Lineage VII
Chapter 20
"We have a shadow," Obi-Wan whispered to Siri.
Ahead, a cluster of Civilized exiles labored up the incline, the pallid haloes cast by their glow-lamps sliding over the wind-stripped forest, tiny moons fleeting between the barren tree trunks.
Siri glanced over one shoulder. "Who's she supposed to be with?"
The small girl doggedly hounded their steps, stopping with wide eyes when they halted just in front of her. Her thumb slid out of its keeping place in her mouth, glistening in the dim illumination. "Go bed," she demanded.
"I don't – you deal with this, Kenobi."
"What? I'm not a crèche-master." He eyed the girl's drool-smeared cheeks nervously, running a hand over his own grimy and ill-shaven face with a wry twist of the mouth.
Siri leaned closer, adamant. "Well, I – like the Force – am not a nursemaid, either. You do the negotiating."
"Fine." He dropped to one knee before the toddler, wondering where in the blazes the child's parents were. Or whether she had any. Or what he was supposed to say. But how difficult could it be, really? He decided to channel some of Troon Palo's peerless wisdom, though he would probably do well not to imitate his own beloved hirsute clanmaster's stentorian tones. "We want to sleep, too," he quietly assured the sulking youngster. "The faster we finish this hike, the sooner you can rest."
The girl blinked at him, then plopped down on the unforgiving earth, yawning widely.
"Well, that was good," Siri hissed sarcastically. "Tell her we need to keep moving – there's no time for mutiny in the ranks." She tapped fingers impatiently against the saber hilt at her side. "Can't you use a mind trick?"
He frowned, mutiny spreading contagiously from the ranks to the first mate. Extending one hand, he cautiously brushed fingers against the child's temples, exerting the Force's subtle and suggestive influence.
The girl scrambled upright, bouncing on the balls of her small feet and holding out two wet hands to Siri in an infantile demand to be carried. "Up! Up!"
"Problem solved," Obi-Wan shot over his shoulder, pressing on into the night behind the fleeing Civilized, leaving his companion to hoist the obstreperous toddler into her own arms and follow grumpily in his tracks.
The glimmering specters of the dead twisted silently in their glass tombs, ghostly faces watching in appalled silence as their living counterparts stalked among the rigid columns, flitting between blue shadows as the security guardsmen pursued, a stealthy game of hide and seek played in a vertical graveyard.
The eyes of the dead remained wide and staring as the first man went down, disappearing behind a pillar of translucent blue without a sound. His companion yelped in dismay, slewed round in a panic and cast the beam of his phospho-torch down the grieving colonnade, the dead's memorial images rising like a phalanx of accusing fingers in the lamps' bright glow. Among the slain, there lurked a nameless menace, the hand of fate waiting to snatch the unwary. His hand went, shaking, to his blaster. He turned again, and again, panic multiplying the legion of shimmering faces into a nightmarish host of the undead, an army of the damned.
"Help!" he squeaked – and then he too fell silent, his unconscious form dragged and dumped beside that of his confederate.
A few minutes later, a new pair of night guards appeared below the perimeter of the memorial hill – ones whose uniforms were ill-fitting, though they bore the proud insignia of the Absolutes upon their sleeves and caps. Adi Gallia had been obliged to roll up the sleeves of her jacket, while Qui-Gon's would not fasten properly over his broad chest. The two Jedi shrugged and shifted uncomfortably in the borrowed garments, heading at a brisk clip for the Museum entrance, pass keys in hand.
"This is how Obi-Wan and I accessed the sublevels before," the tall man informed his partner. "Unless you know of a more direct route."
Adi's face darkened with memory. "My Padawan and I ambushed and assaulted with toxic darts containing neuro-inhibitors," she said, flatly. "I don't recall anything about our arrival in their dungeons."
He nodded grimly. Such expert technique bespoke a cunning familiarity with methods of subduing a Force-user, and suggested once again the presence of a darker shadow operating behind the scenes in Apsolis. "This way."
The lift brought them to the basement levels without a glitch. Two pairs of sentinels let them pass without question, their uniforms and a judicious application of mind influence smoothing the intruders' paths. Their steps brought them to the prison corridors without meeting significant resistance.
"Here," Qui-Gon said, waving open a locked door at the passage's far end.
Four uniformed men jumped form their seats, sabaac cards scattering to the floor.
Adi stormed in, contempt etched in her very posture. "Gambling on duty?" she snarled. "Wait until Naata hears about this."
The offenders broke into a cacophonous medley of excuses and objections.
"Get back to your posts immediately!" the Jedi master barked, voice weighted with deep authority. The miscreants fled, casting fearful glances at the Tholothian woman as they spilled back into the outside passage.
Qui-Gon sealed the door behind them. "Impressive," he remarked. "Who is Naata?"
"The head of Eline's secret police. They live in fear of her, and the commanding officers are changed so frequently they have no idea who is legitimate or not. Quick – here's the safe box."
Qui-Gon's saber made short work of the reinforced paneling. Adi plunged a hand into the dark recesses, withdrawing her own weapon and that of her Padawan.
"Ah," she growled. "Now we are ready to handle this situation." She clipped both lightsabers at her belt, eyes glinting with a banked fire.
"Besides Naata, whom else must we watch for?" Qui-Gon asked, searching through the prison databanks. "There are no other political prisoners currently being held," he added. "Only a long list of scheduled remediation sessions in the Annex."
Adi's mouth twisted. "The conditioning operation is headed by a Sith-spawned pizzmah called Orissk." Her hand clenched about her weapon's hilt. "By my oath, Jinn, if we encounter him, you are to act - for I do not trust myself."
The tall man was no fool; in the shocking profanity and the declaration of emotional investment, he recognized the signs of a fellow pushed to the far extremity of Jedi patience. And he knew instantly, without being told, what perfidy the man called Orissk had committed.
Adi held his gaze, unapologetic, a cold fire kindling behind her luminous eyes. "You will know him by the acid scars and optic implants. It would be best we do not cross paths again."
And she led the way out, invisible thunder rolling in her wake.
" We're nearly there," Siri grunted, ploughing steadily onward with the drowsy youngling still clinging to her neck.
Obi-Wan stopped dead in his tracks.
"What-? Oh no." Siri dropped the child abruptly to her feet, the swooping motion jolting the poor girl fully awake. "Hide, hide here, under this root. Quick, we need to-"
But he was already sprinting back uphill, toward the source of the disturbance, toward the threat which even now hovered over the hill's crest, homing in on them.
"No- over here!" Siri shouted, doubling around a massive boulder.
But she was wrong – there were two droids, and – Obi-Wan sprang clear of the first shot, changing direction again, back toward the trail and the youngling. To the hells with the droids' invisibility in the Force, the dark, the slippery terrain, his lack of a proper weapon, the entire blasted situation.
Where was Siri? For the love of –
He ducked, slewing about to find the origin of the shot. Splintered rock spurted fountain-like behind him, perilously close to the root ball where the youngling crouched.
He spun, the droid's carapace faintly gleaming in the shadows, its humming repulsors giving away its position, and -
He saw it before it happened. The small girl, panic-stricken, darted from her place of concealment, driven by sheerest terror; the droid's targeting light shifted, the canon pivoting round to lock on the new and vulnerable prey; Obi-Wan was already moving, leaping through the fire-riddled air to intercept the blast, Force-enhanced instinct and rigorous training guiding his weapon, pulling his body through a spiralling backflip as he arced clear over the line of fire, blade sweeping downward to catch the deadly projectile in mid-flight, timing and motion flawless, impossibly perfect-
-Except, of course, that his weapon was not a 'saber but a crude staff of wood.
He caught the murderous blaster bolt squarely, the staff exploding in his hands, splintered wood shattering in a fiery cloud, the packet of energy traveling straight through the flimsy barrier into the young Jedi's left shoulder, slewing him about in mid-air and bringing him crashing belly-first upon the hard earth, wind knocked clean out of his lungs.
The girl screamed, and skittered in the opposite direction, a second shot missing her by a hairs-breadth.
Obi-Wan clutched at his wound, a hoarse cry escaping his throat as he rolled sharply to the right, escaping the next blast aimed at him. Pain erupted along his side and back, stabbed into his chest. He flung out a hand, wildly channeling the Force, a sloppy burst of power that sent his foe and a barrage of small rocks and sticks sailing backward into the nearest trees.
The Civilized continued to run; somebody swept the frantic child into his arms and pounded down the slope; the droid recovered its balance and hurtled forward, targeting lights blinking in a manic staccato.
The Padawan sprang away from the next shot, his landing jolting the injured muscles so badly that his vision swam. Loose stones and frost slicked leaves slid treacherously beneath his feet as his hand sought desperately for the cable launcher at his belt. Another blast, and he was somersaulting away, full weight slamming into the wrecked shoulder. He ended on his back, shouting his strident objections into the battle-wracked Force.
Cable launcher. His right hand closed about it. The droid zigged and zagged between the trees, relentless. He closed his eyes, shot the razor-thin cord at the mechanical killer, heard the whine of its cannon reloading, heard the clack of the grappling end hit its carapace and connect with a dangling extremity, and rolled away from the blast even as he hauled the line in, screaming with effort, renewed fire blazing along every nerve in his arm and back.
The droid slammed into a tree trunk, floundering in the taut cable, and fired off three more shots in frenetic succession, overloading its shields and managing to send heavy branches plummeting to the ground trailing comet-tails of fire.
A blue saber blade thrummed hot in the wild blur of shots and falling leaves; the droid fell to the earth, severed in two.
Siri reached him a second later, free hand fisting in his tunic even as he rolled into a convulsive ball, teeth gritted against the waves of searing agony. "Kenobi- come on, get up, get up, for Force's sake – there's another –'
She sprang to her feet, his blade howling about her as she batted away another flurry of shots, shielding him with his own weapon, her feet to planted either side of him as the second assailant descended upon them in a fury. Death rained down on them, strafing fire like hellish meteors plunging to earth around them. Siri withstood the assault, 'saber singing in the cold air –
-and a ponderous stone crashed heavily into the shrieking droid, flattening it to a sparking scrap pile.
Obi-Wan rolled onto his back, exhausted, the last effort wringing him utterly dry.
"Good one," Siri exclaimed, dropping to one knee. The 'saber blade disappeared into its hilt. "Come on, let's…oh, fierfek." Her fingers prodded at the burned edges of his tunic, pushed against him, skimmed over his blood soaked back. "Oh, that's not good. Sit up. You have to sit. Come on."
He gasped as she pulled him halfway upright. "Sith-spit—ah… Siri, I - blast it!" He panted, tugging at his tabards with the good arm. "Here –ah - make… a sling."
She fumbled with the stretch of dirty cloth, wrapping it about the damaged arm, eliciting another choice curse. "Where did you learn that one?" she demanded, grimacing over the messy blaster burn. "That bolt's gone clean through- it hit your shoulder blade, too – you're lucky it didn't graze your spine."
He permitted himself to be pulled to his feet.
"We have to keep moving. There will be more… we have to beat them to the rendezvous."
He nodded, pain momentarily threatening to spin him into a dizzy blackness. Inhale. Draw in strength. Exhale. Release the agony, the animal fear. In. The Force. Out. Weakness.
Siri had him stumbling along beside her, his steps carried on the cresting wave of her determination, her stubborn will sufficient to support the two of them for a short while – or perhaps that was him, for as they slipped and skidded down the final slope, he was leading the way, tugging her along behind him with his free hand, her exhaustion a leaden weight settling in both their limbs, his pain a whip scourging them both onward, relentless. They reached the bottom of the incline together, collapsing in a panting huddle, grasping at each other's arms, heads bowing together until their foreheads touched, two bramble-knotted braids dangling between them.
They looked out over the open plateau.
There sat the hulking Telosian freighter, their promised salvation, gleaming under the sickly moons.
And surrounding it on all sides, a legion of mindless killer droids sitting in smug assurance of victory, a merciless deathblow struck to their faltering hope.