Survivor's Quest

Which meant that if they had to retreat, it would be Fel and his injured gun arm who would be ru

But at least the Vagaari did seem to have missed this particular back door. There were no sentries or other signs of enemy presence in the corridor. In fact, from all appearances, the place might not have been visited in years, and several times Fel had to fight back a reaction to the drifting dust being kicked up by their passage. It would be a shame to put this much effort into sneaking up on the enemy only to a

They made it to their target panel without incident. Drask motioned the stormtroopers to take up side-to-side positions in front of it, BlasTechs at the ready. Then, reaching around past them, he punched the release.

This door, fortunately, opened without any difficulty at all. The stormtroopers were ready, opening fire the instant the sliding panel was clear of their muzzles. "Can you see anything?" Fel shouted to Drask over the BlasTechs' stuttering screams.

"Vagaari," Drask shouted back succinctly. Return fire was starting to come now, and Fel winced as burst after burst slammed into his men, leaving blackened marks on the clean white armor. The targets were clearly plentiful—Fel could see both stormtroopers rhythmically swinging their weapons back and forth—but at the same time the return fire seemed to be increasing rather than decreasing. However many troops Bearsh had brought along, it was starting to look like a large percentage of them were right here.

And even the legendary 501st had a limit to what it could handle.

It took only a few more seconds for Drask to come to the same conclusion. Again reaching past the stormtroopers, he punched the control. The door slid shut, the metal ringing with the impact of belated Vagaari fire. "We have done what we can to encourage their retreat," he said, nudging Fel back toward the direction they'd come from. "It is time to make our own."

"Right." Fel turned around—

And froze. Moving stealthily through the passage toward them was a line of Vagaari warriors.

Apparently, the enemy hadn't missed this bet after all.

CHAPTER 21

Gathering his feet beneath him, Luke ducked out of the doorway he'd been hiding in and sprinted ahead and down the corridor toward the next room in line. As he ran, a hail of blaster bolts scorched the air around him, scattering from his lightsaber blade. He made it to the doorway without getting hit and ducked inside the room.

It was another bunkroom, he saw, this one having been converted into a game area. In the back corner four young couples sat huddled together on the floor, their fear radiating toward him like a set of permlights. "It's all right," he assured them. "Don't worry, you're safe now."

None of them replied. With a sigh, he leaned back out into the corridor for another cautious look. He had hoped this strange aversion to Jedi was confined to the original group of Outbound Flight survivors. But whatever the reason for their hatred, they'd clearly done a good job of passing it on to successive generations.

Unfortunately, if Jinzler was to be believed, it also meant this was yet another place where it might not be safe to leave Evlyn alone. It was starting to look like they were going to have to drag her all the way back to the turbolifts.

Behind him, Mara signaled that they were ready. Raising his lightsaber again, he stepped back into the corridor.

Again, the Vagaari opened fire. But this time, the shots were coming from a set of doorways farther down the corridor. He and Mara might not be taking down many of the enemy with this maneuver, Luke reflected as he took a step toward them, but they were definitely pushing them back.

There was the sound of ru

Stepping back again, Luke joined them. "Everyone still okay?" he asked.

"Yes," Mara said. Evlyn looked a little winded, but seemed all right otherwise. "By the way, did you notice the Vagaari have their own jamming system up and ru

"No, I hadn't," Luke said, frowning. "When did this happen?"

"Sometime in the past few minutes, I think," Mara said. "I tried to call Fel while you were clearing this last section and could get only static."

"Terrific," Luke muttered.

"Not as terrific as they think," Mara said, pulling one of the Old Republic comlinks out of her belt and handing it to him. "We can still keep in touch with Pressor and the Peacekeepers with these."

"That's something, anyway," Luke agreed, sliding the comlink onto his belt beside his own. "What do you suppose they're up to?"

"I don't know," Mara said. "It might not be anything more sinister than Bearsh deciding he was tired of coordinated attacks."

"Then again, it might," Luke pointed out grimly. "And Fel and the Five-Oh-First are back there all alone."

He caught the flicker of concern from his wife. Apparently, she'd grown fond of the Imperials. "We'd better pick up our pace a little," she said.

"Right," Luke said, stepping back to the doorway. "Here goes..."

The Vagaari in the front of the line jerked back as a blaster bolt found a gap in his armor; he toppled over backward, his weapon blazing madly away as he fell. One of the shots sizzled past Fel's head as he crouched down in the corridor, and he winced away as he slammed a fresh Tiba

"We're... still good, sir," Grappler called. But all the confidence in the galaxy couldn't hide the fact that the stormtrooper was hurting, and hurting badly. Too many enemies, too much blasterfire, and even the tough composite that made up stormtrooper armor was starting to disintegrate under the assault. Cloud had stopped replying entirely to questions and orders, though he was still on his feet, still firing, and still retreating in an orderly fashion. Grappler, Fel suspected, wasn't in much better shape.

Fel and Drask were still largely unscathed, crouched down as they were in order to give the stormtroopers a clear field of fire. But that couldn't last, either, and unarmored as they were, a single well-placed shot could easily put either of them out of action.

It would have been nice if they could have used their grenades. The stormtroopers had a complete set of them, along with gas-powered launchers built into their BlasTechs to speed them on their way. The problem was that an explosion among pipes filled with coolant and other working fluids would probably kill the attackers, the defenders, and half of Outbound Flight's remaining populace. The blasters were risky enough in here.

And on top of all that, the Vagaari had finally begun jamming their comlinks. The only mystery was why they hadn't gotten around to it earlier.

So here they were, trapped in a narrow corridor with enemies on all sides and no way to call for assistance.

And as Fel opened fire on the next Vagaari in line, it occurred to him that he was probably going to die.

It was an odd sensation, that. The possibility of death was always present in combat, of course, and there had been many times when he'd gazed out his clawcraft's canopy at the enemy ships rising to meet him and wondered if this would be the time. But in space combat there was always a chance of survival, even if your ship was blown completely out from under you.

Here, there would be no such chance. If the Vagaari blasters found him, he would be dead.