Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith Read Free

superstructure. Fire from the pursuing tri-fighters blasted burning chunks from the cruiser's armor. "Why am I always the bait?"
    "I'm right behind you. Artoo, lock on."
    Obi-Wan spun his starfighter between the recoiling turbo-cannons close enough that energy-scatter made his cockpit clang like a gong, but still cannonfire flashed past him from the tri-fighters behind. "Anakin, they're all over me!"
    "Dead ahead. Move right to clear my shot. Now!"
    Obi-Wan flared his port jets and the starfighter kicked to the right. One of the tri-fighters behind him decided it couldn't follow and went for a ventral slip that took it directly into the blasts from Anakin's cannons.
    It vanished in a boil of superheated gas.
    "Good shooting, Artoo." Anakin's dry chuckle in the cockpit's speakers vanished behind the clang of lasers blasting ablative shielding off Obi-Wan's left wing.
    "I'm running out of tricks here-"
    Clearing the vast Republic cruiser put him on course for the curving hull of one of the Trade Federation's battleships; space between the two capital ships blazed with turbolaser exchanges.
    Some of those flashing energy blasts were as big around as his entire ship; the merest graze would blow him to atoms.
    Obi-Wan dived right in.
    He had the Force to guide him through, and the tri-fighter had only its electronic reflexes-but those electronic reflexes operated at roughly the speed of light. It stayed on his tail as if he were dragging it by a tow cable.
    When Obi-Wan went left and Anakin right, the tri-fighter would swing halfway through the difference. The same with up and down. It was averaging his movements with Anakin's; somehow its droid brain had realized that as long as it stayed between the two Jedi, Anakin couldn't fire on it without hitting his partner. The tri-fighter was under no similiar restraint: Obi-Wan flew through a storm of scarlet needles.
    "No wonder we're losing the war," he muttered. "They're getting smarter."
    "What was that, Master? I didn't copy."
    Obi-Wan kicked his starfighter into a tight spiral toward the Federation cruiser. "I'm taking the deck!"
    "Good idea. I need some room to maneuver."
    Cannonfire tracked closer. Obi-Wan's cockpit speakers buzzed. "Cut right, Obi-Wan! Hard right! Don't let him get a handle on you! Artoo, lock on!"
    Obi-Wan's starfighter streaked along the curve of the Separatist cruiser's dorsal hull. Antifighter flak burst on all sides as the cruiser's guns tried to pick him up. He rolled a right wingover into the service trench that stretched the length of the cruiser's hull. This low and close to the deck, the cruiser's antifighter guns couldn't depress their angle of fire enough to get a shot, but the tri-fighter stayed right on his tail.
    At the far end of the service trench, the massive support buttresses of the cruiser's towering bridge left no room for even Obi-Wan's small craft. He kicked his starfighter into a half roll that whipped him out of the trench and shot him straight up the tower's angled leading edge. One burst of his underjets jerked him past the forward viewports of the bridge with only meters to spare-and the tri-fighter followed his path exactly.
    "Of course," he muttered. "That would have been too easy. Anakin, where are you?"
    One of the control surfaces on his left wing shattered in a burst of plasma. It felt like being shot in the arm. He toggled switches, fighting the yoke. R4-P17 shrilled at him. Obi-Wan keyed internal comm. "Don't try to fix it, Arfour. I've shut it down."
    "I have the lock!" Anakin said. "Go! Firing-now!"
    Obi-Wan hit maximum drag on his intact wing, and his starfighter shot into a barely controlled arc high and right as Anakin's cannons vaporized the last tri-fighter.
    Obi-Wan fired retros to stall his starfighter in the blind spot behind the Separatist cruiser's bridge. He hung there for a few seconds to get his breathing and heart under control. "Thanks, Anakin. That was-thanks. That's all."
    "Don't thank me. It was Artoo's