Obi-Wan Kenobi walked beside Wesley Crusher, his mind only half-occupied by the young teen's cheerful patter. Wes seemed determined to give him a whirlwind tour of the entire ship - which Obi-Wan could already sense was enormous, perhaps as big as a Republic Dreadnought - in the time before dinner; at the moment they were touring the mineral collection. Wes steered Obi-Wan to his favorite specimens, telling stories about when and where and how they had been found. Obi-Wan smiled and nodded politely whenever the boy looked his way.
Wes's stories were interesting to him, to be fair - only the young Jedi had a great deal on his mind. For one thing, Obi-Wan had no idea where these people had come from; as far as he knew they and their technology were completely unknown within the Republic. Wes had explained that the ship had come through what he called a 'wormhole' - as far as Obi-Wan could tell, that was their name for a naturally occurring passage through hyperspace - so they could have come from just about anywhere in the galaxy. But then, Wes had also told him that Enterprise, when its 'warp' drives were not damaged, could travel at well over a thousand times the speed of light through real space. If that was true, then why had they not encountered the Republic or at least the Corporate Sector before this?
Obi-Wan put out his hand to take a small crystal that Wesley held out to him. The crystal glowed with a soft pink light when it touched his skin.
"Data brought that one back from an uninhabited planet," Wes explained to him. "The mineralogists went crazy trying to figure out how it phosphoresces. They still don't know."
Obi-Wan glanced at Wes in puzzlement, then turned his attention to the crystal. With the tiniest tendril of the Force, he brushed the crystal's structure. He blinked in surprise. He felt loneliness - was it an echoing of his own feelings back to him? Or - he brushed it again, this time feeling a soft surprise, then welcoming. The crystal glowed brighter, shading to orange, then gold.
"Hey - it's never done that before!" Wes said.
Some strange, minute creature lived within, or as part of, this crystal's structure: Obi-Wan was certain of it. He looked for the shelf Wes had taken it from, then looked to Wes, and mimed taking a crystal from a drawer.
"Is there another? Yes - there are at least two samples -" and Wes pulled open the tiny drawer beneath the crystal's display shelf. Inside was one more crystal, dark and still on a cushion of foam. Obi-Wan took the crystal into his hand, nestling it beside the first. He smiled. The crystals flared once, joyously, then went still. He placed them together on the display shelf. If they couldn't be home, at least they could be together.
Wes studied him, curiosity evident in his expression. "I sure wish you could talk," he said. Obi-Wan just grimaced. He wished he could talk, too; wished he could explain who and what he was, and how these people could get him home. Wished he could ask questions, like 'what happened to Qui-Gon?' and 'is Xanatos dead?' Those thoughts worried him, loomed in his mind behind the question of who these people were who had taken him in. If they had found him alone - surely Qui-Gon would never have left him, unguarded and alone, helpless, unless - Obi-Wan refused to think that his master could be dead. He couldn't be dead. But Xanatos - Qui-Gon might have left him, thinking he was safe, to chase Xanatos.
So what had gone wrong?
"I'm sorry, Ben, I didn't mean to make you upset." Wes looked at him in concern. Obi-Wan tried to smile reassuringly, and failed. His hands were clenched tight in fists; with a release of his breath the young Jedi let the tension drain from his body; he nodded and touched Wesley's hand to let him know he was okay, then glanced quickly away as misery tightened his throat, searching the display shelves for something to distract him. These people were so kind; but all he wanted now was to go home, to the peace of the Temple, and his friends and teachers, and his master... But more than that, he knew - he could feel it with the certainty of the Force - that as long as he remained on Enterprise, he and everyone on this ship was in terrible danger. For Xanatos was not dead, and he was looking for Obi-Wan, and for the strange offworlders who had made a stranger deal with him for outlandish starship parts.
A shelf containing a single clear, slightly irregular crystal caught Obi-Wan's eye. He caught his breath, and moved closer. Could it be -?
"I'm not sure where we got that. It looks almost like quartz, but the molecular structure is decidedly different, and the fracture face is just slightly off..."
Obi-Wan touched the crystal with one finger, reverently, and felt a mild surge in the Force. A single Adegan crystal. With his other hand he pulled open the drawer below. Sure enough, five more crystals were nestled within. Hope stirred in him. He opened himself to the Force, letting the unique signatures of the crystals touch him, and chose two that especially resonated with him. Then he glanced up at Wesley, wondering how to communicate his need.
"You want those, hunh?" Wes shrugged, evidently frustrated that he couldn't ask why. "Easy enough - we can replicate them. They won't be perfect copies - we could only get that with the transporter. But they'll be so good you won't be able to tell the difference except with an electron microscope." He talked as he led Obi-Wan to a replicator set into the wall by the door; then took the crystals from his hand and placed them on one side of the tray. Obi-Wan watched carefully as Wes programmed the settings: he wanted to know how to do this himself.
A duplicate pair of crystals shimmered into existence beside the first pair. Unabashedly fascinated, Obi-Wan watched, his eyes wide. Somehow he had to get Wes to explain how the replicators functioned.
Wesley handed Obi-Wan the new pair. "I challenge you to tell the difference," he said, grinning.
Obi-Wan took the pair in one hand, then picked up the originals in the other. To his sight, there was no difference; even the tiniest flaws and scratches were duplicated. But in the Force - the new crystals felt lesser somehow; distorted. Obi-Wan let Wes return the original crystals to the drawer. There would be time enough, later, to retrieve them - that is, if he could find or construct the rest of the components he needed before Xanatos came: components for a new lightsaber.
-
Will stepped into Dr. Crusher's quarters at her welcoming "Come." She looked up from her desk. A text readout filled her monitor. "They're in Wesley's room," she told him. "I've hardly seen them except for dinner. Which your young charge ate with gusto, I might add. I think he surpassed even Wesley's record for appetite."
"He was hungry," said Will, amused.
"Well, given the musculature on that boy, it's not terribly surprising. Right now I think they're messing with Wesley's parts collection. Wes appears to have found a kindred spirit in engineering interest. The two of them keep running in here to pull random oddities from the replicator. I don't know what they're building, but they've been at it for hours."
Will looked thoughtful. "Maybe Ben would like to visit with Geordi."
"They've been working overtime on the repairs in Engineering, but it wouldn't hurt to ask." The doctor leaned back in her chair. "Go ahead and knock on the door, I'm sure the boys would like to show off their creations, whatever they are."
His curiosity piqued, Will tapped on Wesley's door. He wondered how much engineering know-how Ben had, and where he had learned it. So much about the boy was a mystery.
"Come in!" Wes called.
The two boys were seated on the floor, a jumble of bits and wires, sensors and power couplings scattered around them. Wes was tooling with a small mobile creature; a project Will recognized, as Wes had been working on it for at least the past two months. In Ben's lap was a smaller set of parts: a metallic cylinder, two hands long, split in half lengthwise; a jumble of wires and parts Will did not recognize, and something that looked vaguely like a power source, which Ben was probing with a pair of narrow pliers.
"What an incredible mess," Will laughed.
"Hi, Commander," Wesley greeted him. "We've been busy. I showed Ben how to use the replicator for hardware. He's really good with circuits and tools." Wes looked like he'd found heaven, and no wonder: not only were there few kids close to his age on board Enterprise, he had yet to find one that shared his passion for tinkering. He looked over at Ben, who flashed him a quick smile, then returned to his absorption. Definitely a common interest there.
Will crouched on the floor by the two boys. "This is your mobile robot, isn't it Wes? How's it coming?"
"I decided to turn it into a dinosaur. I've been studying the files on reconstructed raptor locomotion, and I think I can duplicate their slow walk and their run. But it's not moving now. Something shorted in the control circuit." Wes sounded disgusted.
"I'm sure you'll get it fixed. What's Ben working on?" Will asked, looking over at the younger boy.
"I don't know, really. Once I showed him how to get parts out of the hardware memory, he took off with... whatever it is. Beats me what it's all for. He seems to know just what he's doing, though."
Will leaned over to examine the construction on the floor in front of Ben. A large number of wires were already connected and bundled together with some components he didn't recognize. None of it made any sense to him. But then, engineering was definitely not his strongest suit. Wesley's talent and photographic memory, together with his endless studying and tinkering, put him in Geordi's league: and indeed the boy could often be found in the chief engineer's company.
"Will you show me what it does, when you're finished?" Will asked Ben. The boy shrugged. "If you get it working before we get you home, that is?" The boy smiled softly, shyly.
"Think you'll be ready to go, soon?"
In answer, Ben put down the tool and power source, and began to gather parts from around him into a plastic bin at his side. Finally he lifted the multitool he'd been using, and touched Wesley's knee.
"Go ahead and take it, I've got another."
Ben nodded, and put the tool carefully in his bin with everything else.
"Hey," Wes said, "Come back tomorrow? I have school during alpha shift, but we could spend all beta shift together - I've barely shown you any of the ship yet."
Ben looked questioningly at Will, who answered quickly, "Fine with me." The boy turned back to his new friend and nodded, then stood, taking his project bin with him.
"Good night!" said Wes.
"Good night, Wes," Will called back as he headed out the door. "Good night, Doctor." She answered him with a wave. With a hand on the shoulder of the boy beside him, Will guided Ben toward his newly enlarged quarters.