Almost there, almost there…
The thoughts swarmed in Jorec's head as he swerved Lia's landspeeder through the light traffic on the main expressway leading to the spaceport where freedom awaited. Yet the two military speeders behind him were bent on preventing them from reaching their destination. Rapid fire from the heavy repeating blaster mounted on the back of the speeder raced through the streets, sending up little shards of duracrete when they impacted on the road beneath the landspeeder. Other shots hit the other speeders that were on the road, causing their drivers to panic and swerve their vehicles away from the fire.
Lia Garent attempted to minimize herself in her seat as the blaster fire continued, her hands were over her head, forcing it as far down as she could. Her safety strap was around her waist, digging into her stomach as the chase continued. The sound of shattering transparisteel filled her ears as she felt the warmth of a blaster bolt as it passed above her hands by a few centimeters, and her back was now littered with the broken pieces of the back window. She heard Jorec in the driver seat let out a Selvernan curse as his window also shattered. The sound of additional blaster fire as they hit the roof of her landspeeder followed, almost making her wish that she had taken up on the offer her father had given five years ago to buy the old family airspeeder. But then again, if the Empire was so desperate to see them dead, she had no doubts that military airspeeders would be scrambled against them, maybe even some fighters from the local garrison.
"You OK back there?" she heard Jorec ask after he apparently swerved in front of another landspeeder for cover.
She nodded, prompting him to ask again. "I'm fine," she finally replied, the words coming out of her mouth in almost a frightened squeak.
"You're doing fine," she heard him respond to her in a reassuring voice. "Just stay low, and you won't get hit."
Jorec himself was trying to stay as low as possible in the driver's seat, hoping that one of the gunners back there wouldn't get in a lucky shot. His windshield was severely cracked, the result of the recent shot that had shattered the back window, and now his visibility was extremely limited. He swerved the speeder away from the civilian vehicle he had been using as cover, attempting to maneuver his vehicle off of the expressway and onto the side streets he had walked upon earlier that evening.
The landspeeder violently rocked as the Stormtroopers operating the heavy repeating blasters opened fire upon once again as it came into their sights. The bolts of energy raced up the street, before finally hitting the speeder's bottom. The speeder's right bottom side dipped toward the ground, part of it impacting with the street below, causing sparks to fly up in the air. Lia was nearly thrown into the door of the landspeeder as she felt her side of the vehicle, shrieking in fright as the grinding of the speeder hitting the street filled the vehicle with a horrendous sound.
"You still there?" Jorec asked as he attempted to steer the craft towards his exit. The speeder was now extremely unresponsive, the simple act of moving the vehicle across the lanes of traffic was now a chore. They had hit one of the repulsors…
"Yeah," Lia answered over the noise. "You?"
"I'll be fine if they just stopped shooting at us for a few seconds," Jorec responded as finally managed to maneuver the landspeeder into the exit. He looked back, and was relieved to find only one of the military landspeeders following him. "I think we lost one," Jorec reported his findings to Lia. "Although I think we're going to have to ditch this speeder soon," he added after three more shots hit the roof. "Unless this thing can last another kilometer."
That last kilometer seemed like it took over an hour to reach, with the lone pursuer continuing to fire upon them nearly unrestricted by any other vehicles on the road. And the busted repulsor both slowed Lia's speeder down, and made it unwieldy to drive, opening them up for more shots. Jorec was relieved to finally see the open gates of the spaceport through the busted windshield.
"Rinoco, get those guns ready, we have some company," Jorec reported to the Xexto through his comlink.
"I think I can see them now, or at least I can see their shots, and some sparks," Rinoco replied as he watched the carnage outside through a viewport. "SITHSPIT, is that you?" he yelled as he saw the now blacked landspeeder as it hobbled towards the Wayfarer-class transport on three bottom repulsors.
"Unfortunately, yes," Jorec answered. "Get on those laser cannons!" he ordered the Xexto. "We can't take much more of this!"
Rinoco moved to another chair on the bridge of the ship and punched a few buttons, causing a monitor to light up. He lined the crosshairs over the second car as it continued to fire upon the badly damaged landspeeder, and finally pulled the trigger. Two red shots emerged from the laser cannons of the vessel, and slammed into the roof of the enemy speeder, which promptly gave way. The explosion knocked the gunner from his nest, sending his body onto the permacrete ground.
Jorec followed Lia up the ladder that led into the ship, standing guard in case the other vehicle that had pursued them finally found them again, and was relieved to see nothing other than the smoking remains of the one Rinoco had destroyed. The pain in his left foot was returning as the adrenaline rush of the escape began to wear off. It did seem to be better, however, as it no longer hurt as much as it originally did when he first injured it.
"We're all set for takeoff," Jorec heard Rinoco say as he finally pulled himself out of the hatch and onto the deck of the vessel. He pushed the ladder down, and finally closed and sealed the hatch as Rinoco pointed out the lounge to Lia and walked to the bridge of the ship.
Jorec watched as Lia took a seat at the small conference table in the lounge of the vessel, and he took the seat next to her. "I suppose we still have some talking to do," Jorec said as he heard the Dancer's Dream begin to take off. "Where were we?"
"You had just explained that you were a Jedi, and how you got on the planet to begin with," Lia answered his question. "I have to admit, I had some reservations about believing you," she added as she brushed some shards of transparisteel from the back of her shirt. "But, I think I've seen enough proof that you are," she said, remembering the feeling of falling three stories only to survive the impact unharmed. "How's your foot?" she asked, recalling that while she had escaped unharmed, he didn't.
"It'll be fine," Jorec replied. "Nothing broken, although I should probably put some ice on it later." His left hand moved up to his chin, thinking about what exactly he was planning to say before the Stormtroopers had arrived. "I was planning on telling you," Jorec began. "Funnily enough, I was planning on telling you the next time I saw you. It just happened a little later than I thought it would…" That "little later" had turned out to be nearly a whole month, a month that encompassed his imprisonment and the whole adventure that had followed.
"I just wish you would have told me sooner," Lia sighed. "Maybe this whole thing could have been prevented."
"I really don't know about that, Lia," Jorec responded. "Maybe this was meant to happen, something to actually stop me from lying to myself about who I was. How could I really tell you the truth, if I could barely even face it myself? For the longest time I tried to run away from who I was."
"Who are you?" Lia asked. "Are you the same person I fell in love with?"
Jorec knew the answer to her question, and he realized that he had always known it. "I think I am," he replied. "The only thing that's really changed about me is my past, I still feel like the same person I was a month ago. And, excluding the use of the Force, I still act like I did a month ago."
"You said something about a crash, what happened after you last saw me?"
"I returned home," Jorec replied. "And I was ambushed by some Stormtroopers. They must have had orders to bring me in alive, because no matter how many of them I killed in self-defense, they kept firing stun bolts at me. They eventually got me.
"I woke up in a Star Destroyer's detention cell, still dazed from the stun shots. And then they…" Jorec's voice trailed off, remembering the torture he had been subjected to was still hard to do. "They tried to turn me to the Dark Side, or at least that was their plan. I eventually gave in, and confessed that I was a Jedi. I'm just glad they never found out about you," Jorec ended.
"Why? What would have happened to me?"
"They would have done anything to get me to fall," Jorec answered. "Anything…"
Lia shuddered as she realized what he meant.
"They put me on this ship, I believe it was used in the Clone Wars to transport prisoners, and I stayed there for Force knows how long. I think that something must have gone wrong with the hyperdrive, because apparently the ship hit the gravity well of a planet and crashed onto the surface.
"There were only three survivors of my cellblock; Rinoco, myself, and another Rebel named Banth. He was killed when the surviving Stormtroopers found us in the evidence room, but not before revealing to me that I should go to Alderaan. He said that Bail Organa's a Jedi supporter, and that he would hide me. We managed to escape the planet when a rescue ship arrived several days later. We went another inhabited planet near this system and unloaded our prisoners, and that's where we got this ship."
"I had heard that you were arrested for treason and conspiracy on the HoloNews," Lia said after a moment of thinking. "But I guess they didn't tell the full story."
"The only treason I committed was when I killed a few Stormtroopers when I attempted to escape them in my apartment," Jorec replied. "You said that you had something tell me, a few minutes before the military vehicles caught up with us."
Lia nodded her head, wondering how Jorec would actually take the news. "Jorec," she said while looking at his face. "I'm pregnant…"