"How many made it out, do you think?" Mike asked eventually. They were following the corridors in the direction Sahhar had fled, but it was becoming clear that he was long gone. Josh's rage had calmed to the point that he could think clearly...barely.
"Not many," Josh said. "Maybe a dozen, and some of them probably won't make it back to the surface." They were in another anonymous underground passageway that twisted through Sahhar's base - bare stone, metal conduits lining the ceilings, narrow recessed doors along the walls, and sparse fluorescent fixtures scouring everything with harsh white light and deep shadows.
"At least Khalil made it out," said Mike. Josh grunted in reply. They stopped briefly while Mike turned the hand scanner in a circle around them again, and then continued. "He did what we asked him to. It's not his fault they found our little surprise."
"So he says. I don't trust him any farther than I could throw him."
"Looked like you could throw him a good long way to me."
They rounded a bend and found themselves facing a split in the corridor. One way went left, the other right, but there was no straight ahead.
"Two roads diverged in a psychotic alien's army base..." Josh muttered.
"I'm not sure we can tell which one is least traveled by," Mike said.
"It's probably just as well. In this case we'd be better off taking the road most traveled. But since we don't know which one it is, d’you have any suggestions?"
"Well," Mike said, referring to his scanner once again, "if we go this way we'll be headed back toward that power source." He pointed to the tunnel on the left. "Or maybe it's several power sources. I can't really tell."
Josh looked down the corridor on the right for a long moment, sensing that Sahhar had gone that way, but after a moment he turned away. "Left it is, then."
We stood before a heavy blast door at the end of the stone passageway. The cross corridor stretched off into the distance in either direction with other blast doors along its length. My first thought was that the doors lead to troop barracks. We were too far underground and too far away from, well, anything, for munitions lockers. It could be a safety measure to store your firepower this far from anything, I suppose, but there was no sign of any system for transporting it back to the surface. It wouldn't be reasonable to move weapons of any size through the maze of twisting and occasionally narrow corridors using man-powered carts or repulsor sleds.
Mike looked up from his hand scanner and said, "Definitely more than one power source - a whole damn bunch of them, in fact - and they're all behind that door. There's enough power being generated back there to run London for a month."
"Probably not Terran technology then," I said stupidly.
With a derisive snort Mike said, "I wouldn't count on it."
The door didn't open when we approached it. On the wall next to it was a small control panel with a numeric keypad and a pair of green and red buttons, all labeled in Aurebesh. For the millionth time I cursed myself for not learning to read both the extragalactic alphabet and the language it represented. Instead of asking Mike, who could read it almost perfectly, I held my breath and hit the green button.
To my surprise the door slid open immediately. The sight on the other side forced the breath back out of me and provoked a soft "oh my God" from Mike. Through the door we emerged onto a metal platform suspended midway between the floor and ceiling of the largest room either of us had ever seen. Next to this underground cavern, our own subterranean hangar back in Mendellia looked like a simple two car garage. It had to be at least half a mile on each side. I could easily imagine a Star Destroyer parked in here, even though I knew realistically it couldn't be *that* big.
The room didn’t prompt our startled reactions, though. Those came from the widely varied collection of war machines filling the space to capacity. Squadrons of TIE fighters, interceptors, and bombers hung in racks from the ceiling, linked to each other by miles of catwalks and to the floor by staircases and platform lifts. Every square foot of floor space was packed with ground vehicles: troop transports, hover tanks, command and control vehicles, two squadrons of AT-ST walkers, and a division of AT-PT mobile infantry walkers. There were even eight towering AT-ATs scattered through the cavern.
"Well. There’re our power sources," I said.
Mike nodded numbly before finding his voice again. "This is bigger than just buying a shield and launching some missiles for revenge. A lot bigger. How could they have gotten all this in here without us knowing it?"
"Maybe they started back when these things were just cool special effects to us. Maybe they have some tricks we don't know about. Either way, this complicates things."
We started down the stairs to the floor, and something I’d learned in my Air Force days popped into my mind. They would only need this kind of equipment if you were planning to take and hold land, and a lot of it. If you only wanted to blow things up, air power would do.
"So what's Sahhar planning to take and hold?" I wondered aloud.
A couple of steps above and behind me, Mike said, "Huh?"
I looked back and said, "If they have all this here, they must be planning to take *something.*"
"Obviously," he agreed.
"But what?" I asked. "This is overkill for crushing resistance in Iraq itself."
"Saddam's never been afraid of a little overkill," Mike said.
"Yeah, but do you really think that’s what this is all about?"
Mike considered it for a moment before replying, "Well, we are an intelligence team. It's our job to figure that out."
Two pairs of boots met the rough stone floor and stopped. My hand rested on the railing as my eyes roamed over the platoon of hover tanks lined up in front of me and the troop transports behind them. I looked over at Mike, and the look on his face told me we were wondering the same thing: What do we do now? What can we possibly hope to do now?
"You know," Mike said quietly, "if they have the people to go with all this, we're not going to be able to stop them."
"If they have access to this much hardware and can get it all here without us knowing about it I don’t think we ever could have."
"So you want to give up now? After all we've been through - losing Vickie, Thayer and Becki breaking up, Lenka nearly getting killed, putting up with you,… After all that, you think it's hopeless?"
"I didn’t say that!"
"You said we never could have stopped them! What's the difference?"
"And you said we can't stop them now!"
"I said if they-" Mike stopped midsentence and took a breath before starting again. "Look, right now it’s contained here, in a small space." I chuckled, and Mike corrected himself. "Relatively small space. Whatever. Point is we can deal with it better right now than we’ll ever be able to later. "
I did my best to burn Mike alive with my death glare of extreme annoyance, but when he didn't spontaneously combust I had to come up with a Plan B. "I'm open to suggestions," I said, injecting all the venomous sarcasm I could muster into just four words.
I was hoping Mike would just hit me, because I was dying for an excuse to hit him. I took a quick step backward when he slung the backpack off his shoulder, and he looked at me as if I was a particularly stupid puppy. "I've got a bunch of detonators, remember?" he said as he held one up in front of me.
He looked past me and I followed his gaze to the nearest stone column. The thing was bigger around than a California redwood. I couldn't imagine our explosives scratching it. "Will they do any good?"
"If we turn the yield all the way up and put three or four around each column, it should do the trick."
"Do we have enough for that?"
"You need to spend less time in your X-wing and more time studying demolition. We don't have to destroy them all. If we take out enough of them the weight of the rock will bring the rest down. We must be, what? A hundred meters underground?"
"The ceiling might be a hundred meters underground. Looks to me like we're a hundred meters or more under that."
"Fine, whatever. Imagine how much that hundred meters of rock must weigh."
I wasn't stupid. I knew what he was getting at. Still, those columns were damn big. I kept to myself the nagging doubt that we had enough detonators to do the job.
"So first we find out what we can about what they're planning, then we start setting charges," he was saying.
"No, we set the charges first." He was about to argue with me again so I held up my hand and explained. "Destroying this equipment is more important than finding out what it's for. We have a chance to do that now, but we don't know if we will later. I'd rather lose the chance to find the explanation than lose the chance to blow this place."
Mike sighed. "Okay, that's a fair point,” he said as he examined the room. “Let's start in the middle."
We worked our way toward the middle of the room, walking down one aisle, crossing through an opening between rows, down another aisle. Progress seemed to be measured in inches toward the center, rather than feet or yards. Finally we reached a broad walkway running through the middle of the room, wide enough for any of the vehicles in sight to pass through. We turned down the main boulevard and headed directly for the center column.
I had never felt as insignificant in my life as I did walking down that broad aisle. It was the size of a four lane highway, and was empty but for the two of us. Machines that could kill me six different ways but didn't need to because they could just step on me loomed to either side. I couldn't even hear my own footsteps here; their sound was swallowed by the endless empty space.
Mike broke me out of my reverie the hard way, by slamming me into a nearby troop transport. I was still deciding whether to demand an explanation or just punch him when he held a finger up to his lips. He flattened himself up against the side of the transport beside me. The impressive silence I was so awed by now worked in my favor. Through the still air I heard the faint sound of distant footsteps and muffled voices coming our direction.
A trio of armored soldiers clad in gleaming white from head to toe passed by our hiding spot. They didn’t see us because their white helmets blocked their peripheral vision. After they were past and their backs turned completely to us Mike started to take a step toward them. I held him in place with my arm, and moved toward them myself.
It was over in seconds. As I charged toward the troopers I used the Force to hurl the middle one backward into the transport behind me. I ignited my lightsaber and lashed out with it, neatly separating another trooper's head from his shoulders. I turned my inertia into a spin and brought my saber down on the third trooper, splitting him in half from one shoulder to the opposite thigh. Before either body hit the floor I leapt at the first trooper with my saber thrust out in front of me.
The lightsaber’s metal emitter slammed into the trooper's polished breastplate, and he had to look down to see if the blade had plunged through his chest. There wasn't time for him to see the blade disappear before it hit him.
I kept the saber's emitter pressed tightly against his armor and yanked his helmet off with my free hand. I pitched it over my shoulder in one smooth motion and it clattered across the ground, bouncing to a stop against the body of one of his comrades.
I ignored Mike gaping at me and grabbed the top of the trooper’s armor. I waggled my deactivated saber back and forth before his wide eyes and asked, "You know what this is?" He nodded vigorously, still trying to catch his breath. "Good. We're going to ask some questions, and you're going to answer them honestly, or I’ll rip you to pieces with my bare hands. Am I making myself clear?" I shoved the lightsaber against his armored stomach to reinforce my point.
He was a young man, and clearly not from around here with his pale skin and blue eyes. He seemed about the same age as Arrek, my new wingmate, and Arrek wasn't even old enough to drink legally. "Y-yes," he gasped with his first full breath.
I started to speak, and then stopped. How does one ask someone if they're planning to take over your planet? Luckily Mike wasn't having the same problem. "What's all for?" he asked, gesturing at the vehicles all around.
"Invasion," the trooper said. When I heard his accent I knew he was from even farther away than I first suspected. 'A galaxy far, far away' was a little more than 'not from around here.'
"Invasion of what?" I demanded. He didn’t answer me. I shook him hard with the hand gripping his armor. “Tell me!” I shouted.
“I can’t!” he gasped. “He’ll kill me!”
“Answer me or I’ll kill you myself!”
“Sahhar’s not going to be hurting anyone,” Mike said reasonably. The trooper looked at him with desperate hope in his eyes, but still kept silent.
I pulled him forward a few inches and slammed him back into the transport so his head bounced off its side with a metallic clang. “Tell me or I’ll break you in half!” I screamed, my face inches from his.
His head jerked up to look at me, and it was clear he was terrified. Good. That would buy his cooperation for the short term. I didn’t need anything more. “Everything,” he said.
“Bullshit,” I said. “There isn’t enough firepower here to take the whole planet.”
“Don’t need to take the whole planet, just this region,” he said as he tried to move a hand up to rub the back of his head. “Then we build factories and training centers and everything else we need for the rest.”
“And now that you’ve got the shield to protect you, we can’t do anything to stop you, right?”
The trooper nodded, his eyes darting nervously from me to Mike and back. His cowardice was infuriating. “But why not just bombard any resistance from orbit?” Mike asked.
“We don’t have ships for that. Admiral Tavira-“
“Tavira?” Mike repeated, his eyebrows going up in surprise. “Leonia Tavira?”
The trooper nodded.
“What’s she got to do with it? Isn’t Sahhar in charge here?” I asked.
”He is! The admiral is his military commander. He found us wandering in deep space and convinced the admiral to join him. There were less than a hundred of us then. We were stooping to piracy when Lord Sahhar came and brought his vision.”
“Bet I know what that vision was,” I said. “So why doesn’t ‘Admiral’ Tavira have any ships to bomb our planet back to the stone age with?”
“She lost her fleet in her battles with the rebels. When I joined her she had only a single dreadnought. With Lord Sahhar’s leadership she built her forces that to all you see here in less than two years,” he said with a trace of pride creeping into his voice. “No one on this world will ever be able to stop us,” he finished defiantly.
I didn’t care for his defiance. I told him so by punching him hard across the face with my fist wrapped around my lightsaber. His head slammed into the side of the transport once again. “I wouldn’t count on that,” I said.
“So what are you waiting for?” Mike asked.
“We have the equipment but we don’t have the men. There are far more of us than there were, but still not enough. The admiral sent Commander Andreyasn back to gather more. We begin as soon as they arrive.”
“When will that be?”
“Soon.”
“How soon?” I demanded as I shoved the end of the lightsaber up under his jaw and clamped my hand around his throat.
“Eight days,” he gasped. “Maybe nine.”
I looked at Mike and he looked back at me. Somehow in the last hour this had gone from a rogue nation with a single shield to an all-out attack on our home countries to a planetary invasion. We could stop this here, now, but this was our only chance. We wouldn’t get another. “You’ve been a big help,” I said to the trooper before flinging him away from the transport. As he stumbled to get his feet under him I raised my lightsaber above my head and lit it once again. I was about to slash through the stormtrooper when I caught the look Mike gave me, so instead I slammed the reinforced pommel into the base of the trooper’s skull. He dropped to the ground in a senseless heap.
“No time to waste,” I said before Mike could speak. “Give me some of those detonators and let’s get to work.”
I stuffed my pockets full of explosives and we set off in opposite directions. I chose a column beside an AT-AT and searched for a weak spot – a crack, a seam between two sections, even a chip in the surface. There was nothing. The column’s exterior was rough but completely unmarked. Astounded, I decided to set the charges in a cluster at the bottom to blow it sideways off its base. I bent down to set the first detonator and found another surprise. There was no place where column met floor. One flowed smoothly into the other; they were part of the same whole.
“Four, we have a problem,” I said into the comlink.
Mike sounded annoyed when he replied. “What is it, Seven?”
“This column doesn’t have a weak spot. It’s solid rock, no seams of any kind, even at the floor.” Suddenly the truth of what was right before my eyes hit me. “This whole place was carved right out of solid rock, columns and all.”
“That’s right,” Mike grunted. I could hear the beep of a charge being set in the background. “Space three charges evenly around the column and turn the yield all the way up. Then cross your fingers.”
That wasn’t very reassuring, but I didn’t have a choice. I could create some weaknesses with my lightsaber, but we didn’t want the ceiling coming down with us in here. Besides, cutting through solid rock would take a long time, and there was no way to know how much time we had.
I flipped the cover of the first detonator open and my fingers flew across its simple keypad, arming it, setting its explosive, and setting it for remote detonation. I slapped the charge onto the column and moved on to the next one.
I was panting like a bantha but almost down to my last charge when time ran out. I heard a clomp clomp clomp sound approaching and my stomach tightened. I looked around and couldn’t find the source of the sound, but my view of most of the cavern was blocked by the equipment surrounding me. I quickly finished setting the charge and began working on the last one. As I was entering the arming code the stone floor shuddered beneath my boots. The first was a small vibration, but the second was stronger, and each one after that even more so. It At the second shockwave I realized they were coming at the same time as the stomping sounds.
It stopped as suddenly as it began, and the silence was more intimidating than the rattling and the deafening noise. I looked up from the charge, and an AT-PT walker stood where only a moment before had been just a wide, empty walkway. Its twin blaster cannons were pointed at my chest.
The Force prompted me to light my saber at the same instant the AT-PT fired. The blade sprang to life just in time and reflected both bolts back at the walker. The glass polarized to protect the pilot’s vision and I leapt into the air, twisted through a forward somersault, and landed on my feet behind the walker. I slashed my lightsaber into its reversed knee joint, but its thick armor stopped the blade before it did any serious damage.
I pulled the saber back for another strike but the AT-PT, smaller and nimbler than the other Imperial walkers, turned in my direction quicker than I expected. I backed away from it, trying to keep its armed front end pointed in a safe direction. We turned two full circles in a bizarre dance of man and metal.
Then I stopped retreating and leapt straight at the walker. I grabbed the hand and foot holds on its flank and climbed up onto its roof. The pilot bucked his craft wildly, trying to throw me off, but my Force-enhanced balance was unshakeable. I slashed my lightsaber through the entry hatch on the walker’s roof. Sparks showered over me and a hundred tiny flames scoured my face. Air hissed out as the hatch lost its pressure seal. My free hand darted up to wipe the hot slivers off my face and came away streaked with blood.
I was reaching for the hatch with the blood-smeared hand when another pair of laser blasts tore through the air where my head had been an instant before. A second AT-PT had joined the fight. I dropped over the opposite side of the walker I stood on and clung to the handholds, putting the walker’s armor between me and the second attacker. The pilot spun his craft around with an unhesitating confidence that showed complete faith in that armor. The second walker fired again as soon as it had a clear shot at me. I let go of the handholds and hit the ground rolling.
I came up under the first walker – not a very comforting place to be – as the twin blasts rocked it. Its pilot danced the craft around randomly, trying to crush me beneath its metal feet. I planted myself in the one safe place I could find – on top of one of those heavy feet, with my arms and legs wrapped around the walker’s leg. I was jarred by each step the walker took, but I had bought myself a split second to think. The second walker couldn’t fire now without hitting its comrade in a weak leg joint.
Clinging to the walker’s leg I was directly below its engine and drive system. I had no idea how the internal workings of a late model Imperial AT-PT were arranged, and I didn’t care. Praying for either God or midichlorians to guide my hand, I drove my lightsaber straight up into the middle of the power section. My prayer was answered when my blade found an exhaust port of some sort and plunged into the walker’s engine all the way to the hilt. A noxious fluid spewed out and boiled away as a sickly yellow smoke as soon as it left the engine. I yanked my hand back and rolled away from the walker. Bolts from the second walker tracked me across the floor, but I paid them little mind. My attention was focused on the grinding squeal the damaged walker made when it tried to move again. An explosion rocked its rear section and shook the floor. It tumbled forward on its viewport and crushed its blaster cannons before collapsing in a heap of junk metal and spare parts.
The second walker’s grenade launcher coughed and a spinning sphere of explosive death flew through the air in my direction. I threw my arm out in front of me and tossed the grenade back toward the walker with the Force. It exploded directly below the walker. The force of the blast peppered the area with high velocity shrapnel, but the walker remained on its feet. I closed the distance between man and machine before its pilot could launch another grenade.
I stood before the walker as if daring it to fire at me. My heart hammered away in my chest. The breathless feeling reminded me that the weakest part of the war machine wasn’t its engine or its awkward leg joints but the man inside. I reached my hand out toward the walker’s cockpit and stretched out to the pilot through the Force. I found his heart, beating more steadily than mine, and pictured it resting in the palm of my outstretched hand. I could see the pilot through his front window and saw his eyes go wide in shock when I curled my fingers into a loose ball and squeezed lightly. His heart beat harder and faster as my grip tightened. He writhed wildly, trying to break the grasp of the Force. Now his heart was beating unnaturally fast. I could feel it fluttering in my hand like a trapped bird. He flailed for the release for his vehicles top hatch in a vain effort to escape.
I squeezed harder until his heart couldn’t beat at all. It twitched uselessly, and the pilot twitched along with it. Finally I squeezed my fist tightly and his heart burst. His body slumped in the seat with his mouth hanging open and his eyes still wide. I smiled at his expression of eternal pain.
I turned to leave, reveling in my victory, and the smile disappeared. Sahhar stood nearby, blocking my path.