by Watson, Jude
The Sith.
Anakin faced out to the valley. He felt the cold wind blow against his face. The Sith was calling him.
Chapter Seventeen
Obi-Wan turned to the others. “We need to get to the cruisers. It’s too far to hike to the valley. We only have about an hour of dusk left. We don’t want to go in at night. Madame Nu gave me coordinates for the best approach.”
Obi-Wan saw both relief and trepidation on the faces of the other Padawans. They all wanted to go. They wanted it and feared it.
He saw no fear on his Padawan’s face, however. He wasn’t sure how Anakin was feeling. There was something going on…underneath. Korriban had unsettled them all, Obi-Wan knew.
Even the Masters were not eager to enter the valley. They knew they were heading into great trouble. They knew there would be difficulty. Traps. Attacks. Surprises. The dark side of the Force could snare them, confuse them. But they each felt strongly that this was their only chance. The hidden darkness every Jedi felt was here. They could find it and expose it. End it. Here. Now.
Back at the Dreshdae landing platform, they hurried to their cruisers. Anakin sprang into the cockpit. He entered the coordinates Obi-Wan had given him for the Valley of the Dark Lords. They would have to find it through instruments, since it would not be visible. Then they would survey the area before deciding on a landing point.
Anakin did a preflight check, working quickly but carefully. All the indicator lights turned green. It was a go.
Except…
He tapped on an indicator. The light had shone green immediately. It should have cycled from orange to yellow first. Just a small thing, an indicator for the portside fuel baffles. If the light was red it would indicate a clogged baffle. Even that wouldn’t prevent takeoff. He could fly with a clogged fuel baffle.
But why hadn’t the indicator cycled through the colors?
“Problem?” Obi-Wan looked at him.
Anakin turned in the seat. The toolkit was clamped to the bottom of the counter. One of the clamps hadn’t engaged all the way. It would rattle during turbulence. He would have noticed it on the flight here.
Someone had been aboard.
Through the windscreen, in the ship next to him, Ry-Gaul gave him a thumbs up.
“No!” Anakin shouted. He jumped forward and hit the comm. “Don’t start the engines!”
Ry-Gaul looked at him, puzzled, and nodded.
“Anakin, what?” Obi-Wan asked, frowning at the urgent tone in Anakin’s voice.
“Not sure yet.” Anakin quickly disengaged the hatch and climbed down into the engine. He only a needed a few seconds before he saw it.
He vaulted out of the engine bloc. “We’ve got to get out. The other ship, too!”
Obi-Wan hit the comm. “Evacuate! Now!”
Anakin hit the ramp control at the same time. He, Ferus, Siri, and Obi-Wan charged down. They met Ry-Gaul, Tru, Darra, and Soara.
“Take cover!” Anakin shouted.
The Jedi raced to the opposite side of the landing platform and dived behind a cruiser as the two starships exploded in a fiery blast. They felt the heat on their faces. A wall of air hit them.
Slowly, Anakin rose. He regarded the skeletal frame of the starship with regret.
“That was one sweet cruiser,” he said.
“What happened?” Siri asked.
“I saw an indicator light malfunction. It didn’t cycle through.”
“Which one?” Ry-Gaul asked.
“Fuel baffles. Then I noticed that someone had used the stowed toolkit. When I looked at the engine, I saw that someone had rigged the main reactor to blow on ignition. Then I noticed a small timer. I figured that after the preflight check if takeoff didn’t take place, it would blow anyway.”
“Well done,” Ry-Gaul said.
“Very well done,” Soara seconded, gazing at the burning ships.
“We’re running out of time,” Obi-Wan said. He took out his comlink.
“What are you going to do?” Anakin asked.
“I’m afraid that Teluron Thacker is going to find his courage.”
“I doubt he’ll want to give us a hand,” Siri said.
“He doesn’t have to give us a hand,” Obi-Wan said. “Just a ship.”
Within minutes, Thacker pulled into the landing platform in a large airspeeder with a bright orange shell. He looked at the smoking hulks of the cruisers.
He shuddered. “I’m not going to ask.”
“Thanks for this,” Obi-Wan said as Thacker quickly hopped out of the vehicle.
“It’s the company airspeeder. For clients.” Thacker looked worriedly at the smoking cruisers. “I’m not supposed to lend it out.”
“We’ll take good care of it,” Obi-Wan said.
Anakin looked at the large speeder with disgust. “This will be like driving a gravsled.” He knocked on the decorative fins on the outside. “A gooped-up gravsled, at that.”
“It will fit all of us and it will get us there,” Obi-Wan said. “Drive.”
The Jedi climbed into the airspeeder. Thacker remained outside, watching them.
“At least it has a couple of sniper blasters,” Anakin said approvingly as he surveyed the instrument panel. “They might come in handy.”
“You’ve been a friend to the Jedi,” Obi-Wan told Thacker. “We won’t forget it.”
Thacker swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
“About what?” Obi-Wan said as Anakin powered up the engine.
“It isn’t very fast, or agile…”
“It’s all right.”
“I’m sorry!” Thacker yelled as they took off.
“Jumpy fellow,” Siri said, settling into her seat.
“Everyone’s jumpy on Korriban,” Darra said. “Can you blame them?”
Anakin guided the airspeeder high above Dreshdae. He entered the coordinates into the computer. “Estimated arrival in ten minutes,” he said, pushing to the maximum speed.
Siri twisted around. “Hey, looks like security cruisers on our tail.”
Suddenly, the comm unit crackled on the emergency channel.
“Attention, Koro-1 Deluxe Airspeeder. Land and show documentation. Stolen vehicle check. This is the Commerce Guild Army Patrol.”
Obi-Wan pressed the transmission button. “Correction. Owner loaned the vehicle. Please check with owner Teluron Thacker.”
“Negative. Owner Teluron Thacker reported vehicle stolen. Land or undergo firepower from laser cannon.”
“Thacker betrayed us,” Obi-Wan told the others. “That’s why he was so jumpy. Somebody got to him.”
“Someone he’s more afraid of than the Jedi,” Soara said. “Anakin, can you outfly those security vehicles?”
“Thirty seconds to land,” the comm unit thundered.
“In this bucket?” Anakin gripped the controls. “If I have to.”
“Then do it,” Obi-Wan said.
“Hold on.”
The words had barely left Anakin’s lips when the Jedi were nearly plastered to the cockpit canopy as the ship went into a screeching dive. The army speeders struggled to keep up.
A blast from a laser cannon thundered by, shaking the ship. Anakin put the ship into a tight turn.
“Come on, come on,” he muttered. “You can do it.”
The second blast was closer.
“Use those sniper blasters,” Obi-Wan directed. “If we give them some firepower they might back off. Just don’t hit anything.”
Anakin flipped on the sniper blaster controls. “They’ve been disabled.”
Obi-Wan groaned. “Great.”
“We’ve got to outrun them, then,” Siri said.
“Head for the monastery,” Ry-Gaul suggested. “The canyons will give you cover.”
Anakin pushed the speeder into a climb that slammed them back into their seats. He tried a corkscrew turn, a movement that he could make with his eyes closed in a decent speeder. This one groaned with the effort. The controls shook in his hands
as blaster bolts skittered across the hull.
“This isn’t going to work,” he muttered. “Ry-Gaul, can you take over?”
Ry-Gaul quickly slid into the pilot seat and Anakin transferred the controls. He crawled past the others to the rear.
“What are you doing?” Obi-Wan asked.
“If I can reduce the air drag, it can go faster.” He spoke to Soara, who sat near a small toolkit built into the cabin wall. “Hand me that fusioncutter, will you? It’s going to get windy,” Anakin warned, before flipping open the canopy.
The wind whipped through the cabin. Anakin used a servodriver to disengage the canopy completely. It flew off the airspeeder, smacking the first security speeder straight in its windscreen. The blow sent the cruiser careening downward to the planet’s surface.
“That was lucky,” Anakin muttered.
He crawled out on the airspeeder. Buffeted by air currents and hanging on for his life whenever Ry-Gaul swerved to avoid cannonfire, Anakin crawled to the port fins. Using the fusioncutter, he sliced through the fastenings and kicked off the decorative fins. Laser bolts made the hair on the back of his neck stand at attention as the charge shuddered through the air. Anakin held on with his knees as he made deep cuts in the bright plastoid shell and kicked it off into space.
He crawled back inside the speeder. “Better?” he asked Ry-Gaul.
“Better. I can get it up past maximum speed.”
To Anakin’s surprise, Ry-Gaul inclined his head toward the controls, even as he made a hard left and went into a dive. “Take over.”
Feeling pleased, Anakin slipped back into the pilot seat. A Jedi Master had passed the controls to him! Ry-Gaul was renowned as a pilot, and he thought Anakin better able to handle the evasive flying. Take that, Ferus!
Anakin kept pushing the speed. Even when the mountains loomed ahead, he didn’t slow down. The airspeeder screamed down into the valley. He looped around a peak and dived into a canyon dotted with boulders. The three remaining army security speeders followed.
Anakin kept the craft close to the ground. This kind of flying came naturally to him. After all, he’d trained on Podracers.
He whipped through the canyon as if it were a racing course. He flew over boulders, squeezed through natural formations, sensing obstacles before they appeared. One speeder behind him clipped a wing and spun out of control.
“Another one down,” Obi-Wan said. Anakin allowed himself a moment to look at his Master. He always enjoyed making Obi-Wan pale.
A tall formation grew out of the canyon floor. Anakin headed straight for it.
“Anakin, you’re pushing it—”
“That’s the idea.”
“This speeder doesn’t have that kind of maneuverability—”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
At the last possible second, Anakin wrenched the controls. Instead of turning, he went straight up. The bottom of the airspeeder skidded along the formation. The sound of screaming metal blocked out the sound of the engine. Smoke rose around them. Obi-Wan saw licks of flame on the airspeeder’s body. He closed his eyes.
The security speeder behind them tried the same maneuver and crashed head-on into the rock. The second veered off, only to clip a wing. The wing dragged on the canyon floor, slowing the craft until it ground to a halt.
Anakin kept going straight up. When he was high above the surface, he straightened out the airspeeder. The fire on both wings died out in the rush of air.
Nobody said anything for a moment.
Then Obi-Wan cleared his throat.
“And now, for the hard part,” he said.
Chapter Eighteen
They decided they could not risk flying over the valley. The Sith Lord had been a step ahead of them since they’d arrived on Korriban. He knew they were coming. They would just have to arrive in a way he didn’t expect.
They would walk in.
Anakin landed the now-battered speeder on a rocky mountain ledge, squeezing it between the mountain wall and a sheer drop. The Valley of the Dark Lords was a short distance down the mountainside.
They descended the cliffside, hiking quickly but conserving their energy for what lay ahead. The mountains were steep and crowded together like spiteful beasts, with cliffs pressing in from both sides. Occasionally boulders would crash down without warning, sending them leaping for safety. The extended dusk was still holding, but the light was gradually fading. The coming darkness was faintly tinged with red.
When at last they saw the Valley of Dark Lords ahead in the distance, their steps slowed and then stopped. The wave that came at them made them pause. It fractured the Force they felt around them, tore at it. They had expected to feel more of the dark side, but they hadn’t realized how concentrated it would be.
They knew the Sith tombs that inhabited the valley were designed to amplify dark energy. It was a physical presence that the Jedi could feel, pressing against their chests. It made them instinctively reach for their lightsaber hilts.
The wind picked up, grabbing at their cloaks with icy fingers. The red-tinged clouds collided, rolling across the sky with a new velocity. They were alone in the middle of a harsh landscape, and even the rocks had warned them to stay away. The sand seemed to suck at their footsteps and the wind was blowing them backward. The air tasted rank and spoiled.
Obi-Wan wanted to say something. There had to be a phrase to bolster them, to make them feel less marooned in this land of gloom and shadows.
It was Ry-Gaul who spoke.
“May the Force be with us.”
And, of course, it was this phrase that renewed them, the one they had spoken so many times—to each other, to their Padawans—the words that felt so comfortable in their mouths, the words that were more than words, that lived in their dreams.
They walked on.
They paused just outside the entrance to the valley. The cliffs were so close that they could not all stand in a row. Shelves of razor-sharp rock protruded from each cliff face in a staggered pattern, all the way to the top, so that a craft could not possibly maneuver to get inside. The rock shelves created deep shadows, gray shading into black.
Obi-Wan examined the sides of the entrance carefully. He could see no evidence of weapons or security measures. It seemed impossible to him that they could just walk in.
“There has to be a trap,” he said. “Madame Nu says that legend claims that the tombs were guarded by tuk’ata beasts. They were at the service of the Sith.”
“Tuk’ata?” Ferus asked.
“Gigantic creatures. Triple rows of teeth, six inch claws, and three horns,” Obi-Wan explained. “They can move on four legs or two, and have two winglike extensions—not functional wings, but poisonous stingers. Very fast.”
“Let’s see,” Darra said. “Stingers, claws, teeth, horns. My favorite kind of creature.”
“It’s a legend, remember?” Anakin said, trying to keep his voice light.
“I…don’t…think so,” Tru said, his eyes on the cliffs.
There, the shadows formed into beasts that slowly rose, stretching long necks and sniffing the air.
They were certainly tuk’ata, and they reared up—four, then six, then ten. Their cries seem to split the clouds open. Blood-tinged saliva dripped from their triple rows of teeth. With a flex of their powerful legs, they leaped down from ledge to ledge, and then made the final drop with ease, landing easily and rearing up once again on their hind legs in preparation to attack.
“Did I mention they can jump?” Obi-Wan asked.
The Jedi raised their lightsabers.
Chapter Nineteen
The vicious tuk’ata moved at lightning speed. They did not have an attack strategy. They didn’t need one. They charged with flashing teeth and claws and whipping stingers.
Anakin jumped toward the lead tuk’ata. He wanted to be the first to bring one down. The beast whirled, its yellow eyes flat with menace. One massive claw swiped through the air. Anakin caught it with his lightsabe
r. The beast howled. He had only angered it.
He needed to hit a vulnerable spot. He saw Ferus and Siri attack a tuk’ata together, moving in rhythm. Perhaps he should have waited for his own Master, but with a quick look over his shoulder Anakin saw that Obi-Wan was occupied with two tuk’ata at once, while Ry-Gaul and Tru were racing to help.
The creature swiped at him again, and, anticipating the move, Anakin ducked and rolled, trying to strike up into the beast’s chest, where he assumed a blow would kill it. To his surprise, the stinger landed on his arm. He had not expected that range of motion. Instantly, his arm was on fire, though the stinger had barely licked him. Anakin flipped his lightsaber to his other hand, cursing his luck.
The tuk’ata struck, no doubt following up on his advantage. While its prey was immobilized by the poison, the beast would finish him off. But Anakin was able to flip backward and strike, this time burying his lightsaber in the middle of the creature’s head. He heard the sizzle and smelled the smoke. The yellow eyes rolled, and the creature fell dead.
Ry-Gaul and Tru had been outflanked by two tuk’ata. Obi-Wan had his hands full with one massive beast, bigger and fiercer than the rest. Anakin leaped on the back of the tuk’ata bearing down on his Master, hoping to distract it. The beast reared up, both stingers waving, while Anakin did a quick and elusive dance to avoid their sting.
Obi-Wan advanced, striking the tuk’ata with a series of hard blows. The creature staggered. Anakin was able to slash at the creature’s neck before he was thrown off. The tuk’ata screamed, rearing, and Anakin and Obi-Wan leaped out of its way. It toppled and thrashed and then was still.
They were already moving, turning to charge one of the tuk’ata who was after Tru. With a roar, it turned on them instead, circling and striking, trying to get claws and teeth embedded into Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan used his liquid cable launcher and anchored it on the creature’s horn. Using the cable, he swung up and out, his lightsaber a blur of motion as he attacked again and again. The creature howled, trying to claw Obi-Wan away. Anakin was able to deliver the death blow in the chest.
Obi-Wan swung off the creature and landed, his boots thudding on the dirt. The cries of the tuk’ata mingled with the buzz of lightsabers as the Jedi met their attacks with moves and counter-moves. The tide of the battle was turning. Five tuk’ata lay dead, and two were mortally wounded. Anakin and Obi-Wan were able to team up with Ry-Gaul and Tru first alternately feinting to confuse the creature, and then slicing it into several pieces. Soara and Darra, working together in their usual flawless teamwork, had somehow kept two tuk’ata at bay. Wounded, the two counterattacked, but Darra and Soara were too fast, too agile, and too strong.
