Star Wars_ Fate of the Jedi 02_ Omen - Christie Golden [9]
“No!” Jysella cried aloud. She had been mesmerized, watching this strange scene unfold, and was suddenly seized with a realization. And there was a way for her to prove this realization right.
She knew, as all Jedi knew, that there were all kinds of security measures in place at the Temple. The past had starkly shown that even a Temple with Jedi in it could still be violated. Jysella, like all the Jedi Knights and probably most of the Masters, wasn’t privy to exactly what many of these security measures were. At least, she had never been before, but if her guess was correct…
She sprinted to the pillars. If she had indeed somehow been granted a glimpse into the future, then a droid was ensconced within. With a grunt, she thrust her lightsaber in at the exact spot where she suspected the droid’s center would be. The lightsaber cut through the marble pillar—and into the metal and wiring of a security droid. With a whiny hiss and crackle, it was disabled before it was even alerted to attack her. Elated, Jysella leapt across the main hall to the other pillar and repeated the process.
She turned her head to the exit. She didn’t see the apprentices coming at her yet—which meant she had a chance. Quickly she turned back the way she had come and saw the telltale outline of the door to a service corridor, opened it, and ducked inside. She closed the door behind her, then dived behind the large outline of one of the larger, more industrial-duty cleaning droids. She curled up, trembling, hugging her knees to her chest as she had when she was a little girl, and concentrated on masking her presence within the Force.
* * *
JYSELLA HAD BOLTED, AND CILGHAL DIDN’T KNOW WHERE. SHE ONLY knew that the presence on the other side of the door, so very frightened and yet tinged with that strange sense of there-not-there, was gone.
Quickly she clicked her comlink. “Jysella is on the move,” she said. “Get people at the main entrance immediately. I think she may be heading for it.”
There came a few seconds of silence interrupted only by the protesting sound of the door as the lightsaber slowly cut a circle through it. The doors were meant to be activated in case of an intruder in the Temple, to protect the Archives, or in case of another disaster such as fire. Thus these doors were not the easiest to get through, not even for a lightsaber, and Radd Minker’s blade was dragging, like a stick through poured and setting duracrete, as he determinedly kept going. It would take several more precious seconds before they were through, and Cilghal didn’t think Jysella Horn had several more seconds. She was dreadfully worried that the confused young woman would get herself killed.
“It’s impossible!” came a sudden yelp from the comlink. Cilghal, who had seen enough to know that the word impossible was one not to be bandied about lightly, didn’t comment on the exclamation. She asked, “What’s happened?”
“She—the locations of the security droids are strictly on a need-to-know basis.” This was true—even Cilghal didn’t know where they were ensconced. “There’s only a handful of my team who have that information. And yet Jysella targeted and destroyed the two we were just about to activate. She couldn’t possibly have determined their locations at all, let alone in so short a time.”
Cilghal thought about the strange resonances she had sensed from Jysella a few moments before, and unease stirred inside her as a suspicion began to form.
“Go on,” said Cilghal, her enormous eyes on the slowly moving blade.
“And she’s not heading for the main entrance. We don’t know where she’s heading.”
“She’s going to want to get out, I can assure you of that much,” Cilghal said. “I would send the security teams to every other exit.”
“Yes, Master Cilghal.”
Cilghal sighed. Radd threw her an apologetic glance. “I’m sorry this is taking so long, Master.