Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 08_ Edge of Victory 01_ Conquest - J. Gregory Keyes [28]
“My ship!” Vehn howled, as the deck pitched wildly. Not blinking, Anakin took them through the storm, just as two more ships closed in, completing the trap.
“Help Master Ikrit,” Anakin told the Jedi candidates. “Push the freighter up farther.”
“Master Ikrit is gone, Anakin,” Valin said. “He jumped out of the hatch.”
“He what?”
“There he is!” Tahiri shrieked, pointing ahead of them.
There Ikrit was indeed, walking toward the blocking ships, a corvette and a light freighter. As he approached them, they were parted as if by two gigantic hands.
“I don’t believe it,” Anakin said. But he gunned forward, nevertheless, aimed at the gap the Jedi Master had created for them. Blaster bolts and laser beams sizzled and hissed in the air, but every shot that might have hit either Ikrit or the ship bent away, missing by centimeters, and still the small Jedi strolled sedately along.
They were almost free now, passing over Ikrit.
“He can’t keep that up,” Anakin said. “Tahiri, use the Force. Snag him as we go by.”
“You bet,” she answered. Her confidence rang false; Anakin heard a tremor in her voice.
That was when the first bolt slipped through and struck Master Ikrit. Anakin felt it in the Force, a spike of clarity. No pain, no fear, no remorse, only … understanding.
Two more shots hit Ikrit in quick succession, and then fire was pounding their ship again. With a sob of anguish, Anakin jetted the ship through the hole and spun. At the same moment, with an inarticulate growl, Tahiri leapt from the open hatch, lightsaber glowing, and ran toward the downed Master.
“No!” Anakin howled. He brought the forward guns—the only ones under his direct control—to bear, and opened up on the ships that were suddenly closing between him and Tahiri. They returned fire. He caught a glimpse of her, Ikrit’s body in her arms, dodging back toward him. Absurdly, his eyes were drawn to her bare feet, white against the brown soil.
The transport turned halfway over under a barrage, and every light in the ship went out. Cursing, Anakin started furiously trying to reroute, and then the power whined back on. The shields were gone.
“Valin, Sannah, one of you!” he shouted. “Get to the laser turret! Now!”
He did the only thing he could. In seconds they would be cooked. If he stood any chance of getting Tahiri back on board, he needed a plan.
He spun and fired the jets, leaping above the other ships, strafing them as he went. He was absorbed now, his senses in the Force stretched to their limits, dodging shots before they were fired, sensing the weakest spots to place his own rounds, pinwheeling and jagging above them.
The ships came up with him. He fought for altitude, all the time aware that Tahiri was farther and farther below him. He could still feel her. She was still alive.
Master Ikrit was not. Anakin felt the old Jedi’s life go, felt it pass through him like a sweet wind.
I am proud of you, Anakin, it seemed to say. Remember—together, you are stronger than the sum of your parts. I love you. Good-bye.
Gritting his teeth against another concussion, Anakin clenched the tears in his skull. Cry later, Anakin, he thought. Right now you have to see.
One of his engines was limping. He couldn’t win this, not here, not now. With a curse that bordered on being a sob, he flipped, slid between two ships that collided an instant later, and punched toward the upper atmosphere.
Below him, Tahiri’s presence dwindled.
Like Chewie. Just like Chewie.
He jerked the ship back around and aimed it at the nearest ship, a corvette, and went to full throttle.
“What the—” Vehn gasped. “You’re going to kill us!”
Anakin fired. The other ship held steady, steady.
Anakin pulled up, just slightly, and skipped off the top of the corvette the way a hurled stone might skip across a lake. The collision tossed them up with a terrible shrieking of metal.
The counterforce hurled the corvette down, not far, but far enough to slam