Anakin tapped his fingers on his desk worried. He had thought that things had been going well. But recently all of Elara’s messages had seemed so distant. She barely talked about herself anymore, asking more and more invasive questions about him instead. She knew how uncomfortable he got having to keep secrets from her. It was what he appreciated about their conversations, that she never pressed when she saw that he was uncomfortable and couldn’t discuss it with her if it had to do with his work.

  But recently it seemed like something had changed, and she was acting differently. Did it have to do with her visit to see him? He had thought that it had gone well, they’d even held hands for a bit. But maybe he’d been misreading things? Ugh, so stressful. He put down the datapad with his half composed message and left his room.

  “Hey mom. You mind if I come with you to the store today? I need something to take my mind off of things.”

  Mom nodded, “That girl still?”

  “Yeah. I’m not sure what changed all of a sudden.”

  “I can’t believe that you almost died only months ago and you’re still focused on girl trouble.”

  “I’m sorry. I know it’s not very logical. But somehow knowing if Elara likes me or not feels more important. I’ve almost died plenty of times, but I’ve never had a girlfriend before.”

  “Stop that,” mom said and gripped him around the shoulders with a fierce look on her face, “Don’t you ever act like your life isn’t important. You have people that love you for who you are. And you can talk to us, not bottle it up like your feelings on Slarena’s past.”

  “I… I understand. I just feel like I have to protect you two from everything. I don’t want anything else to happen. I couldn’t let anything else happen…”

  “Ani, that’s okay. I feel the same way about you. But you can’t let it control you. Or not take care of us properly. Do we need to get Slarena to rant at you some more until you accept it? Her tirade after we’d all calmed down from your incident was rather epic.”

  “I did learn some new curses,” Anakin said, “Maybe I’ll learn some more if she goes for another round.”

  “Yeah, me too,” mom admitted, “But still. Let’s not go through that again. Far too exhausting for all of us. And even if things don’t work out with Elara, there’s plenty of local girls that I’m sure would be happy to have you. You’ve just got to get out into town a bit more and meet new people. ”

  “Uh huh. Are we going to the store or what?”

  “Sure, I was about to have some breakfast. Get something quick before we go.”

  They had a quick breakfast and then both climbed into the hovercar and drove off. The last two months Anakin had been on ‘sick leave’ as Count Dooku told him in no uncertain terms to not return to the lab until his emotions were more settled than they were right now.

  He’d been experimenting in the bunker below on some custom droid designs using some military grade droid parts that Dooku had been nice enough to deliver to him when he asked. His latest project was one of the largest droids that he’d ever built, and he was proud that it was nearly finished. It would be a real monster once it was fully complete and could be put to use defending their property. Well, sit inside the bunker until they were attacked, that was. Something to fill his time and settle his mind during his ‘vacation’ or more recently joining his mom to help out at the general store.

  But after nearly two months, Anakin was feeling much better than before. He hadn’t realized just how wound up and angry he’d been. He still felt a little guilty for causing so much trouble for the family, but he had realized, reflecting back that maybe he had gotten off easy.

  No one he cared about had truly been hurt, only the three men harassing Slarena being killed in the end. And despite himself, he still couldn’t make himself feel all too bad about that. Trying to be more open with Slarena and mom emotionally was difficult, but once it was all out in the open he felt an odd sort of relief.

  Despite the awkwardness, the short little conversations like the one he’d just had with his mom helped ground him and make it easier to express his feelings too. It wasn’t just him, Slarena and mom had decided to start telling him about their worries too sometimes. Which should have made him more stressed out, but oddly enough made him feel closer to the both of them than before.

  They arrived at the store in the hovercar and parked it out back.

  Mom manned the front counter of the shop while Anakin went in and out of the back and filled the shelves back up with inventory. A few of the locals trickled in and chatted with mom for a bit as they bought their items and then left again.

  “Ani, want to run the counter for a bit?” mom asked after he’d finished fully stocking the shelves, “I’ll just be in the back organizing things.”

  “Okay, mom.”

  He went behind the counter and dealt with some more customers for the next hour or so while mom rifled around in the back and organized.

  He didn’t know the townspeople too well, but enough that he recognized some people and was able to have some friendly conversation with them without embarrassing himself.

  The store was empty for a bit, and Anakin was waiting for another customer when he looked up and saw a man walking in.

  The man paused for a moment when he spotted Anakin at the counter.

  “Expecting someone else, Riktor?” Anakin asked drily as the man coughed as he picked up a box of nails and an ocular zoom cylinder to help see things from far away.

  “Erm, nope just buying things,” the thirty eight year old man said as he walked up to the counter and put down the box of nails and the ocular zoom on the counter.

  “What’s the ocular zoom for?” Anakin asked curiously as the man handed over the credits.

  “Oh, for the herd. Can’t see as far anymore, so if a calf wanders off from the herd then it’s getting harder to find ‘em sometimes. Figured this might help.”

  “Don’t you have that guy that you hired? To help you shepard them?”

  “Ah, he took off. ‘Bout a week ago. Bigger and better things in the city, I guess. Got to do it all myself for now until I find someone else to help out. I…”

  “Riktor? Riktor is that you?” mom called out from the back and quickly speed walked out, “Ricktor! How are you doing? It’s been, what… A wee… nine days? How have you been?”

  She walked up and gently shoved a bemused Anakin to the side as she took his place and started chatting with Riktor. She leaned on her elbows a little towards him as they talked and started flirting as Anakin stood there watching.

  He cleared his throat and the both of them jumped, clearly having forgotten that he was still standing there watching them.

  “Anyway,” Anakin announced loudly, “I have that… I’m getting lunch at that local restaurant. See you later, mom.”

  Then he left and went to do just that.

  At least that was one thing he didn’t have to worry about. The two of them were as love struck with each other as ever despite Riktor being unceremoniously thrown at the house in the middle of their big fancy date because of Anakin’s ‘incident’.

  As he sat in the restaurant and ate his meal, he thought about Elara. She’d had fun last time she’d visited him, he was sure of it. Maybe if they met up in person again he could figure out what was going on with her.

  By the end of his meal, he was feeling much better having come up with a solution to his problem. Once they were face to face, he was sure that things with Elara would work out. Or at least he’d have an answer to what was wrong.

  — — —

  Jedi Knight Aurtera looked down at Skywalker’s latest message with her mind racing. The boy wanted to meet… Her efforts had been fruitful so far. The boy had still been vague, but she’d been able to drag out some scraps of answers from him even if he didn’t seem to realize it.

  She had now confirmed that not only was he a member of the lab he worked at, but a leader of some kind. Of the whole lab, it seemed, even if it hadn’t been explicitly stated in the messages. Also the boy viewed his work as ‘Important to the galaxy’. An interesting choice of words, that Aurtera was sure were significant. This was Anakin Skywalker, Chosen One of the Force supposedly. She didn’t see him saying something about some Techno-Union research that would only enrich one corporation. Or something minor. No, whatever he was working on was important to the galaxy. The psychological profiler agreed with her conclusions from studying the boy’s messages. Whatever was in that lab was important, but she wasn’t sure just what yet…

  In addition, she’d learned some bits and pieces of his past in some more detail. Mostly unimportant things, but some interesting fragments. Such as the fact that he was on ‘vacation’ for the last two months because he needed some ‘extra time off’.

  That would line up precisely with the timeline with the burst of the dark side Force on this planet. Had something happened at the Techno-Union headquarters that had been covered up? It was worth investigating, and Knight Aurtera sent the theory along with her frequent reports to the Jedi Council on her efforts.

  In all of the messages there was absolutely no mention of the Jedi, Coruscant, or Count Dooku. Or that all three of their little family were freed slaves. Something that Knight Aurtera didn’t personally care about, but could be a social stigma of slaves being ‘lesser’ carrying over into Skywalker’s desire to not announce it to a girl that he was trying to impress.

  But she was distracting herself. All of this information was interesting, worth investigating. But none of it was proof.

  She absently typed out a refusal to the request for a meeting, making excuses that Elara’s ship route set by her father was taking her to the opposite side of the galaxy so it would be a long time before she could return.

  Knight Aurtera watched as the psychological profiling program took her message and altered it to be rephrased in Elara’s words as closely as possible. She checked it over for any mistakes, and nodded when she saw that it was correct and sent it off.

  Her datapad chimed again with another message from Skywalker almost as soon as the artificial delay in the messages finished processing. He must have answered within a minute of receiving the new message. In his newest message, Skywalker was being more insistent on setting a date, even if it had to be months away. Unfortunately Elara had been quite clear in the past that none of her shipping routes ever lasted more than three or four weeks usually. Knight Aurtera hesitated as she tried to think of what to do. Any deviations from the pattern increased the likelihood of Skywalker noticing the deception. But obviously there couldn’t be any face to face meetings either.

  Eventually she came to a decision and typed in her answer. Three months from now at the earliest, Elara said. Elara’s father had ordered her to go on a new shipping route that was the longest that they’d ever done. She was upset about it, but it was important for the company so her father insisted that she should go along. The profiling program matched Knight Aurtera’s words to Elara’s words and then she sent it off. That should hold off the boy for a bit.

  The boy replied less than five minutes after receiving the message again.

  His message said he was disappointed in the delay, but he wanted to set a more firm date for Elara’s visit when she returned and the new shipping route was done and over with.

  Knight Aurtera pursed her lips as she stared down at the datapad. The boy wasn’t going to give up, was he…

  Unfortunately, any delays beyond those three months would be too much. One long excuse could be bad luck. Two were suspicious and much more clearly an excuse. And even if he didn’t expect that the Elara that he was messaging was an imposter, it would still signal disinterest in him if he thought it was from the real Elara.

  And to get more information from the boy he still had to think that Elara still was eager to message him. As soon as it appeared that she was losing interest or avoiding him, then he would be much less eager to offer up valuable information that could expose something critical to the whole investigation.

  So Knight Aurtera sighed and sent the message. Elara was delighted and agreed to meet in four months. A bit of a push for extra time, but a reasonable one to ‘relax after her long trip’. Now she had a timeline. Either she solved this case in four months and gained enough information to prove that Skywalker was up to no good, or her ruse would be discovered.

  She would just have to solve the case within her time limit then. She was sure deep in her bones that Skywalker was doing something nefarious. Four months was plenty of time to find out what it was. It had been barely two months and she’d already started getting ideas of different avenues that she could explore.

  — — —

  “You call this evidence? One intercepted message that you can not even tell me the source of? What are you Jedi smoking over there? Even if it’s true, this is nothing. If one of my analysts gave me something like this, I’d fire them on the spot! A vague hint that the boy is working on something ‘important to the galaxy’? To his supposed crush? Of course he’s exaggerating to seem more impressive to her! I’ve had about enough of your Council trying to push me and my office around, and wasting all of our time in the process.

  "You sent your own agent didn’t you? If this is all she can come up with, then I suggest you send someone more competent next time. No, I refuse to order my agents to infiltrate the Techno-Union labs on your say so and with no cause. Grandmaster Windu, I’m busy enough dealing with all of the revenge killings from the freed slaves and the unrest across the galaxy.

  "I will state again, you will have no assistance from Republic Intelligence in this matter until any actual evidence is found. Concrete evidence. If that agent of yours can even manage so much as a a scrap of anything useful from her little vacation, then I'll eat my boots. Good day.”

  He angrily ended the call and let out a sharp breath. He’d thought that the Jedi Council would have been placated after they sent out their own Jedi Knight to investigate Skywalker. But somehow they were breathing down his neck even more than before she left. He’d about had it with their baseless requests for his resources. He’d tried being polite, made his stance quite clear. But they kept bringing him these… Useless scraps. No, no more. He’d finally let out his outburst directly to Grandmaster Windu. He knew the director would support him in this, the man had told him as much himself before. Now he could refocus on the problems and threats to the Republic. He would no longer humor the Council’s requests for assistance with the case.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  — — —

  “You are on your own. Republic Intelligence has proven resistant to providing assistance with only what you’ve gathered,” Grandmaster Windu’s voice said from the console in front of Knight Aurtera.

  “We give you permission to more directly intervene to complete your mission. Make sure that you are not identified, and use caution. But get that evidence at all costs. That boy represents a danger to all around him and maybe even the galaxy if he is truly a talented user of the dark side. We must discover what he’s been planning and stop him before it’s too late.”

  Knight Aurtera watched the console for a moment with a severe expression as the message ended. She only had a little time left before Elara was scheduled to meet Skywalker. The messages had come to nothing despite her being more and more intrusive to no result.

  It was time for her to put boots on the ground.

  It took another week of planning before she was finally ready. She spent that time spying on the family and monitoring when Skywalker’s personal ship would leave and return from his work, as well when Ms. Reborn and Ms. Skywalker were out in town working at their store.

  She landed her ship at the nearest city and then rented a small personal craft to shuttle her to the town where the Skywalkers lived. She set down in the nearby woods far away and pulled out the personal speeder hoverbike for the final leg of the journey.

  The Skywalker house should be abandoned, and she’d go inside and see what she could find. She had the same blocky device from before to copy over any data from any terminals or devices that she found. In, copy all of the data, see what other physical evidence that she could find, then out again. She was wearing a mask and was wearing civilian robes rather than the traditional Jedi ones, so she shouldn’t be recognized.

  Her lightsaber was in a sealed pocket on the interior of the robe. Instead she was armed with a much more common vibroblade and sidearm simply for appearances. She wouldn’t be using the blaster, but no mercenary hired for a job like this would ever go anywhere without a proper side arm.

  She parked the speeder bike three kilometers away from the Skywalker home and hid it in the brush, ready to travel by foot the rest of the way. The speeder bike was too loud to approach the house directly, especially if there was somebody home. Skywalker was definitely at work, but the two women were more erratic and sometimes came home earlier or later depending on the day.

  The Jedi Knight crept forward through the woods with the vibroblade slung over her back and the blaster at her hip. She whirled around and squinted as she heard the snap of a twig off to her right. She stared into the trees and felt her surroundings in the Force. Sometimes you could feel others if you trained yourself enough in the Force, even if it was unreliable.

  Her senses told her that there was nothing living around her that could be a person and she relaxed slightly. It was likely just some forest creature, nothing to worry about.

  She kept moving forward until she was in sight of the property’s walls. Everything was quiet as she slowly activated her gloves that started glowing. She could jump over that wall in a single bound using the Force. But she was trying to be a normal, if elite, mercenary. She had to use this technology as much as she could in her mission.

  She approached the wall and put her hand on it. Her gloves stuck to its surface and she started scaling the eight meter tall wall. Halfway up, she paused as she heard a click inside. Just around her stomach a small hatch opened and revealed a nozzle. Her eyes widened and with a burst of the Force she launched herself upwards towards the top of the wall just as the nozzle released a burst of flames.

  She nearly had reached the top of the wall when a shimmering purple shield formed even as she leapt. Surprised, she slammed into it before she could sail over the wall with her leap and bounced off of it.

  She started falling back to the ground and twisted her body in mid-air and in a burst of the Force landed on her feet and unsheathed the vibroblade from her back and activated to make it start humming.

  All around emerging from the forest were over a dozen armed droids with a thin and almost skeletal design like none she’d ever seen before. They were are all armed with heavy military grade repeating blaster rifles. She spotted at least four still on the edge of the woods carrying even larger weapons that might even be sniper rifles for long distance combat. All of the weapons were pointed at her.

  “Stand down, intruder,” One of the droids in the center said, “You are surrounded. There is no chance for your escape. Drop your weapons and surrender now.”

  Her mind raced. She could handle this many droids, no matter how advanced. But only if she used the Force, possibly blowing her cover. But all of this military hardware, droid designs like she’d never seen before… This was something! Everything was being recorded through her mask right now, so even her escape right now would give her enough that Republic Intelligence would be forced to investigate Skywalker.

  But if this was what was guarding the perimeter than there must be something even more valuable inside. She’d never get a chance where the defenses would be any lower than this…

  “Stand down!” The droid repeated, “These units will fire if you do not surrender within the next five seconds. Five. Four. Three…”

  She took a deep breath and drew deeper on the Force, setting herself into a fighting stance. Without using a lightsaber, this battle would be difficult. Vibroblades while having great cutting power, were almost completely unable to block blaster fire. She’d have to dodge it all if she wanted to win this fight.

  “Two. On—”

  She leapt into the air in the burst of the Force and sailed over the heads of the droids.

  The droids turned to fire up at her, but she was to fast and landed in the upper boughs of a nearby tree and immediately dashed to the side deeper into the forest as a barrage of blaster fire went through where she had just been.

  She dropped down to the forest floor, vibroblade pointed straight down as she landed on one of the military droids in the backline with the longer range rifles. In a single blow her vibroblade ploughed through its chest and pinned it to the ground. Despite its injury the droid still flailed and tried to reach around to grab her.

  She withdrew the vibroblade from its chest and with another smooth motion decapitated it and made it go still. So she had to go for the heads…

  Another barrage of blaster fire came pouring onto her and she leapt to the side again. She found another droid and decapitated it before it could lift its blaster to point at her.

  The trees and underbrush rustled all around her and she heard the pounding of the droid feet as they chased after her.

  One by one she took out six more of the droids in the darkness of the woods as they worked to surround her, and used surprising levels of stealth to attempt to ambush her. Only the screamed warnings of the Force let her dodge and weave from blaster shots ambushing her from the trees as she fought.

  The trees grew silent as the droids apparently gave up the chase and started retreating back to the Skywalker home, too extended in their chase after her. But she wouldn’t let them get away that easily.

  She charged back towards the house at Force enhanced speed, defeating the military droids in ones and twos as she encountered them in their retreat. She estimated that there should only be three or four of them left by now.

  Another blaster came from just behind her and she swayed to the right to dodge the blast. In a leap, she turned and leapt towards the droid who’d attacked and with a single swipe of her blade decapitated it before it could fire again.

  She turned and continued her charge towards the house, only to stop when she saw the four droideka’s deployed there. How had they arrived outside so quickly? And their designs were strange, altered from the standard models that the trade federation liked to use.

  Behind the droidekas were six more of the new type of droid, blaster weapons raised at her. The droidekas were encapsulated by their personal bubble shields and their two arms of heavy blaster rifles pointed towards her as they fired their weapons. She leapt into the air once again, and the droidekas were too slow for their arc of fire to follow her.

  But the smaller new units had anticipated her jump and peppered the air in front of her arcing flight with their own fire.

  She groaned as she narrowly dodged a few of the blasts in mid-air and left searing burns where they narrowly passed by her.

  She landed behind the droidekas and the line of six droids, who lowered their blasters and simultaneously drew their own vibroblades from their backs and charged her.

  They all leapt at her as one, and she fought back and eliminated the first droid in seconds in melee combat. It’s attacks were predictable and rigid, if quick. It was clear as the six droids all attacked that they were unused to working together in melee like this so they bumped into each other and generally acted as if they were attacking her alone rather than a cohesive group.

  But even so, six, now five, attackers at once was almost too much even for her.

  She hadn’t used any Force blasts, it was far too obvious as an ability rather than her leaps or enhanced speed, which could theoretically be mimicked by different forms of technology.

  She decapitated another attacker, leaving only four left. The four droidekas had almost fully turned around and were preparing to unleash another barrage of blaster fire on her.

  She blocked another strike from a vibroblade and lifted her off hand. She’d just have to try to not be too obvious about it… With a light Force push, she sent three of the droids stumbling back slightly as she turned her full attention on the fourth droid that she was fighting and defeated it in short order.

  Using smaller Force pushes she unbalanced the droids one by one and exploited their weakness and efficiently destroyed them.

  The Droidekas attempted to fire on her again, having slowly fully turned around again, but she leapt over their heads again out of the way and landed just behind them.

  She darted forward and pressed her vibroblade against the shield and pressed hard with Force enhanced strength. The Droideka’s shield grew brighter and brighter as the point of her vibroblade pressed deeper and deeper into its surface, until like a soap bubble it popped.

  Her vibroblade sliced in and in three quick swipes reduced the droideka to scraps.

  She turned to the next closest droideka and moved again to repeat the process. She noticed out of the corner of her eye the shields of the two other droidekas deactivate and them compressing themselves into balls for fast travel.

  She finished off the second droideka and turned to finish off the other two as they quickly rolled to the edge of the woods for some reason and away from the walls.

  Suddenly instead of continuing their path the two rolled up droideka stopped and turned around and little ports lining the sides of their bodies opened.

  They rolled forward as if to charge the walls of the house as what could only be thrusters started firing along the outside sections of their rolling ‘ball’.

  She sliced straight through one of the droids effortlessly with a single dash, and was shocked to see the second one fly in the air as its smaller jets let out one sustained burst of thrust before dimming again, sending it launching up into the air and on course to sail over the walls into the Skywalker compound. The shield above the walls flickered off just as the droideka was about to hit it and Jedi Knight Aurtera quickly followed after with a Force assisted leap directly towards the somehow flying droideka.

  The shield flickered back on just behind her, turning back on just a moment too late to catch her trailing legs. In two quick slashes she destroyed the last droideka before it could hit the ground, before curling into a ball and smoothly rolling on the ground before popping to her feet on the area inside of the walls.

  She was huffing and puffing from the exertion of the frantic combat as she looked around and held her vibroblade at the ready. That had… been difficult. She’d never expected resistance like anything close to this coming in.

  She took a few deep breaths and went to the front of the main house surrounded by a large lawn and the two large landing pads for spacecraft. She didn’t see any more droids in the area, so she used her vibroblade to slice open the lock to the front door and walk inside.

  It looked like a normal, if rather large, home from what she could tell as she looked around. But there were no devices from what she could see, so she moved farther inwards while making sure to keep herself wary in case there were any more droids waiting in ambush.

  Nothing on the first floor, it seems that all of the bedrooms were on the second floor.

  She went up and opened the first door to the right and saw that it was clearly a woman’s room based on the objects scattered around and case of makeup sitting on the bedside table. She went down and looked inside the next room and saw that this bedroom was still barebones than the first one, with nothing much except for the bed and some basic furniture.

  Jedi Knight Aurtera swept inside and started quickly opening the drawers and looking for a device or something that she could get some data from. She took everything out of the drawers and threw them on the floor behind her as she felt the seams to look for any hidden compartments that could be hiding anything.

  She paused as she opened another drawer and saw that it was filled with feminine products. This wasn’t Anakin Skywalker’s room either apparently. But she continued her search regardless and after a few seconds finally found a datapad. She took it out and plugged her device into it and copied the data in a few seconds before throwing the datapad on the floor as well.

  She tipped over the cabinets and with her strength ripped open the mattress of the bed in case anything had been hidden within the mattress. Nothing.

  She knocked over the dressers and cabinets and sent them crashing onto the floor with a crunch of splintering wood as she hunted for any seams on the walls behind them that could be a hidden compartment. Criminals liked to put furniture in front of secret compartments so when people were searching they would miss them. She had to be quick, she was sure Skywalker was rich enough to replace all of this without even a blip in his finances based on the Republic Intelligence reports she'd read estimating his income.

  Another cabinet smashed. Again, nothing.

  Knight Aurtera went into the hallway and left the trashed room behind her as she entered the last room that must be Skywalker’s room. This one was far different than she expected it to be. There was a bed, and a few cabinets that you’d expect for a bedroom to hold clothes… But there was also a large desk with an inbuilt hologram terminal on its surface. Scattered around the edges were various mechanical parts of different shapes and sizes that she couldn’t determine the purpose of. She frowned and took out her device and plugged her device into the port of the desk. What was Skywalker doing with something like this in his room?

  After that she searched the whole room the same as she had the last one and had much more luck than she had in the last one. There were no less than four different devices including a datapad, a communicator that likely had some saved messages on it, and two strange things that she had no idea of their function. But all of them had ports and her device was able to extract data from them.

  After she was done turning over the room, all of it recorded on her mask, she returned to the first feminine bedroom and turned it upside down as well. There was one more datapad left behind that she copied the data from as well, but again there were no hidden compartments from what she could tell.

  She spent another five minutes searching the rest of the house and knocking over furniture in her hurry to look for anything else that could be suspicious. But no more hidden compartments. This had to be enough evidence, especially whatever had been on Skywalker’s special desk with hologram capabilities. And all of this military hardware, whatever it was must be valuable.

  Knight Aurtera went outside and immediately leapt to the side as the Force screamed a warning to her.

  A massive metallic fist slammed into the doorstep where she’d just been standing. She looked up in horror at the massive droid looming above her at over four meters in height. It’s body looked haphazard. Half of it was covered in shiny silvery protective plates while the rest was exposed wires and exposed internals. Its head was shrouded in a massive helmet with two glowing green eyes fixed on her.

  The droid raised the arm that hadn’t just attempted to squash her and she saw the massive twin barreled cannon mounted on its forearm.

  With a gasp, she leapt into the air just as the ground below her exploded as the massive droid let loose.

  Two large plates on its shoulders slid back and two square boxes started sliding up out of the cavity. One of them came to a halt with a grinding sound halfway up, even as the other continued its ascent and clicked into place as the massive droid straightened up to its full height.

  Knight Aurtera landed on her feet just to jump again as the ground exploded beneath her again as the cannon on the droid’s arm fired again.

  She ran towards the main doors even as the larger shield remained fully active over the whole estate.

  She stood in front of the closed doors in the walls big enough to drive a vehicle through leading to the outside and waited. She jumped up at the last moment as the massive droid fired one more time and accidentally blasted the set of doors off of their hinges and sent them clattering to the floor.

  Knight Aurtera wasted no time darting outside and enhancing herself to the max to sprint away with her heart beating hard and her chest heaving from exertion.

  She entered the woods just for the trees behind her to explode into a cloud of wood splinters as the giant droid fired blindly after her.

  She kept running and heard the droid attempting to chase after her and fire its weapon at her rough position when it caught sight of her. But she was quick enough to avoid it and by the time she made it to her speeder the massive droid had fallen far behind, having trouble wading through the tightly packed trees that blocked its way.

  She quickly unearthed the speeder and blasted away to drive back to her ship. She climbed back into the vessel and hurriedly started flying away even as she felt exhausted. She couldn’t even remember the last time a battle had ever pushed her so far. That was several levels above the usual gangsters she usually dealt with, or training bouts that she had in the Jedi temple.

  She landed in the city and after making sure that she had the precious bulky cube with the data and the mask still, she left her rental ship and quickly speed walked to her true vessel equipped with a hyperdrive. She had to get out of here before things escalated. Military hardware didn’t come from nowhere, especially not anything like the droids that she’d just fought.

  Her ship lifted off and went into orbit. She noticed a blinking light on her console which went on for several seconds before accepting the connection automatically.

  “Spacecraft 1370245-B, deactivate all systems and prepare to be boarded. You are suspected of terrorist activity. You will surrender yourself to the law now unless…”

  She sat in the cockpit and held the lever as her hyperdrive warmed up.

  “Deactivate your hyperdrive or we will fire! You are in violation of Republic law charter…”

  She ignored the voice and pushed the lever forward and the ship hummed as her ship began to jump into hyperspace.

  The ship shook violently as the surrounding ships fired on her, bringing her shields down to less than twenty percent before the hyperdrive finally let out one final hum before the stars around her streaked and shifted into the blue of hyperspace.

  She was out. All she had to do was get this evidence directly to the Council without delay. Her mission was complete, and this was more than enough for an arrest. It must be.