The Chase is on
This is star systems away from being the best idea that ever crossed my mind or lack thereof, not that any of my ideas were particularly ingenious, I observed as the assassin droid, whose defensive mechanisms must have been as sophisticated as its stabilizing one, sent a barrage of electrical shocks arcing over its metallic surface, stinging my unfortunate hands. Since I valued my life, as unspectacular as it oftentimes was, I had no alternative but to cling grimly to the automation, gritting my teeth through the ripples of agony jogging through my palms and fingers.
As the droid sped me through the bustling traffic lanes of Coruscant, I noted dimly that this sight, which surely ought to have been a weird spectacle to those who were privileged enough to be outsiders, did not garner nearly as many curious stares as I would have anticipated. Then again, I was on Coruscant, I reminded myself, where one would basically have to be on fire to warrant even a second glance from a majority of the busy, cosmopolitan civilians.
Even though I was aware that it was nothing short of a display of extreme folly, I found myself gazing down as I journeyed along, struggling to endure the electrical assaults of the assassin droid. When I glanced down, I glimpsed the teeming ecumenopolis levels stretching seemingly into infinity beneath my feet, and I swiftly raised my eyes again.
Yet, the damage had already been accomplished. Now I couldn't pretend that I was doing anything less perilous than whizzing kilometers above the planet's surface, clutching onto a device that was as devoted to dislodging me as I was to remaining affixed upon it. I could no longer delude myself into believing that if I relinquished my grip, I would emerge from the experience in any better shape than an overripe muja fruit that had been imprudently utilized as a punching bag on which to practice kata moves upon. When I smashed into the permacrete surface of the planet, I would probably go splat like an overripe muja fruit, as well.
Speaking of objects going splat, that had almost happened to me, for another shock had nearly sent me plummeting to the ground so far, far below. Blast it, either the voltage of the shocks was increasing or my endurance was decreasing.
Where in all the neighboring galaxies was my Padawan when I needed him? If he was still in Senator Amidala's sleeping quarters, I would murder him, assuming, of course, that I survived this current ordeal.
Ouch, burn it. The voltage must have risen or my endurance must have diminished again. That settled it, then. There had to be a way of circumventing this agony besides releasing my grip upon the droid. Yes, that was it, I determined as enlightenment struck me. I fumbled with the droid with my right hand, discovered what felt like a power wire, and yanked it out of the machine without pausing to consider the potential ramifications of my impulsive behavior. Just as I had done when I had leaped out of the window in Senator Amidala's suite. Obviously, Anakin's impetuousness was rubbing off on me, and that was not a good thing…
At first, my scheme appeared to have been effective since the electrical shocks ceased bombarding me. However, the flaw in my plan was revealed a nanosecond later when it became clear that I had severed off the power supply that controlled the anti-gravity mechanism and kept the automation aloft.
Of course there had to be a catch. One of the few certainties of this particular universe was that there was always a catch to everything, I griped inwardly as the droid and I descended, falling through the air like stones. The lights of several stories flashed past us as we dropped with a velocity I didn't even want to contemplate.
"Not good, not good," I shouted into the wind whacking my face as I fell, my words demonstrating that I was indeed the master of understatement if nothing else. Frantically, I battled to reconnect the wires before I ended up contributing to the general good of society by becoming an invaluable piece of the pavement.
It took much more time than I would have liked, but I finally managed to turn the assassin droid on again, and off it soared with me hanging desperately upon it. Unluckily, the device didn't waste a second before it recommenced the series of electrical shocks that it had generously been treating me to previously.
Still, it was batter to have a chance of not ramming into the permacrete surface of Coruscant than to have none, which is what would have happened if I'd kept the power off to halt the onslaught of electrical shocks. That didn't prevent me from wishing that I could separate the mechanism that controlled the droid's flight from those that governed its defensive system, though. If Anakin were here, he could have achieved such a feat in a heartbeat, but he wasn't here, much to my aggravation.
My annoyance with my apprentice was rapidly transfigured into panic when the droid elected to upgrade its defensive maneuvers and twisted so that it collided with the durasteel side of a towering edifice. The impact knocked all the oxygen out of my lungs and I nearly let go of the droid reflexively. However, I recalled my surroundings in the last possible millisecond and maintained my hold upon the machine, although I had to admit that it was notably less firm than it was before. I was losing the strength to continue this. If Anakin didn't rescue me or the droid didn't reach the assassin's lair soon, then…
This soothing syllogism was left only halfway finished when the inconveniently well-programmed assassin droid veered back into the thronging Coruscanti traffic lane, diving behind a speeder and flying along just above the vehicle's exhaust engine.
Mumbling something― I wasn't even positive what exactly myself and I was the one whose lips the words had departed from― I contorted myself into an odds shape in a stunt that I would never able to duplicate in a million years, even if my life depended upon it again.
I had only just recovered from this terrifying experience that would hopefully only be a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence when the droid again chose to switch to another track, this time swooping in low over the roof of one close by structure.
Luckily, if anything about this horrid affair could be constituted as being lucky, it was a flat rooftop. This allowed me to tuck my legs up so that I could skim across the roof along with the inventive automation that was challenging me so. After darting across the rooftop, it dropped into an alcove in the side of the edifice.
Peering into the niche as I approached by way of droid, I spotted a battered yellow airspeeder that plainly had seen better years or decades parked behind a muffled figure in a brown form-fitting unisuit waiting inside the recess, apparently awaiting the return of the droid dispatched to eliminate Senator Amidala.
When the being saw me clinging to the approaching automation, he whipped out a laser rifle. "I have a bad feeling about this," I muttered, as the sentient centered his weapon upon me, and the Force screamed out a warning. I thought that it wasn't of much use as an alarm system if it was only beginning to blare now when I had been in mortal danger ever since I had so stupidly vaulted out of the window.
Less than a moment later, explosions burst all around me. If I could just use my lightsaber…but I couldn't withdraw it without relinquishing my hold upon the droid with one hand, and the instant I did that, it would find a way to throw me off. All I could do in this compromising situation was hope that the assassin was cursed with a dreadful aim.
It transpired that the assassin didn't have a lame aim. Great, I complained in my head, as I twisted myself in several different directions at once to dodge the maelstrom of bullets. This is just what I needed to top off this marvelous night.
However, the splendors of this evening had not concluded yet, for barely a minute later, the droid detonated when a blaster bolt hit it, and I was slipping by ten levels, then twenty, and then thirty of them.
It took me half a moment to realize that I was, indeed, plunging through the Coruscanti atmosphere at a speed that would have gotten a ship pulled over by the sector police for a traffic safety violation. Worse still, there was nothing in my Jedi repertoire to save me in this case, and there were no handholds in sight― no platforms and no awnings of thick and padded material for me to grab or land upon. Nothing. Just another four hundred and something levels to the ground. Wonderful.
Hopefully the horror that would pierce through my heart like a stunpike when the permacrete surface of Coruscant actually came into view would kill me before the impact did, I thought as I sought to find my calm center by calling upon my connection with the Force so that I could accept this unwelcome and embarrassing demise.
I had made scant progress in this endeavor when a speeder swooped beside me like the predatory hawk-bats that nested in the abandoned shops and residences on this world. Acting on the primitive instinct to survive at all costs, I clasped onto the vehicle before it could whiz past it.
As I started to claw my way into the vessel, it entered into my brain that whoever was navigating this craft might not appreciate my dropping by so unexpectedly. Well, maybe if I asked really politely, I could persuade the driver to drop me off at the next building or anywhere else that was remotely solid, instead of kicking me out into the air again.
It was only when the driver announced cheerily, "That was wacky!" that I recognized the pilot as none other than my unruly Padawan.
Obviously it's him because who else on the whole planet would fly about with such blatant disregard for his own safety or the rules of air traffic? I demanded exasperatedly of myself as I clambered into the passenger's seat beside Anakin.
"What took you so long?" I asked him, trusting that he would detect the trace of gratitude for the rescue in my tone just as I had discerned the relieved nuance in his previous statement. It was a stupid game that we engaged in together: pretending that we didn't give a decicred about each other when in reality we did. All too much, perhaps.
"Oh, you know, Master," explained my apprentice, his frivolity implying that we were relaxing one of Coruscant's balconies and describing the images we saw in the clouds. As he continued, he lounged back in his chair and slung his left arm up on the edge of the open speeder, adopting a posture that was the embodiment of casualness, "I couldn't find a speeder that I really liked. One with an open cockpit, of course―"
Inwardly, I conceded reluctantly that it would, in fact, require a considerable amount of time to commandeer a senator's vehicle, and it would, indeed, have to be one with an open cockpit if the borrowing without permission but with every intention of returning in the best possible condition could be accomplished. Unfortunately, since most senators invested more credits than the average Aqualish laborer made in a standard decade in their cruisers, very few of them purchased ones with open cockpits, because, as Anakin's actions illustrated, it was easy to steal crafts with open cockpits. The fact that few senators possessed open cockpit vessels probably was the reason why my Padawan had been compelled to select a ship that was a brighter yellow than most nebulae. Its ostentatious hue screamed that someone couldn't resist showing that wealth could buy objects but not taste.
"And with the right speed capabilities," rambled on Anakin with the same levity. "Then, you know, I had to hold out for just the right color―"
I was about to suggest that his vision, his sanity, or his taste was lacking if he believed that this nauseating yellow was the perfect shade for anything but a torture chamber. However, the thought was erased when I saw the closed-in yellow speeder that had been parked behind the assassin fly by us on a tangent.
"There!" I exclaimed, jabbing at the vehicle. With his lightning reflexes, Anakin whipped our transport about instantly and angled us off into rapid pursuit of our quarry. The predator was now the prey.
The prey was far from helpless, though. Almost immediately, an arm stretched out of the lead speeder's open window, wielding a blaster pistol, and the assassin 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 for swordsman," I remarked, maintaining the dialogue between my apprentice and me to take my mind off the fact that we would both probably be perishing in the imminent future. As I established as much, I dodged the bullets, a task that was rendered more difficult by the fact that I was being jostled about as Anakin spun us into a sequence of evasive maneuvers. I was teasing him since my Padawan invested more than enough time in honing his lightsaber skills, and we both knew it.
"I thought I already did that," stated Anakin slyly.
"Only in your mind, my very young apprentice," I educated him sharply. Yes, I recognized that he was jesting, but that he would make such a comment at all was symptomatic of his ever-growing complacency. No Jedi could be Master Yoda's peer at fencing. Even Master Windu, with his Vaapad, could not be placed on par with the grand master of our Order, and, to his credit, I suspected that Master Windu would be the first to acknowledge as much respectfully and without a hint of bitterness.
Granted, Anakin's extraordinary Force connection might very well permit him to surpass Master Yoda one day, but that time was very far away at the present, and my Padawan still had much to learn if he ever aspired to achieve such a goal. For now, he was light-years behind Yoda in just about everything imaginable and it wouldn't do him any harm to recollect this crucial tidbit of data.
At this juncture, my impossible apprentice decided that it would be advisable to follow the assassin's lead and weave in and out of the traffic lanes without any concern about the direction the rest of the lane happened to be traveling in, something that annoyed the occupants of the other crafts if their honking horns and rude hand gestures were any indicators.
"Hey, easy," I ordered after we almost smashed head-on into our third vessel. "You know I don't like it when you do that." That was an understatement. I liked it when he pulled off stunts like that as much as most organisms enjoyed receiving a taxman's letter or an eviction notice from their landlord.
"Sorry. I forgot you don't like flying, Master," snickered Anakin. At the end, his voice rose while he took our speeder down abruptly to avoid another hailstorm of blaster bolts from the assassin.
"I don't mind flying," I disputed, although that wasn't entirely true. If I could have lived my whole life without flying, I would have done so without a tinge of remorse, but my wish wasn't likely to be fulfilled and I had long ago come to terms with that fact. "But what you're doing is suicide." With my murder mixed in for good measure, might I add.
Anakin chose to prove the veracity of my assessment by pivoting sharply to the right and dropping abruptly. From this perspective, it appeared that the spire of the edifice below us was quickly approaching us, although, technically, it was us that were rushing toward it. We were going to become dead Jedi kabobs. Any remaining vestige of gratitude I might have harbored toward Anakin for saving me faded when I noticed that he had only granted me a temporary reprieve from the icy scythe of death. Sure, every time a life was saved, it was only a temporary gift since everything eventually perished, but most reprieves lasted more than five minutes, and I resented my Padawan for raising my hopes that I would survive this horror story only to dash them again with his manic piloting.
In this particular case, my worst fears that we would be impaled upon the spire never came to fruitition, thank the Force, for Anakin tugged back on the throttle at the last possible second. This allowed him to life the nose of our craft and zip it through the traffic until we were once again closing the gap between us and the assassin.
"Master, I've been flying since before I could walk," Anakin boasted, soaring past a commuter air train almost close enough to scrape the paint off both of the vehicles that had narrowly averted a collision that would have been far more injurious to us than it would have been to the train. "I'm very good at this."
As I had been dealing with him for a decade now, I was cognizant of his talent as a pilot, but it only took one miscalculation for the pair of us to perish in an inferno reminiscent of the hells depicted in the folklores of many worlds spanning the galaxy. If that happened, I would find out how to return from the dead and murder him, even if he was already dead himself.
"Just slow down," I commanded, but, as usual, I would have done better not to waste my breath because my directive went unheeded.
When the assassin attempted to shake us off his trail in a convoy of gigantic freight vessels, and then whipped through several impossibly tight corners into slender crevices between structures, Anakin matched every move. Around and around the two lunatics went, cutting through and under the traffic, and circling the buildings, somehow always managing to keep one another in sight. Clearly, the assassin was as brilliant a pilot as my Padawan was, and that was quite a compliment.
However, my apprentice had a differing viewpoint on the capabilities of the other pilot. "He can't lose me," bragged Anakin as he skimmed the wall of a conapt as he pursued the other craft. "He's getting desperate."
"Great," I remarked dryly, aware that desperate sentients were the most dangerous ones in the galaxy. Once an organism was convinced that it was going to die no matter what, it became filled with impotent fury, which motivated it to kill as many of the adversary as possible along with it. I didn't want my Padawan and me to be victims of the assassin's desperation. Blast it, if only I could persuade my apprentice to slow down…
"Wait!" I barked when the assassin's speeder charged into a tram tunnel. "Do not go in there."
"Don't worry, Master," Anakin soothed and sent the speeder into the tunnel after our quarry. He sounds as if he is humoring me, I observed mentally, but this is― oh no! The light just ahead wasn't the end of the tunnel as I had imagined, but rather the head of a massive oncoming passenger tram.
Barely in time, Anakin and the assassin spun their ships about and hurried back the way they had entered. We emerged from the tunnel just ahead of the high-speed tram that was blowing horn irately at us for our folly. When I realized that we would live through this moment of insanity, I released the breath I hadn't even been aware that I was holding.
"You know I don't like it when you do that," I repeated a statement I had made earlier this night, swallowing the bile that had burned its path up my throat at the near accident with the tram.
"Sorry, Master." Anakin's tone was still kilometers away from apologetic and I mentally upgraded my classification of him from impossible to incorrigible. "Don't worry. This guy's going to kill himself any minute now."
"Well, let him do that alone," I reasoned as we both watched the assassin burst right into the traffic and charged the wrong direction down a congested lane.
Although I deemed my logic as unassailable, my Padawan did not share my enlightened view if the way he raced after the assassin was any method of judging. Both of our vessels whipped around a corner with barely a millimeter to spare and past a row of banners waving in the wind. The left wing of our speeder clipped one of the flags, and our craft lurched as the banner draped across its front.
"That was too close," I told Anakin.
"Clear that!" Anakin hollered.
"What?" For a moment, I didn't understand. Then, I recognized that the flag was obstructing one of the air scoops. Without air, our engine was strangling. I leaned out of the speeder, trying to grab onto the banner and yank it away from the air scoop. Unfortunately, however, the flag was out of my reach.
"Clear the flag!" Anakin scowled as he battled the controls. "Hurry, we're losing power!"
There was only one thing for me to do. Sighing, I scrambled out onto the engine until I could reach the banner. When I pulled it free, the speeder leaned forward suddenly as it regained all the speed it had lost. The jerk almost caused me to lose my grip on the engine entirely, and I slid backward nearly a meter before I caught myself.
"I don't like it when you do that," I complained as I crawled back into my seat. My brain was too busy recovering from the trauma of balancing myself on the engine to come up with a more witty comment.
"So sorry, Master," answered Anakin, and this time I thought that he did mean the words, at least a little, but only a little.
The incident with the flag had cost us time― the assassin's vessel was well ahead of us now, but my Padawan played his controls like a musician would his instrument and was able to close the gap between us once more. He was navigating Podracers ever since he was six-years-old, I reminded myself, as I did whenever we ended up in one of these berserk chases. This notion was never the balm I initially intended for it to function as because it forced me to recall that Anakin had the distinction of having crashed every Pod he had ever raced except the final one that had bought his liberty. It was a marvel that he had survived all those crashes, but I supposed that the Force wasn't going to let the Chosen One go until he had completed his destiny and brought it back into balance, whatever that entailed.
And what was Anakin doing now? Was he seriously about to follow the assassin into that power refinery?
"It's dangerous near those power couplings," I warned, trying to encourage my apprentice not to follow the assassin's impulsive action. "Don't go through there."
Yet, Anakin dove after the other craft, anyhow. The presence of our two vehicles in the refinery triggered the activation of a series of giant electric arcs.
"What are you doing?" I demanded as my Padawan drove our speeder through the first of the electrical fields, and the charge tingled through me, rippling from the tips of my hair straight down to my toes.
"Sorry, Master!" Anakin decided to go with an apology rather than an explanation, or perhaps he didn't have one. His harried tone indicated that he was struggling to maintain control over the transport because the electric currents were obviously hurting him as well.
Recognizing that he didn't need another distraction to contend with, I clamped my mouth shut until we had exited the refinery. Then, I noted with a healthy does of sarcasm, "Oh, that was good."
"That was crazy," Anakin concurred flatly, his eyes still fixed on the craft ahead of us.
"I'm so glad you agree" was on the tip of my tongue when the other speeder twisted sideways and halted in the mouth of an alley, firing point blank at us.
"Stop," I yelled. If we stayed on this course, we would ram straight into the other speeder. No, maybe not. There was an impossibly minuscule gap just below the assassin's vehicle, and Anakin appeared to be aiming directly at it.
"We can make it," Anakin declared, the epitome of confidence. The next moment, we were underneath the assassin's ship. My apprentice was able to navigate us through the gap, but our speeder smashed into a pipe on the other side and spun wildly about as a result.
Dimly, I saw a construction crane and a pair of supporting struts swing by. Then, I felt our speeder brushed against something, and an enormous gas ball enveloped us. A second later, our speeder bumped into a building and stalled.
Why do I always let him drive? I groaned inwardly, burying my head in my hands as I called myself nine sorts of imbecile. "I'm crazy, I'm crazy," I muttered, thinking that it was about time I checked both my Padawan and I into a mental institute before either of us could inflict any more damage upon ourselves or other beings. If I was flagellating myself, Anakin was not reprimanding himself.
"I got us through that one all right," he commented in a satisfied tone.
His smugness caused my blood to boil. "No, you didn't," I countered in a testy voice. "We've stalled, and you almost got us killed."
"Oh, I think we're still alive," responded Anakin flippantly. He fiddled around with the controls for a moment, and the engine sputtered before roaring back to life. When the engine started to work again, he smiled, as though we had not lost the assassin all because he had to prove his skills as a pilot. The grin infuriated me, because it was obvious that he had not truly listened to a word that had escaped my lips earlier.
"It was stupid!" I snapped, finally allowing myself to reveal my anger and frustration with him.
At last, my tone penetrated my apprentice's bubble of self-satisfaction, and he blinked before hanging his head. It didn't take a genius to conclude that he was alarmed by what he deemed as my harshness. After all, I rarely raised my voice at him, but this situation and his complete absence of any semblance of repentance was nothing short of utterly exasperating.
"I could have caught him," protested Anakin once he had recovered from his surprise at my display of temper. Anyone else might have let the matter drop, but he had to argue the point.
"But you didn't," I interrupted, glaring at him to show that I wasn't going to enter into a debate about the odds of various hypothetical events occurring. "And now we've lost him for good."
This sentiment had only just left my lips when an explosion rocked our speeder. Reflexively, Anakin and I ducked, dodging the blaster bolts that rained down upon us. Once the pzing of bullets striking the sides of our craft and the durasteel wall of the nearby edifice had abated, I felt our speeder tilt sideways as Anakin guided it into the air again and tried to escape the ambush.
"No, we haven't," smirked my Padawan as our ship rose and we confronted the assassin once more.