A cheer went up and Boba looked down toward the arena.
The gates were opening again, all four of them this time. Droidekas rolled in, unfolding as they surrounded the prisoners, their blades gleaming wickedly in the light from the hole above the arena.
Before Boba could even blink, the droidekas had completely surrounded the three prisoners on their reek.
It was over.
Boba closed his eyes. He didn’t want to watch. Then he heard a noise behind him.
A very slight clicking sound. He opened his eyes and turned, and saw a terrible sight. A Jedi, standing behind his father.
The Jedi’s face was dark, like fine wood. His eyes were narrow and cruel. His purple lightsaber was drawn, and ignited.
And held across Jango Fett’s neck.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The’ Geonosians stopped cheering. The droidekas stopped advancing.
The reek, with the two Jedi and the beautiful woman on’ its back, stopped prancing and bucking and rearing. A hush fell over the entire arena and all eyes turned away from the Jedi and the droidekas. All of a sudden the show was not in the ring, but in the stands.
Everyone was staring at the officials’ box, where the Jedi held the lightsaber to Jango Fett’s neck.
We are the show! Boba realized with horror.
Jango Fett stood perfectly still. His Mandalorian battle armor Was useless against a Jedi lightsaber. One flick of the Jedi’s wrist and he would be decapitated.
Boba was scared.
As usual, the Count kept calm. Boba had noticed that he liked to turn everything into a game, even a bad situation. Even an emergency. The Count seemed to know the Jedi.
“Master Windu,” he said, in a smooth, oily voice, “how pleasant of you to join us. You’re just in time for the moment of truth. I would think these two new boys of yours could use a little more training.”
“Sorry to disappoint you,” said the Jedi. “This party’s over.”
The Jedi gave a little hand signal. It looked to Boba as if lights were coming on all over the arena.
Lightsabers.
There were at least a hundred of them - some in the corners down by the ring, others up high in the stands. They came on all at once.
And each was in the hands of a Jedi.
Where had they come from? How had they all gotten in?
Boba was amazed at how bad the Geonosians’ security was. And he was beginning to understand his father’s grudging respect for the Jedi. They had their ways.
The Count, as always, tried to seem unimpressed. That was his style in a crisis.
“Brave but foolish, my old Jedi friend,” he said. “You’re impossibly outnumbered.”
“I don’t think so,” said the Jedi called Windu.
He scanned the crowd with his hooded eyes. “The Geonosians aren’t warriors. One Jedi has to be worth a hundred Geonosians.”
But the Count came right back at him. “It wasn’t the Geonosians I was thinking about.”
It was the Count’s turn to give a hand signal, even slighter and more subtle than the one the Jedi had given. Boba heard a sound like a storm on Kamino - a low rumble. Suddenly all the doors in the arena opened and every aisle in the stands was filled with Battle Droids.
The Battle Droids ran down the aisles with their lasers flashing, firing at the Jedi and scorching whatever else was in their way.
Lasers flashed overhead, and Boba ducked. The Jedi called Windu had gone from offense to defense in an instant. He was deflecting the droids’ lasers with his lightsaber; it was like fencing with the air.
That was all Jango Fett needed. He crouched and fired the flamethrower that was built into his battle armor.
WHO0000SH!
Windu was engulfed in a torrent of orange flame, and his robe caught fire. It flared behind him like the exhaust of a rocket as the Jedi jumped out of the stands into the ring.
Jango let him go. He turned and went into action with the Battle Droids and the Geonosian troops, toasting the Jedi with vicious laser fire.
The Jedi all began to clump in the center of the arena, back-to-back, around the reek with the apprentice Jedi, Obi-Wan, and the beautiful woman still on its back.
The fight was on!
The reek wanted no part of it. It leaped into the air, throwing the three off its back. Then it ran in wild circles, snarling and snorting, stomping and stamping, crushing droids, Geonosian troops, Jedi, and bystanders under its hooves.
“Go!” Boba shouted, out loud this time. It didn’t matter which side he was on - it was exciting to watch. Blood and bodies were flying. And the only person down there in the ring that he liked, the pretty woman, was unhurt, at least so far.
She was standing in the middle of the ring with the Jedi. Somebody had tossed her a blaster rifle. She was pretty good with it, too, blasting droids and Geos on all sides.