by Jude Watson
“But why did you build it in the first place?” Ferus asked.
“I live under the crust. I need an exit strategy. So, what do you say? I’m going. Are you in or out?”
Ferus looked at Trever. It might be foolhardy, but it might be brilliant. They could steal back the lightsabers. They could raid Malorum’s files. He could find out what Malorum had learned about Polis Massa. He could find a way to stop him, follow through on his promise to Obi-Wan. This could be his only chance.
“I’m in,” he said.
“You’re not going without me,” Trever said.
Ferus’s expression clearly said not this again. But Trever didn’t care. He wasn’t going to be left behind. He’d been left behind before. By his mother, by his father, by his brother. Each time, they’d said It’s too dangerous. You’ll be safe here.
Each time they said I’ll be back.
“It’s a two-person ship,” Ferus said. “There’s no room. I’ll be back—”
“No! Don’t say that,” Trever warned. “Just...don’t. I can help. I’ve been to the Temple. I’m small—I can get into tight spaces. And you’ll need some blasting expertise.”
Solace looked at him doubtfully, and he bristled.
“I’ve got half- and quarter-alpha charges, and I’ve made my own mini-blasts,” Trever said. “No noise, no smoke, just sweet entry anywhere you want to go.”
Solace looked at Ferus.
“Trever has had an interesting history,” he said.
“If we take the tool kit out, you can fit behind the seat.” Solace looked at Ferus. “The kid can handle himself. You could, too, at his age. So relax.”
“Ferus doesn’t know the meaning of the word,” Trever said.
Solace and Trever laughed, and some of the pressure Ferus felt inside eased. It was good to be laughed at again. It felt like friendship.
Hume, Rhya, Keets, Oryon, Curran, Gilly, and Spence were sitting at a table fashioned out of a slab of permacrete balanced on some old protocol droid legs. Ferus approached them and sat.
“I’m taking off. Solace promises you’ll be safe here. Her assistant Donal will look out for you. I don’t think I’ll be long. Solace and Trever and I have decided to break into the Temple again. This time, I’m going to get a look at the files and see exactly what Malorum is planning. Unless we go, this place won’t be safe.”
“We’ll come with you,” Hume said.
“No. First of all, there’s no room. And second—well, you came with me to find Solace, and you found it. This is my battle.”
Ferus stood. He looked at each of them. They’d been together only a short time, but he felt tied to them, tied to their struggle to stay alive.
It was Curran who spoke up, using the words of the Svivreni. On their world, it was considered bad luck to say good-bye.
“The journey begins,” Curran said softly. “So go.”
When Ferus returned, he found that Solace had already done the preflight check. Trever had squeezed into the space behind the seat. Ferus slid into the passenger seat directly behind Solace. The craft was so small that they easily navigated through the cavern and zoomed into the underground tunnel.
“I’ve explored all through the tunnels down here,” Solace said. “There are more than I told you about. It took me months to get all the parts for this craft and build it.”
She piloted through the tunnel, flipping the craft sideways when she had to. Then she zoomed up through a huge crack in the ceiling and they entered the main lane of the old city on the crust. They buzzed through the empty place.
“The columns for the Temple were sunk near the tech warehouses,” Solace continued. “They were hard to find because the trash heaps were built around them about a century later.”
After maneuvering for nearly an hour, the craft dipped down into a vast smoking heap of garbage piled hundreds of meters high. Solace navigated the space, veering around the piles. At last they saw a thick column ahead, and then another, and another. “There are the supports. Hang on.”
Now they were going straight up, hugging the column as it rose through the sublevels of Coruscant. Trever fought against dizziness. He was looking straight up through the cockpit canopy. Level after level rushed at him, floors, spires, walls, walkways, lights, beings, cloud cars, air taxis, landing platforms.
It had taken them so long to get down to the crust, and now it was all receding behind him so quickly.
The buildings grew more thickly around them. Lights came on. Dawn was breaking above them. Speeders and air taxis streaked past them. And they were still below the surface.
He knew they were close when Solace pulled back on the speed. “Our best chance is to do this quickly,” she said. “In and out.”
Above them Trever saw the base of the massive Temple building. Even down here he could see evidence of damage, blackened stone and missing chunks, as though the building had been hacked away at.
Slowly they cruised around the base, searching for the place Solace was looking for. She positioned the ship’s nose against the wall. A whirring noise began, and the plasma jets began to slice through the base.
Fine dust coated the windshield, but Solace had thought of that, too. A rotating device cleared the windshield every few seconds, leaving them complete visibility.
The plasma jets cleared a hole just big enough for the ship to get through. They flew inside and found themselves directly in the turbolift shaft.
“It worked!” Solace exclaimed.
“I wish you didn’t sound quite so surprised,” Ferus remarked.
“Malorum’s office first. Then back down to storage if we haven’t been discovered.”
The craft ascended the shaft, then turned into a horizontal turbolift corridor. They could see the turbolift itself now, unused, at the end of the shaft. Beyond it they could see that the corridor had been blasted, some of it caving in. The turbolift was partially destroyed.
Solace gently brought the craft to rest on the shaft flooring. The cockpit canopy whirred back, and one by one they climbed out.
“This lift door opens out into the service hallway,” Solace said in a low tone.
She and Ferus stood by the door. Trever watched them. Something was passing between them, and he supposed it was the Force. He couldn’t feel it, but he was starting to recognize its presence, just by the quietness that surrounded Ferus when he accessed it. Then, without a word being spoken, Ferus stepped forward and cut a hole in the door with his lightsaber. They stepped through.
The hallway was empty. Trever followed behind as the two Jedi moved quickly and silently. He almost tripped on a conductor wire, but caught himself just in time. He broke out into a sweat at the thought of the noise he would have made if he fell.
In and out, Solace had said. Attract no attention.
This hallway had been used recently. He saw evidence of scrape marks along the power vents, as though they’d been pried off. Was the Empire looking for something hidden in the Temple? They’d heard the same rumors he had about treasure being kept here. Of course, according to Ferus, Palpatine had started the rumors, but that didn’t mean Imperial officers knew that.
Why had there been conductor wire on the floor?
Ferus accessed a doorway to the main hallway. Trever could see the door to Malorum’s office. It was open. They could hear the sound of others in the building, but the hallway was clear.
Quickly they crossed the hallway and went into the office. Ferus hurried to the desk.
“The holofiles—they’re gone. So are the datapads.”
Solace looked around. “It’s been cleaned out.”
“I guess Vader wanted Malorum back under his nose.”
“I won’t learn the name of the spy now,” Solace said in disgust.
Ferus frowned. He went to the window and looked out, keeping out of sight. “Where are the troops?” he wondered. “This place was crawling with them when we were here last. You’d think there would be even more.”
“Something’s wrong,” Solace said. “I feel it.”
“I feel it, too.”
“Let’s find the lightsabers and get out of here,” Solace suggested.
The glowlights dimmed for a moment, then resumed. It was just a glitch, Trever told himself. But something was making him uneasy. Something that had nothing to do with the Force, and everything to do with the Empire.
The wire he’d almost tripped on. The scratch marks on the power vents.
“Wait,” he said.
He whipped out his servodriver and hurried to the power panel. He unscrewed it from the wall and looked inside.
“Trever, what is it?”
“Power leakage,” he said. “Something is sucking the power from the core generator.”
“Why?”
“I can think of only one reason,” Trever said. “A version of a sleeper bomb. They’ve tapped different power stations, all at once, to fuel it. They’re draining the power to build the explosion. They’ve gone into different power vents. I’d say they wanted to tap enough power to blow the entire Temple.”
“It’s Malorum,” Ferus said. “That’s why he cleared out his office. Vader told him to do it, so he’s doing it. Even though Vader wasn’t serious. It’s Malorum’s way to disgrace Vader in the eyes of the Emperor. He can claim that Vader gave the order.”
“Do you have any idea when it could blow?” Ferus asked Trever.
“It’s just a guess,” Trever said. “But if that glitch means what I think it means, we could have just made the shift to reserve power.”
“Which means what?” Ferus asked.
“Which means soon. Minutes.” Trever swallowed. “We don’t have time to leave the way we came.”
“We could go out the front entrance,” Solace said. “Take our chances. Leave the Temple and let it be destroyed.”
“I can’t,” Ferus said.
Solace nodded. “Neither can I.”
They raced through the main hallways. There was no time for subterfuge.
Malorum and his officers had withdrawn most of the stormtroopers, but they had left attack droids to continue the patrols, to prevent interference from intruders. Ferus bounded toward the first group as it wheeled to engage them. His lightsaber moved rapidly as he mowed through them from one side while Solace took the other. She was all movement and no wasted motion, her lightsaber a blur. She was faster and better than Ferus and together they destroyed the droids in only seconds. They met in the middle and raced through the gap they’d created, smoke rising around them. Trever kicked through the hot metal and followed.
They knew where the central core generator was. The only chance they had was to shut it down before the bomb was fully armed.
Not trusting the turbolifts, they swung downstairs, leaping down and letting Trever catch up when they had to pause to dispatch more attack droids. They made it to the power source, a white room where the mighty sublight generator hummed. The reserve power light was blinking.
“Here’s the bomb,” Trever said, hurrying over to it. “They didn’t bother to hide it. You’ve got to shut down the main generator. But do it gradually, or it could trigger the bomb.”
“Thanks for telling me.” Ferus turned his attention to the power-core controls. He knew how to do this. He had made it a personal course of study to find out how the infrastructure of the Temple worked. Quickly, he accessed the power computer bank. He went through the necessary series of steps to shut down the system. He went slowly, powering each subsystem down from green to yellow to red.
The lights flickered and failed. They heard the gentle sigh as the air system shut down.
“What now?” Solace asked.
“We wait,” Trever said. “And hope we don’t blow.”
Solace held up her lightsaber, which gave a soft blue glow. Trever got out his glow rod. The seconds ticked by. He looked at the power indicator on the bomb. Slowly, the indicator began to move.
“It’s draining,” he said. “It won’t arm.” He looked up at Ferus. “You can kill it now. It’s dead.”
Ferus swiped a clean strike through the bomb. The device split into two neat halves.
“How long before they figure it out?” Solace asked.
“Soon,” Ferus said. “I would imagine that Malorum is nearby. He’ll want to see it blow.”
“We stopped him this time. But all he has to do is set another one,” Trever said.
“I think Vader will find out and stop it,” Ferus said. “That’s my guess, anyway. Word will get back. If the Emperor wanted the Temple completely destroyed he would have ordered it done. He wants it to remain. It’s a symbol to the galaxy—the wreck of the Jedi Order. But to us, it’s a symbol of what we can be again.”
“I don’t know if it’s a symbol of anything anymore,” Solace said. “I just know it was my home, and I don’t want them to blow it up.”
They walked out of the central power control center and started down the hall again. Suddenly they heard the noise of stormtroopers clacking down the hallway. Ahead, from this vantage point, they could see the entrance to the Temple. As they looked, the doors flew open and stormtroopers poured in. Malorum was at the head. They could hear his voice boom, bouncing off the high stone walls.
“Find them!” he screamed.
A sea of white flooded the main hallway. They turned and ran. They could not meet this display of force. Overhead, seeker droids began to fan out, searching for them.
They ran back the way they had come. They had to get to Solace’s ship. It was their only hope for escape.
Pursued by a seeker droid, they raced down the hallway. Ferus leaped and twisted, slicing it in two.
They could hear the stormtroopers behind them, running now. “They must have picked us up on surveillance,” Solace said.
They had seconds. Ferus hurried Trever through the hole to the turbolift shaft. Solace followed. Blaster fire peppered the lift door as Ferus stood, deflecting it. When he was sure Solace and Trever were inside the craft, he turned to leap inside the hole.
At that moment, at least fifty more stormtroopers appeared, some of them on AT-RT walkers. If Solace waited for him, they would all be captured or dead.
He looked at Trever, whose eyes were wide, pleading. “I’ll be back!” he yelled.
“I told you not to say that!”
Ferus deactivated his lightsaber and lifted his hand. Solace saw his intention and leaped up momentarily to catch it as it flipped through the air. He would allow himself to be captured, but not his lightsaber.
“Now go!”
Solace hesitated. He saw how close she was to joining him. He couldn’t let her.
“You’ve got to get him out of here!” Ferus shouted.
As Trever screamed and hammered her back with his fists, Solace pushed the controls, and the ship took off.
It had all taken less than a moment. He knew Malorum would want to take him alive. Ferus turned toward the onslaught, defenseless now, and alone.
He sat in a prison. Somewhere. He hadn’t been taken off Coruscant, he knew that much. He had a bruise on the back of his head where they’d hit him with a stun baton. His legs still tingled from the blow to the back of his knees.
It was only the beginning, he knew.
He had been in an Imperial prison before and had escaped before they tortured him. He didn’t think he would be that lucky twice. The last time, Malorum had been the head officer.
One thing you really didn’t want, Ferus reflected through his crashing headache, was an Imperial Inquisitor with a grudge.
He lifted his head when the doors swished open. Malorum walked in. Ferus could feel his enjoyment of the situation. Ferus decided then and there that no matter what they did to him, he was going to give Malorum a hard time.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this, Malorum,” he said.
“Very amusing.”
“No, I mean it. We really do. You’ve just got to get out of prison. See the ga
laxy. Have some fun—”
“I’m having fun right now. I’m enjoying this immensely.”
“Wow, me too. At last, we’re bonding.”
“So let’s talk.”
Ferus nodded and stretched out his legs. The pain nearly made him wince, but not quite.
Be a Jedi, Ferus. Be the Jedi you never were, for star’s sake. Accept your fear and find your center.
“Let’s talk about the Jedi. I underestimated you, Ferus. I thought you left them and never looked back. But you’ve been doing nothing else but trying to save them. Who is the Jedi you were with at the Temple?”
“I was with thousands of Jedi at the Temple. And it was so long ago...”
“You know what I mean. Today. When you broke into Imperial property. What is the name of the Jedi you were with on Bellassa?”
Ferus pretended to frown. “Funny, he never mentioned it.”
“You never caught his name?”
“He never dropped it.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Now there’s the difference between you and me. I find it absolutely believable. If all your friends had been wiped out, do you think you’d be going around telling people your name? I don’t think so. You’d keep it to yourself, I think.”
“If I was a coward.”
“Ah, in my opinion, cowardice is underrated. It keeps you alive.”
“Is being alive so important to you? That’s a pity.”
“Are you feeling sorry for me now? I didn’t know you cared.”
Malorum laughed. “You think I haven’t seen this before? Bravado in the face of certain death? You’d be surprised how often those about to die put on a show. You aren’t unique.”
“I don’t care much about being unique. Remember, I was raised a Jedi.”
“Yes, you’re all the same, I suppose. Hypocrites. Hungry for power. You were about to take over the Senate, you tried to assassinate Emperor Palpatine...all while wearing those Jedi cloaks of humility. It was a good scam, but it’s over.”