Chapter 16: Chase

The force of a concussion grenade shoved Jaina the rest of the way into the room, plastering her to the floor as debris rained down. A cacophony of noises assailed her; the embattled hum of a lightsaber—Anakin's—fending of tremendous laser blasts that shook the building. But more importantly, she could hear her children screaming for her.

Jaina somersaulted backwards onto her feet, casting off the restricting house robe as she went. Smoke from the initial assault choked her and minimized her visibility to almost nothing. She moved by instinct, hurrying first to the area of the nursery her son's crib should be in. She tripped over one of its legs in her haste, and cursed it aloud with everything she had even as her hands grappled for the newborn.

He was gone.

Her heart jumped into her throat. Panicked, she dashed to the other side of the room to Hanna's bedside. "Hanna?" she called, reaching for both children in the Force. They were alive, but frightened.

And gone.

"Mommy!" the answering call was faint and farther away than it should have been. In a desperate scramble, Jaina flung herself out of the nursery and down the hall to her room. It wasn't but a few steps away, yet the distance seemed immeasurable. She practically crashed into the bedside table, snatching her lightsaber and awakening the weapon at once. The amethyst light cut through the smoke, once again giving her a sense of direction.

She reached out to her daughter in the Force, using their connection to see through the girl's eyes. There was smoke and confusion, not much for Jaina to go on, but the twirling firebrand of Anakin's saber was still within her sight.

The initial blast had ripped the entire outer wall from the whole apartment, leaving a massive space open to the Coruscant night. It was into this fissure that a swarm of black-clad, armored beings rappelled from an upper level, even before Anakin and Jaina had gotten to their feet. Outside swarmed teams of swoop bikes and airspeeders. By the time he brought out his lightsaber, a Golan Arms CR-1 blaster cannon had been fitted on its tripod and aimed at his chest.

"Kriff."

The first bolt was enough to jar his shoulders from their sockets. He grunted, didn't have time to feel the pain because he had to parry a low rifle shot at his knee cap, then one of the accompanying bursts from the cannon at high right. The third burst was then barely deflected from his left shoulder, and instead pounded into the wall to his left, searing open a hole the size of his head. All this in the space of time his heart took to open one chamber.

He took a step forward and stretched out his left hand, then made a fist. The muzzle of the cannon crumpled, and at the next shot imploded, taking off both arms of its shooter. He took another step, blocked three blaster shots, and shoved with his mind, tossing five perpetrators off the ledge.

"Mommy!"

For a moment he was distracted, his eyes torn to the far side of the gap. An indistinct figure cradled a bundle of blankets in one arm, and a squirming Hanna in the other. A skiff hung outside the breech, and the figure swung over onto its deck.

The split second cost him. Something slashed into his right shoulder, burning flesh and tossing him backwards into the kitchen table. He winced and rolled, lightsaber still ignited and batting away chasing blasts. It wasn't bad, he thought as he yanked the synthwood table over as a cover. He spared it a glance. Puckered red flesh surrounded by charred tissue and clothing stared back. He grunted against the pain, trying to remember the last time he had been wounded in combat. Blast his inattention!

He stood, both hands extended to their fullest, and yanked the weapons out of the hands of ten attackers. They scrambled for backups, and he somersaulted over the table into their midst. One slash to the right and a man had lost both arms, another cut from hip to shoulder. Another strike to the right and a scattering of limbs flew away.

"Anakin!"

He looked up to see his sister—clad only in a flimsy silk nightgown—salute him with her lightsaber hilt and leap headfirst out the gaping hole in the apartment wall. He sighed, elbowed a man in his way in the face hard enough to splatter blood, and jumped after her.

The Coruscant high rises whizzed by at dizzying speeds, blowing his shaggy hair into his eyes. He wiped it away and stretched out in the Force, reaching both for a speeder he could snare, and Jaina. She had already grabbed an enemy swoop, and was wrestling the pilot for control. He slowed his descent just enough, hoping his timing wasn't off.

It wasn't. He dropped into a passenger seat at the exact right moment, causing the young Bothan couple to scream and swerve out of the designated spacelane. "Sorry," he grunted, swinging over the backseat and into the pilot's couch to sit between them. "I'm going to need to commandeer this," he muttered, and yanked the controls from the male pilot. "Jedi business."

The female continued to scream in a high pitch and wail Bothese in his ear. Anakin pulled the speeder around, turned it towards the fleeing skiff his niece and nephew had disappeared into, and said to the male, "Real catch you got there."

"Filthy human!" he spat back in heavily accented Basic. "Get your Jedi scum out of my speeder!"

Anakin pulled into a steep ascent, then threw him a hurt look. "Now that was a little rude."

The skiff grew closer as he gunned the engines for all they were worth. Ahead he saw an enemy swoop bike begin firing at the skiff, trying to take out the aft engines. Jaina, he thought. He kicked the thrusters again, crisscrossing the airlanes, barely missing certain death by a hairsbreadth. The Bothan woman screeched loud enough to drown out the roar of Coruscant traffic.

Suddenly a blaster stuck between his ribs. "Get out!" the male yelled, his violet eyes murderous.

Anakin jerked the speeder to the left, then quickly back to the right, jarring the weapon loose in his grip long enough for Anakin to knock it into the air. "I'm beginning to think you don't want me here."

He finally came alongside Jaina, bent low over the swoop bike handles and looking utterly ridiculous as her nightgown snapped in the wind. "Where are they headed?" he hollered, amplifying his voice in Force so she could here.

He didn't hear her so much as receive understanding in the Force, even though she yelled back. "They have to have a space transport somewhere!" He could feel her fear and anxiety as his own, it was so pungent in the Force. He had never felt her so afraid. He could almost hear her thoughts. Who are these people, and what do they want with my children?

Suddenly he swerved, yanking the speeder in a diverging path with hers. At the last second he pulled down on the stick and jumped, calculating the exact moment with Jaina, to land behind her on the swoop. "Nice of you to drop by," she growled and fired another round into the skiff. It was a tricky process. A miss hit could kill her children as soon as save them. One burst took out a chunk of the steering vane, but to no real effect.

"How is that thing getting this altitude?" he sputtered against the wind that smacked her hair into his face. "It shouldn't go over fifty meters!"

"It must have been modified for the city," she answered, and fired again. Her shot chewed into the starboard thrust nozzle, and the skiff began to slow and lilt to that side. "You take the other swoops, I'll get the children."

"Other swoops?"

She jerked upwards suddenly, climbing high above the skiff's flight plane, then diving back down like an arrow in for the kill. "You mean you haven't noticed all the people shooting at us?" she queried.

He squirmed in his seat, glancing over his shoulder. With surprise, he noted at least half a dozen black-clad swoop riders hot on their tail. "Sithspawn! Where were they five minutes ago?"

"Chasing me while you were getting chummy with a couple of Bothans," she ground.

"Hey, you try to hitching a ride with them," he snorted.

"We're getting closer," she said, and was right. The arrow tactic had worked, and they were within twenty meters of the fleeing skiff. "I'm going to jump when I get alongside them. You take care of our buddies back there."

He didn't even have time to reply before she went soaring off the seat, lightsaber aglow. He watched her land safely, then turned to the task at hand. Anakin wrestled with the controls, looping back around to face his pursuers. "All right, time to have some fun."

"You do know that we're idiots?"

The woman snuggled against his side nodded solemnly, her auburn hair glistening in the flickering lights outside their window. "This is very true. Do you want to leave?"

Jacen grinned and leaned back further against the plush couch. "I'd have to be an even bigger idiot to do that."

Tenel Ka laughed merrily, and nuzzled the side of his neck in playful affection. "I admit, I am rather pleased at our stupidity."

"You know, me too," he agreed, and was surprised to find that he meant it. But there were things weighing on his mind, things he would have to make clear before he could be at peace in this new relationship they were embarking on. "We need to talk, though. About what all this means."

She held up a hand to stop him. Her gray eyes blinked slowly, mulling over her next words. He could sense the wheels in her mind working, formulating a response that would appease him. He marveled at her beauty, both inside and out. She was full of character and loyalty, and—as had recently been demonstrated for him—a phenomenal physique. "Jacen, you are my oldest and dearest friend, and I'd like to think we know each other almost as well as anyone. So there is no need to explain. I know that permanency isn't a part of this package; I couldn't have it that way if I wanted to. I will need to marry one day, to provide an heir for my House. Hapes is not an unprejudiced consortium, and I would endanger you, myself, and any offspring by wedding a Jedi."

Jacen nodded sagely. "That's a good thing, Tenel Ka, because I don't plan to get married." He paused for emphasis. "But that leaves us with the decision of what to do in the meantime."

She traced a finger absentmindedly across his collar bone, sending shivers over him. "I get the feeling that love is not a factor for you."

He swallowed hard, unsure for once of what it is she wanted him to say. "Part of me will always love Danni," he admitted. "But I need to get her out of my head, out of my heart. I want to be up front with you. I don't want a serious relationship, I want a change." He cupped her chin, turning her face to his. "I do love you. But I'm not sure I can give you all of me."

Surprising him again, she smiled. "Good. Neither can I."

"So. We just make the best of all this until you what, find a suitable husband?" he quirked a brow.

She sighed. "Something like that."

He glanced out the window at the speeding air traffic. "It's a plan."

"The children are in our custody," Varen repressed a victorious grin. If he kept pleasing her like this, he might not be killed after all. "They are being pursued, but my men are confident of escape."

"Good," his new boss imitated a human grin. She still occupied his office on the asteroid base, but slowly he had become accustomed to it. She had invented a marvelous plan to get rid of Fel, after all. "These offspring will make most satisfactory apprentices."

Varen shrugged, mimicking the posture one with an itch between their shoulders would take. "Apprentice for what? I have plenty of other men here who are already grown, men that could serve you now instead of later."

She smiled placatingly. "I wonder sometimes at your simplemindedness. None of your band can serve in this way. Take my word for it."

"Fine," he nodded, any thought of it already dismissed. "I also have a report on Fel."

"He has followed our clues to the swoop gang on Nal Hutta?"

He nodded again. "Yes. He has ingratiated himself with them, just as you said. I suppose you were right about not letting them know who he is. They played their part better. Now, when we give the signal, he won't be expecting it."

"We cannot leave a trail this time, Varen," she hissed, suddenly sinister. "We have to make his death look like an accident."

Varen chewed on this thought a minute before proposing, "He won the Bilbousa Pursuit only two standard days ago. The next time he races, we could engineer an accident."

The feathers on her crest fluttered in appreciation of the plan. "Have it done. And no incongruities this time. Your stupidity during the war and our dealings with Chak Fel is why we have this to worry about today."

"Of course," he ground his jaw, but managed to sound subservient. "And what about after he is dead, and the children are delivered to you?"

She climbed awkwardly out of her chair, backward knees springing. "I have a few plans in store for your operation. We can once again dominate the slave trade, with my guidance and a little political pull."

"Political pull?" he frowned. "Slavery is illegal. I deal mostly in spice now."

"You think too small, this is your problem!" she waved a finger at him. "That is the problem with all my predecessors. My master had potential, but even he failed to see the threat in his own henchman. We must be ever watchful, and ever hungry." Her violet eyes locked with his. "Do you understand anything I'm saying?"

"Yes," he lied.

She smiled knowingly. "So. We will bring back slavery. Never you mind how. I'll see to it once my payment has been delivered."

He bowed before turning to leave. She was a strange one, all right. And it was more than likely that she would ruin him with these unfeasible plans. Perhaps it was time to rid himself of that nuisance once and for all.