Survivor's Quest

The droideka's head swiveled toward him, as if not believing he was actually going to try this again. Luke took another step; the droideka responded by tracking its blasters toward him. "Get ready," Luke murmured. He took a third step, sensing Mara stepping into the corridor directly behind him—

And suddenly all other sensations and awareness vanished as the droideka opened fire.

Luke's lightsaber flashed back and forth, deflecting the blasts as he continued to sidle toward the starboard anteroom door. He reached it, dimly hearing the snap-hiss behind him as Mara ignited her own weapon.

The droideka reacted instantly. Even as Mara stabbed her lightsaber blade into the blast door, it ceased fire, folded up, and began rolling full-speed toward them. Luke watched its approach, trying to judge the timing— "Go!" he snapped at Mara. He deflected a burst of rolling fire as he heard her close down her weapon and take off back to the relative safety of the corridor. He held position another half second, then broke out of combat stance and charged after her.

The droideka kept coming. Luke heard the subtle changes in pitch as it altered direction to continue the chase, and put some extra speed into his ru

The sound of the rolling wheel abruptly halted. "There it goes!" Mara called, braking to a halt in front of him.

Luke stopped and spun around, lightsaber ignited and ready. The droideka was standing in the center of the corridor, exactly where it had been the last two times it had chased them in this direction, its hazy deflector shield up as it finished the process of unfolding into attack position.

And beneath it, lying on the deck beside one of its tripod feet where Mara had carefully placed it before they'd launched their little feint, was their secret weapon.

Lorana Jinzler's old lightsaber.

Lying inside the droideka's deflector shield.

Luke lifted his lightsaber; but in salute, not defense. Even as the droideka's blasters settled into firing position, he felt Mara stretch out to the Force, twitching Lorana's lightsaber off the deck and rotating it to point upward toward the large bronzium-armor bulb at the base of the droideka's abdomen. With an asthmatic snap-hiss the green blade blazed to life, slicing into the droideka's heavy alloy body—

Luke had just a fraction of a second of premonition. "Down!" he snapped, grabbing Mara in a Force grip and pulling her down onto the deck beside him with their backs to the doomed machine.

And with a thundering explosion, the droideka disintegrated.

Luke squeezed his eyes shut, wincing as the blast washed over him like a desert sandstorm, the heat singeing the back of his neck, the concussion lifting him up off the deck and slamming him back down again, the tiny bits of shattered metal whipping across his back and legs and arms like maddened stingflies. A wave of acrid smoke followed behind the blast, curling his nostrils. A second later cooler air flowed across him in the opposite direction toward the partial vacuum, causing a brief moment of turbulence.

And then, everything was once again still. Cautiously, he opened his eyes and looked back over his shoulder.

The droideka was gone. So was Lorana's lightsaber, he noted with a twinge of guilt.

So was most of the portside blast door.

"Come on," he said to Mara, dragging himself upright. He felt a little woozy, but otherwise he seemed all right. "Let's get in there before they recover."

"What?" Mara asked vaguely, rubbing at her cheek as she got shakily to her feet and turned around. "Oh. That could be useful."

"Right." Luke looked around for his lightsaber, which had somehow ended up another three meters down the corridor, and stretched out to the Force to call it to his hand. "I take it that bulb thing with all the bronzium armor was the droideka's mini-reactor?"

"You got it," Mara said, stooping and retrieving her own lightsaber. "I was just trying to shut it down. I didn't mean to shut it down quite that violently."

"You must have hit one of the power regulators," Luke said, taking a couple of deep breaths as he looked her over. Her clothing was badly scorched, but aside from a few minor cuts and burns she seemed uninjured. She still had some of the same blast-induced fogginess he himself was fighting, but it was rapidly fading away. "Come on—we have to get in there," he repeated.

"Right," Mara said, her voice firmer this time. Taking a deep breath, she started forward. "Let's do it."

The left side of the blast door had been collapsed inward, crumpling the thick metal and leaving a gap big enough for two people to step through together. He and Mara did just that, lightsabers ready in front of them.

There was, as it turned out, no need for caution. Outside, the concussion shock wave from the exploding droideka had had a long, wide corridor to spread out into as it dissipated its energy. Here, however, it had had only the relatively confined space of the monitor anteroom to bounce around in. From the looks of the twenty or so Vagaari sprawled over their consoles or lying twitching on the deck, the wave must have done some fairly serious bouncing.

"They'll keep," Luke decided, looking across the rows of chairs and monitor consoles toward the archway and blast door leading into the bridge. "Let's see if we can get inside before Estosh realizes we're here."

"Go ahead," Mara said, nodding to the left where one of the consoles had suddenly started beeping. "I want to see what's coming through over there."

Luke nodded, threading his way through the rows of consoles toward the door. He was nearly there when there was a hollow metallic clank, and with a ponderous rumble the door began to slide open.

"Sss!" Luke hissed a warning to Mara as he jumped to a group of consoles a couple of meters to the right of the door. Closing down his lightsaber, he dropped into concealment behind one of the cabinets and peered cautiously around the side.

Behind the opening door were a pair of nervous-looking Vagaari pointing heavy blaster carbines out into the monitor anteroom. At their feet, growling deep in their throats, were a pair of wolvkils.

Luke held his breath, recognizing the opportunity that had just been handed to them. Protected by thick bulkheads from any damage from the exploding droideka, the Vagaari in the bridge had nevertheless certainly noticed the blast. Estosh had apparently decided it was worth the risk of sending someone out to see what was going on.

Which meant the bridge now lay wide open to them, with only a couple of soldiers and their pet wolvkils standing in their way.

The question was how best to take advantage of that.

One of the soldiers said something back over his shoulder. Another voice replied from inside the bridge. Reluctantly, Luke thought, the two Vagaari stepped through the doorway and started across the room toward the wrecked blast door, their weapons clutched tightly in their hands.

And as they did so, one of the wolvkils turned its head and looked straight at Luke.

Luke looked back, stretching out to the Force. Back aboard Outbound Flight, he'd touched the nerve centers of a group of the predators, searching out the pathways that would let him put them harmlessly to sleep. Now, though, he needed something subtler, something that would suppress their curiosity or their aggressive instincts without doing anything as obvious as dropping them like a couple of softdolls. Carefully, quickly, he traced along a wolvkil's nervous system...

And then, across the room, someone moaned.

The two Vagaari jerked in unison toward the noise, their weapons jerking with them. The moan came again, more gurgling this time. One of the aliens murmured something to the wolvkils, and Luke was suddenly forgotten as the two animals headed in that direction. The Vagaari followed, weapons held ready. Behind them, the door to the bridge reversed its direction and began to slide closed.