Star Wars: Fragile Threads

Fragile Threads

"How long have we got?"

"Four, maybe five minutes."

"Time to go," Drake said to Tiaja.

Nodding, Tiaja rubbed the grime from her sister's face. "Jani, where are the other girls?"

Jani shook her head. "When the torches went out they ran, and the spiders got them. I got away because—" Her eyes went wide. "Belia!" She ran to the body of a grotesque repto-mammalian creature laying on the stone floor. "Belia, wake up!" She threw herself onto the corpse of a juvenile rancor. The beast would have stood four-meters tall, dwarfing Nikaede, and yet it was only half the size of the full-grown rancors that inhabited the planet.

Still clutching three of the spider's legs, the rancor's hand was bloody and distended, the spider's fangs still protruding from its skin.

"Now we know what killed that spider," Drake said.

"We were playing in the fields near the Singing Mountain Clan when the Nightspider Sisters attacked." Jani's tears smeared the dirt on her face. "She followed them here and tried to save me."

A chittering noise echoed from farther down inside the mountain. Drake felt his skin crawl as the noise grew louder and closer. "Reinforcements." He picked up the bereft child and gave her to Nikaede. "Get her out of here before those Nightsisters arrive."

"Belia! We can't leave her!" Jani wailed, reaching out for the rancor.

"She's dead, Jani," Geerd said. "We'll be dead too, if we stay here any longer."

Tiaja stood facing the shadows rising in the back of the cavern. Holding her lightsaber in her left hand, she stared at the scars on her palm. "Never again," she whispered.

"You coming?" Drake asked.

"Right behind you."

~ ~ ~

Clutching Jani in her arms, Nikaede hurried up the sloped tunnel path toward the entrance. Geerd went ahead of her when a Nightsister moved into the tunnel to intercept them. As he took a knee and fired off a round, killing her, a second one came around the corner and shot him with a plasma arrow. Before he could reload, she struck him in the face with her bow, knocking the man off balance and over the edge.

Nikaede headbutted the warrior and with a kick to the groin, launched her into the ravine after him.

"Uncle Geerd!" Jani screamed.

Drake reversed course to go back down into the cavern. Tiaja grabbed him by the sleeve. "There's no time," she said. "We have to get Jani out of here. Tell your smuggler friend to blow the detonators."

Drake bit his lip. There was no arguing. They were out of time. "Densin, stand by to detonate the first charge."

"Drake," Densin replied, "there's a remote chance the first charge could detonate the second and the third and so on. The deal was to blow them when you were clear."

Green and purple, covered with stiff black hair and pustules, a pair of broodlings raised their heads above the rocky ledge, using their spinnerets to haul themselves up on fragile strands of webbing.

Drake fired his blaster, severing one thread, but three others shot up from the bottom of the ravine. "Densin, trigger the first charge! Now!"

The initial blast sent a cloud of shrapnel and rock debris upward into the tunnels, pelting and chipping the walls. Soon after, the second and third devices went off, bringing the mountain crashing in on itself.