Force-hold caught Nick a meter short of severe head trauma; then as they both fell back toward the floor, the pressure-wave of superheated air that shrieked in through the fissure from the meadow cave sent them skidding and bouncing and rolling over the rough-cut floor in a hailstorm of rock shards and burning dirt.
Mace kept his Force-hold on Nick; as they skidded to a stop in the nightmare of dust and smoke and screaming, he set Nick on his feet and crouched beside him. 'Stay up!' he shouted.
'Stay low but off the floor?
He huddled there, hands jammed against his ears, bounced by another blast-lesser-and another lesser still, the natural inaccuracy of the DOKAWs causing some scatter. A final convulsion of the mountain cracked the roof of the cavern and rained boulders at random. Some screams were crushed to gurgles; others scaled up to shrieks of agony.
Two seconds passed-two more-and Mace sprang to his feet. Light from glowglobes made luminous spheres that could not overlap through the thick swirl of dust and smoke that stung tears into his eyes; one incautious breath sent him into a paroxysm of coughing. He yanked Nick to his side-the young Korun had an arm over his streaming eyes and he was hacking into his other hand-and Mace grabbed the hem of his homespun tunic with both hands.
'Hey-hackhagh-hey, what are you-' 'We need your shirt.' With one twist he ripped the tunic in half up the back; another twist continued the rip from collar to waist in front. He left half in Nick's hands while he tied his own half over his face in a sort of hood. The cloth was coarse enough to see through, and it cut the dust and smoke from intolerable down to merely hellish.
While Nick imitated him, Mace picked his way around the rubble and over dead and wounded Korunnai toward a gleam of ultra-chrome under a huge slab of stone. He dropped to his heels beside it and gestured, clearing smaller rocks away from the lorpelek.
'Kar? Can you hear me?' Even hoarse with dust and pain, Vastor's growl had a sardonic edge. Better stand back.
When you're around, big hard things seem to fall on my head.
Mace breathed himself into his center, and found the slab's shat-terpoint. 'Don't move.' His blade flared, bit in, and the slab cracked in two over Vastor's back. A shrug of Vastor's huge shoulders shifted the two pieces enough that he could push himself up to his knees between them. He was caked with dust, and blood trickled from an ugly gash over one ear.
You could have killed me. You should have.
'You're no good to me dead,' Mace said. 'Is there a hardpoint in this base? A hardened bunker, preferably airtight?' The heavy weapon lockup. It can be sealed.
'All right. Get all the non-ambulatory sick and wounded in there and seal it up. When the militia comes, they'll start with gas.' Vaster and Nick exchanged grim looks.
Mace glanced over his shoulder. 'Nick. You're with me. Let's go.' We'll never hold them. Not for a day. Not an hour.
'We don't have to hold them ourselves. I have a medium cruiser in-system that's carrying a regiment of the finest soldiers this galaxy has ever seen.' Mace put one hand on Vastor's shoulder, and the other on Nick's, and there was a strange shine to his dark eyes. 'We aren't going to hold them. We aren't even going to fight them. With the Halleck for air cover and the troopers holding the ground, those twenty landers can evacuate this entire place within hours.' 'Grassers and all?' Mace nodded. 'We just have to get them here.' DOKAWs pounded the mountain. Korunnai ran and screamed and bled. Some tried to help the wounded. Some died. Some huddled shivering against the nearest wall.
Mace kept moving. Nick trotted at his heels. Sometimes shock-waves knocked them down.
Sometimes the dust was so bad that Mace had to light their way with scatter from his and Depa's blades.
'Why do you need me! You were in the comm center this morning,' Nick gasped through a mouthful of dust that his spit had turned to mud. 'I'm good with a medpac. You go on. I can look after wounded-' 'That's why.' Bladelight picked up jagged gleams ahead: the corridor was blocked with a sloping wall of tumbled rock.
'This is the only way I know to the comm center,' Mace said. 'I'm hoping you know another.' Nick muttered a curse under his breath as he leaned on the slope of boulders. 'How deep is the rubble? Can you cut-' His eyes widened. 'Hey, there are people in there! Trapped! I can feel them-we've got to get them out!' 'I feel them too. The fall's not stable,' Mace said. 'Shifting and cutting will take more time than we have: the first mistake would bring tons of stone down on their heads. We need another way to the comm center.' 'But-we can't just leave them in there-!' 'Nick. Try to focus. Will they be safer out here?' 'Well, I.' Nick frowned. 'Well.' 'Listen to me. There will be cave-ins throughout these caverns. We can dig survivors out later. We have to make sure enough people live through this to do the digging. Yes?' Nick nodded reluctantly. 'Then let's go.' The comm center was just a small natural cave with rude plank tables, a few homemade chairs, and some equipment. 'Probably not much left of the relay antennas,' Nick muttered as they trotted toward it.
'It's a little late to worry about concealing our position,' Mace reminded him. 'And subspace won't have any trouble going through rock.' Nick squinted at the doorway, cursed, and broke into a sprint. 'The surgical field's down!' He darted inside.
Mace went after him, but stopped in the doorway.
The subspace comm unit lay on the floor, among the splinters of the plank table; its housing looked like someone had rolled it down a mountainside and dropped it off a cliff. The realspace-frequency units, less durable, were crushed. Nick was cursing continuously under his breath as he knelt over the two Korun commtechs, who lay motionless on the floor as though they were simply taking a nap in the ruins of their post.
Mace said, 'Nick.' 'They're dead,' the young Korun said thickly. 'They're both dead. Not a mark on them.
And-' 'Nick, come out of there.' Nick prodded one's head with his finger. which gave, deforming spongily, as though the man's skull were soft foam. 'And they're squishy…' 'We have to leave this place. Now.' 'What could do that to a man?' 'Concussion,' Mace said. 'Shock transmission. This room must be part of a solid structure that reaches to the surface-' 'You're saying.' Nick looked at the walls around him with widening eyes. 'You saying if another DOKAW hits the same spot, while I'm still in here-' 'I'm saying-' Mace urgently extended a hand,'-cover your ears zndjump.' Mace took his own advice then drew on the Force to suspend them both, and the air in the comm cave pounded them like they were caught in the palm of a giant's handclap. He let the shock send them whirling back along the passage away from the comm center, them released his Force-hold and rolled to his
