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Chapter Seven
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Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Newest Part
Evritt Bagaynz threw the stupid Gungan off his back, pulling free his blaster, just as the explosions began. He moved to place his blaster between himself and the dumb animal raining ineffectual blows on his head when the other creature leapt to its feet and kicked his arm.
His blaster went skidding to one side and his arm went numb. In an almost convulsive move, he threw the first of the stupid beasts off of himself and rolled to one side. The older one, Tar Balls or something like that, was waiting for him. The dumb thing grabbed his arm in a powerful grip, twisting his forearm back and up so hard and fast that the cracking noise of his shoulder might well have been a sonic boom. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the thing's big leathery fist speeding in at his head, and then all went black.
"Jar Jar," Tarpals said as the younger Gungan moved towards the now-inert form on the floor of their hut, "Whatta you think you gonna do to him?"
The younger Gungan froze for a moment, swaying slightly. His broad head swiveled towards Tarpals, the right eye stalk twisted down from the abuse the human had piled on it, the left barely focused. "Me thinkin me gonna kill him."
"He ain't going nowhere, Jar Jar," the older Gungan said, feeling such pity for the younger one. He'd known Jar Jar for years. The younger Gungan's mother had been a cousin of his, and when she and her mate had died on a fishing expedition, Tarpals had taken on a sort of unofficial guardianship of the younger being. It enraged him that he'd had to feign an inability to protect the other throughout the human's abuse of him. He'd decided to teach the younger Gungan some self-defense moves, but Jar Jar's natural clumsiness, combined with the considerable abuse he'd already taken from the human, made it nearly impossible for Tarpals to help much. But the day he'd told Jar Jar he was going to teach him "Soldier Things" had almost been worth it for the sheer joy that had radiated off the youngster.
"First," Tarpals said, picking up the human's blaster, "We gotta find out what blowing up out there. If it the pirates, happy day, yay?"
"Happy day," said Jar Jar, in a tone that was anything but. The younger Gungan let Tarpals take him by the upper arm and lead him out.
The camp was in chaos. Four humans were in the middle of the camp. At first, Tarpals thought they were reinforcements for the slavers, because of the way they were dressed. But the newcomers were firing on the pirates.
The explosions he'd heard had taken out a large section of the stockade at the back of the camp. Gungans were streaming that direction, breaking for the nearby river where it would be at least somewhat harder for the slavers to chase them down. One of the humans, a small female, was covering their retreat. She had long brown hair that was stringy and messy and resembled a pile of tentacles spilling down her back. Her face was made up with some sort of white paste offset by large black circles around her eyes, a black grid that looked like teeth around her mouth, and red streaks that were meant to resemble blood around her lips. The little warrior was an uncanny shot, Tarpals noted, and to his trained eye, she was a product of Naboo Defense training.
"Boss," Jar Jar said, staring at the group, "They gotta Jedi with them."
This was true, Tarpals noted. The human furthest away from them, a slight man with spiky hair, was leaping and dodging among the pirates trying to enter the stockade, a brilliantly glowing lightsaber flashing among the enemy. His clothes were rags and his face was filthy. The other two were similarly attired, but both of them moved and shot with the trained precision of graduates of the Naboo Military Academy. He saw one of them go down from a blaster shot fired by a slaver who'd managed to sneak a fair ways into the camp, hiding behind a hut. Tarpals leveled his blaster at the pirate and squeezed off a shot. He had nearly no practice with this sort of weapon, but the brilliant green blast took the slaver in the chest.
"You there," called out the young woman with the skull make-up, "Help the others retreat, cover the river bank. One of our people is down there."
"Yassa," he called back and started to lead Jar Jar towards the back of the stockade. As they cleared the back fence, he spotted four slavers running around the corner, blasters in hand. He shoved Jar Jar down, knelt beside him, and started blasting. His first two blasts slammed into the two leading humans, but one of them was apparently wearing armor under his tunic. He spun back, but returned fire almost immediately. The shots went ineffectually by as Tarpals grabbed Jar Jar around the middle and hauled him easily back into what cover the blown out stockade could offer. He ducked back after squeezing off a few fast shots, then turned to Jar Jar. "Gotta bad, bombad feeling about this," he said.
But Jar Jar wasn't there to respond. He was staggering back into the camp.
The plan had been for Qui-Gon Jinn, Jedi Master, to take one of the NDF soldiers and sabotage the slavers' response capabilities. One of their vessels was positioned so it's two quad-laser batteries could fire on the stockade in the event of a riot. The other vessels were not in a position to bring their weapon systems to bear on the slaves. One of the NDF troops would bring up the repulsor truck they had brought, parking it by the river to provide cover for the escapees. Amidala, Obi-Wan, and the remaining two NDF troops were to enter the camp under cover of detonating grenades and hold off the pirates long enough for most of the Gungans to escape. It had been pure blind luck that that Gungan had turned up with a blaster in time to take out the threat on their flank, and Amidala had every intention of offering that one a Naboo Cross, the highest honor a non-military citizen of her planet could receive.
She checked the group's back half a minute after the Gungan had fired on the pirate and saw the blaster-equipped older Gungan crouched in the ruined stockade opening, firing off to her left at something outside the stockade - several somethings, judging by the number of blaster shots being returned. The younger one was running towards them, building up a good head of steam in spite of the obvious damage he'd taken. She tried to wave him back, but he ignored her, lumbering off towards where the flanking pirate had fallen.
"Hope you don't get killed, friend," she muttered as she turned back to the front of the stockade. "Obi-Wan," she called. "Reinforcements behind!"
She couldn't even tell if the young Jedi heard her, but his movements started to tend back towards the rest of the group. She assumed that the flashing, leaping maneuvers were something like a strategic withdrawal.
Flipping her blaster to her left hand, she pulled Kyrie to her feet, letting the handmaiden use her undamaged right hand to provide further fire. Stepping back carefully, she began pulling her small force back.
Qui-Gon Jinn and the young NDF soldier slid back into the woods, quiet as ghosts, and started around towards the back of the camp. Two pirates ran past them, heading the same way but heedless of the two saboteurs. The two slavers stopped at the corner of the stockade. One nimbly ascended a nearby tree and clambered out along a branch a few meters above the ground and started firing down towards where the gap in the stockade would be. The other took that as her cue to begin firing towards the river, either at straggling Gungans or at the truck they'd brought.
Qui-Gon lightly slapped the soldiers upper arm with the back of his knuckles. He pointed at himself, then at the slaver kneeling on the ground, then at his companion, then at the sniper in the tree. The soldier nodded, then began drawing in a bead on her blaster carbine on the sniper.
Qui-Gon stepped lightly along the stockade, taking great care to keep his movements quiet until he was standing almost on top of the kneeling pirate. He raised his lightsaber above his head as a signal to his companion, then swept it down, lighting it only when it would take off the pirate's left arm, which held the blaster. The pirate slammed back, gripping the stump of her arm before passing out from shock. A body slumped to the ground to his left, the sniper's right eye a smoking hole. The NDF troop ran up to him as he glanced around the corner. Three slavers were advancing on the corner, cautious and ready.
In the distance, Qui-Gon could hear large repulsors starting up. One of the pirate vessels was getting airborne.
Jar Jar found the bad human who Tarpals had shot. The man had a gun like Tarpal's, only longer, about as long as Jar Jar's forearm. He had a little gun in a pouch on his waist. Jar Jar took them both, then stood to go back to his old friend.
He stood up a little too quickly, and immediately his surroundings started to spin. He went to grab his head to steady it, forgetting he had blasters in each hand. The resulting impact actually cleared his head a little, and he started off after the good humans, who were falling back towards where Tarpals was crouched. He got to where he could see his friend's hiding place, and felt his heart explode as a blaster bolt - from the wrong direction! - took the older Gungan through the side of his head.
He ran towards the corner, the good humans flashing by like blaster bolts as he sped by them. As he got close to Tarpals, he stumbled over some of the wreckage of the duracrete stockade, sliding forward on his belly straight through the opening. He twisted, lifting his right shoulder off the ground, and was as surprised to see three humans less than two meters away as they were to see him. He yanked on the handles of the guns he had, and two of them went down right away. One of his nearly random blasts had hit the leading human in the leg, and the other blast, from the big gun, punched a second in the face.
The third flew back, slamming into the wall hard enough that Jar Jar heard cracking noises, and slumped to the ground. He finished rolling onto his back and a human female knelt over him. "Oh, my," she said. "You'll be okay," she promised, offering a hand to help him to his feet.
Behind her was a big human, bigger even than Bagaynz had been, and he was holding light in his fists. "Jedi thing pretty," he said, passing out.
They'd had to carry the young Gungan - his friend was quite dead - along with the wounded NDF soldier. They made it back to the repulsor truck with no trouble, but as they were loading the Gungan into the back of the enclosed craft, the pirate ship came into view overhead. Qui-Gon leapt atop the vehicle, shouting at the pilot to "GO!"
He anchored himself in place with the Force, studying the ship quickly. It was a small freighter, only twenty or so meters in length, and seemed only to be armed with two fixed laser emplacements at its bow and quad-laser batteries top and bottom of its midsection. He hoped it had no missile or torpedo systems - as it was, the fixed lasers would be a formidable test of his Jedi abilities. He actually had no worries about the quad-laser, and was in fact banking on it.
The truck began lurching evasive maneuvers which would only matter for as long as the enemy ship was at its present altitude. If it went higher, its weapons would require a smaller degree of arc to traverse to saturate the area in deadly laser fire. The ship was about a hundred meters back and twenty up. The relative position of the vessel meant that the quad laser couldn't traverse to fire directly on them, only behind them. Once the pilot figured that out, Qui-Gon would have a very limited time-frame with which to work.
In the meantime, there were options. He drowned himself in the Force, feeling all around him. His impression was that the young Gungan they'd saved would probably have permanent damage to his eyes, but should be otherwise alright after proper treatment. The young Queen was a riot of energy and powerful emotion. It occurred to Qui-Gon that he'd never heard of a Naboonian Jedi, and to wonder why. Obi-Wan was trying to induce a healing trance in the Gungan, a difficult task at best when the patient was not particularly Force-sensitive, but which may aid the young being considerably, and the other occupants of the craft were a blend of anxiety, anger, determination, and strength.
The enemy craft was running with a skeleton crew - two weapons officers, a pilot, and an engineer. The pilot was a veteran, which did not bode well, but he was in a slight chemical haze, perhaps drunk. The two weapons officers were younger, but their lifestyle meant that they would be resistant to normal emotional manipulations. The engineer he more or less disregarded. He reached out to all of them, and made himself a figure of personal revulsion to them, so that their fire would be concentrated on him. The weapons officer in the cockpit prepared the forward guns.
In less than a heartbeat, Qui-Gon channeled as much energy into his saber as he could - a technique rare among the Jedi, but one he had found quite useful over the years. In his hyper-aware state, he could almost see the light coalescing in the barrels of the weapons, and the movement of his blade was almost casual as he batted the bright beams out of the way. The impact against his saber would have thrown him back had he not joined himself to the heavy craft he rode.
He pulled the blade back up in time to deflect a second blast - fortunately, the lasers' rate of recharge was fairly slow - and this one he slammed straight back at the craft, taking it a short distance forward of the quad laser. He felt the jolt of terror from the belly gunner. The vessel started to gain altitude to allow the belly gunner a better angle, and Qui-Gon sent out a fast impulse to the forward gunner. The expected shot came - and was bounced unerringly into the turret of the belly guns. Qui-Gon felt that being disappear from the Force, and acknowledged it with a quick nod before leaping down and into the body of the truck.
"Move into the forest," he shouted. "Their forward guns won't be able to track us unless they tear their ship apart in the trees!"
