Survivor's Quest

"Must be lining up with the storage core's gravity direction," Luke said.

"Is that good?"

"Definitely," Luke assured him. "Shipboard gravity is usually tied in with the rest of the environmental system. If the gravity is working, chances are the core's got air and heat, too."

A few seconds later the car settled to a stop, and the door slid open to reveal a large, musty-smelling cavern.

Luke stepped out of the car, lightsaber ready in his hand. The room stretching out in front of him was only dimly lit, with perhaps a third of the permlight emergency panels still operating. The nearest true bulkhead was ten meters away toward the forward end of the core, with another bulkhead twenty meters in the other direction toward the rear. The space right in front of the turbolift was reasonably open, but the rest of the room had been partitioned by a grid of floor-to-ceiling meshwork panels dividing the floor space into three-meter-by-three-meter sections. A few of the sections had been partially or completely emptied, but most still held stacks of crates.

"Haven't made much of a dent, have they?" Luke commented as the others stepped out to join him.

"This facility was supposed to supply fifty thousand people for up to several years," Mara reminded him. "I'm surprised they got even this far into it."

"This may have been used up during the first part of the voyage, when all were still alive," Drask said, moving the beam from his glow rod down the labels of one of the stacks. "Surely not many of the original crew could have survived."

"How anyone survived is still beyond me," Luke said, shifting his glow rod to point at the aft bulkhead. Just visible at the edge of the beam were two doorways: one human sized, the other obviously built for cargo. "Let's head aft and see what else is back—"

He broke off as the comlink at his waist emitted an odd chirping noise. He pulled it from his belt, peripherally aware that Mara and Drask were doing the same with theirs, and clicked it on.

A burst of static crackled at him, and he quickly shut it off again. "That's strange," he said, frowning at it. "It sounded like something was coming through just then."

"Same here," Mara said, turning her comlink over in her hand. "Yours, too, General?"

"Yes," Drask said, sounding thoughtful. "It was as if—" He stopped.

"As if?" Mara prompted.

"As if someone had used a—I do not know the proper word in your language," the Chiss said. "It is a signal that stretches across all parts of the communications range in an attempt to penetrate jamming."

"Some kind of full-spectrum burst," Mara said, nodding. "We use that technique ourselves sometimes. Usually between vehicles or ships, though—I've never seen it used on anything as small as a comlink."

"Do Chiss comlinks have that capability?" Luke asked Drask.

The other hesitated. "Certain of them do," he said. "Those I equipped our party with do not."

"Let's put it a different way," Mara said. "Are there any of these more sophisticated comlinks aboard the Chaf Envoy?"

Drask looked away. "There are," he conceded.

Mara looked back at Luke. "Terrific," she said. "So someone's able to communicate with the ship. Only that someone isn't us."

"Maybe it was just the survivors talking among themselves," Luke suggested, hunting for a less ominous explanation. "Maybe Pressor needed to send a signal to one of the other Dreadnaughts."

Mara shook her head. "Intership comms ought to be hardwired."

"Unless some of the lines are out."

"Maybe," she said. Clearly, she didn't believe that for a second.

Unfortunately, despite what she still sometimes called his farmboy na?vet?, neither did Luke.

Someone aboard Outbound Flight was communicating through Pressor's jamming. The question was, who?

And what were they saying?

He looked at Mara, but she just shrugged. "Nothing we can do about it right now," she said. "Come on, let's see what's back this way."

"In hindsight, I suppose we shouldn't have been surprised to find you here," Ambassador Jinzler commented as Pressor led the group back toward the Number Five Turbolift Car. "Even in the most adverse of conditions, humans always seem to find a way to survive."

"Yes," Pressor said, keeping his voice neutral as he waved the others ahead of him into the car. The two Geroons, he noticed, hesitated before stepping through the doorway. Jinzler himself didn't even break stride. The man was either very trusting, very overconfident, or very stupid. "Though the fact we lived through all of that certainly wasn't for lack of trying on somebody's part," he added.

"Indeed," Jinzler murmured as he and the female Chiss stepped to one of the rear corners of the car. "Exactly how this all happened is one of the things we hope to find out."

"Perhaps you'll have that chance," Pressor said, pulling out his command stick and plugging it into the droid socket on the control board. "Unfortunately, most of the records were ruined in the attack." He touched a button, and the barrier between Cars Four and Five slid open.

The three black-clad Chiss in the car reacted like dolls on twitch-strings, spi

"You do," Pressor said, returning the nod. The least he could do was show himself to be as cultured and polite as his visitors. "I welcome you to Outbound Flight, Aristocra Formbi, and apologize for the necessity of greeting you as I did."

"No apology required," the Aristocra assured him. Those glowing red eyes flicked to the female Chiss still hovering close to Jinzler, as if checking to see that she was all right. "Your caution is completely understandable."

"Guardian Pressor is going to take us to see his people," Jinzler spoke up. "After that, I presume we'll be discussing the possibility of their return to the New Republic."

The Aristocra frowned. "The possibility?"

"That's correct," Pressor said. "I'm not at all sure we'll choose to go back to the Republic. Or to go anywhere at all, for that matter." He made an adjustment on the command stick.

"You didn't tell him where they are?" Formbi asked, his eyes on Jinzler.

Pressor paused, his finger poised against the activation button. "What do you mean, where we are?" he asked.

"I'm afraid our conversation didn't get that far," Jinzler admitted.

Pressor looked at Formbi, feeling a knot forming in his stomach. "Why don't you tell me now?" he invited.

Formbi's mouth twitched. "You're deep within a high-security defensive position of the Chiss Ascendancy," he said. "Traveling here is forbidden without special authorization. Now that we know about you, I'm afraid you can't be permitted to stay."

The knot in Pressor's stomach tightened. "I see," he said, putting his voice back into neutral mode. "And if we refuse to leave?"

"I would hope you wouldn't," Formbi said, matching Pressor's tone. "We will, of course, give you any assistance you might require in moving your people wherever you wish to go. It's little enough compensation for what you've suffered."

"I see," Pressor said again. "Well, you can present your case before Director Uliar and the Managing Council. They'll be the ones who'll make the final decision."