Armistice
Scene 26
"See what you can do to assist – thankfully, injuries were minimal," Obi-Wan murmured, leaving Phiatalleika Esoro outside the vast medical bungalow where Loop and his brethren had been housed earlier that afternoon. Glancing through the partially opened doors, he could see that there were already an ominous number of empty palettes.
The young healer nodded, and tugged her damp hair into a tight knot. She did not immediately comply with his order, but hesitated upon the threshold long enough to give him a severe once-over reminiscent of Vokara Che in full battle array. "You will dry off and find a heat unit?" she inquired, sternly.
His eyebrows rose. Even Anakin at his most insufferably overprotective had never cosseted him so much. "I don't think I'm quite such a delicate convalescent as all that." His mouth twitched, as he watched her obstreperous expression melt into intimidation. "But I'll do something about the mess." He ran a hand through snow-laden hair, slicking it back off his face.
Phia bowed, blushing at her own temerity, and scuttled away into the medbay. He turned then to stride across the courtyard, wrapped in silence and darkness, surrounded by the thrumming of the complex's emergency power generator. The rearguard of the northern storm front lashed against the transparisteel windows of the bland structures, leaving endless weeping tear trails along their surfaces. He raised his hood, though there was little point in the gesture. Tiny pellets of hail – the last weary rounds of ammunition fired at them from heaven's ramparts – pinged against roofs, danced in sprightly patterns at his trudging feet. Having been raised on Coruscant, with its artificially enhanced and controlled meteorological patterns, he had always enjoyed the spectacle of real weather as a young padawan. Even now, despite a few harrowing experiences that had taught him better, a part of him enjoyed this storm. It was not like the orderly, docile rains which the orbital mirrors and moisture deflectors on the city-planet permitted in due season. This was what Qui-Gon had always called a wild thing, full of pride and fury and a kind of untamed beauty.
It is like the Force itself, Obi-Wan: to be respected, listened to. Not manipulated and used. We are in harmony with such power, its servants and vessels, not its lords and masters.
Like the Force, like sentient Life, the foremost manifestation of that supernal energy. A thing to be respected, not bought and sold and manipulated to suit the demands of politicians.
This clone army will be our undoing. Sometimes now, he still wished his former mentor were alive, to hear his confessions of unease and absolve him of anxiety.
Focus in the present moment, where it belongs.
He drew his moisture laden cloak tight about his body and made for the entrance to the intact half of the officers' barracks. Pausing at the open doorframe, he reached out through the Force, much as the beam of light spilling from within fell across the landing pad and its frozen pools of water, the strewn remains of near-disaster. And there it was – a little flicker of danger, a tiny serpent-tail rattling somewhere nearby: sentient malice, aloof but observant. He focused upon it narrowly, but it melted away before he could pinpoint it, seeming to dissipate into anonymity, into an endlessly repeated pattern.
What he needed was a long meditation. Well, a dry cloak and a long-
He broke off his train of thought abruptly, sensing the Kaminoan's presence before he rounded the corner of the sterile passageway. Nirra Vah's head swayed slightly atop his elongated neck, his pale fingers interlaced across the front of his silvery clinician's garment. "Master Jedi."
A short bow. "Director."
"We apologize for the inconvenience this power rupture has caused… our facilities are generally maintained in perfect order."
"As I am well aware." After all, he had been the first Jedi – after the spurious "Sifo Dyas" who had commissioned the army all those years ago – to set foot on Kamino, a world which officially did not exist even in the Archive records. He had been the first to lay eyes on the cloning center, the neat tiers of bottled embryos and the conditioning school where the clones were trained up to be incomparable soldiery. He had been impressed then, in a cold and nauseating way. He was still impressed. "This was an act of sabotage."
Vah waved a dismissive hand. "Nonsense. There is nobody present but myself, my staff, and the units. And I assure you, a psychological abnormality on the scale you suggest is impossible. Our screening methods are impeccable and we dispose of defective product without delay."
"I see." In other words, a rogue was impossible. Which was untrue – it had happened before, on the front. The pressures of war were immense, incalculable, and the human psyche perhaps beyond the reach even of the most exacting scientific calculations. But he did not say these things aloud.
The Kaminoan's limpid, bulging eyes blinked slowly. "If you will forgive my saying so, our conditioning methods are superior even to those you Jedi employ upon your own younglings. As I understand it, you have in recent decades experienced an alarming rate of anomalous outcomes."
"Apostasy to the Dark is not a matter of –"
"Especially among your Service Corps," the director added, delicately. "The specialists who visited Kamino last month were nonconformist in their principles and beliefs. The Jedi Order would do well to reconsider its training methods."
Was that a hint or a threat? Obi-Wan inclined his head, studiedly neutral. "Your people are an illumining paragon in that regard."
"Yes." The fish-like eyes rotated in their sockets a few degrees, seeking a better angle from which to study his face. "I wonder if the trouble did not originate with that research team, if you will forgive the bold suggestion."
"Every possibility must be examined."
They bowed again, the faintest breath of contempt wafting in the Force despite the mutually flawless etiquette. The Kaminoan turned and flowed down the corridor, placid as ever. Obi-Wan waved open the door to their cramped temporary quarters and turned the odd conversation over in his mind, grimacing a little at the puddle he had left upon the threshold.
Heat unit. Yes. And then a long, long meditation.
The door slid closed behind him.