[Legacy Of The Force] - 03(101)

“Raynar is making progress,” Luke said defensively. “He’s accepted a prosthetic arm and is considering cosmetic surgery to repair the burn scars.”

“That should come in handy when he escapes,” Mara said. “He won’t scare so many little children on the way to the undercity.”

Luke frowned at her sarcasm. “The surgery will help Raynar see himself differently,” he said. “Cilghal says that Will be a big step in his recovery.”

“Okay-so maybe he’ll be cured in another two or three years.” Mara rose and hiked up her equipment belt, which tended to slip down on her hips now that she was carrying the extra weight of the shoto she had built in anticipation of meeting Lumiya. “Let’s catch up with the Anakin and stick close to Jacen. Ben will show up there sooner or later.”

“If he hasn’t already.”

Luke rose and started toward the door, and suddenly the uneasy prickle he had been feeling blossomed into full-blown danger sense. He glanced around the room, trying to locate the source of the threat. He felt nothing menacing from the other patrons, but that didn’t stop him from pulling his lightsaber off his belt as casually as possible.

Mara already had her weapon in her hand, though, like Luke, she held it down at her side to avoid sparking a panic. “You feel it, too?”

“Let’s go,” Luke said. He weaved through the crowd toward the nearest exit hatch, and Mara stayed close on his heels. If they allowed a fight to start in here, a lot of innocent beings would suffer.

They were a few paces from the exit when a hunched figure appeared in the bare durasteel corridor outside the cantina, hobbling out of an intersection about six meters up the way. She was wearing a bulky black cloak with the hood pulled up, and she was being careful to keep her face turned away from the ceiling lights. Luke had just enough time to realize that he did not feel her presence in the Force before she brought her arm forward and sent a silver tube tumbling down the gray corridor toward him. A set of flashing diodes midway down its length confirmed the cylinder’s nature. He raised his arm and used the Force to hurl the tube back up the corridor.

“Grenade!” he yelled.

The grenade was almost back to the intersection when the corridor erupted into silver brilliance. A tremendous bang shook the cantina, and Luke found himself tumbling backward over a table, ears ringing and spots dancing before his eyes.

He hit the floor amid a torrent of spilling drinks and flailing customers. His eardrums popped painfully as the air pressure dropped, and the exit hatch fell with a deafening clang. An instant later half the cantina’s lights flickered out, leaving the stunned crowd bathed in shadows. A hull-breach alarm began to whistle overhead.

Luke reached out in the Force and sensed Mara lying about three meters away, surprised but unharmed and already recovering her wits. He sprang to his feet and saw that the area closest to the exit had taken the brunt of the explosion, with perhaps two dozen beings lying on the debris-strewn floor in various states of injury. Most of the yelling seemed to be coming from deeper in the cantina behind him, where the patrons had been far enough from the blast to become panicked instead of stunned.

Mara stepped to Luke’s side. “Nice save.” She nodded out the viewport, where a cloud of flotsam from the damaged corridor was already drifting past. Fortunately, there seemed to be only a few bodies-but none was dressed in a black cloak.

“That was just the opening salvo.” As Luke spoke, the first frightened patrons began to crowd toward the can可na’s other exit, their cries turning impatient and angry when everyone could not squeeze through the hatch at once. “There’s a reason she attacked before we were…”

A long hissing crackle sounded from the second exit, drawing a frenzy of screams from fleeing patrons. Luke had not heard the sizzle of a striking lightwhip in decades, and the sound sent a hot prickle up his spine. He reached inside his robe and withdrew the shoto he had been carrying in anticipation of just this moment.

“Well, I’d say this proves it.” Luke’s heart ached with disappointment. “Ben’s not here. Lumiya is.”

“Yeah.” Mara’s voice was angry. “Jacen set us up.” She snapped the shoto off her own equipment belt and started for the cantina’s inner wall, moving into position to flank their attacker. Luke started toward the hatch and saw snakes of light crackling into the crowd ahead. A leathery, anvil-shaped head went flying and two human arms dropped to the floor. A dozen voices cried out in pain as ribbons of bloody cloth flew from their tunics.

“Back, you kreetles!” The icy voice belonged to Lumiya, “Get back! Only one man can save you now!”