heart. His friend Garen Munn had been Commander of the Republic forces on
Acherin - and had presumably died there on that awful day when the clone
troopers had turned against the Jedi, slaughtering their former generals on
the order of the Sith Lord who was now Emperor.
"Plug in the coordinates," Ferus said. "It's our only shot."
There was nothing to do now but hope that the fuel would hold out. As
they spun through space, they tried not to tick off the kilometers in their
heads. Finally, they approached the planet, a violet-tinged haze in the
distance.
Obi-Wan worked the comm unit, trying to raise a response. "This is
strange," he said. "I can't get an answer. Not only that, but there's no
chatter on the open lines."
"That is strange," Ferus said. "Keep trying. Is there some kind of
atmospheric disturbance in the air?"
"No. They have a dense inner atmosphere, but nothing that should block
communications."
"We're going to have to enter their atmosphere," Ferus said. "I hate
to enter anyplace without permission these days, but we have no choice."
He pulled back on speed as they approached Acherin.
"What's that?" Trever asked, pointing to some orange streaks in the
sky.
"Could be some naturally occurring cosmic gas," Obi-Wan said.
"But we're in the inner atmosphere," Trevor said.
Ferus immediately started turning the ship. "In certain conditions,
like a dense atmosphere, the after-burn of a missile can leave - "
A sudden streak crossed the sky. This time, they knew exactly what it
was.
"That's cannonfire," Obi-Wan said. "But what - " Suddenly, an imposing
fleet of assault ships appeared, heading directly toward them.
"The Empire," Trever said.
Fighters took off from one of the assault ships - chasing a trio of
small starfighters that now shot across the sky. The Imperial fighters
began to chase the three renegades.
Ferus swallowed. "Great. Out of all the planets in the galaxy, we have
to pick one in the middle of a war."
"We're going to have to land," Obi-Wan said. He quickly accessed the
surface mapping systems. "Just put it down - we're nowhere near a
spaceport, and we don't want to blunder into the Empire's hands anyway."
Quickly Obi-Wan scanned the topographical sensors. "There's an area
below in a canyon that would give us plenty of cover." He gave Ferus the
coordinates.
Suddenly, one of the renegade starfighters peeled off from the others.
It bore down on them, flying so close its belly almost scraped the roof of
their craft.
"It's forcing me down!" Ferus shouted. "What's going on?"
"And it's drawing fire," Obi-Wan added. "It's alerted the Empire to
our position."
"Yeah, this just keeps getting better."
They screamed down through the sky. The surface of the planet loomed.
"I can't hold this course," Ferus said. Cannonfire shook the ship.
The ship on top of them was hit. Smoke suddenly obscured their vision.
"We're going to crash-land!" Ferus shouted, wrestling with the
controls.
With a horrible groaning sound, the ship hit ground and skidded on
rock. Ferus controlled the landing, but the battering it received from the
rocks took its toll. It came to rest on one side, metal screaming against
the rough ground.
They activated the landing ramp, which only opened partway. Ferus
searched the pilot's compartment and found an old blaster, which he held in
his hand as he led the way out.
A short distance away, the pilot of the renegade starfighter had
emerged from its canopy - with a blaster at. the ready.
Blaster fire streaked toward them, trying to pin them in one small
area.
"Don't move!" the pilot shouted. "If you move, you're dead."
CHAPTER FIVE
The helmeted pilot stood on the hull of the ship, casually balanced,
with both hands on the blaster. Obi-Wan reached out a hand and Force-
pushed. The pilot stumbled back... as Ferus raised his own blaster and Obi-
Wan leaped forward to place the blade of his lightsaber above the pilot's
neck.
The pilot looked up with wide, dark blue eyes. "Well," she said, "what
do you know. A Jedi."
"Who are you?" Obi-Wan asked.
"Raina Quill. I'm a commander in the Acherin resistance. Pleased to
make your acquaintance. That is, if you could manage to take your
lightsaber off my neck."
She was a humanoid woman of about Ferus's age. Her gaze seemed
friendly, if intense, but Obi-Wan wasn't about to let her free yet.
"Why did you force us down?"
"Because you were about to land in the middle of enemy-controlled
territory, right within range of a turbolaser. I had a feeling you wouldn't
like that. Hey, I thought all the Jedi were dead."
Obi-Wan deactivated his lightsaber. "Not all."
"Apparently." She gingerly came to a sitting position. "Ow. As it is,
we're still behind enemy lines. And I have a feeling those starfighters
didn't lose us. They had better things to do. But I bet they broadcast our
landing site to the ground army."
"Who's the enemy?" Ferus asked.
"The Empire, of course," she said.
"But you were a Separatist planet."
Raina rose to her feet and took off her helmet, shaking out a long
auburn braid. "That doesn't mean we support the Empire. We wanted the right
to secede from the Republic, not to turn the galaxy into a place of
absolute power. Now we've got an Emperor breathing down our necks. Anyway,
we were negotiating a truce with the Republic army when the Clone Wars
ended. After we got a look at the Empire, we decided to call off the truce
and keep fighting instead."
"So how's it going?" Trever asked.
"We've been fighting for almost a year," she said. "They thought
they'd crush us in a matter of weeks. But they can't let us win. We know
that. We're making a last stand in our ancient city of Eluthan. We've got
our army concentrated there. It's a walled city, and we've evacuated most
of the civilians. We should try to get there as quickly as we can. And,"
she added with a rueful glance at their ships, "I'm afraid we have to walk.
"
"Did you know the Commander of the Republic Forces?" Obi-Wan asked
her.
"Garen Muln? Yes, I met him once, when we were negotiating the truce.
But you should talk to our commander, Toma. He dealt with Muth. He was with
him on that last day... the day the Chancellor said that all Jedi were
enemies."
The day of the slaughter. Obi-Wan felt Ferus glance at him. Ferus knew
Garen had been Obi-Wan's good friend. Ferus had met him as an apprentice,
in what he still thought of as his previous life.
"Look, we'd better get to Eluthan," Raina continued. "You can talk to
Toma there."
Obi-Wan and Ferus exchanged a glance. They really didn't have any
choice. They needed a ship to get off-planet, and Raina was their best bet
to find one.
They looked at Trever, and he shrugged. "I guess I'm along for the
ride."
"We'd better get going," Raina urged.
They followed her through the canyon into a dense wood. "Much of
Acherin is open land," she told them. "We only have three cities. Eluthan
is the center of our culture. We fortified it heavily during the Clone Wars
and we have a shield operating. That's why we've retreated there."
They walked quickly for several kilometers. Ferus tossed a pack of
protein pellets to Trever. He could see that the boy was tiring.
"We only have a few kilometers to go," Raina said in a low tone. "The
Empire has ringed the outskirts of the city with their army. We might run
into some droid scouts. With any luck we can slip through. I know some
shortcuts."
They picked up their pace, close to running now. They came to a vast
open field studded with massive standing stones, some of them hundreds of
meters high. In the distance, a walled city loomed. It was built on a
plateau, and the thick stone walls rose against a bleak yellow sky. It had
been designed for fortification, but it was clear that the makers had an
eye for beauty, too. The stone was laid in a pattern, and the contrasting
grays and dark blues seemed to make up a sculpture of weathered stone and
deep colors. There was a grandeur about it that made Obi-Wan and Ferus stop
in their tracks.
Raina noticed their reaction. "It is our treasure," she said simply.
"And we believe it will protect us from anything."
Not the Empire, Obi-Wan thought.
Suddenly a high whine cut through the air.
"It's a compact assault vehicle," Raina said. "Follow me."
They ran behind her to enter a dense area of the standing stones. They
stood, their backs to the stone, while the CAV approached, a droid piloting
it.
Obi-Wan knew the vehicles. They were small and agile, but prone to
sensor jamming. He assumed that the Empire was using them primarily for
surveillance in this area. One droid could cover a great deal of territory,
and the vehicle was equipped with a medium-sized blaster cannon.
The CAV sped past.
"There'll be more," Raina said.
They moved on. They went from the shelter of stone to stone, making
slower progress now. Every so often a CAV would speed past, its droid pilot
aiming a surveillance probe into the air. They were able to evade it each
time...
... until they stumbled on a small squad of heavily armed droids. This
time, there was no hiding. They heard the metallic click as the droids
snapped into attack position.
Blaster fire erupted from the droid squad. Raina reached for the two
blasters strapped across her chest and kept up a steady barrage as Ferus
charged. Obi-Wan took out his lightsaber and went after the left flank,
while Ferus charged toward the right.
Obi-Wan sliced off the head of a droid and used his backswing to
disable the control sensor suite of another. Ferus flew through the air and
executed a diving roundhouse kick, somehow slipping through the streaks of
blaster fire without catching any of it.
The other two droids retreated behind a tall standing stone and began
peppering them with blaster bolts.
"Here come the reinforcements." Raina pointed into the distance with
her chin, where CAVs were approaching. "If you can dispatch those two, I
can get to an open area and activate a smoke grenade. The wind is southeast
- it will carry most of the smoke toward the CAVs. I can get us through the
smoke to the secret entrance in the wall. That way they won't lock on our
position."
"Done." Obi-Wan summoned the Force and leaped to the top of one of the
smaller standing stones. He jumped from one to another until he had the
droids in view. Then he dropped behind them. Before they had a chance to
turn and fire, two strokes of the lightsaber turned them into scrap.
Raina raced to the open area and aimed the smoke grenade. She was
still out of range of the cannons on the CAVs. The grenade flew through the
air. Thick, acrid smoke billowed out and spread back toward the CAVs. Obi-
Wan quickly ran back to the group.
The wind carried much of the smoke away from them, but they still had
to make their way through it, their eyes streaming. They followed the
metallic sheen of Raina's armor as she led them through the smoke. When
they arrived at what looked like a sheer wall, she pressed several stones
in what appeared to be a random pattern. One large stone slid out.
She motioned them inside.
CHAPTER SIX
They walked through the narrow deserted streets. The city wasn't laid
out in a grid, but in a random pattern, streets and alleys turning and
ascending and descending the hilly terrain. The houses were made of mellow
bronze stone, and were only a few stories tall.
"Most of the citizens have evacuated," Raina explained. "This is
pretty much just an army base now. But once it was a thriving city."
They walked to a sprawling stone building on the edge of a grassy
plaza. The plaza now served as a landing platform for the ships. A plastoid
roof sheltered it and connected it to the building.
"This used to be a school," Raina said. "Many of the students joined
the resistance, and the rest offered the building as a base for operations.
Most Acherins are totally devoted to this cause. We didn't have to ask for
sacrifices. They offered them."
Trever smirked. "Or maybe they just wanted to get out of classes."
Raina didn't take offense; she laughed. "Maybe."
Obi-Wan looked around at the low, stately building, the expanse of
grass that had once thrived and now was brown and seared with the scorch of
after-burn and the trampling of boots. Once, boys and girls had run through
this grass, had studied at this school.
Odd how much he hated war, yet how much of his life had been spent
around it.
Raina nodded at a guard standing outside the double doors, and she and
her guests were allowed in. She quickly led the way to the command center,
a circular hall in the middle of the building. It had once been a gathering
place for students, Obi-Wan guessed. Now it had been outfitted with
vidscreens and computer banks.
A tall man with a shaved head saw them enter. His face was impassive,
but Obi-Wan noted how his body relaxed and his gray gaze cleared when he
saw Raina. Obi-Wan guessed this was Toma.
"We thought you were shot down," the tall man said.
"They tried," Raina said. "I lost my ship. But I met some friends."
She introduced them.
Toma looked at Obi-Wan searchingly. "I am glad to meet a Jedi."
"You knew Garen MuIn."
"Yes, we - "
Suddenly the command screen lit up with pulsating lights. Toma turned
and regarded the screen. "The counterattack has begun. The Empire has our
fleet surrounded. We need to scramble all pilots back up there."
"I'm ready," Raina said. "All I need is another ship."
To Obi-Wan's surprise, Ferus spoke up.
"I'd like to offer my services," he said. "Any chance to take a whack
at the Empire, I'm for it."
"We could use your help," Toma said. "Raina, can you find our friend a
ship?"
"Ferus..." Obi-Wan said, but he didn't know how to finish the thought.
He couldn't forbid Ferus to go. That wasn't his place. Ferus wasn't his
Padawan.
He would remain here. This was not his fight. He could never forget
that his duty was to Luke and Leia. He could take no unnecessary risks.
"Don't fret, Obi-Wan. I'll just do a little damage and come back to
get you," Ferus said easily.
"I want to go," Trever said.
"Sorry, kid," Ferus said. "Not this time."
"I'm really getting tired of being left behind."
"I don't think stowaways have a choice," Ferus said.
Toma turned to Obi-Wan. "Will you watch the battle with me? Your
advice will be appreciated. I have great respect for the Jedi."
Obi-Wan bowed his head. He would be happy to offer advice, but his
heart was heavy. He knew this effort was doomed. Ferus saw his feeling in
the Jedi's eyes, and turned abruptly to go with Raina.