Chapter Thirty-Two: A Dead End

Frigid air shrieked as it tried to force its way through the door—it cut across Obi-Wan's face, slicing through his winter coat as he and Padmé fought to shove the hulking hatch shut. When the wind finally relented for a moment and the vaultlike door slammed into its frame, the Jedi breathed a sigh of relief. Blessed silence surrounded them at last; refuge from the cold and the noise of the rushing air.

In the newfound calm, Obi-Wan turned to face the door they had struggled so hard to force shut. It would have been at home on a submarine or in a space station—several inches of durasteel stood between them and the outside cold. In the center it sported a massive crank handle, and a small porthole was their only window to the outside. Beyond the equally thick glass of the window, a blizzard swirled—the Jedi could just make out the royal shuttle, parked among a cluster of prefabricated buildings identical to the one they stood in now.

Turning from the slab of metal, Obi-Wan sized up the room they'd found themselves in. Almost immediately, he found himself letting out an exhausted sigh.

It was a worn and weathered outpost—dim overhead lighting flickered above dingy desks and countertops. Computer terminals sat dormant, an obvious layer of dust settled atop each vacant chair. Though the room carried telltale echoes in the Force, echoes that spoke of a once-bustling workspace, the bare metal floors and their matching walls now spoke of nothing but abandonment.

Obi-Wan and Padmé had arrived at Snowblind, and no one was there.

Closing his eyes, he reached out to probe further, to look beneath the whispers of what had been and find if there was anything here now. But the usual connection he had to the Force—instant, comforting, clear—wasn't there. Perhaps the base was just too dead for it too resonate.

Or, his own voice said, perhaps it's hopeless.

An ear-splitting crack of shattering ceramic forced his eyes open. Obi-Wan looked to the noise's source just in time to watch it repeat itself—a weathered caf mug, still stained inside and out from the dried remnants of its contents, slammed against the wall and fractured into dozens of pieces.

Opposite the wall, Padmé held another mug in her hand—Obi-Wan could just make out the fading emblem painted on its surface. His friend wound back her arm to ready another throw.

"Padmé!" he hissed.

She threw the mug anyway.

"This was supposed to be it!" she yelled over the sound of shards falling to the floor. "Someone was supposed to be here!" Sweeping her hand across one of the desks, she shoved over a pile of flimsiplast notebooks.

Obi-Wan reached out his hand toward her, fighting the urge to send waves of calm into her mind. After all, it doesn't matter. No one here to hear. "Maybe those Switchboard messages were a bad lead," he began, the words exiting his mouth in an automatic near-whisper. "Perhaps they packed up and left in the time it took us to fly here."

He knew it wasn't true even as he said it. Their surroundings told a tale of a long, slow abandonment—not a hasty evacuation. Dust had settled evenly across the metal decking, devoid of any footprints save the ones they'd made since walking through the door.

"They're still broadcasting on that same frequency we decoded at the Switchboard, Kenobi," Padmé snapped back. "We followed the signal in through the snowstorm, it's how I knew where to land the shuttle."

"But our shuttle can't decode the signal's contents," Obi-Wan pointed out. He felt a perfect sort of detached calm fall over him as he countered each of her objections—resignation to the inevitable. "We have no idea what it's saying now. It could be an automated message of some kind. It doesn't mean anyone is here."

Padmé rolled her eyes as she settled into one of the wheeled office chairs—it creaked as she shifted her weight backwards. "So they closed up shop, but left their radio on? I don't think so."

The Jedi moved over to a nearby desk, bending down to poke at a dormant computer terminal. To his surprise, the display came to life—and to his dismay, it was totally blank. Something, or someone, must have wiped the network clean before they abandoned this building.

Belatedly, the Force whispered in his ear. For a moment, Obi-Wan was hopeful—perhaps it was suggesting another terminal—but then he felt his teeth grind together as his body recognized the sensation for what it was.

A warning.

Cold instantaneously flowed through him—not the chill of the planet, but something danker. Wetter.

There was something off about this place. Something unsafe.

The dissociative haze that had come over him lifted. Tapping deeper into the pulse of malignant feeling didn't get him anything, the Force continuing to stay elusive—but the single feeling had been enough. Staying here was no longer simply fruitless—somewhere, there was danger.

His eyes moved past the terminal screen, to the chair Padmé was aimlessly spinning in across the room.

He needed to get her out of here—and gentle prodding wasn't going to do it.

"You should head back. Start up the shuttle," he told her. "If we're quick, we can fly out of here in the snowstorm, cover our exit too. I'll poke around here and see if I can find a clue as to where we should head next."

Padmé's slow rotation in the office chair came to a halt as she planted her feet on the floor. "Absolutely not." She rose to her feet and began marching toward him. "I'll go outside, sure, but not for that. There are a dozen other buildings in this compound, we should start by looking there."

Obi-Wan poked and prodded at the terminal keyboard in front of him, hoping his actions would summon something to the display, anything that he could seize upon as an excuse to leave. It didn't work. "You're going to check every building?" he asked, his attention split halfway between Padmé and the blank screen—he kept poking at the keys, praying for something to happen.

"If I have to," she said, moving around the weathered desk to gaze over Obi-Wan's shoulder at the terminal screen. When she saw it was blank, she stepped back and blew out a long, slow breath. "We've done nothing but chase leads. I want to find something. Something real."

She shoved away from the desk and marched toward the door of the abandoned building. "If you want to drag your feet, that's fine by me. But I'm not going along with it. We landed here, risked getting caught and killed . . ." She trailed off as she arrived at the vault door, resting a hand on the crank wheel set into it and turning back to face Obi-Wan. "I'm going to make it worth the trouble, that's all."

"They won't kill you." The words left Obi-Wan's mouth almost automatically, and were enough to keep Padmé from turning the door handle—if only for a moment.

A snort escaped her nose. "And why's that?"

"Because of Anakin."

She said nothing, simply raising an eyebrow in his direction and leaning against the doorframe.

It was the last resort, the thing he'd told himself whenever he'd look over at his partner and feel a renewed twinge of guilt at taking her along to tilt at windmills. But if it keeps her talking . . . "You're his wife," he continued, the awkward obviousness of the words accented by a sheepish shrug. "If you were captured, he'd never let them kill you."

Snorting, Padmé shoved away from the door, dragging one foot against the metal decking. "That's a nice thought, Kenobi. But I don't think Anakin even knows about the Jedi investigation."

"He's the chancellor's right-hand man—"

"Which means some things are still above his pay grade," Padmé interrupted. As she approached one of the abandoned desks, she mindlessly shuffled through the stack of papers atop it. Her gaze was distant, as if she were looking past the contents of every scribbled note. "Think about it. If you're investigating the Jedi, what's the most valuable asset you could possibly have on your side?"

She didn't wait for Obi-Wan to speak. "A former member of the Order. If Anakin were helping them, they'd have something by now. A list of names. The location of the Jedi Temple. A Knight or two in custody. But they don't have any of that." A sigh escaped her mouth. "Either he refused to help them, or they haven't asked him yet. And I really doubt he'd turn them down, so . . ."

As she trailed off, a disquieting tingle once again began to crawl its way up the back of Obi-Wan's neck. The light from the empty terminal screen seemed to swirl into a psychedelic beacon, drawing the Jedi into an uneasy trance.

What is it? he asked the Force, thoughts hammering against the same blockage that had been there since they'd arrived. What are you trying to tell me?

"We're just lucky this Tarkin guy is running the investigation," Padmé continued. "If Palpatine asked Anakin to help, he'd probably turn in the entire Order."

"You don't really believe that, do you?" Obi-Wan asked in a dull, distracted monotone. His attention was elsewhere—he gripped the warning in his mind, turned it over and over, trying to find a seam, an identifying characteristic, anything.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could just barely make out Padmé's shoulders slumping. "When it comes to Anakin," she began, "I don't know what to believe anymore."

SOMEONE'S COMING.

Finally, a clear signal—the words were plain as day, as if they'd been whispered in the Jedi's ear. He leapt to his feet—the wheeled desk chair careened backwards, clattering against the far wall—and repeated them aloud.

"Someone's coming."

Without pause, Padmé drew a pistol from her coat.

"I told you not to bring that," Obi-Wan hissed.

"Lucky for us I didn't listen."

"We cannot leave a trail of bodies here."

Rolling her eyes, she leapt over the nearest desk, rushing toward a bank of lockers set against the wall. One by one she threw them open, tossing their contents out onto the floor. "Guess I'm lucky you think they won't kill me anyway."

Stepping back from one of the lockers, she turned around and marched toward the building's front door. In her right hand she held a crowbar—as she reached the doorframe, she stepped to one side and brandished it in what looked suspiciously like her best imitation of a Jedi. "How many of them are there?"

"What?"

"How many of them are there?" she repeated. "Are they armed? Do they know we're here, or are they on a routine patrol?"
With an audible panic Obi-Wan didn't like hearing at all, he replied, "I . . . I don't know!"

Padmé looked like she wanted to kill him. "Kenobi," she said, drawing out his name as she hissed it through her teeth. "I am asking you to stretch out with your feelings and find out!"

With a shaky nod, he closed his eyes and drew his senses inward. Please, I am begging you, give me anything.

In a blessed rush, his fear finally broke through the malaise, his surroundings falling away—the terminal displays and empty desks, the metal floors and walls that sheltered them from the blizzard outside. Once he'd found his center in the Force, he exhaled and reached out.

What he found nearly knocked him over.

In an instant Padmé was at his side, catching him as he fell to the floor. He gasped for breath, struggling to pull air into his lungs—it was like someone had kicked him in the stomach.

When he'd gulped down enough air to regain some composure, he braced a hand against one of the desks and forced himself back to his feet, struggling to pinch off the sensory vein he'd just opened.

"They've got someone," he gasped between labored breaths. "There's a presence in the Force. A strong one."

"A Jedi?"

He shook his head. "I don't . . . I'm not—"

"Where? Where are they?"

He pointed to the floor. When the gesture was met with a look of bewilderment from Padmé, he spoke. "Down there. There are caves beneath the ice." Within them a nexus of . . . something, most definitely Force energy—pulsing hot enough to cut through the planet's chill. If he hadn't been in his own way, he would have noticed it as soon as they'd landed.

"They've captured a Jedi," Padmé said grimly. "We're too late."

"Hey!"

A voice—not Obi-Wan's or Padmé's, but a stranger's—rang out, filtered through the static of a helmet communicator.

Their unwelcome intruder, the one the Force had warned him about, had not come through the front door. Instead he stood where the wall of lockers had been—in their place was a square hole, the containers swung aside to reveal a secret door. The man was clad head to toe in pristine white plastoid; his helmet bore a blank expression that made it difficult to judge his reaction to seeing two uninvited guests.

The armored trooper reached for the blaster hanging from his hip, and Obi-Wan sprang into action.

You can't let him shoot her, a voice shouted in his head—and it was this mantra that drove his every action. From bolting across the room as his opponent reached for a gun, to barely flinching as a haphazard shot slammed into his left shoulder, to diving at the trooper's waist and tackling him to the ground.

The plastoid armor landed with a hollow crack, and Obi-Wan saw the gun clatter away—an extra nudge from the Force ensured the blaster was well out of reach. As the pair rolled across the floor, Obi-Wan was only vaguely aware of Padmé shouting at them—at him, to be more precise.

"Kenobi, watch out!" came her warning, just as the trooper reached for another weapon—a stun baton, much like the one Anakin used to carry. It crackled with a vibrant blue energy.

An energy that very much hurt as it discharged into Obi-Wan's midsection. The stun blast sent him reeling backwards into a desk; it was at this point that the pain in his shoulder began to catch up to him. He gritted his teeth and fought to ignore it, willing the searing nerves to calm themselves. Steadying himself against the desk, Obi-Wan rose to his feet.

His opponent did the same, flourishing the stun baton and discharging arcs of electricity into the air. Each of them held their ground for a moment, locked in a standoff, waiting for the other to make the first move.

Obi-Wan made a gentle probe into the trooper's mind, hoping that perhaps he could deescalate the situation—but they were beyond the point of simple mind tricks. The plastoid-clad man was on full alert, his mind a rush of adrenaline. No gentle suggestions would defuse this fight.

The Jedi gritted his teeth and rushed forward to finish things.

He was met with a lateral slash of the stun baton—one he'd been expecting—and he leapt backwards as the business end of the weapon barely missed his stomach. Unfortunately, the dodge found him slightly off balance—a follow-up strike of the baton met his leg straight on.

The stunned leg buckled beneath Obi-Wan, sending him tumbling toward his opponent. The trooper took the opportunity to whack him with the stun baton twice more—once in the ribcage, and once in the back of the head.

Obi-Wan crumpled to the ground, his grip on consciousness loosening by the second. As the world around him swam in various shades of blue and purple, he fought to keep his eyes open. The trooper discharged the baton into the air again, then wound it up for a final strike.

He watched as one blaster bolt after the other planted itself in the trooper's stomach, burning through the plastoid armor, leaving an acrid smoke in the air and black burn marks on the once pristine surface.

He watched as his opponent fell to the floor.

He watched as Padmé Amidala stepped over the limp body, blaster pistol in her hand. He watched as she pumped several more shots into his midsection—ostensibly for good measure.

It was the last thing he saw as his world slipped into darkness.

The waves crash against Obi-Wan's shins, stretching out to infinity. He stands atop the endless expanse of the water's surface, his boots somehow staying dry despite the lapping ocean.

In the distance there is another figure, the silhouette of her blastweave coat unmistakable. It flutters in the wind as she stands with her back to her old partner. The coat's collar shields her from the gale; its fringes brush against the uneasy waves.

He opens his mouth to call out her name, but his voice is gone. Despite great effort, his screams are nothing, void—as if they are being shouted into the vacuum of space. Were she facing him, she could perhaps read her name on his lips.

Qui-Gon!

It is no use. Each shout makes his throat more hoarse, each yell scratches at his empty voice. She does not turn to face him.

Kicking at the water beneath his feet, he glances away from her. He's been here before, he realizes. Years ago, when her body was unconscious. He came here to speak to her mind.

She had been at peace then, despite her grave injuries. The water had moved in gentle ripples, reflecting the oranges of a low sunset. Now the clouds in the sky warn of an oncoming storm; the water rolls and rumbles, churning into a dull grey foam.

There is a crack, and the sky brightens—a bolt of lightning slams into the water's surface far too close for Obi-Wan's liking. He whirls around to face his friend again, to shout a warning in her direction—but his shouts produce no sound yet again.

He is too late.

The lightning strikes again, this time landing at the feet of Qui-Gon Jinn—and the Jedi begins to sink into the water.

Obi-Wan breaks into a run, waves splashing beneath the soles of his boots as he sprints across the water toward the sinking woman. Lightning smacks into the water on either side of him in quick succession, but he is undeterred.

Qui-Gon is knee deep in the water now. It rises to her waist, even as Obi-Wan remains atop its surface. After just a moment, it reaches her shoulders.

He dives toward her, stretching out his hand, but she is gone—the water envelops her head, pulling her downward.

He screams for help—that word, it seems, can yet make a sound. It echoes through the emptiness, a cry of desperation.

"Help!"

A shadowy figure emerges from the storm, staring down at Obi-Wan as he lies prone in the water. Anakin, the Jedi realizes—his hair long and matted with sweat, his body draped in a thick black cloak.

"Anakin, help!" Obi-Wan shouts—but the young man merely stares into the distance, as if no one is there but him. After a moment, he turns away and disappears into the storm clouds again.

Then, another figure. This one emerges from a white cloud, a bright spot against the darkness of the storm. The light from behind the figure casts her in silhouette. "Kenobi," she says. "Get up."

The light fades. It is Padmé Amidala, bending down to reach for him—and for Qui-Gon.

"We've got work to do."

"Qui-Gon!"

A violent gasp for air sent blood rushing to Obi-Wan's head as he sat upwards. Immediately he felt a jolt of pain in his left shoulder—wincing, he glanced over at the wound.

His clothes were torn loose around the shoulder, which sported a fresh bandage. Behind him, his winter coat had been bunched up into an improvised pillow. She must have laid me here to treat the blaster burn, he thought, reaching up to gingerly poke at the tape and gauze.

When he realized what she had laid him next to, he immediately recoiled—he'd been resting beside the body of the trooper Padmé had pumped several blaster bolts into.

As Obi-Wan sat up further, he propped himself on one arm and craned his neck to glance around the room. Though Padmé was nowhere in sight, a downward glance revealed a folded piece of flimsiplast taped to his chest. He plucked it free and unfurled the paper—it was a note, scribbled in Padmé's handwriting. The haphazard script suggested she'd penned it in a hurry.

Guess you thought I hadn't caught on to you trying to get rid of me, huh?

They've got one of your people. That means this is now a rescue mission. We aren't leaving without them . . . but you're not coming. It's not safe for you anymore.

I'm headed beneath the ice to get whoever's down there. Once you're awake, go start the shuttle and keep the engines warm. I'll be back as soon as I can.

Don't follow me.

He was on his feet before he'd finished reading the note, sweeping up his folded coat with one hand and crumpling the flimsiplast in the other before stuffing it in a pocket. Bending down beside the armor-clad body of the fallen trooper, he wrapped his fingers around the stun baton that had jolted him into unconsciousness.

The weapon rolled around in his hand as he stood up—he felt the weight of it, the texture of the grip. The ridges around the handle reminded him of Anakin's old baton, of the grip that had become his student's lightsaber.

A lightsaber that now sat abandoned in a storage trunk, tucked away beneath Obi-Wan's bunk in the Jedi Temple. Cast aside and forgotten.

Obi-Wan let out a long sigh as he clipped the stun baton to his belt. You may have lost him, he thought as he felt the weight of the weapon on his hip. It was no lightsaber, but its presence was comforting nonetheless.

His mind flitted to Padmé, leaving that note on his chest before heading off to rescue someone whose identity she didn't even know. But he did—his vision of Qui-Gon rose up again, her silhouette sinking into the lake.

Don't lose them too.

He moved toward the hole in the wall that had been covered by the equipment lockers—the place his attacker had emerged from, and the place his friend had no doubt descended into. A ladder stretched downward into darkness.

Obi-Wan leapt through the hole. Down into Snowblind. After Padmé.

Don't lose them too.

A strange light emanated from the walls of ice around Obi-Wan. The passageway he'd descended into appeared to have been sculpted by the hand of nature—its surfaces ebbed and flowed, its turns weaved in erratic patterns rather than the hard and even angles of a tunnel carved by machines.

Nevertheless, there was plenty to suggest sentient occupation. Conduits of wire were grafted into the walls of ice, and metal grating lined the cave floor to provide any would-be walkers with a more steady footing.

Then, of course, there was the door—a grey metal slab which blocked the path before Obi-Wan. His hand wandered to his belt of its own accord, though he stopped just short of grabbing the weapon that hung there. A stun baton, he knew, would not be cutting through plates of durasteel.

Fortunately for him, it seemed his predecessor had cleared this obstacle. Padmé's presence was obvious—not just because of echoes in the Force, though those were evident. Beside the hulking door, the remnants of a control panel sparked and sizzled. Someone had ripped the panel's faceplate from its housing, digging around inside to extract wires and strip them of their insulation.

Padmé had done the hard work of hotwiring the door. All he had to do was touch the exposed wires together. Sparks flew outward as the circuit inside the control panel completed, and the durasteel door opened to reveal the passage beyond.

Obi-Wan stepped through, pulling his coat tighter around him as he moved deeper into the ice cave. As he walked, he stretched his senses outward, hoping to find any sign of Padmé—or of his captured Jedi friend.

He found none, though the Force urged him to press onward anyway.

The cavern remained unchanged for a while as Obi-Wan undertook a claustrophobic, frozen echo of his journey through the caves of Had Abbadon. The walls were tighter, the air colder, and the ground beneath his feet hard and unforgiving.

He was so lost in reminiscing that he failed to notice he'd approached another door—and in doing so, stepped directly in view of a security holocamera.

Obi-Wan yanked the stun baton from his belt and thumbed its power switch, flicking his wrist as the weapon crackled to life. He leapt to one side of the cavern, planting his back against a wall and scanning his surroundings.

Nothing happened. As the rush of adrenaline faded, the Jedi took another tense glance at the holocamera.

It was dead. No activity lights, no sweeping motion to cover the width of the cavern. He stepped closer and peered directly into the device, which revealed the telltale carbon scoring of a well-placed blaster shot.

Padmé, he thought, relief washing over him. She'd cleared the way for him yet again. Clipping the stun baton back on his belt, he moved toward the door beneath the holocamera and placed his palm against it. The Jedi closed his eyes and allowed his senses to stretch beyond the barrier.

Troopers on patrol. He felt them walk past the other side of the door. They're calm, not on alert. They must not have found her.

A wave of relief rolled across him again. He was all but certain Padmé was okay—now, all he had to do was get to her.

When the patrol had moved far enough away, he shoved the door aside with a mental push and stepped over its threshold.

This, he realized, was the real Snowblind.

He stood inside a corridor not unlike those found within a Star Destroyer—polished floors reflected matte grey walls and the vertical banks of lights set into columns along them. Durasteel blast doors that could have been lifted straight out of the Coelacanth capped off the hallway in one direction.

Obi-Wan didn't wait around to find out what was on the other side of them. The Force beckoned him in another direction, down the corridor and around a corner. The presence he had sensed earlier, from the abandoned outpost above the ice, was nearby—a glaring beacon of light against the darkness of the hidden facility.

As he moved, he willed his footfalls to land quiet against the decking, pushed the pain in his shoulder aside as much as he could, and radiated a gentle mental suggestion to pay the man in the winter coat no mind.

Are the troopers here even susceptible to mind tricks? He couldn't help but wonder whether Tarkin had the foresight to staff his station with people strong enough to resist the nudges of the Force.

If he was lucky, he wouldn't have to find out. And fortunately, the director seemed to run the place with a skeleton crew—if he'd been on the Coelacanth, there would have been no avoiding crew members any longer than a few seconds, but here sentient connections broke up vast chunks of nothing.

He jogged down the corridor as he rounded a corner, picking up his pace while expending more effort to ensure his feet fell silently as they hit the floor. The hall he rushed through was lined with multiple doors in even intervals, akin to an apartment building or a hotel. The doors were numbered, too—cleanly painted labels adorned each one, the numbers rose in sequence as the hallway stretched on.

Were these guest suites? Holding cells? He hoped for the former as he placed his palm against one of the doors—the one the beacon of Force energy was so clearly coming from—and slid it aside.

It gave way with little resistance—no lock, that's good—and his heart leapt as he saw who stood within the room.

"Padmé." He breathed her name in a sigh of relief. "Where's Qui-G . . ."

Though her gaze stayed fixed upon him, she said nothing, silently stepping aside to reveal the rest of the room.

It was a guest suite after all—the furnishings were stark and simple, but enough to provide some comfort. A bed was tucked into one corner, with a heater unit affixed to the wall beside it. Opposite the bed, an armchair sat spotlit by a reading lamp—and within the chair was the person whose Force presence Obi-Wan had felt from above.

His eyes were weary as they fell upon Obi-Wan, the grey of his beard glinted in the light of the reading lamp. By the looks of things, Padmé had interrupted the old man's tea time—a mug sat perched on one of the chair's arms, and a book was nestled in the crook between the man's crossed legs.

Sighing, he closed the book and leaned back. As he spoke, the weight of his voice seemed to resonate throughout the guest room. "Hello, Master Kenobi." He paused, raising a hand to beckon Obi-Wan. "I suggest you step inside before anybody sees you."

It was as if someone had glued Obi-Wan's feet to the floor. He could not move—he could only utter the man's name in a strained, confused whisper.

"Count Dooku?"

Republic Archives: Blizzard Cave

Given the right environmental conditions, weather phenomena that normally occur only outdoors can happen within enclosed spaces such as underground caverns.

One notable example of this is the "blizzard cave," an event observed on multiple ice planets which are home to large subterranean structures. Though the cave is underground and cut off from outside weather systems, the cold air contained within is enough to turn water droplets condensing on the cave walls into snow crystals. When enough of this snow collects on the cave walls and ceilings, it can fall to the ground.

This precipitation can be further disturbed by wind currents moving throughout the caverns, creating whiteout conditions not unlike the blizzards that may occur on the surface of the same ice worlds. These blizzard caves can prove particularly hazardous—numerous expeditions have sought shelter from harsh winter weather inside a cave, only to fall victim to yet another blizzard once they are safely inside.