The Joiner King by Troy Denning Read Free Book Online Page B

Luke seems to feel comfortable with them.”
    “Yeah, well, I always knew the guy was a little strange.”
    “Han, we have to go in,” Leia said. “This is where Jaina and the others came.”
    “I know,” Han said. “That’s what
really
gives me the creeps.”
    They reached the end of the array and passed over the insect holding aloft the amber light; then Leia glimpsed a second iris hatch and they left the asteroid behind. Far ahead, spiraling down the walls of the ever-narrowing passage, three more beacon lines flared to life. Han stayed close to the walls, showing off for Leia by following the contour of the conglomeration’s unpredictable topography.
    After a time, the arrays began to grow hazy and indistinct as the dust, being slowly drawn inward by the conglomeration’s weak gravity, thickened into a gray cloud. Han continued to hug the wall, though now it was to make it easier for the terrain scanner to penetrate the powdery fog.
    A nebulous disk of golden light appeared at the bottom of the shaft. As its glow brightened, Leia began to see meter-long figures in insect-shaped pressure suits working along the passage walls, dragging huge bundles across asteroid surfaces, repairingthe stony tubes that held the jumbled structure together, or simply standing in a shallow basin and staring out at her from behind a transparent membrane.
    “You know, Han,” she said, “this place is starting to give
me
the creeps.”
    “Wait till you hear a pincer rap,” Han said. “Those things will really ice your spine.”
    “Pincer rap?” Leia glanced over at the pilot’s seat, wondering if there was something Han wasn’t telling her. “Han, do you recognize—”
    Han cut her off. “No—I’m just saying …” He raised his shoulders and shuddered at some memory he had kept buried their entire married life, then finished, “It’s not something you want to experience. That’s all.”
    The dust cloud finally began to thin, revealing the disk of light below to be a bulging hatch membrane more than a hundred meters across. Several dozen insects were scuttling away from the middle of the hatch, oozing a thick layer of greenish gel from a valve at the rear of their pressure suits. Han eased back on the throttles, then—when the portal showed no sign of opening—brought them to a stop twenty meters above the center.
    The insects reached the edge and turned around, the lenses of their dark helmets turned up toward the
Falcon.
Soon, the gel began to bleed off in green wisps.
    “What are they waiting for?” Han turned his palms up and gestured impatiently. “Open already!”
    Once the gel had evaporated, the insects returned to the center of the portal and began to mill about aimlessly.
    “Is there
anything
on the comm channels?” Han asked.
    Leia double-checked the channel scanner. “Only background static—and not much of that.” She did not suggest trying to comm the
Shadow.
Some insect species were sensitive to comm waves, a fact that had led to some tragic misunderstandings in the early days of contact between the Verpine and the rest of the galaxy. “I could wake Threepio. He might be able to tell us something about who we’re dealing with here.”
    Han sighed. “Do we have another choice?”
    “We could sit here and wait for something to happen.”
    “No,” Han said, shaking his head wearily. “You can’t outwait a bug.”
    Leia rose and flipped the droid’s circuit breaker. After the light had returned to his photoreceptors, he sat turning his head back and forth as he calibrated himself to his surroundings, then finally fixed his gaze on Leia.
    “I
do
wish you would stop doing that, Princess Leia. It’s most disorientating, and one of these times my file allocation table will be corrupted. I could lose track of my personality!”
    “Wouldn’t that be too bad,” Han replied.
    “Threepio, we need your help,” Leia said, allowing the droid no time to process Han’s sarcasm. “We’re