"And as we just saw, it can put its shield up before it finishes unfolding if it senses an attacker nearby," Mara pointed out.
"Which means we can't let it see the attack coming," Luke agreed. "Which brings us back to some kind of ambush."
"Right," Mara agreed. "Problem: the only place around here to hide is inside one of the rooms off the corridor."
"Which we already tried."
"Right," Mara said. "What we need is for it to follow us someplace more promising. Maybe aft to the turbolaser blisters, where we've got all that wreckage to set up in."
Luke shook his head. "It's not going to let us do that," he said. "You saw what it did just now. With both of us clearly in sight, it still stopped two meters in from the command deck corridor, fired a few times, then went back to guard duty."
"It did, didn't it?" Mara commented, her expression changing subtly as she stared at the wall across from them. "You think you could pick out the exact spot where it stopped?"
Luke pulled up the memory. "Easily," he said. "Both times it stopped about two meters in, right in the center of the corridor where it's as safe from possible ambush as it can get. Of course, there's no guarantee it'll go to the same spot the next time."
"Oh, I think there is," Mara said, smiling a sudden, private smile. "Even if this is one of the models with an autonomous brain, the Vagaari can't possibly have the skill to have programmed anything fancy into it. I'm guessing it's been given its patrol parameters and is going to stick with them down to the half centimeter."
"Okay," Luke said, eyeing her suspiciously. He knew that look, and it generally meant trouble. "But there's still no cover anywhere nearby for an ambush."
"That's okay," she said. "For this one, we're not going to need cover. Here's the plan..."
Getting a firm grip on his lightsaber, Luke once again stepped out into the command deck corridor.
The droideka's head swiveled toward him, as if not believing he was actually going to try this again. Luke took another step; the droideka responded by tracking its blasters toward him. "Get ready," Luke murmured. He took a third step, sensing Mara stepping into the corridor directly behind him—
And suddenly all other sensations and awareness vanished as the droideka opened fire.
Luke's lightsaber flashed back and forth, deflecting the blasts as he continued to sidle toward the starboard anteroom door. He reached it, dimly hearing the snap-hiss behind him as Mara ignited her own weapon.
The droideka reacted instantly. Even as Mara stabbed her lightsaber blade into the blast door, it ceased fire, folded up, and began rolling full-speed toward them. Luke watched its approach, trying to judge the timing— "Go!" he snapped at Mara. He deflected a burst of rolling fire as he heard her close down her weapon and take off back to the relative safety of the corridor. He held position another half second, then broke out of combat stance and charged after her.
The droideka kept coming. Luke heard the subtle changes in pitch as it altered direction to continue the chase, and put some extra speed into his running. If he hadn't been right about the droideka's positioning the last time, or if the machine wasn't as precisely programmed as Mara was hoping, this wasn't going to work.
The sound of the rolling wheel abruptly halted. "There it goes!" Mara called, braking to a halt in front of him.
Luke stopped and spun around, lightsaber ignited and ready. The droideka was standing in the center of the corridor, exactly where it had been the last two times it had chased them in this direction, its hazy deflector shield up as it finished the process of unfolding into attack position.
And beneath it, lying on the deck beside one of its tripod feet where Mara had carefully placed it before they'd launched their little feint, was their secret weapon.
Lorana Jinzler's old lightsaber.
Lying inside the droideka's deflector shield.
Luke lifted his lightsaber; but in salute, not defense. Even as the droideka's blasters settled into firing position, he felt Mara stretch out to the Force, twitching Lorana's lightsaber off the deck and rotating it to point upward toward the large bronzium-armor bulb at the base of the droideka's abdomen. With an asthmatic snap-hiss the green blade blazed to life, slicing into the droideka's heavy alloy body—
Luke had just a fraction of a second of premonition. "Down!" he snapped, grabbing Mara in a Force grip and pulling her down onto the deck beside him with their backs to the doomed machine.
And with a thundering explosion, the droideka disintegrated.
Luke squeezed his eyes shut, wincing as the blast washed over him like a desert sandstorm, the heat singeing the back of his neck, the concussion lifting him up off the deck and slamming him back down again, the tiny bits of shattered metal whipping across his back and legs and arms like maddened stingflies. A wave of acrid smoke followed behind the blast, curling his nostrils. A second later cooler air flowed across him in the opposite direction toward the partial vacuum, causing a brief moment of turbulence.
And then, everything was once again still. Cautiously, he opened his eyes and looked back over his shoulder.
The droideka was gone. So was Lorana's lightsaber, he noted with a twinge of guilt.
So was most of the portside blast door.
"Come on," he said to Mara, dragging himself upright. He felt a little woozy, but otherwise he seemed all right. "Let's get in there before they recover."
"What?" Mara asked vaguely, rubbing at her cheek as she got shakily to her feet and turned around. "Oh. That could be useful."
"Right." Luke looked around for his lightsaber, which had somehow ended up another three meters down the corridor, and stretched out to the Force to call it to his hand. "I take it that bulb thing with all the bronzium armor was the droideka's mini-reactor?"
"You got it," Mara said, stooping and retrieving her own lightsaber. "I was just trying to shut it down. I didn't mean to shut it down quite that violently."
"You must have hit one of the power regulators," Luke said, taking a couple of deep breaths as he looked her over. Her clothing was badly scorched, but aside from a few minor cuts and burns she seemed uninjured. She still had some of the same blast-induced fogginess he himself was fighting, but it was rapidly fading away. "Come on—we have to get in there," he repeated.
"Right," Mara said, her voice firmer this time. Taking a deep breath, she started forward. "Let's do it."
The left side of the blast door had been collapsed inward, crumpling the thick metal and leaving a gap big enough for two people to step through together. He and Mara did just that, lightsabers ready in front of them.
There was, as it turned out, no need for caution. Outside, the concussion shock wave from the exploding droideka had had a long, wide corridor to spread out into as it dissipated its energy. Here, however, it had had only the relatively confined space of the monitor anteroom to bounce around in. From the looks of the twenty or so Vagaari sprawled over their consoles or lying twitching on the deck, the wave must have done some fairly serious bouncing.
"They'll keep," Luke decided, looking across the rows of chairs and monitor consoles toward the archway and blast door leading into the bridge. "Let's see if we can get inside before Estosh realizes we're here."
"Go ahead," Mara said, nodding to the left where one of the consoles had suddenly started beeping. "I want to see what's coming through over there."
Luke nodded, threading his way through the rows of consoles toward the door. He was nearly there when there was a hollow metallic clank, and with a ponderous rumble the door began to slide open.
"Sss!" Luke hissed a warning to Mara as he jumped to a group of consoles a couple of meters to the right of the door. Closing down his lightsaber, he dropped into concealment behind one of the cabinets and peered cautiously around the side.