(previously on 'Road Movie to Naboo')

        "Is anybody -listening- up there?" one voice shouted into the
clear.  "This is Colonel D'arcy!  We have taken thirty percent
casualties!  Two-thirds of our shuttles are down!  None of our weapons
can so much as scratch their Destroid!  They are counterattacking with
weapons we can't even identify!  Scrub this mission and get my men the
hell OUT!"
        "Turn it off," Tsonis snapped disgustedly.  "Lieutenant
Caspar, align weapons for surface bombardment."
        "Sir?" Caspar asked in shock.  As accurate and potent as
phaser fire was, it degraded badly in orbital bombardment.  Firing on
the island would, beyond all doubt, take out a large number of the
Marines as well... and photon torpedoes were strictly prohibited for
surface fire, period.
        "In the American Revolution, on Earth, there was a battle in
which the armies of the two sides were so closely engaged that neither
side's generals could exercise any control over the troops," Tsonis
informed him.  "The British won the day by firing their cannon into
the mass of intermingled soldiers to force them apart.  The victory
justified the deaths of friendly troops."
        He pointed to the now-silent viewscreen and said, "Our ship's
guns can take out that Destroid.  No armor can withstand a sustained
phaser bombardment.  We may lose some of our troops in the
blasts... but all of -theirs- will be killed.  Now prepare to fire,"
Tsonis hissed, "or prepare to be part of the collateral damage."


                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

                              presents:

                UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT
                    -=WARRIORS OF THE OUTER RIM=-

                         Road Movie to Naboo
                           Part 4: Balance

                         Benjamin D. Hutchins
                           Kris Overstreet

         with the invaluable assistance of the Usual Suspects
                    and thanks to all the sources

                (c) 2002 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


        The intercom panel on Tsonis's command chair arm clicked
online of its own accord, and the voice of Acting President Palpatine
sliced keenly through the tension-filled air of the bridge.
        "Belay that weapons order, Captain Tsonis," said Palpatine
calmly.
        Tsonis blinked, reddening visibly with anger at being
countermanded in front of his bridge crew, but his voice was
controlled as he replied, "With respect, Mr. President - "
        "Come to my ready room," Palpatine interrupted, his voice
still as calm as could be.  "We will discuss the matter privately."
        When Tsonis had entered the Acting President's office and the
door had closed behind him, Palpatine smiled thinly, put his folded
hands on his desk, and informed the captain conversationally, "I want
Queen Amidala alive, Captain, not disintegrated.  If your forces
cannot take her on the Forbidden Island, then I can wait until she
returns to the capital."
        Tsonis blinked in astonishment.  "What makes you think she - "
        Palpatine smiled with benevolent patience.  "Come, Captain.
Amidala did not brave the Forbidden Island for her health.  If she
wished to elude us, she would have remained at sea."  His tone still
conversational, not accusatory in the least, he went on, "Tell me -
just -why- are your forces having such difficulty capturing her?"
        Tsonis was unable to keep his frustrated anger out of his
voice as he snapped, "Well, for a start, your pet madman switched
sides, and spaced half my security staff on his way out."
        The Acting President nodded thoughtfully, though Tsonis
noticed he didn't look surprised.  "So," murmured Palpatine, as if to
himself.  "Lord Vader has betrayed me."
        "Indeed he has," replied Roman Tsonis, his annoyance plain to
see.  "What's more, Queen Amidala's expedition to the Forbidden Island
has obviously borne fruit.  We don't have any information on -what-
they found there, but it was sufficient to help them destroy the
strike force that we sent after them.  They'll be on their way by now,
invisible again on the open water."
        Palpatine frowned.  "This business with Lord Vader disappoints
me.  Either his eons in suspended animation have degraded his resolve,
or he seeks to thwart me because he resents my claim to the Lordship
of the Sith.  Either way, much as I regret it, he must be destroyed.
Has he rendezvoused with the Queen's party?"
        "No," Tsonis replied.  "His ship has some sort of cloak.  It
vanished as soon as it was done strafing the Nestor."
        "What is he up to?" wondered Palpatine irritably.  "No
matter.  I shall dispatch my apprentices to the surface.  They will
deal with whatever weapon the Naboo have wrested from the Forbidden
Island."
        "Three warriors against a weapon that destroyed an Earthforce
Marine Corps division?"
        "The Sith have overcome the weapons of Mandalor before,"
Palpatine growled.  "If necessary they will do so again.  Don't look
so surprised, Captain.  Of course it was Mandalor that left the stamp
of ancient warfare on this planet.  That war, like so many the
Mandalorians fought, is forgotten now - except to me.  It was a defeat
that paved the way for the end of them."  Palpatine smiled as if
savoring a personal memory.  "A defeat meted out by the Sith.  History
shall repeat itself upon Naboo, Captain."
        Tsonis hated it when he lost the thread of the Acting
President's conversations with him, and wished it wouldn't happen
quite so often.  He nodded stiffly and took his leave.
        Palpatine shook his head.  Tsonis fancied himself a man of
power, but he was really just a petty tyrant, using a talent bestowed
on him by genetic aberration to terrorize his subordinates and
believing it made him superior.  He was useful, certainly, but
Palpatine had yet to meet a telepath who did not disappoint him.  He'd
had much higher hopes for them when he'd arranged the founding of the
Psi Corps for their concentration and study.
        He sighed.  One of his two misjudgments, he concluded.  Once
his second was dealt with - once Lord Vader had been destroyed - he
would have to set about seeing what he could do to mend the first.

        Corwin, the Jedi, Achika, the Queen and her Protectors had the
whole run back to Theed to plan the counterattack, and the time and
their own collective skill paid off.  In its early stages, the battle
to retake the Naboo capital could not possibly have gone better.
        After a precautionary rewinding by Corwin, Ifurita went ahead,
clearing the docks of guards and forcing several platoons' worth of
Earthforce Marines into full flight.  Following behind, more quietly
and cautiously, came the others, Panaka, his guards, and Ric Olie in
the lead, then the Queen and her handmaidens, then Corwin, Achika, Len
and Emmy.  When starfighters and troop transports appeared overhead,
attempting to slow Ifurita's onslaught, they were met by a roar of
draconic fury and blasts of ice from above.  Between Ifurita and Nall,
the party storming the palace had plenty of air cover.
        None of the Earthforce troopers paid any attention to the
group until they entered the palace's hangar bay itself.  The squad
detailed as guards fell quickly to the Protectors, and a second squad
from within the palace found their plasma bolts bounced back at them by
Jedi lightsabers.  With these defenders dealt with, the group paused
to plan their next move.
        The ships in the hangar had not been tampered with, for the
most part.  The native-built starfighters, sleek and deadly-looking in
their livery of gold and chrome, hadn't been touched at all; instead,
the occupiers had merely placed restraining bolts on the row of R2
astromech units sitting in their charging racks along one wall.  A
sweep of a lightsaber blade freed one droid, a blue and silver one,
who came to life with a perky chirp and whistle.
        "We need information on where the occupiers are," Amidala
said.  "Padme, ask this droid to interface with the palace computers.
We seek the location of the occupation force commander, Senator
Palpatine, and the prisoners they hold here."
        The droid blatted its derision at taking an order indirectly,
then trundled over to a nearby computer interface.  A quick plug and
query later, the droid's little holoprojector displayed plans of the
palace with descriptions of the occupation force's deployment.
        "Here," Panaka said, indicating a path through the service
corridors of the palace.  "We can evade the patrols almost all the way
to the throne room.  According to this, a Captain Tsonis commands the
occupiers from the antechamber there.  Palpatine will probably be with
him, or he knows where he is."
        "Very good," Amidala nodded.  "Let us proceed at once."
        With thanks to the droid, the group moved towards the lift
doors which would take them down to the service corridors marked.
With every step, Len and Emmy felt more anxious, sensing a presence
lurking within the lift itself.  Suddenly, without any warning, the
two broke into a run and dashed in front of the group, signaling them
to stop...
        ... just as the doors of the lift opened, revealing a slim
figure in the black-on-black robes of the Sith, his tattooed skull
bare except for a scattering of small horns around the scalp.  With a
hiss his lightsaber came to life, and after a long, penetrating look
into the eyes of the two Jedi, he lunged to the attack.  Instantly
Len's saber was active and blocking the Sith's repeated blows, and the
two danced a reel of death in front of the lifts.
        "Get them out of here!" Len shouted, unable to look away from
his opponent, each warrior using the Force to speed his blows home.
        "Like hell!" Achika shouted, shoving Emmy aside as she brought
her own blade to silent awakening.  With a battle-cry she swept her
sword around to attack the Sith from behind, but her blow was
deflected by a -second- blade emerging from the other end of the
Sith's swordhilt, and he danced fluidly between them both, knocking
away their blows with his saber-staff.
        Not pausing to watch, Emmy turned and gestured to the Queen's
retinue.  "Get moving!" she shouted over the sounds of clashing
sabers.  "We'll find another way down!"  With Corwin's help she got
Panaka's guards and the Queen and her handmaids moving down a side
corridor, and side by side with Corwin they guarded the rear until
Len, Achika and the Sith were lost from sight.

        Ifurita hovered over the city of Theed, having limited her
attacks on the Earthforce Marines to herding most of their forces out
of the city.  With collateral damage kept to a minimum, she could
focus her efforts on the regrouping force assembling on the broad
savannah and rolling hills just outside the city walls.
        That force, despite her efforts in Theed, posed a significant
threat.  Hovertanks rode between ranks upon ranks of armored troopers,
phaser rifles held at the ready.  Assault shuttles and troop transports 
landed, unloading fresh reinforcements.  This force, assembled, 
organized,  and led by professionals, could definitely cause problems...
        ... that is, for anyone other than a Great Dragon and an
ultimate weapon created by an ancient civilization not known for
making penultimate weapons.
        "Well, whaddaya think?" Nall inquired from his perch on her
shoulder.  "I think we can take 'em."
        "Ion storm," Ifurita murmured, ignoring him as she brought her
staff forward and discharged a yellow-white ball of flame from the
tip.  The ball grew as it fell to the ground, smashing into a double
row of hovertanks, sending static discharges across their armor as
they dropped, powerless, onto the grass.  Armored troopers froze in
place, caught in the blast, their powered armor frozen.
        "Not bad," Nall remarked.
        Switching her aim, Ifurita said, "Gale," and scattered the
swarm of hovering transports with a focused blast of air.
        "I can do that," said Nall, less impressed.
        Ifurita went on ignoring him.  "Neutron ram," she called,
sending blasts of highly accelerated subatomic particles through the
assembled marines.  The neatly assembled rows of troops scattered,
many lying dead, wounded, or stunned across the field as the rest
broke and ran.
        "... OK, that's different," Nall conceded.
        A handful of troopers attempted to return fire, and Ifurita
began swooping through the remaining ranks, breaking up clusters and
dodging fire effortlessly.
        Blue flickers through the routed soldiers caught Ifurita's
attention.  One by one, six by six, the marines were vanishing in
showers of blue-white light.
        "I guess they've had enough," Nall noted.
        Ifurita spared a fraction of her concentration to track the
energy flow from the ground up into orbit, to the dozens of warships
in orbit above the planet.
        Her orders were to attack the occupation forces and provide a
diversion for the Keyholder and his allies.
        "That's cool with me," Nall continued, stretching.  "I didn't
even have to - hey!"
        Without comment or ceremony of any kind, Ifurita reached up,
plucked him from her shoulder, and dropped him.  Before he finished
catching himself with his wings and protesting, she vanished in a blur
of motion, accelerating to orbital velocity, determined to fulfill
those orders far beyond Corwin's actual conception.
        "We've -really- got to work on your people skills, honeypie!"
Nall shouted after her.  Then, surveying the abandoned battlefield, he
sighed and decided to head back to the palace and see what was going
on there.  He just wished it wasn't such a long flight back... 

        The royal party was making its way through an access corridor
behind the library when the next one came.  Emmy sensed him a moment
before he burst out of a side passage - little more than a ventilation
duct, really - and cut down one of the Queen's Protectors with a
startling yell and a flash of blue-white light.  The Hyelian reacted
instantly, too late to save Teneman but in time to prevent the
attacker from doing further damage to the column.  His next strike,
intended for Captain Panaka, instead stopped in the V formed by her
crossed shortsabers.
        "Keep moving!" Emmy barked to the group behind her, and she
paid them no further attention after that.  She and her opponent
regarded each other through the brilliant convergence of their
weapons for a few seconds before Emmy mustered strength and heaved him
off.  She was between him and the retreating backs of the Queen's
party now.  He'd have to get past her to do them any further harm.
        He was a tall, thin human with a gaunt, scarred face and
half-hooded eyes that made him look sleepy.  The rest of his
expression seemed vaguely amused as he brushed back his black velvet
cloak and raised his lightsaber into an en-garde position.
        "Well, well," he said, his voice quiet and mellow, "what have
we here?  A little elven Jedi, my my."  He chuckled and said in a
confidential tone, "How Maul will envy me.  Barging off to the hangar
like that, sure he would seize the greatest prize by striking first."
He smiled; it was not a nice look in the first place, and the scar and
the jagged shadows cast by his lightsaber's glow made it that much
worse as he added, "You will be Darth Blade's proof of the value of
patience.  This will be a great deal more fun than looking for some
mythical Mandalorian weapon."
        Then he attacked.  He was fast, and strong, but the worst
thing about the situation from Emmy's point of view was the fact that
their current surroundings favored his fighting style.  He fought like
a fencer, holding his lightsaber in one hand, attacking along a
straight line.  Emmy's preferred style was more acrobatic, involving a
lot of maneuvering, and there simply wasn't room to maneuver in this
maintenance passageway.  All she could do was use her superior
reflexes to keep him at bay and look for an opportunity.
        As they fought, Blade's composure began to break down, and
Emmy realized that it was just a facade.  Her sensitivity to the Force
was primarily an immediate, local one, and through it she could feel
the madness surfacing in her opponent as he became more and more
pleased with the upper hand he held.  His little smile broadened, his
sleepy eyes opened fully and began to glitter with glee.  As he
riposted and attacked, he began to laugh and make little shouts of
mocking challenge.
        But under that amusement was a current of twisted, irrational
rage.  The man was angry, angry that she dared even oppose him, angry
that she was here at all.  He hated her just for being in his way,
hated her at the same time that he coveted her.
        This, Emmy realized, was the price the Dark Side extracted
from its followers.  This man's mind had bent almost double under the
weight of his evil; as his facade crumbled away and she saw ever
further into his psyche, she could feel it on the verge of breaking.
It both appalled and disgusted her, and she found herself wishing she
could tune it out.
        He slipped through her guard while she was having that
thought; she recoiled instinctively, guided by the Force, and the tip
of his blade just touched the point of her shoulder, filling her arm
with pain.  She forced it down, smoothed it over, and counterattacked;
he interposed his blade, there was a great sparking crash, and they
were several feet apart, Emmy's first breathing space of the duel.
        For just an instant, she thought she felt an odd vibration in
her right-hand saber, the one she'd used for that attack; but she
didn't have time to consider it long.  To capitalize on this
opportunity, she launched herself into a direct attack.
        Blade fell back, raising his hand, and lightning crackled from
it.  Emmy had heard of this technique - Master Yoda had even
demonstrated it - but it had never been used against her in battle
before.  She halted her attack and raised her sabers to block it.
        There was a bright flash, a loud BANG, and a terrible searing
pain in her right hand.  Gasping, she staggered back, looking down in
disbelief at the bloody, black-edged furrows crossing her right palm.
On the floor in front of her lay the smoking remains of one shortsaber.
        Darth Blade laughed a high, shrill laugh of triumph and said,
"Oh my!  It appears your saber construction skills aren't quite up to
snuff, my dear."
        Emmy regrouped, raised her remaining weapon, and fought down a
wave of nausea stemming from the pain in her hand.
        "I still have one left," she informed him.
        Blade grinned, his eyes shining dementedly.
        "Then come and use it, my dear, before I catch up to your
friends!" he cried, and then vanished up a side duct, his laughter
trailing behind him.
        "... Great," Emmy muttered; then she wrapped a bandage from
her utility belt around her hand and went after him.

        Corwin Ravenhair grumbled at himself.  Somehow, he'd managed
to get separated from the others just by pausing for a second to look
back and make sure Emmy didn't need any help - which was doubly
annoying because, by the time he did so, she wasn't visible anymore
either.  He'd never been all that good at mazes, and this palace's
service tunnels were that in spades.  He -thought- he was going the
right way, but on second thought, maybe he was up one elevation level
too many?
        He emerged through a powered access door onto a narrow
catwalk, which was more or less entirely not what he'd been expecting
to find.  This reinforced his suspicion; he had it reinforced a little
more when, looking down past the catwalk, he saw a large room full of
Earthforce troops - and the man in the lead of them was a Psi Cop.
        Good thing I'm a Lensman, Corwin thought as he dropped down to
the catwalk, peering over the edge.  Actually, now that he looked at
it, it wasn't a catwalk; it was a structural beam crossing the room on
its long axis, about fifty feet up from the floor.  Corwin kept low
and crossed until he was directly above the Psi Cop, then leaned out
again and watched.
        The door at the far end of the room opened and another person
in black entered.  For a second, Corwin figured him - no, wait, her -
for another Psi Cop, but then he noticed the more robelike cut of her
clothes.  Another Sith, then?  How many did they -have-, anyway?
        The woman - as she drew closer, Corwin saw that she was a
Minbari, bald-headed and bone-crested, her crest cut into the jagged
shape favored by the warrior caste - strode impatiently up to the Psi
Cop and demanded in lightly accented Standard,
        "Well, Captain Tsonis?"
        "Ah.  Kahm Talann.  I was wondering which of you he would
send.  Queen Amidala and her party are barricaded in the throne room,"
the Psi Cop informed her.  "They must have reached it through a
service tunnel before we could secure it.  I've tried to reach them on
the intercom system to demand their surrender, but they've turned it
off."
        Kahm Talann made an irritated noise.  "I'll root them out of
there," she snarled.  "Secure the perimeter out here and see that I am
not disturbed."
        Lady, thought Corwin with a grim smile, I think you're plenty
disturbed already.  Then he started making his way silently toward the
maintenance hatch at the far end of the beam, which, unless he missed
his guess, led into the rafters of the throne room.

        Leonard Hutchins was impressed.  He had been told, of course,
that the ancient Sith had been powerful warriors, highly trained in
the Jedi arts of combat and fueled by the Dark Side.  Still, he'd
never seen one - never really expected to see one - and so the sight
of this one in action was quite an eye-opening experience.  He'd never
seen one of those double sabers used in actual combat before, either;
Master Gajic owned one, which he used as a training aid, but they were
much too dangerous to the wielder for all but the most skillful to use
in real battle.
        This guy qualified.  He'd held Len and Achika both off all the
way from the hangar bay down to... wherever the hell they were now,
one of the machinery spaces underneath the palace.  No matter what
they tried, they just couldn't touch him.
        This was a silent conflict, except for the snapping bark of
lightsabers clashing and the grunts and hisses of people giving all
their athletic ability to their conflict.  That suited Leonard fine;
his concentration on the battle had to be absolute in order to keep up
with this joker.  He knew they would probably have been better off in
the long run had Emmy been the one to confront this man; she was the
better duelist of Aldous Gajic's ex-padawans.  The thought didn't
bother Len, since it was a simple truth, but all the same...
        "You're not - a very - conversational guy," Achika observed
between the clashes of blades.  For a moment, Len thought she was
talking to him, but a glance across the Sith Knight's shoulder showed
him that she was, in fact, addressing their opponent.
        It took a moment for that to sink into the Sith's horned head,
too; then he seemed to pause momentarily before thrusting out a hand
and hurling Len twenty feet down the corridor.
        I hate it when they do that, he grumbled to himself as he
picked himself up.
        In the meantime, the Sith turned and engaged Achika with his
whole attention, which was not the effect she'd really been aiming
for.  She held him off, scowling with concentration, but she still
managed to find enough breath to needle him some more.
        "What I mean is - where I come from - it's traditional - for
the bad guys - to make a little - speech before - the fight starts -
you know?  Introduce yourself - tell us - how bad you're - gonna whip
us - that kind - of stuff."
        The Sith snarled, baring black teeth, and pressed his attack.
Achika glanced over the intersection of her blade and the enemy's to
see Len rushing up; he would be rejoining the engagement momentarily.
        Wondering exactly where she got this tendency to be a smartass
in the middle of a fight, Achika decided it was almost certainly from
her father before remarking, "You might - at least - tell me your
name - buddy."
        The Sith whirled, trapped her blade, leaned down so that he
was almost nose to nose with her, and snarled in a guttural hiss,
"Maul."
        Then he lashed an elbow across her face, sending her careening
into the corridor wall.  Maul lunged forward, but Len arrived at that
moment, interposing his own saber and driving the Sith Knight back.
        Achika picked herself up, thumbed the smudge of blood from the
corner of her mouth, and smiled coldly as she brought her Jei blade
back into existence.
        "See, now, that's a lot more civil," she said sardonically.
"It's always better with introductions.  My name's Achika," she added
as she renewed the double engagement, "and this's Len."
        Len shook his head, a tiny smile touching his face.  Ah, the
Jyuraian royal courtesy... 

        Emmy walked with silent tread deeper into the bowels of the
palace, all her senses alert.  Her hand throbbed mercilessly where her
bursting lightsaber had gashed it.  She thrust the pain out of her
mind, tightened the bandage and continued on.  She could feel the Sith
Lord on the level below her.  He'd stopped moving while she was
distracted wrapping her hand... it was almost as if he was waiting for
her.
        She went down the stairs, past a couple of service conduits,
her attention focused on the presence awaiting her.  His aspect had
changed.  The anger she'd felt radiating from him earlier had cooled,
replaced by something that felt almost like curiosity - and yet his
power seemed to have increased immensely.  Had his gaining an
advantage increased Blade's confidence and power -that- much?  How was
that possible?  His aura had become deep and wide, black as night, and
all trace of Blade's mad wildness had fled.
        Emmy's eyes flew wide as she was struck by the sudden
realization that the man she was sensing was not Darth Blade.  She
didn't know who he was, but she suddenly knew that she'd been chasing
a stryy'dr, and cornered a G'grah instead - and a Hunter G'grah at
that.  Sensing the depth of this one's commitment to the Dark Side,
Emmy felt a cold touch of fear in her belly.
        She stopped, closed her eyes, and banished the fear.  That was
what the Sith wanted - for her to be afraid of him, to fight him
fueled by that fear.  She would not play into his hands.  She took her
remaining saber from her sleeve, held it in her good hand, and stepped
through the mist-shrouded doorway.
        The room beyond was circular and dark, lit only by the reddish
glow from the twenty or so vertical conduits ringing the room.  Pipes
and cables hung in loops from the high ceiling.  Emmy's bootheels rang
on the metal-grate floor.
        Standing in the center of the room, the lights on his chest
panel blinking eerily in the darkness, his masked face hidden in
shadow, was a figure out of Emmy's nightmares.  Over six feet tall, he
seemed to Emmy in that one frozen moment to be a great black monolith,
looming in the center of the chamber to an impossible height, as broad
as a seacliff, the rasping, malevolent hiss of his assisted breathing
echoing across the centuries.
        She'd seen a painting of him once in the ruins of the Jedi
Temple on Hyeruul.  She'd seen a vision of him the first time she'd
touched her ancestor O'bi-Wann's lightsaber.  Once, in a nightmarish
brush with the Dark Side in an icy crevasse on Halloran V, she'd faced
him blade to blade and been struck down, just as O'bi-Wann had been.
Master Gajic had said the hallucination was a metaphor for being so
fixated on the past as to be doomed to repeat it.
        But this was not a hallucination, or a vision, or an ancient,
faded painting on cracked plaster.  Darth Vader, ancient and infamous
Dark Lord of the Sith, was really standing in the center of this
power-station subchamber beneath the Royal Palace of Naboo.
        "I've been waiting for you, M'yl'ya," he intoned.  "We meet at
last."
        HE KNEW HER NAME!
        All her lofty thoughts about maintaining her calm and not
playing into the hands of the Sith were erased in a blinding white
rush of panic.  Darth Vader, here, now?!  It couldn't be!  Vader had
lived and died three thousand years before M'yl'ya Kyn'o'bi was born.
Even if it were possible, WHY would he be here?  He could only have
sought her out, sought out the last Jedi descendent of his old teacher
and nemesis O'bi-Wann Kyn'o'bi, sought her out to destroy her and end
the Jedi tradition of the Clan Kyn'o'bi forever - 
        "NO!" she screamed.  Her remaining shortsaber sprang to life
almost of its own accord; her mind a blur of terror, she reversed it
in her hand and leaped for Vader's face.
        The blow came so fast she never even saw the Sith Lord move, a
sudden smashing impact to the side of her face that deflected her away
from Vader and sent her crashing to the metal grating a quarter-dozen
meters away.  She rolled to her feet and attacked lower this time,
trying to put her blade through the life-support control panel on
Vader's chest.  This time Vader simply backed away, his movements
unbelievably fluid for a man whose body was as ravaged as the Sith
Lord's was supposed to be under his black insulated armor.  Emmy kept
coming and Vader kept going until she'd backed him to the wall.  Then
he stepped aside of her death-blow and let her drive her shortsaber
into the power conduit behind him.
        There was a brilliant flash of light and a deafening CRACK,
and Emmy's small form was catapulted back as if struck again.  She
crumpled where she landed, her whole body numbed by the shock.  An
angry burn smoked across the palm of what had been her good hand where
her second saber had all but vaporized.
        She remained there, huddled and shivering with shock, for
almost four full minutes, while Darth Vader stood motionless near the
broken conduit and watched her, utterly impassive.  He did not move in
to finish her off, though she was quite helpless and it would have
required very little effort on his part; nor did he attempt to help
her.  He simply stood and watched.
        Her mind came back before her body did.  With sudden lucidity,
she realized that she had given herself totally to her fear and hatred
of the ancient Sith Lord, come dangerously close to the Dark Side
herself, and that the wracking pain in her knotted muscles was the
price of her failure to remain calm.  As she gathered her wits,
reached out to the Force and began to soothe her tortured body, it
also came to her attention that Darth Vader had not destroyed her, as
he might easily have done during any of her mindless, clumsy attacks.
Instead he had fended her off, avoided her, and finally maneuvered her
into giving herself this tremendous shock.  It was almost as if he
-wanted- her to regain her calm.
        If that was what he wanted, then the Sith Lord had gotten his
wish.  The Force flowed through Emmy, and her muscles stopped
shivering and unwound.  The pain and terror drained away completely.
Slowly, she pulled herself from a huddled sprawl to a head-down kneel
(almost, she observed ironically to herself, as though she were making
obeisance to the Sith Lord), then pushed her shoulders up and sat back
on her heels.  And still Vader stood and watched.
        Having used her aid kit's small bandage, she tore a strip of
material from her tunic sleeve and bound it around her left hand, and
found pleasure in the symmetry.  Then, and only then, did she raise
her calm violet eyes to Vader.
        "Darth Vader," she said softly.  "Dark Lord of the Sith."
        Vader nodded.
        Emmy rose smoothly to her feet, put her heels together and
bowed.  "I am M'yl'ya Kyn'o'bi of the Clan Kyn'o'bi - Jedi Knight."
        Again, Vader nodded.  "I know.  As I said, I have been waiting
for you."
        Slowly, deliberately, Emmy removed her field pack, opened it,
and removed a long, narrow metal case.  The locks on this case she
worked with delicate care; then she slid the lid back and removed the
object it contained with gentle, reverent hands.  It was O'bi-Wann's
ancient lightsaber, its black and silver surfaces gleaming with careful
cleaning and polishing.
        "Do you recognize this lightsaber, Lord Vader?" Emmy
inquired politely.  "You should.  It belonged to my ancestor, Master
O'bi-Wann Kyn'o'bi, when you murdered him."
        Emmy dropped the case into the field pack, slung the pack to
the edge of the room, and assumed the traditional single-saber en
garde position.  The ancient saber's blue-white blade filled the room
with its bright glow and hum.
        "It is my duty as a Jedi Knight to destroy you, Sith Lord,"
she told him.  "Defend yourself."
        Vader nodded gravely, stepped into his own en garde, and
ignited his own saber.  Its ruby-red blade cast his face mask into a
demonic relief as he and Emmy regarded each other past their blades
for several eternal seconds.

        On the palace level, Kahm Talann finished cutting open the
throne-room door, stepped through, and smiled.  Queen Amidala sat
stoically on her throne, her arms folded in the sleeves of the black
and red court robe she'd donned over her battle dress.  Two of her
handmaidens flanked her, sitting on the arms of the throne, covering
as much of the Queen's body with their own as they could; they held
silver blasters in their hands, but Talann did not consider them a
threat.  In front of the throne, the three men who remained of the
Queen's Protectors stood shoulder to shoulder, laser rifles at
guard-arms across their chests.  Captain Panaka knelt in front of
them, his own weapon at the ready.  A nice defensive phalanx,
bristling with firepower... and all of it futile.
        Talann's smile deepened as she took a step forward.  The
Queen's Protectors held their fire, waiting for her to come closer so
that they could be sure their shots counted for something.  She took
another step, entering the circular pattern that dominated the
audience-chamber's marble mosaic floor.
        The guardsmen shouldered their weapon-stocks and took aim,
their eyes flinty, but still they did not fire.  Talann was impressed
again - these were not raw amateurs as the volunteer troops of the
Naboo Defense Force had been.  These were trained, experienced
professional soldiers, sent off-world to complete their schooling in
the military arts.  Some were veterans of the International Police
Tactical Division; others had been members of the Wedge Defense Force;
a few had even served in Earthforce and Starfleet in happier times.
They were dedicated, their minds were disciplined, and they did not
fear her.
        Kahm Talann almost regretted the necessity of killing them.
        As she took another step, a man suddenly dropped from the
rafters overhead, landing neatly in front of Captain Panaka and then
rising to stand, feet spread, arms folded, smack in Talann's way.
        Despite his entrance, he didn't look all that impressive -
though tall and broad, and possessed of a certain dark handsomeness
accentuated by one snow-white lock of hair in front, he was dressed in
a grimy blue jumpsuit and had a toolbelt at his waist.  From his
appearance, Talann decided he must be some kind of a technician or
mechanic.
        A curiously-embellished mechanic, to be sure.  He had a silver
and rose-colored signet ring on his left ring finger, and there was an
earring in his left ear, a simple silver cuff.  The triangular marks
on his cheekbones and the center-dotted circle on his forehead called
to Talann's mind her colleague Darth Maul's facial tattoos.  She
wondered if, as in Maul's case, they represented a religious commitment 
in this fool.
        He must be some kind of fanatic, after all.  The Dark Side
only knew what he thought he would accomplish by dying first, and
blocking the Queen's Protectors' lines of fire while he did so.  He
lacked even an appreciable weapon.  In his left hand, he held only a
staff of simple wood, black-lacquered with silver endcaps and scarlet
markings in a language she could not read.
        "Queen Amidala is not going to die today," said the bearded
mechanic calmly.  "I've promised it."
        "And who," inquired Kahm Talann contemptuously, "might -you-
be?"
        "I am Corwin of the Raven-Hair," replied the mechanic in a
proud tone: "Chooser of the Slain, Watcher O'er the World-Engine, Rune
Knight of Iron and Pillar of the Tenth World."
        Then, with a smooth and practiced motion, he took a half-step
back into a ready stance, whirling the heavy staff around his body and
presenting it to his opponent.
        Talann had no idea what the titles were supposed to mean, but
if this idiot thought that a wooden staff, however pretty, would avail
him one bit against a Sith warrior...
        Then she noticed the glint of his wristwatch's face, turned
toward her as he gripped the staff, and the reason for his fanaticism
became clear to her.  With a cold smile, she raised her saber in
perfunctory salute, then made a simple overhand strike.  Corwin raised
his staff just as one does to block such a strike, and Talann's smile
widened still further with the anticipation of this bold fool's death.
She would cleave his staff in two, and his head right behind it; his
body would fall to the floor still holding the severed halves of wood
in its hands.
        Then her saber struck the wooden staff and stopped with a
ringing crash, as though she had just brought it down with all her
strength on another lightsaber.  So unexpected was this that she
actually reeled backward slightly, her shoulder muscles smarting.
Corwin grinned back at her, knocked her saber blade up, then spun the
length of wood in his hands and laid one of those metal endcaps across
the point of her chin, dropping her solidly to the marble floor.
        She rolled to her feet, wiped at the blood oozing from the
corner of her mouth, and acknowledged with a grudging nod that she had
underestimated him.
        Talann's lightsaber clashed and sparked against the polished
wood of the mechanic's warstaff.  As the anger and hatred of the Dark
Side surged through her and guided her strokes, she had to acknowledge
a note of respect in the flood of dark emotion.  This person, she
thought as her saber swung down, up, across, and was blocked each time
by the staff - This person is no fool.  This person knows exactly what
he is doing.
        Head shot, leg shot, back around to catch the elbow.  Block a
wig-wag strike from his staff, stab - the mechanic pushed the
lightsaber blade up and away, and for a moment the two adversaries
were nose to nose, Talann glaring, Corwin quiet and reserved, with
just a hint of merriment lurking in his eyes.  He wasn't bad-looking
for an Earthman, either... 
        "So.  You come here often?" he quipped.
        Talann gave him a sardonic smile.  "I could find a use for a
man like you, Lensman," she told him.
        "Sorry," Corwin replied with a regretful little shake of his
head.  "Somebody's already got a use for me."
        Then he rocked back, releasing her blade, and kicked her
before she could use it against him.  Talann disengaged with a painful
grunt, stumble-stepping back, recovering, then moving in a slow
semicircle around her opponent.  Corwin stood ready a moment, then
matched her movement, sidling around to block any path toward the
Queen and her guardians.  Talann stepped faster, no longer interested
in the Queen's Protectors, focused on the only true threat in the
room.  Her boots clacked on the tiles as she grew closer and closer to
the wall, closer and closer to Corwin.
        Corwin's staff spun around, and the butt-end flashed towards
her.  Instinctively, Talann stopped and moved to dodge, throwing her
balance off... and Corwin's stab shifted into a neat sweep of the
shins, knocking her legs from beneath her before she could recover and
block.
        Talann curled up as she fell, her saber blade winking out as
she rolled through the fall, tumbling past Corwin and rising up just
where she wanted to be: directly behind him.  Her saber hissed to life
again, and with a shout she swept it down toward his unprotected back.
        Stick flashed in the Naboo sunlight as Corwin shifted his grip
and - just barely - brought it to bear across his shoulder blades,
blocking the tip of Talann's blade.  He yanked the staff back over his
shoulders, spinning around to block her sweep to the midsection, then
loosing one hand as he put tension into the other, flicking the
steel-shod tip into her right cheek before he spun the staff back into
his open palm.
        Involuntarily, Talann brought her hand up to her face.  The
blow stung, but did no worse... an insult.  This cretin dared to taunt
a Sith Knight.
        Talann decided she didn't really like him all that much after
all.  "No more foreplay," she hissed, bringing her sword back to the
ready position.
        Corwin just nodded and gripped the staff a little tighter.

        Somewhere in her logic loop, Ifurita was marginally
concerned.  Dealing with the fleet of starships encircling the planet
was proving more difficult than she would have expected.  In times
past, she had laid waste to fleets that dwarfed this one as a sea
dwarfs a pond, cleansing entire solar systems of her masters' enemies;
but either these vessels were tougher, or she was weaker, than had
been the case in those bygone times.
        She could hole their shields and their hulls with little
difficulty, that wasn't the problem.  The problem was, punching holes
through the ships, clean through them, didn't seem to have all that
much effect.  She didn't know their internal layouts as she had the
ships of old, and without that knowledge, precise disabling strikes
were difficult at best.  There were certain external cues - she could
identify weapons ports and thruster exhausts and their like - but the
exact locations of power generators and life support systems were
unknown to her.
        In addition, their small craft posed more of a threat in a
vacuum, where their speed and maneuverability increased beyond the
sluggish performance they had shown below.  Also, it appeared that one
of the vessels was producing a gravity wave effect, probably intended
to interfere with faster-than-light drive systems.  It also caused
problems for some of Ifurita's attack modes, though her threat
analysis system was fast determining its composition and would no
doubt provide her with a countermeasure shortly.
        It should have done so by now; another indication that the
centuries of storage may have degraded her performance.  Since her
reawakening mere days earlier, she had already been rewound once, and
she knew that when this battle was completed she would almost
certainly need it again.  Had she possessed emotions, the thought
would have been rather humiliating.
        She continued avoiding the ships' fire, her small size and
great speed making that task relatively trivial, and waited patiently
for her threat analysis to be complete.

        Whatever ancient culture had constructed the reactor chambers
beneath the palace of Theed, Len mused, they had no concept of
occupational safety and health.
        The Sith with the strange double-ended lightsaber had led Len
and Achika a merry chase through the palace's underpinnings.  Somehow
the tattooed warrior managed to use his saber-staff to block both his
and Achika's blows and still find room for an occasional counterstroke.  
Even with the Force flowing through him, Leonard could barely keep up
with the flashing, slashing red blades, which spun around Maul with the
effect of a well-tuned point defense shield.
        The pursuit had continued, blow by blow, through the lower
corridors of the palace, down into its better-kept depths, until with
a leap and somersault the Sith had vanished into the catwalks which
criss-crossed the immense fusion plants and the massive cooling shafts
that surrounded them.  Now Len and Achika had separated, using the
Force to boost their own leaps across thirty-foot chasms, often twenty
feet or more straight up or down as well.
        Leonard had landed near one of the chamber's walls, on the
walkway towards an auxiliary cooling vent, when something beyond his
senses screamed a warning to him.  Without thinking Len surrendered
himself to the Force, felt his arms swing around just in time to stop
the staff from bisecting him.
        This time it was Len on the defensive, Darth Maul on the
attack.  Slowly, carefully, Leonard backed away from the relentless
blows, blocking, blocking, blocking as the Sith spun and stabbed,
slashed and thrust his blades at him.  Leonard put away all thought,
fell deeply into the Jedi battle trance, and sensed where his blade
needed to be.
        Slowly, but surely, Len went back on the offensive.  The two
Force users stepped around each other for a moment, trading blows, and
then Leonard was backing Maul down the walkway, blades hissing and
sparking as Leonard's lightsaber met the Sith's saber-staff blades
again and again and again, the blows moving faster than a normal eye
could follow.
        The combatants stepped into the corridor leading to the
cooling shaft, and an alarm sounded as the internal sensors registered
energy discharges in the corridor.  One by one, a series of protective
forcefields activated, each one a little closer to the fighting men,
until at the end of the corridor the last field flared into view, with
Darth Maul inside the small shaft chamber and Leonard in the corridor
between two force fields.
        For a moment, both combatants watched each other.  The Sith
shouted and brought his staff against the field, sending sparks
through the pinkish barrier.  The blade failed to penetrate.
        Seeing this, Maul growled under his breath, deactivated his
sabers (as Len had already done) and began pacing, the picture of
angry, nervous energy, for all the world resembling a frustrated
jungle cat walking back and forth and glaring at its prey.  Little
twitches and jerks of his body added to the image of pent-up anger and
aggression oozing from the Sith's tattooed face and cloaked body.
        Leonard knelt and put away all emotion, all anxiety, falling
deeply into the Force.  At the far end of the corridor, Achika had run
up to the barriers, a bright greyish spot in the Force in contrast to
his own brilliant white and the Sith's devouring black.  In his mind's
eye, Len could see her shifting her weight from foot to foot, biting
her lip as she waited for the barriers to come down.  He put away his
concern, his feelings for her, and looked deep into the Force for
guidance.
        The barrier in front of him deactivated.  Before he opened his
eyes Len had activated his saber and blocked Darth Maul's first
strike; as the barriers behind him fell, one by one, he pressed the
attack again, letting his instincts guide his blade into slash, parry,
thrust, deflect, blow after blow.  Carefully the two combatants
circled the small room, careful to stay well away from the open vent
in the center of the room, a dark hole leading down into possibly
bottomless depths.
        In a back corner of his mind, Len sensed Achika running down
the corridor, her Jei blade alive.  He could see the barriers
reactivating, outrunning her, finally shutting her off in the same
place he had been before.  For a moment, he worried that she wouldn't
be able to stop in time and would collide with the field; depending on
what sort of barrier field it was, that might be dangerous, even
lethal.
        In that moment, the Force slipped away from him.  Darth Maul
leaped over Len's head and ran one end of his saber-staff through the
young Jedi's torso.
        That which Len figured would probably be his last thought
struck him as disappointingly un-Jedi-like as he had it:
        (Aw, -crap-.)
        Pain flooded through his mind, and then blackness.

        The blue-white beam of O'bi-Wann's blade flashed and arced,
casting shadows on the walls with every blow against Darth Vader's
blade.
        Why isn't he attacking? Emmy thought to herself as she kept
the blows coming.  She had backed him around the power chamber,
through the door she had entered from, and toward a tangle of service
ducts, and all he offered by way of resistance was to use his
lightsaber to deflect her blows away from his body.  He had not once
tried to take the initiative.  In fact, his defense was barely even
worthy of the name.
        Sweep, clash, shove, step.
        Something inside her felt uneasy about the fight, but Emmy
forced herself to remain calm, pressing the attack with single-minded
determination.  As she pressed Vader back through the ductwork, she
began to wonder why she had found him so frightening.  He was a
pathetic combatant, not even the equal of Darth Blade.
        Stab, sweep, clash, push, thrust.
        He had none of the ferocity, none of the terrifying presence
of the version she had seen in her vision of O'bi-Wann's death or her
travails in the dark cave.
        Left, right, left, spin, slice.
        He was just a man, old and slow, kept alive by a life-support
suit.
        Opening. Slash, sweep, clash, clash.
        In moments she would disarm him, and then end him.
        Sweep, clash, stab, twist.
        Vader's lightsaber spun away from his hand, its beam winking
out as the metal cylinder clattered to the floor.
        The circle would be complete, and the Clan Kyn'o'bi would have
its revenge.
        Spin, slash - 
        -NO-.
        Emmy's body froze, her eyes closed, her breath slow and
ragged, as thoughts cascaded through her mind.
        Revenge.
        She wasn't killing the Sith Lord because he was a Sith Lord;
she was killing him because he had killed her ancestor, shamed her
family, and destroyed a way of life.  She wasn't defending herself;
Vader had gone out of his way not to harm her.  She had forced him to
fight.  She wasn't defending anything.  She was destroying him to make
herself feel fulfilled.  She was taking revenge.
        That was not the way of the Jedi, it was the way of the Sith.
The calm she felt was not the serenity of the Force, it was the
malevolent purposefulness of the Dark Side.  She had tricked herself.
        Shame threatened to swallow up the anger Emmy hadn't known she
felt.  Shame, self-hatred, for having almost thrown away generations
of honor, generations of service to the Light.  This, too, was the
Dark Side, an open pit waiting to devour her with one misstep.  This
time, however, Emmy knew it for what it was.
        I will atone, Emmy thought.  And, noble ancestors, I will make
you proud of me.
        With an effort, Emmy pushed away both emotions, released all
emotion, centered herself in the true calm of the Jedi.  Her breathing
grew steadier, her heart slowed down, as the Force - the right side of
it this time - filled her body and soul, embraced her as much as she
did it.
        She opened her eyes.
        They made a strange tableau, there in the gloomy half-light of
the service subbasement: the hulking Dark Lord, his broad back pressed
against a wall, empty-handed and helpless; and the diminuitive white-
robed woman, the blue-white blade of her lightsaber perhaps half an
inch from cleaving his helmeted skull in two.
        Emmy withdrew O'bi-Wann's lightsaber and returned it to her
belt.  She took a step back.  Darth Vader stood straight, and for
several moments, Jedi and Sith Lord regarded each other silently.
        "You would have let me kill you," said Emmy, a note of wonder
in her voice.
        "If that was your destiny," replied Vader, unperturbed.
        "Why?"
        "Balance," said Vader.
        Emmy gazed at the featureless black lenses where Vader's eyes
belonged, seeking some meaning there, and for a moment, she could see
into his soul.  What she saw there surprised her infinitely.  It was
dark, yes, immensely so, but there was a serenity there that shocked
her with its purity.  Unlike Darth Blade's, unlike her own childhood
expectation of Vader's, it was not a twisted ruin, corroded and
splintered by the wrenching power of the Dark Side.  It was dark as
the night is dark - because that was simply its nature.
        "Noyyj'ttat," she breathed.  The revelation that the Dark Side
could be lived with in such harmony was, for the moment, beyond her
ability to comprehend.  She had always thought of it as a rapacious
monster, twisting and destroying all it touched.  All the others
touched by the Dark Side who she had seen were insane, broken by the
Dark Side in some fashion, and all those she had ever heard of - but
Darth Vader was not.  He possessed an incredible inner peace, like a
man who has been through Hell and no longer fears its horrors.
        She remembered the prophecy Vader was, in his own time,
thought to have embodied.  It predicted the One who would bring
balance to the Force.  She had never understood what that was supposed
to mean, but now she was beginning to see the first inklings of its
meaning.
        "What... what should we do now?" she asked, her voice hushed
almost to a whisper with awe for what she had just seen.
        "Now, young Kyn'o'bi, we must deal with the -true- enemy,"
said Vader.  He stepped past her, out of the alcove, and started to
head for the stairs.
        "TRRRRRAITORRRRRRRRRRRR!!" shrieked Darth Blade as he dove out
of the maze of ducts, pipes and hoses overhead, his lightsaber
springing to life as he fell toward Vader.  Emmy reignited her own
saber and took a step - 
        Darth Vader moved away from Blade's wild, hacking swing as a
shadow glides across a bedroom ceiling at night.  His right hand
reached out.  Without his even looking at it, his lightsaber flew into
that hand, its blade already forming.  He blocked Blade's next blow
before Blade delivered it, parried a second, and then counterstruck
with such force that sparks flew from the meeting-point of the blades.
        As Emmy watched, awestruck, she saw both sides of the Dark
Side's coin come together in battle.  Blade, frantic, burning with
hatred, his mind unraveling as the Dark Side fed on his fear, hacked
and slashed with manic energy.  Vader released his anger against the
Sith pretender with precise control, blocking, counterattacking, and
methodically dismantling his opponent's rudimentary strategy.
Unhesitating, contemptuous, Vader beat down Blade's attack, crushed
his defense, and rid the universe of him.
        Emmy remembered thinking Vader pathetic and burned with shame.
If he had turned that swift, vicious prowess on her, she wouldn't have
lasted half as long as Blade had.
        Standing over what remained of his adversary, Vader
deactivated his saber and placed it on his belt.  Turning to regard
Emmy, he seemed to think for a moment, then intoned simply,
        "Come.  There is more to be done."
        Her mind whirling with the sudden torrent of insights she had
experienced, Emmy followed the Dark Lord silently up the stairs.

        Over the last few days, Padme Naberrie had seen more thrilling
things than she'd ever seen before, in all her fourteen and a half
years.  She'd seen two Jedi Knights in battle against the troops of
the Federation; she'd seen Leonard and Achika's duel on the Sun Queen;
she'd seen the Forbidden Island, the dragon and the Demon Goddess and
Corwin Ravenhair's gigantic iron soldier.  It had been a -bad- week,
sure, but it had certainly been -exciting-, which was more than a girl
could usually say about life on Naboo.
        Seeing Corwin fight in person was another thing to add to the
list.  The man's athleticism was easily the equal of his Jedi
brother's, and his fighting style was visually fascinating with its
great looping staff strikes and direct, powerful attacks.  Seeing him
ranged against Kahm Talann was intriguing her so much that she had to
keep reminding herself that she was in mortal peril; so in tune was
she with the fight that it seemed to occupy her entire consciousness.
She almost fancied she could sense what the combatants were going to
do just before they did it, the same way they did.
        Padme wondered how it was that Corwin could do that.  She knew
from reading and from talking to Leonard and Emmy that it was a Jedi
trait, part of their communion with the Force; but Corwin was no
Jedi.  He seemed to be anticipating Talann's attacks with nothing but
sheer martial skill.  Despite the Force-wielder's mystic advantage, he
was holding his own - in fact, he might even be a little ahead of her.
        Of course, just as she said that to herself, Padme saw the
tide of battle go against him.  It turned, as such things so often do,
on a trivial thing: in this case, the edge of the carpet in front of
the Queen's desk.  Corwin and his opponent had crossed it a dozen
times and more in the course of their battle, but this time he caught
the edge of it with his heel, and it threw him off-balance.  Talann
cackled triumphantly and struck.
        Corwin's great strength came to his rescue, giving him the
ability to stop the course of Stick's last abortive sweep with brute
force and muscle it onto a different course despite an almost total
lack of leverage.  The staff intercepted Talann's lightsaber once
again, meeting it with such force that the weapon was torn from the
Minbari woman's hand; but in the process, Corwin lost his grip on
Stick as well, and both weapons clattered into the corner of the
throne room together.
        As Corwin hit the floor, the impact knocking the breath from
his lungs, Talann ignored her fallen weapon and leaped after him
barehanded.  Before he could recover his breath or his balance, she
had hauled him upright and battered him down again, finishing their
fight in seconds with a series of precise, powerful blows delivered in
the style of the Minbari barehanded arts.  It had been a long time
since Talann had had a chance to use the Killing Fist in combat, and
she relished the opportunity.  There was a certain joy in snapping a
neck that a lightsaber's antiseptic burning simply couldn't touch.
        When she rose from the floor, a fierce grin on her face, she
rose alone.  Corwin stayed where he was, sprawled on his back, his
slack hands outstretched to his sides.
        "Well," said Talann to the Queen's retinue with a cold smile.
She reached out her hand, and her lightsaber flew back into it as if
on a wire.  "So much for your protector."

        Above Naboo, Ifurita's logic center finally settled on a
course of action.  It was slightly risky, an unfamiliar situation
for her; she was accustomed to being so much in control of any battle
that risk-taking was unnecessary.  Her battle intelligence was nothing
if not adaptable, however, and in this case it seemed to her that a
slight risk was preferable to a drawn-out, conservative approach.
        She had identified one of the ships as the one from which the
rest of the force seemed to be taking its cues.  It was a large,
inelegant, slab-sided vessel, but heavily armed and armored, and its
gunners were very accurate.
        Ifurita paused in her consideration of this vessel to swat one
of the X-shaped vacuum fighters which were trying in vain to acquire a
missile lock on her, then returned her attention to the warship, whose
markings indicated that its name was "Nestor".  Not knowing anything
about Earth's mythology, she had no idea what that name meant, nor did
she care.
        She avoided a swarm of the fighters and swooped toward the
Nestor, confronting the enormous ship head-on from a distance of
perhaps ten times its length.  Its weapons lashed the space around
her, but even accurate starship gunners could not reliably hit a
target the size of an ordinary unarmored woman.  She estimated that
she would have at least four seconds before the ship could accelerate
enough to close the range sufficiently.
        Plenty of time.
        She spoke, as she always did when selecting her attack, though
it made no sound in space.  Had anyone been able to hear it, they
would have heard her pronouncing the name of a weapon she had learned
from a Tf'tbk Naak megacruiser in the course of her first assignment,
the Outer Quadrant War:
        "Positron lance."
        A worthy opponent, the Naak Hegemony; had Ifurita been capable
of such a sentiment, she would have remembered them with a sort of
fond respect.  They had been valiant, and in that sector their weapons
had been second only to Mandalor's.  A great shame for their culture
that, of all the empires with which to engage in a war to the death,
Mandalor was the one their leaders had chosen...
        The forward section of her power-key staff split along its
length, both horizontally and vertically, and the four sections thus
created snapped outward on struts to form an X configuration when
viewed straight on from the end.  The brass-like key tip remained in
one piece, attached to the top section; it swung on a Z-hinge back
down into alignment with the staff's centerline.  The plasma-like glow
in the two glassine globes built.  Blue-white lightning crackled in
the space between the four separated quarters of the forward section,
running from the forward globe to the back of the key-tip segment.
        A moment later, a straight line of intolerably bright light as
wide as Ifurita was tall streaked free from the tip and plunged
squarely into the center of the Nestor's blunt prow.
        The positron lance burned all the way through the ship, front
to back, in the space of a microsecond, destroying weapons arrays,
sensor conduits, crew members, environmental control stations, the
master computer, the main reactor core, the metaspace jump point
generator, and the #3 main thruster.  Flashovers and beam-halo effect
burned through the vessel's electron-plasma distribution network.  The
artificial gravity failed, but a moment later it no longer mattered as
the whole stricken vessel first collapsed in on itself, then exploded
outward with such violence that the blast wave crippled one of the
Conqueror's Nebula-class escorts and knocked the Interdictor's gravity
wave generator offline.
        Exactly as Ifurita had expected it would.

        "My God in Heaven!" blurted the on-duty sensor operator aboard
USS Conqueror.  "Did you SEE that?!"
        "I saw," Acting President Palpatine replied calmly from the
center seat.  "Report."
        "Anti-matter beam weapon," the operator replied, shaken but
carrying on with her duties.  "Nestor was destroyed outright,
Carthage's main reactor is down, and we've lost FTL interdiction
capabilities.  The blast wave knocked our own shields down 15%, and
we're way the hell over HERE!"
        Palpatine frowned.  "It would appear," he mused, "that Darth
Blade failed in his mission."  He sighed.  "Very well.  General
retreat; the fleet will retire to metaspace and leave this sector."
        The fleet comm officer blinked.  "But, Mr. President - "
        Palpatine raised a calm hand.  "Don't worry, Lieutenant," he
said.  "My apprentices can find their own way home, if any of them
live."
        "I know, sir, but Captain Tsonis and the palace security force
are still on Naboo."
        "Yes, I know," Palpatine replied placidly.  "What a shame."
        Despite the situation, everyone on the bridge of the Conqueror
was smiling just a little bit as the fleet began to secure for its
retreat.

        Ifurita collapsed her staff back to its base configuration and
watched them go, the ships one by one leaping into hyperspace or
metaspace, until the only one which remained was the ugly one whose
engines had been smashed by the Nestor's concussion wave.  It didn't
seem interested in putting up a fight.  She guessed its crew was
occupied with putting out fires and generally making sure their ship
didn't go the way of the Nestor.
        That was fine with Ifurita.  Any more combat, and she wouldn't
have had the energy reserves necessary to make a successful planetfall
again.  Something, she mused as she turned to re-enter, was definitely
wrong.

        When the powerfield separating Achika from the coreshaft room
dropped, the Princess of Jyurai exploded out of the corridor like a
missile from a launch tube.  Darth Maul met her, his teeth bared, his
spirits enflamed by the ease with which he had cut down his first
opponent.  Still, it hadn't been -that- easy, until something had
distracted the Jedi; the Force had conveyed that to Maul quite
clearly.
        The young Sith Knight thought he knew what it was that had
distracted his erstwhile foe, too, and had he not been fully caught up
in the wrath of combat, he would probably have sneered about it, just
a little.  Of all the emotions, love was the biggest waste of
resources.  Hadn't it just cost the redheaded Jedi his life?
        He had no time for such ruminations right now, though; his
opponent was just as furious as he was.  The way of battle followed by
the Jyuraian royal family may have evolved from the Jedi way, but
along the way it had lost the Jedi insistence on calm and tranquility,
the concept of aggression as wrongness.  The Jei had no bright and
dark sides; it was merely energy, to be wielded as its masters saw
fit.  Certainly anger had to be modulated carefully, or it would lead
to rashness and stupidity - but it was not to be avoided simply for
what it was.
        Achika certainly wasn't avoiding it.  Under the circumstances,
she wasn't particularly modulating it, either.  She was using every
drop of it, and it was making her an opponent Darth Maul had to spend
all his concentration on.  It almost looked to him as if her
lightsaber had gotten larger somehow; she was holding the grip with
both hands and the blade itself seemed to have a -curvature- to it.
        Maul didn't bother to think too hard about that, either.
Thinking wasn't his job; destroying Lord Sidious's enemies was.  Time
enough for thinking many decades hence, when -he- was master of the
Order - though he couldn't really envision a time when he fully
stepped back and let his own apprentices do -all- the killing for
him... 
        Maul set himself and used the Dark Side to hurl the Jyuraian
away from him, hoping to seize back the initiative.  She flew back,
all right, clear across the open pit of the cooling shaft which
dominated the center of the room; but she turned in midair, converting
the out-of-control flight to a controlled tumble.  Her boots hit the
opposite wall, and without staying there long enough to fall, she
kicked off and flew back toward him, her blade set for a charge.  Maul
knew if he tried to block it, he'd lose at least half of his saber and
probably an arm, so he ducked instead.
        It was a good call; the ornately-dressed girl's solid blue
blade -destroyed a wall segment-, carving a great red-edged scar in
the duraplate and smashing the panel hard enough that it separated
from the ceiling.  Maul scrambled to his feet, faint astonishment
creeping into his rage-filled eyes; then they flashed with triumph as
he saw that hitting the wall like that had startled his opponent
almost as much.
        He swept in for the kill, but Achika was faster than he
expected; she blocked his attack not with her blade but with her free
hand, seizing his saber-staff in the center of its body.  Maul let go
of it with one hand to seize her sword hand's wrist, keeping her own
blade away from him, and the two stood there, locked in this standoff.
Her strength surprised Maul, who, while wiry, was the most physically
powerful of any of Palpatine's apprentices.
        For several seconds, they remained that way, eye to eye,
grunting and straining; then Darth Maul slammed his forehead into
Achika's, bloodying her scalp with his horns.  She reeled, the
wood-covered hilt of her weapon falling from her hand, and the blade
winked out before it hit the floor.  Maul's saber came away in her
hand, but she couldn't hold onto it either, so both weapons clanged to
the deckplates.
        No matter.  Now that she was unarmed and stunned, Maul could
finish her with his hands.  He seized her by the front of her
brightly-colored fighting dress, balled his fist, and punched her as
hard as he could, then hoisted her from the floor and held her out
over the cooling shaft.
        Her eyes refocused to see the triumphant, malevolent grin on
his face; snarling, she shot her right hand forward, her palm smacking
rather ineffectually against his belt buckle.  She'd noticed it
before, an ornately (if hideously) carved thing of what looked like
ebony.
        Wait.  Ebony?
        With a growl, the Sith Knight moved forward to finish the job
of dropping her down the shaft.
        Achika narrowed her eyes, closed her hand around Maul's belt
buckle, and concentrated her will, hoping she was right, hoping the
buckle -was- ebony.  She'd never tried to use a focus as weird as this
to manifest a Jei psi-blade, but if she were ever going to, then now
was definitely the time.
        Besides, if she didn't, this guy was going to get away with
killing Len.  And that just wouldn't do, now -would- it?
        Darth Maul's eyes went suddenly wide in surprise as a solid
blue bar of light sprang from the small of his back.  Involuntarily,
he took a step back, trying to escape from the source of the sudden
screaming pain in his middle.
        Achika got her feet under her, twisted her hand, and yanked it
across, tearing the buckle free from his tunic and her blade free of
his body the long way, then seized him by the shoulders and drove a
knee into him.  Maul, eyes bugging out, gasped, and black blood
bubbled from his lips.  Her own face clouded by the sort of wrath
normally associated with the Sith, Achika straightened him, turned the
pair of them 180 degrees, drew back her hand, and drove the heel of it
squarely into his teeth.
        Darth Maul's constitution amazed her; despite having been
about halfway bisected, he was still standing as he took two stumbling
steps back and plummeted into the cooling shaft, vanishing from view.
        Achika stepped to the edge and looked down, watching him fall
until he could no longer be seen; then she turned, the anger washed
from her face in an instant by grief, and knelt down next to Leonard's
body.

        After a fight like that, Kahm Talann was feeling generous.
Rather than cut them down, she swept the Queen's Protectors aside with
a gesture, then strode toward the throne.
        "Now, Your Majesty, it's time for you to... "  She trailed
off, brows knitting, and fixed the Queen with a puzzled stare.
"Wait... " she murmured; then a smile spread slowly back onto her
face.  "So.  A clever deception, but your thoughts betray you.  You
aren't Queen Amidala."
        The girl in the Queen's makeup gasped, then wrenched her
blaster from her sash.  Talann snarled and smacked it away, then
plucked her from the throne and hurled her to the floor.
        Stepping over her, Talann growled, "I'll deal with you
presently.  Right now... "  Her eyes narrowed as she scanned the two
remaining handmaidens; then her smile returned again and she took a
step toward Padme.  "Right now I have business with the real Queen."
        Padme stood where she was, not flinching from the Sith
Knight's approach, and stared the Minbari woman right in the eye, her
jaw set in defiance.
        "Go on, kill me," she said, and her voice had the ringing,
aristocratic tone of the Queen's speech.  "It will gain you nothing!
The Naboo are a democracy, and my people have already decided not to
submit to your dark rule.  Cut me down and another will be elected in
my place.  We will never give up."
        Talann sneered.  "Brave words, little girl, but they will not
save you."
        "Maybe not," said a voice from behind her.  Talann gasped, her
hand snatching her lightsaber from her belt even as something that
felt like a machine tool clamped itself on her shoulder and half-spun
her.
        "But I will," Corwin continued, and then he drove his left
fist into Kahm Talann's belly with all the strength he could muster,
driving it with his hips and legs as well as shoulders, back and arm.
Talann gagged, her lightsaber dropping from her hand as she felt
something burst inside her from the blow.  Pain flooded her whole
body.  She fought for control, but it was too late.  Everything was
happening too fast, too unexpectedly, it hurt too much.
        Corwin's big, bony knuckles plowed into the side of her jaw,
halfway between chin and ear, with a painful-sounding crunch.  Without
another sound, Talann went down like a rag doll.
        "You could have told me who I was supposed to be protecting,"
Corwin grumbled good-naturedly at Padme as he collected the Sith's
lightsaber, then helped the faux Queen up from the floor.
        "Sorry," Padme replied, grinning.
        "But - she beat you!" said the handmaiden in the Queen's
robes.  "We saw - "
        "You saw what I wanted her to see," replied Corwin.  "Little
trick I learned from a friend of mine.  She was so hell-bent on
beating me, making her think she had was easy - and so hell-bent on
killing -you-," he went on, gesturing to Padme, "that she never saw me
coming."  He spun the lightsaber hilt in his hand, then hung it on his
toolbelt.  "Think I'll keep this for a souvenir," he remarked.  "Got a
friend back home who collects swords," he added with a grin.
        "Your Majesty," said Captain Panaka, indicating one of the
displays on Amidala's desk.  "Look!  The sensor jamming has stopped.
The Federation fleet... they're gone!"
        Padme rounded the desk, shouldering into a place next to the
captain of her guards, and looked for herself.  She punched a few
keys, pulling up reports from other sensors around Theed.
        "The occupation forces have pulled out - except for the group
in the anteroom," she reported.  "And you're right, the Federation
ships are gone, even the Interdictor.  Long-range communications are
still offline, though," she added with a disappointed slump of her
shoulders.  "They've probably cut this console off from the anteroom."
        "Well," Corwin said with a faint smile, "I guess there's only
one way to handle that."
        Panaka, for the first time in his association with the various
otherworldly allies his queen had acquired recently, grinned.  "I
guess there is," he said.  "Your Majesty?"
        Padme nodded.  Corwin drew an antique Mauser pistol from one
of the pouches on his belt, went to the door leading to the anteroom,
flung it open, and shouted, "Hey!  Psi Cop!"
        Tsonis turned, a hand on his blaster.  "I am Captain Roman
Tsonis of the Federation Psi Corps," he announced.  "Am I speaking
with a representative of Queen Amidala's government?"
        "You're speaking with a Grey Lensman, dirtbag," Corwin
replied.  "Now listen up: Your fleet just bugged out and left you
here, and your boss's special friend is out of the picture.  You guys
are all that's left of the occupation force and you're not going
anywhere.  So Her Majesty the Queen would really appreciate it if you
gave up, rather than forcing Captain Panaka and me to make an almighty
mess out here."
        Panaka, standing next to him with his blaster leveled, tried
unsuccessfully not to smile.  The young man certainly had style, there
was no denying that.
        "I don't believe you," Tsonis replied flatly.  "Squad, form up
and advance.  We're taking the throne room, and if these two try to
stop us... "
        Panaka glanced sidelong at Corwin.
        "Dammit," Corwin muttered.  "It always -works- when it's a
-lie-... "
        Panaka chuckled grimly.  "Queen's Protectors - stand fast!"
        Tsonis and the front rank were thirty feet from the steps
leading up to the throne room door, and Panaka and Corwin were just
starting to consider the most effective placement for their first
volley of shots, when the anteroom's decorative dome imploded,
showering the marble floor between the Federation troops and the two
chief defenders with glass.
        As the Psi Cop and his troops recoiled with cries of surprise,
an enormous white and gold shape dropped through the jagged remains of
the dome, slammed to the floor, and spread its giant wings to block
any remaining line of fire any of them might have had toward the
throne room.  The incredible beast loomed over the troops, extended
its head toward them on a long, powerful neck, bared glittering fangs
sixteen inches long, and unleashed an ear-splitting, terrifying roar.
        "I recommend an immediate surrender," the calm-faced,
black-and-white-clad lovely standing on top of the dragon's head
added, leveling a peculiar staff-like weapon at them.
        "Indeed," a deep, resonant voice intoned from behind them.
Tsonis and the others whirled to see the anteroom doorway filled by
the incongruous sight of the tall, broad black shape of Darth Vader
and the short, slim white form of Emmy Kyn'o'bi, Vader impassive, Emmy
with her ancient lightsaber at the ready.
        "Vader!" Tsonis snarled.  "So you've turned -completely-
against your master, eh?  You ancient -filth-!  President Palpatine
will see you -die- for this!"
        Vader's calm was glacial as he replied, "No man is my master."
        Tsonis might have protested further, except that he was busy
grabbing at his collar and making a very unfortunate gurgling noise.
After a moment, his eyes rolled up in his head and he pitched
bonelessly to the floor.  Everyone stared at him in mute horror for a
moment; then he stirred slightly and drew a raspy breath before
subsiding into full unconsciousness, which seemed to break up the
tableau a little.
        "That man annoys me," Vader remarked conversationally.
        The rest of the Federation troops looked at their commander,
whom none of them really liked anyway, sprawled unconscious on the
floor; looked at the man who'd put him there from forty feet away
without even raising a hand; looked at the rest of their situation;
and gave the hell up, throwing their weapons down at Nall's feet.

        Amidala - the real Amidala - took charge of the situation once
her military and paramilitary helpers had finished securing the
palace.  It was she who used the anteroom's still-functional stellarcomm 
console personally, once the room was secured, to request the aid of
the International Police in clearing up the mess and ensuring that the
Federation forces really were gone.  Then she broadcast a message of
hope to her people (who had been told by the occupiers that she was
dead), rallying the Naboo to emerge from their shelters and begin
straightening up the mess that the Federation's soldiers had made of
their world.
        When she finished, she turned away from the commset, leaned
back against it with a sigh, and regarded the wreckage of her throne
room's antechamber.
        Nall, still menacing the surrendered Federation soldiers just
for the fun of it, turned his head to see that she was off the comm;
then he seemed to quiver before collapsing into his flying-cat form.
Smaller and fluffier, he winged across the room and settled on her
shoulder.
        "Sorry about the ceiling," he said.  "We were in kind of a
hurry."
        "That's all right, Nall," she said, reaching up to scratch his
ears.  "We can build another one."
        "Well, if you need anything airlifted, I can help," the dragon
offered.  "By the way... "
        "Mm?"
        "What -is- your name, anyway?  I've heard two now... which
one's right?"
        The queen laughed.  "Both," she said.  "My name's Padme
Amidala.  'Naberrie' is my mother's maiden name... I use it when I
don't want people to recognize me."
        "Interesting technique," Nall observed.
        "It mostly worked," Amidala replied.
        "That's true," said Nall.
        "Hey!" came Corwin's voice from the door to the throne room.
"Who took my Sith Knight?"  He turned and looked across the
antechamber to the spot where the Queen's Protectors were keeping the
surviving Federation soldiers penned up.  "Captain Panaka, did you put
her with the others?"
        "No," Panaka replied.
        "Oh, -great-," Corwin grumbled.  "She must've gotten away
while we were messing with the stellarcomm!  Nall, c'mon, we - "
        From outside came the high-pitched whine and deep, booming
thrum of a Federation troop transport powering up and boosting away.
        "... never mind," said Corwin, dropping his face into his
palm.
        "Ah, let 'er go," said Nall easily.  "She can tell the others
what a bad idea it is to mess with the Naboo."
        "Do we have a team in the lower level yet?" Corwin asked
Panaka.  "And does anyone know what the deal is with Tall, Dark and
Gruesome over there?" he added, pointing to Vader, who stood off to
one side looking grim and malevolent.  (He couldn't really help it,
Corwin supposed, with that -mask- on.  Kabuki Horror Theater or what?)
        "I think Emmy does," Nall replied, "but I'm not gonna ask her
about it right now.  I wonder what's eating her?  She looks like she
just found out God doesn't like purple."
        "Security Force Three is sweeping the lower levels now,"
Panaka confirmed after consulting his earset radio.
        "Where the hell's Len?" Nall wondered.
        A moment later the door leading out to the rest of the palace
opened and Achika came in, and in her arms was the crumpled answer to
the dragon's question.

        Ten days later, Amidala stood on a balcony on the palace's
upper level, looking out at the Harkon Sea and thinking about the
situation.  An alien space fleet again orbited her homeworld; but this
time it was a joint task force of Jyuraian warships and International
Police Space Force vessels, here to secure the area.  One of them was
the flagship of Admiral Hutchins himself, IPS Challenger, fresh from
the IP repair yards; the admiral had promised the queen a tour later
on.
        Amidala considered the admiral, of whom she had of course
heard but who she had never met before.  He wasn't what she'd been
expecting the First Lensman and founder of the IPO to be at all; with
his eternal youthfulness he was more like Corwin and Leonard's brother
than their father.  She'd been moved by the depth of his concern for
his son, too.  Such a busy, high-profile man, but he'd reacted just as
any normal father to the news that his son had suffered a wound
Naboo's best doctors agreed must be mortal.
        Except, of course, that Naboo's best doctors had never seen a
Detian before.  Before the palace physicians' astonished eyes, the
Jedi's horrible wound had healed while he spent the days after the
incident in a regenerative coma.  Gryphon's ship's doctor, who was
more familiar by far with Detian physiology, expected him to awaken
sometime today.  Amidala looked forward to it; she'd kept her calendar
clear today specifically so she could be there, if not when it
happened, at least immediately thereafter.
        She sighed, looking out over the water.  The crisis was
averted, she still had her kingdom and her people had their
freedom... but this wouldn't be the end of it.  The remnant of the
Federation was still out there, and leading it in its disastrous
course....
        Oh, Eidun, she thought, remembering the smiling, avuncular man
she had thought her world's senator to be since meeting him in early
childhood.  I thought I knew you...

        On the roof, Darth Vader sat in seiza, his cloak whipping
around him in the sea breeze, and considered his next move.  He didn't
notice the spectacular view his vantage point afforded him, or the
sharp, salty tang of the sea air, or the roar of the surf far below;
of the three, he could not sense one nor appreciate the other two.
His entire being was focused on sensing the currents of the Force.
The whole galaxy - more than that - was shifting around him, and the
pattern didn't make any sense yet.
        No matter.  It would, in time.  Right now, the current that
seemed to him most promising led offworld, but there was no hurry.  He
was welcome here, if warily - an unfamiliar experience, but not
unpleasant - and though there was a call, he could wait to follow it
until this situation settled a little.  He wouldn't have long to wait
for that to happen.
        And when it did, the time was right to begin the next phase;
of that much he was certain.  If he'd had any doubt, just reaching out
enough to sense the bright sparks of the two Jedi and their friends
around them would have been enough to put it to rest; but he had no
doubt.
        He was Darth Vader.

        Two levels down, in a room he had been lent as a temporary
workshop, Corwin adjusted his lab coat and said, "OK, you can put your
clothes back on."
        Unspeaking, Ifurita did as instructed.  Corwin, engrossed in a
very complicated-looking holodiagram, paid her no more mind for
several minutes.  Then he switched off the display and said, "OK.
It's taken me this long to figure out your systems.  Congratulations,
your inner workings are physically impossible.  I've got them properly
calibrated anyway, which should impress you, except that you can't be
impressed, which makes you a very tough room to work."
        Ifurita regarded him blankly.  He ran a hand through his spiky
hair and sighed.  A moment later the door opened partway and a snout
appeared.
        "Is it safe for me to come in now?" asked Nall.
        "Huh?  Yeah, whatever, Nall.  Know anything about seven-
dimensional hyperspring constructs?"
        "Um... no," said Nall dubiously as he settled on Corwin's
shoulder.
        "Then be quiet," Corwin replied, rezzing up the display and
frowning at it again.  "I'm thinking."
        "Well, tell me what the problem is," Nall said.  "Even if I
don't know how to fix it, maybe you'll figure it out yourself by
telling someone about it."
        "The problem is, she's not getting as much out of a winding as
she should."
        "Oh.  Well, maybe you haven't got the touch, rocketboy."
        "OK, out," said Corwin, pointing to the door.
        "Sorry.  I'll be good."
        "Sure."
        "No, I mean it."  Nall thought for a moment.  "I suppose
you've checked all the, um... hardware."
        "What do you think this diagram is?" Corwin inquired.
        Nall cocked his head.  "It -looks- like a map of the Avalon
defense tunnels."
        Corwin opened his mouth to remonstrate with the dragon again,
then took another look.  "Huh.  So it does."  Then he thumbed the
display off again.  "Anyway, yeah, I've checked all that."
        Nall shrugged.  "Maybe it's all in her head, then."
        Corwin looked skeptical, but the look faded as he thought.
"Hmmmmmm," he said.  Then he sighed and tossed the datapad onto his
workbench.  "I guess there's nothing for it but to go in and look.
I'll have to rig an adapter for that interface port... "
        Nall stifled a snicker, but not well enough.
        "OK, out," Corwin repeated.
        "Sorry!  I couldn't help... I'll go now," said Nall, launching
himself again.  "Good luck!"
        "Thanks," Corwin mumbled, already rifling through the boxes of
random electronics on the workbench for suitable parts.
        An hour later, he had his adapter cobbled together and
installed, and was fitting the other end of the cable into a
cybernetic interface deck.
        "OK, now... this may feel a little weird," he warned Ifurita
as he taped the electrodes to his head and hands.  She gazed at him
impassively, not speaking.  "... All right, I guess you don't really
care about that," he muttered.  Then he sat down in the Barcalounger
on whose arm he'd balanced the deck, settled in, and said mostly to
himself, "Well... here goes nothing."
        Diving an alien cybernetic intelligence was not a new
experience for Corwin, but it was always a thrill, since every one was
different.  This one was surprisingly large given the flatness of its
responses; a lot of that could be attributed to the construct's huge
recall web for attack and defense methods, but still, there was a
-lot- of extra capacity in here.  Surprisingly wasteful, given the
mind-boggling efficiency of the rest of her design.
        He surfed the corridors of her datanet for a while, looking
for the power management subsystem, and when he found it, he found the
problem.  He wasn't sure how it had gotten here, but there was a
terrific snarl in the recharge checkloop.  It looked like a power
source of unusual intensity had been connected at some point, and a
small bug in the part of the code which controlled the power
management unit's intake rate had been tripped, fouling up the buffer
states.  A trivial matter to repair, and only slightly tougher to fix
so that it wouldn't happen again.  The repair took him five minutes,
two of which were spent in tightening up code that would have worked
fine anyway.
        Feeling satisfied with himself, he was just about to jack out
when he noticed something else out of the corner of his eye - a dark
patch in this otherwise brilliantly lit datanet, some subsystem which
had been coded in but never turned on.  He went to it, looked it over,
and couldn't figure out what it was for.
        Better leave it alone, then, he thought, but just as he turned
away, a fat blue spark jumped from his icon's hand to the control
node, and suddenly the darkened subsystem flooded with light - light
so bright it washed out his perceptions of everything else, so that
there was only
        "WHAT the - ?!" he blurted, sitting straight up and yanking
the electrodes off his head.  Turning, he saw smoke curling up from
the vents on the cyberdeck.  Ifurita sat where she had been before,
rigid, glassy eyes staring into nothingness.
        "Oh -man-," Corwin muttered, jumping up.  He reached to remove
the adapter from her interface port, then yanked his hand back,
cursing - the brass cuff of the adapter plug was -hot-!  Wrapping his
hand in his sleeve, he tried again, and this time got it out and
dropped it onto the floor.
        The disconnection of the adapter seemed to break whatever was
holding Ifurita in place; she gasped, a very human-like gasp, and
slumped forward, propping her face with her hands.
        "Uh... Ifurita?" asked Corwin, leaning over her.  "Are
you... are you OK?  Something got a... a little weird there... "
        Slowly, she lowered her hands and regarded them as if seeing
them for the first time; then she looked up at him, her deep blue eyes
wide with something that looked like a cross between shock and dismay.
        "Wh... what... what's happened to me?" she asked, in a very
much more human tone of voice than he had ever before heard her use.
        Corwin scratched at the back of his head.  "Hoo boy," he said
to no one in particular.

        Two floors up, one wing over, M'yl'ya Kyn'o'bi stirred
slightly in the meditative posture she'd held for the last twelve
hours, then opened one violet eye and aimed it at the bed next to
which she was kneeling.  A moment later she was on her feet, pressing
a button on the wall next to the headboard.
        By the time Achika Shannon, Padme Amidala and Nall reached the
bedside, Leonard Hutchins's eyes were flickering open and he was
making quiet awakening noises.  He hadn't fully returned to
consciousness before Achika had hold of one of his hands.
        "uhhhh," he said, blinking.  "emmy?"
        "Right here."
        "who's got my... oh... "  Len smiled, a little dreamily.
"achika's still here... good... "
        "What did you think, I'd -leave-?" Achika demanded, indignant.
        "well, y'know... royal duties or some such... did we win?"
        "You bet we won," said Nall.  "We kicked their -asses-.  OK,
so, one of the Sith Knights got away and who the hell knows where
Palpatine is now, but still - we cleaned 'em up -good-."
        Len's smile got a little stronger.  "what happened to the guy
we fought?" he asked Achika.
        "Last seen heading for the planet core at terminal V," Achika
replied.
        Leonard chuckled.  "i knew he'd piss you off... if he killed
me," he said.
        Achika chuckled wanly, sniffing back tears.  "Yeah," she said,
her voice squeaking a little.  She wiped at her eyes with her sleeve.
"He didn't quite kill you, but he sure pissed me off... "
        "'s funny," he murmured.  "after he punched the big hole in
me, i thought... well, first i thought 'aw, crap,'" he admitted with
weak wryness, "but after that, just when everything was sliding away,
i thought, 'well, it's ok... achika's with me... '"  He smiled,
opening his eyes a little further and fixing them on hers, and
squeezed her hand just a little.  "and what do you know - you
were... "
        Achika forced back more tears, sniffled, and said in a brisker
voice than she really intended to use, "You should rest.  Get your
strength back."
        Emmy nodded.  "Yes, get some sleep.  We'll still be here when
you're stronger."
        Padme took a hesitant step forward; Achika, seeing her
hesitation, smiled and gave her Len's hand.
        "Master Jedi," said Padme.  "Your friends are right, you
should rest now; but before you do, I just wanted to thank you."  She
leaned down, feeling a bit self-conscious, and gave him a quick,
gentle kiss.  "Thank you for helping to save my world."
        Len smiled hazily.  "'s part of the job... " he murmured, and
then went to sleep.
        "Huh," Nall mused softly as Emmy returned to her vigil and the
other two girls left the room together.  "You wouldn't think a guy
would have that reaction to being kissed by you, Your Royal Flyness."
        "Shut up, Nall," said the queen and the princess together, but
they were laughing as they said it.


     /*  Joe Satriani  "Sleepwalk"  _Strange Beautiful Music_  */

                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                              presented
                UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT
                    -=WARRIORS OF THE OUTER RIM=-
                         Road Movie to Naboo
                           Part 4: Balance

                               Writers:
                         Benjamin D. Hutchins
                           Kris Overstreet

                           With help from:
                          The Usual Suspects

     Darth Vader, Yoda, the Naboo, Palpatine, Darth Maul and the
       Jedi/Sith concept adapted from the works of George Lucas

           Aldous Gajic adapted from a character created by
                        J. Michael Straczynski

       Achika adapted from a character created and designed by
                          Hiroyuki Horiuchi

         Ifurita created by Hiroki Hayashi and Ryoe Tsukimura
                   and designed by Kazuto Nakazawa

                  Nall designed by Toshiyuki Kubooka

                    Big O created by Hajime Yatate

            The Mighty Orbots did not appear in this film

 (But if they had, that would have made the space battle pretty cool,
                          don't you think?)

              The Warriors of the Outer Rim will return

                         E P U (colour)  2002