The Unifying Force Read Online Free PDF

taken me thirty years to get used to the old you.”
    “Me, too,” he said, without humor.
    Exhaust ports ablaze, the
Falcon
rolled through a sweeping turn and raced for Selvaris’s binary brightened transitor.

THREE
    Bent low over the swoopbike’s high handgrips, Thorsh threaded the rocketing vessel through concentrations of saplings and opportunistic Yuuzhan Vong plants, under looping vines, and over the thick trunks of toppled trees. He hugged the fern-covered ground when and where he could, as much for safety’s sake as to spare his spindly passenger any further torture from thorned vines, sharp twigs, and the easily disturbed hives of barbflies and other bloodsuckers.
    But Thorsh’s best efforts weren’t enough.
    “When do we get to switch places?” the Bith asked over the howl of the repulsorlift.
    Thorsh knew that the question had been asked in jest, and so replied in kind. “Hands at your sides and no standing on the seat!”
    Taking into account only the difference in heights, the Bith should have been the one in the saddle, with Thorsh scrunched down behind him, fingers clasped on the underside of the long seat. But Thorsh was the more experienced pilot, having flown swoops on several reconnaissance missions where speeders hadn’t been available. His large wedge-shaped feet weren’t well suited to the footpegs, and he had to extend his arms fully to grasp the handgrip controls, but his keen eyes more than made up for those shortcomings, even when streaming with tears, as they were now.
    Thorsh kept to the thick of the large island, where the branches of the tallest trees intertwined overhead and provided cover. The swoop was still running smoothly, except when he leaned it hard to the right, which for some reason caused the repulsorlift to sputter and strain. He could hear the other swoop—to the east and somewhat behind him—weavinga path through equally dense growth. The four escapees would have made better progress out over the estuary, but without the tree cover they would be easy prey for coral-skippers. One skip had already completed two return passes, paying out plasma missiles at random, and hoping for a lucky strike.
    The morning air was thick with the smell of burning foliage.
    Flat out, the swoop tore from the underbrush into a treeless expanse of salt flats, pink and blinding white, the nighttime sleeping grounds for flocks of Selvaris’s long-legged wading birds. Determined to reach cover before the coral-skipper showed up again, Thorsh gave the accelerator a hard twist and banked the swoop for the nearest stand of trees.
    Thorsh had just reentered the jungle when a clamor began to build in the canopy. His first thought was that another coralskipper had joined the pursuit. But there was a different quality to the sound—an eagerness absent in the deadly sibilance of a coralskipper.
    Thorsh felt his rider sit up straighter on the seat, in defiance of the hazards posed by overhanging branches.
    “Is that what I think it is?” the humanoid asked.
    “We’ll know soon enough,” Thorsh yelled back.
    Again he twisted the accelerator. Wind screamed over the swoop’s inadequate fairing, forcing another flood of tears from his eyes. But his actions were in vain. The objects responsible for the escalating tumult passed directly overhead, silencing the racket of the swoop, then outracing it.
    “Lav peq!” the Bith screamed.
    Thorsh knew the term; it was the Yuuzhan Vong name for netting beetles, voracious and meticulous versions of the winged sentinels that had roused the prison guards. Lav peq were capable of creating webs between trees, bushes, or just about any type of barked foliage. Typically the beetles arrived in successive fronts, the first fashioning anchor lines, and those that followed feeding on bark and other organics to replenish the fibers needed to complete the filigree. A well-constructed web could ensnare or at least slow down a human-sized being. The strands themselves