“Careful, now,” he said. “You could have someone’s eye out with that thing.”
Viliips weren’t like comlinks that needed opening and operating. Viliips were like being there in person, always on, always watching. The warrior had to be silenced, and fast.
Fett didn’t even have to give the signal.
Beviin went for the villip hooked on the warrior’s shoulder and sliced it across its base with a single sweep, sending it flopping to the ground in a spray or fluid. For a split second the warrior just stared, jaws parted-his lipless mouth seemed permanently open-and then the narrow alley plunged into bedlam.
‘Trait-“
It was the last word the warrior said. The living armor shitted before their eyes to protect his neck and head, but Beviin managed to hit him in the jaw with his return swing, and a beskad was a heavy weapon. The blade embedded itself in the warrior’s jaw, leaving him gurgling and thrashing as his amphistaff changed briefly from snake to iron bar. As the warrior dropped to his knees, the amphistaff slipped free and Fett threw himself on it instinctively, punching his glove-mounted vibroblade through it and pinning it to the ground. Its tail thrashed. Suvar rushed over to decapitate it with his own blade.
It was a couple of seconds that felt like hours. The subaltern was still screaming and writhing as Beviin struggled to pull his saber free. Briika leapt on the warrior between the scythe-like claws to drive her vibroblade deep into him but it skidded off the Vonduun crab armor. She let out a grunt and stabbed again. And still he kept struggling.
“Shut him up for fierfek’s sake-“
“Shabla claws. Look out.”
Beviin let go of the saber and grabbed the warrior’s armored throat with his crushgaunts.
“Let’s play a game, shabuir.” He squeezed, and the subaltern’s eyes stared. His mouth opened wide. “It’s called beskar beats crabshell.”
Crushgaunts had been illegal for centuries. The micronized beskar in them meant they could exert enough pressure to shatter thick bone and maybe more. The shell armor seemed to be putting up a fight, but Beviin-a mild man most of the time, in Fett’s experience-hung on, cursing in completely incomprehensible Mando’a, until there was a sound like cracking ice and the warrior let out a long gurgle. The armor twitched, its claws snapping impotently a couple of times before stopping.
A second’s silence followed.
Beviin, slightly breathless, gazed at his gloves with a distracted smile. “We were crazy to ban these.”
“Remind me to rescind that when I get back,” Fett said.
It was a good thing that nearby cannon barrage had drowned the screams. Beviin struggled to pull the saber out of the body and finally had to put his boot square on the warrior’s chest to do it.
“So the armor dies when the soldier does?” Suvar grabbed the dead amphistaff, sliced chunks off the subaltern and his armor, and stuffed the remains into his pouches and pockets until they bulged. “Bio samples, not trophies, okay? We need to get as much information on these … things as we can.”
Beviin reached over and sliced off some scalp complete with wispy black hair. “Trophy. Now let’s go, shall we?”
It took five Mandos to tackle one Yuuzhan Vong this time. But they’d learned a lot about how to kill them in just that one brief tussle. They’d learn plenty more.
Briika scrambled to her feet, a little unsteady. The explosions were getting closer. “All we have to do is start up a crushgaunt factory. Easy. 1 mean … oh … “
She seemed breathless. She looked down at herself, and then sank to her knees again, hands pressed against her chest plate.
“Buir? Buir!” Dinua grabbed her mother’s shoulders and as her arms dropped the dark blood welling from under the armor plate was suddenly visible. It was pooling between her knees. It was all over the dead subaltern. “She’s been stabbed. The crab armor spike went right through her suit. Get bey plates off!”
“No, that might be holding her together,” Cham said. “Get her back to Slave I, fast.”
“She’s bleeding out-“
Beviin picked her up in his arms with no apparent effort.
“You promised …” she said.
Fett was about to say something brutally pragmatic but he was wrong, and he knew it. “Faster it we both lift her with jet packs.”
“That’ll take some doing.”
“Do it. Dinua, burn that body. If the Vong find him they’ll know it wasn’t a lightsaber that sliced him up.”
Dinua looked close to protest. But she simply nodded and adjusted the flamethrower on her wrist, then looked back at her mother.