Star Wars: Red Harvest (15 page)

Zo stiffened. That must have been when she made the connection, on some level at least, because a moment later she was staring straight at the dead thing wiggling on the end of Tulkh’s spear. Except it wasn’t really at the end anymore; it had pulled itself forward until it was almost close enough to grab the Whiphid’s face.

I’ve got an idea
, she told the orchid.
Grow
.

What?

You’re in them now
, she said,
aren’t you? You’re a part of them. You said so yourself
.

Yes, but—

Then grow
.

I can’t just—

Don’t argue with me! Just GROW
.

It might have been that last command, the desperate vehemence of it, that stirred the orchid to action. Zo saw the thing at the end of Tulkh’s spear stiffen and then fall abruptly motionless, as if it had just realized something profoundly unwelcome was taking root inside it. An instant later a thin green tendril began to wind itself out of the thing’s right ear, extruding a vine that grew steadily thicker as it looped downward. Another vine appeared inside its left nostril, and then a third and fourth—stalks and runners were snaking busily out of both ears now, some of them bearing small clusters of leaves, others tiny black flowers. The corpse’s mouth opened, and another stalk, this one as big around as Zo’s finger, burst outward from its bloody throat.

Hestizo this hurts, this hurts me—

Grow
, she told it.
Grow, just keep growing, just GROW—

Looking around, she saw the others were experiencing the same effect, sprouting stalks and stems from every visible orifice. Their faces squirmed with thin, wiggling plant life just underneath the skin. Zo knew that it was working now. The orchid was in them, and the orchid was
growing
. She concentrated harder—she could actually see the flora growing inside the things now, driving it harder, farther, faster from within, even as the orchid began crying out, begging her to
stop
, telling her that this
hurt
, it couldn’t do it anymore—

She ignored it and stared straight at the thing on Tulkh’s spear.

She thought the word again; thought it with all the intensity and determination she could muster, over and over in a smooth and solid thought-wave.

GROW-GROW-GROWGROWGROW—

The corpse’s entire cranial vault exploded in a colossal
splat
of red and black and green. In the place where its skull had been, a bright spray of leaves flapped and writhed, winding outward, spilling down, to encompass the entire upper half of the thing’s torso. The body fell limp, sagging on the spear.

Tulkh dumped the thing with a brisk shoveling gesture, kicking it so that it barrel-rolled over the edge, and then glanced back at Zo. “You did that?”

“Me, and the flower.”

“You better do it again.” The Whiphid pointed over the edge of the overhang at the other things. They were still sprouting, Zo saw, but not as quickly, clawing back upward toward them.

Hestizo, please
—the orchid sounded weaker now—
no more, not now, I can’t, it hurts …

“You have to,” Zo said, unaware that she was speaking out loud. “You have to do it, because if you don’t they’re not going to stop. They’re going to kill us, they’re going to kill me, do you understand?”

So sorry, Hestizo …

Silence.

And it was gone.

A hand closed around her ankle, jerking her forward from below. Zo started to fall, landing on her side just as one of the things lurched upward, fully into view. She tried to pull away but couldn’t budge.

Grow
, she pleaded with the orchid,
grow, GROW NOW—

But the flower, wherever it had gone, whatever its abilities had been just moments before, was of absolutely no help to her now. She couldn’t even hear its voice anymore. And the writhing, rippling movement under the other things’ faces seemed to have stopped. There was nothing more they could do about them now. The orchid was tired, or absent—or dead.

The thing on her leg was dragging her closer.

“What are you doing?” Tulkh shouted. He was stabbing furiously at the others, without much effect. “Stop them!”

“I can’t!” Zo shouted back. “The orchid’s not there anymore!”

All at once something huge burst up out of the ground in front of them—a monolith, black and featureless, hurling up an enormous corona of rock and ice in its wake. From what Zo could make out, it looked like a turret made of stone and durasteel, taller than the rocky outcropping where she was currently fighting for her life. Lights pulsed within it. As its domed upper mounting swung toward them, she saw the gleam of a heavy turbine—

The blaster pulsed twice, and the corpse in front of her disappeared in an acrid spray. Zo blinked, wiping her eyes, and a massive amount of strength and momentum slammed into her from behind—the Whiphid, she realized—knocking her off the top of the overhang just before the third blast pulverized it completely.

They landed face-first in the dirty snow, Zo’s ears ringing, her head splitting from the fusillade of laser blasts behind them. Massive hunks of smoking boulder and snow were showering down from above. Zo stared back at the crater where they’d just been standing.

“Run!” Tulkh ordered.

“What?”

“That way.” He jerked his arm toward the long, hollowed-out, tube-like structure twenty meters in front of them, and when she didn’t move, the Whiphid shoved her forward just as the laser cannon pivoted again, tracking straight for her.

“S
TATEMENT,” THE
HK’
S VOICE CRACKLED, FROM INSIDE THE COMLINK
. “S
IR, WE
located Hestizo Trace.”

The Sith Lord paused and adjusted the frequency until the connection became clear. He was standing in the bulkhead of the
Mirocaw
, having just finished a complete inspection of the vessel from top to bottom. Locating the bounty hunter’s ship had not been difficult—the tower’s sensors had found it crash-landed two kilometers outside the academy, tracking it from the heat signature, and Scabrous had approached it with absolute stealth, on the off chance there might be someone aboard. But there was no sign of the Jedi or the Whiphid who had brought her here. The craft had been abandoned.

“Where is she?” he asked.

“Response: Initial perimeter scan reports positive identification on the northeast quadrant. Scanners registered a ninety-eight point three percent positive pheromone match.”

“How long ago?”

“Response: Ten standard minutes, sir. Coordinate vector twenty-seven by eighteen, order of magnitude—”

“Is she dead?”

The slightest of pauses: “Response: Negative, sir, per your orders.”

“Good.”

“Statement: Our midrange scout systems report that she and the Whiphid bounty hunter are traveling together, headed northwest toward the tauntaun paddock in that near vicinity. They are still on foot and in all probability seeking immediate cover from the initial attack.” The HK made a clicking sound, awaiting orders. “Query: Shall I reactivate the perimeter cannons in that quadrant, set for stun?”

Scabrous didn’t answer right away, thinking about the terrain that the droid was describing. The tower itself wasn’t far from there, of course, and—

And the library.

“That won’t be necessary,” Scabrous said. “I’ll handle it personally.”

“Statement …” The droid sounded more tentative now. “There is … something else.”

“What is it?”

“Several local sensors are reporting unverified cluster activity in various quadrants around the academy in general. It’s unclear exactly what the source of the activity is. Biorhythm diagnostics aren’t reporting any verifiable vital signs.”

“Then fix it.”

“Clarification: The electronics themselves are online and functioning normally. It’s the activity—it shows no sign of life, body temperature, respiration, heart or brain activity.”

Scabrous stopped and gazed thoughtfully at the
Mirocaw
’s dented metal bulkhead in front of him. For a moment the only sounds were the low, steady hum of the hemodialysis machine pumping fresh blood through his body, and the susurrus of fluids whisking through tubes, feeding him the cocktail of antiviral drugs.

“How much activity?” he asked.

“Response: Unclear at present,” the HK’s voice said. “But it seems to be—”

“What?”

“Well, it seems to be spreading, sir.”

“I see.” Scabrous thought of the apprentice, Nickter, or the thing that had once been Nickter, crawling out of its cage despite the fact that all vital signs registered negative. He thought about how the thing had lunged at him and then gone after Jura Ostrogoth; the appetite that the thing had brought to bear. At that moment, Scabrous had assumed that what he’d seen was a kind of exaggerated nervous twitch, a biochemical accident that the drug and the orchid had triggered inside Nickter’s body. But now—

It seems to be spreading, sir
, the HK had said.

—he began to reconsider.

“My lord?” the droid prompted.

“Never mind that now,” Scabrous said. “I’m going directly to the library. There will be no more need for lasers. Hestizo Trace will meet me there personally, and we shall finish our business together, she and I, as it was meant to be. Have my own ship prepared for immediate departure afterward.”

“Yes, sir, but—”

Scabrous cut off the transmission and strode through the
Mirocaw
’s open hatch, down the landing ramp, and out into the snowy night.

I
N THE FIRST HOUR THAT
T
RACE PASSED THROUGH THE COLLAPSED WALLS AND
stone temples of the academy, the blizzard around him only worsened. It was as if the planet itself had read his arrival as a kind of infection on the cellular level and was fighting him off however it could. The temperature, already freezing, continued to plunge until his throat and lungs burned with every breath. The wind roared between the massive boxy shapes of the buildings and substructures, the great slabs and half-submerged corridors. Its scream was wraith-like, endless, the cry of something hungry for more than simple meat. Even the pellets of snow themselves felt sharper, jagging into his skin like tiny bits of shrapnel from an endlessly recurring explosion.

In his peripheral vision, a shadow twitched and slithered.

Trace stopped, hand reaching back for his lightsaber, and that was when he saw the man stepping out of the arched doorway to his left. Even before Trace glimpsed the man’s face, he sensed the thin, bitter smile twisted over his lips, the threat of violence in those half-lidded
eyes. The man’s tunic and cloak blew out behind him, snapping whip-like in the irregular gusts of wind, and his voice, when it came across the broken landscape between them, was a low snarl.

“You landed on the wrong world, Jedi.”

Trace turned and faced him directly. The man was a Sith Master; that much was readily apparent—perhaps an instructor at the academy.

“I am Shak’Weth, Blademaster here on Odacer-Faustin. I can only assume that you came here seeking humiliation and an unpleasant death.”

“I’m here on other matters.”

“Ah?” The Blademaster cocked his head slightly, looking marginally intrigued. “But you’ve found me instead.”

Trace nodded. Actually it was only stillness that had found him, clarity of thought, and it came as a blessing. The cold, the darkness, the stinging wind—all of these outside factors had simply ceased to exist. His entire world had shrunk to the exact distance between him and the man who stood before him, an obstacle in the way of finding Hestizo. Trace felt everything inside him beginning to relax and flow smoothly as the Force spread through his nerves and muscles, generating a kind of weightless balance between action and intent. He drew his own lightsaber, felt it blaze to life in his grasp, a perfect extension of himself.

The Sith Master’s response was immediate. With a harsh grunt of fury, he flew at Trace, vaulting upward in the wind and angling the blade down with both hands, ripping through the ground where Trace had just been standing. The execution was flawless, a thing of almost organic brutality, as if the Blademaster had become a force of nature, another component of the blizzard that roared around them.

Yet he was still too slow.

Leaping sideways, Trace had spun around with his own lightsaber extended in front of him in a sweeping blow. The Sith Master was there, deflecting the attack and charging him again, hammering him backward with a vicious series of piercing thrusts and jabs, offering no quarter. Twice the blade came close enough to Trace’s face that he
could smell the scorched stubble on his cheek; the third slash came within millimeters of taking off his head.

Trace realized that regardless of what Shak’Weth had said a moment earlier, the Blademaster didn’t intend to humiliate him, to toy with him or prolong the duel any longer than necessary. At this point, the Sith Master was attacking for the most primitive reason imaginable—to slaughter Trace and leave his steaming carcass in the snow. In that split second Trace saw the rest of the duel playing out in two distinct ways, neither of which would last long. Death was hovering over them now like a scavenger, close and claustrophobic—he saw it reflected in the Sith Master’s eyes.

When the red blade came at him again, Trace jumped upward. He put everything he knew about Form V’s Djem So variation into that jump, leaping over Shak’Weth, spiraling through the flying snow, landing on the other side, and twisting around instantly, keeping his lightsaber at throat level with the intention of finishing the duel in a single stroke.

Shak’Weth laughed—a bone-dry chuckle—and deflected the maneuver with mocking ease. He swung at Trace, and this time the Jedi felt a hot, bright stab of pain as the lightsaber seared through his cloak and tunic, slashing into the flesh along his rib cage. Drops of blood fell into the snow, disappearing as they melted.

“Too easy, Jedi.” Now the Blademaster’s shoulders and back were braced against the slouching stone wall behind him, its outer surface cracked and half collapsed, and he tensed to spring forward. “Now I shall finish you.”