The Captive Temple

19

As they raced down the hall, Qui-Gon asked tersely, “Bant?”

“She’s fine,” Obi-Wan said shortly. “Bruck is dead.”

A pall had settled over Obi-Wan’s face. He would need to talk about this later, Qui-Gon knew.

“I studied the diagrams,” Obi-Wan told him, changing the subject as they turned the corner. “I can get us there faster through the infrastructure of the building.”

Obi-Wan leaped and kicked open a duct overhead. Qui-Gon noticed that he was barefoot. “Garen’s boots slowed me down,” he explained as he swung himself in. Qui-Gon followed. They crawled down a short length of an air circulation shaft and came to a service panel. Obi-Wan accessed it. It slid open and he climbed in.

It was a tight fit, but Qui-Gon made it. Here he could stand upright. They were on a catwalk, surrounded by machinery.

Qui-Gon heard a slow whining noise. “The repulsorlift engines are starting up,” he said.

“This way.” Obi-Wan ran down the catwalk. He came to a vertical ladder and began to scramble down. Quickly, Qui-Gon followed.

The ladder left them at a service door. Obi-Wan pushed through. They were now ten levels down.

“There’s a back stairway to the right,” Obi-Wan said as he raced down the hallway with Qui-Gon beside him. “It will bring us to the horizontal tube that is used to transport food from the dining hall to the med unit.”

They came to the tube. Obi-Wan gestured for Qui-Gon to go inside.

Qui-Gon crammed himself into the small space. Obi-Wan squeezed in next to him. Then he hurriedly set the controls. In seconds, they were sucked down the tube on a moving ramp. At the end, Obi-Wan kicked open the door.

They spilled out in one of the resting rooms in the med unit. Qui-Gon knew it was on the same level as the tech center. But he also knew that a shaft separated the two wings.

Qui-Gon checked his chrono. “We have about one minute,” he told Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan’s face was streaked with sweat. “The gas duct.” He turned and ran.

Qui-Gon followed. Out the window he could see that across the shaft ran an air-systems duct. “Where does it come out?”

“Right where we want it to,” Obi-Wan said, locking his fingers in the grate and prying it off. He kicked it aside and scrambled inside the duct. “It’s the gas transport system for the freezer containers used to store med supplies.”

Qui-Gon squeezed into the opening. The duct wasn’t high enough for him to stand. He followed closely behind Obi-Wan as they crawled rapidly down the tunnel.

“Obi-Wan, what happens if Miro tests the gas transport system when he powers up the air ducts?” Qui-Gon asked.

There was a pause. “I’m not sure,” Obi-Wan answered.

Qui-Gon knew that the gas pumped into molten carbonite was toxic, but decided to keep the information to himself. He didn’t need to tell Obi-Wan.

The boy had caught the implication and scrambled even faster down the tunnel.

Thirty seconds. Qui-Gon tried to move fluidly, gracefully. He was a big man, and wasn’t normally fast on his hands and knees in a confined space. He felt the Force surrounding Obi-Wan in front of him, and it seemed to vibrate around them in the enclosed space, giving them strength and agility.

Qui-Gon saw a fractured beam of light ahead. They were approaching the grate.

Obi-Wan blasted through the opening so fast he seemed just a streak to Qui-Gon. Qui-Gon swung himself out. Miro was standing at the console, his fingers flying on the keys.

“Stop!” Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon yelled together.

“Don’t activate the air circulation system,” Qui-Gon warned. “It’s booby-trapped.”

It didn’t seem possible that Miro’s translucent skin could pale. But for a moment he seemed to shimmer like a ghost. He jerked his hand back from the console.

“We have to find the bug,” Qui-Gon said, striding toward the console.

Miro punched in a code, and the blue screen that surrounded them filled with numbers and graphs. “I ran a complete bug check when the system was powered down,” he said. “Nothing came up. There’s no program in the system anymore except for mine. Are you sure about this, Qui-Gon?”

“No,” Qui-Gon said reluctantly. “Xanatos could have lied. But can we take the chance?”

“I can run the checks again,” Miro said, tapping on the keys. “Maybe I missed something.”

Obi-Wan stared up at the blue screen, trying to read the schematics of the system. Qui-Gon turned away. He knew that Miro was vastly better at figuring out tech systems.

But he could do something that Miro could not. He could go inside the mind of Xanatos.

Qui-Gon closed his eyes, remembering the final scene with Xanatos on the ledge. His enemy’s fatal flaw was his need to boast. Often he inadvertently let slip something that would alert Qui-Gon to the diabolical windings of his mind.

And Xanatos prided himself on his elegance. Whatever he had done, it would have a twist.

Qui-Gon remembered the fiendish glee in Xanatos’ expression. Yes, there was something personal about what he had done, some final, stinging slap to the Jedi.

What you revere can destroy you….

Qui-Gon’s eyes sprang open. “Miro, where is the main power source of the system?” he barked.

“In the power core,” Miro answered. He crossed the room and opened a durasteel door marked fusion furnace. “Here.”

Qui-Gon hurried through the door. He found himself in a small circular room. A catwalk ran around a deep central core. A ladder led down into it.

“This is the fusion reactor. The power sources are lined up in a grid,” Miro explained. “It goes down about ten stories. I’m running my second checkup on the power sources now, but nothing came up the first time—”

“No,” Qui-Gon murmured. “It wouldn’t.”

He hoisted himself onto the ladder and began to climb down. “Whatever you do, don’t reboot the system,” he called up to Miro.

It didn’t take him long to reach the bottom of the core. Qui-Gon circled around slowly, running his hands along the various compartments and dials. He saw a compartment labeled fusion furnace access.

Qui-Gon pressed the lever. The door slid open. Nestled inside were the stolen Healing Crystals of Fire.

He tucked the glowing artifacts reverently in his tunic. Immediately, they warmed his skin.

He climbed up the ladder where Miro and Obi-Wan were waiting anxiously.

He pulled the crystals out of his tunic. “They were in the fusion furnace,” he told Miro.

“They would have served as a massive power source,” Miro said, his voice slightly unsteady. He cleared his throat. “They would have started a chain reaction with the burst of energy from the reboot. If I had punched that key—”

“What we revere would have destroyed us,” Qui-Gon finished.