Rebel Stand: Enemy Lines II (30 page)

“Where are the others?”

“En route. I got a comm message to them.”

“How? There are kilometers of rubble between us and them! A comm message couldn’t possibly penetrate.”

Exasperated, Kell finally did look down at his leader. “Do you remember something about us putting a sensor package up at rooftop, then running a direct cable down so Danni and Baljos could get a constant sensor feed?”

“Oh, that’s right.”

“I broadcast to that sensor package—”

“Never mind, never mind, I get you now. I’ll set up for the others getting here.”

   The hole above Nyax’s head widened. No more rubble poured down upon him. Instead, sunlight did. First it was a tiny shaft; then it broadened into a blue-white column of brilliance. He bathed in the light, held out both hands to capture it, rubbed it into his cheeks.

Luke could feel Tahiri’s sense of shock; it matched his own. “Did he drive a hole all the way to the surface?” she asked.

“I think so,” Luke said. He turned his attention to the beings at the summit of the construction droid. He could

feel their confusion, too. Nyax, his objective accomplished, had released them. As their volition returned, their physical exertions, their outrage at the way they had been violated for so long, overwhelmed them. “I have to get up there,” Luke said. “Persuade them to drive that thing out of here before the building comes down.”

“No, you don’t,” Mara said.

He looked at her, surprised at such a merciless, unnecessarily cruel statement. But then he sensed her amusement at his mistake.

“Just tell them,” she said.

Luke reached up and found minds—dozens of them, all receptive to the Force. In the wash of Force energy emerging from the crack in the wall, he found he could reach any of them, all of them.

He projected a strong demand for silence, a sense of calm, and could feel them quiet. Then he formed a picture in his head: the building collapsing, the construction droid driving in reverse to get away. He projected that image with all the strength he could muster, bolstered by the Force wellspring.

He felt them react—shock … and then belief. In moments he heard the metal tower’s engines roar again, and could feel their intention to crash their way back out through the rubble pile behind them.

Luke thumbed his lightsaber into incandescence and marched toward the creature with Irek Ismaren’s face.
Let’s finish this
.

But Nyax, ignoring him, lifted straight up into the air and floated up through the hole his Force powers had made. In a moment he was out of sight.

* * *

Danni, Elassar, and Bhindi scrambled in through the access hatch.

“Take the seats forward,” Face ordered. “These rear ones are for the Jedi; we don’t want people climbing over each other when they board. Copilot’s seat is mine. Where’s Baljos?”

“He’s staying,” Bhindi said. “Instead of me.”

Face sighed. Once it became likely that resistance cells would be of little use here, he’d told Bhindi to pack up for a return to Borleias. He hadn’t anticipated Baljos being so resistant to having his studies cut short. Baljos’s choice here might prove to be a scientific boon someday … or it might be a useless way to commit suicide.

But it
was
Baljos’s choice.

Face dogged the hatch shut, then struggled up the makeshift ladder and into the copilot’s seat. He strapped himself in. “Ready when you are.”

“Boom,” Kell said. He thumbed a hand remote.

The
Ugly Truth
rocked as the wall beneath its keel blew out into the street beyond.

Kell didn’t wait to evaluate the situation, the size of the hole. He shoved his control yoke and the transport lurched forward. Face’s stomach rose into his throat as the transport leaned out into the open air above the avenue, then leapt free of the building to plummet nose-down toward the ground.

   The construction droid’s internal turbolift opened and the Jedi stepped out into the machine’s topside control chamber.

The scores of people packed into the chamber didn’t notice them. Their attention was riveted on the forward
viewports. Beyond them, mounds of rubble were falling away … and beyond hovered a cloud of coralskippers.

Even as the construction droid burst out into sunlight, the coralskippers opened fire, pouring plasma bursts into the machine’s front face. Shocks from impact points dozens of stories down rocked the control chamber. Diagnostics screens lit up; alarms blared. Tatterdemalion workers who had, minutes ago, been mind-controlled slaves now shrieked, possessed again of enough intelligence to realize that their doom was at hand.

“We’ve got to get them out,” Tahiri said. “The weapons—”

Luke shook his head. “This droid’s weapons won’t do much against coralskippers. We have to use other weapons.”

“What weapons?”

Mara said, “Us.”

Luke raised his voice, drawing on the Force to strengthen it. “Everyone out! Down the emergency stairs. Don’t take the turbolift; it’s
evil.
” He added the mental image of the turbolift snapping open and shut like the mouth of a malevolent carnivore.

The Coruscant survivors continued shrieking, but crushed forward toward the two opposite stairwell exits, leaving the Jedi some room in the middle. The parting of the sea of flesh also gave them a clearer view of the coralskipper formation and the incoming plasma fire.

“That fountain of Force energy is what made Nyax stronger,” Luke said. “It’s pure power … and we can use it, too.” To demonstrate, he raised a hand like an orchestra conductor … and a mound of rubble against a building a hundred meters ahead rose into the air. Luke
clenched his fist and drew it toward him, and the rubble swept toward the construction droid.

The coralskippers to the rear of the formation had no chance. Chunks of duracrete, stone, and ferrocrete plowed into them from behind. Dovin basal singularities snapped into position to swallow some of the improvised missiles, but even that was not enough. Luke’s missiles smashed into yorik coral, sweeping coralskippers out of the way.

Eyes wide, Tahiri mimicked Luke’s gestures, but with the face of a building to their left, to the right of the coralskippers. Chunks of facing blew forth from the building, hurtling and falling among the coralskippers.

Mara continued to add her voice and her Force presence to the orders Luke had given, spurring the workers to flee more quickly, but most of her attention was on the chamber’s controls, its walls and ceiling features. She found what she wanted and reached up to undo a hatch in the ceiling. Bright light spilled in from above and a metal ladder lowered. She went up topside.

Coralskippers rose from the formation in sudden flight, attempting to get away from the stream of crude projectiles, but those who rose first ran into another stream, this one moving much faster; chunks of rock and duracrete pounded into the yorik coral, eroding it like a super-powered sandblaster, destroying those vehicles.

At first Luke thought that Mara had initiated that attack, adding her strength to his and Tahiri’s, but he realized after only a moment that it felt wrong. He leapt up through the hatch Mara had opened, landing beside her on the construction droid’s roof. Tahiri was only a second behind him.

From here, they had a clearer view of the sky full of coralskippers and of the ziggurat behind them.

From the ziggurat emerged a column of rubble. As it rose, it parted, arcing away from its point of emergence in all directions like a water spray. But this spray was being flung kilometers in every direction, chewing through building tops and coralskippers as it landed.

And above its center, where the rubble no longer rose, floated Nyax. Giant boulders danced in and out through the rubble spray, weaving a lovely spiral through the air.

“Another Jedi academy graduate,” Tahiri breathed. “He can lift really big rocks.”

“Very funny,” Luke said. He gauged the leap from the construction droid’s roof to the nearest solid surface on the ziggurat, decided they could make it. “Let’s go.”

   Viqi heard a noise in the distance, a roar as if some dam had finally opened its valves to let countless tons of water through. The floor rumbled under her feet.

She ignored it. She ignored the pain in her wrists, pain caused by her struggles against her bindings; those struggles had gone on until she’d found a jagged piece of metal protruding from a wall, and now she was free again.

She reached the Terson’s apartment building and the floor of their chambers. She was trembling with exhaustion and dripping with sweat by the time she stumbled into the living chamber … and then she froze, almost all remaining hope draining from her.

The secret access stairs were down, and, of all things, an airtaxi rested in the middle of the chamber.

She took the stairs up as fast as she could and stared in anguish at the hole in the wall through which the
Ugly Truth
had left. All her work was undone. She would have to start again, searching, hiding, surviving, until she could find or repair another functional spacecraft.

Well, it was likely that the airtaxi was functional. That was a starting point. She descended to give it a look.

On the front seat was a pile of preserved food from the
Ugly Truth
, and a note:

   Senator Shesh:

We thought you would probably need these more than we do. Don’t eat them all in one place.

   Love,

The Wraiths

   Only then did Viqi sink down to the carpet. Only then did she begin to cry.

The ziggurat was a series of high, broad steps. The Jedi leapt up to the next step, ran its width, and then leapt up to the one above, again and again, until they reached the roof.

From here they could see the hole in the ziggurat roof widening. With every moment that passed, more tons of rubble poured up and out of the hole and flew out to pour onto surrounding kilometers of buildings. Some streams diverted to hose coralskippers out of the air. The lines of giant boulders still danced their merry circles around Nyax.

Luke led the others off at an angle, to where each of the boulders in turn dipped down to within meters of the ziggurat’s surface. As the next one swept low, they leaped, propelling themselves farther with use of the Force, and landed atop the irregular duracrete surface.

Luke could feel it as Nyax detected them. The pale giant rotated in the air to face them, his smile changing from one of simple pleasure to one of malice. “This is going to be bad,” Luke said.

Mara nodded. The wind at this altitude whipped her hair into a life of its own, making it look like a candle flame in a strong breeze. “Any ideas?”

“I have one.” Tahiri knelt to improve her balance while she stared ahead. In the distance, this stream of boulders took a sharp turn, then moved to within a few meters of Nyax’s position and beyond. “Just past that point. Distract him. I’ll finish him.”

Luke cocked an eyebrow at her. “
You’ll
finish him. How?”

There was something in Tahiri’s eyes that sent a chill down Luke’s spine. “He could fight the Jedi just by feeling us in the Force,” she said. “He couldn’t feel the Yuuzhan Vong, so he had to watch. Well, I’m both.” She rose and turned away from Luke and Mara, then took the long leap to the next flying boulder back in line. She raced its length, then leaped again to the third boulder down.

“What do you say we take her at her word?” Mara said.

“I’m too tired to argue.”

Their boulder reached the end of its straightaway course and turned. It turned more violently than its predecessors had, but Luke and Mara could feel Nyax’s
intentions in the Force; they kept their feet planted and did not budge.

As their vehicle came closer to Nyax, Luke stretched forth his hand. He snatched a portion of the rubble stream from beneath them, bent its course, sent it hurtling toward Nyax.

Nyax reacted without moving, regaining control of the stream, hurling it at Luke.

Luke leaned over backward, rotating his boulder with him. The oncoming stones crashed into its side and bottom as the rotation continued.

Upside down, clinging by virtue of her enhanced Force strength, Mara ignited her lightsaber and hurled it. It twirled under the flow of boulders, almost invisible through the dense rain of duracrete; then, as it came within meters of Nyax, it twirled up and at him.

His expression changed to one of startlement. With none of his own blades active to protect him, he slipped sideways, out of the lightsaber’s path, then turned to watch it as Mara directed its flight. She sent it around in a long loop, preparing it for another approach.

Mara and Luke came upright as their boulder completed its rotation, and Luke could feel Nyax’s attention on him, too, waiting for his attack. Luke made it, shoving in the Force, trying to hurl Nyax off balance and onto Mara’s blade. The attack was a success, but Nyax activated all his blades as he was shoved, and with contemptuous ease he swatted Mara’s lightsaber away.

   Power flowed through Nyax, such power as no being alive had ever felt. He could reach down into this world,
reach through the false crust beneath him, through the natural stone crust beneath that, all the way to where stone turned to sluggish fluid and through to where superheated metals ran like river water. He could crack this world in two, could force the meaningless worker-things to convey him to another, and crack that one, too.

And he was tired of these creatures. They were weaker than he, but so stubborn. Even inventive.

Nyax raised his hands. He would crack the stone they rode on and send it and them hurtling down into the ruins.

Something slammed into his back, just below the point where his internal armor plate protected him. His eyes snapped wide. He had not felt it coming. He used his power to overcome the pain.

A second thing struck him. He felt bones in his lower back shatter. Numbness flowed across his legs. He exerted greater control over himself, desperately trying to force sensation into those limbs, as he turned.

His third antagonist, the smaller female with the yellow hair, rode another boulder, lying upon it and gripping it with one hand. She looked at him with alien mercilessness in her eyes. She barely registered in his special senses—she must have closed herself off to the power, reducing his ability to detect her, his ability to anticipate her moves.