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The machine exploded instantly, flinging pilot and rider head over heels in opposite directions.

Quickly, however, a second sled was catching up.

This one carried a pilot only, but a more skillful one. Twisting the throttle, the pilot drove his sled into Obi-Wan’s, trying to send it spinning out of control or, better still, into the trunk of massive tree that was protruding acutely from the thick ice. Narrowly missing the latter, Obi-Wan went into a sideways skid. Overcorrecting, he added spin to his slide and couldn’t resume his course until the sled had whipped through half a dozen counter rotations. By then his crash-helmeted pursuer was well positioned to ram him a second time, but Obi-Wan was ready for him. Turning sharply, he steered into the pursuit sled, hanging on through the jarring collision, then directing a Force push at the rebounding pilot.

The sled shot forward as if supercharged, with the pilot all but dangling from the control bars. Speeding up the face of a hummock, the craft went airborne, then ballistic, plummeting into a thinly iced-over fishing hole at an angle that took machine and rider both deep under solid ice.

Water geysered into the air, drenching Obi-Wan as he raced past. The third sled was still clinging to his tail, and blaster bolts were whizzing past his ears. Up ahead, he saw Anakin and Fa’ale lean their sled through a sweeping turn to the south, between two of Naos III’s many hills. Lethal hyphens of light streaked down from the bridge that linked the hills, but not one found Anakin or Fa’ale.

Unable to replicate Anakin’s deft turns, Obi-Wan was falling farther behind with each quarter kilometer, and was now making himself an easy target for the assassins on the bridge. With no hope of negotiating the hail of fire, he maneuvered the sled through a long turn away from the span. But no sooner did he emerge from his half circle than he found himself on a collision course with the last of the pursuit sleds.

The inevitability of a head-on crash left him no choice but to abandon his machine for what was going to be a very long slide on the ice. But just short of his leap, a bolt in the jagged line the bridge gunners were stitching along the river caught the pilot of the onrushing machine in the chest, hurling him into the air. Twisting the throttle, Obi-Wan swerved around the pilotless sled and continued to race upriver, out of range of the blasters.

To his right a clamor built over the hill, and the shadow of something large and swift fell over him. A repeating blaster clacked repeatedly, fracturing the ice directly in his path and opening a wide, surging breach of agitated water.

Uncertain he could leap the gap even if he wanted to try, Obi-Wan applied the brakes—hard!

The sled was ten meters from the ice-chunked fissure when a metal claw dropped over him, snapping shut and plucking him from the seat. Wrenched from his hand, his lightsaber flew onto the ice, and the sled sailed off into the frothing water.

“Stars’ end,” Obi-Wan muttered.

Suspended on a swaying cable, the claw began to ascend toward the open belly of a graceless snow skiff.

Red hands clamped around Anakin’s waist, Fa’ale whooped and shouted, clearly enjoying herself. Even through the daze of too many drinks—or more likely because of them.

“You missed your calling, Jedi,” she shouted into his right ear. “You could have been a champion Podracer!”

“Been there, done that,” Anakin said over his shoulder.

It was then that he caught sight of Obi-Wan being lifted from his sled. Bringing brakes and thrusters to bear, Anakin powered the sled through a fast 180 and shot back upriver, under the bridge they had just left behind, dodging the unrelenting fire of hand blasters.

“Sharptooth collector,” Fa’ale explained when she saw the snow skiff. “Gathers catch, so the fishers won’t have to ferry their loads into the city. That’s what I do here—my job, such as it is.”

The claw that had Obi-Wan in its grip was halfway to the skiff.

“I don’t see any way of reaching