Survivor's Quest

Though if there were surviving Chiss, it might not make any difference. Even if the Vagaari hadn't bothered to hunt down and kill everyone aboard, they would certainly have made a point of wrecking the ship on their way out. "So in other words, we should assume we're on our own," she concluded. "All right. Pressor, you said D-Three was isolated from the rest of Outbound Flight. That means you must have vac suits to get back and forth. Any of them still in working condition?"

"A couple dozen of them are," he said. "But as I told you, we can't get the hatches open."

"We don't have to," Mara told him. "All you need to do is build a small caisson around one of the turbolift doors with me in it. I can cut through the hull, climb up the pylon, and make my way cross-country to the Chaf Envoy."

"And how do you get back in?" Drask asked.

"I'll figure that out later," Mara told him. "What do you think?"

Above them, the lights flickered. "Terrific," Pressor muttered, glancing up. "They must be getting to the generator."

"What, we're ru

"We are in this part of the ship," Pressor said. "They've already gotten into the main power conduits."

"Wait a minute," Jinzler said, frowning. "You have portable generators? How many?"

"Probably ten that still work," Pressor said. The lights flickered again—"Better make that nine."

"I never even thought to ask," Jinzler said, sounding disgusted with himself. "Get them together as quickly as you can—all of them—and set them out along the corridors."

"Co

"Co

"It will not work," Drask declared. "Even if the generators succeed in drawing the line creepers out, there are too many of them. They will quickly overload and destroy the generators' wiring, then return to the larger sources of power."

"That's right," Jinzler said, smiling tightly. "If the worms actually get to them."

He turned back to Pressor. "But they won't, because around each generator you're going to create a moat of salt water. The worms will crawl in, short out their organic capacitors, and die."

"You're kidding," Pressor said. "I've never even heard of that."

Jinzler shrugged. "It's a trick we came up with when I was bumming around Hadar sector after the Clone Wars. It's fairly disgusting, but it works."

"I'll get the techs on it right away," Pressor said, pulling out his comlink. "You've certainly had a varied career, Ambassador."

Jinzler's answer, if he made one, was lost as a sudden surge of distant emotion yanked at Mara's attention. "Something's wrong," she said, pulling her lightsaber from her belt and heading for the door. Pressor got there ahead of her, slapping the release and ducking through.

It was then that they heard the shouting in the distance ahead.

"Come on," Pressor growled, drawing his blaster as he and Mara sprinted down the corridor.

They rounded a turn and nearly collided with a dozen techs and civilians ru

Pressor swore under his breath, thumbing on his comlink. "All Peacekeepers to the forward starboard pylon," he ordered. "The Vagaari are back."

"This doesn't make sense," Mara objected, trying to stretch out to the Force as she ran. But the flavor of the alien minds was too faint to sort out against the clamor of civilian panic throbbing in the air around her. "Why would they have come back?"

"Maybe they decided they wanted to watch us die after all," Pressor said grimly. "If so, they're going to pay heavily for the privilege."

One of the other Peacekeepers was waiting in the darkness when they arrived at the turbolift lobby, the beam from his glow rod twitching back and forth as he fidgeted with apprehension. "They're coming through," he hissed, turning the beam on one of the doors. "I can hear them working on it. What do we do?"

Pressor never had a chance to answer. Almost before the words were out of the other's mouth, the door suddenly gave a violent creak and cracked a centimeter open. Three pry bars were in place before it could close again; and with another series of creaks the door was forced open. Pressor and the Peacekeeper leveled their blasters at the opening, and suddenly two combat-armored figures leapt out of the gloom, their own glow rods swinging back and forth. Behind the lights, Mara could see hand weapons tracking as they searched for targets—

"No," she snapped, reaching out to the Force and twisting all four muzzles to point into opposite corners of the lobby. "Don't shoot. They're friends."

She stepped into the middle of the standoff as a third armored figure emerged into the room. "Welcome to Outbound Flight, Captain Brast'alshi'barku," she said, bowing slightly to the newcomer. "I thought you'd never get here."

CHAPTER 23

"We never even heard the Vagaari leave," Captain Talshib said disgustedly, his red eyes blazing even more brilliantly in the dim glow of the recovery room permlights. "We were sitting like fools in concealment in the command center, waiting for them to make their move. But they simply exited their own vessel, scattering line creepers along the way, and left. Apparently they had already decided to take the Old Republic vessel and had no time to waste with us."

"Yes, Bearsh would have informed Estosh of the new plan by that time," Drask agreed. "They had had the foresight to appropriate a set of special operations communicators before traveling to Outbound Flight and were able to send pulse messages through the humans' jamming."

"I wish I had known," Talshib rumbled. "We could have deployed to intercept them."

"It's just as well you didn't," Mara commented from the other side of Formbi's recovery table. "You saw what happened to the squad we left in the Dreadnaught's docking bay. They never even had a chance."

"Perhaps," Talshib said reluctantly. Warriors' pride, Jinzler thought as he leaned against the wall by the open doorway watching the discussion. Or perhaps just pride in general. Talshib would probably have preferred an overwhelming enemy attack, even if it had meant dying in combat, to the situation he currently found himself in.

Mara must have sensed that, too. "No perhaps about it, Captain," she said firmly. "If you hadn't been around to rig that sealant tent across the broken pylon, we'd still be trying to figure out how we were going to get out of here."

Talshib snorted. "Thus permitting you to travel freely from one dead vessel to another."

"Neither of them will be dead for long," Drask put in firmly. "If Ambassador Jinzler's technique works, both vessels should be functional within a matter of days."

Talshib snorted again. That was probably a good deal of his attitude problem, Jinzler had already decided. The Vagaari line creepers had wiped out the Chaf Envoy's communications with the landing party and otherwise crippled the ship before the crew, lurking in their hidey-holes, had even realized they were under attack.

And then, as if that weren't embarrassment enough, it was human ingenuity that was going to clear out his ship for him. That had to really gall him, and Jinzler was a little surprised that Drask had gone out of his way to mention where the plan had come from.

Unless Drask had done it on purpose, a not-so-subtle reminder to his subordinate that even the Chiss could learn from other species on occasion. Certainly the general's politely unfriendly attitude toward humans seemed to have warmed perceptively over the past few hours. Jinzler could only wonder what had happened to cause that change.