Lineage VII


Chapter 12

The ruined skeletons of Apsolis' old university buildings sketched a stark and mangled calligraphy against the lurid backdrop of the energy-dome. Blackened girders and crumbling roofs stood as testimony to the destructive power of fire or explosives, so many corpses left on display as grim deterrent to those who might commit the same crimes.

Adi moaned softly as he crossed the last sheltered alley between their location and the overhang of a half-collapsed auditorium near the edge of the abandoned campus. "We're at the university," Qui-Gon told her, softly. "Hold on."

He received no answer, so he pressed onward, jogging across the open space a moment after the last search skiff had buzzed overhead, patrol lights blazing. The Force was awash with danger, but none of it immediate. Apsolis was alive with fearful eyes – those who sought him and his companions, and those who watched the hunt in cowed and silent trepidation.

The front doors were jammed shut, but they yielded to the Force.

His footfalls echoed in the empty corridors, smashed holo-boards lining the halls, a textured coating of dust smeared over an inlaid floor. One or two classroom doors had been battered open, revealing gutted chambers beyond, furnishings torn apart and piled in their centers, the powdery detritus of smashed holobooks leaving a glittering fairy-land carpet upon their smooth floors. Only the light filtering in from outside touched the edges of desks and broken chairs, cast his own shadow like a long finger across the stretch of corridor ahead. The doors slid shut behind him, a quiet afterthought.

The Jedi master waited, alert to the subtlest stirring in the Force. Another sentient approached, one whose mind was keen with suspicion and treachery, but who did not exude malice - only a defensive tension tantamount to aggression. Heavy shuffling steps approached in the dark, and then a glow-torch cast a querulous beam of light along the hall, a thin searchlight flickering up, down, and then resting on the tall man and his sagging burden with a shocked hesitance.

Blinded by the bright glare, Qui-Gon could only address the vague shadow occupying the corridor ahead. "Who is there?"

A rasping snort. "You're the trespasser, stranger. You answer first." The click and whir of a blaster's charge cell warming up followed this pronouncement.

"I am Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, ambassador from the Galactic Republic, here at the behest of Master Adi Gallia."

The bright torch beam was obligingly lowered. "Jedi, eh? Who's that with you?"

Blinking purple after-images out of his vision, Qui-Gon peered at the burly figure standing at the passage's far end. A stocky, rather dwarf-statured Besalisk peered back, reptilian eyes slitted assessingly, throat sack ominously swelling, lower pair of arms covering him with a matched pair of highly illegal disruptor charge hand-blasters while the upper pair remained crossed over a broad chest. The being was clad in a faded jumpsuit, one that may have been blue at some point in the distant reaches of history.

"I have Master Gallia with me," the tall man replied. "She has been held prisoner by the New Absolutes for some time. She is in need of medical care and told me friends are to be found here."

The besalisk holstered his weapons and stumped forward. At closer range, Qui-Gon noted the humped back and dragging gait - tell tale signs of a hereditary deformation. A large ring of pass-keys hung at the creature's belt, clacking together as he ambled along at an odd, rolling gait.

"Friends of who, eh?"

"Of hers, I should imagine," the Jedi master answered, carefully. "She especially recommended the intelligence and bravery of the janitor here."

Throat sack ballooning with pleasure, the caretaker's posture relaxed minutely. But new suspicion quickly took the place of general caution. "Eh. How do I know you aren't some damned infiltrator? Probably tortured her till she coughed up some facts. And where's the small Jedi? The young, pretty one? She dead?"

Qui-Gon allowed the Force to convey his sincerity. "Master Gallia's Padawan has gone with my own apprentice to warn the hill people of the impending threat to their lives. And the Absolutes know of neither your location nor your names. No Jedi would betray innocents, even to save herself. I promise you."

A pair of gimlet eyes blinked once or twice, as the janitor drew an enormous hand over his ridge-scored face. "Hmmm." He squinted at Adi's unconscious form and then rumbled deep in his throat. "Fine. Come this way. Double cross us and I'll kill you myself, with my four bare hands, Jedi or not."

"You have a medic here?"

The reptilian turned his back and started retreating along the corridor, signaling Qui-Gon to follow. "Do we got a medic? We got a lot of people and things here in the 'Combs. Just you wait and see, Jedi."

Hoisting Adi a bit higher on his aching shoulders, Qui-Gon followed his strange escort into the mysterious bowels of the derelict building, the sound of klaxons outside fading to a dull memory as they penetrated deep into a forgotten and unruly realm beneath Apsolis' despotically ordered surface.


The land sloped upward, rising toward the feet of the mountains in one long swath of boulder-strewn glacial plain. Enormous white stones jutted from the earth, massive soft-edged sculptures dotting the endless expanse. A sparse blanket of hardy grasses was scattered over the earth like a callow youth's first beard.

Obi-Wan swerved and wound his way among the obstacles, threading steadily upward as the sun rose high overhead, warming the air that rushed past their faces in a never-ending stream. All conversation had long since ceased, Siri's grasp on him gradually but inevitably loosening, growing slack and then – just as he rounded the shadowed side of a towering white boulder - it slipped altogether.

He leapt free of the swoop, sending it skidding over the open plain, propelling himself backward as she slid off the seat behind him. He seized her, wrapping his own limbs protectively about her limp body in mid-air, hit the hard soil with a loud grunt of pain, and rolled to a stop beneath the looming rock's cool side. Siri sprawled listlessly in his arms.

"Siri. Siri- are you all right?"

She stirred groggily, shoving him away, her skin pallid and sweat streaked, hair clinging to her damp face in places. He pushed the obscuring strands away.

"…let go. Fine," she muttered, heaving in great lungfuls of air. "Just… fainted."

The swoop slowed to a standstill hundreds of meters away, repulsors keeping it airborne, the empty landscape having spared it from devastating collision. Obi-Wan scanned the bright horizons for any sign of pursuit, or other life, but they were utterly alone. "You need to rest," he decided, propping her up against the side of the rock. She sat there, color slowly returning to her complexion, eyes closed as she drew in deep centering breaths. He crouched before her, fingers of one hand spread on her knee.

"I'm fine," Siri insisted. "…Don't stare at me, for Force's sake."

"I'll… go get the bike. Stay here," he added, needlessly, pushing to his feet and tramping across the cold plain to fetch the hovering vehicle. His muscles were cramped from so many hours spent hunched behind the swoop's controls. He lengthened his stride, enjoying the exertion, the warmth of the sun on his skin. The world was strangely silent out here – not even a furry springer poked its head from a ground-hole to peer curiously at the trespasser upon the land.

He walked the gravbike back to the boulder's shelter, musing on their predicament. Delay was dangerous for all involved; soon enough search parties would be sent after them, and the message they carried to the unsuspecting Civilized could not be delivered too speedily. But Siri was clearly much weaker than she would admit, her reserves of strength depleted. His pace slowed as his mind wandered back into dark corridors of speculation. He had no illusions about the Absolutes' prison, and the depredations wrought upon those held within its cruel walls. Torture was not foreign to his experience, young as he might be – he had no doubt that such had been the fate of both Jedi women. But his imagination balked at the details, his mind bucking away reflexively each time he sought to theorize.

And all too soon, he was back at the place he had left Siri, standing helplessly beside the swoop while she lay curled on one side, face hidden in a crook of her arm, shoulders spasmodically heaving.

What was he to do? Rejected already a dozen times since he had discovered her, he had little hope of reaching her now. Jedi training did not include any pointers on succoring a distraught woman, particularly one displaying unbecoming emotion, especially when that woman was Siri Tachi, who was forged of unbreakable Vespari steel like the knife hidden in his boot. He shifted his weight a few times, fingers of one hand drumming nervously against his saber's hilt, gut twisting with an unfamiliar pang of distress.

Force, why was he upset? The realization provoked a second surge of alarm. He could not lose his head. A Jedi remained calm, anchored immovably in the Force.

Siri softly wept, her back still resolutely turned to him.

Master Qui-Gon, adept of the Living Force and his current apprentice's reference point for every virtue, would know exactly what to do. In fact, the great Jedi master had handled similar crises on more than one occasion – as the Padawan vibrantly recalled, with a twinge of shame. Obi-Wan knelt beside Siri, banishing his own tension on a long exhalation. He would approach this in just the same manner his master would deal with a parallel situation.

"Siri," he addressed her firmly. "That's enough. We have a duty to fulfill. You must focus on the present moment, and the task at hand. We must make it to the nearest Civilized settlement. Too much is at stake for us to delay."

She rolled over then, galvanized into a cold fury. One hand dashed moisture from her cheeks. A pair of sapphire eyes pierced straight through him. "Are you trying to be masterly with me, Obi-Wan Kenobi?"

"I –"

Siri rolled upright with a deadly fluidity, the banked power of a trained athlete and warrior, and thrust a cautionary finger at his face. "Nobody requested your advice, Obi-Wan! Nobody asked for your help!"

He choked back a snarl of outrage, suddenly at the end of his patience. "You did!" he retorted, hotly. "I felt it in the Force! You called for me and I came and I'm sorry the service wasn't up to your exacting standards, Padawan Tachi!"

She was on her feet the next instant, pale and shaking though she might be. "If I had my saber, Kenobi, you'd be feeling my exacting standards right across your arrogant, presumptuous, high-handed arse!"

"I doubt it," he growled, half-aching for an opportunity to expose her fallacy, to prove her glaring error, to clash together at arm's-width, hand's-width, breath's-width, blades shrieking in discordant joy as they tangled-

"Well?" Siri snapped, one brow arching upward. "I thought there was need of haste. I'm not waiting for you all day." She stormed away toward the gravbike, golden hair tossing pertly over one shoulder, the glorious afternoon sun falling full upon her as she crossed from shadow into brilliant light.

There were rents in her clothing, the gritty rust-colored stain of blood upon her trouser legs. His heart leapt into his throat, striking him dumb.

"Well?" Siri demanded, stiffly mounting the bike and waving him onto the bench behind her. Mutely, he obeyed, wrestling his own turbulent feelings under tenuous control. "Siri-"

She slewed round, bringing their faces so close that a warmth of mingled breath fluttered vexedly between them. "You're a better diplomat when you keep your mouth shut," she whispered, bright warning clear in her sparkling eyes. Her lower lip trembled, and she turned round again, kicking the swoop into motion with a violence suggestive of acute rage.

Obi-Wan held on for dear life, gritting his teeth as she recklessly piloted them over the remainder of the glacial plains and up into the forbidding ramparts of the foothills.