Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Dark Tide 01_ Onslaught - Michael A. Stackpole [108]
Mara ran to Leia. “How badly are you hurt?”
Leia shook her head, then started as the thing in her arm sprouted legs and tried to pry itself from her flesh. Mara reared back and tapped the razorbug with the tip of her lightsaber, killing it. Leia batted at the dead bug with her left hand and finally knocked it loose from her flesh. “Yuck!”
Mara tore the sleeve from her robe and quickly wrapped it around Leia’s arm. “We’d better get that looked at.”
“Later. There might be more Yuuzhan Vong with the refugees. We have to check—” Leia looked up. “Where’s Bolpuhr?”
“I don’t know.” Mara stood and helped Leia to her feet. “He was back over here, wasn’t he, near the tent?”
“Yes.” Leia ran over to the ruins of the tent, then stopped and sank to her knees again. “Emperor’s black bones, no.”
The Noghri lay on his back, his sightless eyes staring up at the sky. The Yuuzhan Vong’s claws had sliced deeply into Bolpuhr’s neck and chest. The Noghri, who had been tireless and fearless in his duty, looked smaller in death, more childlike and fearfully innocent.
Leia shivered. If the Yuuzhan Vong can kill Noghri with their bare hands . . . She shook her head and closed Bolpuhr’s eyes. “This is worse than anything we’ve faced before, isn’t it, Mara?”
Her sister-in-law slowly shook her head. “If it is, chances are we won’t have much longer to worry about it. Look, go to the refugees and see if you can sort out who the Yuuzhan Vong are. Maybe these were the only three to get in. I’ll check tents in this area and hold the perimeter. I’ll comm if there is trouble.”
“I don’t want to leave you here alone.”
Mara gave her a brave wink. “I have the Force. I’m not alone. Move it. I don’t want you here stealing more of my fun.”
Luke Skywalker stared out into the darkness. Detonations from proton torpedoes and concussion missiles were drawing closer. He could feel the shock waves vibrate through him. In the backflashes he saw the huge vehicles moving closer, ever closer. Plasma bolts filled the air with an orange glow and, more often than he wanted to acknowledge, exploded something in the air. Fiery wreckage would tumble from the sky and scatter fire and debris across the ground, doing some damage, but generally only illuminating the horde coming at them.
Luke dried his left palm on his cloak, then unfastened the garment and whirled it off behind him. He gripped his lightsaber tightly in his right hand, again and again looking down to make sure the heel of his hand was over the activation plate. He reached out with the Force to gauge the distance to the front and could feel the line of Yuuzhan Vong slaves broadening as they approached the camp.
One of the troopers stationed nearby looked over at him and smiled. “If you’re nervous, I guess there is no problem with me being nervous.”
Luke thought for a second and then nodded. In all the battles he’d fought, even Hoth, he’d been involved in one-on-one, man-and-machine fights. Flying an X-wing or piloting a snowspeeder demanded neither less nor more courage than fighting on the ground, but it was more impersonal. His shots broke other fighters or brought down Imperial walkers, and if his foes survived, that was okay. It was part of the game, part of what made such combat noble in the eyes of many.
But ground warfare was not noble. The object of the exercise was to kill as many of them as possible before they killed you. It was intimately personal because your target was another living being, not some machine encasing him. You succeeded when he dropped, and, yes, while an enemy might surrender, that was not viewed as anything nearly as noble as a pilot who was shot down and captured.
This is just going to be killing, pure and frighteningly simple. Luke could feel the frayed troops coming in, only five hundred meters distant. Beyond that line, fighters