Apocalypse (21 page)

C
ARGO DID NOT NEED LIGHT OR FRESH AIR
. I
T DID NOT GRAY OUT DURING
high-g accelerations, nor did it suffer ringing ears every time it shot through a grav-control halo. Cargo did not feel its gorge rise when the transfer tunnels took an unseen turn, and it did not grow dizzy with dehydration as it sailed through the stifling heat of a repulsor-driven freight-handling system.

But Ben did.

And that made the journey from the water-intake plant a real test of endurance and courage. For what seemed an hour, Ben sailed through the sweltering cargo tube, lurching and turning through the darkness, consumed by his growing fear for Vestara. He could only imagine the agony she would suffer at the hands of her Sith captors, the punishments she would endure for killing so many of her own kind—especially High Lord Taalon and her father. But it was more than just fear eating at him. It was anger, too. Everyone had been so fast to blame Vestara for the ambush … and no one faster than Corran Horn. Considering how his own children had betrayed the Jedi while
under Abeloth’s control back on Nam Chorios, Master Horn ought to have known better than to pass judgment based on nothing but a guess. Vestara deserved better than that.

A spine-jamming deceleration jerked Ben’s thoughts back to his own situation, and he felt the air stir ahead as a freight canister sped through an unseen intersection just centimeters from his head. He hung there motionless for a few moments, listening to surprised groans and involuntary grunts echoing through the passage as his five companions endured their own sudden stops and unexpected accelerations. Then he felt his face beginning to stretch as he shot forward again, and once more he was flying helplessly through the darkness.

The worst part was the control rings. Every hundred meters, Ben would pass through one of the repulsorlift control rings that lined the shaft. If he was lucky, the ring would be on standby, and he would suffer only a moment of unpleasant queasiness as he passed through a wafer-thin antigravity field. But as he approached an active ring, a crashing roar would fill the tunnel. There would be a moment of silence as he passed through, then an excruciating
pop
deep inside his ears, followed by a maddening ringing that made his whole head ache.

So far, Ben had passed through fifteen active rings and endured more twists and turns than he could track. His stomach felt like he had been practicing wingovers with a deactivated inertial compensator, and he was so thirsty that he was almost ready to start sucking the sweat out of his own robes. And he had no idea how much longer the journey would last—or what they would find when they finally reached the computer interface located at the other end.

Ben felt his stomach flutter as he passed through an inactive control ring; then the muffled thump of a shifting guidance door sounded in the darkness ahead. A moment later his spine bent backward as he was drawn upward into a vertical shaft. A cloud of blue light appeared above his head and rapidly brightened into a reflection on the interior wall of another bend in the tube—this one back to the horizontal. Ben barely managed to spin around before passing through a final pair of control rings. He decelerated so hard his kidneys ached, and then he was spat out of the freight tunnel and dropped onto the padded bed of a receiving bench.

A bar of brilliant white light appeared a few centimeters ahead and
started to glide along the pad toward Ben. He rolled away, only to find himself trapped on his side, his back pressed against the guide-rail on the far side of the bench. The beam swept across his face, bright and blinding as it shone into his eyes, then continued toward his feet. As his vision began to clear, Ben saw that the light was being projected from a saucer-shaped silhouette sitting atop the squat, blocky torso of an STK-CLR stock-keeping droid.

The subtle whine of a pneumatic motor sounded from the droid’s shoulder and waist areas, and four telescoping arms extended toward the guide-rail. Ben rolled beneath them, then swung his legs around and dropped off the bench to stand next to the droid.

It spun around its head-disk so that the projection slot was facing Ben. “Your universal stocking code is not evident,” it said, speaking in a deep, clattering voice. “Please display it for proper shelf assignment.”

Ben shook his head. “I’m not a stock item.”

“Of course you are,” STK-CLR responded. Another whine sounded, and before Ben could react a set of servogrips closed around his wrists and ankles. “You came through the freight system.”

“Not everything that comes through the freight system is a stock item.” When Ben tried to pull free, the droid’s arms suddenly extended farther, and he found himself hanging spread-eagled in the gloom. “Put me down! And that’s an override command.”

“Stock items are not authorized to issue override commands,” STK-CLR countered. A small panel opened in the droid’s chest, and a slender hose ending in a tiny nozzle shot out and sprayed a bar code down the front of Ben’s robe. “You have been marked
DEFECTIVE UNIT
. Present yourself to the routing station on the far side of the delivery portal for return to your supplier.”

Rather than continue the argument, Ben simply hung his head. “Sure, whatever you want.”

“Good.” The droid lowered Ben to the floor. “And relay my displeasure to your manufacturer. This is the Jedi Temple. We have acceptance specifications.”

As soon as his boots hit the floor, Ben pivoted around and tripped the primary circuit breaker in the back of the droid’s neck. A surprised squawk sounded from the STK-CLR’s vocabulator; its arms retracted into their sockets, and its frame hissed down to settle over its legs. Ben
pushed the droid away from the receiving pad, then snapped his lightsaber off its belt hook and turned to see if he could figure out where the freight-handling system had deposited him.

He was not surprised to find himself in a dimly lit warehouse filled with row after row of high, gloom-swaddled shelves. The Jedi Temple had at least a hundred such rooms, devoted to storage for laboratories, armories, fabrication shops, communications centers, even routine maintenance functions necessary to keep any building of its size in good repair. But this room smelled faintly of Tibanna gas and hyperdrive coolant, and it was reverberating to the muffled thunder of artillery strikes crashing against the shields outside a nearby chamber.

All of that told Ben that he was in the parts locker of a spacecraft repair bay. Judging by the size of the locker, and by the steady battle rumble he was hearing, it was a repair bay that served an extremely large and busy hangar.

The muffled growl of activating control rings sounded deep within the freight-handling system and grew instantly louder, and Ben looked back in time to see the meter-long silhouette of an astromech droid shooting out of the delivery portal. It decelerated almost instantly, then settled gently onto the receiving pad.

Ben used the Force to lift the little astromech onto the floor next to him. “Rowdy?”

The droid responded with an indignant tweedle.

“Sorry,” Ben said. “Not much light in here.”

A ceiling lamp activated, illuminating the vicinity in a cone of brightness—and leaving no doubt about the identity of the battered little unit in front of Ben.

“Turn that off!” Ben ordered. “We’re trying to stay hidden here.”

The lamp remained on, and Rowdy whistled a question.

“From the Sith, of course,” Ben hissed. “I can’t believe you brought us to the Main Operations Hangar! There are probably a couple hundred Sith manning the cannon batteries—right out there!”

Rowdy tweedled in agreement. Then, without deactivating the lamp, he dropped his third tread and began to roll along behind the shelving units. Ben followed along until they reached the eighth row, at the far end of which he saw another cone of light shining down on his father and Corran. The two Jedi Masters were twenty meters away,
standing next to a computer interface panel, but staring over the parts counter out into a massive repair bay as brightly lit as it was empty. Given their lack of caution, it seemed apparent that Ben’s fear of discovery was unwarranted. The Sith were simply too busy defending the exterior of the Temple to worry about what was in the parts locker behind them.

“Okay, Rowdy. Sorry.” Ben pointed toward the interface panel. “You obviously know what to do. I’ll go back and let the others know the situation.”

Rowdy replied with a good-natured trill, and Ben returned to the receiving area, where Jysella Horn stood peering into the delivery portal with her lightsaber in hand. Her jaw was set, her feet were braced, and her Force aura was humming with anticipation.

“There was a lot of blasterfire behind me,” Jysella said as Ben approached. “I think Jaina and Valin have been trading bolts with the enemy the whole way.”

“Blasted Sith.” Ben vaulted over the receiving bench, then turned to face the delivery portal. “Don’t they recognize a desperate escape when they see it?”

Jysella shrugged. “Maybe they’re just as desperate to catch us.”

The sound of activating control rings began to growl up from the depths of the freight-handling system, and an instant later Jysella’s brother, Valin, came shooting out of the delivery portal. His attention was fixed behind him, and he was holding a blaster pistol with a pinging depletion alarm.

Ben began to have a very bad feeling. “Valin, is Jaina—”

“Jaina’s in trouble,” Valin interrupted. He rolled off the bench toward Jysella, then ejected the blaster’s energy cell, popped in a new one, and holstered the weapon. “She kept calling for cover, but it’s hard to fire past someone’s head when you keep taking g-loads. I might have hit her a couple of times.”

“If she was still firing herself, you did great,” Ben assured him. “ ‘In trouble’ is better than ‘dead’ any day.”

“I’ll feel better when she tells me that herself,” Valin said. He snapped his lightsaber off its hook and took a position at Jysella’s side. “But this is going to get even messier. It sounded like there were dozens of Sith in the tube behind her.”

“It doesn’t matter how many there are,” Jysella said. She stepped over to the control panel on the side of the delivery portal. “Not if they never get here.”

Ben smiled. “I like your thinking.” He looked toward Valin. “But we have another problem. There must be a couple hundred Sith out in the Main Operations Hangar, and this storage locker is a dead end. We need an escape route.”

Valin nodded and started for the back corner of the warehouse. “I’ll cut a bolt-hole.”

Ben activated his comlink and opened a channel to his father. “We’ve got Sith following us through the freight system,” he said. “We’re trying to strand them, but no promises. How are you and Rowdy coming with the interface?”

“If stranding them doesn’t work, try to buy some time,” Luke replied. “Rowdy is plugged into the droid socket, but he can’t find the computer core.”

An angry whistle sounded over the channel as Rowdy objected to the characterization of the problem, but the groan of control rings was already building down in the cargo tubes, and Ben began to hear the muffled squeal of blasterfire.

“Okay,” he said. “We’re about to make a lot of noise back here, so be ready to turn back reinforcements. Let us know as soon as you get those blast doors open.”

By the time he finished speaking, the blasterfire had grown louder and more distinct. Ben activated his lightsaber, then positioned himself within easy reach of the delivery portal and drew in a deep breath, trying to clear his mind before the combat began. He still felt angry and frightened for Vestara—and he had to put that aside. Fear led to mistakes, and anger led to … well, someplace he did not want to go.

Ben was still trying to center himself when Jaina shot out of the delivery portal. She stank of singed molytex and charred flesh, and she was firing back into the delivery portal even as the freight system dropped her onto the receiving bench. Ben gathered himself to leap up beside her, but her eyes snapped in his direction, and she shook her head.

“Stay clear!” Jaina rolled off the other side of the bench, yelling, “Grenade!”

Ben reacted instantly, his hand rising as he reached out in the Force. He caught something heavy and fist-sized as it shot from the delivery portal, then swept his hand toward the far wall and felt the tiny orb go sailing.

In the next instant a yellow blast seared the side of his face, and he felt himself slam into the nearby shelves even before he realized he had been sent flying. His ears were ringing and his ribs ached, but he could still feel all of his limbs—and one of them was holding a lightsaber. He extracted himself from the toppled shelving, then turned back to find a Sith warrior already jumping off the bench toward Jaina. Two more—one with a pointed dark beard and the other with an old scar across his nose—were turning to face Ben. Their eyes shone with the anticipation of an easy kill.

Ben didn’t care for their attitude.

He Force-blasted Scarnose back across the receiving bench, then leapt at Pointed-Beard. The bearded Sith pivoted forward, whipping his lightsaber around, and their weapons met in a spray of sparks.

Guessing what would come next, Ben launched himself into a cartwheel over their locked blades and watched Pointed-Beard’s Force-hurled glass parang spin harmlessly past. He came down behind his foe and pivoted hard, dragging his lightsaber through the Sith’s shoulder and torso.

The man collapsed, screaming and stinking of charred flesh, and Ben found himself looking down on Jaina from his perch on the bench. She was standing over the corpses of Scarnose and the third Sith, her shoulders heaving as she struggled to catch her breath. For a moment, Ben thought she was just tired from killing two Sith in the three seconds it had taken him to kill one.

Then he noticed the large circle of blood-soaked cloth on the side of her robe. At the center was a deep, thumb-sized burn hole.

“Jaina, are you okay?”

Ben’s ears were still ringing from the grenade blast, and he could barely hear his own words—much less Jaina’s reply. But the alarm in her eyes was plain to see, and when her gaze slid toward the delivery portal, he realized what
she
must be hearing: the growl of activating control rings.