But the entire set of wings weighed less than five kilograms. The club, about a hundred grams. He would have to swing with all his might to give the impact meaning.
The Blood Carver swooped low again, his legs drawn back, triple-jointed arms hanging like the pedipalps on a clawswift on Naboo.
He was focused completely on the Padawan.
Making the same mistake as Anakin had.
With a heart-leap of hope and joy, Anakin saw Obi-Wan winging over the Blood Carver. The boy's master extended the beam on his lightsaber as he dropped with both feet on the assailant's wings and snapped them like straws.
Two swipes of the humming blade and the outer tips of the Blood Carver's wings fell away.
The Blood Carver gave a muffled cry and flipped on his back. The fuel in his wingtip tanks caught fire and spun him in a brilliant pinwheel, elevating him almost twenty meters before sputtering out.
He fell without a sound and slipped into the lake a dozen meters away, raising a small, gleaming plume of oily silicone. Ghosts of burning methane swirled briefly above him.
Obi-Wan recovered and raised his wings just in time to end up buried to his waist in the froth. The look on his face as he collapsed the lightsaber was pure Obi-Wan: patience and faint exasperation, as if Anakin had just failed a spelling test.
Anakin reached out to help his Master stay upright. "Keep your wings up, keep them high!" he shouted.
"Why?" Obi-Wan said. "I cannot vault the two of us out of this mess."
"I still have fuel!"
"And I have almost none. These are terrible devices, very difficult to control."
"We can combine our fuel!" Anakin said, his upper face and eyes bright in the murk.
The froth rippled alarmingly. At the edge of their insubstantial island of foam, a gleaming silver-gray tube as wide as four arm spans arched above the silicone slurry. Its skin was crusted with stuck-on bits of garbage, and its side was studded with a lateral line of small black eyes trimmed in brilliant blue.
The eyes poked out on small stalks and examined them curiously. The worm seemed to ponder whether they were worth eating.
Even now, Anakin observed the prize scales glittering along the worm's length. The best I've ever seen-us big as my hand!
Obi-Wan was sinking rapidly. He blinked at the haze of silicone mist and noxious gases wafting over them.
Anakin reached down with all the delicacy and balance he could muster and unhooked the fuel cylinders from his wings, taking care to disconnect the feed tubes to the outboard jets and pinch off their nozzles.
Obi-Wan concentrated on keeping himself from sinking any deeper into the sticky foam.
Another arch of worm segment, high and wide as a pedes trian walkway, thrust itself with a liquid squeal from the opposite side of the diminishing patch. More eyes looked them over. The arch quivered as if with anticipation.
"I'll never be this stupid again," Anakin said breathlessly as he attached the tanks to Obi-Wan's wings.
"Tell it to the Council," Obi-Wan said. "I have no doubt that's where we'll both be, if we manage to accomplish six impossible things in the next two minutes."
The two worm segments vibrated in unison and hissed through the silicone like tugged ropes, proving themselves to be one long creature as they rose high overhead. More coils surrounded them: other, bigger worms. Obviously, the Jedi-Master and apprentice-looked tasty, and now a competition was under way. The segments whipped back and forth, striking the edges of the island. The froth flew up in hissing puffs, until there was hardly more remaining than an unwieldy plug.
Anakin gripped Obi-Wan's shoulder with one hand. "Obi- Wan, you are the greatest of all the Jedi," he told him earnestly.
Obi-Wan glared at his Padawan.
"Could you give us just a little boost. .," Anakin pleaded. "You know, up and out?"
Obi-Wan did, and Anakin lit off their jets at the very same instant.
The jolt did not distract him from reaching out with out stretched fingers, grazing a curve of worm skin, and grabbing a scale. Somehow they lifted to the first shield and slipped into the updraft of a discharged canister. Spinning, knocked almost senseless, they were drawn up through a port.
Obi-Wan felt Anakin's small arms around his waist.
"If that's how it's done. .," the boy said, and then something-was it is his Padawan's newfound skill at levitation? — lifted them through the next shield as if they lay in the palm of a giant hand.
Obi-Wan Kenobi had never felt so close to such a powerful connection with the Force, not in Qui-Gon, nor Mace Windu. Not even in Yoda.
"I think we're going to make it!" Anakin said.
Chapter 2
The opportunities are endless," Raith Sienar said as he walked along the factory parapet. Beside him strolled Commander Tarkin of the Republic Outland Regions Security Force. They might have been brothers. Both were in their early thirties. Both were thin and wiry, with high-arching bony brows, piercing blue eyes, aristocratic faces, and attitudes to match. And both wore robes of senatorial favor, showing extraordinary service to the senate over the past decade.
"You're speaking of the Republic?" Tarkin asked with more than a hint of disdain. His training-he came from an old and well-established military family-gave his voice a particular edge, both world-weary and amused.
"Not at all," Sienar said, smiling at his old friend. Beyond and below the parapet, four Advanced Project ships approached completion, black, sleek, smaller than previous models, and very fast indeed. "I haven't received an interesting contract from the Republic for seven years."
"What about these?" Tarkin asked.
"Private contracts with the Trade Federation, several mining firms, others. Very lucrative, so long as I don't sell my very best weapons to the wrong buyers. Every ship I make, I equip with weapons, as you doubtless know. Much more profitable that way, but tricky at times. So I keep the best in reserve… for my most generous customers."
Tarkin smiled at this answer. "Then I may have useful news for you," he said. "I've just come from a secret meeting. Chancellor Palpatine has finally forced a stand- down over the Naboo incident. The Trade Federation security forces will soon be disbanded. In the next few months, they are to be assimilated into Republic forces and placed at the disposal of the senate. All will comply-even Outland Mining-or face a centralized and much more powerful military response." Tarkin used a small hand scope to look over the details on the new ships. Each was twenty meters wide, with broad, flat cooling vanes terminating their wings. The compartments were compact, spherical, hardly luxurious. "If they are your main source of income, your position now is, shall we say, compromised?"
Sienar tipped his head to one side. He had already caught wind of Chancellor Palpatine's decree. "The Trade Federation had large reserves of money, and granted, they gave me many more interesting contracts than the Republic did, but I've kept my friends in the senate. I will miss Trade Federation patronage, but I don't see a complete collapse of Trade Federation influence for some time. As far as the Republic is concerned. . their specifications are neither inspired nor inspiring. And when I do take a Republic contract, I'm forced to work with aging engineers the senators trust. I hope that changes."