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By Root 929 0

’t break his concentration enough to say so. Instead he slowed his mind, sped his perceptions, trimming the sled’s four lifters separately to compensate as—right on schedule—the Gamorreans leaped and grabbed and piled on each other’s shoulders to be the first ones through the doorway, squealing, cursing, waving axes and shoulder cannons, heedless of Luke’s execution of maneuvers that would have made a transport tech blench. The sled rocked and heaved but nobody fell. The Gakfedds, accepting the navigational near miracle as a commonplace, were all out of the sled and gone before a true commander would have let any of them stand.

Panting, shaking, sweat burning in the cuts on his face, and cold in every extremity, Luke timed the power dim precisely with their departure so that the sled wouldn’t shoot up through the end of the shaft, and then steadied the much-lightened vessel into the torchlit guard lobby of Deck 19. He collected his staff and rolled over the side, too weary to open the tailgate; lay on the floor, fighting the wave of reaction, the weakness of calling on the Force far beyond his current strength.

On the wall, the chronometer read 1550.

Cray, he thought, breathing deep of the stuffy, smoke-filthy air. Cray. And Cray will help me save Callista.

I’ll pay for this later.

He climbed to his feet.

Now.

In a way it was harder to focus the Force in his own body, to call strength from outside himself, channeling it through muscles burning with the toxins of fatigue and infection and a mind hurting for rest. But that, too, he put aside, moved forward with a warrior’s light strength, barely aware of the lurch and drag of his injured leg, the awkwardness of the staff.

The corridor around him rang with the sudden cacophony of battle.

He flattened to the wall as Gamorreans fell out of the hall before him, hacking, yelling, firing almost point-blank with blasters whose shots ricocheted crazily or ripped long burns in the walls; gouging at one another with tusks and raking with stumpy claws, then screams like the rip of metal and canvas and stray gouts of blood stinking like hot copper in the air. Luke dodged, swung around the corner and into the heat of the fray, but saw no glimpse of the green uniform Cray had been wearing, no cornsilk flash of hair. A nightmare vision of Cray lying bleeding in some corridor flashed through his mind—then from the door of a through-passage Callista yelled, “Luke!” and he ran, holding himself up against the wall, barely feeling the sawing pain. “This way!”

“All personnel are to report to the section lounges,” said the tannoy, clear now, and Luke thought, This part of the ship is still alive. The Will is here.…

“All personnel are to report …”

“Luke!”

He skidded to a stop around a corner, facing the shut black double door of what was labeled PUNISHMENT 2, over whose lintel a single small light burned amber. Nichos stood against the wall, a statue of brushed silver, the only thing alive in his face the desperate agony of his eyes.

In front of the door stood a human stormtrooper in full armor, blaster carbine ready and pointed in his hands.

“Just stay where you are, Luke,” said Triv Pothman’s voice. The helmet altered it, rendered it tinnily inhuman, but Luke recognized it all the same. “I know you feel loyal to her but she’s a Rebel and a saboteur. If you back off now I can testify in your favor.”

“Triv, she isn’t a Rebel.” Luke scanned the hall with his eyes and mind and detected not a fragment of loose metal, not even a gutted MSE or a mess-room plate … “There are no Rebels anymore. The Empire is gone, Triv. The Emperor is dead.” He literally didn’t think he had the strength to rip the carbine out of Pothman’s grip by the Force alone.

Over the door the digital readout changed to 1556, and the amber light began to blink red. Triv hesitated, then repeated in precisely the same tones, “I know you feel loyal to her but …”

“That was a long time ago.” Luke reached out with his mind, feeling his way to the older man’s thoughts as if physically trying to penetrate the white plastic