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A silvery white shaft of light just over a meter in length hissed to life. It hummed low and mournfully as its cold illumination turned all the Jedi images into ghosts. Corran twisted his wrist around, bringing the energy blade through a set of interlocked loops. The sound quickened slightly as the blade transformed a strand of webbing into a drifting tendril of smoke.

Corran turned, thinking to sweep the lightsaber blade through one of the mannequins, but stopped before he struck. These images have endured enough abuse. I won’t add to it. He knew he was correct not to contribute to the further despoiling of the monuments. Moreover, there had seemed to be a subtle pressure, a hidden malevolence in the room, that encouraged and condoned the destruction.

Corran felt good defying it.

He hit the button under his thumb once to shut the blade off. It remained lit. Corran frowned for a moment, then hit the button twice in quick succession, and the blade vanished. The double hit to turn it off guarantees it won’t go down in combat if the button is hit accidentally.

As shadows reconquered the room, Corran shivered. Trying to integrate this storehouse of Jedi memorabilia with Lusankya was enough to make his brain hurt. I’d probably have a better chance of figuring out what all of this stuff is doing here if I had a clue as to where I was. It’s good to have clothes and equipment, but somehow I doubt disguising myself as a Jedi Knight is a way to become less conspicuous in making my escape. And that’s still my first priority—getting out of here.

Corran smiled and let the lightsaber roll back and forth across the palm of his hand. “I bet you’ll make a wonderful door opener.”

Suddenly a short, sharp pop echoed through the complex of rooms. A shockwave started dust swirling through the room, centered on a doorway back along the wall to the right. Sounds like someone else is finding novel ways to open doors. This room is too open, nowhere to hide.

Three figures dressed in black moved into and through the doorway. They paused there and swept the room with the harsh white beams of the glowrods fixed to the barrels of their blaster carbines.

Having no other option, Corran froze in place. The lights flashed over him, lingering only as long as they had on the other unmoving figures in the room.

“Nothing here.”

The tallest of them nodded. “Then we wait.” His voice trailed off for a second. “Hey, there was something funny about one of the dummies over here.”

He played his light over Corran again and his friends likewise brought their lights to bear on him. “This one’s got a face.”

“Yeah, I have a face and I’d like to keep it.” Corran thumbed the lightsaber to life. “I hope that’s not going to be a problem for anyone.”

37

Wedge walked over to the circular holopad sitting atop a pedestal in the center of the briefing room. “We’ve only got time to go through this once, so listen up.” He hit a series of keys on the holopad, causing a holographic map of the Palace district and environs to spring to life. The whole scene rotated up 90 degrees to give the pilots a chance to look down through the network of towers, tunnels, and causeways which clogged that section of the city. Deep in the lower reaches of the display a red square pulsed with life.

“We have a report that the Palpatine Counter-insurgency Front is staging from this location for a strike on a bacta storage facility in Invisec. We’re flying cover for a commando force that is going to go in. The fact is that these PCF folks are very dedicated to their jobs and are likely to scatter when our forces hit. We expect speeder bikes, swoops, and speeders to be heading out of there. Since they used an airspeeder bomb to hit an earlier site, we have to assume that any and all such vehicles are moving bombs. We’re going to take them down.”

Wedge pointed to the empty seat beside Pash Cracken. “Nawara isn’t here because our strike is going to hit the PCF about the same time Nawara normally