Interlude 2

The alarms went off, blasting through the room like an explosion. Qui-Gon jumped at the sudden sound, his Force senses screaming of danger. He charged out of the bed chamber and plowed into Shania, who's eyes were dark and worried. "What's the alarm for?" he shouted over the noise.

"We're being attacked." The words were shouted back, grim.

Qui-Gon had a sense of foreboding. There was more to this. He grabbed her hand and pulled her with him. "The evidence!" she shouted and darted from his grasp. She ran back into the room he had just exited and re-emerged with the black bag slung over her shoulders. "Follow me!"

The two ran down the corridors, dodging her few panicking servants. "What about them?" Qui-Gon asked her.

"What about them?" she responded. Her callous attitude halted his progress. She noted he no longer followed her and stopped, turning to him. "Come on!" she urged.

"You can't leave them here!" he said angrily.

"They have their own transports, Jedi, now move your ass!" Her green eyes flashed angrily and she turned again to leave. "If they don't get on them, it's their own damned fault." Qui-Gon said nothing else as they ran. She swung open what looked like a service door and leaped through. He followed and found himself on a servicable staircase of twisted metal. They clattered down it until they entered a large, underground hangar bay.

"How many escape options do you have?" he wondered outloud.

"Not enough apparently." Her voice was still grim and he looked where she stared in dismay. Several blaster shots had taken out one of the landing struts and blown away the cockpit.

"Damn," he swore.

"Tell me about it." She jogged to a far door marked DO NOT ENTER. She rapidly punched in a key code and then ducked automatically when a razor blade darted out to take off her head. "That's there in case one of the servants find out the code. No one knows about the blade, though."

"What's in there?" he asked following, filing away that relevation as another security measure in her paranoid walls.

"Pax," she replied. He halted when he saw Pax.

Hanging from girders was a fighter wing, gleaming brightly. Painted on the side was the words "Pax Di'reh". "I don't understand," Qui-Gon said as he watched her lower the fighter to their level.

"What's not to understand? This is Pax."

"I thought Pax was real."

She gave him a slightly amused glance. "He is. Pax, meet Qui-Gon. Ignore his stupidity, he's a Jedi."

The fighter beeped twice and made a whirring sound. An astromech droid with yellow markings made a squealing sound at Shania's companion rolled into view and returned to his soft beeping at his mistress. The clamps lowered and brought the droid into it's hold on the fighter wing.

"I still don't get it." Qui-Gon was confused.

"Get in and I'll explain while we're taking off. Then I want you to shut up while Pax and I get our butts out of here, okay?" She sounded exasperrated so Qui-Gon didn't argue. He clambered into the back, which was not made for a secondary pilot but as a small storage unit.

"This is going to hurt," Qui-Gon muttered to himself. Pax blooped something vaguely sympathetic and Shania chuckled. Qui-Gon crammed himself in, barely.

"And you were just so proud of being all big and strong and in control," she jibed as she climbed in after him. "Okay, Pax, let's get out of here. They want to make this asteroid uninhabitable!" Pax screamed an indignant reply and the hatch lowered, making a hissing sound as it sealed shut.

The engines fired and Qui-Gon distinctly heard a sigh of relief from the female pilot. "What?" he demanded.

"I wasn't sure they worked," she said. Qui-Gon's eyes widened. "I haven't flown this thing in a several months and we barely landed. Pax might have fixed most of the problems though." She looked over shoulder at the crunched Jedi knight. "I hope."

"How reassuring," he ground out as he was jolted when the fighter lifted off the ground. "How did the astromech get the name Pax?"

"I named him. I hate number designations. They are so impersonable. One of his little beeps and whoops together sounded like Pax Di'reh to me, so that's what I called him. He helped me out a lot in the early days, but he got banged up one time so I retired him. Now he helps me with mechanics that Shinoba won't bother with." Shania had the fighter clear of the hangar and they could see the attackers. "Gods be damned!" she swore and jerked the pilot stick to the right sharply they rolled and Qui-Gon's head banged against the cockpit wall.

He struggled against the sharp pain for a moment and then slipped in to the black pit of unconsciousness.