I just realized I haven't put in one of those disclaimer things, so here we go:

I don't own Star Wars, blah blah blah, George Lucas does, blah blah blah, I'm just playing around in his universe, blah blah blah, the end.

Well, how'd I do?

Chapter 4

Obi-Wan sat numbly in his quarters, still trying to figure out what had just happened.

Two days ago, he had been talking to Anakin Skywalker, his former apprentice. They had come to his quarters, and he had said goodbye. Sensing that something was amiss, however, Obi-Wan had gone back, only to find out that he hadn't been talking to Anakin. Not the true Anakin, in any case. The true Anakin wouldn't have deceived him, wouldn't have lied to him, wouldn't have betrayed him, nor the entire Jedi Order, for that matter.

Obi-Wan shivered. I haven't known Anakin for three years.

For that was how long that Anakin had been married. It still seemed hard for Obi-Wan to understand, but Anakin had married Padme Amidala, the Senator from Naboo, going directly against the Order, which expressly forbids attachment and marriage.

But the most hurtful part, at least for Obi-Wan, was that his former apprentice had kept it hidden from the Jedi for so long. Obi-Wan could still remember the words that Anakin had spoken to him, years ago: You're the closest thing I have to a father.

He wondered when that had stopped being true.

Of course, he did feel a certain amount of sympathy to Anakin. The boy had been taken in to the Order when he was much too old, and he had a deep attachment to his mother. Obi-Wan could well remember the grief and anguish felt when Shmi had died.

But, Obi-Wan supposed, that really was the problem. Most Jedi were taken at such an age that they had no memory of their mother. Anakin hadn't, and this left him vulnerable to becoming attached to other people. Like Padme.

She really wasn't such a bad girl, Obi-Wan decided. But Anakin's problem wasn't in his choice of wife. It was the fact that he wanted a wife in the first place. Jedi had a deeper calling than love or marriage. Their powers enabled…no, demanded that they try to make the galaxy a better place, so that someone they'd never meet, in a place they'd never visit, would be able to enjoy the things that they never would.

Obi-Wan smiled. It sounded quite noble, and he was sure that all the Jedi, including Anakin, would agree. The only difference was that while his former apprentice was saving the galaxy, he would no doubt be making sure he had as much excitement as possible. Anakin was as close to a rogue as any Jedi had ever come. Obi-Wan wondered what would become of him.

Already the Jedi council was having talks, regarding what to do with Anakin. Some said that he was a loose cannon, and that this latest escapade proved it. Others, meanwhile, stuck to the prophecy, saying he should be punished, not expelled. It was clear that this was a divisive issue. A hearing was planned, to decide the young Jedi's fate.

The newsgrids would of course be covering the hearing, and the story in general. So much regarding the Jedi was surrounded in mystery and intrigue, that any story having to do with them immediately caught the public's eye.

And from what Obi-Wan could gather, the public was on Anakin's side. The idea of a renegade Jedi was appealing to them, and one who would risk everything for love was even more so. To them, the Jedi were too studious, to devoted to their work; in short, too boring. That they would expel someone for not being so boring was galling to them.

The trial was being held to the public eye, as much as it was to the council. The Republic was already in shambles, and for the Jedi, the foundation upon which the government was built, to be falling apart, it would cause even more systems to join the Separatists, something no Jedi wanted.

It was going to be a difficult time for his former Padawan, Obi-Wan knew, with so many people watching his every move, judging him, trying to decide if he was worthy to keep all that he had worked for in his life.

Obi-Wan only wished that he could be there with him, to help him through the hearing.

But it was not to be. After he had informed the council of Anakin's deceit, they had moved on to what they deemed 'more pressing matters,' namely, the Disruptor. Having such a weapon of mass destruction would mean that the Separatists could hold a planet ransom, robbing it of it's wealth or taking complete control over it. It had to be destroyed, that much was clear. The question that remained, was how.

Eventually, it was decided that a sabotage would work best. A direct, large-scale assault would be near suicidal, as the Disruptor had near-impenetrable shields, thousands of turbolasers and ion cannons, and a constant escort of two dozen Trade Federation Battleships. A single Jedi, however, might be able to sneak aboard, discover a weakness, and exploit it. Obi-Wan was chosen for the mission, after much debate as to whether his former Padawan's situation would distract him. Finally, Yoda had spoken up in his favor, and so respected was the Jedi Master, that soon after, the council voted unanimously in support of Obi-Wan.

So here he was, one man, attempting to destroy an eight kilometer long ship, with little or no outside help, with nothing more than a lightsabre.

But, he had the Force, which gave him better than even odds.

He got up from his bed, and headed toward the starfighter bay. It was time to go.

*     *     *

Obi-Wan lifted his Delta-Seven, the ship of choice for most Jedi, of the ground and out of the starfighter bay. It was a highly versatile ship, agile and maneuverable, yet well armed and defended; much like the Jedi themselves.

Of course, this made the fighter instantly recognizable, meaning Obi-Wan would be identified immediately if he showed up in one. No, he would have to steal another ship, and pose as a shuttle pilot of some kind. The only problem was that he had no idea where, in fact, the Disruptor was. They would only have that kind of information at a Separatist base. Which meant going back to the only Separatist base he knew of: Geonosis.

He shuddered, thinking of his one and only visit to the barren, rocky planet. It hadn't been under the best of circumstances.

Thankfully, the Delta-Seven had finally been outfitted with lightspeed capacities, so the hyperspace ring, which had fit around the wedge-shaped ship, was no longer necessary. The change had been prompted by several Jedi having their ring stolen, while it orbited around the planet, awaiting pickup.

With his course already programmed in, Obi-Wan cleared Coruscant's gravity well, and engaged the hyperdrive. The stars extended into lines, before disappearing completely as the sky changed to that of hyperspace, a swirling blue mass.

From Coruscant to Geonosis was a three-day trip, which was a bit too long to sit in a cockpit comfortably. Thus, Obi-Wan went into a Jedi hibernation state, with instructions for his R4 unit to wake him if anything seemed amiss.

He settled into a comfortable position, and sank into a trance.

Three days later, exactly on schedule, R4's pinging awakened him.

Obi-Wan looked around, still groggy from the hibernation. He couldn't exactly remember where he was going, or for that matter, why he was going anywhere in the first place. Why had R4 disrupted his sleep?

Disrupted…disrupted…and why does that sound familiar?

"Disruptor!" he called out to no one in particular. He was on a mission to destroy the Disruptor. Abruptly, all his memories came back, and he realized where he was. Hyperspace, en route to Geonosis. Speaking of which…

"R4, prepare to enter realspace."

The timer on his display counted down to zero, and he pulled the hyperspace lever. Suddenly, instead of a mottled blue, there was the black of space, and the red of Geonosis.

Memories assaulted him: the battle against Jango Fett in the dense asteroid field, his near-execution in the arena, and the disastrous duel with Count Dooku, all intermixed with the deaths of his fellow Jedi. At the time, he had said that he'd never be coming back to the planet, yet here he was, barely three years later, returning for a second time.

He shook his head, clearing all thoughts from his mind, and focused on the mission. The planet was, of course, heavily guarded, with Trade Federation Battleships covering every sector of space around the planet. Every sector, Obi-Wan realized, except for the asteroid field.

Sighing, he set a course for least dense section of the planet's ring he could find, and wondered, for seemingly the hundredth time, Why me?

It actually wasn't as bad as he'd feared. He managed to avoid all of the larger rocks, weaving and dancing his craft around them. Some smaller ones struck harmlessly against the shield, and one snuck through to damage the landing strut, but nothing major.

He was just about to breath a sigh of relief, when two laser blasts shot above him, knocking out his shields.

"Get those shields back up, R4!" he yelled, while throwing his ship into the best evasive maneuvers he could manage without hitting an asteroid.

"This is why I hate space travel," he muttered to himself, all the while biting back a curse. It was obvious, in retrospect. The Separatists weren't willing to rely on the deadly asteroid alone as protection. Anyone who made it through the ring would be faced with an array of asteroid-mounted turbolasers.

He grimaced. He hadn't been damaged, but the Separatists had undoubtedly been alerted to his presence, which meant he could very well be walking into a trap. He would be sure to send no transmissions, so they couldn't find his exact position, but he still felt uneasy. He hoped he wouldn't be requiring another rescue attempt.

As he headed down into the Geonosian atmosphere for just the second time in his life, Obi-Wan was struck with an unpleasant thought: This time, none of the Jedi knew he was here.

He pushed all thoughts from his head, trying to clear his mind. He had to concentrate. The trick was setting down as close as possible to the foundries without coming within sensor range. Unless…

A thought had occurred to him. He could quite easily manipulate humans, though he was never at ease when doing so. He wondered if the same skill would apply to droids.

He reached out with the Force, trying to sense the machines as they worked. He couldn't exactly sense the droids themselves, but he could sense the impressions they made on the Force.

From there, it was a simple matter of finding which droids where in charge of the sensor stations, then modifying their memory systems so that they would conveniently forget that there was a starship swooping down upon them. A slight bit of pressure, applied to certain circuits…

"There," he whispered, triumphantly. He could now land practically anywhere, so long as it wasn't within visual range of the base. He picked a suitable landing spot, a small ledge about halfway up a cliff, facing away from the foundries, and began his descent.

He made the landing without incident, although the damaged landing strut gave the ship a disconcerting tilt to the left. He popped the canopy, and looked at the task ahead of him.

It was a good 100 meters to the top of the rock face, but the numerous cracks and handholds made the climb possible, though difficult. Clearing his mind, Obi-Wan reached out with the Force, and leapt.

Even with a Jedi-enhanced jump, he only made it halfway up the cliff. At the top of his arc, he grabbed at the nearest set of handholds, and latched on. Finally, after several minutes of half-climbing, half-levitating, he reached the top, and looked down upon one of the droid foundries of Geonosis.

It was amazing, really, the contrast of the outside of the building, to the inside. Obi-Wan had seen the huge, multi-level factory where the droids were built, and it was about as cold and utilitarian as it gets. All hard edges and corners, it was built to be supremely efficient, much like the droids themselves. Cold, ruthless, and lethally efficient, the droids were programmed killing machines, with no room for anything as frivolous as emotion or creativity.

The outside, on the other hand, was quite literally a work of art. Full of soft curves and smooth edges, it reminded Obi-Wan of the Jedi temple. It was built with the concept, not of form over function, but of form and function. The building looked like a huge cone, with ridges spiraling to a tapered point. It did not seem to have any pattern or shapes that Obi-Wan could detect, but rather, it seemed to flow, as if it were organically grown.

Which, Obi-Wan reminded himself, probably isn't that far from the truth.

He shook his head, pushing the thought from his mind. Right now, he couldn't afford to see the base as either of those things. It was simply a building, a building that he would have to work with if he were to succeed.

And that, Obi-Wan, supposed, was really the problem with the dark side. People deep in the dark side saw things two ways: either as tools; things that could be used to their advantage, or as obstacles; things to be overcome and beaten.

A Jedi, meanwhile, sought harmony and balance, trying to disturb as little as possible. It was better to work with something, rather than getting around it, or simply destroying it.

A dark side-user would have tried to overpower the base, and that would have been his undoing.

Now, he made his way down to the facility, trying to avoid being seen. There were droids patrolling the area, but their intervals were so regular, their movements so predictable, that Obi-Wan had no trouble getting around them.

Finally, he reached the sloped wall of the base itself. He looked around, and saw that he had miscalculated, perhaps fatally so. As he had worked his way to the building, he hadn't noticed the sun gradually lowering towards the horizon. He'd thought he had a sufficient amount of time to reach the base before dusk, but Geonosis' rotation, obviously, was faster than he'd expected.

Now, with the darkness growing around him, he had very few options in front of him.

All along, his plan had been to climb up the wall of the base, until he reached an uninhabited point. From there, he could cut a makeshift door and gain access to the building before anyone knew he was there. His own robes would camouflage well enough with the brown walls of the factory, but the glow of his lightsabre, especially with dusk fast approaching, would stand out like a tauntaun on Tatooine.

He stood there, for a moment, at a loss as to what to do, staring at the wall in front of him. The very organic looking wall…

Working quickly, he pulled out his lightsabre. Looking around, he leapt up, about twenty feet into the air, and latched onto the wall. From there, he climbed another fifteen before he sensed that there were no droids on the other side of the wall. He activated the energy blade, and set to work.

It was quite simple, and Obi-Wan marveled that he hadn't seen it before. The Geonosians were quite obviously an insect-like species, that much was clear. What Obi-Wan hadn't realized was that the reason the outside of the base contrasted so much with the inside was that it wasn't built to be a base. It was built to be a hive. And a defining characteristic of many hives was their primary organic makeup.

Obi-Wan smiled, thinking of his mock-duel with Anakin. When the training blade had passed through his body, harm had only come to the skin tissue. At the time, he had not had any time to wonder what caused the blade to make such a strange effect, but for now, the fact that it did was sufficient for his purposes. For if the base was at least partially alive, the walls would surely be some kind of skin. And a training lightsabre only has one-tenth the glow of a regular one. Anakin, you genius.

He carefully brought his blade in, an experimental cut. Sure enough, the material made a soft hissing sound and began to blister. Digging the blade deeper in, the wall began to shrivel up, forming a small hole the size of his fist. Finally, after several excruciatingly slow minutes of waiting for the hole to widen, it was finally big enough. He crawled though, and landed in a crouch on the floor of a softly lit hallway.

He was in.

Obi-Wan looked around, trying to gauge his surroundings. He saw that it was not so much a hallway that he had landed in, but a tunnel. It was round in shape, with a diameter of about one meter. It was not pitch dark, but the only light seemed to be coming from far down the shaft. There were no glowpanels, no droid tracks, or for that matter, anything that indicated the Separatists had ever been in here. Probably deemed to small to be of any use.

The tunnel had a definite slope to it, with the path to his right leading downwards. After thinking for a moment, he decided to head the opposite direction, up to the left. After all, the command center was likely to be at the top, and what little light there was seemed to originate from that direction.

As he walked, he ran his hand along the wall, trying to find any other tunnels that might branch off. The material was definitely different from the outer wall, though only slightly, confirming his guess about the nature of the building, and the 'skin.'

After walking for what seemed to be an interminable amount of time, Obi-Wan stumbled to a stop, discouraged. Had he really seen light ahead, or was it just his imagination? He sighed. Nothing to do but keep walking, he told himself. He'd come too far to turn back now.

Finally, after a few more minutes of walking through the dark tunnel, the monotony was getting to him. He was about to just stop and turn around, when the light changed from that of a diffuse glow, to a small pinprick, far ahead.

Triumphantly, Obi-Wan quickened his pace. The light had been coming from that direction, after all. The pinprick grew with each step, until it got large enough for Obi-Wan to see what it was: A large, hexagonal door, with a glowpanel installed on the inside of it.

Obi-Wan reached out with the Force, and, sensing no droids on the other side, reached out and touched a button on the door's control panel.

As the door slid open, he carefully eased himself into the hallway. While there weren't any droids, they probably had security cams. Immediately, he saw that he had been correct. There was a cam, and it was swiveling right towards him.

He leapt back into the tunnel, and with the wave of his hand, shut the door just in time. He sat there for a moment, sure that he had been caught. When no alarm sounded, he allowed himself to relax, and let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding.

Obi-Wan frowned. He hadn't been spotted, but now there was the pesky manner of getting past the cams.

As he sat there in the dark, inspiration struck. He reached out with the Force, and, manipulating the circuits, did some fast reprogramming on the cam.

He got up, and opened the door for the second time. He stepped out, and although the cam was pointed straight at him, no alarm sounded. Obi-Wan smiled. After all, the droids monitoring it see nothing but an empty hallway.

He had modified the cam, setting it to loop, while playing an archived tape of an empty hallway. Of course, as soon as they noticed that no droid patrols were coming through, they would immediately spot the deception. But Obi-Wan expected to be out of the base long before that occurred.

He wandered down the corridor, reprogramming cameras as he came to them. Eventually, he came to a computer console.

He looked down at the screen, mentally crossing his fingers. If access to the computer was locked, he would need a password to get through. However, if someone had been careless enough to simply shut down the unit, rather than logging off…

He was in luck. As the unit booted up, instead of a password prompt, he saw an inquiry screen with a flashing cursor.

Obi-Wan grimaced. He wished he had brought along Senator Amidala's R2 unit, or at least some good code-slicing programs. As it was, he didn't know if he could sift through all the garbage, and find what he was looking for.

Shrugging, he typed in the word 'disruptor,' not knowing what else to do. He was not surprised to find out it was classified.

After several more attempts, he still couldn't get the computer to give him any useful information. Finally, he simply called up a map of the building, hoping he could find out what he needed in the command center. Imprinting the layout in his memory, he set off.

Finally, he reached the command center, distinctly aware that what he was trying to do was near-impossible.

At a security cam three levels down from the center, he had stopped to make a recording. While still broadcasting a playback loop of an empty hallway, he had taped a shot of him running down the hallway, lightsabre extended. Now, standing outside the command center, he reached out to the cam he had used, and set it to play back his recording.

It only took a second for the alarms to start blaring. "Intruder alert! Intruder alert! All droids to D deck!"

Obi-Wan lifted his hand symbolically, and used the Force to levitate himself up against the ceiling.

A moment later, just as he'd predicted, the droids that had been manning the command center came rushing out. A few glanced up and saw Obi-Wan, but he was able to suppress their curiosity easily enough. Finally, when he was sure they were all gone, he lowered himself gently to the floor.

He walked into the command center, and stood in awe for a moment at the huge array of consoles, blinking lights, and banks of machinery.

Picking a computer, he settled down, and with a certain degree of satisfaction, saw that it was still logged in. The droids were good at following orders, but not much else. Therefore, they wouldn't have thought to log off the computers when they left, unless told specifically to do so. This left Obi-Wan with access to huge array of Separatist secrets at his fingertips. At the moment, however, he was only interested in one.

It took a few minutes for the computer to access the information, but finally, Obi-Wan knew where the Disruptor was being built. He shivered, and an icy feeling of dread spread down his stomach.

He was going to Hoth.

----- Author's Notes -----

Okay, first of all, I'm sorry that this wasn't a Boba chapter, as I had said it would be, but the next one will be, so don't worry.

Second, let me explain the whole Disruptor/Death Star thing. When I first started the story, I thought that Obi-Wan would go on a mission to sabotage the Death Star. In fact, in chapter three, I first had Anakin and Obi-Wan discussing the DS, but that's been edited out. Anyway, I like Obi-Wan so much, that I wanted his mission to succeed. And, as we all know, any mission against the Death Star would be pre-doomed to failure, as it shows up in the OT.

Then, I was on the Star Wars message boards, when I saw a topic called "What are your superweapons." It was while reading that thread that the idea of the Disruptor occurred to me.

Finally, I decided to put the Disruptor in, and use it as a sort of distraction masterminded by Sidious. The Jedi could focus on the Disruptor, while he made his real superweapon on the side. This way, Obi-Wan would be allowed to succeed (which we knew would happen the moment I mentioned the Disruptor, since it doesn't show up in the OT), and yet, the Death Star could live on. Hope that clears things up.

Finally, to Jeffrey, I'm sorry I had to kill Jar Jar, but we all knew it was going to happen sometime. After all, he isn't in Episode 4, 5, or 6.