Apocalypse (29 page)

“The entrances are in the undercity, yes?” Saba asked. “That is fine for the lower levelz, but it would take dayz to fight up into the main part of the Temple. We would lose too many Jedi Knightz.”

“And we don’t have days,” Mirax said. “Admiral Bwua’tu’s troops don’t have the fuel or ammunition to continue their assault that long.”

“Nor is that the only problem,” Leia said, recalling the admiral in command of the
Regalle
task force. “Nek Bwua’tu can’t keep the rest of the military sidelined forever. Sooner or later, the Sith impostors in the officer corps will start convincing their subordinates to ignore the admiral’s order. Then they’ll start bringing
their
assets into action around the Temple.”

Leia saw Han’s hand close in a fist and knew she was getting through to him. When he felt helpless, he started to look for soft walls to punch. Unfortunately, he wasn’t going to find any in an undercity industrial hangar. She took his arm.

“Han, I just don’t think there’s any way we
can
help them,” she said. “If Luke and the others can’t get those blast doors open, their only chance will be to escape before the baradium drops.”

Han tensed as though he had found his wall, then glanced at Allana and merely lowered his chin. “Yeah, I know.” There was more resignation than resentment in his voice—but the resentment
was
there. “They’re Jedi. They’re on their own.”

Han had barely finished speaking before Allana stepped to his side. “They’re not just any Jedi, Dad. They’re two of the best Masters ever—and they’ve got four
really
good Jedi to back them up. And that means they’re going to be okay.” She took his big hand in hers, then added, “Trust me.”

D
OWN THIS DEEP IN ITS SUBLEVELS, THE
J
EDI
T
EMPLE SEEMED MORE
cave than building. The corridors were so crusted in yorik coral that Vestara sometimes had to turn sideways to squeeze through narrow sections. Fungi grew everywhere, clinging to the walls and ceilings in long shelves and stringy curtains. The air reeked of mildew and vermin. The glow panels still activated on approach, but the light they cast had to pass through several centimeters of grime, resulting in a gloomy pall that usually seemed more shadow than illumination.

Even so, Vestara wasn’t lost. The guidance beacons were chirping steadily in the earbud of her salvaged comlink, so this
had
to be the evacuation route. According to the mission briefing, the route led to a secret access tunnel that Han Solo had developed after the Mandalorian siege. Everyone in the assault company had been shown how to use his or her comlink to access a special chirp-code that could be used to find the tunnel entrance.

Of course, Vestara’s original comlink had been confiscated after she’d been taken prisoner. But it had been easy enough to Force-summon
a new comlink from a dead Jedi Knight while her captors were busy in the water treatment plant, trying to lure Ben into their trap. It had been even easier to slip away during the confusion following the Jedi survivors’ daring escape into the freight-handling system.

What had not been easy, however, was staying ahead of her own pursuers. She had expected the Sith to fixate on the Skywalkers. So she had fled in the opposite direction, with the intention of rejoining them later—if it served her. Vestara had barely finished cutting her way through the floor before some Sabers started to give chase, and she had been running ever since.

They seemed to anticipate her every move. They fired at her from intersecting corridors. They sprang out of hidden alcoves. They dropped out of the ceiling or appeared mysteriously ahead. There had to be a dozen of them by now.

And why? It just didn’t make sense. An entire division of space marines was pounding the Temple exterior, and Luke Skywalker himself was loose in the interior. Surely the Circle of Lords had more important things to worry about. Vestara was one little Sith girl, fleeing for her life. Not much of a threat. So either the Grand Lord believed punishing her to be more important than defending the Sith foothold on Coruscant—or they believed recapturing her to be worth the drain on their defenses.

But again, why? She was just one girl.

A cloaked silhouette appeared ahead, stepping out from the shadows along the wall. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and Vestara feared for a moment that he had gotten ahead of her and been lying in wait. But the man turned in the opposite direction and started down the corridor away from her, and the shadow from which he had come broadened into an intersecting passage.

Vestara did not even break stride. She just raised her hand and unleashed a blast of Force energy. The man’s spine arced backward, and he flew down the passage with limbs flung wide. By then, she was five steps from the intersection and wishing she had a grenade—because her pursuers never came alone, and they were seldom fools or cowards.

When no one else emerged from the intersection, Vestara slipped close to the same wall and launched herself into a high, arcing dive over its entrance. She landed hard in a forward roll that was more of a
forward
slam
and still managed to come back onto her feet. She extended one leg and pirouetted on the other, coming around just as an emerald-eyed woman stepped from the intersection. Vestara hit Emerald-Eyes with a Force shove and sent her stumbling into the wall.

Then a lightsaber snapped to life behind Vestara. She finished her pirouette and found the Force-blasted man rushing back, his crimson blade already sweeping down at her knee.

Vestara sprang into a one-handed cartwheel, landing a vicious roundhouse kick on the way past his head, then ignited her own blade and brought it sweeping up to finish the fight.

Her moves would have been perfect—except her attacker wasn’t there.

He was standing just beyond her reach, shaking his head clear and holding his lightsaber in a low guard that seemed a little too careless. Vestara should have killed him anyway, but that would have taken time—and time she did not have. Back at the intersection, his companion was leaping to her feet, and the sound of running boots was beginning to build in the corridor beyond the intersection. Vestara flashed the man a wry smile and shook her head.

“Sorry.” She was winded, so winded she could barely gasp the words. “Not that … dumb.”

She gave him a Force shove that failed to rock him on his heels, then turned and sprang away. He was after her in a heartbeat, trailing a few steps behind, so close she could hear the weapon sheaths rasping against his trouser legs.

“This is foolish.” He was not out of breath at all. “Surrender now, and you won’t suffer.”

Vestara did not waste her breath on a reply. She had been running and fighting for hours. The only thing keeping her on her feet was the Force itself, and even the Force would fail her soon. Her legs burned and her lungs ached. She had coughed so much phlegm her chest felt like a volcanic eruption. Her vision narrowed at bad moments, and her hearing faded even at good moments, until all that remained was the steady chirping of the guidance beacons.

“There’s no escape,” her pursuer called, only two paces behind. “Not for you.”

Vestara lengthened her stride and pumped her arms harder.

Her pursuer laughed. “You are doing our work for us, little girl,” he called. “How long before even the Force betrays you?”

The next time Vestara’s right arm came forward, she turned her shoulder to hide her hand from view. She flipped her lightsaber around, pointing its emitter nozzle to the rear. When her hand swung back, she grabbed him in the Force and pulled hard.

She activated her blade.

Her pursuer screamed. Vestara flicked her wrist, dragging the blade through his body. She did not break stride.

Three steps later, she dared to glance back. Emerald-Eyes was a dozen paces behind, pushing hard but not overtaking, running Vestara down.

Twenty meters beyond followed a whole column of dark-cloaked Sith. They were running two abreast, jostling and twisting in the narrow confines, a stream of angry eyes, all fixed on Vestara. There had to be twenty of them now, with a Keshiri woman in the second row whom Vestara recognized as Lady Sashal.

Twenty warriors and a High Lord, all to chase down a single girl. Had the Circle gone mad?

Emerald-Eyes put on a burst of speed, and Vestara felt the hand of the Force close around her. Knowing she needed to break free while she still could, she stopped, changed directions, and launched herself down the corridor behind a Force-enhanced side kick.

A kick that
should
have caught the woman square in the chest.

But the kick missed—and left Vestara standing on one leg, with Emerald-Eyes behind her.

An arm snaked around Vestara’s waist, and the cold circle of a lightsaber emitter nozzle touched the side of her neck.

“Drop your lightsaber,” the woman ordered. “Move, and you die!”

Vestara dropped her lightsaber and stood very still on one leg. Then she began to think. Sith were not the kind to show mercy, not after a long and grueling chase, not when they had lost several companions to their quarry.

Maybe her pursuers wanted her alive. That would explain all the talking, and the lack of blaster bolts and Force lightning.

“Move and … die?” Vestara gasped, still breathing hard. “Really?”

“Try me.”

“Sure.”

Vestara let her leg collapse, and her weight fell on the arm around her waist. Taken by surprise, Emerald-Eyes failed to catch her, and Vestara dropped like a bag of rocks. When the lightsaber pressed to her throat did not ignite, Vestara knew she was right about the huge effort to capture her. The Sith wanted her—but they wanted her alive.

By the time she hit the floor, Vestara was rolling back toward her captor. She drove an elbow into Emerald-Eyes’s knee and heard a
pop
. A nice loud
pop
. The woman screamed, and the crack-siss of an igniting lightsaber sounded above Vestara’s head.

Too late.

Vestara was already grabbing for the wrist. She snapped it at the joint, forcing the blade away as Emerald-Eyes collapsed. Vestara accelerated into her roll, driving her foe down hard, and the hollow crack of skull hitting yorik coral echoed off the walls. Yorik coral was harder. Emerald-Eyes went into seizure, body shaking and mouth foaming.

Blaster bolts and Force lightning began to flash up the corridor, some hitting a meter short, most screaming well overhead—suppression fire, meant to keep Vestara pinned until they could recapture her. She pulled Emerald-Eyes’s blaster and began to spray bolts back down the corridor … 
not
suppression fire.

The first shot took out the man in front of Sashal. The second would have taken the High Lord herself had the Saber next to her not used his own arm to deflect the bolt.

The close call was enough to make Sashal and her followers hesitate—only for a second, but that was all the time Vestara needed. Still firing, she grabbed Emerald-Eyes’s lightsaber and raced down the corridor.

At least,
racing
was her intent. Instead Vestara’s exhausted body began to stumble and stagger. She drew on the Force even more heavily. Every part of her burned. Every part ached. The Force was feeding on
her
now, bursting cell after cell, and it would not be much longer before it devoured her completely.

Better that than be taken alive. Whatever the Circle of Lords wanted with her, she had no illusions about how they would extract it. Her torture would be a violation of body and spirit that would leave her a broken, empty vessel unable to recall her own name.

Blasterfire began to screech past her knees. Sashal was trying to cripple her. Vestara hurled herself into a Force tumble, making it impossible to fire at her legs without risking a head hit. The blasterfire stopped at once, but Vestara could not keep tumbling as fast as her pursuers could run.

She came up on her feet and began to pour blaster bolts into the ceiling ahead, aiming for the glow panels. Her pursuers fired on her legs again. The fiery sizzle of a graze burned her thigh, and then she was running in a pool of darkness. Behind her, the blasterfire ceased.

Vestara ran another ten meters before the sensors activated the next glow panel. Her pursuers managed to snap off a couple of shots before she plunged them back into darkness. Sooner or later, a shot would bring her down—and even if it didn’t, the Sith were gaining.

Vestara tipped the blaster pistol over her shoulder and squeezed the trigger, firing blindly. Two shots later, she heard a scream and a thud. She stepped to the other side of the corridor and fired again, and another scream sounded over the steady chirping in her earbud.

Another glow panel activated ahead. Before she could darken it, a blaster screamed behind her. A fiery stabbing took her below the knee. Her leg buckled, and Vestara launched herself into a forward roll and came up firing. The glow panel finally went dark.

Then the guidance chirping began to slow.

Vestara kept rolling, and the chirping in her earbud became even slower. There was a turn coming. She rolled again, then fired back down the corridor. Someone close screamed.