Star Wars: Coruscant Nights III: Patterns of Force by Michael Reaves

between his hands as if it were made of modeling gel instead of highly charged energy particles. Then he flung the blindingly bright ball at Tesla.
    The Inquisitor whipped into a defensive position, erecting a barrier against the salvo. It seemed to matter little; it still took him by storm, knocking him backward almost to the entrance of the corridor. Only his own well-honed control of the Force kept him from tumbling out of control. He jackknifed in the air and came at the boy again, this time with his lightsaber lit.
    He saw the boy’s face clearly as he charged. The cowl of his cloak lay back on his narrow shoulders, his hairfloated wildly about his head, and his eyes were huge with fear and fury.
    Feeling the youth’s anger, Tesla was exultant. He had a fleeting thought of what a prize this child would make for his lord, but the proud thought was swamped by survival instinct—and by his own wrath. He would not be bested by a mere boy! He roared aloud, using the Force to amplify the sound, and saw the teenager’s eyes widen farther.
    Tesla was ready when the second ball of repulsor energy came flying at him. He raised his lightsaber to parry it—and was blown upward into the heights of the field tunnel in a flash of searing crimson light. At a height of seven or eight meters, he collided with a ripple in the energy barrier that deflected him downward again with just as much force. He came down on the gritty duracrete surface face-first, only just gathering the presence of mind to wrap the Force around him like a cocoon. It was all that kept him from breaking bones.
    He levitated back to his feet, enraged, and threw back his own cowl. “Fool!” he roared at the retreating form. “I offer you freedom and you choose to hide with the vermin!”
    The youth hesitated and turned. “You’re an Inquisitor.” His voice came to Tesla’s ears warped and tortured by the skittering, moaning sounds of the warring repulsor fields.
    “So could you be, with your power.”
    The boy’s unspoken scorn was immediate and powerful, as if it, like his unlikely ability, was fed by the Force. He started to turn away.
    “Return with me or die!”
    The boy turned back, his gaze meeting Tesla’s so strongly that the Inquisitor heard it as a rending sound in his head and felt it as a searing pain behind his eyes. His heart pounded, his breath was suddenly constricted—hefelt like a lidded vessel filling with some white-hot substance until it must surely burst. The fire gnats were crawling over him again, inflaming every nerve in his body.
    “Leave me alone,” the boy said quietly, and the words sounded in Tesla’s head, each one like an icy dagger in his paralyzed brain. “Just
leave me alone
.”
    Then suddenly he was free. He stumbled to his knees, fury and humiliation sweeping through him in waves. Tesla lifted both hands and fired a bolt of Force-lightning at the corridor just above the boy’s head, uncaring of the result. If the wretch would rather die than be taken by an Inquisitor, then so be it.
    The lightning struck the rippling surface and bifurcated, each sizzling lash recoiling to strike again centimeters apart. They twinned again, then quadrupled.
    Tesla cut off the flow of Force-lightning from his body, but it had little, if any, effect. Suddenly the corridor was filled with a dozen random lightning strikes, then twice that many. They were advancing on him in a trenchant storm, eating up the passageway before him. He couldn’t see what had happened to the boy; his figure was lost in the erratic pulses of light. Tesla threw up a defensive barrier and backed swiftly away from the advancing lightning. Surely, with its motive energy cut off, it would soon fade.
    He kept moving, staying just ahead of the searing, draining discharges until he was certain the exit must be directly behind him. He glanced over his shoulder. It was not. In fact, only a meter or two farther along the passage, what had been an open passageway