Vision of the future

'I agree,' he said, returning his lightsaber to his belt and stepping over to the shrunken collection of items that had been his pack before the fire creepers had gotten to it. Aside from the food bars in their metal case, the spare blaster power packs and glow rods, and some of the syntherope, there wasn't much left. The bedrolls, survival tent, medpacs, even the detonator casings on the grenades had all been ravaged into useless shreds. 'I guess we just take whatever we can salvage of this stuff?'

'That's what I'm doing,' Mara said. She had one of her ration boxes open and was sorting out the bars between the various pockets in her jumpsuit. 'Soldiers' first rule: concentrate on the food.'

'Understood,' Luke said, starting to fill his own pockets. Artoo rolled unsteadily up to him on the uneven ground and with a beep of invitation slid open the hidden compartment in his dome. 'I'm putting what's left of the syntherope in Artoo,' Luke called to Mara, stuffing the coil into the compartment. 'In case you need it.'

'Fine,' Mara said. 'I'm ready.'

'Me, too,' Luke said, gazing into the darkness. 'You want to stay with the same marching order?'

'You mean with you in front and me behind handling the luggage?' Mara asked, nodding toward Artoo.

Luke felt his face warming. 'I meant—'

'I know what you meant,' Mara said, giving him a wry smile. 'But you're the Jedi; and if there's anything in there with big teeth, you've got the best chance of toasting it before it draws blood. So. After you.'

Luke looked up at the waiting Qom Jha. 'Sure,' he said, shifting his glow rod to his left hand and drawing his lightsaber. 'We're ready, Splitter Of Stones.'

Follow me, the Qom Jha said, dropping off the ceiling and fluttering into the darkness. It was quickly evident that their route wasn't so much a passageway as it was a narrow, V-shaped crack in the rock. Within the first three steps Luke was forced to return his lightsaber to his belt and wedge his glow rod into his tunic to free up his hands to help pull himself along. Behind him he could hear Artoo's continuous nervous twittering and the occasional muted thunk where Mara bumped him into one of the side walls.

Each time that happened, he had to fight back the impulse to offer his help. If Mara needed him, she would ask. Probably.

Fortunately, the crack was only no more than three meters long, with a yellowish wall blocking the far end. This is the way inside, Splitter Of Stones said from a perch at a small gap that broached the yellow wall near the top. Beyond this wall is the High Tower.

'I'd say we're here,' Mara commented. 'That wall's definitely artificial.'

'Agreed,' Luke said, wedging himself into a more or less steady position in front of the wall and drawing his lightsaber. 'You and Artoo keep back.'

The wall was quite thin and, more importantly, not made of cortosis ore. Three quick slices of the green blade, and they had their entrance.

Luke dropped through the opening, lightsaber and Jedi senses at the ready. Beyond the wall was a dark, high- ceilinged room, incredibly dusty, that extended out beyond the range of his glow rod beam. Spaced along the walls at two different heights were elaborately tooled wall sconces that looked like they had once held torches or torchlike lights. Above the sconces, at perhaps a dozen other points around the room, other gaps showed where sections of the yellow wall had crumbled away from the ceiling. Aside from the sconces, there were no other decorations or furnishings.

'Doesn't look like Hijarna,' Mara muttered from behind him, waving her own glow rod around.

'What?' Luke asked.

'There's a ruined fortress on the planet Hijarna,' she explained. 'Karrde sometimes uses it as a meeting place.'

'Yes, he said something about that when I saw him on Cejansij,' Luke said. 'He said if this fortress was like that one it could probably shrug off any attack he could throw at it.'

'Him, or the New Republic in general,' Mara said grimly. 'The Hijarna fortress was made of some incredibly hard black stone that could eat massed turbolaser fire for breakfast.' She gestured with her glow rod. 'My first look at the High Tower from outside the cave mouth reminded me of that one. But the wall material here isn't anything like it.' Artoo whistled, his sensor unit extended and rotating back and forth as if searching for something.

'That doesn't necessarily mean anything,' Luke pointed out, squatting down in front of the droid and peering at the datapad they'd rigged up to serve as translator for his more complicated comments.

'They could have been built by two different groups of the same people.'