by James Luceno
Back at the window, Yomin Carr watched the sleek shuttle put down just outside the compound walls.
The Yuuzhan Vong warrior’s smile was genuine; he was going to enjoy this.
They came out of the security of the Jade Sabre tentatively, and none more so than R2-D2, who was so concerned with the eerie and dangerous surroundings that he failed to pay enough attention to his companions and kept bumping into Luke. They couldn’t stay on planet for long, they knew, even with their breath masks, for it was too hot, and every step would literally suck the moisture right out of them.
Mara started for the compound door, but Luke noted something off to the side by the tower, and pulled her by the arm that way. As they approached, they noticed that all the ground in the area was covered by strange-looking little reddish brown beetles.
“They’re all dead,” Luke noted, stepping gingerly over the crunchy insects, and R2-D2 blew whistles of protest and flat out refused to follow—until, of course, something hidden deep in the jungle canopy roared and then the little droid zoomed through the beetle cluster, crunching them up with his wheels, spraying the tiny carcasses up into the air in his wake.
“But it’s not the air, apparently,” Mara noted, turning a glance toward the jungle canopy. “Some of the creatures have survived.”
“Well, if some of the creatures have survived, then so should the people inside the station, some of them, at least.”
“Unless what we’re hearing are new creatures, adapted to the atmosphere,” Mara noted, and she checked a gauge at the side of her collar and shook her head. She and Luke might be able to breathe without help from their equipment, but the air was certainly of terrible quality.
The three moved to the wall, toward the gate showing on this side of the compound, a stained metal door.
“Blood,” Mara noted.
Luke pulled open the casing of the security lock to the side. “Tap into the codes,” he ordered R2-D2. The droid started for the box, but Mara whipped out her blaster and put a shot right into the contraption, frying it. The metal door resounded with the click of lock tumblers disengaging.
“Direct,” Luke noted sarcastically.
“What’s it going to hurt?” Mara asked.
Luke conceded the point with a shrug and kicked the door open, leading the way in. The compound was deserted, a sight made even more eerie by the sharp contrast caused by the vivid light filtering through the cloud cover. “Empty dock,” he noted, pointing to the space vacated by the departure of the Spacecaster.
“Could be just for landing supply ships,” Mara reasoned.
R2-D2 put in a series of clicks and whirs.
“True enough,” Luke agreed. “They’d have to have some way to get up to their satellite’s telescopes, and to get off planet, if necessary.”
“It doesn’t get any more necessary than this,” Mara noted dryly.
“Whether they left or not, there are data banks inside,” Luke remarked, leading the way toward the main building. “We’ll get some answers.”
R2-D2 zipped right behind him, and Mara was fast to follow, though she paused a few steps later and bent down, finding yet another of the strange beetles. This one, unlike all the others, was still alive, though undeniably groggy and slow. She carefully picked it up and brought it close before her eyes, noting a clear liquid oozing from the end of its tiny mandibles.
“What is it?” Luke asked, turning back to see his wife with the beetle in her hand and an intense look upon her face.
Mara shook her head slowly, her gaze locked on the little creature and its wriggling legs and clapping mandibles.
“You think that these bugs are somehow related to this disaster?” Luke asked. To his distress, Mara, instead of answering, wiped her finger across the mandibles, collecting some of the oozing liquid, then brought the finger right before her eyes.
“There’s something about this …,” she said slowly.
“Probably poison,” Luke reasoned.
Again Mara slowly shook her head. “Something different,” she tried to explain, and her voice seemed to falter. “I don’t know …”
Luke noted how hollow her eyes seemed, as if the beetle, or this planet, was somehow draining her. He wanted to ask if she was all right, but wisely held the question, reminding himself that his capable wife didn’t need his worry.
Inside, the station was quiet and dim and cooler, and with air that was much more breathable. Also, many lights, mostly panel indicators, were still on, and those quiet, usually indiscernible background sounds, the hum of computer drives and glow lamps, permeated the air.
“It’s like a tomb,” Mara said, and both she and Luke instinctively recoiled from the mere volume of her voice, the sudden breaking of constant, low-level hum.
“Let’s find the main computers so that Artoo can tap in,” Luke suggested.
“Everything still seems to be functioning,” Mara remarked as they started on their way, padding down the darkened corridors with all speed, for none of them wanted to stay in this place any longer than absolutely necessary. They turned corner after corner, opening every door they passed. Both Luke and Mara had their lightsabers in hand, though when they noticed each other poised as if expecting an attack, they both put on curious expressions. Logically, there should be no danger here.
But something about the atmosphere of the place, the panel lights glowing in darkened rooms …
“Here it is,” Luke called, pushing open one door to reveal a large circular room.
“Great setup,” Mara remarked when she entered, seeing the array of the seven control pods.
“And the place is still alive,” Luke added. “So where is everybody?”
R2-D2 rolled into the room, down the ramp from the refreshment dais, and onto the main floor. He went to the nearest pod and extended his computer interface, linking up.
“Download everything they’ve got,” Luke instructed, and the droid beeped and clicked his agreement.
Luke replaced his lightsaber on his belt, then moved to the pod next to R2-D2. Mara did likewise and moved to the central command pod, and both of them went to work, trying to determine the condition of the equipment. It was all working, they soon understood, but no clear signals were coming through from the orbiting satellites, or from anything else, it seemed.
“It’s the cloud cover,” Luke remarked. “Nothing’s getting through.”
“And maybe no distress signal could get out,” Mara added.
Luke nodded. “That’ll take a few minutes,” he said to her, drawing her gaze to the droid. “Let’s go and see if we can find anybody.”
The two had grown more comfortable with the place by then, and so they thought nothing of leaving R2-D2 alone in the big room, or of splitting up once outside the room, so that they could cover more ground. R2-D2, though, didn’t share that level of comfort. He began whistling a tune more nervous than singsongy while he continued his work on the download, trying every trick he knew to extract the information more quickly.
Maybe the whistling would help.
There was no one about, and given the blood on the entry gate, Mara thought nothing of walking into formerly private quarters. She checked lockers and closets, even coat pockets and private desks. In one room she found some scribbled notes in an old-fashioned flimsiplast journal, dated just over a week earlier, describing the increasingly foul air and the inability of the station to raise any communications off planet, or even to find the feeds from the satellites.
The writer went on to detail the investigation to this point, how someone named Yomin Carr kept saying that this was all a passing weather oddity. The page ended ominously: Perhaps it is natural, but I believe it is linked to
“To what?” Mara asked aloud in frustration. She ruffled the flimsiplast but found no further writing, then opened the desk drawer, to see more unused flimsiplast, some metal clips, writing utensils, a couple of data cards, and some small bottles.
She reached for the data cards, thinking there
might be more information there, but paused as one of the bottles caught her eye. She turned it about so that she could better see its contents.
A beetle.
Mara took the beetle she had collected outside out of her pouch, comparing the two. They were the same species, obviously, and that made her wonder even more if these creatures were somehow connected to the disaster. Had this scientist suspected the same thing? Did he believe the disaster linked to the beetles?
She took the journal and the bottle and headed back into the hallway, turning to follow in the direction Luke had gone.
A screech from behind, from R2-D2 in the control room, turned her fast the other way.
The droid wasn’t trying to interpret the information as he absorbed it, was merely trying to make the transfer as fast as possible. He was well on his way, figuring the download to be about 70 percent complete, when he swiveled his domed head about and saw the dark, caped figure rise up from behind a low railing at the side of the room. He knew at once that it wasn’t Luke or Mara, and hoped that it was just one of the missing scientists.
No such luck, as the droid discovered when the figure came out of the shadows, leaping atop one of the pods in the front row, clad in some dark plated armor unlike anything R2-D2 had ever seen, and holding a snake-headed staff.
He roared at R2-D2, a stream of curses and snarls—“Infidel! Perversion! Sacrilege!”—and stomped his foot down on the console, sending up a spray of sparks.
R2-D2 tried desperately to flee, but he did so before he disengaged his interface connection, and so when he then tried to pull free, his bulk was twisted at the wrong angle. The droid whistled and beeped, trying to call for help.
The caped menace pulled something from the bandolier about his chest and threw it, or rather, simply let it go.
R2-D2 wheeled back the other way, his interface connection disengaging even as it tugged back, and the resulting abrupt shift toppled the droid onto his side. And just in time, for the flying thing zoomed past, smashing into the pod, driving right into it, and R2-D2 screeched. His dome swiveled about, to look up, and there was the warrior, standing above him, staff poised for a destroying blow.
“Eeeooowww!” the droid squealed, and rolled to the side.
The door at the back of the room banged open and Mara rushed in. “Stop!” she cried. “We are not your enemies!” Her words trailed away as the figure leapt away from the pod, closer to her, to stand in all his warrior glory, dark armor gleaming, his disfigured face staring coldly at the woman.
And what unnerved Mara most of all was the feeling inside her gut that this warrior, this monster, somehow knew her.
The two stood and stared for a long while, neither blinking, the test of wills before the inevitable battle. Off to the side, R2-D2 managed to manipulate his torso, pushing against the console while extending his arm, to upright himself. He skittered right off, but the noise alerted the caped warrior, and he launched another missile—was it some kind of bug?—the droid’s way, this one clipping the console right behind the fleeing R2-D2, showering him with sparks and bringing forth another frantic “Eeeooowww!”
Mara reached for her lightsaber but, recalling her weakened state, drew her blaster instead and had it leveled the warrior’s way before he turned back to face her.
“It is an abomination,” he growled.
“It’s a droid,” she corrected.
“Exactly my point,” the warrior replied with a wicked grin. “An abomination. A sign of the weakness that pervades your people.”
“My people?” Mara asked. “Who are you?”
“I am Yomin Carr, the harbinger of doom,” he said with a sinister laugh. “I am the beginning of the end for your people!”
Mara’s face screwed up with incredulity.
“Do not mock me!” Yomin Carr roared, and he pulled another thud bug from his bandolier and let it fly at Mara.
She took a shot at it, but it dodged, and then she had to dive aside, once and then again as it swooped around. It started to loop for a third pass, but this time, she got her aim and blew it out of the air.
Yomin Carr continued to laugh.
Mara turned her blaster on him. “I think you’ll be coming with me,” she said.
He laughed louder and started to reach for his bandolier.
“Don’t make me,” she warned raising the blaster threateningly.
He just laughed and continued, and she shot him. But the magnificent, plated armor turned the blast aside.
Eyes wide with disbelief, Mara had to move again, and quickly, as Yomin Carr tossed out another thud bug, and another, and another. She wisely abandoned her blaster, tossing it aside and drawing out her lightsaber. Then she went into a frantic dance, twisting and parrying, lightsaber intercepting the darting thud bugs as they came at her in rapid succession.
Yomin Carr’s laugh turned into a growl as he nearly emptied his bandolier, a dozen thud bugs darting and spinning at Mara.
Her glowing blade worked in a furious, humming blur, whipping up high and to the side, down low—and when she couldn’t catch up to that low-flying missile, she deftly hopped it—and then back up, connecting with one zooming creature barely a centimeter from her face. She turned about and sliced across, picking two out of the air, then dropped into a squat, the lightsaber flashing up above her head to take out a diving bug, then swishing down to the side, forcing another to alter its course. It tried to turn about, but had too much momentum and smashed into the back wall, crashing in deep.
Mara spun about to face Yomin Carr, dived into a forward roll to regain her balance and to avoid any forthcoming attacks. Her lightsaber was at the ready as she came up, but the next missile plopped down—harmlessly, Mara believed—a couple of meters in front of her.
The armored warrior leapt forward, landing perched on the railing in front of the woman. She started forward to meet his charge, lightsaber working against the movements of his staff.
The gooey pie on the floor before her expanded suddenly and grabbed at her feet. Quick as any felinoid, sensing the movement, Mara launched herself into a back flip, and then another.
But the goo spread to pace her and caught her by the feet, rushing to encompass her ankles and hold her fast. Yomin Carr howled in apparent victory.
Mara’s lightsaber swished down, cutting through the goo easily, separating it into two parts, but each of those parts continued to move, grabbing stubbornly.
“You’ll not defeat it,” Yomin Carr promised, and indeed, each passing moment and each passing movement brought both the jellies up higher on her legs, trapping her even more.
R2-D2 wheeled out into the hall, aware of what was happening with Mara and knowing well that there was nothing he could do to help her directly.
But Luke could, the droid understood, and so he wheeled down the corridor, squealing and clicking. A security holocam mounted high on the wall gave him an idea, and he rushed to the wall, knocking clear the security console and whirring through the codes, tapping into cam after cam until he spotted Luke, scrolling through some screens on a computer in a private room.
Accessing a complete diagram of the station, R2-D2 soon isolated the room, and off he went, still screeching and beeping.
The goo grabbed at Mara, but despair surely did not. She kept her head and her cool, and moved her lightsaber through a wild blur of motion, slashing, cutting, the tip even brushing against her pants leg as she sliced the gel from her body. On and on she went, seemingly wild but actually precise—so much so that she soon had the goo chopped up into little pieces—and she still kept the presence of mind to arch her blade back out in front to intercept yet another thud bug zooming for her.
The warrior came on, staff sweeping down, and Mara ducked at the last moment, came up tall, and sent her lightsaber up high with a rolling motion that kept the staff out wide.
Yomin Carr dropped to one knee and brought his staff horizontally above him, hands out wide, to intercept.
Mara fu
lly expected that her powerful lightsaber would shear through the staff and end the fight abruptly, but amazingly, the tattooed warrior’s weapon caught the lightsaber, accepting the brunt of the hit without apparent damage, and Yomin Carr twisted his hands to the side as he came up fast, throwing Mara’s blade off aim.
She should have stepped back to regroup, but the jelly, the many tiny jellies, still held one of her feet firmly, and she could only twist back so far, and not far enough for her to bring her lightsaber in to parry.
Yomin Carr stabbed with the snake-head end of his weapon, and to Mara’s horror, that head opened wide its maw, fangs dripping venom. She slapped her hand inside the angle of the blow, against the shaft just below the head, and was quick enough to retract it as the snake head turned in to bite at it.
The lightsaber’s glowing blade swooped in an up-turning circular parry between the two, forcing Yomin Carr back, and with that moment of pause, Mara slashed it down beside her foot again, cutting in half the last piece of jelly large enough to hold her. Then she leapt back, though not far—it was as if she had wads of gum stuck to the bottoms of her feet.
“You are worthy,” Yomin Carr congratulated, and started to nod and used the ruse to swing about quickly, his staff elongating and becoming supple suddenly, more a whip than a bludgeoning weapon.
Mara tried to leap back, but the jelly, still grabbing at her, slowed her down. She pivoted to the side, bringing her weapon out to intercept.
The whip snapped around the lightsaber, a strike so perfectly aimed that the head still came in across the woman’s arm, fangs cutting deep scratches.
Yoman Carr howled in victory, but Mara took the burning hit, focused her energies suddenly on that part of her body, and forced a blood rush out of the wound, washing away the poison before it could begin to take hold. She accepted then that this opponent possessed weapons that she could not anticipate, and so she went on the offensive immediately, charging ahead and launching a series of thrusts and slices that had Yomin Carr backing, and all the while, he tried to retract his weapon to staff form, to give him something with which to parry.