婆罗门
精华
|
战斗力 鹅
|
回帖 0
注册时间 2012-3-9
|
楼主 |
发表于 2016-1-2 12:48
|
显示全部楼层
面对大批Lylek怪兽的出现,皇帝与维德开始转进——真是转进
他们转进到了Lylek怪兽挖掘的巢穴里——这巢穴的范围有十几公里,开始进行屠杀行动:
"Agreed," the Emperor said, and they turned and hurried into the winding central tunnel, which sloped downward, widening as they went. They'd covered maybe two hundred meters, moving ever deeper underground, when they heard the first sounds of the lyleks' pursuit coming from behind them. Rock formations dotted the floor and thick clumps of crystal hung from the ceiling of the tunnel, but there was nothing that would have made for a defensible pocket. The chitters and hisses bounced off the stone, seeming to race ahead of them.
"They're faster than us in this terrain," Deez said. "We're going to have to turn and fight."
As the lyleks closed on them, the tunnel seemed to hum under the force of their tread. Soon Vader could hear the clatter of their exoskeletons as they ran over the stone.
"They are almost upon us," he said. The captain fell back, taking station with Deez at the rear, between the Emperor and the horde. Vader ignited his lightsaber to provide at least some additional light.
"Here they come!" the captain said, and started firing wild one-handed shots over his shoulder.
"I see them!" said Deez, and started firing, too.
Lyleks squealed and hissed.
"You may use your grenades," Vader said. The cavern was wide enough to endure the blast without collapsing.
Both guards immediately activated and tossed grenades; five seconds later the tunnel behind them reverberated with the sound of the explosions, lylek screams, and the rumble of falling stone. The blast wave roared from the confines of the tunnel. Vader and the Emperor used the Force to deflect the bulk of the wave from them, but the power of it drove the two Royal Guards face-first into the floor, their armor scraping along the stone.
Vader turned and used the Force to lift both guards to their feet. Deez was bleeding from the nose and looked stunned.
"We won't slow for you again," Vader said. "The horde is still coming."
As if to make his point, the sounds of the pursuing lyleks rose up from behind, clicking, hisses, and squeals.
Vader took position beside his Master as the four of them continued down the tunnel. He sought a place where they could stop and hold their ground, but the tunnel went on and on, not narrowing, with its downward slope diving ever deeper into the **et.
Drawing on the Force as he ran, he gestured at the ceiling and took hold of several large chunks of crystal stalactites. He rocked them loose with his power, then let them dangle there, waiting for the vibration of the passing horde to cause them to fall.
The tunnel wound left and right as they descended, but Vader saw no side tunnels. Just the single tube continuing to burrow into Ryloth's crust.
From behind came the boom of falling rock-the crystals Vader had loosened-and the squeals of crushed lyleks. Yet still they came, the horde seemingly unbreakable. And they were still closing.
At the end of a long, sloped straightaway, Vader let the rest of the group run on while he stopped to look back. His helmet reflected the meager light projected by his lightsaber and he saw the horde enter the far end of the tunnel, an ocean of legs, tentacles, and mandibles, saw them scrabble over and around the stalagmites that dotted the floor. The beat of their armored, pointed legs put small pits in the stone. Some of them clambered along the walls like giant arachnids, coating the surface of the tunnel behind them. Their tentacles waved as they scurried, jaws working as if already masticating flesh. Vader could not escape the feeling that he was being steered, perhaps by the lyleks, or perhaps by his Master.
He fell deeply into the Force and loosed a wave of power from his outstretched hand that filled the circumference of the tunnel. The blast slammed into the charging horde, cracking exoskeletons, shattering stalagmites, and driving a score or more of the lyleks in the lead backward in a shower of broken bodies and broken stone. They squealed and chittered and flailed, and the lyleks following after scrambled over the fallen and wounded, their eyes fixed on Vader.
Vader was prepared to meet them all, slaughter every one of them then and there, but his Master's voice from up the tunnel pulled him around.
"Come, Lord Vader!"
He deactivated his lightsaber, turned, and hurried forward, using the Force to augment his speed and catch up with the other three.
"What happened?" Deez asked, but Vader ignored him. When he reached his Master's side, he voiced his thoughts.
"Yes," the Emperor agreed. "The beasts are herding us-unintentionally, I think."
"Herding us to where?" Vader asked.
"We'll soon know," the Emperor said. "I think we should prepare ourselves."
They hustled through the tunnel, which had finally started to narrow.
"There's light ahead," the captain said. "Look!"
Vader saw it, a dim, green glow coming through a circular opening about a meter and a half in diameter. Soon the tunnel gave way to a large cavern thirty meters across, a hemispherical cyst in the **et. They stood in the opening, five meters up on the wall of the cyst. Clusters of glowing crystal sprouted from the walls and floor-the source of the ambient light.
Hundreds of lyleks milled about on the floor of the cyst, all of them tending what Vader assumed to be the queen of the colony, a lylek with a bloated abdomen three times the size of the rest. Large, gray, leathery-looking sacs adhered to the walls in clumps of ten or twenty here and there-egg sacs. A dozen or more tunnel openings dotted the walls and ceiling, all of them about the same size as that in which the four men stood. For a moment no one spoke, and the only sound in the tunnel was the labored breathing of the guards and Vader's respirator.
The queen lylek noticed them then. She swung her huge head in their direction, fixed her eyes on them, and hissed in alarm, the sound bouncing off the walls of the cavern, echoing. The rest of the lyleks in the cavern turned toward them, too, their movement causing a collective clicking. They hissed as one, their tentacles squirming in agitation. Down the tunnel behind the men, the pursuing lyleks continued to close.
"And now we know to where we were being herded," the Emperor said.
Vader turned to Deez and the captain. "You two are to hold as long as you can here."
The captain stiffened. "We will stay with our Emperor."
"Do as Lord Vader commands," the Emperor said.
"What are you going to do then?" Deez asked while he and the captain took grenades in hand, activated them, and waited for the pursuing lyleks to appear.
"We're going kill them all," Vader said, igniting his lightsaber.
The Emperor cackled, drew his own lightsaber, and activated the red blade.
此时Belkor的精神开始逐渐陷入疯狂
Delian Mors则开始找寻皇帝
在地下巢穴,皇帝与维德(哦,还有那俩皇家卫队)VS数百外骨骼能够抵挡爆能枪的Lylek怪兽的战斗在进行:
混战中在皇帝被Lylek怪兽群扑时维德一度升起盼望帕尔帕廷死在这里自己统治银河的念头,但念头转瞬即逝赶去救援,不过实际上不需要皇帝自己直接用原力将群扑上来的怪兽炸得粉碎,而且看起来除了衣服碎头发乱身上脏外毫发无损。
随后皇帝问维德可有盼望自己刚才死在这里,维德承认有,但只要一小会。随后俩人继续屠杀怪兽群,此时Lylek怪兽的女王被激怒杀出:
Vader enveloped himself in the Force, let it saturate him, and through it magnified and channeled his omnipresent rage and hate. Beside him the Emperor, too, unbridled his power and sank into the Force. As one they leapt down from the mouth of the tunnel.
The moment they hit the floor the lyleks swarmed forward, hundreds of them, a wave of spiked limbs and clicking mandibles. They raised their upper bodies as they charged, freeing themselves to use their spiked front legs like spears. They climbed over one another in their eagerness to kill and feed.
Vader extended a gloved hand and loosed a blast of power that blew apart two of the lyleks rushing toward him, showering those behind with gore and chunks of carapace. At the same time, his Master unleashed a destructive wave of power that cast three of the huge creatures backward and into the wall, cracking exoskeletons and leaving them broken, twitching, dying.
Vader rushed forward, blade held high. He ducked a tentacle, sidestepped the stab of a spiked leg, and with a crosscut severed the head from a lylek as it lunged at him. Crushing the skull under his boot, he used the Force to propel the headless carcass into a trio of the creatures behind it, turning them into a knot of legs and tentacles and chittering.
Feeling danger behind, he spun and lopped off the two front legs of another lylek that was poised to impale him through the back. He leapt atop its flailing, skittering body, riding it for a time while his blade slashed and stabbed at its fellows. He ended the creature's squeals of pain by driving his blade down and through its abdomen.
Bounding off its back, he rushed among the seething mass of lyleks, heedless now of their stabbing limbs and biting teeth, his lightsaber severing legs, tentacles, heads, mandibles, covering the floor in ichor-soaked body parts. Impacts from the tentacles and legs and hulking bodies barely moved him. None penetrated his armor, and what little pain they managed to inflict could not surpass the pain he carried always within him.
A spiked leg caught him squarely, slammed hard into his side, and drove him sideways into the tentacles of another lylek, which immediately wrapped around his legs and lifted him upside down from the floor.
While he hung there, another lylek lunged forward, mouth open wide as though to snap off his head. He drove his lightsaber into its open mouth and out the back of its head, and it fell dead to the floor. The creature holding him drew him toward its own mouth, but he simply bent at the waist and severed the tentacle holding him. He flipped in midair as he fell, landed on his feet, spun, and severed the forelegs from a lylek before him. It collapsed, screeching and spraying ichor from the stumps, its huge body thumping into him in its pained spasms. The impact of its bulk knocked him backward, but he rode the motion into a spinning crosscut that bisected another lylek's head. He'd killed dozens, a score or more, yet still they kept coming, the press of them restricting his movement, buffeting him, spiked legs slamming into the floor all around him.
Roaring, he dodged and jumped and spun through them, his blade slashing and stabbing, until a blow from a tentacle caught him flush in the chest and sent him careening backward. The creature that had struck him followed up, tentacles grasping, jaws clicking, the spears of its forelegs raised high. Meanwhile the spiked leg from another lylek slammed into his back. His armor prevented the limb from skewering him, but the impact drove him back toward the charging lylek.
Stumbling, Vader nevertheless held out a hand, channeled the Force, and loosed a blast of power that slammed the charging creature five meters backward into the wall. Wanting a moment to gather himself and check on his Master, he jumped high above the teeming mass of lyleks to a ledge five meters up on the wall, using the Force to augment his leap. The creatures he had just escaped gnashed their mandibles, waved their tentacles, and tried to climb over one another in their frustration as they scrabbled at the side of the wall.
From above, back near the tunnel mouth, Vader heard the shouts of the guards and the rapid whumps of repeated blasterfire. An explosion boomed-a grenade-causing the walls to vibrate.
Vader called on the Force, leapt, and propelled himself up to the mouth of the tunnel. Deez and the captain had both taken a knee, blaster rifles **ted on their shoulders as they fired into the lyleks trying to advance down the tunnel toward them. Vader casually loosed a blast of power down the tunnel mouth, destroying the leading lyleks and pushing half a dozen more backward.
Seeing Vader, the captain shouted, "Where is the Emperor?" Deez just kept firing.
Vader turned and looked down to the floor below, where his Master, surrounded by a dozen or more lyleks, was spinning, whirling, leaping, his lightsaber moving so fast it blurred. He looked tiny amid their bulk but moved with preternatural speed, his blade stabbing and slashing and severing. He was laughing, the familiar cackle somehow audible above the sounds of the horde.
But then a score or more of lyleks lurched at him at once from all sides, leaping and climbing over one another, their tentacles a squirming net, their claws slashing, their massive chitinous bodies blocking him from Vader's view.
A thought flashed through Vader's mind, a stray thought, just for a moment: his Master dead, Vader ruling the Empire, the galaxy, unconstrained by the leash of an old man...
He killed the thought, leapt from the mouth of the tunnel, flipped in midair, and landed hard atop one of the lyleks. It bucked, tentacles squirming. He drove his blade down through its back and out its abdomen, killing it.
Tentacles reached for him from the left and right, and a third lylek reared up over its dead kin to get at him, but he vaulted from the carcass on which he stood and onto the back of another lylek a meter away. Again he drove his lightsaber down and through it.
"Master!" he shouted, still unable to see the Emperor in the press of the creatures.
A blast of power from somewhere under the throng of creatures drove four lyleks ten meters into the air, their bodies shattered by the force of the impact, limbs and tentacles showering down in a macabre rain. His Master stood in the center of the circle of surviving lyleks, his hair mussed, his robe torn, his lightsaber in hand, but otherwise seemingly unharmed.
Vader leapt down to his Master's side. They took position back-to-back.
"Master," Vader said.
"Lord Vader," his Master responded, and chuckled. "Enjoyable, no? Did you consider allowing me to die to realize your own ambitions?"
Vader didn't even attempt to lie. "I did, but only for a moment."
"Good," his Master said. "Very good."
As if on command, the lyleks surged toward them from all sides. As one, Vader and his Master channeled the Force and unleashed blasts of power that slammed into the advancing creatures, shattering several and casting six or seven hard against the walls. Still the lyleks came on, chittering and grasping and slashing.
Vader and his Master stood back-to-back in the center of the press, their lightsabers murderous red lines that lylek limbs and tentacles and bodies could not pass. The carcasses piled up around them, a mountain of the dead, and still they came on. Soon both of them were covered in gore, lost in the Force, in their unbridled ability to kill.
Vader sensed a new danger a moment before it materialized: a lylek from somewhere in the rear of the surviving mass sprang high over the others toward him and his Master, chittering, the spikes of its legs aimed forward as though to impale. Vader answered the creature's leap with a Force-augmented leap of his own, wielding his lightsaber in a two-handed grip, intercepting the creature in midair, and cutting it in two with the red streak of his blade.
He landed atop a dead lylek and immediately bounded back to his Master's side. He hit the floor in a crouch, expecting to be swarmed by the remaining lyleks, but instead found them backing away from him. He soon saw why-they were making way for the approach of the queen.
"You perceived the smaller danger but not the larger," his Master said. "Here it is now."
* * *
此时查姆?辛杜拉等人搜寻皇帝与维德,看到了皇帝与维德在面对至少数百Lylek怪兽包围转进前是屠杀到了什么情况:
* * *
The quiet of the forest unnerved Isval. It seemed the lylek horde had stripped it of life, or that all the creatures in it were waiting in pensive silence for whatever terrible thing might come next. The swath the lyleks had cut through the terrain would have struck her as impossible had she not seen it for herself. Uprooted trees, shattered trunks, undergrowth pounded into the dirt. And yet she knew that within a month it would be overgrown and gone, as if nothing had ever happened.
There were lessons in that, she thought.
She and Cham hustled along beside Goll, who covered ground rapidly with the path so easy to follow. Goll's team trailed them, the sound of their bouncing gear and equipment loud in the quiet. Chewing up the kilometers gave Isval time to consider the endgame.
"What do we expect to find here?" Isval asked Cham. "Bodies?"
Cham shrugged, looked to Goll.
"If the lyleks caught them, there won't be anything left of the bodies," Goll said. "But there will be signs of a feeding frenzy. That'll tell us all we need to know."
The thought of Vader and the Emperor being torn apart by a hungry pack of Ryloth's chief predatory animal seemed fitting somehow. Still, Isval had seen the things Vader could do-things that no one should have been able to do.
"And if there was no feeding frenzy?" she asked. "If they escaped?"
"No one escapes on foot," Goll said.
Isval was not so sure.
Within the half hour they found the first of the lylek carcasses. The huge body lay in the undergrowth, its head missing. Isval eyed the body, which seemed all edges and spikes and points, covered in a dry, chitinous exoskeleton that looked like weathered stone and was probably sturdier than armor. Its tentacles were rubbery lengths thicker around than her arm.
"Blaster shot," Goll said, examining the stump of the lylek's neck. "See the charring? 'Bout the only way a blaster brings one of these down."
"If they killed the entire horde, could you pick the trail back up?" Cham asked.
Goll looked at him in disbelief. "Cham, killing one lylek is one thing. Maybe just a lucky shot. But wiping out a horde with a blaster while on foot? That's like trying to kill a sandstorm. It's a force of nature. It'll consume you and barely know you're there."
"Could you pick the trail back up, Goll?"
"I...yes, I think. Lot of variables, of course, but-"
"Good," Cham said.
Soon they found more carcasses, all of them headshot.
"Getting closer," Goll said softly. "Stay sharp."
They came to the edge of a ravine, and all three of them stopped cold. They looked down into it for a long time, staring in shocked silence. Goll broke the quiet with a soft curse.
Dozens of lylek carcasses lay scattered about the bottom and walls of the ravine. A number of them headshot, but some other force had destroyed the rest. Legs were broken and twisted, exoskeletons shattered and cracked. One carcass lay half buried in the hillside on the opposite side of the ravine. Goll surveyed the scene, the usual furrow back in his brow.
"The horde didn't come out of the ravine," he said. "Lyleks nest underground. This must be an entry point." He didn't sound certain to Isval. "Probably a lot of holes leading down to the nest all along that side of the ravine. But I don't..."
"Was there a feeding frenzy here?" Cham asked.
Isval knew the answer before Goll said it.
"I don't...no, I don't think so," he said. "Come on."
Isval hesitated a moment as a mental image formed in her brain of lyleks bubbling up out of holes in the ground, trapping them in the bottom of the ravine.
"Stay up here and cover the approaches," she said to Goll's people, who lined the edge of the ravine, staring down in wonder.
"Stay sharp," Goll ordered them, and started down the side of the ravine, using what remained of the undergrowth to keep his footing as he descended. Cham and Isval followed.
The creek that once ran through the ravine had been churned into a paste of mud ichor by the lylek horde. Eyeing the carcasses of the dead, Isval could not imagine what Vader and the Emperor had done to break apart the lyleks so thoroughly.
"Grenades?" Goll asked, though Isval saw no sign of charring or burning.
"Must be something we haven't seen," Cham said.
"These are apex predators," Goll said in disbelief. "We fortify our cities out of fear of facing a handful of these. And this group of four, facing a horde on foot? These are apex predators," he repeated.
Vader is the apex predator, Isval thought but didn't dare say aloud.
Goll studied the churned dirt around what appeared to be a collapsed tunnel entrance. A massive tangle of tree roots and the hind end of a lylek stuck out of the rubble, the rest of it buried under the collapse.
"A lot of activity around this tunnel," Goll said, studying the ground. "Like they were trying to get at something in there. Probably Vader and his group retreated into this tunnel, then collapsed it behind them to cut off pursuit." He backed off, looking up, left, and right. "There will be a lot of other tunnels nearby that lead down into the nest. The whole hill is probably riddled with them, going down a long way. They wouldn't have escaped by collapsing this tunnel. The lyleks would have come at them from another tunnel."
"You're telling us Vader is underground?" Cham said.
"I'm telling you he went underground," Goll said. "Probably the rest of the horde did, too."
"What remains of it," Isval said, looking at the carcasses.
"If they come out," Cham asked, "will they have to come out here?"
"That's a big if, Cham."
"But if they do?" Isval persisted.
Goll shook his head. "I've seen computer models of lylek nests. They're labyrinthine. There are scores of entry and exit points. If the Emperor and Vader somehow manage to stay alive down there, they could come out anywhere within, say, a ten-kilometer radius of here. Sorry, Cham. I think we just lost them."
Cham's skin darkened, a sign of his frustration. Isval was clenching a fist.
Cham activated his comlink. "Kallon, Faylin, we think Vader and the Emperor are underground. They may come up anywhere within a fifteen-kilometer radius of our current location. Get up in the air and start a scan. You find anything at all, sound off immediately."
"If there are any ships out here, they could detect us," Kallon told him.
"I know," Cham said. "But do it."
After Kallon and Faylin acknowledged the order, Cham took the encrypted comlink he used with Belkor and repeated the same thing. Isval could only hear Cham's half of the conversation.
"They could be, Belkor, but I doubt it." Cham looked at the many dead lyleks, the collapsed tunnel. "You're not seeing what I'm seeing here. Just get up in the air and scan. I know. Just do it." He cut the connection.
"They could already be out and on the move, Cham," Goll pointed out. "That ten-klick estimate is just an estimate."
"I realize that," Cham said, and cleared his throat. "Options? What else do we have?"
Goll shrugged.
"We could go down after them," Isval offered.
"That is not an option," Goll said.
"We don't have gear for that, and it's too dangerous," Cham said.
"None of us would come out," Goll said. "I guarantee that."
Isval's irritation with the situation boiled over into anger at Goll. "Are you also guaranteeing that Vader won't come out, then? That they're dead down there?"
Goll put his hands on his hips, looked around at all the dead lyleks, and shook his head. "Not after seeing this, no. I don't know what could kill them, if not this."
His admission deflated the bubble of Isval's anger.
Goll looked up at the sky through the openings in the forest's thick canopy. "Wind's bringing rain. Smell it?"
As if on cue, thunder rumbled.
"What kind of men are we after here, Cham?" Goll asked. "This is like nothing I've ever seen, or even heard of."
Cham just shook his head, lekku waving. Isval had only the one answer, and she still wouldn't say it out loud.
Apex predators. That's what kind of men they were after.
* * *
现在让我们鼓掌欢迎,本书里维德跟皇帝面对的最强对手——Lylek女王出场
Vader and the Emperor stood in the shadow of the queen's towering form. Her respiration was audible in the sudden lull, loud and wet. Each of her six legs was a meter and a half in circumference, and the spikes they ended in looked like sword blades. Her squirming tentacles-four instead of two-were ten meters long, as thick as a man's waist, and ended in glistening points of chitin that leaked some kind of ichor, or perhaps poison. Her mouth could easily bite a person in half.
She advanced slowly, tentacles squirming, the ends of her legs striking the ground with a clipped, staccato rhythm. She lowered her head and hissed as she came on. Her mandibles worked the empty air.
Vader's Master wore the same knowing half smile he seemed always to wear. "Shall we begin, Lord Vader?"
Vader answered only with the sound of his breathing.
The queen exploded into motion and so, too, did Vader and the Emperor. A tentacle lashed at Vader and he leapt over it, sidestepping a second tentacle, and chopped down with his blade. He missed as the queen snapped the tentacle back, his blade putting a charred furrow in the stone of the floor. He leapt high over her, flipping at the apex of his trajectory, and as he descended he took his blade in a two-handed grip and pointed it downward to impale her.
She lurched sidewise and lashed out with a tentacle, which struck him squarely and knocked him to the floor. She turned as though to advance on him, but his Master sprang before her, jumping, twirling, and ducking under the rapid swings of her tentacles and the spikes of her legs. His lightsaber slashed rapidly at every opening, striking the tentacles but scarring them only, not severing them.
The queen lunged toward his Master and he flipped backward, landing a few paces away. Vader jumped to his feet, spinning out of the way of her attempt to stab him with the chitinous spike at the end of one of her tentacles. He found himself face-to-face with five lyleks, all of them hissing, tentacles squirming. He stabbed one through the head, back-flipped high over another, hit the ground, and severed its rear legs.
To his right his Master gestured and, with the Force, lifted two of the lyleks from the floor. Vader and his Master exchanged no words, but each knew precisely what the other intended. With a casual throwing motion, the Emperor flung the two lyleks in Vader's direction, their legs and tentacles squirming, bellies exposed. Slashing and turning a rapid spin, Vader bisected both of them; the four gory pieces that remained fell to the floor in a heap.
From above, blaster shots slammed into the lylek that remained before him, with several shots bouncing off its carapace before one finally caught it in the head and put it down. Vader glanced up to see Deez kneeling in the tunnel's mouth, blaster rifle lowered, firing down into the melee.
Vader reflexively slashed with his lightsaber as another lylek scrabbled toward him. The blade took off the legs and left the creature squealing and spasming. He saw his Master dodging the rapid, repeated strikes of the queen's tentacles. The Emperor twisted and spun and leapt, slashing with his lightsaber where he could, and where the blade bit into the thick tentacles it opened black gashes that leaked a thick ichor. The pain seemed only to make her angrier.
Vader leapt high and landed at his Master's side. The queen roared and loosed a flurry of strikes. Working in tandem, they parried her blows, counterstruck, opened dozens of holes in her tentacles, their blades spinning blurs before them. Her very bulk slowly pushed them backward, and from time to time they had to turn their attention to a lylek that rushed them or tried to jump them from the side. Moving almost as one, the two Sith Lords turned and spun around an unspoken central point, parrying, slashing, killing. Frustrated, the queen rushed toward them with surprising speed. Her huge body slammed into them both, knocking them backward. Quick as a lightning strike, she struck with snapping mandibles...
The Emperor fell flat to the floor to avoid the bite and she slammed her legs down at him like so many pikes, each blow chipping the stone of the floor. He rolled and spun underneath the mountain of her body while Vader slashed at her tentacles, the ichor from her many wounds spraying in all directions. She was trying simply to smash his Master with her mass, but Vader perceived her intent, raised a hand, and held her up, straining, grunting for the fraction of a moment that it took for his Master to roll out from under her. And then they were at her again, their blades humming and cutting. She hissed, wounded tentacles flailing, legs stomping, and bounded backward in a crouch.
"Emperor!" Deez shouted from above, and fired at the queen as rapidly as he could pull the trigger.
The shots bounced off her carapace and ricocheted wildly around the chamber. Vader used his lightsaber to deflect one into the face of the lylek nearest him, killing it. Beside him, his Master split the head of a lylek that lunged at him. Vader decided to finish matters.
"Master," he said, and nothing more.
"Go," the Emperor said.
Vader sprinted forward and leapt high. The moment he reached the apex of his jump, his Master seized him with the Force and flung him the rest of the way so that he landed atop the queen's back.
Immediately she bucked, tentacles flailing, and he drove his lightsaber down into her back. To his surprise, the blade only bit partially and then slipped to the side. She screamed and hissed with agony. He grasped it two-handed again, preparing another blow, but she reared up hard, bucking, and flung him to the floor. He landed near his Master, who grabbed him by the arm and heaved him to his feet with uncanny strength.
She whirled around at them and whipped her tentacles at Vader and his Master, following with a lunge forward and a vicious bite at Vader. They sidestepped her attacks, once more falling into their usual rhythm, and crosscut at her head with their lightsabers. Both blades struck home. The Emperor tore a long gash in the armored exoskeleton of her head, and Vader destroyed one eye. She shrieked and reared backward, eye socket leaking gore, tentacles whipping wildly. Deez continued to pour down fire at her, but the shots appeared to do her little or no harm. Still, the distress of their queen drove the remaining lyleks into a frenzy, and they charged from all sides.
Vader bounded backward, leapt high up on the wall, and hung with one hand from a narrow ledge, his boots **ted on the stone. He'd assumed his Master would do the same, but he hadn't. Instead, his Master stood in the center of a crowd of the creatures, spinning, whirling, slashing, killing. Deez diverted his fire from the wounded queen to the lyleks attacking the Emperor, but the frenetic motion of the combat prevented him from aiming accurately, and his shots bounced off their carapaces in all directions.
The queen recovered enough to survey the scene and her eye fell on Vader, perched as he was on the wall, seemingly vulnerable, and she lurched toward him, shrieking. She pushed through the lyleks around her, her tentacles squirming wildly, grasping for him. Her remaining eye fixed on him and her mouth opened wide in a prolonged hiss.
Below, an explosion of Force lightning shredded a handful of lyleks and left his Master standing in the center of a circle of charred, dead creatures. He made eye contact with Vader, nodding, and Vader knew to hold his position as the queen closed.
His Master raised both hands and sent a storm of Force lightning into the queen, enmeshing her in sizzling blue lines. She screamed and spasmed in agony, her mandibles parting wide to reveal the rows of her teeth as the lightning tore at her carapace and the organs underneath, burning her inside and out.
Vader acted quickly. Drawing on the Force, he leapt off the wall straight at her head. Despite her pain, she managed to snatch him out of midair with a tentacle, seizing him around the waist and squeezing. His armor creaked under the strain and he shouted with pain but, as ever, let the pain draw him deeper into the Force.
She lifted him high and jerked him toward her slashed face, the ruin of her eye, her mouth opened wide to hiss, exactly as he'd anticipated.
"Finish her!" his Master shouted.
He threw his lightsaber at her open mouth, guiding it with the Force, causing it to spin as rapidly as a rotor as it flew into her gullet. She gagged, recoiled, one good eye wide with pain and confusion, as Vader maintained his mental hold on his spinning blade, cutting her apart from the inside out. Desperately, instinctively, she drove the spiked, poisoned tip of another tentacle at his chest.
Enmeshed in the Force, he caught the spike in his gauntleted fist and stopped it before it reached his armor. He grunted with pain, with exertion, the thick, muscular appendage of the giant creature straining against his Force-fueled strength. He was the stronger, and stared into her face as his lightsaber tore through her innards and his Master's lightning charred her flesh.
She screamed again in a final burst of agony, and the hulking remains of her body collapsed to the floor, taking Vader, clutched now in a limp tentacle, with her. He hit the floor in a crouch along with the bulk of her carcass, shook off the tentacle, and recalled his lightsaber to his hand. The blade cut through her carcass and returned to his hand, slick with fluid.
The remaining lyleks shrieked and chittered, tentacles and legs jerking wildly. Deez continued to blast at them.
Vader met the eyes of his Master, standing five meters away, and both nodded. Immersed in the Force, they set about slaughtering the remaining lyleks. The lines of their lightsabers rose and fell, rose and fell, and the confused, stunned beasts barely defended themselves. Soon the floor was carpeted in carcasses, and Vader and his Master were the only living things standing amid the carnage.
His Master's cackle filled the silence. Both deactivated their blades.
"Well done, my friend," the Emperor said.
Back up in the tunnel, Deez used the high-tensile cable integrated into his belt to rappel down the wall. He picked his way through the slaughter, obviously trying and failing to control the expression of awe on his face, until he stood before Vader and the Emperor. He took a knee, his fist to his chest.
"My Emperor."
"The captain?" Vader asked.
"Killed by one of the creatures, Lord Vader," Deez said as he stood. "His body is...not recoverable."
To Vader, the Emperor's mind seemed to be elsewhere. He may have heard Deez or not; Vader could not tell.
最终皇帝与维德杀死了Lylek女王以及所有出现在他们面前的Lylek怪兽,一名皇家卫队成员——那名克隆兵丧生
"I think we should leave this place before it starts to stink," the Emperor said finally. "This is the way to the surface, I'm quite sure."
Together, Vader, the Emperor, and Deez moved quickly through the tunnels, ever upward, back toward the surface. They stayed alert for lyleks, but the tunnels were empty. The entire nest must have been annihilated.
"The creatures struggled when the queen died. When the head is removed, the body must soon die," the Emperor commented.
Vader said nothing, merely looked at his Master.
"Do you not see? That's why we're hunted, Lord Vader. The rebels hope to cut the head from the Empire."
"Of course," Vader said. It was unlike his Master to state something so obvious except with a purpose. "And?"
His Master adorned his face with his usual half smile. "Many things are that way, even some relationships. If the head is removed, the body cannot exist alone. The relationship is complementary, almost symbiotic."
Vader understood his point then. "Yes, Master."
The roll of thunder reverberating through the stone told them they were nearing the surface. The tunnel they traversed gradually narrowed until they could move only single-file. Deez led, and Vader came last.
Ahead, Vader saw that the tunnel was blocked. He could hear the sound of dripping water and falling rain from behind the blockage. Deez climbed amid the rubble, trying to peer through it.
"We're right at the end," he said. "I can see the outside through a crack in this rockfall. Probably a rockslide caused by the rain. We'll need to clear it, my lords."
Vader and the Emperor stepped around Deez, faced the tons of rock and dirt, and both felt deeply into the Force. As one, they raised their hands, summoned their collective power, and loosed a sudden blast that was more powerful than a grenade. Rock and dirt exploded outward, no doubt traveling high into the night sky.
Beyond, they could see the trunks of trees and falling rain.
"It's clear, Sergeant," said the Emperor with a smile.
* * *
随后发现他们预计用来离开的通道口被山体滑坡堵上,爵爷与皇帝用原力直接炸开成吨的岩石与泥土
|
|