Vision of the future

There were two of them, standing there on the upper section of floor: a pair of large, thickset sentinel droids on treaded bases, each with a heavy blaster gripped in its right hand.

'Get behind me!' Luke snapped to Mara, taking a short step in front of her. Just in time. Even as he stretched out to the Force, both sentinels opened fire.

'Stupid, stupid, stupid,' he heard Mara snarl from behind him. 'A big fat diversion—the oldest trick on the list. And I fell for it like some dumb farm kid.'

'Watch your language,' Luke warned. The sentinels were good, laying out a systematic targeting pattern that would have quickly taken out most opponents. So far, though, he was easily staying ahead of them. 'Can you do anything about them?'

Her reply was a spitting of blaster fire over his shoulder raking across the sentinels' joints and glowing eyes. But there was no effect. 'No good—the armor's too thick for my blaster,' she said.

'Let me try—'

'Watch it—he's moving,' Luke cut her off. The sentinel on the left had suddenly started rolling on its treads along the raised floor ring toward the far end of the room, blaster still firing. Luke clenched his teeth, stretching out harder to the Force, feeling sweat breaking out on his forehead. With the source of the blaster bolts now coming from two different directions—and with the separation between them growing ever wider—it was becoming harder and harder for him to physically get the lightsaber blade back and forth fast enough to block the shots. Behind him, he heard the snap-hiss as Mara ignited her own lightsaber—

Followed by a sudden yelp and a muffled thud.

'What happened?' Luke snapped, not daring to take his attention off the sentinels.

'Don't try to walk,' Mara warned, her voice inexplicably coming from the floor beneath him.

'Thrawn left another surprise for unwanted guests.'

Luke frowned. 'What do you mean?'

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the blue-white blade of her lightsaber cut across one of the shots from the more distant sentinel, now at the far end of the room. 'Okay, I've got this one,' she said. 'If you can spare a second, take a look at the floor.'

Letting the Force guide his hands, Luke risked a quick look down at his feet. One glance was all he needed. The floor had sprouted loops of green-black cord that had formed themselves into a tangled mass around their feet. 'Looks like they extruded themselves out of the cracks between the tiles,' Mara went on. 'First step I took my foot tried to catch in one of the loops.'

'Clever,' Luke agreed tightly. 'I guess that rules out any chance of running for it.'

'At least we know now why all the furniture's stacked off to the side,' Mara added. 'You don't want to clutter your killing field with a lot of stuff the victims might be able to hide behind. Luke, this other sentinel's still coming.'

Luke risked a glance. The second sentinel had rounded the far end of the room and was now rolling steadily around the other side.

And in maybe ten seconds it would reach a point directly across from Mara.

'Quick—before it gets any closer,' he told her, easing a little to his left so he could again defend against both sentinels. 'Use your lightsaber on it.'

'Right,' Mara said, and through his haze of concentration he felt her emotional twinge at the memory of her less than perfect handling of the weapon back in the chamber where they'd taken out all of the stalactites and stalagmites together.

But the moment passed; and as he leaned hard into the effort of blocking the barrage of shots he saw the flash as her lightsaber windmilled across the room toward the sentinel. It sliced cleanly into the intersection of head and body—

And then, abruptly, the blue-white blade vanished.

'What happened?' Luke demanded.

'Blast it!' Mara snarled. Out of the corner of Luke's eye he saw the blade reappear, swing into the sentinel, and again vanish. 'He put a layer of cortosis ore under the armor.'

'Then go for the blaster,' Luke said.