Race to Crashpoint Tower

by Daniel José Older

  A bolt of light flew by, smashing with a fizzly explosion into the wall nearby. “They’re closing,” Lula warned. “Hold steady.” Ram felt her shifting on the seat. Was she—He glanced back. The girl was definitely raising herself into a wobbly standing position even as more blaster shots screamed past.

  “COMING THROUGH!” V-18 hollered. A Gran lunged out of the way. “WOOT WOOT!”

  “I guess if he’s gonna drive,” Ram grumbled, “I can…” He managed to turn around and pulled himself into a squat. Lula swung her lightsaber once, batting away a blaster bolt, and then again, smacking another. Her face was calm but determined, like she’d been training for this moment her whole life. Which, Ram realized, they both had, really. But he felt somehow totally unprepared anyway.

  Behind them, the pursuing Nihil speeders blitzed through the street, knocking over anyone who got too close. The nearest one was about to pull up alongside them. Lula knocked away one more shot, then crouched low and leapt onto the front steering vane.

  “Whoa!” Ram said, igniting his own lightsaber, but he barely had time to pay attention as Lula slashed the shooter’s rifle in half. The other speeder was coming up fast and had a rapid-fire weapon system on board. The air exploded with laser blasts. Ram swung his saber left, right, and then in a wide circle in front of him, sending one shot after another ricocheting into the walls around them.

  Lula had knocked both Nihil off and taken over driving the first speeder, but the ones on the speeder shooting at Ram had pulled up alongside hers and were trying to shove it into a building.

  “Vee-Eighteen, keep us steady!” Ram yelled, feeling the droid wobble beneath him. He reached out with the Force and felt the vibrating rumble and heat of the Nihil speeder’s engine.

  “I AM KEEPING STEADY!” V-18 snapped back. “But there’s something up ahead I can’t make out.”

  “Huh?” Ram couldn’t look or he’d lose the hold he had on the engine. “Hang on!”

  Lula slashed at the attacking Nihil speeder just as it swung out of the way. The rider fired two shots at her, which she deflected quickly, but Ram could tell driving with one hand and fighting with the other wouldn’t work for long.

  He refocused on the engine, blocked out everything else, and used the Force to shove it into overdrive.

  “Ayeeee!” yelled the Nihil in back as smoke poured out around him. He leapt off the speeder with a shriek, but the one driving must’ve hit the accelerator in his panic—the speeder dipped forward, and the directional rudder scraped against the street, snapped in half, and sent the whole thing cartwheeling forward in a fiery explosion.

  “Watch out!” Ram yelled as flame and debris burst toward Lula.

  She glanced to the side, then took her speeder roaring upward, over the tumbling disaster. A fireball clipped her rudder though, and she threw herself off the seat, then somersaulted once on the pavement and leapt up running.

  “Um…up ahead!” V-18 warned.

  “You okay?” Ram reached out to Lula as she caught up to them. “What is it, Vee-Eighteen?”

  “Just cuts and bruises,” Lula said, grabbing his hand and hoisting herself up. She’d snatched a satchel off the Nihil speeder, Ram realized, and must’ve slung it over her shoulder before the wreck.

  V-18 made a concerned whirring noise. “That seems bad.”

  Ram whirled around. Up ahead, a dense greenish-yellow fog rolled closer and closer.

  “Can we go around?” Lula asked. They’d pulled up to a hover right in front of the dense fog. More blaster fire and screaming emerged from within, along with a few other ominous noises—growls and moans—that Lula didn’t even want to guess the origin of. She’d been through the Nihil’s horrible chemical attacks before, and she never wanted to be anywhere near them again.

  Ram shook his head. “This is the only way to Crashpoint Tower.”

  “Crashpoint?”

  “That’s just what we call it,” Ram said. “Folks like to practice speeder maneuvers up there. Doesn’t always go well. Anyway, let’s go!”

  Lula steeled herself. At least with V-18’s upgrades, they could zoom through fast—or fast-er than walking, anyway—and be on their way. She handed Ram the satchel she’d grabbed from the Nihil speeder. “Put one on.”

  He pulled out a rubbery face mask with various gaskets and tubes on it. “Whoa! Good thinking!”

  Lula managed to find a smile somewhere amid all the fear and turmoil. “I’ve faced off with these raiders before, unfortunately. I spied this while we were tangling on the speeders and figured they might come in handy. They sometimes keep one or two size-adjustable ones in their jump bags, so maybe we can find something for the Bonbraks.”

  “Ah, I have more bad news, in case you were looking for some,” V-18 said.

  “We weren’t,” Lula and Ram both snapped.

  “Wow, touchy. You’re welcome for saving your lives with my fancy new upgrade, by the way.”

  “Thank you,” Ram said unconvincingly. “What’s the bad news?”

  “I think I’m leaking?”

  Ram and Lula both slid off the droid and peered underneath, where a shiny black puddle was spreading quickly below a burn-bruised slash in the engine. “You’ve been shot!” Lula yelled, stepping back. She wasn’t expecting it to affect her so much, but the droid had indeed saved them, even if he’d copped an attitude about it. And it was just one more terrible thing in the midst of so much awful. She looked at Ram. “What are we going to do?”

  He glanced around the deserted street, surprisingly calm, then nodded at the two furry creatures poking their heads out of one of the saddlebags. “Can you guys get him up and running?”

  Breebak and Tip leaned over from their perch to get a good look at the damage, then they conferred in quiet chirps. Finally, the taller one turned his huge black eyes to Ram and nodded once. “Ponk.”

  “I shall place myself in the noble wizened hands of these eloquent creatures,” V-18 proclaimed. “Go on without me!”

  “We’ll keep moving.” Ram pointed to a back alley stretching off into the shadows nearby. “Take him in there. And when he’s back up and running, head to the comms tower. We’ll probably need a hand. Or…” The fact that Ram and Lula might not make it there hung heavily in the air.

  “Affirmative!” V-18 said, already making his way to the edge of the street. The Bonbraks fussed about something then waved goodbye.

  “Thank you!” Lula called. “For helping us! Be careful!”

  She traded nervous glances with Ram. “On foot?”

  “That’s the best way for now,” he said grimly. “I’m not sure how long that repair will take, so we’re better off going ahead while they work on it.”

  “But…” Something about that fog. It wasn’t just that she’d been in a Nihil-generated fog before and never wanted to be again—a vicious kind of seething emanated from it this time, like some horrific creature lurked within. Whatever it was, though, they’d have to face it. There was no other way. Lula pulled her mask on and nodded at Ram, and together they walked in.

  “Does the Force work on it?” Ram asked as they stepped gingerly down another cobblestone street amid a seemingly impossible mustardy cloud.

  Lula shook her head. The Nihil mask barely fit. The straps pulled at her braids, and its rubbery edges gnawed at her flesh every time she moved, but better too tight than too loose. “A little, but not enough to be worthwhile for all the effort it takes to clear an area.”

  They didn’t want to light their sabers—it was too risky, with innocent people running around, and anyway it would draw more attention than they were looking for. So instead they just walked very close to each other and cast wary glances to either side as they went.

  “If we keep going down this street,” Ram said, “it’ll lead us along the edge of the lake and then into the outskirts, and finally the woods. Problem is, it’ll also take us through—”

  “Halt!” an angry voice called up ahead.

  Lula a
nd Ram stopped in their tracks. That restless, sinister seething feeling still pulsed outward from somewhere nearby; in fact, it had gotten stronger. But they had other problems to deal with. A Nihil raider stepped through the fog, blaster rifle pointed directly at them. Two more followed, and five behind those. All of them had their weapons trained on the Padawans.

  “Jedi!” the leader said. The others muttered back and forth and advanced on either side of him. “Drop your sabers!”

  Lula didn’t know Ram well enough to be able to game out what he’d do, but she hoped he’d at least follow her lead. There were more of the Nihil, sure, but she still had her weapon. Giving that up would mean giving up the whole fight, and she wasn’t about to do that. Her saber ignited at the same time as Ram’s, and she smiled inwardly.

  “They’re gonna attack!” someone yelled. “End them!”

  Blaster fire blazed everywhere; Lula and Ram swung and swung, backing up side by side, step by step. A few Nihil dropped, winged by their own deflected shots, but the others kept advancing.

  “What were you going to say we had to go through?” Lula asked as she batted away another shot and then another.

  “Oh,” Ram said, spinning his own lightsaber in a wild windmill motion. “The Lonisa City—”

  That seething feeling suddenly reared up from the mist just as a horrible screech sounded up ahead.

  “Zoo.”

  “What was that?” Lula gasped. The Nihil stopped shooting and glanced around. There was nothing to see, though; their own chemical attack was unyielding.

  Ram stepped backward, pulling Lula with him. “Sounded like a—”

  With a clang, something large and metal flew out of the emptiness and skidded along the street: the busted-up entrance gate to the zoo. Two long, sinewy arms emerged from the fog. They ended in clawed feet that cracked into the pavement where they landed. The screech sounded again as the creature’s face appeared, long snout opened wide in four directions to reveal glistening, blood-soaked teeth and six squirming tongues. Then a second and third head emerged. A half dozen eyes glared out in every direction behind all those gnashing jaws.

  “Hragscythe!” Ram finished. “Run!”

  Lula took a few steps back as the hragscythe advanced, pounding one clawed foot after another into the pavement—she counted six total. The Nihil turned their fire toward it, but they were too late; it was already on them. The first three were swept away by a vicious swing of its front claws. The rest scattered, screaming, but the hragscythe snapped up one in its gaping maw and clobbered another with a strike of its long spiny tail.

  Lula turned, saw Ram’s lightsaber glistening through the fog ahead, and ran.

  “They can breathe this horrible stuff?” Lula asked as they ran side by side through the fog.

  “Apparently so!” Ram yelled. He was running out of breath and answers. There were so many things he’d realized he didn’t know about the world in the past couple of hours, he’d lost count.

  “It’s coming,” Lula panted. “I can feel it!”

  They both whirled around, lightsabers lit, but the fog remained a thick and impenetrable wall around them. Footsteps approached at a run, and Ram raised his lightsaber. By the time the Nihil emerged into view, just a few meters away, the hragscythe was already on him, that vicious face appearing just above and then swooping down to grasp the raider and yank him screaming into the fog.

  “I don’t think we can outrun it!” Ram said as they ducked around another corner. “This way! I think!”

  He led them down a ways, but he wasn’t totally sure where they were anymore—the whole world had become a mist-covered nightmare. A rumble came from up ahead—not explosions, though, something huge running toward them. Ram put his arm out, stopping Lula in her tracks as another Nihil squad appeared out of the mist, looking around. They heard that low thunder, too, felt the ground beneath them tremble.

  “More Jedi!” one yelled, spotting Ram and Lula.

  “Wait!” another called before they could open fire. “Over there!”

  The Nihil all raised their weapons and started shooting, a barrage of different kinds of blaster fire that flashed into the heavy fog and then seemed to be swallowed up by it.

  “Ahhh!” someone yelled, and then a Nihil went flying over everyone’s heads and landed in a heap nearby.

  “Run!” the others yelled, scattering into the mist. A gigantic beast stomped forward with an uneven gait.

  “It’s the mudhorn!” Ram yelled. It was coming right for them, head bowed low so that gigantic horn on its snout would drive right through whoever it hit. “We gotta get—”

  Ram didn’t finish, because the mudhorn seemed to look directly at them and run even harder. A Gungan Nihil ran by, firing his blaster in all directions, and the mudhorn clipped him with one shoulder as it stampeded past, sending the raider flying off into the mist.

  Lula stepped forward, face determined.

  Ram reached for her. “What are you—” But the mudhorn was almost upon them, and closing fast. Lula raised one open hand, thumb over her heart, palm facing to the side, edge to the approaching beast. She moved it sideways toward her shoulder, and the mudhorn moved with it, stumbling, eyes wide with confusion. It tripped and crashed forward, tumbling sideways with a grunt and then sliding into a storefront, which shattered.

  The beast scrambled to its feet and lumbered off into the mist.

  Ram shook his head. “Whoa!”

  “Do you know how we can get out of here? Because we’ll never make it to the comms tower at this rate.”

  “I do have a thought, actually.” The idea had been growing since they’d rounded the corner. Lula was right. They could barely even get a block without being shot at or almost eaten, and even if they could, there was no way to navigate through this fog. How did the Nihil manage it? Ram wondered. It didn’t matter; if he and Lula couldn’t see through it, maybe there was another way…. “Follow me.”

  Ram leapt onto a parked speeder, then flung himself upward through the fog, grabbed hold of a flagpole, and used it to vault to a third-floor window ledge. There he waited until Lula caught up. Then he nodded at a balcony jutting out above them, and together they jumped, clutched its railing, and hauled themselves up.

  Already the mist was thinning out. They could see almost across the street, and up above it looked even clearer. They heard a starfighter zoom past, followed by the screech of cannon fire that flashed red through the fog.

  “Brilliant,” Lula said, and Ram felt a surge of pride. “Let’s keep going.”

  They worked their way higher and higher, bouncing from window ledges to balconies. By the time they climbed onto the rooftop, the sky was clear around them.

  “Oh, no,” Lula said, taking her gas mask off and walking to the edge.

  “What is it?” Ram ran up beside her, unstrapping his own mask. “Oh…”

  The city Ram loved and had grown up in was in shambles. Most of the Carnival District and a huge stretch of the Government District were steeped in that horrible fog. Smoke rose in billowing towers from all across the building tops, and the screams of scared people sounded from the streets below. Out over the lake, the floating pavilions swarmed with signs of destruction. A few listed dangerously; others had caught fire. Speeders zipped away in all directions, desperate to escape. The biggest pavilion, which they’d all revolved around—the one representing Coruscant—was simply gone. Blasted out of the sky probably, taking with it untold lives.

  A badly burned transport poked from the surface of the water—the Innovator, Ram realized with a gasp. Chancellor Soh’s flagship. A battle seemed to be raging on top—Jedi lightsabers flashed as Nihil blaster bolts were flung back and forth. Ram couldn’t make out anyone he knew from where he stood.

  Up above, Nihil fighters streamed through the sky, dancing and dangling in the air. A squadron of Jedi Vectors flashed past, blasting a few of the Nihil crafts to pieces, some getting clipped by return fire.

  Lula w
rapped her hand around Ram’s. It wasn’t just his own world that was ending, that would never be the same—even if it felt like it looking out over the ruins of his home city. No, an attack so bold, so relentless, so devastating could only mean one thing, and Lula knew it, too: the Nihil had never been truly defeated. They’d been lying in wait, biding their time. This wasn’t some singular sleeper cell of troublemakers; this was an all-out assault on everything the Republic stood for, on the Jedi themselves.

  But also, Valo was being destroyed before Ram’s very eyes, the people of Valo slaughtered mercilessly. All that pain and terror swept over him in a wave, and he didn’t even realize he’d been crying until Lula reached over and wiped one of his tears away with the sleeve of her robe.

  “I…” he started to say, but no words made sense. Instead, he let Lula wrap him in a hug and hold him close while he released all that fear and despair.

  “We have to…do something….” He sniffed. “We have to help them.” There were so many hurt people, so much fear. It felt like the fabric of the Force itself was trying to rip in half in the air around them.

  “We have to get to the comms tower, Ram,” Lula said firmly. “That’s what we can do.”

  “But…” He reached out a shaking hand to the burning city, then let it drop. She was right. Everything in him wanted to swoop down into the streets, whisk everyone to safety one by one, and fight off all the hordes of Nihil. But they would never be able to help everyone, and they’d probably get killed in the process.

  No. He had to see the whole for the whole, not get distracted by each part. The whole of this wasn’t one attack on one street corner; it was the entire city. More than that, Ram realized, it was the whole Republic under assault. If the Nihil carried the day, if they were allowed to simply sweep in and massacre all these people with no one coming to help, no one even trying to stop them, beyond the Jedi already there, well…then it was open season on the galaxy. Anyone could do anything.