Jaina’s eyes cleared of the explosion afterimage in time for her to see Zekk suspended in the air not far from her-and Zekk suddenly plummeting again. She leapt free of her airspeeder, hurtling between oncoming speeders in the next lane, and landed on the sidewalk outside the residence. Drawing on the Force with more speed and confidence than Kolir could have employed, she caught Zekk five meters off the ground, lowering him quickly but safely to the walk beside her. She slapped at the flames dancing across his back, smothering them.
Through the Force, she could feel life pulsing strongly within him. Through her other link with him, she could feel his pain-skin and joints jarred by the explosion, burns across his back and shoulders, piercing hurt scattered across his body where fragments from the destroyed airspeeder must have hit him.
She didn’t have time to determine whether any of those fragments had penetrated vital organs, to find out whether Zekk’s life would soon begin to fade. The doors of the airspeeder she’d ridden and downed whooshed open and its two passengers stepped out.
They weren’t CorSec agents. They were tall and angular, their skins gleaming and metallic. Brandishing oversized blaster rifles, they advanced on Jaina’s position with a confidence born of aggression programming and a lack of concern for their own welfare.
They were YVH droids-Yuuzhan Vong Hunters, produced by Tendrando Arms during the Yuuzhan Vong war, designed to match those fearsome alien warriors in deadliness and determination.
“We,” Jaina said, “are in trouble.”
The doors of Thann’s airspeeder opened and the YVH droids within emerged, swinging their blaster rifles up toward where he stood on the roof.
Thann leapt off to the right, flipping over the head of one of the combat droids and just ahead of its stream of blasterfire. He landed on his feet in a low crouch, putting the body of the airspeeder between him and the far combat droid, and lashed out with his lightsaber. It caught the midsection of the blaster rifle as the weapon was being lowered into line with his body. The rifle crackled and detonated, a small explosion by comparison with that of Zekk’s airspeeder, but sufficient to blow the weapon into two pieces and send stinging hot metal fragments into Thann’s chest.
The droid, undismayed, unconfused, kicked at Thann; the blow connected with his midsection. Thann twisted at the last moment, reducing the impact, but what was left was like being hit by a pneumatic ram. The blow catapulted him back and off his feet. His shoulders hit the groundspeeder avenue; he continued into a backward roll, coming up on his feet, his lightsaber at the ready.
The second combat droid leapt atop the airspeeder, giving it a clear line of sight on him. Thann gestured, catching up the closer droid with a wave of telekinetic force, hurtling it up and back into the farther droid. Both droids went backward off the airspeeder roof together, the second firing, its shots wildly inaccurate, as it went.
Thann’s tactical sense kicked in. Break line of sight. Contact superiors. Evaluate friend-and-foe resources. He leapt up, caught the side of an open-topped airspeeder with his free hand, and used the Force to propel him in its direction of travel so that the sudden impact would not dislocate his arm. He looked over, saw the frightened features of the pilot, a dark-haired boy of late teenage years, and smiled reassuringly. He got one foot up against the side of the airspeeder and catapulted himself off and up, cartwheeling as he went, then landed cleanly atop the forward engine housing of another speeder, this one at the top of the traffic current. Its pilot, a middle-aged man in business dress, waved angrily at him and shouted, words lost in the wind.
Now Thann was ten meters in the air and traveling away from the scene of the conflict in the direction from which the Prime Minister’s convoy had originally come.
Traveler’s robe flapping in the wind but voice unruffled, he pulled out his comlink and said, “Purella to Tauntaun, Purella to Control. Purella situation a trap, target not acquired. Be advised.”
OUTER SPACE, CARRIER DODONINA
Lysa Dunter sat cursing her bangs and waiting for launch.
A pretty blue-eyed young woman with dark blond hair, she never lacked for attention but got slightly more when she kept her hair in a short cut with bangs. But if she didn’t sweep her hair back absolutely correctly in the split second before donning her flight helmet, her bangs would drift down again and hover at the top of her peripheral vision … as they did now.
She could take her helmet off in the cramped Eta-5 interceptor cockpit and try to adjust things … but if her squadron commander, whose interceptor rested on the Dodonna’s starfighter hangar floor one row up and just to the left of hers, were to see her do it, he’d mock her. Lysa didn’t like being mocked.