in a stormtrooper’s armor.
Her pale gaze moved from the body to the blade. She deactivated it, bringing a strained silence to the corridor. Then she looked up at Jax. “Wow,” she said. “That was—effective.”
Jax glanced down at the dead Inquisitor. The maroon cowling around his neck was a smoking ruin. “Help me get him out of sight.”
“Here!” Den called from the medbay access corridor. He’d armed himself with the discarded blaster rifle. “Five’s got the doors open.”
Sacha and Jax dragged the corpse as far as the outer hatch of the access, but then Sacha stopped him from stepping into the short corridor and waved a handheld device at the cams over the doors.
“Just in case someone’s watching,” she said.
They entered the corridor, dragging Tesla’s body between them. I-Five—in his R2 persona—had indeed opened the medbay doors, then disappeared. Jax and Sacha deposited their burden just within the medbay, but out of sight of the door.
“Den, lock the medbay doors and stand by,” Jax said tersely, then followed Sacha in search of the droid. They found him talking to the computer in control of Thi Xon Yimmon’s autonomic processes.
Jax quashed a surge of emotion at the sight of the Whiplash leader—that this powerful intellect had been reduced to a sleeping hulk. He was struck anew by the horror of what Vader had meant to do.
“Can you wake him?” he asked I-Five.
“I’ve stopped the flow of anesthetic and programmed a mild stimulant. Beyond that—”
“Can we move him like this?” Sacha asked. “When Vader realizes he’s chasing a phantom, this is the first place he’ll go.”
“He already knows,” Jax said grimly. “Which means he’s going to be casting around for me. I’ve managed to blur my Force signature, but it won’t take him long to figure it out. He’s too powerful. We need to get Yimmon out of here now.”
“Jax …” The voice, a mere whisper, came from Thi Xon Yimmon’s lips. “Spirit willing. Body …” He raised a shaking hand, focused his eyes on it, then let it drop.
“We have to move you now,” Jax told the Cerean. “Can you stand?”
“He won’t need to,” I-Five said. He brought an antigrav medical gurney over to Yimmon’s bedside. “Given the circumstances, what could be more natural than for the Inquisitor on duty to order the prisoner moved to safety?”
Thi Xon Yimmon was a big man. It took Jax, Sacha, and I-Five to heave him onto the gurney.
“What ship did you bring and where is it?” Jax asked Sacha.
“The Laranth—well, she’s the Raptor now. Five stole their codes. She’s in the commercial docking area one slip away from the external doors to this lovely place.”
Jax groaned aloud. “That’s where I started the decoy.”
“Yeah, I know. We saw it.”
Jax made a clutch decision. Reaching out with a dart of Force sense, he sought Darth Vader … and found him—on the same level and heading right for them. As soon as the connection was made, he knew he’d given up any hope of cover. Vader was alone—the stormtroopers and Inquisitors were sweeping up from the lower levels of the station, presumably driving any intruders in their path up into the northern hemisphere.
Had Vader not communicated the deception to them?
“Okay,” Jax said. “We’re going to have to take an alternative route out of here. Do you know where there are other exits into the main station?”
“Sure,” said Sacha. “First thing we did when we got here—plot all the access points.”
“If you go back the way you came, you’re going to run into a horde of stormtroopers and Inquisitors.”
She shrugged, rattling her body armor. “Fine. We’ll keep to the upper levels.”
“Good. Whatever I do, you need to get Yimmon to your ship and get him out of here. Understood?”
Sacha and Den both stared at him.
“You’re not coming with us?” Den asked.
“I may not be able to. For one thing, I left the starfighter up in the shuttle bay. I’d really rather Vader not get his hands on it.”
“And we’d really rather he not get his hands on you,” said Den.
Jax closed his eyes. They had no idea. “I won’t let him.”
Moments later, an apprentice Inquisitor, a stormtrooper, and a droid exited the medbay with their two prisoners and got into the nearest turbolift. They headed up. Three levels later, they got off the lift and headed toward the commercial sector of the station. With the bulk of the Imperial forces concentrated below, there were few enemy soldiers on these levels and, though they’d been alerted, they’d be looking for