A/N: There will once again be no Wednesday update. Expect Saturdays only until further notice. It's getting to that time of year where I am very busy, but I am still actively working on this story.
The group loaded up into speeders and set out for Theed. Sienna could feel the nerves of the Nubians, but also their grim determination and sharp focus. Beside her, Anakin was buzzing with something akin to thrill or excitement. He'd heard stories of adventures and battles, the dramatized stories of the deep-space pilots and the cautionary tales and fables from the elders in his neighborhood. Sienna had told him her share of stories too, and now he was going on an adventure of his own.
"What should I do to help?" Anakin whispered.
That… that was a good question. What were they supposed to do with Anakin?
"Stay close to Jinn and Obi-Wan and do as they tell you," she said. "Keep your head down and make sure you don't get shot."
That was clearly not the answer he had been hoping for. "But I want to help."
"That is helping. Making sure they don't have a reason to worry about you in addition to the droids is the most helpful thing you can do."
Anakin scowled, crossing his arms and slouching in his seat.
They made it to the secret passages, and then up into the city. Sienna was surprised by how few guards there seemed to be. For an occupation, the place wasn't very occupied. If this was her Time, the Empire would have had troopers on every corner.
They split into groups. Panaka and a few others went around one way, and Padmé, R2, the three Jedi, Anakin, and a squad of pilots went another way. They came to a square and Padmé leaned around a column, signaling to Panaka. He signaled back an all-clear.
Qui-Gon turned and crouched in front of Anakin, grabbing the boy's shoulders.
Anakin stiffened, and Sienna's eyes narrowed, an instinctive spark of protectiveness flashing through her Force-signature. She'd need to have a talk with Qui-Gon about sudden movements and unexpected physical contact.
"Once we get inside, you find a safe place to hide and stay there," Qui-Gon said, either oblivious to Anakin's discomfort or ignoring it.
Anakin nodded. "Sure."
"Stay there," Qui-Gon said again, raising an eyebrow and a finger in warning.
Anakin nodded again, and Qui-Gon gave his shoulders another squeeze in what was probably supposed to be a comforting gesture, but only served to raise Anakin's anxiety levels.
Sienna sent feelings of peace and security across the bond, gently sweeping away the traces of anxiety. Anakin relaxed, and sent back an impression of a smile.
There's about to be some loud noises and bright explosions, she warned him, spotting the guards with an armed speeder pull up under the arch across the square.
Anakin nodded and braced himself.
The speeder fired. The bolt slammed into a tank, sending it crashing the ground in a plume of smoke and sparks.
The droids whirled, searching for the source of the bolt. "There they are!" One of them shouted, drawing the attention of the other droids. They opened fire on the speeder, and thus the battle began.
Padmé, blaster in hand, dashed around the corner. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan ignited their lightsabers and followed, Anakin running alongside them, sandwiched between them and the wall. Sienna opted to keep blasters in both hands, shooting down droids as she too dashed around the corner. She'd always been best with blasters.
They ran through the door and down a hall, towards the hangar. When the next door opened, the group was immediately bombarded with blaster fire.
"Ani! Find cover, quick!" Qui-Gon ordered, deflecting blaster bolts with his 'saber.
"Get to your ships!" Padmé shouted to the pilots.
Anakin scrambled behind a crate, but blaster fire still rained down all around him. Sienna ducked and rolled across the floor, shooting down droids.
"Anakin, the vents!" She shouted.
"What?" He called.
She unclipped her lightsaber from her belt and threw it at him. He caught it, glancing down at the weapon with a startled expression.
"Cut a hole in the grate, and hide in the vents! You'll be safest there!"
"But-"
"NOW!"
Anakin scrambled back against the wall. He ignited the gold blade and plunged it into the metal grate that covered a large air vent. It sliced through the spokes the way he imagined a krayt's claws would cut through a bantha, and then the grate clattered to the ground, leaving an opening just big enough for him to crawl into.
Anakin turned off the lightsaber. "Do you want your-" He turned, intending to return it to Sienna, but she was scrambling up into a ship and zipping out of the hangar with the other pilots before he could get the sentence out.
A bolt whizzed past his head and singed the wall a hair's breadth from his ear. Anakin flinched and ducked into the vent, crawling on his hands and knees, the lightsaber still clutched in one of his fists. Once inside he twisted around to peer back out at the battle still raging in the hangar. The Jedi cut down the doids quickly and efficiently with their lightsabers and the Nubians did the same with their blasters. Within seconds, the hangar was clear, and the sounds of blaster fire ceased.
Anakin crawled back to the opening of the vent and poked his head out.
"My guess is the Viceroy's in the throne room," Padmé said to Panaka.
The Captain nodded. "Red group, Blue group! Everybody this way."
"Hey, wait for me!" Anakin called, shuffling forward.
"Anakin, stay where you are," Qui-Gon ordered as he strode by, "you'll be safe there."
"But I-"
"Stay in that vent."
Anakin huffed and flopped onto his belly, glaring at everyone's boots. He heard the door to the palace slide open, but then everyone stopped. Anakin felt a wave of confusion and uncertainty emanate from the group. He craned his neck, but he couldn't quite see what it was they were worried about.
He could, however, feel a dark and sticky presence. He shuddered, instinctively pulling his own presence in on itself. Whoever that guy was, he felt wrong.
And familiar. Was that the guy that Mister Qui-Gon had fought in the desert? The one who stabbed Sienna?
Anakin shuffled backwards a little more.
"We'll handle this," he heard Mister Qui-Gon say.
"We'll take the long way." And that was Padmé's voice.
The sound of blaster fire started up again—apparently some more droids had joined the party—along with the distinctive buzz of multiple lightsabers. Everyone was fighting once more.
An idea formed in Anakin's mind. He wanted to help, but he didn't know how to use a blaster. He'd never been allowed to touch a weapon. But he did know some basic moves with a lightsaber; Sienna had taught him with sticks and brooms at dusk, when no one could see. He wasn't stupid enough to think that he could fight battle droids, but what about the Viceroy? Padmé and Captain Panaka seemed to think that if they got past the droids, capturing the Viceroy guy would be easy. So he probably wasn't a good fighter. And Anakin had Sienna's lightsaber, so maybe the Viceroy would think he was a Jedi and get scared and surrender. He could crawl through the vents to the throne room and capture the Viceroy for Padmé.
The only problem is that that would mean disobeying Qui-Gon. But technically, Anakin would still be in the vents, up until the point that he climbed out to capture the Viceroy. So he would be mostly following orders. And he was free now, which meant no one could make him do anything, not anymore. He didn't HAVE to follow orders. He was free to make his own choices.
Anakin did a determined nod and pushed himself back up onto his hands and knees. Yes, that's what he'd do. Crawl through the vents, find the throne room, capture the Viceroy. Easy.
He tucked the lightsaber under his belt (he didn't have a fancy clip for it) and started crawling.
"We lost one!" Sienna called over the comms, jerking her own vessel to the side to avoid colliding with the falling ship. They'd only just barely cleared the hangar, and already they were down a pilot. Great.
"Who's here? Bravo Leader, ready!"
"Bravo Two, here!"
The pilots went through their roll call. There were only nine of them.
"Bravo Twelve, ready to blow stuff up," Sienna said, once the comms had been silent long enough to indicate there weren't any other pilots joining them.
"Roger that, Bravo Twelve."
They flew up through the atmosphere and the battleship came into view, looming not far from the planet. Several dots departed from the ship like a swarm of bees taking flight.
"Fighters straight ahead!"
"Roger Bravo Leader!"
"We'll punch a hole for you, Bravo Twelve."
"Roger that!" Sienna called.
As one the squadron moved through the field of fighters, their combined fire protecting themselves and picking off the vulture droids. They made it to the ring, and then one of the heavy cannons picked off Bravo Four, his ship going up in a ball of flames. The others tilted to avoid the blast.
"I want someone on those cannons!" Bravo Leader called.
"The deflector shields are too strong!" Bravo Three called, and then his ship took a hit and exploded just like Four.
"Forget the cannons!" Sienna shouted, jerking to avoid another blast. "Just get me to that bay before we're all shot down!"
"We're not gonna make it to the bay, there's too many fighters, we're dropping too fast."
"Kriff this," Sienna muttered. She yanked the stick to the side, dropping out of formation.
"Bravo Twelve, what are you doing?"
"I'm completing my mission. Keep the vultures occupied, I'm going in."
"No! There's still too much fire!"
"I am aware of the situation!" Sienna snapped. "I work better alone anyway, just keep them off my tail and try not to die."
"...Roger that."
Sienna sent her ship into a spin, shooting down two vultures approaching her nose. She flipped on her side to fly between two pillars, then skimmed along the edge of the dome, so close that her ship's belly almost scraped the surface, close enough that the cannons couldn't angle and hit her. Three more vulture droids dove down to attack, but two Nubian fighters rose to meet them.
"We've got you covered, Bravo Twelve!"
"Roger!" She followed the curve of the dome just a little longer, then hit the thrusters with everything she had and leapt off, aiming straight for the bay.
She shot into the mouth and through, not bothering to slow her speed in the slightest. It was risky, flying inside at this speed, but no riskier than flying through tightly packed fields of moving asteroids. The first set of doors were open, and so were the second, and she tilted on her wing and zipped through. The next were closed, but a few blasts from her guns relieved the doors of their sockets. Only then, flying through the smoke, did she put on the brakes just in time to come to a screeching halt inches from the back wall.
Droids were already running to meet her, but she ignored them. She had shields, they would hold against the blasterfire for a couple minutes. Sienna closed her eyes and stretched out her senses, feeling for the reactor core. It was actually a little closer than she thought. She checked her belt, reassuring herself that the explosives were still there. They were.
Time for the hard part.
Sienna cocked her blasters, counted to three, and then jammed the button to open the canopy. The droids started firing immediately. Sienna met them shot for shot, ducking and twisting, trusting the Force as she leapt down from her fighter and made a mad dash across the hangar and down the hall. She didn't think, she just ran, the Force guiding her every step.
She ducked and rolled past two B1s and behind the reactor. She shoved one blaster back in its holster and started grabbing charges off her belt, placing them and continuing to shoot at the same time.
"Careful, don't hit the reactors!" One of the droids called to its buddies.
Sienna smirked and rolled to the next reactor, slapping on the charges. And, for good measure, she used the Force to toss two more onto a third reactor. Taking out two reactors should be enough to blow the whole ship, but she wasn't taking chances.
The blaster fire stopped, which was incredibly suspicious, and when Sienna turned around she discovered why.
The entire hallway between the reactors and her borrowed Nubian fighter was filled with droids, blasters cocked and ready. A door to her left slid open to reveal more battle droids, and a couple of droidekas rolled out onto the walkway to her right.
"Surrender!" Ordered one of the droids in the hall. "We have you surrounded!"
Sienna slowly raised her hands.
"Drop your weapon!"
She opened her hand and let her blaster clatter down to the ground.
The droid gestured to one of its buddies. "Cuff her."
"No thanks," Sienna said cheerfully. "I have places to be."
She gathered the Force around her and leapt up into the air. She hit the side of one reactor and used her momentum to jump to the next, whipping out her second blaster and shooting at a grate in the ceiling. Another bounce and she was up in it, bracing herself against the slick walls of the vent, out of range of the droid's shots.
The seconds ticked by as she shimmied up through the duct, and then as she turned to crawl as fast as she could. If the droids gathered all the charges before she could set them off, her mission would have been for nothing.
Sienna closed her eyes and sunk into the Force's waiting embrace, letting it show her the layout of the vents and the halls below. She could feel her ship, and droids marching past it. They weren't exactly guarding it, but there were a lot of them milling about. More than she could shoot down.
You don't have to, the Force whispered. Look.
There was a grate almost directly above the ship. It was only two paces to the left. Close enough that she could probably jump down and clamber into the cockpit before getting shot.
Probably.
She didn't have time to steal a different ship though, not if she wanted there to be enough charges left to blow the reactors. This was her best bet.
Sienna took a deep breath, shot out the grate, flattened her arms to her sides, and dropped down. She hit the ground, tucked into a roll to avoid breaking her legs, Force-jumped into her ship, and jabbed the button to start up the engines before even closing the canopy. Which ended up being a bad move when a blaster bolt grazed her shoulder, but then she was in the air and accelerating through the hangar. The doors started to close in front of her and she pushed the ship faster, tilting onto her side to slip between them.
The mouth of the hangar was fast approaching, and Sienna had wasted enough time already. She hit the detonator.
The shockwave from the exploding reactors nearly threw her into a wall. She grunted and yanked on the controls, steadying her vehicle, and shot out of the hangar and into space.
"Everyone get back!" She shouted over the comm. "She's going down!"
"Roger that!"
She saw the Nubian fighters turn tail and flee, and she picked off a few vulture droids that tried to follow. The shockwave grew as the entire control ship exploded, catching the closest fighters and sending them tumbling through space, Sienna included.
She let her fighter spin for a second before stabilizing it. When she did, she let out a breath of relief.
"We did it boys," she said over the comms. "We did it."
Cheers erupted in her earpiece, and she smiled.
Anakin's knees were starting to ache, but he ignored them and pushed on. He could handle aching knees. He'd handled worse before and he knew how to ignore the pain to get a job done. And right now, his job was especially important.
He came to an intersection and paused, closing his eyes and trying to open himself to the Force. He knew it could lead him to the throne room because Sienna had told him plenty of stories of times that she had gotten lost and asked the Force for guidance. It was a little frustrating how long he had to wait before he thought he felt it nudge him to the left. In the stories it always sounded like the Force responded right away. Maybe that was one of the things meditation was supposed to help with.
At the next intersection, when he again had to wait for what felt like an eternity, he vowed to try harder the next time Sienna taught him meditation.
A couple minutes later and voices caught Anakin's attention. Excitement bubbled up in his chest and he moved faster, coming to a stop next to a grate in the floor of the duct. He peered through it.
Down below was a large room. In the center stood several beings, but two wore very large hats. The hats probably marked them as important people.
Anakin grinned. He'd found the Viceroy!
The only question now was how to get down from here so he could capture him.
Jump, the Force whispered plainly.
Anakin frowned. That was a reeeeeeaaallly far drop. Like, far enough that he would probably splat on the ground.
"I can use the Force to help me jump high, or run really fast."
Sienna's words from their first ever meeting echoed in his mind. She never did show him how to jump with the Force, saying it was too risky that someone would see. But he trusted Sienna. If she said you could jump with the Force, he believed it.
"Well, here I go," he said to himself.
He pulled the lightsaber out of his belt and tilted it against the grate, then ignited it. The metal melted and the grate fell away with a clatter that echoed loudly in the open room.
"What was that?" One of the beings asked.
"Aaaaa!" Anakin shrieked as he jumped out of the grate. His stomach leapt to his throat, and for a terrifying moment he was sure this was a terrible idea and he was going to die. On some kind of instinct he flung his hands towards the ground. He felt the Force swell under his fingertips, slowing his fall.
He landed hard on his feet and his left ankle rolled. He felt something pop, which definitely couldn't be good, but the adrenaline coursing through his system dimmed the pain.
"Yes!" Anakin grinned, proud of himself for jumping.
The beings stared at him.
"Um, I mean," he whipped the lightsaber forward, igniting it again, "surrender, Viceroy!"
"A Jedi!" One of them exclaimed. "I thought there were only two of them!"
"Yeah, well there's actually three," Anakin replied. "And I've captured you."
The second being laughed. "You look awfully young to be a Jedi."
Anakin glared at him. "I'm a Jedi in training. And I've still captured you."
"Captured?" The Viceroy said, and Anakin heard a door slide open. "It is I who has captured Queen Amidala, little Jedi."
"Anakin!" Padmé's voice cut across the room.
He turned, and sure enough, Padmé and her warriors were being marched across the room by several battle droids.
A droid swiped Sienna's lightsaber out of Anakin's hand while he was distracted.
"Hey! Give that back!"
"Anakin," Padmé hissed again. Her gaze was sharp, her Force-signature swirling with a number of aggressive and determined feelings. None of those feelings were 'thanks for capturing the Viceroy, Anakin.' In fact, if there was anything directed at him, it was annoyance and maybe a hint of worry.
He suddenly felt rather foolish, and he ducked his head. Qui-Gon had told him to stay in the vents, and he had disobeyed, and now he was captured too. If he had listened, maybe he could have rescued Padmé, instead of being captured along with her.
She grabbed his arm and pushed him behind her, into the circle of her guards.
"Your little insurrection is at an end, Your Highness," the Viceroy said. "Time for you to sign the treaty and end this pointless debate in the senate."
"Viceroy!" Came a voice from the left.
They all whipped around.
"Your occupation here has ended," Sabé said, lifting her blaster and shooting two B1 droids.
"After her!" The Viceroy exclaimed. "This one's a decoy."
The droids gave chase, several falling before they had even made it out the door. Padmé backed up a few paces and then turned and dashed to her throne, jamming a button on the armrest to reveal a secret compartment full of blasters.
"Captain!" She tossed one to him.
He caught it and shot down a droid while Padmé shot down another. Anakin ducked and scooted against the side of the throne, trying to stay out of the way.
"Jam the doors!" Panaka ordered. He held his blaster level with the Viceroy's heart while some men hurried to comply.
Anakin stood up slowly. He spotted Sienna's lightsaber lying on the ground beside the open hand of a fallen battle droid. He scrunched up his face and reached out, using the Force to call it to him.
"Now, Viceroy," Padmé said, "we will negotiate a new treaty."
Obi-Wan dropped to his knees, gently scooping Qui-Gon's head and cradling the man against his own body.
"It's too late," Qui-Gon rasped. "It's.."
"No!" Obi-Wan shook his head violently, pressing a hand against Qui-Gon's chest, as if he could keep the man's heart beating through sheer willpower.
"Obi-Wan," the older man's voice had already dropped almost to a whisper, and Obi-Wan moved his hand to cup his Master's neck. "Promise.. Promise me you will train the boy."
Obi-Wan nodded, a single frantic, jerky movement. "Yes Master," he said, his own voice coming out desperate and broken.
Qui-Gon slowly and painfully lifted a hand to brush his fingers against Obi-Wan's cheek. "He… is the Chosen One. He… w- will bring balance." His eyes bore into Obi-Wan's, trying to convey the importance of this last task.
Obi-Wan nodded again, tears gathering in his eyes.
"Train him." It was almost a plea.
And then the man was gone.
Obi-Wan caught his Master's head as it began to loll to the side. He pressed his own forehead against Qui-Gon's, face contorting in grief as the tears began to fall freely now. He felt a sob caught in his throat, unable to escape, and so he cried silently as he cradled his Master, his mentor, his father.
No, nononono. Don't leave me, Master. Don't go. Don't go! Please! Don't go, please don't go. Master!
A thousand cries echoed in Obi-Wan's mind as his heart shattered.
But it was too late, and his pleas went unheard.
