God Save the Queen: Book 2 Chapter 11

This chapter was commissioned by Everdusk

Chapter 11: A Bright and Shining Center

A low whine filled the air.

The dunes raced by beneath my speeder. In the passenger seat, Bo-Katan followed the horizon with her scanner. We left behind the shadow of our landing craft, already rising to bring down another search party.

“Tracks have vanished.” Bo’s voice crackled over the comm. “Damn storm wiped them away.”

I pressed my mask tighter, focusing on dark sands lit up by the speeder’s lights. Drifts of sand clouded my visibility as we skirted the boundary of a massive sandstorm.

“Anyone else have traces?” I asked, only to receive negatives in reply. I flicked off my comm again, hands tense on the controls.

One thing about commanding so many people: everything took time. It took time to organize a rescue party, time process our new guests, and time to provision shuttles and enter a planet’s atmosphere without burning off our heat shields. That I had delegated those responsibilities as much as I was able did not change that Anakin’s makeshift camp was empty by the time we made planetfall.

He still wasn’t answering his commlink.

“He most likely broke it, your majesty,” Qui-gon had said. “It happens with disturbing regularity.”

And so back up the shuttle had gone, and had returned with more people, with speeders, with scanners and scopes.

“Break around both edges of the storm,” I ordered. “Anakin at least should have moved to avoid it.”

Bo snorted. “Since when have Jetii ever done the sensible thing?” That bit came over our personal frequency.

I swapped channels. “You want to ride into the mouth of that?” I asked her. The night was dark, but the planet’s lone moon gave us more than enough light to see the writhing wall of sand creeping across the desert.

“…Let us hope your boy has more sense, then,” she replied.

Not likely.

“Admiral.” Sabé pinged me. “Otta Gunga has moved into high orbit over your position. We are routing your party the storm’s path now.”

“Anything I should know?” I asked.

“That the consensus of your general staff is that you should return to orbit post haste and let the Mando’ade and Pratorians handle the retrieval mission.” I could hear the frown in her voice.

“Too bad I’m Queen.” I’m sure she could hear the smirk in mine. “…Are you sure these readings are correct? The storm is barely moving.”

“Scans are quite certain, but we cannot penetrate the storm’s interference,” Sabé replied. “Additionally, Captain Ciquella wishes to inform you that we are reaching the limits to how long we can hold the captured crew under Republic law.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “They don’t want the girl back?”

“They are quick to wash their hands of her, Admiral Amidala.”

“Tell Ciquella we’ll check our chrono when they give us something actionable,” I said.

“He is most insistent, your majesty.”

“I don’t have time for this.” Chances are they didn’t know anything useful. “You have my permission to release them if they provide us any intel at all.”

“Understood, Otah Gunga out.” Sabé cut the channel.

I turned my attention back to the dunes racing past, jaw clenched tight. “Come on, Anakin. Where are you?”

~~*

Pressed tight into the lee of the outcropping, Anakin could just about open his eyes.

It helped that the winds no longer felt like they were flaying off his skin. Anakin had thought that meant the aliens had led him and Schel through the storm, but now he saw the walls of sand high on all sides of them, so thick overhead that they blotted out the sun.

Then he knew it was going to be a long day.

One of the four-legged aliens that had approached them nudged Anakin’s arm, pointing towards the center of the storm. They had all covered themselves in thick cloth before braving the standstorm, but it hadn’t impacted the alien’s ability to navigate.

There, in the middle of the storm, stood a sandcrawler.

He could barely make it out over the storm, but the massive rolling thing had huge, panelled arms covering its side, with turbolasers peeking out from between them. The front sucked up sand before spouting it off into the air, where it whipped around the crawler.

What made his eyes narrow in anger, however, was more of the quadrupedal aliens coming out of the crawler. They darted out into the storm, quickly combing through the crawler’s wake and fixing loose panels, scurrying back and forth like ants.

Or slaves.

“This is why you brought us here?” Anakin shouted over the wind. “To free them?”

The alien at his side let out a mournful sound, but the meaning was more than clear. He didn’t know how much they understood, but if he let his emotions press outward, they seemed to be able to pick up his meaning from the Force.

Anakin blew out a breath. “How many are there?”

The following hand gestures were less precise, but the answer seemed to be ‘lots’. Anakin closed his eyes against the wind and rested a hand on his lightsaber.

The last time Anakin and Master Jinn crashed a trafficking ring, they’d been on Sullust. The narrow confines of the subterranean cities would be just like the inside of the crawler, so really, he just had to make it inside, and then he could figure out the rest from there.

As he stood another pair of hands caught his wrist. “Where are you going?” Schel asked.

The Miralukan girl had been almost completely silent since the camp. She hadn’t even realized they were heading into a storm at first, until Anakin had pressed a damp cloth into her hands and told her to wrap it around her mouth and nose.

Since then, her anxiety had simmered against Anakin just like the coarse sands. The sooner he could get this over with, the better.

“I’m gonna take out that crawler.” He caught Schel’s hand, squeezing. “After that, storm should stop too, and Padme’ll find us.”

“Why not let them find us first?” Schel asked. “There…I can’t see through the metal, but there are way to many people in there!”

Anakin frowned. “I don’t think our friends are leaving. Without them, the best thing we could do is huddle down and hope we don’t get buried.” And that was a good way to die in a storm this slow.

“Let’s do that then.” Schel pulled at him.

“What? No, we’re not doing that,” Anakin said.

“Why? There’s—there’s a whole armada in orbit, you have so many ships!”

The wind swallows Anakin’s laugh. “Thought you hated ships.”

“That’s not the point!” Schel shouted. “You…why does it have to be you?”

Anakin shook his hand loose. “Probably best if you wait here, Schel.”

She shook her head. “Then answer my question!”

Anakin bit his lip. “They’re slaves.”

Schel shook her head again. She hadn’t heard him over the wind.

Anakin tried not to think about being a slave. He still—even with Master Jinn, it still…

Sometimes though, the galaxy shoved his past in his face. It’s why it had hurt to fight against slaves on Sullust. Even though he was trying to help them, they’d fought for their masters.

For nights after that, Anakin wondered if he’d have done the same thing. He hadn’t understood, as a child. He was a slave and he did what Watto told him to do, and that was just how the world worked until an angel had dropped out of the sky with her Jedi guardians and plucked him and his mother up from the dusty sands of Tatooine.

He didn’t have the words to explain to this girl, who was almost a slave as well.

He didn’t have the words to explain how he would still smile when he remembered a joke Watto had told him, or the twisting pulling emptiness deep in his gut whenever he remembered his old friends on Tatooine. How he would wonder how many of them now slept with metal collars around their necks, while he sat and meditated in the hall of a thousand fountains.

Before coming to the Jedi temple, he never could have imagined so much water.

“I have to,” he said instead. “Stay here, I’ll come back for you.”

Then he stood, pulling his cloth mask tight around his face. He watched through squinted eyes as the crawler moved slowly closer. His lightsaber fell into waiting fingers with but a thought.

Anakin took his time to shape his intentions, holding the feeling deep in the Force. He turned towards their guide.

“You know,” he said. “You kidnapped us and dragged us halfway across the desert, but thanks for leading me here.” He pushed his intentions out into the Force. “I’m going to save them all.”

The leader of the aliens thumped his chest with two arms. Anakin grinned. He turned, shut his eyes against the wind, and darted down the rocky dune.

The Force guided his steps. Behind, he heard the others following in his wake, even Schel.

She swore half a dozen times in almost as many languages before the sandstorm swallowed the sound of her voice.

Anakin sprinted across the sands towards the crawler.

For a moment, he worried about getting inside. Then he felt it in the Force as well. Anakin pushed himself even faster, reaching exit hatch just as the metal jaws of the beast trembled and dropped open.

Anakin leapt through the air, lightsaber igniting in a flash of blue. With a flick, he slashed open the hydraulics holding the ramp. It fell open just as a gaping slaver started to turn.

For a moment, Anakin’s hand tightened on the hilt of his saber. Then his other hand came up and threw the Zabrak across the room into a wall of crates. The man hit the ground, unconscious, and a shift in the force ensured that he remained so.

The other quadrupeds inside the crawler shifted, unsure. Then the rest of Anakin’s allies arrived.

“Get them out of here.” He turned towards the dark interior of the crawler. “I’m gonna take this thing apart.”

~~*

I felt Qui-Gon shift.

“They are in the storm, your majesty,” he said over the comm.

I glanced over my shoulder. We’d been following the edges of the sandstorm for nearly an hour, with no signs of our wayward Padawan, or anything else.

“You’re sure?” I asked.

He nodded. “I felt Anakin’s presence in the force.”

“Bo, relay that to orbit. We’re going in,” I said.

I heard her snort. “You just don’t want that assassin of yours to yell at you.”

“Sabé is no assassin.” I switched channels. “All units in my column, we’re heading into the storm. Keep in sensor range.”

From orbit, I received protests, but if they’d wanted an armchair admiral, they should have promoted someone else.

“Can you drive a speeder, Master Jinn?” I asked.

Instead of answering, he slid into the front seat. I handed off the controls, checking the seals on my armor one more time.

“On your mark,” I told him.

Qui-Gon nodded and then took us into the storm.

I lost sight of everything almost instantly. A thick wall of sand pushed me back into my seat and blasted across my visor. The howling of the wind intensified even further.

Bo increased the brightness of the instrument panel, before even that started to flicker.

“Admiral, we’re—readings on the front—” Static ate the rest of the message. Still, the meaning was clear enough.

“Reduce speed,” I said. “Relay that order back, keep at least two speeders on your instruments at all times.”

The speeder wined beneath us, shifting with the wind. “You better know where you’re going, Qui-Gon.” I muttered. From the corner of my eye, I could just make out his sillouhette, face covered by a borrowed helmet, Jedi cloak billowing in the storm.

He piloted the speeder with sure hands, taking us ever deeper.

“We’ve lost contact with orbit,” Bo said. “This sand isn’t just silicate.”

I turned my eyes front, to the wall of sand that blocked out all sight. “I think it’s scratching my armor.”

“That shouldn’t be possible,” Bo replied.

My scuffed vambraces suggested otherwise. Before I could reply though, the wind broke, and the speeder jerked forward without the pressure of the storm.

“Contact!” Bo shouted. “One mark, dead ahead.”

As if from a shadow on the sea, a massive structure of pitted metal appeared from the storm before us. Vanes covered the sides, rattling with even the reduced force of the sandstorm, it sat unmoving, loading ramp gaping open at its belly.

For a moment, my gaze tracked towards a stream of centaur-like aliens trickling from the inside, before something shifted on the side of the gaping machine.

“Turbolasers!”

“Evasive action! Get in close!” I shouted.

The speeder column spread apart right before the turbolasers fired. Bo-rolled back over her seat, grabbing our own rear-mounted turret as Qui-Gon jinked us closer.

Another row of turbolasers came to life, spitting out a hail of red beams.

I grit my teeth as a speeder exploded behind us.

Our answering barrage raked the side of the batteries, knocking out lasers and sending slag falling to the sand. The storm shuddered around us.

Then we were in its shadow, too close for the turbolasers to fire back.

“Shell this thing like an Opee!” I ordered. Our more nimble lasers shredded the side of the massive machine, taking apart the vanes and turbolaser’s both.

I kept a leery eye on the aliens, but they shied away from our speeders even as the whipping winds continued to lessen.

With a groan, a massive section of the structure’s outer plating fell away, and with it, the storm around us died.

“What the hell?” I glanced over my shoulder as the sand started falling from the sky. Slowly, then faster and faster, massive drifts of sand returned to the desert, almost burying us as the turbolasers fell silent.

Bo-Katan tilted her head. “We’ve got comms with orbit.”

I nodded, hopping out of the speeder. “Then let’s get to the bottom of this mess. I want two teams—”

Qui-Gon stood upright. “Your majesty.” He pointed toward the now-silent structure.

My head snapped up just in time to see two people jump from a brand new hole in the side of the structure. I jumped, flaring my jet pack once to snag the two out of the air.

“Hey, kid,” I said to Anakin. I flicked on my jetpack yet again, taking us slowly back to the sand. “What happened to sticking with the escape pod?”

I landed next to Qui-Gon who’d caught a very flustered-looking Miraluka.

“Oh, uh…hey, Padme.” Anakin blinked up at me, face covered in soot.

“Honestly, what did you do to yourself?” I set him down, brushing him off. “Now report.”

“We found slavers!”

I stilled at that. “Slavers, huh?” I turned my gaze back to the ramp, even as Anakin started relaying the whole story about how he’d stormed the ‘crawler’ and freed the local peoples from inside, prepared for a heroic last stand backed into a corner before we’d blown the whole thing open.

“Let’s finish putting an end to these slavers then,” I said.

“Aha!” I heard a laugh come from inside the crawler. “Your Admiralness, I’m afraid to tell you that I have already taken care of them for you!”

As one, my forces turned as a Zabrak clad in a rust-red coat swaggered down the loading ramp. The centaur locals shied away from him and the rest of the Zabraks trailing after him.

“And who, exactly, are you?” I asked.

“Me? Why, I am Captain Hondo Ohnaka, at your service.” He bowed low, snapping his fingers. “And this bantha poodu peddling fool is your slaver.”

“Ohnaka you backstabbing bastard!” The Abyssin scrambled to his feet. “I—I work for him, he’s the slaver!”

“What accusations!” Ohnaka smiled, stubby spikes along his jaw pulling into an even larger grin. “I only employ Zabraks; that way, you know exactly what type of betrayal you’re going to get.”

I watched the byplay silently before turning towards Anakin. “Did you see either of them inside?”

Anakin pointed to the fuming Abyssin. “He was calling the shots.”

“So you see—”

“And what,” I cut off the smarmy Zabrak, “were you doing here, Captain, that absolves you of participating in this slaving ring?”

“Why, my erstwhile friend here approached me about a potential business venture,” Ohnaka replied. “But the moment I realized what he was doing, why, I rushed to aid your…little friends here. Hello again, little Schelly! It’s been so long.”

The Miralukan shrank into herself, hiding behind Qui-Gon.

“Bastard, kin-fucking, low-life excuse for a—” The Abyssin started swearing as only a condemned man could.

“Some friend,” I said.

“I am cursed with fellowship and generosity! Besides,” Ohnaka continued. “I think you’ll find what he was offering me far more interesting, if half the stories I’ve heard about you were true.”

“Stories?” I took a step forward. “I’m not interested in stories.”

“Not even the ones calling you Queen of the Mandalorians?” he asked.

At my side, Bo stiffened.

“Ah but don’t mind me. Please, know that my crew will cooperate with your investigation. We’re as eager to put these slaving bastards behind bars as anyone!” He laughed again, even as two of my Praetorians stepped forward to take him into custody.

Right away, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to poke holes in his story, not within the bound of Republic law, and it chafed at me worse than the sand.

What’s worse was that the Zabrak pirate was perfectly relaxed throughout the whole affair. The other ‘citizens’ we’d picked up in orbit practically tripped over themselves to proclaim his innocence the moment we dropped his name.

That was the first time I ran into Captain Hondo Ohnaka, and by the force I wished it was the last.