Star Wars the Truce at Bakura - Kathy Tyers [110]
Dev’s choked cry whirled Luke around in time to see the broad hatch shoot up into the ceiling. A P’w’eck leaped through, seized the boy from behind, and brandished a claw at his throat. Dev ducked and fired his paddle beamer over one shoulder. The P’w’eck collapsed, leaving a thin trail of red blood across Dev’s neck.
Guided by his subconscious, Luke whirled and slashed behind him. Two more P’w’ecks had appeared as if from thin air. They fell wounded and shrieking, but others lurked in an opening where he’d seen no hatchway. They pelted him with diffuse blue blaster bolts. They were still shooting to stun. His saber deflected bolts onto bulkheads and alien flesh. Dev cried out and fell to the deck. Luke hadn’t seen—or felt—anything hit him. “Dev?” he shouted.
The massive blue Ssi-ruu dove toward Luke through the broad hatch, warbling and whistling. It fired a steady silver beam. Dodging, Luke raised his saber and bent the beam toward a P’w’eck in the narrow hatchway. It collapsed, forelimbs flailing. The blue one came on across the junction, watching Luke but not the deck. From up the curving corridor, Dev crawled on elbows and knees toward the blue giant. Luke dove across the yellow-lit hall and ducked the silver beam. The blue’s will daunted him, even from a distance. It might not perceive the Force, but in Luke’s senses it cast a huge dark shape with the same savor that tainted Dev’s memory-crippling shadow.
Dev lunged up from the deck. From behind Big Blue, he fired his paddle beamer into the base of its tail. The alien twisted its upper body toward Dev and fell limp legged. Luke dashed forward, brandishing his saber. Ducking the silvery beam, Dev pressed his paddle to Blue’s head and fired. The creature honked, then screamed. The scream ended in a gurgle. Dev zigzagged his beamer across its head. Clattering noises retreated up both curving corridors. Luke relaxed, coughing a little. Deep in his throat, something tickled.
Dev sat down on Big Blue’s flank and kicked it. When it didn’t move, he cradled his left hand under one arm and let his beamer dangle. “I faked that hit. It seemed safer to play dead than to go on fighting,” he rasped, panting. “I didn’t seem to be helping you at all.” The trickle across his throat was darkening. Luke touched the wound. “It’s not deep,” Dev insisted. “Just a claw mark.”
Big Blue lay still except for a narrow black tongue that drooped, quivering, from one nostril. “Is he stunned?” Luke asked.
“Dead.” Dev stared up into his eyes.
Luke saw pain, guilt, and triumph. “Who was that?”
“He … controlled me.” Dev stared at the gray deck tiles. “But Firwirrung was my master—the small brown with the V on his head, the one whose foreclaw you cut off. Firwirrung is the really dangerous one. We’re all dead if he catches you. Everyone. Everywhere.”
“Why? He didn’t seem to be in charge.”
“No, but he runs the entechments.”
“Have they always … enteched … to power their droids?”
“They’ve enteched older P’w’ecks for centuries. But humans last longer,” Dev explained. “He means to force you to entech other humans from a distance. The Ssi-ruuk want to enslave the whole galaxy. There are … I don’t know how many more ships, waiting out there to hear when Bakura falls.”
“This is just a scout force?” Luke asked, alarmed.
Dev nodded, and Luke sensed his shame. “Believe me, Firwirrung’s ready for you.”
He’d helped.… So that was the story, at last. Luke shut his eyes. No wonder Dev had tried to strangle him, rather than let the Ssi-ruuk have their way. “Well.” Luke choked another cough. “Let’s get the job done before more of them show up.”
“Are you all right?”
Luke coughed again. That reptilian odor irritated his nostrils and throat. “Something I’m breathing must bother me. I guess you’re used to it. Come on, let’s go.”
Engineering was a jumble of controls and conduits, but Luke had no trouble finding the master display panel. This locus created a gargoyle imitation of life so powerful, so abominably twisted, that he flinched. A hundred intermingled energies seethed at his subliminal senses. Freshly