[Last Of The Jedi] - 08(33)

“I think so.”

“Were there any vehicles when you came inside the complex? Airspeeders? Ambulances?”

“Bog had an airspeeder, but he left.”

“I came with Zan Arbor,” Linna said. “There’s a small hangar off the landing stage. One standard-issue small ambulance - a medspeeder. You can load one patient in the back.”

“Okay, we’re going to have to try that. Lead the way, Lune.”

Lune led them through the maze of dark corridors and down several ramps. He didn’t hesitate once. Finally they reached the turbolift. Ferus waved his hand over the sensor, hoping it wasn’t coded. He saw the indicator light flash.

“Good,” he murmured.

They watched the sensor indicate that the turbolift was ascending toward them. Then suddenly the light shifted to red and began to blink. The turbolift suddenly shut down.

Ferus’s heart sank. It had to be a security alert.

“They know Lune is missing,” Ferus said. “We have to go my way.”

Ferus’s mind worked quickly as he led them down to the droid recharging station. So far it wouldn’t be a full-scale alert. Lune was missing, but they wouldn’t assume he’d been taken by someone from the outside… not yet. They might assume that Linna had taken him for another test… or that he had run away, and she was looking for him. They wouldn’t assume the worst. They had a few minutes. But no doubt prowler droids would be sent out to look for them.

Just as he had the thought, he saw the droid. Ferus wondered if it had blast capability as he undipped his lightsaber.

Blasterfire streaked toward them. He deflected it and sent it back. The prowler droid went down, smoking.

“We’d better hurry. There’ll be more.”

He led the others to the glass-walled gallery that ran around the tower. It was deserted. Outside it was still dark. Travel in the skylanes was still light in the predawn hour, just a sprinkling of colored lights moving through the illumination cast by millions of glowlights on the elevated walkways and canyons of commerce. Ferus looked down at the tower itself, trying to reconcile the blueprints he’d studied with his own impressions.

Linna looked down, too. “It’s a free fall down to the landing stage,” she said. “How can we get down there?”

“Let me worry about that.” He was worried. With his Force-ability, Lune could probably make it. But what about Linna?

Suddenly he felt a warning. Ferus reacted quickly, pulling Linna and Lune down just as blasterfire ricocheted through the gallery.

Five prowler droids winged toward him in star formation, firing rapidly as their photoreceptors detected Lune and Linna. The air was full of smoke. Ferus triple-somersaulted through the air. His lightsaber arced and danced as he swung, deflecting the fire and sending all five droids crashing to the floor.

Ferus was so attuned to the Force now that he could sense the air displacements outside in the corridor. More prowler droids were approaching. He had no doubt that Vader would be next. Thousands of meters in the air, they were trapped.

The only way was straight out, then down.

Ferus felt something strange, a humming in his bones that spread suddenly throughout his chest, like a burning star. Power. It seemed something apart from him, something he could reach out and tap if he wanted. This wasn’t the fluidity of the Force, it was something different in quality. The dark side of the Force that could be grasped in a fist and used.

If he wanted.

And he heard the voices again, but this time they weren’t outside of him. They were inside, at the heart of the humming inside him. Ferus turned and looked at the transparisteel. Any moment he expected to see a flock of droids approaching.

You can save them.

All you have to do … is this.

The transparisteel window exploded inward, showering the corridor with jagged remnants of what had been solid a moment before.

“Ferus?”

Lune wasn’t practiced in the Force, but he felt enough to be afraid.

Ferus saw his reflection in the shattered glass. His eyes, glowing. His lip, curled. His face, dark with anger. He didn’t recognize himself.

Not understanding, Linna touched his arm. He looked at her hand and wanted to rip it off his body. He didn’t want connection.

“You can’t make it with me,” Linna said. “And you have to save Lune.”

Stupid woman, choosing to stay when I can save you!

Whose thought was that? His?

What is happening to me?

The voices…

“Go,” Linna urged. “They don’t know I was with you yet. I can go back. Remember you have a friend here.”

She turned and ran, jumping over the shards of transparisteel and disappearing.