The Force Unleashed by Sean Williams Page B

the floor.
    "Progress at what?" she asked him. "Making things complicated?"
    He didn't respond. Her tone was borderline insolent, but she did have a point. Time
    was passing. The last thing he wanted was to get caught up in a dispute between
    Drexl's band and the Core's droid immune system. The sooner he was moving toward his
    objective, the better.
    Another Rodian came running up the corridor behind him, firing at his back. He
    deflected the shots with his lightsaber and brought the ceiling down on the raider,
    effectively sealing himself into the hyperdrive access room. No matter. The walls
    were-weak with metal fatigue. He could punch out in an instant when he was
    finished.
    Kneeling in front of the turbines, he took a handful of cables in both hands and
    called on the Force. Energy surged through him, making him stiffen. Sith lightning
    sparked from his skin and snaked through the ragged metal walls, floor, and ceiling.
    Distantly he heard screams as the many beings inside the wrecked corvette suffered
    from the aftereffects. He ignored them, along with the smell of smoke rising from
    his own tattered uniform.
    Focus, he told himself. Undirected power was power wasted. Gritting his teeth, he
    gathered the energy and directed it down his arms, into his hands. Blue light
    strobed across his vision as the lightning flowed into the wires and from there into
    the hyperdrive mi bines. Groaning, then shrieking, the massive engine came alive.
    Damaged, completely out of alignment, and barely controllable, the turbine shook
    with propulsive power, then strained against the braces still holding it to the
    corvette's warped chassis.
    The deck kicked underneath the apprentice. He swayed as the entire corvette shifted.
    With a terrible sound, it began to move, plowing a brutal furrow through the
    surrounding rubbish. He could picture it clearly in his imagination and through the
    vibrant flow of the Force. As lightning poured through him and into the engine, it
    pushed the stricken corvette physically out of his path. I he way to the Temple was
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    now clear.
    When he sensed that it had gone far enough, he relaxed his concentration. Smaller
    discharges of energy skittered across his skin. Somewhat shakily, he stood, then
    almost toppled over as the engine continued to fire, sending the corvette onward,
    out of his Control.
    He hadn't expected that. There was enough residual potential in the turbine to keep
    it running for dozens of seconds. He had to get out of the corvette before it
    dragged him any farther from his goal.
    Straining, he blew a hole in the side of the downed ship wide enough for a TIE
    fighter to pass through. The wall of a junk canyon was gliding by, raining rubbish.
    With one smooth leap, he caught hold of dangling cable and swung free of the wreck.
    It roared on, dragging itself through the dregs of the galaxy on its disintegrating
    belly, sending waves of disturbed filth radiating out ward from its path.
    "Are you creating a distraction, Starkiller," squawked Juno from the comlink, "or
    trying to draw attention to yourself?"
    "Choose the answer you prefer," he said as he swung from cable to cable back the way
    the corvette had come. Scattered Jawas in singed robes were clambering into their
    transports to give chase to the corvette. He ignored them, used Sith lightning to
    blast a dozen droids that rushed him with electric claws raised, then turned left
    where the corvette had formerly rested to resume his approach to the strange parody
    of the Jedi Temple.
    * * *
    THE STRUCTURE'S BASE WAS EITHER buried under or part of the endless dump that was
    the Raxus Prime surface. The apprentice ascended cautiously to the foyer, where
    buckled armor plates had been hammered as close to flat as was possible and welded
    into approximately level floors. Abandoned thrust tubes stood in for marble columns.
    Sensor arrays made reasonable facsimiles of window frames, and