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“This is the place,” Anakin said. “This is where they had her.” His gaze searched wildly about the room. It didn’t resemble a laboratory so much as a vivisectorium, each surface covered with internal organs—except some of these pulsed and mewled the way severed body parts didn’t. Usually. A quarter of the chamber was walled off by a transparent membrane. “She was in there,” he clarified.

“Of course.”

“Where would they have gone?”

“I don’t see any other way out,” Rapuung replied.

“Well, then—” But as before, he sensed something at his back. Another section of the wall had just gone transparent and permeable. Yuuzhan Vong warriors were pouring through it. Behind them Anakin could make out the yellow of Tahiri’s hair.

“Tahiri!” he shouted, and threw himself at the wave of enemies.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Vua Rapuung howled. Anakin fought in grim silence. Their initial charges carried them into the midst of the warriors, but unlike the group they had just bested, these weren’t scattered around a room, unprepared for a fight. Anakin and his companion were soon forced back toward the first vivarium by the six warriors who had engaged them. The other six—one of whom was vastly more scarred than the rest, probably a leader—led Tahiri and what appeared to be two female shapers back out the door Anakin and Rapuung had entered through.

“No!” Anakin exploded. He tried to leap over the warriors blocking his way, but one snagged his ankle with the amphistaff and used the momentum of his leap to slam him into the floor. Anakin cushioned the fall with the Force, but his enemy was still between him and the door, and his foot was still caught. That is, until Rapuung hit the fellow on the back of the head so hard that teeth flew out. Rapuung stood over Anakin, and for a moment, they weren’t under attack. The warriors merely stood there, watching the Shamed One and Anakin warily.

“Vua Rapuung,” one of them snarled finally. “What are you doing here with this infidel? You should be in the Shamed One’s village, pursuing your redemption.”

“I have nothing to be redeemed for,” Rapuung said. “I have been wronged. You all know it.”

“We know your claims.”

“You, Tolok Naap. You fought beside me only a few tens of cycles ago. You believe me cursed by the gods?”

The warrior he had addressed flared his nostrils, but did not reply. The one who had spoken before, however, lowered his voice. “Whatever you were, whether you are cursed or not, you have clearly gone mad. You fight with an infidel against your own kind.”

“I seek my vengeance,” Rapuung said. “Mezhan Kwaad. Where is she going?”

“The shaper master has been taken up for her trials. The accusation is heresy.”

“They’re taking her outsystem?”

“I do not know.”

“I cannot let her be taken, not until she admits she has wronged me. Any who stand in the way of that will leave this life on wings of blood.”

“We will stop you,” Tolok Naap said. “But we will fight you as the warrior you once were.” He threw Rapuung his amphistaff. “Take up a weapon. Do not make us kill a bare-handed man.”

“Thus far I have triumphed without weapons,” Rapuung said. “If the gods hated me, would this be so?”

“You have this Jeedai as your amphistaff,” one of them sneered. “Lay him aside, and we will lay down our weapons. Then we shall see how the gods love you.”

Rapuung turned a glaring eye on Anakin. “Stand away, Jeedai.”

“Rapuung, I have no time for games. Tahiri—”

“Is with the object of my vengeance. If we lose the one, we lose the other. I will make it swift.”

Anakin stared at Rapuung, then nodded curtly. He stepped back and switched off the weapon.

Eighty seconds later, stepping over the corpses, Anakin glanced sidewise at Rapuung.

“What was it you needed me for?” he asked. “I’m forgetting.”

They jogged down the corridor, gazes cutting right and left, alert for ambush from side corridors.

“When we have Mezhan Kwaad,” Rapuung said, “you must keep death from my back until I have forced her to speak. That is why I need you.”

“I can do that.”

“Swear it. Swear it by this Force you worship.