[Legacy Of The Force] - 03(58)

And that was when the distant roar of an atmospheric entry crackled down from the sky. Jaina craned her neck and quickly found a dozen bright efflux tails streaking from the stars. She thought for a moment the Ducha was sending a squadron of Miy’tils down to support the battle droids-but realized there was another, more important target for the starfighters.

Jaina pulled her comlink, intending to warn her astromech that the StealthX was about to come under attack, then heard servomotors hissing around the bend-exactly as she had planned.

But the battle droid was being uncharacteristically cautious, taking time to sweep the area with its sensors, alert to the possibility of an ambush. Jaina held her breath and pressed herself tighter to the ground, trying to stay calm, trying to slow her breathing and her heart. The droid had probably switched from an attack routine to a stalking routine, and if she could not control her bodily responses, they would give her away.

For the next few moments, Jaina could do nothing but He on the ground and listen to the roar of the Miy’tils grow louder. The sound of Zekk’s lightsaber began to fade as his fight drifted toward the gate, and she could sense his growing desperation through their combat-meld. By now, he had to be using the Force to keep himself going. Soon his skin would begin to nettle with the effects of drawing on the Force too heavily … and then he would simply stop.

Zekk would rather die than risk a brush with the dark side, and that was one of the things that frustrated Jaina about him. To him, a thing was either right or wrong, good or evil, and that made every choice simple. Either you loved someone or you didn’t. There was no room for uncertainty, no room to be confused about how you felt-to wonder where the boundary lay between a lifelong friendship and love … or even if there was one.

Finally a pair of metallic footfalls sounded from the other side of the building. Jaina remained where she was, working harder than ever to quiet her heart and her breathing. The droid would be going into a flushing routine now, and it would be alert to the possibility of attack.

Another trio of footfalls sounded from the other side of the building, then a whole series. Jaina rose as quietly as possible, then slipped around the bend and saw the battle droid moving down another walkway toward the gate. She started after it, running as silently as was possible, her lightsaber still deactivated but cocked to strike.

She was almost there when the droid pivoted, presenting its flank and fixing its red photoreceptors on her face. Its arm came up, and Jaina’s throat cramped with fear as she found herself looking down the barrel of a blaster cannon.

She dropped into a slide, and a stream of colored bolts crumped past so close she felt her skin blistering beneath its heat. The droid lowered its arm, blasting head-sized craters out of the walkway as it tried to track her. Jaina activated her lightsaber and slammed the blade into its knee as hard as she could.

The leg came off in a shower of sparks and hydraulic fluid, and the droid crashed down almost on top of her, jamming the cannon barrel against the ground and blowing its own arm apart as it continued to fire.

A spray of hot shrapnel sliced into Jama’s back and neck. She continued her slide, using the Force to pull herself free, then switched off her lightsaber and sprang to her feet a couple of meters down the walkway. She raced around the bend just ahead of a mini missile that reduced five meters of gratenite wall to crashing rubble.

Once Jaina’s ears had stopped ringing, she was relieved to hear the boom-boom-boom of a grenade volley coming from the other side of the villa. She reached out to Zekk through their battle-meld and sensed his presence somewhere ahead, near the gate. There was no way to tell exactly what had happened, but from the sounds of it he, too, had found a way to cripple the droid chasing him. They were going to make it back to the StealthXs, after all.

Then a long series of sonic booms shook the villa, and Jaina looked up to see the Miy’tils streaking down toward the StealthXs. She pulled her comlink and opened a channel to her astromech.

“Sneaker, bring up the shields. And tell…”

She was interrupted by a negative chirp.

Of course-with all that cold congealed fuel in the system, even hardfiring the engines would not have them at full power yet. “All right, Sneaker. Just do your…”

The astromech’s acknowledging tweedle vanished in the thundering crash of a missile detonation. A brilliant flash lit the sky outside the villa, then several more detonations came, each brighter than the last-and all in the approximate area of the StealthXs.

By the time the explosions stopped, Jaina had reached the front courtyard of the villa. The gate had been closed, and the murgs were clawing at it in such a panic, they had gouged the hard crodium. Zekk was standing atop the wall, staring out toward a plume of black smoke. Even had Jaina not sensed his frustration, she would have known by the angry cloud on his face that their starfighters had been destroyed.