Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 01_ Outcast - Aaron Allston [100]
He felt the Mando reenter the fight before there was any visual evidence of it. The black-clad man was on one elbow, as if hurt and struggling to rise, and then Seff saw that the man had drawn a blaster pistol, built oversized to accommodate his crushgaunts, but had concealed the action behind the sleeve of his other arm. The Mando swept his obscuring arm out of the way and fired; a blue stun bolt headed toward Seff.
Seff felt a jolt of jubilation. He caught the bolt on his blade and deflected it down into the false Tahiri's leg. Tahiri's eyes widened for a fraction of a second, then rolled up into her head. She fell backward.
Now to take advantage of the situation before his enemies could regroup. Seff dashed back to the blast door into the prison and hit two buttons—one to open the door, one to trigger the thermal detonator toward the center of the corridor.
Nothing happened. He wasn't too surprised. If his enemies had found his work here, they could easily have sabotaged his computer.
He glanced back. The Mando was on his feet, headed Seff's way, pistol in hand.
Seff glanced up to where he'd planted the nearest thermal detonator. With an exertion of telekinesis, he yanked it free and let it drop to the floor of the tunnel. It made a metallic sound as it hit. He made sure he could visualize the triggering button; then he sent the small canister-shaped weapon rolling toward the fallen Tahiri.
The Mando skidded to a stop beside Tahiri. Stooping, he picked up the unconscious woman then turned and ran, sheltering her with his body.
Grinning, Seff kept the detonator rolling after them, even allowing it to bounce once or twice for additional noise.
But he let the Mando gain on his rolling weapon. His task was not to kill these enemies.
When the detonator was halfway down the tunnel, when the Mando and the unconscious woman were far enough ahead that the blast might not kill them, Seff dropped into a crouch, turned away from the detonator, clamped his hands over his ears, and telekinetically pressed the trigger.
There was a brief pause, then the world flashed red and white. Walls and floor shook, and Seff's ears were hammered as though he'd been cuffed by a rancor. Braced as he was, the shock wave of the explosion still slammed him into the blast door. He was pelted with superheated pieces of permacrete gravel, one of which burned his side and caught his jumpsuit on fire. The lights went out and smoke filled the air.
Shaky, he rose, patting out the burning portion of his garment. He was now in complete darkness—complete until he reignited his light-saber.
The gleam from his blade showed the tunnel collapsed, rubble filling it to within ten meters of where he stood. His bypass computer was wreckage.
The blast door was unhurt, at least for the moment.
If he'd calculated correctly, there would now be a crater in the bare kill zone above. The prison personnel would be on alert, but guessing either that there had been some sort of fuel mishap outside the prison or, at worst, that someone was trying to stage a prison break from without. His entry was likely to remain a secret for now.
And his enemies, if still alive, were trapped on the other side of the rubble.
He got to work, pressing the tip of his blade against the metal of the blast doors just at the seam, watching the durasteel begin to glow red, then orange, then luminous yellow.
JAG YANKED HIS HOOD AND HELMET FREE. HE GASPED FOR AIR. THE EXPLOSION had hit him like a metal beam in the chest, driving the air from his lungs. He knew it would have been much worse if he had not been wearing his Mandalorian breastplate.
Rising to his knees, he drew out a glow rod. The blue light it cast showed Tahiri, flat on her face beside him, and a tremendous mound of construction wreckage behind them. His blaster pistol was nowhere to be seen. He pulled off his left crushgaunt and pressed fingers against Tahiri's neck. He could feel her