Light of the Jedi(65)
Serj looked at the Jedi, his eyes gone hollow and distant again.
“Lightning,” he said. “It looked like three strikes of lightning.”
“We’re going to be all right,” Erika said, looking her children in the eye as she said it—first little Bee, then Ronn.
Ronn was older, just a few years from being ready to go off on his own, but at that moment they both just looked like babies, terrified and desperate for reassurance from their parents.
The Nihil with them in the cart snorted.
“Yeah,” she said, “just fine.”
She wore a mask, like the others, but Erika knew she was Trandoshan from the look of her arms—long in comparison to the torso, gray pebbled skin gleaming in the sun, ending in hooked white claws. A single line of jagged blue paint bisected her mask from forehead to chin. She held a rifle, and had a holstered blaster and the galaxy only knew what other weapons.
Erika and her family weren’t going to overpower this woman, even if all four of them managed to free themselves from the plasticuffs pinning their arms behind their backs. They were two miners and their kids, and Ottoh was barely conscious; he’d taken a nasty punch to the head when the Nihil finally pulled them out of their house.
No, they weren’t going to be all right.
But you didn’t say that to your kids.
“Just stay brave,” Erika said.
They were racing along a dirt track that curved between two sets of hills. Iron on the left, magnetite on the right, the field generated by the two part of the reason ships couldn’t fly through this part of Elphrona, and the reason they weren’t already in the Nihil’s starship headed offworld. With their speeder gone, the Nihil had decided to add livestock rustling to their list of crimes and stolen five of the Blythes’ herd of steelees to make their getaway.
The kidnappers had harnessed two of the creatures to pull the repulsorcart in which the family was currently riding. Another three kept pace alongside, one Nihil per mount. They were inexpert riders, Erika noted with contempt, slumping in the saddles, holding their weight all wrong. They kept digging in their heels and slapping the creatures’ haunches in an effort to coax out more speed, not realizing that if they would just sit on them properly, the steelees would move twice as fast.
Not that Erika intended to tell them that. The slower their party moved, the better. Because someone was coming after them, and the longer it took the Nihil to reach their ship, the better the odds the people behind them could catch up.
Ronn had noticed it first. He was sitting in the cart facing away from the direction they were moving, which meant he had a view of everything behind them.
Her son had gently nudged her leg with his boot. Three short taps—obviously a signal. She looked at him, mouthed a word: What?
He didn’t move, just cast his eyes to one side, looking past her, then back to her. Then back to looking past her, toward the path they had traveled, then back to her.
Ronn nuzzled up to Bee and said, loudly, “Don’t cry, Bee, this dumb lizard’s not going to hurt you,” which had earned him a kick from their Trandoshan guard that he bore in silence, her brave, brave son. It had also earned Erika a moment to turn her head and look behind them, where she saw what Ronn had seen—sparks, in the distance.
Not close, but not so far, either. She had looked several times since, taking any opportunity for a quick glance, and their pursuers were getting closer, moment by moment.
The sparks were identical to those kicked up by their own mounts every time a steelee’s hoof struck against a metallic rock—wild steelee herds running at night were one of the natural wonders of Elphrona. They made a loud noise, too—a sharp, quick tchk—which helped to disguise what had to be similar sounds emanating from the riders coming up behind them.
Three, she thought. She couldn’t quite make out any details, but it seemed like three, riding side by side.
No one seemed to have noticed besides the two of them. Their Trandoshan guard was keeping her eyes on her captives. And of course, the Nihil weren’t looking anywhere but dead ahead. They were hanging on for dear life, trying to stay in their saddles.
She gave Ronn a questioning look, and he responded with as much of a shrug as he could using just his eyes. He didn’t know who was on their trail, either—and Erika knew he hadn’t been able to raise help from Ogden’s Hope.
Maybe the settlement’s security squad had found their spines and sent a team out to help—but they’d be in a speeder, not as mounted riders.
It didn’t make any sense—but it was a little bit of hope, and hope was in short supply at the moment.
She risked another glance back, just to see if they were getting closer, and this time her luck ran out. The guard saw her doing it and looked, too. She saw their pursuers immediately—impossible to miss, now. The sparks were shooting up to either side like the people chasing them were riding along a road of flame.
The Nihil stood in the cart and yelled out to the rest of her crew.
“Trouble! We got people comin’ up behind, fast! Looks like three of—”
And then Ottoh, who as it turned out was not unconscious but merely pretending to be, waiting for a moment like this, holding his own hope in reserve, clicked his tongue sharply against the roof of his mouth three times. It was a loud sound, and all five of the steelees, well trained and well loved by her husband, knew the command and obeyed immediately.