Mirta backed along the bulkhead, blaster raised, and stepped past Fett to check the compartment. The ship's defended heart was like a nest of boxes. That was great-as long as you weren't trying to get out.

Somewhere aft of them, they could feel sporadic thumps through the ship as troopers tried to smash their way into the center section.

"Did you fry the locks on the hatches to the hangar deck?" Fett asked.

"Yes." Mirta listened at the next barricaded hatch to the Moffs'

last stand. "I hate being interrupted when I'm working. We can crack it later if they still want a fight."

Carid and Vevut unrolled a strip of detonite to make a frame charge. "You reckon they'll cave in when we de-Moff this crate?"

"Maybe." Fett calculated for a moment: twenty Mandos in Bloodfin, about thirty standing by to follow them and take the troopers trying to batter their way into the engineering area. The Imperials might have had a lot more troops, but that counted for little in a confined s.p.a.ce where they couldn't actually use them. "They're logjammed."

Carid and Vevut waved him back, and he took cover with Mirta. The whump of the exploding charge left the hatch hanging open; Vevut ripped it to one side with a crushgaunted hand, and fire spat out the hatchway.

If Daala hadn't wanted the ship largely intact, this could have been over by now. A volley of bolts struck Carid in his beskar chest plate and smacked him against the bulkhead. He made an animal grunt of annoyance.

"Ah, I love it when you boys get saucy!" he wheezed. Fett heard the shunk of his gauntlet vibroblade. "Come here and say h.e.l.lo to your uncle Carid..."

Carid dived into the opening with Vevut and Fett behind. It was an adrenaline-fueled blur-as it always was-and Fett was aware of Vevut getting a faceful of white armor; the troopers must have shoved the remaining Moffs into the next compartment to shield them. The s.p.a.ces were so cramped now that it was hand-to-hand fighting, with not even enough s.p.a.ce to raise a rifle. Displays and sensor panels crashed across consoles like barriers. He tasted singed plastoid when he inhaled-he needed to smell his environment, helmet filters or not-and he would have been blinded by smoke if the HUD hadn't picked up other wavelengths. He jumped onto a collapsed panel to vault over it and it split beneath his boots, catapulting him forward onto a shock trooper. The man shoved his sidearm into Fett's belly and fired.

The impact of rapidly expanding superheated air was like a gut-punch, but beskar really was worth the extra weight. Fett smacked down hard with his vibroblade into the gap between chest plate and underarm, feeling it lodge and then penetrate. A blaster bolt that wasn't his cracked into the man's helmet in a blinding flash of light. The trooper stopped struggling.

"Ba'buir, "said Mirta, trying to haul him up. "Where's the Jedi?"

Jaina Solo was tough enough to look after herself. But if she'd managed to get herself killed, he'd be furious. That wasn't in the plan.

He scrambled to his feet, then heard a thud and turned. Jaina dropped down out of what looked like a ventilation duct.

"Tahiri, "she said. "She's gone into the shafts. Schematic says that's an emergency exit route, last resort."

"You busy, Mand'alor?" Carid yelled. He seemed to forget that he didn't need to raise his voice in a helmet. He usually preferred fighting without one. "Or we'll just mop up this bunch on our own, shall we?"

"On my way, "Fett said. "Solo, can you get her?"

"I need her blocked off somewhere along the route."

"I'll do it." Mirta adjusted her helmet. "I'm small enough to pa.s.s through in armor."

"There's a med sprinter docked topside, "Fett said. "Just a hunch, but do those ducts join up?"

Mirta checked her datapad. "Yeah.... there's a s.p.a.ce a little under two meters high running the underside of that hatch. I reckon Tahiri commed a ride home. Maybe you should use the flamethrower."

"Let's not, "said Jaina, looking up at the deckhead. She shut her eyes as if listening, and coughed. Fierfek, next time I'll make her wear an environment suit. "I can feel her, but I can't feel anyone outside on the hull." "You can sense that?"

"When I really concentrate." She took a deep breath and coughed again. "Might be a med droid, might be someone who can vanish in the Force and I can guess who that'll be."

"I didn't need the Force to know your brother would come to collect his villip, "said Mirta, and dragged a seat across the deck to climb up to another ventilation grille. "And if I get to him first, your training's going to be wasted."

"I said, we leave the sc.u.mbag to her." Fett lunged to grab Mirta's ankle just as she hauled herself into the trunking. He couldn't think of anything that would express his sudden fear for her. He tried. "Don't get killed now that I've bought your wedding present." She shook her leg free. "Get a refund." Jaina gave him a sympathetic shrug and bent her knees, bouncing a little as if she was going to jump. She did. She vanished up the shaft and there was no sound of her crash-ing into anything. 'Yeah, clever. The noise of close-quarters fighting had now given way to more distant sound trans-mitted through the ship's decks, the faint vibration of some serious pounding taking place. The blastproof bulkheads and hatches in the engineering sections seemed trooper-proof, too.

Fett turned to see Carid's head stuck out of the hatch. "Don't get all envious. You can do that with a jetpack. Now, Mand'alor, we're about to open your surprise, so if you wouldn't mind hauling your shebs in here..." "I shouldn't have brought her. Or Grade." "Don't go soft on me, Fett." "I need someone to dance on my grave." Carid was a good man, but Fett missed Beviin on ops like this. "How many have we got in there?"

Fett picked his way through the debris to another hatch, one with double doors. The schematic said this was the inner sanctum. His terahertz penetrating radar showed bodies moving around, just a dozen or so now. As far as he was concerned it was a stupid design for a warship, but then he didn't fight the way Imperial navies did.

"I reckon they'd have a good twenty to thirty Moffs and their lackeys in a flagship, "Vevut said. "I count fourteen dead so far."

"Well, they don't look like they're leading their troops from the front.

Let's drill out the rest of the maggots."

Vevut and Fett crouched in the cover of a console ripped from the deck, squatting ready to spring forward as soon as Carid blew the hatch bolts. Fett felt no pain: he knew he'd feel like a wreck tomorrow, but right then he was im-mune, buoyed up on urgency, adrenaline, and long prac-tice. His body knew what needed doing even if his brain kept trying to tell it that he was too old for this nonsense, and that he needed to worry about his granddaughter.

You didn't give a mott's backside about her mother for decades, and now you worry about the kid.

There was no logic to the things that went through your head when you thought you might die. And every time he drew a blaster, a little voice said that this might be the last time he did, even if he never believed it.

"Cover!" yelled Carid.

"Volume..." Fett sighed, ears ringing.

Whump.

The hatch doors ripped apart. Fett's stream of blasterfire preceded him as he jumped over Carid and burst through the hatch. They were fresh out of troopers inside, and he didn't care if he was dealing with armed Moffs or not, be-cause his hand didn't have time to factor that in before it carried on firing.

He waited for the noise to stop; blaster, exploding transpariplast light fittings, shouts, cries of pain. He'd heard folks say that Mandos were totally silent when they attacked, but then they never heard what went on inside the helmets. Carid had his vivid stream of invective running the whole time, and he never seemed to use the same profanity twice. Vevut muttered to himself. When they got hit, they yelped. Fett couldn't recall making any sound apart from what was forced out of him by being winded by a blow or a fall.

"Well, endex for them, "said Carid. He aimed his blaster while he checked for any still alive. Five men: maybe there were other officers, but not here. They'd reached the core of the citadel. Fett looked up.

"No, I didn't think they'd be that dumb." There was a decent-sized hatch above his head, nothing so small as to need an undignified scramble to pa.s.s through. A panel of controls was inset into the deckhead next to it. Fett lifted his arm to poke the panel with the muzzle of his blaster, and it ratcheted open, releasing a ladder that extended to the deck and came to rest on two feet.

"They don't go down with their ship, then." He directed his penetrating radar by tilting his head, and his HUD showed that the shaft rose vertically, then branched off at forty-five degrees. If the schematic was right, the angled shaft would come out in a larger pa.s.sage just under the emergency hatch. Sounds of tw.a.n.ging metal said that the shaft was either buckling with heat from a fire, or someone was. .h.i.tting it-boots on rungs, probably.

"Why do people always run away from us?" Carid said. "Let's go ask them, "said Fett.

IMPERIAL DESTROYER BLOODFIN: EMERGENCY ROUTE BETA-ONE.

The Star Destroyer was riddled with shafts that reminded Jaina of sinuses in a skull.

She emerged at the top level, sweating. It had to be the top: she ran along the pa.s.sage at a crouch, looking to either side, and couldn't see any more openings. She didn't have a sense of any concealed hatches, either.

But if Jacen was there-he'd know she was, too, even if he couldn't pinpoint her exact location.

Mirta.... where's Mirta?

Ben had once said to her that he used the GAG helmet comlinks, because the Force was all well and good, but he needed to send and receive complex information in appar-ent silence, and the Force was pretty poor at that. Jaina wished for a helmet-just for a moment-to communicate with Mirta. In the end, she didn't need to. She found her squatting with her blaster leveled ahead. Jaina dropped down too.

Mirta's hand signals were actually very clear: Three or four contacts ahead. Then she drew a T-sign in the air with her fingertip-Tahiri-and shrugged.

"She's in there, "Jaina breathed. It was as quiet as she could make it. "I feel her."

The schematic didn't show everything, apparently. Mirta lifted her left forearm, blaster held one-handed in her right just like her grandfather, so Jaina could read the datapad housed in it. Jaina could see a hatch in the deck of the pa.s.sage that wasn't shown. They bolted past it at a crouch, peeling the soles of their boots from the surface to avoid noise, and then they came to a corner.

There was a slow, rhythmic sc.r.a.ping sound, like some-one uns.c.r.e.w.i.n.g a metal container. What happened next felt completely natural: Mirta pointed to the front and side, then to Jaina, and then to herself and indicated forward. She'd give Jaina covering fire as she rounded the corner. Hey, I'm getting used to these people. Mirta signaled: One, two-go.

Jaina shot around the corner and even though she was in Mirta's arc of fire, she felt complete confidence. But ahead of them, Tahiri-struggling to release something in the deckhead, clinging to a ladder, wearing a bright yellow en-vironment suit-clearly didn't. She let loose with a volley of blaster bolts that Jaina deflected with her lightsaber.

The fire hit Mirta's plates.

Jaina had never been close enough to someone in those circ.u.mstances to worry about what happened to deflected bolts, but now she knew. Mirta swore loudly and returned fire. Tahiri fended off the shots with her own lightsaber, and then Mirta just went crazy as far as Jaina was concerned: she ran full-tilt at Tahiri, yelling some curse at her at the top of her voice, something like "Gar shab'ika!"

Mirta shouldn't have been able to beat a Jedi's reaction time. But she did.

She cannoned into Tahiri and the impact lifted the Jedi bodily. It had to be the pure shock of seeing this ball of ar-mored, cursing fury coming at her, not caring if the enemy held blaster, lightsaber, or ion cannon, that rooted Tahiri just long enough to get hit hard. She lashed out with the lightsaber. Jaina could see Tahiri through the faceplate and knew she would never forget her look of horror as the blade of energy simply failed to slice through Mirta's body: My lightsaber doesn't work.

For any Jedi, it was a shock-ing, naked moment.

Jaina was only a split second behind Mirta, but it felt like minutes. She found herself on autopilot, somehow ac-cessing that blind violence that Beviin had shown her, that absolute focus, and for a moment-for long enough-it shut down every warning about the dark side.

There was no anger, only her body taking over, and a voice inside saying, You can't kill Mirta, she's getting mar-ried, her mom died, she's found her grandma. It felt like perfect logic right then. Jaina swung at Tahiri like a mad-woman. Mirta rolled clear and there was the shunk of a vi-broblade. She ducked under the flashing lightsabers, taking a fair few accidental hits, and Jaina saw it unfold in that odd slow motion of desperate combat-Mirta's blade connected with Tahiri's leg and dug into her thigh. Blood spurted: she'd hit an artery. Her blaster went spinning across the deck.

And then there was firing from behind; and boots, running. Tahiri fell back, clutching at her leg. Jaina twisted to see what was coming her way and there it was: three, four men in brownish gray uniforms and caps running toward them. One turned to fire behind him and got a bolt in the chest for his trouble. The rest opened fire on Jaina and Mirta, and it was clear they wanted to get where Tahiri was going. Tahiri herself was second priority at that moment. Jaina slashed at the flying bolts. Fett, Carid, and Vevut came pounding up behind the Moffs and the firefight sent Jaina spinning on instinct alone, following her lightsaber.

She felt the breath of cold air behind her. Metal rasped. Tahiri had dislodged whatever had jammed the hatch, and when Jaina turned, she saw Tahiri scrambling through the deckhead. There was blood everywhere on the deck; Mirta was on her knees, clutching her throat one-handed. "Your shabla brother, "she gasped. "He's up there." The Moffs lay dead. Jaina felt Jacen then; he was throt-tling Mirta to let Tahiri escape into the docking tube above the hatch. Jaina put every sc.r.a.p of strength she had into breaking Jacen's invisible Force choke hold on Mirta. She saw it like a black chain and visualized the links flying apart just as Carid shot past her and scrambled up the ladder followed by Vevut. Fett skidded to a halt and grabbed Mirta by her shoulder, as if he thought the blood on the deck might be hers.

"I'm okay, "she said.

"If he's hurt you, I'll break my own rule and take a long time killing him, "Fett said.

"Don't worry." Mirta rubbed her neck. "I got my own Jedi..."

Then the hatch above them slammed shut. Fett took a couple of steps up the ladder and hammered on it.

"Let me up there." He hammered again. It must have been the air lock: they could hear nothing. "Carid? Open the hatch. Now. Leave the sc.u.m. You too, Verut."

But there was still silence; and then Jaina could feel sc.r.a.ping vibrating through the hull.

MED SPRINTER: BELLY HATCH DOCKING TUBE.

"Tahiri!" Caedus could see her in the dark tunnel of the tube, through the transparisteel viewport set in the outer hatch. The tube was five or six meters deep, long enough to extend through the multiskinned hull and into the air lock beneath. He opened the hatch; it was a simple manual opening, the kind that flipped back on itself. "Tahiri, come on - ".

"I'm stuck, "she said weakly.

"You've only got a few meters to go." Jaina... he could feel Jaina very close. "Come on."

"I'm.... I'm bleeding. I'm trying to hold it together."

"Where?"

"Thigh.... the blood's just pumping out.... my suit's caught..."

Femoral artery. She'd be dead in a couple of minutes. He could Force-lift her.

"Here's a trick we can learn you, son, "a voice below snarled.

"Breathe vacuum. We can. We're well 'ard. It goes like thisThere were Mandalorians below Tahiri, in the tube.

A power tool began whining, and Caedus smelled metal being ground.

Air rushed past him, whipping small sc.r.a.ps of flimsi down the tube.

They're cutting open the docking tube.

"I've caught my suit..." Caedus could see Tahiri now, the blood-soaked leg of her environment suit bunched up in one fist-maybe to seal the cut, maybe in some futile attempt to stop the hemorrhage. "My suit's caught on some-thing sharp..."

Tahiri didn't scream, but Caedus felt her terror and heard little gulping sounds as she struggled to release her suit from whatever had snagged it. She was ripping it as she pulled.

I could stop the bleeding.

I could seal the breach.

I could pull her clear.

He could Force-push their attackers, or grab her to free her, or s.n.a.t.c.h the cutters, but that would just open the rip in the docking tube, too. He couldn't do it all. He was still exhausted from the effort of the battle link and bringing down Fondor's defenses.

No, I am not omnipotent.

And he could pull up into the body of the med sprinter to save himself, and leave her to die.

But he needed Tahiri.

"Don't you dare die on me." Caedus slipped into the tube, catching onto the handholds. "Grab me when I'm in reach and hang on."

He'd Force-jump when he had hold of her, and pull free of the docking ring. It was fine. He could do that.

And then something above made the med sprinter shud-der. The tube creaked and strained at his end. The hatch slammed shut overhead.

He was shut in a docking tube that was venting atmo-sphere, with a dying woman beneath and some psychotic Mandalorians bent on suicide.

"They've.... got vacuumproof suits..." Tahiri said. It had never crossed Caedus's mind to wonder how Mandalorian armor and their undersuits worked. It was obvious: they were like trooper suits. The battered and ar-chaic appearance masked the best technology that could be built into armor.

If I push hard, I can open that hatch again. The air wasn't venting as fast as he'd feared; the men below were using some kind of powered saw on the tough material, and the aperture they'd managed to create was small compared with the volume of air rushing to escape. Caedus dropped down into the tunnel, and something grabbed his leg. He thought it was Tahiri, but it was a gauntleted hand, and it hurt.

It was crushing his ankle. Someone grabbed him around the waist, too.