Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [103]
Han sighted down the barrel of the military blaster; Page did the same with the DC-15 rifle. Meloque wrapped her huge hand around the wooden grip of the antique sidearm. Leia took hold of her lightsaber, but didn’t activate it.
Shortly they heard the patrol approaching. First to appear were a trio of bissop hounds. Low-bodied creatures, they moved in a waddling motion, their long snouts sniffing the air and ground, and their clawed feet leaving distinctive tracks in the dirt. Behind them walked three Yuuzhan Vong warriors armed with amphistaffs and bandoliers of thud and razor bugs. Two were sporting shoulder-mounted tactical villips. Behind them came three warriors on riding beasts as large as grutchyna but as sedate as rontos.
“I’ll take the tracker on the right,” Page whispered to Han. “You take the one in the middle. Go for the villips first.”
Page waved a signal across the canyon to where Kyp and the others were concealed.
Then everyone hunkered down to wait for the patrol to move into the crossfire.
The bissops lifted their snouts toward the boulders just as the first blasterbolts were raining down on them. Han’s and Page’s shots blew the two small villips to pieces, while sizzling red bolts from across the ravine knocked two warriors from their mounts. But even though taken by surprise, the Yuuzhan Vong were quick to counterattack. Razor and thud bugs swarmed into the air, and—rearing and snarling—the three bissops surged up into the rocks.
By then Han, Page, Leia, and Meloque were already in motion, firing on the run and scampering for new positions. A bolt from Han’s heavy blaster shattered the skull of a charging bissop. A second bolt caught one of the trackers squarely in the chest, blowing a smoking hole in the warrior’s vonduun crab armor and sending him flying backward, to be trampled underfoot by a confused quenak.
Running down the opposite outcropping, Wraw came within a meter of being bissop fodder, but a well-placed shot from Sasso dropped the beast before it could snap at the Bothan a second time.
Kyp front-flipped down onto the trail ahead of the patrol. Lightsaber ignited, he fought his way through a hail of razor bugs to take the fight to the remaining warriors. Han was astonished to see the Jedi’s blade neatly cleave a rigid amphistaff, then, on the reverse stroke, sever the head of the warrior himself. Still in the rocks, Leia was similarly engaged in fending off a stream of frenzied bugs. Meloque was cowering below her, afraid to show her head. Pulling the frightened Ho’Din to her feet, Leia led her to a safer position, whirling twice to send return flights of bugs smashing into the rocks.
Han emerged from the boulders to see Kyp kick a coufee out of the hand of the only Yuuzhan Vong left standing, then pierce the warrior through the neck as he was running for his mount, as if in an attempt to flee. A blur of motion drew Han’s attention to the left, and he swung around, flattening himself to the ground. The last of the three bissops hurdled him and bounded up into the rocks, close to where Meloque was crouched, staring distractedly at her heavy-gripped blaster.
Unable to get a clear shot at the retreating beast, Page shouted to Meloque: “Kill the hound!”
She glanced at the escaping bissop, then in bewilderment at Wraw. “It’s just an animal—”
“Kill it!” Page repeated.
“I—”
Bolts from Wraw’s weapon stopped the bissop dead, just short of its disappearing over the rim of the gulch.
“Butchers,” the Ho’Din said as sudden quiet descended. She staggered out of the rocks, and down onto the trail to join Leia and the others. “Butchers!”
“Bissops are trained to return to base,” Page said calmly. “Another patrol would have picked up our trail in no time flat.”
Meloque heard him out, then nodded dully.
Six Yuuzhan Vong, two lizard-hounds, and one quenak lay sprawled in the dirt. Page moved from warrior to warrior, making certain that