Jedi Bounty, page 12
all at greater risk."
Jacen understood that the four humans could not go with Lowie; they had
to keep as far away from the alien radicals as they could. Their
Wookiee friend regarded each of them fondly.
With words and gestures he reviewed for them the directions he
remembered from the computer map of the catacombs. They all found it
painful to see Lowbacca leave again, but knew that this time he would
come back . . .
with the Rock Dragon, to help them get home.
"We'll meet you outside, Lowie," Jacen called.
"In the mountains."
With a last glance over his shoulder, Lowie sprinted down the long
winding tunnel into a whirlpool of shadows.
After less than twenty minutes of cautiously toiling their way up the
steep passage Lowie had indicated, a complete and deafening silence fell
behind them like a curtain. All the alarms shut off; the emergency was
canceled.
"That means they've discovered Lowie's trick," Jacen said.
Nolaa Tarkona's voice came over the intercom.
"There is no poisonous gas spill. What you just heard was a false
alarm, triggered by a traitor in our midst." She paused a moment for
effect.
"Four human prisoners, important hostages, have just escaped. They must
be found. I demand your most diligent efforts in the name of the
Diversity Alliance." When Nolaa Tarkona switched off the intercom, her
angry voice ended abruptly with the force of an ax chopping through a
branch.
"This is trouble," Tenel Ka said.
"We've been in trouble," Jaina countered.
Raynar leaned with a heavy sigh against the corridor's rock wall.
"Nobody's going to fall for our 'human disguise' trick a second time."
Tenel Ka suddenly stood up straight. As always, her hearing and
eyesight were sharper than any of the others'. She gripped her
lightsaber.
An instant later Jacen sensed the approach of numerous enemies. He drew
his weapon, as did his sister. The footsteps were coming closer from a
single direction, but the tunnels heading away branched out in many
other directions.
"Fighting here will be difficult," Tenel Ka said.
Jacen nodded. "We don't have to make a stand heref he pointed out.
"We can run toward the outside," Raynar suggested.
"It'll buy us some time," Jaina agreed. "Let's move."
Clipping their lightsabers to their belts, they raced along the
corridors, zigzagging, turning at random intervals as they headed
upward. Every tunnel seemed to be filled with thundering footsteps and
the rumble of armored feet. The hunt was on in every catacomb; Nolaa
Tarkona had no intention of letting the humans escape.
As they picked up speed, the young Jedi Knights dispensed with caution,
running as hard as they could. Tunnels branched one direction, then
another.
Confusing as the choices were, they kept running uphill.
As they plunged across a corridor intersection, they startled a group of
five guards--a pair of one-eyed Abyssin, a Duros, and two furry white
!
Talz. All of the aliens bellowed, drew their weapons, and fired."
Blaster bolts ricocheted from the curving tunnel walls, spurting rock
dust and smoke.
Instinctively, Jaina ducked to one side. Jacen threw himself in the
opposite direction as a blast struck the hard ceiling and arrowed back
down through the spot where he had stood only a moment before.
"Run!" Tenel Ka said. "Faster!"
They raced along the tunnels, climbing toward the surface as the guards
launched after them, still firing . . . still missing. Anew alarm
sounded; one of the guards must have reported his coordinates and called
for reinforcements.
"Do not stop yet," Tenel Ka advised.
"Save the lightsabers for close-in, hand-to-hand fighting," Jaina said.
"I vote we put that off as long as possible," Jacen added.
"I agree," Raynar said, puffing.
More guards joined the chase, converging from different directions.
Turning a corner, Tenel Ka spotted a tarpaulin-covered alcove marked
with a glowing blue triangle. She recognized the armory symbol
immediately. "Aha," she said.
"Here." She grabbed the tarpaulin and tore it aside to reveal the
small-weapons storage area.
"Are we supposed to just grab some weapons and shoot?" Raynar asked.
"I've never fired a blaster before."
The sound of footsteps echoed from several corridors at once. The angry
guards bellowed.
"I've got a better idea," Jaina said. She dashed into the alcove and
emerged with a thermal detonator in her hand. "We don't have much
time," she said. "But I have a feeling this is going to cause a lot of
damage. Everybody split up."
She gestured in different directions. "Raynat, go that way. Jacen and
Tenel Ka, you head down that corridor."
With the time-lock fuse set on the thermal detonator, she tossed it into
the weapons storage area, then raced after Raynar. A contingent of
guards burst into the intersection and howled as they saw their prey
disappearing in two different directions.
But before they could follow, Jaina yelled, "Time!" She pulled Raynar
with her into the shelter of a shallow niche in the rock wall. In the
opposite tunnel, Jacen and Tenel Ka dove together to the floor.
The thermal detonator went off like a planet exploding.
The weapons storage alcove blasted out with the force of a turbolaser
battery. The remaining thermal detonators exploded in a sympathetic
eruption.
Power packs from the stored blasters added fuel. Rock walls crumbled.
Aftershocks trembled through the corridors.
The low ceiling collapsed, and stunned guards tried in vain to cover
their heads. Curving walls sloughed into rubble. Smoke and fire gushed
in all directions, invading every open pathway.
Feeling the heat singe his jumpsuit, Jacen rolled and tried to cover
Tenel Ka's unprotected skin. His ears popped from the overpressure
wave.
Within moments the shock front raced past the place where they'd taken
shelter. Jacen stood up and brushed himself off. Tenel Ka touched his
arm. "Thank you, Jacen," she said. "That was very brave."
"Just my protective instinct," he said with a lopsided grin. He turned
to look back up the corridor and discovered that the walls had
collapsed, cutting them off entirely from his sister and Raynar.
"Looks like we're on our own," he said.
e will manage," Tenel Ka answered. %Ve must get outside, where Lowbacca
can find us."
Hearing distant shouts of alarm approaching from an open passage, they
limped wearily off down the tunnel before they could be captured again.
Raynat and Jaina plodded ahead. They had not been harmed by the
avalanche or the explosion, but they stumbled from exhaustion.
"I hope Jacen's all right. And Tenel Ka," Ray nar said.
Jaina could sense that her twin brother and her friend had not been
harmed. "They're fine.
But we have to put some distance between us will converge there. Jacen
and Tenel Ka can take care of themselves."
"Of course." Raynar forced a smile. "They're Jedi Knights, aren't
they?"
"They know where to meet us in the mountainsgif we can get out there,
that is."
They ran uphill, away from the fading dust of the explosion. Neither
Jaina nor Raynar had a map of the catacombs, nor did they have Tenel
Ka's instinctive sense of direction. But if they continued uphill, they
decided, sooner or later they would break out to the surface.
"I think I see light ahead," Raynar said after what seemed like hours.
"Natural light."
As if in response, alarmed shouts and nervous blaster fire rang out from
behind, though the guards could not possibly have seen them. Yet.
Jaina and Raynar sprinted ahead toward the light.
"It's a passage to the outside!" Raynar said.
"We made it."
"But I'm not so sure we want to go there," Jaina replied. "We've gone a
couple of kilometers laterallygwe may not come out in the narrow
temperate zone."
But they hurried along anyway until they reached the opening. A blast
of heat struck Jaina's face. She looked out upon the fiery day side of
Ryloth, with its unrelenting, pounding sun and scalding-hot rocks.
"I've got a bad feeling this isn't where we wanted to be," she said.
Flaming light seared a desolate landscape incapable of supporting life
in anything but the deepest shadows. Farther in the distance, cracks
and rivers of running lava broke up the landscape.
Blackened outcroppings slumped like rotted teeth, eroded by temperatures
near the melting point.
Behind them, though, the shouting of Diversity Alliance guards seemed to
be coming closer.
Jaina looked out at the hellish landscape, wondering what use the Twieks
could possibly have had for this opening. Did they send criminals out
into the heat to die under the burning sun?
"C'mon, Raynar, we don't have much choice," she said. "Maybe if we keep
to the shadows . . ."
Picking their way carefully through the rocky debris, they left the cool
tunnels behind and were soon swallowed up by the heat.
Jacen and Tenel Ka stood at the end of the passageway. They had run for
kilometers, escaped numerous groups of guards, fled from every
approaching noise. Tenel Ka said they had gone through the core of the
mountains--and now they stared out a large opening across a glacial
landscape with frozen mountains, ice floes, and a night sky so clear and
cold the stars looked like chips of ice floating in a black lake.
"We won't survive out there for long," Jacen said with an involuntary
shiver. "But we can't survive long in here with those guards and Nolaa
Tarkona st'all after us."
"She will not hesitate to kill us this time," Tenel Ka said. Her
lizard-skin armor gleamed in the dim light, but it offered little
protection from the cold winds outside.
Jacen stood next to his friend. He and Tenel Ka were both trained in
the Force. They weren't completely helpless.
"We have ur wits, our lightsabers, our Jedi skills," Jacen said. %Ve
shouldn't need anything else to keep ourselves alive." He smiled
bravely.
They had to find their way back to the temperate zone somehow and meet
up with Lowie.
Tenel Ka nodded. "I agree, Jacen, my friend."
LUSA WADED INTO the sparkling green pool at the base of the waterfall.
Spreading her arms, she closed her eyes and let the droplets of cool
spray caress her face.
There was a strange tingling sensation along the back of her neck. She
had always been sensitive to the Force and, though she'd never had much
training, she was sure Jaina and Raynar had described this as a sense of
impending danger. Raynar, the twins, and Tenel Ka had been gone for
nearly six days now. She knew something was wrong . . . but what
could she do about it?
Lusa waded deeper into the pool, and when the frothing water rose above
her flanks, she swam straight toward the pounding waterfall. She had
promised Raynar that she would try not to worry for at least three days,
and she had resisted the urge to wallow in thoughts of the perils her
friends might encounter while rescuing Lowie from the cruel Diversity
Alliance. Although each day, the tingling at the back of her neck had
returned, each day it had faded again.
But today she could not escape the feeling. It seemed closer than ever.
Letting the pure, cool liquid envelop her, Lusa approached the
waterfall. She plunged into it, hoping the cascading stream would wash
away the feeling of dread. Water rushed over her and thundered in her
ears. Cleansing rivulets sluiced down her bare torso as the heavier
flow pounded against her back, easing the tense muscles. The serenity
of her surroundings calmed her spirit. Her thoughts were far away on
Ryloth, though ....
With her back st'fil under the waterfall, she turned to get a better
view of the beautiful jungle trees along the shore. To her surprise,
she discovered she was not alone, as she had thought.
Twenty-five meters away, at the edge of the pond, stood a short New
Republic guard she had seen before.
Lusa recognized the Bothan who had accidentally stumbled into the
infirmary several days earlier. She wondered if perhaps there was a
message in the comm center for her, or if her friends had returned from
Ryloth with injuries and the guard had been sent to fetch her.
With a rising sense of alarm, Lusa started to swim for shore. But
before she got halfway there, something flew from the hand of the Bothan
guard, directly toward her.
A noiseless explosion threw Lusa backward in the water. She tried to
flail her arms and found that she could not move them. Furiously, her
mind told her four legs to kick--but she could not feel her legs.
The sky bove her was veiled by a rippling curtain of reddish brown, and
she realized that she had sunk beneath the water. Her hair floated
before her eyes. She wanted to cry out, but bubbles gushed from her
nose and mouth. If she gasped, water would fill her lungs and drown
her. She was paralyzed. Her mind cried out for help, again and again.
The next moment, a strong grip pulled her head high above the water and
she drew in grateful lungfuls of fresh air. When the hand in her hair
gave a vicious jerk, her eyes flew open to find the Bothan's face only
centimeters from hers. His expression was filled with hatred.
"Oh, no. You won't die so peacefully," the guard growled. "A traitor
to the Diversity Alliance doesn't deserve a peaceful death."
A loud, ominous humming sound sliced past her ear. Lusa rolled her eyes
to see that the Bothan held a vibroblade half a meter long in his other
hand. She ordered her arms and legs to move, but to no avail.
She couldn't speak, couldn't protest, couldn't cry out.
"No, that would be too easy," the Bothan said.
"It wouldn't serve Nolaa Tarkona's purposes. You have to know that you
died for betraying her.
And you'll also serve as a lesson to whoever might find your body here!"
He slashed the vibroblade through the air in front of her nose, enjoying
his position of power.
"We can't let a good assassination go to waste and look like an
accident. No, this must be reported as a murder. Anyone who hears
about it will know that a traitor cannot hide from the Diversity
Alliance."
He yanked her head back and touched the tip of the vibroblade to the
base of her throat. A few drops of blood welled up where the point
pressed into her skin. Lusa tried to shake her head, to strike him with
her crystal horns. To her relief, although her arms and legs could not
respond, and he still held her fast in his grip, her neck was able to
move.
For just a second, a sound distracted the Bothan. The guard's blade
wavered and lifted, and he turned to see what had made the noise.
That was all the chance Lusa needed. Ignoring the pain from her pulled
hair, she wrenched her head sideways and down and around. With all the
force she could muster, she rammed upward, goring the Bothan's furry
