Legacy V
Chapter 25
Reckoning
The system's dying crimson star leered menacingly over its satellite's blurred horizon; a cluster of shadowed moons cowered in the penumbra of their mother, so many ill-tempered children trailing the skirts of a formidable matriarch.
"Bogden," Obi-Wan murmured, reading the designation off the navcomp's display. Inhospitable gas giant, surrounded by barren rocks. Just outside Republic boundaries, never formally colonized. A centuries-past geological survey indicating extremely frigid temperatures and intermittently toxic, thin atmosphere on the moons due to lowgrade subsurface volcanic activity. "…Lovely place."
"It's ugly," Anakin agreed.
The young Jedi cocked a brow at him. One had to admit that was ironic coming from a native son of Tatooine, but…. "Ugly is the least of our problems here."
The external sensors readily detected the radiation signature of a small vessel, meaning the Sith's ship had indeed passed into orbit within the last half hour, maybe less. They were not far behind, and he could not at the moment decide whether their proximity to their quarry or the fact that Anakin had in fact and truth cracked a Dark-sider's occult encryption was the more disturbing to his inner tranquility.
"So we're going to chase him down ? Are you gonna fight him again?" the boy inquired, naively.
He's running to his master.
Another thought, more chilling than the first:
What if the Sith lord is already here, waiting for him?
Obi-Wan drew in a deep centering breath . To send a comm now would be to herald his arrival and precise location, not to mention identity. As matters stood, he might have the element of surprise on his side. On the other hand, there was little likelihood any other Jedi had successfully tailed the escaped prisoner. Unless a tracer had already been planted on the Sith vessel….
"Anakin. When you looked at his ship before, had a tracking beacon been fitted to the hull?"
"Nah. But that wouldn't work anyway," the child informed him, academically. "Once the cloaking field went up, everything on the exterior would short out. Plus he had full diagnostics onboard so any interior device would read viral and get blitzed."
The young Knight drummed his fingers against the console. Dooku and his elite Shadows were not fools, and the Temple boasted its own share of technical geniuses. But there had been no expectation of jailbreak, no …. "Wait a moment. Wasn't the ship partially disassembled when you found it?"
"Sure. I guess they put it back together again. Maybe for fun. I do that lots of times."
Something was off about this entire scenario. The weapon, the perfectly functional ship, the delayed reaction of the Sentinels themselves…
His hands gripped the helm hard enough to whiten his knuckles. "In the name of -"
"What?"
Barely suppressed fear was supplanted by a renewed extrusion of anger. "We're not supposed to be here. Nobody was supposed to follow him."
"Well, duh," Anakin remarked.
But he didn't understand. As bitter as slavery had been, as many gruesome injustices and cruelties as the boy had witnessed in his short life, he still had no concept of true perversity, of the treacherous, ruthless warfare played out upon the margins of civilization, in the realm of desperate, as of yet silent strife between the Dark and those oath-bound and fanatically devoted to its annihilation.
In other words, Anakin had never trained as a Shadow.
"So we have to go back?"
"That would be the prudent, reasonable thing to do, yes." They powered down through the moon's sparse atmosphere, arcing low along ragged crater-rims and vast dustbowl plains, swooping over a sharp mountain ridge and dipping into desolate valleys carved with dry canyons and pocked with immense rock shards.
Apparently his tension was contagious, for the boy was taut in his seat, a coiled spring ready to snap. "But we're still going in! How come, Master?"
Because there was no sane, salutary, honorable reason to justify what he suspected had transpired within the Temple; because the Force had unexpectedly given him the means to be here and he had obeyed its prompting; because he hadn't started this fight but he would finish it, however so long it took; and, "…Because he's mine."
The doorway was nothing but a rectangle of darkness carved into a ice-bitten cliff face just past the terminator, where crimson sunset scrawled molten shadows across the dusty waste.
"You will stay here," Obi-Wan ordered, grimly surveying the portal. Lair. Den. Wormhole.
"But-"
"And if anyone should approach this ship, besides myself, you are to leave. Revert to full manual and the shuttle will return to point of origin. Tell the masters at the Temple what happened."
"Okay okayokayokay, but –"
"Anakin."
The child gulped, wide-eyed.
"Stay in this cockpit," the young Jedi added, for emphasis. "Stay."
There were several traditional mantras for the centering exercise, for the occasion of girding one's self for such battle as lay ahead. The Sith's black vessel stood upon a rock promontory like a glittering firebeetle, the last rays of daylight setting its hull aflame with a muted malice. The threshold lay ahead, inaudibly howling, much as the caves of Ilum once had: a place where the Force ran thick, only clotted and blackened here, turgid with the Dark. To walk into the heart of this stronghold, or safehouse, or whatever it might be, armed only with his 'saber and his courage: this could not be undertaken without armor about the inmost heart.
He rooted himself deep within the Light's wellsprings, even as he crossed the short distance between his shuttle and the looming gate, boots trudging through powdery grey dust, flesh prickling with the cold, lungs burning a little in the thin, acrid air. For some inscrutable reason, no meditative anchor would come to mind but the simplest recitation from his crèche days.
It would suffice for the occasion.
I walk on a hidden Way; from this Path I'll never stray; upon this Road no shadows prey; I'll follow unto my last day.
The Dark had other ideas, coagulating into gruesome solidity upon the lightless threshold, a buffeting presence more formidable than any physical barrier might have been. He pushed through, refusing to heed the sharp flare of adrenaline in his veins, the abrupt staccato rhythm of his heart. He thrust onward, into the unknown, into enemy territory, in pursuit of a nightmare fragment, a possible future slipped loose form the moorings of shadow and set loose to trespass upon waking reality.
The interior cavern was hewn in merciless geometrical lines, every seam not-quite parallel, the lines of architecture skewed, converging upon no vanishing point but seeming to collide into one another, a nest of thorns, a thicket of angry spears. The walls were coated in gleaming metal, obsidian in color and highly reflective. A light which was not light seeped from nowhere, barely within the visible spectrum, barely sufficient to cast his pale reflection in half a dozen distorted directions. His nerfhide boots padded against the cold floor, echoing dully, leaving a feeble trail in the grey dust.
A line of other boot-prints preceded him.
The obscene and misshapen foyer opened onto a circular chamber, its single curving wall punctuated with mausoleum niches, or alcoves. The black openings held him fast in their panoptic, many-eyed gaze, the same stifling redlight tracing out a knotwork upon the floor, a contorted pattern of writhing strokes and agonized curves. His gut churned, though he did not recognize the design.
"Fool," a husking voice spoke from the shadows above.
A glimpse upward, at the hate-webbed rafters, and a swift backflip away as a cloaked form dropped like a hunting thranctill from its perch.
The Zabrak warrior stood limned in dullest crimson, horns clawing angrily from his skull, left hand closed about the hilt of an ancient 'saber. He blocked the only route of exit, posture confident and relaxed, a predator at ease within his killing grounds.
"You seek me out here?" The severed stump of his right arm gestured round the gloomy catacomb. "This is ours, Jedi. The common grave of many who failed to destroy your kind in the past. Can you feel their desire for vengeance? It is strong here, where their bones lie."
The crystal deep within his saber's hilt chimed defiantly as the weapon slipped fluidly into his hand. The two opponents circled, counter-clockwise, pacing the perimeter of the tomb. The Dark thickened to a suffocating intensity; Obi-Wan's lungs burned painfully, as though he held his breath underwater.
"When my master arrives, I will present him with your corpse, and earn my title," the young Sith continued, the yellow embers of his eyes flaring with a dangerous light.
"I don't think so."
The Zabrak laughed, a throaty grating of sound over teeth and lips. "That is why you came here, is it not? To face your own extinction?"
To your death, you go.
The Force chorused from poisoned wells, stripping away veils to reveal truth, naked as the crumbling bones of the fallen Sith interred within the walls of this place: the hidden Path led toward a black tomb, wended steadily toward a hate-mantled figure bearing a crimson blade, toward the end. Obi-Wan reeled in the bitter wind of betrayal, a ringing in his ears, a sickening void gathering at the edges of vision.
To death must we all go.
Why had he come, if not for this?
The Sith's blade sprung from its hilt – but not a brand of scarlet fire, as the textbooks in the Temple archives portrayed the Sith weapon. This was different, a line of pulsating nothing, un-light, its thrumming tone a tri-tone dissonance, higher and lower than a 'saber blade, at variance with all that was pure and clear.
Darksaber. Obi-Wan recognized the weapon at once, the shape of the hilt, the slight curve of the blade. He had seen it but once unsheathed, but that was enough. And he remembered to whom its custody had last been granted.
Sapphire flame leapt to meet the unspoken challenge; they dispensed with any salute, falling upon one another like summer lightning, the song of their battle a frantic squeal and thunder upon the encircling walls.
The Darksaber parried his strikes easily, dangerous sparks showering about their shoulders and faces as they clashed. The Sith fought with his left arm, but betrayed no weakness or disparity of skill – his blows fell relentlessly upon the young Knight's guard, a hammering offensive gaining in power and speed as the first wild seconds bled out into a desperate minute, another…
"You hate me," the Dark acolyte exulted. "I can feel it!"
"No." Block, reverse, cut parry strike, reverse, and again – block, strike, push and –
The Sith executed a tight, deadly roundhouse kick, nearly catching him square in the face. He barely spun out of range, coming up short of breath. The very walls seemed to close in about him, a score of rotted skeletal hands reaching to smother him from every crypt, a noxious veil falling over his senses. The Dark cackled and leered, the invisible hordes of specters like a mighty arena crowd, bloodthirsty and eager…
The Darksaber swept within an inch of his belly, a cruel eviscerating strike aimed at his vital core.
Qui-Gon.
With a snarl, the young Jedi redoubled his desperate efforts, a whirlwind rising from some deep abyss, some buried trove of passion. The ghosts of Sith tyrants roared in approval, in fury, the age old vendetta fanned into smoldering renewal by the forge-bellows of their combat. Blue fire blazed implacable against cold anger, sapphire screaming one long wailing cry of defiance against the hornet's clamor of age-old hate.
They fought in a wide circle, locked in a fatal dance, gathering speed and strength until – spinning away from a bind, both of them soaked in perspiration, breath heaving, eyes burning , blades howling—
The Dark combusted, liquid and palpable, tibanna going up in obliterating flame; the Sith unleashed a war-cry, a guttural ululation, hatred compressed into sound, into the voice of countless generations – and smashed his foe against the opposite wall.
Obi-Wan's 'saber skittered away across the scarred floor, a swiftly extinguished comet-tail.
"Die like your pathetic master," the Zabrak growled, a black halo flickering about him, hereditary power licking at his horns like consuming flame.
The young Jedi gasped, and rolled – but a black boot connected savagely with his ribs, the resultant crack drowned out by his cry of pain.
The Darksaber hovered at his throat, while the boot ground against the elbow of his sword arm.
He called upon the Force, but there was nothing here but hate, hollow aching darkness and the scoured memory of an enemy cult. He clenched his jaw as something popped out of joint in his arm, writhed to free himself, then screamed as the nerves from shoulder to hand exploded in agony.
"Now you understand," the conquering warrior said, stained lip curling. "Know and despair: your anger feeds my strength. Your fear is my nourishment. Your enmity my lifeblood. You will fall, Jedi. You and all your vile kind, never to rise again."
Obi-Wan grunted his absolute defiance between gritted teeth, choking on the Dark, on rising bile.
The pulsing blade rose, rippling aura serpentine about its edge; the Sith's blazing eyes widened in anticipation. "Behold the first sacrifice of the great holocaust to come," he intoned.
And then the roof blew apart in a blaze of glory, cacophony raining down on their heads, a tumble of ancient rock and slagged metal, girders, supports, an avalanche of blinding dust, amid the throbbing beat of repulsors and the whine of starship drives.
A single gaping hole above rimmed a dizzy field of stars and the blurring silhouette of the Jedi shuttle, rear boarding ramp open in manifest invitation. The Light sparked, kindling anew from wild hope.
The Sith threw slabs of granite from his body as though they were a youngling's playthings, his face twisted in rage.
Starlight and frigid air cascaded down, bitter galvanizing medicine. Obi-Wan doubled over, yelled aloud with his last choking breath as he scrabbled for his battered weapon hilt, and jumped - a single Force-propelled leap into the waiting ship. His landing was a tumbling, pain wracked somersault into the far bulkhead, a crushing of injured limbs and fractured ribs, an inelegant sprawl upon the decks that sent him sliding halfway back across the cabin as the ship banked sharply upward. His 'saber rolled in the opposite direction and lodged under a magnetic mooring clamp.
Somehow, he registered as pain threatened to pound him senseless, the hatch had closed and the drives surged powerfully beneath him, carrying them away, back to their home and point of origin.
He lay wrestling awareness back from the clutches of oblivion, staring at the curve of white plastoid insulation above, and panting slowly lest he moan like a battered kitling. Eternities passed, and then Anakin's round face appeared in his field of vision, glacial blue eyes limpid with concern.
"Are you okay, Mister Obi-Wan sir? You're hurt! What happened? Are you all right? Can I help?"
He waved one hand at the boy. Force…. Sitting up was out of the question, and he didn't care to examine his damaged elbow. "Home," he croaked.
"It's okay, I put the helm on autopilot.. And I stayed in the cockpit, just like you said. I did, I promise!"
The young Jedi blinked up at the wretched, impudent, completely disobedient,inexcusably headstrong brat through eyes stinging with salt sweat and acrid dust. And started chuckling.
Perhaps a bit hysterically. From a certain point of view.
He stopped when his mirth threatened to morph into a retching bout.
"I'll get a blanket or something," Anakin offered, and scuttled off toward the forward cabin.
Obi-Wan ran a trembling hand over his filth-crusted face. "…Oh, Master," he groaned.