Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Dark Tide 01_ Onslaught - Michael A. Stackpole [105]
Corran looked at Jens. “Keep them occupied. Once we enter the large shell, get Trista up and flying. She’ll be here in five minutes. She laces the area with the killscent bombs, picks you up, and gets us out. If we are not out in that time, consider us dead and get going. No questions, right?”
Jens nodded. “Good luck.”
“Thanks, you too.”
He looked past her to Ganner. “Ready?”
The younger man nodded and vaulted himself up over a boulder. Corran cut around the stone that had hidden him and ran as best as his sandshoes would allow. Ganner reached the safe sand first and bent to hit the quick release on his bindings. He dropped the sandshoes there and sprinted toward the big shell. He brought his lightsaber to hand, but didn’t ignite it.
Corran kicked himself free of his sandshoes, but scooped them up with his left hand. He ran after Ganner and reached the large shell only a couple of steps behind him. Corran tossed the sandshoes aside at the entrance, then pulled his own lightsaber. He left it unlit, but his right thumb hovered over the ignition button.
Ganner had paused inside the large shell’s throat. The walls and floors—every surface, really—were smooth and varied in color from a dark ivory to a soft pink. Darker gray spots dappled the walls at various points, but Corran could discern no pattern to them. The walls also seemed faintly luminescent, but he allowed as how that might just be sunlight somehow pouring through the shell.
Ganner stalked forward and down a set of steps into the main chamber. Off it ran a number of tunnels that Corran assumed led to other smaller chambers, all of which made him wonder what sort of creature had grown the shell. While the flooring was very smooth, it wasn’t particularly slippery. The only sound they heard came from their own breathing and the rasp of sand beneath their boot heels.
The grand chamber opened up as they came around a curve in the stairs. Ganner gasped and took a step back. Corran’s eyes narrowed, but he made himself step past his aide and onto the main floor. He looked at the two students and really hoped they were dead.
The two of them hung from racks, bound ankle, thigh, and wrist. Their heads remained lower than their feet, and their limbs were locked rigidly. Both men had been stripped of clothing. Little maggot-white crablike creatures the size of a sabacc deck walked across their backs, pinching them with little claws, or digging needlelike appendages into their flesh. Little bloody rivulets striped the men’s flesh and colored the floor.
Beneath them something that looked like more like a tongue than a slug slowly moved across the floor, cleansing it of the blood.
Corran reached out with the Force and got a sense of the students. They were in a lot of pain, but their sense within the Force was coming through strong and unadulterated. They might have been beaten up and tortured, but they were not yet dying.
Ganner stepped forward and waved a hand in Vil’s direction. The pinchers flew off his back and smashed into the wall. They descended into a glistening, slimy pile at the base of the wall. Ganner ignited his lightsaber and pulled it back for a blow that would clip one of the rack arms off, partially freeing Vil.
Corran caught a spike of pain from Vil and held his hands up. “No, Ganner, wait.”
“We don’t have time to wait, Corran.”
“The pain spiked in him after you cleared off the pinchers. Do the same for Denna. See if the same thing happens.”
Ganner nodded, and the pinchers on the other student flew off. Pain spiked in Denna, and Corran caught the related tightening of the arm restraints. “I thought so. The rack keeps them in a constant level of pain.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Corran stared at Ganner with disbelief.