by Timothy Zahn
“Under control,” Mara told him. “You might as well not even stop here. Keep going and see if you can drive the Vagaari back toward the Five-Oh-First. I’ll finish here and catch up with you.”
“Right.”
Mara returned her comlink to its pouch and gently let Formbi’s arm down. “It’s bad, all right,” she agreed. “I think you’re going to need more than our medpacs can handle. Pressor?”
Pressor looked up from his examination of the other young Peacekeeper, his eyes smoldering. “What?”
“Aristocra Formbi needs medical attention,” she told him, wondering at his sudden change in attitude. “Where are your facilities?”
“You mean our medical facilities?” Pressor growled. “For the wounded?”
Mara frowned; and then, belatedly, she got it. Pressor, kneeling beside one of his dead Peacekeepers. . . “I’m sorry about your friend,” she said gently. “But there’s nothing we can do for him now.”
“So we should instead give our supplies to help an alien?” one of the older men by the wall demanded bitterly. “The very alien who was responsible for bringing these murderers aboard our ship?”
Mara turned to face him. “Look,” she said, fighting to keep her voice and temper under control. “I understand your anger. But there’s a time for analysis and blame setting, and this isn’t it. You’ve lost two men—”
“Six,” Pressor corrected harshly.
“You’ve lost six men,” Mara snapped, resisting the temptation to remind him that none of them would have died at all if Pressor hadn’t locked her and Luke away in that turbolift car. “That’s the way warfare goes. They were armed, and they at least had a fighting chance.”
She nodded back at the door. “That’s more than you can say for the rest of the people out there. Unless we move, and move fast, they’re all going to die. Is that what you want?”
“So go help them, Jedi,” the old man bit out. “Who’s stopping you?”
Mara shook her head. “We’re not going to do this piecemeal, running around at cross-purposes and getting in each other’s way,” she said. “We do this together, or we don’t do it at all. Our part is to fight. Pressor’s part is to tell us where the enemy is, and to assist us.”
She leveled a finger at the three of them. “Your part is to stay behind the battle line, treat the wounded, and protect our civilians until we get back. If that’s unacceptable, we can leave right now.”
“So nothing has changed,” one of the other old men murmured.
“Apparently not,” the spokesman agreed, his voice edged in bitterness. “Very well, Jedi. We’ll heal your wounded. As you command.” He drew himself up. “But when this is over, you will leave us. Is that understood?”
“Perfectly,” Mara said, turning her back on him in disgust. “All right, Feesa, you and the Aristocra can go with them. You, too, Ambassador.”
“A moment, if I may?” Jinzler asked, stepping up to her. “I’d like to ask you a favor,” he added, lowering his voice.
Mara stared at him in disbelief. A favor? “Jinzler, we don’t have time for this.”
“It’s a very small favor,” he assured her. “I want you to take Evlyn with you.”
Mara frowned past his shoulder at the woman and the girl huddling together uncertainly behind Feesa and Formbi. “You must be joking.”
“Not at all,” Jinzler insisted. “She has rudimentary Force abilities. And you’ve already seen how Director Uliar and the other Survivors feel about Jedi. I think she’ll be safer with you than with them.”
“She’ll be safer in a war zone?” Mara countered pointedly.
Jinzler’s eyes were steady on her. “Please?”
Mara shook her head in exasperation. But even in her annoyance, she could sense that Jinzler was deadly serious.
And now that she was focusing her attention on the woman and girl, she could feel the gnawing fear within them, as well. A fear that seemed more personal than just the fact that there were armed Vagaari running loose aboard their ship. “Fine,” she said with a sigh. “But she stays way behind me where it’ll be at least halfway safe.”
“Thank you,” Jinzler said, beckoning to the girl. “Evlyn? Come on.”
Mara shook her head again as the girl hurried toward her. How to make a difficult situation even harder, in one easy lesson. She just hoped it would be worth it.
“Mara?”
She turned to see Pressor coming toward her. “Yes?” she asked in a tone designed to warn him away from any further arguments.
But to her mild surprise, he hadn’t come to argue. “Here—you might need these,” he muttered, thrusting a pair of comlinks toward her. “Like you said, we have to work together here. These will connect you directly to me and to the other Peacekeepers.”
“And there’s a channel that cuts through jamming, too,” Jinzler added. “Just in case Bearsh finds those controls and turns it on again.”
“It’s here,” Pressor said, pointing out the setting.
“Thanks,” Mara said, stuffing the comlinks into her belt.
“Be careful.” Pressor glanced at his niece, then over at the old men glaring at them from across the room. “And,” he added, lowering his voice, “may the Force be with you.”
* * *
There were three armored Vagaari standing guard in the turbolift lobby when Fel, Drask, and the 501st arrived. They weren’t standing guard for long.
“Power levels seem fine,” Watchman said, glancing around. “Their line creepers must not have gotten this far aft yet.”
“This will be the last place they will spread them,” Drask said. “The Jedi said that the forward turbolifts have already been compromised. The Vagaari must make certain these remain operational if they hope to escape again to the surface.”
“Makes sense,” Fel agreed, visualizing the ship’s layout in his mind. “To be specific, they need the turbolift that connects to the starboard side. That’s the only one left that’ll get them to D-Four.”
“Which means they will have committed a large number of troops to its defense,” Drask said thoughtfully. “What do you think, Commander? Would that be a good place for an ambush?”
“Maybe,” Fel said doubtfully. “Of course, it’s also the most likely place for them to be expecting an attack.”
“I did not say an attack,” Drask said, his eyes glittering maliciously. “I said an ambush. The aft turbolift cluster consists of six cars, does it not, operated singly or in groups?”
“Should be the same setup as the forward ones, yes,” Fel said, nodding.
“And the starboard tube connects with D-Four, D-Five, and the storage core?”
Fel smiled tightly as he finally understood. “Yes, sir, it does,” he said. “How do you want to proceed?”
Drask looked at the stormtroopers. “We will assign two to each mission, I think,” he said. “Normally I would prefer three or more for the ambush unit, but the Five-Oh-First has shown itself capable of handling unusual odds.”
“And if we don’t have at least two of them here with us, the Vagaari may notice and get suspicious,” Fel agreed. “Watchman and Shadow, how would you like to take a walk?”
“Ready and willing, sir,” Watchman said. “Once we’ve reached the turbolift pylon, what exactly do you want us to do?”
“You will take up position at the point where the tube from the storage core connects with the tube running between D-Four and D-Five,” Drask told him. “We will attempt to drive the Vagaari back into the cars. As they lift toward D-Four, we will alert you, and you will destroy them in transit. Can that be done?”
“I think so,” Watchman said. “It should be easy enough to lock down one of the cars just below the intersection point and climb the rest of the way into position.”
“And as long as you have that one car tucked away out of the line of fire, you can shoot up any of the others that you need to,” Fel added. “But make sure that one car stays tucked away, or we won�
�t be able to get back to the surface ourselves.”
“And watch out for the same kind of trap Pressor had set in the forward cars,” Grappler warned. “They are likely to have wired this group, as well.”
“No problem,” Watchman assured him. “Now that we know how it works, we should be able to get up onto the roof of the car and either bypass or reroute the wiring.”
“Good,” Fel said. “Everyone clear on their job?”
There were four nods. “Then carry out your orders,” Drask said. “Maintain comm silence unless absolutely necessary—the enemy may be able to locate your transmissions and thereby anticipate your movements. May warriors’ fortune smile on your efforts.”
Stiffening briefly to attention, Watchman and Shadow returned to the turbolift car. “Now,” Fel said as the car’s creakings faded into the distance. “What are your plans for the rest of us?”
“First, we borrow these.” Stooping, Drask relieved one of the dead Vagaari of his blaster carbine and helmet. “The armor, unfortunately, is too small for us. Still, the weapons may be enough. Choose a weapon for yourself, Commander, and let us plot out our best approach to the enemy.”
* * *
Cautiously, Luke eased an eye around the jog in the corridor just ahead of him. Somewhere nearby he could sense a pair of vaguely hostile alien minds. . .
There was a flicker of warning from the Force, and he ducked back just as a pair of red bolts blew pieces of the corner past his face.
“Okay,” he murmured aloud to himself. So they were closer than he’d realized, and more than just vaguely hostile. That was handy to know.
“Anyone ever tell you that talking out loud when you’re alone is a bad sign?” Mara murmured from behind him.
“When the Force is your ally, you’re never truly alone,” Luke said gravely, turning around and blinking in mild surprise as he caught sight of the girl trailing silently behind his wife. “We have company?”
“So it would seem.” Mara gestured to the girl. “You remember Evlyn, don’t you?”
“Quite well,” Luke said. “Hello, Evlyn.”
“Hello,” the girl said, a bit timidly. “I’m sorry about. . . earlier.”
“That’s all right.” Luke looked at Mara, lifting his eyebrows questioningly.
“It’s a long story,” she said, “and I only have half of it myself. The short version is that Jinzler thinks she’ll be safer with us right now than with her own people.”
“All right,” Luke said, setting his curiosity aside in favor of more pressing business. “Did you get the message from Fel?”
“The one about us pushing the Vagaari back toward the turbolifts?” She nodded. “Pressor’s also heard from one of his people back there. It appears that as long as the Colonists stay out of their way, the Vagaari aren’t bothering to shoot them.”
“Rather have them die slowly, I guess,” Luke said.
Mara nodded. “And to that end, they’re also apparently scattering line creepers by the bucketful.” She hesitated. “We may not be able to save this place, Luke.”
He’d already come to that conclusion. “We’ll just have to do what we can,” he said. “And the faster we finish off the Vagaari, the less of a problem we’ll have. Are any of Pressor’s people going to be in a position to help when we start our push?”
“Not really,” Mara said. “Four of them are inside current Vagaari territory, but I doubt their antiquated blasters have enough power to punch through that armor. Oh, and it turns out that two of the missing Peacekeepers had only been stunned by the Five-Oh-First as they passed through D-Six and are up and functional again. That helped Pressor’s mood a little.”
“Happy allies are good to have,” Luke said. “Let’s keep him that way by telling his people to stay put. Outnumbered and undergunned is a bad combination.”
“Already done,” Mara confirmed. “Though one bright side is that they’re probably not as undergunned as they might have been. The fact that the Vagaari are using charrics and old Republic blasters against us implies they didn’t bring any real weapons of their own, but had to loot the Chaf Envoy and D-Four’s armory for what they needed.”
“Makes sense,” Luke said. “They couldn’t risk the Chiss picking up odd power readings when they went through scanning their shuttle for line creepers. And of course, that leaves them with the same overage Tibanna gas problem the Peacekeepers have.”
“Right,” Mara said. “Even so, the outnumbering remains.” She hefted her lightsaber. “So I guess it’s up to us.”
“And the Five-Oh-First.” Luke paused, frowning as a distant sound caught his attention. “You hear that?”
“Sounds like blasterfire,” Mara said, her forehead wrinkled in concentration. “And lots of it.”
“Maybe they’ve decided some of the Colonists need to die right now after all,” Luke said grimly.
“Or else one of Pressor’s people decided to be a hero,” Mara agreed. “Either way, I think that’s our cue.”
“Right.” Luke ignited his lightsaber. The two Vagaari were still there, he knew, but it was unlikely they would be expecting a straight-out charge. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
* * *
“Again,” Drask ordered.
Fel nodded and fired again, sending a short burst from his borrowed carbine into the corridor wall a few meters in front of him, listening to the slightly wheezy and very distinctive sound of the ancient weapon. “Anything?”
“They sound agitated,” the general said, holding his appropriated Vagaari helmet up to his ear. “Ah—there is an order.”
Fel frowned. “How can you possibly know that?” he asked. “You don’t even speak their language.”
“There is a tone of command that is the same in all languages,” Drask said. “Now we need only wait and see if it is the command we are hoping for.”
“They’re coming,” Grappler murmured, cocking his head toward the corner he and Cloud were waiting beside.
“Stand ready.” Drask gestured to Fel. “Fire again.”
Fel did so, trying to watch both ends of the corridor at once. Between bursts he could hear rapid footsteps approaching. . .
Suddenly, with a clatter of armor, they were there: five armored Vagaari, charging to what they thought was their comrades’ aid. They got off a single, startled volley before the two stormtroopers cut them down.
“Good,” Drask said, surveying their handiwork with satisfaction. “That diminishes the enemy somewhat. Where do you recommend we go next?”
“There’s a series of emergency battery rooms back that way,” Fel said dubiously. “You aren’t really intending to try this same trick twice, are you?”
“Not at all,” Drask assured him. “It is time to take the battle to the enemy. The other stormtroopers should be in position by now; let us see if we can drive the Vagaari into reach of their weapons.”
“Ah,” Fel said. “In that case, we probably want the fluid systems service corridor instead of the battery rooms. There are two access panels in particular we might find useful: one opening into one of the cross-corridors on this side of the starboard turbolift lobby, the other door opening into the lobby itself.”
“How likely are the Vagaari to have set up pickets at the entrance to this corridor?”
“Not very,” Fel said. “It’s narrow and probably not well marked.”
“And it offers an avenue of retreat?”
“It has doors to both the main engine room and the secondary command complex,” Fel told him. “We could hold off a small army from either place.”
“Excellent,” Drask said. “Take us there.”
Cautiously, keeping an eye out for stray Vagaari, Fel led the way through a series of small utility rooms. They reached the entrance to the service corridor, only to find it jammed shut.
“What I don’t understand is where they’re all coming from,” Fel said, stroking his bandaged right arm restlessly as he watched Grappler and Clo
ud work on the door. “That ship of theirs couldn’t have followed us here, could it?”
“It could not, and did not,” Drask told him. “But surely now that we know about their suspended animation technology the answer is obvious.”
“But if they didn’t—oh.” Fel broke off, embarrassed. It was obvious. “Those three sealed rooms aboard their shuttle, the ones they claimed were open to vacuum.”
“Yes,” Drask confirmed. “Though undoubtedly a small portion of each was indeed open to space.”
“Right—the part by the door sensor and access port,” Fel said, nodding. “Otherwise, a secondary test by your people would have shown that the readings were fake.”
“They would have had a secret way to reseal the rooms, of course,” Drask said. “That was why they pretended Estosh had been attacked, to give him an excuse to stay behind.”
“Only it wasn’t just pretending—they really did shoot him,” Fel reminded him. “These people are seriously out for revenge.”
“Perhaps,” Drask murmured. “Or perhaps they are motivated by something more practical.”
There was a hollow popping sound from the door. “Got it,” Cloud announced.
“Good,” Drask said. “Proceed.”
Cloud led the way, followed by Grappler, Drask, and Fel. The corridor was narrower than it had looked on the blueprints, Fel realized with a twinge of apprehension, with barely enough room for the stormtroopers to get through without scraping their shoulders on the piping and access manifolds lining the walls. Far too narrow for any of them to pass any of the others.
Which meant that if they had to retreat, it would be Fel and his injured gun arm who would be running point.
But at least the Vagaari did seem to have missed this particular back door. There were no sentries or other signs of enemy presence in the corridor. In fact, from all appearances, the place might not have been visited in years, and several times Fel had to fight back a reaction to the drifting dust being kicked up by their passage. It would be a shame to put this much effort into sneaking up on the enemy only to announce their presence with a coughing fit.
They made it to their target panel without incident. Drask motioned the stormtroopers to take up side-to-side positions in front of it, BlasTechs at the ready. Then, reaching around past them, he punched the release.
