The Emperor's Plague

13

With each explosive she planted, Jaina felt the metal-lined hallways seem to close in on her. At her direction, Jacen set timed explosives in alternate places, while Tenel Ka drew her lightsaber and sliced partway through support beams or disabled safety interlocks.

“Blaster bolts! When this place blows, it’s really going to blow,” Jacen observed. “Hey, how many thermal detonators does it take to blow up an Imperial weapons depot?”

“Ah. Aha,” Tenel Ka said, responding to Jacen’s attempt at humor as if the question were a serious one.

“The answer is obvious.” Jaina finished setting the time delay on her detonator, moved farther down the corridor, and began setting up the next one. “Okay then,” she said, rising to the bait, “how many thermal detonators does it take?”

Still holding her lightsaber, Tenel Ka shrugged eloquently. “All of them, of course.”

Jacen chuckled. “Yeah. I think you’re right. We…”

“Wait.” Tenel Ka held up her hand for silence. She listened, then switched off her lightsaber so its hum would not mask any other noises. Jaina heard the sound and sprang to her feet.

“Company?”

Tenel Ka backed a few steps down the corridor toward Jaina and Jacen, alert and looking in the direction from which the sound had come.

“Uh-oh,” Jacen said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Something tells me that whoever our visitors are, they didn’t arrive on the Lightning Rod or the Rock Dragon.”

Jaina bit her lower lip as she felt the same tingle of warning.

“The Diversity Alliance?”

“This is a fact,” Tenel Ka said. “We must stay ahead of them in order to complete our mission.” But before the three young Jedi could move, several figures rounded a corner far down the hallway. A furry white Talz and a tentacle-faced Quarren were in the lead. They all recognized the Quarren, whom they had seen on Ryloth with Nolaa Tarkona. Lowie had told them his name.

“Rullak,” Jaina said. Before Nolaa Tarkona’s henchmen took another step, the three friends ran in the opposite direction down the corridor. Behind them the Quarren burbled a command and fired his blaster. The energy bolt spanged harmlessly off a metal wall and deflected into the ceiling, where it left a small, smoking hole.

“Excellent,” Tenel Ka said as they ran.

“What?” Jacen asked. Another shot zinged past without touching them. “They’re trying to kill us!”

He ran full tilt toward an intersection of corridors.

“Yes, excellent,” Tenel Ka said, moving into the lead beside him. Her long red-gold hair and warrior braids streamed out behind her. “Because Rullak’s aim is terrible.”

A third blaster bolt hit the floor several meters behind them, and Jaina realized that Tenel Ka was right. Jaina still carried a concussion grenade under one arm and a microdetonator in her hand. Risking a glance behind her, she noticed that the alien guards had not gained any ground. She had already set the detonator in her hand. Without stopping, she reset the timer with her free hand, activated the microdetonator’s magnetic backing, and smacked the explosive against one of the metal walls, where it clung. Then, pulling the concussion grenade from under her arm, she armed it and dropped it to the floor as Jacen and Tenel Ka disappeared around a corner ahead.

Jaina barely managed to dive to the floor around the corner before the first of her explosions went off. Jacen and Tenel Ka dragged Jaina back to her feet as the second blast shook the corridor.

“Those were only minor explosions,” she panted. “Won’t hold ’em long.”

“Hurry then,” Tenel Ka urged, switching her lightsaber back on and taking up her position in the rear as they pelted down the hallway. Sooner than they might have hoped, Diversity Alliance guards reappeared behind them, pursuing with renewed vigor. Blaster bolts—this time from several weapons—pinged and sizzled around them. Tenel Ka, running backward now, used her lightsaber to deflect any shots that came close.

“This way,” Jaina said. She turned down a branching corridor just as a blaster bolt hit close to the floor at Tenel Ka’s feet, forcing her to jump. When a second blast zinged off the corridor wall beside her, Tenel Ka threw herself backward, brought up her lightsaber, and deflected the bolt—but not without a price. Unable to regain her balance in time, Tenel Ka tried to pull herself forward again to land on her right leg, but her foot encountered a loose chunk of plasteel broken free from the ceiling. Her foot slipped, and the ankle turned at an angle it had never been meant to assume.

One of the guards saw her loss of balance and shot past the Quarren toward Tenel Ka. Knowing her leg would not hold her anyway, the warrior girl relaxed her body and allowed it to fall, so that the energy bolt sizzled harmlessly over her—a hair’s breadth from the breastplate of her lizard-hide armor. Tenel Ka tucked and rolled as she hit the floor, having the presence of mind to switch off her lightsaber as she tumbled a few meters to avoid more blaster fire and—even with only one arm—displaying her prowess as a fighter.

Jacen stepped out of the corridor in front of her, his lightsaber blazing to deflect the enemy fire.

“That way,” he yelled, jerking his head to indicate the corridor from which he had come.

Pushing off from the metal wall behind her, Tenel Ka launched herself into the side corridor in a tumbling roll. During calisthenics she’d often used such maneuvers to bring herself out of a defensive position, back to her feet, and ready to go on the offense. This time, though, when she came out of the roll with both feet planted beneath her, a jolt of pain lanced upward from her right ankle. She bit back an outcry. She could not afford to draw Jacen or Jaina’s attention away from their own defenses by causing them concern for her.

“This way,” Jaina’s voice hissed.

Jaina stood farther down the corridor at the control panel to a safety interlock, where a vaulted portal was set into a bulkhead. Jacen backed around the corner beside Tenel Ka, still deflecting blaster bolts. “Come on, you two, ” Jaina called. Her brother turned and ran, grabbing for Tenel Ka’s arm. She gritted her teeth and pounded down the hallway next to him, ignoring the spear of pain she felt every time her right foot touched the ground.

Moments later they were through, and Jaina swung the heavy portal shut behind them.

“I set an entry code on the emergency interlocks,” she explained, “but I don’t know how long this’ll hold them.”

Tenel Ka ignored the flaring pain in her right leg, tuning it out as if switching off a faulty comlink.

“Perhaps our situation calls for desperate measures,” she said.