Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [181]
“At least Shimrra can’t speak through these two,” Luke said.
“I’d say that’s exactly what Shimrra’s doing,” Jaina hollered back.
Gargantuan symbiots, Sgauru and Tu-Scart were partners in the walkway devastation. Considering that the former was female and the latter male, it was something of a marriage. At Gateway settlement on Duro, the couple had demonstrated their talent for demolishing buildings, and they were doing an equally skilled job of dismantling and consuming the yorik coral concourse. Hard-shelled, segmented Sgauru was doing most of the grunt work. Beady black eyes dotted her white head, and her mouth writhed with dozens of feeder-tendrils. Her powerful rear pincers gripped around the upper coils of her snakelike mate, she was using her stubby front legs and enormous head to smash the span to pieces. Loose chunks didn’t fly far before being pulverized by sleek black Tu-Scart’s elongated body.
Absent their usual team of handlers, the creatures had emerged from a massive hollow beneath the concourse, through which the esplanade river cascaded thunderously into the square at the base of the Citadel. Lashed by rain and howling winds, the monolithic fortress loomed above the Jedi, rising up into the battle-torn sky like the rough-hewn blade of a coufee. Though winged, mottled with patches of dark green moss, and bedecked with vines whose seeds had taken root in the worldship’s nooks and crannies, the Citadel was simply too sheer to scale, even with the aid of the Force. Starfighters were still circling the rounded summit, but not one had managed to come within a thousand meters of Shimrra’s lair without being destroyed. The remains of those that had tried littered the uneven, inundated terrain for kilometers around.
Far below the concourse, at the base of the Citadel, a dark maw accessed the lower depths of the mountain. But that opening was heavily guarded by reptoid slave soldiers. Rocketing down the terraced wall of the urban canyon, Page’s Commandos and YVH droids were taking up firing positions above the Chazrach, but the enemy was well entrenched and answering Alliance blaster bolts with spouts of firejelly and highly flammable sparkbee honey.
If the Jedi were to infiltrate the Citadel, Jacen had to persuade Sgauru and Tu-Scart to halt their destruction of the western concourse while a narrow stretch still remained intact. He risked a few cautious steps toward the beasts, then stopped when temblors began to rock the fragile span at regular intervals.
“Now what?” Jaina yelled to Luke. “Is Zonama Sekot making another fly-by?”
The temblors grew louder and more forceful. Jacen managed to keep his balance on the swaying concourse, but the steady jolts proved too much for the unbroken expanse. Fissured, the yorik coral span gave way, plummeting in fragments into the whitewater torrent. At the same time, two armored quadrupeds appeared from around the curved base of the Citadel, lumbering in concert and settling into fortifying positions behind the slave soldiers. Planting their splayed front claws in the raging river, they lowered their triangular heads. Plasma streamed from the thick horns that branched from their bony foreheads, spattering against the walls of the canyon and forcing the commandos and YVH droids to retreat to the rim.
With the cavernous entrance at the base of the Citadel effectively sealed, Jacen saw Sgauru and Tu-Scart as the only hope. The beasts had to be coaxed into breaching the wall of the Citadel. Jacen sensed that his best chance of accomplishing this would require him to abandon the Force and give himself over fully to his Vongsense—something he had been unable to do since arriving on Coruscant. He felt like a switch being thrown between two poles; Force at one pole, Vongsense at the