The voice came from Anakin’s right, and he turned to see a third 501-Z security droid staring at him through the optical slot in its durasteel head. Anakin instantly realized the 501-Z must have been just out of his visual range, braced against the wall outside the tunnel as it guarded the tunnel’s entrance. As the 501-Z had already loosened its blaster rifle and was aiming it at Anakin’s head, Anakin gave the droid his undivided attention.
Anakin dropped to a crouch as the 501-Z fired at where Anakin’s head had just been. As Anakin felt the discharged energy bolt speed over him, he raised his hand so that his palm faced his attacker and used the Force to hurl the 501-Z across the chamber. The droid smashed against the metal wall with an incredible impact, leaving a deep dent as it fell to the floor.
Less than two seconds had passed from the 501-Z’s order of “Halt!” to its destruction. In that time, the two other 501-Zs assumed attack position and the tall R1 astromech, still jacked into the tech station, rotated its domed head to gaze at the human intruder.
As both remaining 501-Zs lurched forward, Anakin noticed they had moved directly under the magnet crane. He spotted the crane’s controls just as the droids drew their blaster rifles. The droids were about to fire when Anakin reached out with the Force to activate the crane. In a blink, the 501-Zs lifted from the floor and slammed against the looming crane.
Anakin turned for the R1, which let out a nervous, electronic squeal before its lights went dead. Anakin realized the R1’s systems had completely shut down. He rushed to the tech station and examined a datascreen. According to the data, the massive vessel would reach Fondor in twelve minutes, and the navicomputer was locked out. There was no way to adjust the guidance controls or alter the vessel’s course and speed.
Besides the door to the access tunnel, there was only a single open hatch in the control room. Anakin hoped the Duelist Elite had not been lying about the adjoining hangar. If the hangar was not there, Anakin had no idea where to begin looking for Obi-Wan and the other captives on the inexact replica of the Sun Runner. But he did know that he had less than twelve minutes to stop the massive ship from reaching Fondor, and there was only one way to stop it.
It had to be destroyed.
Anakin ran for the open hatch.
The Duelist Elite had not lied. The control room’s open hatch led directly into a pressurized hangar where Anakin found the Nallastian freighter, the Fondor Space Patrol ship, and Obi-Wan’s Z-95 Headhunter.
Anakin saw his Master seated within the Headhunter’s cockpit. Like Anakin, Obi-Wan still wore a g-suit. Anakin ran toward the starfighter, but stopped short as he smacked into an invisible barrier.
It was a force field. Anakin now saw that the hangar’s tractor-beam projector was trained on all three ships, immobilizing them on the hangar floor. Anakin activated his lightsaber and leaped at the projector, sweeping his weapon’s blade through the device. Sparks erupted from the ruined projector, and the force field dropped, freeing the three ships.
The crews of the freighter and the space patrol ship wasted no time in making their escape. Both ships fired their engines and launched—much to Anakin’s surprise—through what appeared to be one of the hangar’s wide metal walls.
Obi-Wan raised the Headhunter’s cockpit canopy, looked at Anakin, and said, “You were supposed to stay on my wing.”
“Forgive me, Master,” Anakin quickly replied, “but I’ve learned that this vessel isn’t really the Sun Runner, and that it’s heading straight for Fondor. The guidance controls are locked, and we only have about eleven minutes. I think we must destroy the ship. The control room is beyond that hatch, and there’s a hypermatter reactor. We just need some explosives.”
“Sounds like you’ve been busy,” Obi-Wan said as he scrambled out of the cockpit. “Good thing you didn’t stay on my wing, or both of us might have been captured.”
Anakin pointed at the wall through which the freighter and patrol ship had departed. “The wall is a hologram?”
“It conceals the docking port,” Obi-Wan answered as he opened his fighter’s compact cargo bay. “From space, the hologram looks like hull plating. The tractor beam snagged my fighter and dragged me in, same as it did the other ships.” From the fighter’s cargo bay, Obi-Wan removed a proton grenade. He commented, “Senator Rodd certainly keeps his starfighters well supplied.”
A terrible realization suddenly hit Anakin. “Master, your starfighters cockpit is only large enough for one of us.”
“I’m aware of that,” Obi-Wan said as he handed the grenade to Anakin. “Since you know where to find the hypermatter reactor, you’ll plant the grenade. We don’t want this ship blowing up too close to Fondor, so set the timer for two minutes. I’ll ready the Headhunter for launch, and you’ll ride it out. Where’s your starfighter?”
“Anchored near the missile silo.”
“I’ll carry you to it so you can make your own way back to the Unitive, instead of clinging to the outside of my ship like a mynock. Go, now.”
Carrying the grenade, Anakin ran for the hatch that led to the control room while Obi-Wan climbed back into the Headhunter’s cockpit. Inside the control room, Anakin twisted the grenade’s arming mechanism, priming a battery to deliver a small electrical charge to the weapon’s proton core. Then he pressed the grenade’s activation plunger, planted the grenade against the hypermatter reactor, and ran back through the hatch.
Returning to the concealed hangar, Anakin saw that the Headhunter was angled straight for the holographic hull plate that concealed the hangar’s port. He made sure his insulated helmet was still sealed tightly to the neck of his g-suit, then sprang for the Headhunter and gripped the handle on the cargo bay.
Carrying Anakin, the Headhunter lifted from the hangar floor, then launched toward the hologram-hidden port. Obi-Wan piloted the starfighter through the hologram, out of the port, and then looped back around the massive ship’s cylindrical exterior until he arrived at the ruined missile silo, where Anakin’s CloakShape remained anchored. They were all still speeding toward Fondor and its starship yards.
Obi-Wan closed the distance between the Headhunter and the anchored CloakShape, and Anakin stretched his legs out to his waiting starfighter. The moment Anakin’s boots contacted the CloakShape’s hull, he released his grip on the Headhunter’s cargo hold. Obi-Wan kept the Headhunter close to the CloakShape while he watched Anakin pop his starfighters canopy and enter the cockpit. As soon as Anakin was safely behind the controls, Obi-Wan guided his Headhunter away.
Following his Master’s lead, Anakin released the CloakShape from the larger ship’s hull and sped after the Headhunter. He sighted Obi-Wan’s fighter in front of him and tried using his starship’s comm to hail the other fighter, but the comm only produced a dead signal. Anakin remembered the sensor jammer he had seen in the mysterious ship’s control room and he realized the jammer was still operating. But not for long.
Behind Anakin, the massive ship was suddenly wracked by a tremendous explosion. The shock wave sent metal debris in all directions, as far out as Anakin’s starfighter. The CloakShape’s particle shields held up against the hammering rain of debris, but the shock wave knocked the starfighter off course, separating Anakin from Obi-Wan even more.
Anakin gripped the CloakShape’s controls and reoriented himself, then looked back at the site of the explosion. Although most of the ship had been reduced to small bits, a large, cylindrical fragment remained intact. To Anakin, it looked like a gigantic cross section. The giant hunk of wreckage hurtled away from the explosion. As best as Anakin could see, it was on a collision course for Fondor’s moon, Nallastia.
The only thing Anakin really knew about Nallastia was that it was a jungle world. He imagined the effect of flaming wreckage, crashing down through the moon’s atmosphere to the forests below. He knew he could not let that happen.
Still unable to contact Obi-Wan, Anakin steered after the wreckage, accelerating past the smaller debris. As he neared the wreckage, he
spotted a dark blemish on a surface area and he realized he was looking at the scorched remains of the concealed missile silo. Evidently, the explosion in the ship’s control room failed to travel all the way through the tunnel to the chamber beside the missile silo.
Which meant the rack of eighteen highly explosive missiles was still intact.
Anakin remembered the cracked wall in the chamber that contained the racked missiles. He aimed the CloakShape’s concussion-missile launcher at the missile silo and fired.
High over the moon Nallastia, the giant piece of wreckage exploded into billions of particles, most no larger than grains of sand. Unfortunately, Anakin had not been able to put much distance between himself and the explosion, and the CloakShape caught most of the shock wave. The starfighter was tossed like a flimsy toy, sending Anakin into an out-of-control spiral, down through Nallastia’s atmosphere.
Gazing through his cockpit canopy, Anakin tried to see Nallastia’s surface, but all he could make out was a rapidly swirling blur of darkness. He was descending upon the side of the moon that was currently cast in shadow, facing away from the sun. As he struggled to gain control of the CloakShape, he knew the Nallastian night would soon be illuminated by his starfighters fiery crash.
So Anakin ejected. Explosive bolts released his starfighters canopy, and his seat blasted out of the cockpit. As the seat’s automatic landing jets carried Anakin down to Nallastia, he watched as the CloakShape spiraled nosefirst into a grassy field, then blossom into a burst of flame.
Under the night sky, Anakin steered his ejected seat down near the CloakShape’s crash site. All he could do now was try to extinguish the flames. With his starfighter destroyed, he had no means of leaving Nallastia or contacting the Unitive.
He wondered how long it would take for Obi-Wan to find him.
At this point, readers who chose to follow the adventure in the Star Wars Adventures Game Book can return to Hunt the Sun Runner.
“Anakin?” Obi-Wan repeated into his starfighters comm. “Anakin, do you read me?”
Obi-Wan had lost sight of Anakin after the first explosion decimated the mysterious derelict. Afterward, he had seen a second explosion near the moon Nallastia, but he did not know whether Anakin had anything to do with it. Even though the replica of the Sun Runner and its sensor-jamming equipment were now destroyed, Obi-Wan could not seem to get a clear signal on any transceiver frequencies. He suspected all the exploded debris was causing the interference.
Obi-Wan searched the starscape with his eyes, trying to find any trace of Anakin’s CloakShape. Several minutes later, Obi-Wan noticed that his Headhunter’s fuel gauge was showing an alarmingly low level of energy. A quick calculation confirmed he would have just enough fuel to reach Fondor, where he could refuel before returning to the Unitive. He would have to wait until later to resume his search for Anakin.
As Obi-Wan angled his starfighter toward Fondor’s starship yards, he found himself thinking about his hasty conversation with Anakin in the mammoth ship’s hangar. Anakin had said he discovered the ship was not the Sun Runner, which did not surprise Obi-Wan, who had been suspicious of the derelict from the start. But as he considered the fact that the derelict had been an elaborate counterfeit, he wondered who would have built what must have been an expensive replica of the Sun Runner, and then aimed it at Fondor.
Obi-Wan knew the questions would nag at him until he learned the truth.
* * *
On the planet Esseles in the Darpa sector, far from the Fondor system, a Hutt named Groodo lived in a palace in the capital city of Calamar. Groodo had many pleasures, but revenge was at the top of his list. Nothing made him happier than taking vengeance on anyone who was fool enough to wrong him. Groodo even found himself looking forward to being wronged, just so he would have the opportunity to get even.
Besides plotting vengeful acts, Groodo had his business interests. For many years, he had run a factory on Esseles, specializing in the manufacture of customized hyperdrive engines. He still owned the factory, but had turned its operations over to his son, Boonda. Groodo now dedicated most of his energy to the development of Groodo Starship Yards, which orbited Esseles. He was in his den, admiring a holographic model of a Republic Sienar Systems Marauder-class corvette, when his Boonda slithered into the room.
“Greetings, my ignorant spawn,” Groodo drawled.
Boonda chuckled. His father often called him by that term of affection. “Hi, Pop,” Boonda said cheerfully. “Sorry to bother you, but do you remember that secret replica job at your starship yards?”
“Of course, I remember it, you hopeless sack of fat,” Groodo replied. “It’s a four-hundred-meter-long Corellia StarDrive Alpha-class heavy transport, deliberately distressed to look like it’s four thousand years old, and it bears the markings of the Sun Runner.”
“Yeah, that’s the one I meant,” Boonda said. “Did you know it’s been stolen from your starship yard?”
“Stolen?” Groodo said, rolling his eyes in disbelief. “Quick! Call the insurance company!”
While Boonda slithered out of the den to contact the insurers, a twisted smile crept across Groodo’s face. He knew for a fact that the duplicate of the Sun Runner had not been stolen. He had rigged the ship’s hyperdrive himself and he knew it had gone all the way to the Fondor system, carrying his memory-wiped droids with it. It was all part of his latest and most elaborate plan for revenge. The way he had it figured, the starship yards of Fondor would be out of business within a week. Then their business would be his. That would show those spineless would-be industrialists not to underestimate him again.
Groodo returned his attention to the hologram of the Marauder corvette and began to whistle.
* * *
Back in the Fondor system, on the moon Nallastia, Anakin was nearly exhausted by the time he extinguished most of the burning wreckage from his crashed CloakShape. His only consolation was that he had prevented a greater disaster. If he had not destroyed the mysterious ship’s largest remnant in space, many square kilometers of Nallastian jungle would have burned to the ground. It was pure luck that his starfighter had not crashed in a populated area.
Anakin prepared to dig in for the night. After removing his helmet and the outer layer of his g-suit, he dragged the remaining burning wreckage to a safe location and constructed a campfire, which he hoped might help Obi-Wan find him. Then he wondered if he were anywhere near a Nallastian village, and if the Nallastians would find him first.
He used his lightsaber to cut several broad, flexible leaves from a tree and assembled the leaves into a shelter at the tree’s base. He was more than ready to go to sleep. He only wished he wouldn’t have any more bad dreams.
Anakin removed his boots and belt and placed them in the shelter. He was about to slip into the shelter himself when he heard something snap. The sound did not come from the nearby campfire, but from the shadows between a group of nearby trees.
Anakin stepped closer to the campfire, keeping his back to the flames, and he gazed out into the darkness. A low growl rumbled from the nearby trees, and he saw a pair of menacing yellow eyes open and stare back at him. Based on the distance between the two eyes, he guessed the creature’s head was quite large.
Anakin reached for his lightsaber, but it was not where it should have been. He forgot that he had left it clipped to his belt, which was now resting inside the shelter of broad leaves.
The yellow-eyed creature growled again, then leaped from the shadows.
NEXT ADVENTURE:
THE CAVERN OF SCREAMING SKULLS
11.6.18.15.14.5-1
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Star Wars Adventures 001 - Hunt the Sun Runner Page 4
