At the noise of the opening door, a group of techs and two armed Wookiees scurried down the steps behind them.
"At last," one of the human techs muttered as she looked through the open doorway into the small, glowing alcove beyond.
Jyr glanced to the Wookiees. "Stay with the techs a reasonable distance behind us…and don't let them wander off."
Hhkarak rumbled his understanding and hefted his bowcaster in preparation. Jormukkar beside him did likewise.
Jyr turned and swept past Luke, entering the alcove without a second thought. The interior was constructed of the same material as the Rakatan outpost with a wide, circular vertical shaft dropping from the center of the floor.
Luke tipped his head over the edge of the shaft and looked down. Three ladders scaled the side of the shaft as it dropped some twenty meters below into a dim, reddish/black hallway or room below. Sensing the immediate vicinity below them was clear, Luke swung out over the nearest ladder and began to climb down.
A second later Jyr's falling body flashed by Luke in a blur and landed in a crouch on the floor below. Right, Luke said, mentally chastising himself as he let go of the ladder and dropped.
He landed in the center of a long hallway that stretched at least ten meters wide, and extended out to his right and left as far as he could see into the darkness beyond. The only light provided came from the overhead shaft and the well lit alcove above.
Hhkarak growled/barked from overhead. "We're clear," Jyr said loudly so his voice would carry back up the shaft. "Send them down."
The human techs, five in all, began to descend the ladders, struggling with the weight of their equipment packs. Hhkarak reached out and grabbed one on the way down to keep him from falling backwards, and held on long enough to let the old man steady himself on the rungs. The Wookiees reached the bottom of the shaft first, retaining one ladder exclusively for themselves, and helped the humans' transition off the truncated steps that ended a half meter short of the floor.
Seeing the darkness around them, the techs immediately reached into their packs and brandished a glow rod for each of themselves, and passed an additional two to the Wookiees. Before they could offer any to the Jedi, Luke brandished his lightsaber and flooded the hallway with a yellow light, akin to the color of the glow rods.
Jyr added his blue a moment later and the far end of the hall to their right became dimly visible as the wide 'tunnel' angled at a joint and cut off further view. The left view, however, extended out into the dark distance beyond, with no end in sight.
"Strap a glow rod to one of the ladders," Jyr ordered.
The young woman pulled another from her pack along with some tape-like adhesive and securely attached the end of the yellow/orange rod to one of the vertical bars.
Out of curiosity, Jyr's blade flashed white and the Jedi dipped the tip into the floor. It resisted the blade, just as the material uncovered at the bottom of the dig site had.
Luke glanced at the floor, and then Jyr. "I can see why destroying this place would have taken some effort."
"Indeed," Jyr said, returning his blade to the safer blue stun-blade. He toed the very shallow indentation his blade had caused with his nimble black boot, feeling almost nothing.
Luke glanced at their two options…left or right. "Which way?"
Without a word Jyr began to walk, albeit very slowly so the techs could keep up, to the right and the angle in the hallway beyond. Blue blade in front, he led the small expedition deep into the shadows while the small glow rod attached to the ladder diminished behind them.
Before they reached the bend an opening appeared to their left, equal in size to the dimension of the hallway. As they walked closer, they discovered it was a T-junction that led to another impossibly long corridor. On this one, however, there was a smaller door, still some three meters high, imbedded into the new hallway's left wall.
A meter-wide flat bubble sat next to the door on the wall, which the techs reacted to instantly, brandishing a handheld computer and interface cables.
"Never mind that," Jyr said as he lifted a hand toward the giant door. With a hefty groan, the triangular door slid upward, disappearing past its peak into the wall above where it locked in place with a mighty jolt.
"Thanks," the old tech said before holding up his glow rod and spilling its light into the room beyond. With the other four techs cowering behind their elder, they huddle/walked into the room behind Jormukkar, who stepped out in front of them to lead the way. Luke was a half step behind the towering Wookiee.
Jyr glanced down the long hallway as everyone else entered the newly opened chamber. Hhkarak growled a question back at him.
"I don't know. Something doesn't feel right," Jyr said casually.
The Wookiee gripped his bowcaster with both hands and sniffed at the air.
"Go ahead," Jyr insisted, "I'll bring up the rear."
With one final glance back, Hhkarak trudged after the others. Standing alone in the dark hall Jyr reached out and touched the cold stone with his bare palm. Having foregone his traditional armor, the agile Jedi wore nothing but a formfitting black garment that stretched whisper silent with his every move. A thin belt separated shirt from pants and provided an anchor point for his pair of lightsabers and a number of tiny pouches that carried his comlink and other tiny devices.
On a hunch he pulled out his comlink and got nothing but static in reply. The odd, stone-like material must have been blocking the signal. He shut the hissing mic off and returned it to his belt when another weird feeling brushed his consciousness, almost as if…
On impulse he shut off his lightsaber and listened, trying to ignore the noises from his team as they moved further inside the large chamber. He listened down the hall, trying to identify whatever it was that had caught his attention. He listened and listened for several seconds, holding his breath to clear his hearing even further.
Click, clack, click, click, clack…His eyes opened suddenly with understanding. His lightsaber sprung to life and he jumped inside the room with the others.
"What is it?" Luke asked quickly.
With a large rumble, Jyr brought the door down behind them and sealed the room with a loud and heavy thud as the stone-like door fell into place. "Check for other entrances…hurry!"
Knowing better than to ask again, Luke darted off across the room, following the left wall. He moved passed row after row of objects on the ground but ignored them, his eyes only interested on the uninterrupted wall beside him. On the opposite side of the room Jyr did likewise, and they both noted with concern that their glowing blades were getting farther away from each other.
Luke reached a shallow corner that redirected the wall some thirty degrees back towards the center. He guessed, based on Jyr's moving blade off to his right, that the chamber was geometrical in shape, maybe hexagonal or octagonal, and that they would meet up on the far side. Stepping around what looked like a control panel, Luke moved away from the wall, then angled back towards it before stopping in his tracks.
"I have an open door!" he yelled back in the direction of the tiny glow rods and Jyr's now white blade.
A thud resonated through the room, quickly followed by Jyr's voice. "Close it!"
"Ok," Luke said tentatively as he reached out through the force. The door was unbelievably massive, and it was locked in place by some mechanism in the wall off to his right. Without power Luke was going to have to forcefully unpin the mechanism holding up the door. He searched with his senses for the range of movement that the pin was capable of making when he heard noises closing on his position.
Hurrying as much as he could, he probed the entirety of the concealed pin and finally found the track that it moved on. He pushed with all the pressure he could remotely muster, and felt the mechanisms grind through positions they were never designed to travel unpowered. The door released and fell as something scurried underneath.
Luke brought his blue blade up in front of him defensively as a second something tried to cross below the falling door and was crushed underneath its massive weight. Before Luke knew what was happening, a red blaster bolt fired at him from three meters away.
He deflected the blast upward and quickly switched his blade to searing white before jabbing forward into what he thought was a droid. His blade connected with one of several spider-like legs…and bounced off.
Stunned, Luke quickly came back on guard and deflected another blaster bolt, this time back into the droid, whose armor simply absorbed the blast. It scurried forward on its five massive legs and jabbed another appendage at Luke, who rolled clear of it to his left…and into an unseen object, banging his head in the process.
He got to his feet just as the droid scurried toward him, firing as it came. Luke heard a crackle of force lightning and realized that Jyr must have been fighting another droid, or droids, on the other side of the room…but it also gave him an idea as his mind flashed back to the time he spent digging through the Jedi archives.
Luke jumped clear of the droid and shook his free hand, flinging it back and forth, trying to remember how to use this particular power. It had been over a year since he'd attempted it. He blocked another blaster shot in the process, then broke through the stagnant barriers within his flesh and loosed a flow of energy from the palm of his hand at the droid.
The white, almost lightning lept forward and sizzled as it impacted the droid's metallic body, passing through its armor and frying internal circuits similar to the way an ion blast disabled computer systems.
The droid stopped in its tracks.
Not sure how successful he was, Luke cautiously walked up to the droid and touched his blade to its armor plating. One, two, three, Luke counted to himself, four, five, six, seven, eight… The white blade slide through the droid's armor and cut through its internal circuits as if they weren't even there. Luke pivoted the blade around through the tiny hole, gutting the droid as best he could.
The droid lurched and Luke quickly withdrew his blade into a defensive position, but the droid didn't move again. It froze in place and held static, with a tiny tendril of smoke floating up through the thumb-sized hole Luke had cut into its armor.
Across the room he could hear Jyr still fighting what sounded like several droids…but to his horror he heard one of the techs cry out in pain and the Wookiees open fire with their bowcasters back at their original entrance. Luke left his disabled droid where it was and sprinted across the dark, cluttered chamber.