Title: Line the Rebel
Author: AsianScaper
Disclaimer: Star Wars belongs to George Lucas.
Rating: G
Category: Drama
Spoilers: None
Feedback: Friends, enemies: Send your comments or constructive criticism to asianscaper@edsamail.com.ph. Advice is highly sought after!
Summary: Sequel to 'Fire and Ice". Obi-wan and Padme arrive in Ethmun.
Archiving: Just email me the URL to allow me a peek.
Dedication: To Alison AGAIN, who insisted on a sequel and eventually inspired it. Love you lots, girl!
Author's Note: Another vile experiment on my writing style. Tell me what you think! The title was inspired by a phrase from Macbeth.
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Part VIII.
Crystals drowned the skies with falling torches; precipitation akin to rain though never accepted by coarse, granular silica, already bright and heavy from the sun's influence. Sky and cloud did not lie together on a bed of sapphire. Water's lack choked the steam from the clouds and only small patches of what could have been rain, flew past like desert eagles in a parched, choked, and isolated land. The sky was black, as if the sun had fled to spit tar on this planet's repulsive face.
Ethmun was much like Tatooine, though dunes did not rise here as they did in the desert planet. The maker's hand assembled one place infinitely saturated with sand in seamless scopes while the other was confined to a hellish scheme of coarse powder against jutting, featureless stone.
Volcanic rock reached up to the transport, black and forged from the the hot inner core of the planet. The heated tread of magma pierced their eyeballs and a flowing river of granules greeted their first landing.
"None too homely," Obi-wan muttered, as his robe was caught in a harsh zephyr and his face was scratched curiously by flying grains of soil. His beard was awash with dirt before he could protect himself from the onslaught.
"Better than our state of mind," Padmé offered in turn.
Smiling, they pulled their hoods over their heads, their hands tight around their persons. It was not cold but the wind brought all else to a howling, unrecognizable blur. They had to shout to each other to overwhelm the din.
"I cannot believe that council will be held in such a noisy, inhospitable place," Obi-wan quipped.
Checking his hip for his lightsaber, he carefully led the way for Padmé and her escort, watchful with both the Force and his oftentimes unreliable senses. Sand and soil made way for his feet and he could hear the crunch and beat of his toes against loam.
"But I feel a disturbance that I ought not to ignore," he added to himself, helping the senator over a small ledge and into the facility just beyond the small port.
The door hissed open and he stopped by the gate to allow the ladies to enter first. Her personal guard entered before he did and once everybody was robbed of noise and dirt, he took another glance outside, cautious in his observations. The sand was getting to his eyes and beginning to deface his cheeks. He looked up, found nothing but the cruel darkness and the slight twinkle of stars trying to endure the perpetual squall.
The stillness was alarming when he finally stepped in and shed the sand in his ears, in his hair. To travel from one foul state to one of neutrality made his hackles rise.
Shoving the grime vigorously from his robe and trying to be presentable, he took his time studying his surroundings. It was a white, humming interior though the corridors had begun to age despite the recent polish. Perhaps it was from the abuse of the outside world, having been transported from the looks of those who spent too much time outdoors. The facility was dug into the rock, and was sheltered from the storms outside. Ventilation filled their ears with a distant complaint, a grumble of air. There was no evidence of wind, only the soft whir of machinery.
A droid walked past them, its screws and parts creating a jolly mix of gold and silver and producing the rythmic jig on a titanium bulkhead. It was a protocol droid and its golden eyes jerked to them, in honest regard. The innate good of objects made to serve had a good aesthetic appeal to the sanitary feel of the base.
It said to Padmé in a languid voice, "Good day to you, Senator Amidala." Its head lurched towards Obi-wan. "And to you, Master Jedi."
"Good day," he returned.
It was then that the earth chose to move and the droid tottered idly, while it persevered to leave.
Ethmun was a young planet, Obi-wan thought. He could still feel the daring it possessed while shoving its plates aside and in.
"The planet was an excellent choice," he told Padmé.
"Which is why we chose it."
"Good girl." She did not bother to congratulate herself at his fawning tone. "But I have to tell you, I feel ill at ease."
Padmé stopped their promenade in the middle of the hall, suddenly wary. Her personal guard stood clustered around her, protective, vigilant, their fingers jittery.
A few passing personnel, gave them inquiring looks, and the fire in Obi-wan's eyes matching Padmé's own beleaguered their dutiful strolls. They rightfully ignored them and many gave a look…then passed unnoticed. "What pinches your insides, Master Kenobi?"
"The weather, the youth, and the unforeseen quality of this place. An excellent target and habitation for the minions of dark," he whispered. Her handmaids, he knew, were listening. Better than evil ears spying on the deaf pillows of good.
"We all have our reservations, Master Kenobi."
They resumed walking. Despite her present state, she managed to match their pace foot by foot. It was she who eventually set the harried mood and the pace slowed a bit.
"Be careful, my lady."
"I will."
He was skeptical, knowing that she would rather sacrifice her own life for another rather than forfeit those who were dedicated to the task.
He stopped by her quarters. As the doors slid open, he bowed delicately to her. "I shall see you in council, Senator."
"As I, you. Good day, Obi-wan," she said, taking his cheek and patting it affectionately. "Be well. Do not worry so much for me."
"Oh, but I do. I owe it to myself and to another we once loved."
That put a thorn in her gaiety and she bled water to her eye. He wiped the tear as it fell, lonely, in a gesture of friendship, of warmth; a requiem of sunny days when brought to nightfall's shelter. "Farewell, for now."
Then she was gone.
***
Part IX.
"Ethmun."
He tried to taste the name on his lips. Tasting was a sense lost to him and only words held texture to entertain his mouth. The syllables left a bitter, malignant cyst just east of his tongue.
"The youngest planet of the Rassimer system, my lord," an aide told him, with a voice rising close to a shriek. His hair hidden in a cap, the insigna of his rank glinting with fervor, yet his face was demarcated from the rest of his intentions to be confident and concise. "Intelligence affirms that the leaders of this new rebellion will assemble in Ethmun. A base was built there a few months ago, in haste, I should think."
"Which you overlooked," Vader inserted, rather ominously.
The fellow trembled from head to toe. "Y-yes, my lord."
Movement made the aide leap in surprise. A fist accused him from the sides of the dark lord, menacingly clenching, like claws.
"Prices to pay," the lord muttered through the device covering his teeth.
The dark lord had waved a hand to dismiss the revenant storm haunting him. One from Jes'Dameer, another from Sassanoth.
The aide took three steps from whence he stood.
Reap the fields, the crop of lives.
Anakin's armor caged him from the world such that his ward was futile. There in that prison like a bird, he would be fed, nurtured, and then looked upon like an animal. For he was not a man. The bread of gloom would nourish him and its crumbs would fall to his feet.
Everything would fall to my feet. I will not fail, not again.
Laughter echoed idly within his mind.
The wind his motion created beneath his fingers made him silent for the while. Why was he to able to feel the wrath made by his own hand and not the other exaggerated forms outside his circle of creation? Perhaps it was why he caused pain, that he may be insensate to it. That in burning his skin to blisters, he may not feel the heat.
His fingers tightened and the aide began to choke as invisible hands took him by his throat. "M-my lord…" he sputtered as saliva fell from the sides of his mouth. The man sank to his knees, clawing at his neck aimlessly, desperate in retreat.
Anakin frowned. Ah, was he wielding the sheath from the sword? Was that a tortuous concession beneath the grimace? A participation in fear? Grief?
Satisfied with the way the man's face ruffled to folds of agony, Vader loosened his grip and stood. Let them know me, he thought darkly. Only when the man's eyes pleaded for life, did he finally give him liberty.
"Do not fail me again, Commander."
The aide only nodded, relieved to be dismissed of his fault. Staggering to his post, the man began to speak once more, as was his first vocation. His tongue stumbled and choked on its own juice.
"Our infiltrators…have detected more than two hundred authorities from over…a h-hundred worlds congregating within, m-my lord."
The silence summoned from the recesses of Anakin's stern request, settled more sweat on the man's forehead. He began to literally shine under the dim light.
Sweat. Sweet to look at, for toil. Bitter to bear, for fright.
Anakin breathed deeply. The machinery rumbled as his intake of breath disturbed the mandibles of technology. Again, the aide looked as if he were willing to throw himself to the floor rather than face this munificent patron of depravity.
Of course, the Dark Lord of the Sith would not allow such a senseless, wasteful act.
"Set a course for Rassimer," he said.
"Yes, Lord Vader, a-as you command."
"Hold yourself together, man," was his quiet rebuke. "You have much to endure."
***
Part X.
The tall, grinning mounts held up the sky by their tattered forms, imposing and ever-watchful of the grim chime of the stars. For every twinkle, there was a streak of severe lightning, wounding the heavens that as it flashed, the black sky bled a color of swelling blue.
It was a mindful reminder of the powers that were. A glint, a shimmer, a peek of intelligence that shot the suns into silent eclipses round the center of the galaxy.
"Do you not think it interesting," Obi-wan told his young companion, "that we alter the evolution of this world, its growth, just by stepping on it, by looking on it, by merely knowing it's there?" He breathed the air of the solarium. It was heavy with the smell of Sambo peaches; a hint of honey mixed with cinnamon. A fairy prance with glittering, tasty, fairy dust to coat one's lips in. "We terminate lives as we walk, make them as we lift our feet from the earth. Don't you find it strange? That whoever found us in clay would allow us to draw the syllables ourselves?"
"I think it is fitting. Our freedom calls for the responsibility in shaping other's paths as well as our own," his companion returned.
Padmé was a belligerent lady in matters that shook the foundations of nature, essence, and elusive wheels that moved their joints. In her passion, her answers were sincere and true. The better teachers lay their skill in that ability, to make simple what was profound, for those who look into the glass, would perceive every notion of sculpture and paint.
Obi-wan accepted with a nod and a humble grunt. "You learn many things when you are a Jedi," he mumbled.
The lady laughed, a skulking ray of light in a fen. It was enough to cheer him. Such was her beauty, both in and out.
"There is much to teach when the galaxy bears the rhythm of your feet," she countered, as the fair lacework of her head-dress marked the gentle curve of her temple, the slight dip of her cheek as it worried for the loss of another.
"True."
The friends of old sat there within that observatory, seeking shelter in fell hills of gray and black. Those colors mounted the shades to their palette of emotions and one, no stronger than melancholy. But…a flash of lightning here, a rumble of thunder there, and hope was in every kiss of light, bright misery in every howling turn of the clashing gods above.
Though they waited, old Grathus came lumbering by in his cane, his silvery curls falling gently down the sides of his face, like daughters cradling their father. His rich beard was oddly thick, though thin in every individual strand; like a colony of the peasantry all starving yet strong in numbers. Poor Grathus had lost everything and his stride stood empty but his eyes were bright.
"Well, well," he said in upbraiding tones. There was humor in his heavy lean and his cane seemed an instrument for clowns as he grinned. "What brings you to this desolate place, in such an odd hour?"
"Meditation," Obi-wan said.
Grathus blinked as if a veil had hid the Knight.
"Ah, Master Jedi. What an honor!" His face fell. "I am…very sorry for the losses the Order has endured for this cause. I hear that a few have arrived from hiding." Grathus took a seat adjacent to them, tracing the history of their gazes as he, too, meshed his sight with the landscape around him. "And you, my lady," he told Padmé. "Though you are young, your actions have been commendable. I do hope you are well, both for the children and yourself. Yet most of all, for the rest of us."
"Thank you, old Grathus," Padmé affectionately acknowledged. "What brings you here? Old age doesn't vie well with stringent spectacles."
"Same reason you do. To find hope, which I should think you have. There's light in both of you, more so with this young woman." Grathus chuckled. He stroked his cane; a blind man wandering through the wood with his touch, to perceive every cranny.
Obi-wan supposed that the old man would know the difference between his cane and another just like it. It was a familiar touch, the caress of the engineer when his blueprint resigns for reality. One that he himself once had.
My Padawan. Where are you, you little devil?
Was he teasing a festering rage?
Perhaps not. He cared. Too much that even when the boy turned to shades of gray, Obi-wan was willing to cross every orifice for his sake, to change the spectrum, the lineage of color to those of light. Yet would he listen? Perhaps not.
Oh, but he would, Obi-wan told himself. How could he have shared what he did with beautiful Padmé?
The woman was speaking now, sparring words with the old senator.
"More's the blight, Senator Grathus, if we cannot negotiate," she told him.
"Oh, more's the blight, my dear, if we let this Sith Lord destroy every pillar of faith. Blood has always been traded for peace; a sacrifice on the altar, if you will."
Padmé raised a brow and her teeth showed in an accusing smile. "What then, if the citizens have no blood to call their own, having been bled bare on the very path you speak of?"
"Oh me!" the old Grathus exclaimed, laughing. "In the older the days…it was simpler."
"You can shine light on even the deepest fissures of the earth. All you need is courage, a candle, and yourself. Then brave the caverns."
"An ideal, I should think , that we ought to strive for. But men get old swiftly. You make it sound so simple, Senator Amidala." Grathus coughed slightly to put his point across.
"Oh, but it is. Peace is peace. You cannot buy it with war. But people bribe the quality of courage with tales of glory. So they fight, valiantly. Why else are heroes made in battle fields?" She did not wait for an answer.
For the alarms had sounded.
Old Grathus deposited a curse in the solarium, and another on his way out, making a trail down the corridor as he quickly assembled his parts to retreat to safety.
Padmé now stood, grabbing hold of a man running across the solarium to the command deck beyond and demanded, "What is happening?"
"My lady, a Star Destroyer has been detected," the officer huffed between breaths, "having jumped from hyperspace to the outer reaches of the system." She let go of the man and he gratefully bowed, running off as quickly as he had come.
Silence.
Hope. Faith. Love.
Themes of the hour. Thunder rose. Lightning cackled. The light seared their senses.
"He's giving us time," Obi-wan whispered.
The look Padmé gave him was one that put the jagged edges of his heart together. It gave him strength to feel the lighsaber beneath his hand and memorize the sacrifice on it. Oh, all was not in vain! Responsibility held the expedition!
"Escape, my lady," he pleaded. The susurration of his lips, warm, untainted, trembling. His eyes ached; grief had long been purged. The pool of his soul's window was suddenly empty of what he thought was once its essence. "While you can, Padmé. For the children. For yourself. For him."
She fled.
Only in the beginning.
A prayer.
The children were safe.
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-The End-