Star Wars_ Young Jedi Knights 04_ Lightsabers - Kevin J. Anderson [30]
Norys bent down to grab the spear, narrowing his eyes in rage as he looked at his teacher. The old pilot had made a fool out of him. He felt a dangerous anger boiling through his veins. He had a good mind to take the tfiple-pronged spear and attack the pompous old man with it.
"But don't think your armor is invincible." Qorl reached inside his uniform, pulled out a deadly blaster pistol, and pointed it directly at Norys. "For instance, this blaster could slice through that armor as if you were wearing nothing at all."
Norys stiffened, looking into the ominous snub barrel of the pistol. His mind raced. What had he gotten himself into? Why was Qorl so upset with him? He wondered whether he could swing the spear, knock the blaster away, and strike down the TIE pilot. That would serve the old man right....
Qorl turned the blaster pistol around and extended it toward Norys, butt end first. "Here. This will be your personal weapon," he said.
Norys dropped the spear to the floor and tentatively took the blaster. The pistol felt very good in his gloved grip. Qorl nodded at him. "For target practice," he said, then went over to the controls by the door.
The gray light-absorbing walls of the windowless room shimmered.
Suddenly Norys found himself standing in a dank, dim cave with fanged stalactites dripping from the walls and ceiling. Long spikes of stalagmites rose like blunt knives from the floor. Unseen water trickled somewhere, and a pallid light seemed to ooze from the pale rock itself. Despite the room's visible transformation, Norys could detect no change in the smell of the air through his helmet filters.
"The walls of this chamber will absorb blaster bolts," Qorl said. "Your weapon has already been set to full power. There won't be much recoil, but you must become accustomed to how it feels to aim and shoot and hit a target. Pay attention now. Watch for them as they attack."
"Watch for what?" Norys said, looking around from right to left. "What's going to attack me?"
The cave seemed more sinister now. The eye goggles distorted his vision, and he tried to compensate. Strange creature noises burbled and hummed from every direction. He couldn't tell if they were insects or rodents, but they sounded vicious to him, as if everything within this chamber might be a predator.
Norys had hunted in the lower alleys of Corus cant, tracking giant granite slugs, multifanged spiderroaches, mutated feral rats-and his intuition told him this was simply a testing chamber on the Shadow Academy. He didn't think there could be any real danger. Not really.
However, this cave certainly seemed real enough....
With a squalling cry, a leathery-winged creature dropped out of its hiding place in the ceiling and swooped toward him. Its eyes were huge and slitted, and Norys could see pointy ears or antennae on top of its head and razor claws at the ends of its flapping wings as it swept down.
A mynock. They weren't supposed to be terrible predators-but from the wicked fangs and claws as it swooped toward him, Norys decided this was one mynock with a bad attitude.
He pointed the blaster and squeezed off an energy bolt, but the beam went wide, striking a stalactite and startling up four more of the angry flying creatures. The new batch of mynocks also attacked, annoyed at him for disturbing their dark slumber.
Norys squeezed the firing button again and again, adjusting his aim as he watched the bright bolts streak through the dimness. The brilliant spears of light dazzled his eyes, and he could barely see through his filtered goggles.
The devilish mynocks swooped and avoided the deadly beams.
This wasn't fair! It was supposed to be target practice. He should have been able to point at a bantha's-eye or hide behind a window while shooting at an unsuspecting target in the streets below, as he had often done on Coruscant.
The blaster missed again and again as mynocks swirled around him, flapping