Chapter Ten
A/N : Yep, I'm still plugging along on this thing, sloooow and steady. Hope someone's still around to read it ;-)
Naboo, six weeks ago
The Galump easily showed the reason for its name as it made its characteristic mutterings while digging the soft turf for roots. Pushing its broad, spiky nose into the ground, it chewed noisily and swung its knobbed tail happily, giving no indication that it sensed the approach of a predator.
Duey tensed in a crouch, gripping his spear as even his breathing silenced. He eyed the proportions of the animal appreciatively. The creature's broad haunches could be salted and feed the village for days. Its tail knob would make a rattle for Ome, and its soft hide a cloak for Ganya. It would be a fine kill, and if he accomplished it, there would be a feast in the village tonight, music. Joy. But if he did not, the thick, curved claws on the creature's powerful two-toed feet might reach him. Or if it escaped, they might not get another chance at proper food for days. Ome would whimper in her sleep from hunger pains, Ganya's eyes would grow even more flat and weary from hearing her.
Joy and sorrow. At every moment the Gungan's life swung from one extreme to the other, but he could barely remember a time when it had not been so.
Suddenly the Galump started and rose on legs ridiculously long and thin for its massive body. With a shrieking cry it sprang from the clearing and loped off, disappearing into the trees. There was no use following. A Galump in full gallop could hit speeds of 40 to 50 miles per hour.
Duey was so dismayed at his failure that he did not notice the quiet that had fallen on the forest at first. Then he realized that the birds had stopped singing, and the little primates that usually chattered among themselves in the treetops and threw berries at visitors were all gone. A heavy air of lifelessness had descended, and he knew then that he was now being hunted.
Standing, he slipped further back into the thicker undergrowth, keeping to the shadowed spots. He flicked a small, hidden switch in the handle of his spear and the blade bifurcated, bleeding through with electric current that sparked between the two points. It was a capability he only used in combat, the power burning flesh and charring bone past the point of usefulness in a hunt. It was the only piece of technology left from the old days.
A figure in black stood on his right, watching him silently.
"Whosa dere?!" Duey demanded, hefting the power-spear in his hand, poised for the throw.
For a moment the person did not move or speak. Then with a fluid movement, he lifted his hands and pulled the hood from his head. Duey saw the creased, waxen features of an elderly human.
"Howsa you bese here?" He asked, the spear trembling in his hand.
The man blinked, his smile disarmingly mild. "I didn't mean to frighten you. When I was a child we often played in these forests. We believed they were enchanted."
"Dis da Ankuran land," Duey hissed, advancing.
"I do not wish to harm you," the man said, glancing at the spear but not flinching or withdrawing an inch. "I only want to clear my conscience."
"What yousa mean?"
The man clasped his hands behind his back and bowed his head with an attitude of sorrow. "Fourteen years ago a great injustice was enacted on your people by my countrymen."
"What youssen knowen 'bout dat?"
"A great deal more than I would wish," the man said in a low voice. "My people were led by a lie, the lie of a madman. My friend, I have come to tell you that the madman is here."
"My would knowen," Duey scoffed, but his spear point fell.
"The king who ordered the strike on your tribe was exiled to the wastelands just beyond your borders. He arrived by ship and has been living there for years."
Duey stared at him. His tribe had seen the ship, and other ships after, crisscrossing the skies far over the forest canopy, descending into the cursed scar his culture had always feared. But since the ships had flown beyond their lands, they had decided they were no immediate threat.
"He resides in a warehouse twenty minutes east," the old man continued.
"Whysa you tellen me dis?" Duey asked suspiciously.
The man sighed. "Friend, my countrymen have recognized this man for the criminal he is. But they have not the courage to bring him to the justice he deserves, choosing instead to put him out of sight and out of mind."
The man stepped closer to Duey, his eyes overflowing with sadness and sympathy. "Veruna believed, as my own family once did, in the ancient principle of "Sideous von falcos" – that might makes right. I cannot repair all the wrongs that my kinsmen wrought, but I can address this one. The blood of your parents cries out for vengeance."
Duey drew in a shuddering breath, and turned abruptly. He began pacing. Everything in the man's voice and manner seemed to suggest honesty. But his hunter's instincts told him that something was awry. Duey had only managed to keep his tribe together and fed because of his strong judgement and fortitude, but also because of the difficulty of gaining his trust. And something, nothing he could pinpoint, but something about the man made icy fingers touch his spine. Still, the man's last statement made his fists clench at his sides.
"But perhaps you are too afraid to give them that."
"We da free Gungans. Wesa no fear nothing!" Duey snapped.
The man raised his eyebrows and smiled, as if this were all some pleasant game. Duey disliked his smile. He began pacing again like a tusk cat in a cage.
He turned on his heel. "Howsa—"
But the spot where the man had stood a moment before was empty, not even the leaves rustling from his passage. Duey was alone again.
After much thought on the incident, Duey decided he had been visited by one of the Gods.
"There is no emotion, there is peace.
There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.
There is no passion, there is serenity.
There is no death, there is the Force."
Obi-Wan had come here, to the cool sterility of their ship, knowing it was the last place anyone would look for him right now. He sat cross-legged, his hands resting lightly on his knees, his eyes closed.
But no peace came to him. The harder he sought for it, the more easily it eluded him. Sweat stood out on his brow. He could not let Anakin encounter him like this. The last time he had felt so shaken to his foundations had been just after Qui-Gon's death. And even then he had been shored up by the Council, by his promise to train Anakin, and by Sabe.
Sabe….His mind clenched again, like a fist.
The order taught that the will of the Force was inviolable. In the end, regardless of any mortal act, it would be cleansed of all darkness, the divisions between minds would fall to dust, and the unity of all life would begin again as a single sentient being which would never die. He who set his will against this through greed, fear, and despair would be entrenched in misery, and would disappear with that final cleansing.
But the order also taught that all sentient creatures had the freedom to choose, the will to flow with the Force, or against it. Such a simple truth, but so staggering to the mind from the youngest initiate to the highest master.
What was fear? What was pain? What was darkness itself? Were they merely foils to the greater light? Were they necessary for the light to exist? Were they creators of free will? Did the force want? What did it want?
The order existed as a retreat from all those things that clouded perception of the force; marriage, family, politics, the caprices of the world. But the Jedi had sworn to protect society, and could one truly do that if one was permanently apart from it? Could the Temple itself become an attachment, overshadowing the will of the Force with its own?
What am I considering? He wondered. How has one kiss, one wayward embrace brought me to this morass?
It had not felt like defiance, and from his youth he remembered defiance well. There had been no notes of greed or possessiveness in that moment in the river, only the coming together of two souls by mutual choice, a pure and joyful celebration of the breath in their bodies and the blood in their veins. We exist! Sabe had seemed to whisper to him in that kiss, in the butterfly quick tattoo of her heart, in the warm pressure of her lips. We are in this moment in this place and embrace it!
Could it stay like that? Could any of the other things the Code forbade? Or did they all by their nature turn to a kind of avarice? What then was safe? The joy of that moment had seemed another version of the highest ecstasies of meditation, the rewards of hard study, or a just victory in battle. They all seemed to carry the same shade of meaning. Did they all carry the same deadly turn?
"I am a Knight of the Order," Obi-Wan murmured aloud. "My life is not my own."
Those words, however, did feel like defiance. They resembled the absence of object constancy in a very young child, the idea that if you covered your eyes with your hands, the facts would cease to exist.
It wasn't as if he was a stranger to desire. Siri Tachi's face floated briefly to mind, her lips quirked in the teasing grin she always seemed to wear. But even that had been little more than an experiment, two teenagers' brief foray into forbidden territory. When it had run away with them, they had mutually decided to walk away in allegiance to the Code they both had sworn to. And he had stepped back into that place apart; the silent witness, the knight, the Negotiator.
Was that a choice? Or was it out of weakness? Did he use the Code to shield himself from questions he feared to ask?
The Order was all he knew. He feared to think of life without it. He feared the state of the Republic without the keen minds in the Temple that were a direct creation of its Code. All he loved was tangled up with the ideals of the Order.
Separation from the Order would be far more crippling than the amputation of a body part. It would be like amputating himself from…himself.
With this sudden recognition, he felt something in him, some knot tied up in the vicinity of his chest release as if by cue. He allowed his eyes to slip closed again, and then he let go of everything. Like a prisoner stepping outside his cell at last, he released a long sigh as the Force received him.
Darkness surrounded him, inky, utter blackness. It was as thick as oil, and immense. He could sense the size of it. It was everything, everywhere. Nothing did not suffer its sick touch, no sentient creature, no molecule of matter. No light was not polluted by it except for one; a red glow twinkling somewhere far ahead. And after a time, through this great, thick, sludge of blackness the livid fire burned.
Have I fallen asleep?Obi-Wan wondered to himself. Have I completely lost control of this meditation?
He thought if it were true, it would not be the question he would be asking himself. The fire grew and strengthened, until he realized that it was not actually getting bigger, he was getting closer. Now he could discern the individual flames, licking up the stone sides of the great statues that guarded the front of the Temple.
Horror growing, he saw the flashes of lightsabers beneath the statues, one of them tiny. That was Master Yoda. The other he did not recognize. His hand dropped to his side for his lightsaber before he realized that he had no hand, no side. He was a pair of eyes in this vision, a creature without substance or form.
From between the two figures he saw a black shape burst. It was an Equiis, and it seemed to cover the distance from the Temple to him in no time at all, the fire that was consuming the Temple reflecting in a bloody sheen over its muscled hide. The man in a black cloak on its back was huddled so closely behind its neck that at first Obi-Wan thought it was only a bundle of cloth somehow tied there. The man rode leaning into its neck and gripping its mane as if he was terrified of riding and clinging for dear life. But then the cloaked man rose to his full height, detaching himself from the Equiis's back like a flea, and with one smooth jerk of his arms, pulled the Equiis's head around and slowed it to a dancing, impatient walk. A blast of hot wind blew the cloak hood from the man's head, and Obi-Wan saw the tumultuous brown eyes reddened with grief, the attractive face streaked with dirt and tears, the strong chin below trembling as his lips moved to produce the words;
"Master, we are all orphans now."
With a sharp gasp of horror, Obi-Wan came back to himself in the ship, cross-legged on the floor.
From the front of the ship, the main comvid turned on, beeping as it received a message.
Sabe had been staring into the sky past the point when tricks of the eye made swarming forms in the unyielding, cloudless blue. The clouds had passed earlier in the day and the sun was warm and yellow, but it only seemed to touch the surface of the cold she felt.
She wondered if servants of the darkness could perceive a sunny day, the verdant throbbing power in gathered trees, the play of light in a river. Or was everything for them filtered to monochrome through that leprous, malicious gaze?
She smiled to herself humorlessly. Does a crazy person know she's crazy?
"Sabe?"
Sabe turned. Anakin stood further up the bank, a bunch of flimsy clutched in his mechanical hand. She tilted her head. He'd never mentioned it, and kept it hidden as well as he could beneath the flowing sleeves of his robes. Did it still pain him? He followed her gaze and switched the papers to his good hand, tucking the artificial one out of sight as he held them out to her.
"I was able to retrieve these codes from the holovid's databank. Though it will cost you, as much trouble as it gave me," he smiled wanly.
She took the flimsy and flipped through it. Most of the codes meant nothing to her. It would probably take months of tracing to find out all their sources…
She stopped as a familiar one leaped out at her. "This is the palace code."
"Probably from the day Veruna sent his distress call," Anakin said, settling down beside her.
"Yes. But it appears more than once, back many months," Sabe said.
"Do you think he suspected his danger and tried to get aid before?" Anakin suggested.
Sabe put the flimsy aside and rubbed her forehead. She had had contact with the Queen that morning, and her tone had been… What had it been?
"What news from the south, Agent Naberrie?"
"Evidence of illegal spice trading, possibly with the Separatists."
Jamillia pressed her lips together, her dark eyes cloudy. "And what progress have you made toward finding his killer?"
"Rudimentary, my lady," Sabe said, confused by her lack of reaction. "But I feel if we follow the trail of his contacts and suppliers—"
"Your role is not military intelligence, Agent. It is to solve a murder. Be mindful to keep your focus on that."
"Are you alright, Sabe?" Anakin asked, jerking her from her thoughts.
She looked down. Her hands were trembling on the flimsy. "I don't know, Anakin," she whispered. "I wish I knew how far down the rabbit hole went."
Anakin's comvid bleated. He slipped it from the pouch on his belt and acknowledged Obi-Wan. A brown leather pouch, embossed with the seal of the Jedi. It caught Sabe's attention so completely that she did not even notice his conversation with his Master until he had turned off his comvid. "Obi-Wan wants me back on the ship. He has received a message from the council."
He leapt to his feet and walked back toward the river. Before Sabe could follow, her own comvid beeped. She jumped. "Eirtae?" she answered wonderingly.
"What is this sample you have sent me?" Eirtae's voice was nearly shrill.
"Something Veruna was working on. Why?" Sabe asked.
"Well, whatever it is, it's hot," Eirtae said. "As soon as I entered it into an analyzer droid I had officers of the ministry of defense at my office door wondering what I was doing."
The cold settled more deeply in her chest. "What did you tell them?"
"That I was working under the Queen's order. What's going on Sabe? Why would they be interested in this stuff?"
Sabe sighed deeply. From the start she had been working off feeling and instinct alone, and they had not failed her yet. "It is a chemical weapon, Eirtae, a mix of dioxis and spice to make it impervious to the Jedi antidote. I think Veruna has been peddling it to the separatists."
The comvid went completely silent. Sabe looked at its signal reading, but it was still strong. "Eirtae?"
"Have you seen its symptoms?" Eirtae asked in a faint voice.
"Once, in a young Gungan. Fever, respiratory difficulty, seizure, bruising on the abdomen. Why?"
"Sabe, have you not seen the dispatches?" Eirtae half-shrieked.
Sabe held the comvid slightly away from her ear, wincing. The cold feeling in her chest froze solid. "I'm in the middle of the rainforest, Eirtae. What's happened?"
She heard Eirtae take a breath. "The throne has not had contact with Ohma Dun for days, since just after those outages I mentioned. Today a survivor made it back to Theed."
Survivor…?
"He had all the symptoms you described. He died this afternoon."
Even though she had run all the way from the river to their ship, Obi-Wan and Anakin had almost completed their preparations. The engine was already rumbling, the rear of the ship spouting cerulean plasma.
"You cannot leave me behind," she said without preamble, stalking up to Obi-Wan where he checked the settings in one of the shield generators.
His focus on the generator intensified, as if it held the secret to life. "I assume you have learned of the events on Ohma Dun, then."
She cleared her throat impatiently, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Anakin and I must see to this threat alone," Obi-Wan murmured, adjusting a dial. "You are not prepared for the kind of battle we expect, and your orders are here. You will be safe with the Ankurans now."
"It is happening again, Obi-Wan. They are slaughtering Gungans up there, and…and I have reason to think the crown is involved," Sabe said.
He looked at her then, his gray eyes clearing as if he'd been startled out of sleep. "If that is true, then it is imperative that you remain."
"Obi-Wan…"
He turned away, chafing his furrowed brow with the tips of his fingers.
"Are you running away?" Sabe said softly
He sighed, his shoulders slumping with weariness. "I am doing my duty. As you must remain with yours."
"Will you return?" she asked, her voice cracking.
"I don't know." He said.
Wordless, Sabe watched him close the fireproof panel over the shield generator, lifting his tool bag and ascending the ramp into the ship. She looked to the side. All her belongings had been stacked neatly on the ground. They had also unloaded a small transport pod for her, she presumed to get back to Theed when she was ready.
A hopeless feeling filled her. "Obi-Wan."
He turned, his eyes rising to hers with obvious reluctance.
"The force…" She closed her eyes briefly, forcing the bitter-tasting words out of her mouth. "The force be with you, Obi-Wan."
He inclined his head and disappeared into the ship.
Asajj Ventress watched from the shadows, her smile widening and her breath coming easier as she felt the two strong force presences diminishing into the distance with the flight of the ship.
Everything was going according to plan.