by Timothy Zahn
Exactly the sort of buildings that might house major fabrication facilities.
“Whoa,” Anakin murmured. “They’ve been busy, haven’t they?”
“Indeed,” Obi-Wan agreed grimly, returning his breather to its pouch. “You see just past the buildings, how the gorge narrows again? Looks to me like this whole section of cavern is artificial, carved out to give themselves more room.”
“Makes the whole soggy trip worthwhile,” Anakin said. He pointed to the buildings that had caught Obi-Wan’s attention. “I vote we start with those big ones along the sides. They’re pressed pretty close to the cavern walls, so there shouldn’t be anyone wandering around back there to bother us, and those windows look big enough to get through.”
“Assuming the builders bothered with windows on the side facing the wall,” Obi-Wan said doubtfully.
“They did,” Anakin assured him. “Those windows are mostly for ventilation, and the builders will have wanted to take advantage of the airflow along the wall.”
Obi-Wan shrugged, peering upward. High overhead, though still protected by the walls of the gorge, he could see the black spots of STAPs on patrol. Just as well he and Anakin hadn’t tried coming down that way. “One way to find out,” he said. “Nice and quiet, now.”
They dropped back into the surging water and worked their way to the left through the forest of supports. When Obi-Wan judged they’d gone far enough, he carved a set of hand- and footholds in the rock with his lightsaber and climbed up beneath the platform. Alert for signs of danger, he carefully sliced a large hole through the permacrete, using the Force to lower the plug into the water. There were no Neimoidians or droids visible when he poked his head up, and a minute later, he and Anakin were standing in the narrow gap between the building and the cavern walk
Anakin had been right: The windows they’d seen were indeed repeated on this side-and many were open for ventilation. Tucking his lightsaber into his belt, he made a Force-assisted jump up to one of the open windows, grabbing the edge with hooked fingertips. Pulling himself up, he peered inside.
He had expected to find a building filled to the ceiling with the heavy-duty fabrication machinery. To his surprise, the building was largely empty with most of its research equipment pushed back around the edges with only a meter of ventilation space between the walls and the various consoles. A dozen Neimoidians were gathered around a large mat lying in the center of the floor, while a number of worker droids worked at various assembly tables that had been set up just inside the ring of consoles. A maze of crane tracks crisscrossed the ceiling, and a service catwalk ran around the entire interior beneath the line of windows. After pulling himself through the window, Obi-Wan dropped flat onto the catwalk and eased his way to the edge.
He was studying the layout below when Anakin crawled in to join him. “I give up,” the other murmured. “What is this place?’
“No idea,” Obi-Wan said. “The equipment around the edges makes it look like a research lab. But why they’re not .using the middle of the floor, I don’t know.”
“Maybe whatever they’ve been working on is out of the building right now?” Anakin suggested. “That big mat could be what it was resting on.”
“Then why does everyone seem so interested in the mat itself?” Obi-Wan countered.
“Good point,” Anakin said. “Want me to go ask them?”
“Let’s try to be a bit more subtle than that, shall we?” Obi-Wan said as he studied the room below. “Maybe start by pulling the records off that R-408 computer down there, I wish we had a droid with us.”
“Maybe we do,” Anakin said, pointing toward the right. “Isn’t that the R3 from your scout ship?”
Obi-Wan blinked in surprise. It was Ar-three, all right, strapped to a tall equipment rack and hooked up to a decryption analyzer. “I should have guessed they’d bring it here from the wreckage,” he said, studying the room’s layout more closely. At the moment, the droid was out of the immediate line of sight of the Neimoidians gathered in the center. If he could get down from the catwalk without being seen and get behind the analyzer, he should be able to free the droid without raising the alarm. Once that was accomplished, they could move through the ventilation corridor behind the consoles and get to the R-408. “Wait here,” he told Anakin, starting to gather his feet under him.
“No, I’ll go,” Anakin said. Before Obi-Wan could object, he grabbed the edge of the catwalk, flipped over the side, and dropped silently to the floor below. Ducking behind the nearest cabinet, he hunkered down and headed toward Arthree.
Obi-Wan shifted his attention back to the Neimoidians, still working on the mats. But even as he watched, one of them straightened up and started walking with exaggerated casualness toward one of the nearby consoles. Apparently, Anakin’s drop to the floor hadn’t been as secretive as they’d hoped.
He grimaced, but there was nothing for it. Pulling out his cable dispenser, he extruded a few meters and attached a grappling hook to the end, then threw the hook to catch on one of the ceiling cranes. Pulling out his lightsaber, he swung down toward the Neimoidians below.
The one who’d been heading toward the line of consoles gave a throaty yelp and broke into a run. Still in midair, Obi-Wan locked his lightsaber on and hurled it ahead of the alien. It sliced through the three closest racks, sending up a spray of sparks and bringing the Neimoidian to a sudden panic halt. “Everyone stay where you are,” Obi-Wan ordered as he hit the floor, stretching out with the Force to call his lightsaber back to his hand.
The command was superfluous. Aside from turning to face him, the rest of the Neimoidians were still right where they’d been standing when he’d started down from the catwalk, clustered nervously around the far end of the mat.
Which, in Obi-Wan’s experience, wasn’t like Neimoidians at all. They should have been running like frightened neeks, scattering toward exits, alarm buttons, or likely places to hide. Lightsaber ready, senses alert for trouble, he started toward them. He reached the edge of the mat, noting an odd sense of anticipation in the air, and started to take another step.
And without warning, the mat’s upper surface suddenly split open along its diagonals and 100 small objects burst out.
He wrenched his foot back from its intended landing spot, shoving hard off the floor with his other foot to leap half a meter backward as a group of flying disks spun around in formation and shot through the air straight at him. His light-saber slashed, slicing across them-with a multiple concussion, they exploded into a blistering rain of shrapnel.
His Jedi reflexes were all that saved him, sending him ducking away so that the flying bits of metal perforated a fiery path across his shoulder and back instead of his face and throat. Suppressing the pain, he twisted back around to find another group of the disks spinning toward him. Catching them in a Force grip, he threw them hard toward the far end of the building.
There was a warning flicker from the Force, and he looked down to find a dozen small rectangular droids skittering toward him on tiny legs. He slashed with his lightsaber, dodging around out of their reach as he winced in anticipation of more explosions. But there were no blasts from this type. Instead, pools of evil-looking green liquid spurted from each as he cut it open, and the room began to fill with the hissing and pungent fumes of acid as it ate its way into the permacrete and metal of the floor,
“Watch out!” Anakin’s voice shouted from behind him.
He looked up from the acid droids to find a double squadron of small spheres with short glider wings shooting toward him. Ducking to the side, he threw himself into a flat roll that brought him up onto one knee. The spheres changed course back toward him, and he slashed into the first with his lightsaber.
Obi-Wan gasped as the droid burst into a brilliant electrical discharge and sent a flash of current arcing into his arms and down his side, spasming his muscles and enveloping him briefly in a corona! haze. The other spheres were still coming; clenching his teeth, trying desperately t
o unknot his muscles, he swung his lightsaber up to meet them.
Even as Obi-Wan realized that he would never make it in time, there was a shout from behind him and Anakin leaped to the attack, his own light-saber slashing back and forth among the spheres as he soared through their midst. By the time his feet hit the deck again, half the spheres were smoking pieces of rubble scattered on the deck. Ducking beneath the rest of them, Anakin stretched out his hand and sent them tumbling away.
“Thanks,” Obi-Wan managed, fighting to unknot his muscles.
“No problem,” Anakin said, pointing across the room. The Neimoidians were finally on the run, charging for all they were worth toward the exits. “Do we care if our friends leave?”
“No, let them go,” Obi-Wan puffed, his knees shaking with the aftermath of the electrical attack. “You got the tech data download, didn’t you?”
“Arthree’s pulling it out now,” Anakin assured him, nodding toward one of the corners of the room. “Looks like our other friends are regrouping.”
Obi-Wan turned in that direction. The disk-shaped explosive droids he’d scattered earlier had gathered together in the corner, hovering in loose formation as if deciding how exactly to structure their next attack. “So are your shockers,” he said, nodding to another corner where the winged spheres Anakin had dispersed had also congregated. The worker droids, he noted peripherally, had retreated to the ventilation corridor behind the rows of consoles, clearly wanting no part of this. “Looks like they’re planning something.”
“They’re way too small to have that kind of intelligence,” Anakin argued. “There must be someone or something else controlling them.”
“Probably something in the mat itself,” Obi-Wan suggested. “I thought I saw a glint of wires as it opened.”
“Well, whatever’s running them, let’s get rid of them,” Anakin said. “ Uh-oh....”
“What?” Obi-Wan asked, stretching out toward the disks with the Force. To his surprise and consternation, he couldn’t seem to get a good grip on any of them.
“They’re vibrating,” Anakin said. “Variable frequency, variable intensity. They’re not going to be easy to-watch out!”
Obi-Wan dropped his gaze, his light-saber swinging downward in his hands at the urgent prompting of the Force. Just in time, too; with his attention distracted by the hovering droids across the room, a half dozen of the acid droids had managed to sneak up on him. Even as the tip of his lightsaber blade sliced into the permacrete floor, the droid in the lead spat a narrow stream of green liquid at his torso. It hit the lightsaber blade and bounced back in a fan-shaped spray that washed over three of the others, sending them scurrying away in a flurry of hissing and burning outer shells.
Before any of the others could react, Anakin stretched out with the Force and flipped them over onto their backs, swiveling them to point their sprayers in a safe direction. “Cute,” the younger man grunted as their short legs flailed around.
“That’s okay,” Obi-Wan told him grimly. “We can be cute, too. You think you can get a grip on one of those exploding disks for me?”
Anakin frowned in concentration. “Let me see...yes, got it.”
“Then get ready,” Obi-Wan told him. Getting one of the acid droids in a Force grip, he hurled it across the room toward the flying spheres.
It took the control system perhaps half a second to catch on-but that half-second was all it had. Even as the flying spheres broke formation and started to disperse, Anakin yanked his explosive droid out of the disk formation and hurled it on a collision course with Obi-Wan’s acid droid.
Their paths intersected just in front of the scattering spheres, and with a flash of fire, the spheres were suddenly enveloped in a cloud of green acid. Even before the sound of the blast faded away, Obi-Wan and Anakin caught up the remaining acid droids and began hurling them like an interceptor missile spread at the remaining explosive disks.
The disks dodged frantically, but the droids were coming at them too quickly and there simply wasn’t enough maneuvering space in their corner. Two more collisions, two more explosions of green smoke, and the battle was over.
“Well, that was fun,” Anakin said. “You okay?”
“I think so,” Obi-Wan said, eyeing the . last of the smoking electrical droids as it settled unsteadily to the floor and lay still. Closing down his lightsaber, he wiggled his fingers experimentally. The numbness was nearly gone, though the shrapnel injuries across his back would require a healing trance somewhere down the road. “I’ll be fine.”
“Good,” Anakin said. “Rule number one: Try not to be grounded when a high-voltage capacitor weapon zaps you.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” Obi-Wan said dryly.
“Rule number two,” Anakin went on, his voice suddenly tight as he held up his right hand. “Don’t have an artificial hand when you do it.”
A hand, Obi-Wan saw, that was visibly trembling. “Can you still fight with it?” he asked.
Anakin shrugged. “It’s not too bad, but I may not be up to taking on a full garrison of battle droids.” He walked over to the ripped mat, stepping carefully around the still sizzling pits in the permacrete. “Nice little booby-trap they’ve come up with.”
“Yes,” Obi-Wan said, studying it carefully. There was a thin base layer of machinery inside, but aside from that the thing looked pretty light-and waterproof, perhaps?
“Go get Arthree,” he told Anakin, glancing around the room. His eyes fell on a group of three equipment racks, each of them over a meter wide and deep, and a good two meters tall, and he crossed over to it. Igniting his lightsaber, he sliced away the shelf supports, releasing the equipment boxes to crash onto the floor in a tangle of cables and power lines,
Lifting the three racks, Obi-Wan carried them back to the empty mat, laying them together on their sides in the center of the material. By the time Anakin returned with Arthree, he had the edges of the mat pulled tightly up around the sides, hooking the material in place on the mounting pins.
“This looks interesting,” Anakin commented, eying the contraption. “I hope you don’t think they’re just going to let us float our way out of here.”
“I’m hoping they’ll have bigger things to worry about by then,” Obi-Wan assured him, pulling out his lightsaber again and digging into the floor. “Put Arthree aboard and get ready.”
He finished cutting their exit hole, letting the slab of permacrete drop into the surging river below. Together, he and Ana-kin lifted the makeshift boat over the opening and let it carefully down. Anakin, he noted with silent approval, had fastened a line to one end of the boat, which he now tethered to the upstream edge of the opening with his grapple. Gripping the edges of the hole, the two Jedi lowered themselves down.
To Obi-Wan’s relief, his contraption did indeed float. “We’re just going to ride the current?” Anakin shouted over the noise, squinting as the waves threw spray off the support pillars on either side.
“Yes, with a little troublemaking along the way,” Obi-Wan said. Igniting his light-saber, he slashed the blade at an angle across the nearest pillar. With a grinding thud, the top part of the column slid partially past the lower section, pulling a series of hairline cracks in the platform where the sudden dead weight now dragged at it.
“Ah,” Anakin said, nodding his understanding. “Like you said, bigger things for them to worry about,” He sliced through the pillar on the opposite side of the boat, then reached over and cut their anchor line.
The boat took off, bucking along the waves like a sprinting animal. The two Jedi kept busy, cutting every pillar within reach as they went. Ahead, the far edge of the platform loomed, and they shot out into the open area of the gorge to find a dozen battle droids on STAPs hovering in wait. Spotting the boat, they swiveled to face it and opened fire.
Obi-Wan stretched out with the Force, letting it guide his lightsaber as he deflected away the shots that came near. The boat passed beneath the sentry line, and he turned to
keep his lightsaber between him and the droids as they spun around and gave chase. Keeping his weapon moving, deflecting the shots straight back at the STAPs wherever possible, he settled into his defense.
They’d gone perhaps another dozen meters when it suddenly penetrated his combat tunnel vision that Anakin wasn’t using the standard Jedi technique of deflecting the droids’ own weapons back against them. In fact, as Obi-Wan paused for a quick breather, he saw that his Padawan’s deflected shots were instead going harmlessly back toward the base itself.
Was his artificial hand still malfunctioning? If so, they were about to be in serious trouble. A fresh cluster of STAPs had appeared over the base, far more than he could handle alone. “Anakin!” he shouted over the water’s roar. “You’re not hitting the droids!”
“I’m not aiming for the droids!” the other shouted back. “I’m aiming for that power generator at the edge of the base!”
Obi-Wan smiled tightly. He should have known. Settling back into combat mode, he started aiming his own deflected shots toward the generator.
The droid reinforcements were just clearing the edge of the base when the generator blew, throwing debris into the air and sending a concussion wave down the gorge that nearly knocked Obi-Wan out of the boat. Through the smoke, he caught a glimpse of a dozen STAPs plummeting out of control, while beneath them a broken section of the base’s permacrete platform collapsed ponderously into the river.
And with their base disintegrating and their Neimoidian masters in imminent danger of drowning, the droids did indeed suddenly have bigger things to worry about than a pair of escaping Jedi. As a slight bend in the gorge cut off his view, Obi-Wan saw the surviving STAPs turn around and head back for rescue duty.
Odds were, they weren’t going to be there in time.
