Part 25 (1/2)
No matter. Lightsaber flas.h.i.+ng, Jax began to inch toward the Dark Lord.
The Inquisitor, Tesla, immobilized by shock, seemed to come to himself suddenly. He ignited his own weapon and met Jax blade for blade, intent on keeping the Jedi from his obvious purpose. With the place coming down around them, and with no way of reaching Vader, Jax found himself in a standoff with the Inquisitor.
He glanced at Kaj, huddled with Laranth in their corner, face white and terror-filled. What had Vader done to him, to keep him from even attempting to use the Force?
How had the Dark Lord turned him from an unpredictable and implacable enemy into a pet he dared let out of its cage? Jax knew he'd never get any answers to those questions if he couldn't end the stalemate.
Above the sizzle and clash of the two crimson blades, Jax heard a blessed sound behind him: the whine of I-Five's laser. The droid had freed himself and was working on the doors. Jax caught his breath when he saw the condition his friend was in-one arm all but severed, dangling by a few wires, and most of his upper torso crushed. He'd had to drag himself to the doors, and his single functioning laser was sputtering badly. Nevertheless, he persevered.
Marshaling all his energies, Jax bore down on the Inquisitor, pus.h.i.+ng him back toward his dark master. He handled the Sith blade as if it were an extension of his body, as if his mind wielded it without the intermediary of his arms and hands. Thrust, parry, thrust; high to low, then high again.
Tesla, his face s.h.i.+ny with sweat and twisted into a rictus of pure rage, tried to hold, but was forced to give ground. His gaze bored into Jax's as if he might do him physical damage with that as well. Jax knew he wanted to.
Back and back, closer and closer to Vader the two fought, until a clever feint by Tesla pulled Jax slightly off-balance. The Inquisitor's grimace became a death's- head grin of elation. He s.h.i.+fted his blade to one hand and whirled it in an arc toward Jax's side.
A glancing blow of Vader's erratic power struck the Inquisitor and tumbled him, head over heels, into a tangle of wrecked machinery and optical fibers. His lightsaber extinguished and spun away, clattering to the floor.
Jax abruptly found himself facing Darth Vader with nothing but his lightsaber. Opportunity or disaster? he asked himself.
Vader's helmeted head turned toward him, half obscured by the frantic flow of Force static. Every nerve ending in Jax's body tingled with the regard. He raised the blade and saw the mirrored movement of Vader's hand.
Vader issued two words; Jax couldn't tell if he heard them with his cars or through the Force: You cannot.
A warning? A hope? A lie? Before Jax could answer with word or lightsaber, the doors behind him slid open.
Jax saw Vader's head tilt toward the doors, and swung his blade in an overhand arc. It struck the envelope of Force coc.o.o.ning Vader and ricocheted as if it were made of mere metal. The shock of the contact numbed Jax's arm and hurled him to the floor.
”Jax!” The voice was Laranth's, calling from behind him; he turned and scrambled to his feet. Through the open control room doorway he saw Thi Xon Yimmon, Tuden Sal, and a team of Whiplash operatives that in eluded, incredibly, Den Dhur. They were armed to the teeth, fangs, and mandibles.
Laranth stood just inside the door, one hand extended toward him. Next to her Tuden Sal struggled to remove Kaj without hurting him; the boy seemed intent on getting to Vader. He was screaming inarticulately; what it was Jax couldn't make out above the booming sounds of Vader's Force blasts. As Jax stumbled toward them, reaching for Laranth's outstretched hand, Kaj broke free of Sal and darted past him. Before Jax could react, the boy was slammed by Force energy and wrenched off his feet. Vader had effectively roped him with a lash of pure energy and was dragging him inexorably toward the blasted-out window.
Jax leapt after the boy, blade upraised-only to be la.s.soed by another energy lash from Vader.
Chapter Twenty-Eight.
No.
It could not end like this. His chance-his one chance of experiencing the Force, wasted.
Wasted.
Rhinann didn't understand what had happened or why the bota hadn't affected Vader the way the Dark Lord had obviously expected it to-the way any of them had expected it to. The Sith Lord had not become the exponentially augmented, G.o.d like being of supreme control that the rumors of the bota's properties had suggested. He had become instead an unstable locus of power, spitting out death and destruction.
And now, with Jax Pavan and Kaj Savaros tethered to him with chains of unbreakable energy, Vader backed toward the shattered control room window, showing every intention of destroying the Jedi and the boy.
Such a paltry use of that stupendous gift.
Rhinann could no longer bear it. ”It should have been mine!” he shrieked, and hurled himself from his hiding place directly at the Dark Lord.
He had nothing but brute strength on his side, but he knew the weaknesses of his ex-master's person. Vader's energy was now totally focused on Jax and the boy. Rhinann shot toward him and battered at Vader's breathing apparatus with clenched fists, trying desperately to damage it.
The move, unantic.i.p.ated and unexpected as it was, distracted Vader. He lost his Force grip on both Jax and Kaj and took several steps away from the Elomin, teetering on the brink of the broken window.
It was a long fall, and Rhinann suspected that was where his life would end, but he no longer cared. He ripped at the chest plate with clawed hands, shrieking his anguish again and again. ”It was mine! It was mine'.”
He felt Vader's hands close around his neck and looked up to sec his own ravaged face reflected in the obsidian mask. ”You stole my life,” Rhinann gasped as the fingers tightened. ”I shall have yours in payment.”
He lunged; they toppled over the broken sill together, tumbling into the cavernous s.p.a.ce beyond. Rhinann never felt the impact. He attained his experience with the Force for one brief, s.h.i.+ning moment, feeling an echo of it gust through him as it reduced him to dust.
The control room was silent but for the sound of labored breathing and Kaj's whimpers. There was movement behind him; Jax felt hands touching him, lifting him up. Laranth's hands and I-Five's good one. He clung to them and let them right him, then nodded at Kaj, who lay huddled on the floor nearby.
There was a babble of sound then as the rescuers flooded the room with bustling intent. I-Five turned to face Den, who was hovering behind him holding a blaster rifle that was almost as big as he was.
”Do you even know how to use that thing?” the droid asked.
Den looked down at it. ”Well, I'm not sure. Shall I point it at your thick metal skull and find out?”
”It's good to see you, too,” I-Five said softly.
”Likewise.” The Sull.u.s.tan peered closely at the damaged droid. ”Isn't that the same arm that Wookiee pulled off when you were drunk on Drongar?”
”Hold on,” said Jax, feeling a sudden tension in the atmosphere of the place. He glanced about, seeking the fallen Inquisitor, Tesla. He had vanished.
Not good.
A cataclysmic burst of Force energy from the hangar floor threw the dimmest recesses of the control room into blinding brilliance. The entire building rocked.
”Out! Get out!” Jax dodged a piece of falling ceiling plate and glanced around for his lightsaber. It might be a Sith blade, but it was all he had right now. He saw it lying on the blasted floor. Next to it lay the pyronium crystal Vader had taken. Jax whipped out taut threads of Force energy and called both objects to his hands. Then he sprinted for the open doors as the chamber disintegrated about him.
Chapter Twenty-Nine.
Den and I-Five, in the manner of old and comfortable friends, easily fell back into their accustomed, seemingly dysfunctional relations.h.i.+p. I-Five teased Den about returning. Den accused the droid of being f.e.c.kless and inept without him to offer wise counsel and practical advice.
The droid had availed himself of the talents of a number of mechanics and designers in the Whiplash during the course of his repair, and as a result was as good as new-better, in some ways. In addition to the twin lasers and the interfacing spike, he now possessed a veritable transforming a.r.s.enal in his hands, including a monofilament line capable of supporting over a metric ton, a small but efficient automatic slugthrower, and the ability to shoot streams of various nonlethal soporific gases.
Jax knew something of apology and confession had pa.s.sed between I-Five and Den, hut he refused to pry. Den did admit to all that he'd been sitting in the s.p.a.ceport fuming and vacillating when he realized that, as fond as he was of Eyar Marath, and as cozy as was the thought of a comfy cave on Sull.u.s.t, this wretched planet with its artificial tunnels and its dangerous inhabitants was where his heart was.
”While I was with you guys-arguing, frustrated, ready to strangle the droid and the Zeltron-I thought about Eyar in moments of angst. While I was on my way to her, I thought about you guys nonstop. I finally realized that meant something. It meant this was home, because this was where I was the most alive. The most me. I don't know who that old codger is that wants to do nothing but lie around Eyar's family cave being sage, but he's not Den Dhur.”
Jax and Laranth spent over a week working with Kaj, trying to restore his memory and banish the falsehoods Vader and Tesla had implanted in his mind. He was torn, one moment hovering on the verge of knowing Jax and Laranth as friends, the next cowering from them inabject fear and begging for Tesla.