Jude Watson - Jedi Quest 10 - The Final Showdown

"Head for the monastery," Ry-Gaul suggested. "The canyons will give you cover."

Anakin pushed the speeder into a climb that slammed them back into their seats. He tried a corkscrew turn, a movement that he could make with his eyes closed in a decent speeder. This one groaned with the effort. The controls shook in his hands as blaster bolts skittered across the hull.

"This isn't going to work," he muttered. "Ry-Gaul, can you take over?"

Ry-Gaul quickly slid into the pilot seat and Anakin transferred the controls. He crawled past the others to the rear.

"What are you doing?" Obi-Wan asked.

"If I can reduce the air drag, it can go faster." He spoke to Soara, who sat near a small toolkit built into the cabin wall. "Hand me that fusioncutter, will you? It's going to get windy," Anakin warned, before flipping open the canopy.

The wind whipped through the cabin. Anakin used a servodriver to disengage the canopy completely. It flew off the airspeeder, smacking the first security speeder straight in its windscreen. The blow sent the cruiser careening downward to the planet's surface.

"That was lucky," Anakin muttered.

He crawled out on the airspeeder. Buffeted by air currents and hanging on for his life whenever Ry-Gaul swerved to avoid cannonfire, Anakin crawled to the port fins. Using the fusioncutter, he sliced through the fastenings and kicked off the decorative fins. Laser bolts made the hair on the back of his neck stand at attention as the charge shuddered through the air. Anakin held on with his knees as he made deep cuts in the bright plastoid shell and kicked it off into space.

He crawled back inside the speeder. "Better?" he asked Ry-Gaul.

"Better. I can get it up past maximum speed."

To Anakin's surprise, Ry-Gaul inclined his head toward the controls, even as he made a hard left and went into a dive. "Take over."

Feeling pleased, Anakin slipped back into the pilot seat. A Jedi Master had passed the controls to him! Ry-Gaul was renowned as a pilot, and he thought Anakin better able to handle the evasive flying. Take that, Ferus!

Anakin kept pushing the speed. Even when the mountains loomed ahead, he didn't slow down. The air-speeder screamed down into the valley. He looped around a peak and dived into a canyon dotted with boulders. The three remaining army security speeders followed.

Anakin kept the craft close to the ground. This kind of flying came naturally to him. After all, he'd trained on Podracers.

He whipped through the canyon as if it were a racing course. He flew over boulders, squeezed through natural formations, sensing obstacles before they appeared. One speeder behind him clipped a wing and spun out of control.

"Another one down," Obi-Wan said. Anakin allowed himself a moment to look at his Master. He always enjoyed making Obi-Wan pale.

A tall formation grew out of the canyon floor. Anakin headed straight for it.

"Anakin, you're pushing it — "

"That's the idea."

"This speeder doesn't have that kind of maneuverability — "

"I guess we'll find out."

At the last possible second, Anakin wrenched the controls. Instead of turning, he went straight up. The bottom of the airspeeder skidded along the formation. The sound of screaming metal blocked out the sound of the engine. Smoke rose around them. Obi-Wan saw licks of flame on the airspeeder's body. He closed his eyes.

The security speeder behind them tried the same maneuver and crashed head-on into the rock. The second veered off, only to clip a wing. The wing dragged on the canyon floor, slowing the craft until it ground to a halt.

Anakin kept going straight up. When he was high above the surface, he straightened out the airspeeder. The fire on both wings died out in the rush of air. Nobody said anything for a moment.

Then Obi-Wan cleared his throat.

"And now, for the hard part," he said.

They decided they could not risk flying over the valley. The Sith Lord had been a step ahead of them since they'd arrived on Korriban. He knew they were coming. They would just have to arrive in a way he didn't expect.

They would walk in.

Anakin landed the now-battered speeder on a rocky mountain ledge, squeezing it between the mountain wall and a sheer drop. The Valley of the Dark Lords was a short distance down the mountainside.

They descended the cliffside, hiking quickly but conserving their energy for what lay ahead. The mountains were steep and crowded together like spiteful beasts, with cliffs pressing in from both sides. Occasionally boulders would crash down without warning, sending them leaping for safety.

The extended dusk was still holding, but the light was gradually fading.

The coming darkness was faintly tinged with red.

When at last they saw the Valley of Dark Lords ahead in the distance, their steps slowed and then stopped. The wave that came at them made them pause. It fractured the Force they felt around them, tore at it. They had expected to feel more of the dark side, but they hadn't realized how concentrated it would be.

They knew the Sith tombs that inhabited the valley were designed to amplify dark energy. It was a physical presence that the Jedi could feel, pressing against their chests. It made them instinctively reach for their lightsaber hilts.

The wind picked up, grabbing at their cloaks with icy fingers. The red-tinged clouds collided, rolling across the sky with a new velocity.

They were alone in the middle of a harsh landscape, and even the rocks had warned them to stay away. The sand seemed to suck at their footsteps and the wind was blowing them backward. The air tasted rank and spoiled.

Obi-Wan wanted to say something. There had to be a phrase to bolster them, to make them feel less marooned in this land of gloom and shadows.

It was Ry-Gaul who spoke.

"May the Force be with us."

And, of course, it was this phrase that renewed them, the one they had spoken so many times — to each other, to their Padawans — the words that felt so comfortable in their mouths, the words that were more than words, that lived in their dreams.

They walked on.

They paused just outside the entrance to the valley. The cliffs were so close that they could not all stand in a row. Shelves of razor-sharp rock protruded from each cliff face in a staggered pattern, all the way to the top, so that a craft could not possibly maneuver to get inside. The rock shelves created deep shadows, gray shading into black.

Obi-Wan examined the sides of the entrance carefully. He could see no evidence of weapons or security measures. It seemed impossible to him that they could just walk in.

"There has to be a trap," he said. "Madame Nu says that legend claims that the tombs were guarded by tuk'ata beasts. They were at the service of the Sith."

"Tuk'ata?" Ferus asked.

"Gigantic creatures. Triple rows of teeth, six inch claws, and three horns," Obi-Wan explained. "They can move on four legs or two, and have two winglike extensions — not functional wings, but poisonous stingers. Very fast."

"Let's see," Darra said. "Stingers, claws, teeth, horns. My favorite kind of creature."

"It's a legend, remember?" Anakin said, trying to keep his voice light.

"I… don't… think so," Tru said, his eyes on the cliffs.

There, the shadows formed into beasts that slowly rose, stretching long necks and sniffing the air.

They were certainly tuk'ata, and they reared up — four, then six, then ten. Their cries seem to split the clouds open. Blood-tinged saliva dripped from their triple rows of teeth. With a flex of their powerful legs, they leaped down from ledge to ledge, and then made the final drop with ease, landing easily and rearing up once again on their hind legs in preparation to attack.