Her elation changed to disappointment and concern when the shining object turned out to be a humanoid skull. As she scanned the area, she saw a mostly intact skeleton stretched out and picked clean. Although not what she had hoped to find, it did confirm that there might be something else in the caves with them. She grabbed her comlink and signaled Finn.
“Did you find it?” Coming from the small speaker, his voice sounded tinny.
“No,” she replied, “but I did find some humanoid remains. Keep your guard up.”
“Copy that,” he replied.
Dusque replaced her comlink on her belt and continued down the tunnel. She found that since she had verified the presence of predators, she was straining to hear every last sound. Without warning, she heard the scurrying again, and this time it was on top of her. From around a bend she hadn’t detected, a large rodent came hopping straight toward her. She didn’t even have time to draw her weapon before the monstrosity was less than a meter away. She held her breath and froze to the spot.
Larger than most canids, the creature appeared to be covered in armored plates. It had an elongated nose, which suggested that it relied predominately on its sense of smell. As it hopped on its larger rear legs, it paused almost on top of Dusque’s boots. It stood on its back legs and sniffed the air curiously. Dusque didn’t move a muscle and prayed the comlink wouldn’t suddenly go off.
While the creature stood on her, Dusque saw something start to ooze from its clicking jaws. As the liquid hit the tunnel floor with a spatter, there was a slight sizzle. She realized that it was bile, a powerful alkaloid that helped the creature break down and absorb fats. Now she knew why the skeletal remains were so smooth. The corpse had been simply digested away. She realized that it was a bile-drenched quenker that stood on her feet, something not many saw and lived to tell about. While she sincerely wished that she would not be its next victim, the scientist in her hoped that she might be able to salvage a sample of the animal’s genetic material off her boot when she got out of there.
After what seemed like an eternity, the quenker lowered itself and hopped up the tunnel. Dusque let out a shaky breath, but her elation was short lived. She realized that she would probably have to pass it at least one more time before she got out of the cave. She wasn’t sure how long the masking aerosol would last, and she was torn. She wanted to warn Finn, but she feared that if he had found himself in a similar situation, the sound of the comlink would undoubtedly startle the creature and alert it to his presence. She accepted that fact that he was on his own, and that it had been her decision, her choice to live with. She began to grasp the enormity of what Princess Leia must live with every day, and she wondered again how the woman found the strength to do it.
Taking a deep breath, she continued down the tunnel. She had to admit, it was an ideal spot to hide something precious. She couldn’t think of a reason anyone would come down here, and the quenkers—she was certain there were more than just the one—would make excellent natural guards. She wondered if any Rebels had died secreting the holocron. And she wondered if she and Finn would share their fate.
If I die here, at least I will have done something with my life, she thought. I’ll be remembered, even if it’s only for a short time. The thought warmed her and gave her the courage to go on.
The tunnel wound sharply to the left and then opened into a large chamber. Once again, there were two paths to choose from and a healthy sprinkling of humanoid remains in both directions. Not too far ahead, Dusque heard more skittering and another, unidentifiable sound. She decided she didn’t need to see what had made that particular noise, so she chose the tunnel that veered away from it.
As she moved to the right, she realized that she was no longer hearing water echoing in the distance. She suspected that the tunnel she had picked was going to come to an end soon, simply another offshoot that led to nowhere. Shortly she discovered that she was both right and wrong: The tunnel did end in another cul-de-sac, but it was not empty.
She was startled to see an arch made from three slabs of stone freestanding in the center of the recess, only slightly taller than an average human. There was no chance that it was a natural occurrence—the stones didn’t look as if they’d been cut from any of the nearby rock walls. She was sure they had been very deliberately placed. After checking around and behind the arch, she holstered her gun and walked through.
On the other side of the arch was a circle of smaller stones, each one small enough that even Dusque could have placed them there herself. In the center was a small fire pit, and above it was a rudimentary spit. As Dusque examined it, she wondered briefly if one of the Dantari had somehow set up a small encampment there, but she dismissed the idea as illogical. While the Dantari were simple people, they were practical. Quenkers would not be worth hunting: the risk–reward factor was disproportionate. Someone else had been here, but because the pit was cold—which she verified by holding her hand over the ashes in the center—there was no way of knowing if whoever it was might still be in the area.
As she crouched near the fire pit, she had an odd thought. She thrust both of her hands into the ashes and started to root around. Stirring up a small cloud of ash, she tried not to cough aloud. She was about to give up, feeling foolish, when she felt something unusual in the ashes. She got her hand around it and pulled it from the fire pit.
Dusque stretched out her palm flat and held the soot-encrusted object at eye level. She gently blew the ashes from it and then caught her breath in amazement. A perfect cube, no bigger than her hand, twinkled in the glow of her halo lamp. Her mouth opened in awe as she turned the object first to the left and then to the right, studying it.
The outer edges of the object were etched metal, while a crystal matrix gleamed and pulsed in the center. She fell back on her rump, as though someone had punched her in the stomach. She knew how important the device was, but she hadn’t expected it to be so beautiful. For several long moments, Dusque forgot everything else around her and stared at the delicate-looking construct. She had no idea how long she stared at it or how long she might have been mesmerized by it if her comlink hadn’t suddenly chirped at her. Shocked back into reality, she scrambled to grab the communicator.
Before Finn was able to transmit anything, she whispered, “I’ve got it.”
“What?” Finn asked.
“I found it,” she repeated, still staring at the holocron.
“You are amazing,” he replied, clearly elated. “Let’s start back up. I was just checking in with you because I haven’t seen anything down here.”
Dusque was about to end the communication when she remembered the rats. “Finn,” she added, serious once more, “be careful. The tunnels are full of quenkers.”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” he replied.
“The aerosol seems to work, but I don’t know for how long.”
“Okay,” he answered. “Meet you back up at the divide. You watch yourself,” he added.
“Copy that. Dusque out.”
She marveled at the holocron once more before tearing her eyes from it and placing it carefully in her sack. She took once last look around at the stone campsite and wondered who might have used it and what they might have known about the holocron. She couldn’t believe that it had come to rest in the center of the pit accidentally. She was momentarily frustrated that she had a puzzle before her that she might never know the answer to. With a sigh, she resolved to let it go. She quietly left the strange chamber.
As she started up the tunnel, Dusque kept a watch for quenkers, but she didn’t see any. Rather than be pleased, she found their absence disturbing. If they weren’t near her, they were probably hunting something. She hoped it was the creature that had made the strange sound deeper in the cave. Then she heard several short bursts of blasterfire.
“Finn,” she whispered passionately, and started to run.
As she rounded a bend in the tunnel, the sound of blasterfire was almost deafening. The e
choes from the blasts sounded on and on. About twenty meters ahead of her, she saw Finn, blasters drawn. He was surrounded by three quenkers, each one dripping acidic bile. Although he was holding them back, she could see that they were starting to close in on him. She dropped down on one knee and, taking careful aim, started to blast away at the quenker closest to her.
“Dusque!” he yelled.
She continued to fire away at the creature, and a part of her rational mind was amazed at their resilience and wondered what in the chemical makeup of their bony hides made them so impervious to blasterfire. The rest of her wanted nothing more than to blast the creature into oblivion.
She could see that she had caught the attention of not only the quenker she was attacking, but also the one that was closest to Finn. Her distraction bought him a little breathing room, and he was able to reload his nearly empty blaster.
After what seemed an eternity, the first quenker showed signs of faltering. Unsteady on its back legs, it began to tremble. Redoubling her fire on it, Dusque edged closer, trying to stay in the optimal range for her weapon. She kept her arms outstretched, firing until her blaster was mostly drained. Fortunately, the quenker expired before her power pack did. The rodent tumbled to its side in a great heap and twitched once before lying still.
Dusque refreshed her blaster and started firing on the one Finn wasn’t attacking. It had already suffered severe damage from both their weapons, and at her renewed fire it broke off its attack and hopped weakly down the tunnel. From the corner of her eye, Dusque saw that the quenker didn’t get very far before expiring like its littermate. There was only the one left. But Dusque found she didn’t need to assist much; Finn had basically already killed it. The animal was just too stubborn to know it was dead already.
“C’mon and die,” she heard Finn say through gritted teeth. As though the quenker heard him, it promptly fell over, finally aware that it had, indeed, died.
Both Finn and Dusque were breathing hard. Dusque found that she was trembling from the exertion, but was elated with their temporary success. She smiled at Finn and leaned against the tunnel wall to catch her breath. She saw that Finn’s chest was heaving, as well. Ignoring his exhaustion, he crouched down to poke at the dead rodent.
“Careful,” Dusque warned. “The saliva coming out of its mouth has acid in it.” But unable to resist, she knelt down and collected a sample of the bile in a specially sealed container.
“Is there anything on this planet that’s not out to kill us?” he quipped when she was done.
Dusque, however, answered him seriously. “Well, there is the little fabool. It’s a creature that just sort of bobs around like a balloon. It’s pretty harmless.”
Finn laughed. “I was joking!”
“Oh,” Dusque replied. “I guess I can’t stop being a scientist. We are what we are.”
Finn grew silent and lost his smile. “You’re probably right,” he replied.
“We should get out of here before the smell of blood draws out more of these things,” she told him.
“Before we go,” Finn asked quietly, “can I see it?”
“Of course.” Dusque realized that she wanted to see the holocron again, as well, part of her still not believing that she had found it.
She pulled it out of her pack and held it out on her flat palm. It twinkled in the low light of their halo lamps, and Dusque saw that Finn was as mesmerized as she was.
“Where was it?” he asked.
“There was an offshoot of the tunnel and what looked like a primitive campsite,” she explained. “I found it there, but I have no idea whose site it was.”
“And it was just lying there?” he asked.
“No, it was in the fire pit under some ashes,” she answered slowly, thinking how foolish it sounded in retrospect.
Finn looked up with some amazement. “What made you look in there?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, shrugging her shoulders in bewilderment. “It wasn’t logical, but I don’t think logic has anything to do with this.”
“No, I think you’re right,” he agreed. “And I think we should start to make tracks out of here.”
Dusque started to hand it to Finn, but he refused. “You hang on to it.”
She put it away, and together they started the long climb out of the cave. Somehow, perhaps because they were flush with success, climbing out didn’t seem to take as long to Dusque as descending had. Or it’s because I’m not alone, she thought, looking at Finn. He, however, was grim faced once more. Dusque knew that he must have been thinking that they weren’t in the clear yet. She admitted to herself that she had forgotten that simply because she and Finn had the device didn’t mean the Rebel Alliance did. There was still a long way to go.
Eventually, the roar of the waterfall grew louder and Dusque knew they were nearly there. She breathed a sigh of relief that they had managed to avoid any more quenkers. She honestly didn’t know how much more their weapons could have handled.
Soon enough, the back side of the waterfall was visible to Dusque. She moved to stand near the water’s edge, feeling the mist on her cheeks. Whether it was because they had been successful or just because she was alive, she reveled in the feel of the cool water on her skin. They had succeeded and they had done it together. With a gentle smile, she turned around to share the thought with Finn.
He was standing a few meters behind her, an unreadable expression on his face.
Concerned, she took a step toward him. “What’s wrong?” she asked, puzzled.
“I’m sorry,” he told her eventually, fidgeting with his hands. “I’m so sorry.”
Something in his tone scared her. What could he possibly be sorry about? The only thing she could think of was the nearby water, but he hadn’t seemed so anxious previously. And then she heard the sound of a power pack slamming into place.
“If you don’t hand over that pack, you’re going to be a whole lot sorrier,” a voice from behind Dusque called out. She and Finn whirled around to see several humanoids step through the waterfall. Every one of them was armed, and every one of the weapons was pointed right at them.
THIRTEEN
The man who had threatened them stood in front of three others. He was as tall as she was, dressed in a mangy vest and pants. He wore two low-slung holsters, one on each hip. A few tufts of wispy blond hair poked through the torn hat on his head. His shirt was partially open, revealing a silver chain from which hung a pendant with a sigil that looked like a bird’s foot. He had both his blasters leveled at Dusque.
“Are ya deaf?” he demanded. “Whatever you two got while you were in there is the property of the Gray Talon. Now hand it over.”
One of the others moved up to cover Finn, who gave Dusque a helpless look.
“You heard him,” the one beside Finn shouted.
“This is our planet and what’s here is ours.”
“I’ll one ask you one more time,” the leader said, “before I go ahead and take what I want. Hand over your treasure. I don’t take kindly to the idea that someone would want to rob me.”
“Okay,” Dusque replied, not trying to hide the quiver in her voice. “Just don’t shoot.” She proceeded to root around in her bag.
“Hurry,” the leader ordered her. He seemed to be enjoying her fright. “If you do, I promise I’ll kill you quickly. If not, I can make you suffer for days. I’d like that,” he said softly, “but you wouldn’t. Pretty thing like you shouldn’t have to suffer.”
Dusque poked around frantically in her pack and then her fingers closed around what she had been searching for. When she stopped moving, the Gray Talon member with the two blasters flicked one of his weapons in Finn’s direction.
“If you don’t give it to me, I’ll have my partner kill him right in front of your lovely eyes.”
As she pulled the container out of her bag, she popped the cap with her thumb.
“Here it is,” she shouted, and tossed the vial of quenker bile directly into
the pirate’s face.
Screaming in rage and pain, he dropped his blasters and clawed at his eyes. Dusque, seeing him double over in agony, grabbed him by his vest and pulled him close. She reached down with one hand and pulled her sporting blaster free. Using the leader’s body as a shield, she started shooting at the two men who were still closest to the waterfall. She managed to kill one of the two pirates with her first shot. She missed the second, and he charged at her, knocking her under the water.
Finn used Dusque’s distraction to the fullest. Swinging his right arm up, he triggered the mechanism in his sleeve that released a deadly knife into his hand. In one motion, he brought that hand straight up and under the pirate’s rib cage. The Gray Talon member was dead before Finn had resheathed the bloody weapon. Then he turned and saw that the last pirate was straddling Dusque’s motionless form, and that her head was completely submerged in the cascade from the waterfall.
“Get away from her,” he screamed, launching himself onto the pirate’s back.
Locking an arm around the pirate’s neck, he wrenched him off Dusque. They both tumbled into the water, and a weapon fired once before everything became silent.
Dusque realized vaguely that she could stand up. Somewhere in the distance, she heard the whine of a blaster, but it was hard to make out over the pounding in her own ears. She staggered to her feet, drenched and sputtering. Disoriented, she couldn’t tell what was going on. As she slowly regained her senses, she saw that the cave entrance was littered with bodies. She seemed to be the only one left standing. But where was Finn?
Turning, she saw him lying partially in the water, facedown, along with one of the Gray Talon members. That sight snapped Dusque out of her stupor and galvanized her into action. She ran to Finn on wobbly legs and pulled him from the water. She could see that he had a severe burn on his left leg, but otherwise he appeared uninjured. Struggling with his inert weight, she dragged him up onto the rocky ledge of the cave entrance and dug the medkit out of her sack.
The Ruins of Dantooine Page 18
