Chapter 10: The Hunters and the Hunted
Kuno and Akantha left the bar and headed down the street, avoiding the downpours of the refuse flues from higher levels where they could. Akantha was tense. His head never stopped moving, as if expecting an ambush at any moment. The shadows surrounding the awnings of side streets, and piles of discarded boxes gave more than enough places for a small army to hide in. Kuno sensed nothing, but kept his hand on the handle of his lightsaber.
At a particular rough spot in the pavement, Akantha's foot caught, sending him down in a flurry of cape and arms. Kuno stared amused at the heap of pink and orange, then reached down to help the man back onto his feet, only to be pulled down as the cape unbalanced Akantha after it had gotten caught on a piece of twisted metal. Merriment shining in his eyes, Kuno quickly jumped to his feet again, and again helped Akantha up, this time without mishap.
"Still clumsy?" Akantha only grumbled, and walked away. His cape had ripped neatly in half during the attempt to stand, and the pink and orange colors were tarnished with hues of brown and green. The smell would probably be nauseating, but here in this place, it was not distinguishable from the puddles of what had once been water surrounding them. For a moment, Kuno watched as the data lord attempted to walk away with as much dignity as his crumpled suit and ripped cape would allow. Concentrating to stop a smile from blooming on his face, he followed him, careful to avoid coming into contact with more of the unpleasant looking and smelling brew. His Jedi robes had suffered enough for one day, he thought. If only the day had thought otherwise.
At the crossing of two main thoroughfares, a small transport waited tucked between the sides of two buildings. A dozen armed men stood scattered around, blocking the way for the two men. All had weapons prominently displayed, and all wore armor the color of the ground around them. All in all they resembled living tree stumps more than men paid to wreck mayhem. The leader, Manfred Nerva, a man in his later thirties with a frown on his pale face, stepped away from the wall he was standing against.
"Now. We can do this the easy way, or the hard way. Up to you." His glare moved from Akantha to Kuno, not really expecting two men to put up resistance against superior numbers. His men, handpicked by himself to do his master's bidding, were the best money could buy. Kuno took a half step forward and twisted slightly to better face the man, hiding his saber from view by the same opportunity.
"You would be?" Kuno asked. Manfred shook his head at the obvious stupidity of the question, but decided to humor the eccentrically dressed man.
"Manfred Nerva. Mercenary of profession, before you ask." He answered. Kuno nodded as if this was just the information he had been looking for.
"And might I inquire why we should go with you, Manfred?" Kuno asked of him.
"My master wishes to speak with you." He said.
"And who would your master be?"
"He calls himself Renegade." Manfred answered. Akantha opened his mouth to speak, but Kuno stopped him by placing a hand onto his shoulder, smiling pleasantly at the leader of the troop.
"We can spare a few moments for our old friend. Can't we?" Akantha just nodded dumbly at Kuno's words. Manfred took a half step backwards and drew his brows together. Then, he shrugged, and decided to take what life was giving him. With a polite nod, he indicated the waiting transport.
"The Master didn't expect you to come quite so calmly." He said, while preceding the two to the transport. His men were already assembled before the hatch. Three had gone inside. None were expecting trouble.
"Did he? He must have confused me with our common friend - Kalé." Manfred looked puzzled at Kuno's words.
"He done that before. Ya shoulna trust ta friend Renegade." Akantha nodded kindly at the man, watching with a smile as the confusion in the man's eyes grew. Kuno again put his hand on Akantha's shoulder, this time causing him to whirl around, and point to a small side passage. Akantha didn't hesitate, not waiting to see what would happen to either Kuno or the men who had been waiting for them. He broke away from Kuno and Manfred in a dead run, hoping to reach the cover of the passage before the blasters begin to fire.
Kuno was left standing facing twelve men, most too far away from him to be of any danger. With a happy smile, he looked at the leader of the troop, then slowly pulled out his lightsaber, and activated it. The blue blade sprung to life between him and the twelve men, shielding him more effectively than any energy shield in the universe. Manfred, a scant two meters away from him, glared at him.
"The master didn't mention that you'd be a Jedi. No matter. It's still one against twelve." Kuno nodded, the pleasant smile still on his face. He waited until Akantha had reached the safety of the side passage. Then he vaulted up, dropping down in front of Manfred, placed one good snap kick in the man's face, before he too turned and ran away.
A moving target moving away from a source of blaster fire in a straight line, was a dead target. The red bolts began to pepper the ground where Kuno had been standing the moment the leader of the troop had fallen to the ground in an elegant heap of armor. In a zig-zag, jumping from ground, to wall, to half recycled heap, to broken down speeder, Kuno headed towards the small side passage where Akantha had disappeared into. The occasional bolt, he deflected with his saber, but mostly, he just avoided them by jumping away from them. The fools hadn't bothered to move forward as he was moving away, and after roughly ten minutes after Akantha had began running, Kuno landing on his feet, back facing to his enemies, in the side passage. He had no worries that he would somewhere catch up with the data lord. For all of their knowledge, they were almost pathetically out of shape. A duracrete slug could out distance one of them in a fair race.
The men had finally realized that their prey would escape them if they did not begin running. Leaving their fallen leader in the heap in which he had landed, the eleven ran full steam into the side passage, blasting away at anything which moved, uncaring if it were alive and sentient and their prey.
Kuno soon caught up to Akantha, grabbed his arm, and caused his legs to move faster than they had before. Either that, or be dragged along on the floor and what ever it was covering it.
"Hey... me suit..." The bolts echoing towards them snapped his mouth shut in mid complain. Only to be opened again moments later as the data lord began gasping and wheezing from lack of oxygen. Three hours later, or Akantha thought it was three hours, Kuno pulled him onto a landing pad, heading towards the two men and their speeder bikes on the other sides. Slowed down as Kuno was by the data lord, their pursuers had managed to catch up, and were placing bolts mere meters away from their moving bodies. The two men on the other side of the platform had the intelligence to throw themselves behind a waste collector; one was a bit slower as he first moved his bike to the scant shelter offered by the other bike. Kuno smiled grimly. It wouldn't matter soon.
"Akantha!" He turned to the data lord, still running towards the bikes. "Can you ride one of these?"
"I... be...lieve... that..."
"Yes or no?" He interrupted the wheezing data lord, having no time to spare for his drawn out answer. He could ask for the particularities some other time.
"Ye...Yes." Kuno neatly flung Akantha onto the first bike before he could fully answer, and jumped onto the second on. He didn't wait to see if the data lord was following. He geared his bike into full power and vectored up into the flow of traffic. Minutes later, Akantha drew even with him. Silently they flew back to the Jedi Temple. Akantha catching his breath. Kuno brooding on their opponent.