Survivor's Quest

In the distance, Luke could see the lights of the Brask Oto Command Station directly ahead. The station, and the faint glow of a hundred starfighter drives spiraling around it. Even as he felt his throat tighten, he spotted the multiple flash of laserfire.

"The victory is ours," Estosh said calmly. He lifted his arms toward them. "And now," he added, "you will die."

He clenched his hands into fists; and from each of his sleeves a thin spray of pale green mist shot outward.

"Go!" Mara snapped, jumping sideways toward the red-rimmed emergency cabinet fastened to the wall beside the blast door.

Luke took a deep breath, holding it as he charged through the maze of control consoles toward Estosh. The two Vagaari nearest their commander, he noted, had already slumped over, twitching violently with the effects of the poison. He angled to the side; Estosh responded by shifting his arms to aim the spray more directly toward Luke's face. Clearly, he too was holding his breath, hoping to live long enough to watch his enemies die.

With a sudde

And as he looked away, Luke took a long step toward him, ducking low to stay beneath the poison spray. With two quick slashes of his lightsaber, he sliced open Estosh's sleeves and the gas canisters strapped to his forearms.

With an explosive poof! the directional spray became a billowing green cloud as the entire contents of the canisters were dumped at once. The fog enveloped Estosh's head, roiling outward as Luke took a long step backward. Estosh spun back toward him, his face nearly invisible behind the cloud, his body starting to twitch and contort as the acid burned his skin and the poison worked its way into his lungs despite his efforts to keep it out. For a moment his eyes locked with Luke's—

And then, across the bridge, Mara's thrown lightsaber hit the transparisteel viewport, slicing it open.

In an instant the bridge became the center of a windstorm as the air streamed violently out into space. The expanding poison cloud swirling around Estosh was whipped away with the rest of the atmosphere, turning into thin green tendrils as it was sucked toward the gap. Behind Luke, reacting to the sudden loss of pressure, the bridge blast doors slammed shut.

The twisting vortex blew Estosh off his feet, dumping him to sprawl onto the deck. He turned around to face Luke, hands scrabbling desperately and uselessly across the metal, his face a mask of pain and hatred. "Jedi!" he spat out hoarsely, his last breath a curse.

But Luke was already gone. Even as the windstorm erupted around him he began leaping over and around the control consoles, letting the wind at his back add to his speed as he raced across the bridge toward the hole Mara had cut. Her lightsaber was bouncing precariously along the edge; reaching out with the Force, he closed down the weapon and drew it back to him, jamming it into his belt alongside his. His lungs were starting to ache as the air pressure dropped nearly to zero, and he again stretched out to the Force for strength. Reaching the viewport, he skidded to a halt beside the crack and spun around.

Across the room, Mara had the emergency cabinet open, one hand poised on the oxygen lever, the other holding a patch kit. At Luke's nod she pulled down on the lever and sent the kit spi

The gale, which had subsided to a faint whisper, began to pick up again as the oxygen tanks across the room flooded more air into the escaping flow. Luke counted out a few more seconds to make sure all of the poison gas had been flushed out, then pulled open the patch and slapped it across the hole.

There was a sizzling sound, more felt than really heard in the painfully thin atmosphere. The swirling wind subsided, and he felt the air pressure returning to normal. He exhaled the rest of the air he'd been holding in reserve and took a cautious breath. There was just a residual hint of the poison, drifting through the bridge like a bad memory, far too dilute to pose any danger.

He looked around the bridge. The Vagaari lay across their consoles or in contorted poses on the deck. All were dead.

He sighed. Jedi respect all life, in any form...

"Snap out of it, Luke," Mara called. "We've still got work to do."

Luke focused on her. She was leaning over the helm console, the one Estosh had made such an effort to reach before he died, working feverishly at the controls. "Right," he said, coming toward her. "What did he do there?"

"Exactly what I thought he would," Mara told him, and he sensed her grim satisfaction as she straightened up. "Okay, I caught it in time." She nodded at the viewport. "Now we just have to figure out what we're going to do about that."

Luke turned and looked. During the past few minutes, Estosh's final helm command had continued to drive them toward the Chiss command station.

And from their new vantage point he could see that the defenders were in desperate straits. The Vagaari fighters swarming around it were as maneuverable as X-wings, but with considerably more firepower, and they whipped around the base in a complex dancelike pattern that made them nearly impossible to hit. So far the base's shields were holding, but from the methodical way the fighters were hammering at it he knew it wouldn't be long before they'd battered the defenses down far enough to begin causing serious damage. Off to one side, drifting along outside of the attack pattern, was the Vagaari colony ship, looking like a strange spherical skeleton now that its brood of fighters had been launched.

"And that's after only a few minutes of combat," Mara murmured. "These guys are good."

"The beeping console in the anteroom?" Luke asked.

She nodded. "It was the comm monitor, indicating a signal being sent out from the bridge," she confirmed. "It had to have been Estosh's attack order." She shook her head. "No wonder Formbi wanted an excuse to launch a campaign against these people."

"I don't think they'll need more of an excuse than they've already got," Luke declared, crossing to one of the weapons stations. "Can this thing still fight?"

"What, against ships that small?" Mara countered. "Not a chance. Certainly not with just the two of us to run it. Besides, all we're likely to have are the anti-meteor laser ca

Across the bridge, one of the consoles pinged, and a Vagaari voice began speaking faintly from its speakers. "They've spotted us," Mara said, stepping toward it. "You have anything you want to say to them?"

"Just a second," Luke said, an idea popping into the back of his mind. "No, don't answer. Find me a sensor station and tell me what's happening with the Vagaari carrier."

He sensed Mara's puzzlement, but she headed off across the bridge without comment. Luke went the other direction, toward where the weapons consoles were located. Maybe Thrawn's attack had missed something.

But no. All the turbolaser and ion ca

"Probably where its own heavy weapons were," Luke said with satisfaction. "I was hoping the Chiss had gotten in some good shots before they were surrounded."

"Fine, but that still leaves the fighters," Mara pointed out. "And us with no weapons."

"We won't need any," Luke assured her. "Get back to the helm—"