Star Wars_ Legacy of the Force 01_ Betrayal - Aaron Allston [51]
Jaina spared a glance back at Zekk. He lay unmoving where she’d left him. A passerby, a man in green business dress, was kneeling over him, but his intent did not seem hostile; he was reaching for Zekk’s wrist as if to check his pulse.
Jaina turned to Kolir. “What’s your status?”
“My teef are looshe on the right shide.” With each word Kolir spoke, more blood dribbled from her mouth and down her side, but she seemed unconcerned. “There’sh Thann.” She pointed with her lightsaber.
The Falleen Jedi was indeed headed their way, bouncing from speeder to speeder in the oncoming traffic lane like a hyperkinetic insect.
And no wonder—blasterfire from two streaming sources was dogging him. Jaina saw him ducking under one stream, batting the other away, the second stream moving him laterally because he was in midleap when it reached him.
From her position, Jaina could distantly see the second YVH droid. The duracrete tanker she’d used to crush her last opponent was still moving forward, even picking up speed as it tried to get clear of the combat zone. Jaina reached out for the tanker again and diverted it from its intended flight path; it came down hard on top of the combat droid, grinding it to pieces as efficiently as it had the previous one.
Kolir’s tactic was similarly subtle. She picked up the blaster rifle of the first combat droid she’d destroyed. It took her a moment to swing the weapon, oversized and ungainly for her small frame, into line; then, bracing herself, she fired off a stream of blasterfire at the second distant combat droid. Jaina saw at least two of the blasts hit the droid and glance off.
But the assault was enough to get the droid’s attention. It swung around and focused on Kolir. Thann dropped from the sky to land beside it, severing its legs at the knees, then hacked at what remained until it was in too many pieces to do anyone any harm.
Moments later, running at Jedi sprint speed, the Falleen warrior rejoined them at Zekk’s side. The passerby who’d taken Zekk’s pulse took a look at the three lightsabers and stood up and away from Zekk, his hands half raised. “I didn’t do anything.”
“I know,” Jaina said. “You’d better go.”
He turned and was gone. Jaina knelt beside Zekk, put her hand on an unburned portion of his neck. He still felt strong.
“This operation’s a bust,” she said, “and from the looks of things, the guards down by the gates are massing for a run at us. Let’s deprive them of the opportunity to get themselves killed. Thann, secure us some transportation.”
“Done.” The Falleen pulled something from a belt pouch. It was an identicard in the same basic gold tone as CorSec investigators carried, though it correctly identified him as a member of the Jedi order. He stood and walked toward oncoming traffic, one hand holding the identicard high and the other raised to encourage someone to stop.
And as he walked his skin rippled in color from its near orange to a deeper, huskier red.
Jaina’s pulse quickened, and not just from an intellectual recognition of what Thann was doing. The Falleen had tremendous control over emission of pheromones, chemical cues that dictated many types of emotional response, chiefly affecting members of the opposite sex. Thann was using both the Force and his pheromonal powers to attract, confuse, and overwhelm someone in the oncoming traffic lane, probably also using the Force to make his identicard look like something of local significance…
In her peripheral vision, Jaina saw Kolir sway. The Bothan Jedi reached out and Jaina caught her hand, steadying her. “He shouldn’t do that while I’m injured,” Kolir said.
A red groundspeeder, its driver a dark-haired human female wearing red-tinted racing goggles, pulled up beside Thann. Her features, angular and distinct, relaxed into a blank lack of expression. “Is there a problem, Officer?” she asked.
Thann