Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 14_ Traitor - Matthew Woodring Stover [98]
Jacen stared at him, into him, through him, as though he knew him to his very core, and he nodded. “But you should know that it can also be your greatest strength. Give yourself permission to use that strength, Ganner. You’ll need it.”
“Yeah.” Ganner looked into the lightsaber’s blade as though his future could be read in its amethyst shaft. He grinned at what he saw. “You know, I never liked you, Jacen. I thought you were soft. Wishy-washy. An over-intellectual bleeding heart.”
“I never liked you either.” Ganner looked up to find Jacen answering his grin with a gentle, knowing smile. “I thought you were nothing but a grandstander. A playacting glory hunter, more concerned with looking good than with doing good.”
Ganner laughed out loud. “You were right.”
“So were you.” Jacen held out his hand. “So: here’s our chance to show the Yuuzhan Vong what a grandstander and a bleeding heart can do.”
Ganner took Jacen’s hand and gripped it fiercely. “It’ll be a show they’ll never forget.”
Jacen stepped back and lifted his arms, and the pulse of scarlet and green glow from the arterial sigils on his robe synchronized with the shifting light of the bubbling slime below. Tentacles coiled upward behind him, beyond the lip of the platform, arching high overhead, trailing slime that shone and pulsed, framing him with a living corona: Jacen’s silhouette became a shadow cross within a bramble of light.
“Jacen—!” Ganner gasped, reaching toward him. “Behind you!”
“I know.” Jacen turned his face upward. The tentacles curved down to meet him; he lowered his hands to accept them as their shimmering coils settled across his shoulders. “Don’t be afraid. This is all part of it.”
The tentacles now lifted Jacen in their grip, bearing him up and off the platform, cradling him gently—almost lovingly—as they lowered him toward the bubbling slime, but down there those immense yellow eyes still glittered alien malice.
“Buy me ten minutes,” Jacen said. “That should be enough.”
The clatter of booted feet grew from the tunnel. Ganner paused for one last moment, watching Jacen be pulled beneath the surface of the slime. He felt a burst of power in the Force, a shove from below, an impulse: Go.
He bunched the front of his robe in his free hand and tore it off his body. The dark-glowing arterial sigils spasmed, leaking black light. He tossed the robe into a heap on the platform.
He went.
* * *
Nom Anor squinted through the smoke that boiled from the shattered gape of what had been the Great Door. Squad after squad of warriors slipped close around the twisted durasteel wreckage that pinged and groaned as it cooled. They spread out within the smoke- and shadow-filled Atrium, weapons at the ready, eyes straining for any glimpse of a target.
A squad of warriors had sprinted down the coral tunnel toward the Well, to reconnoiter.
That had been five minutes ago.
None had returned.
Nom Anor hung back in the doorway. He had not survived so much of this war by underestimating Jedi.
Red-gold slimelight pulsed through the smoke from the Well archway. A figure solidified in that archway: a silhouette approaching lazily through the smoke, haloed by the slimelight.
A human silhouette.
Bonelessly powerful: a sand panther, out for a stroll. Relaxed but alert. Poised.
Predatory.
A superstitious chill climbed Nom Anor’s spine.
Warriors fanned out, officers glancing back to their commander, who looked to Nom Anor. “This is your event, Executor. What would you have us do?”
“You! You there!” Nom Anor called nervously in Basic. “What are you doing there?”
The answer was a deep, mockingly cheerful growl. “Isn’t it obvious? I’m standing in your way.”
Ganner Rhysode. Nom Anor began to relax; this was Ganner Rhysode, the weakling who could not even mount the causeway. Ganner Rhysode who got no respect from the other Jedi. Ganner the poser, the playactor. The joke. Nom