Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order_ Dark Tide 01_ Onslaught - Michael A. Stackpole [80]
Jacen stood and kicked his legs free of the bonds. “Uncle Luke, I’m so sorry.”
“No time for that.” Luke handed him his lightsaber, then took hold of Jacen’s right arm and hauled himself to his feet. “The ship is over there, in a depression, to the southeast. Artoo is waiting for us, sending out the data we’ve acquired. We have to go, now.”
“What about the slaves?”
Luke shook his head. “What slaves?”
Jacen pushed past the aches in his body and reached out to catch a sense of the frayed ones. “I don’t understand. There were slaves when I went to the villip paddy.”
“They don’t exist anymore. They are dead, or, I don’t know, somehow they have gone completely over to the Yuuzhan Vong camp. Perhaps they accepted what they are becoming.” Luke leaned heavily on his nephew. “We have to get to the ship.”
Jacen hugged his right arm around Luke’s waist. “What’s wrong? Did they hurt you?”
“No, Jacen, it’s just that . . .” Luke’s chest heaved with exertion. “It’s just that using that much of the Force, using it that directly, is exhausting. A Jedi may be able to control and use a great deal of the Force, but there is a price, a fearful price. Hurry, we have to go, quickly.”
Jacen hustled his uncle along. “Where are we going?”
“We’re going to where others need us, and we can’t be late.” Luke stroked his right hand across his face, painting it with traces of Jacen’s blood. “We’re going to Dantooine.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Dr. Pace shook Corran gently awake. He blinked his eyes. “Yes, what is it, Doctor?”
She straightened up and pointed a finger back toward the excavation chamber. “Jens has got something on those beetles you brought back.”
“Really? So soon?”
“She’s good. What can I tell you?”
“I guess. Thanks. Give me a moment.” Corran slowly sat upright and pulled the soles of his feet together. Snugging his heels in as close as he could to his groin, he leaned forward, stretching out aching muscles. Using Jedi techniques to get rid of the pain was nothing, but that wouldn’t give him back the flexibility tight muscles stole away. The hike back from the lake-bed village they’d seen had been uneventful, and Corran hadn’t minded Ganner’s silent brooding. It gave him time alone with his thoughts, and what he was thinking demanded lots of brain sweat.
In his years with the Corellian Security Force, he’d seen plenty of cruelty. Among the criminal classes, the strong tended to prey upon the weak, which really came as no surprise. In a world where the only rule was that the most lethal individual was at the top of the food chain, cruelty became a survival trait. Corran had seen the result of hideous tortures and casual cruelty. While all of it had been horrible, none of it quite equaled what he saw with the Yuuzhan Vong beating that prisoner to death.
What got to Corran about the death was that the poor slave had clearly gone mad because of the growths on him—and the growths were something the Yuuzhan Vong had caused to become part of him. It struck Corran that if the growths were meant to be used as a means of control, one wouldn’t want those means of control to be something that eventually drove the slave beyond control. It would be akin to fastening a restraining bolt to a droid that, eventually, started issuing random commands that required the droid to be destroyed.
From what he had witnessed, Corran began to get a sense of something else going on with the Yuuzhan Vong and their slaves. The abandon and apparent glee with which the two had killed the slave suggested to Corran that this was something they looked forward to. It almost seemed as if the small shells were presents that would unwrap themselves and give the Yuuzhan Vong a chance