[Legacy Of The Force] - 01(43)

CORONET, CORELLIA

Jaina stood over the injured and unconscious body of Zekk, her lightsaber lit and in a ready position. Four YVH combat droids, situated behind crashed CorSec airspeeders, poured near-continuous blasterfire at her. She’d been able to deflect it all, mostly into the permacrete or back toward the firers, but none of her return shots had done them any significant damage, and the high intensity of their blasters and rapid rate of fire were tiring her. She needed just a second of rest to compose herself, to sweep the droids away-but they weren’t giving her a second.

Then a line of concentrated blue light leapt into existence behind the most distant of the combat droids. Jaina saw it flash around in an arc, and the combat droid’s head leapt from its shoulders with a shower of sparks.

The other combat droids turned to look. Jaina took the opportunity to move forward, a little to the side, and could see Kolir. The Bothan Jedi, incongruous with her party-girl dress, her lightsaber combat stance, and the blood streaming from the right side of her mouth, kicked the droid’s remains off its feet and turned to face the other three.

Their blasters swung around-but Jaina had had her second of composure. She reached up and tugged at a large cargo drone, causing it to gain a few meters’ altitude, then to plummet-right onto two of the droids. It smashed down on them with the weight of tons of cargo. Jaina had a brief glimpse of plastic and metal crates leaping up from the drone’s cargo bed, spilling out in all directions. Not all the drone’s momentum was down-it continued bouncing forward, and then, its computer programs demonstrating considerable skill, became airborne again. It roared away from the scene at full speed, three-quarters of its cargo still skidding and rolling along the avenue.

Jaina launched herself forward. An impact like that would kill most living beings-might kill an armored bantha-but would only delay YVH droids. In midair, she twisted aside and missed being hit by a veering blue airspeeder; as she did, she saw Kolir advancing on the last upright YVH as it fired at her.

She landed beside a permacrete crater that had been the last location she’d seen one of the combat droids. As she came down, she saw that it wasn’t a crater; it was actually a hole punched through into sewers or storm drains beneath.

The YVH droid came leaping up through it, facing her. Jaina flashed her lightsaber across its midsection as it rose. She felt the considerable drag that the droid’s combat armor caused even to a lightsaber blade, but the blade emerged from the other side and the droid crashed to the pavement in two pieces.

One of those pieces was still dangerous. It rolled over and began to bring its blaster rifle up. Jaina stepped in and whipped her blade across the blaster, cutting it in two just forward of its power supply. Then she drove her blade into the crippled droid’s chest, dragging it around to wreak as much damage to the droid’s internal weapons systemry as possible.

Another YVH head landed a meter from her feet. She chalked that up as a second Kolir kill and spun toward the last known location of the fourth YVH droid.

It was rising, its back to Jaina, so much permacrete adhering to it that it appeared to have a new layer of badly installed armor. Jaina glanced over her shoulder, saw another high-mass drone speeder approaching-this one, she noted with satisfaction, a small tanker carrying a load of uncured duracrete. She yanked at it through the Force and brought it down atop the last droid, driving and grinding it forward along the avenue. She saw pieces of the droid severed by the high-mass attack-here an arm, there a leg. Once it was well past her, there was a muffled boom from beneath the nose of the airspeeder as something in the droid’s chest exploded.

Jaina spared a glance back at Zekk. He lay unmoving where she’d left him. A passerby, a man in green business dress, was kneeling over him, but his intent did not seem hostile; he was reaching for Zekk’s wrist as if to check his pulse.

Jaina turned to Kolir. “What’s your status?”

“My teef are looshe on the right shide.” With each word Kolir spoke, more blood dribbled from her mouth and down her side, but she seemed unconcerned. “There’sh Thann.” She pointed with her lightsaber.

The Falleen Jedi was indeed headed their way, bouncing from speeder to speeder in the oncoming traffic lane like a hyperkinetic insect.

And no wonder-blasterfire from two streaming sources was dogging him. Jaina saw him ducking under one stream, batting the other away, the second stream moving him laterally because he was in mid-leap when it reached him.

From her position, Jaina could distantly see the second YVH droid. The duracrete tanker she’d used to crush her last opponent was still moving forward, even picking up speed as it tried to get clear of the combat zone. Jaina reached out for the tanker again and diverted it from its intended flight path; it came down hard on top of the combat droid, grinding it to pieces as efficiently as it had the previous one.