Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Dark Tide 01_ Onslaught - Michael A. Stackpole [78]
The creature scuttled forward, and Jacen felt his guts begin to knot up. Tiny white bumps, looking like gravel and scattered like pimples, dotted the creeper’s dorsal carapace. The slender arms doubled back on themselves, with little pincers and feathery fronds brushing over them, touching them. It seemed to Jacen that the creature was taking inventory of its cargo.
The creeper came to a stop below his face. The two stout appendages reached up, pincers held wide. Jacen pulled his head back, preventing the pincers from grabbing his ears or cheeks. With the creeper so close, he got a good look at the white stones and knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that they were the seeds of the calcifications he’d seen on the slaves. They plant those in me and I’m done for.
One of the slender appendages swept upward, slapping the delicate frond across Jacen’s exposed throat. Lightninglike agony slashed across his neck. He would have screamed, but the pain paralyzed his vocal chords and drained his neck muscles of all feeling and strength. His head bounced down and hung there. Muscles in his face twitched, and a little blood dripped from his mouth from where he’d accidentally bitten the interior of his cheek.
The stout claws caught his earlobes and clamped down tightly. The only good thing about the pain the frond had caused is that he barely noticed the pressure on his ears. With the pain-frond pulled back, one of the slender appendages reached up and pinched the flesh below his right eye, exactly over the curve of his cheekbone. He heard a click and knew the little claws had sliced through his flesh. Blood dripped, splashing scarlet dots over the creeper’s pale gray shell.
While one slender stalk opened the wound, the other brought up one of the little bits of gravel and tucked it beneath his flesh. More pinching and the bleeding stopped, but Jacen could feel the foreign body inside of him. He narrowed his right eye and could feel the thing grate against his cheekbone.
A shudder shook him. He knew of countless creatures, insects mostly, that found suitable hosts for their broods. They would implant eggs into these hosts, allowing a crop of creatures to grow inside the victims. The little creatures would mature and eat and eat, devouring their host from the inside out until they were prepared to burst forth and seek new prey. The host that had sustained them was left a withered husk, with its own life sucked out and spent on raising a clutch of its own murderers.
No, I can’t let this happen to me! He redoubled his efforts to summon the Force, pushing past the pain, but he never quite felt himself connect. Snarling, he tried harder and harder, refusing to give up. He pushed for all he was worth, seeking that spark that would lead him to the Force, refill him and sustain him.
On the shelf by the door, his lightsaber rattled against its resting place.
The creeper released his ears and scuttled toward the doorway. Jacen stared intently at his lightsaber, willing it to twitch and dance. He wanted it to rise up from the shelf, climb toward the ceiling, then he would drive it down with such force that it would crush the creeper. He didn’t know what he could do after that to effect an escape, but that was enough for the moment, and joy surged through him as the lightsaber drifted up off the shelf.
Then it spun away, out toward the east, becoming a black dot against the sun’s ball. Jacen watched it vanish, his victory dissolving into astonishment. He tried and tried to recall it, tried to make it return and smash the creeper, but it vanished. He could not feel it, and great sadness slammed into him. Jacen felt as if the Force itself had whisked away his lightsaber, taking away from him the symbol of the Jedi Knight because it no longer felt him worthy of any place in the order.
Then, distantly, he heard the snap-hiss of a lightsaber