Dark Tide 1: Onslaught

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Luke reached out and pulled Mara into a firm hug. “I love you very much, Mara. For this and for everything else.”

  “I know, Luke.” Mara pulled her head back a bit, then rested her forehead on his, noses touching. “Each of us doing our parts will defeat the Yuuzhan Vong. Count on it.”

  “I do.” Luke kissed her and held her as if it would be the last time, then reluctantly let her slip from his arms. “May the Force be with you.”

  “And you, my love.” She winked at him and backed away toward the center of the camp. “When you need me, I’ll be there.”

  He nodded, then jogged out toward the southern perimeter. He quickly found Colonel Bril’nilim, a Twi’lek in charge of the New Republic troopers, scanning the distance with a pair of macrobinoculars. Luke sensed frustration coming off the commando leader, so did nothing to disturb him.

  The Twi’lek turned and offered him the vision device. “Perhaps you can see something more than I can.”

  Luke waved the macrobinoculars away. “The Yuuzhan Vong are out there, but that’s obvious. The troops are likely slave forces they want to bear the brunt of the casualties. Where do you want me?”

  Bril’nilim pointed over toward the southeast. “You, I’d like there, your nephews off to the southwest. Let me know anything you feel that is odd, and I can send scouts out.”

  “As ordered, Colonel.” Luke turned and found his nephews hanging back a bit. “Did you hear?”

  Jacen nodded. “Yes. Anakin and I go over there, you’re over here. We report whatever is odd.”

  “Right. No going yourselves to investigate, understand?”

  Colonel Bril’nilim’s lekku twitched as he came around. “You better understand. No heroics. My troops will shoot things they don’t understand, and a Jedi sneaking around will be one of them. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” the two young Jedi Knights said in unison.

  Luke and the colonel exchanged smiles. “Good, get to it. I like having three Jedi on my line. I just hope none of us will have to see too much action.”

  “Tough Seven here. I could use some cover on my attack run.”

  Jaina clicked on her comm unit. “Rogue Eleven on you, T-sev.”

  “Thanks, Sticks.”

  The Jedi pilot rolled her X-wing up on the port stabilizer and came around on a heading that put her to starboard of the X-ceptor heading in at the ground formation. The TIE interceptor wings on the X-ceptor spat laser darts past its long X-wing nose, scything down rows of Yuuzhan Vong troopers. Though Jaina could not see much in the green light from the lasers, she could make out that none of the Yuuzhan Vong troopers broke or ran. They also seem small to me, stockier than I thought the Yuuzhan Vong were from what Jacen described.

  A coralskipper came around and vectored in on the X-ceptor. Jaina shoved her stick forward and sprayed red laser splinters at the skip. It immediately sprouted a void that sucked in most of the laserfire. Jaina kept her ship coming on hard and loosed a solid quad burst in the midst of a spray, which caused the Yuuzhan Vong pilot to shy off. As he broke to her port, she rolled to port and leveled out in T-sev’s aft. I don’t like being shielding, but I need to give him this shot.

  Fire blossomed from the X-ceptor’s nose as a proton torpedo squirted out. Jaina bounced her ship up after the launch and gained a bit of altitude. Below her the torpedo streaked straight at the first moving mountain shadow, then it exploded into a brilliant silvery ball that lit up the night.

  The X-wing’s canopy flash suppressor engaged immediately, cutting out most of the glare but still allowing her to see what was going on at the point of the attack. The torpedo had detonated shy of the target by about one hundred meters, and a void had gobbled up a lot of the energy, but what little it didn’t consume wrought havoc on the ground. The energy evaporated soldiers, eliminating whole companies in the blink of an eye. Others it scattered like toys beneath a vengeful child’s feet. The shock wave toppled several of the smaller vehicles, which looked to Jaina like bony armored domes mounted on brush-bristle cilia. Several rolled onto their backs, with their little legs waving in the air, while others that had their cilia flash-fried ground to a halt.

  Most impressive, however, had been the larger vehicle at which T-sev had aimed. Like the smaller creatures, it had a bony-plate armor. Along its spine, and at points on the flanks, hornlike growths jutted out. Plasma bolts shot from these horns, and while she couldn’t tell if the horns could swivel, enough of them pointed in any one direction to be able to scour the skies of fighters.

  She shuddered, as the whole thing looked to her like one giant, armored slug sprouting thorns.

  Jaina rolled hard to starboard, then sideslipped back to port before triggering a burst at the thing, which she arbitrarily decided to call a range—short for mountain range. A void snapped her shots up, and the range launched plasma in her direction. She juked her way clear of most shots and heard the static of her shields absorbing damage from the others. Her sensors reported other gravitic anomalies, which she assumed were dovin basals trying to take her shields down, but her compensator sphere had been expanded to fend off that sort of assault.

  She pulled up and throttled forward into the battle above the convoy. As she inverted her fighter to climb, she saw other ground detonations of proton torpedoes. It looked to her as if they had also gone off prematurely, which killed a lot of troopers and toppled the little creatures. She was glad to know her strategy would have some effect, but she feared it would not be enough.

  “Sparky, what’s the distance between the most forward and most distant ground explosions?”

  The droid scrolled the answer up on her secondary monitor.

  Jaina shivered. The distance made the Yuuzhan Vong column at least five kilometers long. It doesn’t matter how well we shoot. If we can’t knock out the ranges, there is no way we will stop the Yuuzhan Vong from reaching the camp. And, when they do . . .

  Leia started as she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned quickly and dropped a hand to the blaster she wore on her hip, but Mara bodied her back against the hull of the freighter in whose shadow they stood. Leia stared at her for a moment, then raised her free hand to her own throat. “You scared me.”

  “Sorry. Luke sent me to find you, stay with you.”

  “Are you sure? Shouldn’t you be—”

  “Resting?” Mara shook her head. “Never did like being helpless, so here I am. What are you doing out here?”

  Leia jerked a thumb toward the camp’s northeast perimeter. “People have been coming in to the center of the camp, but a couple of families from out here have not. I wanted to check on them . . . I was heading out, and then, I don’t know, I got a feeling . . .”

  Mara’s head came up, and she peered off past the edge of the freighter. “Something wrong?”

  “Nothing like that.”

  Mara nodded, then unclipped her lightsaber from her belt. “You got nothing at all, right?”

  “What?”

  Mara pointed at one of the tents. Movement was plainly visible in it, but as Leia reached out with the Force, she could sense no life in it. “That’s impossible.”

  “Not quite.” Mara darted forward, and her blue lightsaber extended itself in a sizzling line. She slashed at the guylines holding the tent up. It collapsed over three figures for a second, then they clawed their way free of the red fabric.

  The trio of Yuuzhan Vong warriors stood there for a moment, looking tall but, because of what they wore, hardly like the lean figures others had described. A pale pseudoflesh covered them save for the claws that projected through it and where it hung like a hood back off their heads. They had also pulled on clothes. At their feet, revealed by the shredded folds of the tent, Leia saw three naked bodies, covered in blood.

  In an instant she knew what had happened. Some of the Yuuzhan Vong had slipped into the camp, had killed refugees, and were using ooglith masquers to make themselves appear to be human. If others have mixed with the real refugees, inn
ocent people might be slaughtered. The desire to run off and raise an alarm warred with her seeing the three warriors turn to face Mara and her lightsaber. I have to protect the people, but I can’t leave Mara. What am I going to do?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Huddled in the rocks within sight of the Yuuzhan Vong camp, Corran glanced over at Jens. The student tech sat with her back to a big rock, her knees drawn up, with a blocky remote balanced on them. She flicked a couple of switches on the device, and a small spherical probe started to hum as it rose from the ground. An antenna telescoped up, and a small suite of sensors deployed themselves from the bottom.

  Corran nodded to her, and she sent the probe arcing around to the left, to come in at the camp from the north. The little black ball floated gently down into the camp. It circled several of the smallest shells, then darted directly toward the midsize ones. In front of the one that housed the two Yuuzhan Vong warriors, Jens used a strobe to flash the area, then started the sphere retreating to the north.

  The two warriors boiled out of their shells and pointed at the probe. One dashed back into his shell, returning with weapons, armor, and the Yuuzhan Vong equivalent of sandshoes. He dressed himself while still watching the probe, giving the other one a chance to run into his shell and arm himself. When he returned, the two of them began to stalk off after the probe, which had disappeared into the dunes north of the lake bed.

  Corran looked at Jens. “Keep them occupied. Once we enter the large shell, get Trista up and flying. She’ll be here in five minutes. She laces the area with the killscent bombs, picks you up, and gets us out. If we are not out in that time, consider us dead and get going. No questions, right?”

  Jens nodded. “Good luck.”

  “Thanks, you too.”

  He looked past her to Ganner. “Ready?”

  The younger man nodded and vaulted himself up over a boulder. Corran cut around the stone that had hidden him and ran as best as his sandshoes would allow. Ganner reached the safe sand first and bent to hit the quick release on his bindings. He dropped the sandshoes there and sprinted toward the big shell. He brought his lightsaber to hand, but didn’t ignite it.

  Corran kicked himself free of his sandshoes, but scooped them up with his left hand. He ran after Ganner and reached the large shell only a couple of steps behind him. Corran tossed the sandshoes aside at the entrance, then pulled his own lightsaber. He left it unlit, but his right thumb hovered over the ignition button.

  Ganner had paused inside the large shell’s throat. The walls and floors—every surface, really—were smooth and varied in color from a dark ivory to a soft pink. Darker gray spots dappled the walls at various points, but Corran could discern no pattern to them. The walls also seemed faintly luminescent, but he allowed as how that might just be sunlight somehow pouring through the shell.

  Ganner stalked forward and down a set of steps into the main chamber. Off it ran a number of tunnels that Corran assumed led to other smaller chambers, all of which made him wonder what sort of creature had grown the shell. While the flooring was very smooth, it wasn’t particularly slippery. The only sound they heard came from their own breathing and the rasp of sand beneath their boot heels.

  The grand chamber opened up as they came around a curve in the stairs. Ganner gasped and took a step back. Corran’s eyes narrowed, but he made himself step past his aide and onto the main floor. He looked at the two students and really hoped they were dead.

  The two of them hung from racks, bound ankle, thigh, and wrist. Their heads remained lower than their feet, and their limbs were locked rigidly. Both men had been stripped of clothing. Little maggot-white crablike creatures the size of a sabacc deck walked across their backs, pinching them with little claws, or digging needlelike appendages into their flesh. Little bloody rivulets striped the men’s flesh and colored the floor.

  Beneath them something that looked like more like a tongue than a slug slowly moved across the floor, cleansing it of the blood.

  Corran reached out with the Force and got a sense of the students. They were in a lot of pain, but their sense within the Force was coming through strong and unadulterated. They might have been beaten up and tortured, but they were not yet dying.

  Ganner stepped forward and waved a hand in Vil’s direction. The pinchers flew off his back and smashed into the wall. They descended into a glistening, slimy pile at the base of the wall. Ganner ignited his lightsaber and pulled it back for a blow that would clip one of the rack arms off, partially freeing Vil.

  Corran caught a spike of pain from Vil and held his hands up. “No, Ganner, wait.”

  “We don’t have time to wait, Corran.”

  “The pain spiked in him after you cleared off the pinchers. Do the same for Denna. See if the same thing happens.”

  Ganner nodded, and the pinchers on the other student flew off. Pain spiked in Denna, and Corran caught the related tightening of the arm restraints. “I thought so. The rack keeps them in a constant level of pain.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” Corran stared at Ganner with disbelief. “We’re dealing with Vong logic here. I don’t know what they are thinking or why they do what they do. We just have to find a way to get these guys out of these restraints.”

  Corran’s comlink buzzed. “Horn, go ahead.”

  “Jens here. The Yuuzhan Vong are headed back your way. They stopped chasing the probe.”

  “Not good. Buzz them. Do something to attract their attention. We need some time.”

  “You won’t have much. Trista is inbound.”

  “Sithspawn!” Corran’s nostrils flared. “No time to play, no time to think.”

  Ganner raised his lightsaber again. “We cut them free.”

  “And if one cut won’t do it? The restraints tighten and pop their arms out of their shoulder sockets or tear them clean off. No good.”

  “What do we do?”

  Corran raked fingers back through his brown hair, then stepped up to Denna and stabbed his stiffened fingers deep into the man’s armpit. Through the Force, he could feel a jolt of pain running through the man. He also saw the rack’s restraints slacken slightly.

  “That’s it. They’re being held in a constant level of pain. If the rack senses too much, it lets the pressure off. We have to put them in more pain, a lot of pain, to get the rack to release them.”

  The younger Jedi frowned. “How? Beat them up? Break some bones? Stab them with lightsabers?”

  “It would do the trick, but it would kill them, obviously.” Corran smiled grimly. “I will just have to make them think they’re in pain.”

  Ganner’s head came up, and he gave Corran a respectful nod. “Ah, yes. Get to it.”

  “Not that easy.” Corran began to roll up his left sleeve. “It will take some work.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Ever broken a limb?”

  Ganner nodded. “My leg.”

  “You remember it hurt, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you don’t remember how much it hurt. The mind is like that. You forget the really sharp pains so you’ll continue going on. Women forget the pain of childbirth or we’d all be only children.” Corran sighed. “I can project pain into them, but I’ve got to feel it to get it right.”

  “How?” Ganner’s question came very tentatively.

  Corran moved between the two racks and stood facing Vil, with Denna behind him. “You face Denna. When the machines slacken fully, you’ve got to make one cut, get the restraint straps. You do him, I’ll do Vil.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now the hard part.” Corran extended his left forearm toward Ganner, with his hand open and palm up. “One of the other Force abilities I have is pretty rare. I can, under certain circumstances, absorb a certain amount of energy without much damage to myself. To get the pain I need, I want you to press your lightsaber against my forearm. Not too hard—I like the limb just fine. Just hold it out, maybe, and I’ll mo
ve my arm up into it.”

  Ganner’s jaw dropped. “You can’t be serious.”

  “You want to save these two or not?”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. Are you ready?”

  Ganner nodded and extended the lightsaber.

  Corran could feel the buzz of it against his flesh as he slowly raised his arm. The blade’s heat vaporized hairs, filling the area with the stink of singed protein. Corran knew that scent was nothing compared to what would follow. He swallowed, once, hard, then flattened his hand and raised his arm another centimeter.

  Silver agony flashed right up his arm and into his brain. By reflex he started to use a Jedi technique to shunt the pain away, but then stopped himself. He concentrated, soaking in the energy of the blade. He looked out through slitted eyelids and saw his flesh reddening, then beginning to blister. Smoke rose from it, and the pain built. Then, as he saw the first hint of charring, he latched onto the Force and poured the torment out and into the students.

  One second, two, three. Corran let the burning sharpness flow through him and into Vil and Denna. They twitched while he trembled. They shrieked while his flesh crackled. His clenched jaw ground his teeth together, and he tasted blood.

  The racks slackened, dropping each student half a meter toward the floor. The restraining straps snapped taut, all glossy and black like wet leather. Corran ignited his own lightsaber and whipped the blade around, severing each strap, then he dropped to his knees and fell over Vil’s prostrate form.

  Gasping for air, Corran tried to employ the Jedi technique for shunting away pain, but he couldn’t focus enough to do it. The world began to swim and darken at the edges. He was mindful enough to thumb his lightsaber off, then he wavered between complete collapse and the need to get up, get moving.

  He heaved his torso upright and would have gone all the way over but Ganner caught the collar of his robe.

  “Corran, are you—?”