Star Wars_ Young Jedi Knights 11_ The Emperor's Plague - Kevin J. Anderson [22]
He obviously considered them all, including his own son, to be real Jedi Knights. Jaina dug in her pack to take inventory of the explosives, the detonators, and the space mines she had stashed there.
"We'll have to find strategically vulnerable areas on the asteroid. It'll take plenty of explosives, carefully positioned at specific structural weak points, to bring this place down."
"We will find the weaknesses," Tenel Ka said.
"Let's split up into teams," Zekk suggested. "We can go off in different directions and plant more explosives in less time. I want to slag this depot and get out of here before anything goes wrong."
"If anything does go wrong, though," Jacen said, "we'd better agree to rendezvous in our ships out in space."
"An excellent suggestion, Master Jacen," Em Teedee said at Lowie's side.
"I, for one, will be glad to have this Diversity Alliance business over with so that we can get on with more pleasant pursuits."
Lowie patted the little translating droid as if in commiseration. He barked and chuffed an alarming suggestion, which Em Teedee passed along.
"Master Lowbacca suggests that since he is the only nonhuman in this group, he should be the one to plant explosives inside the plague chamber." Jaina exclaimed, "We can't let you go in there by yourself, Lowie!"
"Lowbacca is correct," Tenel Ka said. "If the rest of us are exposed, we are doomed. He may be immune because he is not human."
"Hey, I think we'll all encounter sufficient dangers in setting our own explosives," Jacen said, understanding the grim truth behind Lowie's realization. Somberly, they went in separate directions, carrying their explosives. Lowie trudged toward the central plague chamber, Em Teedee clipped to his belt. Zekk and Raynar stayed with Bornan Thul, who was still loading up at the munitions storage room, while Jacen, Jaina, and Tenel Ka went off to disperse their detonators at structural weak points in the domes and tunnel junctures.
As they hurried, Jaina scrutinized the tunnel walls, corridor intersections, and pressurized domes. She hesitated outside the doorway to one of the overhead domes, unslung her pack, and withdrew a heavy disk, a space limpet mine. Holding the mine against one of the metal walls, she pushed a button to activate its magnetic seal. With a clank, the mine attached itself to the wall. She looked over at her brother and Tenel Ka, raising an eyebrow.
"These limpet mines used to be sent out like a cloud into space. If one attached itself to the hull, it could blow up an entire Corellian corvette."
Tenel Ka grunted in appreciation. "Devastating," she said. "The only problem was, they clung to anything metal in the vicinity. They used no discrimination routines, and several Victory-class Star Destroyers ended up victims of their own space mines."
"Serves them right," Jacen said.
"It is always tragic when warfare causes unintended casualties," Tenel Ka pointed out. "Even Imperial ones."
"Well, if we destroy this depot, the Emperor won't cause any more casualties," Jaina said. She activated the space mine, and its lights winked green: READY FOR DETONATION. She went farther down the wall of the dome and planted another mine on the opposite wall. "That should take care of this dome," she said.
"Now let's move on to the next one." Jacen followed, planting detonators at the branchpoints of corridors.
Once they set off all this destruction, nothing would remain of the asteroid but a rock as dead as it had been before the Empire set foot on it. Lowbacca hesitated outside the doorway to the central plague chamber.
This airtight room contained more death than he had ever seen in one place: sealed transparent cylinders filled with multicolored liquids, vials of plague solutions, nutrient baths teeming with virulent organisms. It was his responsibility to destroy them all, and he carried high-temperature incinerating explosives to do the job. It wouldn't do just to crack open the