Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [186]
Taking a moment to touch Tahiri and Kenth through the Force, Mara vaulted from the steps to the high platform of a temple, then dropped down to the ground and raced after Nom Anor, her lightsaber close at hand to deal with anyone who might try to stand in her way. Rushing into the square, she stopped to scan the several exits, and again spotted her quarry disappearing around the toppled end of a high wall. She fairly flew after him, pursuing him up and over piles of rubble and debris, through stands of towering fire-blackened trees, then on a zigzag path down into what once had been the Column Commons—a midlevel area of open spaces studded with thick columns that supported the sprawling cityscape overhead. Hundreds of HoloNet and holodrama publishers had kept offices there, along with all the major media bureaus. During the Galactic Civil War, the commons had crawled with COMPNOR truth officers, who had ensured that everything published was in keeping with the propaganda of the Empire.
Mara was certain she was more familiar with the area—even in ruins—than Nom Anor was. But in his guise as the Prophet he had obviously gotten to know Coruscant’s canyons and depths as well as any slythmonger or death stick peddler, because he led her on a chase that was as labyrinthine as the tracings of a conduit worm. The deeper they descended, the darker and danker became the surroundings. But Mara had already decided that she would chase him to the core of the planet if that was what it would take to apprehend him.
The pursuit led ever downward, into darker levels, where fetid water dripped from cracked ceilings, and the only light was that which found its way down through gaps in the crushed buildings and the riotously verdant areas that now roofed them.
Closing the gap between them, she saw him grab hold of a fall of vines and swing himself across a wide chasm. Securing the vines on his side of the abyss, he stopped to smirk at her, confident that his escape was secure. She came to a brief standstill opposite him—just long enough to answer his sneering grin with a glare—then dashed for a narrower place in the chasm and leapt to the far side.
By then Nom Anor had disappeared into the ruins of a news bureau building. She could hear him stumbling forward, crunching through expanses of transparisteel debris and smashing through wooden doors. There, too, shafts of dismal light dappled the puddled floors, and a stinging odor of rot and decay pervaded the thick air.
She second-guessed him when he tried to set a trap for her—making it appear that he had gone through a doorway, on the other side of which there was a half-kilometer plunge into pitch darkness. And she outwitted him again by stopping just in time when he used his uncommon strength to dislodge a girder that supported a fractured slab ceiling.
He remained as steadfast in his desire to escape as she did in her desire to hunt him down. He began to scamper through a warren of rooms in a building where residual power allowed him to seal doorways behind him. But Mara merely kicked through them, and when she couldn’t, she found alternate routes, never surrendering her momentum.
Breathing hard and stumbling more often, Nom Anor was beginning to tire. Mara’s acute hearing told her that much—and more. As she was kicking down a final door, she heard a hand blaster’s safety click off, and entered the room to discover Nom Anor hiding behind the putrid remains of a Twi’lek, still dressed in security guard garb.
Mara used the Force to call her lightsaber to hand, even as Nom Anor was triggering off the first bolts. Her blade deflected one after the next, until he had emptied the blaster of fuel. He had sense enough not to hurl the depleted weapon at her. Instead, he began to scrabble backward