Apocalypse (16 page)

And that was a mistake.

Luke Skywalker was not the Sword of the Jedi.
Jaina
was, and now the Sith had trapped themselves inside a locked Temple with her.

Jaina stopped rolling and raised her head, trying to decide who to take on next. Strewn with overturned equipment and severed pipes, the chamber was too tangled with streaking bolts and sweeping arcs of color for her to see anything clearly. The floor was littered with bodies, some motionless, more writhing, too many with faces she recognized as fellow Jedi. Her droid, Rowdy, had managed to extract himself from the inspection capsule and descend the stairs from the bypass platform. Now he was working his way toward the computer interface at the
front of the chamber, where the original plan had called for him to contact the Temple’s central computer, ordering it to lower the shields and open the blast doors.

Off to one side of the battle, Vestara lay unconscious between a flocculation mixer and the adjacent sedimentation basin. Standing over her was a tall, slender Sith Lord wearing a black cape atop black blast armor. His thin lips were sneering as he spoke into a throat-mike. Luke and Master Horn were nowhere to be seen, but Valin and Jysella Horn were atop a narrow pipe, fighting back-to-back while standing three meters above the floor.

And Ben … Ben seemed to think he was invincible, Force-tumbling through the air toward Vestara, dodging blaster bolts and Force lightning with no lightsaber to protect him. He extended an arm, hooking his elbow around a small transfer pipe that crossed the room about two meters above the deck, and allowed his momentum to swing him downward just in time to avoid a fork of blue Force lightning. He came arcing back up, one hand sending a Force blast back toward the woman who had attacked him. She went flying into the gloom, and Ben released his arm and went arcing away, corkscrewing and somersaulting until he dropped out of sight behind a settling tank.

Three Sith were already leaping up onto the transfer pipe to take the woman’s place, and Jaina had her next set of victims. She used the Force to launch herself off the deck grating … and was still in the air when her targets sensed their danger. The leader jumped off the pipe—another woman, her long red hair trailing behind her as she raced to intercept Ben. The two men, one with a dark beard and one clean-shaven, spun to defend themselves.

Jaina’s lightsaber was already coming down, severing Dark Beard’s sword arm at the elbow. She used the Force to send the limb and lightsaber flying in Ben’s direction, then glimpsed the crimson arc of Square Chin’s blade curving toward her lead leg. She flipped her own weapon down to block the attack … but, before she could Force-stick her boot in place, she felt her foot sliding across the transfer pipe. In the next instant Jaina was plummeting toward the deck, with one Sith screaming in pain below her and the other jumping down from above.

Chaos
.

Jaina shoved off in the Force, sending Square Chin floating back toward the transfer pipe—and pushing herself in the opposite direction. She slammed down atop Dark Beard, driving her elbow into his ribs and snapping her head back into his face. She felt his nose shatter, then rolled to her side.

Square Chin was dropping toward her again, his eyes narrowing as she extended her sword arm, pushing the tip as high into the air as she could. He brought his own weapon around to block, and Jaina used the Force to spin him backward, making his parry impossible.

The tip of her lightsaber caught the Sith just below the shoulder blade, then he was sliding down the blade to land atop her, as heavy and limp as a sack of gravel. Jaina’s breath left her in a pained gasp, and her chest felt like a rancor had stomped it. But she had no time to wonder about broken ribs. She deactivated her lightsaber and, using the Force to boost her strength, flung the body off.

The silver arc of a glass parang was already slicing toward her from the direction of Dark Beard’s belt, held in the invisible grasp of the Force. Jaina reactivated her lightsaber, intercepting the weapon—and barely altering its trajectory as her blade melted through it. The two halves flashed past her face, so close they stung her jaw before they shattered against the deck grating.

Jaina brought her lightsaber down across the Sith’s torso. The stench of charred flesh grew overwhelming, and only adrenaline kept her from gagging. She jumped to her feet and raced after the red-haired Sith who had gone to attack Ben.

She needn’t have worried. Ben had collected the lightsaber that Jaina had sent flying his way, and now he was using it to press his attack, combining strength and speed to push Red Hair back. Jaina extended a hand, hitting the Sith with a Force shove that sent her stumbling into Ben’s lightsaber.

Ben staggered, then quickly finished the woman by flicking his weapon up through her torso. She seemed to peel away from the blade, dropping to her knees and collapsing backward onto the grating. He kicked her weapon aside, then gave a quick salute with the crimson lightsaber in his hand.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Glad to help,” Jaina said. She pointed down a narrow aisle between two nearby settling basins. “Let’s go.”

Ben turned in the opposite direction. “They have Vestara.”

He started to add something else, but Jaina stopped listening when a tall figure in a dark robe dropped onto an evaporation cabinet behind him. By the time the Sith raised a hand to launch a Force attack, Jaina was leaping to her cousin’s defense.

Ben must have sensed his danger, too, because he was already moving. They bumped shoulders as he pivoted around, then a deafening crackle split the air and Jaina found herself flying backward on a bolt of Force lightning. She slammed into the wall of a settling tank and remained pinned there, teeth grinding, nerves burning, limbs paralyzed—until Ben shoved his crimson lightsaber into the dancing fork of energy.

Jaina collapsed to her knees, muscles throbbing and quivering and generally useless. Her attacker let his lightning sizzle out and reached for his lightsaber, but she was already grabbing him in the Force. She jerked him off the cabinet and down into the aisle. The Sith was still crying out in shock when her cousin finished him off.

Ben took a heartbeat to check for other attackers, but the battle had progressed from the initial “confusion-and-carnage” phase to the “hidden-death” stage, and there were no longer any Sith out in the open. Even the din of the battle had dwindled to sporadic outbreaks of thunder, shriek, and sizzle.

Ben stepped to Jaina’s side. “You okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

Jaina tried to stand, but her still-quivering legs wouldn’t obey. She extended her hand for help—and felt her entire shoulder erupt in a fiery ache unlike anything she had ever felt before.

“Just a little shaky,” she added. “Get me up.”

Ben pulled her to her feet, then cast a furtive glance back toward the basin where they had last seen Vestara. Her captor had retreated deeper behind cover, but one of Vestara’s feet could still be seen lying against the wall of the mixing station.

“Hold on, Ben.” Jaina slipped an arm around Ben’s waist, then grabbed a handful of robe and put more weight on him than was really necessary. “You’re not going to help her by getting yourself killed.”

“Who’s going to get himself killed?”

“Who do you
think
?” Jaina demanded. “We’re outnumbered ten to one here, and that guy with Vestara looks like he’s in charge.”

“So?”

“
So
that makes him at least a Lord, and probably a High Lord,” Jaina said, realizing her objective had changed from killing the enemy to keeping Ben from being killed by the enemy. Battles were unpredictable like that. “Are you really ready to go after a Sith High Lord? Because I’m not—not when he has all the advantages.”

Ben sighed, but continued to look toward the basin. “What if it was Jag?” he asked. “Would you leave him behind?”

He was right, of course. If it had been Jagged Fel back there, Jaina wouldn’t be wasting time talking about it. She would be working her way toward the mixing station to rescue him—or to die trying.

But it wasn’t Jag. It was a Sith girl who had betrayed Ben half a dozen times already, who had been working her way into the Skywalkers’ confidence for months—and who might actually be waiting for a chance like this one to deal a body blow to the entire Jedi Order. Unfortunately, Jaina couldn’t say as much to Ben. He was a teenager in love, and teenagers in love did not like to hear that their sweethearts might be lying, cheating assassins.

Chaos.

“You have a point,” Jaina said, pretending to consider his argument. “But if that were Jag, he would want me to do the smart thing and not get myself killed while attempting an impossible rescue.”

She turned away, trying to get Ben started in the opposite direction.

Ben stayed where he was. “I didn’t ask what
Jag
would do. I asked what
you
would do.” He tried to free himself from Jaina’s grasp, but she clamped down hard and pulled him back. He scowled and said, “I thought you were shaky.”

“I’m getting better,” Jaina said, grabbing a handful of molytex armor through his robe. “And whatever I might do, it would be smart. So I wouldn’t charge in without a plan, and I wouldn’t get someone
else
killed with me.”

Ben frowned. “I’m not asking you to come.”

“Right,” Jaina replied. “And you expect that to square me with
your father? That you didn’t
invite
me to walk into an obvious trap right along with you?”

Ben stopped pulling, and Jaina knew she had him. He might be willing to throw away his own life on a lost cause, but he wouldn’t take her with him.

“Trap?” Ben asked.

“
Think
, Ben. The Sith commander alone, Vestara lying unconscious at his feet? It’s too much temptation. He wants you to go after her.” Jaina tugged him toward the circular wall of a sludge tank. “Come on. We need to find the others and regroup. Then we’ll figure out how to save Vestara.”

Ben reluctantly allowed her to pull him along. “You’d better mean that, Jaina. I’m not going to abandon her.”

“Ben, I can’t promise we’ll save her,” Jaina said. “You know better. But we’ll do what we can, okay? We just need to be smart about it.”

Taking care to keep their heads beneath the top edge of the tank, they crept around to the other side—and found themselves facing a metal ladder affixed to a large feeder pipe rising into the darkness above. A narrow catwalk ran between the ladder and the chamber’s forward wall, about eight meters above their heads. Kneeling at the near end were two black-robed figures, one holding a long-muzzled version of a Verpine shatter gun, the other wearing a pair of night-vision goggles. The sludge tank had prevented them from seeing the area Jaina and Ben had just departed, but both Sith were scanning the killing zone in front of Vestara’s still-motionless feet.

Jaina glanced over and saw that Ben’s face had gone pale. He clearly understood what he was seeing—a sniper nest waiting to attack anyone who tried to reach Vestara. Jaina started to pull a frag grenade off her combat harness, but Ben touched her forearm and shook his head, signaling her to move on. He knew as well as she did that taking out a single sniper nest was unlikely to defang the Sith trap. And even if it did, as soon as Vestara’s captor realized what had happened, Vestara would change from bait to liability, and her likelihood of being killed would rise tenfold. If they wanted to rescue Vestara alive, they needed a plan—and now Ben knew it, too.

Jaina motioned her cousin to follow, then slipped away from the settling basin and began to work her way toward the front of the
chamber. Their best hope of saving themselves—and Vestara—lay in giving the Sith something else to worry about. The best move was to complete their mission and get the Temple’s blast doors open. To do that, they would have to find her droid, Rowdy, and get him plugged into the computer interface panel—then keep him in one piece long enough to convince the Temple computer to override the lockdown command.

The interface station came into view. A meter-wide panel with a display screen and a keyboard located above a row of droid-accessible dataports, it had two rows of status lights running down one side. Most of the lights were blinking or glowing in colors ranging from red to amber, but there was nothing on the display screen to suggest that Rowdy had already contacted the Temple computer.

“At least it’s been activated already,” Ben observed. “Now all we have to—”

The sentence came to an abrupt end when a brilliant flash lit the chamber. The deafening crackle of a thermal detonator filled the air, and the chamber grew instantly damp and cold. Then the deck grating started to vibrate beneath their feet, and the muffled roar of a waterfall began to rise from the direction of the bypass platform. They ducked behind a pump motor, then carefully raised their heads high enough to peer back over the top.

Shooting into a hole where the platform used to be was a column of water two meters thick.

Chaos.

“No more reinforcements,” Ben observed. “A break like that’s going to trigger gate shutdowns all the way back to the main.”

Jaina nodded. “It’s just as well,” she said. “We can’t bring in enough Jedi to outnumber them, so a large force only makes us easier to locate.”

As she spoke, a shiver of danger sense chilled her spine. She reached for Ben’s collar and ducked back down—only to hear his lightsaber already sizzling to life. She activated her own weapon, barely bringing it around in time to catch the fork of Force lightning that came dancing her way. At the other end stood a lavender-skinned Keshiri female, flanked by a cadre of human Sith, six on each side. Their crimson
blades snapped to life as one, and they began to fan out, cutting off all hope of slipping past.

“Go your way, Ben,” Jaina ordered, still fighting to hold the Force lightning back. “Now!”

“Can’t!” Ben said. “We’ve got a dozen Sith here.”

He put his back against Jaina’s, but making a stand was the last thing she wanted to do. She glanced over at the pump and, seeing that it was still running, came up with a different idea.