Survivor's Quest

"Especially when you add in the slaughter of a few unarmed crewers?" Fel put in.

"Loss of life was neither necessary nor expected," Formbi insisted, some heat seeping through the fatigue into his voice. "My ship had been specially prepared for this mission. All crewers had been provided with hidden areas near their duty stations where they could protect themselves from attack as they watched for the Vagaari to betray themselves. With a squad of warriors in the Dreadnaught docking bay, I also expected there to be ample warning if Bearsh and the others attempted to return to the vessel. We expected to merely catch them in the act of attempted theft or sabotage, which would have satisfied the rules of engagement."

He closed his eyes. "I did not expect such a massive attack to come from the other direction," he said, the heat fading away. "The warriors whom I stationed in the Dreadnaught are certainly dead. So perhaps are all who we left aboard. Their blood now lies on my hands."

"It's hardly your fault that you didn't know about the Vagaari suspended animation trick," Jinzler pointed out. "Car'das must have missed that one."

"He merely met them," Formbi said. "He wasn't given a tour of their technical facilities."

"He'll have to do better next time," Mara said. "What about the others? Feesa and General Drask and your other aides?"

"Feesa knew the entire plan," Formbi said. "That was why I insisted she come along, so that if anything happened to me she could direct the operation. No one else knew more than you yourself were told."

He smiled slightly. "Though I believe General Drask was able to deduce much of the truth."

"Much, but not all," Drask rumbled. "It would have been better if you had taken me into your full confidence."

"If I had, you would have been as guilty as I of manipulating events to bring about this end." Formbi shook his head. "No. On my hands, and mine alone, must this rest."

"You can sort all that out when you get home," Mara said. "Can we assume the rules of engagement have been satisfied?"

"They have been more than satisfied, Jedi Skywalker," Drask said darkly. "We have been attacked without justification or mercy. A state of war now exists between the Chiss Ascendancy and the Vagaari."

"Good," Mara said. "I'd hate to have to go through this again just because we'd missed something in the fine print. In that case, there's just one little loose end left. That falling cable that nearly knocked Luke across the room when we first came aboard the Chaf Envoy. I trust you're not going to try to blame that one on the Vagaari?"

Drask cleared his throat self-consciously. "I am afraid I am to blame for that incident, Jedi Skywalker," he confessed. "When Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano asked Admiral Parck who of the New Republic would be the best warriors to have at hand against possible trouble, he recommended you and Master Skywalker."

"He seemed to have firsthand knowledge of your fighting skill," Formbi murmured.

"Yes," Drask said. "However, I did not entirely trust his tales of Jedi abilities."

"So you arranged a demonstration," Mara said. "Did we meet with your approval?"

"Let us simply say that you did not disappoint." Drask smiled slightly. "The demonstration arranged today by the Vagaari gave you a far better opportunity to prove yourselves."

"Yes," Mara murmured. "I should hope so."

Behind her, the door slid open and Evlyn and Rosemari stepped in, Pressor close behind them. "There you are," Mara said. "How are you feeling?"

"I'm all right," the girl said, looking around at the others as the door slid shut again. Possibly comparing bandage counts, Mara thought with a brief flicker of amusement. "Is Luke all right?" she asked. "I mean, Master Skywalker? He saved my life, pulling me down and protecting me when the pylon exploded."

"He's fine," Mara assured her as her mother steered her to one of the other recovery tables. "And as far as saving lives goes, I think the two of you come out pretty even on that scoring."

"What do you mean?" Rosemari asked, an odd edge to her voice. "Evlyn didn't do anything."

"She most certainly did," Mara insisted. "Evlyn reactivated that turbolift trap at exactly the right moment to shoot the car down the tube and into the eddy rotation just before the explosives detonated. If she hadn't done that, it would have been the fractured ceiling that took the brunt of the explosion instead of the wall, and a lot more high-speed debris would have gotten through. That kind of prescient timing can only come from the Force."

"But you won't tell them, will you?" Rosemari pleaded. "Please?"

"They don't like Jedi here, Mara," Fel said quietly. "I don't know exactly why, but they don't."

"We don't just not like them, Commander," Pressor said grimly. "If the council sticks the Jedi label on someone, they get immediately sent over to Three."

"You mean D-Three?" Jinzler asked. "The Number Three Dreadnaught?"

"That's the one," Pressor said. "The pylons between it and the rest of Outbound Flight were destroyed or collapsed during the attack and crash, leaving it isolated from everything else. So Uliar and the other Survivors set it up as a place where anyone with Jedi traits could be safely banished."

"I thought that was what the Quarantine on D-Six was for," Fel said.

Pressor shook his head. "Quarantine is for people they suspect of using the Force," he said. "Three is where they get sent once they're pretty sure."

"Pretty sure, you say?" Su-mil asked softly, his alien expression very still. In some ways, Mara reflected, he looked even more dangerous without his armor. "And how certain exactly is that?"

Pressor looked away from him. "They're completely sure," he said. "The Managing Council is. I can't speak for the rest of us."

He looked at Mara. "And it's not a death sentence, really," he added with an odd combination of earnestness and embarrassment. "The place has been set up with plenty of food and power. A person could live there for a lifetime in reasonable comfort."

"But in complete isolation," Su-mil said darkly. "You sentence these people to a life of loneliness."

Pressor sighed. "We've only done it twice," he said. "At least, up to now."

"They're not going to send her there, Jorad," Rosemari said. "They can't."

She looked suddenly at Mara. "You can take her with you, can't you?" she asked. "You can take her when you leave."

"The plan was to take all of you with us," Mara told her. "Unfortunately, unless we can get out of here and back to the Chaf Envoy, neither option has much of a future."

"I spoke to the techs a few minutes ago," Pressor said. "Most of the blast doors stopped working years ago, and most of the ones that did work have now been locked open by those cursed conduit worms. Unless we can get a few of them working again, we're not going to be able to get either the turbolift doors or any of the outer hatchways open without losing all our air."

He looked at Drask. "I take it there's still no word from your own ship?"

The general shook his head. "No," he said. "And I no longer believe they will be coming."

"You think they're all dead?" Pressor asked.

Drask closed his eyes. "Including crew members, there were thirty-seven warriors aboard the Chaf Envoy," he said. "The Vagaari may have had as many as three hundred." He opened his eyes into slender cracks of glowing red. "They would not have been prepared for such a devastating assault."

Mara felt her stomach tighten. The sudden multiple deaths she and Luke had sensed aboard D-l could have been all the Chiss, or a sizable fraction of them, or just the squad of warriors Drask had left in the D-4 docking bay. There hadn't been any way to tell at the time, and there still wasn't.