Star Wars_ Outbound Flight Part 41

Not just a few deaths, either, small ripples of sensation that might have throbbed painfully but controllably against her consciousness. These deaths came in a thunderstorm torrent, wave after wave of fear and agony and rage that hammered against her already overstretched and vulnerable mind. She could feel herself staggering, her hands clutching blindly for something to hold on to as her body reacted to her disorientation. There was a sharp pain in her shoulder and head; distantly, she realized she had fallen out of her chair onto the deck. She could feel herself twitching uncontrollably; could sense the others' reactions flowing through the meld, feeding into her weakness even as her own pain fed into theirs. A thousand alien voices shrieked through her brain as their life forces were snuffed out, with a thousand more waiting behind them .. .

Beside Doriana, Mitth'raw'nuruodo took a deep breath. "Ch'tra," he ordered.

And moving as a single unit, the Chiss fleet surged forward. "Time to join the party?" Doriana asked, still watching in grim amazement as the waves of droid starfighters methodically cut their way across the Vagaari s.h.i.+ps.

"No," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said. "Time to start one of our own."

And it was only then that Doriana saw that the Springhawk and the rest of the Chiss s.h.i.+ps were heading for Outbound Flight. He closed his hands into fists, waiting tensely for the Dreadnaughts' gunners to spot this new threat and open fire.

But nothing happened. The Springhawk flew completely through the turbolasers' effective combat range, pa.s.sed unchallenged through the point-defense zone, and with only minor turbulence pa.s.sed through the s.h.i.+elds near the bow of the nearest Dreadnaught. The other Chiss s.h.i.+ps broke from the Springhawk's flanks, spreading out toward the other Dreadnaughts as the Springhawk curved from its intercept vector to fly low across its chosen Dreadnaught's hull.

And opened fire.

They hit the weapons blisters first, the brilliant blue fire of the Chiss lasers tearing through armor and capacitors and charging equipment and digging deeply into the blisters themselves. The s.h.i.+eld generators were next, the Springhawk zigzagging along the Dreadnaught's hull as it targeted and destroyed each in turn. All done with the utmost efficiency, a small detached part of Doriana's mind noted, without a single wasted movement. Clearly, Mitth'raw'nuruodo had made good use of the technical readouts he'd provided.

And then, to his surprise, the Springhawk made a sharp turn away from the hull and headed again for deep s.p.a.ce. Beyond the expanding cloud of destruction, he could see the other Chiss s.h.i.+ps doing the same. "What's wrong?" he asked, his eyes flicking across the sky for some new danger that might have caused Mitth'raw'nuruodo to break off his attack.

"Nothing is wrong," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said, sounding puzzled. "Why?"

"But you have ceased the attack," Kav said, clearly as bewildered as Doriana. "Yet they lie helpless before you."

"Which is precisely why I've stopped," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said. "Jedi Master C'baoth; leaders of Outbound Flight. Your vessel has been disarmed, its ability to defend itself destroyed. I offer you this one final chance to surrender and return to the Republic."

"What?" Kav yelped, his eyes widening. "But you were to destroy them."

"If and when you should command again, Vicelord Kav, such decisions will be yours," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said coolly. "But not now. Outbound Flight, I await your decision."

Through the echoing haze of dying minds still screaming at her, through the smoke and debris and distant moans of the injured, Lorana realized she was dying.

Probably from suffocation, she decided as she noticed that her lungs were straining but that little or no air was reaching them. She tried to move, but her legs seemed pinned somehow to the deck. She tried to stretch out to the Force, but with the death agonies of the Vagaari now joined by the much closer deaths of her own s.h.i.+pmates she couldn't seem to bring her thoughts into focus.

Something cold and metallic closed around her wrist.

She opened her eyes to find a maintenance droid tugging at her arm. "What are you doing?" she croaked. It was a matter of mild surprise to discover that she had enough air even to speak. Experimentally, she tried to take a deep breath.

And felt a welcome coolness as air flowed into her lungs.

She blinked away some of the fog hazing her eyes and peered through the swirling debris. There was a long jagged slash through the ceiling above her, undoubtedly the source of the weapons blister's sudden decompression. Stretched across the gash were a dozen sheets of twisted metal that appeared to have been blown or pulled away from the walls.

Half a dozen small metalwork droids were climbing across them, filling the room with clouds of sparks as they hastily welded the sheets into place over the gash.

Lying on the deck halfway across the room, his arms stretching toward the ceiling as he used the Force to hold the still unwelded sheets in place, was Ma'Ning.

Lorana couldn't see very much of his body with the wreckage of the control room scattered across her line of sight. But she could see enough to turn her stomach. He must have caught the full brunt of one of the laser blasts, taking both the agony of the shot itself as well as the impact of the shards of shattered metal it had created. "Master Ma'Ning,"

she gasped, trying to get up. But her legs still refused to work.

"No, don't," Ma'Ning said. His voice was strained but still carried the full authority of a Jedi Master. "It's too late for me."

"For-" Lorana broke off, a sudden edge of horror cutting through her.

With the attack and her own near suffocation, she'd completely lost her connection to the Jedi meld that had so successfully blocked the Vagaari attack.

Now, as she tried to stretch out to it again, she found that it had all but vanished.

"No," she whispered to herself But there was no mistake. When their attackers had targeted the weapons blisters, they had knowingly or unknowingly targeted the Jedi as well.

And with only one or two dazed and stunned exceptions, they were dead.

All of them.

"I should have . . . tried stop . . . him sooner," Ma'Ning murmured, his voice weakening as he rapidly lost strength. "But he was ... Jedi Master . . . Jedi Master . . ."

With an effort, Lorana pushed back the paralyzing horror. "Don't talk,"

she said, trying again to move. "Let me help you."

"No," Ma'Ning said. "Too late . . . for me. But not . . . for others."

One of his outstretched hands twitched toward her, and a bent section of girder pinning her legs to the deck lifted a few millimeters and clattered away. "You can . . . help them."

"But I can't just leave you," Lorana protested. Again she tried to get up, and this time she succeeded.

"I am far . . . beyond your help," Ma'Ning said, a deep sadness in his voice. "Go. Help those . . . who can still . . . be helped."

"But-"

"No!" Ma'Ning bit out, his face convulsing with a sudden spasm. "You're .

. . Jedi. Taken . . . oath . . . serve others. Go .. . go.

Lorana swallowed. "Yes, Master. I-" She trailed off, searching for the right words. But there weren't any.

Perhaps Ma'Ning couldn't find any, either. "Good-bye .. . Jedi Jinzler,"

he simply said, a ghostly smile touching his lips. "Good-bye, Master Ma'Ning."

Ma'Ning's smile vanished, and he lifted his eyes again to the repair droids and their work. Turning away, Lorana picked her way through the wreckage toward the door.

She knew she would never see him again.

The door, when she reached it, was jammed shut. Stretching out as best she could to the Force, she managed to work it open far enough to slip through. The corridor outside was nearly as bad as the blister itself, with buckled walls and chunks of ceiling littering the deck. But here at least the attackers hadn't managed to cut completely through the hull and open it to s.p.a.ce.

The blast doors ten meters down the corridor in either direction had closed when the blister had decompressed, sealing away this section from the rest of the s.h.i.+p. But with the breach now scaled and the emergency oxygen supplies repressurizing the area, the forward blast door opened for Lorana without protest.

In the distance she could hear shouting and screams, and could sense the fear and panic behind them. But for the moment, those people weren't her immediate concern. The Dreadnaughts were well equipped with escape pods, where the survivors could take refuge while the droids repaired the hull.

But there was one group of people who wouldn't have that chance: the fifty-seven so-called conspirators C'baoth had ordered locked away in the storage core.

The people she had locked away in the storage core.

Her legs were starting to throb now where the girder had landed on her.

Stretching out to the Force to suppress the pain, she headed in a limping run toward the nearest pylon turbolift.

"We made a bargain!" Kav snarled. "You were to destroy Outbound Flight for us!"

"I never made any such bargain," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said. "I agreed only to do what I deemed necessary to eliminate the threat posed by the expedition."

"That was not what we wanted," Kav insisted.

"You were in no position to make demands," Mitth'raw'nuruodo reminded him. "Nor are you now."

There was a sudden hiss from the comm. "So," an almost unrecognizable voice ground out. "You think you have won, alien?" The display came alive .

. . and a cold s.h.i.+ver ran up Doriaria's back.

It was Jorus C'baoth, pale and disheveled, his clothing torn and blood-spattered, one side of his face badly burned. But his eyes blazed with the same arrogant fire that Doriana had seen that day long ago in Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's office.

He groped for Mitth'raw'nuruodo's sleeve. "Kav is right-you have to destroy them," he hissed urgently. "If you don't, we're dead."

Mitth'raw'nuruodo's eyes flicked to him, then back to the comm. "I have indeed won," he told C'baoth. "I have only to give a single order-" His hand s.h.i.+fted slightly on his control board, his fingertips coming to rest on a covered switch edged in red. "-and you and all your people will die.

Is your pride worth so much to you?"

"A Jedi does not yield to pride," C'baoth spat. "Nor does he yield to empty threats. He follows only the dictates of his own destiny."

"Then choose your destiny," Mitth'raw'nuruodo said. "I'm told the role of the Jedi is to serve and defend."

"You were told wrongly," C'baoth countered. "The role of the Jedi is to lead and guide, and to destroy all threats." The unburned corner of his lip twisted upward in a bitter smile.

And without warning, Thrawn's head jerked back, his whole body pressing back against his seat. His hand darted to his throat, clutching uselessly at it.

"Commander!" Doriana snapped, grabbing reflexively for Mitth'raw'nuruodo's collar.

But it was no use. The invisible power that was choking the life out of him wasn't something physical that Doriana might be able to push aside.

C'baoth was using the Force . . . and there was nothing Doriana or anyone else could do to stop him.

In a handful of minutes, Mitth'raw'nuruodo would be dead.

Lorana was in a turbolift car heading down the forward pylon when she felt C'baoth's attack echoing through her mind like the sound of a distant hammer. For a minute she puzzled at it, sensing his anger and frustration and pride, wondering what in the worlds he was doing.

And then, abruptly, the horrifying truth sliced through her like the blade of a lightsaber. "No!" she shouted reflexively toward the turbolift car ceiling. "Master C'baoth-no!"

But it was too late. In his single-minded thirst for revenge, Jorus C'baoth, Jedi Master, had gone over to the dark side.

A wave of pain and revulsion swept over Lorana, as agonizing as salt in an open wound. She had never seen a Jedi fall before. She'd known it could happen, and that it had in fact happened many times throughout history. But it had always seemed something comfortably distant, something that could never happen to anyone she knew.

Now it had . . . and following close behind the wave of pain came an even more powerful wave of guilt.

Because she'd been his Padawan, the person who'd spent the most time with him. The one person, Master Ma'Ning had once suggested, whom he might have actually listened to.

Could she have prevented this? Should she have stood up to him earlier, with or without the support of Ma'Ning or the others, when he first began to gather power and authority to himself? Certainly she'd tried talking to him in private on more than one occasion. But each time he'd brushed off her concerns, a.s.suring her that all was well. Should she have pressed him more strongly? Forced him-somehow-to listen?

But she hadn't. And now it was too late.

Or was it? "We don't have to kill anyone," she murmured, focusing her mind toward D-1, trying desperately to send the thought or at least the sense to him. She fumbled for her comlink, only to discover that she'd lost it in the attack on the weapons blister. "We don't have to kill them," she continued, pleading with him. "We can just go home. All they want is for us to go home."

But there was no reply. C'baoth could undoubtedly sense her protest, but all she could sense in return was his indifference to her anguish, and his determination to continue along the path he'd now set himself upon.

It was indeed too late.

Perhaps, a small voice whispered inside her, it had always been too late.

The turbolift came to a halt and the door opened into the storage core.

For a long minute she stood in the doorway, wondering if she should leave the prisoners where they were for now and try to get to D-1.

But she would never make it in time. And even if she did, it would do her no good. She could sense the rigid set of C'baoth's mind, and she knew from long experience that even if she were standing at his side there was nothing she could say or do now to stop him. He would continue his attack until he had killed Commander Mitth'raw'nuruodo, then more, until he had killed all the rest of the Chiss out there.

Her heart aching, she stepped out into the storage core and limped toward the trapped crew members and their families. Even a Jedi, she thought bitterly, could do only so much.

But what she could do, she would.

The bridge crew was on it in a matter of seconds, shoving Doriana roughly aside and cl.u.s.tering around Mitth'raw'nuruodo as they fought to free him from the unseen attack that was killing him. But their efforts were as useless as Doriana's had been.

Standing at the edge of the frantic activity, Doriana looked at the comm display and tried desperately to think. If the Chiss attack had weakened C'baoth enough . . . but there was no sign of weakness in the eyes blazing from that ruined face. Could Doriana shut off the display, then, and at least rob the Jedi of his view of his victim? But Doriana had no idea where that control was, and he didn't speak any language the rest of the bridge crew understood. Besides, he wasn't sure that cutting off the display would do any good anyway.

And then, his gazed dropped from C'baoth's face to Thrawn's control board. The board, and the red-rimmed switch.

It might be nothing. But it was all he had. Pus.h.i.+ng past the crewers who stood in his way, he flipped back the cover and pressed the switch.

And then, even as they continued to pound mercilessly against the Vagaari wars.h.i.+ps, the droid starfighters abruptly turned from their attack and fled.

Car'das frowned, pressing the macrobinoculars tighter against his face. A sizable percentage of the Vagaari fleet was still untouched, the surviving s.h.i.+ps scrambling madly for the edge of Thrawn's gravity projector field. Yet all of the starfighters were leaving. Had they drained their solid-fuel engines already?

He caught his breath. No; the starfighters weren't running away from the Vagaari. They were running toward Outbound Flight.

He was still staring in disbelief when the first wave hit.

Not simply attacking, blasting away with laser cannons and energy torpedoes. They literally hit the Dreadnaughts, slamming at full speed into their hulls and vaporizing in brilliant flashes with the force of their impacts. The second wave did the same, this group striking different sections of the Dreadnaughts' hulls. Through the smoke and debris came the third and fourth waves, these groups pouring laser cannon fire and energy torpedoes into the damaged weapons blisters and s.h.i.+eld generators.

And with a sudden chill, Car'das understood. The first two waves of starfighters hadn't been trying to breach the Dreadnaughts' thick armor plating. Their goal had merely been to create dents in the hulls at very specific points.

The points where the interior blast doors were positioned.

And now, with those doors disabled or warped enough to prevent a proper air seal, the rest of the starfighters were opening the Dreadnaughts to s.p.a.ce.