[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(143)

Mara rose, throwing her covers off in a move designed to whirl them over attackers and give her a moment to collect herself. As she came up on her feet, she reached out and pulled through the Force, and was rewarded with the comforting weight of her lightsaber hilt thumping into her hand.

The room was lit in hues of red by the lightsaber blade hovering in the middle of the room. It was held by a small, misshapen form whose feet were well off the ground. The figure was faced away from her as she rose, but now, boosted by a little push in the Force that Mara could detect, it turned in midair and presented glittering red eyes to her.

It was a boy, maybe thirteen years of age. Its features resembled Ben’s but were twisted in anger, an anger that looked like it had years of abuse, jealousy, and rage behind it. The boy’s hair, unlike Ben’s, was blond, styled in a sort of bowl cut with bangs, and Mara realized with a shock that it was the hairstyle of Luke Skywalker in his youth-she’d seen the holos of him in his adolescence. Worse, for she’d seen those holos as well, it was the hairstyle of the juvenile Anakin Skywalker.

The boy drifted gently down to the floor. “You’re not my mother,” he said. His voice was a serpentine hiss, full of loathing.

“Good,” Mara answered. “Then it won’t be a family crime to cut you down.” She lit her lightsaber, and its blue glow clashed with the red already suffusing the chamber.

The blond boy leapt at her, lightsaber extended in a spear-like thrust, but as he came within range he spun the blade around and low in a sweeping cut.

Mara danced back and to one side, out of range of the attack, and negligently waved a hand at the boy. His eyes widened as her wash of Force energy caught him and threw him against a wall.

Against-and through. He disappeared and the glow of his lightsaber vanished with him.

Mara could still feel his presence, his proximity, even if she could no longer say in which direction he was to be found. She brought her lightsaber up in a defensive posture and waited.

Then she heard the clash of lightsaber blades from outside her quarters, in the corridor.

STAR SYSTEM MZX32905, NEAR BIMMIEL

Nelani reached up and struck, her yellow-white blade cutting through dense muscle and other tissues. There was a squeal of pain and her captor, a mynock-but one with grasping, stipple hands at the ends of its wings-released her and drifted in two different directions, its halves severed by her blow.

All around her, more mynocks flew; they darted in at her, reaching with those too-wrong hands, lashing with their tail-like appendages. She lashed out at whatever came near her, cutting limbs away, using the Force to turn her around in the air.

She was dropping, too, but the rocky cavern floor was well out of sight beneath her. That was a quandary. Gravity was not strong here, but if she began dropping at a great enough altitude, she could still pick up considerable speed, deadly speed, by the time she hit the stone below.

Why hadn’t Ben reacted when she was grabbed and whisked away from him? Why hadn’t he responded to her sudden shriek?

The part of her brain still working on problems and logistics arrived at an answer to the problem of falling. A factor that endangered her would also be her salvation.

The next time a mynock drifted in and tried to snap at her with its claws, she grabbed its fleshy wrist and tugged, allowing her to roll up onto the creature’s back. It banked, trying to dislodge her, but she sprang away from it, sending her away from the floor once more.

Now she could move where she chose. She bounced up toward a mynock, eluded its nasty central mouth, and kicked off from its underside, hurtling almost horizontally. The next one she encountered she used to send her downward, onto the back of one dozens of meters below. Each tried to grab her, tail-whip her, or snap at her as she approached, but she was always nimbler.

On one of her descents she saw the stone floor of the cavern. She calculated that her speed was not too great for a safe impact. Instead of bouncing off the next mynock in line, she rolled across its back and allowed herself to fall. She came down on the floor on her feet, sinking into a low crouch to absorb the impact, bouncing up half a dozen meters just from the flexion of her muscles. But she drifted down again, and now the mynocks whirled by overhead, not attacking.

“Well done.” That was a smooth male voice from behind her.

She spun, the move carrying her up a meter into the air.

Behind her stood a human man, dignified of bearing, his dark beard cut close in an elegant style. He was tall and a trifle overweight, but his loose-fitting black garments suggested that he was carrying around some muscle as well as fat. A silver lightsaber hilt, inlaid with polished black stones shaped like diamonds, hung from his belt.