Timothy Zahn - Survivor's Quest

Abruptly, a blur of shiny metal flashed into view. Letting the Force guide her hand, she fired.

The droideka was gone again almost before it registered in her vision, and from the direction it had disappeared came an abrupt cacophony of metal on metal as it scrabbled to a sudden halt to deal with this unexpected menace on its flank. Mara jumped to her feet and charged for the doorway, hoping she might get in a follow-up shot before it could recover its balance.

But the machine was too fast. By the time she emerged into the corridor, it had already started to wheel around toward her. Aiming for the sensor cluster in its head, she fired.

Too late. The droideka again got its shield up in time, ricocheting the shot away. It finished its unrolling and rose again, weapons tracking toward her. Mara dropped her blaster, igniting her lightsaber and bringing it back up in front of her. The droideka's blasters lifted slightly—

And suddenly the machine staggered as something big and dark came flying down the corridor and slammed into its shield from behind, sending its first volley into the deck. Mara backed away down the corridor, blocking the droideka's shots as it waddled awkwardly after her. A moment later, she'd made it back to the cross-corridor outside the command deck. A second object slammed into the droideka, and she took advantage of the distraction to dodge to her left and run full-speed toward the starboard corridor. Hoping fervently that the droideka didn't have a friend waiting in ambush, she rounded the corner.

No one was waiting, droideka or Vagaari. She'd made it two cross-corridors back when Luke stepped out in front of her, palm upraised. "It's all right," he said. "It's not following."

"You'd better be right," she said, breathing hard as she slowed to a halt. "Thanks for the assist. What were you throwing at it, anyway?"

"Whatever odds and ends were handy," he told her, glancing around and pointing her to a nearby electronics repair room. "The first one was a power converter, I think, and the second was a two-meter piece of structural bracing girder that had been broken off and was lying around."

"Neither of which is exactly a lightweight," Mara pointed out grimly as they stepped inside the room. "If hitting it that hard didn't do anything but spoil its aim for a couple of shots, we can forget about that as a way to take it down."

"I think you're right," Luke agreed. "What about you? Any luck with that sucker shot?"

Mara shrugged. "I'm pretty sure I hit the sensor head, but I don't know what kind of damage I did. Probably not very much—it sure didn't have any trouble lining up its blasters on me afterward."

"So they can't keep their shields up while they're rolling?"

"Right," Mara said. "About all they can do with their shields up is that little waddle thing. Problem is, in wheel form they're just too fast for a good killing shot."

"Certainly not from a blaster that small," Luke said. "Maybe we should see if we can find something with a little more power and try it again."

"Maybe," Mara said doubtfully. "But then you're going to run into a different limitation. With blasters, the more power it's got, the bigger and heavier it is. Even with the Force I had enough trouble hitting it with my sleeve gun. It would be that much harder to move even a carbine fast enough to keep up with a droideka's speed and maneuverability."

"How about if it wasn't moving?" Luke asked. "Could that same carbine punch through the shield?"

Mara shook her head. "I've never seen the specs, but from what I've heard it sounds like it would take something a lot bigger than that to do the trick."

"So we're back to hitting it when it's on the move," Luke concluded. "Maybe you should have tried that ambush trick with your lightsaber instead of your blaster."

"Wouldn't have worked," Mara said. "I would have had to stand right at the doorway to reach it, and it would have picked me up long before it got within range."

"How about now that its sensors are damaged?"

"I'd hate to try it," Mara said hesitantly. "There are several different types of sensors grouped there—composite radiation, vibration, and I think one or two more. It can aim and fire using any combination of them."

"Terrific," Luke said, starting to sound a little frustrated. "We can't use blasters, and we can't use lightsabers. So how did the Jedi of that era deal with them?"

Mara felt her lips tighten. "Mostly, they ran away," she said. "I can't remember a single story of a Jedi taking out a shielded one on his own."

Luke seemed taken aback. "Oh."

"Oh, indeed." Mara leaned her head back out of the room to peer down the corridor. "You did say it had stopped, right?"

Luke nodded. "I heard it unroll. From the direction of the sound, I'd guess it's sitting midway between the two command deck doors."

"Like a big metal vornskr on guard duty."

"Exactly," Luke said, starting to sound back on track again. "At least now we know what else Outbound Flight's organizers packed aboard. Where in the worlds did they get a droideka, anyway? I thought only the Trade Federation had them back then."

"They did, but you forget that the Trade Federation had been allegedly rehabilitated after the Naboo incident," Mara pointed out. "They were all sweetness and light—well, they were all grudging cooperation, anyway—until the Separatists dropped the hammer at Geonosis and the Clone Wars began. Someone probably persuaded them to donate a few to Outbound Flight with an eye toward sentry use on any new colonies they might set up." She gestured. "Fortunately, it looks like the Vagaari only have one of them working."

"One is plenty for me," Luke assured her dryly. "I'm surprised they got even that far."

"I'm not," Mara said sourly. "Or at least, I shouldn't have been. The more I think about it, the more I think droid technology was what Estosh came here looking for in the first place."

"What makes you say that?" Luke asked, frowning.

"It was right after that first cleaner droid appeared on D-Four and you slipped away to scout out our path," Mara said, feeling yet another twinge of professional embarrassment. Like the fake Geroon refugee ship, this was something she should have instantly caught on to. "We got to talking about droids in general, and one of the Vagaari asked specifically about droidekas. There's no place he could have picked up that term except from Fel's operational manual."

"Okay," Luke said slowly. "But we already know they're the ones who stole it."

"Right," Mara said. "But there were four densely packed data cards in that set. What are the odds they would have stumbled across a list of droid designations unless they were specifically looking for them?"

"Even less than the odds they'd find the maintenance and activation procedures," Luke said, nodding. "So this whole fuss is over nothing but a few droids?"

"They're only a few droids to us because we're so used to having them around," Mara pointed out. "Remember what Fel said about the Chiss not having droid technology? If the Chiss don't, probably no one else out here does, either. If the Vagaari can learn how to build and field a droid army, they're going to have a huge advantage, especially among the less developed cultures who seem to be their preferred prey."

"I guess you're right," Luke said. "So the original plan was probably to kill everyone aboard the Chaf Envoy, spread out through Outbound Flight to collect all the droids they could find, then sneak back through the Redoubt before we were gone long enough to have raised any alarms."

"That's my guess," Mara said. "It was just pure luck they got a working Dreadnaught as a bonus."

Luke grimaced. "Some bonus. The chief Vagaari's going to be really pleased to have this show up on his doorstep."