Jedi Apprentice 1: The Rising Force

Chapter 13

Qui-Gon raced for the bridge, down the main corridors. Obi-Wan, Si Treemba, and Clat’Ha followed at a dead run. All around the ship, Arconans were whining in terror — making the strange hissing sound of their kind. They backed into their rooms and locked their doors.

Through the grates under the floor Qui-Gon could hear the grind of the generators charging the ships shields. Meanwhile, the steady whunk whunk sound continued as blasters fired.

He thought he knew what had happened. Pirates sometimes mined the shipping lanes. When the ship hit a mine, the hyperdrive blew, and the ship would drop back out of hyperspace.

As it did, the pirates would open fire, destroying the ship’s weapons and engines so swiftly that unwary travelers seldom had time to react.

Then the pirates would send boarding parties out to strip anything they could from their victims.

A miner transport like the Monument didn’t have much worth stealing, but the pirates wouldn’t know that — not until they’d blown it to pieces and searched through the rubble.

The floor shuddered under the impact of another explosion. As the ship twisted to its side, Qui-Gon rounded a corner. Ahead was a transparisteel view port. Through it, he could see five Togorian warships, all shaped like red birds of prey. Two screamed past his port. Green bolts of blaster fire erupted from the warships, slamming into the Monument. Metal shrieked in protest. The corridors filled with greasy smoke.

The Monument’s guns had gone silent. Now, Qui-Gon could see why — the gun turrets had been blown away. Buts of burning slag lit up like glowing stars where the turrets had once stood.

The Monument floated dead in space. Though fire alarms sounded, no one on the bridge was shouting orders. Now a Togorian cruiser raced toward the ship.

Qui-Gon stood, watching helplessly as the cruiser approached. There were times when he wished that he was not alone, times when he wished he had not lost his last Padawan, Xanatos.

“Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon called. Even though he did not fully trust the boy, he didn’t see any other choice. They need some kind of plan, and they all had to work together if they hoped to survive. “The pirates are getting ready to board,” he said crisply. “I’ll try to stop them. Go to the bridge and see if the crew is alive. If they are not, I want you to pilot this ship out of here.”

Qui-Gon stared hard at the boy. He was asking a lot, he knew. He knew that as a Jedi student, Obi-Wan had flown a few ships in simulation, and most likely piloted some cloud cars around Coruscant. But he’s never piloted a ship like this, and he’d never been in battle.

“I can fight alongside you,” Obi-Wan protested.

Qui-Gon turned and grasped the boy by both elbows. “Listen to me. You must obey this time. Trust my judgement. I can hold back the pirates, but we’ll all die if the ship remains dead in space. Don’t worry about where to go. Just fly anywhere. Once the pirates start boarding, their friends won’t be able to fire on us for fear of killing their leaders. Go now. Fly.”

Obi-Wan nodded. Qui-Gon could see the uncertainty in the boy’s eyes. Qui-Gon wasn’t sure if they boy would be able to pilot the ship, either.

But then again, he wasn’t sure he himself could hold off the pirates.

Obi-Wan nodded. “I won’t let you down.”

Qui-Gon watched as Obi-Wan sprinted toward the bridge with Si Treemba behind him. Suddenly, the boy looked so young…

For half a moment, Qui-Gon was tempted to follow him and leave the pirates to the Whiphids and Arconans. But the miners wouldn’t be a match for the Togorians. He would have to trust Obi-Wan.

Qui-Gon heard the distant roar of small blasters. That could mean only one thing: the pirates had already boarded. Though the Arconans were choosing to hide from the battle, the Offworld miners were putting up a fight.

Of course, the pirates would send more than one boarding party. Qui-Gon decided to let the Offworlders protect themselves. He dashed down a side corridor, toward the docking bay. Clat’Ha ran behind him.

He rounded a corner. A huge Togorian pirate stood directly in his path, his eyes flashing like green embers in the dark fur of his face. The Togorian reached out with his enormous claws to rake Qui-Gon.

But Qui-Gon was a Jedi Master. The Force had already warned him. He twisted under the pirate’s arms, anticipating the move, and grasped the lightsaber attached to his belt. The blade came up cleanly, slicing the Togorian at the knees. The Togorian roared in pain.

Behind the fallen pirate, more Togorians rounded a corner and ran toward them. Clat’Ha, in a blind panic, pulled her own blaster and opened fire. One Togorian screamed in pain, it’s huge fangs gaping and showing blood.

All of the Togorians returned fire with their own blasters. Qui-Gon dodged two bolts, then used his lightsaber to deflect three more.

Clat’Ha dropped low, screaming in rage. She was an able warrior, but they were outnumbered twenty to one. Qui-Gon vowed to do his best to keep her alive.

The door to the bridge was sealed shut, and burning hot. Obi-Wan could feel heat radiating from it as he tried to open it. A fire raged on the other side. Ignoring the pain, he tried to wedge his fingers in the crack and pull it open.

“It’s no use,” Si Treemba told him. “That’s a fire door. It locks if the bridge is burning.”

Obi-Wan backed from the door. The bridge must have taken a direct hit from one of the Togorian ships. But a hit from a heavy blaster or a proton torpedo would have done more than just start a fire. Most likely it had punched a hole in the hull.

It would be dangerous to try to open the door. There might only be a fire, but it could be worse. All the air could have escaped from the room.

He remembered the look on Qui-Gon’s face as the Jedi Master asked for his help. He couldn’t let him down this time.

Carefully, Obi-Wan struggled to calm himself, to use the Force. He could sense the latching mechanism, and it would take only a little effort to move it.

But then what? If he opened it, he could get pulled into space. Or toxic smoke could roil into the corridor and suffocate him, or the fire might spread into the halls.

He didn’t have a choice. He focused his attention and the door slid open.

Immediately, a stiff wind knocked him on the back. The breath left Obi-Wan’s lungs, and the sips air whisked pat him, sucked into the vacuum of space. Obi-Wan grabbed the door frame to keep from getting sucked out. It was all he could do to hold on. Behind him, Si Treemba got a handhold on the edge of a control box.

The bridge had indeed been hit. Air screamed out through a small round hole up above the view port.

“I have to plug that hole!” Obi-Wan shouted to Si Treemba.

But before Obi-Wan could move, Si Treemba dropped to the floor. He crawled across the bridge, reaching for handhold after handhold. Obi-Wan could only hang on to the door frame and watch. He couldn’t stop Si Treemba and he couldn’t help him.

Si Treemba reached for a spherical compass — the round metal object that served as a backup in case the main nav computer was hit or disabled. Fighting the screaming wind, Si Treemba stumbled to the hull and released the compass near the hole. The vacuum sucked it in, and immediately the rushing air quieted.

“Good Work!” Obi-Wan called as he ran to the pilot console. The captain and his copilot were still strapped into their seats, drowsy from loss of air. In another minute, they’d have suffocated. As it was, both men were unconscious. The room felt hot. Blaster fire had ripped through the navigation terminal, and metal slag pooled everywhere. But with so little air in the room, the fire had gone out.

Obi-Wan unbuckled the captain and moved him onto the floor. Then he looked at the control panel. There were so many lights and buttons. For a moment he was stunned, unsure what to do.

He looked up at the view port.

Togorian warships surrounded the Monument. A heavy cruiser that had been refitted as a gun ship edged nearer. Its shields had to be down for it to be so close.

A red light blinked insistently on Obi-Wan’s console. In a daze he realized that the forward proton torpedo tubes were loaded and armed. They were standard defensive gear for transports traveling in such a region. His targeting computer was down, but he aimed for the bridge of the gun ship without it.

His heart pounded. He was afraid of what he had to do. He hoped qui-Gon was tight, the pirates wouldn’t dare fire back with their own men aboard. Because if they did fire, they’d hit with everything they had.

“What are you going to do, Obi-Wan??” Si Treemba asked, holding on to the bridge console.

“Send a message to the Togorians,” Obi-Wan answered grimly. “We’re not dead yet!”

Reaching across the console, he launched the proton torpedoes.

* * *

Blaster fire lit the smoky corridors of the Monument, blinding him. Qui-Gon deflected and dodged the bolts.

Dead Togorians were strewn in the hall behind. Live Togorians choked the hall ahead. Their roaring resounded from the walls.

For a moment, he was pinned behind the dead. He wished that he had some backup. But the Offworlders were fighting on another front.

“Where are your Arconans?” he shouted to Clat’Ha. “We could use some help.”

“Arconans don’t fight!” Clat’Ha shouted back as she snapped a shot at a Togorian. “They probably locked themselves in their rooms!”

“What about Jemba’s men?” Qui-Gon asked. “Maybe you should contact them for help!”

“They wouldn’t come,” Clat’Ha said grimly. “I’m afraid it’s you and me, Qui-Gon..”

A Togorian pirate captain lunged down the corridor, bursting through the screen of smoke. He was huge, nearly twice as tall as a man. His black body armor was scarred and pitted from a thousand fights. A Human skull dangled from a chain around his neck. His fur was dark as night, and his green eyes gleamed wickedly.

He carried a huge vibro-ax in one hand, an energy shield in the other. The pirates pointed ears were drawn back flat against his skull. He stepped forward to meet it.

“Meet your death, Jedi!” the Togorian pirate roared. “I have hunted your kind before, and I will gnaw your bones tonight!”

Suddenly, Qui-Gon realized that the pirates behind their dark captain were retreating, back toward the hold. There was nowhere to go back there, except another access tunnel. The pirates were probably trying to circle behind him.

Clat’Ha rushed forward and fired her blaster. The Togorian raised his shield against it, deflecting it easily. Then he raised his deadly vibro-ax. With only the slightest touch, the weapon could sever a man’s head. Qui-Gon moved forward in one flowing movement, his lightsaber held high.

“No doubt you have killed before,” Qui-Gon said softly. “But you shall not be gnawing any bones tonight.”

He leaped at the Togorian pirate. The pirate roared and swung his ax.

A blinding flash as bright as a solar flare lit space as the proton torpedoes struck the Togorian gun ship.

Obi-Wan shielded his eyes from the intense light. Si Treemba cried out.

Half of the gun ship disintegrated, hurtling debris into space. A second blast followed the first, as the gun ship’s arsenal exploded.

Bits of metal riddled the Monument. A huge section of the blown gun ship hurtled into a second Togorian warship.

Obi-Wan didn’t plan to wait and see id the pirates would shoot him down. While they recovered, he hit a button, loading more torpedoes into his launch tube.

With the navigation console out, the only way to fly the ship was manually. Obi-Wan grabbed the control, pulled back hard, and hit the thrusters. He heard the harsh sound of metal rending. Had he just ruined the engines?

Quickly, he consulted the display terminals. He saw the source of the sound. Two Togorian cruisers were latched to his docking bays. By blasting off, Obi-Was was ripping away from the ships — tearing apart seals to the doors.

All the air by the docking bays would rush into space.

Qui-Gon had gone to stop the pirates’ boarding party.

Obi-Wan gritted his teeth and fervently hoped that only pirates would be swept out into space with the wreckage.

Ahead of him, a Togorian warship opened fire.

* * *

The floor lurched under Qui-Gon’s feet as he met the pirate captain. The huge Togorian weighed four times as much as a man.

Even under normal circumstances, it would have been all the Qui-Gon could do to fend off the pirate. He tried to catch his footing as he blocked the monster’s blow.

The pirate almost fell, but recovered in time to raise the vibro-ax. The blade bit deep into Qui-Gon’s right shoulder, driving him to the floor.

Qui-Gon gasped from the searing pain. His shoulder burned as if it were on fire. He tried to lift his arm, but it was useless.

Behind the pirate, Qui-Gon heard the sound of peeling metal. The seals to hold had ripped apart. Wind howled down the hall as the ship’s air screamed away. Qui-Gon saw droplets of his own blood stripped away like rain in a storm.

Debris came hurtling down the hall — blasters and helmets of dead Togorians. They battered the huge Togorian pirate, and he raised his shield, fighting forward, pressing the attack.

Qui-Gon let the wind pull him, so that he slid along the floor toward the vacuum of space, closer to the pirate captain.

If he died, he would take the monster with him.

* * *

Heavy blaster fire ripped through the hull of the Monument. To Togorian warship had taken aim at the bridge, but with the sudden thrust of the huge ship, the blaster bolts had struck the ship behind their mark.

Obi-Wan pushed away the thought of who might have died in the attack. He reversed thrusters.

The warship’s next salvo fell short, blasting harmlessly into space. Obi-Wan took half a moment to aim his proton torpedoes, the launched them down the warship’s gullet.

As he was sucked toward the space vacuum, Qui-Gon called his lightsaber to his left hand. He aimed a blow at the pirate captain’s feet. The Togorian grabbed a handhold and leaped high, evading the cut, then landed directly on Qui-Gon’s left arm with his booted feet.

Fighting the pain, Qui-Gon tried to bring up his lightsaber, but the huge Togorian had him pinned. Qui-Gon twisted desperately, but he couldn’t get away. With his left arm pinned and his right arm badly wounded Qui-Gon could do little to fight the monster.

The pirate captain roared madly in triumph, and the wind seemed to roar with him. It tore down the corridors like a tornado. Qui-Gon could hardly breathe.

Suddenly the pirate’s head disappeared. The huge Togorian hurtled backward, grabbed by the fury of the wind.

Qui-Gon looked up the hall. Clat’Ha crouched on the floor, desperately clinging to the handle of a locker door with one hand, her heavy blaster in the other.

In the heat of battle, the Togorian had forgotten all about the woman.

Down the hall was a bulkhead door that should have closed automatically when the air pressure dropped. But with all the damage to the ship, it was no surprise that it hadn’t worked.

Qui-Gon was bleeding badly, and could hardly breathe. Weakly, with the last of his will, he reached out with the Force and moved a bit of debris, touching the controls to the door and sliding it closed. As the wind stopped screaming through the ship, everything became deathly silent.

All that Qui-Gon could hear was his own heart beating, and Clat’Ha gasping for air.

The Togorian warship exploded in a burst of light.

Si Treemba worked at the communications console, launching distress beacons. It might take days for a Republic ship to respond, or one could arrive in a matter of seconds. It was impossible to know who would be traveling the space lanes.

Suddenly the Togorian warships peeled away from the Monument. Their gun ship and warship were destroyed. Their captain’s cruiser and second boarding vessel had ripped away from the Monument’s hull, and dead pirates could be seen littering space.

The last of the pirates blasted off into hyperspace, never guessing that they’d been bested by a twelve-year-old boy.

Obi-Wan piloted the Monument among the glimmering stars. Warning claxons were ringing everywhere. Monitors showed air leaks from a dozen holes.

“It looks like the shi is falling apart,” Obi-Wan said to Si Treemba.

Si Treemba nodded his triangular head worriedly. “We have to land now, Obi-Wan.”

“Land where?” Obi-Wan asked, looking ahead at nothing but empty space.

Si Treemba bent over the nav computer. “It’s not working,” he said.

“I know,” Obi-Wan replied. “That’s why I’m flying manually. Where are the crew? Why isn’t anyone coming to help us?”

“They’re probably dealing with the wounded or maybe they are wounded themselves.” Si Treemba peered ahead through the view screen. “Wait! There!”

Obi-Wan could just glimpse the planet ahead, a blue marble the color of water, shot through with white clouds.

“How do we know we can breathe the air?” Obi-Wan asked. The atmosphere might be poison, the planet might be hostile.

“It had got to be better than breathing in a vacuum,” Si Treemba suggested.

The Arconan’s faceted eyes met Obi-Wan’s. The great ship shuddered, and another warning monitor went off, signaling that the air pressure was dropping.

“We don’t think we have a choice,” Si Treemba said softly.

Grelb and his men hurried down the hallways through the Arconan side of the ship. Jemba the Hutt’s miners had fought well against the pirates on their side, but dozens of stout Hutts and Whiphids had died.

There was a good chance that the Arconans would be dead, too. Grelb was hoping to steal some loot from the bodies.

But when he reached the doors to the Arconan hold, he found that the Arconans hadn’t fought at all. Instead, they’d let their pet Jedi protect them.

Grelb glanced around a corner and saw the hated Clat’Ha helping Qui-Gon off the floor. The Jedi had a deep wound in his right shoulder, and his left arm was sore and swollen.

The Hutt smiled, and jerked his head back from the corridor before anyone looked his way.

He whispered to the Whiphids at his back, “Go and tell Jemba: the Arconans are all cowards who dared not come out of their rooms to fight. And their precious Jedi looks as if he’s barely alive. Now is a good time to strike!”

Obi-Wan flew over a watery world from daylight into darkness, to a night lit by five glowing moons that hung in the sky like multicolored stones. Beneath him, enormous creatures flew in great flocks. They were silvery in the moonlight, with long bullet-shaped bodies and powerful wings. They looked like some strange species of flying fish whose wings had evolved to a remarkable size. They stretched their wings wide, half-asleep as they rode the wind. Some of them looked up at his ship curiously.

Clinging to the manual controls, with the ship buckling and rattling, Obi-Wan could see only ocean in every direction. Then, at last, on the horizon ahead he glimpsed one small rocky island, waves breaking against its shore.

He aimed the ship at the rock, held tight to the controls, and groaned with effort as he tried to slow the ship’s fall.