Jedi Under Siege Page 8

  us?"

  Qorl flew beneath the aerial dogfight just above the treetops, anguished

  inside. Jacen Solo was an honorable opponent. The boy had a strong

  heart, though he had fallen in with the Rebel band instead of the Second

  Imperium. But could the boy be blamed?

  After all, his mother was the Chief of State of the Rebel government.

  Norys, however, did have a choice. The broad-shouldered boy knew what he

  had been trained for. He had adopted his Imperial uniform and his ship

  willingly . . . yet now he refused to play by the rules. Norys was no

  better than a ruthless, murderous bully.

  The pursuing TIE fighter continued to fly in the slipstream of the

  crippled cargo vessel. Black smoke curled up from her engine pods, and

  Qorl observed the precise moment at which the shields failed.

  ill Norys fired again, staining the hull with a slash of black blisters.

  Qorl flicked on his own laser cannons and activated the targeting

  systems. The Lightning Rod would explode in a matter of seconds under

  Norys's continued assault. If it did, Qorl wouldn't be surprised if the

  bully continued to shoot the burning wreckage to make sure there were no

  survivors.

  Disgust welled up within him. Switching off his comm system, he

  muttered, "Do I lose any honor by destroying someone who has no honor of

  his own?"

  Qorl had studied every subsystem on the Imperial TIE fighters. He knew

  their weak points. Qorl knew how to destroy them.

  He targeted Norys's reactor exhausts.

  Ignoring his teacher entirely, Norys fired again. His lasers had fallen

  into a slower repeating rhythm now, as if he savored these last few

  moments.

  The Lightning Rod lurched, in one last helpless attempt to dodge the

  laser fire.

  Qorl closed in on Norys's ship.

  And fired.

  Norys's TIE fighter exploded in the air, annihilated so quickly and

  completely that the young bully didn't even have time to cry out in

  surprise.

  ^ Ashamed that his act had been a betrayal of the Second Imperium, Qorl

  made no attempt to contact the Lightning Rod. He simply changed course

  and swerved back toward the main battlefield, while the faltering

  Lightning Rod struggled to remain aloft . . . or at least to land

  without crashing too badly.

  ^ -----------------WHILE BATTLES RAGED above the Jedi academy and in the

  jungle around it, Imperial commando Orvak crept forward, intent on his

  mission.

  He had left his TIE fighter behind in the wake of the explosions at the

  shield generator facility, but he would come back to it once he had

  finished here. For hours now, he had made his way secretly through the

  thick forest.

  Several trees burned in the jungle nearby, sending up coils of putrid

  smoke from the wet vegetation. He heard blaster fire and shouts, the

  distant hum of lightsabers. He kept low and quiet, not willing to risk

  giving away his position.

  Skywalker's Jedi had abandoned their Great Temple to engage in scattered

  skirmishes in the forests . . . leaving it open and unprotected for him

  to do his work.

  Approaching the ancient edifice, still

  ^

  ^ hidden by the jungle, Orvak saw black streaks on the thick

  stone-blaster scoring and scars from proton explosives dropped by TIE

  bombers. The ubiquitous vines that clung to the pyramid's sides had

  withered under the fire and fallen away in heaps. One close explosion

  had wrecked the temple's hangar bay door, preventing Skywalker's fleet

  of guardian ships from launching.

  So, Orvak thought, after all these millennia, this ancient structure had

  finally been damaged.,But it wasn't damaged enough.

  He would take care of the rest.

  Moving carefully, ducking his helmeted head, he crept through the

  foliage, ripping up vines and uprooting ferns to clear the way until he

  finally emerged from the underbrush and stood behind the tall temple.

  Above, TIE fighters streaked like birds of prey across the sky; Orvak

  looked up, silently urging them on.

  To one side of the pyramid he saw a newly laid flagstone courtyard.

  Across it, at the base of the stone structure, a darkened entrance stood

  open. Imagining what sort of fearful sorcerous exercises the Jedi

  students performed there, he stepped cautiously into the courtyard.

  Already weeds had begun to push up be

  ^ tween the flagstones. The jungle would no doubt reclaim its own within

  a matter of months after he destroyed the temple- and it would be good

  riddance to this place, he thought. By then he hoped either to be back

  on the Shadow Academy or perhaps promoted to officer rank on a Star

  Destroyer . . . if his mission today turned out well enough.

  When the fighting became particularly loud, and proton bombs exploded in

  the jungle not far away, Orvak made his move. He rushed across the heavy

  flagstones to the dim doorway that led into the Rebels' secret temple.

  He paused at the threshold for a moment, glad for his helmet in case

  poisonous vapors might seep out from the interior. Who knew what booby

  traps the Jedi sorcerers might have laid?

  He used the sensors in his helmet to check for traps, but found none . .

  . which wasn't surprising, since the Shadow Academy's attack had been

  completely unexpected; the Jedi Knights had not had time to prepare.

  Orvak entered the Massassi temple, shouldering his pack. He raced down

  the corridors, unfamiliar with the layout of the pyramid. He saw living

  quarters, large dining halls . . . nothing of significance that he could

  destroy.

  He made his way down to the rubblesealed hangar bay, where he thought he

  could plant his detonators to best effect and blow up all the Rebel

  starfighters. But when he emerged from the turbolift, he squinted in the

  dim lighting, unable to believe what he saw. Orvak found only a single,

  sleek looking ship, all curves and angles. Nothing more. No fleet of

  spacecraft, no major defenses. He snorted in disbelief.

  Suddenly, alarms squealed out from the hangar bay. Flashing red lights

  stabbed at his eyes. A small barrel-shaped droid hurtled toward him,

  whistling and screeching. Blue electric bolts sparked from a welding arm

  that protruded from its cylindrical torso.

  Orvak slammed himself back into the turbolift, punching the controls to

  seal the doors. Could the Jedi have installed a force of assassin

  droids? Lethal, weapon-wielding machines that would never, ever miss?

  But as the doors sealed shut and the turbolift whisked him upward, his

  last glimpse showed him that the attacker was simply a lone astromech

  droid trundling across the floor, sounding the Amdard alarms installed

  ^

  in its base. Apparently, however, no one remained in the temple to hear

  them.

  He chuckled nervously. One astromech droid! It annoyed him when mere

  machines held too great a sense of their own importance. He no longer

  feared a trap.

  Orvak had to find a different place for his purposes anyway. Someplace

  more special.

  He finally located it
on the highest level of the great pyramid.

  Taking the tuiwhft to the top, and holding his blaster ready to shoot

  anyone who came out of the shadows, the Imperial commando stepped into

  the grand audience chamber.

  Here, the walls were polished and inlaid with multicolored stones. At

  one end rose a great stage, from which Orvak could imagine the Rebels

  gave lectures to their students, handed medals to each other after

  victories in the war against the rightful rulers of the galaxy, perhaps

  even performed their disgusting rituals.

  Yes, he thought. Perfect.

  Moving quickly, heart pounding with the thrill of accomplishing the

  mission that had already cost the life of his companion Dareb, Orvak

  unslung his pack. He pulled off his black helmet to see better in the

  light that filtered through the temple skylights.

  ^ Smoke blackened the sky outside, like burnt paint brushed across the

  air. Distant sounds of the continuing attack echoed like ricochets

  inside the audience chamber. But he heard no one else nearby, no

  movement.

  The temple was empty, and he had the time to work.

  Orvak strode up to the stage, his boots thumping on the stone floor.

  Yes, that would be the best place, a central location where the

  incredible blast could reflect from all sides. He yanked off his heavy

  gloves so that he could tinker with the fine electronic components.

  Working cautiously, he removed his seven remaining high-powered

  detonators and linked them together. Then, he plugged all of the

  explosives into a central countdown timer and spread them out like the

  spokes of a wheel in the grand audience chamber.

  Yes, it would be a fine explosion.

  Ideally, when all the detonators went off simultaneously, the explosion

  would rip off the top of the temple like a volcano erupting. The shock

  wave would punch through the floor to the levels below and blast the

  walls outward. The entire pyramid would come tumbling down, no more than

  a pile of ancient rubble-as it deserved to be.

  Orvak returned to the central unit and fiddled with the controls,

  kneeling on the polished surface of the stage. He thought with smug

  satisfaction that no more Rebels would ever lecture here. No future Jedi

  Knights would learn Rebel ways. This room would hold no more victory

  celebrations.

  Soon it would all be gone.

  Kneeling on the ground, Orvak keyed in the initiating code. All around

  the chamber, detonator lights winked green, ready to go, waiting for him

  to send the final command.

  Surveying his handiwork, he smiled and pressed the ACTIVATE button. The

  timer began to count down. Not much time left for the Jedi academy.

  As he moved, resting his hand on the floor, Orvak caught a glimmer of

  motion out of the corner of his eye . . . something glittering and

  translucent, almost transparent; it had caught a reflection of the light

  somehow.

  He pulled out his blaster, remaining in a protective crouch. "Vvho's

  there?" he called.

  Then he saw it again, an iridescent sinuous shape slithering toward him

  across the stage. He lost sight of it once more.

  Orvak fired his blaster, gouging holes in the floor around him. Streaks

  of energy

  ^ bolts ricocheted around him. He flattened himself on the stage, afraid

  of return fire.

  He couldn't see the shimmering invisible thing anymore, and wondered

  what it could have been. Some sorcerer's trick, no doubt.

  He shouldn't have dropped his guard, but the Jedi would never get him.

  Just then, Orvak felt needles of pain sting his hand. He looked down to

  see tiny droplets of blood welling from two punctures in his palm-and

  the triangle head of some kind of viper, a glassy crystalline snake!

  "Hey!" he shouted.

  Before he could lash out at it, the crystal snake dropped away from him

  and slithered toward a narrow crack in the wall. Orvak saw a last

  spangle of light, and then the serpent disappeared. . . .

  But by now he was beyond caring, because a warm fog of sleepiness had

  begun to steal over him. The pain from the snakebite in his hand dulled

  to a throb, and Orvak thought drowsily that a long sleep could only make

  it better.

  He collapsed into a deep slumber right beside the countdown timer.

  The numbers ticked inexorably downward. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  TENEL KA STOOD at the edge of the Imperial battle platform, her muscles

  tense, her body and reflexes ready to react.

  She coiled her fibercord before returning it and the grappling hook to

  her belt. Then, with her single muscular arm, she held up her

  rancor-tooth lightsaber and ignited it.

  Beside her towered Lowbacca, ginger fur standing on end, dark lips

  peeled back to reveal fangs. The Wookiee used both hands to grip his

  clublike lightsaber with its molten bronze blade.

  Surprised to see unexpected enemies, stormtroopers on the battle

  platform marched forward with blasters drawn, confident of their

  victory.

  Em Teedee wailed. "Oh dear, Master Lowbacca-perhaps we should have

  planned this attack a bit more thoroughly."

  Lowie snarled, but Tenel Ka stood tall, ^

  ^ her confidence unshaken. "The Force is with us," she said. "This is a

  fact."

  A single TIE bomber swooped overhead, dropping proton torpedoes into the

  forests.

  The sounds of blaster fire ricocheted around them.

  On the raised command deck of the battle platform, the Nightsister

  Tamith Kai stood in her black cloak like a preening bird of prey. She

  turned, her midnight hair writhing around her head with static

  electricity, her wine-dark lips curled in a sneer. Tenel Ka and Lowie

  took three brave steps toward the waiting stormtroopers.

  One of the white-armored soldiers, apparently nervous at seeing the two

  young Jedi Knights, fired his blaster-and Tenel Ka whipped her energy

  blade across to intersect the incoming energy bolt, deflecting it into

  the sky.

  Then, by unspoken agreement, she and Lowie charged forward, yelling.

  They slashed with their lightsabers so furiously that though the

  stormtroopers sent out a volley of blaster fire, they were thrown into

  chaos. Lowie and Tenel Ka forced their way through them like a

  whirlwind.

  On the command deck above, Tamith Kai strode forward to gaze down at the

  skir

  ^ mish. "The girl is mine. I'll crush her heart myself," she said.

  Tenel Ka slashed once more with her lightsaber, taking out another

  charging stormtrooper. She turned. Her heart thudded, but her breath

  came slow and even. Her muscles sang. She was prepared for this fight,

  sure of her physical abilities. This would be her best battle ever.

  "That leaves all the other stormtroopers for you, Lowie," she said,

  springing up onto the command deck to meet her nemesis.

  The young Wookiee roared his readiness, though Em Teedee did not sound

  quite as courageous. "Please be cautious, Master Lowbacca. It wouldn't

  be wise to get delusions of grandeur."

  The stormtroopers pressed forward, fifteen against one gangly
young

  Wookiee.

  Lowbacca didn't seem to think the odds were too bad.

  Tenel Ka stood before the Nightsister, holding herself tall and proud,

  her turquoise lightsaber in front of her. She remembered the first time

  she had taken the evil woman by surprise and nearly crippled her. "So,

  how is your knee, Tamith Kai?" The Nightsister's violet eyes flashed,

  and she shook her head mockingly. "V&y not

  ^ surrender now, weakling girl?" she said.

  "This is hardly a worthwhile test of my abilities. Ha! A one-armed

  child who dares to think she can be a threat to me."

  "You talk too much," Tenel Ka said. 'Or do you intend to use your foul

  breath as a weapon against me?"

  "You have been around those twin Jedi brats too long," Tamith Kai said.

  "You've learned disrespect for your superiors." The Nightsister jabbed

  the air with her fingers and sent a bolt of blue-black lightning toward

  the warrior girl from Dathomir.

  "I see no one here who is my superior, Tenel Ka said, intercepting the

  lightning bolts with her lightsaber blade. Then she used the Force to

  build her own positive thoughts and feelings, which she pulled around

  her like a shield. The Nightsister retreated a step, taken aback.