Part 5 (2/2)

Spinning to face her Padawans, walking backward without missing a stride, Ahsoka smiled at the youngsters closest to her. Chivas and Tibrugni smiled back, two small peas in a Kuatipod, the glow of their ignited training lightsabers reflecting in their wide, excited eyes.

”There's an old Hutt saying, ” she told her Green team, as beneath their feet the treacherous quake-ground woke and s.h.i.+vered a warning. ”And it goes like this: Ungdaliki-aigoto-aigoto-grutaaaaah!”

A moment's startled silence, and then the Green team shouted back. ”Ungdaliki-aigoto-aigoto-grutaaaaah!”

Then the game began, and Ahsoka forgot that none of this was real. Long since blooded in battle, she couldn't think that way anymore.

Christophsis. Teth. Maridnn. Kaliida Shoals. Bothawui. Kothlis.

Memories of each encounter rose to drown her, and instead of fighting them she let herself sink beneath their hot red surface. What she'd learned in the real war could help her now, could help these Padawans. It might even make the difference between life and death for them one day. And she owed it to Anakin to train them as well as he trained her.

With Taria's Blue team coming close on their heels, the most important thing was to find cover before they ran into any Sep droids.

The Green team staggered and fell and rolled across the heaving quake-ground, then pounded into the dojo's thick foliage as a hard, driving rain began to fall. That was where the first wave of mosquito droids found them. Relentlessly they harried the Padawans, whose excitement swiftly turned to uncertainty and confusion as the rain flogged them and the quake-ground unbalanced them and more mosquito droids came in hard and blasting.

Fiercely focused, remembering Kothlis, Ahsoka led the attack, shouting encouragement and instructions to her stunned, faltering team.

They rallied quickly. Amazingly, she lost only one. Crushed with disappointment, downed Laksh'atz waved them a forlorn good-bye as the Greens zapped the last mosquito droid and pushed on to the river.

A detachment of battle droids waited for them on its far bank. Proudly Ahsoka watched three Padawans take the initiative by felling a tree and rolling it into the water. Instinctly responsive, the rest of Green team formed up to give them cover. The dojo's damp air spat and sizzled as volley after volley of stinger bolts were deflected, knocking all but three of the battle droids out of the game. They lost T'boor in that engagement, but the rest of the Greens stayed safe using the tree trunk for cover as they half waded, half swam across.

When they reached the river's other side, Ahsoka took out one of the remaining droids and Chivas the other two.

”Good job, Greens!” she said, grinning, and waved her team on toward the ravine. Feeling a familiar stirring in the Force she looked around and saw Taria, leading the Blues toward them in a furious charge. ”Whoops!” she said, and chased after her team.

After that they lost sight of their opponents, but they could hear distant blaster shots and the buzzing whine of lightsabers even though the atmospherics program was enthusiastically deluging them with another storm. Somebody was keeping the Blue team busy. And then they forgot about everything but their own survival, because STAP-riding battle droids were swooping in for an attack as they stumbled across a treacherous pocket of zero-g-which shut off when they were some five meters above the ground.

Avoiding the droids and riding the Force to a safe landing got a bit messy. They lost the Mon Cal Padawan Baggro in that engagement.

Using the Force and the strength of their newly forged bond, the Green team Padawans fought their way down the dojo's steep ravine and up the other side through another cloud of mosquito droids, and then faced the daunting cliff. More droids on STAPS threatened them there. Breathless, determined, Ahsoka drew on every lesson Anakin had ever taught her to lead her team. Too busy now to be scared for him, instead she leaned on him even though he was so far away.

25.See, Skyguy? I was paying attention.

But even so, by the time they reached the first re-created city street Green team's numbers had dwindled from eleven to four, not counting herself.

”Come on, ” she told the remaining Padawans, remembering Rex's Hint #6: The worse things get, the more confident you need to look. ”This is the last stretch. We can do this. We can win. ”

What was left of the exhausted Green team rewarded her with straightened spines and renewed determination. She smiled at them.

This must he what it feels like to he Anakin. And then the narrow street was full of droidekas and battle droids and they were desperately scrambling to survive.

Sprinting through puddles, leaping crumpled groundcars and artfully scattered piles of rubble, diving through open windows and rolling across splintered floors to dive back outside again, deflecting blaster bolts left and right-they gave themselves over to the madness of urban battle.

The Greens lost another two team members to droids in the last desperate push to reach the tower and its beacon ahead of the Blues.

Taria's team had taken its own route into the city and was racing to take the prize at its center.

The teams reached the tower at the same time. ”Go on!” Ahsoka shouted to Chivas and Veneka, her last two Padawans. ”That beacon isn't going to light itself!”

Breathing hard, aware of sore muscles and sc.r.a.pes and bruises, she watched the Padawans scale the tower's external wall. Taria had three Blue team members still standing. They took off after the Greens, leaving Taria to cheer them on.

Ahsoka looked the older Jedi over. Slushed with muck from the quagmire the Greens had managed to avoid, Taria was sc.r.a.ped and bruised, too, with several rips in her sedate dark gray bodysuit. After what had happened rescuing the scientist's mother, probably she shouldn't be taking part in this game. But Master Damsin was a stubborn law unto herself.

”I'm fine, Ahsoka, ” Taria said, not s.h.i.+fting her gaze from the race up the tower. ”So you can stop looking at me like-oh. Stang. ”

One of the Blues had misjudged a handhold and was tumbling not very tidily to the street below. Her command of the Force to cus.h.i.+on the fall proved far from perfect.

”Sorry, Michka, ” said Taria to the winded Padawan. ”I think that has to count as dead. ”

The Padawan groaned and let her yellow-scaled head thud to the ground.

Ahsoka stared again at the tower where two Greens and two Blues were scrambling to the top with a lot more enthusiasm than finesse.

She couldn't help smiling.

”You were right, Taria. This is an excellent way for Padawans to learn. ”

”And what have you learned?”

”Me?” she said, surprised. Oh. Right. I'm still a Padawan, too. She thought of Anakin. ”That nothing's ever as easy as it looks. ”

Taria smiled. ”Don't worry, Ahsoka. No matter who wins this, you haven't let your Master down. ”

The lurking unease she'd managed to outrun came surging back. ”Taria... ” She felt her breathing hitch. Say it, say it. You know you hare to say it. ”I've got a bad feeling. About Master Skywalker. ”

Taria's greenish-blue hair, stuck through with twigs and unraveling from its long braid, caught the flickering streetlights and shone like living ice. For the first time since they'd entered the dojo, Ahsoka saw a hint of discomfort in her eyes as her terrible illness made itself felt. Atop the tower the Padawans reached the compet.i.tion beacon together, and ignited it together with loud triumphant hollering. A tie.

Applauding their effort, Taria slid her tawny, topaz gaze sideways. ”I've got one, too. About Master Ken.o.bi. ”

”Oh. ” Ahsoka swallowed. ”Really? And what does that mean?”

Taria snorted. ”You're too smart for a question like that, Ahsoka. You know as well as I do what it means. ”

26.She did. Oh, she did.

Skyguy... where are you? What's going OH?

CHAPTER FOUR.

Anakin sat up, s.h.i.+fting between heartbeats from deep sleep to waking. Even as he looked around his unfamiliar surroundings-a storeroom, its walls lined with prefab durasteel shelves not even a quarter filled with cans and boxes-he could feel his senses unfurl and test the cool, dry air for danger. Nothing. At least, nothing immediate. Only the same clouding anxiety and tension he and Obi-Wan had felt as they approached the village. And he sensed Teeba Jaklin, the woman who'd warily given them permission to enter the village, brought them back here to her home, and offered them tea and soup and rough beds on her floor. Vaguely, he remembered drinking something bitter, swallowing some kind of gritty gruel, then afterward falling facedown on this thin mattress. And then lights out.

So. Look on the bright side. General Skywalker. And don't forget that things can always be worse.

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