Mace approached. They clutched their brooms possessively, adjusted the kerchiefs that bound whatever thin hair they may have had left, and watched him in silence.
One of them spat near his feet as he passed.
Instead of responding, he stopped. Now off the main streets and away from the constant rumble of voice, foot, and wheel, he could hear a new sound in the morning, faint but crisp: a thin, sharp hum that pulsed irregularly, bobbing like a cup on a lazy sea.
Repulsorlift engine. Maybe more than one.
Echoes along the building-lined street made the sound come from everywhere. But it wasn't getting louder. And when he got another Force-nudge from Smiley up the street and moved on, it didn't get fainter, either.
On the opposite sides of the buildings around, he thought. Pacing me.
Maybe swoops. Maybe speeder bikes. Not a landspeeder: a land-speeder's repulsorlifts hummed a single note. They didn't pulse as the vehicle bobbed.
This was starting to come into focus.
He followed Smiley through a maze of streets that twisted and forked. Some were loud and thronged; most were quiet, giving out no more than muttered conversation and the thutter of polymer cycle tires. Rooftops leaned overhead, upper floors reaching for each other, eclipsing the morning into one thin jag of blue above permanent twilight.
The twisting streets became tangled alleys. One more corner, and Smiley was gone.
Mace found himself in a tiny, enclosed courtyard maybe five meters square. Nothing within but massive trash bins overflowing with garbage. Trash chutes veined the blank faces of buildings around; the lowest windows were ten meters up and webbed with wire. High above on the rim of a rooftop, Mace's keen eyes picked out a scar of cleaner brick: Smiley must have gone fast up a rope, and pulled it up behind him, leaving no way for Mace to follow.
In some languages, a place like this was called a dead end.
A perfect place for a trap.
Mace thought, Finally.
He'd begun to wonder if they'd changed their minds.
He stood in the courtyard, his back to the straight length of alley, and opened his mind.
In the Force, they felt like energy fields.
Four spheres of cautious malice layered with anticipated thrill: expecting a successful hunt, but taking no chances. Two hung back at the far mouth of the alley, to provide cover and reserves. The other two advanced silently with weapons leveled, going for the point-blank shot.
Mace could feel the aim points of their weapons skittering hotly across his skin like Aridusian lava beetles under his clothes.
The repulsorlift hum sharpened and took on a direction: above to either side. Speeder bikes, he guessed. His Force perception ex panded to take them in as well: he felt the heightened threat of powerful weapons overhead, and swoops were rarely armed. One rider each. Out of sight over the rims of the buildings, they circled into position to provide crossing fire.
This was about to get interesting.
Mace felt only a warm anticipation. After a day of uncertainty and pretense, of holding on to his cover and offering bribes and letting thugs walk free, he was looking forward to doing a little straightforward, uncomplicated buttwhipping.
But then he caught the tone of his own thoughts, and he sighed.
No Jedi was perfect. All had flaws against which they struggled every day. Mace's few personal flaws were well known to every Jedi of his close acquaintance; he made no secret of them. On the contrary: it was part of Mace's particular greatness that he could freely acknowledge his weaknesses, and was not afraid to ask for help in dealing with them.
His applicable flaw, here: he liked to fight. This, in a Jedi, was especially dangerous.
And Mace was an especially dangerous Jedi.
With rigorous mental discipline, he squashed his anticipation and decided to parley. Talking them out of attacking might save their lives. And they seemed to be professionals; perhaps he could simply pay for the information he wanted.
Instead of beating it out of them.
As he reached his decision, the men behind him reached their range. Professionals indeed: without a word, they leveled their weapons, and twin packets of galvenned plasma streaked at his spine.
In even the best-trained human shooter there is at least a quarter-second delay between the decision to fire and the squeeze on the trigger. Deep in the Force, Mace could feel their decision even before it was made: an echo from his future.
Before their fingers could so much as twitch, he was moving.
By the time the blaster bolts were a quarter of the way there, Mace had whirled, the speed of his spin opening his vest. By the time the bolts were halfway there, the Force had snapped his lightsaber into his palm. At three-quarters, his blade extended, and when the blaster bolts reached him they met not flesh and bone but a meter-long continuous cascade of vivid purple energy.
Mace reflexively slapped the bolts back at the shooters-but instead of rebounding from his blade, the bolts splattered through it and grazed his ribs and burst against a trash bin behind him so that it boomed and bucked and shivered like a cracked bell.
