Star Wars: Survivor's Quest

CHAPTER 24

"I love you."

Luke jerked slightly as he came out of his healing trance. "Are we there?" he asked, working moisture into his mouth.

"We're there," she confirmed. "More importantly, so is our wayward Dreadnaught. It came into the system about fifteen minutes ago and is angling around the star to get into position for the next jump. It should be crossing our bow in about half an hour."

Luke peered out the canopy at the asteroid Mara had settled the Skysprite beside. "Nice location," he complimented her. "How'd you manage to sneak in without them spotting you?"

"Actually, we were a little ahead of them," Mara told him. "They weren't anywhere in sight, so I gambled that they hadn't picked up an hour or two somewhere along the way and settled in to wait."

"Good," Luke said, stretching again and bringing his seat back to a sitting position. "Where exactly are we?"

"Well, that's the bad news," Mara admitted. "We're only another hour or two outside the Brask Oto Command Station. If we let them get back into hyperspace, we're going to be pushing it to take back the ship in time."

"Okay, so it'll be a challenge," Luke said, offhandedly. "I think we can handle it."

Mara frowned suspiciously at him. "You're not going all super-Jedi on me, are you?"

Luke gave her an innocent look. "Me?"

"Skywalker—" she said warningly.

He grinned once, then sobered. "No, of course not," he assured her. "I just don't think they're going to put up that much resistance, that's all. We pretty well proved aboard Outbound Flight that we can take them."

"We proved it to the ones who didn't survive," Mara pointed out. "I'm not convinced Bearsh and Estosh will have gotten the message. You're not really expecting them to just surrender, are you?"

"No, not really," Luke said regretfully. "But I don't think their troops will just stand there and get themselves slaughtered, either. If we can push them back to the bridge, I'm going to offer Estosh a deal: we'll let him and his people leave the Dreadnaught, get back into their carrier, and leave in peace."

"Under Chiss escort, of course," Mara said. "And if he doesn't go for it?"

Luke grimaced. "Then we'll just have to take them out."

"Sounds reasonable," Mara said. "Come on; you've got just enough time for a quick snack before we have to get ready."

They were in their vac suits and back at their chosen control boards when the Dreadnaught appeared around the side of the asteroid. It was, Luke noted, nearly five minutes ahead of Mara's estimate. Estosh was apparently pushing the ancient ship for all it was worth.

"Okay," he muttered, watching the huge mass of metal lumber past and trying to gauge the best moment to swing out of their partial concealment. The massive sublight engines blazed into view—

He threw power to the Skysprite's drive, blasting them away from the asteroid on a vector paralleling the Dreadnaught's course. Keeping them clear of the larger ship's ion emissions, he swung them around the starboard side and underneath. The stumps of the four broken turbolift pylons looked like sections of a model maker's mounting stand in the light from the distant star. "Anything?" he asked as he swung toward the aft-portside tube.

"No course twitching; nothing tracking us," Mara reported. "Of course, the aft sensors are the ones the Colonists would probably have skipped if they hadn't felt like fixing everything."

"Or they may just have skipped the point-defense weaponry back here," Luke reminded her, easing up to the shattered end of the pylon for a closer look. It didn't look like there was going to be enough room for him to lift the Skysprite straight upward, canopy-first, as he would into a standard docking bay.

But if he rotated the ship ninety degrees, standing it on its drive nozzles and taking it in nose-first...

"I hope," Mara said, "that you're not thinking what I think you're thinking."

"I am," Luke said. "Hang on."

He gave the engines a burst of power, pushing the small craft ahead a dozen meters along the Dreadnaught's underside. Then, shutting down the main drive, he shifted power to the forward-ventral maneuvering jets, pitching the Skysprite's nose upward. The pylon stump slid past, and he fired one final burst from the main drive, running them straight upward into the tube.

To the accompaniment of a horrendous screech of torn metal.

Luke fought back a wince as he activated the forward landing claw, firing it past the turbolift cars to a more solid connection with the wall. "Was that the hyperdrive ring?" he asked as he took in the cable slack, winching the Skysprite another couple of meters into the pylon.

"Let's just say we'd better not need a quick exit," Mara said. "Aside from that, it was a classy maneuver."

"Thanks," Luke said, shutting the Skysprite's systems back to standby and making sure his vac suit was sealed. "At least we don't have to wonder whether or not they heard us coming. Grab the sealant kit and let's go."

The Skysprite's canopy was, fortunately, reasonably flat, and they were able to get it open in the cramped space without having to cut their way out. Working his way up the landing claw cable, Luke maneuvered between the parked turbolift cars to that last-second gash he'd carved with his thrown lightsaber and squeezed through it.

The damage turned out to be even more impressive than he'd expected. The lightsaber handle had apparently bumped the top of the door a fraction of a second before the blade had closed down, swinging it up and nicking a small hole in the lobby ceiling.

"Nice," Mara said, nodding to the latter as she handed Luke the sealant kit through the opening and then eased her own way through it. "You cut off not only the turbolift lobby, but a section of the next deck up, too. Anything up there they would have particularly missed?"

"Just the next turbolift lobby up," Luke said, looking around. His lightsaber was lying over in a corner beside four dead Vagaari who had been in the wrong place when the Dreadnaught broke free and the lobby depressurized. The blast doors that had reacted to the emergency were about five meters away down each of the three corridors leading away from the lobby. "I think one of the aft electronics supply rooms is just down the corridor from it, though, and a droid maintenance facility is off in the other direction," he added, starting across the lobby. "Depending on which blast doors reacted up there, either or both of those might have been locked away from them, too."

Mara grunted. "It would have been a lot simpler if none of them had worked," she pointed out, taking the sealant kit back from him and opening it. "Then the whole ship would have depressurized, and they'd all have died right then and there."

"Which they obviously didn't, since the ship is still under power," Luke pointed out, retrieving his lightsaber and taking a quick look at the alien bodies.

"I didn't say I believed it," Mara said. "I just said it would have been simpler. Anyone we know?"

"Nope," Luke said, experimentally igniting the lightsaber. The green-white blade flashed to existence with gratifying strength. "Good," he said, closing it down again and hooking it onto his belt next to Lorana's. "I was afraid the activator might have stuck on and drained all the power. You need any help?"

"No, I've got it," Mara said, unfolding the patch to the proper size and starting to seal its edges around the gash. "You just stand there and be ready for trouble. They may try to pull something cute even before we get the lobby repressurized."

"Right." Moving to the blast door blocking the corridor leading forward, he stretched out to the Force. There were alien minds in that direction, he could tell, and a high degree of maliciousness. But that was all he could read. Holding his lightsaber ready, he waited.

No attack had come by the time Mara finished laying out the patch and checking its integrity. "Ready?" Luke asked as she packed the kit away.

"Ready," Mara confirmed. "You sure you don't want to use the emergency oxygen tanks to repressurize? It would let us get out of these suits before we have to do any serious fighting."

Luke looked over at the red-rimmed emergency cabinet fastened to the side wall with its collection of oxygen tanks, sealant kits, and medpacs. "I'd rather leave that in reserve," he told her. "Depending on how much of a fight the Vagaari put up, we may wind up needing extra oxygen somewhere else along the line."

"Okay." Igniting her own lightsaber, she took up a ready stance a couple of meters in front of the blast doors. "Remember, just nick it. Enough to let the air in but not enough to trigger anything they might have on the other side."

"Right." Standing as far off to the side as he could, feeling awkward in the confines of his vac suit, Luke jabbed the end of the green-white blade through one corner of the thick door.

There was a sudden hissing noise, and a stream of air began to blow in through the opening, its edges swirling white as water vapor condensed and froze in the vacuum. He glanced at the atmosphere tester on his vac suit, wondering if the Vagaari might have tried poisoning the air on this deck. But there was nothing. A minute later the whistling faded away as the pressures equalized.

"Anything?" Mara asked.

Luke checked the tester again. "Looks clear," he said.

"Good." Laying her lightsaber on the deck, Mara popped her helmet and started stripping off the vac suit. "I hate trying to move in these things. Watch for company, will you?"

A minute later she was finished. A minute after that, both vac suits were off and piled neatly back near the turbolift doors. "Here we go," Luke commented as Mara took up a stance a couple of meters back from the blast door, her lightsaber humming in front of her. "Let's see what the Vagaari have come up with."

Reaching out with the Force, he keyed the control. Ponderously, the blast doors began to slide back into the walls.

And from a dozen standing and kneeling Vagaari five meters back came a withering hail of blasterfire.

Luke was ready, keying the doors instantly closed again as Mara scattered away the shots that had made it in. "Well, that answers that question," she commented.

"Partially, anyway," Luke corrected. "Did you happen to notice the little flat boxes lying along the sides of the walls?"

She shook her head. "Observation was your job," she reminded him. "My job was staying alive."

"Right," Luke said. "Anyway, they were just like the little gray boxes they used to mine the turbolift, except that these were white."

"White?" Mara frowned, then nodded. "Of course—repainted to blend in with the corridor walls. How many were there?"

"I didn't get an actual count," Luke said, studying the image in his memory. "But they were spaced a meter or two apart and ran all the way down to where the corridor jogs to the right."

"Cute," Mara said. "So the next time we open the blast doors, we'll probably see the Vagaari in full retreat. We'll chase them, watching for blaster shots, and whoever's handling the detonators will have his choice of when to blow us to bits."

"Something like that," Luke said, looking at the ceiling above them. "What do you think? We go up?"

"They'll probably have something ready up there, too," Mara said, her voice and sense suddenly thoughtful. "After all, they've seen what lightsabers can do."

"You have an idea?" Luke prompted.

She favored him with an evil smile. "What they haven't seen is this," she said. Letting go of her lightsaber, she levitated it in front of her.

"Okay," Luke said. "So?"

Mara's reply was a twitch of her head back toward the turbolift lobby. Frowning, Luke followed. She stepped to the Vagaari bodies in the corner and, stretching out to the Force, levitated one of them upright. Focusing her control, she moved its arms and legs, keeping it a couple of centimeters above the floor, making it stride rather shakily across the lobby as if it was still alive.

Or, rather, as if he and Mara had put on their enemies' armor as a disguise.

She lifted her eyebrows questioningly. "Doesn't look all that realistic," he pointed out doubtfully, levitating one of the other bodies for himself and sending it across the deck. His didn't look any more alive than hers did. "But if we keep them moving, the Vagaari may not notice."

"I think it's worth a try, anyway," Mara said.

"Definitely," he agreed. "Let's do it."

Moving their puppets to the blast doors, they settled them into standing position. "Quickly, now," Mara said, crouching down beside the wall where her presence wouldn't be immediately obvious. "We don't want anyone getting a clear look."

Luke nodded. Stretching out to the Force, he keyed open the doors.

Mara's prediction had hit it exactly. The Vagaari who had been firing from just outside the doors were already halfway down the corridor, firing wildly behind them in full retreat. Mara sent her puppet charging after them, its arms and legs pumping madly. Luke's was right behind it. The apparently terrified retreating Vagaari disappeared around the distant corner—

And with an earsplitting blast, the entire corridor exploded in a burst of fire and smoke.

Luke winced, feeling his puppet twist around as it was buffeted violently by the blast before sprawling out of his control onto the deck. His ears ringing, he caught Mara's eye and nodded. She nodded back, and together they sprinted ahead through the smoke and heat.

They met the returning Vagaari just around the corner as the aliens headed back to check the results of their handiwork. The battle was over very quickly.

"Twelve down," Luke commented as he looked down the corridor. There were no signs of trouble or activity, at least not up to the next jog some ten meters ahead. "Plus the four from the turbolift lobby makes sixteen."

"Which might actually be a significant number if we knew how many there were to begin with." Mara nudged one of the bodies with her boot. "Recognize anyone?"

Luke frowned at the alien face. "Is that Bearsh?"

"Sure looks like him," she said. "These guys are a lot more impressive in combat armor than in those silly robes, aren't they?"

"Most species are," Luke said. "Looks like he was leading this particular charge personally. That's a good sign."

"How so?"

"Estosh called him a general," he reminded her. "If he's sending generals to handle field operations, it might imply he hasn't got all that many warriors left."

"Good point," Mara agreed. "Between the dent we made in his troops on Outbound Flight and the people he absolutely has to have crewing the Dreadnaught's duty stations, he may very well be hurting for bodies to throw at us right now."

"Right," Luke said. "Either that, or Bearsh was simply being overconfident."

"You are so very helpful sometimes," Mara said, shaking her head in mock annoyance. "I'm surprised you didn't go into politics. Come on, let's get moving before they come up with something else."

They reached the corridor jog Luke had noted without further incident and paused there, looking carefully around the bend. Still no signs of enemies, but twenty meters ahead another set of blast doors had been closed across their path. "Looks clear," he murmured.

"There are three sets of doors leading off each side of the corridor, though," Mara pointed out. "Perfect place to hide while you're waiting to pounce."

Luke closed his eyes, stretching out his senses. He could feel the malevolent, brooding presence of Vagaari all over the Dreadnaught, scattered through his mind like vaguely defined bubbles of heat in a cold room. But none seemed to be very close. "I'm not picking up anyone in there," he said.

"Neither am I," Mara confirmed reluctantly. "I still don't like it."

"Then let's get through it quickly." Throwing a last look at the empty corridor behind them, he rounded the corner and headed forward.

He was just passing the middle set of doors when the left-hand door ahead of him slid open, and five growling wolvkils padded into the corridor.

He braked to a halt, lifting his lightsaber warningly toward the animals. From behind Mara came the sound of another door opening, and he glanced back as four more of the predators filed in from one of the aft set of doors to block their retreat.

"Well, this is cute," Mara murmured. "You see what the stylish wolvkil is wearing this season?"

Luke hadn't; but now his jaw tightened as he spotted the fragmentation grenade slung under each wolvkil's belly. "I was wondering what they thought this was going to accomplish," he commented, adjusting his grip on his lightsaber as he tried to think. So far the wolvkils didn't seem inclined to attack, but were contenting themselves with growling from a distance. But that could change at any moment.

Mara had come to the same conclusion. "Let's try a strategic withdrawal while we think this out," she suggested, easing up to Luke's right and tapping the release on the door beside him. It slid open, and Luke sensed her concentration as she gave the interior a quick check. "Clear," she said. "Come on."

Together, they eased into the room, lightsabers ready. The wolvkils made no move to follow. Mara touched the inner door control, and the panel slid shut. In the glow from his lightsaber Luke found the light pad, flicked it on, and closed down his weapon.

They were in what appeared to be one of the many pumping stations that were by necessity scattered around any ship this size. Sets of conduits snaked along the walls and high ceiling, most of them running into one or the other of two huge and silently chugging rectangular boxes with rounded corners set against the bulkhead across from the door. "Cozy," Luke commented, looking around. There were no other exits from the room, but of course that didn't mean anything to a Jedi with a lightsaber. "Let's see if we can carve ourselves a back door," he suggested. Stepping to the forward wall, he ignited his lightsaber—

"Wait," Mara said.

Luke paused, looking over his shoulder at her. "What?" he asked.

She was gazing at the wall in front of him, her sense tight and suspicious. "Luke, what's the usual procedure for sealing a hull breach?"

He frowned. "You send some repair droids to the vicinity, close the blast doors behind them, pump out the air to equalize pressures, then open the inner doors to give them access to the leak."

"Right," Mara said, nodding. "The Vagaari have had four days to seal the gash you cut in the turbolift lobby. We know there are housekeeping droids still working, and we know there were enough repair droids rolling around at one time to fix all the damage Thrawn did to the hull. And anyway, even if none of them works anymore, Estosh surely brought a pressure suit or two along they could have used to go in themselves and fix it."

"But they didn't," Luke said thoughtfully. "Why not?"

"Because if we'd come up the pylon and found your gash all sewn up, we might have decided to come aboard somewhere else," Mara concluded grimly. "This way, they could reasonably predict where we'd come in, and could concentrate on making this one corridor as much of a death trap as they could."

She nodded toward the wall in front of him. "So why should this part of it be any different?"

"Good question," Luke agreed, closing down his lightsaber and stepping aside. "In that case, you'd better do this."

It took three delicate strokes for her to tease a scratch all the way through the bulkhead. And it was indeed a very good thing he'd let her go first.

"Terrific," she said darkly, sniffing at the liquid trickling down the wall. "Secondary reactant fuel, which most certainly wouldn't normally be stored next to a pump room. Estosh is kindly offering us the opportunity of immolating ourselves."

"How generous of him," Luke said, looking up at the ceiling. "I wonder if they've ever seen how high a Jedi can jump."

"I don't think so," she said. "But it wouldn't take a Jedi to climb that maze of pipes fastened to the wall. If they were being thorough, they'd certainly have booby-trapped the ceiling, too."

"Right," he conceded. "What about down? Any idea what's below us?"

"Usually it would be substructure, environmental equipment, and other bulk stuff," Mara said. "Not a place you want to go randomly swinging lightsabers."

"So we can't go down, up, or sideways, and outside the door there's nothing but wolvkils and fragmentation grenades," Luke concluded, looking around for inspiration.

"And we've got a reactant fuel leak going," Mara reminded him. "Any ideas?"

Luke's gaze paused on the two humming pumps. Each of them was nearly two meters tall and a meter wide, with a casing built of heavy metal and a front access cover shaped like a rectangular, flat-bottomed bowl with rounded corners and edges. "Actually, yes," he told her, popping the release on one of the covers and swinging it open. The cover was as strongly built as the rest of the casing, with a ten-centimeter lip all the way around the perimeter. "Let's get these doors off."

Igniting his lightsaber, he sliced off the hinges, catching the cover in a Force grip as it started to fall ponderously toward him. "I hope you're not planning to use these things as shields," Mara warned as she cut the other cover free. "There are an awful lot of grenades out there."

"No, I've got something else in mind," Luke assured her, leaning the cover up against the wall by the door and closing down his lightsaber. "Time to go for the high ground." Getting a grip on two of the pipes fastened to the wall, he started to climb.

Mara followed silently, clearly puzzled but willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Midway through their climb, he could sense when she suddenly caught on. "Okay," he said when they were about two meters off the deck. Looking down over his shoulder, he stretched out to the Force and lifted the two covers to hover in the air just beneath him and Mara, their bowl sides up. "You ready?" he said.

Her answer was the snap-hiss of her lightsaber. Reaching over to the dripping bulkhead, she slashed the blade through it.

With a sudden gurgle, the trickle became a flood, the aromatic fuel flowing down the wall and running across the floor. "Watch your timing," Luke warned as the sloshing pool began to fill the small room. "Remember, the lips on these things are only about ten centimeters high."

"I know," Mara assured him. She had her lightsaber closed down and back on her belt now, with her sleeve gun drawn. "Get ready... now."

Abruptly, the door slid open at her Force command, the pool of fuel flowing out into the corridor. There was a surprised yelp from one of the wolvkils—

And Mara fired a single shot from her blaster into the liquid.

It ignited with a tremendous roar, the flames shooting nearly a meter off the deck. Even with the hovering covers protecting them, Luke found himself wincing at the rush of heat that washed over and past him. The yelp outside had become a howl of pain and fear, and he could hear startled Vagaari voices mixed in with those of the wolvkils. The height of the flames diminished as the blazing liquid continued to flow out into the corridor, settling down to perhaps thirty centimeters.

It was time to go. "Take the right one," he called to Mara over the noise of the flames, pointing to the hovering cover nearest her. He felt her take its weight. Then, focusing all his attention on the other one, he maneuvered it into the center of the doorway and settled it down onto the deck. Bracing himself, he jumped.

He hit the cover dead center, dropping into a crouch as he landed. The flames crackled all around him, flowing nearly to the level of the cover's lip, giving him the sudden feeling of being in a boat floating on a river of fire. Recovering his balance, he straightened up and looked around.

The entire corridor was filled with fire and smoke and the screams and howls of the injured. Through the shimmering heat haze to his left he could see flame-sheathed Vagaari writhing in agony as they staggered around trying to find a way out of the rolling river of fire. To his right, the blast doors reflected back the light of the flames, making metallic pinging noises as the sudden heat created uneven expansion in the metal.

Surprisingly, he saw only a couple of wolvkil bodies lying burning in the inferno. Apparently, the animals' speed was as good for escape as it was for attack.

Turning back to the room, he again stretched out to the Force, taking the second cover from Mara's grip. Sliding it over his head through the blocked doorway, he maneuvered it along the corridor and set it down in the flames just in front of the blast doors. "Okay," he called to Mara. "Let's go."

Bending his knees, he leapt over the fire to land in the center of this second metal boat. He glanced back to see Mara land safely in the cover he'd just vacated, then turned and slapped the blast door release.

There were no Vagaari waiting on the other side, though if there had been the flaming liquid now streaming out along the floor toward them would probably have sent them running anyway. Luke made another jump to get past the edge of the expanding fire and turned back around, ready in case Mara needed assistance.

She didn't. Without having to pause to open the blast doors as Luke had had to, she did the final part of the trip in two quick back-to-back leaps, landing on the deck beside him. Even before she was down, he stretched back out to the control and closed the blast doors again.

"Well, that was fun," she said, breathing hard after her trip through the smoke. With its source of new fuel now blocked, the fire on this side of the blast doors had settled into a small pool that was busily burning itself out. "Uliar's going to have a fit when he sees what we've done to his Dreadnaught."

"He can bill us," Luke said, looking around. "I vote we get out of this corridor. The command deck's another four decks up anyway."

"Seconded and approved," Mara said. "I take it you'll want to avoid the turbolifts?"

"Absolutely," Luke said, looking up at the high ceiling. "But as you pointed out, they haven't yet seen how high we can jump."

Igniting his lightsaber, he locked the switch on and hurled it spinning into the ceiling, carving out a neat hole just wide enough to pass comfortably through. "There we go," he said, catching the weapon and closing it down as Mara fielded the circle of deck metal as it tumbled toward them. "Let's go."

They made it to the command deck's level without further trouble. Either the Vagaari had been thrown into disarray by the turning of their firetrap against them, or else Mara had been right about their defenses being focused on that single corridor.

Still, there was a lot of distance yet to cover before they reached the command deck, and a potentially large number of Vagaari still available for Estosh to throw at them. Senses alert, lightsabers held at the ready, they started forward.

But for a while, Luke began to wonder if the aliens had indeed given up. As they'd already discovered on the lower decks, the damage was greatest in the Dreadnaught's midsection, where Thrawn's attack had methodically taken out the turbolaser blisters and shield projectors. The debris and twisted bulkheads made for ideal ambush points, yet the Vagaari made no attempt to use them. There were occasional stacks or lines of explosives, but laid out hurriedly and with no attempt at subtlety or camouflage, almost as if simply dropped there by Vagaari trying desperately to get out of the path of the approaching Jedi. The two clusters that couldn't be bypassed were quickly disarmed.

They made it through the midsection and continued on into the forward operations and crew areas. Here the resistance was slightly better organized: teams of three to five Vagaari would lurk in doorways or curves in the corridor, firing concerted volleys of blasterfire as Luke and Mara came into view. But again, Jedi senses and reflexes were more than adequate to the task, and it usually took only a few seconds of fire for the aliens to realize that their surprise had failed and to break off, scattering away into the shadows. From all appearances, it would seem Estosh was in the last stages of helpless desperation.

Mara didn't believe it, either. "He's up to something," she muttered as they passed the site of the latest would-be ambush, stepping over the bodies of the two Vagaari who had been unlucky enough to have their shots reflected straight back at them.

"Of course he is," Luke said, glancing in both directions as they reached yet another cross-corridor. No one lying in wait in this one. "The question is, what? What else could Outbound Flight's organizers have brought aboard that he could use against us?"

"We'll find out soon enough," Mara said. "Another couple of cross-corridors and we should be there."

They moved ahead cautiously. Three minutes later, they reached the command deck.

It was the same setup as they'd seen earlier on D-l, minus the extensive damage that the impact with the planetoid's gravel pit had created down there. A wide cross-corridor ran across the width of the ship just aft of the command deck, with an archway and sealed blast door set into the bulkhead directly in front of their portside corridor. Thirty meters to their right was a similar entryway, this one set in front of the main starboard corridor. Beyond the two blast doors would be the monitor anteroom with its long rows of consoles; from the far side of the anteroom, a single archway and even heavier blast door would lead onto the bridge proper.

"They're in there, all right," Luke said, stretching out toward the thick bulkhead with his mind. "Quite a few of them. I get the feeling they're expecting us."

"They got that part right, anyway," Mara said. "How do you want to work this?"

Luke looked down the cross-corridor toward the starboard entryway, considering their options. The fact that the Vagaari had sealed the anteroom blast doors implied they weren't going to give up their territory quite so easily. "We go straight in," he decided. "Whatever they've got planned, they've either got a duplicate trap at each of the two doors, or else they've saved everything for the bridge proper. Either way—"

"Hold it," Mara cut him off, her head cocked. "You hear something?"

Luke frowned. A new sound had been added to the background noises of a capital ship in flight, a metallic rumbling coming from their right. He looked again down the cross-corridor toward the other anteroom door—

And suddenly, a giant wheel-like machine rolled into view from the starboard corridor. It braked to a halt and began to open like a strange metal flower.

"Oh, no," Mara breathed, tossing her lightsaber to her left hand and snatching out her sleeve gun.

But she was too late. Even as she fired, the machine finished unfolding, its curved head rearing up over its tripod legs, its jointed forearms settling themselves into horizontal position, the hazy sphere of its deflector shield flickering to life and spattering Mara's shot into the ceiling. The head shifted slightly toward them, as if noticing the intruders for the first time, the arms swiveling their permanently mounted blasters to point in their direction.

It was a droideka. But unlike the one they'd so recently faced in Jerf Huxley's cantina, this one appeared to be fully functional.

And it was hunting them.