“But now that you have broken up the swarm,” Thrawn suggested, “perhaps we should simply return to my shuttle and make repairs. Then we can fly to safety.”
Zak shook his head. Something was wrong. The shreevs were slowing down. They’re making the most of their meal, Sh’shak had said.
Zak saw several shreevs break away and fly heavily, lazily toward a grove of trees.
They’re making the most of their meal…
More shreevs broke away, and suddenly Zak remembered. “We’ve got to hurry!” he shouted in alarm. “We don’t have much time!”
Thrawn looked around for some new danger. “What do you mean?”
“The shreevs!” Zak said, pointing skyward. More of the dark flying creatures had broken off and were soaring away in search of a resting place. “Shreevs only hunt until they get their fill. Then they sleep off their full stomachs.”
A deep frown sank into Hoole’s long face. “And the beetles by far outnumber the shreevs. There will still be hundreds of thousands of beetles left when all the shreevs have gone to take their naps.”
Tash shuddered. “Which is more than enough to come after us.”
Zak looked left, then right. One way led back to Thrawn’s ship, the other toward Vroon’s workshop. “Which way should we go?”
“To my ship,” Thrawn ordered. “Now that we have time to work, I can make repairs.”
“No-to the workshop,” Hoole countered. “Vroon knows more about these insects than anyone alive. Perhaps there is a weapon, or some information in the cottage, that we can use.”
Thrawn was in no position to argue. None of the others were Imperials, and no one else would follow him. They turned and hurried toward the workshop.
They were still a hundred meters from the old stone cottage when the last of the shreevs had flown away, leaving the sky still buzzing with beetles. At first, the insects continued to drift about in small clouds. But soon the clouds joined together, turning the hum of their wings into a louder buzz.
Anxiously, Zak, Tash, and the others started to run. They reached the workshop just as the sun vanished behind the swarm.
They found the workshop door ajar. “Maybe Vroon came back,” Zak said. “Now that his drog beetles are attacking everything in sight, maybe we can persuade him to help us.”
They pushed the door open.
Just as Zak had hoped, Vroon was inside. But all that was left of him was his hard, transparent S’krrr shell. His eyes and the rest of his body had been eaten away.
CHAPTER 17
Beetles crawled in and out of Vroon’s remains. More beetles fluttered around the workshop, and for a moment, Zak feared that the swarm had reached the building before them. Then he saw the glass container that had held Vroon’s own collection. It had fallen to the floor and shattered.
“He must have come back for his collection,” Zak guessed.
“So much for finding a weapon here,” Thrawn scoffed. “If Vroon had anything to use against these beetles, it obviously didn’t work against the swarm.”
Quickly, the small group braced itself for the coming swarm of insects. While Zak and Tash busied themselves stomping on the beetles in the room, the others overturned tables and workbenches. Then, using tools in the workshop, they laid plastoid trays and tabletops-anything flat across the open windows, sealing them shut. Just as Thrawn slammed the door shut and jammed a bench behind it, the swarm struck the building.
Thuk! Thuk! Thuk!
Hard, tiny bodies smashed against the stone walls of the workshop. Alone, each beetle weighed almost nothing. But as hundreds of thousands of them slammed against the door and windows again and again, they acted like a battering ram. The walls were already starting to shake.
Zak looked around. “There’s got to be something here we can use. Vroon was an expert on these beetles.”
Thrawn scowled. “Vroon was insane. He worshipped bugs. He miscalculated and now he is dead. We must be careful not to miscalculate as well. Our best chance for survival is to wait it out until my ship notices I have not checked in. They will send down enough forces to wipe out ten million insects, and we’ll be rid of these pests once and for all.”
Zak, Tash, and Hoole exchanged glances. That might be Thrawn ‘s best chance for survival, but for them it was like jumping out of the rancor’s claws and right into its mouth. Once they were on board an Imperial Star Destroyer, they might never get off again.
As the walls continued to shiver and groan under the weight of untold numbers of beetles, Zak and Tash searched the workshop for anything they had missed-a weapon or a chemical, anything Vroon might have used to keep control over the beetles.