Situated just behind Valatus Tower, the Kremminer building looked like nothing so much as the other's ugly younger sibling. Where Valatus Tower seemed almost to reach up toward the stars in all its gleaming opulence, the Kremminer building stood squat and unkempt like a noxious amphibian.
On even slightly more cosmopolitan planets, buildings as dilapidated as the Kremminer would have been sequestered as far as possible from the likes of Valatus, so that the well-to-do patrons of the former could be spared the discomfort of having to look out upon the latter. The society on Juthruul, however, had not reached the point of such stratification—Kremminer's dinginess was a mark of its function as a used metals' refinery rather than the social status of the beings who frequented it. Most of those very beings could just easily be found in the halls of Valatus Tower at other periods in Juthruul's rotational cycle.
At four stories high, the Kremminer building was still the tallest structure directly adjacent to Valatus Tower—and this made it the perfect staging point for the mercenaries' backup. There were two of them stationed on the roof next to a sack of equipment a pair of high-powered, two-person speeder bikes. The two Niktos were alert, but not agitated. As far as they were concerned, everything was going according to plan.
Their first hint otherwise came when the Nikto on the right received a call on her communicator. She answered it, and her countenance grew increasingly confused and agitated as she listened to the voice on the other side.
It was, Tahiri judged, the perfect moment to make her presence known. She stood up from her hiding place atop the Kremminer building's emergency water cylinders and dropped to the roof, using the Force to slow her fall so that she alighted delicately in front of the Niktos.
"That will be my partner your friend is trying to tell you about," she told the one with the communicator. With a theatrical flick of her wrist she activated her lightsaber. "I hope for your friends' sake they don't give him too much trouble. The Yuuzhan Vong on this planet and in this galaxy are under our protection; any attempt at collective punishment against them will be repelled." She raised the lightsaber blade to point between the two Niktos. "We can repel this particular attempt peacefully, or not-so peacefully; your choice."
They were professionals, all right. Even before Tahiri had finished speaking, the two mercenaries were diving away in opposite directions, forcing her to split her attention between the two of them. Both drew blasters and opened fire.
Tahiri pirouetted, twirling her lightsaber almost casually and easily deflecting the spray of blaster bolts. She could have sent them back where they'd come from with only a little more effort, but she had no intention of killing or maiming these mercenaries unless she absolutely had to. Murder is not the Jedi way.
At random, Tahiri chose one Nikto and spun towards her, still easily deflecting blaster bolts as she went. As Tahiri stepped within close range of the Nikto, she swung her lightsaber in an arc which neatly cut off the blaster's muzzle.
The mercenary immediately began fumbling for a backup weapon, but at this point Tahiri produced her backup weapon: a Stockhli spray stick. It was a little tricky dividing her attention between the Stockhli stick and swatting away the second Nikto's continuing spray of blasterfire, but she managed get working, and a minute the first Nikto was covered in a net of quick-hardening chemical spray. That should keep her out of trouble for a while.
Tahiri pivoted to face the second Nikto, only to discover that while her attention was otherwise occupied, the mercenary had drawn another blaster and activated a personal shield. She smirked at Tahiri from behind the shield's blue-white glow, as if to say "what now, Jedi?"
Tahiri matched the mercenary's smirk. While the combination of two blasters and a personal shield would be difficult for a Jedi to deal with, but hardly impossible. However, Tahiri had a better idea, prompted by something interesting she'd noticed about the equipment sack. "You don't know who you're dealing with, do you?" she said.
The mercenary stared blankly. That was all right, she'd understand soon enough. Tahiri reached out, not with the Force, but with her Vongsense, searching the equipment sack. Pure sabacc! Apparently, the mercenaries thought it would be cute to use the Vong's own weapons against them, culled from one of the millions of planet's the Yuuzhan Vong had seeded with their biotech during the invasion.
Tahiri sent out a silent coax, and was rewarded by a half a dozen razorbugs bursting out the side of the sack. The Nikto yelled out in mingled surprise and fear as the swarm descended upon her. Being made of matter rather than energy, the razorbugs could easily pass through the Nikto's personal shield, and any one of them was deadly enough to cut the mercenary to ribbons.
Fortunately, Tahiri had a greater level control over them, and directed the tiny beasts to focus on the Nikto's weapons in clothing. In only a few seconds they had reduced the mercenary's clothing to rags and her blasters to small heaps of shredded metal. Somewhere in there one of the bugs had also taken out the Nikto's personal shield, leaving her standing there helpless.
Through her Vongsense, Tahiri sent the razorbugs a feeling of good work, and instructed them to return to their nest and go back to sleep.
She raised her Stokhli stick again, just make sure the mercenary wouldn't cause any more trouble, when she hard a faint tinkle of transparisteel somewhere above her, and a flash of warning from the Force. Something was wrong.
She looked up to see a body falling from a window on the ninth level of Valtus Tower. It was Anakin.
To be concluded …