Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones

by R. A. Salvatore

  Immovable.

  The wire snapped tightly, but Obi-Wan didn't budge.

  He felt the angle of the pull change dramatically as the rocket-man plunged to the deck, his pack breaking away.

  Obi-Wan started around the pole, but stopped and shielded his eyes as Jango Fett's rocket pack exploded with a burst of light and a tremendous concussion.

  “Dad!” Boba Fett cried as the rocket pack blew apart, his face coming right to the viewscreen. But then he saw Jango, off to the side and apparently unharmed, though tugging frantically against the pull of the wire—that was now being controlled by the Jedi.

  Boba slapped one hand helplessly against the screen, mouthing “Dad” again, and then he winced as the Jedi slammed into his father, kicking and butting him, and both of them, locked together, went rolling off the back edge of the landing pad, sliding fast down the skirt and toward the raging ocean. Obi-Wan kicked and tried to find his way back to the Force, but Jango punched him repeatedly. He could hardly believe that the bounty hunter would waste the effort, with certain death awaiting them both at the end of the slide and fall. He managed to pull back somewhat and saw Jango lift one forearm, a strange smile on his face. The bounty hunter clenched his fist, and a line of claws popped forth from the armor.

  Obi-Wan instinctively recoiled as Jango lifted that arm higher, but then the bounty hunter slammed it down, not on Obi-Wan, but on the platform skirt. At the same time, Jango worked his other hand, releasing the locking mechanism of the wire-launching bracelet, and it slid free of his arm.

  He screeched to a halt, and Obi-Wan slid past him. “Catch a roller fish for me,” the Jedi heard Jango say, and then he was falling, over the lip and down toward the raging whitecaps.

  “Dad! Oh, Dad!” Boba Fett cried in relief as he spotted his father clambering back over the skirt lip and onto the platform. Jango climbed to his feet and stumbled toward Slave I , and Boba rushed to the hatch, sliding it open and reaching down to help his father aboard.

  “Get us out of here,” the dazed and battered Jango said, and Boba grinned and rushed to the control panel, firing up the engines.

  “I'll put her right to lightspeed!”

  “Just break atmosphere and take her straight out!” Jango ordered, and his words came out with a growl of pain as he held his bruised side. Then he noticed his son's wounded look. “Get the nav computer on line and have it set the coordinates for the jump,” he conceded.

  Boba's smile beamed brighter than ever. “Liftoff.” he shouted.

  Obi-Wan used the Force to grab the trailing, loose end of the wire that still held him by the wrists, and he threw that end out, looping it over a crossbeam in the platform structure. His descent stopped with a sudden jerk.

  He glanced around, then began to swing, back and forth, gaining momentum until he was far enough out to pull himself free of the bond and drop lightly onto a small service platform, barely above the lashing waves.

  He took only a moment to catch his breath, and then opened the door of the service turbolift with a wave of his hand. Even before the door opened at the landing platform, he heard the engines of the bounty hunter's ship roar to life.

  He came over the lip, spotting his lightsaber immediately and calling it in to him with the Force.

  But he was too late. The ship was already shuddering, ready to blast away.

  Obi-Wan pulled a small transmitter from his belt and threw it out long and far at Slave I . The magnetic lock of the tracking device grasped on to the ship's hull just in time.

  Rain and steam pouring all about him, Obi-Wan Kenobi stood there for a long while until Slave I disappeared from view.

  He looked around at the platform, replaying the battle in his head, his respect for this bounty hunter, Jango Fett, growing considerably. He understood now why Jango had been selected by Sifo-Dyas, or Tyranus, or whoever it was that selected him. The man was good, full of tricks and full of skill.

  He had taken Obi-Wan Kenobi, a Jedi Knight, the man who had defeated the Sith Lord Darth Maul, to the very precipice of disaster.

  But Obi-Wan was still pleased at the way it had played out. He would track Jango now. Perhaps at the end of the coming journey, he would finally get some answers instead of even more riddles.

  = XIX =

  Boba sat quietly, sensing the tension, as Slave I blasted away from Kamino. He wanted to talk about his shot with the laser cannon, about how he had knocked the Jedi down and sent his lightsaber flying away. But this wasn't the time, he knew, for Jango wore an intense expression that Boba recognized all too well, one that told him clearly that now was not the time for him to speak.

  The boy rested back against the wall farthest from his father as Jango worked the controls, setting the coordinates for the jump to hyperspace. “Come on, come on,” Jango said repeatedly, rocking back and forth as if urging the ship on, and glancing over at the sensors every few seconds as if he expected a fleet of starships to be chasing them away.

  Then he gave a shout of victory and punched the hyperdrive, and Boba went back against the wall, watching the stars elongate.

  Jango Fett slumped back in his seat and breathed a sigh of relief, his expression softening almost immediately. “Well, that was a bit too close,” he said with a laugh.

  “You smashed him good,” Boba replied, his excitement beginning to bubble up again. “He never had a chance against you, Dad!”

  Jango smiled and nodded. “To tell the truth, Son, he had me in real trouble there,” he admitted. “After he dodged that explosive pack, I'd about run out of tricks.”

  Boba frowned at first, wanting to argue against anyone ever getting the upper hand on his father, but then, as he considered the moment Jango had mentioned, his frown became a wide smile. “I got him good with the laser cannon!”

  “You did great,” Jango replied. “You fired at just the right time, and were right there, ready to help me in when it was time for us to go. You're learning well, Boba. Better than I ever believed possible.”

  “That's because I'm a little you,” the boy reasoned, but Jango was shaking his head.

  “You're better than I was at your age, and by a long way. And if you keep working hard, you'll be the best bounty hunter this galaxy's ever seen.”

  “Which was your plan from the beginning with the Kaminoans, right, Dad? That's why you wanted me!”

  Jango Fett moved over and lifted one hand to tousle Boba's hair. “That and a lot of other reasons,” he said quietly, reverently. “And in every regard, in every hope and dream, you've done better than I ever expected.”

  There was nothing that anyone in all the galaxy could ever have said to young Boba Fett to make him feel better than those words from his father.

  Jango took Slave I out of hyperspace a bit early, so that Boba could have some time piloting the ship on the approach to Geonosis. For Boba, sitting in the chair beside his father, working the controls deftly, even showing off a bit, there could be no greater moment, and the boy was saddened by the sight of the red planet, Geonosis, and the asteroid belts that ringed it.

  “Security's tight here,” Jango explained, taking the helm. “It'll be better if I put her down.”

  Boba sat back in the chair without complaint. He knew his father was right, and even if he had disagreed, he wouldn't have done so openly.

  He turned his attention to the scan screens, showing the composition of the asteroid field nearby, and some distant traffic around the other side of the planet.

  He noted one blip in particular, disengaging from the asteroid belt and moving out behind Slave I . He didn't think too much of it at first, until a second blip appeared, right behind Slave I , though nothing substantial enough to be a separate ship.

  “Nearly there, Son,” Jango remarked.

  “Dad, I think we're being tracked,” Boba told him. “Look at the scan screen. Isn't that a cloaking shadow of our own ship?”

  Jango looked at him doubtfully, then turned that skeptical expression upon the
scan screen. Boba watched with mounting excitement as his father's gaze turned intense and he slowly began to nod.

  “That Jedi must have put a tracking device on our hull before we left Kamino,” he agreed. “But how? I thought he was dead.”

  “Someone's following us,” Boba observed.

  “We'll fix that,” Jango assured him. “Hang on, son! Watch me put us into that asteroid field—he won't be able to follow us there.” He looked over at Boba and winked. “And if he does, we'll leave him a couple of surprises.”

  Jango opened a side panel and pulled a lever, releasing an electric charge along his hull that was designed to destroy just such tracking devices. A quick look at the scan screen showed that the cloaking shadow had disappeared.

  “Here we go,” Jango said, and he dived Slave I into the asteroid field, pulling a fast circuit over and around a nearby rock, then diving out fast to the side, rolling about a spinning boulder, and cutting fast between another pair. In and around he wove, with no apparent pattern, and a few moments later, Boba, who was still studying the scanner, announced, “He's gone.”

  “Maybe he's smarter than I thought and headed on toward the planet surface,” Jango said with a grin and another wink. Even as he finished, though, the scanner beeped. “Look, Dad!” Boba cried, pointing out the blip, now inside the asteroid field, as well. “He's back!”

  “Hang on!” Jango said, and he put Slave I through a wild series of dips, climbs, and turns, then finished with a straight-out run, while uncapping a firing trigger and squeezing the plunger. “Seismic charge,” he explained to Boba, who grinned.

  But then the boy was screaming a warning as the forward viewscreen filled up with an asteroid.

  Jango was already on it, turning the amazingly maneuverable Slave I up on its end and running up over the giant space rock.

  “Stay calm, son,” he assured Boba. “We'll be fine. That Jedi won't be able to follow us through this.”

  His declaration was accentuated by a sudden flash and a jarring buck as the sonic charge detonated far behind them.

  “He got through it!” Boba cried a moment later, seeing the Jedi's ship reappear on the scan screen.

  “This guy can't take a hint,” said Jango, who remained unrattled. “Well, if we can't lose him, we'll have to finish him.”

  Boba cried out again, but his father was in complete control. He put the ship down a narrow tunnel creasing one of the larger asteroids. He had to slow a bit to maneuver, and when Slave I came out the other end, Jango and Boba saw the Jedi starfighter stream over and past them. The hunted had suddenly become the hunters.

  “Get him, Dad!” Boba cried out. “Get him! Fire!”

  Laser bolts burst out of Slave I , tracing lines all about the starfighter, which cut a snap-roll to the right and down.

  Jango stayed with him, trying to line up another shot, but the Jedi was good, snap-rolling one after another, each time coming out near an asteroid and sliding behind it for cover.

  Boba continued to urge his father on, but Jango kept his patience, figuring that sooner or later, the Jedi was going to run out of hiding places.

  A fast dive, then a sudden turn back up, then a sudden roll and bank to the right had the Jedi moving behind yet another asteroid, but this time, instead of following, Jango cut in short of the rock and fired blindly past it.

  Out came the Jedi's starfighter, right into the line of fire, and the ship bucked, pieces flying, as a laser bolt clipped it.

  “You got him!” Boba yelled in victory.

  “And now we just have to finish him,” the ever-cool Jango explained. “There'll be no more dodging.” He pushed a series of buttons, arming a torpedo and sliding open the tube, then moved to punch the red trigger. He paused, though, and smiled, and nodded for Boba to move closer.

  Boba could hardly breathe as his father slid his hand onto the smooth trigger grip, then looked down at him and nodded. The boy punched the trigger and Slave I jolted as the torpedo slid away, diving at the Jedi starfighter and taking up the chase as the starfighter bolted and tried to evade.

  A few brief moments later, Slave I 's viewscreen lit up in the light of a tremendous explosion, forcing Boba and Jango to shield their eyes with their arms. When they recovered and looked back, they we re greeted by pieces of wreckage and torn chunks of metal. The scan screen was clear. “Got him!” Boba shouted. “Yeahhhh!”

  “Nice shot, kid,” Jango said, and he tousled Boba's hair again. “You earned that one. We won't see him again.”

  A few deft turns had Slave I out of the asteroids and speeding down toward Geonosis, and despite his earlier reasoning, Jango Fett allowed Boba to guide the craft down. Truly, this was no flight for a boy to pilot, but Boba Fett was so far above any ordinary boy.

  Anakin traveled through great canyons of multicolored stone, across dunes of blowing and shifting sand, and along an ancient, long-dry riverbed. His only guide was the sensation of Shmi, of her pain. But it was not a definitive homing beacon, and though he suspected he was moving in the general direction, the landscape of Tatooine was vast and empty, and none knew how to hide among the sand and stones better than the Tusken Raiders.

  On a high bluff, Anakin paused and scanned the horizon.

  Off to the south, he noted a huge vehicle, resembling a gigantic tilting box, plodding along on a single huge track. Nodding with recognition of the Jawas, and well aware that no one knew the movements of all creatures among the desert better than they, he kicked his speeder bike away.

  He caught up to them soon after, riding into a group of the brown- and black-robed creatures, their inquisitive red eyes poking out at him from the shadows of huge cowls, their ceaseless chatter humming like strange music all about him.

  It took him a long time to convince the Jawas that he wasn't interested in purchasing any droids, and a longer time to get them to understand that he was merely looking for information about any Tusken Raiders.

  The Jawas talked excitedly among themselves, pointing this way and that, hopping all about. Jawas were no friends of Tuskens, who preyed on them as they preyed on anyone else they found vulnerable. Even worse to the Jawa salesman mentality, Tuskens never purchased any droids!

  The group eventually came to agreement, and pointed as one to the east. With a nod, Anakin sped away. The lack of monetary compensation seemed to aggravate the Jawas, but Anakin had no time to care.

  The asteroids rolled along their silent way, undisturbed, seemingly unshaken from the explosions and zigzagging vessels.

  In a deep depression on the back side of one such rock huddled a small starfighter, its definitive outline and consistent colors showing stark contrast to the rough-edged and bleeding, broken mineral streaks of the asteroid.

  “Blast. This is why I hate flying,” Obi-Wan said to R4, and the droid's responding beeps showed that he was in complete agreement. Few things could rattle the Jedi Knight, but engaging in a space battle with a pilot as obviously skilled as Jango Fett was surely one of them. Unlike many of his Jedi associates, Obi-Wan Kenobi had never much enjoyed space travel, let alone piloting.

  He winced as his asteroid came over and around, showing him again a glowing piece of torn metal that had taken up orbit within the belt. His ship was wounded from the laser blast—nothing substantial, just a thruster-angler—and he had understood that he could not hope to outmaneuver the clever torpedo. So he had ordered R4 to eject all the spare parts canisters, and fortunately, that had been enough to detonate the missile. Despite the success, between the shock of that blast and landing hard and fast on the asteroid to complete the ruse, Obi-Wan was relieved to see that his ship had remained intact.

  He wanted no further space fights with Jango and his strange, and supremely efficient, ship, though, and so he had sat here as the minutes slipped past.

  “Have you got their last trajectory logged?” he asked the droid, then nodded as R4 assured him that he did. “Well, I think we've waited long enough. Let's go.” Obi-Wan paused for a
moment, trying to digest all the amazing things he had seen on the trail of Jango Fett. “This mystery gets more wound up all the time, Arfour. Think maybe we'll finally get some answers?” R4 gave a sound that Obi-Wan could only think of as a verbal shrug.

  Following the path taken by Slave I , Obi-Wan was not surprised that it led straight for the red planet, Geonosis. What did surprise him, though, was that they were not alone up there.

  A series of beeps and whistles from R4 alerted him, and Obi-Wan adjusted his scan screen accordingly, locking on to a huge fleet of vessels, settled on the other side of the asteroid belt.

  “Trade Federation ships,” he mused aloud as he angled to get a better view. “So many?” He shook his head in confusion, noting several of the great battleships among the group; their unique design made them hard to miss—a sphere surrounded by a nearly enclosed ring. If the clone army was for the Republic, commissioned by a Jedi Master, and Jango Fett was the basis for the clones, then what ties would Jango have to the Trade Federation? And if Jango was indeed behind the assassination attempts on Senator Amidala, the leading voice of opposition to creating a Republic army, then why would the Trade Federation approve?

  It occurred to Obi-Wan that he might have misjudged Jango, or misjudged his motivations, at least. Maybe Jango, like Obi-Wan and Anakin, had been chasing the bounty hunter who had tried to kill Amidala. Maybe the toxic dart had been fired not to silence the would-be assassin, but as punishment for the attempt on Amidala's life.

  The Jedi couldn't convince himself of that, though. He still believed that Jango was the man behind the assassination attempt, and that he had killed the changeling so that she could not give him up. But why the clone army? And why the Trade Federation ties? There was no apparent logic to it.

  He knew that he would get no answers up here, so he took his ship down toward Geonosis, keeping the asteroid belt between him and the Trade Federation fleet.