Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 14_ Traitor - Matthew Woodring Stover [38]
Nom Anor stared at the universe of bloody carnage within the viewspider’s sac with numb, uncomprehending horror.
“What—?” he murmured blankly. “What—?”
“Executor. We’re running out of time.”
“Time? What time? This—this disaster … We are dead, don’t you understand? Tsavong Lah will slaughter us.”
“Ever the optimist,” Vergere chirped. “You assume we’ll live out the hour.”
Nom Anor glared at her speechlessly.
Once again, that unexpectedly strong hand of hers clasped his arm. “Have the warriors outside this chamber escort me to the Nursery. And call your commander, if he still lives. I’ll need someone with enough authority to get me through the guards, onto the hive-island—if any of the hive guards live that long.”
“The hive-island?” Nom Anor blinked stupidly. He couldn’t get any of this to make sense. “What are you talking about?”
Vergere opened a hand at the viewspider’s optical sac. “Do you think he’s finished, Nom Anor? Does our avatar of the Twin seek only confusion and slaughter—or does he produce confusion and slaughter as a diversion?”
“Diversion? To accomplish what?” Then his good eye bulged wide—in the viewspider’s image sac he saw Jacen and the five slaves who accompanied him wade into the chest-deep murk of the hive-lake, hacking their way through the churning, struggling, bleeding tangle of slaves and warriors. One of Jacen’s companions fell, speared through the throat by a warrior’s amphistaff; another was dragged under the water by the clawing hands of unarmed slaves. The three remaining swung their spade rays wildly, trying not only to keep warriors and slaves at bay but also to splash a path through the flames that floated on the surface of the lake.
Jacen slogged grimly on, half swimming, without a glance at the slaves who defended him. Any warrior or attacking slave in his path fell to lightning slashes and stabs of the amphistaffs he wielded in both hands. He didn’t even bother to wipe from his eyes the blood that flowed from a deep scalp wound.
All he did was walk, and kill.
He turned toward the center of the lake. Toward the hive-island. And kept walking.
Nom Anor breathed, “The dhuryams …”
“They are the brains of this ship, Executor. He has already shredded the tizo’pil Yun’tchilat, and he cannot hope to escape. What other target is worthy of his life?”
“You sound like you’re proud of him!”
“More than proud,” she replied serenely. “He surpasses my fondest hope.”
“Without a World Brain to direct the separation and atmospheric insertion, the whole ship could be destroyed! He’ll kill himself along with everyone else!”
Vergere shrugged and folded her arms, smiling. “Wurth Skidder.”
Nom Anor’s stomach roiled until he tasted blood. The Jedi Skidder had given his life to kill a single yammosk—and the dhuryams were vastly more valuable. Beyond valuable. Indispensable. “He can’t,” Nom Anor panted desperately. “He can’t—the life-forms aboard this ship are irreplaceable—”
“Yes. All of them. Especially: he himself.”
“He couldn’t! I mean—could he? Would he?”
“Ah, Executor, what a happy place the universe would be if all our questions were so easily answered,” she chimed, opening her hands toward the viewspider’s image sac.
It showed Jacen Solo on the hive-island’s shore, driving one of his blades through the chest of a maddened shaper while with the other he opened what might have been either a slave or a masqued warrior from collarbone to groin. Two of his escort survived; they had turned just at the waterline, where their blurring swipes of spade rays could not quite hold back a mob of suicidally fierce slaves. The two gave ground, forced backward up the beach, while Jacen scrambled up onto the nearest of the huge dhuryam chambers of calcified coral.
He paused there, hesitating, standing atop the waxy hexagonal plug that sealed