Survivor's Quest

Huxley's eyes hardened. "You try something cute and you'll see how good a copy it is." He looked over at the group of casual observers to his right, and his eyes locked on someone in the crowd. "You—Sinker!"

A kid maybe sixteen years old stepped out from a knot of older men. "Yes, sir?"

Huxley gestured toward Mara. "Get her lightsaber."

The kid goggled at Mara. "Get—uh—?"

"You deaf?" Huxley bit out. "What are you afraid of?"

Sinker made as if to speak, looked furtively at Mara, swallowed visibly, then stepped hesitantly forward. Mara kept her face expressionless as she watched him approach, his nervousness increasing with each step, until he was visibly shaking as he stopped beside her. "Uh... I'm—I'm sorry, ma'am, but—"

"Just take it!" Huxley bellowed.

In a single desperate motion Sinker ducked down, unhooked her lightsaber from her belt, and scampered backward with it. "There," Huxley said sarcastically. "That wasn't so hard, now, was it?"

"Wasn't so useful, either," Mara said. "You think that's all it takes to stop a Jedi? Taking her lightsaber?"

"It's a start," Huxley said.

Mara shook her head. "It's not even that." Looking over at Sinker, she reached out with the Force.

Abruptly, the lightsaber ignited in his hand.

Sinker's startled squeak was mostly lost in the snap-hiss as the brilliant blue blade blazed into existence. Rather to her surprise, he didn't drop the weapon and run, but held gamely on to it. "Sinker, what the frost are you doing?" Huxley snapped. "That's not a toy."

"I'm not doing it," Sinker protested, his voice ru

"He's right," Mara confirmed as Huxley drew in another bellow's worth of air. "He's not doing this, either."

She reached out to the lightsaber again, making it weave back and forth in Sinker's grip. The kid wove back and forth with it, hanging on with the grim air of someone who's found himself astride an angry acklay with no idea how to get off.

The rest of the crowd was probably feeling much the same way. For those first few seconds there had been a mad scramble by everyone near Sinker to get out of range of the weapon bobbing in his hands like a drunken crewer. They had mostly stopped moving now, though a few of the smarter ones had decided it was time to get out entirely and were making tracks for the exits. The rest were watching Sinker warily, ready to move again if necessary.

"Knock it off, Jade," Huxley snarled. He wasn't smiling anymore. "You hear me? Knock it off."

"And what do you plan to do if I don't?" Mara countered, continuing to swing the lightsaber even as she kept an eye on Huxley's blaster. The others wouldn't shoot her without orders or an immediate threat, she knew, but Huxley himself might forget what his goals and priorities were here.

It was a risk worth taking. With every eye in the cantina on Sinker and his disobedient lightsaber, no one was paying the slightest attention to the droideka standing stolid guard across the room.

Not the droideka, and certainly not the barely visible tip of brilliant green light stealthily slicing a circle through the lift floor around its curved tripod feet.

"I'll blast you into a million soggy pieces, that's what I'll do," Huxley shot back. "Now, let him go, or I'll—"

He never finished the threat. Across the room, with a sudden creaking of stressed metal, the lift floor collapsed, dropping the droideka with a crash back into the cellar.

Huxley spun around, screeching something vicious.

The screech died in midcurse. From the direction the droideka had disappeared, a black-clad figure now appeared, leaping up from the cellar to land on the edge of the newly carved hole. He lifted the short cylinder in his hand to salute position, and with another snap-hiss, a green lightsaber blade blazed.

Huxley reacted instantly, and in exactly the way Mara would have expected. "Get him!" he shouted, stabbing a finger back toward the newcomer.

He didn't have to give the order twice. From the semicircle of gu

Mara was already in motion. Rising halfway out of her chair, she grabbed the edge of the stone-topped table and heaved it upward. A fraction of a second later Huxley's shot ricocheted off the tabletop now angled toward him, passing harmlessly over Mara's head to gouge yet another hole in the ceiling behind her. Mara heaved the table a little higher, and Huxley's eyes abruptly widened as he realized she intended to drop its full weight squarely into his lap, pi

He was wrong. Even as he scrambled madly to get out of his chair and away from the falling table before it was too late, Mara kicked her own chair back out of her way. Using her grip on the table edge as a pivot point, she lifted her feet and swung herself forward and downward.

With a lighter table, the trick wouldn't have worked, and she would have simply landed on her rear in front of her chair with the table in her lap. But this one was so massive, with so much inertia, that she was able to swing under the edge now falling backward toward her, land on the floor beneath where it had been standing, and get her hands clear before the edge crashed into the floor behind her.

This put the heavy tabletop neatly between her and the twenty-odd blasters that had been trained on her back.

Huxley, still completely off stride, had time for a single yelp before Mara lunged forward, slapped his gun hand aside with her left hand, and then grabbed a fistful of his shirt and hauled him down into cover with her. Her right hand snaked up her left sleeve, snatched her small sleeve gun from its arm holster, and jammed the muzzle up under his chin. "You know the drill," she said. "Let's hear it."

Huxley, his eyes on the edge of terror, filled his lungs. "Huxlings! Cease fire! Cease fire!"

There was a second of apparent indecision. Then, around the room, the blasters fell quiet. "Very good," Mara said. "What's part two?"

Huxley's lip twisted. "Drop your weapons," he growled, opening his hand and letting his own blaster fall to the floor. "You hear me? Drop 'em."

There was another brief pause, then a dull clatter as the others followed suit. Mara stretched out with the Force, but she could sense no duplicity. Huxley had caved completely, and his gang knew better than to try to second-guess his decisions. Keeping her blaster pressed under his chin, she got to her feet, hauling Huxley up with her. She gave each of the half-sullen, half-terrified gang members a quick look, just to make it clear what rash heroics would cost, then turned to the man in black as he walked up to her. "So didn't you see that droideka before Huxley lifted it up here?" she asked.

"Oh, I saw it," Luke Skywalker acknowledged, closing down his lightsaber but keeping it ready in his hand.

"And?"

Luke shrugged. "I was curious to see whether it still worked. Did it?"

"We didn't get a complete field test," Mara said. "It didn't look very mobile, and I'd guess its tracking is on manual instead of automatic. But it probably fires just fine."

"Fired," Luke corrected. "It's going to need a little reworking."

"That's okay," Mara assured him, sliding her sleeve gun back into its concealed holster. "Huxley's people will have some time on their hands."

She gave Huxley a push away from her, letting go of his shirt. He staggered slightly but managed to maintain his balance. "Here's the deal. Before I leave, I'll credit twenty thousand to your account. Not because Karrde owes you anything at all, but simply as a thanks for your years of service to his organization."