Chapter 6: The Chase
"Anakin, over there!" Padmé's finger thrust unexpectedly under Anakin's nose, and had it not been for his precognition, she probably would have scratched out his eye.
They had been following a trace from Obi-Wan's COM link for several minutes now, inching in on him slowly through the static and mixed signals. COM link signals were weak to trace, and Obi-Wan was traveling very fast, which made tracking him a nearly impossible task. Anakin turned his head sharply and followed Padmé's finger. In the distance, he could see Obi-Wan trailing the Sith by roughly a hundred meters. Her deep black robes were billowing behind her, slowing her down just enough for Obi-Wan to keep on her tail. The speeders were being pushed to their limits, and luckily they were flying over a field of open grass, one bump or sharp turn and both of them would probably wipe out.
"Bring the ship in low and open the hatch!" Padmé shouted, a little unnecessarily. "I'll distract her."
Anakin wanted to object; no one had really given him an opportunity to help out yet, but she was already halfway out of the cockpit by the time he'd said, "but!"
He growled a little, hating to just have to sit and watch while Padmé and Obi-Wan were in danger, and since he hadn't even been there to help when Annora had been killed, he felt particularly useless. He sharply banked the ship starboard and pulled down parallel to the Sith woman, slowing to cruising speed and lowering the ship until it was nearly skimming the ground. He could hear the tall grass of the field below whipping at the stomach of the ship. He'd just fixed this damn thing. If a rock flew up and got jammed in the vents, he was just going to die. He tapped a panel and the hatch opened with a roar of incoming wind. His ears popped as he glared stupidly at the pitch stabilizer, unable to even glance at Padmé for risk of shearing off the ramp and killing her.
He heard her fire a few rounds, but he couldn't tell if she'd managed to land a hit, he was still unable to take his eyes from the altimeter controls. He heard a speeder whining over the roar of wind howling through the hatch, and he tried to keep the ship steady in a frustrated attempt to do anything useful. Soon, he heard his Master's boots clunking up the entrance ramp and the hatch closed with a hiss. Padmé's footsteps trailed quickly behind. Obi-Wan rushed into the cockpit and plowed into the co-pilot chair, which rotated sharply and slapped him in the thigh with its safety harness.
Obi-Wan's face was wind burned and bright red, and Anakin could feel his Master's heart beating frantically as Obi-Wan sat down and tried to fasten his harness. His breath was coming too quick and his hands were too chapped from the wind, so he just threw the clips aside and leaned forward, looking at the controls.
"Pull up and follow her from a distance. She might try to shake us; when Padmé hit her she veered off to the west. I managed to pick up her speeder bike's tracer code on my scanner..." Obi-Wan continued to mumble breathlessly as he fiddled with some instruments and locked the ship onto the Sith's stolen speeder bike.
Padmé came in looking exhausted and windblown. She was holding her right arm to her body; a frustrated expression on her face.
"You okay?" Anakin asked, watching as she sat down behind Obi-Wan and fastened her harness with her left arm.
"I'll be fine. I threw my arm out in the wind and pulled something, but I think I'll live," she said as she gave him an irritated look.
Obi-Wan broke into a half-smile and said, "She did fabulously. I've never seen blaster fire so accurate while one is hanging out the back end of a ship."
Padmé nudged the back of Obi-Wan's seat rather forcefully with her knee.
"He's lying. When the wind caught my arm, I lost my blaster. However, it did happen to hit the assassin in the face, so no harm done."
Anakin couldn't suppress a laugh.
"You hit her in the face with a blaster?" Anakin asked laughingly.
Obi-Wan grinned boyishly and said, "It was a very accurate hit."
With a roll of her eyes, Padmé turned the other way and pretended to ignore them both.
"Which one do you suppose she was?" Anakin asked, his eyes tracing the signal of the Sith speeder.
"What?" grumbled Obi-Wan, his brow furrowing.
"Was she the Master or the Apprentice? There are always two of them, right?" Anakin persisted.
Out of the corner of his eye, Anakin saw Padmé glance up anxiously.
Obi-Wan's voice dropped very low and said, "She was the Apprentice, I'm sure. Her fury is very new; her skills are not yet polished. We can be sure of one thing."
"Whoever the Master is, he knows what he's doing. To have trained a new Apprentice so quickly is very alarming," Obi-Wan said.
"The whole situation is very alarming!" Padmé said shrilly, before quieting herself and looking embarrassed for eavesdropping.
Obi-Wan glanced at Padmé over his shoulder and gave a sad smile. The cockpit was quiet for a moment as the situation sunk into all of them in turn. Anakin continued to watch the tracer beacon as they hovered in the stratosphere, waiting for the Sith to stop and board her ship. Anakin increased the scanner breadth so that he would detect any ship entering or leaving Naboo's gravitational sphere. Not that it would have been difficult anyway; there was not much intergalactic traffic on Naboo during peacetime.
They had been waiting for some time, and Anakin was beginning to think they had been duped.
"Master, what if her base isn't off-planet?"
Obi-Wan considered this briefly before shaking his head.
"No, she's foreign. I could feel her presence several minutes before the attack, but I didn't know what it was. She hasn't been here long."
"But she's not going anywhere...the speeder is just going around in circles and I haven't picked up any departing air traffic," as he said this, Anakin dialed up the range on his scanners another notch, just to be sure.
Padmé spoke from behind Obi-Wan saying, "My guess is that she's buying time."
She leaned forward to glance at the speeder's beacon and said, "The longer she delays her departure, and the longer she can formulate a plan of escape."
"I think you might be right," said Obi-Wan thoughtfully. "Perhaps we need to use some force."
Obi-Wan turned to Anakin and said, "Bear down on that speeder and get her caught in your draft. Don't discharge any weapons; we can't risk destroying her yet."
Padmé angrily asked, "Why not?"
"This time we need to destroy them both. The fact that Darth Maul was the only one," responded Obi-Wan cautiously.
She turned back to Anakin, who was already lowering the ship for re-entry. "If you catch her in a draft she'll..."
A shrill alarm started ringing as the computer called out: "Unidentified vessel detected, departing Nubian airspace." This was followed by a series of coordinates and a louder beep as the ship's computer added, "Unidentified vessel preparing for hyperspace."
"Damn!" hissed Obi-Wan, who was looking through the navigation shield as if he thought her ship, would be visible from this distance. "Get on her, NOW!"
"I'm already on it," Anakin replied.
Anakin's hands clamped the controls and the ship made a very nauseating lurch forward as he fought to pull the ship from Naboo's atmosphere as fast as he could. Obi-Wan was frantically punching in the enemy ship's last coordinates, and luckily it wasn't terribly far from their current position, only a few hundred thousand clicks to the north. As they closed in, the Sith ship appeared on several data screens as the computer scanned and analyzed it.
"It's a modified ship," said Anakin. "But it's an old piece of junk. I should be able to trace the jump, that model shouldn't have a cloaking devise on it..."
He was cut short as the Sith ship vanished in a blinding burst of light. Padmé punched her knee with a very non-regal growl. Obi-Wan closed his eyes and sighed, clearly fed-up.
Anakin watched as the computer scrambled several nasty looking equations and finally spat out a set of coordinates.
"We've picked up her ship's hyperdrive calculations. It looks like she aimed somewhere on the Outer Rim."
Looking a bit revived; Obi-Wan transferred the coordinates to a navigation console and called up a map of a sparse-looking system.
"The Ryloth system?" mused Anakin, trying to connect the map with his memory. "I've heard of that system."
"As have I. Your home-world is located in that system," replied Obi-Wan slowly as he analyzed the map.
Realization hit Anakin like a ton of bricks. He hadn't been back to that system since he left nine years ago.
"It's not in Republican space. Prepare to make the jump to hyperspace, we're going after her," Obi-Wan continued.
Just seconds after Anakin loaded the data for the jump, the transmission console started flashing as they received an incoming message. Anakin stared, slightly dumbfounded.
"It's the Council," he said, unable to mask his surprise.
"When the ship is ready, make the jump," instructed Obi-Wan as he hit the receive button.
The transmission crackled to life, and a small blue figure appeared on the console.
"Master Fisto," said Obi-Wan politely, inclining his head.
"Obi-Wan," he returned curtly. "I'm afraid we have a very serious problem."
Anakin and Obi-Wan exchanged looks, but before anything could be said, Kit Fisto continued.
"We have received a transmission from a Jedi; an Aislinn Raghnailt. Her last transmission was dispatched several days ago, but it did not reach the council until this morning. I hope we aren't already too late." Fisto paused and inclined his head, causing his headlocks to shift. "From what we can gather she is somewhere in the Ryloth system..."
Obi-Wan and Anakin glanced at one another again, and without warning the ship jumped into hyperspace.
It would be difficult to say whose face appeared more astonished. Obi-Wan was uncharacteristically slack-jawed, while Anakin merely gaped; Padmé appeared quite floored, and Kit Fisto suddenly frowned, before his expression morphed quickly into one of pure confusion.
"Your ship has just appeared in the Ryloth system," he stated, obviously surprised.
Regaining his composure, Obi-Wan quickly cut to the point.
"We are tracking a Sith spacecraft. A new Sith apprentice has emerged; it appears she was after the Queen. She killed Queen Amidala's double."
"So you know," Master Fisto said in a somber voice. "The Chancellor has informed us of his suspicions. None of the Council had detected a disturbance, so we were wary to jump to a definite conclusion. Unfortunately it seems that the Chancellor's suspicion is correct." He paused again and thought for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was dark. "It would seem that the Ryloth system is more dangerous than we originally thought."
Padmé seemed to mutter something under her breath and she scowled.
"As I said before, Aislinn Raghnailt dispatched a message to the Council two days ago. She expressed a need for assistance," Master Fisto added.
Fisto paused for dramatic emphasis and then continued saying, "This system is not allied with the Republic, and for millennia it has been governed by the Hutts, along with an army of ruthless gangsters. We have a precarious agreement with the system, which declares that no Republic Jedi are allowed admittance without specific permission. If Aislinn Raghnailt is discovered, things could get extremely unpleasant."
"Bureaucratically unpleasant or mutilatingly unpleasant?" asked Anakin, who immediately balked when Obi-Wan shot him a glare.
Fisto seemed unfazed as he replied, "Unpleasant in every sense. For several centuries Gardulla and her ancestors have done everything in their power to keep the Jedi off of Tatooine, and there is no reason to believe they'd suddenly changed their minds.
"As long as anyone can remember, the mobs of Tatooine have made it their business to find every Jedi potential born on the planet and keep them from being trained; sometimes in very controversial ways. They have never let anyone escape. There is no way that anyone could slip off-planet and return a full-fledged Knight; every sentient with resident status is fitted with an implant that keeps a record of their whereabouts. If they should try to leave for any reason it explodes in the electropshere.
"They feel that things are better for it. Gardulla has countless powerful friends that protect Tatooine's many taxpayers, and Tatooine's many taxpayers have never tried to leave. So the idea of a Jedi just waltzing through the planet's electrosphere, in either direction, is absolutely ridiculous to them."
Fisto sighed with frustration and continued on saying, "Tatooine is not a part of the Republic. There is an ancient treaty forbidding any Jedi associated with the Republic from entering Tatooine space. It is the type of treaty that has no fine print...it simply states, "or else." It is a very troublesome time for an entire system to revolt outright against the Republic, a tiresome burden when the Republic can endure no more strain.
"We need you to find Aislinn Raghnailt and recover her. To our knowledge her location is still Tatooine, so there is still time. Do not reveal yourselves to anyone, and do not speak of the Republic. We require a silent operation.
"The sudden appearance of the Sith is most unfortunate. We cannot risk deploying another Republican ship into enemy space, so you will have to track her yourselves. I warn you, this complication with Aislinn Raghnailt is no easy matter. Do not disregard it because of a shadowy threat. The Hutts have far-reaching friends, and we cannot risk a war."
Fisto bowed his head and sharply declared, "May the Force be with you," before the hologram disappeared and the cockpit was silent save for the sounds of the ship's computer receiving Fisto's profile of Aislinn's possible location.
Padmé was the first to speak saying, "We'll need to split up. One of us must track the Sith, and the others should track down Aislinn Raghnailt."
Obi-Wan spun around slowly to face Padmé.
"We?" he repeated slowly. "Us?"
Anakin could see where his Master was going with this, and he quickly interjected.
"Master, we can't just leave her alone to wait for us. The Sith are after her. It would be irresponsible to simply leave her on a hostile world," Anakin said.
"No, it would be irresponsible to flaunt her before legions of gangsters and Huttese warlords who would like to see each of us very painfully dead," was Obi-Wan's reply.
"Then what do you suggest we do?" Anakin asked unpleasantly.
Padmé growled and unfastened her harness, standing up and angrily throwing her arms over her chest.
"I suggest you stop talking about me as if I'm not here and ask me what I would like to do, since it seems that I am causing such a problem. As the senior delegate of a democratic world, I would think that I could be of use for such a clearly political matter, but it sounds as if I am too much of a burden to even be allowed off the ship!" Padmé said angrily.
Anakin gaped. He had never heard Padmé use the word "I" so many times in his life, and he had certainly never seen her so furious. Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair, but said nothing.
"We are all going to find something shabby to wear, Anakin and I will go in search of Aislinn while you, Master Jedi," Padmé looked at Obi-Wan as if she doubted he was a Master of anything, "will go in search of the Sith."
With that, Padmé turned on her heel and strode to the rear of the ship, and she could be heard rummaging about the closets looking for some sort of disguise.
Anakin turned to Obi-Wan and said, "It's as good a plan as any, Master, and it's unfair to ask her to do anything else."
With a tired sort of reprimand, Obi-Wan said, "Padmé is upset and distraught, she wants to find her friend's killer, but Aislinn Raghnailt has put a rather sizable roadblock in her way. We would be unwise to encourage any wrathful behavior on her part, and it would be extremely foolish of us to allow a prominent Republic delegate to be exposed to this system."
When Anakin looked ready to interrupt, Obi-Wan harshly added, "Especially when her life has already been threatened once today."
"So then what options do we have? She can't just stay here. The ship could be boarded, or raided, or destroyed..." Anakin said.
"She will not stay here and neither will you. I will take care of Aislinn and I want you to escort Padmé back to Coruscant. In a few days time, return for me in an unregistered fighter…" Obi-Wan said.
"But what about the Sith?" Anakin asked.
"We will see about the Sith, but I am sure that the further away Padmé is from this system, the safer she will be," Obi-Wan replied.
Anakin wanted to object, but Padmé had returned to the cockpit, sporting a vastly over-sized robe. Her face was completely obscured by the massive hood, and Anakin could not shake the ridiculous impression that Padmé had morphed into a five foot Jawa. However, he was glad that her face was masked, because when Obi-Wan told her his plan, the low sound she made suggested that her expression would have been a shock to behold.
Anakin spun around quickly in his chair and fiddled with the ship's controls, bringing the ship closer to Tatooine, where the enemy ship had clearly landed. He hoped that piloting the ship would be enough of an excuse for him not to get involved in the argument that was about to unfold. Padmé threw back her hood and stared at Obi-Wan in surprise, her face almost disgusted.
"With all due respect Master Kenobi I am not some youngling you can order around! Nor am I some half-wit shut-in politician who cannot handle herself in a fight. I happen to be tagging along on this little misadventure by choice, and you are neither my bodyguard nor my superior, so if you think you can just casually decide what is best for me you are seriously mistaken.
"If you are truly so worried about me being captured by some back-world pirate, then perhaps it would be good of you to remember that when we picked up your Padawan nine years ago on a this planet, it was I, not you, who was out in the sand playing with the bad guys. I've evaded the Hutts before, and they have no interest in me aside from using me for ransom. As Jedi, you two are the ones who will draw truly unwanted attention," Padmé said angrily.
Anakin sat very still, his eyes very wide. He tried not to move, tried not to breathe too loudly, hoping that Padmé's wrath would pass over him. Mercifully, she made no attempt to attack him, and the cockpit became silent as Obi-Wan and Padmé stared each other down.
Finally, with a very hefty sigh, Obi-Wan relented, "FINE! You and Anakin will search for Aislinn Raghnailt and I will pursue the Sith woman."
"That will be excellent," declared Padmé, as casually as if she were ordering a meal.
Then, under the pretense of finding more disguises, she vanished once more to the back of the ship. Obi-Wan turned toward Anakin very slowly, looking tense.
"Apparently I was mistaken," he drawled, a bit of dry sarcasm tinting his voice. "It would be most unfortunate for some lawless scoundrel to come across Padmé."
He glanced at Anakin, a sparkle in his eye as he said, "Unfortunate for them."
