attack, an unrefined high–low–low–high pattern, which Ben was blocking only because of his strength in the Force and the reflexes drilled into him by thousands of hours of practice.
Luke flicked a finger in Vestara’s direction and sent her tumbling toward Taalon, who was limping across the floor toward Ben, one knee buckling every time he placed weight on it. Had the High Lord been at his best, he would simply have redirected the girl straight into Luke. Weakened as he was by his injury and his ongoing transformation, he barely managed to Force-jump over her—and that left him vulnerable.
Luke raised his lightsaber and grasped the Sith in the Force, intending to bring him tumbling into an ignited blade … then felt something catch him across the ankles. He had no time to be astonished, barely even the nanosecond required to realize Abeloth had survived her fall into the cleft. He merely felt his feet shoot away and found himself dropping face-first.
Luke tucked his chin and managed to flip to his back before he hit the stone floor. Abeloth was on top of him, her flesh blistered and smoking, her remaining leg entwining both of his, her remaining arm wrapped around the back of his neck. She drove the still-sizzling stump of her amputated arm into his throat, catching him square in the voice box and pressing hard. The cartilage began to give. He pushed back with the Force, reinforcing his larynx and trying to throw her off.
It was no good. Abeloth had a dozen times the Force strength Luke had, and he could do no more than keep her from crushing his throat. He tried to bring his knee up and found his legs incapable of moving. She straightened her leg, forcing his knee to bend against the joint, and something gave with a muted pop. He slammed a Force-enhanced knuckle strike into her side and heard three ribs snap … and remained entangled. She dug her nails into the root of his ear, then twisted, and his head erupted in pain. He slipped his deactivated lightsaber between their bodies and jammed the blade emitter against her stomach. He thumbed the activation slide and saw the blade shoot out the other side.
Still Abeloth held on, clinging to him like a self-tightening cargo cable. It seemed impossible to shake her, and Luke knew that he had to. To fail was to die, and take Ben with him. He reached out with the Force, grabbing for anything that might help him, anything to give him a second or a centimeter to counterattack.
Half a dozen loose cushions rose from the seating tiers and bounced harmlessly past. He continued to reach, felt something heavy and liquid rising from the stage floor, and a glob of molten heat arced onto them, splashing across Abeloth’s back and spattering off the floor, driving tiny pinpricks of anguish into Luke’s arm and face where it hit him.