Fallen Heroes
"You Jedi have brought peace to our world. The gods smile upon your ferocity." Chamtar Joogin waved a clawed hand at one of his advisors, summoning him forward. The premier's plated and horned face scowled gravely as he lifted a heavy wrought-metal stole from his underling's arms and proferred it to the man standing before him. "Accept this honor-stole, as payment for your services, and a mark of our respect."
"We are quite content," Obi Wan Kenobi assured him.
"Wizard!" his ten year old apprentice breathed, gazing wide-eyed at the priceless treasure his master had just declined.
Joogin's laugh was a startling clap of thunder. "The small warrior desires the honor," he smiled, revealing a jostling crowd of teeth. He draped the heavy object over the Padawan's slight shoulders. "Grow into it, little hero."
Obi Wan's eyebrows drifted upward, but it would be impolitic to return the gift, once given. Joogin would be enraged by such a public insult. He bowed instead, and Anakin followed suit, tottering slightly beneath the heavy links of the ceremonial vestment.
"We must depart, Premier Joogin."
"Then once again I must thank you for all you have accomplished. Please rest in the knowledge that what you have started, our security forces will finish."
The Jedi knight bowed carefully. "I wish your people a lasting peace."
Tagging along behind his master en route to the transport's busy boarding ramps, Anakin Skywalker blurted out," What did he mean by they're gonna finish it? That doesn't sound good."
Obi Wan slowed his steps, to enable the ten year old boy to catch up. The heavy metallic stole draped over Anakin's shoulders was proving an awkward burden. "I'm sure I don't want to know. But we've done all we can….how the government chooses to deal with their criminal element is not an affair in which we are permitted to interfere without grave cause. And we have been ordered back to the Temple, on standby."
"Another mission? Yippeee!"
Obi Wan held out a hand to stop the prancing boy from barreling over an elderly Klatooinian couple hobbling toward the ramp with a precarious tower of luggage perched on a hover-trolley. "Be mindful of your surroundings," he admonished the over-enthusuastic Padawan.
"Sorry."
"Master Jedi. This way, please." The ticketing droid practically drooled over them as they ascended the ramp. It made way for them, pushing ahead of the grumbling passengers in the snaking line waiting for admittance to the ship's cavernous hold.
"So we did a good job on that mission, didn't we?" Anakin observed, craning his head curiously to get a good look at their fellow passengers. "Will the Council be pleased that we're such heroes? Again, I mean, cause aren't we already heroes because of Naboo?"
"Yes, well, I think you'll find the title hero doesn't guarantee many prerogatives inside the Temple, " Obi Wan agreed dryly. "And why this sudden need for recognition, Padawan?"
Anakin blushed and glanced down at his new and ostentatious personal ornament. "Oh, that. I just didn't want to hurt his feelings. And you have to admit: this is pretty rugged."
Rolling his eyes at the boy's ingrained habit of employing coarse Outer Rim slang, Obi Wan fingered the heavy edge of the linked metal plates in the warrior's stole bestowed upon his apprentice by the Klatooinian governor. "Hand made," he remarked. "Very nice."
"It'll look great hanging on the wall in my room," Anakin surmised.
"What? Think again, young one. As soon as we set foot in the Temple, you will be handing that artifact over to the Archives, to be stored in the permanent collection."
Anakin's face fell. "I can't keep it?"
"What does the Code say?"
They shuffled a few paces forward along the transport's corridors. The young boy dragged his feet reluctantly against the dully textured durasteel. "I can't have any possessions beyond what I can easily carry on my own person." He sighed. Then he brightened. "But I can wear this, so actually….?"
"You intend to wear that all the time? Good. We'll have you do a few circuits of the advanced obstacle course wearing that. And then we'll practice underwater swimming…and maybe some aerial saber moves…"
Anakin's face twisted back into a defeated frown. "Fine. The Archives can have it."
"I knew you would see reason eventually. Shall we? Apparently we have been assigned a cabin fit for heroes: there are actually two separate bunks inside."
It was a well known fact that most sentient beings (at least those not equipped with wings, or born into one of the more aquatic species-communities) enjoyed the occasional dream of flying. It was exhilarating, freeing, a welcome relief and escape from a reality which often seemed earthbound and stale. Most sentients, that is. Obi Wan Kenobi had his share of flying dreams, of course – but he never enjoyed them. It might be that he spent too much time in waking reality behind the controls of a space craft, often in perilous situations. Or it might simply be that his flying dreams quite frequently transformed into falling dreams. Falling-toward-imminent-death-in-a-blazing-conflagration dreams. Not pleasant.
He was almost grateful to be rudely awakened by a small hand roughly shaking his shoulder.
"Master! Master!" Anakin's young voice was uncharacteristically panicked.
He sat bolt upright, nearly smashing his head on the bunk above him. Only impossibly honed reflexes saved him. "What is it?" The question was put out to the universe in general; no sooner had he sprung fully awake than Anakin's trembling voice was joined by a violent disturbance in the Force. Both clamored for his immediate attention.
"Something bad…really bad….I'm scared!" the frightened boy whispered, gripping onto his mentor's arms with both hands and pressing his small body close. The Force was ringing with danger….the blazing conflagration part of the recently shattered dream continued to hover before his mind's eye.
"Anakin." He steeled his voice. "You must control your emotion. Choke your fear – you are feeding it. Remember what I showed you.."
The boy made a little headway, wrestling his spiraling terror under shaky control. He trembled. "We've got to do something! Please! Can't you feel that?"
Obi Wan held his too-young, too-inexperienced Padawan's shoulders for a moment longer. "Yes," he agreed, forcing his voice into a cool serenity he did not feel. "Hush. We can't do anything unless we know what's wrong." Slipping onto the floor beside the narrow ship's berth and kneeling in meditation posture, he felt his mind slip into the turbulent currents of the Force. It was not necessary to be in such a physical pose to feel the ever-present Light, but decades of training had their uses: for him, the act of kneeling like this almost automatically opened a window in his mind, letting him slip from ordinary to extraordinary awareness in a heartbeat.
Danger – close at hand – all-consuming. A blaze like a supernova and the vacuum of space ripping at the ship's hull, flinging shards of durasteel and precious air into the void. Danger, danger, danger….near…
"The ship's engines," he said, leaping to his feet with a jolt of adrenaline. The ship was going to explode, the engines were somehow compromised – bad maintenance, poor hyperspatial calculation, a flaw in the fuel uptakes…there was no way to know the cause, not with the imminent fact beating so urgently against his mind, a ceaseless drumbeat of warning.
"Let's go," the boy yelped, bolting for the door.
Obi Wan seized a handful of tunic. "No. No time. Anakin. Get the passengers to the forward hold. All of them. Now!"
They raised the alarm together, shaking terrified co-passengers out of sleep, thrusting them bodily down the crowded corridor to the forward storage cabins, ignoring insults and shouting and pushing back against those who resisted. Clamoring, jostling, the passengers were herded into the large cabin behind the cockpit. Crew members squeezed in behind them, demanding an explanation. Obi Wan sealed the emergency hatches, and the blast shields, holding off an irate pilots' assistant with his lightsaber. Screams and protests filled the air –
-and then the entire ship lurched violently, a boom deeper than sound shuddering its massive frame. Lights failed, claxons blared, their motion became a sickening erratic spiral, the artificial gravity began to fail, sending bodies sliding across walls toward the ceiling. Alarms wailed and bleeped, voices shouted and screamed and jabbered in sheer horror.
"What's happening? We're all going to die!" someone wailed, and the chorus was taken up in the hundred-fold.
Obi Wan clamped down on his apprentice's arm and dragged the pair of them forward through the struggling masses of bodies, to the cockpit door. Already afraid of him, the crew and passengers now scrambled out of his way. He waved the doors open with the Force and found his way onto the bridge.
Here the chaos was more intense. Every warning light and damage report console was lit with a flickering red glow. The bridge crew shouted and milled, spiking panic poisoning the already thinning air.
"The engines are gone!" somebody shouted. "She's breaking up!"
"You must get to the escape pods, at once," Obi Wan shouted in the captain's ear. "Abandon ship. It won't hold."
The man shook his head. "Automated systems are all down. They'll have to be launched manually, from here."
Obi Wan glanced through the forward viewports. They had been so close – the ship was in the gravitational field of its first stop, the Harassi system. A pale yellow planet loomed beneath them, either Zylo or Ankabar, he did not know which. The passengers had a chance. He grasped Anakin's shoulders again, dropped to one knee.
"Go with the Captain, Padawan."
"But! What are you going to do?"
"I'll launch the capsules. Go!" This last command he barked at recalcitrant apprentice and the ship's captain alike. They were hustled away, joining the throng in the forward hold. Crew members herded and prodded the passengers into the escape pods attached to the forward hull. Obi Wan settled himself before the ship's console, locating the override release. He pried open the panelling, spotted the series of old-fashioned hydraulic levers.
The ship buckled and slewed again, as more systems failed. A subtle rattling beneath his feet told him that the dead carcass had been seized in the planet's pull. No longer capable of flying, the massive transport must now begin the inevitable fall to the distant surface. Releasing all emotion, he used the Force to lift each lever in turn, releasing the life pods into the upper atmosphere. Each was equipped with minimal life support, self-directing thrusters and an emergency beacon. The passengers had a chance.
Meanwhile, his metallic coffin would begin a long, torturously slow degrading orbit around the yellow planet until it finally collided. He pushed the thought out of his mind and started trying to bring anything, any halfway functioning remnant of the ship's systems, back online. He wasn't very good at giving up.
"Master, let me help!"
Obi Wan spun round, horrified.
"What?" Anakin dared to question him. "I know you said go with the captain, but then I figured out what you meant and then I didn't want to go and I slipped past him and everyone was in such a panic I just had to get you out of here too but then you went and launched all the pods…and here we are," he ended lamely, all in one breathless tirade. "Don't be mad, master."
"Anakin!" He was well beyond merely "mad" - and he hoped that counted as eschewing anger. "Blast it, Anakin! We could both be killed."
"So you were okay with just you being killed?"
Obi Wan ran a hand over his short beard, and then through his hair, leaving it sticking up in wild tufts. "Yes," he growled. "For Force's sake, Anakin. "
The boy quailed a little, but he was also very unpracticed at giving up. "I maybe could figure out how to fly this thing," he offered.
"There are no engines, no thrusters, barely any stabilizers, ten percent shields, and manual directional control. You can't pilot this thing. It's going to crash."
"I'm good at crashes," the skinny ten year old insisted. "I crashed lots of pods in the races back home. Mostly I was able to salvage 'em, you know…and not get killed." He clambered onto the co-pilot's seat, tongue sticking between his teeth, forehead furrowed in concentration. "How long do we have?"
"Hours or minutes. It depends on the angle of our initial descent, and the magnetic compass is out, so…"
"So assume the worst?" The blonde boy grinned at his master over one shoulder, relishing the first of many private bad jokes.
Obi Wan couldn't help but smile back. "Very good," he said. The faintest flutter of hope made itself felt in his chest. "Can you pilot this thing?"
"I can fly anything," Anakin boasted. "Uh..well….I've never even seen controls like this, actually, and …uh…."
"Use the Force," Obi Wan commanded, stepping forward to touch the boy's back. "Let it flow through you. It will guide your hands, take your knowledge and skill and tell them what to do."
Anakin nodded, and opened himself as he'd been taught…the falling ship plunged sickeningly and began to accelerate…the Force surged and flared around the small boy, a violent, uncontrolled storm laced with emotion and wild ambition and confusion.
"No, Anakin, you must …" But why bother? The child couldn't learn a lifetime of Jedi training in thirty seconds. He had more raw talent than half the Temple put together, but he couldn't channel or control even a fraction of what lay at his command. And it was almost too late. Heat was building around them as their plummeting ship entered the ionosphere.
"Master! You have to help me!" Anakin was frantic. His hands clutched at the ship's controls, his habitual cocky assurance melting in the fiery heat.
Obi Wan sprang forward, prompted by sheer desperate instinct, and seized the boy around the waist, sitting in the co-pilot's chair with Anakin squashed against him, kneeling painfully on his lap with bony knees digging into his thigh muscles. He called on the Force which shone so brightly around Anakin, willing the explosive, unfettered power to channel through his own body and mind. Instantly, the wild maelstrom spun into a torrent of directed energy, a thundering waterfall of light, channeled through one Jedi into another. Obi Wan felt it burn through him like liquid radiance, sweet pain, and accepted that it was this or death ….he dropped his head forward, his forehead pressed against the boy's back, making himself a passive conduit of power, shaping the mighty storm into a focused, blazing line, like a lightsaber, ready for the boy to wield.
For a moment, there was only one Jedi on the bridge. One pair of hands reached for the helm, one mind watched in utter blissful calm as the world rushed to meet them, making tiny adjustments, slight shifts, subtle movements that would transform death into life…Light wrapped itself around them, the one who had the skill and the one who could control the power, and they floated, serene in the Force, as they fell like a thunderbolt toward the ground below.
They cried out together when the hull finally impacted.
"Master?" a voice peeped. Except it wasn't a just a voice, it was a presence, a bright marker in his tired mind. When he didn't respond, the voice repeated itself. "Obi Wan?" And with the words came another hot-bright nudge of energy deep within his psyche.
On reflex, he answered in the same manner, using a skill he had not dared touch in many long months, one he hoped never to use again. "I'm here." He nudged back, through the Force, now feeling giddy with the sudden double-vision, the once-familiar sensation of sharing thought and feeling.
"Where are we?" Anakin asked, the question a mere whisper in physical space, a startling shout of near-panic in the Force – too close, too loud, too intertwined with his own emotions.
We're in each other's minds. Not supposed to happen so easily….so early…"We're alive," he assured the frightened boy. This isn't death. At least, he was fairly certain. Surely dead people did not feel quite so…uncomfortable.
"Anakin," he groaned, pulling his attention away from the nascent bond, from its implications. His voice sounded harsh, dry and rasping, unreal and yet too grossly real and material.
Something stirred against him. He sucked in a breath, and choked on hot, plastoid-laden air. Coughing violently, he struggled to push the thing off. It pushed back, thin fingers groping at his face. It was pitch black.
"Obi Wan," Anakin's voice whimpered, out loud. Anakin was the thing pressing against him. He weighed about a half metric ton. Why was that? "We're stuck, I think. Squished. Auuugh. I can't move." He began to squirm.
Stop! the young Knight commanded, along the mental link so inexplicably forged between them. How many years had it taken him and Qui Gon to achieve such a rare connection?
The boy stopped. He actually obeyed. His bony limbs stopped prodding and poking and bruising the one trapped beneath him. But they were both gasping for clean air- the counterpoint of their labored breathing was the only sound.
Anakin was frightened, angry, hurting. He wanted out! And the urge to scream and thrash was growing stronger with each passing second. Obi Wan tamped down the instant empathetic agreement. Oh yes, one had to be so careful with these things…shielding was taught to younglings at an early age…well, except Anakin. "You must stay calm," he soothed. "I'll get us out of here in a moment."
"Okay." The boy's voice was so small in the choking darkness.
Reaching through the Force, Obi Wan sensed the crumpled and ruined form of the starship's bridge, crushed around them on all sides. It was a miracle they hadn't been crushed with it. Metal and housing and circuitry weighed in, shut them off in a tomb of slowly melting and slagging durasteel and plastoid. He reached further. There. The viewport – shattered, fractured to a fine powder by the impact. They could go through it. It was above them. Cautiously he eased his hand downward, found his saber hilt. The angle was too awkward, and he couldn't budge.
"Anakin. I need you to cut through the metal above us." He fumbled the hilt into the boy's hand. "A hole big enough for us both. Just…thrust the blade through and carve a circle."
The hand trembled. "Won't sparks and..hot stuff…fall on us?"
Obi Wan sighed. "Yes. I'd rather not die here. Would you?"
"No." Determination flared in the boy, bright and hot like a firecracker. His spirit was indomitable, despite the odd waves of fear and longing which seized him and spun him like a leaf on the wind. The blue blade sizzled and spat into life, plunging surely, deftly into the metal above. Bits of agonizing molten slag dripped on them, sparks burned. They cursed and hissed and cried out, and then Obi Wan pushed the offending chunk of metal out of the way, through the gap overhead, and cold, pure air poured in on them. Anakin jumped clear, with a helpful push from below, and then Obi Wan levered himself into position in the tight space and clambered out. He jumped free of the wrecked hull and landed on soft, dusty ground beside his apprentice.
"Whoa," Anakin assessed the damage done to the ship. "We really should be dead."
Obi Wan stared and nodded. They really should. They still might – but now didn't seem the time to point it out. He held out a hand for his saber and replaced it at his belt. Drawing the Force around him, he sensed that they were in a desolate landscape, almost devoid of life. Emptiness stretched in every direction. Only the stars shone overhead, aloof and unblinking. They were utterly alone.
We have each other, Anakin reminded him. Or perhaps the boy thought it to himself without understanding that he was projecting.
"Yes," the Jedi knight agreed. "And a bad start is better than a bad ending."
"Sometimes you just don't make much sense, master."
A few hours later, and they had at least a fire to comfort them against the cold. There was not much in the way of vegetable growth – a few succulents, some straggling dried skeletons that might once have been a stunted variety of desert scrub. It was difficult to make them burn, but very few substances could resist the scorching heat of a saber's blade – set on lowest power – and eventually the meager heap of branches caught fire and burned slowly. Anakin slept by the fire, wrapped in his cloak. He shivered despite the warmth – the boy was accustomed to a much hotter climate, and likely would always prefer heat to cold. Obi Wan had cleaned and bound the cuts on the boys' hands and face with the limited medical supplies he carried in his belt pack, and fixed them an unappealing supper of exactly one condensed nutrient pellet each. They swallowed the thick powder dry, for water was the one commodity they did not have.
That worried Obi Wan, though he had as yet said nothing to his apprentice. He had with him, in a pouch containing other infrequently used survival items, a chemical solvent which would enable him to instantly purify about a half gallon of ….well, of the liquid most readily available to most warm blooded beings. When he and Anakin woke with full bladders in the morning, they would be able to drink a small amount of sterile, recycled water. If he could convince the boy to cooperate. After that….he looked at the bleak horizon stretching in all directions. After that was not something he could afford to fret about. Mind on the moment.
And speaking of minds, what had happened back there on the falling ship? Had his desperate channeling of Force energy through his own spirit to Anakin's accidentally formed a complete training bond with the boy? Accidentally. Now there was a foolish thought. He wasn't sure he welcomed the existence of such a link with Anakin Skywalker. Yes, he was growing fond of the boy. Yes, he intended to carry out Qui Gon Jinn's commission to train the Chosen One– to the utmost of his ability. But they weren't meant to be so…intimate. Were they? He looked at the sleeping Padawan across the fire. He had thought of his own master as a father, for many years. He couldn't really bring himself to look upon Anakin as a son.
Annoying little brother, he decided. They were, by the will of the Force, rather stuck with each other now.
A tremor in the Force warned him. Saber blade snapping to life, he spun in place and swung just as the hunting animal pounced. Its head rolled into the fire, kicking up a curtain of sparks and smoke, and its heavy scaled body slammed into his chest, nearly knocking him into the fire too. He used the Force to lift the stinking mass out of the smoldering pile of sticks, and bent to examine the carcass. It was a long snouted, beady eyed thing with razor jaws and powerful rake-shaped forearms. Plates of overlapping armor covered its back and flanks, and its body terminated in a stumpy tail. He had never seen one before. He supposed it was reptilian.
Chiding himself for the lapse in concentration, he set watch again, this time not allowing his mind to wander on its own track. All his musings could wait.
Anakin watched in fascination and then in repugnance as Obi Wan rendered the bag of …water…drinkable. "We're not actually going to…uh..swallow that, are we?" he asked, feeling the parched dryness of his throat and the woolen thickness of his tongue.
"We need water, Anakin. We'll find another source soon, I hope, but in the meanwhile, this is the difference between life and a nasty death. It takes three days for a human to die of dehydration in a climate like this, but the ill effects will start soon." He took a long swig at the liquid in the container, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and handed the remaining half over to Anakin.
"Bantha nuts," the boy groaned, making a face of disgust. He screwed his eyes shut, took a deep breath, and quickly downed the rest of the warm water. Wordlessly, he handed the empty pouch back to his teacher. "What's that smell?"
Obi Wan eyed him warily. "Breakfast. An animal attacked us last night, and I thought it best to make use of its flesh." He pointed to the tiny smoldering fire, where bits of something greasy roasted slowly on long spits.
Anakin was impressed. "Wizard. How'd you cut it up? With your lightsaber?"
The Jedi knight rolled his eyes. "Yes, I use my saber as a butchering implement. I also use it to shave and trim my nails, and I'm working on a whittling project too." He held up a thin knife, which he deftly folded into its handle and then slid down inside his left boot.
"I want one!" Anakin immediately enthused.
"Hm," Obi Wan remarked.
"Can I ask you something?" the boy rattled on, eyeing the skewered whatever-it-was cautiously before taking an experimental bite. "Last night…in the ship, I mean…when we could sort of hear each other thinking? Is that normal for Jedi?"
The whatever-it-was had an oily, slightly unpleasant taste. "Normal, no. But possible, yes. Sometimes it can happen between two Jedi who are very close, or who have worked together for many years."
"Oh. So we're…very close, master?"
Obi Wan finally met the boy's eyes. "It would appear so."
"Rugged." Anakin beamed and stuffed the remainder of the unappetizing meal in his mouth, licking each finger in turn. "Could you and Qui Gon do that?"
Obi Wan swallowed the rest of his burned meat and grizzle, though he suddenly had no appetite. "Yes…after a long while. But yes."
Anakin bounded to his feet with the irrepressible energy of youth. "So how are we getting out of here? I mean, we can't stay here forever. We'll croak. I know. I used to live in a desert like this. Two days without shelter and –" Here he made a grisly choking noise and drew a finger expressively across his throat.
"I see I needn't explain the situation to you. Our best hope of survival is to send an open-frequency distress beacon. Our comlinks are only for short range use," he reminded the boy, who had hopefully withdrawn his own small unit.
"Yeah, but maybe I could salvage a few bits from the wreck. You know, a signal amplifier, a power converter, a coupe binary anodes and a transceiver coupler…" Anakin ticked off the items on his fingers. "Of course, I don't know how to establish a distress beacon."
"I do." Obi Wan gazed at the sihouette of the smoking junkheap that had once been their ship. "If we're going to do this, I suggest we do so now. At this rate, the heat will be intolerable by noon."
"Way before that," Anakin corrected him, setting off at a trot in the direction of the ship. "C'mon. We'll prob'ly have to cut through the hull with your saber. Maybe I could do that part?"
"Maybe." I hope this works, or we could be here a very, very long time.
"Don't be so pessimistic, master," Anakin called over his shoulder.
Blast, Obi Wan thought. He was going to have to adjust to the idea of Anakin sharing some of his thoughts. And vice versa.
"I feel kinda sick."
"I know. Just …rest here a moment. Keep the hood of your cloak up. "
Obi Wan felt the perspiration – precious moisture he could not afford to lose – running freely down his back, the insides of his britches. The heat had escalated to a kiln like intensity, although the sun was just past meridian. The short march from the wrecked ship back to their camp, bearing the small pile of electronic components Anakin needed, had enervated them both. Now he gathererd the dregs of his evaporating strength and summoned the Force, using its subtle power to shift and move a large quantity of the loose sandy dust beneath their feet, scooping and shoving and digging deeper in one place until he had excavated a small cavern or dug-out big enough for Anakin and himself to crouch inside. He pushed the boy in ahead of him, and sank against the cool gritty side of the hole.
"Thanks," the Padawan murmured. "We shoulda done that first thing in the morning."
"Yes. Our first lesson here. We won't leave here until sunset."
Anakin discarded boots and cloak and outer tunics, following his teacher's example, and pressed his back against the much cooler surface of the hollow. "I wonder how far we'd have to dig to reach water? They said on Tatooine there was water about two and a half klicks under the surface, but I don't think so."
Obi Wan shook his head. "Unlikely. And I suspect it's unlikely here, too."
Anakin spread out the components he had stripped off the ruined transport's comm. console. "I'm gonna work on this," he said tentatively. "What are you gonna do?"
Obi Wan stretched out on the hard, uneven floor of their shelter. "Sleep," he said. "I kept watch last night, and I feel it. And then meditate on our water problem."
"Oh." Anakin frowned and started tinkering with the circuits and transceiver units, opening the back of his comlink as he worked.. "Am I gonna feel your dreams?" he blurted out.
"No. I can shield from you. And I'll teach you how to do so, also. Force knows I don't want to share your dreams, either. Too much reckless piloting and podracing for my tastes."
The boy sent him an alarmed look, but he closed his eyes and let the thick, hot air and the dizziness caused by slow dehydration rock him into a brief but deep sleep. He willed the image of clear water to be the last thing he saw before he drifted off.
"Master. It's sunset. And look – I've rigged up a comm. unit."
Obi Wan clawed his way back to consciousness. Grogginess was a bad sign, but he ignored it. "Well done," he told the boy in a voice rasping from too little moisture. "Let me see."
The boy's invention looked like a sculpture on display at the Coruscant Modern Art Museum, but a cursory examination revealed that it had all its working parts in good order, and was moreover very cunningly wired to allow Anakin's comlink unit to act as a signal router. It took only a few moments to program in the standard Republic space broad-band distress signal and set the transmitter to repeat.
"The thing is, it'll probably fry out in six hours or less," Aankin admitted sheepishly.
But Obi Wan patted him encouragingly. "Then those six hours will be enough to attract one ship. Patience. The key to surviving a marooning incident is to remain calm."
The boy scrunched his nose. "How many times have you been marooned?"
"Are you counting the times Master Qui Gon left me behind on purpose?"
Anakin's expression was so horrified that he had to relent. "I'm twisting your tail. Come. Let's address our next vital need: water."
"I don't think I can…you know, make any more," Anakin told him somberly.
"Nor I. But something else has occurred to me. Those plants we saw above – the succulents. I've studied such things. They collect moisture from the air, nothing you or I could drink."
"Like vaporators," the boy nodded.
Obi Wan smiled. "Yes, like a vaporator. And they store the fluid in their tissues, like all living things. Did you notice how fat the leaf pads are?"
"Uh – huh…you aren't saying we have to eat them, though? I mean, stuff like that tastes awful. Once me and Kitster were stuck out on the other side of Mos Espa and there were these little bushes, and …well, between the spines and the taste it wasn't worth it. "
"You have a better suggestion?"
No," Anakin groaned, obediently following him up out of their hovel. The night air was much cooler, though no breeze played across the endless swells of dust. They tramped a short distance to the nearest clump of straggling succulents and broke off a large pad each. By chewing carefully for several minutes, the rubbery flesh of the plant could be persuaded to yield up a mouthful of sticky liquid, which ran down their parched throats and coated the raw tissue with a soothing film. The remaining fibrous mass was bitter and impossible to break down. They spat the mess out on the dirt.
"Wow. Yum," the Padawan rolled his eyes.
"Dessert," his teacher said, holding out a second pad. They munched in silence, and eventually left the mashed remains in an untidy heap next to the first pile. "This is disgusting," Anakin remarked. "We're never doing this again."
Obi Wan grinned. "Wait till I take you to Dexter's."
Another day passed, and their thirst became an obsession. The succulents were little consolation - dewdrops spattered on a parched plain.
"That's a dust storm."
"What?" Obi Wan looked up, hearing only the faintest whistle of wind in the distance, feeling only a sluggish upheaval in the Force. "Are you sure?"
"I grew up with them, yes. We gotta get outta here. Now. Shelter."
Obi Wan flung the last bit of succulent aside. "Our little hole won't be much shelter against a dust storm. We'll have to crawl inside the ship's hull again."
"But you said it was toxic."
"It's better than being shredded to a pulp."
They ran, covering the distance to the crashed ship at a sharp clip. True to Anakin's word, even before they reached the shadows of the still-smoking metallic hulk, the screaming of the wind picked up, and the Force shuddered in warning. The first signs of the destruction to come eddied around their feet – little whips of sand and dust snapped at their heels and flung gritty fingers at their faces.
They crawled, with difficulty, into the cramped space they had carved out earlier on the scavenging expedition. Anakin went first.
"Ow!" he yelped. "Master! It's full of….eech!"
In a moment, Obi Wan's saber was burning in the darkness. By its pale light, they could see the decks crawling with scorpions. The humming of the weapon made them shy away; and a few warning swings near the floor sent every one of them scattering over the threshold.
"Ow…." Anakin moaned, curling into a ball against the bulkhead.
Alarmed, Obi Wan scooted forward to the boy, clipping his weapon back in place. Outside, the wind screamed. He used the Force to shift a bit of warped plastoid into place against the door. "Let me see. What happened?"
"I think one got me," Anakn said in a small voice. "It really hurts." He held out a hand before him, and Obi Wan felt the fingers and palm delicately, feeling the boy flinch as he brushed against the hot, raised flesh. "They're poison, I bet. I was crawling in on my hands..that was stupid, huh?"
It wasn't something an experienced Jedi would do; perhaps not even something an experienced desert-dweller would do. But Anakin was tired, hungry, thirsty, and anxious. Such a tiny mistake to carry such terrible results. "We'll take care of it," he assured the young Padawan.
"Ah…I'm gonna throw up," the boy said in a tiny voice, and promptly suited actions to words. The cramped space soon stank of chewed succulent and bile. "Sorry….ow.."
Obi Wan groped in the pouch which contained med supplies. A universal antidote was all he carried – it likely would do very little against such a potent toxin. "Here. Give me your hand…this might help."
"Ow! What was that?"
"Shhh, it's an anti-toxin. It should at least slow that down. I'll try to help you heal – but I need you to relax. Can you do that?"
"No…." Anakin groaned, starting to shudder.
Calm down. Can you still hear me?
The boy crawled into his lap, like a bedraggled mutt. His body felt hot, and he shook. Obi Wan instinctively wrapped arms around the quivering form. Yes, came the tentative answer.
Outside the wind raged and threw walls of sand against the ship. The panels of the hull shook and whined beneath the onslaught. Inside, Obi Wan sank into a healing trance, or as close to one as he could manage. He didn't really know any advanced techniques, so he merely sent waves of strength and comfort to his Padawan's ailing body. After an endless wait, the boy seemed to cool, and slipped into an exhausted slumber. In the close, suffocating cave within the dead ship, the hot air grew hotter still. Perspiration clung, sticky with grime, to both their faces. Obi Wan shifted Anakin, tucking him to one side, rolling his own cloak into a pillow for the boy's head. The wind still howled and slammed the hull.
He leaned despondently against the bulkhead, and closed his own eyes.
He must have fallen asleep, for he woke up. The Force was alight with danger. A flash of liquid fire travelled up his spine. Anakin. His hand reached sideways, to the boy. But the Padawan was asleep. Breath rising and falling too fast, but steadily. The boy's hair was damp with sweat, and fever still burned under his skin. The poison had been slowed….that was not the immediate danger.
Swallowing painfully because his mouth was so dry, he unfurled his senses into the Force. Where the howl of the sandstorm had been there now lurked an eerie pre-dawn quiet. And in the middle of this deathly silence, stalked a malicious presence. A predator, huge and crafty. Focused on his scent. They had been found.
He glanced at the sleeping boy. He must draw attention away from Anakin. Better not to be discovered here, in a space too small for effective combat, with only one entrance. Cautiously, he shifted the panel which blocked the door. A cascade of sand poured in, flooding the chamber and avalanching in almost up to his boots. Anakin stirred and moaned, but did not wake. The faintest trickle of pre-dawn light crept in through the gap.
He drew in a breath, and slid through the opening. A sweeping glance around the grey world revealed a drastically altered landscape. The contours and shapes of the hills and ridges had been obliterated and replaced with completely new ones, as though the storm had wiped a slate clean and then rearranged the world to its own fancy. The ship was now little more than a dome rising above a sea of sand. Another storm…or maybe a few more hours worth…and the wreck would be buried forever beneath the shifting dust-mountains.
His eyes flicked to the bulk of the ruined ship behind him. The intruder was prowling about the opposite side of the ship. His hand strayed to his saber hilt, and he waited, frozen in place.
With a cry that seemed to rattle the dust-scoured air, the hideous jaws and neck of a krayt lizard reared themselves over the hull of the wrecked ship. The powerful forearms and sinous body followed, the head easily huge enough to swallow its prey in one bite. Obi Wan slid backward down the sandy slope a short distance, retreating before the fearsome dragon, luring it further from the refuge where Anakin lay defenseless.
The krayt followed, flat glassy eyes tracking his progress to the foot of the dune, massive tongue flicking over its wide lips, scenting the air, the faint wind, last eddies of the passing storm. It roared, and lunged forward for the kill.
A Force-enhanced leap saved him. Tumbling through the air, his feet hit its skull, its back. He danced, sprang along the length of its spine as it writhed about, contorted itself into a thrashing coil to reach him. Its scaled body hit the slanting wall of sand and began the graceless slide downward. Obi Wan leapt clear of grasping claws and teeth, rolled behind it, twisted aside as its tail smashed into the soft hill beside him.
The krayt moved with the grace of an underwater thing, its thickly scaled body twisting fluidly through the churning sand, wrapping back around itself, circling back, fast and deadly. The head plunged at him, jaws open. His saber flashed, seared off the front teeth, carved through the tongue. Purple gore spattered on his tunics; he cut away a claw that came to seize him, somersaulted after the next one, swept downward to fend off the third attack, leapt forward to singe the beast's neck, soared away from a powerful swipe of its legs.
The tail whipped beneath his feet even as he landed, and knocked him flat. The saber left his grip, rolled down the slope a few meters. He crouched, ducked, dived for the weapon, but the krayt's tail again slammed into the sand between him and the gleaming hilt. The Force brought it to his grip; he rolled aside, re-ignited the blade, skewered the claw coming to crush him flat. The krayt howled in agony, reared up, seemed to twist away defeated…
And the blasted tail struck him across the chest, knocking his breath away, sending him sprawling into the side of the dune. A claw sliced into his thigh, digging deep, gouging hard through muscle. He arched backward in agony, sawed through the scaled flesh, rolled gasping to one side as the enormous bleeding digit thudded to the sands. The krayt screamed, thrashed, withdrew a short distance upward, slinking away from him…up the slope toward the ship and Anakin.
Obi Wan clawed his way onto his stomach. The wounded, furious krayt trudged up the sandy dune toward the opening, a hideous keening wail shuddering from its throat.
"Anakin!" The Padawan was defenseless, ill, unprepared…With the help of the Force, Obi Wan threw his saber through the air, in a long, perfect arc, into the narrow opening in the ship's hull.
The dragon continued to slog upwards, toward shelter, toward unsuspecting prey. Obi Wan fought to stand, but his mangled leg would not hold him. Panting, he dragged himself upward, far too slowly, the sand shifting beneath his hands. He closed his eyes. Anakin! Wake up! Wake up, Padawan! Danger!
There was only the barest flicker of a response. He buried his face in the hot sand, willed the Force to carry his message. The krayt's pained, grunting breaths quickened as it neared the opening to their hiding place…
Anakin! The saber! Danger!
The krayt reached the gap, shoved its murderous head through the opening, with a rending of metal, and screamed again, its hideous voice echoing in the ship's black interior.
Obi Wan cried out.
The krayt staggered backward, its body uncoiling, slackening, a smoking hole appearing dark between its eyes.. The body wavered outside the doorway and then dropped, to roll down the dune, shaking the sandy earth as it slid to a rest. It stopped halfway to Obi Wan.
Anakin followed, gripping the hilt of the lightsaber with two hands, barely steady on his feet. The blade disappeared, and he half-slid, half crawled his way down to the older Jedi. "Master!" he sobbed. "Master!"
"I'm all right, Anakin. It's just a …scratch.." He brutally suppressed his pain. His trousers were a crimson mess, his whole body shaking.
"I killed it," the boy moaned. "Your saber. It came at me... I heard you – in my mind. You said danger. I killed it, it's dead. I did it." Tears spilled down the boy's cheeks, still flushed with fever from the scorpion venom.
Obi Wan reached out a hand to comfort him. "You did well, Anakin. It was going to kill you. Both of us. You did as I said."
"Are we gonna die now?"
Obi Wan sighed. "If the Force wills it."
Gradually the boy's tears turned to heaving breaths and finally to sniffles. Anakin knelt on the sand - and then his face blanched. "Uh oh," he muttered, and threw up again, all over his master. Obi Wan turned his head aside, nearly overcome with same urge himself. The Krayt dragon's stinking corpse loomed above them, and the sands eddied beneath its broken body.
They lay side by side, exhausted, abandoning themselves to the Force and oblivion.
If time passed, he did not remember. The wind moved ceaselessly, almost whispering words.
"Master Jedi. Master Jedi….He's not responding. Get the medical droid over here, somebody. Master Jedi." The hot wind was so like a human voice. Its susurration over the sands might be words, the scuffing of boots through drifting grit.
"The kid's in bad shape. We need two hover gurneys."
The wind had picked up strength again; it tugged at him, tried to pull Anakin from his protective grasp. No. He fought back, through a haze of heat and pain. He had a promise to keep.
"Ferkell, just get the kid, would you?"
The tugging coontinued, more urgent. The Force swelled and filled him, and he used it.
"Holy chizzk! Ouch!"
The wind shattered into muffled cries of pain, the slither of heavy bodies hitting the dunes a few meters away. The tugging stopped.
"Whoa. Yorkin, you're vaping nuts. Did you just see that? Don't go near 'im. Let the droid do it."
"Nonsense." A pair of hands, and a distinctly human voice. "Easy, son, we're here to help. Rescue team. Your ship was downed in this sector- we've been looking for you for almost three days, but we never would have located you without that distress signal."
That made a distant, historical sense. Memory stirred. "Survivors?" he asked, prying open reluctant eyes and wincing as the blue sky stabbed brutal fingers of light into them. He had no moisture left for tears; the stinging made him blink, rapidly.
"Survivors…yes. The captain and the crew and the passengers? Yes. They're all safe – we recovered the escape pods from orbit."
"Good," he croaked. That was good. He gripped Anakin's limp form tighter, feeling the thread of life faintly pulsing through the Force. "He's….bitten by scorpion. Help him."
Yorkin – this was the name attached to the hands and the voice – was gently prying his hands loose from the Padawan. "We'll do everything we can. Relax. Let me have him. That's it…easy. Good." Shuffling steps, more hands, motion, the hot sand disappeared beneath his back and was replaced by something smooth, cool.
"Contact Temple…Coruscant," he insisted.
"We'll send a transmission right away," Yorkin soothed. There was no way to know if he was sincere….the Force was so cloudy, so full of swirling grit and sand. There was a flare of pain as the man prodded at his wounds, the hot gash left by the krayt's claws; a prickling sensation – pressure hypo, maybe – a rush of ice through his veins. The clouds expanded, softened, blurred.
"Anakin," he muttered, feeling the muzzy wind blow his mind into drifting tatters.
"He's here, it's all right," Yorkin's voice supplied. "Watch your step, there, Ferkell …into the transport, now…easy…"
"Kriff! How did they survive out here this long? How did they survive the crash? And did you see that slagging monster? Heroes of the Republic and all, maybe. But if you ask me: Jedi are some scary chiizzsk."
Obi Wan tried to correct this offensive misrepresentation, but his voice was lost to him, along with vision, and hearing... and passing time.
"Master?"
"Hm?"
"Wake up."
"Mmm." He managed to slink his way back to consciousness. Dunes and sky and heat had disappeared, to be replaced by impersonal, synthetic blandness. The distinctive reek of disinfectant chemicals left an unpleasant tang in the air. He could feel the sludge of other chemicals in his bloodstream, an uncommon soreness in his leg.
"Master. Guess what? There's a ship coming for us. We're going home. I heard the people talking about it. You've been out a long time, you know - they said your leg wound got infected and we both could have died. And did you hear that all the passengers survived? So we're like heroes. That's what they told the healers at the Temple. I overheard it." Anakin's chest swelled with unbecoming pride.
Obi Wan pretended to think about it. "Because we survived, thanks to the diligence and care of the Zylossi emergency services team? I don't see that we've accomplished anything much to brag about."
"Oh." Anakin's expression was petulant. He was wearing the absurd, ill fitting garments issued by medcenters everywhere in the civilized galaxy. He scrunched his nose and clambered onto the cot beside his mentor. "And I lost my warrior honor-stole, too."
"It looked ridiculous on you, Anakin. It's not a great loss."
The boy stifled a yawn and frowned. "I wanted to keep it, is all."
Obi Wan raised his eyebrows. "We already discussed this, as I recall."
"Huh? Oh...well..." Anakin abruptly stretched out beside his teacher, without bothering to ask permission. His voice faded to a slur. "I just wanted to …you know….have gained something after all that."
"But we did gain something. Remember?" Obi Wan nudged at the boy's mind through the strange but undeniable bond, and felt a flicker of recognition in reply.
Anankin jerked awake momentarily. "Oh, yeah! Wizard!"
"Padawan."
Sorry, came the voiceless response. The boy's eyes drifted closed and his arm draped across Obi Wan's chest.
It seemed cruel to move him, even though the medical staff would probably disapprove. Even though he would likely be bombarded by uninvited, juvenile dreams of speed and glory. Releasing a long-suffering sigh, Obi Wan resigned himself to his fate and closed his own eyes again.
When Temple healer Parr Acel arrived an hour later to collect them, he discovered his two fellow Jedi curled up contentedly, side by side. Passing a broad hand over his three eyestalks, he allowed himself a small puff of bemused laughter. "Heroes, indeed," he snorted.