insects, were legendary for their relentless and resourceful assassin
squads.
Tenel Ka raced over to the comm unit mounted on a stone wall near her
door and slapped the alarm button to sound a general call to arms-but
nothing happened. She pushed the alarm firmly once again with her hand,
and found that the entire warning system was dead.
"Lights," she called, but her room remained dark.
All power, including backup generators, had been cut off to Reef
Fortress.
They were in deep trouble.
Bending over and using the stump of her arm to hold the buckle in place,
she took a moment to fasten her utility belt over the supple reptilian
armor in which she slept. Tenel Ka pulled her hair back with a thong,
letting the long red-gold braids drape like a crown around her head. It
was time for action.
She would have to rouse everyone.
Tenel Ka rushed down the corridor and pounded on the door to Jacen's
room. Lowbacca bellowed from his own chamber and flung the door open.
Jaina hurried out of the gadget room.
"What's going on?" Jacen asked, dragging unsteady fingers through his
sleep-tousled hair.
LIGHTSABERS
^
"Something . . . dangerous," Jaina said, already sensing the situation.
"A serious threat."
Lowbacca roared, his wildly disheveled ftir standing out in every
direction as he attempted to strap on the glossy white belt made of
syren-plant fiber.
"Emergency?" Em Teedee said. "Perhaps we are all simply overreacting."
"No. We are not," Tenel Ka answered. "The power to the fortress has been
cut off, and our defensive force field no longer functions. The
generating station has been destroyed. We are currently under attack by
a Bartokk assassin squad."
Jacen shuddered. "Hey, I've heard of them.
Insects, right? And they all work together as a hive, to assassinate
their assigned target."
Tenel Ka nodded. "They are fearsome mercenaries, fighting as one
organism. Once given a target, they continue to fight until the very
last member of their hive has been killed-or until their victim lies
dead."
"I'm sure that's terribly efficient," Em Teedee observed, "but they
certainly don't sound very friendly."
Jaina frowned, looking determined. "Well then, what are we waiting for?"
She retrieved her lightsaber from her quarters while Jacen ran back into
the aquarium room to fetch his weapon, too.
Lowbacca, his lightsaber already at his waist, roared in challenge.
"Now, Master Lowbacca, getting delusions of grandeur can be hazardous to
your health," Em Teedee said. Lowie just snarled, the black streak
across the top of his head bristling with anger.
Tenel Ka stepped into the Wookiee's room, marched to the far wall, and
yanked free the jagged ceremonial spear mounted there as ornamentation.
Holding the spear one-handed, she said, "We must fight them."
Suddenly they heard a crash and a shout, then brief weapons fire from
the far end of the corridor that led to the isolated tower containing
the matriarch's quarters.
"My grandmother!" Tenel Ka said. "She must be their primary target."
Still holding the spear, she raced down the cold flagstones of the dim
hall. All glowpanels had gone out, and only the moonlight streaming
through the corridor windows lit her way-but Tenel Ka had known these
twists and turns since childhood.
Growling, Lowbacca sprinted after her while the twins ran at top speed
to keep up. Jacen and Jaina ignited their lightsabers, and the brilliant
energy glow splashed ahead, shedding enough light for them to see. Tenel
Ka heard more shouts, a loud scuffle, and her grandmother's voice
calling for help.
"We must hurry," Tenel Ka said, putting on an extra burst of speed.
Someone had to have con LIGHTSABERS
^ tracted the assassin squad to remove the former queen, she reasoned.
Was it Ambassador Yfra? Once Ta'a Chume was dead-and with Tenel Ka's
parents gone-,the ambassador probably would not consider a one-armed
girl in lizard hide much of a threat to her power. She could easily take
over the rulership of the Hapes Cluster.
While the idea enraged her, Tenel Ka could not afford to think about it
at the moment.
Just ahead, a couple of black, clattering insects emerged from side
corridors. The Bartokks, as tall as Tenel Ka, stood on two powerful legs
and had a central pair of arms at their waists for grasping and
manipulating objects, while their upper set of arms ended in long,
hooked claws like scythes used to harvest grain. The serrated edges of
the scythe claws swept from side to side, with razor edges that could
clip an enemy to pieces.
The Bartokks chittered upon seeing these new and unexpected opponents,
but Tenel Ka raced ahead with full momentum. Using all the muscles in
her single arm, she jabbed with her spear, plunging it through the body
core of the left assassin. Its upper four arms flailed in reflex, trying
to bat the weapon out of Tenel Ka's grip-but she twisted the long blade,
ripping it sideways. The insect's hard exoskeleton cracked and split
open, spilling thick greenish-blue goop onto the stone floor. She yanked
the spear free as the Bartokk clattered to the flagstones, its legs
still flailing.
Beside her, Lowbacca met the second assassin with a sideways sweep of
his lightsaber that sliced the Bartokk into smoking halves that fell
twitching to the floor.
The twins rushed up. "Good one," Jacen said, panting. "That's two down."
Tenel Ka spoke over her shoulder as she continued running. "We cannot be
certain those two are dead," she said. "And do not forget, the Bartokks
have a hive mind. Now all of the assassins-there are usually fifteen in
the hive-know we're coming to help my grandmother."
As they skidded around the corner near the armored door to the
matriarch's chambers, five more of the insects moved to block their way.
Ta'a Chume's two personal guards fought fiercely at the threshold to her
chambers, but the remaining Bartokks had nearly succeeded in breaking
in.
As the young Jedi Knights ran forward, Bartokk assassins captured both
loyal guards outside the matriarch's door and dragged them away. The
guards struggled, cried out, then ceased all movement.
Although this capture was intended to free the opening for a fresh
assault on the matriarch's chambers, it also created a diversion for
Tenel Ka and her friends to plow forward. With their lightsahers
ignited, Jacen and Jaina slashed in, chopping the two frontmost Bartokks
into quivering bug LIGHTSABERS
^ pieces. Lowbacca barreled into a third assassin, knocking it against
the stone wall with such force that its black carapace split open.
"Inside," Tenel Ka shouted. She could hear the matriarch calling for
more guards, but there were none. Instead, four young Jedi Knights
charged into her chamber.
"Lowie, help me get this closed," Jaina cried. The lanky Wookiee shoved
his should
er against the armored door as he and Jaina swung it shut
against the powerful press of Bartokk arms and snapping claws. Startled,
most of the insects jerked back, but then began to push and claw at the
entrance again almost immediately. In that instant of surprise, however,
the door groaned shut.
"Lock it," Jaina gasped, and Tenel Ka snapped a bolt into place.
Outside, Bartokk assassins pounded, scraping with their razor-edged
claws against the doorjamb.
The metal door rattled in its frame, and Tenel Ka knew their defenses
couldn't last long against the onslaught.
But that was the least of her worries at the moment.
Three Bartokk assassins had been trapped inside the chamber with them,
and now the ruthless black-shelled insects moved forward, focusing on
their main target.
The old matriarch had barricaded herself in a comerand was doing her
best to knock the creaturesaway with a broken piece of furniture. The
youngJedi Knights rushed to defend the former queen, but one of the
assassins lashed out with its razor claws at them.
Tenel Ka charged forward as the insect killer moved to meet her. She
plunged her ornamental spear into it until the tip of her weapon bored
all the way through the glossy shell and wedged into a crack between the
wall blocks. She left the Bartokk pinned to the wall like a bug in a
child's collection.
Even so, the creature still writhed and snapped, thrashing to get at
them.
Jacen ran forward and with a hissing sweep of his lightsaber, sliced off
the multi-eyed head of another assassin as it leapt toward the
matriarch.
With a roar, Lowbacca left his post at the rattling door and grasped the
remaining Bartokk, lifting it bodily off the floor. Its many sharp arms
thrashed as Lowie pushed forward to the high open window and heaved the
creature over the ledge. The assassin tumbled nearly thirty meters to
splatter on the jagged reef far below.
"Hey!" Jacen said, as the Bartokk he had beheaded, instead of collapsing
into twitching death, continued to fight its way toward the alarmed
matriarch. "Aren't you supposed to die?"
He slashed again with the lightsaber, this time cutting the legs out
from under the headless Bar LIGHTSABERS
^ tokk. The insect torso crashed to the floor, but with its remaining
limbs it still hauled itself toward Tenel Ka's grandmother. The severed
head lay on the flagstones near the wall, staring at its target through
faceted eyes, somehow continuing to direct the body.
"These hive-mind assassins," Tenel Ka explained, "their brains are
distributed through major nerve networks inside their bodies. Simply
cutting off a head won't stop them. The pieces will still attempt to
continue their mission."
With another blow from his lightsaber, Jacen chopped the remaining torso
in half. "This is getting ridiculous," he said.
Lowbacca marched over to where the severed insect head lay near the
wall. Then with great pleasure he stomped down, squashing it as one
might step on an annoying beetle.
The wiry old matriarch tossed aside the broken piece of furniture she
had been using as a weapon.
"I thank you for your efforts to save me, my granddaughter," she said,
"but it would seem that this plot is rather extensive. Our entire
fortress is overrun, and I see no means of escape."
Across the floor the ichor-dripping pieces of the chopped-up assassin
continued to squirm toward the former queen, blindly groping, yet still
deadly.
The skewered Bartokk hanging from the wall thrashed and flailed, trying
to break free from Tenel Ka's spear.
Outside, in the corridors, the rest of the assassin hive hammered
without pause against the armored plates of the door. From where Tenel
Ka stood, she could see the rivets popping out and blocks crumbling to
powder at the edges of the sealed door. The metal began to bend inward.
. . .
It certainly wouldn't last much longer.
^ -----------------JAINA LOOKED AROUND the dim room where they had
barricaded themselves, desperate to find some means of escape. With the
hammering of assassins outside the door growing louder and louder, she
found it hard to think. Pale moonlight streamed through the window from
a deceptively calm sky, bleaching all colors in the room to black and
white and gray.
"We have to get out of here somehow," Jaina said.
Tenel Ka nodded grimly. "This is a fact."
Jacen turned to the matriarch. "Hey, if you know of any secret passages
that lead out of here, now might be the time to tell us."
"There are none," Ta'a Chume said. "This tower room was designed as a
protected chamber, with no secret ways for an assassin to gain entrance.
Reef Fortress itself was built to be impregnable."
Jaina snorted. "Maybe you'd better fire your architect."
Tenel Ka felt at her utility belt and removed her
^
grappling hook and the strong fibercord. "I see no better way. We must
escape by the same route those creatures used to break into the
fortress. Not only must we flee the fortress, we must flee the reef
island itself."
"Where can we go, Tenel Ka?" Jacen said.
"We're stranded."
"I get it!" Jaina cried, seeing what her friend intended. "We take one
of the fast wavespeeders and zoom out across the ocean. It's our best
chance."
The stern matriarch went to the window and gazed at the sheer drop. "You
mean climb down?"
"Yes, Grandmother," Tenel Ka said, setting the grappling hook firmly
against the stone of the windowsill. "Unless you'd prefer using your
diplomatic skills to negotiate a settlement with the Bartokks."
The matriarch's sharp eyes flashed with determination. "I've never
allowed anyone but myself to control my fate-so I suppose falling to my
death while escaping would be preferable to waiting around to be killed
by giant insects in my own bedchamber. It's agreed, then. We'll try the
climb, as you suggest."
Tenel Ka shook her head. "No, we shall do the climb. There is no try."
Jaina tugged on the cord. The grappling hook did not budge. "All right,
let's get out of here."
LIGHTSABERS
^ Lowbacca blatted a comment and Em Teedee said, "Oh, dear-must IT' At
the Wookiee's growled response, the little droid heaved an electronic
sigh.
"Master Lowbacca believes he would be the most sensible choice to go
first-and unfortunately I'm forced to admit that he is correct. Firstly,
because he is an experienced climber, and secondly because he is strong
and will be able to hold the rope steady for the rest of you once he
reaches the bottom."
"Can't argue with your logic," Jaina agreed. "Go ahead."
While Em Teedee twittered about the impending danger, Lowie swung
himself over the sill and supported his full weight on the glistening
fibercord. Then, using his long arms, he lowered himself hand-over-hand
down the vertical stone wall. Em Teedee's pitiful moans grew more and
more fain
t until finally Lowie touched down on the rocks below, stood
away from the wall, and gave the rope a yank.
"Good," Tenel Ka said.
Persistence finally paid off for the Bartokks, who had continued their
relentless battering at the armored door. One of the hinges groaned and
popped out of the wall. With a loud creak, a corner of the door bent
inward. Chittering insect assassins thrust their sharp scythe claws
through the gap.
"No more time," Tenel Ka said to the twins. "You two go now. The rope
will hold both of you."
"We'd better be careful," Jacen said. The door rattled in its frame and
the metal screeched, caving in further.
"Guess we can't afford that luxury," Jaina said in a terse voice. "What
are we waiting for?" She slipped over the sill, grabbing the fibercord,
and began rappelling down the slick dark stones.
Jacen came after her. The rope was thin, and the descent treacherous,
but they used their Jedi skills to keep their balance and make
themselves li hter.
At the bottom Lowbacca stood with his feet planted far apart on the
rocky reef, holding the rope.
"Excellent climbing, Master Jacen, Mistress Jaina," Em Teedee
Lightsabers Page 16