Title: Hiding From Darkness
Author: Kimberly
Beta Reader: Amanda
Summary: After Palpatine took control of the Senate and declared himself Emperor, Padme Skywalker flees for her life trying to escape from the Emperor and his right hand man, Lord Vader, but what will happen when the past catches up with her.
Disclaimer: I pretty sure that I own Star Wars but my psychiatrist says I don't so I think I need to go by what he says.
Chapter 4: Running
Vader watched as the ship carrying his wife left the planet. He was furious. He had come so close to finding her, to catching her and she slipped away right out of his grasp. He turned around to look at his troops that let her get away.
"You idiots," he roared, "You let her escape! If you had followed my orders we would have caught her! Now get back to the ship. We can still catch them if we hurry."
Vader left the field and hurried back to the ship. He let her escape from Coruscant a few days ago and he would not let her escape again.
~*~
The ship carrying Padme and Sabe quickly bounded out the Naboo atmosphere. They gazed out into space and saw another obstacle they would have to get through if they wished to escape.
"I can't believe this," Padme said, staring at Vader's huge starship that he had brought with him to Naboo.
"Nor can I," Sabe answered, "Why could the Emperor possible want you found so much that he would not only send his right hand man to find you, but he would send with him one of his largest ships. You must be one important person Padme."
"Can you get past it?" Padme asked.
"Of course I can. Let's just hope we don't see Vader anytime soon," Sabe said taking control again of the ship and preparing to make a mad dash around the opposing starship and to safety. The starship ahead of them started to fire at their ship, but both Padme and Sabe noticed that the shots were either poorly aimed or the whoever was firing at them only wanted to damage the surface of the ship and not make it blow up.
"I guess we don't get to be so lucky," Padme shouted above the sound of the bullets passing them by as a screen told them a ship was approaching them from behind.
"Great," Sabe said sarcastically.
Sabe hit the accelerator to try and out run Vader and maneuvered the ship to head straight towards the ship ahead of them.
"What do you think you're doing!?!" Padme said as she saw Sabe heading straight towards the ship.
"It's a trick I learned. You head straight towards something and then pull up right before you hit. It usually can throw off someone who is chasing you from behind and make them crash into the thing you almost did. It's one of those tricks a top pilot learns," Sabe informed her.
"Are you sure your qualified to do this?" Padme asked.
"Yeah," Sabe answered, "…I think."
Padme, scared out of her wits at what her friend was trying to accomplish stared back out the cockpit window, watching the fast approaching ship. As Sabe was preparing to make the maneuver a red light on the control panel lit up and made a beeping noise.
"Someone's trying to contact us," Padme said.
"Probably Vader," Sabe said, "Don't accept the message or send anything back until we are passed this ship ahead of us."
"Ok," Padme replied.
A few moments later Sabe was extremely close to the ship ahead of them.
"Here we go," she muttered.
Right when Padme thought they would run into the ship ahead of them, Sabe pulled the ship up sending them up into space, hovering a few feet above the ship below them.
"This is madness," Padme shouted.
"Yes, but this madness should get us out of here," Sabe said.
Padme and Sabe who continued flying to ship both waited to see if Vader's ship would crash. They waited a few seconds but didn't hear any sounds of an explosion.
"Look's like your plan didn't work," Padme said.
"Why don't you hit the button to accept the message we got. Let's hear what he has to say," Sabe told her.
Padme pushed the button and watched as Vader's cloaked figure cam onto the screen located above the cockpit window. Both girls were silent as they listened to what Vader said.
"Surrender now and both of your lives will be spared. Land in the open hanger on my starship and my troops will escort you off and into a place where I will talk to you. If you fail to cooperate we will have no choice but to shoot you down," the image said.
"So much for shooting us down," Sabe said.
"I just don't get why I'm so important to them. There has to be something else going on," Padme said.
"Well, hold that thought until we get into hyperspace. I need all the concentration I can get to outrun Vader," Sabe said.
Sabe got their ship past the large starship easily, but they still had to enter hyperspace before Vader could shoot them down.
"How much longer until we can enter hyperspace," Padme said.
"Right…" Sabe stared and then pushed a button on the control panel sending them into hyperspace, "…now"
"Good, we can finally relax, even if it is only for a little while," Padme said.
"Why don't you go get some sleep Padme? I know I interrupted your sleep earlier when we had to leave. You've still got to be tired," Sabe told her.
"I am tired. But I won't leave you here alone, you may need to help soon," Padme replied.
"It's alright, I'll be fine here. I'm just going to be changing our path every once in a while, hopefully to get Vader off our trail if he's still on it. And I'll wait for Obi-Wan to contact us to tell us where we're going now. I can assure you I'll be fine," Sabe told her.
"Alright. Come get me if you need me," Padme said getting up from her seat and heading towards the bed located in the back of the ship.
Sabe watched her leave and then turned her attention back to what was in front of her. She set the coordinates for the ship to head to and then waited. An hour or two later Sabe's comlink went off once again. She checked to see who was sending her a message and saw it was from Obi-Wan. She quickly answered it and was glad to hear from him again.
"Obi-Wan, it's good to hear from you again. You took so long to contact me I was wondered something had happened to you," Sabe told him.
"It's alright. It took me longer than expected to find a safe place to contact you," Obi-Wan replied, "Did you get off the planet without much trouble."
"Yeah, not too much trouble. Our biggest problem was Vader and his troops," Sabe informed him.
"Vader was there?" Obi-Wan asked.
"Yeah, and he brought one of his biggest starships with him," Sabe told him, "Padme and I are still trying to figure out why the Emperor wants her so bad that he would send his right hand man and one of his biggest starships."
"Something is not right here. Some evil is at work here. I think there is more to this Vader than we thought. We already know he's a Sith, but that's about it. He suddenly came into existence when Palpatine declared himself Emperor," Obi-Wan said, "I will have to investigate this later. But right now I need to get you and Padme to safety."
"Where do you want us to go?" Sabe asked.
"There is a planet that is out of the reach of the Empire, at least for the moment. It is located near the planet Iego. I think you will be safe there," Obi-Wan told her.
"So what is the planet's name," Sabe asked.
"It is called Valar. I'm sending you the coordinates now, enter them into the ship and you can get there," Obi-Wan said, "Also, you and Padme should probably come up with new names, new history, etc. No one there should know who you truly are. The Emperor has many spies, you never who could be watching you at any moment."
"Ok," Sabe said while entering the coordinates Obi-Wan sent her into the ship's computer, "So when should we be expecting to hear from you again?"
"I don't know. Hopefully soon. I will contact you with anything I find out about this Vader," Obi-Wan said.
"Alright. Well, I guess this will be goodbye until then," Sabe said.
"Goodbye. And Sabe, be careful. I couldn't bear it if anything happened to you," Obi-Wan said.
"I will," Sabe said and then turned off her comlink.
She checked the monitor to see how long it would take for them to get to the planet Valar. The screen told her it would take around 13 hours from where they were. She checked the fuel tank to make sure they had enough fuel to get there, which they did. Now all she could do was wait until they got there.
About 5 hours later Padme came back into the cockpit.
"Has Obi-Wan contacted us yet?" Padme asked.
"Yes, I talked to him about 5 hours ago. He told me we should head for a planet called Valar. I set the coordinates, checked the fuel tank to make sure we could get there and just sat around waiting. Looks like we still have 8 hours to go till we get there," Sabe informed her.
"Ok. Why don't I take over in here for a little while? You can go get some rest," Padme told her.
"No it's alright, I'll be ok," Sabe told her.
"No you won't," Padme told her, "You need your strength. I'll be fine in here. If anything goes wrong I can come get you immediately."
"Fine, I'll go," Sabe said getting up from her seat, inwardly very thankful that she could get some rest, though she wouldn't let Padme know that, "Let me know when we're half an hour away from the planet."
"Ok, I will," Padme said while watching walk out of the cockpit.
Padme checked over everything again to make sure everything was in good condition to get them to their destination. Afterwards she just waiting until it was time to get Sabe up. Half an hour until their arrival time, Padme got up and went to wake up Sabe. When she and Sabe got back to the cockpit Sabe sat down and started searching a map of the planet for a good place to land and stay.
"We probably don't want don't want to go to any big city, we don't want to draw too much attention to ourselves," Sabe said while scanning over her map, "How about the city Imladris. It isn't too big and not too small. They have a large spaceport where we could get a hanger to park this ship in. And we shouldn't have too much trouble finding a place to stay at."
"Alright that will work," Padme said, "Would you like me to call in and get s hanger for us to land at?"
"Sure. But I can do the actual landing," Sabe said.
Padme set up to make communication with the spaceport. It didn't take her long to get clearance and a hanger to land in.
"We can land in hanger 11B," Padme said.
Sabe flew the ship into the planets atmosphere and emerged out of it in a few moments. She flew the ship over to the spaceport and landed the ship in hanger 11B.
"You ready to start over?" Sabe asked.
"As ready as I'll ever be," Padme answered, and with that said, both walked off the ship and into a new life.
A/N: I hope everyone likes this chapter. It took me forever to write. I'm so sorry it took me so long to update. I got suddenly very busy recently and am just now finding time to post this. By the way, I know if any of you readers have read or seen any of The Lord of the Rings movies/books you found maybe one or two references in this chapter to them. My number one obsession at the moment is Lord of the Rings, so I may out some references to them in this story. You will probably find most of the references to LOTR on the planet Valar (Valar means something in LOTR, if you don't know and want to, look it up) Please review if you haven't already.
Thanks to Reviewers:
Padme Fleur- I'm glad you like my story. I can't wait to write Padme's reaction to the whole Vader-Anakin thing and will try to make very good. Yay! I got added to someone's author alert thing! Thank you for adding me onto your author alert!
KiTsTeR- and- Annie- Thank you for reviewing again and I will keep posting as often as I can.
kawaii Jen- I'm glad you like my story! I actually hadn't thought about Padme having Luke and Leia yet. Hmm, that would be very interesting to have them in there. That would add some more depth to the story. Now I must go and think about this. If they are going to be in it, you should know in the next couple of chapters.
AllanaPurpleSaber- No, Obi-Wan does not know about Vader being Anakin, but he is going to start investigating into Vader and all as was said in this chapter. Thanks for reviewing!
