But if the Vagaari expected them to die quietly, they were in for a rude shock. Cloud and Grappler had sunk to the floor, semiconscious, their BlasTechs hanging loosely from their hands. Fel grabbed Cloud's weapon, checked the power indicator, and swung it around to point at the door. Outside, he could see the Vagaari starting to move purposefully around, fully in control now and probably setting up their pattern for a rush on the car. Leveling the BlasTech toward the opening, Fel braced himself...
And with a sudden shattering of metal and plastic, the front part of the car's ceiling exploded inward.
Instinctively, Fel twisted his head away, squeezing his eyes shut against the flying debris. The roar of the blast faded and he turned back, blinking open his eyes.
At the front of the car, barely visible through the roiling dust, stood a pair of Imperial stormtroopers.
Watchman and Shadow had arrived.
There were, Fel had estimated, about thirty Vagaari in the turbolift lobby. They never had a chance. The two stormtroopers stood shoulder to shoulder in the doorway, fresh and uninjured, taking the enemy's attack unflinchingly as they systematically raked the lobby with blasterfire.
Fel sank down onto the floor beside Cloud and Grappler, the BlasTech falling loose in his hands as he listened to the firefight, the combat tension finally beginning to drain out of him.
And as it did, he slowly became aware of pain digging into his body from a dozen different places on arms, legs, and torso. Apparently, he wasn't as uninjured as he'd thought.
By the time the battle was over, he needed Drask's help to even stand up.
The two Vagaari fired another burst, their blaster bolts scattering from Luke's lightsaber blade. He pressed forward grimly, letting the Force manipulate his defense, shortening the gap between him and the attackers. In the distance, the sounds of multiple blaster-fire from a minute earlier had gone ominously quiet. Wrapped in the tunnel vision of combat, he couldn't tell what the outcome had been, but it was beginning to look as if he and Mara were already too late to be of any help there.
The Vagaari intensified their fire. Setting his teeth, he struggled to keep up with the attack—
And suddenly, the screaming of their weapons was joined by blasterfire of a more modern pitch and rhythm. For a handful of seconds the two sounds played a deadly duet, and then all weapons fell abruptly silent.
"Luke? Mara?"
Luke let his lightsaber slow to a halt in ready position, his lungs heaving as he relaxed his tight focus and began opening up his mind again. The voice and the sense accompanying it had been very familiar...
"We're here, Fel," Mara called out as she and Evlyn came up behind him. "Come on, Luke, they're hurt."
Luke blinked sweat out of his eyes as he closed down his lightsaber and joined the other two hurrying down the corridor. He could sense the pain now: waves of it, sweeping toward him.
The two groups met around the next jog in the corridor, beside the bodies of the three Vagaari Luke had been slowly pushing back. "These the last of them?" one of the stormtroopers asked, gesturing at them with his BlasTech.
"As far as I know, yes," Luke said, eyeing him and the others with concern and a bit of awe. All four stormtroopers had been through the wars, all right, with blaster burns scattered and clustered all across their once-sleek armor. On two of them, the white color of their breastplates had been almost completely obliterated, with at least a dozen spots on each where the armor had been burned clean through. It was hard to believe they were even alive, let alone more or less on their feet. Fel didn't look to be in terrific shape, either, and though he seemed to be walking on his own Luke could see that Drask was standing ready to offer him a helping hand. "I see you've been busy," he said. The words sounded rather bland, but somehow seemed to fit the casual dignity and bravery he could sense from all six of the group. "I'm sorry we weren't able to get to you faster."
"We managed," Fel said, his voice rigid with the strain of someone fighting back pain and determined not to show it. "Afraid we left a mess by the turbolifts that someone's going to have to clean up."
"Don't worry about it," Luke assured him. "What about Bearsh? Did you see him?"
"I didn't, no," Fel said, glancing around at the others. There was a general murmur of agreement. "He must have made it to D-Four before we were able to deal with their rear guard."
"Rear guard?" Mara asked. "You saying there are still more of them up there?"
"Definitely," one of the stormtroopers said. "We could hear them working in the turbolift pylon while we were bringing the car in."
"I don't suppose you got a head count," Luke said.
The stormtrooper shook his head. "We were too busy getting the car moving and laying out the flash paste to give them much attention."
"I have done a rough calculation, however," Drask said. "From the size of the three inaccessible rooms aboard the Vagaari vessel, I estimate Bearsh could have brought as many as three hundred troops with him."
Luke whistled. "Three hundred? They must have been stacked like data cards in there."
"With their hibernation technology, that would be entirely possible," Drask agreed.
"What were they doing in the pylon?" Evlyn asked.
They all looked at her. "What?" Fel asked.
"You said they were working in the turbolift pylon," the girl reminded them. "You said you didn't count them, but didn't you at least look to see what they were doing?"
The two slightly-less-injured stormtroopers looked at each other. "Not really," one of them confessed. "We could see the lights, and they were definitely working on the tube and not on any of the cars. But that was all we got."
"We had more pressing things to think about at the time," the other stormtrooper added.
"Well, let's think about it now," Luke said. "What could Bearsh be up to?"
"Maybe there's a quick way to find out," Mara said, stooping beside one of the Vagaari bodies and pulling off his helmet. "Let's ask him."
She glanced over the controls, then keyed on the built-in comlink. "Hello, Bearsh," she called toward the voice pickup. "This is Mara Jade Skywalker. How's it going up there?"
There was a long pause. "Bearsh?" she called again. "Come on, Vagaari, look alive."
"I'm sorry, but General Bearsh is unavailable at this time," a voice replied, sounding distant and oddly hollow as it came from the helmet's headphones. "So you still live, Jedi?"
Luke grimaced. General Bearsh, no less. "That's right, Estosh," Mara said. "We still live, you're up and around again—it's just a glorious day for us all."
"Not for all, Jedi," Estosh said, an edge of malicious pleasure in his voice. "But for the Vagaari, this is indeed a day of satisfaction. Where precisely are you?"
"We're standing around on a Vagaari-free Dreadnaught," Mara told him. "You want something more precise?"
"No need," Estosh said. "I see you now, there in the corridor beside the Number Two Turbolaser Coolant Room."
Luke glanced at the marker beside the nearest door in mild surprise. Apparently, the Vagaari had very precise locators built into their troops' helmets. "What do you mean, Vagaari-free?" Estosh went on.
"Oh, didn't you know?" Mara said. "Your rear guard's dead. All of them."
"Really," Estosh said. "Interesting. You Jedi are more effective warriors than we realized. Our mistake."
"A mistake others paid for," Mara pointed out. "But I suppose that's typical. I don't suppose you're brave enough to come down here and take any of the risks yourself?"