Chapter Twenty-Five: Errands

"Come back any time you like, Skywalker," Amaranth said as his pair of guests waved off a third bowl of stew.

"Oh, sure, now that I'm rich all the lowlifes are sponging off me," the pilot said.

The Chevin gave a violent snort through his trunk. "You too, Ben No-Name. You respect your elders more than this one."

Obi-Wan raised his free hand in a wave, holding open the tent flap for Anakin with the other. "It will be my pleasure. In happier times, I hope."

Waving his proboscis dismissively, Amaranth moved to start dishing what was left of the stew into flimsiplast containers. "Happy, sad. People still need food, no matter which."

"Seems to have kept his spirits up well enough, considering," Obi-Wan said to his friend as they strode away from the tent.

"His way of coping, I think," Anakin replied. "His wife got hit by some shrapnel when they were heading down into the tunnels."

"Oh dear." The Jedi sighed, and felt a bit of the exhaustion the meal had dispelled creeping back. "When did he tell you?"

"Didn't. I saw it happen." The pilot's scar stretched again as he clenched his jaw. "I could have done something. If I hadn't been so afraid."

"I'm sure it was out of your hands," Obi-Wan said gently. "In that situation there's only so much anyone can do—"

"You don't understand."

The curtness of the reply would have been jarring if the Jedi hadn't felt the emotions roiling under Skywalker's skin as soon as he mentioned Amaranth's wife. It was far less extreme than the black waves the pilot had been emitting in the cavern just before the Spice Dancer had broken through, but of the same strain. Simmering anger and bone-gnawing anguish and deep, deep fear. The latter was infectious; Obi-Wan pictured what Anakin's raw power could do with those feelings—what it had done when Padmé's life had been threatened—and paled. "No," he said, "I suppose I don't."

With a visible effort, Anakin dispelled the cloud that had moved across his face. "Anyway. We're not starving anymore, time to get down to the real first order of business."

"Which is?" Obi-Wan asked, relieved to be moving on for now—he had to face this, but he also needed to wait for the right moment.

"Getting a replacement compression coil for the coolant unit. For both our sakes, I hope someone has one intact."

The general's brow wrinkled. "I didn't see more than three or four other ships down here. What happens if no one has parts to spare?"

"Well, I've gotta tell you, Obi-Wan, after the last couple of days I'm fresh out of plan B's. But you crash-landed a cruiser here, I'm sure stealing a passenger ship would be no trouble." Seeing the look the Jedi shot him: "Hey, hey, we'd take them offplanet with us. Consider it supervised borrowing. If it comes to that, which I'm hoping it won't." He headed off in the direction of the nearest ship that wasn't his own; looked to be a broken-down passenger shuttle of some kind, though compared to the Spice Dancer it might as well have been a cruise liner. "And we've got to get you some replacement clothes, assuming anyone has something in your size."

"Well, you made do with a droid arm, I'm sure I can deal with something that's not ideally fitted." He hadn't broached the subject before now, but curiosity overcame him: "How did that process go, exactly? I can't imagine the droid was very cooperative."

"Oh," Anakin said with a shrug, "she was very cooperative at first. Then she got into one of her moods, so Padmé just knocked her out. Don't think she's forgiven us for that yet." He idly rubbed the mechanical digits together. "This particular arm was designed for loadlifting, not fine manipulation, but sticking a left hand on my right stump wouldn't have exactly worked, so."

"Seems to me she might be more useful if you just broke her down for parts entirely."

"Pssh, she's okay once you get to know her." The pilot shook his head. "She's been getting worse lately, trapped down here. Don't think any of her brains' initial owners were supposed to be working in caves for very long. But there's no way Padmé and I could keep the ship in shape on our own." Something like embarrassment fluttered across his face. "That was sort of how we ended up with her. I reconstructed her as a present for Padmé, someone who could help her with the ship if I was doing jobs other places."

Snorting, the Jedi pulled up alongside his companion. "You two seem to deserve each other."

"You wound me."

The shuttle was close enough now that Obi-Wan could peer through its front viewport and see inside. "You know what?" he said. "You go ahead and haggle over the coil. I'll meet you back at the ship, I suppose."

Anakin raised his eyebrows, surprised. "Where are you off to? Not gonna see if another pilot can undercut me, are you?"

"Tempting as that sounds, no, I've just got some errands of my own."

"Fine, be mysterious." Bringing his mechanical hand up in a wry salute, he nodded. "Relieved, general."

As Anakin continued on his way to the shuttle, Obi-Wan started toward a cluster of tents. He needed those new clothes, but most of all he needed to think.

The man had to know, at least somewhat, the power he possessed. Unlocking the swoop gang's bike, ripping that creature in half—those had both been conscious acts. And an extremely good pilot could pull off the repulsorlift stunt, otherwise Padmé would have been smashed, but no ordinary being could simultaneously pilot the swoop that way while meddling with its inner workings.

Skywalker knew he was special, then. The question was how far that knowledge went.

Whatever the answer to that was, living on the edges of civilized space hadn't been good for him. Obi-Wan hadn't been a Jedi from birth, of course, but he'd trained early enough to have an understanding of the Force for much of his life. He knew his limits, the risks, the best ways to control the power that moved through him. Anakin couldn't have had any of that. What little he had learned he would have had to teach himself. And self-taught Force users tended to be dangerous at best.

Not that he was entirely without support. But a fellow criminal and a lunatic droid were hardly the best teachers in self-discipline.

"So what do you think of him, Liz?" Padmé asked, wiping some sweat from her brow and heaving harder on her wrench.

"Mister Kenobi?" the droid replied. Working with machines seemed to soothe her at the right times; her eyes had stayed blue for the last several minutes, the two of them silently hammering at the shield generator.

"Not too many other hes we know right now, are there?"

Raising her single arm, Liz pointed a finger and released a concentrated blast of flame from it, welding together a hairline crack in the generator's surface. "Well, not that it's my business, but you've asked me that question about Mister Anakin more than once." A note of anxiety crept in. "Not that I mean to suggest anything is amiss between the two of—"

"I get it, Liz," Padmé cut her off, turning her eyes away from the sparking torch. "Kenobi, yeah."

"Well, he seems very polite, anyway. And her certainly seems to have been useful to you."

"There is that. Too bad he's crazy."

A muted snap sounded in Padmé's right ear; when she glanced over at the droid, she saw red shining. Dammit, we were doing so well. "You're not exactly the best judge of sanity, Amidala. Any sane person would have scrapped this piece of crap years ago."

The peaceful atmosphere shattered, Padmé turned back to her wrench, trying to undo a particularly stubborn bolt. "Yeah, well, when I decide to fly it through an entire enemy fleet you have permission to send the white coats after me."

"There you go again, dropping secrets at me like I'm not even here." With a violent sputter, the torch died—whether this was out of intent or a lack of fuel was hard to tell. "'Oh, I can use the droid as a conversation partner! I'm really just talking to myself! She doesn't understand!' And then as soon as I start to ask questions you change your mind and I can't be trusted."

"Liz—"

"If I'm going to get blown up alongside you organic morons because the newbie had a bright idea about fleet-baiting, I want to know what for."

Unbidden, Padmé felt the urge to bicker back rising within her. Not because she'd turned around on Kenobi's idea—even if they could fix the ship, it was suicide, and all for a government that hadn't paid Oseon much mind beyond the occasional attempt to drum up interest in membership. But whenever Liz was in one of her moods, it was practically reflex for either Padmé or her husband to fire back a retort as to why she needed to have her processor examined. "You're not going to get blown up, Liz. You're too stubborn to die." She gave a particularly vicious yank, and the bolt gave.

"I'm holding you to that."

"Whatever. Help me with the thingy."

"I'm awed at your technical knowledge."

Don't snap back, don't snap back, she told herself. The last thing she needed was to talk herself into thinking the Jedi had a point worth considering.

"Look, Skywalker, I understand that your ship is having problems, but I can't exactly just go to the machine parts shop and pick up a new compression coil if this one breaks—"

"That one's not even installed. That's the whole reason I'm asking you for it."

"Well, what if the other one breaks and I need a spare?"

Doing his best to keep civil, Anakin stared at the Ishi Tib. "Imani, if the ships up there break through and Padmé and I are grounded—"

"Bah, if the ships break through." She shook her head, clacking her beak. "If the ships break through, you're not going to be pulling off a daring escape, Skywalker, especially with one arm missing. Once they've punched a hole into this place, you'll do what the rest of us do—cooperate and hope they're too busy looting the planet to bother with little people."

The guilt the pilot had been feeling about not heading to the center of the camp and alerting everyone and everything to the hole that had already been punched hadn't evaporated, but he felt it steadily lessening as applied to Imani in particular. "If you're planning on staying and cooperating," he asked, "why would you need an extra compression coil?"

"Well, I'm not going to be staying forever."

"Imani." Struggling to stay calm, Anakin began pacing a circle around the shuttle's cargo bay. "I have spent the last two days piloting swoop bikes through holes, fighting bugs with nothing but a stun baton, sleeping on rock floors, almost drowning, and seeing my wife almost get eaten by some monstrosity. I have had a really bad week so far. And I am asking you, as a friend, if you would kindly be able to help me."

When he looked back at the Ishi Tib, the note of alarm that had entered her eyes threw cold water over his anger. He'd started shouting, he realized, and his mechanical fist was clenching tight enough that the metal had started to squeal softly. An image of the worm ripping in half flashed through his brain, and he tore himself away from the heat that had been steadily building inside him. Before Imani could say anything, he spoke again, softly. "I get that it's worth a lot to you. I'm ready to pay you a very, very reasonable amount of money for it."

Her mud-green eyes considered the pilot, anxiety slowly giving ground back to calculation. "500 credits. And you buy me a new one once we're off the planet, one way or another. I can take your swoop as collateral."

Calm, calm, stay calm. "The swoop isn't exactly in any shape to function as collateral."

"750, then. Up front."

"550."

"700, the best I can do."

"650, plus my promise not to tell the rest of the camp that you're a price-gouging scumbag."

Imani's beak clacked once, twice. "Deal. Wait here while I get it."

As she bustled off, Anakin put his flesh hand to his forehead and slowly exhaled. It was getting worse.

He'd done minor things with it before, parlor tricks, really. Picking locks, jumping just that extra bit higher when he needed to, deflecting something hurtling toward his head. Numbing some of the pain he'd felt when a piece of rock sheared through his arm. And even then, it had scared him. It wasn't all bad, of course, and that scared him even more. Before he came down, before he tried to clamp down on the impulses that caused weird things to happen . . . it would always feel good. An indescribable rush, like he was part of something bigger than just himself.

And then today, what he'd done with the worm . . . on the one hand, it hadn't felt good at all. It had left him with a pounding head, a heart that wouldn't slow down, a tingling in the tips of his fingers (both hands, somehow), and an overwhelming urge to vomit.

And yet, at the same time, under the fear for Padmé and the physical exhaustion and the self-loathing, it had felt so . . . satisfying.

Coming down was usually over pretty quickly. He'd stuff the guilt to the back of his mind and move on, and pretty soon the smiles he faked would turn real, and he'd be back to being Anakin Skywalker again. But this time . . . this time it wasn't wearing off.

If this was what Obi-Wan felt every time he used it, Anakin had no idea how the man hadn't gone insane by now.

"Skywalker? Skywalker!"

He apologized, and dropped the credits into Imani's hand, and hauled the coil out of the shuttle. As he walked down the ramp, he could feel her eyes on him.

"You're sure I can't pay you?" Obi-Wan asked for the fifth time.

The old woman snorted. "You Core Worlds types, can't just take a straight answer when you get it. If you're a friend of Anakin and Padmé's your money's no good here. Consider it your welcoming gift."

He ran a hand over the fabric—brown, rough, durable. "Well, you have my thanks."

"Think nothing of it. Now go, get some rest. You look like you're about to fall down right here."

Turning from the booth, Obi-Wan again surveyed the camp. The homey glow had worn off somewhat, talking to the woman as she bustled about for a piece of human clothing in his general size. She'd described sicknesses blazing through certain corners of the cave, accidents from cave-ins, families desperate to somehow get in touch with loved ones on other planets. She herself had been alone as it was, but there had been a young man who would come and talk to her every few days, she said, who she hadn't heard from since the bombardment started. Hopefully he was still alive, she'd said casually, tossing another piece of clothing in the corner.

Loss was not something the Jedi was unfamiliar with. But he'd only ever lost individual relationships—parts of him, not the whole. To have his entire livelihood stripped away from him like that, and end up in a hole in the ground dodging further calamities . . . it was unfathomable.

Relative isolation was part of the Order's strengths, he thought, but it also led to certain blind spots. He didn't know that the Jedi could be wiped out; he had no idea what that would entail. There really was no way for him to extrapolate something from his own experiences into a construct of what the refugees here were feeling. No way except for feeling the flashes of despair that everyone he'd encountered down here had emitted underneath smiles and banter; the bottomless emptiness that he'd felt when he reached back into the tent to touch Amaranth's mind, when he'd probed the aura of the woman who'd given him the clothes he now wore.

If—when—he got out of here, he decided at that moment, he would tell Bail the Republic had to intervene, no matter the consequences. And if the Chancellor didn't agree . . . well. Obi-Wan Kenobi was not someone who thought lightly about disobeying direct orders and bringing a fleet into enemy territory. But there were other avenues. There had to be.

The Force had brought him here for a reason. It had drawn him to Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala. And no matter how mysterious the energy field was, Obi-Wan couldn't believe it would go to all this trouble only to let suffering people be enslaved.

Well, he thought. You've established there's a reason. Now all you have to do is find it.

And to do that, he had to talk to Anakin.

REPUBLIC ARCHIVES: COMPRESSION COIL

When flying through deep space, it's best that no engine parts break, but chief among those parts is the compression coil. A relatively small device, it controls the output of coolant into the inner workings of a ship's sublight and hyperdrive engines, preventing catastrophic meltdowns that would otherwise incinerate the spacecraft. It's possible for a ship to fly at very slow speeds with a damaged or absent coil, but not for long.

Unfortunately for pilots and engineers the galaxy over, the compression coil is one of the engine parts that most easily breaks. It's recommended that long space flights carry at least one backup in case of emergencies, and a dedicated patching kit if that's not possible.