[Last Of The Jedi] - 07 (2 page)

Before he could even form a coherent thought, he felt Flame’s hand on his arm, already beginning to lead him. The air was full of dust and particles that choked him, and he could barely see, but she pulled him forward, both of them on their bellies, making progress on their knees and elbows while they coughed and swore, tears streaming down their faces from the smoke.

The exits he had so carefully noted were gone now, blasted into great, smoking holes in the structure. Then, when he thought things couldn’t possibly get worse, stormtroopers poured through the openings.

Blasterfire streaked through the space. He heard someone shouting. He couldn’t see anything. He didn’t know how the others had fared. He only heard Flame panting “hurry” in his ear.

She wrenched the sleeves of her tunic over her hands – why? A moment later he got his answer.

The vent in the floor was hot, but she slid her hands underneath the smoking durasteel. As soon as he realized what she was doing, he wrapped his cloak around his fingers to help her. They heaved the heavy vent off, dropping it with a thud that was covered by the sound of cries and blasterfire.

The vent system was below, under the floor. He had looked for every exit but this one. But Flame had looked. Flame had mapped it out.

She shoved him inside, then climbed in after him. She reached out and with a tremendous heave slid the vent back into place.

There was nowhere to go. The pipe they had crawled into narrowed as it snaked underneath the floor. They crammed themselves into the tiny space and huddled together. Flame reached into her tunic and withdrew two portable breathers. She handed him one. It would help them not to cough from the smoke and give themselves away.

Directly under the floor, they could hear every word. The crunch of the stormtroopers’ boots. The crackle of comlinks. A last burst of blaster fire and the muffled thud f something falling.

Someone falling.

“Dead.” The electronic mask-voice of a stormtrooper.

“Haul that one up.”

A cry and a scuffle.

“Where did the others go?”

Silence.

“Where?”

Another muffled cry.

“Kill him.”

Trever put his hands over his ears like a kid, a poor scared kid. That’s what he felt like.

He didn’t want to hear. He didn’t want to know.

Time passed. It was dark now. The noises had stopped some time ago.

Flame lightly patted his knee. “It’s time.”

She eased the vent off above them. She climbed out, then reached for his hand. “All clear.”

His muscles were stiff, and his legs barely worked as she pulled him up and out. He collapsed on the floor her, then rubbed his legs and arms, trying to restore circulation.

Around them the ruins rose, blocks of stone hurled whole meters, crumbled stones, dirt, the tiled floor now pockmarked and stained. Trever looked away from the fresh stains. Hearing the battle was enough. He didn’t want to keep thinking about the details.

“Some of them got away,” Flame said. “But I don’t think it’s safe to contact the resistance again, not for a while. There was an informer. Someone who didn’t get to the meeting at the last minute, I’ll bet, or someone who got away.”

“Who?”

She shrugged as she lifted her thick hair off her neck. “Their problem.”

“We’re here to help them.”

Her green crystal eyes bored into him. “Trev, you’ve D learn something. You have to choose your battles. I’ve got a bigger one to fight. I’ll come back when the Roshans are more organized. I’ve got other places to go.”

He ran his hands through his hair. His hands came back streaked with gray dust. “Where?”

“Bellassa, for a start. It’s your homeworld, so you can help me. You know the Eleven.”

“Well, at least nine of them,” Trever tried to joke.

Flame ignored that. If she had a flaw, it was a complete lack of humor. “Bellassa’s successes in forming and maintaining a resistance are starting to get known,” Flame continued. “I need the Bellassans to be the anchor for the new network – an inspiration for the galaxy. What do you say?”

Home. The word rose in him, and it had weight and shape. It filled him up.

“Yes,” Trever said. “But on one condition.”

She frowned. “I don’t do conditions.”

“I need to go on my own little side trip first. I can’t bring you with me.”

She raised one eyebrow at him.

“But there’s one thing I need help with.”

“What?” she asked warily.

“I need to steal a ship.”

For a moment, she looked angry. She wasn’t the type to take someone bailing out on her easily. But then she shrugged.

“Tell you what,” she said. “Stealing one would be too much of a risk. There are lots of desperate Roshans here who need credits. We’ll buy one.”

“Hey, I could get used to this,” Trever said, realizing it never hurt to have a friend with money.

It’s not that he didn’t like kids, Clive Flax reflected. He just never noticed them. They were background in the cities he visited, registering as a flash of movement in a park, or an irritating spill of juice on his trousers if he made the mistake of sitting next to one in a diner. It wasn’t like he ever wanted to interact with one.

Now here he was, stuck on a constantly traveling asteroid in the middle of an atmospheric storm that turned the sky to gray to purple to navy, and he was trapped with a bunch of mates he didn’t know very well. And a kid.

Lune Oddo was eight years old. At first Clive had left him to the others to watch. But he’d been eyeballing this kid for over a week now, and he had to admit he was entertaining. Opinions, questions, and a certain look in his eye, a quietness that Clive associated with his pal Ferus – was that a Force thing? You got the sense that they could hang you with your own words, so you thought twice before you said you could do something you couldn’t, or boasted about something you hadn’t really done.

Not that Clive himself did that. Much.

Well, whatever the quality was, it could unnerve a guy. He’d accepted Ferus because the man had saved his life on a number of occasions. Besides, Clive liked him. Despite the whole Jedi hoo-ha, Ferus sometimes just didn’t have a clue, and he wasn’t afraid to admit it. But this Lune … it was hard to remember he was just a kid.

Imagine, Clive thought, a whole Temple full of these kids? He was lucky he hadn’t met Ferus until after he’d left the Jedi. All that moral rectitude would have sent him straight to the nearest cantina.

He watched the boy now as he flipped a laserball around the barren landscape. It would have been a normal-looking scene, if the kid hadn’t been doing it with just his mind. Garen Muln, who was as weak as a kitten and couldn’t do much, had been working with him. Garen had been some big Jedi Master back before the galaxy had been flattened by the Empire. Now he was more shadow than man.

Clive leaned back on his elbows. He’d been working since before dawn… not that there was dawn on this bloody rock. He was beat. Time to catch forty winks before the others arrived for the food break they always took around this time.

He started to close his eyes, but the sight of Astri Oddo exiting one of the prefab plastoid structures stopped him. He kept his eyelids half closed, pretending to be napping while he watched her shake back the springy, dark hair that could never stay confined in a cap or headband. Then she did a long stretch, hands in the air and up on her toes. She’d been working hard on the computer system here at the base. Things had fallen apart once Ferus had left, and now they were all pitching in, working on tasks that never seemed to end, working until they fell onto their sleep mats and crashed into uneasy slumber.

Astri was a puzzle. On the run from some idiot ex-husband, easy with her smiles, and quick to lend a hand… but with something dark and sad inside. Clive couldn’t charm her, which annoyed him. After a few tries, he’d taken to watching her instead.

Astri watched Lune for a moment, smiling, then leaned down and snatched up a small rock. Suddenly, with surprising accuracy, she winged it through the air toward Clive without even looking at him. Just in time, he lifted a booted foot to deflect it before it hit him.

“Hey!” he cried.

She grinned, thrusting her hands into the pockets of r dirty coveralls. “Stop pretending to be asleep. I won’t bother you.”

“What do you call chucking a rock at my head?”

She came toward him and sat down next to him on le hard ground. “Saying hello.”

He grunted.

“And if I were aiming at your head, I would have hit your head.”

He sat up. Together, they watched Lune for a moment.

“We’ve been on this asteroid too long,” Clive said. “It’s starting to get to all of us.”

“Not me,” Astri said, tucking her knees up under her chin. “I’m in no hurry. I feel safe here.”

He knew what she was really saying. Lune is safe here.

“Safe isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s no way for a boy to grow up,” Clive said. “Hanging around with a scruffy bunch of outsiders.”

“It’s not so bad,” Astri said, but she frowned.

“It’s not gleaming good, either,” Clive observed. “You know, the galaxy is a big place. Lots of places to hide”

”You should know.”

Before he could reply, Oryon suddenly_ appeared behind them. Despite being a big Bothan, he had an irritatingly soft tread. Clive figured it came in handy in the spy business.

“I agree.” Oryon looked very serious. On the asteroid, he had let his beard and his tangle of hair grow wild.

“I’ve been thinking about Lune,” he said to Astri. “At this point, Coruscant might be a good option for you.”

“Are you crazy?” Astri asked. “Go to the seat of the Empire?”

“They’re having trouble monitoring the levels,” Oryon said. “It’s impossible for them to crack down, completely. And Dexter Jettster has a good setup. I’m sure he’d offer you help. He could find you a place to go. Get you a new identity.”

“That is, if we can ever blast off from here,” Clive reminded the Bothan. Then he turned to Astri with a slight flourish of a half-bow and said, “If by any chance Ferus and Trever ever remember that we’re still alive, I’d be glad to escort you and Lune to Coruscant.”

Astri bristled. “I don’t need an escort. I know how to get to Coruscant.”

“You shouldn’t be so quick to turn down help these days,” Oryon advised. “We can all use it.”

. Suddenly Astri looked at her utility belt. A sensor flashed. “Our airspace has been invaded,” she muttered.

“At last, somebody’s remembered we’re here,” Clive said.

She began punching numbers into her datapad. “I linked the security system to a remote so that…” She looked up, her face white. “Lune! Come here now!” She turned to the others. “It’s an Imperial ship.”

Immediately, Oryon spoke into his wrist comlink. “Code red alert, weapons and front-line defense.”

Solace burst out of the shelter, a blaster in her hand. “What is it?”

“Imperial ship,” Oryon said.

Nobody needed to give an order. Within moments, Astri whisked Lune to his hiding place. Solace and Oryon positioned themselves behind two large boulders near the only flat area close to the camp, the place a ship, would no doubt land. Clive, Astri, Roan Lands,. And Dona split up into teams and flanked them. Toma and Raina remained as a last line of defense inside the first shelter. Everyone was armed with blaster rifles, alpha charges, and grenades.

Solace spoke softly into her comlink. “Everyone in position?”.

They all checked in with a quick affirmative.

Clive looked up. Within moments, he saw the silver streak against the dark purple of the atmosphere. The ship wobbled crazily. They all knew how turbulent the inner atmosphere was.

The ship righted itself. It was an Imperial ship all right, a modified Sienar starship. Clive kept his finger on the trigger of his blaster. If they were lucky, the Imperials wouldn’t come up fighting. The group here had worked to create an impression of an abandoned base. The idea was to lure the Imperials in and then attack.

“Hold your fire.” Solace’s voice was soft from the speaker.

The ship executed. A wobbly landing. Nothing happened for a moment. Clive couldn’t see through the windscreen into the cockpit.

The ramp slid down. His finger cramped, but he didn’t move it.

Then a miniature model of a Vulture droid fighter zoomed out, did a lazy twirl, and eased onto a landing on the dirt.

“Could be a trick,” Oryon muttered.

A slight figure with blue hair poked his head out from behind the shell of the ship. “Don’t shoot!” Trever said. “I brought presents!”

Clive leaped across the rock. He couldn’t wait to wrap his hands around the kid’s scrawny neck. Trever’s eyes widened and he bolted. Clive chased him around the ship, but the kid was faster than a dinko.

“Hey! I came back!” Trever shouted.

“So I can kill you,” Clive replied evenly•

Suddenly Solace did one of those show-offy Force-assisted leaps and landed in between them. She held up a hand. “Stop.”

Clive stopped. He learned to have a healthy respect for anyone in possession of a lightsaber, even an unclipped one. He’d seen how fast those things could come out.

“Whew. Thanks, Solace,” Trever said.

She turned with such vehemence that Trever backed up a step. An inflamed Solace was a scary sight. The small blue facial marking over her eyebrow deepened, and her pale blue eyes blazed in her gaunt face.

“You sneaked away. You stole a ship. You went against the group.” Solace’s tone was furious.

“But I was trying to save Ferus!”

“We all wanted to save Ferus,” Solace said. “It was not your decision to make.”

The others gathered, all forming a circle around Trever.

“I came back,” he said in a faint voice. “And look at the ship! Flame bought it and let me take it, can you believe that? It’s a good ship, real fast, handles like a dream –“

“You aren’t a used-starship salesman,” Oryon said to him. “You pledged your support to this group. That means you have to follow the rules.”

“I hate rules,” Trever said.

Raina crossed her arms. “You put us in danger.”