Клаудия Грэй - Into the Dark

Dez Rydan, wild-eyed, went at Reath again and again, relentless. His obvious injuries hadn’t sapped his strength; if anything, Dez was going berserk with adrenaline, almost incapable of rational thought. It was like approaching an injured animal—you could try to take care of it, but it would only snap and claw at you.

Parry. Position two. Twist and parry. Block high, block low, position four. Reath’s body knew the stances and drills so well that he could defend himself without conscious thought. But that was all he could do—defend himself and prolong the fight.

The only other option was maiming or killing Dez Rydan.

“Cut him with the blade that burns,” growled one of the watching Drengir, all of whom seemed highly entertained. “Cook the meat for us.”

Reath wasn’t sure which one of them the Drengir was speaking to, but he didn’t like that instruction either way.

I have to wake Dez up , he thought. Make him hear me, if he even can. How am I supposed to get through to him?

Then Reath remembered another voice saying, when he’d been complaining about the frontier assignment, “How am I ever going to get through to you?”

“Master Jora,” Reath said. “Remember her? Our master?”

Dez hardly seemed to understand what Reath was saying. So Reath reached out with the Force, filling his mind with memories of Jora Malli: her warm smile, her surprisingly deep laughter, her insatiable cravings for Bilbringi food—

And then the knowledge that she was dead, far away, never to be seen again—

Reath had managed to create a connection with Dez’s mind just in time to flood it with grief and pain. Dez pulled back and brought up his lightsaber for another blow. Sooner or later, he was going to hit harder than Reath could parry.

Dez stopped mid-movement, as though frozen. His expression remained glazed, but in his eyes there was some evidence that he was at least trying to make sense of what Reath was saying.

Sweat slicked Reath’s skin. The air was thick with moisture and the smells of soil, sap, and mold. He stood there in defense stance, keeping his eyes locked with Dez’s, not knowing how long the respite would last.

Reath attempted to reach out with the Force, to connect with Dez that way, but immediately he stopped. Dez’s mind was almost unrecognizably disordered—frenzied. Even if a connection could be forged through such chaos, it was as likely to disrupt Reath as it was to stabilize Dez. The risk was too great.

He’d have to reach Dez another way.

Carefully, Reath said, “Think about Master Jora. Just imagine her voice. I know you can hear it, inside your head, if you’ll listen. She’d tell you to stop fighting and let me take you home.”

At first it seemed as though Dez hadn’t even heard him. But then he lowered his lightsaber—only a few centimeters, but it was enough to give Reath a chance.

It wasn’t honorable to hit an opponent when he was down. Usually. This was one of the exceptions. Reath swung his blade sharply upward to collide with Dez’s almost at the base. With Dez wobbly and dazed, his grip on his lightsaber gave way. It spun upward, and Reath caught it with his free hand.

He placed himself between Dez and the Drengir, blades crossed. Even through the glare, Reath could see the fury on their twisted faces.

To Dez he said only, “Come on. Let’s go home.”

“And to think,” Orla panted, “some people—say gardening—is a—relaxing hobby!”

Cohmac didn’t laugh at her joke. Not that he ever laughed much. And no doubt he was distracted by trying to keep his head from being chopped off by the Drengir’s thorny whips.

One of those whips had scraped Orla’s calf earlier in the fight. It had been only a glancing blow, but it was enough to make her leg ache from toe to hip. Swelling had already stiffened her ankle and was beginning to do the same to her knee. Poisonous thorns, she figured.

A Drengir lunged at her, but Orla flung herself backward, half jumping, half levitating, until she was clear of the fight. Not that she intended to leave Cohmac alone in it for long, but they could fight better as a unit once she had some perspective on what they were dealing with.

As she came back down, her sore foot made contact, not with the floor, but with something curved and unfixed. Orla landed hard on all fours and glared backward at the 8-T that had had the nerve to be in her way. The droid took no notice, simply kept on pruning back branches.

Pruning.

With shears specially designed to slice through plants.

Orla’s mind whirled with possibilities. The Aytees attack anything they perceive as a threat to the plants. They’re not attacking us at the moment, which means they don’t consider the Drengir to be plants under their care.

Which means there has to be some way to sic the Aytees on the Drengir.

She turned and pounced on the 8-T’s dome; it whistled once in consternation but otherwise kept to its task. No obvious interface presented itself. If she was going to use the droids, she would have to work with their existing programming.

Orla clambered to her feet, ignoring the stab of pain in her ankle. From her vantage point she could see that Cohmac was pinned near one of the central arches. Overhead curved one of the bowers, so thickly enveloped in vines that the metal was almost invisible.

This was one of those rare moments when a blaster would’ve been more useful than a lightsaber. Orla reminded herself to carry one in future, then summoned the strength to leap even farther up than before—again half levitating—soaring all the way up to the bower. At the topmost point, she swung her lightsaber, severing the bower’s connection to the ceiling. As the metal sagged and she began her descent, she yelled, “Look out above!” Her friend would need no more than that to understand what she’d set into motion.

Orla controlled her fall as best she could, but even her soft landing sent more pain jolting through her entire leg. The poison had continued to spread. Antitox , she thought. As soon as possible. Just not yet.

Entangled as it was in vines, the bower fell in stages—each stem unraveling only so far, then pausing, until the weight forced it to go farther still. It wobbled from side to side, which got the attention of the 8-Ts. Orla limped back toward the thick of the fray. As she’d anticipated, Cohmac had figured out her plan; he’d edged backward until he was well clear of the bower’s ultimate resting place. The Drengir, believing their enemies to be in retreat, had moved into prime position. Orla rejoined Cohmac, each of them parrying blows from the thorn whips with their sabers in a whir of light. Every sweep of a saber sent the tips of thorns spraying around the station, like deadly poison darts.

The bower finally tumbled to the floor with a thud. It clocked one of the Drengir, but that was just a side benefit. The Drengir were covered with the vines and trapped as surely as though they’d been caught in a net. That wouldn’t last long, of course, before they got out. Orla wanted them to get out—or, rather, she wanted them to try.

“Cut yourselves free!” yelled the Drengir leader. One of his spiky hands slashed through a vine with a spray of sap. The other Drengir followed suit, shredding the vines with all their might.

And that was when the 8-Ts stepped in.

They swarmed the Drengir. First a handful, then a dozen, then more droids from all over the station were rolling across floors and down walls, pruning shears clicking. Soon the Drengir began to howl in protest as those shears found their targets. The Drengir would have no trouble destroying the 8-Ts once they were free—but that would take them a while.