Chapter Thirty-Six: Reverse

Reaching forward to grab the next of the metal bars welded to the wall, Obi-Wan found himself almost wishing they'd been blown up before they hit atmosphere.

"This doesn't even make sense," he breathed into the earpiece he'd inserted before unbuckling. "We're above the surface, there should be gravity with or without the generator."

"It's never gone wrong in atmosphere before," Anakin's voice crackled. "Maybe it got bored and decided acting like an antigravity generator was more fun."

"When this is over," the Jedi muttered, ducking as his head almost floated into a collision with the ceiling, "you're getting a new one care of the Defense Force. No charge."

"Thanks for the generosity."

Without warning, the interior lights flickered; a moment later, the ship shuddered violently. Obi-Wan smacked into a wall, swearing as his ribs made contact. "We're okay," his earpiece assured him. "Lasers just got a little close is all."

"Oh, is that all." He looked down—below him was the open hatch leading to the main deck. Exhaling, he hit the earpiece. "Liz, I'm coming to you."

"Why isn't Amidala coming down here? I don't trust you to know a wrench from a repulsorlift."

"Liz," Padmé said, "I know lots of ways to take metal apart, and you've only got one arm left."

"Fine. Get down here, Kenobi."

He let himself float upward again, reaching out with his palms to buffer his impact with the ceiling. Took one, breath, two. Then shoved himself down.

The general had half-expected the Dancer to swerve just at the moment he dropped down, but the descent was blessedly stable—he gripped a rung midway down the ladder just as the ship angled starboard, the whoosh of a concussion missile rushing by. "Would you mind disabling the auditory simulators?" he asked. "Might help my concentration."

"Kenobi. We're in atmosphere."

"Ah. Right. Sorry."

The nearest metal bar was several feet to his left. Inhaling deeply, Obi-Wan thought to himself, Calm down. It's just swimming. If there were also sharks nearby who could fire torpedoes at you. He planted his feet on the outer edge of the ladder. Compressed his legs. Launched. Drifted gently toward the wall.

BANG

"For the love of—" he bellowed before cutting himself off. When he put a hand to his forehead, blood stuck to his fingertips—he and Padmé had that in common now, at least.

"Kenobi," Liz said over the earpiece, "will you stop fooling around and get over here?"

Growling, the Jedi decided that, under the circumstances, he was allowed to cheat. He stretched out a hand, pulled, and hurtled toward the engine room.

Anakin winced as yet another metallic bang issued through the comm. "Sorry, this is trickier than it looks."

"No kidding." A grunt of exertion, then the muted thwack of flesh on metal. "All right, I'm almost to the engine room. Liz, if you'd be so good as to give me a hand."

"Only one left to spare, unfortuna—" Midsentence, her tone leapt an octave. "Of course, Mister Obi-Wan! Lucky for us I have these foot magnets."

"Lucky for us I didn't lose a leg instead," the pilot muttered. Another streak of green flew by, this one close enough to leave a scorch mark along the viewport. "Well, that's not gonna help with the fire." He shot a glance at Padmé. "How many of them are still on us?"

She clenched her jaw. "Looks like we lost some in the smoke, but at least nine are still sticking there. Their sensors must be a hell of a lot better than ours."

"Well, at least they invested in those instead of lasers."

The cockpit was silent for a few moments after that, save for the occasional squeal of a passing burst of plasma. Then, from his right: "Skywalker, even if the two of them don't screw this up, we're probably going to smash right into those fighters."

"So we drop altitude right before it happens. And hey, if we do smash into them, at least we're spoiling their day. Better than just getting blown out of the sky."

Sure, some of it was bravado. And sure, he was only marginally more confident than his wife in Obi-Wan's ability to pull this off. But a fairly large portion of his brain was perversely close to excitement.

After all, he hadn't been lying—always wanted to try one.

"Okay," said Obi-Wan, transferring his grip from the droid's arm to one of the many bits of metal protruding from the engine. "What do you need me to do?"

"Padmé, can you—" The ship bucked. "Talk him through it? Little—" For a brief moment, the floor tilted far enough to the side to become a wall. "Busy."

The line was silent for a few seconds. Then: "Kenobi, I swear to the gods, if you do this wrong I will haunt you myself."

"I'll already be dead," he pointed out.

"Shut up. You're looking at the main engines, right?"

He cast his eyes from one side of the room to the other. "I assume those are the massive cylinders currently giving off smoke?"

"Damn it. Yes." She paused to inhale. "Okay. Liz, open 'em up."

The droid, eyes still a merciful blue, seized one side of a panel roughly six feet wide and three high on the starboard cylinder. "Mister Obi-Wan, I'm afraid I can't generate enough leverage with only one hand. But regrettably, the metal is too hot for an organic being to touch barehanded—"

No time for formalities. The Jedi simply swept a hand upward—the panel sprang from its locked position, clocking the droid in the jaw.

Her eyes snapped red. Great.

When she turned to look at him, though, all she said was, "Well hot damn. You certainly know how to charm a lady, Kenobi."

"I'm full of surprises," he said, then repeated the motion on the port cylinder. "All right, Padmé, they're open."

"Is there a wrench floating around in there?"

The Jedi scanned the room, eyes finally latching onto a floating bar of metal a few meters away. "Yes."

"Give it to Liz, she can use it better."

He nudged the thing with his mind—it hurtled past his nose and into the droid's outstretched arm. "Got it."

Obi-Wan allowed a satisfied smile to form on his lips. "I must say, this is going better than I expected—"

"HOLD ON!" Anakin roared, and suddenly the floor had become the ceiling.

Obi-Wan's arm felt as though something very large had grabbed it and attempted to wrench it from its socket. Without thinking, he let go, and went sailing headlong into Liz, who stood suspended by her magnetic feet. Willing himself to slow down, he managed to wrap an arm around her neck just before he hurtled into the smoking engine.

"YOU COULDN'T HAVE JUST FLOWN TO THE LEFT?!" he shouted into his earpiece.

The question, Padmé thought, was as accurate a summation of her husband's piloting style as any.

"You okay?" she asked, her own arms clenched tightly to the copilot's seat.

"Never been better. Now, wrench?"

"Right." She squeezed her eyes shut, going over the steps again. "The endgame here is to take part of the engine housing and block the rear jet. It'll force the intake to thrust us in reverse." She paused as the Dancer dipped briefly, then struggled upward again. "Theoretically."

"Wait, aren't the jets on the outside of the ship?"

"Oh dear, you're right, major oversight on our part."

"Sorry."

"The nacelles are on the outside, but you undo the latches holding them in place from the engine room. Can't exactly do exterior maintenance when this thing is flying through space. So, Liz, I need you to start undoing the bolts holding the engine cowls in place."

"And what do I do?" asked Kenobi.

"Stand there and wait to throw the cowls into place. There's a control panel you should be able to use. You just have to make sure all two dozen of the bolts are undone first."

"Presumably to make sure this sort of thing never happens."

"Yeah. Now shut up and do the thing."

As the faint sounds of a wrench turning filtered through the comm, Padmé thought about all the things that could catastrophically end this experiment. The droid could freak out again, and either abandon her task or simply sabotage the operation. Kenobi could smash his skull on a wall the next time Anakin flipped the ship. The engines could blow themselves up from the stress of firing in reverse. Or the enemy fighters could score a direct hit before they even pulled the maneuver off.

"You know," she said to Anakin, before she could think to stop herself from speaking, "I always assumed that when we died in some incredibly crazy stunt of yours, it would be in public. So someone could at least carry our idiot legend on."

When she looked over at him, he looked surprised that she'd spoken. "Well," he said, we'll just have to tell it ourselves, then."

Another scorch mark seared itself across the bow. "And we were getting along so well," her husband muttered, veering left as another bolt of plasma streaked through the air the Dancer had occupied a fraction of a second beforehand.

Obi-Wan said nothing—he thought it best not to let Padmé know she'd had the comm turned on for that exchange.

Eight bolts were floating through the engine room. "How many more to go?" he asked Liz, who rather than rotating the wrench was methodically turning her entire hand along its axis. He swiped at his brow with a sleeve that came away soaked in sweat—the heat the engines were emitting was intolerable.

"Two on this one, ten on the port engine," the droid replied. "I don't suppose that lightsaber of yours could make easier work of this?"

"That what of mine?"

"Oh, save it," she scoffed. "You didn't even bother trying to hide the damn thing, and I do have ears, remember? Not as though I care, you're a pain in the processor with or without a fancy sword."

"Remind me to wipe her memory once we're out of this," chimed in Anakin. "Assuming I don't just break her down for scrap."

"Skywalker, I will take my remaining arm and shove it so far up your—"

"At any rate," Obi-Wan hastened to interject, "I don't think waving around my lightsaber while I'm weightless is the best idea."

Two more bolts went floating through the air. "Okay, now for the starboard side—"

An almighty screech issued from below. "DAMN it," the pilot spat through the earpiece. "Hurry up, you two, they just got us."

It may have been the Jedi's imagination, but the smoke pouring from the engines suddenly seemed thicker. "Anything vital hit?"

Padmé, sounding grim: "The starboard nacelle just shifted into yellow range. We'd better hope this doesn't just send us into a spiral."

"Hurry it up, guys," said Anakin. "I'm gonna have to do this before we risk an engine failure."

Obi-Wan looked down at his belt, then up at the starboard cowl, which still had five bolts locked firmly in place. He sighed. "Liz, move."

A sudden snapHISSSSSSS sizzled through the comm, followed by a buzzing swipe. "What did you do?!" Padmé shouted.

"Hurried it up. All the bolts are loosened."

Anakin eased the Dancer's nose downward, hoping with all his strength that the altimeter was still working correctly. "Okay, we're gonna have to time this just right," he said. He slowly, evenly pulled back his mechanical arm, easing down the throttle. "There's a bigass red lever on a panel just above the port engine. See it?"

There was a muffled bang, followed by a barking curse from Obi-Wan. "Yes."

"When you two snap the cowls into position, we go to full burn." Anakin shot a glance at the sensor screen. "Ten seconds." Green plasma rumbled past the viewport. "Nine." He closed his eyes, which were useless with the smoke in any case. "Eight."

Anakin.

His eyes shot open.

The voice had been Obi-Wan's, but not from over the comm. He had heard it, as though it were in the cockpit with him.

Or, rather, he saw, as if he were in the engine room with Obi-Wan. He could see the Jedi right in front of him, one hand clinging to a metal bar a few inches below the ceiling, the other stretched out, open-palmed, facing the lever. Liz swayed in place, anchored by her foot magnets, eyes glowing crimson.

But wait, Anakin thought, this couldn't be right, because he was still in his pilot's chair. His hands still gripped the control yoke, his crash webbing still held him to his seat in defiance of gravity.

Seven.

"Apologies," said Obi-Wan, "but we can't take chances."

"What is this?" Anakin managed.

"The Force doesn't simply touch physical objects, it can touch minds as well. And also alter your perceptions, which is coming in handy right now."

Six.

"You said it yourself," the Jedi continued, "we have to time this just right. And I don't necessarily trust your comm system not to have a lag."

Five.

It occured to Anakin that through this entire exchange, the Jedi had not actually moved his mouth.

Four.

Obi-Wan moved his left hand along the metal bar, trying to get a better grip, and suddenly Anakin's flesh hand didn't feel a control yoke but the burning heat of durasteel heated a good deal higher than room temperature. His mechanical hand no longer gripped the throttle—it was open-palmed, stretched out toward the lever that was somehow only a few feet away.

"Everything is connected, Anakin. Planets. Stars. Plants. Animals. You. Me."

Three.

"All you have to do is reach out."

He was Anakin, but somehow Obi-Wan. Distinct, yet part of a single unit. It was almost as if he was seeing double. Even as his left hand nudged the control yoke, it gripped the bar. Even as his mechanical hand eased down on the Dancer's speed, it stretched toward the bright red lever.

Two.

"Ready, Liz," he and Obi-Wan spoke in unison. A near-miss from a concussion missile buffeted the ship, but no klaxons sounded.

They tightened their grips, closed their eyes.

One.

And reached out.

The Confederacy's starfighter corps was made up of Givin clones. The skull-faced aliens were noted for their extraordinary number-crunching abilities; within the span of an eyeblink they could calculate trajectories at a speed roughly equivalent to a top-of-the-line navicomputer and act accordingly. Not only that, the particular individual these pilots were cloned from was noted even among his species for his abilities—he'd earned the prestigious Nxoni Prize at the precocious age of 14 and gone on to an extremely profitable career in hyperspace research. (This was, of course, before the Confederacy black-bagged him).

Despite their increased potential for mental instability compared to their template, the Givin fighter pilots on the tail of the Spice Dancer were absolutely fastidious in their calculations. And they knew that their target's only options were either to turn around and expose itself to laser fire or to keep on at full burn until they ghosted it. It was a foregone conclusion; all they had to do was keep up the chase.

When the blip on the pilots' sensor screens began to slow down, the inevitability of its demise simply increased. It would, the Givins calculated, be overtaken in precisely 13.7 seconds.

What happened next was, put quite simply, an impossibility.

The clones had been pursuing and firing on the Spice Dancer based on nothing more than scanner data. The smoke covering Had Abbadon, especially at this comparatively low altitude, was too thick for anyone to see through for more than several meters. But, when there were 4.2 seconds left before the clones overtook their target, a massive, blinding flare of white light tore through their viewports.

They missed what happened next; by the time their polarizers had engaged, there was nothing left to see.

Shrieking, flaming, and shedding heat shielding, the Spice Dancer leapt backward, passing so close below its pursuers that their engines scorched the top of its hull. Two of the starfighters were caught in its backwash and hurled upward, blazing.

It was, one of the surviving pilots would later note, as though the ship had sprouted extra engines and fired them at full burn. By the time their flash-blinded eyes were able to check their sensor screens, the Spice Dancer was already fading off the rear edge.

There was a sudden explosion of pain in Anakin's chest, sending his awareness shooting back into his own skull. He blinked hard, swore, and almost smashed the ship into the ground.

The effect of the maneuver was somewhat diminished by the fact that only smoke was visible through the viewport, but the pilot still felt a profound sense of discombobulation watching the grey wisps recede from the ship rather than shoot closer to it. After a few moments, though the combined vertigo of flying backwards and not being dead started to wear off, enough that he was able to turn his head to Padmé and whoop. "How about that, huh?!"

Before she could reply, Liz's voice crackled through the comm. "Someone get down here. Kenobi's hurt."

Anakin thought back to the pain that had smashed into his chest. "Obi-Wan? Obi-Wan, are you all right?"

Padmé was already unbuckling herself. "Get us to the cave, I'll take care of him." The jolt from the engines' firing must have shaken the gravity generator back into shape—she stood quite steadily before dashing for the ladder.

As he guided the Dancer back along the path it had taken, the pilot felt his adrenaline slowly fading back to normal. In its place were mingled horror, disbelief, and something like awe. Not at pulling off the maneuver, but at what had happened in the ten seconds before it happened.

When she reached the engine room, Padmé saw Liz bent over Kenobi's slumped form, lying on the ground. The Jedi did not move. "What happened?"

When the droid looked up, her eyes were blue. "When the gravity came back on, he fell and I couldn't catch him. Oh, I do hope he's all right."

She bent over and put a hand to the inside of the Jedi's wrist—the pulse was there, but it was thin. "Obi-Wan?" When this got no response, she shook him, hard. "Obi-Wan!"

Nothing, then a groan. "If I'd known this was what it would take to get you to warm up to me, I would have just found another pair of hustlers."

Relief rushed through her so fast it was almost staggering. "Do all Jedi do things the hard way?"

"It's our specialty." He tried to roll over, swore. "Now, help me up."

She extended a hand; gratefully, he gripped it and allowed himself to be hauled upright. The Jedi almost slipped out of her grasp—the engine was giving off so much heat that Padmé's hand was already coated in sweat. "I don't suppose you have an infirmary you've been hiding down here," he said, wincing.

"Sorry to disappoint," she said, a trace of her old smirk coming back.

"What happened?" Anakin chimed in through the intercom.

"The gravity came back on and I fell in exactly the wrong place," said Obi-Wan. "Probably concussed myself, and I'm afraid I won't be running any marathons with these ribs. Landed on them. If they weren't broken before, they are now." He wrapped an arm around Padmé's shoulders, and the pair limped toward the kitchen. "At any rate . . . congratulations. You did it."

"Couldn't have without you."

"Oh, sure," muttered Liz. "I was just sitting on my hand the whole time."

REPUBLIC ARCHIVES: PRIMARY ENGINE THRUST VECTORING

Starships are generally steered by adjusting thrust ratios among a series of rear-facing engines. More advanced maneuvers require thrust to be directed toward the bow or sides of a starship. This is usually done with smaller, secondary thrusters mounted along a ship's hull. "Primary engine thrust vectoring" (PETV) is the aerospace industry term for sending thrust in multiple directions at once using only a ship's main engines.

This is not a stock feature on a majority of starships. Space superiority fighters used by military forces are one notable exception, as thrust vectoring is a necessary component of dogfighting. The ability to vector the primary engines can be added to some vessels, though the aftermarket retrofit is often prohibitively expensive. Aerospace traffic control laws prohibit performing thrust vectoring maneuvers in civilized space, such as that around and in the atmosphere of populated planets.

WARNING: It is a common misconception among pilots that PETV can be "hotwired" into any standard starship engine on the fly, causing thrust to be directed out the forward engine intake. Under no circumstances should this supposed hotwire be attempted mid flight. Likelihood of catastrophic engine failure is extremely high.