by Timothy Zahn
Pressor sighed. "We've only done it twice," he said. "At least, up to now."
"They're not going to send her there, Jorad," Rosemari said. "They can't."
She looked suddenly at Mara. "You can take her with you, can't you?" she asked. "You can take her when you leave."
"The plan was to take all of you with us," Mara told her. "Unfortunately, unless we can get out of here and back to the Chaf Envoy, neither option has much of a future."
"I spoke to the techs a few minutes ago," Pressor said. "Most of the blast doors stopped working years ago, and most of the ones that did work have now been locked open by those cursed conduit worms. Unless we can get a few of them working again, we're not going to be able to get either the turbolift doors or any of the outer hatchways open without losing all our air."
He looked at Drask. "I take it there's still no word from your own ship?"
The general shook his head. "No," he said. "And I no longer believe they will be coming."
"You think they're all dead?" Pressor asked.
Drask closed his eyes. "Including crew members, there were thirty-seven warriors aboard the Chaf Envoy," he said. "The Vagaari may have had as many as three hundred." He opened his eyes into slender cracks of glowing red. "They would not have been prepared for such a devastating assault."
Mara felt her stomach tighten. The sudden multiple deaths she and Luke had sensed aboard D-l could have been all the Chiss, or a sizable fraction of them, or just the squad of warriors Drask had left in the D-4 docking bay. There hadn't been any way to tell at the time, and there still wasn't.
Though if there were surviving Chiss, it might not make any difference. Even if the Vagaari hadn't bothered to hunt down and kill everyone aboard, they would certainly have made a point of wrecking the ship on their way out. "So in other words, we should assume we're on our own," she concluded. "All right. Pressor, you said D-Three was isolated from the rest of Outbound Flight. That means you must have vac suits to get back and forth. Any of them still in working condition?"
"A couple dozen of them are," he said. "But as I told you, we can't get the hatches open."
"We don't have to," Mara told him. "All you need to do is build a small caisson around one of the turbolift doors with me in it. I can cut through the hull, climb up the pylon, and make my way cross-country to the Chaf Envoy."
"And how do you get back in?" Drask asked.
"I'll figure that out later," Mara told him. "What do you think?"
Above them, the lights flickered. "Terrific," Pressor muttered, glancing up. "They must be getting to the generator."
"What, we're running on generator power already?" Mara asked.
"We are in this part of the ship," Pressor said. "They've already gotten into the main power conduits."
"Wait a minute," Jinzler said, frowning. "You have portable generators? How many?"
"Probably ten that still work," Pressor said. The lights flickered again—"Better make that nine."
"I never even thought to ask," Jinzler said, sounding disgusted with himself. "Get them together as quickly as you can—all of them—and set them out along the corridors."
"Connected to what?" Pressor asked, sounding confused.
"Connected to anything you want," Jinzler said. "Lights, heaters—anything. Just crank them up to full power and then shut down the main reactors."
"It will not work," Drask declared. "Even if the generators succeed in drawing the line creepers out, there are too many of them. They will quickly overload and destroy the generators' wiring, then return to the larger sources of power."
"That's right," Jinzler said, smiling tightly. "If the worms actually get to them."
He turned back to Pressor. "But they won't, because around each generator you're going to create a moat of salt water. The worms will crawl in, short out their organic capacitors, and die."
"You're kidding," Pressor said. "I've never even heard of that."
Jinzler shrugged. "It's a trick we came up with when I was bumming around Hadar sector after the Clone Wars. It's fairly disgusting, but it works."
"I'll get the techs on it right away," Pressor said, pulling out his comlink. "You've certainly had a varied career, Ambassador."
Jinzler's answer, if he made one, was lost as a sudden surge of distant emotion yanked at Mara's attention. "Something's wrong," she said, pulling her lightsaber from her belt and heading for the door. Pressor got there ahead of her, slapping the release and ducking through.
It was then that they heard the shouting in the distance ahead.
"Come on," Pressor growled, drawing his blaster as he and Mara sprinted down the corridor.
They rounded a turn and nearly collided with a dozen techs and civilians running in the other direction. "They're back!" one of the techs gasped, jabbing a finger behind him as he dodged around Pressor. "In the turbolift. They're trying to break in."
Pressor swore under his breath, thumbing on his comlink. "All Peacekeepers to the forward starboard pylon," he ordered. "The Vagaari are back."
"This doesn't make sense," Mara objected, trying to stretch out to the Force as she ran. But the flavor of the alien minds was too faint to sort out against the clamor of civilian panic throbbing in the air around her. "Why would they have come back?"
"Maybe they decided they wanted to watch us die after all," Pressor said grimly. "If so, they're going to pay heavily for the privilege."
One of the other Peacekeepers was waiting in the darkness when they arrived at the turbolift lobby, the beam from his glow rod twitching back and forth as he fidgeted with apprehension. "They're coming through," he hissed, turning the beam on one of the doors. "I can hear them working on it. What do we do?"
Pressor never had a chance to answer. Almost before the words were out of the other's mouth, the door suddenly gave a violent creak and cracked a centimeter open. Three pry bars were in place before it could close again; and with another series of creaks the door was forced open. Pressor and the Peacekeeper leveled their blasters at the opening, and suddenly two combat-armored figures leapt out of the gloom, their own glow rods swinging back and forth. Behind the lights, Mara could see hand weapons tracking as they searched for targets—
"No," she snapped, reaching out to the Force and twisting all four muzzles to point into opposite corners of the lobby. "Don't shoot. They're friends."
She stepped into the middle of the standoff as a third armored figure emerged into the room. "Welcome to Outbound Flight, Captain Brast'alshi'barku," she said, bowing slightly to the newcomer. "I thought you'd never get here."
CHAPTER 23
"We never even heard the Vagaari leave," Captain Talshib said disgustedly, his red eyes blazing even more brilliantly in the dim glow of the recovery room permlights. "We were sitting like fools in concealment in the command center, waiting for them to make their move. But they simply exited their own vessel, scattering line creepers along the way, and left. Apparently they had already decided to take the Old Republic vessel and had no time to waste with us."
"Yes, Bearsh would have informed Estosh of the new plan by that time," Drask agreed. "They had had the foresight to appropriate a set of special operations communicators before traveling to Outbound Flight and were able to send pulse messages through the humans' jamming."
"I wish I had known," Talshib rumbled. "We could have deployed to intercept them."
"It's just as well you didn't," Mara commented from the other side of Formbi's recovery table. "You saw what happened to the squad we left in the Dreadnaught's docking bay. They never even had a chance."
"Perhaps," Talshib said reluctantly. Warriors' pride, Jinzler thought as he leaned against the wall by the open doorway watching the discussion. Or perhaps just pride in general. Talshib would probably have preferred an overwhelming enemy attack, even if it had meant dying in combat, to the situation he currently found himself in.
Mara must have sensed that, too. "No perhaps about it, Captain," she said firmly
. "If you hadn't been around to rig that sealant tent across the broken pylon, we'd still be trying to figure out how we were going to get out of here."
Talshib snorted. "Thus permitting you to travel freely from one dead vessel to another."
"Neither of them will be dead for long," Drask put in firmly. "If Ambassador Jinzler's technique works, both vessels should be functional within a matter of days."
Talshib snorted again. That was probably a good deal of his attitude problem, Jinzler had already decided. The Vagaari line creepers had wiped out the Chaf Envoy's communications with the landing party and otherwise crippled the ship before the crew, lurking in their hidey-holes, had even realized they were under attack.
And then, as if that weren't embarrassment enough, it was human ingenuity that was going to clear out his ship for him. That had to really gall him, and Jinzler was a little surprised that Drask had gone out of his way to mention where the plan had come from.
Unless Drask had done it on purpose, a not-so-subtle reminder to his subordinate that even the Chiss could learn from other species on occasion. Certainly the general's politely unfriendly attitude toward humans seemed to have warmed perceptively over the past few hours. Jinzler could only wonder what had happened to cause that change.
"Here comes another one," Evlyn stage-whispered from a few paces down the corridor. "No; two of them. No; it's a whole crowd."
Jinzler moved away from the wall and the discussion and crossed to her side. In the much brighter light blazing away from a rack above the portable generator, he could see a group of perhaps twenty line creepers wriggling their way across the deck toward the enticing aroma of electric current.
"Careful," he warned as Evlyn started toward them. "If you get too close your own bioelectrical energy might distract them."
"Okay," she said, backing up again. Together they watched as the fragile-looking creatures climbed briskly up over the lip of the wide, flat basin the generator's stubby legs were resting in. One by one, they dropped into the salt water, twitched a few times, and went still. "That's really cool," she commented.
"Effective, too," Jinzler agreed absently, most of his attention still back on the snatches of conversation he was able to hear of Formbi's war council. Drask and Talshib were discussing their options now, with Mara, Formbi, and Fel occasionally putting in a comment or suggestion. Luke, still in his Jedi trance, was across the corridor in the operating room where they'd finished patching him up.
Unfortunately, none of the options being batted around sounded particularly hopeful, at least not from where he was standing. Borrowing extra generators from Outbound Flight might speed up the decontamination process aboard the Chaf Envoy, but even so the best possible projected completion point was at least three days away. Unless the Vagaari had mechanical trouble along the way, the stolen Dreadnaught would have far too much of a head start for the Chaf Envoy to catch up with it before it reached the Brask Oto Command Station and escaped from the cluster.
"You'll be leaving soon, won't you?"
Jinzler shifted his full attention back to Evlyn. "We all will," he told her. "You, your mother—all of us."
"I mean as soon as the Blue—I mean the Chiss ship is fixed, you and Mara and Luke will be leaving."
"But we'll be back," Jinzler promised. "Or at least, some Chiss transports will be. They'll take you anywhere you want to go."
She shook her head. "It won't make any difference," she said quietly. "No matter where we go, Uliar will find some kind of Three to put me in."
"They're not going to do that," Jinzler insisted. "Surely they learned a lesson from this whole thing. If it wasn't for you, a good many more people might have died."
"That won't make any difference," she said again. "Not to them." She sighed. "I wish you'd never come here. If you hadn't..." She trailed off.
"If we hadn't, what?" Jinzler prompted. "You would have gone on living a lie?"
"I could have pretended," she said. "Lots of people pretend." She looked squarely up into his eyes. "Even you do."
An edge of guilt dug up under Jinzler's rib cage. "That's different," he said. "If I hadn't told them I was an ambassador, the Chiss might not have let me come along."
"But you're here now," she reminded him. "You could have stopped pretending a long time ago."
"Yes, well, we're not talking about me, young lady," he reminded her firmly. "We're talking about you. And the point is, you shouldn't be ashamed of what you can do."
"Maybe not." Pressor's voice came from behind them. "But that doesn't mean she should announce it from the command deck, either." Jinzler turned. Pressor and Rosemari were coming down the corridor toward them, Pressor with a pile of sacks across one forearm. "I brought you a new collection bag," he said, peeling one off the stack and handing it to Evlyn. "These are plasticized, so they won't get as soggy."
"Thanks," she said, taking it and handing him her partially full one in return.
"I really think you ought to go join the rest of the people down on Six, Evlyn," Rosemari said, eyeing her daughter's bandages. "Don't you think you'd be more comfortable there?"
"Would you be?" Evlyn said pointedly.
The corners of Rosemari's mouth tightened. "I suppose not," she conceded. "Director Uliar's probably been talking to people already."
"I'm sure he has," Pressor said. "But I've been thinking, and there may still be a way to backtrack on this."
"What do you mean?" Rosemari asked.
"Well, think about it," Pressor said. "Besides the stuff in the turbolift, which no one else saw, the only thing Evlyn did was pull that comlink across the meeting room deck. We could easily churn the water by saying it was actually Ambassador Jinzler who did that."
"Except that I'm not a Jedi," Jinzler pointed out.
"Maybe you lied about that," Pressor countered. "Or maybe you didn't even know yourself that you had the power."
"And you are the brother of a known Jedi," Rosemari added thoughtfully. "That has to count for something. Maybe your pep talk in the meeting room actually stimulated your powers, not Evlyn's."
"Are you suggesting I lie for your daughter?" Jinzler asked.
Rosemari held his gaze without flinching. "Why not?" she said. "It was you and your people who got her into this mess."
"It's not a mess," Jinzler insisted. "It's an opportunity."
Beside him, Evlyn stirred. "Ambassador Jinzler says I shouldn't be ashamed of who I am."
"Ambassador Jinzler doesn't have to live among these people," Pressor retorted, glaring at Jinzler.
"I do for the moment," Jinzler pointed out ruefully. "A moment that could stretch out considerably, I might add. We won't know until the line creepers have all been cleaned out whether or not they caused any permanent damage. We could conceivably find out that the Chaf Envoy will never fly again."
"That could be a problem, all right," Pressor grunted. "I don't suppose it occurred to you to bring a spare hypercapable vehicle with you?"
"We brought three, actually," Jinzler said with a grimace. "The commander's glider, the transport the Imperials came in, and Luke and Mara's ship. The Vagaari hit all three on their way out. Talshib says they even took the time to sabotage their own shuttle, and it wasn't even hypercapable."
Pressor shook his head. "They're thorough, you have to give them that. So how long until the rest of the Chiss come hunting for you?"
"That's just it," Jinzler said. "Formbi was playing this so close to the table that I'm not sure the rest of the Chiss even know we're out here. There are some aboard the command station we passed on our way into the cluster, of course, but the Vagaari might well be planning to destroy that on their way out. If they succeed, it might be months before anyone comes back out this way."
"That would solve the problem, wouldn't it?" Evlyn murmured.
They all looked at her. "What?" Pressor asked.
"That would solve the problem," Evlyn repeated. "Because if you stay, they'd have to put Luke and Mara
in Three if they put me there. And they couldn't do that, could they?"
"I doubt it seriously," Jinzler agreed hesitantly. That hadn't even occurred to him.
"And then they could teach me how to be a real Jedi," Evlyn continued, looking up at her mother. "Then we wouldn't have to be afraid anymore about what they might do to me, because they couldn't."
Rosemari reached up to stroke her daughter's hair, an oddly pinched expression on her face. "Evlyn..."
"That's what you want, isn't it?" Evlyn pressed. She turned back to Jinzler. "It's what you want, too, isn't it?"
"Certainly, I want you to develop your gift," Jinzler agreed. "But we're the only ones who know about the Vagaari and what they've found out about the Redoubt. If we get stuck here, it may mean the deaths of many more Chiss."
"Is that important?" Evlyn said, a strange edge of challenge in her voice.
"Of course it's important," Rosemari said. Her voice seemed sad, almost resigned, yet at the same time had a sense of peace to it. "Ambassador... there may be another hypercapable transport available. We have a Delta-Twelve Skysprite sitting in one of the docking bays over on Three."
Pressor turned to his sister, his jaw dropping in astonishment. "We've got a what?"
"A Delta-Twelve Skysprite," she repeated. "It's a two-passenger sublight transport with a connecting hyperdrive ring. Dad showed it to me once when we were working over there together."
"I didn't know there was anything like that aboard Outbound Flight," Pressor said.
"Not many people do," Rosemari said. "And I don't think anyone knows why it was even aboard. Dad certainly didn't."
She looked at Jinzler. "The problem is that the Managing Council made Dad disassemble the hyperdrive. They knew they'd never be able to find a way out of the cluster, and they didn't want one of their exiled Jedi to figure it out and get away."
Jinzler took a careful breath. A hypercapable ship... "You say the ring was disassembled, not destroyed? Are all the parts still there?"
"I'm sure Dad didn't break anything," Rosemari said. "He was being very careful. And when he was done, he put everything into a storage locker. If you could get it to work, someone might at least be able to go for help."
