Vision of the future

'In which case, that much noise implies there must be one blazing lot of them on the way,' Mara concluded grimly, looking around. 'I get the very bad feeling we're about to meet a new species of roverines.'

Luke shivered. He'd seen holovids of those infamous insect predators on their annual march across the Davirien jungles. Roverines traveled in swarms of hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions, literally stripping the landscape of every bit of plant life as they passed over it. Plant life, and any animals that were too slow or too sick to get out of their way, eating such stragglers down to polished bone. 'Builder With Vines, how fast do they travel?' he called.

'Too fast,' Mara snapped before the Qom Jha could answer. 'Look—here they come.' Luke caught his breath. Ahead, just at the farthest spot the glow rod beam could reach, the front edge of a pulsating sheet of black had appeared, filling the entire floor and spilling perhaps a meter up the walls as well. Even as he watched, the edge flowed like some viscous liquid into a slight dip in the floor, reappearing as it flowed up again over the lip.

And Mara was right. They were coming far too fast.

'I'd say we've got maybe a minute before they get here,' Mara said. 'If you've got any clever tricks up your sleeve, this is the time to trot them out.'

Luke bit at his lip, his mind racing. There was a way, he knew, to use the Force to create a low-level personal shield. But to maintain the shield long enough, especially against so many individual adversaries, would be practically impossible. Besides, it was doubtful he could also shield Mara that way, and she almost certainly didn't know the technique herself. Using the Force to move each individual fire creeper out of the way as they passed would be an equally impossible task, even with Mara working alongside of him.

And if these insects were anything like Davirien roverines, it would only take one of them getting through and sinking a poisoned stinger to shake their control and alert the rest of the swarm to the presence of food. No, their only hope was to stay out of the fire creepers' way entirely. Either somewhere farther down the tunnel, or else—

'The archway,' Mara said suddenly. 'We'll need footrests about two meters up—'

'Right,' Luke said, igniting his lightsaber and stepping into the opening as he measured the distance with his eyes. Yes, it would just work.

Assuming they had enough time to make the necessary preparations. 'Artoo, close down all your openings,' he called as he swung the tip of the brilliant green blade horizontally into the inner edge of the archway's side pillar half a meter above his head. If the cortosis ore extended this far out from the passageway wall...

Fortunately, it didn't. His lightsaber blade sliced cleanly inward a few centimeters into the rock, without a hint of trouble. 'Child Of Winds, get to that opening up there,' he called as he got a Force grip on the lightsaber and lifted it up to the rock over the cut he'd just made. 'Find a place to hang on and stay there.'

What about you, Jedi Sky Walker? the young Qom Qae asked anxiously, the fluttering of his wings nearly drowned out by the hum of the two lightsabers. How will you protect yourselves?

'You'll see,' Luke assured him. He brought the lightsaber blade down at a not-quite-vertical angle, slicing out a rough wedge of stone and leaving behind a shallow horizontal ledge in the inner edge of the archway. The rustling of the approaching fire creepers was growing steadily louder.

'Mara?'

'I'm finished,' Mara called over the noise, the blue-white glow reflected from behind him vanishing as she shut down her lightsaber. 'We've got maybe twenty seconds.' Luke looked down the tunnel as he pulled his lightsaber back to his hand. The leading edge of the swarm was barely five meters away, the entire passageway behind them absolutely black with the insects. 'I'm ready,' he told her, shutting down the weapon and returning it to his belt. 'On three?'

'On three,' Mara said.

Luke took half a step backward, and for a moment his back pressed against Mara's as they each gauged the distances and stretched out in their own ways to the Force. 'On three,' Luke repeated, trying to ignore the sound that seemed to fill the entire passageway. Across by one wall, Artoo moaned with fear. 'One, two, three.'

He jumped upward toward his footrest, turning his body halfway around as he did so and hoping belatedly that the arc of his leap wouldn't be high enough to crack his head against the curved rock above him. As he came around to face the center of the archway he caught sight of Mara, also in midair with her back to the rock, starting to come down toward her own newly carved footrest. Her arms were stretched toward him, palms outward, as if she were reaching out to push him away. Luke got his own arms up, palms similarly outward, as their heels came thunking solidly down onto their footrests. Their palms met, their fingers intertwined—

Mara took a deep breath, exhaling it in a rush just audible above the noise of the fire creepers now swarming through the passageway beneath their feet. 'I'll be Kesseled,' she said. 'It worked.' Luke nodded, taking a deep breath of his own. With their feet resting on the cutouts they'd made, their arms stretched rigidly out and their hands clasped to brace and support one another, they had in effect become a living archway within the stone one. And as long as they stayed that way, they would remain safe above the flow of insects.