by Troy Denning
When the blade failed to move, Tahiri looked down and saw that this hand, too, was wrapped in a tentacle. She tried to pull free and found that not only was she unable to move the hand, she could no longer even feel it.
That is the thing, my child, Abeloth said. You can’t help it.
A tentacle rose between them, then bent forward and began to slither up Tahiri’s chin.
“What?” Tahiri gasped. A cold terror was rising inside her, and she had to fight to avoid panicking. “What are you doing?”
Did I not say? Abeloth replied. We are going to be together. The lieutenant’s body is weak. Yours will be strong. Yours has felt the Force—
The explanation was cut short by the sharp crackle of a mini rocket, its roar rising in pitch as it approached. Tahiri glanced toward the shattered viewing panel and saw Fett standing there, the arm with the launcher still pointed down into the lab.
Then Abeloth twisted away, ripping herself open on Tahiri’s lightsaber blade, and was gone. The mini rocket arrived an eyeblink later, striking the floor in front of Tahiri … and failing to explode. Fett dipped his helmet—as though to say you’re welcome—then spun away and disappeared about two breaths ahead of Abeloth. She sprang through the hole after him, an oily dark fume pouring from the wound in her side.
It took a couple of heartbeats for Tahiri to believe she hadn’t lost her mind. It seemed impossible, but Fett had just risked his life to save hers. And he was using himself as bait, when he could have just taken his scientists and fled. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all—or maybe he just valued his word more than his life.
Either way, Tahiri was not going to waste the time he had just bought her—quite possibly with his life. She pulled two more thermal detonators from her vac suit pockets and armed them both, then set one fuse for twenty seconds and secured this detonator inside a thigh pocket. The other detonator she kept in her hand, setting the fuse for ten seconds.
By the time Tahiri finished her preparations, brilliant bursts of orange and blue were flashing in the workroom as Fett unloaded his full arsenal into Abeloth. Keeping a silent count in her head, Tahiri Force-leapt through the shattered viewing panel and turned toward the far end of the room, where the two nanotech scientists—Tarm and Yu—were still shackled and cowering in their chairs.
Fett was in front of the two scientists, crouching behind the large lab table that filled the middle of the room, firing everything he had at Abeloth. The blasterfire she simply took, her wounded body barely flinching as bolt after bolt burned through. The flames she stopped with a shield of Force energy that sent tongues of crimson fire licking in every direction but toward her. And the mini rockets she simply Force-nudged off-course, sending them streaking past to explode harmlessly against the wall.
Tahiri’s count reached five. Abeloth was facing away from her. She had leapt up on the table and was walking across it toward Fett.
Tahiri raised the thermal detonator so Fett would have at least some chance of grasping her plan, then opened her hand and used the Force to float it gently toward Abeloth.
The detonator had traveled barely half the distance when Abeloth pivoted sideways so that she could see both of her enemies, and extended a tentacle. The orb tore free of Tahiri’s Force grasp and went sailing toward Fett.
With only a few seconds left before the first detonator exploded, Tahiri went straight to Plan B, activating her lightsaber and Force-leaping to the attack. She was on Abeloth by the count of eight, hacking through a trio of tentacles—which dropped to the tabletop and promptly slithered around her ankles.
A tremendous roar filled the room as Fett activated his jetpack and came streaking toward them, one hand grasping the detonator Abeloth had sent flying toward him—which he had nabbed from the air. He jammed the detonator into the fume-oozing wound in the same instant Tahiri’s count reached nine.
She turned to leap away—then something strong clamped her biceps, and her arm nearly came out of its socket as she was jerked into the air. By the time she realized Fett had politely snagged her on the way past, they were crashing into the front corner of the workroom. Everything went white and loud, and Tahiri feared they had failed to escape the detonator’s blast radius.
That fear vanished an instant later as she hit the floor in an aching heap. Fett came down on top of her, all hard metal and sharp edges, and Tahiri realized that she had actually survived.
Had Abeloth?
Tahiri looked back toward the lab table. There was no lab table, only a five-meter hole in the floor. Drs. Frela Tarm and Jessal Yu, both utterly blast-shocked, sat staring into the hole.
Tahiri tried to move, but Fett was still lying atop her, silent and limp.
“Fett?” she called.
When he didn’t answer, she checked him in the Force and was actually a bit relieved to sense that he was still alive.
“Fett!”
Tahiri started to roll him off gently—until a little voice in her head reached the number fifteen, and she recalled Plan B.
“Fett!” She shoved him hard, bolstering her own strength with the Force. In Hagamoor 3’s weak gravity, the effort sent him flying. “Get off!”
Fett clanged into the ceiling and seemed to awaken. He pushed off hard and dropped back toward the floor, growling in a groggy voice, “Don’t move!”
Tahiri ignored him and opened the utility pocket where she had secured the second detonator.
“I’ve got you, scum!” Fett shouted.
Tahiri looked over to find him standing on wobbly legs—and pointing his flamethrower at her. She used the Force to point his arm in another direction, then held the thermal detonator up for him to see.
“Two seconds,” she said.
Fett’s grogginess seemed to vanish all at once. He pointed toward the shattered viewing panel that overlooked the main genetics lab.
“Get rid of—”
Tahiri whipped the detonator toward the viewing panel, using the Force to guide it and push it along. Even then, the orb had barely passed through the opening before it activated. There came a tremendous crack and a blinding white flash that seemed to eat away much of the wall and the floor in front of them … and then there came another crack, this one deep and sonorous.
The entire facility shook as though it had been hit by an asteroid, and a tremendous clatter echoed through the room as untold tons of stone rained down on the upper side of the ceiling.
Fett’s helmet turned so that the visor was fixed on Tahiri’s face. “Those are some pretty nice detonators. Where’d you get them?”
Another boom shook the workroom, and this time a two-meter circle of ceiling simply vanished into smoke. The shrill whistle of escaping atmosphere wailed through the room, and everything that was not secured to a wall or a floor—shards of metal, pieces of flimsi, datachips—began to fly toward the hole.
Tahiri grabbed the helmet off the carrying clip on her shoulder and—praying that her vac suit had not been compromised during the battle—pulled it over her head and seated it with a quick twist. Fett, whose armor included a built-in vac suit, simply started tapping keys on his forearm control pad.
“Veila!” he yelled over their suit comm. “Is there something you forgot to tell me?”
Another blast shook the facility, this time striking somewhere farther away from the main lab. Tahiri checked her chrono and saw that the barrage had started two minutes early. She hoped that Vangur had noticed the frigate moving into attack position and retreated to a safe distance.
Tahiri toggled her chin-mike. “I didn’t think it would matter,” she said. “I thought we’d be dead by now.”
“You might be,” Fett warned.
“They’re two minutes early, if it’s any consolation,” Tahiri said. “Jag must really have lit a fire under his staff.”
“Now the Imperial Navy moves fast.” Fett’s helmet turned toward the back of the workroom, where Frela Tarm and Jessal Yu were already in the last stages of decompression
sickness, with blue skin and blood oozing out around the rims of their bulging eyes. “Of course.”
Fett turned toward the viewport through which the Squibs had attacked earlier, then used a mini rocket to blow the transparisteel out of its frame.
“Ladies first,” he said. “And no, I’m not going to blast you in the back. I know what happens when you try that on a Jedi.”
“I’m no Jedi.”
“Yeah, you are,” he said. Another turbolaser strike hit the facility, and a second, larger hole appeared in the workroom ceiling. He waved Tahiri toward the frame. “I’m about done being forgiving.”
Tahiri looked back toward the two nanotech scientists, who were both convulsing in their final death throes. “What about your counteragent?”
Fett shrugged, and she could feel his disappointment in the Force. “What about it?” he asked. “The sleemos who invented it are as good as dead. There’s no use joining them.”
“I suppose not,” Tahiri agreed. “But Fett, I’ve got to ask—”
“I’m not your chat-buddy,” he interrupted. “It’s time to go.”
“I know that.” Half expecting a tentacle to appear, Tahiri took one last glance toward the main genetics lab. “So why did you save me back there? You could have taken the scientists and been gone.”
“Maybe I should have, but a deal’s a deal,” Fett said. “Besides, you saved me first. I hate owing someone like you.”
“Like me?”
“A Jedi,” Fett growled. “Can we go now?”
“Sure,” Tahiri said, “but why did you risk your life to save me a second time.”
“I like being owed.” Fett stepped toward the opening. “I’m going now, Veila.”
“Hold on.” Tahiri caught his arm and turned toward the computer stations at the back of the lab. “There’s a datachip in there—and I’d like you to have it.”
Another strike landed, this time sending tons of stone tumbling down into the central cavern beyond the empty viewport.
Fett cast a meaningful glance upward, then said, “It better be some datachip.”
“Probably not, but it’s the only shot you have,” Tahiri said. “I told Yu to copy all his nanokiller files so you’d have the research when you took him and Tarm.”
Fett cocked his helmet to one side. “Why would you do that?”
Tahiri shrugged. “Because I like being owed, too,” she said. “And because I was Caedus’s apprentice at the time.”
“I haven’t forgotten.” Fett turned and started toward the back of the lab to retrieve the chip. “But that’s done between us. Okay?”
“Okay,” Tahiri said. And then they were both hurrying toward the exit, Fett ahead and Tahiri following close behind. “And thanks.”
“That still doesn’t make us buddies, Veila,” Fett said. “To me, you’re just another stinking Jedi.”
From where Jaina was kneeling in the center of the ventilation ducting, facing the side wall, she could see many things. She could see that the Keshiri woman, with her torso cut half apart and a blaster bolt exit wound where her left cheek used to be, was no ordinary Sith. She could see that Luke was driving the woman-thing straight into her. And at the far end of the run, she could see Corran Horn limping toward the edge of a giant exhaust port, mere meters from lobbing the team’s last thermal detonator into the shield generator. She could see that any second now, the Keshiri would have to turn and attempt to stop him, and Jaina could see that her chrono said it was two and a half minutes before midday, GST.
Two and a half minutes was a very long time for an emplacement gunner to adjust his aim. Too long. Jaina knew that as soon as the shield generator went down, the Sith gunnery commander would realize there was a fresh attack coming—and where. He would order all of his gunners to break off their battles with the blastboats and assault cars that had been trying to breach the Temple’s impregnable defenses for days now. He would order them to turn their attention to the exhaust port. And he would order them to fill the sky above the port with cannon bolts and missiles. Then, in two and a half minutes, the Void Jumpers would find themselves dropping into hell.
And that was why Jaina continued to ignore Luke’s order to stand and fight. Instead, she remained motionless, willing Corran to slow down, touching him through the Force and urging him to hang back. But she could feel his concern, his fear that if he delayed, he would be wasting Luke’s sacrifice by allowing the indestructible Keshiri woman to catch up. The instant the woman got past Jaina and had a clear lane to Corran, he would launch himself at the shield generator.
But Jaina also knew she could never last two and a half minutes against the Keshiri woman—not anymore. Her entire body felt like it was burning from the inside out, and she was not at all sure her muscles would obey even when the time came—as Luke kept ordering—to stand and fight. She thought she might last thirty seconds, maybe even a minute if the Force was with her. But two and a half minutes? In two and a half minutes she would be dead.
Jaina’s chrono advanced to two minutes before midday, and then a strange thing happened. The Keshiri woman wailed in pain. It was not merely the kind of scream that anyone might let out as a blaster bolt tore through a lung. This was something supernatural, a scream that seemed to echo through the Force and roll around inside Jaina’s head without ever actually passing through her ears.
The woman staggered, and when Luke blasted her again, she gathered herself to spring after Corran. Time up. Jaina stretched a hand toward her lightsaber and, summoning it into her grasp, used the Force to lift herself to her feet.
The woman surprised Jaina by stopping between her and Luke, and Jaina found herself looking into the face of death. The mouth, where it had not been blown away by Luke’s blaster bolt, was a hideous wide thing that stretched from ear to ear, and the eyes were sunken wells of darkness, at the bottom of which burned two tiny points of light.
Abeloth.
Jaina recalled the description well enough to realize whom she was facing, and she knew that her chances of surviving to see Jag again had just dropped to zero. She ignited her lightsaber and leapt into battle with a powerful mid-body strike that she hoped would drive her foe back onto Luke’s blade.
Abeloth’s hand flicked, and Jaina found herself tumbling down the duct backward. She saw the dark rectangle of a stack-head flash past beneath her; she slammed down and rolled twice before she could finally use the Force to bring herself to a stop. She came up on her knees, facing back the way she had come, and saw Abeloth leaping across the pit toward her.
Jaina brought her lightsaber across in a high guard—only to see her attacker drop down the stack and vanish from sight.
Too exhausted and confused to rise, Jaina remained kneeling where she was, half expecting a hand to come punching up through the sheet metal to grab her by the ankle and drag her to her death. Instead she saw Luke approaching, his lightsaber in one hand and his blaster in the other. When he reached the edge of the stack-head, he extended his arm and blind-fired a flurry of bolts after Abeloth. Then he peered cautiously over the side … and looked confused.
He looked back toward Jaina. “What happened?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Jaina said. “I thought you—”
“Not me,” Luke said, shaking his head. “It was something else—something we don’t understand yet, I think.”
“Something else we don’t understand about her?” Jaina replied. “Great.”
Then she remembered Corran—and that she had not yet heard the crackle of a thermal detonator. Jaina checked her chronometer. It was still a minute and a half before midday. She spun around and was relieved to see Corran standing at the edge of the exhaust port, looking back toward them—and still holding the detonator in his hand.
“Now?” he called. “My chrono is acting up.”
Jaina checked her own chrono again, then shook her head. “Not yet.” Guessing that it would take her just about a minute to cover those last fift
y meters, she motioned for Luke to join her, then rose and began to hobble down the duct toward the shield generator.
“Let’s do it together.”
“Good thinking,” Luke called. “The med-evac team will be faster if we all collapse in one place.”
THEY HAD FINALLY CLIMBED HIGH ENOUGH INTO THE TEMPLE TO ESCAPE the acid-dripping mold and the fungi with poisonous, razor-sharp edges. This passage was just a typical undercity corridor, with corroding durasteel walls, layers of grime, and the reek of decay. And since there were no more man-eating vegetables, Han was no longer in fight-or-flight mode. Now he was just angry—furious, even.
During the ambush in the loading dock, he had glimpsed a brown-haired girl standing in the entrance to the access tunnel. She had been wearing Jedi combat armor, so at first he had assumed she was a prisoner or was fleeing the enemy. Then he had noticed the thermal detonator in her hand, and he had started to think spy. The clincher had come when she had stepped into the loading bay and tossed the detonator toward the Falcon’s boarding ramp, where Allana stood talking with Bazel and Leia. That was about the same time that he got a good look at the little scar at the corner of her mouth, and he had recognized her instantly.
Vestara Khai.
The little smooka had been playing Ben all along, using the girl-in-danger ploy to make him fall for her. Then, after she had gotten inside the Jedi Order and learned as much as Luke was going to allow, she had seen an opportunity to take out Allana and had slipped back to the Sith to set up the ambush in the loading dock. That much was clear. She had used Ben and fooled Luke.
The only thing Han did not understand was how. How had Vestara learned about the drop-off—and that Allana would be aboard? How had she set up the attack so quickly? She had already been inside the Temple when the Falcon arrived on Coruscant, and even if she had had some means of eavesdropping on Bwua’tu’s headquarters, there had been less than an hour to get into position.