Attack of the Clones (11 page)

He tried to get his bearings as he rose. What side of the building was he now on? And which side had Obi-Wan flown away from? And what angle had the fleeing probe droid taken?

As he tried to sort it all out, Anakin realized that only one of two things could possibly put him on Obi-Wan’s trail, dumb luck or …

The Padawan fell into the Force yet again, searching for the sensation that he could identify as his Jedi Master.

Zam Wesell leaned against the side of her speeder, impatiently tapping her gloved fingers on the roof of the old vehicle. She wore an oversized purple helmet, front-wedged and solid save a small rectangle cut out about her eyes, but while that hid her assumed beauty, her formfitting grav-suit showed every feminine curve.

Zam didn’t think much about it at that time, though, for with this particular mission it was more important that she merely blend in. Often she had taken assignments where her assumed feminine wiles had helped her tremendously, where she had played upon the obvious weakness of a male to get close.

Those wiles weren’t going to help her with this assignment, though, and Zam knew it. This time, she was out to kill a woman, a Senator, and one who was very well guarded by beings absolutely devoted to her, as protective of her as a parent might be to a child. Zam
wondered what this woman might have done to so invoke the wrath of her employers.

Or at least, she started to wonder, as she had started to wonder several times since Jango had hired her to kill the Senator. The professional assassin never truly let her thoughts travel down that path. It wasn’t her business. She was not a moral gauge for anyone, not one to decide the value of her assignment or the justice or injustice involved—she was just a tool, in many ways, a machine. She was the extension of her employers and nothing more.

Jango had bade her to kill Amidala, and so she would kill Amidala, fly back and collect her due, and go on to the next assignment. It was clean and it was simple.

Zam could hardly believe that the explosive charge she had managed to hide on the landing platform had not done the job, but she had taken that lesson to heart, had come to understand that the weaknesses of Senator Amidala were not easily discerned and exploited.

The changeling banged her fist on the roof of the speeder. She hated that she had been forced to go outside for help, to procure a probe droid to do the task that she so relished handling personally.

But now there were Jedi about Amidala, by all the rumors, and Zam had little desire to do battle with one of those troublesome fanatics.

She glanced into the speeder, to the timepiece on the console, and nodded grimly. The job should be completed by now. The poisonous kouhuns had been delivered, likely, and one scratch of a venomous stinger should be more than enough.

Zam stood up straight, sensing something, some sudden feeling of uneasiness.

She heard a cry, of surprise or of fear, and she glanced all about, and then her eyes, within the cut-out rectangle
of the helmet, went wide indeed. She watched in blank amazement as the probe droid, her programmed assassin, wove through the towering buildings of Coruscant, with a man, dressed like a Jedi, hanging on to it! Zam’s fear lessened and her smile widened, though, as she watched the droid go into defensive action, for this one was well programmed. It smacked against the side of a building, nearly dislodging the Jedi, and when that didn’t work, the clever droid dived back into the traffic lane, soaring behind a speeder, just above the vehicle’s exhaust.

The Jedi squirmed and tucked and somehow managed to keep himself out of that fiery exhaust, and so the droid swooped off to the side, taking a different tack. It flew in low over the top of one building.

Zam’s eyes widened as she watched the spectacle. She was impressed at the way the Jedi did not allow himself to be slammed off, but rather tucked his legs enough to run along the rooftop as the droid skimmed across it. Oh, he was good!

This was truly entertaining to the confident bounty hunter, but enough was enough.

Zam reached into the speeder and pulled out a long blaster rifle, casually lifting and leveling. She fired off a series of shots, and explosions ignited all about the Jedi and the droid.

Zam looked up from her sights, stunned to see that the crafty man had somehow avoided those shots, had dodged, or had, she mused, used his Jedi powers to deflect them.

“Block this,” the bounty hunter said, raising the rifle again. Taking aim at the Jedi’s chest, she lifted the barrel just a bit and squeezed the trigger.

The probe droid exploded.

The Jedi plummeted from sight.

Zam sighed and shrugged, telling herself that the cost of the probe droid was worth the show. And hopefully the victory. If Senator Amidala lay dead in her room, then that cost would be a minor thing indeed, for this bounty exceeded anything Zam had ever hoped to collect.

The bounty hunter slipped her rifle back into her speeder, then bent low and squeezed in, soaring off into the Coruscant traffic lanes.

Obi-Wan screamed as he dropped … ten stories … twenty. There was nothing in his Jedi repertoire to save him this time. He looked all about frantically, but there was nothing—no handholds, no platform, no awning of thick and padded cloth.

Nothing. Just another five hundred stories to the ground!

He tried to find his sense of calm, tried to fall into the Force and accept this unwelcomed end.

And then a speeder swooped beside him and he saw that cocky smile of his unruly Padawan, and never in his life had Obi-Wan Kenobi been happier to see anything.

“Hitchhikers usually stand on the platforms,” Anakin informed him, and he swooped the speeder near enough for Obi-Wan to grab on. “A novel approach, though. Gets the attention of passing traffic.”

Obi-Wan was too busy clawing his way into the passenger seat to offer a retort. He finally settled in next to Anakin.

“I almost lost you there,” the Padawan remarked.

“No kidding. What took you so long?”

Anakin eased back in his seat, putting his left arm up on the door of the open speeder and assuming a casual posture. “Oh, you know, Master,” he said flippantly. “I couldn’t find a speeder I really liked. One with an open
cockpit, of course, and with the right speed capabilities to catch your droid scooter. And then, you know, I had to hold out for just the right color—”

“There!” Obi-Wan shouted, pointing up to a closed-in speeder, recognizing it as the one behind the assassin who had been shooting at him. It soared above them, and Anakin cut hard on the wheel and the stick, angling in fast pursuit.

Almost immediately, an arm came out of the lead speeder’s open window, holding a blaster pistol, and the bounty hunter squeezed off a series of shots.

“If you’d spend as much time working on your lightsaber skills as you do on your wit, young Padawan, you would rival Master Yoda!” Obi-Wan said, and he ducked, getting jostled about, as Anakin cut a series of evasive turns.

“I thought I already did.”

“Only in your mind, my very young Padawan,” Obi-Wan retorted. He gave a little cry and ducked reflexively as Anakin dived in and out of traffic, narrowly missing several vehicles. “Careful! Hey, easy! You know I don’t like it when you do that!”

“Sorry, I forgot you don’t like flying, Master!” Anakin said, his voice rising at the end as he took the speeder down suddenly to avoid another blaster bolt from the stubborn bounty hunter.

“I don’t mind flying,” Obi-Wan insisted. “But what you’re doing is suicide!” His words nearly caught in his throat, along with his stomach, as Anakin cut hard to the right, then dropped suddenly, punched the throttle, pulled back to the left, and lifted the nose, zipping the speeder up through the traffic lane and back in sight of the bounty hunter—only to see another line of blaster bolts coming at them.

Then the bounty hunter dived to the side suddenly,
and both Jedi opened their eyes and their mouths wide, their screams drowned out by a commuter train crossing right in front of them.

Obi-Wan tasted bile again, but somehow, Anakin managed to avoid the train, coming out the other side. Obi-Wan looked over to his Padawan, to see him assuming a casual, in-control posture.

“Master, you know I’ve been flying since before I could walk,” Anakin said with a sly grin. “I’m very good at this.”

“Just slow down,” Obi-Wan instructed, in a voice that suggested the dignified Jedi Knight was about to throw up.

Anakin ignored him, taking the speeder in fast pursuit of the assassin, right into a line of giant trucks. Around and around they went, cutting fast corners through the traffic, over the traffic, under the traffic, and around the buildings, always keeping the assassin’s speeder in sight. Anakin took his craft right up on edge, skimming the side of one building.

“He can’t lose me,” the Padawan boasted. “He’s getting desperate.”

“Great,” Obi-Wan answered dryly.

“Oh wait,” Obi-Wan added when the speeder in front dived into a tram tunnel. “Don’t go in there!”

But Anakin zoomed right in, and then zoomed right back out, a huge rushing train chasing him, Obi-Wan screaming about as loudly as the train was blowing its horn. “You know I don’t like it when you do that!”

“Sorry, Master,” Anakin answered unconvincingly. “Don’t worry. This guy’s gonna kill himself any minute now.”

“Well, let him do that alone!” Obi-Wan insisted.

They watched as the assassin zoomed right into traffic, soaring the wrong way down a congested lane.

Anakin went in right behind.

Both speeders zigged and zagged wildly, frantically, the occasional blaster bolt shooting back from the lead one. And then, suddenly, the assassin cut fast, straight up, a tight loop that brought Zam behind the two Jedi.

“Great move,” Anakin congratulated. “I got one, too.” He slammed on his brakes, reversing thrust, and the assassin’s speeder flashed up right beside them.

And there was the assassin, firing point blank at Obi-Wan.

“What are you doing?” Obi-Wan demanded. “He’s going to blast me!”

“Right,” Anakin agreed, working frantically to maneuver away. “This isn’t working.”

“Nice of you to notice.” Obi-Wan dodged, then lurched as the speeder dropped suddenly, Anakin taking it right under the assassin’s.

“He can’t shoot us down here,” the Padawan congratulated himself, but his smile lasted only the split second it took for their opponent’s new tactic to register. The assassin swerved out of the traffic lane and shot straight for a building, coming in at an angle to just skim the rooftop.

Obi-Wan started to shout out Anakin’s name, but the word came out as “
Ananananana.
” The Padawan was in control, though, and he slowed and lifted his speeder’s nose just up over the edge of the rooftop.

Another obstacle showed itself almost immediately, a large craft coming in low and slow.

“It’s landing!” Obi-Wan shouted, and when Anakin didn’t immediately respond, he added desperately, “On us!”

It came out, “
On uuuuuuuuuuuuus!
” as Anakin brought the speeder up on edge and zipped around a
corner, clipping a flagpole and taking its cloth contents free.

“Clear that,” the seemingly unshakable Padawan said, nodding down to the torn flag, which had caught itself on one of the speeder’s front air scoops.

“What?”

“Clear the flag! We’re losing power! Hurry!”

Complaining under his breath with every movement, Obi-Wan crawled out of the cockpit and gingerly onto the front engine. He bent low and tugged the flag free, and the speeder lurched forward, nearly dislodging him.

“Don’t do that!” he screamed. “I don’t like it when you do that!”

“So sorry, Master.”

“He’s heading for the power refinery,” Obi-Wan said. “But take it easy. It’s dangerous near those power couplings.”

Anakin zoomed right past one of the couplings, and a huge electrical bolt had the air crackling all about them.

“Slow down!” Obi-Wan ordered. “Slow down! Don’t go through there!”

But Anakin did just that, banking left, right, left.

“What are you doing?”

“Sorry, Master!”

More bolts crackled all about them. Right, left, right again, up and over, down and around, and somehow, incredibly, out the other side.

“Oh, that was good,” Obi-Wan admitted.

“That was crazy,” the rattled Anakin corrected. The older Jedi snapped a glare at him, recognized the greenish color that had suddenly come to the Padawan’s face, and then just put his head in his hands and groaned.

“Got him now!” Anakin announced. The assassin was
sliding his speeder sidelong around a corner between two buildings up ahead.

Anakin went right around behind, only to find the lead speeder stopped and blocking the alleyway, the assassin leaning out the door, blaster pistol leveled.

“Ah, blast,” the Padawan remarked.

“Stop!” Obi-Wan told him, and both ducked as a line of bolts came at them.

“No, we can make it!” Anakin insisted, punching the throttle.

He dived his speeder under the assassin’s, barely missing it, then went up on edge, slipping through a small gap in the building. But there were pipes there, and no level of flying could put the speeder safely through them. They bounced sidelong, then flipped end over end, narrowly missing a giant crane and clipping some struts. The damage brought forth a giant fiery gas ball, nearly immolating them, and in the uncontrolled spin that followed, they bounced off yet another building and the speeder stalled out.

Anakin winced, expected a line of curses to come at him, but when he finally looked at Obi-Wan, he saw the Jedi staring straight ahead, eyes wide and unblinking, and saying, “I’m crazy, I’m crazy, I’m crazy …” over and over again.

“But it worked,” Anakin dared to say. “We made it.”

“It didn’t work!” Obi-Wan yelled at him. “We’ve stalled! And you almost got us killed!”

Anakin looked down at his hands and body, and waggled his fingers. “I think we’re still alive!” He grinned, trying to disarm his fuming Master, but Obi-Wan seemed as if he was about to explode.

“It was stupid!” Obi-Wan roared.