OOO
Chapter Twenty-One.
OOO
It had started clear enough. Sickeningly so. A mocking sun glaring off polished windows so sharply, he had to squint as they pierced by.
But by the time the Jedi Temple loomed on the horizon, grey droplets of rain blown cold by the passing wind whipped and numbed Aiden's face as Bane pushed the speeder to a whining growl under them, zig-zagging through sharpened spires like they were running from an enemy he couldn't see.
Aiden just squeezed his data pad and kept his eyes on the Temple standing oddly pitiful against the grey. Five towers reached up like the fingers of a hand sinking into the sea of beings drowning the entrance. Angry beings, if the signs and fists waving in the air were anything to go by.
Organized rows of white armor surrounded the Temple, standing between the Temple entrance, and the mass of protesters filling every inch of the grand staircases leading up to the marble promenade with shouts and curses. But as Bane flew them nearer, something felt off about the way the troopers stood. And it took a moment for the rainy haze to ebb long enough to realize why.
Only the outer-most row of troopers faced the surging crowds. The rest faced the Temple, feet planted on wet marble, and weapons held tight in gloved hands.
They're not there for the crowds...
Bane tilted the speeder in a long arc around the Temple, well out of the way of any wandering eyes, and he swooped low and approached from beneath like a firaxan shark through the water. They skimmed the outer wall of the Temple so closely Aiden thought they would lose paint against the damp stone, and then Bane yanked the controls and swept them upward almost ninety degrees to a sunken ledge halfway up the side of the Temple carving all the way around the structure like a horizontal trench.
A crackling, purple force-field fizzled and popped along the inner wall of the trench, too opaque to see what lie behind. Drops of rain blown sideways by the wind zapped against it with tiny cracks and puffs of smoke.
"Up and at 'em, slicer." Bane pulled a pack from the rear seat as he rose from the pilot's chair, and he hopped the small gap between the speeder and the ledge, slinging the pack on his shoulder and pressing a button on a blinking, metal cuff secured around his forearm. "We've got a job to do."
The edges of Aiden's data pad bit into his fingers, and he tensed his jaw and looked down at the kilometers-long fall stretching below. "Doesn't the Temple have sensors to detect things like people walking on their ledges?" But he clambered to the pilot's side and planted a foot on the slick, metal siding of the speeder.
Bane didn't look up from his wrist-gauntlet. "It's being taken care of."
Of course it is. He shook his head, adjusted his foot with a small breath, and then pushed off, landing stiff-kneed on the damp ledge and bumping into the force-wall with a sizzling pop. A flash and a zap of pain arced through him, and he jerked back. "Gah!" He rubbed his shoulder where the worst of the sting throbbed. "Can I at least assume you have a plan from here?"
Bane's lip tilted. "Follow me." He jabbed a final button on the gauntlet and pressed his palm against the force-wall. A static flicker sparked where his skin touched the energy, and then a circular gap blossomed in the shimmering field, blooming outward from his palm like a drop of ink in water until a man-sized portal stood open before them, revealing a maintenance corridor running left to right within.
Bane shook out the ghost of the electric zap from his hand and pulled his blaster, ducking his head as he stepped through the portal into the rain-darkened shadows of the corridor. "C'mon."
A final plunge, Barriss... Then freedom. One way or the other. He tucked his data pad into his chest and hunched through the portal.
Sloping walls loomed over him like silent faces, watching. The Temple itself seemed to hum, to murmur. Filling the air, the walls. Unspoken impressions that were felt, more than heard.
He rubbed his arms.
Bane led them through the pulsing tunnels like veins of a living being, and light broke at the end of the last turn, a squinting rectangle shining noisy grey into the corridor. The chest-rumbling wash of ship thrusters and the nasally whir of power tools seeped through the opening right along with the shafts of grey. I can smell the oil burn-off from here...
Bane held up a hand, and Aiden almost bumped into him as he dropped to a knee in the middle of the corridor and slid the pack from his shoulder with a dull thump, tossing his dripping hat to the side and rummaging through the bag.
Aiden cocked a brow. "Looking for your emergency back-up hat or something?"
Bane yanked a tangled mass of earth-brown fabric from the pack, and then stuffed his hat into the now-empty compartment, zipping it closed. He rose and pulled at the draping fabric until the mass unfurled into two hooded robes swinging from his hands.
He held one out to Aiden.
You have got to be kidding me. "And no one's going to notice two hooded figures taking a stroll through their hangar?"
Bane's cheek wrinkled. "How do you think I planted that bomb on your shuttle?"
Barriss leading him up the ramp of the prison transport, the maintenance technician by the thrusters lowering his head, the brim of a hat hiding his face.
The memory faded, and blood red eyes squinted at him in the shadows of the tunnel. He huffed. "So getting outplayed by Barriss has been a running trend for you since all the way back then."
The tilt fell from Bane's lips as Aiden took the robe and slipped it on over his clothes, never letting go of his death-grip on his data pad.
"She'll get hers, slicer." Bane shoved his arms into his own robe and dropped his blaster into its holster, pulling the fold of the robe over it with a tight snap. "Count on it."
He left the backpack where it lie and started walking toward the grey.
Aiden fell in beside him and eyed the lump of the blaster swinging from his utility-belt under the robe. "That's gonna be harder with only one blaster. Guess you were never able to find the one you dropped into the underworld, huh?"
Don't antagonize him, Aiden. It won't help us. But thinking of Barriss just strengthened the urge to shoot barbs. "I guess you're a big, bad, bounty hunter until you go up against a teenage girl."
Bane stopped at the edge of the grey, and looked at him. "Maybe you'll get yours too, slicer."
He ran a finger across a hard edge of his data pad, but didn't look away from the red gaze. "Don't we all in the end?"
Bane stared at him. Then, the tilt reappeared with an almost inaudible gust of breath. Without a word, he turned and stepped into the grey.
Let the chips fall. He ran his palm over the cold beads of water misting the screen of his data pad, and followed.
The grey light poured in through the mouth of the hangar, dulled by droplets that flashed silver in the haze and fell like shards to the hangar floor, pooling along the mouth's edge. The obscured daggers of the Coruscant skyline lied in the pools upside-down as if drowned, painted dead in the pastel film of oil smothering the water.
The falling shards stabbed the image over and over again.
Bane pressed his back to a stack of containers, and peered around the corner toward the main entrance at the opposite end of the hangar, beyond rows of speeders and bustling maintenance workers.
And they were just gonna walk from here to there? Right. Aiden shook his head and crouched behind a shorter stack of containers serving as a makeshift table for a pile of tools, and he pushed aside a teetering wrench that threatened of fall off the edge.
"I'm detecting a flaw your plan," he said. "There's a dozen workers between us and where we need to be. How're we gonna get past them?" His touch lingered on the weight of the wrench, and he glanced at the back of Bane's head.
Bane's jaw worked in small motions, squinting red across the hangar. "Workers don't bother Jedi, this is just a matter of timing. Just keep yer hood up, don't act like you care about being seen, and nobody's gonna give us a second glance."
He was right. No one but workers filled the hangar. Not a single Jedi broke up the constant flow of grease-stained jumpsuits moving between the shuttles. No one would wonder about two hooded Jedi going about their business.
No one would wonder about a single Jedi entering a speeder and calmly flying away on Council business. "And why can't we just take those monster service-tunnels to wherever we're going?" He tightened his grip on the heft of the wrench, and shifted his feet under him, angling toward Bane without moving his upper body.
"Do you have rockets on your boots I haven't noticed yet?"
Aiden wet his lips. Palpatine wouldn't be expecting an update for a while. And besides, tech malfunctioned all the time. Maybe Bane's comm failed. Maybe they were too deep inside the Temple for signals to get through. Palpatine would keep Barriss alive and in that collar until he knew for sure one way or the other.
And that collar was tech. If it was tech, it could be sliced.
Palpatine couldn't stay holed up in that dungeon with her forever. He would have to leave her eventually to keep up his Chancellor routine. And when he did...
Aiden eased the cold steel fully into his hand, the metal almost humming in time with the murmur of the Temple. He could get back to her. Get her out of that collar. And then... Something. Anything.
The murmur shifted. A wash and a rumble shook through the space. The mouth of the hangar darkened.
A speeder broke through the haze, its battered and abused chassis cutting jagged lines as it swept to a hissing stop at the edge of the mouth, right next to the dagger-painted rain pools.
Bane turned his head toward the new shadow.
And his gaze landed straight on the wrench in Aiden's hand.
Red eyes locked with blue, and Aiden froze even as the hairs on back of his neck prickled cold. Blast it...
The speeder shuddered once, and a swirl of black fabric lept out of the pilot's seat, racing toward the hangar entrance. Luminara.
Her robe caught the speeder's jagged siding and tore a small rip in the threading on her way out. But she never looked back as she disappeared out the main door across the way, and Bane never took his eyes off Aiden, cheek wrinkling and un-wrinkling as he looked from the wrench clutched tight in his hand, and then back up to him.
Aiden shifted his dampened fingers over the steel, and slowly motioned his head toward the pile of tools on the crate's edge. "It was gonna fall."
A quiet gust of breath and a squint. "I'm sure."
Neither one moved.
"Is the way clear?" Aiden motioned with his head again, this time toward the door Luminara had just slipped through.
Bane gave a slow dip of the chin within the hood of his robe. "Way's clear, slicer."
Wasn't gonna be an easy out on this one, was there? Just a single road after all. He set the wrench onto the crate with a quiet tink of metal hitting metal, and let his touch slide from the handle, indented canyons pressed into his aching palm.
"Well then..." He shrugged one shoulder. "What are we waiting for?"
This time, something different lie behind the tilt of Bane's lips. "After you, slicer. I'll tell ya where to turn."
There weren't any turns in front of him anymore. There hadn't been for a while now. Aiden pulled the hood of his robe, never looking away from the squint of red, and he rose to his feet, tucking his data pad into over-sized sleeves. Nothing left but to walk.
He swept a tensed glance across the hangar until his gaze settled on a half-dismantled LAAT gunship lying dead halfway to the exit, and he started walking. At least it would block a lot of eyes as they slipped out.
Bane fell in behind him like an oily voice in the murmur. "One last piece of advice before we do this, slicer: Watch your step in here."
The cold end of a blaster barrel whispered across Aiden's back.
"A wrong one will get you killed in this place."
OOO
Obi-Wan, Mace, and Yoda stood under the drooping arches of the Temple entrance. Shouts and taunts spilled over the pearl wall of armor and washed through them, prickling their skin with the anger of hundreds of beings.
A dark shadow loomed in the misty grey above, a growing bruise veiled within the shroud of the rain, stalking nearer and nearer with each flash that rumbled above.
Obi-Wan lifted an eyebrow. "I'm beginning to wonder if we should have never allowed young Stari out of our sight." His tone held the strain of forced levity.
Mace glanced at Yoda. "I knew he should have stayed from the beginning."
Yoda edged the tip of a clawed finger back and forth over a groove in his walking stick.
Footsteps echoed through the arches behind them, and Luminara slowed to a stop as another flash etched the dark shadow above in sharper detail for a single moment. "Forgive me," she said. "It took long to find a speeder to commandeer."
Yoda nodded, but didn't take his eyes off the shadow looming larger and larger. "And Barriss?"
She didn't answer.
It was answer enough.
The grey broke, and the shadow moved through like a battering ram, the rumble of thrusters roaring as if daring anyone to stand in its way.
The wall of white armor shifted, and the inner-most row of troopers fanned out along the wet marble until an armed half-circle formed a cleared-off landing space in the center of the promenade.
The thrusters surged once, spitting flame that smoked and hissed in the damp air, and then the shuttle descended into the middle of the half-circle, pelting armored legs with droplets blown sideways across the marble.
Obi-Wan tucked his hands into his sleeves as the ramp lowered, and Admiral Tarkin descended with chin held rigid in the air.
"This should be fun," Mace muttered.
"Honored Masters of the Jedi Order," Tarkin said as he approached. "By order of the Chancellor, the search for Aiden Stari has been handed over to the GAR. We are here in fulfillment of that duty."
Obi-Wan shared a glance with Mace. "And how does coming here fulfill your duty, Admiral?"
Tarkin stopped in front of them and clasped his hands behind his back. "There have been reports that Stari is being refuged by the Jedi. I'm here to prove those reports false."
Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow. "Oh, are you."
"Yes. I am." Tarkin held his gaze. "The Jedi would never harbor an agent of Dooku... It would be treason."
Mace's jaw shifted.
"Within the Temple, Aiden Stari is not."
Tarkin looked down at Yoda, but didn't move his head. "Nevertheless, my duty to investigate remains. Unless you intend to try to keep me out by force?"
Obi-Wan forced a smile. "Not at all, Admiral. Please, follow me—"
"It would be a poor excuse for a search if I only followed where you lead." Tarkin turned to the armored half-circle and jerked his head toward the Temple entrance before brushing past Obi-Wan, the troopers forming up behind him. "I'll find my own way."
The masters watched the armed guard disappear into the Temple, and Obi-Wan ran a hand down his mouth. "Fun indeed."
OOO
Another burst of lightning flashed through purple-tinged darkness and struck her legs. Another scream sand-papered her throat.
It didn't matter. It didn't.
The lashes of pain tangled and weaved through her, grasping her diaphragm like fingers and squeezing until she couldn't breathe. Dots like growing shadows bloomed in her vision. Just a few more seconds and merciful blackness would claim her...
The storm stopped.
The lashes retreated in an instant, and she collapsed in a gasping heap, her ragged breaths fogging the steel beneath her. She curled her fingers.
"The lie has become the truth, young one. Your body weakens." Black robes lazily swished at his ankles as he paced a circle around her. "Your time runs short."
She coughed, and a few specks of red sprinkled her hand, warm beads of crimson on white-clenched knuckles. "What never existed can't run short."
His chuckle scraped the darkness. "The poetry of a dying Jedi. What an unexpected gift." He crouched low until those orbs glowed at her. "But when I say your time runs short, young one, I am speaking of your Order."
She lifted as much of a glare as she could manage, but he just smiled and held a crooked finger toward the purple glow of the screens. "Look."
On the main screen, Tarkin disappeared into the mouth of the Temple, followed by two rows of white armor on his right and left.
"It's not too late. You can still stop it." He pressed her hand against the aching cold of the collar. "You can save them. You are the only one who can. Allow yourself to."
She gathered whatever moisture and blood still remained in her mouth, and spat as hard as she could at those yellow rings. "I'll never use Sith techniques."
He turned his head from the spray, as close to a flinch as she had ever seen from him, and the smile slid from his face.
"Sith techniques..." He brushed his palm down his cheek, pressing away crimson-tinged beads from ashen skin. "Another lie that has become the truth."
She narrowed her eyes at him.
"Did you know lightning was not always of the Sith?" he intoned, then shook his head. "No, of course not. The Council would never allow such knowledge to be shared. Or perhaps they have forgotten the first warrior to hurl lightning across a battlefield was not a Sith, but a Jedi."
He lifted his palm, and arcs of blue ignited across his fingertips, roiling like a flame in his palm. "It is considered a dark side technique by the Jedi of this era. But it was not always so. It was once a weapon of... Light." His nose wrinkled. "A way to disable an enemy without killing them."
The arcs flared impossibly bright with a sharp crack, and she flinched as he settled his gaze onto her. "It was wasted on the Jedi. The Sith recognized the true potential. The true power. As I show you now."
He loomed over her, and held his hand to her like an offer of friendship, electricity still whipping and cracking across his fingers. "Take it back, young one. Reclaim what was once the Jedi's power to wield. And save them from the darkness about to consume them."
On the screens, the Temple doors closed behind Tarkin.
Luminara... Her charred abdomen twinged, and she pinched her eyes shut. It was a lie. He would never let her go. Her life was going to end in this room. Freeing herself from the collar wouldn't change that now.
No matter how much her fingers itched to hurl his own torture back at him. "Waste your energy showing me your power if you want, Sith. It just means you'll be that much weaker when the Jedi learn what you planned here today, and come to end your reign before it begins."
He just smiled, and pointed the fingertips of his hand at her, the crackling arcs growing.
It didn't matter. It didn't.
OOO
Bane pushed and prodded Aiden through the isolated and backway corridors of the Temple, cold jabs from the blaster barrel keeping them at a quick, agitated pace. The empty halls whispered past like warnings he couldn't quite hear, leaving nothing but a feeling like cold fingers trailing down the back of his mind.
And that blasted murmur.
A slate-black door stretching taller than any he had seen yet broke to his right, and Bane jabbed him hard. "That one. Hurry."
Aiden squeezed his data pad inside the sleeve of his robe, and punched the door panel with the side of his fist.
Shadows spilled out of the room, mixed with faint shards the color of Barriss' saber. Consoles hummed and groaned against walls that loomed down around them, indigo screens flashing with constantly shifting readouts.
But in the very center of it all was a form like Aiden had never seen.
Darkened metal rose up from the floor like a giant's ring, curving into a perfect, hollow circle. In the center of the circle, holographic light filled the dark ring like water in a basin, the indigo moving and shifting like a living thing.
What in the blazes... He tentatively reached out a hand, and the onyx metal tingled hot against his palm. "This is a computer console?" He spoke the thought out loud, but hadn't really meant to. Thing looked more like an ancient monolith than a piece of tech.
Bane closed the door behind them, and tossed his robe to the side with a slight wrinkling of his lip. "All the Jedi's talk about humility and living simple starts to wear a little thin when you see their War Room, doesn't it? Now stop wasting time and get to work." He reached into a pouch on his utility belt, pulled out a universal cable, and shoved the tangled mess into Aiden's chest.
Aiden stumbled back a step and barely caught the twisting wire before it fell to the floor, leveling a glare into the squinting, red eyes. Don't antagonize him, Aiden. It won't help us. This time, the memory of her voice stuck, and he just tensed his jaw and plugged his data pad into the black ring. Only a single path. Walk it.
The holographic water morphed inside the ring, swirling and shaping into letters, words. A directory.
Bane leaned against the nearest console, and crossed his arms. "Get crackin' on the Archives. I'll be watching."
There would be no way to avoid planting whatever 'proof' Palpatine had loaded into his data pad. Not with that holographic water showing everything he was doing. Maybe that's why Bane picked this room.
Aiden shook his head, and began tapping through levels of access. Maybe he couldn't get around planting the files. But he sure as Sith could bury it under every blasted piece of encryption under the binary suns.
...And maybe slip an ace or two up his sleeve if he got out of this alive.
He glanced at Bane out of the corner of his eye, and brought up the directory he was looking for. The water shifted:
Internal Security Master Access.
Archive Master Access.
Council Chamber Live Holo-Connection: Master Access.
Coruscant-Temple Holonet Access-Gate.
He raised a brow at the list. The Council had a live holo-comm in their chamber? But as he continued typing on his data pad, his gaze settled on the final system in the list: A holonet access-gate. A closed holonet access-gate. The reason the Temple was a cyber-island.
He cast another sideways glance at Bane, and pulled up all four systems at once. If he couldn't show Bane a big, blank, nothing, the next best thing was to show him everything.
Words and light shifted and swirled in the ring as it scrambled to display all four directories, and Bane squinted. "That looks like more than just the Archives, slicer."
Aiden forced a steady breath, and an even voice. "Observant as always. Some systems need multiple levels of authorization. To get into the Archives, I might need to get into security first. And security might need authorization from the Council. If so, I'll need to make it think the authorization is coming from the Council chamber."
Bane's cheek wrinkled and unwrinkled. "And the access-gate?"
Aiden swallowed, and moved a single shoulder in a shrug. "I guess I don't really need that one." He tapped the screen of his data pad a few times, and the access-gate menu flickered in the water. Just before it fizzled out entirely, he tapped a single command, and a barely-visible prompt shuddered to life for a split-second inside the dying static:
Open holonet access-gate? Y/N
He tapped 'Y' and the status flipped from 'Closed' to 'Open'.
The menu fizzled out.
He kept his eyes resolutely forward, locked onto the Archive menu still glowing strong in the water, and began the upload of the files, making sure the progress bar was firmly in Bane's sightline. Nothing he could do about it with Bane's hand twitching near his blaster. All he could do now was try to make it irrelevant.
And hope the progress bar held Bane's attention long enough for it to not matter. "Looks like I was right." He kept his eyes on his data pad. "This does need authorization from security to finalize the transfer."
The tense coil in Bane's stance eased off some, and he relaxed against the console, re-crossing his arms. "Fine, just keep it moving."
Oh, it was gonna start moving real fast in a just a second. Hopefully fast enough for me to survive... He chewed the corner of his mouth, and pulled up the security authorization he needed, glancing at the progress bar already halfway to completion.
No matter what was in those files, proof needed to be found for it to be helpful. If the Jedi got their hands on it first... it wouldn't matter what was in them. He just needed to give the Jedi enough time, and make sure they got here before anyone else.
The progress bar filled in, and he raced through security, layering as much encryption as he could in the minute he had. It would have to be enough.
Bane's hand inched toward the handle of his blaster, and Aiden grit his teeth and finalized the encryption before pulling up the last command he needed. The only command that would give any of them a chance at surviving this.
He released a breath. Let the chips fall. "Well, the transfer is complete and I have access to the last security authorization I need... There's just one problem."
Bane squinted and pushed off of the console, standing next to him and glaring into the directories. "What kinda problem?"
Aiden shifted his footing. "This isn't the authorization for Archive access." He swallowed, and set his jaw. "It's for the intruder alarm."
He jabbed his thumb against the screen of his data pad, and the holographic water blared red in an instant. A warning klaxon screeched in his ear-drums, and Bane flinched with widened eyes.
Now! He clenched his fist with all his strength and smacked his knuckles straight into the red of Bane's eye.
Bane's head whipped back with a nasally scrape of a cry, and Aiden locked onto the blaster hanging on his belt like nothing else existed. He lunged forward as Bane stumbled back, and fumbled the swinging handle-grip until his fingers clamped around the cold steel and ripped it free from the faded leather.
Bane blinked hard and raised his arm blindly, leveling his wrist-gauntlet at Aiden's face.
Aiden squeezed the trigger.
Crimson exploded from the barrel and smashed through Bane's shoulder, searing flesh and fabric in molten gold.
Another cry. Bane fell backward.
Get out, get out, get out, get to Barriss. He tore the cable from his data pad, leaving the other end shooting sparks from the black ring that now cast bloodlight through the shadows, and he pulled his hood as low as it would go and charged out the door.
OOO
Tarkin marched through the halls of the Temple, making no pretense of searching as he worked his way toward the War Room, and a klaxon burst through the Temple.
He stopped short with a parting of the lips. And slowly, a thin line settled in his brow. "Damn you, you incompetent bounty hunter scum."
He turned to the rows of white armor flanking his left and right, and jabbed a finger at the left. "Get to the War Room immediately, stop for nothing. The rest of you, secure every exit in this blasted pile of marble. No one gets out."
A chorus of 'yessir' echoed out, and the rows broke as armored boots raced through the halls to carry out their orders.
Tarkin tensed his jaw and followed the group headed for the War Room.
OOO
Aiden raced down familiar corridors with head lowered and hands tucked in the sleeves of his robes, retracing the path to the hangars like a maddened Jedi. The walls themselves seemed to pulse and patter with the rapid pounding of his boots.
He broke the final turn, and at the end of the hall, beyond the hangar entrance glowing grey in the marble, four GAR troopers rounded the corner, armor flashing in the daggers of light.
Blast! He brought up short at the edge of the grey, boots squeaking against the floor.
Black lenses locked on him, and the barrel of a rifle lifted. "You there, halt."
Run or die.
He gripped his pad and blaster inside his sleeves, and dove headlong into the grey. A shot tore the air behind him.
Crap! Every worker in the hangar looked up as he charged forward, gulping dry breaths of oil burn-off as his vision narrowed onto the service-tunnel at the end of the hangar. Too far. Never make it in time.
Boots pounded into the hangar behind him. Another shot blasted.
Workers yelled, and he threw himself behind the scorch-marked steel of the dismantled LAAT gunship and grit his teeth as scarred metal bit through his sleeve. Come on, think! There had to be something in this blasted place.
At the mouth of the hangar, Luminara's speeder idled beside the oil-soaked rain pool.
A bolt shrieked through a gap in the steel with a crack and hiss of boiled plating.
He flinched, and his lips thinned. Dead anyway. He shoved his data pad and blaster into his waistband, and yanked the robe from his shoulders as he peeked through the charred eye-hole the last shot burned into the steel.
Pearl ghosts converged, and he licked his lips. Here's hoping for quick reflexes and slow uptake.
He held the robe from the shoulder-seams until it draped the air like the figure of a man, and then tossed it to one side of the gunship into view of the troopers.
Before it even hit the ground, two blaster bolts smashed through the brown fabric and crumpled it to the floor, the air trapped underneath billowing the robe like a body.
He shoved off of the gunship and launched straight for Luminara's speeder in the opposite direction.
"It's a decoy!"
The hair on the back of his neck prickled with the whine of charging-bolts re-locking into place, and the edge of the rain pools met the pounding of his feet. Dive!
He threw himself forward into the upside-down daggers of the Coruscant skyline, and a trio of shots zipped the air above him.
His teeth rattled as his chest slammed into the durasteel floor, but the thick film of oil carried his momentum the last few feet to the speeder.
He reached up a slippery hand and clamped onto the speeder's jagged edge, and something sharp sliced into his grip. He snarled and hurled himself into the pilot's seat against the burning in his palm.
A bolt cracked against the windscreen.
Sweat and oil mingled as he fumbled the bent flight-stick and then shoved it forward until his palm screamed.
A burst of momentum. The grey engulfed him as he shot out of the hangar into the haze of Coruscant, body trembling, hand shaking. Spatters of rain drops streaked his face, and he shuddered a breath and pulled his crimson-stained fingers from the stick.
Drips of red fell from his fingers and soaked into ripped leather.
500 Republica would stab the horizon soon. He couldn't go back to the Temple and warn them with those troopers swarming. He couldn't call anyone for help—Dooku took his communicator.
His palm throbbed as the hollow swirled inside him, and he ran his good hand down his face. "A data pad, a blaster, and one good hand against a Sith lord. Not very good odds, are they, Barriss?"
The grey didn't answer, and he shook his head. It didn't matter anymore. This was gonna be over. One way or the other. Even if he had no idea what he was gonna do.
The very tip of 500 Republica speared the matted grey in the distance, and he pressed his bleeding hand into his chest with a small breath, and gripped the flight-stick with the other until the nose of the speeder settled once and for all on the rain-soaked tower.
Blast it...
END CHAPTER