'A little,' Luke said, reluctantly closing down his lightsaber and calling it back to his hand. Cutting through the ceiling had been his last, best idea. 'The air in here's being compressed. The extra pressure should help slow down the incoming water a little.'
'Along with making our eyes go all buggy.' Mara nodded toward the far wall. 'You suppose there's any chance the top of the room's above the level of the lake? If it is, we might be able to cut our way out horizontally.'
'And if it isn't, we'd drown ourselves that much sooner,' Luke pointed out. 'Anyway, I really don't think we're high enough.'
'I didn't think so, either,' Mara agreed regretfully, leaning forward to look past Luke at Artoo.
'Too bad we lost the datapad—we could have asked Artoo to take some sensor readings. We could still ask, of course, but we couldn't understand the answer.'
'Wait a minute,' Luke said, another idea suddenly hitting him. 'What about that passageway where we first came in? We could send Artoo there with my lightsaber to enlarge it.'
'No good.' Mara shook her head, the movement sending strands of wet hair slapping gently across Luke's cheek. 'That whole section is solid cortosis ore. I checked it the first time we went through.'
Luke grimaced. 'I thought it sounded too easy.'
'Isn't it always,' Mara said, the faint sarcasm sounding odd coming as it did through chattering teeth. 'Too bad we don't have a Dark Jedi handy we could kill. Remember that big blast when C'baoth died?'
'Yes,' Luke said mechanically, staring off into space. The insane Jedi clone Joruus C'baoth, recruited to fight against the New Republic by Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Thrawn. Clone...
'Mara, you told me cortosis ore wasn't structurally very strong. Just how weak is it?'
'It was flaking off under our boots as we walked through the passage,' she said, throwing him a puzzled look. 'Other than that, I haven't the faintest idea. Why?' Luke nodded at the vast pool below them. 'We've got a lot of water here, and water isn't compressible the way air is. If we could create a hard enough jolt here in this room, the pressure wave should travel all the way down the tunnel to the passageway. If it's powerful enough, maybe we can collapse that whole area.'
'Sounds great,' Mara agreed. 'Just one problem: how exactly do we engineer this massive jolt of yours?'
Luke braced himself. 'We cut through that transparisteel barrier and flood the cloning alcove.'
'Oh, my stars,' Mara murmured; and even through his mental exhaustion Luke could feel her ripple of stunned apprehension. 'Luke, that's a Braxxon-Fipps 590 fusion generator in there. You dump water on that and you're going to have more jolt than you know what to do with.'
'I know it's risky,' Luke said. 'But I think it's our only chance.' Letting go of his grip on her, wincing as his wet clothing shifted against his skin, he stood up. 'Wait here; I'll be right back.' She sighed. 'No,' she said, standing up beside him and taking hold of his arm. 'I'll do it.'
'Like blazes you will,' Luke growled. 'It's my crazy idea.
'Okay,' she said, crossing her arms. 'Tell me how you do a Paparak cross-cut.' He blinked. 'A what?'
'A Paparak cross-cut,' she repeated. 'It's a technique for weakening a stressed wall so that it comes down a minute or so after you're safely out of the vicinity. Palpatine taught it to me as part of my sabotage training.'
'Okay,' Luke said. 'So give me a fast course.'
'What, like a fast course in becoming a Jedi?' she countered scornfully. 'It's not that easy.'
'Mara—'
'Besides,' she added quietly, 'when whichever of us goes down pops up again, the other one's going to have to get them back up here out of the way of the blast. I don't think I can lift you that far that fast.' Her lips pressed briefly together. 'And frankly, I don't want to sit here and watch myself fail.'
Luke glared at her. But she was right, and they both knew it. 'This is blackmail, you know.'
'This is common sense,' she corrected him. 'The right person for the job, remember?' She smiled faintly. 'Or do you need another lecture on that topic?'
