He hit his thrusters and began rising toward the stone aperture above.
Jaina found Zekk perched atop a section of track, exactly where she had stood when Alema’s mysterious weapon had attacked her and severed the rails. Despite the fact that the air pressure was dropping rapidly, Zekk did not have his mask on.
“Zekk, get moving.” She fumbled around in his belt pouch, found his foil mask, and slipped it over his head, drawing its cinch tight around his collar.
He shook his head, not looking at her. “Go on. You need to leave.”
” We need to leave.” She tugged at his shoulder, bringing him to his knees.
“It’s in me. The evil of this place. I thought I’d be able to keep it at bay forever. No, it doesn’t work that way.”
She crouched, getting her arms around his waist, and then straightened, propelling them both up toward the next section of track. “Zekk, are you my friend?”
“I’m your friend. I love you.” His words emerged almost as a babble, running together and inflectionless.
“I need-I need you to help me. If I’m going to get out of here alive.” They crossed the gap, and she grabbed the next section of track. “Now climb. Or I’ll carry you, and I’ll be slow, and I’ll die.”
“All right.” Mechanically, he turned, got his hands on the cross-ties, and began climbing.
“We’ll get you back to where the Masters are, and they’ll get the evil out of you.”
“Oh. Maybe.” Zekk frowned, struggling to remember something. “Where’s Jag?”
“He’s. … following.” The lie sounded unconvincing, even pathetic, to Jaina’s ears.
But Zekk, dazed as he seemed to be, didn’t notice. He nodded, satisfied.
The track wobbled under their hands. Something had to be shaking it. Jaina glanced down, seeing nothing below, and then up.
Above them, a giant sphere was rolling down the tracks. It looked like a plant spore-but two meters across instead of microscopic, and made of grayish metal instead of organic material. It did not roll neatly down the track, but adhered to it as if magnetized.
Jaina assumed it was indeed magnetic, something designed to adhere to ship hulls.
She pulled Zekk around to the underside of the track and held on, preparing to leap free if the thing’s projections threatened to crush a limb in passing. But the spheroid rolled on past harmlessly, descending into the darkness. Zekk stared after it, vaguely curious. “What’s that?”
“A space mine, I think. Nothing we want to be near when it goes off. C’mon, keep climbing.”
They reached the surface and found the track intact up to the habitat above. But the track shook under their fingers, and they could both see the stony ground shaking all around them, kicking up clouds of dust in oddly beautiful streamers.
Jaina saw a distant flash to spinward-sign of another explosion beyond the horizon. She grabbed Zekk and kicked free, leaping toward the hole into the habitat above.
Together they floated through. As the artificial gravity of the habitat hit them, they dropped, landing awkwardly on the lip of the hole.
Jaina breathed a sigh of relief.
Then the shock wave from the last explosion hit. The ground fifteen meters down rippled as though it were cloth laid atop water. Jaina felt her legs shaking, from external vibrations rather than exhaustion.
Jag’s X-wing, visible beneath the hole, rose on one wing as if banking, then tumbled out of sight. The vibrations increased.
The habitat suddenly tilted. The chamber was plunged into darkness-relieved only by the circle of lights around the exit hole-and the two Jedi floated free of the floor.
Suddenly the view through the hole showed more ground, then distant horizon, then stars…
The habitat was free of the asteroid, kicked loose by successive explosions, and was tumbling.
When the two Jedi forced open the door into the hangar, they found everything beyond in a state of chaos. Dim emergency lighting revealed two StealthXs, dozens of durasteel storage barrels, two refueling pumps, and countless hundreds of hand tools circulating through the large open space, ricocheting-in a slow and stately way, in the case of the snubfighters-off the walls and colliding with other free-floating debris. As Jaina watched, one cylindrical metal barrel collided with a strike foil of Zekk’s StealthX and partially crumpled, its lid popping free, the greenish hydraulic fluid it held slowly pouring out into the atmosphere and spreading. In addition to the sounds of clanks, crashes, and other collisions, the R9 astromechs in the two snubfighters were adding screeches and musical tones of dismay to the din.
The control board for the hangar door and its atmosphere shield was dead.