Survivor's Quest

Possibly. It could also be another booby trap.

Still, unless the rest of the survivors were prepared to sacrifice the girl, it ought to be safe enough. Provided, of course, she and the others got inside with the girl before she disappeared through the far door.

Again, Luke's thoughts were mirroring hers. "Mara, you and the general had better stay here," he said as he stepped into the corridor behind Evlyn, taking long strides as he tried to catch up without looking too obvious about it. "He can call back and alert the rest of the party."

"No," Drask insisted, brushing past Luke in turn and striding into the corridor ahead of him. "You do not go ahead alone."

Evlyn had reached the far end and was reaching for a small control panel set into the wall beside the door. Mara hesitated, stretching out to the Force, trying to reach back to Formbi's group behind them. There was no fear or sudden surprise back there that she could detect.

Abruptly, she made up her mind. If this whole thing was legitimate, it wouldn't hurt to be separated from the others for a few minutes, especially with Fel and the 501st there to guard them. If it was a trap, two Jedi always had a better chance than one. "We can call them on the way," she decided, stepping in behind Drask.

She was just in time. Even as she ducked beneath the door, it slid down behind her. "Hurry," Evlyn said, beckoning them forward. Mara took a long step to catch up to Luke—

She caught the warning flicker an instant before it happened. But it was too late. Even as she and Luke grabbed for their lightsabers, two doors abruptly slammed down from the ceiling, one in front of Drask, the other behind Mara, cutting the corridor into thirds and trapping them in the center section.

With a lurch, the floor dropped out from under them.

CHAPTER 12

"Jedi!" Drask bellowed, making the word a curse. "Do something!"

But for that first terrifying second there was nothing either of them could do. Luke fought for balance, feeling Mara's chagrin mixing with his own. The room kept falling, far faster than the planetoid's own weak gravity could possibly have pulled it. Too late, now, he realized they'd been decoyed into a disguised turbolift car.

Then, so unexpectedly and abruptly that he nearly fell over, the car braked to a halt.

"Good day, Jedi." The disembodied voice came from the control panel beside the side door. "Good day, Blue One."

"We are called Chiss," Drask corrected the voice tartly.

"Ah," the voice said. "Good day, then, Chiss. I'm Jorad Pressor, Guardian of the People."

"Interesting way you have of greeting peaceful visitors," Mara commented. "You at least going to come out where we can talk face to face?"

"Whom I deal with is my decision, not yours," Pressor said. "For the moment, that's not going to be you."

"For a very short moment," Mara countered. "Or do you really expect this box to hold us for long?"

"Long enough," Pressor assured her. "Let me explain. The reason you've stopped moving is that your turbolift car is currently sitting at a gravity eddy point being balanced by two equal and opposite focused repulsor beams. If either of them is cut off, you'll be instantly shot through the tube to smash into either the Dreadnaught you just left or the Dreadnaught you were intending to travel to. Either way, it will be very messy."

"For your vessel as well as for us," Drask warned. "Such an impact may do serious damage to your structural integrity."

"I don't think so," Pressor said. "Of course, none of you would ever know for certain."

"True," Luke conceded. "I presume there's more?"

"I know about Jedi lightsabers," Pressor said. "I know you could normally cut your way out of the car with ease. In this case, however, I'd strongly advise against trying it. The power and control cables for both repulsor beams are wrapped in random patterns around the car. Cut any of the wires, upsetting the balance of forces, and it will be the last thing you ever do."

Luke looked at Mara. "You've spent a lot of time thinking this out," he said. "Have you had a lot of Jedi visitors in the past fifty years?"

"We haven't had any visitors at all," Pressor said, his voice suddenly cold and bitter. "But I've always known that someday the Republic would send someone to hunt us down. It seemed only prudent to take precautions."

Luke shook his head. "You've got it all wrong," he said, putting all the persuasion he could into his voice. "We're not here for revenge or retribution or whatever. We're—"

"Don't bother trying to communicate with the rest of your people, either," Pressor interrupted him. "All comlink frequencies are being jammed. Make yourselves comfortable, and cultivate that renowned Jedi patience."

There was a click, and the voice was gone.

"Interesting," Drask commented, turning to face Luke. "Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano has often stated that the Jedi are honored and admired by all. Apparently, he was mistaken."

"Very much mistaken," Luke agreed, looking slowly around the car. Up close, the walls appeared to be solid metal, with no signs of tampering. If their captors were monitoring them, the holocams and voice pickups had to either be hidden in the control board or else buried in the line where the walls and ceiling met, where numerous age cracks had opened up in the metal. "There are any number of people who don't like Jedi," he continued, lifting his eyebrows at Mara. She nodded to the control panel, then put her hands together in a right angle.

So she'd come to the same conclusion he had. Nodding back, Luke slipped off his emergency-kit backpack and popped it open.

Mara picked up the explanation: "Of course, most of them are criminals or warmongers." She had her own backpack off now, her fingers sorting through the contents. "Jedi are supposed to keep the peace, so of course those groups hate us."

"Corrupt politicians don't like us much, either," Luke added, digging beneath the ration bars and water tubes and pulling out his liquid-cable dispenser. Mara was already ready with her contribution: her medpac's tube of synthflesh wound healer. "I wonder which category Pressor falls into."

"Maybe none of them," Mara said. Stepping to a corner of the room, she began laying a thin bead of the synthflesh into the line between ceiling and wall. "Maybe he just doesn't think talking to us would get him anywhere."

"Maybe," Luke said, coming up beside his wife and playing out an equally thin line of liquid cable on top of the synthflesh before it could solidify. "Not here in Chiss space, anyway."

"If they even know where they are," Mara said. "Maybe once we've persuaded them we're here to help we can all sit down together and hear the whole story."

An uncomfortable silence descended on the car. Mara reached the corner and continued on along the next wall, Luke right beside her. Liquid cable, which solidified instantly on contact with the air, was designed specifically not to be sticky so that it wouldn't hang up on anything as it was being extruded. The synthflesh, on the other hand, was designed just as specifically to stick solidly to wounds, protecting them from the air and further injury. Together, they made a perfect barrier against the age cracks and anything that might be hidden behind them.

Once they finished with the walls, it would be a simple matter to block the view from the control panel with one of their all-temperature cloaks. If Pressor didn't interfere, they should be finished in a few minutes.

Pressor didn't, and they were. "There," Luke said at last, stepping back to admire their handiwork. "That should at least keep them from watching us."