Chapter Forty: Into the Inferno

For a single triumphant moment after Valis toppled, Padmé's ability to think was wiped clean by an overwhelming swell of Yes-you-DID-it-you-got-her, her body humming from the vibration of recoil and the adrenaline of seeing the Sith's white form splayed out on the dirt.

Then Anakin shouted a wordless warning, the sound wrenching her to turn and look behind them, and the spike of energy went sour in her veins.

Pirates were streaming out from the city, screaming, running full tilt in all directions, but that was all right—they were operating on sheer panic now. Even the ones heading toward her and Anakin showed no intention of fighting—indeed, many of them were tossing blasters and melee weapons aside to lighten their load.

Cutting through them was a devil.

Darth Maul, Lord of the Sith, in the flesh—twin lightsaber blades gleamed in his hands, standing out through the billowing clouds of rust like swords of pure fire. He moved with a speed fueled not by panic but by purpose, a purpose that could not allow anything to get in his way. As he charged, his saberstaff lashed out left and right, chopping down any of his own men who happened to get too close.

He was about a hundred meters away. And he had seen them.

A choked cry emerged from behind her—against all instinct, Padmé whipped away from Maul back to their path forward, and screamed wordlessly in frustration. Valis was back on her feet—tottering, unsure, but standing—her white clothing splashed red and brown with rust and dirt, a lightsaber in one hand and a glowing dagger of plasma in the other. She'd deflected it, the gods-damned shot hadn't hit her but only knocked her over, and Padmé knew she was never going to get another shot off with the rifle, not now.

From behind, a series of sharp cracks sounded—when Padmé turned around, Anakin had started moving away from her, away from the groaning hulks of the ship graveyard, toward Maul. He too had begun to lash out with his stun baton, smashing it into the faces of the pirates that had begun to stream past the two of them, knocking limbs out from under them, carving himself a clearer path to his adversary.

Anakin, she wanted to scream, they're ALREADY RUNNING AWAY—

—but a fresh roar of turbolasers hit the city, emerald fire ripping the breath from her lungs as it blasted outward in a wave.

In an instant, superheated plasma washed across Padmé's entire field of vision, and she felt her skin feather toward first-degree burns—this salvo had almost hit them, had consumed the entire horizon between her and Anakin and the doomed city. Maul was gone—whether hit or simply cut off Padmé couldn't tell, but no longer visible, on the other side of a whirling gyre of laserfire and thick, oily smoke rising from the charred ground. Anakin staggered in the aftershock, fell to one knee, tried to rise again.

A sharp groan rose behind them. When Padmé dared to turn around, it was just in time to watch two house-sized hunks of desiccated metal start to topple, dislodged from their place in the graveyard by the shock.

Valis stood before the cascading wreckage, white clothing contrasting with the filth behind her much as Maul's shadow had been silhouetted against the fire. She was no longer looking at Vader and Padmé—she too had turned at the noise, was staring even as the ships came crashing toward her.

At the last instant, she ran. Whether it did her any good, Padmé couldn't tell—one instant her bone-white cape was vanishing under the shadow of a falling corvette, and the next the ships had both plowed into the ground.

When Padmé turned back to Anakin, he was rising from the ground, fury blazing in his eyes. "We have to—have to find a way around—"

Even as he said it, Padmé knew this was different. Vader had gone—this was Anakin, insisting on a goal but without the sense of iron purpose in his voice. He knew as well as she did what had happened.

"Anakin," she spat, nearly choking on smoke streaming from the blast site, "even if he's not dead, you're not getting to him. The heat would fry us before we even got close."

He rose to his full height as if to shout, but almost immediately sagged again. Clenching his mechanical hand, all he could manage was, "And Valis?"

Padmé looked back at the pile of starship wreckage. Knew that, if Valis had lived, Anakin would know it better than she would—would be able to sense the still-pulsing life, would know if his wife was lying.

"She's dead," she replied. "You saw me shoot her."

Another volley of laserfire hit the city, lighting the sky green. Anakin looked away from her to take in the show, the sheer unfeeling power of the salvos his ships were hurling at the city. Then, Padmé saw, his eyes moved upward to the Star Destroyers themselves—only two of them firing now, the third listing badly, its nose chewed up by surface fire and its hull crawling with starfighter strikes.

When Anakin looked back at her, she saw him again. Her husband, the man who loved her. His eyes were wide, as if he'd only just realized what was unfolding around them. What he had to save her from.

He'd always been so good at saving her.

"Okay then," he said, nodding and swallowing. Reaching for her, he grasped at her shoulder with his flesh hand. "Come on, we have to get to the Dancer, now."

As they ran, Padmé resisted the impulse to look back in the direction of the fallen ships, to see if she could catch sight of a white-cloaked warrior emerging from their carcasses. When tears rose to her eyes, she dashed them sharply away, insisting to herself it was the rust and smoke.

Anakin held her the whole way back to their ship.

Starting up the Spice Dancer had always been a precisely choreographed routine. This time was no different—even today, as plasma hellfire rained around them, Padmé and Anakin moved as one. Hands flew to switches and buttons and levers in perfect harmony, just as they always had—and as the pile of pirate rubble crumbled beneath her landing gear, the Dancer took to the skies of San Sestina.

They'd made it out. Almost.

Beyond the transparisteel windows of the cockpit, a veritable gauntlet of pirate ships lay between them and the Star Destroyers. Most of the ships were fleeing what remained of San Sestina—the Star Destroyers, even in retreat, kept up their barrage of turbolaser fire—though amidst the chaos Padmé could make out a handful of galleons heading their way. Trying to take us down with them, she thought.

She wasn't about to let that happen.

Gripping one half of the Dancer's split throttle lever and squeezing her other hand around the control yoke, Padmé tore her gaze free from the view outside to stare at the man in the copilot's chair. "You ready?" she asked, offering him a sharp nod of confidence.

He answered with a question of his own: "Are you?"

Padmé found herself without an answer. Shrugging it off, she adjusted her grip on the throttle lever and slammed both of the Dancer's engines into full thrust, sending the ship rocketing skyward. Her stomach dropped briefly as the inertial dampeners worked to catch up with the ship's motion—normally a comforting sensation, a reminder that she was flying again. It wasn't this time. Unease tightened in her chest.

Does he know I lied to him? Does he know Valis is still alive?

She forced the thought out of her head. Forced herself to focus on the present—on the lasers splashing against their shields, and on the swarm of fighters zipping towards them from above.

"Double up the front deflectors!" Padmé barked in Anakin's general direction as she yanked the Dancer starboard to weave past an oncoming concussion missile. "We'll balance them out again once we're in the thick of it."

"No," came the firm reply from beside her. "We can't leave our back exposed like that. One hit from ground fire would cripple us."

Keeping her grip tight on the yoke, Padmé glanced away from the window and toward Anakin again. "I don't think there's much left on the ground to shoot at us—"

"Watch out!"

Startled by the exclamation, Padmé whipped around to face forward and instinctively tore the yoke hard to port.

The Dancer's nose held steady, barreling forward just as it had been before she'd steered left—the ship was on a collision course with a pirate starfighter. Panic leapt into Padmé's throat as her eyes darted around the cockpit, searching for whatever malfunction had sprung up inside the ship.

She found none. Instead, her eyes fell upon a gloved hand resting on the throttle levers. Anakin had reacted to the oncoming fighter too, reaching for the throttle—and attempting to steer the Dancer in the opposite direction.

The maneuver was nothing new. He'd done it hundreds of times before—giving full power to one engine while cutting another, enhancing her piloting of the ship. It was a synchronized dance; they always flew as one.

Today, he'd done it again—but he'd done it in the wrong direction.

As the Dancer rocketed forward, its nose slammed into the pirate starfighter. Metal screeched against metal; shields sizzled as electrical interference arced across them. Anakin was nearly thrown out of his seat. Padmé screamed.

"Gods dammit, Skywalker! Do you want to drive?!"

To her surprise, Anakin uncoupled his seat restraints and rose to his feet. "It's probably best that I do, yeah."

Hearing this, Padmé gripped the yoke with sudden fear. The man standing over her was not the same man who had boarded the ship with her. Was not the same man who had carried her to safety, who had realized they were in over their heads. Padmé once again saw the man who had gotten them into this mess—and he was not merely offering to pilot them out of it. He was not asking.

He was demanding.

Slipping free of her safety harness, Padmé slid out of the pilot's seat and silently gestured toward where she had once sat. As he gazed out the window with eyes of cold steel, Anakin Skywalker—Executor Vader—took his place at the helm.

The wooden medallion around Padmé's neck was colder than ice now; its frozen form stung against her skin. Her hands shook as she strapped herself into the copilot's seat, and she couldn't help but wonder if she'd just made a horrible mistake. "What's the plan?" She gripped the seat beneath her, her fingernails digging scars into the synthetic padding.

When the man next to her answered, his voice was deep. Intense. As if someone else was speaking through his mouth. "Get you to safety," he said.

And then the Dancer rocketed forward again.

Padmé wanted to squeeze her eyes shut, and yet she could not. The Dancer wove through the swarm of pirate vessels in a way it had never moved before—as if the ship was an extension of Anakin himself, sliding through explosions and clouds of shrapnel and waves of engine wash without even having to try.

The two of them had failed to fly as one—instead, he now flew alone.

Not alone, she reminded herself. He had one very powerful ally.

The Force—and now, he was using it on his terms.

Anakin slammed the Dancer into an impossibly tight turn, perfecting the maneuver he and Padmé had failed to execute earlier. One hand held the yoke while the other goosed the throttle, sending the ship drifting around an oncoming galleon.

"We should probably land on a Star Destroyer," Padmé said, raising an unsteady hand to gesture to the nearest of the Republic capital ships. "We'll be safer on board."

"Not that one," Anakin said—his eyes remained locked on the view outside the window as his head shook almost imperceptibly.

When the Dancer flew higher, cresting over the destroyer's hull, Padmé saw why. It's entire nose was aflame, thick smoke spouting out from several holes in the durasteel plating. It hovered above San Sestina at a canted angle—and while its fellow two Star Destroyers were rising higher, making way for the stars, this one seemed to be sinking.

"Oh, gods," she whispered to herself.

"Just hang on," Anakin said, easing the Spice Dancer higher into the sky.

Hang on she did, as her husband threaded their ship through the scattering crowd of galleons and pirate starfighters. More than once during their ascent, Padmé saw fighters collide with each other and burst into a collective ball of flame—fortunate coincidence? she wondered. Or is he doing that to them?

Flames licked the edges of the Dancer's shields as the ship sliced through the upper atmosphere. As it passed into space, the tongues of fire subsided—though Padmé hardly noticed amidst the lightshow of laser fire darting back and forth above San Sestina. Even in the midst of their escape, most of the pirates were content to take a few potshots at one of the two retreating Star Destroyers—and the capital ships that had already been in orbit were beginning to enter the fray, their batteries pounding into the Venators' shields.

Can you blame them?

Padmé felt the Dancer shift beneath her as Anakin eased the nose to the right, toward one of the destroyers—or, more precisely, toward its waiting open hangar.

She was nearly out of this. Once they'd touched down in the hangar, they'd be safe from getting shot down, and then she'd—

Do what?

Her stomach flipped as she weighed her options. Even if Anakin could get their two remaining ships out of this mess—past Valis's entire fleet and into hyperspace—it was only a matter of time before the events of Snowblind caught up with her. Flying home on a Republic Star Destroyer definitely won't help there. And then she'd be even more useless to Obi-Wan than she was right now.

The whine of ship engines died down as the Dancer came to settle on the deck of the Star Destroyer's hangar—but even as Anakin unhooked his seat restraints and rose to his feet, Padmé remained frozen in place.

"Come on," he said, his words hurried, his tone one of urgency. "We've got to get up to the bridge so I can direct us out of this mess."

She could barely bring herself to turn and look at him, instead settling for a lazy half rotation of the co-pilot's chair. "Go." Her voice sounded as hollow as she felt. "I'll catch up."

Anakin seemed satisfied with her words—spinning on a heel, he practically leapt down the ladder to the Dancer's lower deck. Padmé could hear the clank of his boots against the floor, growing fainter as he rushed down the corridor and descended the ship's boarding ramp.

When she unbuckled her own restraints, rose to her own feet, it was a ghostly mirror of Anakin's actions. Detached, as if puppeteered by another, Padmé ambled her way down the ladder and shuffled across the lower deck.

Even as her body moved, her mind shouted in protest. If you follow him, it's over. He'll find out about everything.

About Snowblind.

About Valis.

. . . About the kid.

She came to rest at the top of the boarding ramp, her distant gaze peering outward into the hangar of the Star Destroyer. The glossy black sheen of the hangar deck bounced harsh light into her eyes—and at the base of the ramp, Padmé's reflection in the floor stared back at her.

Something was wrong, she thought. Something was missing—and it only took her a moment to realize what it was. There was only one person at the top of the Dancer's boarding ramp. For years—for nearly as long as she'd owned the ship—there had been two. Partners.

Back then, they'd been plucky adventurers. Hopping from system to system, trying to stay alive and ahead of the law—never looking for opportunities to play the hero.

And yet, when the opportunities had presented themselves, Anakin had done it. Even when she'd protested, insisted they'd run, just save their own skin. He hadn't listened. Because he'd been a good man.

He had run straight into hell, as the bombardment had rained from above on Had Abbadon, with no regard for his own safety. It had been all about helping others. Saving them.

It had cost him his right arm—and he hadn't even been angry about it. The only loss he'd lamented was the loss of the lives he'd failed to save.

But now?

Now he'd rushed into the inferno not to save people, but to kill them. To slaughter pirates who were fleeing anyway. Senseless. Useless. Bitter. Angry.

Dark.

Set foot in that hangar and you're done for. You'll never save Obi-Wan.

Or save the baby.

Or save yourself.

Padmé's fist clenched hard enough to strain her knuckles and dig her fingernails into her palms. It couldn't end like this. You have to do something!

Save yourself.

Save the baby.

Save Obi-Wan.

And underneath her own voice, the memory of Anakin, glowering at her plea for help.

Go ask the Jedi for help.

Padmé's curled fist smacked into the Dancer's door controls, retracting the ramp and slamming the access hatch shut in front of her. Before it was fully sealed, she was already halfway up the ladder. In the cockpit. In the pilot's seat.

Headed for home.

Anakin hadn't even made it out of the hangar when he heard the unmistakable whine of a starship's engines. His starship's engines.

The Spice Dancer was powering up again.

No, a voice hissed in his ear as he whirled around to witness the flares of plasma combustion forming at the tips of the Dancer's engine nacelles. Starships don't just power themselves up. Someone's doing this.

SHE is doing this.

"Stop her!" he cried. His feet were already carrying him across the hangar, back toward the Dancer—but he skidded to a halt when he saw one of his troopers raise a blaster rifle and wrap a finger around the trigger.

Anakin dove in the trooper's direction, wrapping a mechanical fist around the rifle and wrenching it away. "No! Not like that!"

Though the white armored trooper's helmet was blank and expressionless, his scowl was evident in his modulated voice. "Then how?"

He didn't stop to think of an answer. There wasn't time. Instead he tossed aside the rifle and raised his right hand. Reached out toward the Dancer—and out into the Force.

The ship rose into the air, pivoting to face the hangar's opening—but as the engines flared, heat and noise radiating from their nacelles, it did not move. It was stuck. Frozen in place. Held there by an unseen hand.

Got you.

Padmé lurched in her seat as the Dancer seemed to hit a wall. Her eyes zigzagged about the cockpit, snapping from one gauge to another, between status lights and diagnostic displays. She should have been moving forward—and yet she wasn't. Gritting her teeth, she reached for the throttle levers and eased them forward as far as they could go.

Engines whined in protest, the very structure of the ship creaking under the stress of their vibrations. The rattling moved through the deck, up the pilot's seat and into her bones.

She did not notice the wood around her neck, radiating heat and vibrating in time with the ship.

She lied. She LIED to you.

About Valis, yes, but he'd known that even as she said it. He'd let it go. Something to deal with later. Keeping her safe had been more important. And look how she'd repaid him.

She just wanted to get out of there. Make her escape now that you won't help her get what she wants.

She was never here to help you.

Anakin strained against the forces of the fleeing Dancer—the muscles in his right arm hurt, but his mind hurt even more. It was taking every ounce of effort he could muster to keep the ship held in place, and under it all his racing thoughts refused to shut up.

What else is she lying about? the dark voice hissed inside his head. What else is she hiding?

Beneath the hull of the Dancer, a pair of engineers rushed to scramble up a stepladder. One held a fusion torch, its tip glowing white hot and spraying sparks across the deck.

"Hurry!" Anakin screamed at them, raising his other hand as he felt the ship tug against his mental hold. He could tell by the whine of the engines that Padmé had pushed the Dancer to full throttle. She had nowhere left to go. He only had to hold her still until the engineers could breach the hull. Get inside. Bring her to him.

And then?

Well, they had a lot to talk about.

The Dancer's engines screamed as they reached the peak of their power—though the ship itself remained still, suspended in place. Frozen in time. Held there by whatever tractor beam rig the Republic had set up within this Star Destroyer's hangar.

Alarms blared all around Padmé—temperature warnings, structural stress alerts—though one rose above the rest as most concerning.

Hull breach imminent.

Panic welled up within her. They were trying to carve their way inside—fusion cutter? Lightsaber?—she shook her head. It didn't matter. She needed to get out of there. Now.

But the Dancer was going as fast as it could—or trying to, at least—and it still wasn't moving. Padmé's hands rushed about the cockpit, hovering over switches and knobs in a desperate hope that instinct would kick in. That her gut would save her, make her hands press just the right button, and all would be well again. She just needed to go faster.

As her hands passed over a particular lever, it dawned on her. There was one way to go faster. One dangerous way. One very reckless way. One just-so-stupid-it-might-work way.

Her right hand gripped the lightspeed activation lever as her left toggled on the navicomputer. A specific destination didn't matter—she only needed to run enough calculations to make sure she didn't hit something on the way out of the system.

As she froze for one final moment, steeling herself to execute this ghost of a plan, she finally felt it. The necklace on her neck, the wooden carving of the tree from the Jedi Temple, could have been on fire. It burned with the heat of a glowing coal, radiating a violent energy in the Force.

Her stomach dropped as realization dawned. There was no tractor beam holding the Dancer in place.

It was Anakin.

Squeezing her eyes shut, mouth open in a wordless roar, Padmé gripped the hyperdrive lever and shoved it forward.

Republic Archives: The Last Journal of Captain Treskov

[fragment of a note file recovered from a datapad in the wreckage of the San Sestina Incident]

The man called [corrupted data] was like a demon. Deadlier than the warlord, somehow—even without a [corrupted data] he was cutting us down like it was nothing. Catching blaster bolts in his hands, throwing us into walls. He moved with a swiftness I've only seen from the [corrupted data] before.

I should be dead, but I'm not. I should be grateful I'm alive . . . but I'm not. I see them every time I close my eyes—my men, slaughtered like livestock.

[Corrupted data], if you ever find this note . . . I hope you catch him. I hope you kill him.

Do it for us.