Star Wars: Survivor's Quest

CHAPTER 19

Jinzler blinked at him, the collected images of the voyage flashing through his mind. How could Uliar even think that such excruciatingly humble travel companions could possibly be members of a race of pirates and slavers?

But even before the question formed in his mind, that last vivid image of Bearsh settled like a heavy curtain over all the rest: Bearsh standing placidly by as his wolvkils slaughtered their way across the meeting chamber. "How did you know?" he asked.

"Their voices," Uliar said as he stared into space, a distant agony reflected in his eyes. "Or rather, their speech, when they spoke in their own language just before their attack. I only heard it once, but it's something I'll never forget." The eyes came back to a hard focus. "You genuinely didn't know who they were?"

"Of course not," Jinzler said. "You think we would have let them aboard Outbound Flight if we had?"

"I don't know," Uliar said darkly. "Some of you might have." He turned his gaze toward Formbi. "Possibly the heirs of those who tried to destroy Outbound Flight in the first place."

"Ridiculous," Formbi said, his voice taut with suppressed pain. He was lying on his side along the back wall, his head cradled in Feesa's lap, the bloodstains on his sleeve growing steadily larger. "I've told you before: the Chiss Ascendancy had nothing to do with your destruction. Thrawn acted totally on his own."

"Perhaps," Uliar said. "But what about you, Aristocra? On whose behalf are you acting?"

"Why do we waste time with unimportant matters?" Feesa cut in angrily. "We must get medical attention for Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano. Where is your medical center?"

"What difference does it make?" Uliar growled. "Those things will kill anyone who tries to leave."

"No," Feesa said. "During the battle they attacked only those who carried weapons. As long as we leave unarmed and make no threatening movements, I believe we may pass safely among them."

"Interesting theory," Tarkosa said scornfully. "Are you prepared to risk all our lives on it?"

"It need be no one's risk but mine," Feesa shot back, starting to shift position in the cramped space. "I will go."

"No, don't," Evlyn said. "I saw one of them talking to the animals. I think he told it not to let any of us leave."

"Really," Uliar said, his tone suddenly subtly different. "And how would you know that?"

"I don't know," Evlyn said. "I said I think"

"I am willing to take the risk," Feesa insisted.

"I'm not," Formbi told her, reaching up to touch her arm with his fingertips. "You'll stay here."

"But—"

"That's an order, Feesa," Formbi said, his breathing starting to sound heavy as the loss of blood began to take its toll. "We will all stay here."

"Is that how Blue Ones face hard choices?" Tarkosa said scornfully. "To simply sit and do nothing until they die?"

"Maybe that's what they're hoping," Keely muttered. "Maybe their line creepers aren't as bad as they want us to think. Maybe they hope we'll go charging out there and get torn to bits."

"So instead we sit here and die?" Tarkosa shot back.

"No one's going anywhere," Jinzler said firmly. "There's no need. The Jedi and Imperials are still free. They'll find us."

Keely snorted. "Jedi," he said, biting out the name like a curse.

"There aren't any Jedi," Uliar said. "You heard Bearsh. They're already dead."

"I'll believe that when I see it," Jinzler said, turning around to peer through the chairs. The wolvkils had finished their postslaughter grooming and had moved closer to the makeshift refuge, probably drawn by the voices. They were prowling at arm's length away from the table barrier, their ears straight up, their jaws half open.

"We need a weapon," Uliar murmured. "That's what we need. A weapon."

"Those men and Chiss had weapons, too," Jinzler reminded him, looking past the wolvkils to the dead bodies scattered about the far end of the room. "What we really need is help..."

He trailed off, his eyes focusing on the nearest of the dead Peacekeepers and the comlink hooked to his belt.

The comlink the boy had reached for when Uliar had ordered the jamming to be shut off.

"Director," he said, trying to keep the sudden excitement out of his voice. "If we had one of the Peacekeepers' comlinks, could we shut off the jamming?"

"If we had one, yes," Uliar said. "There's a special twist-frequency command line built into those comlinks that allows for communication with other Peacekeepers and the command system."

"Do you know how to operate it?"

"Of course," the director growled. "I served my share of Peacekeeper duty."

"Except that the nearest comlink is ten meters away," Tarkosa pointed out. "Were you hoping to convince one of the animals to bring it to you?"

"No." Jinzler looked at Evlyn. "Not one of the animals."

The girl looked back at him; and for the first time since they'd met he saw an edge of fear in her eyes. "No," she whispered. "I can't."

"Yes, you can," Jinzler told her firmly. "You must."

"No," Rosemari cut in emphatically. "You heard her. She can't."

"Can't what?" Uliar demanded, his voice suddenly watchful.

"There's nothing special about her," Rosemari insisted, glaring warningly at Jinzler.

"Yes, there is," Jinzler said, just as firmly. "You know that as well as I do. Rosemari, it's our best chance."

"No!" Rosemari bit out, clutching her daughter tightly to her.

"So I was right," Uliar said softly.

Rosemari whirled on him. "Leave her alone," she flared at him, her voice trembling. "You're not going to send her to Three to die. You're not."

"Do you dare defy the law?" Uliar thundered.

"She hasn't done anything!" Rosemari shot back. "How can you condemn her when she hasn't even done anything?"

"She's a Jedi!" Tarkosa snarled. "That's all the law requires."

"Then the law is a fool," Jinzler said.

The three Survivors turned furious eyes on him. "Keep out of this, outlander," Tarkosa ordered. "What do you know about us, or what we went through?"

"Is that your reason for denying your children their birthright?" Jinzler demanded. "For keeping them from using and developing the talents they were born with? Is that your excuse—something that happened fifty years ago? Before any of them were even born?"

"No," Evlyn said, her face pleading, her eyes shimmering with tears. "Please, Ambassador. I don't want to do this. I don't want to be a Jedi."

Jinzler shook his head. "You don't have a choice," he told her quietly. "None of us gets to choose which talents and abilities we're born with. Our only choice is whether we take those gifts and use them to live and grow and serve, or whether we bury them in the ground and try to pretend they were never there."

Awkwardly, he shifted around in the cramped space and took the girl's hand. It was shaking, and the skin was icy cold. "You can use the Force, Evlyn," he said. "It's one of the greatest and rarest gifts that anyone can ever be given. You can't simply throw it away."

She looked up at him, blinking back tears. Her face was so tight, he saw, and yet so controlled...

And suddenly, it was as if he were four years old again, gazing across the distance at his sister Lorana's eyes for the first time. Watching the wariness and uncertainty in her own face as she turned away; feeling himself seething with confusion and resentment at the special place she clearly held in his parents' hearts.

Or was that as clear as he'd thought?

He felt his hand tighten around Evlyn's as memories he'd spent years pushing away rushed in, washing over his carefully constructed view of himself and his life like a mountain stream cutting through loose mud. An image of his mother praising him for his near-perfect grade evaluation in fourth tier. Another image, this one of his father, complimenting him on his ingenuity as they worked together to rewire a section of the family holoviewer. More images—dozens of them—all showing that his long-held belief in parental neglect hadn't been true at all.

It fact, it had been an out-and-out lie. A lie he'd created and repeated to himself over and over until he'd genuinely believed it. A lie he'd created for one reason, and one reason only.

Jealousy.

He hadn't hated Lorana at all, he saw now. He'd simply hated what she'd become, because it was what he had longed to be but never could.

He closed his eyes. So simple... and yet it had taken him most of his life to finally recognize the truth.

Or perhaps it had simply taken that long for him to admit it to himself. Perhaps, down deep, he'd known it all along.

He opened his eyes; and as he did so, the image of Lorana's face vanished back into the mists of memory, leaving him once again sitting inside a ruined starship, huddled behind a makeshift barrier, holding a little girl's hand.

He turned to Uliar. "She has the power of the Jedi, Director Uliar," he said. "She always will. You should be honored to know her."

The other's eyes bored into him like a pair of hungry duracrete slugs. But there was apparently something in Jinzler's expression that warned against further argument. The director merely gave a contemptuous snort and turned his face away without speaking.

Jinzler looked at Tarkosa and Keely in turn, silently daring each of them to object. But whatever it was Uliar had seen, they saw it, too. Neither of them spoke.

And finally, he turned back to Rosemari. "There's one last thing," he said. "She needs the approval of the people she loves. More importantly, she deserves it."

Rosemari swallowed visibly. She didn't like this—that was abundantly clear in the lines etched across her face. But beneath the fear and pain, he could see some of the same toughness he remembered in his own mother. "It's all right, Evlyn," she said softly. "It's all right. Go ahead and... and use what you have."

Evlyn looked up into her mother's face, as if mentally testing her sincerity. Then she lowered her gaze to Jinzler. "What do you want me to do?"

Jinzler took a deep breath. "The Peacekeeper over there by the wall has a comlink on his belt," he told her. "Do you see it?"

Evlyn wiggled around to where she could peer through the mesh of the chair plugging the gap between table and bulkhead. "Yes."

"It's the only thing that can shut off the jamming and let us call to our friends for help," Jinzler said. "We need you to bring it to us."

"Your friends are dead," Keely murmured.

"No," Jinzler said. "Not these Jedi. I've heard of stories about them, Councilor. They can't be killed nearly as easily as Bearsh thinks."

"And there are still Chiss warriors aboard our ship," Feesa added. "Many of them. They can help us, too."

"But only if we can call them," Jinzler said, gazing into Evlyn's eyes. "Only if you can bring us that comlink."

Evlyn set her jaw. "All right," she said. "I'll try."

Jinzler felt his throat ache with an old, old pain. Do or do not. There is no try. His father had quoted that Jedi dictum to him over and over again as he was growing up. But never before now had he been able to get past his own resentment and see the encouragement embedded in those words. Pressing his cheek against the chairs above him, wincing as one of the wolvkils snorted a breath of fetid air practically in his face, he looked across the room.

At the Peacekeeper's side, the comlink twitched.

Uliar grunted something under his breath. The comlink twitched again, harder this time; and then, suddenly, it popped free of its clip and clattered onto the deck.

The wolvkils paused in their pacing, all three shaggy heads turning toward the sound. "Steady," Jinzler murmured. "Let it sit there a minute."

Evlyn nodded silently. A few seconds later, with nothing more to draw their attention, the wolvkils resumed their pacing. "All right," Jinzler said. "Now start it toward us. Slowly, and as steady as you can."

Slowly, though not at all steadily, the comlink began to move across the deck. One of the wolvkils paused again as it jerked its way to within three meters of the table, the animal's dark eyes watching the small cylinder with obvious curiosity. But none of its enemies was making any of the threatening moves it had been taught to react to, and its trainers clearly hadn't anticipated a situation quite like this. The wolvkil watched for a moment longer as the comlink rolled and bumped its way along, then lost interest and returned its attention to the creatures cowering behind their barrier. Again, Jinzler found himself holding his breath.

Then, almost anticlimactically, the comlink was at the chair. Reaching out carefully, Evlyn plucked the device in through one of the gaps in the mesh.

And an instant later jerked backward with a gasp as a snarling wolvkil slammed his snout into the chair, nearly knocking it out of position.

"Give it to me," Jinzler snapped, snatching the comlink out of the startled girl's hand. If a loose comlink rolling across the floor wasn't on the wolvkils' list of threats, something being held in an enemy's hand obviously was. "Here," he added, tossing it to Uliar as he swung his legs over and braced his feet against the chair. The wolvkil hit it again, but he'd gotten to it in time and it held steady. "Shut off the jamming."

Uliar's reply, if he made one, was lost as a set of snarling jaws and a clawed paw abruptly slapped into the chair directly above Jinzler's head. "Brace the chairs," Formbi called, struggling to sit upright and getting a one-handed grip on the back of the nearest one. Just in time; the third wolvkil leapt up onto the array of chairs above them, howling furiously as it bit and shoved its snout at them, trying to find a way through. One of its hind legs slipped down between two of them, and the animal howled even more furiously as it flailed around trying to extricate itself. The clawed paw slashed with random viciousness in the enclosed space, and Feesa gasped as it caught her across the shoulder, spilling a line of blood onto the bright yellow of her tunic.

"It's off!" Uliar called over the noise.

Holding grimly onto one of the chair backs with one hand, Jinzler thumbed on his comlink with the other, keying for general broadcast. "Luke—Mara—Commander Fel," he called. They couldn't be dead. They couldn't. "Emergency!"

Beneath her, Luke gave one final tug on the cables, bringing Mara's eyes level with the lower edge of the turbolift door. "How's that?" he called.

"Good," Mara called back, running her fingertips along the corroded metal at the side of the door. In actual fact, another pull or two might have been a little better for what she needed. But it had been a long climb, and even with all the strength he'd been able to draw from the Force Luke's shoulders beneath her legs had been trembling with muscle fatigue for the past five minutes. Better that she strain a little herself and let him conserve what he had left for whatever lay ahead.

Because if they were right about that soundless cry they'd both sensed a minute ago, there was serious trouble up here.

Ah—there it was. "Got it," she announced. Wrapping her fingertips around the manual release, she gave it a careful tug. There was a click as it came loose; stretching out to the Force, she pried the door open.

But instead of opening to the cheery or at least adequate light of a standard turbolift lobby, it opened into almost total darkness.

"How come it's so dark?" Luke asked.

"Probably because there aren't any lights," Mara told him, looking around as she got a grip on the edge of the opening and pulled herself up and through. Strangely, even most of the permlights that should have been in the area seemed to be out. "We may have been wrong about this being the main living area. Wait a second," she added, peering down the corridor. "I can see some lights way aft. Maybe everybody's back there."

"Or maybe they're not," a voice came from the darkness to her right. "Just stay where you are."

Mara turned toward the sound—

And flinched back as the beam of a glow rod blazed to life in her face.

She reacted instantly, dropping and throwing herself to her left in a flat half roll that brought her back up into a squatting position with her lightsaber ready in her hand. The man with the glow rod tried to track the beam to her motion, but the half roll fooled him and the beam overshot her. For a fraction of a second she was able to see past the light to the shadowy figure behind it, and to the weapon he was holding in his other hand.

First things first. Reaching out with the Force, she got a grip on the weapon and twisted its muzzle away from her.

To her surprise, instead of fighting against the push as most people instinctively did, the figure continued rolling his hand in the same direction, rotating at wrist and elbow and twisting out of her Force grip as he would have from a normal combat wrist lock. He swung the arm back around in a tight circle, and was bringing it back to bear when the glow rod beam came back to her face. "I said stay put," he snapped.

"Nice move," Mara complimented him, shielding her eyes from the light. This time, she recognized the voice. "Guardian Pressor, I presume?"

"Put down the lightsaber," Pressor ordered. "Then move away—"

He broke off with a gasp of pain, his glow rod twisting wildly in his grip and coming to rest pointed at the ceiling. Mara blinked away the last remnants of the sparkles in her eyes in time to see his blaster wrench itself out of his hand and go flying toward the turbolift. "Sorry," Luke apologized, pulling himself the rest of the way out of the shaft and catching the weapon in his outstretched hand. "But I don't think we've got time for a debate. Something's gone wrong up here."

"Obviously," Pressor growled, rubbing his wrist. "What did you do to the power?"

"It wasn't us," Mara said. "All we did was ungimmick the car you left us in—"

She broke off as a beep came from her belt. "The jamming seems to be stopped, too," she added, pulling out her comlink and touching the switch.

"—ara—Commander Fel," Jinzler's voice came urgently. "Emergency!"

"We're here," Mara said, throwing a sharp look at Luke. There were panicky voices and the sounds of serious commotion in the background. "Report."

"We're in the council meeting chamber," Jinzler said, clearly fighting to keep his voice steady. "Bearsh has us trapped by those wolvkils of theirs—"

"Wait a minute," Luke said into his own comlink. "The wolvkils? What wolvkils?"

"The ones they've been wearing everywhere," Jinzler ground out. "They weren't dead, just in some kind of suspended animation—very slick, very advanced. And they're not Geroons, either. They're Vagaari."

Pressor hissed something under his breath. "Vagaari?"

There was a muffled crash from the background. "What's happening?" Luke asked.

"The wolvkils are trying to get to us," Jinzler said. "We've got them blocked, but I don't know how much longer we can keep them out."

Mara looked at Pressor. "Which way?"

"There," Pressor said, pointing back toward the lighted area Mara had spotted earlier.

"Show us," Luke told Pressor, handing him back his blaster. "Jinzler? We're on our way."

"Watch out for Bearsh and the others," Jinzler warned as they followed Pressor down the corridor. "They left all the wolvkils in here with us, but they've got some nasty-looking stinging insects they use for personal protection. They might have other weapons, too."

"Got it," Luke said. "Any idea where they were heading?"

"They just said they'd be wandering around," Jinzler said. "It seems they also brought a supply of line creepers."

"Terrific," Luke muttered, glancing into a darkened doorway as they passed. "Fel? You there?"

"Right here, Luke," Fel's voice came promptly. "We caught the gist. What do you want us to do?"

"We're on D-Five," Luke said. "Where are you?"

"D-Six, about midway back along the starboard corridor," Fel told him. "You want us to head back to the turbolifts and join you up there?"

"The forward group isn't working," Luke told him. "From the way the lights and power have gone out, I'd say Bearsh has been here already with his line creepers. Guardian, are the aft turbolifts operational?"

"They should be," Pressor said. "I've got everything locked down between Four and Five, but from Six up to here they should still work."

"You copy that?" Luke called.

"Copy," Fel confirmed. "General Drask's calling the Chaf Envoy for the rest of his warriors. If we hurry, maybe we can catch Bearsh and his friends in a pincer."

"Except that Pressor's locked down all the turbolifts from D-Four," Mara interjected. "That was what you said, wasn't it?"

"It was," Pressor confirmed, punching keys on his own comlink. "Maybe I'd better confirm that was actually done. Trilli?"

Someone answered in a voice too quiet for Mara to hear. Pressor lowered his own voice, half turning away and speaking rapidly as he brought the person on the other end up to date.

Luke caught Mara's eye. "What do you think?" he asked.

"We don't have time to be creative," Mara said. "Not with Jinzler and the others under attack. Straight in is about all we've got to work with."

"Agreed," Luke said. "Unless we want to layer the attack, with us leading the charge and the Five-Oh-First, the Chiss, and Pressor's Peacekeepers coming in backup waves."

"We may not have any choice on the layering part," Mara pointed out. They'd reached a section of the ship where most of the permlights were functioning, she noted, as well as the majority of the regular lights. The line creepers must not have gotten a stranglehold on this area yet. "The Chiss in particular are going to have to gear up from stage zero. Who knows how long that'll take?"

"Let's find out," Luke said, lifting the comlink to his lips again. "Fel, did you hear the question?"

"Yes, but it appears to be a moot point," Fel said grimly. "Drask can't make contact with the ship. No answer, on any channel, from anyone."

Mara looked at Luke, her heart suddenly tight in her chest. He was staring back at her, a haunted expression on his face. The flurry of deaths they'd both sensed while they were down on D-l...

"Luke?"

"Yes, we heard," Luke said. "Better get your team up here on the double. There's a good chance they may already have taken out the Chaf Envoy."

"Understood," Fel said grimly. "We're on our way."

Luke clicked off the comlink. "Guardian?"

"Looks like you can scratch most of our help, too," Pressor said darkly as he jammed his comlink back onto his belt. "Six of my Peacekeepers are missing."

"Six out of how many?" Mara asked.

Pressor snorted gently. "Eleven, including me. We weren't exactly a serious fighting force to begin with." He waved his blaster. "But they were here the whole time, either in the turbolift or with my people. When could any of them have slipped away, either back to your ship or to hit my men?"

"The key is that they weren't all here," Luke told him. "We had to leave one of them behind."

"Because of injuries sustained in a mysterious sneak attack," Mara added sourly. "What do you think, Luke? They shot Estosh themselves?"

"It's starting to look that way," Luke agreed, pausing to look down a cross-corridor before passing it by. "But at least they don't have the element of surprise anymore."

"They apparently had it long enough," Pressor said bitterly.

"Don't worry, we'll get them," Mara said. "What did you tell your people?"

"I told the ones who are left to hold position, observe, and stand ready to defend those around them if attacked," Pressor said, his jaw set belligerently. "Two of them were in that room with your people, and I'm not going to risk the others on some bantha-brained attack until I have a better idea what we're up against."

If he was expecting an argument, he was disappointed. "I agree," Luke said. "Actually, right now we need their eyes and ears around the ship more than we need the extra firepower."

"Absolutely," Mara agreed. "After all, how much trouble can four or five Vagaari make?"

She would remember that rhetorical question for a long time afterward. With Pressor in the lead, they rounded a jog in the corridor and ran straight into the Vagaari.

But not four Vagaari. Not even five Vagaari.

There were eight of them, Bearsh and seven others, striding down the corridor toward them about ten meters away. Bearsh was still dressed in his usual robe and tunic, minus his wolvkil, but the others were outfitted like soldiers, with helmets and full combat armor, armed with an eclectic mix of Chiss charrics and Old Republic blasters and carbines. Two wolvkils prowled ahead of them like advance scouts, while five more wove in and out of their formation like a fighter escort.

The two groups spotted each other at the same moment. "Halt!" Pressor ordered, snapping his blaster up to point at Bearsh.

The Vagaari halted, all right, in exactly the way Mara would have expected trained soldiers to. The four in front dropped instantly to one knee, giving the ones behind them a clear shot as all seven raised their weapons in silent warning. The wolvkils halted more reluctantly, their eyes glaring balefully at the humans, their tails swishing restlessly.

"Easy," Luke murmured, reaching out a hand to gently push Pressor's blaster out of line. At the same time, he subtly eased a shoulder in front of the other where he would be in a position to protect him if and when the Vagaari decided to start shooting. His lightsaber was ready in his hand, Mara noted, but as yet unignited. "Hello, Bearsh," he called to the Vagaari. "I see you've brought some friends."

"Ah—the Jedi," Bearsh said. If he was at all worried by their sudden appearance, it didn't show in his face. "So you survived the turbolift, after all. I'm very sorry for you."

"Why?" Mara asked, a part of her mind studying the Vagaari soldiers and trying to work through the unexpected numbers. Only five Vagaari had been invited aboard the Chaf Envoy; that much she was sure of. So where had the rest been hidden?

"Because it would have meant a quicker and less painful death for you," Bearsh said. "Now it will involve much more suffering."

"Why does anyone have to die?" Mara asked reasonably. "Why don't you tell us what you want? Maybe we can work something out."

Bearsh's eyes flashed. "You fool," he bit out. "You think the Vagaari can be bought off like trinket dealers in the marketplace?"

"Well, you came on this mission for some reason," Mara pointed out. "What was it?"

Bearsh snorted. "The avenging of fifty years of Vagaari humiliation," he said. "The achieving of fifty years of Vagaari desire. Does that tell you anything?"

"More than you'd think," Mara assured him. It did nothing of the sort, of course, at least not yet. But one of the first rules she'd been taught about interrogation technique was that every bit of information that could be coaxed out of an unwary or talkative subject was a piece that might later prove important to the overall puzzle. "And have you achieved those noble goals?"

Bearsh's twin mouths curved in a bitter smile. "Beyond our most optimistic hopes," he said. "The human remnant we leave behind will spend their last hours cursing themselves for how they have unwittingly served us."

"Sounds intriguing," Mara said encouragingly. "How about letting us in on the secret? We're all going to die soon anyway, right?"

Bearsh's eyes shifted to Luke. "Is this Jedi heroism?" he asked contemptuously. "To let your female speak while you cower in silence?"

Luke stirred. "I'm hardly cowering," he said mildly. "I let Mara do the talking because she's better at this sort of thing than I am. Comes of being trained to interrogate prisoners."

The Vagaari's smile turned smug. "You have it upside down, Jedi," he said softly. "And we have wasted enough time with you. Now, die."

He murmured something, and abruptly the two wolvkils in the lead leapt forward. Mara caught a flicker in Luke's sense as he prepared for combat— "No," she told him, brushing his chest with her fingertips as she took a long step to put herself between him and Pressor and the charging animals. "You did all the climbing. This one's mine."

Before he could argue the point she took another long step forward, stretching out to the Force as she gauged the distance and timing. Ears laid back, salivating jaws wide open, the wolvkils' paws hit the deck one final time and leapt straight for her throat—

With a quick sidestep, Mara ignited her lightsaber and cut both of them in half.

She turned to the Vagaari as the remains of the animals hit the deck behind her with sickening multiple thuds. "Now," she said conversationally, holding her lightsaber in ready position. "What was that about someone dying?"

Bearsh's eyes were wide, his face rigid with shock. The smug smile had vanished completely. His mouths worked a moment, and with a sort of strangled gasp he spat something in his own language.

In answer, seven alien weapons opened fire.

Mara was ready. Her lightsaber flashed as she opened her mind to the Force, letting it guide her hands, slashing the brilliant blue blade across the mixture of red and blue bolts. Her sharp focus on the threat in front of her gave her a sort of tunnel vision, but though she couldn't see him she could sense that Luke was at her side with his own lightsaber deflecting the bolts into bulkheads and deck and ceiling. Dimly, she sensed someone else firing nearby, and noticed one of the Vagaari stagger in his armor, his weapon twisted to fire uselessly into the ceiling. Pressor, she realized in a distant sort of way, firing through the defensive barrier she and Luke had set up in front of him. There was another shout of alien language, ringed by a sense of rage and desperation—

The remaining wolvkils leapt forward, apparently oblivious to the blaster bolts scorching the air around them as they charged toward the defenders. Mara took a step forward as Luke took one backward, her lightsaber never missing a beat of their defense as Luke closed down his weapon and dropped to one knee behind her. She might be better than he was at detailed lightsaber work, but even after a long climb he was far and away the best she'd ever seen at this kind of focused accuracy with the Force. If the Vagaari weren't already sufficiently impressed, she thought as she continued to deflect their shots, this ought to do it. The wolvkils reached their jumping-off spot and started to leap straight at her—

They squealed like small lap dokriks, coming to an abrupt and simultaneous halt as Luke stretched out with the Force to momentarily scramble their nervous systems. As they stood stunned, he sent a second, more precise mental jolt into their systems, his mind searching out and focusing on their sleep centers.

With a group sigh, the animals' legs collapsed beneath them and they dropped unconscious to the deck.

Luke got back to his feet. "Well?" he challenged.

Farmboy—the word ran affectionately through Mara's mind. She herself had been trained in ruthlessness, taught never to risk herself for those who threatened her and who, by definition, had therefore forfeited their right to live.

But Luke didn't see things that way. Even as the years had grown and matured and hardened him, the inner core of idealism and mercy he'd brought with him out of that moisture farm on Tatooine had never faltered. Others might sneer at that, she knew, or use his farming background as an insult.

But for her, the title was an acknowledgment of his moral high ground, a large part of what she loved and admired most about her husband. And at the end of the day, she slept better for knowing that even their deadliest opponents had been given every chance they could possibly hope to receive.

But in this case, the chance was wasted. Bearsh's only response was to scream another order. His soldiers' only response was to intensify their rate of fire.

And as the shots began to come perilously close to her face, Mara knew that this particular battle had come to an end.

That end came in the form of a lightsaber whipping through the air beside her, deftly slipping between the frenetic slicing movements of her own weapon. It flashed down the corridor, spinning like a blazing crop harvester disk, slicing through the Vagaari weapons and armor and bodies.

Two seconds later, it was over.

Mara straightened from her combat stance, breathing hard as she studied the fallen soldiers, stretching out with the Force for signs of any surprises still lurking nearby. But Luke had done what was necessary with his usual efficiency.

It was only then that she saw that Bearsh wasn't among the fallen.

"Where did he go?" she demanded, taking another look.

"Who?" Luke asked, looking up from the wolvkil he had knelt to examine.

"Bearsh," Mara said. "He's gone." She turned to look at Pressor. "Guardian?"

Pressor didn't answer. He was staring at the crumpled Vagaari bodies, his jaw hanging open in disbelief. "Pressor?" Mara tried again.

With an effort, he raised his eyes to her. "What?"

"Bearsh," Mara repeated, trying to stifle her impatience. After fifty years without Jedi, these people had apparently forgotten what they were capable of.

"Right," Pressor said, visibly pulling himself together. "He, uh, he took off right after"—he shot Luke a furtive glance—"after you put the animals to sleep. Or whatever you did to them. The rest cranked up their rate of fire, and he took off back down the corridor."

"We'd better get after him," Mara said grimly. "Luke?"

"Go ahead," he told her, moving to the next wolvkil. "I want to make sure they won't wake up until we're ready to deal with them. Go on—I'll catch up."

"Okay," Mara said, starting down the corridor. "Come on, Pressor—you have to show me where this meeting room is," she added, pulling out her comlink and flicking it on. "Fel, stay on your toes," she called. "It looks like we've got more Vagaari to deal with than we were expecting."

There was no answer. "Fel?" she tried again.

Still nothing. "I would say," Pressor said quietly, "that they've probably already figured that out."