Survivor's Quest

Mara pulled her lightsaber from her belt and stepped to the doorway. "Ready."

"Okay." Luke took a deep breath, and Mara could sense him stretching out to the Force. A moment later, with a creak of metal that had been sitting too long in one spot, the door began to slide up into the ceiling.

Mara was ready. The gap was barely waist-high when she ducked under the rising panel, igniting her lightsaber as she leapt into the room.

But there was nothing there except another storeroom, empty except for the usual stacks of boxes, exactly like all the previous four storerooms they'd looked at.

She frowned, lowering the lightsaber blade a little. No; not exactly. Back toward the center of the room, half a dozen sections of the mesh had been cleared out.

And inside them...

"Mara?"

"All clear," she called, closing down her lightsaber and looking around. Lying against the near wall was a piece of slightly twisted girder. Stretching out to the Force, she lifted it and set it upright beneath the door Luke was still holding up. "See if that'll hold it," she said.

Carefully, Luke lowered the door onto the girder. The metal creaked but held. "Odd thing to have lying around," he commented, frowning at the girder as he ducked under the door and into the storeroom. "I haven't seen anything like that in any of the other rooms."

"You haven't seen anything like this, either," Mara said as Drask came in behind Luke. "Take a look."

"Furniture storage?" Drask asked, frowning past Luke's shoulder.

"It's a little more interesting than that," Mara said as the three of them crossed over to the cleared sections. The contents were little more than a jumbled mess of broken furniture and tangled furnishings. But to her the signs were obvious. "You can see three cots in that first one—they've been a little broken up, but there are definitely three of them. Looks like there were four in the next. Probably four in that back one there, too."

"That round thing was probably part of a small table," Luke said, pointing. "I don't see any chairs, though."

"Perhaps they had only stools," Drask suggested. "Those short pieces, perhaps."

"Right," Mara agreed. "There are probably a lot of other pieces tangled in with those blankets and draperies, too. And of course, those boxy things have got to be portable 'fresher stations."

"But this makes no sense," Drask objected. "What you are describing are living quarters. Yet the vessels above are adequately intact. Why would anyone have chosen to live here instead?"

"Maybe all the Dreadnaughts were too badly damaged right after the battle," Luke suggested. "It may have taken a while for the droids to make them livable again."

Mara shook her head. "You're both missing the point. What did we have to do to get in here?"

"We had to lift—" Luke broke off. "Are you saying this was a prison?"

"What else?" Mara asked. "Small cubicles with minimal furnishings and not much privacy, stuck away from everywhere else in the place, all of it behind a door that doesn't open. What else could it be?"

"Interesting," Drask commented. "It would seem that your Outbound Flight experiment was a failure from the start. For there to have been a need for a prison so quickly implies the passengers were not well chosen."

"Or that something drastic happened to them," Mara said. "Some kind of space madness or something."

"Any chance it could have been a medical quarantine instead?" Luke suggested.

"Unlikely," Drask said. "There are not enough beds here for a large disease outbreak. A smaller problem would surely have been better dealt with in the vessels' own facilities."

"He's right," Mara agreed. "Besides, I don't see any sign of medical equipment in here." She gestured into the area. "And you see what else isn't here?"

Luke frowned. "No."

"I see," Drask said grimly. "There are no bodies."

"Or even the remains of bodies," Mara confirmed. "Which either means someone got in through that door sometime in the past fifty years and disposed of the dead—"

"—Or else they got out on their own," Luke finished for her.

"That's what I'm thinking," Mara agreed soberly. "I'm also wondering if the timing of the breakout might have had an effect on the battle."

"Or perhaps it is co

"No, it hasn't," Mara said. "Luke, do you have any idea what sort of justice system was in place during that era? Specifically, what sort of people might the Jedi on Outbound Flight have locked up this way?"

"I don't know," Luke said, shaking his head. "But I can't see why anyone but the most violent or psychotic sorts would be buried this far away from the rest of the expedition. There would certainly have been a brig on each of the Dreadnaughts for dealing with standard lawbreakers."

A whisper of sensation touched Mara's mind. "Someone's coming," she said, unhooking her lightsaber from her belt.

"Who?" Drask asked, drawing his charric. "Guardian Pressor and his forces?"

Mara focused her mind, trying to isolate and identify the approaching minds. They definitely seemed familiar, but they were still too far away to identify.

Luke got there first. "It's all right," he said, returning his own lightsaber to his belt. "It's Fel and the stormtroopers."

"Is Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano with them?" Drask asked.

"No," Mara said. "Neither are Feesa or the Geroons. It's just the five Imperials."

"They pledged to protect him," Drask said ominously. "Why are they not with him?"

"I don't know," Luke said, heading for the propped-open door. "Let's go ask them."

They met up with the Imperials two rooms back toward the turbolifts. "Well, well," Fel commented as the two groups crossed the room toward each other. "I certainly wasn't expecting to find you three here. Not that I'm displeased, of course. What did you think of our host's little trap?"

"Where is Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano?" Drask cut in before either Luke or Mara could answer. "Why are you not protecting him?"

Fel seemed taken aback. "Relax, General," he said. "He's hardly alone up there. Your three warriors are with him, remember?"

"Besides, if Pressor wanted any of us dead, he could have done it long before now," Mara added.

"She's right," Fel agreed. "I'm sure the Aristocra's fine."

"Your calmness is very reassuring," Drask bit out. "Do you even know where he is?"

"Not exactly," Fel said. "But from the sounds their turbolift car made as it headed down, we're pretty sure they're on D-Five, the next Dreadnaught around the circle from where we came in."

"Then why did you not follow them after you made your own escape?" Drask asked.

"Because I thought it might make more tactical sense to come in from a direction they weren't expecting," Fel said, starting to sound a little a

"Wait a minute," Mara said. "If the Dreadnaughts are in a ring, shouldn't the turbolift co

Fel shook his head. "It has to do with the way the gravity directions were set up," he explained. "All the Dreadnaughts are oriented with their bellies pointing inward toward the supply core, while the supply core runs its own gravity toward its own center, sort of like a cylindrical planet, with the lower decks 'down' from the upper ones. That means that from any of the Dreadnaughts, 'down' is always toward the core, while from the core 'up' is always toward the nearest Dreadnaught."