A/N: This is the start of an adventure for Obi-Wan that starts off in Canon and later takes a divergent path into an alternate universe.

Disclaimer: Only the original characters belong to me. Everything else belongs to George Lucas and Disney. I am just playing in their toy box and visiting the Galaxy for a while.

Feral Moon: Discovery

Chapter 1.

Jedi Master Obi -Wan Kenobi groaned softly as he slowly eased up out of darkness. What he perceived to be late afternoon sunlight skittered and danced its way across his vision through the variegated lacy green canopy overhead. Every part of his body ached as though he had been run over by a herd of stampeding banthas. He could hear the creaking and settling of his damaged ship around him, and as he turned his head slightly, he saw the large hole torn through the forest roof as the ship had ripped its way to the ground. It looked as though he'd been thrown clear about sixty yards away.

The last thing he remembered was a series of three explosions on his small transport vessel, his crew shouting orders to one another in a desperate attempt to wrest control of the ship and find a place they could attempt a landing, and the burn of entry into an unknown atmosphere. When the ship finally went into a spin, it seemed to fall so interminably, one could have imagined it plummeting through all nine Corellian hells. The impact was only slightly broken by the treetops of the forest they had crashed into. On the bright side (there almost always was one), the atmosphere proved to be oxygen-rich and quite breathable.

Fighting to clear his mind, his first thought was to determine if any of his transport's small crew were in need of assistance. Unfortunately, he didn't even sense a flicker of their familiar signatures nearby. He shut his eyes for a moment and, looking inward with finely tuned Force perception, he performed an assessment of his own injuries. He appeared to have a couple of cracked ribs and his left wrist was badly sprained, but the Force cocoon he had pulled around himself at the last instant had guarded him from more serious injury. He had tried to cocoon one of his crew with him, but they had been thrown apart with the second explosion just to the rear of the cockpit. It appeared they had been sabotaged at that last spaceport on the Core side of the star system. "Blast! This is one of the reasons I'm not fond of flying!" he muttered to himself.

These Clone Wars were a nasty business and he had never aspired to be a soldier. He was a good tactician, however, and his negotiating skills and exceptional standing within the Order, along with being a highly trained and superb warrior, had earned him the title of General in these wars. He had been on his way to lend his skills to a siege on one of the Outer Rim worlds of Baltimn in the Chorlion sector. Apparently someone had other ideas.

He sighed once again, thinking about some of the recent failures in the Republic's intelligence- gathering community. Yoda was right, even the Council was having difficulty in foreseeing the Separatist threats in time to counteract them. The Separatist forces seemed always to be a step ahead of them lately. He couldn't help but feel, when he immersed himself in the Unifying Force, that there was something else at work here...something dark and elusive. But that line of thinking would have to wait. "Back to the here and now," he chided himself. He needed to take stock of his present situation.

His senses recovering fully, he slowly rose to a sitting position and viewed his immediate surroundings. His wariness was somewhat tempered by his innate sense of curiosity. Once again reaching out with the Force, he searched for a hint of life from his downed crew. Holding on to a nearby branch, he slowly pulled himself to his feet and surveyed the wreckage around him. He called out a couple of times, but his only answer was an increased twittering and fluttering of avian life in the treetops.

Sorting carefully through the nearby wreckage, he came upon the lifeless forms of the ship's few crew members. With a slow exhale of breath, he stood honoring each one, committing them to memory. He would make it a point to offer personal condolences to their families on his return to Coruscant. Picking up a small holograph, he remembered crewman Turvin talking fondly about his wife and little daughter. His eyes turned a stormy grey as he stared sadly at the smiling faces for a moment and had to fight a sense of melancholy. For now, he carefully wrapped and cached the men's bodies, along with their few personal effects, to be recovered when a rescue ship was sent. How many more lives were going to be lost and families destroyed due to this relentless war?

He next conducted a search for any clue as to what kind of explosive devices had been planted on the ship and where the devices had come from. The Council and the Chancellor would be quite anxious for this knowledge. The devices had to have been implanted fairly quickly on board the ship. They had taken turns stretching their legs and looking for news from the pilots at the spaceport and were careful to leave one crew member on board at all times. Not too many people were supposed to be aware of their destination. Only the Council, the Chancellor and some of his immediate staff were what he had been told, yet someone had been aware of their destination and their mission.

Something caught his eye and he hunkered down to get a closer look. It appeared to be some kind of casing. Picking it up, he turned it over and blew some of the dust off of it. He then held it up and noticed there were some markings on it that weren't familiar to him. Perhaps these were in one of the Rim languages he wasn't fluent in. He put them in a pouch on his belt. These would need to be analyzed at the Temple by one of their specialists when he got back.

Once he had completed this task, he sifted through the wreckage one more time in search of anything that might prove useful in case of a prolonged stay. Amongst other things, he found an extra medkit and a multitask pocket tool along with water and a few food items. His own gear, which he carried on every mission, had survived surprisingly intact. He piled everything beside one of the larger trees in the clearing. Squinting at the sun coming through the treetops, he tried to judge the time of day.

Wiping the sweat from his brow and finding a spot in the waning sunlight, he slowly lowered himself to a seated meditative position. He pulled the Force gently around him like a comforting cloak and took the needed time to meditate and center himself once more. He released his sorrow for the lives lost and the war in general into the Force and found healing and strength to move forward in its Light. It flowed around and through him, brushing his weary spirit with warmth and comfort.

Once he felt centered again, he set about making a small camp for the night to rest and prepare for the coming day. "This is one mess you didn't get me into, Anakin," he sighed, "though I certainly wouldn't mind your company right now, old friend." Tugging his outer cloak around him against the evening's slowly increasing chill, he watched the evening mist creep in, and drifted lightly into sleep. In his dreams, the Force whispered to him in the voice of his former Master, "Don't forget, my Padawan, the Force works in ways we do not always understand."

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

As the bright red blinking dot on the war-room holomap winked out, senior Padawan Aayman Daen blinked and held his breath. He waited several more minutes with a sinking feeling. He double checked to make sure, but he knew in his heart that was Master Kenobi's small transport that had just disappeared. He made note of the area it had last been in and hurried off with a sense of trepidation to the Jedi High Council Chamber. "I have a bad feeling about this," he thought to himself.