by Jude Watson
“They had time to transmit our position. We have to move quickly,” Ferus said.
They raced up the stairs. The wind hit them full in the face as they stepped out onto the partially completed roof. Girders and beams crisscrossed the area closest to the hangar in the adjoining tower. Ferus stayed close to Lune and kept a careful eye on Trever.
He and Solace concentrated the Force. This was a difficult task for any Jedi, especially one who had never achieved Master status. To lift a heavy object in the air using only the Force took great concentration.
No, Ferus told himself, remembering the lessons of Yoda. Not concentration. Belief.
The beam rose in the air, rotated, and traveled across the empty air to the hangar tower next door. It entered one of the openings and shuddered as it hit. It held.
They now had a bridge to cross over. Hundreds of kilometers in the air, with no railing…but a bridge.
“Solace, you lead Astri and Lune over,” Ferus said.
Astri and Lune balanced on the beam. The wind blew, pushing Lune’s hair in his eyes. He didn’t flinch. He appeared perfectly balanced.
“I’m letting the air help me,” he called to Ferus.
“You can do it,” Ferus said.
Solace stayed between them. They walked single file across the beam. Lune never faltered. He never looked down. He walked across the beam as though he was strolling across a park on a sunny day.
“Now I’ve seen true courage,” Clive said.
Ferus turned to agree that the boy was amazing. He saw that Clive was watching Astri.
Solace, Astri, and Lune reached the other side. Astri hugged her son to her side.
“Your turn, Trever,” Ferus said.
Clive crooked an arm for Dona. “I’ll escort you to the beam, madam.”
Dona nodded. “Don’t worry about me—I live on a mountain. I can do it.”
Trever, Dona, and Clive started across the beam.
Roan waited with Ferus. They watched as the trio inched across the beam.
Suddenly Ferus was alert to an intruder. A prowler was streaking toward the beam. In the hangar tower, Solace had seen it, too. Dona ducked, almost losing her balance, but Clive grabbed her arm. Another prowler zoomed upward.
“Don’t move!” Ferus shouted to Roan. Then he Force-leaped across the space, soaring toward the aggressors as Solace did the same. In midair, the two Jedi slashed through the droids, sailed past each other and both landed on the beam as lightly as drifting snow.
“Ferus!”
Roan was leaping from beam to beam, avoiding beam fire from two spider droids that had appeared on the partially finished roof. Ferus jumped back to the roof, deflecting the fire. He landed behind the two spider droids and slashed at them with his lightsaber, turning them into molten metal.
“I’m beginning to like this Jedi business,” Roan said.
Across the way, Trever, Dona, and Clive were now safe in the tower. Roan and Ferus hurried to the beam and walked quickly across. “Okay, now comes the hard part,” Ferus said.
“My cruiser is three levels down,” Astri whispered. “The ramps are at each end.”
They moved toward the ramps that linked the levels. They couldn’t risk taking the turbolift. They were almost down the ramp when they heard a squad of stormtroopers heading up. It was too late to retreat; the troopers had spotted them. The commander gave the order to fire.
Ferus and Solace raced forward as the troopers began firing. Their lightsabers whirled as they charged. Roan and Oryon stayed behind, firing their blasters. Clive and Astri placed themselves in front of Dona, Trever, and Lune, their blasters in hand.
Ferus was not used to fighting with Solace. Her style surprised him. She was a loner, and, at this point, a reluctant Jedi. But her fighting style was as generous as it was aggressive. Her leaps were liquid, and she seemed to be everywhere at once, protecting Ferus and guiding them all downward even as she vanquished the troopers. Ferus couldn’t read her intentions as quickly as he should, but it didn’t matter. She read his. She countered his moves, reinforced his strikes, and covered his back.
When the clones were littered around them, he deactivated his lightsaber and nodded at her in admiration. “Thanks.”
They continued on, down to the next level. More prowler droids flew toward them, and Ferus cut them down in three clean strikes.
“They’re going to send more firepower now,” Solace said. “They know where we are.”
They raced down the last ramp toward the cruiser. Solace leaped into the pilot seat. Dona hurried inside along with Clive. Oryon sat next to Solace. Roan jumped in behind Solace, squeezing himself into the cockpit behind the laser cannon controls. Astri and Lune were next.
Suddenly an explosion rocked the hangar. A pair of droidekas had entered and were blasting at a load-bearing column. The column soon crashed to the floor.
The roof overhead began to cave, cracks spreading rapidly. The duracrete underneath their feet began to shift. Ferus grabbed Lune with one hand and Trever with the other. Oryon reached out and yanked Astri inside the craft.
“Lune!” Astri screamed.
With a thunderous roar, half of the level above collapsed. Ferus dove for cover with the two boys as the droidekas continued their deadly blasts.
Solace gunned the engines and soared away from the flying debris. She hovered outside in the air while Roan manned the laser cannons. He made one accurate shot, blasting one droideka and sending the flaming mass of metal into the other one.
Ferus rolled to his feet, coughing out the dust. “Discord missile!” he shouted, spotting one in the air. He knew from his Clone Wars service that it was filled with a flock of buzz droids, those lethal droids that could adhere to a starfighter going at top speed and drill into it, disabling it in seconds.
Solace dove away, but the discord missile kept tracking.
Lune suddenly sent his laser lasso flying. It was a clean red line in the air, flying outward toward the missile. Ferus held his breath. He could feel the Force in the air as Lune unknowingly used it to guide the lasso. Lune may not have been aware of what the Force was, but his mother was in danger and he would make it work for him.
The lasso snaked around the missile, hard enough to yank it slightly off course. It crashed into the side of the hangar. Solace zoomed away, under fire from the ground now.
More stormtroopers were spilling up the ramp, blaster rifles firing. Ferus released Trever and kept the two boys behind him as his lightsaber arced in the air, deflecting fire. While he moved backward, he considered what to do. Solace was circling around, trying to avoid fire and get back inside the hangar. The battalion was between her and Ferus. More were coming every moment. One of them fired a missile and it hit only meters away. Ferus felt the heat of the blast on his face.
Thinking frantically, Ferus jumped onto a small airspeeder. He shepherded Trever and Lune inside, then started the engine. “Drive!” he ordered Trever. He leaped onto the back of the speeder, lightsaber in hand, and deflected fire. Trever took off.
“Where to?” Trever shouted.
“The roof next door!” Ferus dropped back into the speeder as Trever pushed the engines. They shot out into the air and straight over to the roof. Here they were finally out of range of the blasterfire and missiles.
“Let me take over,” Ferus said, reaching for the controls. He zoomed over the beams, searching. Then he dove the craft down into an unfinished turbolift shaft. Safe for the moment, he let the craft hover.
“What now?” Trever asked.
Ferus thought carefully back on the design of the tower. He knew the wall would be thin near the roof, since the reinforcing durasteel hadn’t been added.
“Solace will find us,” Ferus said. He directed the craft up the shaft and maneuvered it closer to the wall. “I need you to do something for me.”
Trever saw the order in Ferus’s eyes. He shook his head. “No. I’m not leaving you. Not again.”
“You
have to. You have to take Lune.”
“I can take care of myself,” Lune said.
Trever sighed. He knew he had to go. “Every time I leave you, you end up captured.”
“Not this time. The Emperor wants me free. I don’t know why, but he needs me. All I have to do is walk out. I can buy time until you can get away. Trever, it’s the only way.”
Trever nodded. “All right. But just so you know, you can’t get rid of me for good.”
“I know.” Ferus activated his lightsaber. He buried it in the wall. It glowed, and the wall began to disintegrate, peeling back on itself. Lune watched, wide-eyed.
“I’ve never seen a Jedi in action before,” he said. “I wish I could do that.”
“Maybe someday you will,” Ferus said. He jumped onto the partially demolished wall. Hanging on with one hand, he scanned the air. He was high over Sath, on the opposite side from the lobby. Stormtroopers were specks below him, lined up and ready to receive orders. Several seeker droids zoomed below but hadn’t tracked him yet. He saw no sign of Darth Vader but still felt his presence.
A glint on a wing, and Solace was diving, heading for him.
“You’re going to have to be quick,” he told Trever.
Trever balanced on the speeder, holding Lune by the hand. He stepped carefully onto the wall, helping Lune to stand beside him. They balanced there, waiting, while Solace cut back on the engines.
She expertly guided the craft to nudge against the wall. Astri’s face was white with suspense.
Lune and Trever stepped easily into the craft and were pulled into seats by Astri’s eager hands.
“Get to the base. I’ll join you,” Ferus shouted over the wind to Solace.
He watched as the ship zoomed away. Then he turned, jumped into the borrowed speeder, and raced back up to the roof. He picked his way past the blasted beams and took the stairs down to street level to meet Darth Vader.
The dark side was so strong that Ferus felt like he was being engulfed by it as he walked up to Vader. He had to pull himself together and act as normal as he could, not like he’d just fought a heated battle.
“I think we’re tracking the same person,” he told Vader. “Any luck?”
Vader didn’t answer for a moment. A long moment. Ferus tried not to sweat. All he could hear was the tunnel-echo whooshing of Vader’s electronic breath-mask.
“Several battalions of droids and troopers have been demolished. Prowler droids as well. The saboteur has help.”
“Lucky that you came prepared,” Ferus said, indicating the armed activity around him.
“Strange. Captain Chainly reported that lightsabers were involved.”
“That doesn’t seem likely,” Ferus said, relieved that he’d hidden his own.
Vader didn’t answer. “Do you have the saboteur’s name?”
“Quintus Farel,” Ferus answered.
“That is an alias.”
“That’s all I have. The apartment was empty when I got there.”
“You took a long time to find me.”
“I was searching. I thought we should work together.”
“I work alone.”
He could not have bested Darth Vader in battle. Ferus knew that. But he had won this round simply by walking out the door. For some reason, he had the protection of the Emperor. As long as he had that, Vader couldn’t touch him.
Vader didn’t have to speak. Ferus knew he was angry. He could feel how difficult it was for Vader to suppress it. Behind his words was fury and frustration. He had gotten to him just by standing here, just by existing.…
Something tickled Ferus’s memory. Something familiar about this scene. What was it? He felt there was something here that he should be able to grasp but couldn’t.
“Lord Vader?” Vader’s comlink crackled. “Space cruiser seen leaving the area, sir.”
“Go after it!” Vader commanded.
“Too late for pursuit, sir. I sent a patrol ship after it.”
“Send everything you have.”
Vader switched off the comlink. “It does not matter,” he said. “They cannot leave the planet.”
The helmet turned back toward Ferus. The blank eyes seemed to study him. Then Vader turned and walked off, his cape swirling behind him.
Keets and Curran sat on the floor together in the holding room.
“What’s taking Sauro so long?” Keets asked.
“I don’t know,” Curran said. “But the longer we’re here, the better. Once we get into an Imperial detention center, we’re sunk.”
“You mean we’re not sunk now?”
The door hissed open. Zackery stood there, a reluctant look on his face. “Senate regulations say I have to send in food.”
Keets brightened. “Things are looking up.”
A cook droid wheeled in. “Things are done by the book in the Senate, young man,” she advised Zackery.
“Don’t call me young man!” Zackery shouted at her.
“Sorry, old man!” the droid trilled.
Zackery snorted and stamped out, but left the door ajar. He stood, his hand on his blaster, and watched.
Keets looked at the droid closely. Despite the fresh paint job, he recognized the antique droid WA-7. It was the same droid that had worked in Dexter’s Diner. She’d served him sliders and the slop Dex called a drink at least a hundred times.
Yes, things were definitely looking up.
She placed a tray on the floor next to them. A large pot of liquid, two mugs, and two veg turnovers. She took the items off the tray and then took the tray away again. “Enjoy!” she said.
She began to wheel out. Keets reached for the cups.
“I’m not thirsty,” Curran said.
“Oh, you’ll like this.” As soon as WA-7 was between them and Zackery, Keets took the small blaster out of the pot.
Curran’s reaction time was excellent for a once-bookish senatorial aide. He jumped to his feet and charged as Keets moved forward with the blaster. At the same moment, WA-7 threw the heavy metal tray at Zackery’s neck. It hit him hard, and he staggered backward. Keets flipped the blaster and used the hilt to knock him on the head. Zackery fell heavily.
Keets turned to the three security droids and blasted them into smoking metal.
Keets and Curran stepped over Zackery’s inert body. They peered out into the hallway. The Senate was coming to life again as Senators, aides, and droids reported for work. Intent on their business, no one gave them a second glance. Together with WA-7, they moved into the stream of workers.
“I suggest a fast exit,” WA-7 said. “I can find my own way out. Say hello to Dex for me!”
She wheeled away. Keets and Curran knew the Senate building as well as the homes they’d grown up in. Within moments, they had found the closest exit. They were free.
Solace steered Astri’s star cruiser straight into the hold. They all climbed out and made their way to the cockpit.
“So far so good,” Oryon muttered. “No Imperial guards rushing the ship.”
“Contact the dockmaster and get clearance,” Solace said. “That will be the real test. I’ll start the departure checks.”
They all stayed in the cockpit, too anxious to find seating. Astri kept Lune close by her side.
“Request permission to take off,” Oryon spoke into the comm unit.
“Checking data,” the dockmaster replied.
Minutes ticked by.
They exchanged worried glances.
“It’s taking too long,” Solace said.
“Of course they changed the registry numbers!” Sauro screamed at the Imperial officer sitting at the databank that monitored all Imperial traffic. “Look for a ship that matches its description.”
The officer keyed in more data. He sent another holographic space map into the air.
“Now give me the data from every spaceport near its last known position,” Sauro said, pacing behind him.
“Senator, there is a ship on the landing platform
on Samaria.…”
Sauro stopped pacing. Samaria! Of course. The hijacking hadn’t been random at all. They’d gone straight to the planet where Ferus Olin was. How could he have missed it? He’d been so blind.
“That’s it. Get me the dockmaster, now.”
“The spaceport is still in the hands of the Samarians, sir, not us—”
“Just get him!”
A moment later, an obviously nervous dockmaster was on the comm.
“Yes, there is an Imperial ship. It’s a diplomatic ship. It’s been cleared for departure.”
“Stop that ship! Now!” Sauro shouted.
“But sir, it’s an Imperial ship,” the dockmaster said patiently. “You must have misunderstood me. All Imperial ships are cleared to—”
“Listen to me.” Sauro leaned toward the comm. “Revoke the order and stop that ship or I will personally escort you to an Imperial prison for the rest of your life.”
“Ah, sir, I’m sorry. But I’m afraid the clearance has already been granted. The ship just cleared Samarian airspace. Sir.”
Sauro slammed his hand down on the console, breaking two sensors.
His assistant hovered by his elbow. “Sir,” he whispered. “The Emperor would like to see you. Now.”
Darth Vader left the mess of the botched pursuit behind and climbed into his custom-made airspeeder. He sat for a moment as his driver waited for orders.
Ferus Olin. So insignificant that Vader had forgotten about him. He had been a blip in his past. Something that had happened long ago, a small jealousy that had never blossomed into a real, mature hatred. He would have been happy never to have seen him again.
But of course he survived the Clone Wars. He hadn’t been a Jedi.
Vader didn’t think of him as a rival. He had never even achieved the status of a Jedi. He had left as a Padawan. A student. Ferus couldn’t come close to matching his power.
But why was he here? Why had his Master employed him at all?
There could be only one answer. Ferus could be one of the few left in the galaxy capable of becoming a Sith apprentice. Capable of being trained, capable of rising to the heights of power.