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 lightsaber.
The gleam from his blade showed the tunnel collapsed, rubble filling it to within ten meters of where he stood. His bypass 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.
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 holocam 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 bypass 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 bypass—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 passed 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 passed, 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 th
e 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. 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 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.
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.
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, bypassed 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 anticipation of the next wild maneuver from Jaina’s vehicle.
“No hurry,” Jaina lied. “This is just revenge.”
“Revenge for what?”
“For waking me up three times in the dead of night during the last week for your spot checks.”
“It’s my job. I take no pleasure in it.”
“Well, I’m taking pleasure in this.” Jaina sent the speeder rightward into a narrow thoroughfare. She dived, dropping precipitously and illegally through three different traffic levels before joining the lane nearest the surface.
All around were the lights of pedestrian walkways. In this area, an aging, run-down region where residential edifices gradually gave way to old, poorly maintained government structures, there was little traffic and few pedestrians.
To his credit, Dab didn’t shriek or grab at his restraining straps. He just shook his head, resigned to the trip. “So you’re going to see Jagged Fel?”
Jaina’s eyes snapped wide. Having no idea of her true purpose for being here—supporting Jag, Tahiri, and Winter if they absolutely needed her—Dab thought it was a romantic liaison. And he obviously thought that Jaina must be absolutely desperate for it.
Infuriated, she tromped on the reverse thrusters, sending herself and Dab slamming forward into their restraints, as she made a sharp right-angle turn onto a side throughway.
Thrown back into his seat by normal acceleration, Dab rubbed his chest. “Ow.”
“I am not going to see Jag—and that’s Head of State Fel to you.”
“Fine!”
“There’s a little rooftop park up here I like.”
“Of course. At this hour.”
Jaina went into a steep climb, going completely vertical as she approached the wall of a particularly large residential block. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Dab’s features drawn back in a rictus brought on by acceleration.
Then she reached the top of the building. She rolled until she was level with the rooftop. She immediately set her speeder down on a broad bed of grass. It was indeed a park, with carefully arranged ponds, trees, and flower beds, fully occupying this rooftop and those of several surrounding buildings. Open-air, railed turbolifts provided access between the roofs.
Dab breathed a sigh of relief. “I get it.”
“You do?”
He nodded. “You come to this run-down neighborhood in the middle of the night, dressed in anonymous brown clothes, and you walk around in the park, hoping someone will attack you so you can beat them up. That way you relieve stress and also get to take dangerous criminals in.”
She stared at him. It was a brilliant excuse, and she was embarrassed that she hadn’t come up with it. “You’re absolutely right.”
“Well, it sounds like a good thing for Jedi to be doing.”
“It does, doesn’t it?” She unstrapped herself and hopped out of the speeder. She gestured toward a spot where the trees were thickest. “I’m going to walk around on the path on the other side of those trees.”
He unbuckled his own restraints. “I’ll come with you.”
“No, I’m less likely to be attacked if there are two of us.”
“And I’m more likely to be attacked if there’s only one of me.”
“True.” She pointed at a set of bushes away from her trees. “Hide there and wait for me.” She raced off toward her trees.
This was not her favorite park, of course. It was the park atop the building where Winter had taken out quarters for the Darkmeld team. From here, she could hear the sirens of public safety vehicles far, far below as they arrived to deal with the crater that had appeared in the plaza minutes before.
Past the trees, she found the roof access to the turbolift and rode down to surface level.
Seff jumped through the hole he’d cut in the blast door and rolled to his feet in the tunnel beyond. There was the mound of debris his thermal detonator had created,
and between him and it were six surprised-looking Alliance Security troopers.
Seff sighed. Of course they’d opened their end of the tunnel to investigate. Of course they’d found their way here.
Of course the highest-ranking trooper shouted, “Halt! Hands in the air!”
Seff raised his hands—the backs of his hands rather than his palms facing the troopers. He made a grasping gesture and yanked.
Debris, chunks of metal and permacrete, tore itself from the mound and hurtled toward him.
The troopers in the rear, hearing the noise, turned just in time to catch the sideways rain of punishing detritus in their faces and chests. The blocks of masonry and support durasteel knocked them down and kept on coming, catching the three troopers in front by surprise. One inadvertently fired as he was hit, his blast passing Seff a meter away.
Seff charged forward, kicking two troopers who were still moving. They lay still. He snatched up the blaster rifle from one and the pistol from another. He made sure both were set to stun.
His access hole was not covered by the debris, but the metal patch was back in place over it. Seff reached for it, then hesitated as a sense of unease passed over him.
Again he gestured, this time lofting a big chunk of broken permacrete right into the patch. The impact tore the patch away, folding it around the debris, and there was a crack and sizzle of electricity. A length of electrical cable now dangled in the gap.
Seff smiled. He brushed the cable away with a gesture, then leapt through the hole.
He didn’t need to look around. As he straightened, he aimed the blaster rifle and fired, his stun bolt catching his target before he even registered what it looked like.
Another woman, also in close-fitting black garments, a hood concealing her features. She hit the floor with her eyes closed.
He took a moment to get his bearings. In the Force, he could feel the many life-forms out there in the tunnel and more closing from both sides. There were still more above, and those numbers were growing.
He darted for the shaft to the surface, hoping that it had not collapsed.
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