“Hutt slime!” Remis Vehn snapped, as the transport scraped along the wall of the pit. “Watch my ship!”
“The controls have too much play in them,” Anakin complained.
“No, you’re flying like a Twi’lek on spice,” Vehn replied.
“Quiet,” Tahiri said, “or we’ll restrain your mouth, too.”
Vehn yelped again as they scraped stone. The fit was tighter than Anakin had thought it would be.
Still, a moment later, they settled into the steaming water of the underground pool. Anakin dropped the landing ramp, and an instant later Ikrit and the two Jedi children were on board.
“Strap in, everyone,” Anakin told them. He hit the lifts and back up they started.
An instant later, the whole ship shuddered and their ears were filled with the screech of metal.
“The landing ramp, you vac-brain!” Vehn screamed. “You didn’t pull up the ramp!”
Belatedly Anakin flipped the appropriate switch, but all he got was a grinding noise.
“Great,” he muttered.
“Anakin,” Tahiri said, “I think we may have trouble.”
“We’ll make it, even with the ramp down. We’ll figure out what to do about that later.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She pointed up through the cockpit.
Something dark was eclipsing the morning light.
“Sith spawn. They’ve moved one of the big freighters over the hole.”
“Continue,” Master Ikrit murmured.
“But—”
“Continue.” The diminutive Master was crouched on the floor, eyes closed, his voice a serene purr. Anakin felt a powerful surge in the Force.
“You should strap in, Master.”
“No time.”
Anakin nodded. “As you say, Master Ikrit.” He throttled up. Banging, sparking, and shaking, they shot up toward the belly of their enemy.
“He’s pushing it up,” Tahiri said in awe. “Master Ikrit is pushing the freighter up.”
And indeed, when they emerged, rather than sitting right over the hole, the freighter was some eighty meters off the ground. Its thrusters were burning, pushing it down, but it wasn’t budging. Anakin darted his gaze about. The other ships and people on foot had sidled in on all sides but one, so he cut toward the hole as a brutal barrage struck them.
“My ship!” Vehn howled, as the deck pitched wildly. Not blinking, Anakin took them through the storm, just as two more ships closed in, completing the trap.
“Help Master Ikrit,” Anakin told the Jedi candidates. “Push the freighter up farther.”
“Master Ikrit is gone, Anakin,” Valin said. “He jumped out of the hatch.”
“He what?”
“There he is!” Tahiri shrieked, pointing ahead of them.
There Ikrit was indeed, walking toward the blocking ships, a corvette and a light freighter. As he approached them, they were parted as if by two gigantic hands.
“I don’t believe it,” Anakin said. But he gunned forward, nevertheless, aimed at the gap the Jedi Master had created for them. Blaster bolts and laser beams sizzled and hissed in the air, but every shot that might have hit either Ikrit or the ship bent away, missing by centimeters, and still the small Jedi strolled sedately along.
They were almost free now, passing over Ikrit.
“He can’t keep that up,” Anakin said. “Tahiri, use the Force. Snag him as we go by.”
“You bet,” she answered. Her confidence rang false; Anakin heard a tremor in her voice.
That was when the first bolt slipped through and struck Master Ikrit. Anakin felt it in the Force, a spike of clarity. No pain, no fear, no remorse, only … understanding.
Two more shots hit Ikrit in quick succession, and then fire was pounding their ship again. With a sob of anguish, Anakin jetted the ship through the hole and spun. At the same moment, with an inarticulate growl, Tahiri leapt from the open hatch, lightsaber glowing, and ran toward the downed Master.
“No!” Anakin howled. He brought the forward guns—the only ones under his direct control—to bear, and opened up on the ships that were suddenly closing between him and Tahiri. They returned fire. He caught a glimpse of her, Ikrit’s body in her arms, dodging back toward him. Absurdly, his eyes were drawn to her bare feet, white against the brown soil.
The transport turned halfway over under a barrage, and every light in the ship went out. Cursing, Anakin started furiously trying to reroute, and then the power whined back on. The shields were gone.
“Valin, Sannah, one of you!” he shouted. “Get to the laser turret! Now!”
He did the only thing he could. In seconds they would be cooked. If he stood any chance of getting Tahiri back on board, he needed a plan.
He spun and fired the jets, leaping above the other ships, strafing them as he went. He was absorbed now, his senses in the Force stretched to their limits, dodging shots before they were fired, sensing the weakest spots to place his own rounds, pinwheeling and jagging above them.
The ships came up with him. He fought for altitude, all the time aware that Tahiri was farther and farther below him. He could still feel her. She was still alive.
Master Ikrit was not. Anakin felt the old Jedi’s life go, felt it pass through him like a sweet wind.
I am proud of you, Anakin, it seemed to say. Remember—together, you are stronger than the sum of your parts. I love you. Good-bye.
Gritting his teeth against another concussion, Anakin clenched the tears in his skull. Cry later, Anakin, he thought. Right now you have to see.
One of his engines was limping. He couldn’t win this, not here, not now. With a curse that bordered on being a sob, he flipped, slid between two ships that collided an instant later, and punched toward the upper atmosphere.
Below him, Tahiri’s presence dwindled.
Like Chewie. Just like Chewie.
He jerked the ship back around and aimed it at the nearest ship, a corvette, and went to full throttle.
“What the—” Vehn gasped. “You’re going to kill us!”
Anakin fired. The other ship held steady, steady.
Anakin pulled up, just slightly, and skipped off the top of the corvette the way a hurled stone might skip across a lake. The collision tossed them up with a terrible shrieking of metal.
The counterforce hurled the corvette down, not far, but far enough to slam it nose-first into the Great Temple. An orchid of flame uncurled from its engines.
A gasp later, the turbolaser in the turret began talking as Sannah took control of the gun. Anakin put the ship into a climb, fighting for distance though every meter he put behind him tore another stitch from his heart.
“I’ll be back, Tahiri,” he said. “That I swear. I’ll be back.”
Kam Solusar gasped and sagged against the damp stone wall of the cave. Tionne, nearby, stifled a cry of anguish. Some of the children, the more sensitive ones, began to cry, probably not even sure what they were crying about.
He groped through the darkness until he found Tionne and took her in his arms. He could smell the salt on her cheeks, feel the torn place in her.
Tionne felt things so deep, so strong. She had no fear of the pain that such openness could cause. It was one of the things he loved about her. While he put on armor against the universe, she took it all in and gave it back as something better. Her wound would heal, and from it a song would come. Others thought she was weak, because her powers in the Force weren’t so great.
Kam knew better. Ultimately, she was stronger than he.
“Master Ikrit,” she whispered.
“I know,” Kam replied, stroking her silver hair. “He knew all along.”
They stood that way for a few precious seconds, drawing strength and comfort from each other. It was Tionne who moved away first.
“The children need us,” she said. “We’re all they have, now.”
“No,” Kam whispered back. “Anakin is still out there.”