Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [192]
That still left the problem of how to reach Shimrra’s bunker, but it didn’t take the Jedi long to discover a narrow stairway that hugged the Citadel’s curved perimeter as it wound toward the summit. Luke led the ascent, with Jaina close behind, and Jacen a few steps behind her, silently thanking the World Brain for interceding at the western walkway, and reaffirming his promise to end the dhuryam’s inner turmoil.
Carved from the same yorik coral that made up the fortress’s unpolished hull and bulkheads, the stairway was a continuous spiral, occasionally walled in on both sides, but more often climbing without an exterior handrail through maintenance rooms and expansive living chambers. Dilating membranes sealed each individual level, and access corridors connected the stairway to interior spaces. The Citadel shook with each seal the Jedi violated, as if each rupture sent a measure of pain through the living vessel. But the shaking could just as well have been a response to the ceaseless bombardment by starfighters, or explosions triggered by Page’s commandos as they fought their way into the lower levels.
Judging by the way the sinuous stairway had been engineered, and the layout of the interior spaces, Jacen realized that Shimrra’s worldship had obviously flown upright through space—a veritable mountain rather than a flattened oval or projectile-shaped vessel, such as the Jedi and Alliance forces had encountered at Helska 4, Sernpidal, Obroa-skai, and other worlds.
It wasn’t until the eighth level that Luke and his niece and nephew met with resistance, but it was clear from the ferocity with which the warriors attacked—from above, below, and through the various access corridors—that the onslaught was likely to continue all the way to Shimrra’s lair, and probably inside it, as well. If the warriors constituted the first line of defense, it was difficult to imagine what might await them at the summit, assuming they could even make it that far.
In most places the stairway wasn’t wide enough for the two people to stand abreast, and in those stretches Luke had to face the brunt of the attacks. He was his own vortex, deflecting amphistaff strikes, whiplike lashes, and spurts of deadly venom; dodging or redirecting flights of thud bugs; parrying the thrusts of coufees, to sidestep, duck, maneuver his body in ways that seemed to defy gravity. Stunned or burned by Luke’s green blade, thud bugs were ricocheting from the walls and high ceiling, chipping away at the yorik coral surface. Dropped in their tracks, warriors sprawled with hands pressed to stumps of legs and opened foreheads, or with black blood welling where the lightsaber had found defenseless areas between living armor and tattooed flesh.
Jacen recalled watching his uncle on Belkadan, where the war had begun, wielding two lightsabers when he had come to Jacen’s rescue. But the rescue on Belkadan paled in comparison to the control Luke demonstrated now.
His single blade might as well have been ten, or twenty.
He took the steps at a lightning pace, burning his way through dilating membranes but in complete control of his momentum. Seen through the Force he was a maelstrom of luminous energy, a Force storm against which there was no shelter. And yet all his energy poured from a calm center; an eye. He made no missteps. None of his actions were interrupted by thought.
In fact, Luke didn’t seem to be there at all—physically or as an individual personality.
Jacen and Jaina were astounded—but they had little time to reflect. Their lightsabers were busy, as well, turning the blows Luke dodged, or defending assaults launched from below.
On the fourteenth level, where the Citadel’s exterior wings sprouted from the hull, they reached a fork in the stairway.
Luke swung to Jacen. “Which way?”
He wasn’t even breathing heavily.
Jacen extended his Vongsense. “The left passage leads to living quarters on the next level. The other,