And its designers had also clearly prepared for such an eventuality. Two more compartments along its lower sides had popped open, and the sentinel's hands were already digging into them for another set of replacement weapons.
But with luck, it would never have a chance to use them. Mara had already brought her lightsaber around in front of the sentinel, turning it to point blade-first toward the big droid. Now, grunting with the effort, she drove it forward.
Not uselessly into the sentinel and its cortosis-ore shell, but straight past it, burying the blue-white blade in the water-stained wall behind it.
The jet of water that burst out around the handle was instant and violent, some of the spray reaching all the way to where she and Luke lay on the floor thirty meters away. Mara felt a sudden twinge of uneasiness at the force of the flow; but it was too late to stop now. Holding the weapon in against the pressure, she spun it around in a ten- centimeter-diameter circle, the hilt more than once nearly vanishing from her view behind the widening spray of water coming out through the crack she was cutting. The sentinel turned its head to see what was happening; lifted its blasters toward the lightsaber—
And with a last burst of effort, Mara finished the cut.
The stone plug came blasting out of the wall with the speed of a proton torpedo, slamming directly into the sentinel's thick torso with armor-crushing force and knocking the big droid helplessly off the upper ring down onto the main floor. Mara caught a glimpse of crumpled metal; saw that the stream of water that had driven the plug was now shooting across the room over her head—
And suddenly a foam-crested wave slammed into and over her from the opposite direction. With her mind still in the tunnel vision of Jedi defense mode, the wave caught her completely off-guard. She felt herself being lifted and thrown by the wild surf as her feet were somehow pushed clear of the tangling trip cords, and scrabbled madly for something to hang on to. Her left hand caught another bunch of the cords, and she hung on grimly, trying to orient herself. Another wave washed over her, tearing her grip away, and once again she found herself being spun around in the turbulence. She clawed her way to the surface, caught a breath that seemed to be half air and half foam, shook the water out of her eyes to see another wave surging toward her—
And then a pair of hands caught her under the arms, and with a tug that felt like it was going to tear her in half she was suddenly arcing upward through the air. There was a jolt as her back slammed into something hard—one of the two hands holding her fell away as the other tightened its grip—
'Here—hold on,' Luke shouted in her ear.
She half turned in his single-handed grip, saw the railing to the upper equipment balcony there beside her, and grabbed on to it. 'Got it.'
'Hang on—I'm going back for Artoo.' Letting go of the railing, he dropped back into the water. With an effort, Mara pulled herself up the railing and over onto the balcony floor. Below her, she could see, the room had become a surging mass of frothing water.
And it was filling up fast. Much faster than it should have, she realized uneasily. And suddenly she saw why. The small, neat hole she'd cut in the wall was no longer either small or neat. Four or five square meters of the water- stained section had given way around it, and the Lake of Small Fish was pouring in through the opening. Already it was halfway up the wall to the ledge where she sat...
A movement across the room caught her eye: Luke, hanging on to some protrusion in the wall, waving toward her. 'I'm here,' she shouted over the roar of the water. 'What do you need?' In answer, the top of Artoo's dome rose a few centimeters over the waves. Bracing herself, Mara stretched out with the Force and lifted the droid toward her.
It was harder than she'd expected it to be. Far harder than it ought to have been. The droid rose over the water with agonizing slowness, and twice during the procedure she nearly lost her grip entirely. Clearly, the battle with the sentinel droids had taken more out of her than she'd realized. But finally she made it, and the droid settled down with a pensive gurgle beside her. He'd been battered around by the water and had lost the datapad they'd rigged to him for translation, but otherwise he seemed all right. She looked back down, searching for Luke—
A hand slapped up to a grip on the bottom rail. 'You get Artoo up?' Luke gasped, pulling himself laboriously up the railing.
'He's right here,' Mara confirmed, reaching over the railing to give him a hand. 'You okay?'
'Just fine,' he panted as he made it over the railing and collapsed onto the balcony beside her.
'Lesson number one,' he added between breaths. 'A Jedi needs air to function properly.'
'I'll make a note,' Mara said, peering down through the railing again. 'What about that second sentinel?'
'I took care of him,' Luke said. Already he was breathing easier. 'Here's your lightsaber,' he added, pulling both weapons from inside his tunic and handing hers over. 'Good job with the wall, by the way.'
'Oh, sure—great job,' Mara retorted. 'There's nothing so brilliant as a plan that ends up almost drowning you.
