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Darsha slashed backhand, feeling a weakness in his defense.

But it was a trap, carefully laid, and he spun a ruby shaft to intersect, which would have hit her at the same time.

But she wasn’t there, having propelled herself sideways to a new position a meter away, her lightsaber pointed at his chest.

And the Sith dived forward, striking left-right-left in a series of attacks that left her winded, even assisted as she was by the Force. She deflected, forcing her mind to disengage from following his technique, to relax and maintain her deep connection to the Force. Thoughts were a hazard.

He did not share that weakness; she could feel the truth of that. He had more conscious control of the power at his command, and that gave him the edge. If she tried to increase her control of the Force, she would reduce her ability to simply react—but if she did not, she could only defend.

The problem reverberated within her as she maintained her connection with the environment, her senses reaching out, her mind searching for answers.

When she found one, she tested it and realized it was her only chance.

Lorn grabbed the droid’s arms and tried to pull him away from the unit’s controls. He might as well have tried to pull a skyhook down from orbit. “What are you doing?”

I-Five did not stop working as he answered. “Trying to ensure that her sacrifice is not a futile one.”

“It won’t be, if you’ll just blast that damned door open!”

I-Five kept talking, his voice maddeningly even. “Even my reactions are no match for the Sith’s—and I am far faster than you and Padawan Assant. She is doing for us what her Master did for her—buying time.”

“What good will that do? We’re trapped in this chamber—”

“With a carbon-freezing unit that can be adapted to put us both in cryostasis.”

Sheer surprise kept Lorn from protesting for a moment. The droid continued, “It’s theoretically possible for living beings to be frozen in a carbonite block and later revived. I read an interesting treatise on the subject once in Scientific Galactica—”

Lorn turned, a snarl building deep in his throat, and aimed the Saurin’s blaster at the hatch lock. One way or another he was going to reach her.

“Stop!” I-Five commanded. “This chamber’s magnetically sealed. The ricochet would most likely destroy us both.”

Lorn spun about and pointed the blaster at I-Five. “Get over there and open that door,” he said, in a voice that did not sound remotely like his own, “or I’ll blow you to scrap metal.”

I-Five turned his head and looked at him for a moment. Then the droid reached out and grabbed the blaster, taking it away from Lorn before the latter had time to pull the trigger.

“Now listen to me,” I-Five said as he returned to his work. “We have one chance to survive this, and it’s not a very good one. The Padawan has no chance. She knows this.” He finished entering a final bit of data on the unit’s control panel. “Get into the unit.”

Lorn stared at him, then turned and looked back out of the hatch window. He couldn’t see Darsha or the Sith directly, but he could see their shadows moving on the floor, cast by the light from the high windows. He realized they had taken the battle to one of the overhead catwalks.

She is doing for us what her Master did for her—buying time.

He had known her for barely forty-eight hours, and in that time he had gone from hating her and everything she stood for, to—this. This frantic pain, this frustration, this welter of emotions he had not allowed himself to feel for years. He did not love her; there hadn’t been enough time for that. But he had come to feel fondness for her, to deeply respect and admire her. If all the Jedi were like her …

He didn’t want to finish the thought. He forced himself to.

If all Jedi are like her, then what happened to Jax was the best thing for him.

“Hurry!” I-Five said. “The unit’s on a timer. We have less than a minute.”

Lorn pressed his face to the transparisteel, trying to get a last look at her. He failed. He could dimly hear the crackling