Assault at Selonia Read online

  “Local wildlife,” Showolter said.

  “Oh, my!” Threepio said. “Feral hunters? Here?”

  “That’s right,” Showolter said.

  “Ah,” Luke said. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” The city of Coruscant had been where it was for a long, long time, and any number of strange animals had been brought to the planet for a variety of reasons—some of them meant for pets, some for food, some for exhibition. Over the millennia a certain number of them had escaped, and of those, a fair number had gone feral, even evolved to adapt to their new circumstances.

  The upper city was a source of resources—mostly in the form of garbage. It was all but inevitable that a warped sort of ecosystem would come into being as the denizens of the depths adapted to their environment. There were even stories—unsubstantiated, so far as Luke knew—that some of the feral species in the lower depths had, over time, devolved from their intelligent ancestors. There were endless urban legends of underlevel zombies, ferocious creatures descended from hapless tourists or office workers who had gotten lost in the subterranean levels thousands of years in the past.

  “So what’s the local nuisance in this part of the city?” asked Lando.

  “We call them corridor ghouls,” Showolter said, “but we’re not quite sure what they are. However, they are definitely hungry. Nasty little things, quadrupeds about knee-high. They seem to be more or less mammalian, but they don’t have fur, just dead-white skin. They’re blind—totally eyeless, in fact. But they have big ears—and big teeth. We think they navigate by echo location. At least that would explain the high-pitched screams they make. But however they get around, they are fast and precise when they go for you. So watch it.”

  “We’re doomed!” Threepio moaned, and Artoo let out a dispirited moan.

  “Take it easy, you two,” Luke said.

  “Yeah, relax. Sounds like they’d make perfect pets,” Lando muttered. He checked the charge on his blaster. “Ready,” he said.

  Luke unclipped his lightsaber from his belt and held it at the ready, but did not switch it on. “Ready,” he said.

  “Good,” Showolter said. “We have the lights on so we can see them. That evens things up a bit. I wouldn’t want to meet them in the dark, that’s for sure. Now, we’re going to step out of the turbolift, go straight down the corridor for fifty meters, then take a left and another immediate left. We go another twenty meters, and then we have a steep ramp that leads down to another level about fifteen meters down. Can that droid on rollers handle a steep ramp?”

  Artoo let out an indignant blurting noise.

  “Sure,” Luke said with a smile. “He can handle pretty much anything.”

  “Well, I hope so,” Showolter said, clearly a bit dubious. “But everybody watch your step—or your wheels, or whatever. The corridor is old, and the footing is not all it could be. And watch it at the bottom of the ramp. The ghouls know that’s a good place to lie in wait. Now, once we’re at the base of the ramp, we’ll be in front of a big blast-proof door, about ten meters away the base of the ramp. Beyond the door is the safe room where we’re meeting. There’s a keypad entrance system on the door, and if you could cover me while I’m punching in the code, that would be most helpful. The ghouls seem to like attacking while we’re working the door.”

  “Ah—just a quick question,” Lando said.

  “Yes, what?” Showolter asked.

  “If the corridor ghouls are as nasty as you say, why can’t you just sweep them out of this part of the tunnels and then block all the entrances?”

  Showolter laughed unpleasantly. “I see I haven’t made myself clear. We like having them around. They’re part of the security system. So if you don’t need to shoot one, please don’t.”

  “I don’t get it,” Lando said.

  “Very simple,” Showolter replied. “Once we’re all inside the safe room, we turn out the lights in the corridors. Anyone who comes snooping around is going to get a very nasty surprise.”

  “That sounds like the NRI I’ve heard about. And you people wonder why you have trouble with recruiting,” Lando said.

  Showolter laughed. “Whatever. Just be ready.” He turned, faced the front of the car, and held his weapon at the ready. “All right Berleman,” he said to the open air. “Open door.”

  Obviously someone was running the turbolift by remote. The door slid open and Showolter stepped into a huge, grim-looking chamber cut out of the living rock. The chamber was dimly lit, its only illumination coming from the turbolift interior and from ceiling glowtube fixtures in a tunnel that opened out in the chamber wall directly opposite the turbolift door.

  The turbolift door slid shut, instantly cutting off half the light in the chamber. It was clearly a large space, but the light from the tunnel glowtubes was nowhere near bright enough to illuminate all of it.

  But there was little time to look around. Showolter was leading them toward the tunnel at a brisk pace, his blaster at the ready. The group entered the narrow tunnel single file, Showolter in the lead, followed by Lando, then the droids, with Luke in the rear.

  The walls of the tunnel were raw, dark brown stone, moist and dank, with some sort of slimy fluid seeping down them. Luke could hear a steady drip, drip, drip in the distance. The air was cold enough that he could see his breath.

  The light in the corridor was dim, coming from occasional glowtubes bolted to the low ceiling of the corridor, which was barely wide enough for two humans to walk abreast. Luke could see that the grimy stone floor of the corridor had been smooth and finished once, perhaps back when the Old Republic was a new idea. Now it was cracked and broken, with a vile, meandering stream of fluid flowing down it, off into the darkness. In most places the stone surface was covered with muddy dirt that had silted down from the upper levels of the city over the generations.

  “Oh my goodness!” Threepio said. “What a perfectly dreadful place. We’re all certain to be destroyed!”

  “Take it easy, Threepio,” Luke said. “We’ve been in worse places.”

  “Considering some of the places we have been, I hardly take that as a recommendation, Master Luke,” Threepio replied. “I can’t imagine why anyone would want to bring us to such awful surroundings.”

  Luke had to admit, if only to himself, that Threepio had a point. This fetid tunnel was not a good place to be. He reached out with his Force ability to see if he could sense any of Showolter’s corridor ghouls in the area, but it was no use. The abandoned lower levels of Coruscant were home to myriad forms of life, and there was no way to know which of the minds he was sensing were ghouls and which were not.

  But, then, suddenly, just as Showolter was nearing the first intersection in the tunnel and their first left turn, Luke had no trouble at all sensing the ghouls.

  Because, at that moment, the ghouls started to scream—and the sound was coming from in front of them. Luke looked to Showolter and Lando, saw the fear in their eyes, and knew the same look had to be on his own face. The screaming went on and on, voice over voice, echoing through the corridor. Luke reminded himself that it was a hunting cry, nothing more, a call from one predator to another. But even so, the sound made his blood run cold. He might know, in cold, logical terms, that the ghoul screams had no more meaning than a bird’s song or a womp rat’s chittering. And yet, to human ears, it was a primordial shriek of terror, of hatred, of loss, of pain.

  Showolter pulled back from the intersection and threw his back against the slimy wall. “Master Skywalker!” he called out, trying to make himself heard over the terrible noise. “If you could be so good as to switch on that lightsaber of yours and watch our back … They like to come from both—”

  But then the screaming started from behind them, and there was no need to give a further warning.

  Luke switched on his lightsaber and took up a one-handed position at guard. He ignored the screams from ahead. Let Showolter and Lando worry about them. He concentrated his full attention behind him, and tried to se
e beyond the end of the lights, to the chamber with the turbolift.

  The screaming stopped as abruptly as it had begun, and just then, Luke saw a flicker of movement, barely discernible in the gloom. Then another, and another. “Company coming for sure from back here,” Luke called out.

  And suddenly, there they were; three of them, standing there at the tunnel entrance. Showolter’s description of them was right as far as it went. They were about a meter high at the shoulder with a fairly conventional quadrupedal body arrangement, their bodies long and lean and wiry. They were long legged, and clearly made for running and jumping. Their ears were huge and pointed, and were constantly swiveling back and forth, independent of each other, as if they were tuning in on each sound in turn. Their eyeless heads had long muzzles, their noses twitching constantly. Luke guessed that their sense of smell was as good as their hearing. The three of them were just standing there with their mouths open, making no sound at all that Luke could hear. Luke called over his shoulder, “Threepio, Artoo—can you hear anything in ultrasonic?”

  “Why yes, of course, Master Luke. The sound appears to be coming from the ghouls directly ahead of you. It is similar to the screams we just heard, but at a far higher frequency.” Artoo bleeped and blooped, and Threepio translated. “Good heavens! Artoo reports they are directing beamed ultrasonics at us. He suggests—suggests they are probing our internal structures in order to decide which of us might be good to eat!”

  “Relax, then, Threepio,” Luke said. “I doubt they’d find much good eating on a metal android.”

  “Why, that’s true,” Threepio said, obviously relieved. “That’s quite a great comfort.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Luke muttered. “Lando! Captain Showolter,” he called out. “Talk to me. What’s going on up there?”

  “We can’t see them, or hear them, but they’re still there, somewhere.”

  “Hold on a moment,” Luke said. He reached out with his power in the Force and felt for the minds of the creatures in front of him. He found spirits full of hunger, and cunning, and eagerness. Now he knew what a corridor ghoul’s mind felt like. He reached out further, into the darkness of the tunnel at his back, feeling for the same sort of mind. There were an astonishing number of creature minds in the dark corridors, but now Luke knew what to look for. “There are three more of them,” he said. The three hungry minds were close by, but on a lower level. “If I’ve got the layout straight, then they’re at the bottom of that ramp you talked about. Let me see what I can do.”

  “What are you talking about?” Showolter demanded.

  “Quiet,” Lando said. “Let the man work.”

  Luke reached out for the minds of the ghouls in front of him, searching for a way to send them away. Even without Showolter’s admonition, he would have had no desire to kill them. They had clever little minds, sharp and quick and direct. No subtle tricks or indirection would work here. Well, sometimes the simplest ways were best. Luke found the proper spots in their minds and struck them with a jolt of pure terror.

  They were gone almost before Luke was aware they had moved at all, and he relaxed his guard, if only a trifle. Even if they were easily scared, they would no doubt work up the nerve to come back again soon. “I’ve chased off our friends back here,” Luke said. “Artoo, keep watch on the rear and give a shout if you spot anything. Lando, you watch the rear as well. I’ve got to go up to the front.”

  “Right, Luke,” said Lando. Artoo acknowledged with a beep.

  Luke cut the power on his lightsaber and shouldered past Lando and the droids to the first intersection, where Showolter was waiting, his back still to the wall. “All right,” Luke said, “I need to know if that’s a dead-end corridor down there.”

  “Yes,” Showolter said. “At least so far as we know. The corridor ends in an area of rockfall. There are cracks and crevices all over the place. We think we’ve plugged all the ones that lead somewhere, but we can’t be absolutely sure. And there’s always the chance that the ghouls or some other animals managed to reopen a hole we thought we sealed. But for humans, yes, a dead end.”

  “But maybe not for the ghouls,” Luke said. But even the possibility that the corridor was a dead end meant that he couldn’t use the same trick of inducing terror. If creatures like the ghouls were terrified with their backs against the wall, they would almost certainly fight their way out. One look at the creatures had convinced him that they might well do a lot of damage if they wanted to. He would have to find another way. “You wait here and watch my back,” he told Showolter. “I want to try something.”

  Showolter looked as if he wanted to protest, but he kept his mouth shut. Luke moved past him, took the left turn of the corridor, and then another immediate left. Here, the tunnel immediately started heading down at a pretty fair decline. He undipped his lightsaber again and switched it on. It lit up with the familiar low thrum of power, its blade glowing eerily in the corridor.

  Luke moved down the ramp into the gloomy depths. He was not entirely sure what he intended to do, except that he did not wish to kill needlessly. He reached out for the minds of the three waiting corridor ghouls. There they were, three bundles of nervous energy; eager, hungry, voracious, fearful minds already teetering on the edge of fight or flight. It would take but the slightest touch for them to run in terror—or attack with relentless savagery. Careful. He would have to be very careful.

  He came to the bottom of the ramp, where it opened into a wide corridor that was even more decrepit than the one above.

  And there they were, directly in front of the blastdoor Showolter had described, the rubble of collapsed tunneling just to Luke’s left. Three of the eyeless creatures, ghost-white, pointed-eared hobgoblins, open-mouthed, their needle-sharp teeth at the ready. It was clear they “saw” Luke through their echo-location sense. They were alert, plainly watching him. The three of them backed up a bit as Luke entered the chamber, and one of them, the smallest and spindliest of them, let out a sort of nervous yelp. That set off the other two, and suddenly the chamber was echoing with a terrifying racket of yelps and squeals and screams.

  “Easy, now,” Luke said as he sidled off to the right of the ramp entrance, trying to put his back to the wall, trying to put as much of a soothing tone into his voice as he could manage. The ghouls whimpered and yelped, growing even more restive. Did they know that their companions by the turbolift shaft had vanished? Was that part of what was spooking them? Or were corridor ghouls always this nervous?

  Luke reached a trifle deeper into their minds, trying to soothe them. But there was little in the minds of these creatures that was much interested in being soothed. How could there be, when they had evolved, somehow, to survive in the miserable, eat-or-be-eaten darkness of Coruscant’s undercity?

  Luke noticed a few scattered bones on the floor, and recognized one of them as teeth in a jawbone that looked as if it came from a ghoul. A corridor ghoul had died, right here, not so long ago. This place was dangerous to them. No, there was no hope of calming these creatures down.

  At least Luke had gained one more bit of information from his mental probing and from their behavior. They had made no move toward the rubble of the collapsed tunnel on Luke’s left, and had no thoughts concerning it. Perhaps smaller creatures could negotiate the rockfall, but so far as the ghouls were concerned, it was a dead end. The only way out for them was up the ramp Luke had just come down. Once on the upper level, they might choose to go down any of the corridors—and might well blunder into Showolter and Lando and the droids.

  A Jedi did not meddle in any living being’s mind capriciously, but only at need—and now there was need. He probed more deeply, and found what he sought. Most unwillingly, he took direct control of the ghouls’ bodies. Their yipping and keening came to an abrupt halt, and suddenly they were standing stock-still. Luke willed the creatures to move away from the blastdoor, toward the rubble pile, and they moved that way, stiff-leggedly and awkwardly. He forced them toward the farthest c
orner of the lower chamber and held them there.

  Luke knew he could hold them more or less indefinitely, but to do so was to risk terrible damage to the creatures and, likely enough, to Luke himself. The ghouls would fight against his will, and could easily do themselves harm. He already could feel them straining against him. He eased back just enough to allow them to shift their stance and move their ears, but instead of growing calmer, they only resisted the remaining constraint all the harder.

  “Captain Showolter! Lando!” he called out. “I have the way open, but I need you down here on the double!”

  “Coming!” Lando called, and Luke could hear the sounds of the two men and the droids moving down the corridor toward him.

  The entrance from the ramp was just inside Luke’s peripheral vision as he kept watch on the ghouls. After a moment he could see Showolter come in, spot the immobilized ghouls, and freeze up. “What in the—”

  “Worry about it later,” Luke said. “Just get the blastdoor open, and hurry.”

  “Of course—” Showolter said, and moved toward the blastdoor keypad—but at that moment the screaming began again, coming from up the ramp. The ghouls Luke had immobilized immediately began to strain all the harder at the invisible bonds that held them, and yelped and moaned and snapped their jaws.

  Showolter seemed about to say something, but thought better of it, and hurried toward his task.

  The two droids came down the ramp next, with Lando right behind them, doing his best to watch behind himself as he moved.

  Luke could hear Showolter punching the code into the blastdoor keypad, and, a moment later, he heard the door start to swing open.

  He risked a backward glance, and saw Showolter and the droids ducking inside before the door was fully open. Lando hesitated at the entrance and turned. “Come on, Luke,” he said. “The others are headed back this way.”

  Luke didn’t need any more prompting. Still holding his lightsaber at the ready, he looked back toward the frozen ghouls and backed toward the blastdoor.