OOO
Chapter Seventeen.
OOO
All thought left as ice shot through her limbs, and Barriss wrenched the controls and slammed the accelerator forward.
Neon blurred and her back hit the seat hard as she dove deep into the darkness, careening like a missile through every narrow passage and sharp turn that flipped her stomach, Luminara bearing down on her like an enemy fighter, matching her move-for-move.
'Padawan, stop this immediately!'
She grit her teeth and shoved the controls forward, skimming through the labyrinth of walkways close enough she could reach out and brush her fingers against the passing grime. The maze of the underworld would shield her for a time, but it would not protect her forever. And every passing blur was one more tick of the clock until her master overtook her.
'Uh, Barriss?' Aiden's voice hesitated in her mind, but somehow pushed Luminara's voice down. 'This might sound strange, but, are you okay? I feel... wrong somehow.'
'Aiden.' She almost sighed in relief at Luminara's presence in her mind falling before the surprising strength of her bond with Aiden, and she struggled to keep her bond with Luminara shut against the master's continued attempts to push through. 'I need you to do something.'
To his credit, he didn't ask for explanation first. 'Okay... What do you need?'
'I don't know yet. I haven't thought that far ahead.' She whipped beneath a blur of neon and searched the darkness desperately for anything to give her an idea. Surely, if there was one place in the galaxy that should offer escape from a pursuer...
The blinking flash of a relay tower caught her eye, and beyond the jutting platform the tower stood on, an open access-shaft beckoned to her in the fog—The only clear passageway in a row of closed-off tunnels denying passersby entry with crackling forcefields.
She pinched the inside of her cheek between her teeth. Luminara would just follow her through. Unless...
Her bond with Aiden pulsed. Was this different than a camera system? 'Aiden, look on your maps just north of the Lounge. Is it possible for you to access something near me if it's connected to the holonet?'
'Depends. Why?'
She twisted the controls and banked hard away from the tunnels, weaving through the spiderweb of walkways toward the curving form of a sign-covered spire that would lead her all the way around its massive body and point her straight back toward the tunnels again.
Her bond with Luminara surged for a brief second, and the master fell behind, something inside Barriss shifting. Unease sprung from the shift, but she pushed it away with a tightening of the lips and a renewed grip on the controls. There was no time. 'Do you see the row of closed tunnels nearby?'
She could have sworn she heard the clack of fingertips on console keys. 'You want me to open one of them?'
'No. I want you to close the only open one exactly when I tell you.'
He paused for a moment. Then, she felt his lip tugging. 'Clever girl...'
She strained a look over her shoulder as the glowing spire streaked nearer. 'You understand, then?'
'If by that you mean we're about to close the door on a Jedi master, then yes.'
She released a breath and squeezed the controls as Luminara lagged oddly behind, and Barriss tilted the speeder toward the spire and pushed the unease from her mind.
She also pushed away a small whisper inside pointing out that she never told him she was running from a Jedi master. 'Good, because it's happening now.'
She cut hard into the curve of the monolith, streaking inches away from neon walls as she accelerated around its width like orbiting a miniature sun, and squinted against the piercing wash of pinks and yellows as Luminara disappeared, swallowed up in the haze of the tower's edge.
The unease flared brighter than the tower for a brief second.
She whipped a glance behind her, but only streaking neon greeted her, and she tensed her jaw and faced forward again.
And Luminara's speeder broke around the vertical horizon of the spire directly in front of her. Accelerating straight at her.
She sucked in a breath and yanked the controls.
The speeder's front end bucked, and Luminara rocketed too near for her to evade in time. The emerald of her master's blade ignited below as she scorched past underneath, and a hard jolt shuddered through the controls and up Barriss' arms, all the readouts on the speeder's display washing red, alarms ringing as the monolith spat her back out of its orbit toward the tunnels.
Blast! She clenched her teeth as the controls shook in her hands and the nose of the speeder began sinking.
Aiden's voice rose again. 'Barriss?'
She looked from the rapidly-dropping power readouts, to the tunnels that now seemed a galaxy away.
Behind her, Luminara arced through the fog, accelerating hard toward her.
She would never make it to the tunnels in time. Luminara wouldn't let her. And now, neither would the failing engine. Come on, Come on... She carved a desperate gaze through the darkness. There had to be something.
The small relay tower blinked once more on the platform suspended over bottomless mist like a lily in a ghastly lake.
It wasn't a good option. But it was the only one near enough to catch her before she plummeted into the abyss.
She strained against the controls with whitened knuckles, and the falling nose of the speeder slowly zeroed in on the platform. 'Aiden.' She braced herself as the seat rattled harder and harder underneath her, fog whipping her face. 'You may have been right about me and speeders.'
She planted her feet on the violently shaking leather as the platform blurred its final meters, and she grit her teeth until the last possible moment and jumped.
Her stomach flipped and her cloak billowed as the smoking speeder dropped out from under her and smashed into unyielding durasteel, carving a blackened trail across the platform before crunching into the relay tower, crumpling the base of the tower with a metallic screech.
Her feet hit the platform hard, cold pinpricks rattling up her legs as she rolled into the impact, the layers of grime doing nothing to soften the steel running across her spine.
Luminara's speeder swirled the fog as she landed across from her almost before she had regained her footing. Luminara lept from the pilot's seat in a swirl of black fabric, and Barriss scrambled for her balance and ripped her saber-hilt from her belt, holding the cold metal tightly but inactive, thumb hovering over the activation button. "Stop!"
Luminara's violet eyes locked with hers, and then glanced down at the silver clenched in her hand.
Luminara's own saber painted the fog emerald.
"Padawan." Her voice was too steady to be natural. It was the steadiness born of refusing to let her voice betray her. "It's over." Her stance remained ready, but her eyes made the unspoken request: Don't do this.
Barriss drew in heavy breaths, her tongue sticking to the roof of her mouth as she shifted her grip on the saber-hilt. No hope existed in challenging Luminara. No escape existed below the edges of the platform. No sense existed in surrendering.
The skin around her eyes crinkled, and her gaze darted helplessly from her smashed speeder smoking under the half-crumpled relay tower that now almost hung over the edge of the platform, to Luminara's Jedi speeder sitting on the other side of the platform.
Directly behind the silent threat of her master's blade.
"Put down your weapon, Barriss. And come with me." Her eyes held what her mask of calm tried to hide. "Please."
'Barriss, what's going on?'
Her breath quickened. "You don't understand, Master. There's more going on here than you know." How could she possibly explain everything? "Chancellor Palpatine has betrayed the Republic. He's in league with Count Dooku." Please believe me.
"And you know this for a fact, do you? Because this Aiden Stari told you it was so?"
Something inside Barriss deflated, and Luminara's stance solidified. "Where is he, Barriss?"
The hidden weight of Aurra Sing's blade hung heavy under her cloak, and she swallowed. "No, Master." Her grip tightened on her saber. "I'm not turning him over to you."
Something like a tension snapped like a string inside her, and a dark room filled with display-screens flashed across her vision.
She blinked.
Luminara stared at her, and finally, the mask of calm reached her eyes. She brought her saber up in a stance Barriss had seen her take on the battlefield, but never in their sparring sessions. It was not a stance Luminara used in training.
It was the stance she used to disable an enemy.
Barriss' heart fluttered and she pressed her thumb down. Blue light exploded from the silver in her hand, crackling the fog around her as she cast one last desperate look around herself, nothing greeting her but the eerie glow of headlights trailing through the fog below.
Like circling vultures, waiting for their meal.
A tingle of warning raced up her spine, and Luminara's blade streaked down in a flash of green. Thought left her as she swung her saber up. A bone-crunching jolt rocked her arms, her fingers clamping to hold onto the blade. A swirl of black fabric and another green flash.
The impact almost knocked the silver out of her hand.
No. Challenging Luminara was not an option. She gasped and launched herself back, feet sliding on grime as she teetered on the platform's edge, and in the precious half-second of space her retreat bought her, she pulled Aurra's saber from under her cloak into her waiting left hand, the cold metal slapping into her palm like a shard of ice.
Crimson exploded from the shard, bathing the fog in a blood-haze, and Luminara halted, eyes locking on the blade.
Barriss' heart hammered against her sternum as she gulped down dry breaths, sabers humming in her hands as blood and water glowed in her left and right.
Neither woman moved. Then, Luminara's gaze traveled from the blood in her left hand, and met her eyes once more, gaze dimming. "The dark side has touched you, Barriss. The girl I know would never do this."
Barriss licked away a drop of sweat that ran in her lip, and slid damp fingers across the shard. "Maybe you're right, Master." She breathed deep, and forced herself to hold it a moment before releasing it in a tremoring breath, her fingers settling on the shard's balance point. "But that doesn't change what I have to do."
She pulled her arm back, and flung the blade as hard as she could.
Straight at the half-crumpled relay tower.
Crimson seared through warped metal, tearing and hissing away, and the tower's base tore from the platform in a mangle of blackened gold. Durasteel groaned as the tower pitched fully onto its side, crashing halfway-over the platform's teetering edge so hard, Barriss dropped to a knee to catch herself as gravity took hold, and the mangled husk slid off the platform in a screech of grinding metal.
Falling like a bomb toward the lines of passing speeders below.
Luminara's eyes widened, and her saber clattered to the ground as she shot her hands toward the falling husk, fingers grasping. The tower shuddered in its descent, like a weight sinking through ever-thickening water, and Luminara pressed her lips together tightly, veins in her hands popping as warped metal hung suspended in the fog.
Now or never. Barriss lept to her feet and raced past the straining Luminara, jumping into the master's Jedi speeder.
"Barriss!"
Her body pulsed and she jabbed the ignition, launching forward even before she had gotten a hand on the controls. She breathed against the pounding in her chest and cranked the flight-stick, pointing the nose of the speeder into the murky distance.
Far below, the twisted remains of the tower slowly floated upward toward the platform where Luminara still stood with hands outstretched, and face tight.
She wouldn't be getting off that platform for a while.
Barriss sank back against the seat, and closed her eyes. 'Aiden...' She didn't know how a mental voice could sound weary. 'You don't need to close the tunnel, anymore...'
His own voice was quiet. Respectful. 'I know, Barriss... I know.'
She didn't bother to ask how he knew as she touched their bond that now pulsed within her like a living heartbeat, and a dark room glowing with display-screens filled her vision.
It was the same way she now knew exactly where he was.
OOO
Palpatine sat in the seclusion of his private sanctuary beneath 500 Republica, absently tapping a finger against crimson velvet as information sped by on the monitor before him.
Tarkin had succeeded in his acquisition of all known recordings of Aiden Stari, and the young Barriss Offee. Now, there was only to dig, and let the buried past reveal itself.
No matter how tedious the process.
A flash of movement on the screen above, and he refocused his attention, slowing the footage to normal speed.
A first-person view from an evidence-retrieval droid filled the screen as it stood over a body he recognized as Dak Landon, two holes charred into the body's torso. Bane had been thorough, indeed.
A crash somewhere off-screen, and the droid turned its head toward the sound, the camera-view turning with it.
A technician lie amid the shattered remains of some piece of equipment, and Anakin Skywalker's togruta apprentice rushed to aid the man, offering a hand.
What drew his eye, however, at the very edge of the camera's view, was the hooded form of Barriss Offee. Her violet gaze passed over the room as she calmly reached for a nearby cart. Her fingers found the edges of a data pad, and in one smooth motion, it disappeared into her robes.
She rejoined her friend at the door, and as the two of them disappeared from view, a smile slowly rested across his lips.
Thank you, young one. He reversed the footage until Barriss stood frozen next to the cart, her hand on the data pad.
I could not have asked for a better nail.
END CHAPTER