Timothy Zahn - Survivor's Quest

"How do we find it?" Mara corrected, her lightsaber already in hand.

"Mara—"

"Don't even think it," she warned. "Besides, I'm better with delicate work than you are."

Unfortunately, she was right. With an effort, Luke forced back his instinctive reaction to shield her from danger wherever possible. "Fine," he said. "How do we find the conduit?"

"They'll guide you in," Fel told him. "Watch for a bright light."

"Right." Unhooking his lightsaber from his belt, Luke took a deep breath and stretched out to the Force. He lifted his eyebrows at Mara, got her confirming nod, and ducked through the doorway.

The smoke was considerably thicker inside the room than Luke had expected, swirling madly around as the compartment's venting system tried its best to clear it away. Ahead, through another half-open door, he could see the blaze of the fire, the crackling of flames punctuated by the hiss from fire extinguishers. Squinting against the smoke, he slipped through the second doorway, dodging around staggering crewers and trying to stay clear of the flames as he looked around for the stormtroopers.

There was no sign of them. But there was another doorway angling off to the right where the fire was burning even more intensely. Even as he sent a questioning thought toward Mara, a dim light suddenly shone out from the room, the narrow beam fighting its way through the smoke.

Mara had seen it, too. Luke caught her wordless signal, sent back an equally wordless confirmation, and started picking his way through gaps in the flames. He managed it with only a few minor burns, and a minute later eased into the room.

The four stormtroopers were standing in the far corner, arranged in a combat semicircle with their backs to an extensive array of fuel tanks, sending short bursts of spray from their extinguishers at any tendril of flame that threaded its way too close. The one shining his light through the doorway looked over as the two Jedi came in and flipped the light upward, centering the beam on one of a set of five conduits snaking their way across the ceiling. Luke nodded acknowledgment and looked for a way through the flames.

Unfortunately, there wasn't one.

He peered into the smoke, listening to his heartbeat counting out the seconds. Even Jedi breath control had its limits, and he and Mara were getting dangerously close to them. He could use the Force to lift his lightsaber to the conduit, of course, but he wasn't at all sure he would have enough control at that range for the delicate scratch Fel wanted. The only other option he could see would be to lift Mara there directly and let her do the job.

It would be risky. That much activity would put a severe strain on his system in his current oxygen-deprived state, quickly running him to the limit of his breath control and leaving him at the mercy of the smoke still filling the room. If the smoke also contained toxic gases, he could be in serious trouble.

He would have to chance it. Turning to Mara, he replaced his lightsaber on his belt and gestured toward the conduit. He could sense her own doubts, but she knew better than to waste time arguing. She nodded her readiness, and he stretched out to the Force to lift her gently off the deck. Keeping her as high over the flames as he could without banging her head against the various pieces of equipment jutting down from the ceiling, he moved her into position. She had her lightsaber ignited before he eased her to a stop, giving the conduit a quick and almost casual-looking slash with the tip of the blade.

For a long moment nothing happened. Then, through the haze of smoke, Luke saw a few drops of liquid collect on the underside of the conduit. They coalesced into a single large drop and fell onto the deck below.

With a sizzle audible even over the crackle of the flames, the particular tongue of flame directly below flickered and went out.

Mara didn't wait for further instructions. Her lightsaber slashed again, slicing the conduit lengthwise; and suddenly the room was filled with a noisy spray of liquid, splattering against the ceiling and walls and showering down onto the fire.

It was almost too late. Luke's vision was starting to waver now as his body ran out of air, and it was all he could do to keep from dropping Mara onto the dying flames and fire-heated deck below her.

Clenching his teeth, he hung on. A few more seconds, he told himself sternly. A few more seconds and the fire would be out, or near enough. Then he could set Mara down and they could both start breathing again.

Unless between the lingering smoke and the extinguisher spray the room contained nothing but those toxic gases he'd wondered about earlier. In that case, he would just have to hope that the fire would be mostly gone before he blacked out, or at least that the stormtroopers would notice and pull him out of anything before he burned to death. A few more seconds...

He jerked as something suddenly came down over his head. He blinked; but even as his eyes registered the vision-enhancing eyepieces in front of them, his skin registered something far more important: the feel of clean, cool air being blown at his face.

He reached a hand up to his head, the fingertips bumping against something hot and hard. But the reaction had been pure reflex anyway, because he'd already figured out what was happening. One of the stormtroopers, recognizing his desperate need for air, had come to his side and put his own helmet over Luke's head.

He took a deep, careful breath. The air smelled as good as it felt. He took another breath, and another, filling his lungs and replenishing the oxygen in his bloodstream. His thoughts flicked to Mara, but before he could ask he sensed that she, too, was being given the same care by a stormtrooper standing on the hot but no longer burning deck beneath her. He eased his Force-hold on her, lowering her down into the Imperial's waiting arms.

There were a pair of hands on his shoulders now, half guiding, half pushing him back the way he'd come. A moment later they reached the doorway and stepped through. "I'm all right," he called, taking one final breath and pushing the helmet away. Its owner caught it on its way up, and Luke got just a glimpse of an intense, dark-skinned face before the other slid the helmet back down over his own head again. He glanced back over his shoulder to make sure Mara was all right—

And froze, feeling his mouth drop open in astonishment. Like him, Mara had taken a few breaths of clean air and was in the process of returning the borrowed stormtrooper helmet to its owner.

Only the head sticking up out of the white armor wasn't human. It was green with touches of orange, dominated by large eyes and a narrow highlighting of glistening black scales that curved over the top and sides of the head almost to the nose. He caught sight of Luke staring at him and his mouth gaped open in what had to be a grin.

Luke could only stare back. The 501st Stormtrooper Legion—Vader's Fist—the absolute epitome of Emperor Palpatine's hatred of nonhumans and his determination to bring them under human domination.

And one of its own members was an alien...

Under the circumstances, Luke had to privately admit, General Drask was surprisingly polite about the whole thing. "We appreciate the assistance," he said, standing like a small, immovable pillar in the smoke-stained corridor as a small river of Chiss moved past and around him on cleanup duty. His voice was under careful control, but there was no mistaking the smoldering fire in his glowing red eyes. "But in the future, you will not take action aboard this vessel without specific authorization from myself, Aristocra Chaf'orm'bintrano, Captain Brast'alshi'barku, or another command-rank officer. Is that understood?"

"Clearly," Fel said before either Luke or Mara could say anything. "I apologize for overstepping our bounds."