Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [192]
I shook my head. “Your Twi’lek set all this up for you?”
The Hutt mumbled. “Master Shala says he is most pleased with Rach’talik’s work.”
“Me? I’d want a refund.” I smiled up Shala, and gave him a cold laugh of my own. “You’ve made two mistakes, Shala. One, you’re at ground zero yourself. Two, you think I can’t stop you.”
I rotated my right wrist, twisting the throttle control up, and whipped the lightsaber around in a slash aimed to slice the deadHutt switch in two. With the twist I turned the lightsaber’s emerald out of the way and I brought the diamond into line with the Durindfire beam. This extended the blade from 133 centimeters to 300, narrowing it, but bringing the Hutt’s hand easily into striking range. Quick flick of the wrist, cleave the control in two, and the day would be saved. That would be the easy way.
Easy is not for a Jedi.
With a puff of smoke, the lightsaber’s blade sputtered and died.
I remember the look of surprise on Shala’s face. I’m pretty certain it came from watching the lightsaber blade grow out at him, but I’m not wholly convinced of that. I think, though, the horror that tinged his expression, that came from the realization that in his surprise, he’d dropped the remote.
Rach’talik, in addition to wanting to replace Shala, was a virtuoso with explosives. The LX-1s went off in sequence, not all at once, washing the central area with wave after wave of laser fléchettes. Each blast scoured the center of the warehouse from a different angle, guaranteeing that no unexploded mines would be hit, but adding laser fire to the chemical fires and exploding drums.
And he even saved the blast from above for last, maximizing the chances that Shala would live long enough to know he had been betrayed.
Had Rach’talik gone for quantity instead of quality, I, too, would have been reduced to a greasy, steaming stain on the duracrete. I knew, from the second I saw the remote fall, I had only one chance at survival, and only one chance to try to contain the damage. I sank within myself, touched the Force, started it flowing, and sucked in every stray erg being sprayed on my direction. I felt sting after sting, as if I were sliding through a Sarlacc’s gullet, and it felt as if I were descending into a black pit of pain. I directed some of the Force to help me blunt the pain, but that made it much more difficult to hold on to all of the power I was absorbing.
I knew I couldn’t hang on to it for long, and I knew I needed to use it to contain the explosion’s deadly force. As I had done in the grotto to save Tionne, I channeled all of it into telekinesis and raised my left hand. I twisted my wrist, starting the energies swirling into a vortex. I could feel the air begin to whirl around me, tightening, quickening. Flames from the chemical fires leaped toward the center of the room, spinning themselves into the vortex. Loose debris, flaming bits of duraplast and rattling, clattering pieces of scrap metal flew into the air, filling the fiery cyclone with dark specks.
I pushed and drove the vortex up and out through the roof, enlarging the hole the last mine had already opened. Chemical drums sailed up, exploding as they went, pulsing green and purple fire through the rising funnel. Flames wreathed me and I sucked their heat in, then vented it back out, up and out, building the firestorm’s strength until it ripped the warehouse’s roof off and crumpled it like a discarded piece of flimiplast.
The warehouse’s doors banged open, then ripped free and flew like sabacc cards into the maelstrom. The warehouse’s viewports imploded as air rushed in to feed the firestorm. I no longer needed to push, it had become a thing of its own, almost living, certainly breathing. I felt it tug at me, but the energy it fed me kept me rooted in place. I reached out with my mind, pitching up into the column