In case you didn't see it, the title of this chapter is "Starcrashed." Get it? Like "Starcrushed" except I changed the "u" to an "a"? I even got show references worked into the chapter titles.

Yeah, you guys probably got that.

"So, uh...what do we do now?" Marco asked.

"Uhhhh..." Star rubbed her temple in thought. She looked toward the cockpit, and then at Marco. "Still can't move your arm, huh?"

"Nope."

She looked at the cockpit again. "Well...I guess I could try to fly this thing." Star stood up and stepped past Marco, squeezing up and into the pilot's seat.

Bracing his back against the bulkhead, Marco staggered to his feet. He hung onto the back of the pilot's seat, looking over Star's shoulder out the forward view screen. "You sure about this?"

Star placed her hands on the control yoke. "All we gotta do is get away from the Temple and land somewhere. How hard could it be?"

The gunship was still pointed toward the smoldering hanger of the Jedi Temple. Star twisted the control yoke to the right with the intention of rotating away from the Temple. The gunship spun on its center axis in the direction Star expected, but it did so far too quickly. "Whoa!" It spun much too far, almost all the way around again, and Star tried to stop the spin by abruptly turning the yoke back to the left, accidentally pulling it slightly towards her as she did, causing the nose of the gunship to lift up as it spun.

Marco clung to the back of the pilot's seat with his good arm as the ship tilted backwards. "StaaaaAAAAAARRRRRR!" he yelled as he lost his grip and fell to the rear of the troop bay, crashing into the rear bulkhead.

Star wrestled with the control yoke, desperately trying to stop the spin and level the gunship out again. "Very hard! Very hard is how hard it could be!"

Down in the troop bay, Marco struggled to pick himself up, which was not easy with the gunship bucking and spinning like a wild rancor. He braced himself with both hands against the rear bulkhead-

Oh, hey, I can move my other arm. I landed right on my shoulder when I fell back here, it must have to popped back in.

He braced himself with both hands against the rear bulkhead, slowly stood up, and grabbed on to one of the handholds overhead. "Star!" he yelled. "You've got to straighten this thing out! Someone is gonna see us!"

"I am trying, Marco! I know someone is gonna see us!"

Anakin Skywalker stood on a balcony looking over the glittering Coruscanti skyline on the south side of the smoking Jedi Temple.

"General Skywalker." Anakin turned at the sound of the Clone Commander's voice. "We've conducted a sweep of the entire Temple. There are no Jedi left inside."

"Very good, Commander. Now have your men..." Anakin's eye caught something moving in the distance behind the Clone. He looked past the Commander and spotted an LAAT/i gunship jerking around erratically in the air. "What is going on over there?" he asked calmly, pointing to the gunship.

The Clone Commander looked toward it. "I have no idea, sir. Should I hail them on the comm channel?"

Anakin held out his hand. "Give me the commlink." The Commander placed the device in Anakin's hand as the gunship slowly began to level out.

The gunship stopped spinning and Star finally was able to level it out. "There we go! Got it!" Then she called back to her friend, "Are you okay, Marco?"

He appeared behind he pilot's seat a moment later, stretching his arm. "Yeah, I'm fine. Actually better than before. I landed on my shoulder and I think it popped it back into the socket."

"Oh, that's-"

"Gunship two-niner-zero, this is General Skywalker. What in the world are you doing?"

Both Padawans froze. "Someone saw us." Star grabbed for the comm receiver and held it out toward Marco. "Marco! Speak!"

"What?! Me?! Why not you?"

"Because, Marco, Clones are boys and I am not."

"Yeah, okay, fair point." He grabbed the receiver, took a deep breath, and then spoke, trying to make his voice as deep as possible. "Uh, yes, General Skywalker, sir. We had a slight mechanical failure but we're okay here now. We're all fine." He looked at Star, who frantically gestured for him to say something else. "H-how are you?" he asked.

Star smacked her forehead hard enough to leave a red mark.

Anakin handed the commlink back to the Clone Commander. "That gunship has been hijacked by Jedi trying to escape the Temple. Blow it up."

The Commander changed the frequency and spoke into the commlink. "There's a gunship just outside of the hanger. Shoot it down."

The reply was an enthusiastic "Yes, Sir!"

"Why aren't they responding?" Marco wondered aloud.

"Probably because they weren't fooled by your dumb impersonation of a clone trooper." Star was busily scanning the controls, trying to figure out the function of every toggle and lever on the control panel.

"Star..." Marco could see an AT-TE walker down below on the ground swiveling its gun around toward them.

"I mean, I know you don't interact with them much, but-"

"Star." The AT-TE had brought its huge main cannon to bear on them.

"-I think I could could have done a better job imitating-"

"Star!"

"What, Marco?" she asked, annoyed at being interrupted.

Marco frantically pointed out the forward viewport. "They're aiming at us!"

A huge bolt of blue energy burst from the walker's cannon.

"ANDNOWTHEY'REFIRINGATUS!"

Acting purely on instinct, Star hauled back hard on the control yoke and shoved the throttle to full power. The gunship's nose turned skyward and the craft rocketed straight up, the shot from the AT-TE passing harmlessly underneath as Marco tumbled into the stern end for a second time.

"WhoaaaAAAAHHHHH-OOF!"

Thrown back into the seat by the g-forces brought on by the rapid acceleration, it took Star a fair amount of effort to push the yoke forward to a more neutral position and slow their momentum. Trying to keep her movements slow and smooth to avoid losing control again, Star halted the gunship's rapid accent, bringing the nose down and leveling out the craft once again.

Rubbing his sore shoulder, Marco walked back up from the gunship's tail end for a second time.

"I think I'm getting the hang of this," Star said to him.

Marco winced as his rotated his shoulder around in its joint. "Well, if my shoulder wasn't reset from the last fall, it's definitely back in now." He shook the cobwebs out of his head and put his hand on the back of the pilot's seat. Star looked at him, smiling, feeling rather pleased with herself. "Please don't do that again."

"No promises."

There was a muffled *bang*. Star looked down. Another bolt of blue energy was racing up towards them. She carefully twisted the control yoke to move out of the way. Another shot came, and then another. Star dodged them both.

"Hey, this is kinda fun!"

"Can we please get out of range?" Marco asked, worried.

"Relax, Marco," Star said confidently. "I'm getting the hang of this whole piloting thing. I got this!"

She shifted the gunship to port to avoid one shot...and moved directly into the path of another. The bolt struck the port side atmospheric stabilizer and exploded, the stabilizer disappearing from the gunship. Marco was knocked off his feet by the tremors.

Star blinked in surprise. "Okay, I am not too proud to admit when I am wrong and I clearly do not got this!"

The various readout screens on the control panel began flashing red, accompanied by a blaring warning alarm. The gunship listed as the port side engine began to shut down, having been pierced by a large chunk of debris from the shredded atmospheric stabilizer. Star desperately twisted the control yoke in an attempt to counter the lack of one engine.

"We gotta get out of here!" Marco yelled as he stumbled trying to pick himself up off the floor yet again. A bolt of energy streaked past the viewport, barely missing the gunship's nose. "We're a sitting duck!"

Star gritted her teeth and shoved the throttle forward against its stop. "I'm on it!" She wrestled with the yoke as the missing port stabilizer and full-power starboard engine threatened to send the gunship into a lateral spin. "Ohhhh, boy, too much power!" Star eased the throttle back until she was able to maintain control over the crippled gunship. She pointed the ship away from the Jedi Temple hoping to get out of range of the AT-TE's on the ground.

Marco opened the troop bay doors and looked back, holding himself steady with one of the overhead handholds. The blue energy bolts were still streaking toward them across the sky. Each shot fired from the walkers' canons lost accuracy, coming further and further away from striking the teetering gunship.

"You're doing great, Star!" Marco yelled over the howling wind. "We're almost out of range!"

The girl with no prior piloting experience up in the cockpit did not dare sacrifice the concentration required to respond. Star's teeth were clenched together, wrenching the control yoke back and forth with a white-knuckled grip. It took every ounce of focus that Star possessed to keep the teetering gunship flying in a straight line away from the Jedi Temple.

Marco closed the bay doors again and stumbled across the constantly moving floor back up to the cockpit.

"I think we're in the clear, Star!" Marco said excitedly.

"That's great!" Star gasped through her clenched teeth. "Now what do we do?"

"Well, uh...I guess-"

Marco was cut off by a deafening an explosion somewhere behind them that caused the gunship to shudder. More alarms started blaring. "What in the galaxy was that?!"

Another LAAT/i gunship whizzed by overhead. "That!" Star said.

The other gunship had fired a rocket into the remaining engine of the damaged gunship.

Suddenly, the buildings of Coruscant were visible in the windscreen as the nose of the gunship sank. "Hang on, Marco!" Star yelled as she hauled back on the yoke as hard as she could. "We're going down!"

The gunship rocked side-to-side as it fell from several thousand feet up. Star continued to fight with the controls, trying to keep the craft upright and prevent it from going into a nose dive.

"What's your plan?" Marco yelled over the warning alarms.

"Uhhhh..." Star jerked the yoke hard to starboard to avoid a mid-air collision with an air speeder. "Aim for something soft?"

"Something soft?! We're not on Felucia! There's nothing soft to aim for!"

Marco's legs suddenly felt heat from an unknown source. He looked back into the troop bay where various wiring and power conduits along the bulkheads were ablaze.

"Oh, that's good."

"What?" Star asked.

"We're also on fire."

"Greaaaaaaaat."

They passed below one thousand feet. Star jolted the sluggish controls to port to skirt around the side of a skyscraper.

"There!" Star cried. "There's a park!"

Marco looked past her out the viewscreen. Ahead was the only greenery around for miles: a park built on top of the roofs of the buildings below it, nestled in the center of taller surrounding buildings. "Hey, it's got a big water fountain! Aim for that!"

"I'll do the best I can!" Star swung the still falling gunship around and did the best she could to line up their trajectory with the park. "Here we go! Hang on!"

Marco clung to the back of the pilot seat. The gunship finally lost what little altitude it had left, Star bracing her feet against the control panel to pull the yoke back as hard as she could so that the touchdown would be as gentle as possible. Even so, the gunship slammed into the ground, it's hull tearing a deep gash into the duracrete walkways and grassy plots in between as its momentum carried it along. Despite how tightly he clung to the seat back, Marco was thrown off his feet for the umpteenth time when the gunship made contact with the ground.

"Gah! Oof! Argh!" he yelped as he was thrown around in the flaming troop bay.

The gunship crashed into the elaborate fountain in the center of the park, and in the meter-deep water it came to rest. Fortunately for Marco, the jets that shot water into the air to create various visual spectacles blasted the flaming gunship with water, rapidly extinguishing the flames.

Star put a hand to her aching head. She hadn't hit it on anything, but the jolt her body had taken when the gunship slammed into the ground had jarred her brain and given her a throbbing headache. "Marco?" she called. "Are you okay back there?"

"Um...sorta?"

Standing up from the pilot's seat, Star staggered back to the troop bay, still holding her head. "Sorta?"

"Well, the fountain put out the fire before it hand a chance to do anything more than singe my clothes..."

Star stepped into a puddle of water. The whole interior of the troop bay was soaking wet. Water from the fountain was raining down into the gunship from a large hole in the top of the hull where the starboard side engine had once been. With the airtight troop bay doors closed, the water was trapped inside and was filling up the interior of the gunship. She could see Marco sitting with his back up against the bulkhead, soaked to the skin. She sloshed her way over to him as he finished speaking.

"...but when we hit the ground, I was holding onto the back of your seat and, well..." He looked at his right arm. "...my shoulder dislocated again."

For a second Star just stared at him, unsure what to say. Then she burst out laughing.

"Star?" Marco said, very confused. "What...what's so funny?"

Star leaned against the bulkhead beside Marco as she continued cracking up, sliding down until she was sitting in the ankle-deep water beside him, slowly becoming soaked herself as more water from the fountain rained down on them.

"Star?"

Struggling to stifle her laughter, Star said, "I'm sorry, Marco...it's just so...ridiculous! All the things we've been through in just the last hour or two and you managed to get your shoulder dislocated, accidentally get it popped back in, and then get it dislocated a second time! I mean, what are the odds?!" Having calmed down, she rested her head on Marco's right shoulder. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have laughed. It is definitely, like definitely not the time to laugh...but...I honestly don't know what else to do right now." She took his hand in hers and squeezed it.

For a moment they sat in silence, the only sound coming from the water trickling down the sides of the bulkhead and splashing onto the floor. They were now both completely drenched, their Jedi robes turned a darker tan and clinging to their skin, and Star's long blonde hair matted to her head and back.

Any other time, Marco would have been very happy to sit and hold his best friend's hand for as long as she wanted to. But this was not the time to linger, and after enjoying the closeness for a minute, he knew he had to voice such concerns.

"Star..."

She looked at him.

"They can probably track this gunship," Marco said slowly. "We need to get away from here before they come to check and make sure we're dead."

"Oh...yeah, right...good idea." Still holding Marco's hand, Star stood up and attempted to help Marco to his feet.

"Ow ow Ow!" He yelped. "That's my dislocated arm!"

"Oh, yeah, right. Sorry," she said, letting go of his hand. His arm dropped lifelessly to the floor. "Hold on, I have an idea. Don't move." She took a step back, held up her hands, and closed her eyes.

Marco furrowed his brow, confused as to what her plan was. "What exactly are you doING AAAHHHHHHHH!" He suddenly felt like he was being crushed laterally. Star was using the Force to squeeze both of his shoulders together.

"STAR! STOP! AAARRRGH-!" There was a barely audible *pop!* and suddenly Marco felt better.

Star let her arms fall back to her sides. "Did it work?"

Marco stretched his right arm out. He could move it once more. "Well...it felt like I was being squished, but I can move my arm again, so...yeah, it worked." He smiled at her. "Thanks, Star."

She held out a hand to him and when he took it, she hauled him to his feet, returning the friendly grin. "You're welcome. Now c'mon." She smacked the button that opened the bay doors. A decent amount of the water on the floor drained out and back into the fountain as the doors slid open, revealing the buildings that surrounded the park. "Let's get a move on."

They hopped down into the fountain, awkwardly trudged through the deep water to the edge, climbed out, and crossed the deserted park onto a side alley. It was still the wee hours of the morning and sun was not up yet, so the streets were mostly empty of foot traffic. A soft squish from their waterlogged boots accompanied every step as they hurried along.

"Where exactly are we going?" Star asked.

"I don't know," Marco replied. "I just picked a direction and started walking. Anywhere is a better place to be than by that gunship."

"Okay, hold on." Star stepped in front of him and stopped, forcing him to stop walking buy placing a hand on his chest. "Just stop for one second. We can't just wander around Coruscant until we run into a squad of clone troopers. We have to have some kind of a plan!"

Marco took hold of her hand and started walking again, towing her along. "Then let's come up with a plan while we work on getting as far away from here as we possibly can."

Star took two quick steps to catch up fell in alongside her best friend. "Okay, so...plan?"

"Hey, you're the one who stopped and said we needed a plan."

Star looked around, hoping for some inspiration of some kind, but saw nothing. "Well...I guess we probably should try to get off of Coruscant. If the clones are trying to kill all the Jedi for some reason-"

"Yeah, what's that even about?" Marco interrupted.

"-There's far too many of them here to avoid them for long. We should get off the planet and find somewhere to lay low until we figure out what's going on, probably somewhere in the outer rim."

"Okay, so how do we do that?"

"We'll buy tickets on a transport off-world like two normal people. Do you have any money?"

Marco reached into his pocket and produced a handful of credit chips. "I have 650 credits."

Star stopped walking again. "Wait a second. You don't sleep with your lightsaber on your belt, but you do sleep with 650 credits in your pocket?"

"650 credits is not going to cut me in half if I roll over onto my stomach," Marco quipped. "I don't think that this is going to be enough to buy two tickets off of this rock, though, even on the cheapest transport."

They reached the end of the alley and turned right onto a walkway beside a lane between the buildings where speeders raced in both directions at their level. The chasm between the buildings was so deep they would not have been able to see the bottom if they had looked.

"Maybe we can ask my Aunt?"

"Senator Eclipsa?"

"Yeah. She'd loan us some money. She loves me."

"Okay. Where does she live? Maybe we can get an air taxi."

Star bit her lip nervously. "Well, um...we won't find her at home."

"...why?"

"Aunt Eclipsa is such a workaholic, she practically never leaves her office at night when the Senate is in session. Her office has a private refresher, so she just showers and such there..."

Marco's heart skipped a beat. "So you're telling me...we have to go...to the Galactic Senate building."

"Uh-Huh."

"A place that is literally crawling with Clone Troopers around the clock."

"Uh-Huh."

"Can't we hail her on the comm and ask her to meet us somewhere?"

"Do you have a commlink?"

"...no."

"Neither do I! So I guess we'll just have to go there."

"Great."

Suddenly, Star spotted a pair of Clone Troopers appearing from a side street ahead. She shoved Marco into an alley, nearly knocking him to ground. The only reason he didn't fall was because they were still holding hands, neither having realized until now that they had never let go.

"What was that for?" Marco asked. Having now noticed that they were still holding hands, he let go out of embarrassment.

"Clones up ahead," she said, peaking around the corner. "Had to get out of sight before they saw us."

"Oh. Good reaction time."

"Thank you."

As they stood quietly waiting until the coast was clear, Marco looked down at his soaked Jedi robe. He looked at Star, too. He couldn't help but think that they both stuck out like a sore thumb. When the troopers had moved on, they left their hiding place and continued down the street.

"If we're going to the Senate building," Marco said slowly, "it probably isn't a good idea to just walk in the front door dressed like this."

Star kicked at a stone mid-step. "Yeahhhh, probably not."

Marco reached into his pocket and extracted his credits. "Well...we have 650 credits to work with. If we're careful, we can probably get an air taxi to somewhere that's open this time of night where we can make a costume change, buy some new clothes, and still have enough to get a second air taxi to the Senate building. And if we hurry, we can probably get there before the sun comes up." He looked at Star to his left, only to find that she wasn't there. "Star?"

"TAXI!"

Star was standing at the edge of the walkway, waving her hand to a dark blue air speeder that was slowing to a stop where she stood.

"Come on, Marco!" she exclaimed as she opened the rear door. "No time to waste!"

Marco quickly dove in beside her and closed the door.

"Where to?" asked the male Nimbanel cabbie.

"Can you take us somewhere where we can buy clothes this time of night?" Star asked.

"What kind of clothes?"

"Cheap ones," Marco said simply.

"But not sketchy," Star added. "Cheap, but, like, you know...decent."

The cabbie snapped his fingers. "I know just the place. Hang on."

He piloted the speeder back into the flow of traffic just as an LAAT/i gunship flew overhead. Marco and Star looked at each other nervously.

"So...you two Jedi?" asked the cabbie.

"We ar-oop!" Star was cut off as Marco elbowed her in the ribs. "Uh, no! No no no no, definitely not."

"You positive? You sure match their fashion sense, and I'm pretty sure you, young man," he said as he pointed to Marco's reflection in the rear view mirror, "have a lightsaber on your belt."

Both Padawans froze. Marco had completely forgotten that he still had Star's lightsaber and that it was in plain view for anyone to see.

"Oh, what, this thing?" he said nervously, holding it up. "This isn't a lightsaber, it's-it's-it's a, uh, uh, uh-"

Star returned his earlier jab to the ribs.

"-Magic wand!" he blurted out.

Star looked at him with wide eyes and mouthed seriously? He just shrugged.

The cabbie laughed. "I don't blame ya'll for lying," he said, observing his passengers' sheepish looks in the backseat knowing they hadn't fooled him. "Not after what went down tonight."

Star and Marco gave each other a questioning look. "What, uh...what exactly did 'go down'?" Star asked.

"You don't know?" the cabbie asked as he turned into a different air lane and dropped down deeper into Coruscant's labyrinth of buildings toward the market district.

"No," his passengers chorused.

The cabbie nodded slowly. "The Chancellor issued Order 66."

Star and Marco waited for him to continue, but he did not. "...which is...?" Marco urged.

The cabbie turned again. "I guess the Chancellor had some kind of failsafe protocols in place for-" He threw both hands up. "-you know, whatever. Apparently a couple hours ago, a group of Jedi tried to stage a, uh, coup d'état, as it were, so he made the call and-" he swiped a finger across his throat. "Crrrrrt! All Jedi are to be executed on-site."

Star and Marco met each other's eyes in shock. For the rest of the ride, neither said a word.

Ten minutes later, the air taxi came to a gentle stop in front of a marketplace store front. A gentle light shone out through the front windows while an illuminated sign above the door proclaimed in Aurebesh letters "Lekmet's Place."

"Here we are," the cabbie announced.

"How much do I owe you?" Marco asked.

"Normal fare is 24 credits," the cabbie said. As Marco reached into his pocket, the cabbie added, "And for not ratting you two Jedi out to the Coruscant police or Republic Army, how about a measly 700 credits?" He rubbed his hands together greedily.

"700 credits?!" Marco yelled. "But I only have si-! ...two hundred."

The cabbie grinned evilly. "You know, kid, you are a real bad liar."

Star groaned. "We don't have time for this." She pushed Marco aside and looked the Nimbanel straight in the eyes. "You are happy to help us, free of charge," she said slowly, waving her hand in front of his face as she focused the Force on his mind.

"I am happy to help you, free of charge," the cabbie repeated.

"You never saw us tonight," she added.

"I never saw you tonight."

Star gave a curt satisfactory nod. "Let's go, Marco." And she roughly shoved him out of the cab.

As the air taxi sped away, Marco was struck with a thought. "Hey, wait a second. If you can mind trick the taxi driver into letting us go for free, why can't you just do the same to the ticket salesman at a spaceport to get us on a transport?"

"Because there was no one around to see me do it here, Marco. Spaceports are crowded, and I don't want anyone to see me Jedi-mind-tricking a ticket clerk."

"Oh, yeah, good point."

It was roughly fourteen steps where from where they stood to the front door of the clothing shop. After the sixth step, Marco put a hand on Star's shoulder and stopped walking. "I just had another thought."

"What now?"

"That guy said the clones were attacking because the Chancellor ordered all Jedi executed."

"Yeah?"

"So when we were back at the Temple, why was Master Skywalker fighting with the clones instead of against them?"

Star felt a chill shoot up her spine. "I...don't...know..."

For a moment, they stared into each other's eyes, both lost in thought, each terrified at what Marco's realization could mean.

"Marco?"

"Yeah?"

"There's more to it than just what the cabbie said, isn't there?"

Marco swallowed hard. "I'd bet on it. Something doesn't add up."

Star took Marco's hand. "This is really bad. Like, really, really, really, really, really, really bad."

Marco looked away. "Yeah...this is really bad."

Chapter 5 coming soon! Don't forget, if you enjoy this story and want to see more, be sure to drop me a review and let me know. It really motivates me to keep writing, and to do it faster!