VIII
The
Chase, Continued
Whipping through the sky lanes, the assassin droid attempted to shake the Jedi Master off. It made tight turns and changed direction often in an attempt to use momentum against the Jedi. Doggedly, Dooku hung on.
He had been right in guessing that Col had sent his accomplice after his Padawan, although he couldn't guess why someone would want to assassinate the girl – she had no political sway at all. Determining to find some answers, the Jedi pulled his legs up to his chest as the droid skimmed over the top of a building, hoping to knock him off.
The Master was hoping that the droid would eventually make its way back to its master, who was probably the being he had fought earlier.
Accelerating, the droid began climbing higher and higher through the levels of skyscrapers. Soon they were above all but the few tallest of the buildings that defied gravity, poking up above the rest of the skyline.
Squinting, Dooku noted a figure perched on ledge outside a window of one of the buildings. Raising a blaster rifle, the being took aim.
Dooku drew his lightsaber, holding it in one hand while he tightened his grip on the droid with the other. The being across the way, let off a shot.
The droid lurched upward, attempting to put the Jedi in a position where he wouldn't be able to block the shot.
Calling on the Force to guide his hand, Dooku parried the shot that came at him. Another volley of shots came in quick succession, taxing the Jedi to defend himself while hanging on to the droid that swerved back and forth through the air as it attempted to shake him off.
Dooku attempted to deflect the blaster fire back to its sender, but he had little success, as his aim was bad while trying to maintain a grip on the droid's sleek outer covering.
Zam Wessell stood on the rooftop, watching the foolish Jedi dangling from her assassin droid. She was tired of engaging him in this foolish duel in the air.
Leveling her blaster rifle at the droid the fool hung from, she took aim and fired. Split seconds later, the droid was vaporized by the high-powered blast, and the Jedi was plummeting down into the night.
Dooku counted twenty levels that zipped passed him before he was going to fast to be able to distinguish on level from the next.
He removed a thin climbing rope from his belt. He took the magnetic grappler on its end and hurled it at the passing wall, urging it forward with the Force.
The grappler caught, and Dooku swung in to rest against the side of the tower as he slashed open a window, holding on to his rope with one hand, and wielding his lightsaber in the other.
He leapt inside, coiling his rope, and surprising a young couple watching a holo-vid.
"Excuse me," he said. "Jedi business."
Quickly the Jedi made his way back up to roof, running at breakneck speed.
When he arrived, he saw that the bounty hunter was still on the roof, conferring with one of his/her cohorts, a helmeted man in a suit of Mandalorian armor. He/she had assumed that Dooku's life had been brought to an end. The bounty hunter had underestimated the Jedi's resourcefulness, as he/she was about to find out. Crouching behind a thermal outlet port that rose several meters into the air, he listened to the conversation that was being carried on.
"My client is getting impatient Fett," the first bounty hunter said. "We'll have to be more subtle next time."
"Indeed."
"If what Lord Sidious says is true, and she really is the Chosen One, we need her dead," the first one said. "Having this real savior in our midst could ruin everything. We need to help Sidious maintain the fallacy that Skywalker is the Chosen One."
The other bounty hunter grunted acknowledgement.
"I can trust that you will finish this matter?" he/she asked.
"You can count it Zam," Fett said.
Rising from his hiding place, Dooku drew his lightsaber.
"Stop!" he called out commandingly.
Both bounty hunters ignited jetpacks and took off into the night. Running after them, Dooku threw his rope, whose grappler soon caught onto the jetpack of the one named Zam.
He stood his ground at the edge of the rooftop, pulling against the force of the bounty hunter's jetpack.
It was a losing battle. The Jedi was swept off the edge to be pulled along through the night.
The bounty hunter's jet pack sputtered, and then died, overworked by the added weight of the Jedi.
As the pair began to fall, Dooku worked his way up the line until his was grappling with the bounty hunter.
They tumbled through the air, punching and kicking.
Dooku managed to regain his climbing line and re-cast it, hoping to snag a building. At the same time, he brought his lightsaber to bear on the hand that held a blaster to his temple.
The bounty hunter let a moan escape him/her as his/her hand tumbled off into the abyss.
Dooku received a hard jerk as the climbing line took hold of the building. He grabbed onto the bounty hunter and swung in, onto a narrow ledge where he let the bounty hunter fall to the ground.
The bounty hunter had turned out to be a woman, wearing a dark veil over the bottom half of her face.
"Who were you trying kill?" he asked.
"It was just a job," she offered weakly. Blood spurted from her wrist where her hand had once been.
"Tell me," he said, invoking the Force to open up the mind of the bounty hunter. She resisted, but soon gave up the information that the Jedi wanted.
"A Jedi Padawan."
"That's good enough for now. Who hired you?" he asked, continuing his interrogation.
"I was hired by – " her voice trailed off as a dart sank itself in the tissue of her neck.
The woman's face relaxed, and turned black and ugly – the face of a Changeling. Things were getting more complicated all the time. Here breath ceased to come. Dooku looked up to see the other bounty hunter fire his jetpack, and disappear into the night.
The night's chase had come to an end, but it left some loose ends…some unfinished business.
