Apocalypse (43 page)

Inside Tahiri’s mind, Abeloth’s wispy voice said,
There is no need for explosives, child
.

The tentacle squeezed Tahiri’s wrist until her hand opened and the thermal detonator dropped to the floor—still unarmed.

We are going to be together a long time, you and I
.

Tahiri jammed the emitter nozzle of her lightsaber into the pit of Abeloth’s stomach. “Not if I can help it.”

She thumbed the switch and saw the tip of her sapphire lightsaber shoot out through Abeloth’s back. Guessing it would take more than a single penetrating wound to kill a Force entity, Tahiri immediately whipped her hand down, dragging the blade down through her captor’s body at an angle … or so she had intended.

When the blade failed to move, Tahiri looked down and saw that this hand, too, was wrapped in a tentacle. She tried to pull free and found that not only was she unable to move the hand, she could no longer even feel it.

That is the thing, my child
, Abeloth said.
You
can’t
help it
.

A tentacle rose between them, then bent forward and began to slither up Tahiri’s chin.

“What?” Tahiri gasped. A cold terror was rising inside her, and she had to fight to avoid panicking. “What are you doing?”

Did I not say?
Abeloth replied.
We are going to be together. The lieutenant’s body is weak. Yours will be strong. Yours has felt the Force—

The explanation was cut short by the sharp crackle of a mini rocket, its roar rising in pitch as it approached. Tahiri glanced toward the shattered viewing panel and saw Fett standing there, the arm with the launcher still pointed down into the lab.

Then Abeloth twisted away, ripping herself open on Tahiri’s lightsaber blade, and was gone. The mini rocket arrived an eyeblink later, striking the floor in front of Tahiri … and failing to explode. Fett dipped his helmet—as though to say
you’re welcome
—then spun away and disappeared about two breaths ahead of Abeloth. She sprang through the hole after him, an oily dark fume pouring from the wound in her side.

It took a couple of heartbeats for Tahiri to believe she hadn’t lost her mind. It seemed impossible, but Fett had just risked his life to save hers. And he was using
himself
as bait, when he could have just taken his scientists and fled. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all—or maybe he just valued his word more than his life.

Either way, Tahiri was not going to waste the time he had just bought her—quite possibly with his life. She pulled two more thermal detonators from her vac suit pockets and armed them both, then set one fuse for twenty seconds and secured this detonator inside a thigh pocket. The other detonator she kept in her hand, setting the fuse for ten seconds.

By the time Tahiri finished her preparations, brilliant bursts of orange and blue were flashing in the workroom as Fett unloaded his full arsenal into Abeloth. Keeping a silent count in her head, Tahiri Force-leapt through the shattered viewing panel and turned toward the far end of the room, where the two nanotech scientists—Tarm and Yu—were still shackled and cowering in their chairs.

Fett was in front of the two scientists, crouching behind the large lab table that filled the middle of the room, firing everything he had at Abeloth. The blasterfire she simply took, her wounded body barely flinching as bolt after bolt burned through. The flames she stopped with a shield of Force energy that sent tongues of crimson fire licking in every direction but toward her. And the mini rockets she simply
Force-nudged off-course, sending them streaking past to explode harmlessly against the wall.

Tahiri’s count reached five. Abeloth was facing away from her. She had leapt up on the table and was walking across it toward Fett.

Tahiri raised the thermal detonator so Fett would have at least some chance of grasping her plan, then opened her hand and used the Force to float it gently toward Abeloth.

The detonator had traveled barely half the distance when Abeloth pivoted sideways so that she could see both of her enemies, and extended a tentacle. The orb tore free of Tahiri’s Force grasp and went sailing toward Fett.

With only a few seconds left before the first detonator exploded, Tahiri went straight to Plan B, activating her lightsaber and Force-leaping to the attack. She was on Abeloth by the count of eight, hacking through a trio of tentacles—which dropped to the tabletop and promptly slithered around her ankles.

A tremendous roar filled the room as Fett activated his jetpack and came streaking toward them, one hand grasping the detonator Abeloth had sent flying toward him—which he had nabbed from the air. He jammed the detonator into the fume-oozing wound in the same instant Tahiri’s count reached nine.

She turned to leap away—then something strong clamped her biceps, and her arm nearly came out of its socket as she was jerked into the air. By the time she realized Fett had politely snagged her on the way past, they were crashing into the front corner of the workroom. Everything went white and loud, and Tahiri feared they had failed to escape the detonator’s blast radius.

That fear vanished an instant later as she hit the floor in an aching heap. Fett came down on top of her, all hard metal and sharp edges, and Tahiri realized that she had actually survived.

Had Abeloth?

Tahiri looked back toward the lab table. There was no lab table, only a five-meter hole in the floor. Drs. Frela Tarm and Jessal Yu, both utterly blast-shocked, sat staring into the hole.

Tahiri tried to move, but Fett was still lying atop her, silent and limp.

“Fett?” she called.

When he didn’t answer, she checked him in the Force and was actually a bit relieved to sense that he was still alive.

“Fett!”

Tahiri started to roll him off gently—until a little voice in her head reached the number fifteen, and she recalled Plan B.

“Fett!” She shoved him hard, bolstering her own strength with the Force. In Hagamoor 3’s weak gravity, the effort sent him flying. “Get off!”

Fett clanged into the ceiling and seemed to awaken. He pushed off hard and dropped back toward the floor, growling in a groggy voice, “Don’t move!”

Tahiri ignored him and opened the utility pocket where she had secured the second detonator.

“I’ve got you, scum!” Fett shouted.

Tahiri looked over to find him standing on wobbly legs—and pointing his flamethrower at her. She used the Force to point his arm in another direction, then held the thermal detonator up for him to see.

“Two seconds,” she said.

Fett’s grogginess seemed to vanish all at once. He pointed toward the shattered viewing panel that overlooked the main genetics lab.

“Get rid of—”

Tahiri whipped the detonator toward the viewing panel, using the Force to guide it and push it along. Even then, the orb had barely passed through the opening before it activated. There came a tremendous
crack
and a blinding white flash that seemed to eat away much of the wall and the floor in front of them … and then there came another
crack
, this one deep and sonorous.

The entire facility shook as though it had been hit by an asteroid, and a tremendous clatter echoed through the room as untold tons of stone rained down on the upper side of the ceiling.

Fett’s helmet turned so that the visor was fixed on Tahiri’s face. “Those are some pretty nice detonators. Where’d you get them?”

Another boom shook the workroom, and this time a two-meter circle of ceiling simply vanished into smoke. The shrill whistle of escaping atmosphere wailed through the room, and everything that was not
secured to a wall or a floor—shards of metal, pieces of flimsi, datachips—began to fly toward the hole.

Tahiri grabbed the helmet off the carrying clip on her shoulder and—praying that her vac suit had not been compromised during the battle—pulled it over her head and sealed it with a quick twist. Fett, whose armor included a built-in vac suit, simply started tapping keys on his forearm control pad.

“Veila!”
he yelled over their suit comm. “Is there something you forgot to tell me?”

Another blast shook the facility, this time striking somewhere farther away from the main lab. Tahiri checked her chrono and saw that the barrage had started two minutes early. She hoped that Vangur had noticed the frigate moving into attack position and retreated to a safe distance.

Tahiri toggled her chin-mike. “I didn’t think it would matter,” she said. “I thought we’d be dead by now.”

“You
might be,” Fett warned.

“They’re two minutes early, if it’s any consolation,” Tahiri said. “Jag must really have lit a fire under his staff.”

“Now the Imperial Navy moves fast.” Fett’s helmet turned toward the back of the workroom, where Frela Tarm and Jessal Yu were already in the last stages of decompression sickness, with blue skin and blood oozing out around the rims of their bulging eyes. “Of course.”

Fett turned toward the viewport through which the Squibs had attacked earlier, then used a mini rocket to blow the transparisteel out of its frame.

“Ladies first,” he said. “And no, I’m not going to blast you in the back. I know what happens when you try that on a Jedi.”

“I’m no Jedi.”

“Yeah, you are,” he said. Another turbolaser strike hit the facility, and a second, larger hole appeared in the workroom ceiling. He waved Tahiri toward the frame. “I’m about done being forgiving.”

Tahiri looked back toward the two nanotech scientists, who were both convulsing in their final death throes. “What about your counteragent?”

Fett shrugged, and she could feel his disappointment in the Force. “What about it?” he asked. “The sleemos who invented it are as good as dead. There’s no use joining them.”

“I suppose not,” Tahiri agreed. “But Fett, I’ve got to ask—”

“I’m not your chat-buddy,” he interrupted. “It’s time to go.”

“I know that.” Half expecting a tentacle to appear, Tahiri took one last glance toward the main genetics lab. “So why
did
you save me back there? You could have taken the scientists and been gone.”

“Maybe I should have, but a deal’s a deal,” Fett said. “Besides, you saved me first. I hate owing someone like you.”

“Like me?”

“A
Jedi
,” Fett growled. “Can we go now?”

“Sure,” Tahiri said, “but why did you risk your life to save me a
second
time.”

“I like
being
owed.” Fett stepped toward the opening. “I’m going now, Veila.”

“Hold on.” Tahiri caught his arm and turned toward the computer stations at the back of the lab. “There’s a datachip in there—and I’d like you to have it.”

Another strike landed, this time sending tons of stone tumbling down into the central cavern beyond the empty viewport.

Fett cast a meaningful glance upward, then said, “It better be
some
datachip.”

“Probably not, but it’s the only shot you have,” Tahiri said. “I told Yu to copy all his nanokiller files so you’d have the research when you took him and Tarm.”

Fett cocked his helmet to one side. “Why would you do that?”

Tahiri shrugged. “Because I like being owed, too,” she said. “And because I was Caedus’s apprentice at the time.”

“I haven’t forgotten.” Fett turned and started toward the back of the lab to retrieve the chip. “But that’s done between us. Okay?”

“Okay,” Tahiri said. And then they were both hurrying toward the exit, Fett ahead and Tahiri following close behind. “And thanks.”

“That
still
doesn’t make us buddies, Veila,” Fett said. “To me, you’re just another stinking Jedi.”

From where Jaina was kneeling in the center of the ventilation ducting, facing the side wall, she could see many things. She could see that
the Keshiri woman, with her torso cut half apart and a blaster bolt exit wound where her left cheek used to be, was no ordinary Sith. She could see that Luke was driving the woman-thing straight into her. And at the far end of the run, she could see Corran Horn limping toward the edge of a giant exhaust port, mere meters from lobbing the team’s last thermal detonator into the shield generator. She could see that any second now, the Keshiri would have to turn and attempt to stop him, and Jaina could see that her chrono said it was two and a half minutes before midday, GST.

Two and a half minutes was a very long time for an emplacement gunner to adjust his aim.
Too
long. Jaina knew that as soon as the shield generator went down, the Sith gunnery commander would realize there was a fresh attack coming—and where. He would order all of his gunners to break off their battles with the blastboats and assault cars that had been trying to breach the Temple’s impregnable defenses for days now. He would order them to turn their attention to the exhaust port. And he would order them to fill the sky above the port with cannon bolts and missiles. Then, in two and a half minutes, the Void Jumpers would find themselves dropping into hell.

And that was why Jaina continued to ignore Luke’s order to stand and fight. Instead, she remained motionless, willing Corran to slow down, touching him through the Force and urging him to hang back. But she could feel his concern, his fear that if he delayed, he would be wasting Luke’s sacrifice by allowing the indestructible Keshiri woman to catch up. The instant the woman got past Jaina and had a clear lane to Corran, he would launch himself at the shield generator.

But Jaina also knew she could never last two and a half minutes against the Keshiri woman—not anymore. Her entire body felt like it was burning from the inside out, and she was not at all sure her muscles would obey even when the time came—as Luke kept ordering—to stand and fight. She thought she might last thirty seconds, maybe even a minute if the Force was with her. But two and a half minutes? In two and a half minutes she would be dead.

Jaina’s chrono advanced to two minutes before midday, and then a strange thing happened. The Keshiri woman wailed in pain. It was not merely the kind of scream that anyone might let out as a blaster bolt
tore through a lung. This was something supernatural, a scream that seemed to echo through the Force and roll around inside Jaina’s head without ever actually passing through her ears.