to kill me more than anything else in the galaxy.'
'I was young then,' Mara said briefly, shifting her light away. 'So where's this opening?'
'Right there,' Luke said, returning his glow rod beam to a crumpled-looking section of wall just below the ceiling. In the center of the light was a small open area that seemed to vanish into the darkness beyond.
'I see it,' Mara said. There didn't seem to be any air coming from it; there must be some other blockage farther down the line. 'Looks cozy.'
'Not for long,' Luke said, handing her his glow rod and igniting his lightsaber. 'Everyone stay back—this'll probably throw rock chips around.' He swung the blade into the wall, slicing into the stone—
And with a sputter of green light, the blade vanished.
Artoo screeched, and Mara caught the flash of astonishment from Luke as he stumbled briefly before catching his balance. 'What happened?' she demanded.
'I don't know,' he said, holding the weapon up close and looking obliquely into the end. 'I thought I had it locked on... let me try it again.'
He touched the switch, and with its usual
And once again, the blade cut only a little ways into the rock before sputtering away. One of the Qom Jha fluttered his wings and said something. 'Yes,' Luke said, and Mara could feel the sudden ugly suspicion in his mind as distant memories drifted up.
'Yes what?' she demanded.
'There must be cortosis ore in this rock,' he told her. He held his glow rod up to the rock face, the light dancing off tiny sparkles.
Mara shook her head. 'Never heard of it.'
'It's apparently fairly rare,' Luke said. 'All I really know about it is that it shuts down lightsabers. Corran and I ran into some Force-users once who'd made sets of body armor out of woven cortosis fibers. It was quite a surprise.'
'I'll bet,' Mara said, a memory of her own drifting up. 'So that's what the slab of rock was Palpatine had between the double walls of his private residence.'
Luke lifted an eyebrow. 'He had cortosis ore around his residence?'
'And around some of his other offices and throne rooms, too, I think,' Mara said. 'I never knew the proper name for the stuff. From what he told me, I gather that if your lightsaber has dimetris circuits anywhere in the activation loop, hitting the rock starts a feedback crash running through the system that takes only a fraction of a second to shut the whole thing down. A little something extra to slow down any stray Jedi who might come after him.'
'The things you learn as Emperor's Hand,' Luke murmured. 'Do you know if there's any way to cut it?'
'Oh, sure—hundreds of them,' Mara assured him, slipping her pack onto the ground. 'Aside from the lightsaber thing, the stuff's basically useless. It's too weak and crumbly to build with—a good blaster carbine bolt will shatter it. Let me see—ah.'
She pulled out one of the grenades Karrde had sent and shined her glow rod on the yield number.
'Yes, this ought to work if you want to try it.'
One of the Qom Jha put in another comment. 'Keeper Of Promises thinks grenades would be a bad idea,' Luke translated. 'He says we're not that far from the High Tower itself, and that sound carries pretty far underground.'
'He's probably right,' Mara conceded, putting the grenade away and studying the rock where Luke had been cutting. 'On the other hand, you're only getting a few centimeters at a time this way. Extra noise or extra delay. Your pick.'
Luke ran a hand thoughtfully across the rock, and Mara could sense his concentration as he stretched out to the Force. 'Let's try it with the lightsabers for a while,' he suggested slowly. 'At least a couple of hours. That should give us a better estimate of how long it's actually going to take.'
'Fine,' Mara said. 'We can always switch to the grenades if we decide it's going too slow.' She played her glow rod over the rock. 'So along with caverns full of predators, we now have a wall that blocks lightsabers. How convenient for someone.'
