He permitted himself a very small smile.

"Are you all right, Yavid?" Devi demanded, breathless, as he returned to the monitoring station. "I can't believe you did it. I can't believe you're not fried. That we're not fried, or blown into a million pieces. Yavid, are you sure you're all right?"

"Yes, " Obi-Wan said, and was shocked to hear his croaky voice. He felt crisped head-to-toe, and the relative silence of the monitoring station made him dizzy all of a sudden.

"Oh, Teeb! " said Devi. "What a mercy you were here!"

To his surprise she threw her arms around him and held him tight. Not wanting to hurt her feelings he returned the gesture- and almost immediately she let go of him and retreated a step.

"Sorry. I don't usually do that. Fling myself on strange men, " she said, fl.u.s.tered.

"That's quite all right. " He grinned at her. "I've experienced far less pleasant embraces. "

She stared, uncertain. And then she laughed, in the midst of chaos and fear a delightfully uproarious sound. "Oh, I do hope you stay in Torbel, Teeb Yavid. We could do a lot worse than you. "

64.It hurt him to lie. "I hope I can stay, too, Devi. My cousin and I..."

And then he was spinning to face the monitoring station's outer door, the rest of his lie abandoned.

Anakin. Oh, no.

The next storm-shield generator overloaded just as Anakin reached it. He had a split second's warning, one hammer blow from the Force. The storm seemed to hold its breath...

...and then exhaled in renewed fury as the generator erupted in a burning light show of sparks. With a scream like a wounded animal the shield directly overhead collapsed and a maelstrom of theta particles poured through the gap.

He acted on instinct-and out of sheer b.l.o.o.d.y-minded terror. Throwing up his hands he used the Force to hold back the stream of theta particles, and with a shout of rage became one with the storm shield. Rejected the storm. He thought he could feel his blood bubbling.

He was losing himself, disappearing within the scarlet vortex of the Force as it consumed him and transformed him into fire.

And there was his mother, whispering again. He can help yon. He was meant to help yon. Furious, Anakin stood alone against the storm.

... On Coruscant, in the Temple, Taria Damsin and Ahsoka shadowdance with their lightsabers. Shadowdance within the Force. Open and trusting they swim its light tides-and as one are swept up in a tidal wave of fear. Shock twists them and they stumble, fingers loosening. Lightsabers fall. Shocked younglings whisper and wonder what to do...

... as Yoda, in meditation, is shocked out of his communing by a sense of danger sharp as pain. Hand pressed to his head be seeks for understanding, seeks to see what has happened. But the dark side is a jealous shroud. It keeps its secrets close. Yoda grits his teeth and fights it...

... as the Drivok psychic seeker lifts its head and scents the air and keens with triumph because above all things it is a hunter and no hunter likes to be eluded. But now it can see the missing Jedi so clearly, lighting up its mind, and on the map it can pinpoint them exactly...

... and Lok Durd laughs and laughs and laughs...

Every alarm in the monitoring station was sounding. Devi pushed her antigrav harness to its limits as she flung herself from station to station.

"No, no, don't do that!" she shouted, slamming switches, hitting b.u.t.tons. "Don't you dare!"

"Devi!" Obi-Wan yelled. "Tell me what I can do to..."

She flung out an arm, pointing toward the generator and storm-shield status board. "Glue your eyes to those gauges. We've got one shield generator down. If another goes it's over. We're all dead. I don't even know how the rest of the shield's still holding but I don't care. It's holding and that's all that matters!"

I know how. It's Anakin. May the Force protect him.

Sick with fear for him, Obi-Wan crossed to the status board and read off the gauges, even as his stomach churned and the bile rose in his throat.

Hold on, Anakin. I'll he there as soon as I can.

Because surely not even the Chosen One could hold back a theta storm on his own.

65."It was the most awful thing I've ever seen, " Qui-Gon had told him, so many years ago. "Theta storms kill in two ways, you see. If you're contaminated from a distance, well, it takes a long time to die. But if you are in the storm's path it trill rip you to pieces and then melt your hones. I've seen it kill both ways, and both ways arc cruel. Better to be swallowed alive by a sarlacc. "

"Well?" Devi demanded. "Are they holding? The other generators? The shield? Yavid?"

Obi-Wan wrenched his mind from the past and checked the status board again. "Yes. So far, so good. "

Devi was sweating, fat drops rolling down her fierce and unremarkable face. But instead of capitulating to the fear, she fought it.

"This is crazy, Yavid. Crazy," she said, and banged her fist on another gauge. "If these readings are right this is a Cla.s.s Four storm. I never thought I'd live to see one this bad. "

"So I should feel honored? Look on it as a-a kind of welcome-home celebration?"

She snorted. "Ha! Some welcome. " And then even that tiny moment of humor was obliterated as yet another alarm began to sound.

"Oh, have mercy, " she whispered. "No. Please, no. "

"What is it? What's happening?"

She staggered to another bank of monitors then turned, her face grayish white. "We've got a power surge building, " she said, her voice catching in her throat. "And I can't stop it. Not without shutting down the entire second sector and that means collapsing the storm shield. Yavid..."

Her terror was almost overwhelming. "Devi, are you sure we can't stop it? Short-circuit it somehow? Where will the surge hit? Devi!"

Startled, she shook her head hard to regain focus and turned back to her monitors. One trembling finger traced the stuttering liquid-crystal display readout of Torbel's underground power grid.

"It'll blow the irrigation system for sure, " she said, almost in tears. "It might take out the artesian pump. Probably not the storm shield.

And then-stang, the mine. Will it hit the mine? No. No, no, not the mine, the refinery. " Spinning around, she nearly fell over. "Unless there's a miracle it'll ground in the refinery. Yavid..."

"Devi, try to stop that surge, " he ordered, already heading for the station's outer door. "There has to be a way to divert it or decompress it. Something. Anything. Please, you must try. Raise Arrad in the refinery and Rikkard at the mine. Tell them to evacuate everyone to a safe distance. "

The moment he set foot outside the power plant he turned toward Anakin-and felt his heart thud as he saw the gaping hole in the storm shield. Felt the furious concentration of power, of the Force, in that one small place as Anakin held back the storm's might.

And then he felt the gathered villagers, their numbers growing, their fear and astonishment mounting, as they watched the stranger from Voteb do a thing that should not be humanly possible.

Hold on, Anakin. Hold on.

He turned and Force-sprinted for the endangered refinery.

CHAPTER NINE.

The refinery was like a war zone.

Oblivious to their imminent danger, the villagers of Torbel worked furiously to satisfy the needs of a government that used them as slaves. Every station was in operation-sorting barrels, compression chambers, screening units, conveyor belts, tumblers, graders, laser-emulsifiers, sonic scrubbers and packing bays, with trolleys waiting at the end to be loaded with damot.i.te, then hauled out to the warehouse for collection.

Death for a thousand, thousand worlds.

Everything was stink and noise. Thumping, thudding, banging, ringing, screeching, grinding: Obi-Wan felt the cacophony like percussion on his skin. His bones were tuning forks driving spikes of sound through his brain and his nose and mouth sucked dry with 66 the heat and acrid fumes. Raw damot.i.te was poisonous and he wore no protection. How long before he'd be affected? He had no idea and it didn't matter anyway. There wasn't time to pull on a suit.

Long rows of strip lighting sputtered and surged, echoing the instability of the village's threatened power supply. Not a single safety-suited villager seemed to have noticed. They were consumed by desperation, by the obliterating need to meet their impossible quota. If Devi had managed to get a call through here, no one had listened.

He took hold of the nearest villager and spun her around. As she gaped at him through her eye shield, he gave her a hard shake.

"You're in terrible danger, Teeba. Get out, now. Run. "

The villagers close enough to hear him stopped working. Letting go of the woman, he turned on them next.

"All of you, get out of here! There's a power surge building!"

They didn't know him. They didn't trust him. Foolishly, understandably, they hesitated. Recklessly desperate, he used the Force to push them.

"Get out!"

The villagers dropped their tools and ran for the door, clumsy and slow in their heavy protective clothing.

He could feel the air swirling, reacting to the unstable power grid. The lights overhead were flickering faster now. And then the conveyor belts shuddered and groaned. Added to the refinery's rough symphony, a counterpoint of startled voices.

"Get out, get out!" he shouted, running along the aisles, between the workstations. "Spread the word! Get out! This sector of the power grid is about to blow!"

He couldn't see Arrad. Perhaps Rikkard's son didn't know there was trouble. Because if Devi had called here and he'd ignored her-The trickle of fleeing villagers was building to a flood as his frantic warning leapt from station to station. Static discharges began a brilliant, lethal dance over the refinery's battered old equipment, arcing and spitting and sizzling with sparks.

An angry shout cut through the noise trapped beneath the refinery's roof. Obi-Wan spun around. It was Arrad, slamming back into the main work area.

"What are you doing?" The young man s.n.a.t.c.hed at the nearest villagers squeezing past him, heading for safety. "You can't go, we're not finished!"

"He says there's a power surge!" one of the villagers shouted, pulling free. "The grid's going to blow. Get out yourself, Arrad!"

"What?" Arrad was shaking his head. "What are you- Rontl, get back here! Harba! You can't go! My father's relying on us to..."

But Rontl and Harba weren't listening. "Arrad!" Obi-Wan leapt for him. "You must get everyone out of here, there's a..."

Arrad shoved him away. "There's still time. We've nearly made quota. We have to protect this last batch of damot.i.te, Yavid! You don't understand what..."

"No, you fool, you don't understand!" he retorted. "Look around you! Look at the static discharge! Devi says the power surge is going to ground itself right here!"

The last villagers were making their escape. Arrad stared after them in furious despair, then waved a dismissive hand and turned his back. Heedless of the danger, he rushed to the nearest juddering conveyor belt and slammed a lever down, halting its progress before the chunks of raw damot.i.te it carried could tumble to the pitted ferrocrete floor.

Somewhere in the refinery a warning klaxon began to shriek.

"Arrad!" Obi-Wan followed the younger man as he slid between workstations to the nearest sonic scrubber. "Do you hear that? Your subgenerator's starting to overload! You have to come with me, now'. "

"If you want to run, then run, " Arrad spat, keying rapid- fire instructions into the scrubber's command center. He'd discarded his protective head gear, revealing straw-colored hair curled with sweat. "But my father's trusting me to keep this shipment..."

67.Is the young fool mad! "Your father doesn't want you to die for it! For pity's sake, Arrad..."

Snarling, Arrad s.n.a.t.c.hed a wrench from his sagging tool belt and raised it. "I only need a few more minutes, Yavid! If you aren't going to help me than get out of my way!"

Battered by noise and by the Force's insistent push that he get out get out get out, Obi-Wan lunged for Rikkard's son. Taking hold of the young man's wrist, he poured every last bit of compulsion he possessed into his eyes, his voice.

"Arrad, come with me!"

Arrad snapped his wrist free. "I can't!" he shouted, almost drowned out by the blaring klaxon and the snapping, sparking sizzle of static discharge. "If we shortchange the shipment's weight they'll cut our food or worse, give the contract to another village. We won't survive that! We're barely surviving now! If you want to make Torbel your home, Yavid, then help me!"

Obi-Wan stared at him. If I force him out of here at the tip of my lightsaber, that will be that. He'll turn us in out of sheer spite. I can't convince him and I can't leave him here.

He had only one other choice.

"All right, all right, " he said. "I'll help. "

"Shut down that bank of laser-emulsifiers!" Arrad ordered. "Hurry! And then we'll..."

"I'm sorry, " he said, closing his fingers around the back of the younger man's broad neck. "But we're out of time. "

This was no simple mind push-he blanked Arrad's resistance with a blast of the Force. The young man's anger wilted and his muscles softened. Above their heads the strip lighting flared sun-bright once and died, plunging the refinery into a darkness leavened only by the eerie blue flashes of static discharge.

Trusting their lives to the Force, Obi-Wan slid his hand down to Arrad's shoulder, gripped the foolish young man's shirt, pulled... then ran.

But they'd left too late.

With a deafening roar the power grid overloaded and they were tossed with casual violence through the stinking, burning air.

Anakin felt the explosion heartbeats before it happened. Sweating and trembling with the effort of holding back the theta storm, ignoring the villagers who'd come to see what was going on, he tried to send Obi-Wan a warning-but his mind was so bludgeoned by the quicksilver torment of keeping the raging storm at bay that he couldn't feel his former Master's presence.

And then the refinery went up like Coruscant fireworks on Republic Day.

Screams and shouts sounded as panic surged through the Force, bright and white and stunning. Vision smearing and blearing, Anakin sought in the crowd for Teeba Jaklin. She'd come from the charter house to see what the fuss was about and remained because she couldn't believe her own eyes.

"Jaklin! Teeba Jaklin!"

She pushed and shoved and swore her way to him through the jostling villagers who pointed and gasped and were beginning to break for the refinery.