Chapter 3
The Jedi Choice
The Rimsoo headed for space, jinking wildly through a storm of red plasma that criss-crossed all around it. The remnants of the droid force, taking to space in Vulture droids and Techno-Union Starfighters, were embarking on suicide missions, blazing their way through squadrons of starfighters and smashing themselves into the Republic Star Destroyers. Anakin and Obi-Wan stood just behind the Rimsoo's pilot, looking out through the forward viewports. So far, none of the Star Destroyers had taken any serious damage, and there were only a hundred enemy fighters still fighting.
Anakin grimaced. His face had returned to normal, and his eyes had lost their yellow-hue. His mechanical arm had came back online, although it was a little crispy, as Anakin put it. "I should be on the ground mopping up the resistance!" he said, frowning.
"Yes, I know you'd like that. And I'd prefer it to this ride back to the Star Destroyer. But did you forget you dropped your lightsaber down the sinkhole?" said Obi-Wan dryly.
Realisation dawned on Anakin's face. "And you didn't summon it back up?"
"No. I was just a bit busy… You know, tending to a couple of wounded clone troopers, and yourself," Obi-Wan had meant to sound nonchalant in a brotherly way, but it'd come out a bit harsh, and he instantly regretted trying to make the joke.
After a few seconds of angered silence, Anakin suddenly perked up. "Master! Look!"
With a burst of white light that indicated that ships were reverting from hyperspace to realspace, four Providence class Separatist Destroyers appeared off the Republic fleet's port bow. The enemy Destroyers, similar to the Invisible Hand, opened fire straight away, their heavy turbolasers sending needles of thick green energy into the Star Destroyers. And, suddenly, the sensor-blip of a Sheathipede class shuttle appeared, racing out from Utapau. The Separatist leaders' shuttle!
"Bring us in to the nearest Star Destroyer! Now!" snapped Obi-Wan. The clone pilot obeyed, flying straight into the long hangar of a Venator.
Anakin and Obi-Wan dashed out of the Rimsoo, not even stopping to offer an explanation the surprised clone pilots on the flight deck.
Anakin leapt fifty feet and landed in the open cockpit of a blue Jedi Interceptor. The pilot who had been about to enter his ship stared as Anakin keyed the controls and gunned the fighter's engines, closing the canopy and shooting out of the hangar. Obi-Wan followed in a V-19 Torrent fighter/bomber that he'd commandeered from two surprised clones.
Anakin pushed the throttles well past their overload stops and primed the laser cannons of his fighter. The shuttle was rapidly nearing the edge of Utapau's gravity well; as soon as it cleared the gravitational pull, the shuttle would jump to hyperspace and escape.
Anakin opened fire when he was one hundred thousand kilometres away. The heavily armoured shuttle jinked, dodging many of the blasts and absorbing the rest on its powerful shields.
Obi-Wan rocketed past in his heavy V-19 Torrent. The fighter/bomber was incredibly fast, but not very manoeuvrable.
At fifty thousand kilometres away, Obi-Wan fired two of his Torrent's proton torpedoes. The blue drive trails of the torpedoes trailed as the powerful missiles angled to hit the enemy shuttle.
The shuttle pulled up at the last second, and deployed a missile countermeasure. The proton torpedoes flew off target, zooming away into space.
C'MON! I CAN END THE WAR! Anakin's thoughts roared in his ears as he raced forward, stitching space with his laser cannons.
An alarm suddenly bleeped, and Anakin threw his fighter into an evasive barrel-roll, just missing the stream of laser blasts that came from the sixty Tri-fighters on his tail. A full five squadrons! The commander of the enemy fleet had obviously decided that Nute Gunray and his cronies were worth more than an entire wing of droid fighters; but it wasn't so much the leaders that the Separatists needed, it was the wealth and technology that the leaders controlled.
"Master!" Anakin screamed the word into his comlink on an open channel. "You go after the shuttle. I'll take these guys."
Anakin half-looped his fighter and shot towards the enemy fighters, pulling rapid evasive manoeuvres and firing. His wildly manoeuvring spacecraft dodged every laser sent this way, and blew eight Tri-fighters out of the sky before one lucky laser shot ripping into the Jedi Interceptor's right wing, blowing off the right control surfaces.
Anakin's fighter went into a sudden, stomach-churning spiral, descending rapidly. The stars outside his fighter blurred, and the battle between the fleets seemed to spin around Anakin, though in fact, it was he who was spinning. Fire trailed from the remnants of his right wing, fed by concentrated oxygen that was escaping from the fighter's six day supply of air.
Obi-Wan felt Anakin's sudden distress through the Force. The Jedi Master didn't even flinch, but his mind screamed at him.
I can save Anakin, or I can kill the Separatists! He didn't have time to do both; CIS fighters were already circling around Anakin's fighter.
The Jedi choice would've been, of course, to destroy the shuttle. Anakin had swore an oath of selfless service to the Republic; he would be expected to lay down his life to kill the Separatist leaders. But Obi-Wan's choice, a friend's choice, a mentor's choice, was to go and rescue his best friend.
Obi-Wan's mind screamed at him to keep going, to kill the Separatists, but his heart screamed louder, to turn around and save his former padawan.
Obi-Wan's hands, white-knuckled, clutched the control-sticks. He could hear Anakin scream curses on the comm.
Checking the sensors, Obi-Wan saw that the Separatists were twenty seconds away from breaching the gravity well in the slow, but well-armoured shuttle. Obi-Wan would reach optimal accuracy range in five, but he didn't think he could destroy the shuttle in just fifteen seconds.
So he gritted his teeth and fired the last of his proton torpedoes at the shuttle, and performed a half-loop, racing up and back towards Anakin, firing needles of blue lasers at the Separatist fighters that circled his best friend like vultures.
Anakin cursed as his lock-on warning blared just by his ear. A horrible feeling of helplessness that made him want to shriek welled up inside him. So this is the end!
Anakin closed his eyes and let go of his anger, at peace by the end. He saw the bright flash of a laser through his eyelids, and saw the angry glare of an explosion.
Ten explosions.
The lock-on warning had ceased, and Anakin opened his eyes. All around him, Tri-fighters were exploding from pin-point fire coming from a V-19 Torrent fighter/bomber which was heading towards Anakin at a respectable fraction of lightspeed. Out of the fifty two Tri-fighters that'd remained after Anakin's attack, only twenty were still flying.
Obi-Wan! Anakin thought, grinning. He could feel his master, a well of Force-power so deep and so full that even Master Yoda couldn't have been able to match the power that stemmed from Obi-Wan Kenobi, who was, without a doubt, the Ultimate Jedi ever to live.
The last Tri-fighter exploded, its evasive manoeuvres proving futile to dodge the flurry of blue cannon-fire that had engulfed it. Obi-Wan's fighter/bomber, slowing down as it passed Anakin, went into a roll of celebration; Obi-Wan must've felt elated, because even the slightest appliance of G-force usually made the Jedi Master's face turn green and his knees shake.
"You made the friend choice?" said Anakin; he was so attuned to Obi-Wan's mind that he all but knew Obi-Wan's thoughts.
"No, Anakin. I made the Jedi Choice. I saved a life; I didn't maim and kill. It makes a change in this war," Obi-Wan said the last sentence with a tinge of sadness.
"Master," Anakin said after a pause.
"Yes, Anakin?" Obi-Wan said.
"Thanks. Just, thanks," It was the greatest measure of gratitude Anakin had ever showed to Obi-Wan for three years; Anakin usually solved his own problems in the war, and saved Obi-Wan's life, not vice-versa.
Jay's eyes fluttered open in the medical bay of the Venator class Star Destroyer Incorruptible. The sickly sweet smell of bacta the slimy blue medical fluid that had been hailed as a miracle since the year it was discovered, three thousand years ago, hung thick in the air. Jay struggled to sit up, but found he was restrained to the clean and comfortable white bed he lay on. Probably so I don't mess up my wound anymore…
All in all, Jay was shocked to be alive. He was sure he'd died at the hands of General Grievous, but, then again, his armour had probably protected him until a medical ship arrived.
Turning slightly, Jay looked at the bed next to him, and instantly felt pity. A fellow clone trooper lay on the bed, the charred stumps where his arms and legs should've been spurting blood.
"Med-droid! Med-droid!" Jay screamed. Instantly, an IM-6 medical droid rolled over and spoke in its calm, melodic voice.
"Yes sir?"
"Why isn't that trooper receiving treatment?" barked Jay; he was no officer, but without his armour plates and insignia as a private, the droid wouldn't know that.
"Triage X," The droid said calmly, and rolled away.
Triage X; too badly injured, unlikely to survive. Tears welled up in Jay's eyes at the injustice of it. He rolled over to face his Vode, his brother.
Jay recognised the clone's younger face; a newer batch of troops. "I'm sorry, Vod'ika!" Jay said sadly, speaking the Mando'a (Mandalorian language)for little brother to the dying clone, calling him his little brother.
"Thanks, Vode."