long this room is?'
'It can't be
'Right,' Luke agreed. 'Got any sage advice before we start?'
'Just that we be careful,' Mara said, joining him. 'Side by side as long as we can with the droid behind us, lightsabers and senses ready.'
'Succinct and practical,' Luke said, stretching out ahead of them with the Force. There was no danger yet that he could sense. 'Come on, Artoo.'
Mara's point about the room's size turned out to be correct. They had gone only a few steps when the back wall came within range of their glow rods. In the center was an open archway leading farther back into the rock.
Not the rough natural rock of the caverns, though. The walls and floor of this passageway were smooth and finished.
'Interesting,' Mara said, playing her glow rod around as they stood just outside the archway.
'Notice anything peculiar about the ceiling?'
'It hasn't been smoothed down like the walls have,' Luke said, eyeing the jutting rock hanging down from the arched ceiling.
'I wonder,' Mara murmured. 'Artoo, your sensors getting anything?' Artoo warbled a rather distressed-sounding negative, and Luke leaned over to check the datapad translation. 'He says the output from the power generator is masking pretty much everything else,' he told Mara. 'That's probably where that hum is coming from, too. You think there's something else up there?'
'Keeper Of Promises said this area was lethal to Qom Jha,' Mara reminded him. 'And we all know how much Qom Jha like to hang from ceilings.'
'And we had that cave of predators who eat flying things like Qom Jha.' Luke nodded, seeing where she was going with this. 'And a bunch of Chiss up in the fortress who think of them as vermin.'
'Not to mention that layer of cortosis ore back there,' Mara said. 'Which I still don't believe got there naturally. This place has defense rings six ways from Coruscant.'
'As one would expect with Thrawn in charge of it,' Luke said. 'Question is, do we try to do something about that ceiling, or assume it isn't something that will bother us?'
'It's never a good idea to leave a danger at your back,' Mara declared, taking a step just inside the archway. 'Here goes.' Igniting her lightsaber, she hurled it expertly up to slice into the rocky ceiling.
There was a brilliant flash, the crackle and stench of high-energy current—
And suddenly the whole ceiling seemed to collapse.
Mara was back out of the room in an instant, even as Luke ignited his lightsaber and jabbed it protectively over where her head had been. The ceiling fell onto it, draping itself over the green-white blade for a second before it was cut through and fell the rest of the way onto the floor.
'How cute,' Mara said, peering in over his shoulder. 'It's like a sculpted Conner net. A Qom Jha settles to a landing, there's a high-energy discharge that fries him, and the whole thing drops to take out any of his friends who happen to be with him.'
'That's cute, all right,' Luke murmured, poking at the netting with the tip of his lightsaber.
'Question is, is it safe now for us to walk over?'
'Probably,' Mara said. 'Conner nets are usually single-charge gadgets, and it doesn't do much good to leave it active once it's on the floor.'
'Makes sense,' Luke said, stretching out to the Force as he eased his foot out over the net. No tingling of danger... and sure enough, his foot came down onto the net without even a spark of residual charge. 'It's clear,' he said.
'Hold it!' Mara hissed, taking a long step forward and putting her lightsaber handle across his chest to stop him, her sleeve blaster now gripped in her free hand. 'Something's coming.' Luke stopped, listening to the soft clicking of feet on rock. More than one something, too, by the sound of it. He played his glow rod down the tunnel trying to see what was coming... And abruptly, from a group of narrow side openings he hadn't noticed came a swarm of fist- sized insectlike creatures scuttling rapidly across the walls toward them.
