Chapter 4: On the Run

Kyrr Geron stood and waited in the elevator as it ascended the eighteen floors between the level on which his ruined home was and the top floor.

Good thing this elevator doesn't have any windows. If there is a secondary squad somewhere nearby, I'm sure they're watching this whole building. I'd practically be a stationary target in this metal box.

He made a mental note to avoid any windowed corridors once he got to the top floor. The building was thick enough that there was a sprawling grid of inner hallways on each floor, with only a few sunlit halls around the edges. Presently the elevator came to a stop, and a set of doors opened behind and in front of Kyrr. He walked briskly through the door in front of him and into a long hallway with many doors on either side. These doors were larger and spaced farther apart than those in the floors below; this was the top floor, where fifty or so of the building's richest tenants kept their personal airspeeders in two or four-vehicle garages.

Kyrr raced toward the garage which contained his own craft, glancing around occasionally for anyone who might see him. As he rounded the corner into the hall where he would gain access to his speeders, he came face to face with a finely-dressed human male. The man stopped in his tracks and took a step back with a startled expression on his face. Staring at the apparently faceless Mandalorian warrior in front of him, he pointed a finger at Kyrr and spoke in a frightened whisper.

"You... You're the one! The one those clones said they were looking-"

Kyrr had heard enough. He abruptly ended the man's life with a squeeze of a trigger. He didn't wait for the body to fall to the floor, he simply continued toward his destination.

Now he was a threat, Kyrr thought as he entered a 7 digit pass code into a panel by the door. He knew who I was, and who was looking for me.

He entered the room and stepped onto a slightly raised platform on which his two vehicles rested. As the doors closed, Kyrr pressed a button on a console on the platform, and the ceiling above it opened, revealing the dim, early morning sky. When the ceiling had finished sliding over to one side, the platform began to whirr as it slowly rose up to fill the open space above it.

Kyrr did not sit idly by waiting for this to happen. He jumped in the pristine and shiny-looking airspeeder he so often used when his business was in the upper levels of Coruscant, and attempted to get the engine started. By the time the platform was level with the building's flat rooftop, the machine had turned on with its usual grinding sound. As he gently increased the repulsorlift thrust, the vehicle levitated up to about two feet off the ground. All of a sudden there was a popping sound and thick grey smoke billowed out of the engine compartment. Then there was a high pitched buzzing noise followed by a metallic crunching sound as the airspeeder fell back to the ground. After that the buzzing stopped. Kyrr held back an angry scream of frustration

What did those chakaare at Aratech do to my engine?

He pressed a button that opened the canopy and got out, switching over to the half-rustedspeeder that still worked. It started up without a problem, and as he was about to take off, he saw a republic gunship slowly approaching the rooftop of the apartment complex. It had both of its large white doors slid back, revealing several fully armed clone troopers inside. At the far end of the building, about one hundred yards away Kyrr, the gunship hovered close to the rooftop and deployed its troops. Kyrr sat motionless, hoping to avoid immediate detection. The clones were all on the roof now, making their way closer to him. They eventually came to a stop around one landing platform, and one of the troopers bent down and seemed to be fiddling with the emergency exterior console that was designed to grant people access to their rented garages if the platform had accidentally been lowered. Kyrr counted nine clones.

So I suppose this must be the backup squad.

Then the shocktrooper that had been kneeling over the console stood up again, and all nine of them stood on the platform as it descended into the garage below. It was obvious to Kyrr that they meant to cut him off from any escape, but they had no idea how long ago the first squad went down, nor the exact garage in which Kyrr kept his speeders.

As soon as the squad had disappeared into the building, Kyrr looked around cautiously and noticed that the gunship was now strafing the rooftop, watching for any activity. If Kyrr did anything now, he'd be spotted, and possibly killed. It wouldn't be long now before the shocktroopers found the dead man Kyrr had shot, and then they would realize that he had already made it to the roof.

If I move from where I am while that gunship is here, I'm toast. If I sit and wait until the clones figure it out, I get to the same outcome.

He couldn't decide what to do. Just then, over on the far side of the rooftop, a landing platform rose up with an airspeeder on it. The gunship raced over to it, and the two remaining clones from the squad approached it with blasters raised. One trooper knocked on the window of the speeder while the other stood behind him with his blaster trained on where he estimated the head of the vehicle's occupant would be.

The gunship was now strafing around the airspeeder, and as its canopy opened revealing an Ithorian at the controls, the gunship pointed exactly away from Kyrr. He took the opportunity without hesitation, gunning the throttle to full speed before he even activated the repulsorlift underneath him. Metal scraped on metal, kicking up a shower of sparks as Kyrr's craft skidded off the edge of the rooftop. It fell for a moment before the repulsorlift kicked in and he gained altitude.

The two shocktroopers turned around in time to see him drop off the edge of the building. They motioned to the gunship and it sped after Kyrr. He tried to lose the pursuing craft by flying through several narrow spaces between buildings, but the republic gunship still followed, rising far above the buildings and then lowering back down when Kyrr's speeder was out in the open. The gunship was gaining on him now, getting closer and closer as the chase progressed. Thinking fast, he took a dive and turned around a building, trying to merge quickly into a line of airspeeder traffic before the gunship pilot could see him again.

This plan worked, to some extent. However, just as Kyrr rounded the skyscraper, the gunship had fired a well-aimed green laser blast. It hit the tail end of Kyrr's speeder, damaging it significantly. He was losing fuel quickly as it evaporated into the air, leaving a trail of smoke behind him. He flew into a billow of smog from some industrial plant and hid there, disguising the smoke rising from his craft that would have otherwise gotten him easily spotted in a crowd.

He waited until his fuel tank indicator showed that it was less than a quarter full before venturing back out into the open, but was pleased to see the gunship had moved on, probably looking for the wreckage it'd never find. He quickly looked over a holographic map projected onto the transparisteel viewscreen of the canopy.

The spaceport is my best bet.

Thanks very much for reading this far! It seems like a lot of people only read Chapter 1 or so, and fewer and fewer people go on to read the next chapters I have up...

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed Chapter 4. I still have another chapter or two up my sleeve, and there's more on the way...

Oh, and please note: when I say "shocktroopers," I am referring to Attack of the Clones -style, white clonetroopers, that would eventually have red markings on their armor by Revenge of the Sith. This takes place near the beginning of the war, so I thought I'd point that out to avoid any confusion.

Please leave your comments and reviews!