Timothy Zahn - Survivor's Quest

Evlyn nodded. Stretching to the Force again, Luke reached down through the opening and keyed the switch.

The car began to lumber its way toward D-4, "downward" from where Luke was currently sitting. Pulling out his glow rod, he adjusted it to tight beam and waited.

"That's a little unfair, Estosh," Fel's voice came from the comlink. "Even Jedi can't be expected to know everything. That's why they have allies like us. You see, we know all about the recorder you tapped into the navigational repeater lines."

Luke frowned at the comlink. A recorder in the navigational lines, that Fel and the 501st had known about?

And that they hadn't mentioned to anyone else?

"Ah, so that's what the diversion with the line creepers was all about," Mara said. Even at this distance, Luke could sense her own surprise and annoyance that Fel hadn't let them in on the secret. But nothing but interested professionalism was coming out in her voice. "You knew you might be leaving this party early, so you made sure you'd have a recording of the route back to the Brask Oto Command Station. And your little chat with Jinzler in the forward observation lounge was because he happened to be too close to the action?"

"Yes," Estosh said, sounding grudgingly impressed that she'd caught on so quickly. "If he'd left at the wrong moment, he would have seen Purpsh installing the device. Master Skywalker, are you still there?"

Luke clicked the comlink voice pickup back on. "Still here, Estosh," he assured the other. "But even that recording isn't going to get you all the way out of the Redoubt, you know. We were half an hour into the flight before you got it tied in."

"That last part will be easy enough," Estosh said offhandedly. "Leaving the edge of a star cluster is not nearly as difficult as navigating one's way inside."

The turbolift car had hit the main gravity eddy field now and was rotating around in the darkness. A moment later it finished its turn, leaving Luke with a clear line of sight all the way to the curve where the pylon entered the underside of D-4.

He frowned. Even though he couldn't see the far end of the tube, he ought to be able to hear the sounds of any activity going on around the curve. But all was silence. Whatever the Vagaari had been doing, they were apparently finished.

That was probably a bad sign. Flicking on his glow rod, he shined it upward.

And caught his breath. There, packed around the tube a few meters out from the curve, he could see a solid ring of flat gray boxes.

Boxes like the ones he and Mara had run into on their initial trip through D-4. Boxes Mara had identified as being full of explosives.

The Vagaari had mined the pylon.

Luke gazed upward, feeling his throat tighten. There was undoubtedly an orderly and systematic method for detaching Dreadnaught-4 from the rest of Outbound Flight. Clearly, the Vagaari weren't interested in finding out what that procedure was.

The car was approaching the ring now. "One thing that puzzles me, Estosh," Luke said into his comlink, holding his free hand horizontally over the hole in the ceiling where Evlyn could see it. "You couldn't have known any of the Dreadnaughts would even be in one piece when we set off on this trip, let alone ready to fly. And you certainly didn't need all these troops just to track the Chaf Envoy's path into the Redoubt." The car reached the explosives, and he jabbed at the air with his finger. Evlyn was ready, and the car settled tentatively to a midair halt.

"That's right," Mara said. Luke could sense her concern as she picked up on his sudden tension, but again all of it was carefully filtered out of her voice. "So what was the original plan? Just out of curiosity, of course."

"You humans are strange creatures," Estosh said, his melodious voice starting to pick up an edge of suspicion. "Here you are, about to die, and yet instead of struggling to postpone your fate, you sit quietly and ask about things that cannot possibly help you."

Slowly, Luke ran the light from his glow rod along the explosives. The detonator wiring seemed straightforward enough, the kind of arrangement he'd seen demolitions techs use during the Rebellion. In theory, he should be able to simply pull it out of all the packages within reach.

The problem was that the detonator box itself was a quarter of the way around the tube from him.

There is no emotion; there is peace. Taking a careful breath, Luke tried to think. He could, of course, easily use the Force to maneuver his lightsaber over to the box and cut it away from the boxes of explosives. But the Vagaari might have wired it with a collapsing release to prevent any last-minute tampering. If it was rigged that way, cutting it free would instantly trigger a detonation.

In addition, there was something else pressed up against the metal beneath the boxes, something he could see but couldn't get to without disassembling everything on top of it. Unknowns were always to be considered dangerous, especially in explosives work.

"The thing is, you see, we Jedi don't die nearly as easily as you might like," Mara told Estosh calmly. "There's a good chance we'll be seeing you again, and the more we know about you, the easier it'll be for us to peel your epaulets back for good when we do."

Still, Luke decided, unknowns or not, if he could get over to the box he stood a good chance of figuring out how to disarm it. The problem was that the turbolift pylon was perfectly smooth, with no protrusions anywhere nearby that would hold his weight. The cluster of buried cables he and Mara had used for their climb up the forward pylon weren't situated close enough to the box, either. He probably could have rigged up something out of liquid cable, but he'd used up most of his supply when he and Mara had sealed off the edges of that first turbolift car.

But if his particular car was too far away, one of the other cars in the cluster should be positioned to pass right next to it. All he and Evlyn had to do was continue up to D-4, where the Vagaari had presumably locked the rest of the cars, transfer to the correct one, and ride it back down again. He wouldn't even have to expose them to enemy fire by going into the lobby; he could use his lightsaber to cut through the sides of the cars until they reached the one they needed.

He looked down into the car and gestured upward. Evlyn nodded and touched the switch, and the car began to rise again. They lifted past the explosives, around the curve—

"How very confident of you," Estosh said, his voice suddenly silky smooth. "My only regret is that I will not actually witness your deaths. Farewell, Jedi." There was a click from Luke's comlink as the Vagaari broke the connection—

And suddenly, below him, the turbolift pylon erupted in an eerie, flickering greenish-blue light and the sound of metallic hissing.

"Luke!" Mara called over the comlink. "What's going on?"

"I think they're about to blow the pylons," Luke said grimly, gesturing Evlyn to stop the car. The other five cars of the cluster were visible now directly above him, along with the gap the car they were riding would normally slip into. "You know any type of detonator that hisses and gives off blue-green light?"

"Sounds like a scorch stick," Mara said. "It's an acid-based, high-temperature paste used to burn a score mark in something to help the explosives crack it more cleanly."

"How long until it burns around a pylon this size?"

"Half a minute," Mara said. "Maybe a little more. If you're anywhere near it, get out now."

Luke listened to his heart thudding in his throat as he weighed his options. If he could just get to the detonator before the scorch stick finished its burn...

But no. Not in half a minute. Certainly not with Evlyn along to slow him down.