The Heart of the Jedi
by ardavenport
/o\\\'/o\\\'/o\\\'/o\\\'/o\\\'/o\\\ - - - Part 1
Obi-Wan Kenobi did not think, he just acted.
The heavy outer door slowly closed and he could see that even with the Force his Master was not going to make it.
Obi-Wan listened to the Force.
His blue lightsaber blade flashed out as he thrust the hilt high up into the opening. The steady friction of the door mechanism instantly changed to squealing and grinding. Qui-Gon Jinn leaped forward, the pack of mazivs running and slashing behind him, their handlers urging them to the kill.
The Force surged through both of them as Obi-Wan seized an arm and shoulder and pulled his the much larger man through. The opening was just wide enough, the length of Obi-Wan's lightsaber.
Propelled forward, they both rolled to their feet and Obi-Wan got a fleeting glance of his lightsaber bending under the pressure before Qui-Gon seized him. They ran along the wall of the castle, propelled now by an urgent warning in the Force.
Run.
Halfway to their air speeder, they saw the flash from the implosion of the lightsaber's power core that even the saber's well-engineered core containment couldn't defeat as it was being crushed. Hopefully some of the discharge deflected back toward their pursuers.
Blaster bolts from above exploded the paving on one side, bits of pulverized stone flying out from the hits. Qui-Gon's lightsaber deflected the danger from both of them. Obi-Wan leaped into the driver's seat of the speeder. He didn't look up, but he knew exactly when his Master was safe in the speeder next to him. Qui-Gon continued to deflect the blaster bolts as the speeder hummed and sped away and up.
Obi-Wan swung the speeder around the outer walls, rising higher. He knew what direction to go, without knowing where he was going.
"There!" Qui-Gon shouted. Obi-Wan saw the two lightsaber blades, green and blue, swinging, jabbing, high on a parapet. Mazivs howled their rage and pieces of them fell over the side. Obi-Wan soared upward, slowing down just enough for the two Jedi to jump to safety. Three Mazivs leaped after them. Qui-Gon's saber cut them down in mid-air.
The speeder accelerated away, descending down the castle hill, and then over the grassy plain toward the mountain where their ship was hidden. Somewhere in the back of Obi-Wan's mind, he knew he should have been elated, his connection with the Force, with his fellow Jedi, was total. He supposed that later he would, but only cool purpose and action filled this moment with no room for satisfaction. The wind blew his hair and bangs back away from his face.
"Well, that didn't work," Eclin commented from the back of the speeder. Obi-Wan kept his eyes forward, but he felt the moment of connection to his actions, to the older Jedi with him, passing.
"You are injured," Qui-Gon said. Obi-Wan glanced back. All he saw was Qui-Gon's back and side, as he turned around in his seat toward Eclin, and an expression of concern in Semko's brown eyes as she also leaned toward Eclin.
"Yeah," Eclin inhaled suddenly in pain. "Ow! That's easier to ignore when someone is shooting at you."
Obi-Wan kept driving. The plain whizzed by under them, the mountains getting larger, huge gray, uneven shapes getting taller as they got closer.
In the back, Eclin gasped again. Qui-Gon gave single word instructions to Semko. Obi-Wan looked down at the locator-holo. Their small, yellow dot rushed toward transparent, miniature cliffs. When the slightly larger green dot of their ship blinked, Obi-Wan touched a yellow control. The answering bleep of their ship's astromech immediately followed.
Obi-Wan veered to the left, away from the gray wall of rock rushing toward them. Mindful of the three in back, Obi-Wan banked as gently as possible. Patches of bluish green foliage dotted the uninhabited slopes they passed over. The scanner screen continued to blink green; no power sources, only primitive life signs, but they had just escaped an ambush from life forms that would be equally less disturbing to a scanner.
Qui-Gon's arm brushed past Obi-Wan's shoulder as he turned back in his seat. Obi-Wan piloted the speeder dove into a canyon. His Master glanced at the scanner display on the board between them, but said nothing.
In the back, Semko said that she had seen much worse injuries.
"I wish I had," Eclin replied, her voice strained, serious. "But I really haven't. Is that good or bad?"
"I couldn't say," Semko quietly admitted.
"Well, I think it's bad. It's bad every way. It's bad getting slashed by those things. It's bad killing them. And bleeding, that's bad," Eclin went on.
Qui-Gon stared ahead at the twisting canyons that Obi-Wan navigated while Eclin compared the mazivs to swarming, eight-legged boolots, especially how they smelled; the injured Jedi's voice gained strength and normalcy as her narrative rolled on, occasionally spurred on by Semko's sympathies.
Obi-Wan skimmed over a small lake, surrounded by steep rock walls, the area's tough plant life clinging to near vertical surfaces. Reaching the far bank, Obi-Wan made one more sharp turn and then swiftly up the open, rear ramp of their ship. Semko literally leaped over them, her slender, lithe body hitting the deck and running to the forward pilot seats.
Qui-Gon leapt up right after her. The astromech whistled shrilly.
The ship's engines, already warmed up, whooshed as Semko hit the antigravs and the rear ramp began to close. Obi-Wan threw himself back to the seat next to Eclin.
Qui-Gon's lightsaber hissed and slashed. Mazivs screeched and flailed. Body parts fell all around the Jedi Master as swept his green blade through another one. Unarmed, Obi-Wan crouched next to Eclin, his legs up to kick out at another attacker. Eclin stared up the length of her own green lightsaber blade at the dead maziv, one of it's long, rear legs still hooked on a strut on the ship's hull above them. Gritting her teeth, her face contorted with revulsion, Elcin pushed upward, just enough to sever the limb.
"Oooaaaahhh..." Eclin moaned, her voice loud with disgust. The sinewy body, it's plumed head still attached to charred tendons, slid off her knees and thumped down onto the floor like a sack of bones. Pushing the tough, clawed forelimbs off of himself, Obi-Wan climbed out and carefully helped Eclin up. The ship was rising; the slight, subtle changes in acceleration made the injured Jedi's steps even more wobbly. Obi-Wan helped her limp to a sleep couch set in the wall, and then retrieved the medical kit.
At the forward pilot seats, Qui-Gon told Semko to go into orbit, but not to jump to hyperspace until he told her to. He came aft and searched with his eyes, turning around, his whole body facing any potential hiding places. Obi-Wan did not sense any more danger. He could feel that Qui-Gon did not sense anything either, but the older man still slid opened all the wall and floor compartments to look. Then he began picking up maziv remains, gathering them under the disposal lock.
Qui-Gon was angry. It was an unspeaking rage that demanded silence from anyone nearby as well. Eclin, grimacing, said nothing though her eyes kept followed her elder's motions. Obi-Wan kept his back to Qui-Gon and checked the bandaged gashes on her side and upper thigh.
Obi-wan heard his Master climbing into the speeder in back. He heaved the maziv remains out and then dragged them forward. Space and stars and a yellow sun showed through the forward view port. They were in orbit.
Qui-Gon hit the switch and the disposal door slid open. The space wasn't large enough for the mazivs' long legs, so Qui-Gon had to cut them up with his lightsaber. The air recyclers could barely keep up with the smell of burned meat as the Qui-Gon repeatedly filled the disposal with body parts and then ejected them to burn up in the upper atmosphere of the planet below.
Obi-Wan didn't watch, but he and Eclin sometimes stole glances toward the forward pilot seats.
/o\\\'/o\\\'/o\\\ End of Part 1 /o\\\'/o\\\'/o\\\
