The Rise of the Final Order - A Star Wars Story

Chapter 22

Ben Solo

As they sped through the air speeder traffic trying to catch up with Caedaris, Ben saw Kaia pull her sniper rifle off her shoulder out of the corner of his eye and aim it at Caedaris' distant speeder. It was a dangerous move, but Kaia was skilled with a rifle, and she almost always hit her target. Still though, doing it on a fast moving speeder bike in a skylane on Coruscant was a risky move, and Ben didn't want her to get hurt.

"Keep the speeder steady," she said, still training her rifle on Caedaris' speeder, which they were slowly catching up to. "I need a clean shot."

"I'm trying," Ben replied through gritted teeth, concentrating on keeping Caedaris in their sights without swerving too much. It was difficult to do when he had to weave through all the high speed airspeeder traffic.

Kaia fired off the first shot, but it bounced harmlessly off the side of Caedaris' speeder, leaving only a scorch mark scored across it. Caedaris swerved, trying to throw them off, but Ben was quick to angle in her direction, and Kaia was even quicker to adjust her aim. She fired two more shots, the first one grazing across Caedaris' shoulder, and the second one hitting the mark-the back thrusters of the speeder.

Caedaris' speeder jerked, and the back of it began releasing smoke, having taken critical damage. The Sith Lady changed course, now looking for a place to land, and Ben sped up, closing the distance between their speeder and hers.

But for he could reach her, he felt Kaia's alarm in the Force and then their speeder buckled as a blaster bolt knocked out the engine. He hadn't seen where it had come from, but there was no time to think about that when their speeder was about to explode.

"Get ready to jump!" he warned Kaia, who was quickly slipping her rifle back over her shoulder in preparation.

The speeder was descending quickly now, with no engine to keep it going, and then only had a few seconds before it would blow itself to bits. Once they were close enough to one of the walkways, Ben shouted the command, "Jump!" Then both he and Kaia leapt from the speeder, using the Force to boost their jump so they would make the gap between the skyline and the walkway, tumbling across the pavement as the speeder bike exploded behind them.

Although now slightly bruised and disorientated, Ben got up to his feet, Kaia pushing herself up to standing not far from him. "What do we do now?" he asked.

"Get back to the ship," Kaia responded. "She's going to try to get off-world now that she knows we're after her."

"Then we're going to have to hurry," Ben remarked.

"That's what we've been doing the whole time," Kaia pointed out. "Now let's go. Since we don't know where her ship is, I don't know how much time we have before she can escape."

And then they were running again, this time back towards the spaceport they had come from. Most of the beings they passed by were quick to get out of the way, but several times, they had to dodge out of the way of an oblivious passerby or shove around them, and while it only added a few more seconds to the time it took them to reach their ships, it was a few seconds they couldn't afford to lose.

Eventually though, they made it back to the spaceport, but before they could get to their ships, Ben felt a sudden rush of danger sense, and before he could stop to figure out what it was, there was a flash of light, and then Kaia's StealthX exploded, followed by Ben's less than a second later.

Ben skidded to a stop, Kaia right beside him, eyes wide. If they had been just a few moments quicker to arrive, they would have been killed in those blasts, and Ben had a feeling that whatever had happened wasn't an accident. Someone was trying to stop them from catching Caedaris, maybe even kill them.