They activated their targeting computers.
The Falcon stopped spinning-no doubt as target-lock alarms filled the cockpit.
A nervous Sullustan voice came over the comm channel. “This is Jae. run, second mate of the Millennium Falcon, requesting the two unseen craft to deselect us as targets.”
Jaina and Zekk did not comply.
The glow died from the Falcon’s ion drives. “This is Jae Juun, second mate of the Millennium Falcon. SeeThreepio was mistaken. Our only intention was to move the ship out of… the line… What the bloah is that?”
Jaina and Zekk did not need to see past the Falcon to know what Juun was talking about. They could feel it in the growing pressure of Unu’s will, in the growing weight inside them.
The Falcon slipped away from the exit, exposing the old Lancer-class frigate now blocking the way outside. A small, well-armed launch was gliding silently through the jagged entrance, nosing aside ruined dartships and tumbling pieces of Killik.
Unu’s will grew crushing, compelling Zekk and Jaina to answer honestly-even before they sensed the question.
Who did this?
Mara and Luke were ten meters down a sticky, wax-lined tunnel, and every time Mara made the mistake of breathing, she came close to retching. The dank air stank worse than a Sarlacc’s belch, a cloying melange of decay, spice, and free ethmane. And the smell was only growing worse as they advanced.
“At least it keeps you from thinking about the burns,” Luke said.
Mara’s awareness of her wounds-half a dozen aching circles where electrobolts had burned thumb-sized craters into her flesh-returned. She drew a little more of the Force into herself, using it to reinvigorate exhausted muscles, to keep her pain-crippled body functional.
“That’s what I love about you, farmboy,” she said.
“I always look on the bright side?”
“Not really.” Mara assumed a cynical tone. “You always know how to make a girl feel better.”
The tunnel finally opened into a large vault where the air was so humid and hot that their faces grew instantly moist. An eerie whine permeated the chamber, barely loud enough to hear above the pounding of her own heart, and the Force grew heavy with the pain of the nearly dead.
Mara followed Luke into the vault, and suddenly she forgot the eerie sound, the horrible smell, even her own fiery pain. The entire chamber was lined by large hexagonal cells, some sealed with a wax cap, some containing a paralyzed Chiss captive curled around a Gorog larva. Many of the prisoners were dead and mostly devoured, with the barbed mandibles of a nearly developed larva protruding half a meter above the cell walls. Just as many remained alive, groaning weakly as larvae gnawed at their immobile bodies.
“I’m beginning to understand the Chiss point of view,” Luke said. “I wonder if Raynar knows about this?”
“Maybe, on some-“
Mara’s neck prickled with cold, and she spun around to find the wrong end of an electrobolt rifle illuminated in her lamp beam. Behind it, sighting down the stock, was a blue face framed by a pair of Twi’lek lekku.
Rather than taking half a second to ignite her lightsaber and another half a second to block, Mara pointed and released the Force energy she had been using to keep herself going. Her body erupted into pain and muscle tremors, but blue lightning shot from her fingertips and blasted the rifle, driving the stock back into the Twi’lek’s mangled shoulder and crackling deep into the wound. Alema cried out and let the weapon slip from her hands, then went limp and floated away into darkness.
Mara felt a hint of uneasiness in Luke. “What?”
“Nothing,” Luke replied. Just thinking
Luke’s lightsaber crackled to life and droned past Mara’s ear, blocking what sounded more like blasterfire than another electrobolt. She sensed a second attack coming and activated her own blade, sweeping it up behind Luke’s to bat away another string of bolts.
The blasterfire fell silent, but not before Mara could swing her helmet lamp toward its source. She glimpsed a hump-shouldered man with a half-melted face and one chitinous insect arm grafted to his shoulder; then he slipped out of the light.
“Force lightning.” The man’s voice was raspy and sharp. “We had thought Skywalker’s Jedi considered themselves above that.”
“We make exceptions.” Again, Mara sensed a certain apprehension in Luke. She ignored it and swung her helmet lamp toward the voice, and again the dark figure slipped out of the light. “Especially in your case, Welk.”
As Mara spoke, she and Luke moved apart, positioning themselves just within each other’s reach, where they could still take advantage of overlapping fields of defense.