concourse. The sixth lay twitching and sparking on the floor by the stairs. It
kept trying to standup, but something was broken in its leg or hip joints.
Instead of rising, it scrabbled around and around in slow jerky circles, like a
child's broken toy.
There was no sign of Master Yoda.
In all the shattered scene, one figure remained brisk and erect: Asajj
Ventress, as tall, slim, elegant, and deadly as he remembered her. "Ah—it's
seventeen, isn't it?" she said pleasantly. A pair of sabers spat and blazed into
hissing life in her hands. "Now I'm glad the droids didn't finish you off. That
would have muddled my count."
"You number your victims?" Jai said. "That must take an army of accountants."
"Oh, I'm really a one-woman show, and I like to travel light," Ventress said,
flexing her wrists and cutting quick arcs of brightness in the air. "I only
count my Jedi, and I find dead reckoning is enough for that."
Down in the docking bay, Palleus Chuff had set Last Call to engage her
engines after ten minutes. At least five of those minutes must have gone by, and
the more the actor thought about those giant engines firing inside the enclosed
bay, the more he thought that maybe the whole idea hadn't been such a great one.
Yoda was working very fast. The Call was anchored to the deck with high-pull
magnets on the bottom of five support legs. The old Jedi was chopping them off
one by one. "Why are you doing that?" Chuff asked, peering forward so his head
was right under the corner of the ship now without support.
Yoda squeaked and puffed out his round cheeks with the sudden effort of using
the Force to keep the Call from crushing Chuff into a grease spot on the docking
bay floor. "Step back!" he barked.
"You don't have to get huffy about it." A stream of superheated plasma arced
toward Chuff, curving mysteriously away at the last minute. "Whoa! That was
lucky!"
Yoda snarled. He grabbed the actor's wrist and flipped him under the
starship, letting the corner come crashing down where they had been standing a
tenth of a second before. The air crackled and pinged as a line of flechettes
tore into the ship's hull.
"Don't you think it would be better to take out these droids?" Chuff
squeaked. "Not that I would try to teach you your business, but under the
circumstances—"
A sonic grenade came bounding under the ship's belly. With a swat of the
Force, Yoda sent it rocketing out again. "If the ship's engines fire, tear the
spaceport apart it will," he grunted.
"Oh," Chuff said, crestfallen. "I guess I hadn't thought—"
"True!" Yoda grunted, and with another sudden twitch of the Force, the two of
them were stuck to the ship's underside as a line of plasma fire swept the deck
where they had just been standing. An instant later they dropped back to the
floor, now hot underfoot.
"I will deal with the machines," Yoda said, eyes twinkling. He turned off his
lightsaber and passed it to Chuff. "Take this. Cut off the last leg you must, so
ship out of the docking bay I can push. Then get to the turbolifts."
"Me!" the actor said. "But—"
Yoda held Chuff's hands, clasping them around the lightsaber. "Live your
part, you can. Be a Jedi hero, you must!" And somehow, strength and courage and
confidence seemed to flow from the old one's hands, and Chuff felt more alive
than he had ever been. As if courage were a fire, and he was standing too close
to Yoda not to burn.
He felt his own eyes gleam and his own mouth curve up into Yoda's Merry Havoc
smile. "May the Force be with you, Master Yoda."
The old Jedi cackled. "It usually is!"
Then the chattering sound of a railgun bit into the dim docking bay, gouging
a line of sparks out of the floor, and Yoda was gone. An instant later one of
the assassin droids was picked up as if by an invisible hand and hurled into a
comrade. Tracers of railgun fire converged on a shadowy figure flitting away
from Chuff.
How much time left, the actor wondered. Three minutes? Two? He drew a deep
breath. Quietly he crept toward the Call's last magnetic anchor.
The docking bay was filled with a grinding, scraping noise as a single-pilot
stunt craft some distance away began to drag across the floor. Yoda was drawing
the droids away.
Chuff limped over to the last leg of the ship. After days trussed up in
Ventress's hold, his whole body felt stiff, sore, and awkward. The skin in the
middle of his back was crawling, expecting the burst of blasterfire that would
cut him down. He forced himself to ignore it, determined not to let Yoda down.
Muzzle flashes lit the far end of the bay like continuous lightning, and a
sonic grenade went off, adding its bass growl to the whine and chatter of the
railguns.
Without so much as a lightsaber, Master Yoda was giving the assassin droids
all they could handle.
When Chuff got to the last stanchion, he had a sudden moment of panic, sure
he wouldn't know how to turn the lightsaber back on. He tabbed what would have
been the power button on the prop he had used for 1,437 performances of Jedi! To
his delight the weapon hissed immediately to life. "By the stars," he murmured,
feeling his best Knowing Yoda Smile creep onto his face, "the Force is with me."
Quickly he slashed through the support, turned off the lightsaber so it
wouldn't give away his position, and threw himself backward as a sudden
stuttering flare of tracer fire whined overhead.
The Call settled on the deck with a resounding crash, free of her magnetic
constraints.
By the time Chuff made it to the turbolift, the countdown chrono running in
his head said Last Call's engines were going to roar to life any second now. He
had a sudden image of what that would mean: rippling bands of magnetic energy
and fusion bursts pulsing through the hold, the ship smashing blindly into
walls. Energy building for the blind jump to hyperspace, and Force help anyone
caught in a confined space with that.
Chuff swallowed. Playing the hero with Yoda's own lightsaber in his hands he
had felt shaky courage everywhere, but now the courage was draining fast and
only the shaking remained. He curled up in a corner and turned his face to the
wall so he wouldn't see the first gleam as the Call's engines flickered to life.
A hand touched him on the shoulder. He gasped, spun, and saw Yoda's merry
eyes looking at him. Yoda grabbed Chuff and dived for the lift as a line of
flechettes chopped into the wall where they'd been standing.
Lights flickered on throughout Last Call, and a deep humming throb began to
build in her engines. The ship scraped across the docking bay floor blind,
gathering speed, and then with a deafening metal scream punched into the space
station wall. The Call jerked through the opening and tore free in a shower of
transparisteel, insulation, and sparking wires. She picked up speed, angling
away from the station as her preliminary thrusters kicked in.
Explosive decompression sucked all the air out of the docking bay, plucking
chairs, papers, tools, small craft, and most importantly the four assassin
d
roids, and flinging them into the black vault of space. The howling wind nearly
jerked Chuff out of the lift tube to follow them, but Master Yoda's hand held
him back. A pocket of air remained in the lift, held there by Yoda's will.
Out in the long dark of space, the assassin droids spun, tumbling slowly as
they drifted farther and farther away, until their erratic blasterfire was only
the twinkling of distant lights.
Yoda turned to Chuff. "Thank you," he said.
Back on the staircase between the main concourse and the food court, the
killer droid's metal hand was cold around Scout's throat. She felt her vertebrae
creak as it slowly lifted her off the ground by her neck. Whie was staring at
her. Two other droids lay in pieces around him. "Put away your weapon," the
droid told Whie.
"Don't do it," Scout gasped. "I'm not import—" The droid's fingers tightened
just a fraction, choking off any kind of speech. She could barely get air. With
a lifetime's experience of choke holds, she figured she would be unconscious in
thirty seconds. Unless the droid decided to squeeze once, hard, of course; then
she'd be dead.
Whie studied the situation. For once he was even breathing hard. He gave a
little nod, and the flame of his lightsaber guttered and went out. "Hurt her and
"That is irrelevant," the droid said in its monotonous voice. "Only the
mission is relevant. You must not interfere with the mission."
A faint black ring was forming at the edge of Scout's vision. She fought to
keep conscious. The droid was standing sideways on the stairs, holding her out
from its body with mechanical ease, a clear warning to Whie, who stood five
steps below.
There was something odd about the side of the droid's head. Scout blinked and
forced herself to focus. Yes, there it was: a tiny red dot, like the point of a
glow rod beam, centered on the side of the droid's head. Odd.
"Is there a problem here?" Fidelis said, picking his way fussily down the
stairs.
"Any interference with the mission will result in the termination of this
unit," the droid said, emphasizing its point with a squeeze that wrung a
strangled squeak out of Scout.
Fidelis approached slowly. "The girl is of no interest to me. I serve only
Master Malreaux, who stands behind you. You and your comrades appear to have
offered violence to him."
"He tried to interfere with the mission," the droid said. It didn't seem to
notice the little red dot on its forehead. "Anyone who interferes with the
mission must be suppressed. Stand back, or you, too, will be disassembled."
"That's hardly polite," Fidelis said. His fingers shot out, plunged through
the assassin droid's eyeholes, and tore its head off.
At the same instant, the green blur of Whie's lightsaber flashed, and Scout
fell to the ground with the assassin's severed hand still around her neck. Half
a meter away, she could see the severed gears and wires in the stump of its
wrist trying to close the hand and crush her throat.
The headless, handless machine lurched to its feet.
"I think not," Fidelis said. The gentleman's personal gentlething plunged his
hand down through the assassin droid's neck coupling and drew it back out
holding the droid's innards, trailing tubes and wires like a heart ripped out
with its ventricles still pumping. Fidelis tightened his hand with the same
instant crushing force that had pulverized the SPCB soldier's gun, reducing the
killer droid's innards to a gleaming lump the size of a sugar cube._
The droid crashed to the stairs like a pile of scrap metal.
"Cheap thugs," Fidelis sniffed. "Terribly underbred."
Whie was staring at his servant. "What are you?"
"Your gentleman's personal gentlething, sir."
"Um, a little help here?" Scout gasped. Whie stopped gawping and used the
Force to prize open the metal fingers clenched around her throat.
Scout sucked in a great gulp of air. Stale, canned, recycled air it might be,
but no ocean breeze had ever tasted so sweet. She looked at the pieces of droid
scattered down the stairs. Whie had been doing some neat sword work while she
was falling down and trying to break metal hands with her throat. "Thank you for
the rescue, handsome prince."
Whie grinned. Scout decided that when he wasn't trying to be Serene and Above
It All, he actually had a pretty likable face. He grabbed her hand and pulled
her up. "All part of a day's work, princess."
They looked down from their vantage point on the stairs. There was no sign of
the little R2 unit in which Master Yoda had been hiding. The spaceport concourse
was littered with droid debris. The ferroceramic floors were gouged and charred.
Near Maks Leem they were spattered with blood. A few Phindians were still trying
to crawl from the area. Distant sirens were ringing. There was a great muffled
crash from somewhere down in the docking bay.
Jai and Maks were in trouble. Master Leem was trying to force herself to her
feet, but even from this distance they could see from her unsteady, swaying
movements that she was fighting to stay conscious. Thirty meters away, Jai Maruk
was in a fierce fight with Asajj Ventress, his one lightsaber, sky blue, matched
against a pair of blood-red blades. Asajj was winning.
Whie and Scout looked at one another in dismay. "Let's go!" Scout said.
Jai Maruk was deaf, moving in a haze of white noise that grew gradually
softer until it was just the faintest hiss, the sound of blood running under his
He had never fought this hard in his life. The droids had been just a
warm-up, a stretching exercise, costing him a cup of blood and a little mobility
moving to his right, thanks to a flechette in his hip.
In the eleven and a half weeks since he had seen Ventress the first time, he
had gone through their meeting again and again, cataloging every mistake,
analyzing everything he could remember from that first savage encounter. Back on
Coruscant, he had come to understand that he had underestimated her. For the
first few passes of their encounter he had been looking to disarm her; by the
time he realized his mistake, she had taken the initiative and was driving him
back with a relentless attack. His parries had become wild, and eventually this
over swinging had eroded his defensive posture and his balance.
He had imagined the rematch a hundred times: contemplated which opening
stances to use, which attacks would be most successful, which of his strengths
he could play to. Her mastery of the two-sword form was admirable, but in his
experience such fighters tended to rely too much on their blades, and pay too
little attention to the Force.
There was only one thing he had never fully admitted into his analysis. She
was better than he was.
Just.
Better.
On the long flight home it had been easy to look away from that fact. As he
lay on his cot in the Jedi Temple , planning combinations and footwork, he had
forgotten this one, seemingly critical detail.
She was better.
Faster. More elegant. Better footwork. More precise with
her blades.
Succumbing to the dark side of the Force might be a poor life decision, but even
her touch with the Force was better than his: more powerful, more subtle, more
nuanced, and—this was the hardest thing to admit—more deeply understood. She
understood her own nature and skills and weaknesses better than Jai knew
himself.
Just better.
Like a dream, that knowledge had faded from him as soon as he left Vjun. It
was nothing he could bear to believe. But now, like a nightmare forgotten during
the day but creeping back at night, the profound truth that Ventress was going
to kill him was piercing Jai Maruk's understanding, hard and sharp as a knife
blade driving home.
After only three passes she had scored a long wound up his arm when his parry
had been too late coming. By then it was already evident that skill was not
going to save him. He tried trickery, using the Force to pick up a piece of a
broken droid and hurl it at her from behind. Somehow she felt it coming, twisted
like an Askajian dancer, and sent the chunk of metal screaming into him. He
tried to bat it away but succeeded only in slicing the metal in two, and one of
the halves had hit him very hard in the right leg.
He switched from trickery to pure will. He had won that way before, too. As a
small boy in the Temple , sheer implacable will had been his trump card. He had
won staring contests from the age of seven because he was simply willing to keep
his eyes open while they burned and ran with tears, staring relentlessly until
the pain was too much for his opponent. That was Jai Maruk. The Hawk-bat, they
called him, because of that fierce wild stare.
It wasn't enough.
He hated that. This woman was evil. Despicable. He had dedicated his entire
life to the principles of justice, to truth and knowledge, to honing his whole
body into a kind of blade, a sword-spirit, keen and quick.
And it wasn't enough.
This woman, younger than him by five years or more, this spiteful mocking
killer was just better than he was, and he hated that. With a black fury he
attacked, driving her back, letting go of himself in a way he never had before,
battering her down, half blind and mad with hate. He pressed her hard across the
blood-spotted floor.