Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance (22 page)

Cinzia!

She
woke with a start in the middle of a firefight, and couldn't for a
moment remember who or where she was. Every cell of her body hurt.
Someone was screaming. Not her. It was the screaming that had woken
her. Only on awakening did it become clear that the voice wasn't
coming from a human throat.

She
remembered.

Hutta.

The
vault.

Lema
Xandret.

Her
muscles burned as she willed them into action. Raising her head was
like lifting a mountain of pain. She felt a scream of her own boiling
inside her, a scream of rage and despair and fear. Containing it hurt
her, but at the same time it gave her strength. She needed every
ounce of strength she could muster to survive the next few seconds.

Out
of everyone in the security air lock, the six-legged droid-things had
targeted her first of all.

We
do not recognize your authority!

She,
however, recognized their defiance. It was the same offered by the
crew of the Cinzia when they had been confronted by the smuggler. But
whose authority did they recognize? There had to be something-or
someone-behind their murderous natures.

Ax
raised herself to her knees, and from there, with a supreme effort of
will, to her feet. The world swayed around her, but the scream was
intact, and growing. The dark side swelled inside her.

The
creatures from the vault saw her, and instantly turned their blue
pulses onto her.

She
set the scream free.

A
Force barrier surrounded her, bare millimeters from her skin. It
shimmered and flickered as wave after wave of energy crashed against
it, but it held. It held as long as she screamed, as long as she
didn't want to die.

The
attack ceased, and she staggered back a step, breathing heavily. Her
lungs were full of hot smoke and ozone. Her head rang with sound. One
of the things attacking her had been blown back by some kind of
weapon. The details eluded her. The important thing was that the
droids were distracted. This was her chance to find out how tough
they really were.

"Whose
authority do you recognize?" she shouted, launching herself at
the nearest. Its hand weapons were concentrated on the shield of a
laser cannon and didn't turn in time. "Whose authority do you
recognize?"

The
droid-thing didn't answer.

Her
rage spun instants out into hours.

First,
she tried spearing the hexagonal body with her lightsaber.

Some
kind of shield appeared between them, bending her blade back at her
own arm, forcing her to retreat.

Next
she tried blasting it with Sith lightning.

The
thing's body caught the energy and discharged it from the tips of its
limbs. Four sparkling arms lunged at her, forcing her to duck again.

She
reached out a hand and tried to crush its insides telekinetically.

Its
honeycomb skeleton resisted more powerfully than durasteel. The hex's
deadly limbs flailed to impale or shoot her, no matter how hard she
strained.

They
screamed together, locked in a vicious stalemate. She couldn't kill
it, and it couldn't kill her. It moved on lean, powerful servos that
matched her own strength and agility. Its black sense organs tracked
her every movement. But every blue pulse it fired at her was
reflected by the Force barrier, and every wild slash of its
razor-sharp limbs was deflected harmlessly.

Then
suddenly it retreated. Its limbs worried at its metallic skin as
though scratching itself for fleas. She followed it, puzzled and
wary. Was this a trap, some strange new tactic to throw her off her
guard? She lunged at it, and it backed rapidly away, firing a stream
of blue to keep her at bay.

Then
it stopped, stood its ground, and vanished.

For
a second Ax doubted the evidence of her own eyes. How could a droid
just disappear? It wasn't possible!

A
blast of blue energy struck her from the side, out of thin air, and
she realized: the droid had activated a camouflage system, reducing
its appearance to little more than a blur. It was blending into the
background, circling her, trying to shoot her in the back.

Ax
narrowed her eyes. She didn't know what these things could or
couldn't do, exactly, but of one thing she was completely sure. One
way or another, they were going to die. She was going to destroy them
all.

*
* *

Shigar
blinked sweat out of his eyes and took the chance to catch his
breath. Backup couldn't have come too soon, even if it was in the
form of a Sith and a green-skinned Twi'lek at the controls of a laser
cannon. He didn't have the energy to complain. With one of the droid-
things down, speared by the Twi'lek right through the middle, and
another occupied by the girl, that left just one for him and Stryver
to finish off.

The
Mandalorian hovered over it, peppering it with blasterfire and
concussion missiles. Shigar waited for an opening.

His
comlink buzzed.

"You
should fall back, " Larin told him. "We've got it covered
now. "

"I
don't think it's that simple. "

"But
you're hurt. At least have someone look at that for you. "

He
looked down and noticed for the first time that his left arm was
covered with blood. He had been completely oblivious to the pain.

The
laser cannon fired again. This time the droid-things were ready. The
one Shigar was watching dropped to a crouch and threw up its
electromirror shield. The bolt from the cannon knocked it backward,
but the bolt itself was reflected into the wall. There it exploded
harmlessly, showering two crouching noncombatants with gravel.

Stryver
swooped in on his jetpack and landed next to Shigar. Shigar raised
his lightsaber, but the Mandalorian wasn't on the offensive.

"Tell
them to aim for the vault, " he said, indicating the comlink.

"Why,
what's in there?"

"Just
tell them. "

Then
he lifted off and went back to harrying the target. Again the laser
cannon fired, and again the bolt exploded into the wall.

Shigar
relayed the instruction. "The door's open, " he said, "and
it's a confined space. Anything left in there will be fried. "

Larin
passed the message on to the Twi'lek. From his position, Shigar could
see his lekku swinging in an instant negative. A brief argument
ensued before Larin came back to him.

"The
navicomp might still be in there, " she said over the comlink.
"If you can get it out, then they'll fire into the vault. "

Shigar
didn't dismiss the plan out of hand. Far be it from him to aid the
Hutts in their venal pursuits, but the Republic needed all the help
it could get in the war against the Empire. It wasn't his primary
mission, but it was still important.

"All
right, " he started to say.

Then
two things happened that put all thought of the navicomp from his
mind. First, the droid-thing attacking the Sith girl disappeared.
Second, the laser cannon fired again, and the bolt was deflected a
third time into the wall.

Into
the same section of the wall, Shigar realized. The shots weren't
ricocheting at random. They were being aimed.

"Stop
firing!" he shouted into the comlink. "Tell him to stop
firing!"

Larin
tapped her helmet, obviously thinking she had misheard his order.

The
Sith girl was moving, following a dimple in the air. It fired back at
her, blue pulses appearing out of nowhere and bouncing off her Force
barrier. The nearly invisible droid-thing was heading for the two
noncombatants Shigar had seen earlier.

"I
said stop firing!" He waved his arms to convey his urgency.
"Now!"

The
Twi'lek ignored him. Another bolt went into the wall, widening the
crater that had already been bored into it. One more shot, Shigar
thought in alarm. That was all it would take to ruin everything.

The
hand weapons weren't strong enough that the droids could shoot their
own way out, so they were using the Hutts' weaponry instead. Instead
of killing them, the laser cannon was going to set them free.

Shigar
ground his teeth together and sprinted forward. If Larin couldn't
stop the Twi'lek from filing, he would haw to throw himself at the
camouflaged droid and hope to succeed where the Sith had failed.

Distantly
he heard the roar of Stryver's jetpack pass overhead, but the
significance of it eluded him. The shot he had feared came from the
laser cannon and bounced off the electromirror shield, into the
deepening pit in the wall. Long cracks spread out from it, and
suddenly masonry was tumbling down from the wall. The two
noncombatants lay directly in the path of the rubble.

Shigar
had a choice. He could intercept the droid or save the two men. He
couldn't do both. There was just a split second in which to decide.

Ignoring
his pain and exhaustion, he let the Force flow through him and did
the only thing he could.

*
* *

Yeama's
teeth were bared in determination as he fired at the cowering hex.
Larin yelled at him to stop-she had guessed the droid- thing's
intentions, just like Shigar-but the Twi'lek was blindly resolute. He
thought he was doing the right thing. He honestly believed that he
was on the verge of overpowering his target. He wouldn't listen.

She
braced herself to physically wrench Yeama from the laser cannon's
controls, but the rising whine of a jetpack made her look up. Stryver
was on his way. He must also have seen what the laser cannon was
doing. But he wasn't flying to defend the breach, as Shigar was. He
was coming right for her.

Barely
in time, Larin realized his intentions. She hurled herself away from
the cannon and dived for cover. Behind her, the cannon erupted into a
ball of flame. Bits of metal whizzed past her, pinging off her armor.
A wave of heat engulfed her. She felt like a rancor had gripped her
in its jaws and was shaking her back and forth.

When
it was over, she looked back at the laser cannon. It was a smoking
ruin, destroyed by Stryver's missiles. Of Yeama, there was no sign at
all.

Stryver
dropped heavily next to her. His armor was as blackened and dented as
hers. "Get into the vault. Destroy everything you find there. "

"What
are you going to do?"

"Finish
things. I've seen enough. "

As
he spoke, more of the damaged wall fell away, revealing empty space
on the other side. The hexes were already heading for the opening,
followed by the Sith. Stryver grunted and took to the air, activating
weapons systems he had not yet used against the droids. Larin watched
him go, thinking hard.

There
would be time for thinking later, she reminded herself again. The
priority was to put an end to the current crisis. Stryver wasn't
above taking drastic steps to do exactly that-killing Yeama to put
the cannon out of action was just one example-and he seemed to know
what he was talking about. Looking around her, she found two of poor
Potannin's guards and called them to her. Moving gingerly through the
rubble, they headed for the battle-scarred antechamber, and the
gaping mouth of the vault.

*
* *

Ula
stared up in horror at the descending mass of masonry. There was
nothing he or let could do to avoid being crushed, and Jet's droid
was too far away to intervene. There wasn't time for last regrets or
second thoughts. The law of gravity was unbreakable, even on lawless
Hutta.

He
raised his arms in a futile attempt at self-preservation and closed
his eyes.

He
didn't die. His thoughts ground on with increasingly amazed vitality,
until eventually it occurred to him that someone had intervened to
help him live a little longer.

He
opened his eyes. The avalanche had been deflected around them by an
invisible force. By the Force, he realized as he looked around for
the source of his salvation. It was the Jedi, standing with his left
hand outstretched in a warding motion and his expression fierce. Ula
himself could feel nothing at all arising from that gesture, but he
was profoundly grateful that the stones seemed to do so perfectly
well.