Onslaught: Dark Tide I

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Ganner snorted. “Shall we break out the speeder bikes?”

  “Nope. Dust is too fine for the engine filters to pull out of the air, so they’ll just stall.”

  “Then how do we get over there?”

  “We walk.”

  “But …”

  Corran leapt out from the freighter and landed in a crouch. He sank to ankles and wrists in a trough between two little sand dunes. Rising up a bit, he started walking toward the university camp.

  “How did you … You don’t have enough ability in the Force to …”

  Corran looked back at Ganner and waved him forward. “Move through the troughs. The lighter particles blow around, the heavier ones sink and are more compact. Still slow going, but it’s going.”

  He heard Ganner crunch down behind him, but a gust of wind raised a cloud that obscured the younger man. Corran spread his senses into the Force and found Ganner easily. All around them he found other hot spots of life, ranging from small insects to more complex creatures. Fist-size mammals were most numerous, and something larger lurked at the fringes of his awareness.

  He pushed on toward the camp and reached it with relative ease after a several-minute trek. A couple of rocky outcroppings defined the western edge of the camp. Long, dark-gray plinths thrust up through the sand like the fingers on a drowning man’s hand. Below diem were scraps of fabric that had once been part of tents. They flapped, red, blue, and green, from tent structural supports that were almost entirely buried in shifting sand.

  Reaching out through the Force, Corran searched for life beneath the sand. Again he found insects and the small mammals—with many of the latter huddled together deep in a crevasse in the rocks. Others were moving through the sand, into one of the tents and back out again. Their course was so regular that Corran assumed they were moving along a tunnel and raiding a food store of some sort.

  He looked at Ganner. “Aside from you, I get nothing very big.”

  “Same here. The small creatures are shwpi. The Imp survey team found them fairly common. The report says they’re herbivores and indicates they grazed on the abundant vegetation.”

  “They’ve overgrazed it, then, very badly.” Corran looked around, then climbed up on one of the rocks. “There is a much larger rock formation to the northwest, maybe half a kilometer off. The openings in it could lead to caves. Fly or walk?”

  Ganner frowned. “Even I would tire if I had to float the two of us over there.”

  “Not with the Force, with the ship.”

  “Oh.” He shrugged. “Walk, I guess. I’ve seen enough of that ship for a while.”

  “Me, too.” Corran climbed down and started off toward the northwest. Because the wind was coming from the west, he was able to cut along a trough for a bit, then had to go over a dune crest and move along another trough. It was easier than trying to wade through an ocean, since the sand waves didn’t pound into him. Still, sand managed to get everywhere and was decidedly more abrasive than water. The exertion also made him sweat, and the dry, cool air sucked as much moisture as it could from him.

  As he made his way toward the rocks, he relied on the Force to tell him about his surroundings. He didn’t sense many of the shwpi, and those he did encounter seemed paralyzed with fear. They trembled in deep burrows. And, still, at the very edge of his awareness, other life-forms moved and gathered.

  Corran pushed on, then dropped to one knee about a hundred meters from their goal. He swiped a hand across his brow, then wiped his muddy palm off on his trouser leg. “At least it’s not hot like Tatooine.”

  Ganner came over the low dune and crouched beside him. “True, that would just compound our misery.”

  “I should have thought to bring water, though.” Corran frowned, then his head came up as something tickled his awareness. Something is moving out there. He glanced at Ganner. “Feel it?”

  “Yes, coming in along this dune line, coming fast.” Ganner pointed directly north. “The sand is shifting a bit there.”

  Corran turned and fingered his lightsaber. Sand moved, ever so slightly, falling from the crest of dunes and down. He sensed a life-form speeding within the lighter, dusty layer of sand near the surface. It burned brightly in the Force, almost blinding in intensity as it raced closer. Corran took a half step back by reflex and tapered down his sense of the Force.

  The thing burst from the dune. Nothing more than a gray and white blur, it shot past Corran and dived into the next dune. Its powerful flat tail snapped back and forth, then disappeared within the sand. The beast shot off to the south, and both men watched the sand shift in its wake.

  It wasn’t until Ganner turned to look at him that Corran felt the stinging across his left thigh. His dusty black trousers had a neat gash slashed in them, and the pale flesh below was smeared with blood. The wound wasn’t deep and didn’t hurt that much, but if he’d not recoiled, it would have taken a huge chunk from his thigh.

  Ganner’s eyes grew wide, and he pointed to Corran’s leg. “Is it bad?”

  “No, but it could be.” Corran turned and pointed to the south. “It’s coming back.”

  “Two of them, and another starting from the north.” Ganner pulled his lightsaber from his belt and ignited a sulfurous-yellow blade. “We can stop them.”

  “Yeah, maybe those three, but there are more out there.” Corran could feel the shwpi burrowing deeper. He rejected that as a plan that he and Ganner could follow, which meant there was only one thing they could do. “Run for the rocks! Now!”

  The things—and that was about the best Corran could do in making up any sort of name for the gray blur that had slashed him—came on fast and oriented on the two Jedi as they made their dash for the rocks. Corran threw himself up over a dune and did a shoulder roll down the other side. He saw the sand rippling in a line toward him, so he dropped into a crouch.

  The thing burst from the dune and dove straight at him. Corran ignited his lightsaber and brought it up and around in a parry. The sizzling silver blade caught the creature behind the jaw and right in front of its shoulders, at what should have been a neck. Gray fur combusted into acrid smoke, and black blood splashed over the sand. The creature’s head snapped at Corran’s leg, once, then kept snapping and rolling across the ground until life drained from it. The body, stuck halfway into a dune, whipped the tail back in slackening slashes.

  The creature’s snout was long and tapered back into a wedge-shaped skull that was entirely covered in chitin or keratin, like fingernails, but much thicker and polished smooth by moving through the sand. Short but powerful limbs sprouted long claws, clearly designed for digging. The creature’s gray fur was little more than down except for a fringe at the back of the skull, and the long flat tail was covered with keratin scales. Its side-to-side undulation obviously helped propel the supple body through the sand.

  As striking as the creature’s physical presence was the horrid stink it gave off. It smelled to Corran like vapor from rotting ronto meat mixed with the sourest ale and harshest cigarra he’d ever tasted. He choked back a desire to vomit and didn’t terribly mind the scent of his gorge burning the creature’s odor from his nostrils.

  Corran leapt past the thrashing body and sprinted as fast as he could along the dune trough. He could feel two of the things pacing him. They’ll catch me, unless …

  He skidded to a stop, then lunged back at one dune. As he did so, he twisted the grip of his lightsaber, cutting in the dual-phase function. His lightsaber blade doubled in length and went from silver to purple. It sparked as he plunged it deep into the sand to skewer one of the things. The sand immediately boiled as the creature writhed out the last of its life.

  Old-style Jedi, indeed!

  The Corellian Jedi flattened as the second creature burst from the dune to his right and dived at him. Its attack tore a strip of cloth from his tunic, but missed scoring flesh. The creature’s flight took it into the dune where its fellow was dying, and the second creature attacked the wounded one. Its
jaws closed hard, cracking bones and making wet popping sounds that inspired Corran to get up and run again without looking back.

  He went over another dune, and another, with Ganner pacing him slightly to the south, leaping dunes in prodigious bounds. Some of the creatures seemed to still be following them, but a growing number broke off and oriented toward the rolling bloody balls that were corpses being worried and devoured. The beasts arced from dune crest to dune crest, like fish leaping from the waves, and let loose with undulating little cries that made them sound like feral R2 units on a rampage.

  Two men appeared on the rocky outcropping toward which the Jedi ran. Each of them bore a blaster carbine and started triggering off random shots, scattering them across the most direct route to the caves. More of the creatures moved away from the shots, letting Corran and Ganner come in fast.

  Chests heaving, they reached the rocks. Corran extinguished his lightsaber and bent over to catch his breath. He glanced sidelong at one of his saviors. “Thanks for the help.”

  The young man nodded, then raised the carbine’s muzzle as an older woman emerged from the mouth of a cave. Thickly built, and with dark gray hair pulled back in a tight bun, the woman had a hard look in her cobalt eyes that indicated she brooked no nonsense by those associated with her. For a half second she reminded him of his father-in-law, Booster Terrik, then she scowled and he realized he probably wasn’t going to get along with her even that well.

  Posting her fists on her hips, she shook her head. “Jedi. I should have known.”

  Ganner gave her a hard stare. “What do you mean?”

  She lifted her chin to indicate the dunes. “Only fools or Jedi would cross a slashrat killing field. You’ve got lightsabers. That makes you Jedi.” Her eyes narrowed. “Of course, that doesn’t mean you’re not also fools.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Jacen Solo felt turmoil gathering in him like the roiling clouds down on Belkadan. He knew part of it was simply impatience. He and Luke Skywalker had entered the star system out toward the fringe and R2-D2 had plotted a simple course to Belkadan. It was designed to make them look like a piece of debris being drawn into Belkadan’s atmosphere by gravity. To augment the deception, they shut down the engines and most sources of power, leaving the small ship a bit cold and decidedly dark.

  He sat alone on the bridge, watching the stars slide past as Belkadan grew ever closer. Studying the planetary profile from Luke and Mara’s previous visit, and supplementing it from the ExGal-4 survey of the planet, had prepared Jacen for a yellow-green ball with an atmosphere made mostly of carbon dioxide and methane, but new readings indicated the atmosphere had returned to near normal for Belkadan. The carbon dioxide level remained a bit elevated, and that contributed to it being warmer than archival data indicated it should have been, but not unpleasantly so.

  So says Uncle Luke, but he grew up on Tatooine.

  Part of Jacen understood exactly what had happened to Belkadan. The Yuuzhan Vong had released some sort of biological agent that had radically altered the planet’s ecology, and apparently had something else in place to restore it again to near normal. Jacen was well aware of other examples of a population managing to alter a world’s climate and ecology to suit them, so the Yuuzhan Vong’s action wasn’t unprecedented.

  What was stunning was the speed with which they accomplished the changes. Just over two months had passed since Yomin Carr had destroyed the ExGal facility here, and already Belkadan was back to normal. Jacen allowed that the readings his uncle and aunt had taken from before might have been artificially high because of local concentrations of gases, but he knew that to be a rationalization and didn’t believe it. He wanted to, however.

  The reason for wanting to believe it touched on his turmoil. He was a Jedi Knight, schooled and skilled in the ways of the Force, yet when he reached out and touched Belkadan, he didn’t sense anything that was terribly wrong. The world fairly pulsed with life, and none of it was malignant.

  That latter fact bothered him because he’d seen the Yuuzhan Vong. He’d listened to Danni’s stories of what they’d done to her and Miko. There was no doubt in his mind, no doubt whatsoever, that the Yuuzhan Vong were evil. Such evil should be radiating off that planet like light from a glow panel.

  The fact that the Yuuzhan Vong’s evil didn’t register through the Force shook Jacen deeply. His life had been built on a foundation of good and evil, of light and dark. While he had never known the Emperor or Darth Vader, he had been touched by evil. Recognizing that sensation—the feeling of fiery needles being scraped over flesh—had been a mechanism by which he had steered himself. Now, all of a sudden, just like the blastboat, he was adrift and had no way of avoiding trouble.

  The second that thought occurred to him, Jacen knew it wasn’t true, but the Yuuzhan Vong’s Force invisibility fed into the greater question of whether or not his uncle had found the correct path for the development of Jedi Knights. Luke’s training had been predicated on good and evil, yet here was a clear threat and the Jedi Knights were at a disadvantage fighting it. Everything that they had been taught would not help them confront and defeat the Yuuzhan Vong.

  He wondered if his approach—the idea of moving off into solitary contemplation of the Force—would provide him the means of recognizing and dealing with the Yuuzhan Vong. He couldn’t bring himself to believe they were not part of the Force in some way. Jacen assumed that at whatever levels he had become attuned to the Force, the Yuuzhan Vong’s presence did not somehow register. Animals could hear sounds he could not; alien species could see in spectrums he could not. Is it possible that the Yuuzhan Vong can be spotted in the Force if one’s awareness of it is expanded?

  He had no answer for that question, but he felt equally certain that his uncle’s approach was going to be useless in handling the Yuuzhan Vong. He had no doubt that the Jedi Knights would fight long and hard, and he even counted on them being able to win some battles. Mara had succeeded in killing a Yuuzhan Vong warrior on Belkadan in a duel, but even she admitted that being unable to sense him through the Force put her at a severe disadvantage.

  Yet, as much as Jacen wanted to withdraw, he felt guilty and selfish when he contemplated doing so. Danni’s pained descriptions of how the Yuuzhan Vong had treated her tugged at his heartstrings. It also reminded him of how much his parents had done to help those who were helpless. He’d grown up in a family where taking responsibility for others was as much a part of life as breathing, and rejecting that ethic was something that just felt wrong to him.

  By the same token, he’d seen what it had done to his parents and his uncle. Luke had fought the Empire for twenty years, and his mother had fought even longer than that. They constantly put their lives on the line, never having a moment that could be considered normal in their lives. If it wasn’t kidnappers and assassins trying to snatch or kill them, it was some planet’s population trying to wipe some other species out. His parents and his uncle never had time for themselves.

  Jacen frowned and avoided descending to self-pity. Despite having to deal with the problems of others, his parents had always done their best to nurture their children. There might have been times when official business kept his mother away, but she always managed to make up for it—not by bringing some gift from a faraway world, but by sharing time with him and his siblings. And his father had gone from being protector to good friend and confidant. Luke had been friend and mentor, and all of them meant more to Jacen than he knew he would ever be able to express.

  Which is why rejecting them and the way of the Jedi seemed wrong, and yet so necessary. His hands flexed into fists, then he forced them open again. Having grown up with an awareness of the Force, he understood it in ways that Luke never could. He had insights he could share with his uncle or mother, but they would never come upon those insights by themselves. They see things in large chunks, and I see the details on those chunks.

  “It’s almost time, isn’t it?”

  Jacen started, then
looked over and saw his uncle hanging in the cockpit hatchway. “Yes. We’re being pulled in by Belkadan’s gravity. We have two minutes to atmosphere. I can take it in, you know.”

  Luke nodded, then slipped into the cockpit and dropped into the copilot’s chair. R2-D2 rolled into the cockpit behind him and locked himself into a landing bracket built into the bulkhead. Luke smiled at the droid, then looked at Jacen. “Just remember, we want as little nudging as possible. We want everything to look natural.”

  Jacen nodded. His uncle had advanced the theory that if the Yuuzhan Vong used living creatures the way others used machines, then the patterns those creatures would be most adept at noticing would be the sort that were unnatural or panicked—prey behavior patterns. A smooth insertion with minimal course changes would seem unremarkable, or so he hoped. Jacen agreed that his idea made sense, but that was from a human point of view. I just hope the Yuuzhan Vong concur.

  He settled his hands on the control wheel and restarted the engines. He kept thrust at zero, but fed a little power into the repulsorlift coils. A little rudder and a gentle easing of the yoke forward brought the Skipray blastboat, Courage, into the atmosphere. It bucked at first, but Jacen kept his hands steady on the controls. He glanced at Luke to see if his handling of the ship suited his uncle.

  Luke gave him a little nod, then glanced at a monitor containing navigational data. “We’re ten thousand kilometers from the ExGal site. Heading 33 mark 30 at the moment, dropping as we go.”

  “Got it. I wanted to be over the mountains before I turn us to port.”

  “Good plan.” Luke closed his eyes and started breathing very slowly. “Nothing amiss at the moment.”

  “Thanks.” Jacen flipped a switch to reverse thrust and then nudged the throttle forward. Airspeed began to drop, and the blastboat with it. It didn’t fall so sharply as to be under control, but just enough to suggest the ship was about as aerodynamic as a meteorite burning into the atmosphere.