Attack of the Clones Read online

  “I think he is a good man,” Anakin stated. “My instincts are very positive about …”

  The young Padawan trailed off, his eyes widening, his expression becoming one of shock.

  “I sense it, too,” Obi-Wan said breathlessly, and the two Jedi exploded into motion.

  Inside the bedroom, the kouhuns crawled slowly and deliberately toward the sleeping Padmé’s exposed neck and face, their mandibles clicking excitedly.

  “Wee oooo!” R2-D2 shrieked, catching on to the threat. The droid tootled a series of alarms and focused a light on the bed, highlighting the centipede invaders perfectly as Obi-Wan and Anakin burst into the room.

  Padmé awoke, her eyes going wide, sucking in her breath in terror as the wicked little creatures stood up and hissed, and came at her.

  Or would have, except that Anakin was there, his blue lightsaber blade slashing across, just above the bedcovers, once and again, slicing both creatures in half.

  “Droid!” Obi-Wan cried, and Anakin and Padmé turned to see him rushing for the window. There, hovering outside, was the remote assassin, its appendages retracting fast.

  Obi-Wan leapt into the blinds, taking them with him right through the window, shattering the glass. He reached into the Force as he leapt, using it to extend his jump, to send him far through the air to catch hold of the retreating droid assassin. With his added weight, the floating droid sank considerably, but it compensated and stabilized quickly, leaving the Jedi hanging on to it a hundred stories up.

  Off flew the droid, taking Obi-Wan with it.

  “Anakin?” Padmé asked, turning to him. When she saw him return the look, and saw the sudden flicker of intensity in his blue eyes, she pulled her nightdress higher about her shoulders.

  “Stay here!” Anakin instructed. “Watch her, Artoo!” He rushed for the door, only to stop abruptly as Captain Typho and a pair of guards, along with the handmaiden Dormé, charged in.

  “See to her!” was all that Anakin explained as he scrambled past them, running full out for the turbolift.

  * * *

  Not without defensive systems, the probe droid repeatedly sent electrical shocks arcing over its surface, stinging Obi-Wan’s hands.

  The Jedi Knight gritted through the pain, having no alternative but to hold on. He knew he shouldn’t look down, but he did so anyway, to see the city teeming far, far below.

  Another shock nearly sent him plummeting toward that distant bustle.

  Reflexively, and hardly considering all the implications, the Jedi fumbled with one hand, found a power wire, and pulled it free, ceasing the electrical shocks.

  But ending, too, the power that kept the probe droid aloft.

  Down they went, falling like stones, the lights of the various floors flashing past them like strobes as they dropped.

  “Not good, not good!” Obi-Wan said over and over as he worked frantically to reconnect the wire. Finally, he got it. The probe droid’s lights blinked back on, and off the remote soared, with Obi-Wan hanging on desperately. The droid wasted no time in reigniting the series of electrical shocks, stinging the Jedi, but not shaking the stubborn man free.

  Anakin was in no mood to wait for a turbolift. Out came his lightsaber, and with a single well-placed thrust the Padawan had the doors open, though the turbolift car was nowhere near his floor. Anakin didn’t even pause long enough to discern if it was above him or below, he just leapt into the shaft, catching hold of one of the supporting poles with one arm, propping the side of his foot tight against it, and spinning downward. His mind whirled, trying to remember the layout of the building, and which levels held the various docking bays.

  Suddenly that sixth sense, feeling through the Force, alerted him to danger.

  “Yikes!” he yelled as he looked down to see the turbolift racing up at him.

  Grabbing on tighter to the pole, he held his open palm downward, then sent a tremendous Force push below, not to stop the lift, but to propel himself back up the shaft, keeping him ahead of the lift with sufficient speed for him to reorient himself and land, sprawled, atop the speeding car.

  Again, whipping out his lightsaber, he stabbed it through the catch on the lift’s top hatch. Ignoring the shrieks from the car’s occupants below, Anakin pulled open the hatch, grabbed the edge as he shut off his blade, then somersaulted into the car.

  “Docking bay level?” he asked the pair of stunned Senators, a Sullustan and a human.

  “Forty-seven!” the human responded at once.

  “Too late,” the Sullustan added, noting the rolling floor numbers. The diminutive Senator started to add, “Next is sixty-something,” but Anakin slammed the brake button, and when that didn’t work fast enough for him, he reached into the Force again and grabbed at the braking mechanisms, forcing them even more tightly into place.

  All three went off the floor with the sudden stop, the Sullustan landing hard.

  Anakin banged on the door, yelling for it to open. A hand on his shoulder slowed him, and he turned to see the human Senator step by, one finger held up in a gesture bidding the eager young Jedi to wait.

  The Senator pushed a button, clearly marked on the panel, and the turbolift door slid open.

  With a shrug and a sheepish smile, Anakin had to fall to his belly and squeeze through the opening to drop to the hallway below. He ran frantically, left and then right, finally spotting a balcony adjacent to the parking garage. Out he ran, then vaulted over a rail, dropping to a line of parked speeders. One yellow, snub-nosed speeder was open, so he jumped in, firing it up and zooming away, off the platform and then up, up, heading for the line of traffic flowing high above.

  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 r
elished 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.