Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance (39 page)

Even
through the ship's unusually powerful shields, the impact was
deafening. Larin fell back into her seat with one arm covering her
eyes. A split instant later a second bolt struck the ship, this one
created by Shigar's attempts to destroy the target. The Auriga Fire
went into a wild tumble, then righted itself with a jerk.

"...fire!
Cease fire!" Jet was yelling.

"All
right, we get it. " Larin adjusted her earpiece. "What are
we supposed to do now? Pull faces at it until it goes away?"

"I
don't know, " he said, "but we can't take another hit like
that. Our shields are down to forty percent. "

"Angle
the shields forward, " said Shigar. "Set a course for the
closest of those tube things. When I tell you to, put the sublights
on full. "

"That's
madness!" said Ula.

"No,
I see where he's headed. " Jet brought the ship around to face
the tube Larin had fired into. Bright discharges still sparked from
hex to hex, running in waves up and down the length of the tube. "It
wants energy? Energy I'll happily give it. "

The
Auriga Fire leapt forward as though to ram. The hexes fired
ineffectually at the forward screens, and the agglomeration's arms
curled in to embrace their attacker. Larin's hands lay restlessly on
the cannon controls as the tube grew rapidly larger ahead of her.
This, she told herself, was one situation where firing would
definitely make things worse.

Instead,
she was part of the bullet and the trigger at the same time.

The
Auriga Fire reached the tube's open end. It was just wide enough for
the ship to fit inside, a fact for which Larin was completely
grateful: the tri-laser blisters marked the ship's widest point. The
moment it and its passengers were completely encapsulated, Shigar
shouted "Now!" and Jet switched the sublights to full.

There
followed a horrible moment when the ship strained to move forward,
but all the force it produced was sucked up by the weave of tightly
bound hexes surrounding it. Larin could see the effect it had on them
at horribly close quarters. The hexes writhed and shook, and slowly
began to glow. Metal limbs flared like magnesium burning in pure
oxygen. Black sensory pods popped and hexagonal bodies stretched. She
couldn't hear anything, but she imagined the hexes screaming.

Turning
a laser bolt back onto its owner was one thing. Absorbing all the
energy required to accelerate a starship was quite another.

The
Auriga Fire burst out the other side, trailing a tail of bright blue.
The hex-tube shook and bulged as it tried to contain the energy it
had absorbed. A ball as bright as a sun formed in its heart, and
Larin feared it might actually shoot out at them, destroying them
instantly.

But
then the hex-tube buckled, as the ball didn't so much explode as
discharge throughout the entire agglomeration. Thousands of hexes
burst apart in an instant, spraying the surrounding vacuum with
exotic shrapnel.

"Yee-ha!"
yelled Larin, then added more soberly, "Let's never do that
again. "

The
beleaguered escape pod and its occupants found themselves
unexpectedly out of danger. It was a simple matter now to snatch it
up in the tractor beam and haul it to safety outside the debris
field, where other ships could look after it.

As
the Auriga Fire turned about to look for another harried pod, Shigar
said, "Wait. "

"What
is it?" she asked, hearing a note of urgency in his voice.

"It's
her. Master Satele is calling me. "

"I'm
not picking up any transmissions, " Jet told him.

"She's
not calling me that way. " Larin held her breath, not wanting to
distract him as he concentrated on whatever he was receiving through
the Force. "See that chunk of the Corellia over there, Jet? Head
in that direction. "

"Will
do. "

The
Auriga Fire accelerated for a relatively large piece of the destroyed
cruiser. The twisted, oval fragment was approximately fifty meters
down its long axis, and featured a gold finish down one side,
revealing that it had once been part of the hull. It tumbled freely
through the hexes, and appeared to be the focus of a concerted
scavenging effort leaching metal from one end.

Larin
readied herself for the order to fire. When Master Satele's pod came
into view, getting her safely and quickly clear would be the
priority.

Then:
"I don't see any pods, " Ula said. "Are you sure this
is the right spot?"

It
wasn't the first time the former envoy had expressed doubts about
Shigar's abilities. Larin wondered if he was part of the axis in the
Republic government that mistrusted the Jedi and their methods.

"I'm
sure, "said Shigar. "She's not in a pod. She must be in a
pressurized compartment in that chunk. "

"I
can ready a docking ring, " said Jet, "if you can pinpoint
her location. "

"We
won't have time, "said Ula. "There are hexes all over that
thing. "

Shigar
said, "You have vac suits, don't you? I'll jump the gap. "

"I'm
coming with you, " said Larin.

"No,
" he said. "I'll need you on the cannon, making sure no
more come aboard. Drop me off, back away, then come get us when we're
out. I'll take a spare suit for her. "

"And
if her compartment doesn't have an air lock?"

"Then
I'll think of something else. "

She
heard him crawling up his access tunnel, back into the ship, and
turned to look at him. "Are you sure this is the right thing to
do?" she called at him along the tunnel, unable to hide the
intense worry she felt. The wreckage was crawling with hexes. One
slip, and neither he nor his Master would come back.

"Positive,
" he said. "She's the most important person in the galaxy.
It's my duty to save her. "

Then
he was gone, leaving Larin feeling slightly wounded by his words. On
Hutta, he hadn't come to save her. If his deal with Tassaa Bareesh
had gone awry, she would have ended up rancor food for certain. But
for Master Satele, he swept in with lightsaber swinging, risking life
and limb and not even letting Larin help.

She
wondered if he thought she might slow him down.

Don't
think like that, she told herself. We're still partners, and this
obviously isn't going to be over as quickly as we'd thought. Chances
are we'll find plenty more opportunities to fight back-to-back.

She
swung the cannon around and picked off a hex standing high on the
back of the wreckage. That was one less he would have to worry about.

*
* *

The
auriga fire's vac suits were simple models, with no armor, inbuilt
weapons, or maneuvering jets, and barely fifty minutes of air in
their backpacks. Shigar guessed they were normally used for quick
repairs outside the ship, where they could be tethered to the main
life support. Shigar stripped out of the new clothes he had
improvised from Ula's official wardrobe-brown robe, black pants, and
sand- colored top, the closest he could approximate to Jedi
colors-then picked the cleanest suit from the rack and slipped it
quickly over his unprotected limbs. Ideally he would have worn a body
glove, like Larin's, but there wasn't time for such niceties. He
would use biofeedback to regulate his body temperature.

He
fixed his lightsaber to a clip on the suit's right hip, where it
would be accessible in an instant, and slung a spare suit over the
crook of his left arm.

"Aft
air lock primed and ready, " said Jet over the suit's intercom.

"Okay.
" Shigar tested the seals one last time. The air tasted stale,
but that was the least of his problems. "Get in as close to the
wreckage as you can. "

His
breathing sounded loud in his ears as the air lock's inner door
opened and he stepped inside. As the air lock cycled, he took the
opportunity to center himself. He knew what to expect. He had faced
the hexes before. His priority, however, was to find Master Satele
and get her out as quickly as possible. There wasn't time to fight or
take any unnecessary risks. That would only get the both of them
killed.

"Can
you hear me. Master Satele?" he asked over the suit comm, using
a band thick with the static of distant stars. Military forces
normally avoided that channel, making it perfect for short-range
transmissions that needed to go untraced.

"Perfectly
well, " Master Satele responded, faintly but clearly.

"How's
your air?"

"Running
low, but not critical yet. "

The
outer door opened with a puff of fog and Shigar kicked himself out
onto the hull. For a moment the sheer weirdness of his position
struck him hard. He was standing practically naked on the hull of a
smuggler's ship, surrounded by killer droids and wrecked ships, with
the galaxy's brilliant spiral to one side and the jets of a black
hole to the other.

He
couldn't tell if what he felt was joy or terror.

The
twisted wreckage drew nearer. Larin's cannon flashed, and a hex went
tumbling. Using the tractor beam, Hetchkee pulled another hex out of
what had once been a window in the Corellia's hull. That created a
clear spot.

Shigar
braced himself to jump.

"Here's
as close as we can get, "said Jet. "Don't miss. "

With
one explosive kick of his muscles, Shigar cleared the gap. For a
moment the sky turned about him-the planet came into view from behind
the Auriga Fire, blistered with magma domes-and then he hit the
wreckage solidly, with arms outstretched to find the slightest grip.

He
stuck fast, and paused to catch his breath. A hex, alerted to his
arrival by the subtle shift in the wreckage's angular momentum,
peered with black eyes out of a nearby hole. Its forelegs came out to
point at him. Shigar reached for his lightsaber, but Hetchkee was
quicker. The hex swept up and away from him, into empty space, where
it was blown to atoms by Larin.

"Thanks,
" he said.

"Pleasure"
came Larin's reply. "Are you going to lie there all day while we
do all the work?"

He
was already moving, tugging himself lightly from handhold to handhold
in the perfect free fall of open space.

"You
are close, " said Master Satele over the comm. "I can sense
you. There's a shattered access port ahead. Go in that way. "

He
obeyed without hesitation, keeping a sharp eye out for more hexes.
When he was inside, there would be no rescue from Larin and Hetchkee.

The
wreckage appeared to have been part of the Corellia's forward command
center and had been occupied at the time of the disaster. Shigar
squeezed past several bodies as he wound his way deep into the
twisted structure. The path was tight and occasionally dangerous,
with sharp edges and spikes to negotiate. There was very little
light.

"Come
to the next intersection and stop there for a moment, " she told
him. "I have to tell you something. "

The
sound of movement came from ahead, through the bulkheads he touched,
and Shigar slowed down to a bare creep, every sense attuned to the
slightest change. The intersection must once have been broad enough
for a landspeeder but was now barely large enough to admit a person,
particularly one as tall as him. There was definitely something
moving down the right-hand bend.

"What
I must tell you is this, " Master Satele said. "Ever since
we heard the droids, I've been wondering just how much of herself
Lema Xandret put into her creations. The answer is around that
corner, Shigar. Can you see it yet?"

He
edged around the corner to see what lay ahead of him. There were nine
motionless hexes clustered around a pressurized door, as though
waiting for it to open.

"I'm
behind that door, " she said, "and soon you will be, too. "

"How,
Master?" He couldn't conceive of a way to defeat nine hexes at
once, when just two had been more than a match for him on Hutta.
There was barely enough room to slide by them, let alone fight.

"You
told me that the droid factory contained a biological component, "
she said. "It seemed reasonable to wonder if the hexes might
also. "

"There's
a fluid inside them, " he said, remembering what he had seen on
Hutta. "It looks like blood. But they're definitely droids.
They're not cyborgs. "