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Beyond, several meters away, four YVH combat droids poured fire at the two Jedi from the blaster cannons in their right arms.

Ben focused on the droids’ weapon arms, not their appearance. Tall, gray-black with glowing red eyes, built to look like armored human skeletons, their appearance had been carefully designed by Lando Calrissian to anger Yuuzhan Vong warriors and frighten everyone else. Their deathlike ugliness was distracting. Ben elected not to be distracted.

Saba, her sword work brilliant, was parrying full-auto-fire streams of blaster cannon fire. Luke, more mobile, was avoiding the fire aimed at him—like a dancer, he kept ahead of every stream, but was making no headway, and in fact was being herded back toward the blast doors. A few moments more and the droids might pin him against the doors, denying him maneuverability, and finish him.

But one of Luke’s opponents switched targets—it aimed at Ben, sending its stream of blasterfire at him.

He got his lightsaber up, caught the first several bolts—and was staggered, forced back by their power, which was so much greater than any bolt from a blaster pistol or rifle he had ever encountered. He might be able to intercept every bolt, but stopping them all would exhaust him within seconds.

Don’t stop them. Just get rid of them. It was his own voice, not his father’s, not his mother’s, not Jacen’s.

He angled his blade and let the incoming fire ricochet off it. The bolts angled up and to the right, pouring into the ceiling and walls—and hammering much less at his arms.

Good. Now he could survive the attack for perhaps half a minute. Yippee.

He shook his head. He could be someone his father and Saba needed to protect, in which case he might get them killed. He could take care of himself, just barely, as he was now, in which case he made a lie of his assertion that he would be useful on this mission.

Or he could contribute. But how?

Let the enemy do the work. The operation’s catchphrase flashed into his mind and he knew what to do.

He reached out with his free hand, grabbing and wrenching through the Force at the blaster cannon arm of his enemy. Knowing how heavy the YVH droids were with their layers of laminanium armor, he exerted himself—and spun the droid around, aiming its cannon at one of Saba’s foes.

The cannon fire took the YVH droid in the side, riddling it. It jerked in place, the glows fading from its eyes, then went down sideways, cut in half at the pelvis.

Ben kept up the pressure on his opponent, maneuvering its blaster cannon to aim at Saba’s second enemy. The droid ceased fire before hitting its other ally. A vent opened on its chest—

Luke gestured, and smoke emerged from the vent…but the minirocket designed to fire from that port did not. A moment later it exploded, blowing the top half of the droid off, leaving the legs still standing.

Now there were two, each facing a Master.

Saba pressed forward, able to push her way up the stream of fire from her droid. Her target raised its other arm, an arc of what looked like lightning flashing toward her, but she caught that on her lightsaber as well—then ducked and rolled under both energy attacks, rising just beyond the droid, her lightsaber blade extended backward and up—into the droid’s neck and head. The laminanium armor there did not yield easily, but the precision of her blow and the greater-than-human strength she could put behind it drove the point of her blade through what would, in a human, have been thoracic vertebrae, severing its head.

Nor did she stop there, but spun, driving her point down from a high stance into the newly created gap in the droid’s neck.

Luke, meanwhile, gestured. His enemy toppled backward and down, rolled by a telekinetic exertion in the Force to lie facedown. It struggled to rise, but Luke pounced, putting the point of his blade against its back. He drove it home, slow going through the armor, and twisted it around until the droid ceased struggling.