Ch. 9

Luke and Leia sat bolt upright in the makeshift bed their parents had prepared for them, both suddenly aware of movement in their little room. A hand reached for each of their mouths, but before it could grab them a training light saber, built only to stun, paralyzed each intruding hand. Unfortunately, the hands had accomplices, and soon enough the twins were dragged through the window by a large group of cloaked figures, one stumbling behind the group, his arms hanging limply at his sides. As soon as they were on the sandy street, the twins struck again, at exactly the same moment, paralyzing their respective captors and twisting away. As they ran back towards the window from which they had been abducted, they turned to block as many shots from the stun blasters as they could. Suddenly, their young host came running silently but determinedly out of his house. He held a blaster, but, though extremely brave, he was no match in ability, size or experience for the figures around them. He managed to hit several of the arms and legs around him, but delivered no deadly or truly compromising shots- he was stunned quickly and fell to the ground. Even the Skywalker twins, though skilled for four year olds, could not ward off every blast. They managed to temporarily paralyze several of their captors, able to synchronize their attack communicating mentally through the Force. In fact, they both felt exhilarated by the fact that they were experiencing their first real battle. However, they soon fell to the ground too, and the frustrated captors stalked off with their prize.

"You told us it would be easy," grumbled a cloaked figure with a deep voice. "No one said anything about them being little Jedi."

"The reward will be worth it," said a raspy, eerie voice from beneath a black hood, no face visible underneath.

"My arms are paralyzed," commented another who had been similarly uninformed as the first objector.

"In time, the feeling will return," reassured the mysterious figure, obviously the leader of at least this small group.

"What if they had been real light sabers?" Asked a third, nursing a paralyzed leg and trying to stumble along with the group.

"I knew they would not be. Now please, silence," the leader again displayed his authority, and the group walked along in silence, those who had not suffered casualties carrying the small children slung over their backs.

"Won't the Jedi come looking, if these are Padawans?" Asked an inquisitive member of the group, unable to keep quiet his curiosity.

"Well, I should certainly hope so," came the daunting reply from the leader, a chuckle, or really a cackle, emitted from deep within the recesses of the hood. The cloaked group continued on, finally in perfect silence. They loaded their cargo carefully on board of several high quality land speeders- carefully, but not at all softly or tenderly. Soon enough, the entire group flew across the sand, speeders set to be completely silent, and the black figures disappeared into the night.

Padme sat in Anakin's pilot seat on the ship, hugging her knees to her chest, silent tears running down her face. She was snuggled in one of Anakin's cloaks, for it was the only thing that could bring any sort of comfort to her, though nothing could conquer the devastation she was feeling inside. She knew that the situation must be more serious than they had originally thought, or else Anakin would be back with their babies already. Neither she nor Anakin had been truly worried at first- so war-torn was the entire family that things like this were expected. However, usually Anakin seemed to be able to fix things, but now he was taking a long time. And now, it was her children in danger, and not the random creatures of the galaxy. She couldn't bear to lose them, she couldn't even imagine it- life without them simply wouldn't happen, she would just collapse and curl in to a ball and never move again… much like she wanted to do right now. She just hoped beyond hope that the Jedi would find Luke and Leia, and bring them back to her quickly, and that Anakin would return to her soon as well.

The boy was in the back of the ship- he had discovered several minor problems with the ships navigation system and hyper drive, and had decided to put himself to the task of restoring the ship to perfect condition. Plus, he hadn't much liked dealing with the weeping pregnant woman in the front- though he had let her give him a hug for a little while. He had soon brushed her off, somewhat awkwardly, and gone to the back to 'see about the hyper drive.' Padme didn't mind, as long as he kept busy he seemed to be happier, less worried- she hoped that she could help him find a good path in life for himself…

She hugged her stomach, in it the one child that remained with her, her unborn child, silently hoping she would never lose sight of this one, ever. She knew that this new child needed its brother and sister, and more intensely that she and Anakin needed them. She knew that like her, Anakin would not be able to continue life if his precious angels were lost- he loved them all so much, but one thing about Anakin was his attachment and intense love and sense of possession that he felt for them. It was exactly how he had been so nervous of losing her nearly five years ago…and she knew he wouldn't be able to deal with losing the twins. Of course, she wouldn't either, how could she, these two little people had become the most important part of Anakin and her lives…She knew he would find them, the Jedi would catch the bad creature that had taken them… the Jedi always fixed what went wrong… right?

Anakin crept silently up toward the giant metal door of Jabba's palace, careful to make sure that no one was around him. Just as he lifted his hand angrily upwards to barge through the door using the Force, he heard voices in the distance, very faintly. In fact, he wasn't sure if he actually heard them or if he was sensing them through the Force, but something told him that the voices would lead him in the right direction. He turned, and hugging the sides of the building, walked around its periphery until he saw some kind of a struggle taking place.

He saw several figures apparently arguing with each other, all standing in between several speeders on the sand and the hangar door, which hung wide open as a back entrance to the palace. Creatures ran back and forth from the speeders into the palace, bringing cargo and supplies onto the speeders. Several of them seemed to be in an intense verbal argument, occasionally pushing or shoving one another. Anakin couldn't tell what they were arguing about, but they seemed to be smugglers of Jabba's. Whether or not his children were with them was unclear to him. He snuck closer to the group, and hid in between speeders parked haphazardly in a cluster around the hangar door. Peering into the speeders, he didn't see any signs of the twins anywhere- he assumed they had already been taken inside.

Suddenly, the creatures began to separate, half of them heading towards the speeders and the other half retiring into the palace. Seeing his chance to sneak into the palace undetected, Anakin ducked under the hangar door, as several of the creatures sped away on the speeders.

As he wandered the halls, he tried to think of possible motives for the Hutt's desire of his twins, but none came to mind except a ransom. He and Padme certainly never had to worry about money, but they weren't exactly the kind of billionaires whose children people would kidnap just for the money. A political agenda was an obvious reason for kidnapping the Skywalker children, and with anyone other than the Hutts he would have immediately jumped to that conclusion- however, the Hutts lived more outside the law than against it, and weren't ever looking to get involved in serious intergalactic politics. He didn't suspect that they would have taken the children just to get a political agenda taken care of. He knew there must be some further motive, but explanation failed him.

He knew that confronting Jabba outright was not an option, and so he snuck down to the dungeons, peering into each cell so stealthily that none of the prisoners noticed him. But nowhere did he see his children. Growing increasingly frustrated, Anakin reached out with the Force, stretching his sensitivity to its limit, and still felt no sign of the small Force signals with which he had become so familiar.

Until this point, Anakin had not been honestly worried about the situation. He had truly believed it was some sort of local, spur of the moment kidnapping, inspired by the boy letting it slide that the Skywalkers were in town. He had figured that he would be able to handle it easily. Now, however, unable to find his children anywhere in the village or in Jabba's palace, he was growing increasingly discouraged and worried. He had seen speeders right outside of Jabba's palace that matched perfectly the description of those the boy had described as taking the twins from the village… they had to be here! If they weren't, it would mean that those speeders outside… that they had taken them somewhere else, and the only 'else' he could think of was in space…

The sudden anxiety of not even knowing what planet his children were on gave Anakin a momentary panic attack, which soon subsided into extreme anger. Who could take his children away like this? He and Padme had had such a wonderful life with the twins, for the first time ever Anakin had had a real family, and had been truly happy with both his personal life and his work as a Jedi, and now someone had to ruin everything. Ruin his peace, his happiness, put his children's lives in danger…but also to bring back this feeling, this feeling of hate and anger that he so hated, that he wanted so much to leave him forever.

He could feel that his children simply were not in the palace, and thus he knew that his only remaining option was to quit the palace just as stealthily as he had entered it, and try to follow the speeders he had seen outside. Hopefully, they weren't all gone yet. If they were, he really didn't know what he would do. He expertly navigated his path back to the hangar door through which he had entered, and noticed that one speeder remained, parked haphazardly across the entrance.

The occupant of the speeder was hastily jumping out of it, staring around him- obviously lost from the group, or… on the lookout? Could it be that they had detected him? No, that was impossible. Anakin quickly sent that thought out of his head. They would have positioned someone on the lookout no matter what, especially in an operation as seemingly important as this… He watched the figure in front of him begin to hastily walk away from the speeder, as if searching for something. Suddenly, the figure seemed to disappear into the shadows, puzzled, Anakin wondered how anyone in this area other than he could have been that clandestine. Just in case, if there was anyway, it was a Force sensitive being- for that seemed to be one possible explanation for the stealth of this creature, Anakin put all of his Force shields up, blocking his mind and Force signal off completely- a trick he had perfected under Obi Wan's helpful tutelage over the past few years of having nothing really to do on Coruscant, and one he was quite proud of. He snuck through the shadows, in the direction of the other being, too intrigued to put the matter to rest. Looking around him, he still saw nothing, and he felt no presence near him either. This was very strange, to say the least. He put his hand on his light saber hilt.

Suddenly, he backed into something, hard. Rubbing his back and whipping around with his light saber, he found, to his shock, another blade instantly ready to meet his. But this blade wasn't red…

"Obi Wan?" Anakin asked, stunned.