“We were about to ask you the same thing.” A speaker box aboard the mangled railcar began talking, its voice speaking Basic with a light, lilting accent Jaina had never heard before. “Attention, all workers of Jonex Mine Eight Eleven B. Our sensors indicate a catastrophe-level event. Seek the nearest omega-designated shelter immediately. Activate all emergency beacon comm posts at once. Attention, all workers of Jonex Mine Eight Eleven B…” Faintly, she could hear the same message being echoed off distant stone walls.
She glanced down at Alema again. “Sounds bad. Guess we’d better stay here until we find out what’s gone wrong.” Alema released her grip on the cross-tie but did not drift away from the track. She climbed a step toward Jaina, manipulation of the Force keeping her steady on the cross-ties, and drew forth her lightsaber, igniting it with a snap-hiss. “Get out of our way.”
There was another distant rumble, this time from the right. Jaina’s ears popped from a change in pressure. She worked her jaw, equalizing the pressure, and her hearing returned to normal. “Sorry. What was that again?” She lit her own lightsaber.
“Idiot.” Alema waved, a sweeping gesture, as if slicing with a vibroblade.
Energy-invisible, reeking of the dark side-slammed into Jaina, forcing her back. The track she held on to bent several meters above her head, moving her out of the way.
The blow drove the wind from her lungs and sent a wave of pain through her chest.
In her moment of discomfiture, Alema leapt up past her. She landed on a cross-tie twenty meters above Jaina. She began climbing as though the vertical track were a staircase, using only her feet and the Force.
A blaster bolt from above caught her nearly by surprise. Alema got her blade up in time to absorb some of it, but the impact knocked her back and away from the track. She fell fifty meters or more, and was almost swallowed by darkness before she recovered sufficiently to vector back toward the lower section of track.
Grimacing with pain, Jaina looked up. Descending toward her was Jag, in a free fall allayed by infrequent pulses of his backpack thruster.
Jaina moved hand over hand along the track, reaching the point where Alema’s Force attack had bent it, and began climbing from there. If she got high enough fast enough, she could cut free another section, perhaps making the gap too great for Alema to leap past, even in this low gravity.
The track wavered as something hit the angled section she had just left. She glanced back.
Jag was there, standing on one leg. Through his visor, Jaina could see that he was sweating, probably from pain. He glanced down toward Alema. “Did you give her the chance to surrender?” Jaina nodded. “She said no. Rudely.”
“That’s it, then.” He jerked a thumb upward, signaling for her to climb. “Go.”
“I’ll stay. We have to deal with Alema.”
“I’ll deal with Alema. Someone’s using explosives, city-busters at least, and they’ve cracked the shell of this asteroid. The atmosphere’s venting. And Zekk-he’s one chamber up and he’s a mess. I can’t get him to leave. He’ll die here if you don’t help him.”
Jaina looked down at the climbing Alema, up at the distant gap into the next chamber, and finally at Jag. “You’re going to die.”
“Maybe. But my suit can handle hard vacuum for an hour or more. Yours, with your mask, five minutes. Who dies first? Go on. When you get to the next cavern, cut the track free.”
Jaina looked at him. The Jaina of a few weeks ago would have seethed, argued. It was her right to stay here until the bitter end-her right.
Jag’s, too.
“Good luck.” Her words emerged as a whisper. She leapt up and began climbing as fast as her strength and boosts from the Force would allow her.
Jag pulled a pouch free of his utility belt and jammed it onto the metal of the track he stood on. Then he fired off his thruster and ascended. He didn’t have to worry about overtaking Jaina; she was climbing fast.
Below, Alema leapt across the gap separating the lower track from the upper. She landed exactly where Jag had stood moments ago.
Jag made sure his comlink was active. “Boom One.” He wasn’t fast enough. He’d uttered the first word when Alema gestured. The explosives package he’d affixed to the rail sailed free of the track. It exploded a moment later, far enough away that it did no more to Alema than cause the track she stood on to sway.
She stared up at him, murder in her eyes, and began climbing again, almost as fast as Jaina-faster than Jag’s poor low-gravity thrusters could carry him.
As she climbed, the bent section of track beneath her twisted back the other way, and then again toward her, and finally came free entirely, a broken section four meters long. Rapidly, borne by invisible powers of the Force, it rose past Alema, flying straight toward Jag.