Timothy Zahn - Survivor's Quest

"Listen!" Drask murmured urgently. "I hear a turbolift car approaching."

Fel grimaced as he caught the telltale sound, too. Approaching full of enemies, no doubt, but he didn't have anything better to offer. If they could clear the car before those inside knew what was happening, they would at least have bought themselves a little cover.

In fact, if the Vagaari in the lobby stayed groggy long enough, they might even have a chance of using the car to get away. "Go," he told Drask, giving a tug on Cloud's arm to get him moving.

They picked their way through the maze of stunned Vagaari, the stormtroopers stumbling drunkenly, Fel doing his best to help and hurry them along. Drask, unencumbered with injured comrades, made the trip considerably faster and was standing ready at the door when it slid open. He swung around the edge to lean into the car, his charric spitting blue fire as he laid down a killing pattern.

The pattern broke off almost before it started. "Empty," he called, swinging back around again to cover the Vagaari still getting to their feet. A shot blistered past his head; shifting his aim, he fired once to silence the gunner. "Hurry!"

The Chiss had shot three more Vagaari, and the room was starting to fill with blaster bolts by the time Fel and the stormtroopers stumbled through the open door. "We're in," Fel shouted as he guided his charges to the rear of the car. The enemy fire was still highly random, but the Vagaari would be getting both their balance and their aim back any minute. "Hit the control—there."

"Storage core?" Drask asked, still firing as he ducked inside.

"Yes," Fel said. Whatever reinforcements Bearsh had would undoubtedly be up on D-4, and Fel had no interest in taking them on just now. "Come on, hit it."

Drask did so.

Nothing happened.

Drask hit it again, and again, then tried the switch to D-4. Still nothing. "What's wrong?" Fel demanded, hurrying to his side.

"It does not function," Drask snarled. "The Vagaari have locked it down."

A burst of enemy fire splattered off the edge of the door. "Come on," Fel said, grabbing Drask's arm and dragging him to the back of the car. So that was it. The enemy had anticipated their final move, and they were now well and truly trapped. Fel had failed his men, failed Admiral Parck, failed Aristocra Formbi and the rest of the Chiss.

But if the Vagaari expected them to die quietly, they were in for a rude shock. Cloud and Grappler had sunk to the floor, semiconscious, their BlasTechs hanging loosely from their hands. Fel grabbed Cloud's weapon, checked the power indicator, and swung it around to point at the door. Outside, he could see the Vagaari starting to move purposefully around, fully in control now and probably setting up their pattern for a rush on the car. Leveling the BlasTech toward the opening, Fel braced himself...

And with a sudden shattering of metal and plastic, the front part of the car's ceiling exploded inward.

Instinctively, Fel twisted his head away, squeezing his eyes shut against the flying debris. The roar of the blast faded and he turned back, blinking open his eyes.

At the front of the car, barely visible through the roiling dust, stood a pair of Imperial stormtroopers.

Watchman and Shadow had arrived.

There were, Fel had estimated, about thirty Vagaari in the turbolift lobby. They never had a chance. The two stormtroopers stood shoulder to shoulder in the doorway, fresh and uninjured, taking the enemy's attack unflinchingly as they systematically raked the lobby with blasterfire.

Fel sank down onto the floor beside Cloud and Grappler, the BlasTech falling loose in his hands as he listened to the firefight, the combat tension finally beginning to drain out of him.

And as it did, he slowly became aware of pain digging into his body from a dozen different places on arms, legs, and torso. Apparently, he wasn't as uninjured as he'd thought.

By the time the battle was over, he needed Drask's help to even stand up.

The two Vagaari fired another burst, their blaster bolts scattering from Luke's lightsaber blade. He pressed forward grimly, letting the Force manipulate his defense, shortening the gap between him and the attackers. In the distance, the sounds of multiple blaster-fire from a minute earlier had gone ominously quiet. Wrapped in the tunnel vision of combat, he couldn't tell what the outcome had been, but it was beginning to look as if he and Mara were already too late to be of any help there.

The Vagaari intensified their fire. Setting his teeth, he struggled to keep up with the attack—

And suddenly, the screaming of their weapons was joined by blasterfire of a more modern pitch and rhythm. For a handful of seconds the two sounds played a deadly duet, and then all weapons fell abruptly silent.

"Luke? Mara?"

Luke let his lightsaber slow to a halt in ready position, his lungs heaving as he relaxed his tight focus and began opening up his mind again. The voice and the sense accompanying it had been very familiar...

"We're here, Fel," Mara called out as she and Evlyn came up behind him. "Come on, Luke, they're hurt."

Luke blinked sweat out of his eyes as he closed down his lightsaber and joined the other two hurrying down the corridor. He could sense the pain now: waves of it, sweeping toward him.

The two groups met around the next jog in the corridor, beside the bodies of the three Vagaari Luke had been slowly pushing back. "These the last of them?" one of the stormtroopers asked, gesturing at them with his BlasTech.

"As far as I know, yes," Luke said, eyeing him and the others with concern and a bit of awe. All four stormtroopers had been through the wars, all right, with blaster burns scattered and clustered all across their once-sleek armor. On two of them, the white color of their breastplates had been almost completely obliterated, with at least a dozen spots on each where the armor had been burned clean through. It was hard to believe they were even alive, let alone more or less on their feet. Fel didn't look to be in terrific shape, either, and though he seemed to be walking on his own Luke could see that Drask was standing ready to offer him a helping hand. "I see you've been busy," he said. The words sounded rather bland, but somehow seemed to fit the casual dignity and bravery he could sense from all six of the group. "I'm sorry we weren't able to get to you faster."

"We managed," Fel said, his voice rigid with the strain of someone fighting back pain and determined not to show it. "Afraid we left a mess by the turbolifts that someone's going to have to clean up."

"Don't worry about it," Luke assured him. "What about Bearsh? Did you see him?"

"I didn't, no," Fel said, glancing around at the others. There was a general murmur of agreement. "He must have made it to D-Four before we were able to deal with their rear guard."

"Rear guard?" Mara asked. "You saying there are still more of them up there?"

"Definitely," one of the stormtroopers said. "We could hear them working in the turbolift pylon while we were bringing the car in."

"I don't suppose you got a head count," Luke said.

The stormtrooper shook his head. "We were too busy getting the car moving and laying out the flash paste to give them much attention."

"I have done a rough calculation, however," Drask said. "From the size of the three inaccessible rooms aboard the Vagaari vessel, I estimate Bearsh could have brought as many as three hundred troops with him."

Luke whistled. "Three hundred? They must have been stacked like data cards in there."

"With their hibernation technology, that would be entirely possible," Drask agreed.

"What were they doing in the pylon?" Evlyn asked.

They all looked at her. "What?" Fel asked.