OOO

Chapter Sixteen.

OOO

Aiden's body pulsed as silence filled the opening inside him, and then Barriss' voice echoed once more: '...What?'

Something like an invisible tension filtered through the opening after her voice and squeezed his gut.

He ran a hand down his face. 'I think I've just become the most important piece in whatever Dooku's planning.' The aching ghosts of the knobs and switches twinged down his back, and he twisted his lip, pressing his palm into the muscle and rubbing slow circles. 'We're not the only ones making a play for Palpatine. He's got me watching the bastard like a stalker.'

He could practically feel her brow pinch. 'Why?'

'He's planning something,' he repeated. 'Something that won't end well for Palpatine. Can't exactly say I'm sorry at the thought of it.' He blinked. 'Actually, it would solve most of my problems...'

'Aiden, If you're caught helping Dooku, you'll be charged with treason.'

'That starship has kinda already flown, Barriss. Handcuffs, exploding shuttles, troopers hunting us—Any of this ringin' a bell?'

Exasperation sighed through the opening. 'Aiden...'

His lip quirked of its own volition. 'Sorry, sorry, I know.'

'Do you have any way of finding out where you are?'

That was the question, wasn't it? His fingers found the data pad tucked in the small of his back, and he winced as he pulled it from his waistband, hard edges scraping across the bruises that were sure to already be forming. 'Dooku locked me in the passenger compartment the whole way over here. Weren't any windows to see out of.'

Lines of code still raced down the screen of the pad, and he tossed it with a sigh onto the computer console beneath the displays still showing him and Dooku outside the Lounge. He huffed. 'I was only outside long enough for Jax' security cameras to get some crisp images of me and Dooku being best buddies.'

A faint spark flickered in the back of his mind. "Wait a minute..." he said out loud. The frozen image of the Chance Lounge burned his eyes in the dark room.

A slow smile spread across his face.

'Aiden?'

His smile widened and he sat down at the console, accessing the system interface. 'Dooku might have been right, after all.'

'What are you talking about?'

'This entire mess started because I got caught slicing into a camera system.' His fingers flew across the console, and the displays blinked with maps of the underworld overlaying with system directories. 'Maybe that is what's gonna get me out of it, too.'

As long as the pig's systems were hooked up to the holonet...

On the screen above, the static image of Dooku standing outside the Chance Lounge fizzled away, morphing into a live video feed of the Lounge's back entrance, courtesy of Jax' own paranoia-induced cameras. Jackpot.

'I think Dooku is really gonna regret giving me access to the holonet, Barriss.' He grinned.

'I take it you have an idea?'

'Yeah. I'm gonna do exactly what Dooku ordered me to. I'm gonna slice into some cameras. And I'm gonna get caught doing it.' He tapped a few buttons, and the video feed froze for a moment, the image flickering, and then began speeding in reverse, every piece of action that went down outside the Lounge playing before him like a holofilm running from end to beginning. 'I'm gonna run an active tap on Jax' camera system that'll cycle through all his archived footage. Then I'm gonna slice into his main security system and trace my own intrusion.'

'Meaning...'

'Meaning it'll show me exactly where I'm intruding from.' He buried the huff that built in his throat. Running counter-security on himself. That had to be an all-time low in the career of a slicer.

'Couldn't the police detect and trace it as well?'

'Nah.' He ran the back of his wrist across his forehead, not looking away from the screen as he navigated the Lounge systems. 'No one but you and me will ever know I did this.'

She was silent for a moment. 'Are you sure? You did just say you're in this because you got caught doing exactly what you're doing now.'

Apparently, he spoke too soon. Getting burned about your skills by a Jedi was the all-time low in a slicer's life.

He was about to respond when the screen playing the archived footage above him flashed, and as Aurra ran across the Lounge's back walkway, a blaster shot ripped from off-screen and burned through her chest.

He jerked his head back, and knit his brow hard. 'Wait, you weren't the one who killed Ghost-Woman?'

Regret seeped through the opening. 'Remember our friend Bane?'

'Bane? The blue creep with the jet-packs on his feet?'

'He was waiting outside the Lounge.'

The strange glint on the hazy rooftop beyond the neon. His eyes narrowed. He remembered Bane just fine. The creep was on Palpatine's payroll. If he was waiting outside, it could only be because Palpatine sent him. But if Palpatine had sent Bane to the Lounge...

Why wasn't he in a body-bag right now?

'Barriss...' His brow pinched harder. 'Bane saw the whole thing go down. He had a clear shot on me the whole time. And he shoots the Ghost instead?'

'Your guess is as good as mine, Aiden.'

He didn't have any guesses. All he had was what he knew about slicing—A program only did what the programmer told it to. If the creep had a clear shot on him, but let him go with Dooku instead of dropping him like a womp-rat right then and there, only one explanation made sense.

'Palpatine told him not to kill me.' The realization sat like a weight inside him. 'He knew I was at the Lounge.'

The feeling of eyes on him while working on Jax' machines... The feeling of eyes on him in Palpatine's loft... Aurra telling him she never watched him work...

Bane had been following him the whole blasted time since that stupid loading dock where Barriss grabbed him and ran. Palpatine knew they went to the Lounge. He knew Aiden and Aurra broke into his loft.

The bastard knew everything.

Barriss' confusion swirled in the opening. 'How could the Chancellor have known we were there?'

Adrenaline prickled his veins, and he wiped his lip as Dooku's shuttle appeared on the screen, and another flash, this time much smaller, streaked from beyond the neon. He froze the image. 'Barriss, did Bane get away clean after Dooku took me?'

'What... Yes, why?'

A tiny sparkle winked in the frozen image, like a faint twinkle breaking up the onyx of the shuttle's hull, and he zoomed in on it. 'Can you get your hands on a speeder and follow my directions if I guide you on these maps?'

A tinge of wariness. 'Yes... Aiden, why?'

The screen burned with the image of a tiny tracking device sitting quietly against the hull of the shuttle, blinking steadily, and he tensed his jaw.

'Because you need to get here before Bane does.'

OOO

Shutters drawn tight on the windows of the Council chamber cast deep shadows across the patterned marble, broken only by thin shafts of amber filtering through the slits.

Silence resonated as Luminara's hologram flickered in the center of the room. "...The crashed shuttle bears the marks of a lightsaber." Her posture never changed, but her eyes lowered. "It is the work of my padawan."

Looks passed between those seated, and Yoda's gaze became distant, the lines in his face deepening as he ran a clawed finger over the long-worn groove in his walking stick.

Mace kept his eyes on Luminara. "Is there any sign of them?"

"No." Resignation flattened her tone. "I arrived too late. They are gone."

"See if anything left to find, there is." Yoda's ears drooped slightly. "And return to the Temple."

She fizzled away with a wordless bow, and Mace looked at Yoda through the amber shaft cutting the air between them.

"You know what must be done," he said.

Ancient lips drew tight as if a final rally of strength might give argument, but finally, the ears drooped lower. "Send word to the available knights, we will." His voice was little more than a rattle.

"Betrayed the Republic, Barriss Offee has."

OOO

Deep fabric hung low over Barriss' eyes, shielding her like a dark veil against the unknown as she crossed the shadows to Aurra's speeder, the weight of the Ghost's saber hanging next to her own under her cloak.

The seat rumbled under her as she lifted into the air, casting glances toward every stretch of murky distance not blocked by the pillars of decay looming over her. It was bad enough she was so near the heart of the search area. The last thing she needed was to be discovered by a passing patrol before she even began.

Calm yourself and focus. She let out a steadying breath as the words she had echoed so many times within herself carried her once more into the murky unknown.

'That's the spirit.' Aiden's voice filled her.

She almost rolled her eyes. Almost. 'If you want to help, keep watch on the Lounge's camera and tell me if any departing troopers are heading in my direction. If a patrol stumbles across me, this will be over before it begins.' If only she had followed the black dot when she escaped the Lounge.

'I don't think you'll have to fly very far out of their way to avoid them. They think you're long gone so most of them are just waiting for the evidence retrieval droids to get there and take over. They do have a Jedi with 'em though.'

She hesitated, angling the nose of the speeder down and under the grunge-darkened neon of a floating billboard. 'Who?'

'Dunno. Never actually entered the camera-shot, just saw the edges of their robes a few times while they were hangin' around the shuttle you took out. But who else except Jedi wear robes like that?' A pause. '...No offense.'

This time, she did shake her head.

'Looks like whoever it was already left, anyway. I don't even see a shadow anymore.'

She bit her lip as she weaved through increasingly familiar towers and walkways, something niggling in the back of her mind. Like a pained whisper slowly growing louder the further she went.

She banked hard to the left, setting a course even further out of the way of the Lounge.

Through the distant haze smothering what passed for horizon in the underworld, the tell-tale green glow she had come to despise writhed like a tiny emerald as far away as the dank fog allowed her to see. Any troopers that may have been loitering outside had no chance of spotting her at this distance, but she still steered the speeder through the darkest path she could find.

The pained whisper grew not in volume, but presence, and she scrunched her brow as a rising sense of uneasiness built in her gut even as the green glow of the Lounge disappeared beyond the murk behind her.

Maybe I'm just shaken. She gripped the controls more tightly as she neared a metered access tube that would take a waiting line of airspeeders to the surface.

That was when an all-too-familiar tingle raced up her spine, and a voice she had not heard in what felt like a lifetime burst in her mind: 'Padawan!'

The pained whisper flared, and her breath left her. Oh, please no... A hard pull yanked her gaze toward a single speeder in the line, and haunting violet so similar to her own locked on her from beneath midnight fabric.

Luminara. The pain. The Jedi at the Lounge.

Her master was now staring at her through the fog.

Luminara angled her speeder toward her, never breaking eye-contact, and everything faded away as she swallowed, and clamped her hand on the cold metal of the accelerator. There could be no regret now. There was only to act.

And pray.

She slammed the accelerator forward.

END CHAPTER