• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

All these years later, here he was their prophet.

THIRTEEN

The ychna led the attack on Caluula Station.

Towed into place by a special breed of dovin basal grown on faraway Tynna, the monster slug fastened itself to Caluula’s deflector shields like a leech, fattening as it absorbed every joule of ionized energy the generator could summon, then taking the suddenly vulnerable central module in its enormous mouth and crushing it like an eggshell. No sooner had the module depressurized than into the rend dropped hundreds of Yuuzhan Vong warriors, disgorged from landing craft and outfitted with armor and the star-shaped breathing creatures known as gnulliths.

Squadrons of battered starfighters streaked from the station’s launching bays to engage swift flights of strafing coralskippers. Close-in weapons traversed and fired, pouring storms of green energy at the approaching capital ships. In the intact modules, klaxons continued to wail, locks cycled, and blast shields descended to seal off corridors and vital enclosures. Against the barricades of solid durasteel, the Yuuzhan Vong splashed red-hot magma, and where that failed they loosed an improved stock of black-plated grutchyna, whose digestive acids were corrosive enough to burn through alloy.

Close to where the ychna was feasting, crouched behind a rampart of fuel-depleted loaders and stacked cargo crates, Han, Leia, and two dozen soldiers waited with hand weapons, assault rifles, repeating blasters, and a few grenades and rockets that had been scrounged from Caluula’s near-empty armory. Those droids that weren’t carrying ammunition or standing by to refresh weapons moved about in a daze, including C-3PO, who was walking in tight circles behind Leia.

“Don’t lose your head,” she told him. “Lend a hand.”

“But, Princess Leia, I’m scarcely a war machine. I’m useless for anything but protocol and translation. Oh, where is Artoo-Detoo when we need him?”

“Threepio, you’re forgetting that you’ve been as courageous as Artoo ever was.”

C-3PO came to a halt. “Have I? Well now that you mention it, there was that incident on—”

“Incoming!” a soldier yelled from down the line.

Fifty meters away something was burning an enormous hole in the lowered blast shield. Clouds of noxious vapor streamed from the ragged edges of a widening circle.

Han checked the charge of his DL-44 and drew a bead on the center of the circle. “Hold your fire,” he said. “Wait till they show themselves …”

First through the breach were a pair of grutchyna. The six-meter-long beasts leapt snarling from the acid clouds like apparitions, only to be cut to pieces by blasterfire before they had gone ten meters. Then the armored warriors came, rushing through in groups of three and four, hands gripped on amphistaffs or bandoliers of thud bugs.

“Now!” Han shouted.

Thirty blasters fired simultaneously, dropping the vanguard dozen, then a dozen more behind them. But the Yuuzhan Vong kept coming, treading on their fallen comrades in a mad charge and hurling plasma eels and amphistaffs on the run. The weapons thumped against the barrier and caught one or two of the defenders by surprise. But no razor bugs or airborne venom followed, making clearer than ever that the warriors wanted captives, not casualties. Advancing into the grid of laserfire with fists raised in overtures of personal challenge, they were mowed down by the fives and tens, seemingly ignorant of the fact that the Alliance soldiers were playing by a different set of rules.

The warriors would have called foul if they could—foul at being so dishonored. Their every action defied death and sowed confusion. And somehow that made them harder to kill, rather than easier targets.

Blasters fired nonstop, and the thrumming blade of Leia’s lightsaber batted away a hail of thud bugs. But the line couldn’t be held. Outnumbered, the defenders were forced to fall back. The Yuuzhan Vong pressed the attack, stopping only to drag away and bind those they had