He can use the force to increase the intensity of his blade

A boom on the hatch they'd entered through indicated the use of some kind of ram, but the door did not give way. Another boom and still it held.

"Drim?" she called.

"I don't hear anything out here," he said, indicating the other hatch. "But then I'm not sure I would. The door's thick, Isval."

"All right, then," she said. "Let's go."

"And quickly," Eshgo added.

Isval slung Grolt's body over her shoulder, grunting under the burden, and hustled up the stairs to join her team.



* * *



Vader rushed through the ship, his anger going before him and parting the crew that otherwise choked the halls. He reached the hatch to the hyperdrive chamber. Four dead stormtroopers lay on the deck, and another group of stormtroopers and armed security personnel used a portable grav-ram in an attempt to force open the hatch. The control panel and door switch were dead, probably sabotaged from the other side.

The corporal in charge of the security team saw Vader approach and stepped out to meet him. Meanwhile, the ram powered up with a hum and slammed into the hatch, doing nothing.

"Lord Vader," the corporal said. "The door's been secured from the inside and the switch has been disabled. There's only one other way into the chamber and I've sent a team around-"

Vader ignited his lightsaber.

"Move," he said, not slowing, and the security personnel and stormtroopers nearly tripped over themselves as they scrambled out of his way.

He took his lightsaber in a two-handed grip, channeled the Force, channeled his rage, and slammed the blade into the hatch. It sank an arm's span into the metal. The heat from the weapon made a red-hot circle in the hatch around the blade. Vader held on to the hilt and poured in his power. The metal started to surrender to the heat of his weapon, the heat of his wrath.

He would cut through the hatch within a sixty count, and then the traitors would be his.



* * *



A sizzle from the direction of the hatch through which they'd first entered turned all their heads. The hatch was reddening with heat, at first a small circle, but expanding.

They were cutting their way in.

Isval cursed.

The circle expanded. Smoke poured off the door as whatever tool they were using to cut started to slag the metal.

"Nothing should be able to cut through that door," Eshgo said.

Isval consulted the map in her head and formulated a way back to their ship. It seemed a parsec away, given the challenges that stood between them and it. She wasn't sure they had enough time.

Behind them, the glowing red tip of a line of energy poked through the hatch. Isval recognized it: the blade of a lightsaber. Vader was out there, the Vader who'd wiped out Pok's entire crew single-handedly. The realization at once thrilled and terrified her. She thought of Pok's face, of vengeance, but Eshgo's voice brought her back.

"Isval, we need to leave!"

She blinked, nodded.

"Open it," she said to Drim, and everyone on the team took their positions, weapons ready, as the hatch parted along its seam.



* * *



Melted metal pooled on the floor near Vader's boots, bubbling and smoking, as his lightsaber bored through the hatch. He felt the fear of the traitors in the hyperdrive chamber. No doubt they'd seen his lightsaber, and they knew he was coming. They were right to fear. And their fear fed his anger. The steady rhythm of his respirator tolled the passage of time, the moments remaining to the traitors before he had them.

"Tell your team the traitors are to be taken alive," Vader said to the corporal. "Their final disposition is to be left to me."

"Yes, Lord Vader."



* * *



The hatch yawned open. There was no one there.

Isval realized she'd been holding her breath. Everyone else must have been, too, for they exhaled as one.

"Eshgo, Drim, Crost, you're in the pallet," she snapped. "Weapons hot."

"And try not to shoot each other," Eshgo said as Drim and Crost piled into two of the pallet's tool compartments. "Gonna be close," he added to Isval.

She knew. To Faylin, she said, "You're driving, Fay."

"And you?" Faylin asked while Eshgo contorted himself into the last compartment.

"I'm wounded or dead," Isval said. "I'll lie on top. Your backup if you need it. Cover me with Grolt."

Faylin wrinkled her nose but nodded.

Isval activated her comm and reached out to the decoy teams. "Ship is hot and set for half an hour. If you can, get off now."

She got no response.

"Anyone copy?"

Nothing. She didn't dwell on what it must mean. She had no time to dwell on anything. The opposite door was melting. Vader was coming.

She lay atop the pallet and Faylin covered her with Grolt's body, arranging him such that her head was hard to see. Faylin put Grolt's hat over Isval's head, also helping to hide her lekku.

"Anybody looks hard at us, they'll notice you," Faylin said. "Nix that. They won't even have to look hard, just look at all."

Isval knew, but the pallet couldn't hold her inside, too. Covering herself in a corpse was her only play.

"Just move fast," she said.

"Count on that," Faylin said.

Behind them, Isval could hear metal dripping from the door that Vader was cutting through, hitting the floor in sizzling dollops. She could hear voices through the small hole Vader had already cut. She resisted the urge to run across the chamber, stick the barrel of her blaster in the hole, and start firing blind. She needed to get her team out even more than she needed to kill Vader. The Imperials would be through in moments, and they'd see the explosive charges.

An idea struck her.

She was thinking through her exit. Cham would have smiled.

"Faylin, get us out of here, into a side hall, and wait."

"Wait? Isval, we only have half an hour."

"I know, but do it."

"Isval..."

"Just do it!"

"You sure?" Eshgo said, from inside the pallet.

"He asks that again and you can shoot him, Drim," Isval said.

Drim chuckled, and Faylin steered the pallet out into the network of halls that connected the hyperdrive chamber to one of the Star Destroyer's main corridors. Isval, covered in a corpse, breathed into Grolt's neck. She had to fight down a wave of sickness.

Before they'd gone ten meters, she realized she'd forgotten something and cursed.

"What?" Faylin asked, alarmed. "What is it?"

"Nothing. Nothing."

But it wasn't nothing. In the rush, she'd neglected to destroy the mechanism that would have sealed the hatch behind them. Once Vader cut his way through the first hatch, there was nothing to slow his pursuit.

"Which hall?" Faylin said.

"Just pick one!" Isval said.

But Faylin seemed paralyzed with indecision. From somewhere ahead they heard the heavy tread of boots-stormtrooper boots.

"That one," Isval hissed. "Right there. Just get us out of the hall."

The boots grew louder, the murmur of voices. Isval felt Eshgo, Drim, and Crost shifting their weight inside the pallet, no doubt trying to position themselves to fire should things go bad.

Faylin turned the pallet down a narrow maintenance hall. The overhead lights were flickering like strobes.

They waited there in silence as the voices and boots got louder. After a few seconds, a group of stormtroopers and security personnel ran past in the direction of the hyperdrive chamber.

When they were gone, Isval said, "Get us a little closer to the main corridor, then park it again."

"What are you waiting on?" Eshgo said, his voice muffled through the sides of the pallet. "This is our chance."

"No it's not," Isval said. "Not quite yet."

Careful not to dislodge Grolt's body, she twisted her head and moved her arm slightly to check the timepiece she wore on her wrist. Thirty-two minutes.



* * *



Vader's blade soon cut a large enough hole in the hatch. A circular portion of the door fell to the floor with a clang and he ducked through, the stormtroopers following him through the breach.

The traitors were gone, having fled out the door opposite. Dead Imperials lay all around the hyperdrive chamber, several of them missing pieces of their uniform, but the hyperdrive itself seemed intact.