Lineage X
Chapter 12
Nield dejectedly contemplated the wavering schematics as they rotated idly in mid-air above Obi-Wan's compact projector. Set to maximum magnification, the small device cast an impressive image, a colossal rendering of the scrapped fighter's inner secrets.
"Vape. There's just no way to make it work without new parts." A hand rose and carded through thinning hair, leaving a greasy trail behind.
Obi-Wan completed a thoughtful circuit about the makeshift hangar, pondering the holographic diagram much as he might study a star-chart before departing on a mission. "You could dismantle the hyperdrive and cannibalize parts. It's not as though the ship will be making any more supralight journeys."
The older man released another wistful sigh. "Not without the right tools. I wouldn't dare breach the dampers without a proper micro-fusion cutter. We only have junk."
"A 'saber blade can do it." A 'saber blade and a very, very, unnaturally steady hand.
Nield's watery eyes squinted at him dubiously. "You offering to get directly involved, now?"
A shrug. "This is merely an engineering project. An avocation. I'm not involved."
"Right." Nield's lined face broke into a grin, an echo of the passionate youth he must once have been. "My mistake." He switched off the projection and handed the disc back to its rightful owner. He braced the young Jedi's elbow with one hand, a sudden pressure there, a natural link between generations. "You know… this is going to sound strange to you… it's just, I lost my son. Years ago now. He would have been about twenty now." A heaviness settled in the Force between them, a sour knot of remorse. "Cerasi was his mother. We were very young. Well," he added, with a bitter breath of laughter, "We were The Young."
Obi-Wan felt at a loss without his wide sleeves. Where did one fold one's hands into at such solemn moments? "I am very sorry for your loss," he responded, automatically, abstractedly noting the dull echoes of Nield's pain across the acoustic dome of his own heart.
There is no emotion. There is peace. There is no death. There is the Force.
But Nield was not a trained Jedi. He abruptly, inexplicably broke into tears, shoulders hunching into a miserable ball and hands hiding his shame behind trembling barricades.
Obi-Wan looked away, the response as hard-wired into him as the ritual bow of respect to an elder, as the habit of addressing all authorities as master, the raising of mental shields about his own instinctive reactions as a courtesy to others.
But Nield was a man accustomed to harsh realities, both inner and outer, and moreover he was a man. So he turned to the obvious source of consolation a half-second before his companion suggested it himself. "Let's get to work on that fighter," he hoarsely wheezed, shoving the moment of weakness aside.
Cerasi sought them out, bearing a laden tray in her hands.
"You two should eat."
The noontime fare was nothing but pressure-canned fava beans. The Young took what they could get, and liked it. Trained to eat whatever was set before him –within the dictates of reason – Obi-Wan simply set about the odious task of consuming his meal with a brusque practicality, and then wiped his hands on a rag.
"Tonight is firstday again," Cerasi announced, gathering the soiled plastoid bowls and utensils. "I'm going up."
"No," her two companions intoned, in unison.
She raised her eyebrows at Obi-Wan, tossing the lustrous waterfall of red hair over one shoulder. Silver strands glinted here and there among the bright skein."Oh so you're telling me what do do now, too? You two are in cahoots."
Nield scowled. "Please, Cerasi," he pleaded, but his words fell on deaf ears.
"We've been over this before. I'm going, Nield. You have no hold on me. We don't believe in any of that chisszk, remember?"
Obi-Wan winced, understanding that he was witness to a private argument. "Excuse me," he muttered, rising to afford them some privacy.
"No you don't," Cerasi snapped. "You took his side, now back up your words. Why shouldn't I go?"
Exhale. Slowly. "The danger is greater than before. There are… developments you don't know about. I need to finish my mission here. Then, perhaps.. " Except, of course, he could not outright lie. Nor could he force the vile words up and out of his gullet: you are to be left to your fate when I am gone. Sometimes sacrifices must be made.
Cerasi's fierce emerald eyes brooked no opposition. "I'm going."
"Then I'm going with you." Imperious, and final. A tone of voice worthy of any Jedi Master.
She wilted beneath the onslaught, and took out her wrath on Nield instead of the speaker. "Fine! I'll remember your virility when I light candles for the dead."
When she had stormed away, Nield rested a stained hand upon the young Jedi's shoulder. "Thanks. I'll feel better with you up there to watch her back."
Obi-Wan nodded, puzzling over the scene he had just witnessed. " I do not understand her resentment toward you, given… your relationship."
The older man chuckled wryly. "We don't; believe in restrictive relationships. Besides, Cerasi only hates me every twenty-eight days. You'll catch the hang of it, once you've been around women long enough."
Apparently, Obi-Wan reflected, there were some hidden benefits to Temple culture that he had not yet truly appreciated, having no standard of comparison. And perhaps there was something to be said for the straightforward lifestyle of bachelor pairs that was most prevalent among his colleagues, young and old. Certainly living in close proximity to Dooku… or Qui-Gon… had never involved cyclical bouts of esoteric incivility. Although, in defense of the other side, Bant never indulged in such unpredictable – or was it alarmingly predictable?- behavior. As for Siri…
Well. Did he even dare speculate?
"Come on," Nield gruffly interrupted his thoughts, no doubt misinterpreting the slightly mystified expression on his young companion's face. "Let's get to work, then, if you're spending your evening at the ceremonies."
Offering to cut into the hyperdrive damper arrays with his 'saber had been a brash, headstrong, and ill-advised notion - but he did it anyway. If there was one certainty in Obi-Wan's mind, one foundation more secure than any other it was this: he would keep his promise, once given. And his pledge to help Nield constituted a minor promise.
He kept it, regretting his stupidity with every spark and drip of slagged tritanium that smoldered through his clothing and boots. The shoto blade was better suited to the task, having a shorter length altogether, and a more refined adjustment focus for power and intensity. He had built it later in his career, a more elegant and fine-tuned weapon than his first 'saber. And inside its heart thrummed the crystal of a woman who had in life been nothing but precise insight and trenchant, purifying fire of spirit. If anything could cut through theoretically impenetrable alloy, it would have been Tahl Uvain's merciless wit.
And so, he did in her stead, the Force guiding his hand through the most delicate of operations: the fulfillment of honor's demands without causing devastating destruction.
And that was the difficulty, was it not? That and perhaps its concomitant problem: balance. For at this point in his evolving personal identity, honor demanded the fulfillment of many oaths, many promises. An oath to serve and obey his master; to submit and be guided by the Council; to uphold the Senate's decree and the Republic's more nebulous ideals; beyond all these, the inmost and sacrosanct vow of all Jedi - to serve the Force itself without reservation. The promises teetered, a skyscraping tower of obligation, pinnacle and foundation separated by ten thousand years of hard-won wisdom and a bitter history. Every member of the Order must find the elusive center of gravity, the plumbline from summit to base, the unerring fulcrum point of conscience by which he might align all these potentially conflicting dictates.
All except one, whose mantra had ever been be mindful of the Living Force. And, by implication, the rest will be added unto you.
"Hey," Nield interrupted his brooding assessment of his present ethical crisis. "That's done it! I'm officially impressed."
And he had, indeed, done it. The dampers fell away, neatly severed without a single nick or scorch left upon the hyperdrive's labyrinthine inner realm. Obi-Wan smiled then, feeling that he had somehow got the tail end of the riddle's answer; later, when he could meditate, perhaps he would feel his way forward to its front and see what he had caught. For now, however…
"Now we can make some trouble." He was no engineering genius himself, though certainly competent, and he had difficulty with the more discursive and schemtic mathematical aspects of astronavigational theory. But the one thing he could unerringly accomplish in the domain of technics was the assembly and repair of a hyperdrive core, that knot of paradoxes that powered interstellar travel and made a mockery of dimensions and sizes. Perhaps because this represented a jutting peninsula of mechanics into the deep and uncharted waters of intuition, a loving brush of matter upon the boundaries of metaphysics. He would never know why, only know that he almost understood the mess of circuits and amplifier fields splayed before him.
That was enough for Nield. Danger successfully thwarted, he leapt into the fray readily, sleeves rolled up above his elbows, weathered face shining with fervor. "Yes," he muttered.
They set to work dismantling the exquisite outer matrix first. The task invited inrospection; neither of them felt compelled to make small talk. The intricate web of connections was painstakingly unraveled by skilled hands, hidden unities revealed one by one beneath the apparent chaos. A wave of guilt washed through Obi-Wan's mind as intuition made the deep connection between outer and inner: he had dropped into the Young's existence much as this derelict fighter had, an anomaly like a meteorite hurtling out of heaven into the complex tapestry of their history and circumstance. He knew nothing of them but the most cursory and trivial details – he had not bothered to ask.
"Nield."
A grunt beside him indicated that he had the other man's attention.
"How did the war between the Melida and the Daan start? Who are they? Why the hatred?"
He could feel Nield's surprise and disappointment slide over the Force'surface, a cynical shudder of resignation in their wake. The man had just realized that his whole life's purpose and cause was a footnote soon to be forgotten in his companion's existence, a mere colorful proscenium for the more important drama playing itself out on the galactic scale. The young Jedi caught his lower lip between his teeth.
Blast. These were people, not statistics in a mission report, facts in a briefing file…
"You'd have to ask Cerasi," his companion answered, tersely. "She's a better storyteller. And I… I'm sick to death of it."
"I'm sorry." He was.
Nield snorted again. "Never mind," he mumbled. "I've just outgrown it all, I suppose. But Cerasi – she hasn't aged. Not on the inside. She's still burning with ideals, doesn't understand why the rest of us have guttered out. She'd go up in flames at a moment's notice, if she had a spark to her kindling."
Obi-Wan held his peace, understanding more than was explicitly stated.
"Be careful tonight," Nield added, with a curt nod.
They labored on, in silence, only exchanging words when expedience demanded it.
Cerasi was waiting for him near the dank sewer tunnel entrance, a bundle of real wax candles in her hands. "I've been saving these. They smell like fellmar, which is now extinct. Probably, at least."
The ephemera of childhood association wafted upon the Force's currents; he did not enquire further. "We use candles for meditation sometimes. An ancient custom."
Cerasi nodded, watching him intently as he pulled his cloak's hood forward and tucked the 'saber hilts out of sight at his belt. "Meditation."
"I could teach you, a little," he impulsively offered.
She tied back her hair in a sinuous and untidy knot and slipped into a shapelss thermal jacket. "That would be nice." One hand rubbed at a temple, the back of her neck. "Whatever it is." She jerked her head toward the exit. "Let's go. The armistice won't last long tonight. Both sides are getting uneasy again."
He nodded, and followed her up the sloping passage, extending his senses into the plenum, seeking special indicators of danger ahead. Melida-Daan's choking hatred cascaded down the tunnel to meet them, a chill draught like the stroking caress of bony fingers over rictus-taut flesh.
"Are you okay?"
He nodded, and held out a hand. "After you."
