[Last Of The Jedi] - 05(28)

Solace stayed between them. They walked single file across the beam. Lune never faltered. He never looked clown. He walked across the beam as though he was strolling across a park on a sunny day.

“Now I’ve seen true courage,” Clive said.

Ferus turned to agree that the boy was amazing. He saw that Clive was watching Astri.

Solace, Astri, and Lune reached the other side. Astri hugged her son to her side.

“Your turn, Trever,” Ferus said.

Clive crooked an arm for Dona. “I’ll escort you to the beam, madam.”

Dona nodded. “Don’t worry about me — I live on a mountain. I can do it.”

Trever, Dona, and Clive started across the beam. Roan waited with Ferus. They watched as the trio inched across the beam.

Suddenly Ferus was alert to an intruder. A prowler was streaking toward the beam. In the hangar tower, Solace had seen it, too. Dona ducked, almost losing her balance, but Clive grabbed her arm. Another prowler zoomed upward.

“Don’t move!” Ferus shouted to Roan. Then he Force-leaped across the space, soaring toward the aggressors as Solace did the same. In midair, the two Jedi slashed through the droids, sailed past each other and both landed on the beam as lightly as drifting snow.

“Ferus!”

Roan was leaping from beam to beam, avoiding beam fire from two spicier droids that had appeared on the partially finished roof. Ferus jumped back to the roof, deflecting the fire. He landed behind the two spider droids and slashed at them with his lightsaber, turning them into molten metal.

“I’m beginning to like this Jedi business,” Roan said.

Across the way, Trever, Dona, and Clive were now safe in the tower. Roan and Ferus hurried to the beam and walked quickly across. “Okay, now comes the hard part,” Ferus said.

“My cruiser is three levels down,” Astri whispered. “The ramps are at each end.”

They moved toward the ramps that linked the levels. They couldn’t risk taking the turbolift. They were almost down the ramp when they heard a squad of stormtroopers heading up. It was too late to retreat; the troopers had spotted them. The commander gave the order to fire.

Ferus and Solace raced forward as the troopers began firing. Their lightsabers whirled as they charged. Roan and Oryon stayed behind, firing their blasters. Clive and Astri placed themselves in front of Dona, Trever, and Lune, their blasters in hand.

Ferus was not used to fighting with Solace. Her style surprised him. She was a loner, and, at this point, a reluctant Jedi. But her fighting style was as generous as it was aggressive. Her leaps were liquid, and she seemed to be everywhere at once, protecting Ferus and guiding them all downward even as she vanquished the troopers. Ferus couldn’t read her intentions as quickly as he should, but it didn’t matter. She read his. She countered his moves, reinforced his strikes, and covered his back.

When the clones were littered around them, he deactivated his lightsaber and nodded at her in admiration. “Thanks.”

They continued on, down to the next level. More prowler droids flew toward them, and Ferus cut them down in three clean strikes.

“They’re going to send more firepower now,” Solace said. “They know where we are.”

They raced down the last ramp toward the cruiser. Solace leaped into the pilot seat. Dona hurried inside along with Clive. Oryon sat next to Solace. Roan jumped in behind Solace, squeezing himself into the cockpit behind the laser cannon controls. Astri and Lune were next.

Suddenly an explosion rocked the hangar. A pair of droidekas had entered and were blasting at a load-bearing column. The column soon crashed to the floor.

The roof overhead began to cave, cracks spreading rapidly. The duracrete underneath their feet began to shift. Ferus grabbed Lune with one hand and Trever with the other. Oryon reached out and yanked Astri inside the craft.

“Lune!” Astri screamed.

With a thunderous roar, half of the level above collapsed. Ferus dove for cover with the two boys as the droidekas continued their deadly blasts.

Solace gunned the engines and soared away from the flying debris. She hovered outside in the air while Roan manned the laser cannons. He made one accurate shot, blasting one droideka and sending the flaming mass of metal into the other one.

Ferus rolled to his feet, coughing out the dust. “Discord missile!” he shouted, spotting one in the air. He knew from his Clone Wars service that it was filled with a flock of buzz droids, those lethal droids that could adhere to a starfighter going at top speed and drill into it, disabling it in seconds.

Solace dove away, but the discord missile kept tracking.

Lune suddenly sent his laser lasso flying. It was a clean red line in the air, flying outward toward the missile. Ferus held his breath. He could feel the Force in the air as Lune unknowingly used it to guide the lasso. Lune may not have been aware of what the Force was, but his mother was in danger and he would make it work for him.