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By Root 951 0

tank, slashing with his greater reach at her midsection. She darted to the right, putting a waist-high outcropping between the two of them, angling her blade to protect what the projection of stone didn’t. She caught his slash on her blade, the force of the attack nearly throwing her back despite the leg she’d braced against the impact; she felt her arms shiver under the blow. It irritated her that she hadn’t taken the blow at the correct angle to cause his blade to skid along hers, which would have reduced the impact. She shoved the thought from her mind but let the anger linger. Being too analytical at a time like this could be fatal.

She continued around the outcropping and slashed at the back of his knee, but the impact from that previous blow had robbed her of forward momentum; the man was able to catch her slash on his blade. He disengaged smoothly, just barely enough to get his blade clear of hers, and popped the tip up toward her in a rising slash. She merely skipped back a pace and let the energy blade pass harmlessly in front of her.

Vestara reversed direction—continuing to circle as she had been would eventually have presented her back to Tola. Her opponent switched to a one-handed grip on his lightsaber and made a forward sweeping gesture with his free hand. Vestara expected something to come flying out of that hand, a small cloud of dust perhaps, but nothing did.

Instead, from behind him, a cluster of rocks, some of them the size of a fist, hurtled off the ravine floor and arced up at her.

Vestara nearly winced. An overt use of the Force—somewhere on Nam Chorios, a Force storm would soon arise, possibly injuring or even killing people—and the realization that this mattered in the least to her was a second unwelcome surprise. Ruthlessly, she suppressed that emotion.

She could have sidestepped the cloud of stones. Perhaps her opponent expected her to, or perhaps he intended to lunge in the direction he anticipated her to take. And she did spin to her left, just not far enough to be completely safe from the stones. She continued the twirl into a spinning side kick.

She was still more than a meter from her adversary, but her boot sole connected with one of the incoming stones, sending it hurtling back toward the man’s face.

He flinched, bringing his blade up to deflect the stone.

She followed the stone, felt an impact against her left shoulder, felt her body twist from the blow, but continued into a single-handed lunge with her blade. Her lightsaber slid into her opponent’s body just beneath the heart. She planted her forward foot and dragged her blade up. Its red tip slashed through the heart.

Wide-eyed, her opponent staggered back and fell, dying.

Vestara straightened. There was pain in her left shoulder where one stone had connected, and in her right foot where she’d kicked the other, but her injuries seemed minor, manageable.

She gave a cautious glance back over her shoulder. Luke’s opponent was already down, in two large pieces, severed at the waist. Luke was hurtling toward Ben, but Ben was already in the follow-through of a horizontal slash that sent his own opponent’s head leaping off his neck.

Vestara turned her attention back to Tola. The woman hadn’t moved or drawn a weapon. Vestara gestured toward the ground with the tip of her blade. “How about you surrender to our justice?”

“Some other time.” Tola held up the object in her hand—it looked like a comlink of some sort—and pressed a button on its top surface. Then she leapt laterally to grab the bottom of the cable leading up to the speeder winch above. Already retracting, the cable drew her up the ravine wall at a rapid clip.

Ben gestured as if to drag her or the speeder down through use of the Force, but Luke slapped his arm down. “Not worth it, Ben. Consequences.”

Ben looked irritated. “I forgot.”

Tola got to the top and sprang up into the pilot’s seat of the speeder. She offered Vestara and the Skywalkers a mock salute. Then she pressed the button on her comlink again.

Vestara was hit from the side—it was Luke, bearing her and Ben