Light of the Jedi(78)
Porter Engle reached out with both the Force and his hand, palm out, and deflected the bolt back, sending it caroming back off toward the hills. Not strictly necessary. He could have pushed it away with his mind, or frozen it in place. But flicking a blaster bolt away like an insect…it made a certain statement.
“I saw you, friend,” he shouted up, calling his lightsaber back to him. “Saw right where you’re hiding.”
The hilt smacked into his hand with a whap he always found utterly satisfying, his thick fingers slipping into grooves worn into the metal cylinder from tens of thousands of hours of practice and combat.
“And soon I’ll see you again,” he called.
Porter Engle sprinted toward the hill, moving faster than the Nihil could probably see, leaping up and over and from side to side. No more blaster bolts. He had a feeling the surviving Nihil had thought better of this whole ambush and was making a run for it.
When he made it to the top of the rise, he learned that he was right. The Nihil was sitting on another steelee, trying to get the beast to move, digging his heels into its sides. He wasn’t shouting at the poor creature, its head down and hooves dug in hard—he knew better than to make that kind of noise—but Porter knew that under ordinary circumstances he’d be cursing at it, using every horrible oath he could dream up.
“I bet you’re the one that shot my animal,” Porter said.
The Nihil whipped around, his blaster firing, and the conflict ended the only way it could.
Porter was utterly certain.
The Nihil toppled off the steelee, a smoking hole through his mask.
Porter Engle wasted no more time on him. He deactivated his lightsaber and slapped it into his holster, then approached the traumatized steelee, his hand outstretched.
“Hey there, fella…” he said. “You are a luminous being. Whaddya say you and me go do some good?”
The steelee looked at him, its eyes wide. He touched its flank, and it calmed. He wrapped his hands in its bridle, preparing to heave himself up into its saddle.
And then the Nihil with the hole through his mask sat up. He lifted his blaster to fire—and Porter Engle realized the raider was probably of some species that kept its brain elsewhere in its body, meaning he could survive a headshot, meaning that Porter Engle, whose hands were occupied with the steelee, was about to die.
These thoughts ran through his head, along with an odd moment of sadness about a refinement to one of his pie recipes he would now never get to try, and he prepared his spirit to join the Force.
A black, gray, and red-orange blur leapt off the rocks, directly at the injured Nihil.
Ember, Porter Engle thought in astonishment. He’d forgotten all about her.
The charhound opened her jaws and a huge gout of yellow flame spat out, enveloping the Nihil before he could bring his blaster to bear. A strange, hollow scream emanated from the raider’s mask, and he rolled on the ground, trying to put out the fire that had consumed his body. Ember did not stop, just continued torching the Nihil until at first he stopped screaming, and then he stopped moving.
Then she closed her mouth and padded up to Porter Engle, who gingerly bent down and scratched her behind one ear. She felt hot, like his oven back at the outpost. He supposed that made perfect sense. She must have followed them all the way from the wrecked homestead, he and his fellow Jedi so focused on pursuing the Nihil they hadn’t thought to consider who might be pursuing them.
“Good girl,” he said. “Very good girl.”
Porter climbed aboard the steelee, and he was off, headed down the slope at a ready pace with Ember loping alongside, racing after Bell and Loden and the family they were trying to save.
* * *
Loden Greatstorm and Bell Zettifar had steadily gained ground on the Nihil they were chasing, but had not completely closed the distance. Now the kidnappers’ ships were visible, parked on the rust-colored sand just outside the no-fly zone. Two, looking like welded-together piles of cubes and spikes, and both marked with the three lines they’d seen on the door of the Blythe homestead. The Nihil had almost reached the vessels, along with their prisoners, still being pulled along in the little cart.
“We’ll never catch them in time,” Bell said.
“I know,” Loden said.
He removed his hands from the reins of his steelee, but the creature didn’t slow its strong gallop, sparks shooting up with every step. Bell assumed his master was steering his mount via his knees and a judicious application of the Force. In a single smooth motion, Loden swung the metal tube he had salvaged from the wrecked Vanguard around his body, placing it atop one shoulder. He pulled his lightsaber from his holster, slapped it against the flat plate connected to the tube’s electronic components, and the power unit on the far end lit up glowing gold, the same color as Loden’s blade.
Bell realized what Loden had taken from their vehicle—the Vanguard’s laser cannon, its kyber-keyed anti-ship weapon. He held his breath. He couldn’t believe this was about to happen.
Loden fired, and a bolt of golden light shot from the end of the tube, like a lightsaber blade but somehow denser, more there. The edges of a saber blade faded out into an intense whiteness—but this blast thickened, darkened, into an amber like the first rays of an autumn sunrise. And the sound—Bell heard it with his bones, not his ears. In the moment of the weapon firing, all other sounds ceased.