Don’t stop them. Just get rid of them. It was his own voice, not his father’s, not his mother’s, not Jacen’s.
He angled his blade and let the incoming fire ricochet off it. The bolts angled up and to the right, pouring into the ceiling and walls-and hammering much less at his arms.
Good. Now he could survive the attack for perhaps half a minute. Yippee.
He shook his head. He could be someone his father and Saba needed to protect, in which case he might get them killed. He could take care of himself, just barely, as he was now, in which case he made a lie of his assertion that he would be useful on this mission.
Or he could contribute. But how?
Let the enemy do the work. The operation’s catchphrase flashed into his mind and he knew what to do.
He reached out with his free hand, grabbing and wrenching through the Force at the blaster cannon arm of his enemy. Knowing how heavy the YVH droids were with their layers of laminanium armor, he exerted himself-and spun the droid around, aiming its cannon at one of Saba’s foes.
The cannon fire took the YVH droid in the side, riddling it. It jerked in place, the glows fading from its eyes, then went down sideways, cut in half at the pelvis.
Ben kept up the pressure on his opponent, maneuvering its blaster cannon to aim at Saba’s second enemy. The droid ceased fire before hitting its other ally. A vent opened on its chest…
Luke gestured, and smoke emerged from the vent… but the minirocket designed to fire from that port did not. A moment later it exploded, blowing the top half of the droid off, leaving the legs still standing.
Now there were two, each facing a Master.
Saba pressed forward, able to push her way up the stream of fire from her droid. Her target raised its other arm, an arc of what looked like lightning flashing toward her, but she caught that on her lightsaber as well-then ducked and rolled under both energy attacks, rising just beyond the droid, her lightsaber blade extended backward and up-into the droid’s neck and head. The laminanium armor there did not yield easily, but the precision of her blow and the greater-than-human strength she could put behind it drove the point of her blade through what would, in a human, have been thoracic vertebrae, severing its head.
Nor did she stop there, but spun, driving her point down from a high stance into the newly created gap in the droid’s neck.
Luke, meanwhile, gestured. His enemy toppled backward and down, rolled by a telekinetic exertion in the Force to lie facedown. It struggled to rise, but Luke pounced, putting the point of his blade against its back. He drove it home, slow going through the armor, and twisted it around until the droid ceased struggling.
Saba pushed her dead foe over, sending it crashing to the deck plates, and eyed Ben. “Good tacticz, “she said. “But warn this one next time. The stream of boltz crossed this one when the droid turned.”
Ben winced. “Sorry, Master.”
“Do not be sorry. Learn.” She turned forward and resumed her advance toward the bridge.
Luke grinned at him. “What did she say first?”
“Good tacticz.”
“Don’t lose track of the praise even in a stream of constructive criticism. Or vice versa.” Luke turned to follow the Barabel Jedi.
His feet ringing on the metal deck plates, Koyan sprinted through what seemed like endless corridors of Centerpoint Station, racing toward an air lock that his datapad map said was less than a kilometer away.
Which, he realized as he was forced to jump over the bodies of a GAG trooper and two dead CorSec security guards, meant that the enemy was within a kilometer of the fire-control chamber. Things were bad.
Though the corridors were narrow and unfamiliar here, the glow rods dim and the metal beams and panels of every passageway resembling those of every other, he found his way to Air Lock Epsilon Thirty-four G. He entered it, noted that there was a shuttle interior visible through the opposite viewport, and cycled it.
Moments later he stepped through into safety. But here, in the main cabin of the troop carrier shuttle, there was no one to be seen. “Hello?”
“Yes?” The voice carried back from the cockpit.
“Get me to Coronet immediately.”
The pilot rose from her seat and stepped out to stare at him. White-haired and almost as pale as an albino human, with a prominent supraorbital ridge and eyes as black as space, she was a Chev. … and dressed in the blues of a Galactic Alliance officer.
Koyan grunted and reached for his hideaway blaster.
The Chev was faster. She drew from her holster and fired. Her bolt caught Koyan at the sternum, throwing him back and down.
All of a sudden, sounds reaching his ears were oddly watery and distant, and his vision began to close in. All he could see was the ceiling of the shuttle cabin. He couldn’t do anything anyway-the pain in his chest was excruciating.