Allana stood just inside, looking up at them, her face shining as though she"d heard the entire exchange. "I can go?"
Han stooped to pick her up. He straightened without even a fake groan or a you"re getting too heavy you"re getting too heavy comment. "You can," he told her. "If you promise to be a good member of the crew. That means following orders, even the ones you hate." comment. "You can," he told her. "If you promise to be a good member of the crew. That means following orders, even the ones you hate."
"I promise."
"All right."
"And we fib all the time. Every time you call me Amelia, that"s a fib, isn"t it?"
Han scowled at her. "Don"t confuse the issue with facts. Leia does that all the time, and I hate it."
ARMAND ISARD CORRECTIONAL FACILITY, CORUSCANT.
Seff h.e.l.lin stepped through the hole he"d burned in the permacrete mere days before and pulled the metal sheet into place again. With luck, this was the last time he"d have to do that, the last time ever.
He was so close to his goal that he could feel himself trembling. The isolation he"d felt for so long might at last come to an end. He still wasn"t sure how he"d recognized Valin over the holorecordings of the man"s trial-how he"d instantly realized that it was the true true Valin, not some imposter-but he had. Valin, not some imposter-but he had.
Soon he would free his fellow surviving Jedi Knight. And maybe, just maybe, Valin would have answers that Seff lacked.
The tunnel was as he"d left it, the near end still rigged with his bypa.s.s equipment. Something was different, though, which he could recognize even at the distance of twenty meters: the main light indicator on the console now glowed green instead of red. It had completed its task; it had cracked the door"s access code. He breathed a sigh of relief and headed that way.
Something else was different, too, and he was in midstride, halfway between his entrance and the door, when he felt it. This was a faint stirring in the Force, more subtle than most he had felt in recent times. There were presences nearby. They weren"t workers in adjacent tunnels or prison personnel beyond the door; he could feel that they were waiting for him him.
He stopped and slowly turned, unsealing the front of his workman"s jumpsuit, and pulled his lightsaber from beneath its folds.
The metal patch he"d set over his access hole was gone, pulled away so quietly that he hadn"t heard it. From this angle, Seff could not see much through the gap, but the intruder wasn"t waiting. She stepped through into his view.
He knew her, all right. Tahiri Veila-or, actually, the imposter in her form. She was not dressed as a Jedi; she wore a tight-fitting jumpsuit all in black, almost featureless. Nor was she barefoot. Her lightsaber, unlit, was in her hand. Her expression was grave.
He gave her a look of scorn. "You could do better than that. At least get the footwear, or lack of it, right."
Her answer was almost a whisper: "Just like Valin." She moved sideways, all feline grace, until she was in the center of the tunnel.
"Which is why I have to be stopped, yes?"
"Yes, absolutely."
"Tell your comrades to come on in. I want to see who they"re they"re impersonating." impersonating."
The false Tahiri glanced toward the hole and nodded. A man stepped through, but Seff did not recognize him; though not tall, the man was burly, clad in loose-fitting pants and tunic in black, with dull silver gloves protruding from the cuffs of his garment. He wore a black hood that cast his face into shadow. He looked unarmed, though he could have been hiding a mult.i.tude of weapons under the tunic.
On second glance, his burliness was not natural. Seff was sure the man wore some sort of breastplate under the cloth. Coming through the gap in the wall, he had not bent properly at the waist; he was stiff in his movements.
That sent a jolt of alarm down Seff"s spine. "A Mando Mando. Of course, they"d send a Mando against me."
The hooded man said nothing. And whoever else was beyond the gap did not enter, did not come within sight.
With at least three-against-one odds, speed and aggression were of the essence. Not waiting for any irrelevant declaration of intent or repartee from his opponents, Seff threw up a hand, exerting his will through the Force. The false Tahiri merely narrowed her eyes as she used her own powers to adhere to the permacrete beneath her, but the unknown Mando staggered backward and slid for many meters, flailing. Perhaps he wasn"t a Mandalorian after all; he seemed too awkward.
The false Tahiri waited only a moment, until Seff"s surge flagged, and then ignited her lightsaber and charged forward. Seff lit his own blade.
"Seff, things will be a lot better if you just surrender." She twitched her blade, a feint designed to lure him into a premature attack.
Seff pretended to fall for it, striking down at her, a cla.s.sic cleaving blow, but he jerked the blow to a halt and redirected it down at an angle against her left side. Halfway into a block against the antic.i.p.ated blow, Tahiri had to leap frantically back and maneuver her blade into the path of Seff"s, a successful block that nevertheless left her off-balance and on the retreat.
"You"re lucky," Seff told her. He struck again, throwing a series of attacks to keep her off balance. "Whoever you are, I have far less contempt for you than for the real Tahiri. Murderess, traitor, pathetic slave to her emotions-that"s what she she is." is."
Seff was surprised to feel a jolt of anger and hurt from his opponent. Could it be that she identified so strongly with the woman whose face she wore? Interesting. He kept up his attack.
He felt the Mando reenter the fight before there was any visual evidence of it. The black-clad man was on one elbow, as if hurt and struggling to rise, and then Seff saw that the man had drawn a blaster pistol, built oversized to accommodate his crushgaunts, but had concealed the action behind the sleeve of his other arm. The Mando swept his obscuring arm out of the way and fired; a blue stun bolt headed toward Seff.
Seff felt a jolt of jubilation. He caught the bolt on his blade and deflected it down into the false Tahiri"s leg. Tahiri"s eyes widened for a fraction of a second, then rolled up into her head. She fell backward.
Now to take advantage of the situation before his enemies could regroup. Seff dashed back to the blast door into the prison and hit two b.u.t.tons-one to open the door, one to trigger the thermal detonator toward the center of the corridor.
Nothing happened. He wasn"t too surprised. If his enemies had found his work here, they could easily have sabotaged his computer.
He glanced back. The Mando was on his feet, headed Seff"s way, pistol in hand.
Seff glanced up to where he"d planted the nearest thermal detonator. With an exertion of telekinesis, he yanked it free and let it drop to the floor of the tunnel. It made a metallic sound as it hit. He made sure he could visualize the triggering b.u.t.ton; then he sent the small canister-shaped weapon rolling toward the fallen Tahiri.
The Mando skidded to a stop beside Tahiri. Stooping, he picked up the unconscious woman then turned and ran, sheltering her with his body.
Grinning, Seff kept the detonator rolling after them, even allowing it to bounce once or twice for additional noise.
But he let the Mando gain on his rolling weapon. His task was not to kill these enemies.
When the detonator was halfway down the tunnel, when the Mando and the unconscious woman were far enough ahead that the blast might not kill them, Seff dropped into a crouch, turned away from the detonator, clamped his hands over his ears, and telekinetically pressed the trigger.
There was a brief pause, then the world flashed red and white. Walls and floor shook, and Seff"s ears were hammered as though he"d been cuffed by a rancor. Braced as he was, the shock wave of the explosion still slammed him into the blast door. He was pelted with superheated pieces of permacrete gravel, one of which burned his side and caught his jumpsuit on fire. The lights went out and smoke filled the air.
Shaky, he rose, patting out the burning portion of his garment. He was now in complete darkness-complete until he reignited his light-saber.
The gleam from his blade showed the tunnel collapsed, rubble filling it to within ten meters of where he stood. His bypa.s.s computer was wreckage.
The blast door was unhurt, at least for the moment.
If he"d calculated correctly, there would now be a crater in the bare kill zone above. The prison personnel would be on alert, but guessing either that there had been some sort of fuel mishap outside the prison or, at worst, that someone was trying to stage a prison break from without. His entry was likely to remain a secret for now.
And his enemies, if still alive, were trapped on the other side of the rubble.
He got to work, pressing the tip of his blade against the metal of the blast doors just at the seam, watching the durasteel begin to glow red, then orange, then luminous yellow.
JAG YANKED HIS HOOD AND HELMET FREE. HE GASPED FOR AIR. THE EXPLOSION had hit him like a metal beam in the chest, driving the air from his lungs. He knew it would have been much worse if he had not been wearing his Mandalorian breastplate. had hit him like a metal beam in the chest, driving the air from his lungs. He knew it would have been much worse if he had not been wearing his Mandalorian breastplate.
Rising to his knees, he drew out a glow rod. The blue light it cast showed Tahiri, flat on her face beside him, and a tremendous mound of construction wreckage behind them. His blaster pistol was nowhere to be seen. He pulled off his left crushgaunt and pressed fingers against Tahiri"s neck. He could feel her pulse, and saw her lips part in a groan he barely heard.
He became aware that there was a faint noise emerging from his helmet. He raised it to his ear.
"Gaunt, Sand, this is Hoth. Come in." The voice was mechanically distorted and deepened, not clearly recognizable as either human or female, but it was definitely Winter, using the call signs they"d agreed upon for him and Tahiri. "Gaunt, Sand, come in." Even through the distortion, there was an edge of worry to the voice.
"Hoth, this is Gaunt." Talking hurt. Jag paused to draw in a pained breath. "Sand is down but recovering. Mad Nek is separated from us, continuing his mission. Are you intact?"
"Gaunt, Hoth. Not badly hurt."
Jag looked at the debris mound. He switched his glow rod over to a focused beam, shining it across the top of the mound. There were gaps there. It was a precarious, dangerous thing, but there might be a way across. "Call in the rest of Darkmeld. Bring in whoever you can. Bring them in close and have them stand by. If we"re lucky, this won"t be a complete foul-up."
"Understood."
"Gaunt out."
"Hoth out."
Tahiri"s eyes opened. There was no confusion in them, only anger. She experimentally moved her head, then rolled over onto her back. "Did he have to hit me with a whole cargo ship?" Her voice was almost distinct; Jag"s hearing was returning.
Jag pulled his crushgaunt back on. "Turns out that just because he"s crazy, he"s not inept. Who would have guessed?" He donned his helmet again.
She rose. "Where"s my lightsaber?"
He stood as well, looking over the mound. "Somewhere under that, I suspect."
Her expression turned sour. "This just keeps getting better and better."
Seff peered around another sublevel corner, spotted the security holo-cam down the corridor, and caused it to fuzz for a moment as he ran past.
He"d had no pursuit, nor was there any sign that the prison"s internal security forces were alert to him. And now he could feel Valin, a dull, faint light in the Force, very close-one or two levels up, not more than forty meters laterally from his position.
It only took a simple bypa.s.s to get this level"s turbolift doors open. The prison designers had done him a disservice by making the air shafts far too small for an adult human to crawl through, but air shafts were not the only accesses. Now he stared up the turbolift shaft. The lift car itself was far above him, not moving-Seff suspected that the state of alert caused by the explosion had resulted in all the turbolifts going to a certain level and locking down. So much the better for him. He leapt across to the ladder rungs on the back of the shaft and began climbing.
The door two levels up would have been even easier to bypa.s.s-he was operating from the undefended shaft interior instead of the exterior-except that he had to do the delicate electronics work with one hand while hanging by the other from the top of the access box. But finally it offered up a little spark of defeat and the door slid open.
Three security guards, armed and armored for a riot, stood on the other side. They"d had their backs to the lift door but turned in surprise as the door slid up.
Seff jumped to stand in their midst. "Sorry," he told them, then kneed the one on the left viciously in the stomach while putting an elbow into the temple of the one on the right, cracking the man"s helmet.
The one in the center backed away, bringing his blaster rifle into line, and got a shot off. Seff sensed his intent, a chest shot, and twisted out of the way. The blast pa.s.sed close enough behind him to sear his shoulder blades.
He ignited his lightsaber and cut the blaster rifle in half at the base of the barrel. The guard, wide-eyed, continued his backpedaling and reached for his comlink, but Seff kicked him square in the jaw. The guard fell, unconscious, his jaw disturbingly askew.
Seff took a look around. This level of the prison, still below the surface, was dimly lit and quiet. The high-ceilinged main corridor and its all-metal walls led right and left from the turbolift lobby. It had many doors, some of them oversized, all of them closed. He nodded. This would be a storage level, and it was reasonable for them to put the harmless Valin Horn here.
There was a holocam mounted at the ceiling corner. It was pointed straight at him-straight at the spot where people entered or left the turbolift. If it was being monitored at this moment, he would be discovered. He fuzzed it, hoping that he had not yet been detected, and left it that way for the seconds it took him to shut the turbolift door and then pull the three unconscious guards to a point outside the holocam"s line of sight. Then he let it return to normal operation.
He trotted down the corridor to the left, brushing his fingers across each door as he pa.s.sed, fuzzing each security holocam as he came within its range of vision.
What he found curious was that the prison was not being flooded by false Jedi. Any force that could infiltrate and replace the Jedi could do so more readily with the government"s cooperation, which meant that the government and the Jedi should be hand in hand, which in turn would make it easy for them to send an army of false Jedi down here after him. But only the fake Tahiri had come. Why? Had the government somehow held out against the imposters? He felt a little stirring of hope.
On the other hand, perhaps there were two or more groups of imposters at work-groups that did not cooperate. The Jedi could have been infiltrated by one, the government by another. That would make sense of what was happening here.
He felt a pulse in the Force as he neared one oversized door. Yes, Valin, however diminished, was beyond it. He got to work on the door security. But the security panel was new and of a very sophisticated type, obviously installed because of the important nature of the captive beyond.
Seff ignited his lightsaber and plunged it into the durasteel door. In less than a minute, for it was not as formidable as a blast door, he cut a large gap into it.
Down the corridor, the turbolift door slid open. The false Tahiri stepped through. Her hood concealed her features. She carried no lightsaber.
She spotted Seff, but instead of rushing toward him, she turned to stare up at the holocam monitoring the turbolift. She began jumping up and down, waving at it.
Seff sighed. Now she was using the prison"s resources against him. Things would be more difficult.
He ducked into the chamber beyond the newly ruined door. It was a storehouse, packed high with old furniture, broken exercise equipment, computers dating back to the Old Republic ... and a huge rolling rack from which hung the carbonite prison of Valin Horn.
Valin had obviously been bound when frozen. He stood, arms behind him, a statue in mottled gray-black with an expression of pain and outrage on his face, sealed in a rectangular plate. A monitoring panel was embedded along the right rim of the carbonite.
Seff moved to it, hurriedly entered a series of commands. The tiny screen read, ERROR ERROR. ENTER AUTHORIZATION CODE ENTER AUTHORIZATION CODE.
Seff glowered at the apparatus. Now was not the time to face one final layer of security.
A strident breep-breep-breep breep-breep-breep alarm filled the air. Then Seff"s ersatz Mando opponent squeezed through the hole in the door. alarm filled the air. Then Seff"s ersatz Mando opponent squeezed through the hole in the door.
Seff moved toward him, reigniting his weapon, and slashed to cut this persistent enemy down, but the man took the blow on one skillfully interposed gauntlet. The blow did not penetrate. It was clear that he was wearing true Mandalorian crushgaunts made of beskar beskar.
Seff spun, bringing his blade down at the false Mando"s shoulder. His target caught the blade on his other gauntlet cuff-clearly, he"d had some training against lightsabers-but Seff maneuvered his hilt up, the blade down, using the gauntlet cuff as a lever point, and the blade slapped against the shoulder, a lighter blow than originally intended.
The false Mando"s tunic burned away there and caught fire at the edges. As Seff drew back, he could see that the breastplate beneath, too, was beskar beskar.
All right, then. The neck would be his next target. He lunged, arcing his blade in a visually bewildering attack- The lightsaber hilt was yanked out of his hand. It spun through the air, its blade tip glancing off the false Mando"s hood and revealing the black metal helmet beneath, and then the hilt landed in the palm of Not-Tahiri, now stepping through the hole in the door. Immediately she switched the weapon off and then unscrewed the pommel, rendering the weapon temporarily useless.
Seff looked at the carbonite imprisoning his colleague. "Sorry, Valin. Not this time."
"Not ever," the false Tahiri said.
With a gesture, Seff sent Valin"s rack hurtling toward his opponents. Not-Tahiri leapt out of the way. The false Mando, too slow, was hammered by the rack and thrown to one side.
As the carbonite reached the door, Seff raised it two meters into the air, letting it slap up against the exit. Seff followed, ducking through the hole he"d cut, then let the rack fall. It slammed to the floor behind him, momentarily sealing the door.
Seff raced down the corridor toward his exit. Ahead, the turbolift door was still open, but he could hear the rushing noise of an oncoming lift car.
There was no time to gauge its distance or travel rate. If he was lucky, he"d live and escape. If he was unlucky, he"d die. He heard Valin"s carbonite being shoved out of the way as he put on a burst of Force-augmented speed and leapt into the turbolift shaft, slamming into the rungs at the back. He didn"t grab at them; he dropped.
An arriving lift car shuddered to a halt just above his head. He grabbed at rungs a few meters down and held on, listening to the sweet sound of prison guards rushing out of the lift. He smiled; they wouldn"t stop a trained Jedi or even a good imposter like the false Tahiri, but they would slow the false Tahiri and her companion long enough for him to get away.
He dropped again, grabbing a new rung five meters down, and continued down the shaft.
"What"s the rush?" Dab rubbed sleep from his eyes, then cringed as Jaina brought her speeder up to within centimeters of a fast-moving cargo hauler, sideslipped out of her traffic lane and directly in line with oncoming speeders, bypa.s.sed the hauler, and whipped back into the proper lane a handspan in front of the larger vehicle. All around them, other speeders veered and wobbled a bit in nervous antic.i.p.ation of the next wild maneuver from Jaina"s vehicle.