And as she did so, her peripheral vision caught a glimpse of silvery metal arcing toward her from the left. Her hand darted up to intercept, wondering which of the pirates had really been stupid enough to throw a grenade in such close quarters.
But it wasn"t a grenade . .. and as her mind belatedly caught up with the evidence of her eyes, she twisted her hand around, shifting it from block to catch- And her lightsaber dropped with a resounding slap into her grip.
For an instant her eyes focused on Tannis as he dived sideways toward the cover of one of the other consoles, his hand still swinging in follow-through from the throw. Then her thumb found the lightsaber"s activation stud, and the magenta blade snap-hissed into existence.
It was as Mara killed the third to the last of the pirates with his own blaster bolt that the Commodore suddenly seemed to wake up to what had happened to his force. With a hoa.r.s.e shout, he dodged behind the last pirate still standing, a Rodian, firing at Mara over the alien"s shoulder as he backed hastily toward the door. Even as Mara dropped the Rodian, the Commodore made his escape.
"Tannis?" Mara called, closing down her lightsaber and circling through the consoles to where the other had gone to ground. "You all right?"
"Mostly," he said between clenched teeth as he pushed himself into a sitting position and peered at the ma.s.s of bodies. "And I thought you"d been good on the Cavalcade. How in s.p.a.ce did they wipe out you Jedi in the first place?"
"Strictly speaking, I"m not a Jedi," Mara said, looking around. The once pristine command room was a shambles. "Is there a backup command room somewhere?"
"Yeah, in the emergency bunker," Tannis said. "I suppose you want me to take you there."
"If you don"t, all this will have been for nothing."
"Fine," Tannis said with a hissing sigh. "Out the door and to the left."
He gave Mara a twisted smile. "I think we"ll let you go first."
"I was planning to." Igniting her lightsaber again, Mara palmed the door release and stepped out into the hallway.
There was no one in sight. "You must have some re ally sound sleepers here," she commented as they headed the direction Tannis had indicated.
"More likely the Commodore"s got them prepping the ships for a quick pullout," Tannis said, glancing nervously at each doorway they pa.s.sed. "I don"t suppose you happened to take out Caaldra before you came charging in here."
"Sorry," Mara said. "Actually, I haven"t seen him since before dinner.
Maybe he left." "I hope so." Tannis shivered. "The guy scares me." "Don"t worry about him," Mara said. "Thanks for the a.s.sist, by the way. How did you get hold of my lightsaber?"
"I went and got it out of the rain catcher where you put it, of course,"
Tannis said sourly. "Maybe you thought you were being all cute and stealthy, but I could see the thing floating along the towers and guy lines the whole way. Almost gave me a heart attack."
"You only saw it because you knew to look for it," Mara pointed out, nevertheless impressed that he"d caught on to her trick.
"Maybe," Tannis said. "But I sure didn"t want to count on everyone else missing it. As soon as I got free I went to the roof-"
"Hold it," Mara said, stopping him with her left hand as she raised the lightsaber to guard position with her right. Directly ahead of them, behind a stack of barrels- A flurry of blasterfire blazed at her from the edge of the barrels: two men, one low, one high. Mara blocked the bolts with ease, brushing the two attackers back behind their barrier. "Any idea what"s in those barrels?" she asked Tannis.
"Not a clue," he said. "I"ve never seen anything like that stored in the hallway before."
The attackers fired again. Mara responded, catching a faint crunching sound as one of the deflected bolts sizzled into the lower barrel, sending a dark liquid pouring out onto the floor. A second later the blasterfire broke off, and Mara saw a pair of shadowy figures beating a hasty retreat. "Come on," Tannis said, starting forward. "Easy," Mara warned, again holding him back. Running through her sensory enhancement techniques, she sniffed cautiously at the air.
One sniff was all it took. "Back," she ordered Tannis sharply, taking his arm and pulling him away from the spreading liquid.
They"d gotten three steps when the liquid exploded into brilliant yellow flame.
Mara reacted instantly, pulling Tannis to the floor beside her. A moment later the barrels themselves ignited, sending a fireball in both directions down the hallway. Mara pressed herself against the floor, feeling the heat wash over her legs and back and head. Tannis screamed something; only then, and only dimly, did Mara realize that she"d been burned, too.
The sheet of flame pa.s.sed over them and continued down the hallway, leaving superheated air in its wake. Blinking back tears, Mara rolled back up into a crouch, using the Force to suppress the pain. Her lightsaber had closed down during the mad scramble, and she ignited it again.
She was barely in time. Even as she brought the weapon up to guard position there was a warning flicker, and she spun thirty degrees to her right as a pair of blaster bolts came at her from a dark alcove that had been shielded from the blast.
The blaster went silent, and Mara heard a soft chuckle. "Impressive,"
Caaldra"s voice came. "Do I have the honor of addressing the Emperor"s Hand?
"The Emperor"s Hand is just a rumor," Mara said.
"Of course," Caaldra said. I"m flattered that the Emperor would send someone like you to stop us."
"Only the best for you and your patron," Mara said, deciding to pa.s.s up the fact that she"d happened on this scheme purely by accident. "Nice trap, by the way."
"Only the best for you and your traitor." Caaldra fired again, two widely s.p.a.ced shots to her head and legs. Mara was ready, blocking both with ease. "You and he must be hurting pretty badly, though."
"We"ll manage," Mara a.s.sured him. Actually, she had no idea what shape Tannis was in, and she didn"t dare risk pulling any of her attention away from her combat focus and her own pain suppression to find out. "It"s nothing compared with what a full Imperial interrogation will feel like."
Caaldra snorted contemptuously. "Is this where I"m supposed to spill my secrets and plead for mercy?"
"Spilling your secrets would make things go easier for you," Mara said.
"The pleading I can take or leave."
"Ah," Caaldra said. "Sorry to disappoint you, but it"s time to go. Give my regards to your friends."
There was a last flicker of thought; and to Mara"s surprise, the sensation that had been Caaldra vanished.
Leaving Tannis lying on the corridor floor, Mara took a careful step toward the alcove, stretching out with the Force. Caaldra was gone, all right. Keeping her lightsaber ready, she moved closer to find that what she"d thought was an alcove was actually a large deep-set doorway.
Glancing once around the corridor to make sure no one was trying to sneak up on her, she pushed open the door.
The room beyond was considerably larger than she"d expected, dark and musty, its only light coming from starshine through a large skylight in the middle of the ceiling. In the faint glow she could sec rusting ground-moving equipment and dusty stacks of conduit and shoring boards, probably leftovers from when the pirates converted this part of the mining operation into their base.
And near the back of the room, protected by high guardrails, were three wide circular pits.
Mara smiled grimly. Did Caaldra really think he could escape her by ducking down an old survey tunnel? The Force was Mara"s servant, and no matter how twisty or tangled the tunnels might be, she would have no trouble tracking Caaldra through them.
She started toward the closest of the pits; and as she did so, out of the corner of her eye she saw a flash of brilliant green through the skylight.
And suddenly the entire building shook as the thunderclap of a distant explosion ripped through the air. Reflexively, Mara threw herself into a crouch beside the nearest ground-mover. Another flash of green fire fell from the sky, and a second explosion scattered the dust around her.
The pirate base was under attack.
Chapter Sixteen.
LaRone had just finished suiting up when Quiller came on the intercom.
"One hour," he announced. "Starting pre-combat systems check."
"Right," LaRone said. "Grave, Bright.w.a.ter-get to the gunwells and start your own checks." He got acknowledgments, and with his helmet tucked under his arm he headed for the c.o.c.kpit.
Predictably, Marcross was there ahead of him, seated in the copilot"s seat with his own bucket stashed beneath the control console. "Everything looks good," he reported as LaRone took his usual place at the sensor/ shield station behind Quiller. "How are our guests?"
"As of three hours ago they were fine," LaRone told him. "I gave them the updated schedule and suggested they might want to get a little sleep before life gets b.u.mpy."
"I"m betting they asked to join the party," Grave*s voice came from the gunwell intercom.
"Actually, they didn"t," LaRone said. "Probably didn"t think it would do them any good."
"They were right on that one, anyway," Marcross said with a grunt.
"Quiller, what"s this loop warning I"m getting on the portside sensor?"
"It"s nothing," Quiller said. "Let me see if I can clear it."
Listening with half an ear, LaRone watched his own displays and began preparing his mind for combat.
Luke.
Luke startled out of his light doze. "Ben?" Get up, Ben"s voice whispered in his mind, and Luke could sense the urgency behind the words. Leia"s in danger Luke felt his heart freeze. "What kind of danger?" he asked, grabbing for his boots. "Where is she?"
In Makrin City on Shelkonwa. The governor"s chief administrator has closed down the s.p.a.ceport and alerted the Empire to her presence.
Luke felt his throat tighten. He"d been afraid something like this would happen, been worried about it ever since Leia had asked him to go with Han instead of her. "What do I do?" he asked. "I"m trapped here."
There was a moment of silence. Not as trapped as you think, Ben"s voice came again reluctantly. Go to the computer.
Frowning, Luke stepped over to the desk. Was he supposed to figure out how to tap into the ship"s comm system and call General Rieekan for help?
Focus on the keypad, Ben instructed. Focus on the numbers.
Focus on the keypad? "I don"t see anything," Luke said, looking back and forth across the line of numbers. He stretched out to the Force, but there was nothing there.
The first number is seven.
Luke shifted his attention to that key. Was there a lingering sense there? Setting his fingers over the keyboard, he opened himself to the Force, offering it control of his body as he had during the battle with the pirate ships.
But his fingers remained motionless. Without the immediacy and stress of combat to drive his thoughts and emotions, he wasn"t getting anything.
"I"m not-I can"t see it," he said. There was a whisper in his mind that might have been a sigh. The numbers are seven seven eight one three one two. Luke keyed in the sequence. Nothing happened. "Now what?"
Ben didn"t answer. Grimacing, Luke looked around, trying again to listen to the Force. His eyes drifted to the repeater display showing the ship"s current position, vector, and systems status. He could almost feel something there, but try as he might he couldn"t get the sensation to coalesce into anything clearer.
Run your finger across the underside of the repeater display frame.
Luke obeyed, and this time there was a quiet click from behind him. He turned, and to his surprise saw that a door-sized section of the bulkhead at the end of the bed had popped open a couple of centimeters. Smuggling compartments, maybe? Crossing the cabin, he pulled open the door.
It wasn"t a smuggling hole. It was a weapons cache. A cache that included two sets of Imperial storm-trooper armor.
Luke stared at the gleaming outfits, a ripple of horror running through him. He"d spent the past day wondering if LaRone and his men were pirates or smugglers or bounty hunters or even the Consolidated Security agents that they claimed to be. The possibility that they might be Imperials had somehow never crossed his mind.
Don"t be concerned, Ben"s voice soothed. It isn"t what you think. At least, not entirely.
Luke glanced over his shoulder at the cabin door. "That"s not a lot of comfort."
Trust me, Luke. Take one of the blasters and load it. Luke looked at the weapons, hoping fervently that Ben wasn"t going to ask him to take on five storm-troopers all by himself, and reached for the biggest blaster on the rack.
Luke, Ben"s voice admonished.
He stopped, taking a deep breath and stretching out to the Force. Okay.
But if he wasn"t supposed to take the biggest blaster...
His eye fell on the smallest of the weapons, a tiny hold-out blaster.
Still concentrating on the Force, he reached out and took it off the rack. He still couldn"t feel any real guidance on the decision. "You know, you could make this whole thing a whole lot easier," he complained as he found the right-sized power pack and gas cartridge and loaded them into the weapon.
Your uncle could have carried you around on his back until you were fifteen, too.
Luke grimaced. It had been a stupid thing to say. "Sorry," he apologized.
You"ve taken your first steps into a larger world, Luke. But there are many, many more steps to go. I cannot carry you along your own personal path. All I can do is guide you, and teach you, and help you to find that path for yourself.
"I understand," Luke said, hefting the blaster in his hand. "I take it I"m supposed to figure out for myself what to do with this?"
You and the Force together will do so, Ben a.s.sured him. Patience. Listen to the Force. When the time is right, you"ll know.
"Here we go," Quiller murmured, getting a grip on the hypers.p.a.ce levers and pulling. The starlines faded into stars, and stretched out below them LaRone saw the dark shadow that was the planet Gepparin.
He frowned. Directly ahead on the surface, the planet"s nighttime darkness had been broken by a tight cl.u.s.ter of brightly glowing reddish yellow spots. "What"s that?" he asked, starting to lift a hand to point.
And as he did so, a brilliant flash of green light slashed across his view, stabbing down into the landscape below and adding another glowing spot to the cl.u.s.ter already there. "What the-?" Marcross bit out.
"Oh, fusst" Quiller snarled, throwing the Suwantek up and to the side in a tight spiraling curve, turning them back the way they"d come. From above another cl.u.s.ter of green turbolaser bolts flashed out and downward.
Lit briefly by the reflection of that fire, the wedge shape of an Imperial Star Destroyer appeared in the distance. "It can"t be," LaRone breathed.
"It is," Quiller confirmed grimly. "It"s the Reprisal. They"ve found us."
Luke was pacing back and forth across his cabin when the Suwantek"s sudden turn threw him hard against one of the bulkheads. He caught his balance, rubbing his palms where he"d hit the wall.