Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 14_ Traitor - Matthew Woodring Stover [57]
“I can do this all day.” He could: the warrior might as well have been a part of Jacen’s own body. He could no more fail to meet an attack than one of his hands would miss the other in the dark. He would feel every scrap of whatever pain he inflicted, but so what? It was only pain.
And the rest—
He let himself go, moving light and easy, counters to every attack as clear and obvious and predictable as a form he’d done a thousand times: like training with Jaina, when their Force talents and their twin bond had made them practically one person. More warriors sighted the fight—the dance—and thud bugs snapped through the air, and Jacen actually felt he should apologize as he gracefully faked the warrior off balance and then took his outstretched arm and spun him into their path. The thud bugs hit him like hammers. Vonduun crab armor saved his life, but transferred enough hydrostatic shock to snuff his consciousness like a switched-off glow rod.
Jacen felt that, too: an eyeflash of blackout that staggered him.
When his eyes cleared, three warriors had him boxed.
Knowing how they would attack wouldn’t help; no one alive could move fast enough to dodge. The warriors slashed at him, amphistaffs lengthening with whipcrack speed. None of the blades even grazed him.
He had not moved.
To the nerve nodes that served as all three amphistaffs’ primitive brains, Jacen suddenly appeared to be a—small, disturbingly misshapen, but still unmistakable—amphistaff polyp; uncounted millennia of natural selection had hardwired amphistaffs against cutting polyps.
Well, that worked okay, Jacen thought. But once they drop them and come after me barehanded, I’m cooked.
So he attacked.
He took three running steps for momentum toward the one on the left and sprang into the air. The warrior’s instinctive reaction—to lift his amphistaff and spear Jacen through the guts—did him no good at all, because the amphistaff dropped limp between his hands and the warrior could only gape in astonishment as Jacen slammed both feet into his chest and flattened him as if he’d been hit by a speeder.
Jacen hit the ground running, and never looked back.
They came after him like hungry gundarks, snarling fury. He dashed blind through the storm, slipping, skidding, head down, navigating by the feeling in the middle of his chest: toward where the Yuuzhan Vong weren’t. He could feel them spot him, could feel surges of rage and feral blood lust from all directions as hunters glimpsed him, vaguely, wraithlike through the rain and hail, and felt every flash of stark joy when they spotted him in the stuttering blue-white strobe of lightning. Thud bugs tracked him, blasting splinters off walls, scattering chunks of sodden moss. Shouts from all sides: harsh coughs with too many consonants, half smothered in rain, half buried in thunder. He didn’t speak the language, but he could feel the meaning.
They had him surrounded, and were closing in.
This, he said to himself, would be a really good time for Vergere to show up.
As if summoned by his thought, an invisible hand shoved his shoulder, knocking his headlong dash into a diagonal stagger. Before he could recover his balance, an invisible rope hobbled his ankles and brought him crashing to the ground—
Which collapsed under him with the dull rip of rotten fibertile, and dumped him headfirst four meters down to a damp stone floor that he hit like a cargo sack. He lay there, half stunned, gasping, wind knocked completely out of him, staring at the sudden constellations that wheeled around his head but shed no light into the surrounding gloom.
A section of wall slid aside, revealing another room beyond, dimly lit by glow globes in conservation mode. The light from the far room haloed a small, slim avian silhouette in the doorway. “Jacen Solo. It is time to come