Survivor's Quest

CHAPTER 13

"What was that?" Drask asked abruptly. "Did you hear something?"

Across the car, Mara closed down her lightsaber. Luke stretched out with the Force, straining to hear. There was the sound of a door closing... one of the repulsorlift generators seemed to change pitch subtly...

"One of the turbolift cars is moving," Mara said, her head cocked to listen. "Down, I think."

"Which one?" Drask demanded. "Can you tell which one?"

Luke frowned with concentration. The sense of those in the car... but between the Geroons and Chiss, there was too much alie

"I think Jinzler's aboard," she said, shaking her head slowly. "I can't get anything else."

Drask muttered something under his breath. "We must get out of here," he said. "Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano may be in grave danger."

"We're working as fast as we can," Luke pointed out, trying to suppress the sudden misgivings circling his stomach. If Jinzler was on the move, did that mean Guardian Pressor had decided he was the one the colonists should be talking to? Had that been Jinzler's plan the whole time, in fact—to be the one to make first contact with them?

He shook the thought away. No—that was ridiculous. How could Jinzler have possibly known there was anyone left aboard?

Still, even if there was no malice in the man, there was also no diplomatic training. "Mara?" he murmured.

"Working as fast as I can," she reminded him, scratching the tip of her lightsaber blade gently across the metal.

Luke grimaced, but he knew as well as she did that this couldn't be rushed. If she cut too far through the metal and nicked one of the repulsor power lines, none of them would be helping Formbi or Jinzler or anyone else. He fingered his own lightsaber hilt, cultivating his Jedi patience.

And then, all at once, the square of metal popped out of the wall. Caught slightly by surprise, Luke let it fall nearly to the floor before he was able to nab it in a Force grip and lower it more gently the rest of the way. "Okay," Mara said, closing down her lightsaber and stepping aside. "Your turn."

"Right." Stepping to the spot Mara had just vacated, he ignited his lightsaber. Stretching out to the Force, he eased the tip of the blade between the crisscrossing of wires behind the wall.

"Careful," Drask warned, taking a half step toward him. "If you touch the wrong wire—"

"Don't worry," Mara said, waving him back. "He knows what he's doing."

Luke pursed his lips. He knew what he was doing, certainly, at least in theory. Whether he could actually pull it off was another question entirely.

Just above the lightsaber blade a bright red wire stretched horizontally across the opening. Preparing his mind, he twitched the blade toward it.

Not close enough to actually touch it, of course. But close enough to activate the short-range prescience that gave the Jedi what appeared to be superfast reflexes.

And for that single brief instant, he could feel a sudden pressure against the soles of his feet.

"Red wire powers the upper repulsor," he a

"Right," Mara said, going to the opening and marking the indicated wire with a bit of the dark brown coating from one of her ration bars. "One to go."

Luke nodded and turned around toward the first opening she'd made in the wall. Choosing a blue wire this time, he ignited his lightsaber and again twitched the tip of the blade toward it.

Nothing.

He tried again with a green wire, then a red wire, then another blue wire, with similarly negative results. Then, finally, he waved the blade toward a black-striped white wire and felt a brief sensation of the floor dropping out from under his feet. "There," he told Mara, backing away. "Black-striped white."

"Got it," she confirmed, marking it as she had the red wire on the other side. "Okay. We ready?"

"Ready as we'll ever be," Luke agreed, getting into position again facing the black-striped white wire. Mara stepped behind him, pressing her back to his as she faced the other side and the red wire he'd identified.

"Just a moment," Drask said, sounding more than a little alarmed. "What exactly do you plan here?"

"It should be clear enough, General," Mara said. "We're going to cut the power lines."

"But—" Drask broke off. "You really can do this?"

Luke could feel Mara's red-gold hair shift against the back of his neck as she turned to face the Chiss. "Trust us," she said.

Her hair resettled itself as she turned back to her target, and with a snap-hiss she ignited her lightsaber.

And with a sensation Luke still found astonishing, he felt her mind flow into, around, and through his.

For that exquisitely stretched-out moment in time they were truly a single mind, a single spirit poured into two separate bodies. They thought as one; they felt as one; they moved as one.

And their lightsabers struck as one, each of the two glowing blades slashing through its targeted power cable in perfect synchronization.

There was a slight jerk, more imagined than truly felt; and with a decided feeling of anticlimax, the turbolift car began to sink downward. Luke took a deep breath...

As suddenly as it had begun, the melding ended. The sensation of oneness faded away, leaving only the warmth of the memory behind. "There," Mara said. To Luke's ears, her voice sounded a little strained as she, too, worked to regain mental and emotional balance after their moment of unity. "See? No problem."

"What do you mean, no problem?" Drask bit out. "We are falling."

"Don't worry," Mara said. "Now that we're traveling at a normal speed, there are built-in safeties to catch us at the other end. The problem was that Pressor's repulsors would have slammed us down too fast for them to trigger."

"That was a dangerous chance to take," Drask growled.

"You want out of here or not?" Mara countered.

The Chiss hissed between his teeth. "You Jedi have the arrogance of untested power," he told her bluntly. "One day, you will take one too many chances, and it will destroy you."

There was a gentle jolt from above, as if the car had momentarily shivered. "What was that?" Luke asked, glancing at the ceiling.

"We have changed direction," Drask said, cocking his head oddly to the side. "We are now traveling more vertically than before."

"How do you know?" Luke asked. Standing in the car's artificial gravity, he couldn't feel anything different.

"I simply know," the Chiss said. "I ca

"All right, fine." The last thing Luke wanted right now was something else to argue about. "But in that case, where are we going?"

"Perhaps Guardian Pressor enjoys layering his traps," Drask said, his hand on his charric. "This may lead to a special place reserved for anyone who defeats the first layer."

"I don't know," Mara said, looking around. "Seems a little like overkill. Luke, do you remember what this setup looked like from the outside? There were a pair of curved tubes leading off the main one, right?"

"Right," Luke confirmed, pulling up the image from his memory. "They looked like they were heading toward each other when they disappeared into the hill."

"One coming off each side of the tube," Mara added. "Like they were branch routes you could take from either of the two Dreadnaughts."

"Branch routes heading to the central supply core," Luke said, nodding as the explanation suddenly hit him. "Of course: the SC button on the control panel."

"Right," Mara agreed. "That must be where we're going."

The words were barely out of her mouth when the car abruptly jerked again, and the floor seemed to drop gently out from under them. Reflexively, Luke tensed, then relaxed as he realized what had happened. Now that the car was out of the main tube and Pressor's trap, it had been grabbed by the branch tube's normal repulsor beam and was being pulled sedately downward toward the storage core. "We are turning over," Drask said, again doing that head-cocking thing.