The silver-suited guards fired repeatedly. “Shall we set to stun?” one of them said.
“No, just kill her,” Hovrak said. “And the other one too.”
One of the three remaining guards blasted away at the mass of solid rock overhanging the crevice entrance. After volley upon volley, the overhang began to glow red with the heat it had absorbed.
Hovrak growled in anticipation. “Keep firing! They have no defense against us.”
When Jaina stepped forward to deflect the new volley of fire, Raynar popped out of his shadowy shelter. He hefted another sharp-wedged rock, then hurled it with perfect aim, so that it struck Hovrak’s faceplate and cracked the reflectorized transparisteel. Raynar ducked back into hiding as the wolfman roared, stumbled backward, and barely regained his balance on the ledge.
One of the guards focused on Jaina and fired, ignoring the other activity around him. She deflected the shot, using her dazzling blade to knock the blaster bolt back to its source. The energy bolt caught the guard full in the chest and left a smoking hole in his reflective suit.
Mortally wounded, the guard gasped and gargled, then slumped off the fiery cliffside.
Hovrak now had only two guards remaining.
“You’ll need more help than this to defeat a Jedi Knight,” Jaina shouted defiantly. Her throat burned; her cracked lips were bleeding; crusty salt from evaporated perspiration sparkled on her skin—but she was entirely focused on the battle now, flowing with the Force.
Hovrak snarled, uncomfortable now that his faceplate was broken. The outside air felt too hot to breathe, despite the suit’s laboring air-conditioning units. “Soon we won’t need to worry about humans ever again,” he taunted them. “When the Diversity Alliance gets hold of the Emperor’s plague, every one of you will die, from one end of the galaxy to the other.”
“You’ll die first,” Jaina shouted back, stifling her horror at the plan Hovrak had just revealed.
Now she knew what Nolaa Tarkona had intended all along.
Raynar threw rock after sharp rock at Hovrak and the guards. They stopped trying to melt the overhang and turned their blaster fire at him, but Raynar dodged away, drawing agility from the Force.
In frustration, the last two guards fired again.
With no place to run, Jaina and Raynar stood at the edge of the narrow path, far from the temperate zone in the mountains where Lowie had planned to rescue them.
On every side, sharp black boulders blocked any hope of escape.
Jaina stepped slightly in front of Raynar. She was willing to fight to the death. She saw no other choice….
The Lightning Rod shot out of hyperspace, emerging as close to Ryloth’s gravity well as Zekk’s daring calculations would allow. Luke Skywalker sat in the copilot’s seat, glad to be along on this rescue mission.
The ship streaked toward the atmosphere like a comet, broadcasting the access code Lusa had supplied, but not bothering to pause or request clearance to approach the planet. Zekk hoped his bold rush would get him past any sentinels that patrolled the orbital lanes around the Twi’lek homeworld.
“It’s hard coming back here,” Lusa said, trying to maintain her balance on all four hooves as the ship rolled from side to side. “Nolaa Tarkona knows I betrayed her. The Diversity Alliance won’t hesitate to kill me.”
“Then we won’t give them the chance,” Zekk said grimly.
“She’s already sent an assassin to kill you on Yavin 4, and he failed,” Master Skywalker pointed out, looking at the centaur girl with understanding. “Sometimes we have to face our fears.”
“My fears keep coming after me,” Lusa said. “And now they’re trying to hurt my friends.”
Zekk dodged and rolled, pirouetting experimentally in space. Then, satisfied that the Lightning Rod was ready, he dove toward the mountain range at the terminator between day and night. “Let’s just hope we make it down there without running into much resistance,” he said, and powered up his weapons systems.
Two sentry cruisers homed in on the rapidly approaching intruder. Zekk recognized a Hornet Interceptor and a stripped-down Lancer frigate emblazoned with alien language glyphs. “Unidentified ship, you are trespassing in airspace held by the Diversity Alliance. You are not welcome in this system. If you do not depart immediately, you will be destroyed.”
“Yeah, right,” Zekk muttered. “#y me.” Alarms sounded on his control panel, but he ignored them. Without acknowledging, he raced straight at the sentry ships and opened fire.
“They aren’t prepared for any resistance yet,” Luke said, his eyes half closed in concentration. “Their minds are too … complacent.”
The sentry cruisers began to activate their weapons systems and power up their shields.
Suddenly aware of their danger, both craft spun out of the way and arched upward, but not before the Lightning Rod’s rapid, low-power blaster bolts scored some important hits.
“Hah! Right in the sensors,” Zekk crowed. He clapped his hands in triumph. “They’re blind now until they can reset their systems.”
“Leave them, then,” Luke said. “We need to hurry. I sense that Jacen and Jaina are in trouble.”
Lusa braced herself. The Lightning Rod scraped into the atmosphere while the two Diversity Alliance sentry vessels spun about.
Disoriented in space, the two ships drifted so close to each other that they nearly collided before their respective commanders regained control.
Zekk roared down to cloud level, where huge tornadolike heat storms spawned by the temperature discontinuity between the frigid night side and the hot day side buffeted the ship. The wind currents knocked the Lightning Rod back and forth, but Lusa knew where they had to go.
With terse accuracy, she directed Zekk toward the section of mountain range that held the tunnels controlled by Nolaa Tarkona.
“I spent plenty of time there,” Lusa said, her crystalline horns glimmering. The muscles in her back rippled as she paced the deck and snorted uneasily. “I never thought I’d go back willingly. But this is for my friends.”
“That’s why it’s an important step in your healing process,” Master Skywalker said.
Lusa nodded. “For my friends…,” she repeated.
“Hang on,” Zekk said. “I’m increasing speed. Those sentry cruisers are trying to sound an alarm.” The Lightning Rod soared straight along the day side slopes of the mountain range.
On the open channel Zekk heard a strident warning being transmitted now that one of the ships had managed to get its main generators back on-line—but no one responded. Perhaps the Diversity Alliance was already too busy with its own emergencies.
Lusa pressed her face against the sloped transparisteel of the cockpit windows. “Look—down there on the mountainside!” she said. “What are those lights?”
Zekk frowned and studied the area the centaur girl had pointed to. “Looks like blaster fire.”
“And a lightsaber,” Master Skywalker added. “Somebody’s fighting down there.”
“It’s Jaina!” Zekk said with absolute certainty. “Hold on down there, we’re on our way!”
Though normally reluctant to use his Jedi senses, Zekk let the Force tingle through him. It made him self-conscious to use the Force, here in the presence of the Jedi Master, but Zekk knew he was doing the right thing.
The Lightning Rod, its laser cannons powered up to full charge, swooped to the rescue.
“Jaina is sure going to be surprised,” he said.
The glaring sun and bright blaster fire had nearly blinded Jaina. She could hardly see anything other than her own lightsaber. Her arms were so weary she could barely raise them, but she sidestepped, deflected, struck. She could not allow herself to slow down. Hovrak had only two henchmen left. She and Raynar still had a chance, though it was a slim one.