[Dark Nest] - 1(161)

Luke brought his boot up under her chin, snapping her head back, sending her arms flying out to her sides. She began to backflip away, her lightsaber slipping from her open fingers.

Luke summoned the weapon into his empty hand and continued toward Mara, who had disappeared inside a knot of Gorog. Her weapons were still flashing inside the snarl and her presence was burning hot in the Force, and that gave him hope. He reached out to Leia, urging her to hurry, then fell on the jumble with both lightsabers whirling.

The battle erupted into a tempest of hissing blades and shrieking blasters and crackling electrobolts. Luke opened a dozen thoraxes in a dozen strokes, then his back spasmed with the paralyzing heat of an electrobolt strike. Mara fired from somewhere inside the tangle of limbs and mandibles, and the acrid stench of melted chitin rose behind him. Luke stretched out with the Force, dragging Killiks away from Mara, hurling them into their fellow warriors or impaling them on crooked forks of energy.

Luke pulled himself toward a glimpse of red-gold hair, his lightsabers opening a path, filling the air with globules of insect gore. Twice, a mandible slipped through his defenses, one stabbing deep into his thigh, the other slipping a barb inside the face opening of his helmet. Both times, he slashed off the attackers’ heads and moved on.

Finally, Luke came to Mara’s whirling figure. Her vac suit had been burned to tatters, and she had half a dozen black circles

where electrobolts had hit her. A faint aura of gold had arisen around her, a sign she was drawing on the Force to keep her exhausted, wounded body going.

Mara briefly locked gazes with Luke, then her green eyes slid away, looking overhead. Luke followed her line of sight and was surprised to see Alema Rar pulling herself into the tunnel mouth. Her left arm was floating at her side, a deep, gaping V where she had been cleaved.

Mara lowered her gaze again and continued her defensive whirl.

She batted away an electrobolt, then groaned, “This isn’t really taking the fight to them.”

“Not too late, though.” Luke sent a flurry of electrobolts screaming back toward the Killiks that had fired them. “Got them overconfident now.”

“Better make it look good, then.”

Mara sent a dozen bolts screaming toward the Twi’lek. Luke did not see whether any hit. By then, the Gorog were pressing the attack again, and he was too busy defending himself and Mara to worry about Alema.

Leia’s arms had become deadweights fifteen minutes into the fight, and she was able to wield her lightsaber now only by virtue of the strength Saba was lending her through the Force. Han had run out of power packs-she had not noticed when - and traded his T-21 for a pair of captured assault rifles, which he had taken to firing one in each hand. The bugcrunchers had taken so many hits that Bugs One through Three had exhausted their laminanium repair ingots. With the exception of Saba - who only seemed to grow quicker, stronger, and more joyful as the battle wore on-even the Jedi Masters were slowing, if the tattered condition of their combat vac suits was any indication.

And the Gorog just kept coming, blocking the way ahead, clattering out of side passages, rumbling up the tunnel behind the rescue team. A limitless swarm.

“Han!” Leia’s lightsaber swept down to divert an electrobolt streaking toward his knee, then swung up to block one coming at her own head. Her arms were so numb she did not even feel them move. “Do those bugcrunchers have thermal detonators on them?”

“What do you think?”

“Use ‘em.”

“In here?” The assault rifle in Han’s left hand ran low on power and began to shoot sparks. He let it float free. “That’s crazy! If we blow a hole in this ice cube-“

“Use ‘em!” Leia used the Force to pull a rifle out of a dead Gorog’s hands and floated it up the corridor to Han. “I don’t think we’re going to reach Luke and Mara in time. And we’re not doing very-“

“YVH bugcrunchers,” Han said over the combat channel. “Go BAM. Use your detonators.”

“BAM status requires authorization-“

“Do it!” Han shouted so loudly that his voice reverberated out of five other helmets. “Do it now!”

“Authorization code do it now accepted,” Bug One said. The soft crump of the droid’s grenade launcher sounded from the head of the line. “By Any Means status-“

A brilliant flash lit the corridor, and the rest of the report was lost to the earsplitting crackle of a thermal detonator.

The rescue team surged forward into the crater, and Bug Four called, “Proceed with all haste.” A soft crump sounded as the droid launched his detonator. “Explosion imminent.”