Клаудия Грэй - Into the Dark

Reath would have strongly preferred to move quickly, because the Drengir continued to close in around them. However, his obvious plan of escape seemed not to concern them, which meant there was some serious flaw Reath hadn’t thought through yet.

If it’s that big a problem, I’ll find out about it soon enough , he told himself.

He wanted to get them talking, both to learn what he could and so they’d finally stop referring to him as meat. “So,” he said, “are the Drengir from this world and some of you traveled to the station? Or did you settle this planet by leaving the station on one of the hyperspace pods?” To Reath, the pods looked like an automated relay, but he wanted the Drengir to confirm that.

What he said interested them, he could tell—but they still didn’t acknowledge him. One of them said, “Others of our kind remain on the station. It has seen them.”

The Drengir leader hissed, which seemed to be their version of a thoughtful sound. “Then they were not killed. Only dormant. If they are dormant, they can be freed.”

“Can we do it without falling dormant ourselves?” asked another Drengir. “Why should we risk ourselves for the weak?”

In response, the Drengir leader lashed out with his thorn whip, forcing the speaker to crouch submissively. “We do not risk ourselves for the weak. We risk ourselves to learn if we can again use the pods. If so, we can resume our hunt. At last we will find fresh meat.”

“Okay, so, that’s just one mention of ‘meat’ too many, and we’re going to go now,” Reath said, nudging the tottering Dez more strongly toward the first pod.

“We will be able to hunt!” A Drengir pointed a moldy green finger at Dez. “This one has told us that nothing holds us back any longer.”

When did Dez start giving Drengir pep talks? But by then Reath understood that Dez wasn’t himself and hadn’t been since almost the moment of his transport. He’d obviously sustained a serious head injury, but that had been only the start of his problems. The Force alone knew what Dez might’ve been drugged with or interrogated about.

He faced the Drengir evenly as he kept edging Dez farther and farther back. They’d almost reached the launch mechanism.

“Once the Amaxines were our enemies,” said the Drengir leader to those who surrounded him. His followers all rustled in apparent agreement. “They built this structure to better fight us. Then we found it, and used it to fight them. They abandoned the station, left it to us. Our victory!”

The Drengir all shouted with the memory of that glory. Based on what Reath had studied about the Amaxines, any victory against them would’ve been hard-won. All he cared about was that the howling celebration had given him the moment of distraction he needed to elbow Dez through the pod door. Dez stumbled and landed on his hands and knees; Reath winced, but told himself that at least that would be the last of Dez Rydan’s suffering.

One of the Drengir motioned toward them. “Let them go to the station. We will follow.”

“Follow…” Reath’s voice trailed off. There were two transit pods in the launcher, and he’d worked them around to one while not noticing Drengir already boarding the other. Summoning his courage, he said, “Fine. Follow us. We have friends aboard the station.”

They acknowledged him again—but with braying, rustling laughter that sent shivers along Reath’s spine. “This station will be ours, and our conquest of the galaxy can resume.”

Reath imagined the thick greenery throughout the Amaxine station. Drengir could’ve been— must’ve been in stasis the entire time, hidden in plain sight. The darkness surrounding them hadn’t been the shadow of something long dead, but of something that could awaken again.

“Gotta go,” Reath said. “Thanks for the stimulating conversation.”

The Drengir’s laughter filled his ears until he, too, was in the transport pod. Extinguishing the lightsabers, Reath dropped them, pulled the hatch door shut, and hit the one control on the panel. Immediately the workings began their strange whine-hum.

“Where are we?” Dez managed to say. He remained on his hands and knees. “I don’t understand where we are.”

Reath helped Dez into the one seat, crouching by him to keep him steady. “It doesn’t matter, because we’re not staying,” he said gently. “We’re going home.”

And the Drengir will be right behind us.

Hague’s blaster fired.

As though in slow motion, Cohmac saw Orla’s raised hand and felt her pushing back through the Force.

The energy bolt crackled in the air—not frozen in place but moving forward slowly enough that the Jedi were able to easily step around it. As soon as it was behind them, Orla let it go. It crashed into the wall with a spray of sparks that briefly illuminated Hague’s astonished face.

“Why do you attack us?” Cohmac demanded. “We have done you no harm.”

Orla added, “We helped you.”

“Yes, you did. But you did that as much for yourselves as for me, didn’t you?” Hague retained some remnant of the avuncular warmth he’d shown when they all first met after the Legacy Run disaster, but the blaster he held told the true story. “It suited your vanity to be the great and wise, saving the poor and helpless. But the Nihil are poor no longer, and we have never been helpless.”

And there it was—Hague’s anger, no longer masked. In him it was not a sudden flame of temper but a deeply banked, volcanic heat that roiled on and on. Nor was his anger purely for himself; this was something he bore for his people. Cohmac wondered who the Nihil were—where they must have come from—to carry such wrath as their birthright.

He said only, “None of that answers the question. Why do you attack us?”

“We were the only ones stranded here—but misfortune fell on our entire Cloud.”

Hague spoke as though they should know what “Cloud” referred to. Probably a subset of the Nihil , Cohmac reasoned.

Meanwhile, Hague continued, “What should have been a moment of supreme triumph is instead indignity. When we are asked for our trawl, we will have almost nothing to offer, and they might cast us out.” A gleam came into his eyes. “But if we offer them the lives of the Jedi—and the secrets of this space station—those will make up for everything. Now that the rest of our Cloud is here, we can finally act.”

Hague lifted his blaster and fired—not at the Jedi but at the shield doors behind them. They slid shut with a heavy bang, sealing them in. Cohmac and Orla exchanged glances that revealed they’d each looked for an exit and found none.

“Your sorcery cannot save you,” Hague said. But he appeared somewhat shaken.

“We don’t need sorcery,” Orla shot back. She always did let herself be baited a little too quickly. “We have lightsabers.”

Hague no longer wanted to engage with them; Cohmac could not tell whether the man was intimidated or merely moving on. Hague’s head turned as he spoke into a small comlink pinned to the lapel of his jacket: “Intruders aboard the station are confirmed. Two Jedi. Possibly others, as movement in the transport areas of the station has also been detected.”

Transport areas? Cohmac filed that away for later reference—assuming there was a later.

From Hague’s comlink came a harsh voice: “ Send a team to investigate the transport areas and clear them. Hold the Jedi. Another team will join for the extermination. ”

Affie didn’t want to leave her mission unfinished. But the Jedi were already in trouble. That meant Leox and Geode might be, too. While she hadn’t been able to identify every strange sound ricocheting through the station in the past few hours, the last loud bangs had definitely been blaster fire striking metal. She wanted her friends to leave the station alive, which meant putting her mission aside for a while.