Birthright
Chapter 13
The stolen ship reverted into realspace three times consecutively, after completing a short five-minute jump. Anakin wrestled with the unresponsive hyperdrive, but despite his best efforts, the Togorian vessel remained obstinately uncooperative.
Master Piell returned from the aft maintenance bay with a look of disgust written on his uneven features. "Vell," he snorted derisively. "Leave it to pirates to use anti-theft measures on vat they've stolen. Dere's an override circuit on the field stabilizers." He tossed a magnetic micro-spanner toward the ceiling, where it clamped to the metal with a sharp clack.
"I could prob'ly remove it," Anakin offered. He could fix anything.
"Vitout blowing us to smitereens? Ve'll have to land somevere. Mucking around vit the stabilizer array in mid-flight is suicide, my boy."
Good point. Anakin twisted his mouth to the side. Landing somewhere would mean another delay. "What about my master?"
Even Piell jerked his head in the direction of the hold, his black topknot swishing with the motion. "You go keep an eye on him. I'll find us a safe spot to set down. Ve'll call for an emergency medical team to meet us there."
Anakin slipped out of the cockpit into the rear compartment. He hunched against the bulkhead, knees drawn up to his chest, arms wrapped tightly around his shins. Obi Wan was still lying there, looking far too ashen and limp. Looking a lot like Master Qui Gon had looked, laid out on his funeral pyre, on that horrible evening in the palace at Theed.
Nobody could kill a Jedi. Master Qui Gon had said that he "only wished that were true". Now Anakin wished it were true, too. He couldn't lose his master, because without Obi Wan he would again be in freefall, a discarded remnant of fate, a Chosen One that nobody had really chosen. Master Piell was trying his best – Anakin had faith in the dwarfish master's good intentions – but …what if it wasn't enough? What if they had been too late, and when they arrived back on Coruscant, it was only to attend another funeral?
After a short interval, Master Piell joined him, leaving the ship on autopilot. He stood for a moment, gazing down on the boy crouched in a tight ball against the plastoid interior wall. His one good eye softened slightly in sympathy, while his ruined one was frozen in its perpetual scowl of disapproval. He was like the Force itself: nurturing and harsh, merciful and ruthless. It was a strange face, a duality inscribed in living flesh. Anakin shuddered.
"Skyvalker," the diminutive Jedi ordered. "Vatch your emotions. They're fair veather friends, at best."
"Yes, master." It sounded sullen, even to him, but he really didn't care.
"Sulking von't help matters," the tiny master grunted. "Make yourself useful, boy. Lie down here. You're hothead enough to keep two people varm."
The words were harsh, but there was a gleam of kindness beneath the curt tones. Anakin obediently curled upon the hard, cold deck, shimmying as close to Obi Wan as he could, ending up with his master's head tucked under his chin. He could feel the flutter of faint breath against his tunics, hot-damp on his collarbone. He could smell dirt and blood. Obi Wan's hair was sun-bleached to gold at the tips, like Anakin's. It was dirty and hung in heavy strands against his skin. There was the gritty white film of dried sweat clinging to his face in delicate patterns, crumbling where streaks of fresh moisture carved channels through the detritus. There was a sticky place behind one ear, where clotting red trickled down to smear the filthy tunic's collar. A pulse beat throbbed alarmingly fast against Anakin's chest.
Even Piell efficiently tucked his cloak and Anakin's around the pair of them, cocooning them together in a bundle. It felt odd: a little like Mom cuddling him as a small boy on Tatooine, on a cold desert night while the wind howled outside their slave shelter; but also a bit too much like the time he had found and tried to save a half-crushed krayt hatchling. He had cradled the pathetic soft-scaled form in his hands, wrapped it in strips of linen torn from his worn slave tunic, tried to soothe and nurture the trembling body back into vitality. But it had died in the end, despite all his attempts to fix it.
"I'm scared," Anakin confessed, his voice a whisper as cold and hard as the unyielding and uncomfortable deck.
To his surprise, Master Piell didn't explode into a reprimand. His long ears waggled slightly as he shook his head. "He's not vorried about himself, so vy should you be?" he said.
Anakin nodded, though he couldn't quite bring himself to believe it.
"Stay there," Even Piell commanded, and returned to the cockpit.
Anakin stayed. He stayed until tears came, and rolled down his cheeks, and then dried to a sluggish trickle and a hiccupping glitch in his throat. He stayed until one of his arms and his left side were numb from lack of circulation. He stayed until the too rapid rise and fall of breath against his chest and belly, the gentle warmth radiating between them and trapped beneath the two tightly wrapped cloaks, lulled him into a doze, and then into a half-dream, and finally into a deep and exhausted sleep.
Gherru Rhak'an howled in rage and throttled the messenger with the power of the seething prama, the red fire flooding in his veins. How could it be possible? How could the sorcerer have managed such a feat – when Rhak'an had left him, he was writhing on the floor of a dungeon cell, bleeding out his life slowly in the throes of the warlord's ceremonial poison and a deep knife wound. Even a magician of his power could not have overpowered the guards, escaped, found his way to the upper observation deck and then flown away.
The body of the unfortunate messenger sprawled on the flagstones at his lord's feet. Rhak'an kicked it aside. He was lord of his clan, and lord of prama. He would not tolerate such an insult, and surely the treasonous, lying prama, which even the wizard had admitted took no sides and was a tool of betrayal and deception, would help him.
Before, he had glimpsed the future and the far distant present in dreams, slivers of insight granted by the Ancestors. But the Jedi sorcerer had shown him something better – had taught him to seek stillness within and to listen to prama at times of his own choosing, as though it was a voice always whispering. He did this now, crouching upon the hrad floor as he had seen the Jedi do, centering his breath on the one thought of revenge.
And the prama showed him things. At first he did not understand, but as he remained sitting, his hackles rising in anticipation, his nostrils flaring wide with exhilaration at this new vista of experience, the meaning became clearer. The prama here, in his stronghold, rippled strangely, much as it did around the Jedi. Only now there were the echoing disturbances of others… of newcomers like the escaped prisoner.
And Rhak'an understood. The magician had been aided. By other Jedi. Like womprats , they had wormed their way into his fortress without detection and assaulted the guards, stolen a ship. The Togorian's lips curled in a sneer of distaste. No Togorian would ever rescue a fellow who had fallen into enemy hands: those weak enough to be caught without claiming for themselves a warrior's death did not deserve to be snatched from the hands of punishment. But the ways of the Jedi were strange to him, their customs exceedingly dishonorable. They fought without hatred, disdained to take life-mates, hoarded no wealth, and believed that the strong must serve the weak. To such delusional fools, the idea of saving one already proved worthless to the clan might also seem somehow wise or good. It did not matter; he knew only that it was so.
He stormed through the corridors of his stronghold, disgusted at the sniveling incompetence of his underlings. Fools and weaklings, they deserved nothing more than the life of servitude they lead. Gherru Rhak'an would show them this day, once again, why he was lord of the clan, that nobody had any right to rob him of his war prize and dishonor him. He would hunt down all the Jedi, and slay them, and mount their heads beside the desiccated skulls of the other traitors outside the main gates.
The prama proved its fickle nature then, for rather than helping its self-proclaimed Jedi servant, veiling and protecting him, it surged to Rhak'an's aid, its black-crimson fire quickening images in his mind – places where the stolen ship had been, the planet toward which it even now limped like a maimed warrior dragging across a bloodied battlefield. The prama did not pour pity and leniency into Rhak'an's breast, but kindled sparking anger into a wrathful flame, a beacon of hatred, calling him toward his foes. This prama was dark, and powerful, and ever-moving, hypnotic in its coiling energy. It swelled within him, filled the longing which had first driven him to seek the Jedi.
And Rhak'an knew that at last he had found the answer, and the portal to true greatness, the molten river that would slake his thirst for power and knowledge. So long deprived of his birthright, cruelly orphaned from his own destiny, he knew that now at least he had come into his own. And the prama, dark and cruel, laughed around him, wild with vengeance and delight.
His bird-of-prey starfighter lifted into the dawn-streaked sky and sped away, toward his distant and stranded prey.