Part XX -- The Chase
Back in the Falcon's landing meadow, a dark figure slunk toward the freighter, his armor gleaming in the morning light. The landing ramp groaned and lowered at a concentrating gesture from a black-gloved hand, and Vader entered the ship.
Once on board, he activated the long-range transmission unit and recorded a brief message. At the conclusion of the recording he keyed a number into the unit, gave it his personal authorization code to get the transmission past the Imperial communications barrier, and utilized several of the Falcon's security measures. If the message was intercepted, these measures would prevent the hacker from tracing the transmission back to the sender or forward to the recipient.
Finished at last, Vader shut the Falcon down and departed, closing the hatch behind him.
Conrad waited by the highway next to his van. "Got the supplies from your TIE okay?" he asked.
"Yes," Vader replied. "Thank you for your services, Conrad."
***
Mara politely turned down the waitress' offer for "something more to go with your drink" and continued to listen to the three young men yakking their tongues apart. She grimaced as she sipped her drink. Earth's alcoholic beverages left something to be desired. Then again, so did the planet's inhabitants. She brushed off the leg of her pants. The girl who had previously worn this outfit -- black "Bad Religion" shirt, tight-fitting jeans, black studded belt, and wrist chrono -- would recover, but when she regained consciousness her clothes would be the least of her concerns. None insulted the Emperor's Hand and escaped unscathed. "Hopeless geek" indeed!
"I'm tellin' ya, the party was weird!" one of the trio told his fellows. He wore a T-shirt with Darth Vader's visage on it. Odd how they knew of the Empire but still had such infantile technology. Perhaps this was the effects of the turbulence in the Force her master had described.
"I go to the Elite's bash every year, right?" the young man continued. "One minute I'm in my Death Star gunner getup, doin' some disco, mindin' my own business, and the next -- POW!" He slammed both hands on the table to add emphasis. "Vader and some snowtrooper whip out lightsabers! And these weren't cheapo plastic dealies
either -- these were the real McCoy!"
Mara cocked her head, intrigued.
"You're so full of bull, Justin," sneered the second. "'Specially when you're slammed."
"It's true, Ricky!" insisted the third. "I saw 'em too, and I was sober!"
Ricky snorted. "So some freaks put florescent paint on some sticks and stood next to a black light. What of it?"
"There weren't any black lights there!" exclaimed Justin. "Ethan and I were right there, man! You could smell the ozone! You could hear that weird saber buzz! Those were real, man!"
"Don't believe it," Ricky humphed. "I'm as obsessed as the next guy, but I'm not THAT out of the loop."
"Believe it," Ethan replied. "My old boss, Miss King, she was there. Ask her. I'll bet she'll tell you."
"Liberty's a member of the Elite," Ricky shot back. "They're all weirdos."
Mara downed the rest of her drink, left a pile of Earth cash for the waitress, and walked out of the Leapfrog. So Vader was somewhere in this city. He wouldn't be too hard to find. She wasn't as strong in the Force as he, but she could still sense and track him. Now to secure a few vehicles for herself and her accompanying troops.
***
"We've been down this road before!" insisted Cody.
"Have not!" countered Amethyst from the driver's seat.
"Have too! We've passed that Chinese restaurant three times now!"
"There are dozens of Chinese restaurants in Denver," she retorted, braking for a red light.
"Yeah, but how many have dragons on their signs?"
"Pritnear all of them. It's practically a law. If you open a Chinese restaurant in America, you're required to put a Chinese dragon on your sign."
"Face it, Maria von Trapp, we're lost," grumped Cody.
"You can get out and walk home, Jar Jar," Amethyst snapped.
"Exactly where are we going?" inquired Leia.
"There's a guy here in Denver who's a self-published author," she explained. "Liberty purchased about a hundred of his books last night on eBay, and I'm picking them up for her so she can sell them in her store. She figures if she sells books the big chain stores don't, sales may go up." She turned down a side street. "If I can find his apartment. The directions he gave us are worthless."
Amethyst, Cody, and Vader were squeezed in the front seat of Amethyst's Chevy Citation, and Luke, Leia, and Mike were crammed in the back. While Amethyst had taken the two-hour trip to Denver to help Liberty, the others simply wanted a look at Colorado's biggest city. So far they had seen plenty of it.
"Perhaps if I took a turn at the wheel..." Vader offered.
"Not this time, Vader," Amethyst replied. She shot Mike a look in the rearview mirror. "Mike, no matter how many times you push the lock mechanism, it'll go up and down the same way."
He pulled his hand away. "Sorry."
Leia gave Luke a smirk. "So these are your new friends?"
He shrugged. "After awhile, you get used to their idiosynchracies."
She gave him a gentle shove. "I missed you, Luke."
"Missed you too," he replied, giving a playful push back.
"Hey!" she protested, pushing him again. Naturally he retaliated, and soon the two were engaged in a slapping match, giggling all the while.
"Don't make me go back there and sit between you two," Vader threatened.
"She started it!" cried Luke. "Ow!"
"I don't care who started it!" Vader replied. "I'll finish it!"
Mike peered out the back windshield. "Hey, is Liberty coming too?"
"Do you see her in the car?" demanded Cody. "Neither do I, so she must not be. Sometimes, Mikey, I think you're a few TIEs short of a fleet." He turned back to the front, but after a moment he craned his neck to look at Mike again. "Out of simple curiosity, why do you ask?"
He pointed at the rear windshield. "That looks like her car."
Amethyst took a peek at her rearview mirror, briefly studying the silver vehicle. "That's the right color, Mike, but the wrong make. Liberty drives a PT Cruiser. That's a Dodge Caravan. And Liberty doesn't have that bright red of hair."
At the mention of red hair Vader whirled. He went instantly stiff at the sight of the vehicle.
"That's Mara Jade, the Emperor's Hand," he said in disbelief.
"Who?" Leia asked. "I've never heard of an Emperor's Hand."
"I'd be surprised if you had," Vader replied. "She's a Force-sensitive assassin utilized by the Emperor for accomplishing his dirty work."
"And she's one of the butt-kickin'-est women in the Star Wars books!" gushed Cody. "Pull over so I can get her autograph!"
"How long has she been following us?" wondered Luke.
"I first saw her when we got off the freeway," volunteered Mike.
Vader swore loudly and pointed to an alley. "Turn there. We'll try to lose her. Why the stang didn't I sense her trailing us?"
"Why is she here anyway?" asked Leia as their car swerved into the narrow street.
"No doubt for me," Vader replied. "I've been absent for too long. The Emperor has sent her to retrieve me."
"Then pull over!" shouted Cody. "That's your ticket home!"
"It's not as simple as that," Vader said gravely.
"What do you mean?" demanded Luke.
Amethyst exited the alley, and the Citation emerged in downtown Denver. Mara's Caravan was still on their tail. She wove her vehicle through traffic, earning a few car-horn protests and raised fingers, but she couldn't shake their pursuer. If anything, the Caravan only closed the gap between their bumpers.
"I can't get this bitch off my butt!" Amethyst hissed, making a tight left turn and running a red light in the process. "If we don't wreck first, I'm gonna run out of gas, and then what do we do?"
"She won't kill us, will she?" whimpered Mike.
"She's an assassin, blockhead!" Cody replied. "That's what assassins do!"
"If she catches us, Luke and Leia will die," Vader replied soberly. "And quite possibly the rest of you, as you are witnesses."
"What about you?" asked Amethyst.
"Just drive," Vader said shortly.
On impulse Amethyst swerved into the left lane, playing chicken with a UPS truck. Just as the driver laid on his horn she returned to the correct lane, and the squeal of brakes indicated Mara had narrowly avoided a head-on collision. Incredibly, she stayed on their bumper. Even worse, as they swept past a bar two more cars -- a blue Datsun pickup and a bronze Acura Legend -- pulled out of the establishment's parking lot and joined in the chase.
"She's got stormies helping her out!" Cody shrieked. "How'd they learn to drive so fast?"
"Stormtroopers are genetically altered to learn how to operate vehicles in an extremely short amount of time," Leia replied. "And I'm sure it doesn't take much to hotwire one of these cars."
"Don't diss our technology, Princess," Amethyst shot back. "Hang on tight. I'm gonna see if we can't shake them here." She aimed the car at a road repair site.
"Are you crazy?" Cody exclaimed. "Traffic fines are double in a construction zone!"
"I think I'd rather live to pay the fine, Cody," Amethyst retorted.
The Citation barreled through a "Detour" barrier, scattering shattered wood across the hard-packed dirt. Workers in hard hats and orange vests leaped for safety as the car rocketed around machinery and safety cones, knocking over quite a few of the latter. One man waved his hand-held stop sign furiously and stood right in their path. Amethyst pumped her horn, and at the last possible moment the worker sprang out of her way. Mara was right behind, though she had dropped back to avoid the Citation's dust trail. The Datsun and Acura followed, the Datsun with a starburst crack in its windshield where a piece of the sign had struck it.
"No luck," Amethyst noted.
"We need a plan!" Luke cried. "We have to come up with something!"
"Got any suggestions?" demanded Cody.
Amethyst pulled into a parking garage whose toll gate was, by some miracle, out of order at the moment. Only a ribbon of yellow "Do Not Enter" tape blocked off the entrance, and this the car easily broke through. Strangely enough, their pursuers did not enter after them. Instead, all three vehicles parked at the entrance, and their drivers watched as the Citation disappeared into the building.
Amethyst found a parking place on the ground floor and cut the engine. "This is bad."
"What are you talking about?" Mike protested. "She didn't follow us."
"She didn't need to. This garage has only one way in or out. We have to come out sometime, and when we do..." She drew a finger across her throat.
No one spoke for a moment. The seriousness of their situation was sinking in. There was no sugar-coating the predicament -- if they didn't find a way to outrun, outgun, or outwit the Emperor's Hand, they were dead.
"Never thought it would end this way," sobbed Mike.
"Oh, quit sniveling," Vader hissed.
"What I want to know is why you seem so reluctant to confront her," Leia said. "You both work for the Emperor. You're on the same side."
"You're wrong," Vader replied.
She blinked, surprised.
"This morning," he went on, "I went to the Millennium Falcon. I used its long-distance transmitter to send a message to Mon Mothma." He hesitated, then pushed onward. "I sent her a request to join the Alliance."
Luke smiled in quiet triumph while the others just gawked.
"You WHAT?!" Leia exclaimed.
Cody laughed hysterically and slapped the dashboard. "I never saw this one coming! I've been thrown for a loop lots of times, but this takes the cake!"
"It ain't hard to throw you for a loop," Amethyst quipped.
"Shut up, Mary Poppins."
"But -- you're a Sith," Mike pointed out.
"And your point is...?" Luke asked.
"Well -- he -- he killed the Jedi -- and lots of other stuff," Mike stammered.
"Mike's right," Amethyst said. "He's the Rebellion's biggest enemy, the Emperor notwithstanding. Will they really just up and let him join?"
"Yes," Luke said firmly. "It has long been the Alliance's policy to allow all who truly wish to join us do so. Mothma decided long ago that any Imperial that wanted to defect to the Alliance could, be they a stormtrooper, technician, or even a Grand Admiral, so long as it could be proved that they weren't acting as double-agents or spies. We're an organization that makes no discriminations against a race, gender, religion, or past affiliation. To deny Vader a place among us would be to destroy all we have worked so hard to build."
"Are you sure about that?" asked Amethyst. "What if they refuse him?"
"Then I'll fight to ensure there is a place for him among us," Leia replied sternly.
Vader turned to regard Leia. "I thought you would hate me, Leia, for all I have done to you and your friends. I'm glad that is no longer the case."
"I hate Darth Vader," Leia answered. "Always have, always will. But I don't hate my father."
He nodded again, obviously pleased.
"This is all very touching," Cody noted, "and I hate to end it, but Vader joining the Rebellion ain't gonna mean squat if he's a corpse by the time Mothma gets the message."
"We need a quick getaway driver," Luke announced.
"Someone used to driving at high speeds and making decisions under pressure," Leia added.
"Who here can do that?" asked Mike.
Amethyst smirked. "You really are dense, Mike. Don't you pay attention when we watch Episode I?"
***
The Force smiled upon Mara Jade. Minutes after hotwiring several cars and beginning a search of Star City, she had sensed Vader and Skywalker departing the city in another vehicle. Now, after three hours of following the Citation, she had her quarry trapped. She gave a dark smile. Skywalker would die, and Vader would answer to the Emperor for his unauthorized absence.
"Hand to Executor, objective nearly completed. Prepare a shuttle. I'll signal when I have them, then you may send the transport."
She keyed off the comm and exited the vehicle, striding casually to a spot not far from the building and facing what she knew to be the exact location of Vader and his companions. Aside from her assigned targets, there were four others. Too bad they had the misfortune to run into Vader and Skywalker. They would not leave her sight alive.
From the wall of the parking garage came an explosion of concrete. She threw up a shield of the Force but stayed her ground as chunks of stone pelted her and her troops. A particularly large fragment crashed through the windshield of the Acura, killing the trooper inside. No great loss, she had others...
Too late she sensed the cause of the explosion -- Vader had used the Force to blast the hole as an escape route. The yellow vehicle shot through the opening and barreled toward her, going way too fast for her to possibly dodge it.
She had time for one last thought -- a particularly nasty and unrepeatable thought regarding Vader's mother -- before impact.
***
If anyone inside the car could have seen Vader's face through his mask, they would have been terrified by his grin of rapture.
Then again, they were pretty terrified anyhow.
"One hundred and twenty miles an hour?" Vader repeated, taking a glance at the speedometer. "That's the fastest this thing can go? Ha! I grew up driving podracers! Those can hit six hundred..."
"Whatever man, just keep your freakin' eyes on the road!" Amethyst shouted.
The Citation tore through the streets at upward of one hundred miles an hour, whipping past slower traffic and disregarding such trivial matters as traffic signals. The Datsun followed, joined by a violet Plymouth Prowler, a white Ford Taurus, and a red Mitsubishi Eclipse.
"Where's Mara and the man in the bronze car?" demanded Luke.
"Vader ran over Mara, remember?" Cody replied. "As for the Acura, who cares as long as he's off our bumper?" He gave a loud sob. "Why'd she have to die? She was supposed to marry ya, Luke!"
"Me marry Mara Jade?" Luke gaped.
"Who gives a crap about the books right now, Cody?" snapped Amethyst.
Vader cranked the steering wheel, and he turned a corner so sharply the Citation went up on its two right wheels before coming back down on all four. The driver of the Eclipse lost control and flipped, landing the car on its top with its front end buried in the front window of a bank.
"That looks nasty," noted Mike, peering back at the mess.
"How many cronies has Mara got?" asked Cody.
"She always takes five troopers with her on strikes," Vader replied. "The drivers of the Acura and the red car are dead. That leaves these three to eliminate."
"And they're gaining on us!" squealed Mike.
"Calm down!" Leia ordered.
Vader whipped around another corner, expertly maneuvering the car to avoid oncoming traffic -- of which there was a lot.
"This is only a test," said Cody. "For the next sixty seconds we will be conducting a test of our Emergency Broadcast system. If this were an actual emergency, we would NOT be going ONE HUNDRED PLUS miles an hour the WRONG way down a ONE-WAY STREET!"
The Citation lurched onto the sidewalk as Vader swerved to avoid a taxi, and before he could get back on the road the vehicle smashed into a newspaper rack. Copies of "USA Today" and the "Denver Tribune" fluttered through the air like birds. The driver of a green Volkswagon, spooked by the explosion of paper, sent his car into a spin and slammed into the back of the Taurus. The white car somehow managed to keep going in a straight line.
"Um, guys?" Mike squeaked.
"Not now, Mike!" Luke ordered. All eyes were on their pursuers.
"I'm not that smart, I admit..." he went on.
"We know," Cody replied.
"But maybe we'd better worry less about those guys and more about the train."
Four heads whipped around to see a railroad crossing ahead -- with a train in the process of going over the tracks.
No one knew who started screaming first, but soon everyone in the car was shrieking in fear -- except Vader, who only floored the gas pedal.
"What are you doing?!" howled Amethyst.
"Trust me!" he replied.
A nearby theater had taken down their marquee board for repairs, and one end was propped up on cinder blocks to allow workers access to its wiring. As if pulled by an invisible rope the sign slid into the road, right in their path. The Citation streaked up the impromptu ramp and went airborne, clearing the train by such a narrow margin that the tires skimmed the top of the railroad car. With the aid of the Force Vader landed the car,
jouncing everyone around but preventing any injuries to the occupants. The car was a loss, though.
"There goes my suspension!" cried Amethyst.
"Oh pipe down, at least we're alive," Luke snapped.
The stormtroopers weren't so lucky. Twin explosions sounded as the Prowler and Taurus smashed into the side of the train. The Datsun barreled up the ramp and soared through the air, landing on its front bumper and somersaulting down the street before coming to rest on its hood.
Everyone took a moment to catch their breath. Then Amethyst flung open the door and scrambled out of the car, whimpering over the damage inflicted on her Citation. From the looks of it, the vehicle had been damaged beyond repair.
"I say from now on, Liberty picks up her own books," Leia suggested.
Vader laughed. "As luck would have it, this is the street we were looking for. We can still get what we came for." He popped open his door. "I hope someone has money for the bus back to Star City."
Back in the Falcon's landing meadow, a dark figure slunk toward the freighter, his armor gleaming in the morning light. The landing ramp groaned and lowered at a concentrating gesture from a black-gloved hand, and Vader entered the ship.
Once on board, he activated the long-range transmission unit and recorded a brief message. At the conclusion of the recording he keyed a number into the unit, gave it his personal authorization code to get the transmission past the Imperial communications barrier, and utilized several of the Falcon's security measures. If the message was intercepted, these measures would prevent the hacker from tracing the transmission back to the sender or forward to the recipient.
Finished at last, Vader shut the Falcon down and departed, closing the hatch behind him.
Conrad waited by the highway next to his van. "Got the supplies from your TIE okay?" he asked.
"Yes," Vader replied. "Thank you for your services, Conrad."
***
Mara politely turned down the waitress' offer for "something more to go with your drink" and continued to listen to the three young men yakking their tongues apart. She grimaced as she sipped her drink. Earth's alcoholic beverages left something to be desired. Then again, so did the planet's inhabitants. She brushed off the leg of her pants. The girl who had previously worn this outfit -- black "Bad Religion" shirt, tight-fitting jeans, black studded belt, and wrist chrono -- would recover, but when she regained consciousness her clothes would be the least of her concerns. None insulted the Emperor's Hand and escaped unscathed. "Hopeless geek" indeed!
"I'm tellin' ya, the party was weird!" one of the trio told his fellows. He wore a T-shirt with Darth Vader's visage on it. Odd how they knew of the Empire but still had such infantile technology. Perhaps this was the effects of the turbulence in the Force her master had described.
"I go to the Elite's bash every year, right?" the young man continued. "One minute I'm in my Death Star gunner getup, doin' some disco, mindin' my own business, and the next -- POW!" He slammed both hands on the table to add emphasis. "Vader and some snowtrooper whip out lightsabers! And these weren't cheapo plastic dealies
either -- these were the real McCoy!"
Mara cocked her head, intrigued.
"You're so full of bull, Justin," sneered the second. "'Specially when you're slammed."
"It's true, Ricky!" insisted the third. "I saw 'em too, and I was sober!"
Ricky snorted. "So some freaks put florescent paint on some sticks and stood next to a black light. What of it?"
"There weren't any black lights there!" exclaimed Justin. "Ethan and I were right there, man! You could smell the ozone! You could hear that weird saber buzz! Those were real, man!"
"Don't believe it," Ricky humphed. "I'm as obsessed as the next guy, but I'm not THAT out of the loop."
"Believe it," Ethan replied. "My old boss, Miss King, she was there. Ask her. I'll bet she'll tell you."
"Liberty's a member of the Elite," Ricky shot back. "They're all weirdos."
Mara downed the rest of her drink, left a pile of Earth cash for the waitress, and walked out of the Leapfrog. So Vader was somewhere in this city. He wouldn't be too hard to find. She wasn't as strong in the Force as he, but she could still sense and track him. Now to secure a few vehicles for herself and her accompanying troops.
***
"We've been down this road before!" insisted Cody.
"Have not!" countered Amethyst from the driver's seat.
"Have too! We've passed that Chinese restaurant three times now!"
"There are dozens of Chinese restaurants in Denver," she retorted, braking for a red light.
"Yeah, but how many have dragons on their signs?"
"Pritnear all of them. It's practically a law. If you open a Chinese restaurant in America, you're required to put a Chinese dragon on your sign."
"Face it, Maria von Trapp, we're lost," grumped Cody.
"You can get out and walk home, Jar Jar," Amethyst snapped.
"Exactly where are we going?" inquired Leia.
"There's a guy here in Denver who's a self-published author," she explained. "Liberty purchased about a hundred of his books last night on eBay, and I'm picking them up for her so she can sell them in her store. She figures if she sells books the big chain stores don't, sales may go up." She turned down a side street. "If I can find his apartment. The directions he gave us are worthless."
Amethyst, Cody, and Vader were squeezed in the front seat of Amethyst's Chevy Citation, and Luke, Leia, and Mike were crammed in the back. While Amethyst had taken the two-hour trip to Denver to help Liberty, the others simply wanted a look at Colorado's biggest city. So far they had seen plenty of it.
"Perhaps if I took a turn at the wheel..." Vader offered.
"Not this time, Vader," Amethyst replied. She shot Mike a look in the rearview mirror. "Mike, no matter how many times you push the lock mechanism, it'll go up and down the same way."
He pulled his hand away. "Sorry."
Leia gave Luke a smirk. "So these are your new friends?"
He shrugged. "After awhile, you get used to their idiosynchracies."
She gave him a gentle shove. "I missed you, Luke."
"Missed you too," he replied, giving a playful push back.
"Hey!" she protested, pushing him again. Naturally he retaliated, and soon the two were engaged in a slapping match, giggling all the while.
"Don't make me go back there and sit between you two," Vader threatened.
"She started it!" cried Luke. "Ow!"
"I don't care who started it!" Vader replied. "I'll finish it!"
Mike peered out the back windshield. "Hey, is Liberty coming too?"
"Do you see her in the car?" demanded Cody. "Neither do I, so she must not be. Sometimes, Mikey, I think you're a few TIEs short of a fleet." He turned back to the front, but after a moment he craned his neck to look at Mike again. "Out of simple curiosity, why do you ask?"
He pointed at the rear windshield. "That looks like her car."
Amethyst took a peek at her rearview mirror, briefly studying the silver vehicle. "That's the right color, Mike, but the wrong make. Liberty drives a PT Cruiser. That's a Dodge Caravan. And Liberty doesn't have that bright red of hair."
At the mention of red hair Vader whirled. He went instantly stiff at the sight of the vehicle.
"That's Mara Jade, the Emperor's Hand," he said in disbelief.
"Who?" Leia asked. "I've never heard of an Emperor's Hand."
"I'd be surprised if you had," Vader replied. "She's a Force-sensitive assassin utilized by the Emperor for accomplishing his dirty work."
"And she's one of the butt-kickin'-est women in the Star Wars books!" gushed Cody. "Pull over so I can get her autograph!"
"How long has she been following us?" wondered Luke.
"I first saw her when we got off the freeway," volunteered Mike.
Vader swore loudly and pointed to an alley. "Turn there. We'll try to lose her. Why the stang didn't I sense her trailing us?"
"Why is she here anyway?" asked Leia as their car swerved into the narrow street.
"No doubt for me," Vader replied. "I've been absent for too long. The Emperor has sent her to retrieve me."
"Then pull over!" shouted Cody. "That's your ticket home!"
"It's not as simple as that," Vader said gravely.
"What do you mean?" demanded Luke.
Amethyst exited the alley, and the Citation emerged in downtown Denver. Mara's Caravan was still on their tail. She wove her vehicle through traffic, earning a few car-horn protests and raised fingers, but she couldn't shake their pursuer. If anything, the Caravan only closed the gap between their bumpers.
"I can't get this bitch off my butt!" Amethyst hissed, making a tight left turn and running a red light in the process. "If we don't wreck first, I'm gonna run out of gas, and then what do we do?"
"She won't kill us, will she?" whimpered Mike.
"She's an assassin, blockhead!" Cody replied. "That's what assassins do!"
"If she catches us, Luke and Leia will die," Vader replied soberly. "And quite possibly the rest of you, as you are witnesses."
"What about you?" asked Amethyst.
"Just drive," Vader said shortly.
On impulse Amethyst swerved into the left lane, playing chicken with a UPS truck. Just as the driver laid on his horn she returned to the correct lane, and the squeal of brakes indicated Mara had narrowly avoided a head-on collision. Incredibly, she stayed on their bumper. Even worse, as they swept past a bar two more cars -- a blue Datsun pickup and a bronze Acura Legend -- pulled out of the establishment's parking lot and joined in the chase.
"She's got stormies helping her out!" Cody shrieked. "How'd they learn to drive so fast?"
"Stormtroopers are genetically altered to learn how to operate vehicles in an extremely short amount of time," Leia replied. "And I'm sure it doesn't take much to hotwire one of these cars."
"Don't diss our technology, Princess," Amethyst shot back. "Hang on tight. I'm gonna see if we can't shake them here." She aimed the car at a road repair site.
"Are you crazy?" Cody exclaimed. "Traffic fines are double in a construction zone!"
"I think I'd rather live to pay the fine, Cody," Amethyst retorted.
The Citation barreled through a "Detour" barrier, scattering shattered wood across the hard-packed dirt. Workers in hard hats and orange vests leaped for safety as the car rocketed around machinery and safety cones, knocking over quite a few of the latter. One man waved his hand-held stop sign furiously and stood right in their path. Amethyst pumped her horn, and at the last possible moment the worker sprang out of her way. Mara was right behind, though she had dropped back to avoid the Citation's dust trail. The Datsun and Acura followed, the Datsun with a starburst crack in its windshield where a piece of the sign had struck it.
"No luck," Amethyst noted.
"We need a plan!" Luke cried. "We have to come up with something!"
"Got any suggestions?" demanded Cody.
Amethyst pulled into a parking garage whose toll gate was, by some miracle, out of order at the moment. Only a ribbon of yellow "Do Not Enter" tape blocked off the entrance, and this the car easily broke through. Strangely enough, their pursuers did not enter after them. Instead, all three vehicles parked at the entrance, and their drivers watched as the Citation disappeared into the building.
Amethyst found a parking place on the ground floor and cut the engine. "This is bad."
"What are you talking about?" Mike protested. "She didn't follow us."
"She didn't need to. This garage has only one way in or out. We have to come out sometime, and when we do..." She drew a finger across her throat.
No one spoke for a moment. The seriousness of their situation was sinking in. There was no sugar-coating the predicament -- if they didn't find a way to outrun, outgun, or outwit the Emperor's Hand, they were dead.
"Never thought it would end this way," sobbed Mike.
"Oh, quit sniveling," Vader hissed.
"What I want to know is why you seem so reluctant to confront her," Leia said. "You both work for the Emperor. You're on the same side."
"You're wrong," Vader replied.
She blinked, surprised.
"This morning," he went on, "I went to the Millennium Falcon. I used its long-distance transmitter to send a message to Mon Mothma." He hesitated, then pushed onward. "I sent her a request to join the Alliance."
Luke smiled in quiet triumph while the others just gawked.
"You WHAT?!" Leia exclaimed.
Cody laughed hysterically and slapped the dashboard. "I never saw this one coming! I've been thrown for a loop lots of times, but this takes the cake!"
"It ain't hard to throw you for a loop," Amethyst quipped.
"Shut up, Mary Poppins."
"But -- you're a Sith," Mike pointed out.
"And your point is...?" Luke asked.
"Well -- he -- he killed the Jedi -- and lots of other stuff," Mike stammered.
"Mike's right," Amethyst said. "He's the Rebellion's biggest enemy, the Emperor notwithstanding. Will they really just up and let him join?"
"Yes," Luke said firmly. "It has long been the Alliance's policy to allow all who truly wish to join us do so. Mothma decided long ago that any Imperial that wanted to defect to the Alliance could, be they a stormtrooper, technician, or even a Grand Admiral, so long as it could be proved that they weren't acting as double-agents or spies. We're an organization that makes no discriminations against a race, gender, religion, or past affiliation. To deny Vader a place among us would be to destroy all we have worked so hard to build."
"Are you sure about that?" asked Amethyst. "What if they refuse him?"
"Then I'll fight to ensure there is a place for him among us," Leia replied sternly.
Vader turned to regard Leia. "I thought you would hate me, Leia, for all I have done to you and your friends. I'm glad that is no longer the case."
"I hate Darth Vader," Leia answered. "Always have, always will. But I don't hate my father."
He nodded again, obviously pleased.
"This is all very touching," Cody noted, "and I hate to end it, but Vader joining the Rebellion ain't gonna mean squat if he's a corpse by the time Mothma gets the message."
"We need a quick getaway driver," Luke announced.
"Someone used to driving at high speeds and making decisions under pressure," Leia added.
"Who here can do that?" asked Mike.
Amethyst smirked. "You really are dense, Mike. Don't you pay attention when we watch Episode I?"
***
The Force smiled upon Mara Jade. Minutes after hotwiring several cars and beginning a search of Star City, she had sensed Vader and Skywalker departing the city in another vehicle. Now, after three hours of following the Citation, she had her quarry trapped. She gave a dark smile. Skywalker would die, and Vader would answer to the Emperor for his unauthorized absence.
"Hand to Executor, objective nearly completed. Prepare a shuttle. I'll signal when I have them, then you may send the transport."
She keyed off the comm and exited the vehicle, striding casually to a spot not far from the building and facing what she knew to be the exact location of Vader and his companions. Aside from her assigned targets, there were four others. Too bad they had the misfortune to run into Vader and Skywalker. They would not leave her sight alive.
From the wall of the parking garage came an explosion of concrete. She threw up a shield of the Force but stayed her ground as chunks of stone pelted her and her troops. A particularly large fragment crashed through the windshield of the Acura, killing the trooper inside. No great loss, she had others...
Too late she sensed the cause of the explosion -- Vader had used the Force to blast the hole as an escape route. The yellow vehicle shot through the opening and barreled toward her, going way too fast for her to possibly dodge it.
She had time for one last thought -- a particularly nasty and unrepeatable thought regarding Vader's mother -- before impact.
***
If anyone inside the car could have seen Vader's face through his mask, they would have been terrified by his grin of rapture.
Then again, they were pretty terrified anyhow.
"One hundred and twenty miles an hour?" Vader repeated, taking a glance at the speedometer. "That's the fastest this thing can go? Ha! I grew up driving podracers! Those can hit six hundred..."
"Whatever man, just keep your freakin' eyes on the road!" Amethyst shouted.
The Citation tore through the streets at upward of one hundred miles an hour, whipping past slower traffic and disregarding such trivial matters as traffic signals. The Datsun followed, joined by a violet Plymouth Prowler, a white Ford Taurus, and a red Mitsubishi Eclipse.
"Where's Mara and the man in the bronze car?" demanded Luke.
"Vader ran over Mara, remember?" Cody replied. "As for the Acura, who cares as long as he's off our bumper?" He gave a loud sob. "Why'd she have to die? She was supposed to marry ya, Luke!"
"Me marry Mara Jade?" Luke gaped.
"Who gives a crap about the books right now, Cody?" snapped Amethyst.
Vader cranked the steering wheel, and he turned a corner so sharply the Citation went up on its two right wheels before coming back down on all four. The driver of the Eclipse lost control and flipped, landing the car on its top with its front end buried in the front window of a bank.
"That looks nasty," noted Mike, peering back at the mess.
"How many cronies has Mara got?" asked Cody.
"She always takes five troopers with her on strikes," Vader replied. "The drivers of the Acura and the red car are dead. That leaves these three to eliminate."
"And they're gaining on us!" squealed Mike.
"Calm down!" Leia ordered.
Vader whipped around another corner, expertly maneuvering the car to avoid oncoming traffic -- of which there was a lot.
"This is only a test," said Cody. "For the next sixty seconds we will be conducting a test of our Emergency Broadcast system. If this were an actual emergency, we would NOT be going ONE HUNDRED PLUS miles an hour the WRONG way down a ONE-WAY STREET!"
The Citation lurched onto the sidewalk as Vader swerved to avoid a taxi, and before he could get back on the road the vehicle smashed into a newspaper rack. Copies of "USA Today" and the "Denver Tribune" fluttered through the air like birds. The driver of a green Volkswagon, spooked by the explosion of paper, sent his car into a spin and slammed into the back of the Taurus. The white car somehow managed to keep going in a straight line.
"Um, guys?" Mike squeaked.
"Not now, Mike!" Luke ordered. All eyes were on their pursuers.
"I'm not that smart, I admit..." he went on.
"We know," Cody replied.
"But maybe we'd better worry less about those guys and more about the train."
Four heads whipped around to see a railroad crossing ahead -- with a train in the process of going over the tracks.
No one knew who started screaming first, but soon everyone in the car was shrieking in fear -- except Vader, who only floored the gas pedal.
"What are you doing?!" howled Amethyst.
"Trust me!" he replied.
A nearby theater had taken down their marquee board for repairs, and one end was propped up on cinder blocks to allow workers access to its wiring. As if pulled by an invisible rope the sign slid into the road, right in their path. The Citation streaked up the impromptu ramp and went airborne, clearing the train by such a narrow margin that the tires skimmed the top of the railroad car. With the aid of the Force Vader landed the car,
jouncing everyone around but preventing any injuries to the occupants. The car was a loss, though.
"There goes my suspension!" cried Amethyst.
"Oh pipe down, at least we're alive," Luke snapped.
The stormtroopers weren't so lucky. Twin explosions sounded as the Prowler and Taurus smashed into the side of the train. The Datsun barreled up the ramp and soared through the air, landing on its front bumper and somersaulting down the street before coming to rest on its hood.
Everyone took a moment to catch their breath. Then Amethyst flung open the door and scrambled out of the car, whimpering over the damage inflicted on her Citation. From the looks of it, the vehicle had been damaged beyond repair.
"I say from now on, Liberty picks up her own books," Leia suggested.
Vader laughed. "As luck would have it, this is the street we were looking for. We can still get what we came for." He popped open his door. "I hope someone has money for the bus back to Star City."