Remnant: Force Heretic I (40 page)

“Understand this,” Nom Anor said. “I could have let you die. But do not allow the fact that you are alive deceive you into believing that I won’t kill you out of hand, now or in the future.”

Kunra didn’t appear frightened; he was probably too weak from his injuries to feel anything much apart from shock.

“I’m not fool enough to think that, Nom Anor,” Kunra said. Fluid rattled in his lungs as he spoke; he coughed once to clear it, spitting the gray-green mucus into the dust at his side. Then, fixing his wavering eyes on Nom Anor again, he said “I am too aware of your reputation. You do nothing that doesn’t benefit your own cause.”

“And what is my cause now, Kunra?” Nom Anor emphasized the question by applying increased pressure with the blade.

“You tell me,” Kunra gasped.

“I want many things, and in time I intend to get all of them.
Your
time, on the other hand, is decidedly limited. You can either agree to help me achieve these things, or I will kill you now. There is no other option.”

Kunra rolled his eyes and attempted to laugh, but the pain was obvious beneath the facade. “I don’t suppose I could have a little time to think about it, could I?”

“You have already held me up enough,” Nom Anor said coldly. “Choose now, or die indecisive. It matters not to me.”

The ex-warrior closed his eyes, then nodded once. “I guess I will help you, Nom Anor.”

“Good.” He was satisfied that the answer was truthful. Kunra was a coward; he would do anything to save his life, even if it meant betraying himself. Such desperation would make of him a fine bodyguard, for a time.
They would understand each other on that score, at least. “There are just two more things you need to know,” he said, withdrawing his blade from Kunra’s throat and sheathing it under his belt. “The first is that you will never question my instructions. Not more than once, anyway, for there will be never a second time.”

He paused to let the point sink in.

Kunra nodded. “And the second?”

“You will never use my true name again,” he said. “If it
was
my name that led Niiriit and the others to their deaths, then I would avoid something similar happening in the future.”

“What should I call you, then?”

“I haven’t decided upon a name yet,” he said. “Amorrn will do for now—the name I used in the upper levels when I visited with I’pan. But I fear that even this might be recognized now. I shall let you know when I have chosen another.”

He held out a hand and helped Kunra to his feet. The ex-warrior’s leg was tender, but he could walk, at least. Yuuzhan Vong biotechnology was more effective on living tissue than was the machinery of the infidel—or even, Nom Anor suspected, the nebulous Force of the Jedi.

“Where to now?” Kunra asked, standing in a position that favored his good leg.

“Up,” Nom Anor stated flatly, glancing into the darkness overhead. “I have some business to attend to there.”

Saba’s comlink clicked at the same time Danni said: “Wait, Saba! Look!”

Through the remaining scarab’s senses, Saba saw one of the Yuuzhan Vong warriors at the controls of the slaveship slip to his knees, then slowly slump over to one side. The second was having troubles of his own. Going
to the aid of his fallen comrade, he lost his balance and fell forward, striking his head on the control console. He regained his footing just long enough to stand up again, then he, too, went down in a heap.

“The poison worked!” Danni’s words were carried on a barely suppressed and incredulous laugh of relief. “It just took a little longer than we expected it to.”

“It doesn’t change anything,” Saba said soberly. “We’re still drawing away from
Bonecrusher.
”

The Barabel drew her lightsaber at the same time she opened a comm channel. There seemed no point maintaining a communications blackout any longer.

“Jacen, this iz Saba,” she said urgently. “Our cover has been blown. Please acknowledge.”

His reply was muffled by the layers of the people and blorash jelly packed in around them. “I hear you, Hisser,” he said. “And we already guessed as much. We have contacts closing in across the board, moving in to pick you up right now. Will you be able to get out okay?”

Danni’s expression had quickly gone from elation to one of dismay. Like Saba, she knew the only way out would be to cut through the hull, and that would result in the almost certain deaths of all the captives they’d come to rescue.

But maybe there was a way, Saba thought. It was risky and went against virtually every spacer instinct in her body, but it just might work.

She had sworn not to let such a thing happen again …

“Jacen, empty the flight deck,” she said hurriedly. “Keep
Jade Shadow
in dock and tell Mara to have the tractor beam ready.”

Danni’s eyes grew wide in the reddish darkness. “Saba, you’re not—?”

“We truly have no other choice,” Saba shot back sharply. “Now, hang on to something.”

Saba pressed the business end of her lightsaber flat against the fleshy wall of the slaveship interior. The sound it made on ignition was horrific as it boiled through flesh to the vacuum outside. The ship quivered as she dragged the blade along the wall, turning a hole into a slit one meter long, then two meters. The tissue resisted parting even when the lightsaber had moved on, cauterizing the edges and killing nerve endings. A great bulge developed as muscles pushed in from all sides, resisting the pressure differential by fighting to keep the lips of the hole together. But Saba kept cutting, bracing herself as best she could against the ribbed flesh, readying herself for the inevitable.

When the rent in the belly wall reached five meters, Saba felt the muscle tremble and give way. The slit peeled open, emptying the contents of the slaveship out into the vacuum in one thick stream

“Saba, what are you doing?” The exclamation came from Mara. “Those people are going to freeze to death out here!”

“No they won’t,” Saba replied, fighting the current that was trying to pull her through the gap also. The people bumping into her as they were sucked through the hole only made her task that much harder. “The insulation from the blorash jelly should hold for several minutez—long enough for you to get them into the flight deck.”

“And what are they supposed to do for oxygen in the meantime?”

“The gnullithz, of course.”

“Saba, the gnulliths won’t work in a vacuum!”

“They won’t be in a vacuum; they’ll be in the blorash jelly—which iz where they’ve been getting the oxygen in the first place.” She grunted heavily as a couple more
bodies collided with her on their way out. “Trust this one, Mara. Get them to the flight deck az soon as possible and everything will be all right.”

I hope
, she added silently to herself.

Mara chuckled nervously. “This is a crazy idea,” she said. “One only a Barabel would attempt!”

Saba sissed softly to herself, taking Mara’s words as the compliment they were intended to be. With both hands on the pommel of the lightsaber, she widened the hole as far as she dared—too much would send the slaves spraying across the sky in an arc too wide for Mara to catch them all; but too small a hole would mean the slaveship wouldn’t empty fast enough, giving the Yuuzhan Vong reinforcements time to arrive. After a few moments she snapped off her lightsaber and crawled around the hole to where Danni was clinging desperately to the command bulge.

“Time to get out of here,” Saba told her, wrapping around the woman’s shoulders an arm that was almost as long as Danni was tall.

“About the only thing going for this plan of yours, Hisser,” Danni said, “is that it can’t be anywhere near as bad as the way we came in.”

“Here we come, Mara,” Saba said over the comlink.

Clutching Danni close to her chest, she let go and was instantly swept up by the current and sucked unceremoniously out into space. Limbs from the other captives continued to batter her as they flew out, so she tucked herself around Danni to protect her. Then the slight acceleration she had felt through the slaveship was gone and she was spinning in space, two living people in a clump of about forty held together by the blorash jelly. The stuff stiffened around her as though setting, keeping the pressure in.

“We’re out,” she said shortly.

“Keep talking,” Jacen said. “It’ll give us a trace.”

“No—get—otherz—” But that was all Saba could manage. The blorash jelly was continuing to set, pressing at her chest and making it almost impossible to breathe, let alone talk.

Trapped and with little else to do but wait, she stared out through the translucent jelly at the galaxy spinning idly around her, wondering if this would be the last thing she ever saw. She thought back to how her own people had spilled from the slaveship above Barab I. Had any of them been conscious to ask similar questions? Or had they been like all the rest of the captives here, unconscious and oblivious to the danger they were in?

As she continued to drift through space, Saba noticed several lights that were brighter than the other stars. The biggest of these was Borosk’s sun, spinning lazily around them, while others she imagined to be TIE fighters that had been launched by
Bonecrusher
to make room for the people rescued from the slaveship. As yet there was no sign of attack from the Yuuzhan Vong, which was fortunate.

“Beautiful,” Danni ground through a clenched jaw, her eyes fixed on the view of the massive globules of solidifying jelly drifting nearby. The reddish spheres were glittering in the sunlight, spinning around them in a lengthening spiral with its starting point in the side of the rapidly deflating slaveship.

Saba didn’t have the breath or the energy to comment. All she could do was stare, and morbidly wonder what would happen to them when the jelly set completely …

But the thought was broken when the bubble that contained them jerked suddenly, bringing their gentle roll to a complete and abrupt halt. A sense of falling swept over
her, and with immense relief Saba realized they had been picked up by
Jade Shadow
’s tractor beam. Their bubble—along with a dozen or so others—was slowly being drawn down into hold of
Bonecrusher.

“Got you,” Jacen said. There was no hiding his relief. “Are you two okay in there?”

“I’m—here,” Danni said with effort. “Not sure—about—Saba.”

Danni seemed to be coping with the solidification of the jelly better than Saba was. Maybe, Saba thought as the tightening across her chest worsened, it had something to do with the smaller lung capacity of humans. A Barabel would find it much harder to breathe in higher pressure since it took more energy to inflate the larger rib cage. Danni and the other humans, though, could survive more readily on small, rapid breaths.

Theorizing was all very well. Knowing the problem didn’t help her find a solution—especially when she could feel darkness closing in around the edges of her vision. She closed her eyes so she didn’t have to think about blacking out, concentrating instead on Jedi breathing techniques to conserve her energy.

This was disrupted when another rough jolt sent them tumbling end over end. Saba thought she could hear Jacen talking, but he sounded far-off and vague. Soon she heard other voices, and she thought for a second that they might be the droid brains joining in on the discussion, but again she couldn’t be sure. Everything was too hazy.

Flashes of light coincided with a faint and distant tapping sound, and she knew instinctively that
Braxant Bonecrusher
was taking hits to its reactivated shields. She should have felt relief that she had been rescued, but all she could think of was the other people in the blorash
jelly. She just hoped they had been rescued before the Yuuzhan Vong had arrived.

A thrill of fear rushed through her when the flashing abruptly intensified. Surely the Yuuzhan Vong couldn’t be
that
close? But no, she thought numbly. These flashes were from laser light, not plasma.

With some effort, her eyes flickered open and she looked around to see what was going on.

“No, Saba,” Danni panted from close by. “Keep them—shut. It won’t—be long my—scaly friend.”

Despite Danni’s reassurance, though, it was hard to maintain a Jedi calm with all the flashing going on, as well as the jelly solidifying around her like ferrocrete. But she tried to stay focused just the same.

Her ears detected a faint sizzling-crackling sound that gradually grew louder. The mass of jelly shook violently. She felt the pressure across her body ease slightly, and then a few seconds later ease some more. Soon Danni was squirming out of her grip, and she realized with great relief that she could breathe properly again.

Saba opened her eyes and the world flooded back in. Between flashes of automatic cutting lasers and robot manipulators grabbing at her, she heard droid brains announcing that the release had been achieved with “optimal efficiency,” while TIE fighters reported on the defense of the Dreadnaught. And there was Jacen standing above her, tearing chunks of jelly from Danni’s jumpsuit, then helping Saba do the same. The Barabel’s mind was still fuzzy, and her hands were stiff and unwieldy as circulation gradually returned. It took her several minutes before she could fully comprehend the scene around her.

She was on a landing deck. More than fifty rough spheres of solidified jelly filled the confined space almost to its limit. From the spheres protruded arms and legs, along with the occasional head of the unconscious human
captives. Cutting lasers were beginning to work on several of the spheres, releasing the people so they could be treated. She could feel them through the Force: all would need medical attention to reverse the effects of the drugs supplied by the gnulliths, but it looked very much like the majority of them would live.

She laughed out loud as Jacen and Danni helped her to her feet. Danni threw her arms about the Barabel in a show of both relief and gratitude, while Jacen slapped her shoulder plates in a congratulatory gesture. An immense feeling of satisfaction rushed through Saba—so strong was it, in fact, that for a moment she was afraid that her legs would fold beneath her.