The ceramic base of that black armor, its fundamental structure, was not ceramic at all.

He could only stand and blink, and mouth a single word: meltmassif.

As if in confirmation, Vastor collapsed, just crumpled, folding to the deck like a dead man.

“Han …?” Luke said uncertainly. “Han, I think we need to go.”

“Luke!” his comlink crackled. “There’s something wrong with Leia—she’s, I don’t know, she’s having some kind of seizure or something. Luke, what do I do?”

“I don’t know,” Luke said as he watched Vastor’s body do the same: writhe in slow, twisting convulsions like a Riddellian bloodworm baking on a hot fry-rock. There came a clatter from above: blaster rifles slipping from stormtrooper hands to bounce on the stone of the ring ledge. The stormtroopers, each and every one, began to buckle at the knees. They twisted and jerked, bucking in slow motion, clutching at their helmets with gauntleted fingers as though to claw out their own eyes.

“Han,” Luke said. “Go. Go now.”

He reached out with the Force and slammed shut the Falcon’s hatch just as the Vastor body lurched to its feet and reached Luke in one lightning bound. Impossibly powerful hands seized Luke’s shoulders as Vastor lifted him like a doll, and shook him and roared rage and bloodlust into his face, and there was nothing human left in Vastor’s eyes. He sank his teeth into Luke’s throat, and bit down.

And on the ring ledge above, the stormtoopers started to scream.

[...]

“Hey, bucket-heads!” Han shouted. “What’s wrong with you guys? Where’s L—uh, where’s your emperor?”

All he got in reply was more howling, so he went up another rung on the gangway and peered around. The wreckage of the Falcon’s dorsal quad turret made him wince; all that was left was a flattened mass of crumpled transparisteel under great big gleaming chunks of what looked like obsidian. He made a mental note to bill the repairs to Lando.

Another couple of steps up the gangway raised his angle of vision enough that he could see the crown of the big man’s shaved head over the wreckage and rubble. One step more showed him Luke’s limp, unresisting form hanging from the big man’s grip while that son of a Pervickian dung camel chewed on Luke’s neck—!

Han cleared the hatch in a single leap, and by the time his feet touched the hull his blaster was in his hand. “Hey, monkey-breath! Chew on this!”

But he couldn’t just fire from the hip; Luke was in the way and Han knew stun blasts were useless against the Vastor body. In the fraction of a second that it took him to bring the DL-44 up to eye level to align the sights, the big man’s right hand came free of Luke’s shoulder with a weird ripping sound. Luke’s shoulder, where that hand had been, showed black and glistening like the handful of crystal hairs back in the Melter crypt, and Vastor’s hand was full of the same—and while Han was trying to make sense of that, some invisible force snatched his blaster away.

I have got to learn to hang on to that thing with both hands! Han bounded forward, swept up a jagged hunk of obsidian the size of his doubled fists, and charged, cranking the black glass rock back over his shoulder as if he was going to hurl it overhand—but he hurled himself instead, leaping up onto the rubble, then down again in a headlong dive with the chunk raised high until a scarlet blaster bolt slashed past his face and blew the hunk of obsidian right out of his hand.

He almost went face-first into the hull armor but managed to turn his crash into a clumsy somersault that left him flat on his back, dazed and gasping and staring up at the business end of his blaster. Which was in Luke’s hand.

Luke said, “Didn’t I tell you to go?”

While Han was still blankly mumbling, “Yow. Nice shooting. I think,” the enormous Vastor-thing moaned like someone in terrible pain or fear or both. One huge hand slammed against Luke’s chest, and for all Han could tell, it was like Vastor was the one in trouble and trying desperately to escape. An instant later, Vastor ripped his mouth free of Luke’s neck—and his mouth was full of those black crystal hairs. The wound in Luke’s neck wasn’t bleeding, it was sprouting a thatch of that same blackly glistening fur that was writhing and twisting and growing like it was alive. Vastor gasped like a drowning man and yanked his other hand off Luke’s arm, and before Han could manage even a faint guess as to what was actually going on, Vastor whirled, took four or five running steps for momentum, and made a great big flying leap right off the ship.

Han had no idea if Vastor had fallen to his death, or if he’d caught a grip on the wall, or had maybe even started flapping his arms and flew into orbit. He could only stare up at his young friend and murmur plaintively, “Luke, what the hell?”

“You would have killed him,” Luke said distantly.

“Oh, you think? We kill bad guys. It’s what we do.”

“I don’t,” Luke said. “Not if I can help it. Not anymore.” He looked down at Han with a faint start, as though he’d been lost in a daydream and only now realized where they both were. Wearing a faintly bemused half smile, he flipped the DL-44 end-for-end and offered its grip to Han. “Here. You’ll need this.”

“For what?” Han asked, just as he was starting to realize that the shaft around the Falcon had suddenly gone quiet.

The stormtroopers had stopped screaming.

“Uh-oh.”


- Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor, Chapters 17-18



(Note: I genuinely don't get what the hell is happening here with the meltmassif spikes being left behind by Kar's attacks. I think it's because Cronal quit controlling him, and just the meltmassif in his system was reacting weirdly or something. Or it could be the meltmassif in Luke's system reacting with the meltmassif in his. It's not really important or relevant at all, just a strange detail.)