Apocalypse (15 page)

The joke did little to lift Vestara’s heart. If Master Skywalker’s assault team met a disastrous end here, her life expectancy would drop by a factor of ten—and she had learned enough about the Temple defenses to realize that a determined host of Sith would be able to hold off the space marine assault indefinitely. And even if they could not, the High Lords would have plenty of time to escape alive. Vestara needed Skywalker and his team to succeed and succeed quickly, so they could disrupt the Circle of Lords and make possible a life for her other than pretending to be a Jedi hopeful.

She took Ben’s arm and started toward the far end of the platform. “We need to have a look around,” she said. “The Sith understand diversions as well as the Jedi, and they wouldn’t make the mistake of leaving this room unguarded.”

“Master Skywalker’s orders were clear,” Jysella called after them. “You’re to report at once.”

“Thank you, Jedi Horn,” Vestara said, speaking over her shoulder. “We understand.”

She led the way down a short metal staircase to a durasteel deck grating suspended about a meter above the true floor, which was covered in some sort of dark membrane. Vestara was confused about its purpose, until she noticed that the entire floor sloped toward a depression in the center of the room. Apparently, leaks and flooding were enough of a concern that a central drain had been installed.

Ben stepped off the staircase and stopped at Vestara’s side. “Ves, we need to follow orders. I’m sure they checked the place over.”

“I’m sure they tried,” Vestara said, starting toward a speeder-sized pump motor. “But something is definitely wrong here. Don’t you feel it?”

Ben fell quiet and began to look around, no doubt expanding his own Force awareness into the dark recesses of the room. Finally, he shook his head.

“No, I don’t feel anything,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean much one way or another. I’m sure most Sith know how to hide their Force presences as well as we do.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. It’s just too calm …” Vestara let her sentence trail off as she finally realized what was missing. “Where are the droids?”

Ben frowned. “Droids?”

“You can’t walk a hundred steps on Coruscant without running into a droid,” she said. “And you’re telling me the Jedi didn’t use any to run this place?”

Ben’s brow rose. “I see your point.” He glanced around again. The room was too packed with equipment to see all the way to the front, but that was where Jysella had told them his father was waiting. “Let’s check with Dad anyway. Maybe there’s something he forgot to tell us at the briefing.”

“You go ahead,” Vestara said. “I’m going to have a look around.”

Ben caught her arm and started her toward the front of the room. “Ves, come on.”

Catching the note of warning in his voice, Vestara allowed him to pull her along. “Why, Ben?” As she walked, she continued to reach out in the Force, searching for any hint of the sentry that had to be somewhere in the darkness spying on them. “So the rest of the team won’t grow suspicious of me showing some initiative?”

“Because Jedi obey orders, too,” Ben said, picking up the pace. “Especially in battle situations.”

Vestara started to remind Ben that he had once urged her to think for herself—then felt the deck grating wobble beneath her foot. Normally, she would not have given the sensation a second thought. But her Master, Lady Rhea, had taught her to pay attention to
everything
going into a fight, to remember that even the smallest detail could save her life, so Vestara dropped her gaze.

She saw the weapons first, a pair of blasters and a trio of lightsabers, all partially hidden in the fold of a black robe or the crook of a dark elbow. The people holding the weapons were on their backs, resting
two abreast with their faces wrapped in dark scarves. Their eyes were squeezed to mere slits to prevent the whites from showing, and they were remaining absolutely still to avoid attracting attention.

Vestara glanced away, trying to act as though she hadn’t seen the figures beneath the grating. But she had noted at least half a dozen in a mere glance, and there was no reason to believe that was the entire force. The Jedi were walking into an ambush—and that could only mean the Sith had known they were coming.

Vestara had no idea how her people had learned of the Jedi assault plan, but she
did
know who would be blamed for it—provided she was lucky enough to live that long. Sith were nothing if not first-rate assassins, and this ambush appeared to be a variation on the Quiet Return. When they expected the target to be alert and wary upon entering the killing zone, Sith assassins preferred to remain somewhere else until the victim relaxed, then return via a secret entrance to launch the attack. She was guessing that this group had come from the chamber below, through a hole cut a few hours earlier, and hidden beneath the drainage membrane.

Vestara continued to walk at Ben’s side, trying to figure out how the ambush affected her. The Sith would be watching her more closely than any of the Jedi except Grand Master Skywalker, so it would be impossible to disappear before the attack began. Besides, she needed the Jedi assault force intact to make her own plan work.

“Ves?” Ben asked. “Wake up, will you? We’re about to go into battle.”

“Oh yes, the battle,” she said. Now that she knew where the ambush was coming from, she just wanted to reach the control panel as quickly as possible. “You’re right, of course.”

“I am?” Ben asked, turning his head to look over at her. “What happened to change …”

His sentence faded into an unexpected silence—as did the sound of their footfalls, and the swishing of Vestara’s robe. But when she glanced over at Ben, she saw that his mouth was continuing to move as though he were still hearing his words inside his own head. Someone was using the Force to quiet the air and prevent it from carrying sound waves—and that could mean only one thing.

Vestara reached out to Master Skywalker in the Force, flooding her
presence with alarm, then grabbed Ben by the arm and spun around to find a ten-meter section of deck grating flying toward them. A blast wave of shock and confusion raced through the Force as Ben struggled to comprehend what he was seeing, and Vestara knew he would never react in time. She slammed her forearm across his chest and kicked his heels out from beneath him, then flung her own legs out in front of her.

They landed side by side on their backs an instant before the grating slashed past, passing a handbreadth from their faces. Ben’s eyes bulged wide and his mouth opened in a soundless cry of surprise—then Vestara began to slide across the grating back toward their attackers. She raised her head and saw a wall of dark-cloaked ambushers leaping from their hiding places, blasters flashing and lightsabers ignited.

Suddenly Vestara stopped sliding. She glanced back and saw Ben’s hand extended toward her, holding her in the Force, trying to drag her back.

A ferocious ache began to throb through her hips and shoulders, and Vestara felt as though she was coming apart. Then she realized she probably was. She screamed in pain and shook her head, yelling at Ben to let her go.

Whether Ben actually heard her above the battle din—the screaming of blaster bolts and the growling of lightsabers—Vestara could not tell. She simply started to slide faster than before.

Behind her, Ben snapped his lightsaber off its belt hook and sprang to his feet, then quickly dived into a somersault as a flurry of blaster bolts burned into the grating around him. For an instant, Vestara thought he would ignite the blade and get them both killed by attempting to fight his way toward her.

She should have known better than to underestimate Ben Skywalker. He simply continued to somersault, using the Force to trace a zigzag course across the deck. When he came up, his weapon hand snapped in her direction, flinging his lightsaber toward her. Vestara reached for it in the Force, at the same time looking back toward the ambushers.

The first Sith were already charging past, using their crimson lightsabers to bat aside the torrent of bolts coming from a group of
Jedi charging back from the front of the room. Ben’s lightsaber landed in her hand. She thumbed the activation switch, then rolled to her belly and swung the sizzling blade through two sets of running legs. When a cold shiver raced down her spine, she continued the roll and brought the weapon up to block.

A shower of sparks erupted as Vestara’s blade clashed with another, and she glimpsed a lavender Keshiri face snarling down from the other side of the blazing cross above her. The two blades locked, and Vestara lay beneath her attacker, struggling to keep the woman’s lightsaber away. The
crump-crump
of detonating grenades began to sound somewhere near the front of the room, and in the back of her mind she realized the Jedi were being attacked from two sides.

Vestara relaxed her arms a little, and the Keshiri woman’s lightsaber began to descend toward her face.

“First, I take your beauty,” the woman said. “Then I—”

Vestara hit her with a Force blast and sent her flying back into a rank of Sith climbing up through the missing section of grating. The Keshiri’s blade, still ignited, sliced one warrior in half, and her body knocked two more off their feet.

Beyond the tangle of limbs and blades, Vestara glimpsed Valin and Jysella Horn still up on the bypass platform, Valin using his lightsaber to defend Jysella from Sith blaster bolts while she leaned through an open access panel. Vestara traced back the stream of bolts until she spotted a Sith warrior firing from between a pair of pump housings. She sent him tumbling with a Force shove.

That was all the respite Valin Horn needed. He leapt off the bypass platform in a flying cartwheel. Beginning to think she and the Jedi just might survive this ambush after all, Vestara sprang to her own feet—and heard a deep voice behind her.

“Enough.”

The base of her skull exploded into dull throbbing pain as something hard and heavy—the hilt of a lightsaber, no doubt—struck. She spun and caught only a glimpse of black cloth as her attacker moved behind her.

The hilt descended again.

Her knees buckled, spinning her around, away from her unseen attacker. Her vision began to narrow, but fifteen meters away up on the
water main bypass platform, she saw a small female Jedi climbing out of an open access panel. The woman ignited her lightsaber, then came leaping over the platform’s safety rail, brown hair flying and violet blade whirling, and Vestara knew the battle was on.

Jaina Solo, Sword of the Jedi, had just arrived.

A
FORK OF
F
ORCE LIGHTNING FLASHED PAST BELOW
J
AINA’S CORKSCREWING
body, so close that the sting of its heat penetrated the thin molytex armor beneath her robes. She twisted into another whorl, her wrists turning almost of their own accord as she swung her lightsaber around to catch the next bolt, and then she sensed the floor rising up beneath her. She brought her feet around and landed hard, the durasteel deck grating shuddering beneath her boots as a dozen dark-robed figures spun to face her, their wide eyes betraying the confusion and alarm they felt at seeing a Jedi Knight deliberately jump into the heart of a Sith mob.

How a mission could go sour so fast, Jaina had no idea. The Sith were everywhere, crawling beneath the deck grating, dropping down from the pipes, darting out from between the filter cabinets and pump housings. Clearly, the Jedi had walked into an ambush, and their battle plan had fallen into chaos.

No problem. In a situation like this, Jaina thrived on chaos. She
became
chaos.

Jaina leapt over an incoming leg slash, then dropped her attacker with a quick snap-kick to the temple. She blocked a strike at her neck and, still in the air, turned her jump into a cartwheel. She shifted to a one-handed grip and swung her free arm in an arc, using the Force to sweep two more Sith off their feet. Landing in their midst, she stomped on the throat of the first and jammed her lightsaber through the chest of the other, then pulled a concussion grenade off her combat harness and thumbed it active.

She dropped it at her feet and began to count.
One
.

The melee went still. All eyes dropped to the grenade, noted the absence of a safety pin, the arming light blinking red. The Sith looked at her with wide eyes, then spun away and tried to hurl themselves beyond the blast radius.

Jaina’s count reached
Two
. She caught the grenade on the toe of her boot and kicked it toward a missing section of deck grating, where a fresh stream of Sith warriors were climbing into view.

Her count reached
Three
, and Jaina dropped.

The detonation hit her like a hoverbus, rolling her across the deck, flinging flesh and durasteel through the air above her. Why the Sith had sprung their trap so early, Jaina could not imagine. The largest part of the Jedi assault force had not even reached the killing zone, and while dozens of Sith were already in the room, they seemed almost as confused and poorly positioned as their targets. Maybe Luke had sensed the danger and forced the issue—or maybe he had been their true target all along. Perhaps they feared Luke Skywalker just that much.