Vortex: Star Wars (Fate of the Jedi) (Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi)

by Troy Denning

  “Why keep us in the dark?” Kyp demanded. “I’ll tell you why—because you knew we’d never go along.”

  “Because it was not your decision to make,” Hamner retorted. “I’m the one Master Skywalker appointed to take his place while he’s away.”

  “Only you are the one Daala agreed to, yes?” Barratk’l growled. “Have you never wondered why that was?”

  Hamner’s body tensed, and for a moment it seemed he was about to leap down on the fanged tower of fur that was a Yuzzem. Instead his expression turned hurt and angry, and his disappointment rippled through the Force.

  “This is not what I expected of you, Barratk’l,” Hamner replied. “Had I realized how little value you place on loyalty, I would never have suggested you for the Council.”

  “Had you told me you wanted loyalty to you above the Order, I would not have agreed.” Barratk’l checked her chrono, then turned to the other vac-suited Masters. “Eight minutes to launch, and prep takes five. We must go.”

  “Yes.” Saba motioned them toward the stairs, but kept her gaze fixed on Hamner. “This one will finish matterz here.”

  But the Masters did not start down the stairs immediately. Instead, Kyle Katarn cast one last look up at the catwalk.

  “Kenth, it doesn’t have to be like this,” he said. “We all know how much stress you’ve been under, but you should never have tried to carry it all on your own. That’s why we have a Council.”

  As Kyle spoke, Hamner’s hand came up, and Saba felt the Force flowing to him in a rush. Thinking he had finally gathered the courage to challenge her, she raised her own hand to counterattack—and was astonished to hear not the echoing boom of a Force blast, but the spine-chilling screech of twisting metal. Saba checked her own attack, then glanced back toward the stairs and found a pair of twisted safety rails ending over empty air.

  The staircase hit the hangar deck with a deafening clang that drew all eyes toward the Masters, and Saba realized with a heavy heart that Hamner was not going to make this easy on himself. He intended to mount his challenge in full view of the entire Order—a foolish decision that would only heighten his humiliation when he failed to win back his dominance.

  “No!” Hamner pointed at the vac-suited Masters and used the Force to send his voice booming across the hangar. “You will not lead the Jedi Order into treason! I forbid it!”

  The Force erupted into a vortex of confusion and astonishment. A sudden stillness fell over the hangar as all eyes turned toward the observation balcony, and the first wisps of doubt began to seep into the auras of the beings below as Jedi Knights and support staff alike began to wonder whom they should obey. Saba sighed, then caught the gaze of Kyp Durron and pointed to the far end of the balcony, where a second staircase descended to the hangar floor.

  “Go,” Saba said. “This one will see to Master Hamner.”

  Kyp nodded, but did not start across the balcony. “Saba, remember that he’s one of us. Don’t do anything you don’t have—”

  “This one knowz how to fight without killing,” Saba interrupted. As she spoke, Hamner continued to bellow about treason, urging the Jedi Knights and support staff to follow the law instead of misguided orders. She looked back toward the catwalk. “But two longtailz in a pod is too many. It causes … disharmony.”

  Saba raised a hand toward the catwalk and began to pull with the Force. A three-meter section of metal twisted and snapped, then came clanging down almost atop her head. Expecting her rival to come with it, feet and fists flying, she gathered herself to spring into a melee.

  But Hamner was not there.

  Instead, Saba saw him a dozen meters away, barely visible through the catwalk’s durasteel grating as he somersaulted along the next section. No longer bellowing about treason, he seemed content to simply keep moving, and as she watched he rolled to his feet and continued out of sight at a Force-enhanced sprint.

  “Master Hamner is fleeing?” Saba asked, confused. “He is giving up so easily?”

  “Not fleeing,” Cilghal replied. She pointed a finned hand toward the heavy blast doors that covered the hangar exit. “Changing tactics.”

  Saba cocked her head, eyeing the network of catwalks above, and understood. “The shenbit!” She turned and sprang onto the balcony’s safety rail, then Force-sprang onto the broken catwalk six meters above. “The shenbit licker!”

  The jump would have been easy for any angry Barabel, and for a Barabel with the Force it was little more than a step. Saba landed three paces down the catwalk, already racing into the maze of equipment and dark empty spaces at a full sprint.

  The blast doors had been dropped when the Solos discovered the first Mandalorian scouts watching the Temple, and they had been left down ever since. If Hamner reached the mag-lev generators before the doors were retracted, it would be a simple matter for him to cut their power supplies and trap the entire StealthX wing—maybe not forever, but long enough to prevent a timely launch.

  By now, the Solos would be infiltrating the detention center. Daala would be distracted by the news that the Pellaeon was preparing to break orbit. Within minutes, the entire Sixth Fleet would be moving to intercept Booster Terrik’s marauding Star Destroyer, and the Errant Venture would be forced to escape into hyperspace. If the Jedi wanted their StealthXs to escape Coruscant without a fight, the wing had to launch on time. Saba checked her chrono—they had seven minutes.

  Everything depended on that one thing. If the timing failed, Luke and Ben would be left to fight Abeloth and the Sith alone—and that Saba could not allow.

  She reached the first junction in the catwalks and turned toward the blast doors. The air this high in the hangar was dusty, dark, and hot. There were pipes, ducts, and crane rails everywhere she looked, but Hamner was nowhere to be seen. Saba felt like she was chasing him through the canopy of a durasteel jungle, and she knew it was good terrain for an ambush. She checked her chrono again. Six minutes. Hamner had six minutes until the blast doors opened—and six minutes gave him plenty of time for an ambush.

  It did not matter. Saba had sparred Hamner many times, and he was not the fighter she was. She reached out to him in the Force, searching for his presence, sharing with him her hunger to close and fight, the heat in her blood that the chase was bringing.

  Then Saba tested the air again and tasted the sour tang of human fear. She felt an emptiness in the Force, a dozen meters ahead and off to the left, and she knew Hamner was trying to hide from her, drawing his aura in tight so she would not feel his panic and his fear. She saw an intersection ahead and heard a boot heel scuff across the durasteel gratework. She turned the corner, already reaching for him in the Force, and found … nothing.

  A prickle of danger sense raced up Saba’s spine, but she already knew what was coming, and already she was whirling to meet it.

  Too late.

  The stately figure of Kenth Hamner stood opposite her, in the gloom beyond the intersection, one hand raised toward her chest, his dark eyes filled with cold fury. Saba brought her hand up, lashing out in the Force and trying to knock him off-balance, but it was no good. Hamner had fooled her, and now he had the drop on her. As she unleashed her attack, his slammed her in the chest, lifted her off her feet and hurled her into the safety railing, driving her up and over, flipping her backward so that she found herself staring down at a StealthX squadron fifty meters below. Their canopies were closed, and the air was already shimmering with the heat of their engines.

  Less than five minutes to launch. Maybe a lot less.

  Saba used the Force to press herself to the safety railing as she dropped. When the cold durasteel began to slide along her tail, she curled the tip and caught herself, and her momentum brought her swinging backward. She reached up and latched on to the catwalk with both hands, locking her talons through the middle of the grate, and she told herself that Hamner had not really intended to kill her—that had she not caught herself, he would have reached out with the Force and prevented a fellow Master
from plummeting to her death.

  Even when she heard Hamner’s boots ringing down the catwalk, five or six meters away, Saba refused to believe he had meant to kill her. A leadership challenge was one thing, but to actually slay a rival … no Jedi would do such a thing. Recalling how Hamner had used misdirection to ambush her early, Saba sissed at her foolishness.

  “Good one, Kenth,” she said. “Very tricky.”

  Saba extended herself under the catwalk, locking her talons around the opposite edge, then swung up on the other side, slipping under the rail and rolling to her feet in a fighting crouch.

  Hamner was nowhere to be seen.

  “Not funny,” she growled. “Not funny at all.”

  Saba raced in the direction of the footfalls, but in the maze of dark steel she quickly lost track of Hamner’s route. She checked her chrono. Only four minutes to launch. On the hangar floor, the two squadrons she could see were sealed up tight. Their R9 units were strobing green, and the support crews were unhooking hoses and moving utility carts toward the deck perimeter.

  Saba searched for Hamner in the Force. This time, the only presence she could feel along the catwalks was Cilghal’s, about a hundred meters away and moving cautiously but calmly as she searched the far side of the maze. Saba hissed in frustration, then started toward the front of the hangar. There were two doors and therefore two mag-lev generators, and Hamner would have to cut both power feeds if he wanted to trap the StealthXs. Otherwise, flight control would simply open one blast door, and the squadrons would stream out in single file instead of launching in formation.

  So all Saba really needed to do was save one door. If the Force was with her, she would pick the right one and catch Hamner before he did any damage. If not, Daala and Starfighter Command would have three minutes instead of thirty seconds to react. The last squadron or two might find themselves fighting to escape Daala’s grasp. But even so, nearly fifty Jedi in StealthXs would escape to join Luke in the fight against Abeloth and the Sith.

  Saba reached the front of the hangar with three minutes left before launch. The turadium blast doors were already riding on their mag-lev tracks, their lustrous surfaces shimmering with the reflections of colored signal lamps. A deep roar was building inside the hangar as the StealthXs ramped up their ion engines, preparing for a hot launch.

  Saba leaned over the safety railing, peering down at the inside corner of the nearest blast door. From such a height, the mag-lev generator was not at all impressive, a danger-yellow drum about as tall as a Wookiee and surrounded by a transparisteel safety wall. The power feed was entirely nondescript, a gray plasteel conduit tube about as large as a male human’s arm that ran up the wall adjacent to the blast door and disappeared into a junction box in the ceiling.

  Seeing no sign of Hamner anywhere near the first conduit, Saba reached out for Cilghal and found her back near the observation balcony. This puzzled her for a moment, until she remembered that the quickest way down from the catwalks was via that balcony. Had the Mon Calamari left it unguarded, it would have been a simple matter for their quarry to double back, drop down to the flight deck, and simply walk to the mag-lev generators.

  Relieved that Cilghal had thought to cover that route, Saba turned to inspect the second power feed. It was hidden by the far edge of the door, and the turadium was more than two meters thick—enough to hide her quarry, had he already jumped across. Wondering if she still had a chance to save both doors, she started down the catwalk, shuffling sideways so she could keep watch over the door she had just checked. There was no use trying to save the second door if she let Hamner sneak behind her and take the first.

  Saba had just reached the midpoint seam—where the doors came together in a magnetic seal stronger than the turadium itself—when a pair of hawk-bats suddenly dropped out of the superstructure above. The din inside the hangar had grown so loud that it was impossible to hear their shrill cries. But she could feel in the Force that they were more angry than frightened, and the way they kept circling back into the darkness suggested they were trying to protect a nest somewhere up on the girder.

  Saba ran her gaze along the upper edge of the girder and realized her mistake even before she spotted a shadowy figure running toward the doors. Hamner didn’t intend to cut the power feeds. He was going for the relay box that controlled the magnetic seal between the blast doors. She raised a hand and used the Force to jerk him off the girder.

  If Hamner cried out as he fell, his voice was lost in the general roar of the StealthX engines. But when he looked in Saba’s direction, his mouth was gaping in rage, his arms flailing and his eyes filled with betrayal. Determined not to kill him, Saba stepped closer to the safety rail and caught him with the Force, then pulled him toward the catwalk. Toward her.

  Hamner’s hand dropped to his side, and as Saba floated him over the rail half a second later, he had his lightsaber in hand and ignited. She hurled him into the catwalk, slamming him into the durasteel grate facedown, then snatched her own weapon and was standing above him as he looked up. His nose was gashed, crooked, and pouring blood.

  Saba ignited her own blade. “Kenth, stop,” she yelled, trying to make herself heard above the roar of the engines. “If we continue, you will only get …”

  Saba felt her shin scales go flat and barely lowered her blade in time to keep Kenth from cutting her off at the knees. He was only trying to drive her back … she was sure of that. Instead of taking an easy counterstrike at his head, she rolled her wrist and sent his blade flipping away, then stepped forward to stomp on an elbow that was suddenly no longer there.

  Hamner was rolling toward the edge of the catwalk, turning up on his side with his top arm extended toward his tumbling lightsaber and his lower arm coming around to club her behind the legs. Saba tried to escape by stepping forward. He was too quick, landing a Force-enchanced blow that buckled her knees and would have sent her crashing down on her back … had she not had a tail with which to catch herself.

  But Saba did have a tail, and so Kenth’s attack merely dropped her to her knees at his side. She lashed out, more by instinct than will, barely remembering to retract her claws before she planted her free hand in Hamner’s chest. She pushed hard, pinning him against a safety rail support post.

  “Enough!” she bellowed. “This one is losing patience.”

  Hamner glared back at her, eyes burning with self-righteous fury. He snarled something Saba could not hear over the roaring of StealthXs, something so filled with hatred it turned his Force aura sour and cold. Suddenly Saba understood how badly she had misjudged the situation. This was no dominance fight. Hamner had one desire: prevent the Jedi from launching their StealthXs. And to achieve that goal, he was very willing to kill.

  The fire in Hamner’s eyes changed to ice. Saba brought her guard up and blocked the blade flashing toward her neck. She countered with an elbow, trying to catch him below the ear, but her angle was poor and his jaw snapped instead. His eyes went wide, rolled back, and for an instant Saba thought she might have knocked him unconscious despite the miss.

  She should have known better. Kenth Hamner was a Jedi Master, and Jedi Masters did not fall victim to their own pain. She felt Hamner’s palm striking the center of her chest. Her breath left in an anguished gasp, and she found herself tumbling down the catwalk, using the Force to keep herself between the safety rails as Hamner tried to Force-hurl her over the side.

  A dozen somersaults later, Saba finally clamped on to a passing support post and brought herself to a halt. Hamner continued to attack with the Force, banging her up and down, trying to break her grasp and send her flying over the rail. After a couple of seconds, Saba felt an opening to her right, and she realized she was at an intersection. She angled a leg into the corner, braced her feet against the far corner post, and wedged herself into the opening.

  A blue strobe began to blink above the blast doors, flashing the one-minute warning. Time was running out fast, and Hamner decided to gamble on a quick kill.
Still using the Force to push at Saba, he came charging down the catwalk, his lightsaber weaving a basket of green light as he tried to camouflage the attack pattern he would use.

  It did not matter to Saba. All she had to do was keep him busy for the next fifty seconds, then the StealthXs would be launched and reinforcements on their way to Luke and Ben. She waited until Hamner had drawn within two meters, then hooked her foot around the post she had braced it against and released the one she had in her hand.

  Hamner’s Force push sent her sliding, pivoting around her foot to face the opposite direction … and bringing her heavy tail around. She swept it across the catwalk behind her, catching Hamner in the ankles and knocking him off his feet.

  Saba stopped sliding. She sprang up instantly, already spinning around to claim the extra fighting space in the intersection.

  Hamner had the same idea, and for a moment they stood to either side of the gap, their lightsabers sparking and flashing as they tried to drive each other back. During the first flurry Hamner did a good job of keeping Saba off-balance, varying speed attacks with subtle counters and streetwise knee attacks, which he had always been too gentlemanly to employ during their practice matches. Saba relied on the Barabel power attacks he had never learned to stop, hammering at his guard hard and fast, coming back time and again in an effort to wear him out before she had to kill him.

  Finally, Hamner was too slow bringing his guard up after a brutal overhand slash. Saba leapt in to finish it, flipping her lightsaber around for a backhand pommel strike that would surely have knocked him unconscious—had he not been dropping to his haunches and swinging up at her rib cage. She saved herself only by Force-flipping over his head and coming down two meters away, and even then it was only her precautionary tail sweep that stalled his pursuit and saved her life.

  Saba spun around to find Kenth firmly in control of the intersection. He used the extra space like the master swordsman he was, launching attacks against either side at will, repeatedly pivoting back and forth so that she would have to face him square-on instead of presenting a flank defense. Under normal circumstances, she would simply have retreated down the catwalk, forcing him to either follow or let her go.