More story for you! Thank you to all my reviewers (again)!
However, I seem to be in a bit of a dilemma. I've come up with two different endings for this fic--one of which really isn't an ending at all, rather the beginning of a connected story--but I want to know what you want. Majority rules, and you can let me know via review or my email here: adi @ death-star . com (carefully spaced to prevent any spammers or the like). Should I post the ending as a look from Obi-Wan's perspective as we carry into ANH and ultimately his death, or should I post my AU ending? Please let me know, because indecisiveness is a terrible, terrible thing--like what to wear today. :P
***
He had been searching. Searching for so long without a trace, without the slightest bit of a trail revealed. But he knew Kenobi lived. Every spare day Darth Vader had, he spent in some way or another searching for the elusive Master.
Because while Kenobi lived, the Jedi lived.
It puzzled him to no end. Despite the friction between them, he had known his Master well. Perhaps not his dreams or lifelong goals, but he had become very familiar with Kenobi's patterns of behavior, at least.
So why did those habits now disappear? Just like they had at their last duel…
He banned the memory from his mind, for now. It angered him too much, and he had to concentrate.
The mercenaries couldn't find him. The Emperor's Hands couldn't find him.
Darth Vader himself couldn't find him.
The trail had gone cold, Kenobi's signature wiped from the starlanes. Vader had thought he had felt a wisp of something just after he had killed the sensitive young Twi'lek along with the rest of the pirate band, but the feeling vanished as soon as he pursued it.
For all Vader knew, Kenobi was a living ghost, drifting through space and time to appear and fade away as he pleased, taunting the Sith lord, revealing his limits.
He was jealous. He still is, thought Vader. He was the Chosen One, and Kenobi wanted the power for himself. It was the only solution Vader could come up with. Either that, or the Force was hiding him.
But Vader wouldn't settle with the latter. If the Force was hiding Kenobi, the Force was with Kenobi. Which meant the Force was not with Vader, a concept that seemed impossible to him. He was the Chosen One. Of course the Force would be with him.
He considered grappling with the concept. It might have made sense, in another time, another place…
Another world.
Perhaps if the Force was with Kenobi, it would protect the Master long enough for Kenobi to come to Vader. That sounded exactly like something the old fool would do, if he was given enough cover to make him falsely confident. And if Kenobi came to Vader, the Force would then be with Vader, so perhaps the Force would indirectly be with the Sith lord all along?
If Kenobi envied him, then he would reveal himself someday. Vader had only to settle in and wait. He would wait. His patience was that of a predator, hungered but knowing the flesh was on its way.
…He would wait.
***
The sky above was the bluest of blue. It might have reflected his eyes; his eyes might have reflected it. Thick, lush grass grew underfoot, unclipped and wild like the flowers lining the side of the shore. Reeds changed to red mud changed to a fine sand, and the water stretched to the horizon, meeting the sky in an almost indistinguishable line.
He smiled. I am dreaming.
"A little more than that."
He turned to meet the familiar voice, and a pair of equally blue eyes met his.
Not only that; they were exactly the same. Obi-Wan stood before himself, his younger self from a time lost in all but memory. The long Padawan braid hung from behind his ear; Obi-Wan supposed this younger version to be a senior Padawan, judging by the length. Perhaps a couple of years over twenty.
"What is this?" he asked the younger one, whom he guessed to be a vision. "What exactly are you supposed to be?"
The Padawan smiled. Obi-Wan knew that whatever force there was behind those blue eyes had known he was going to ask that. "I am you, and more than you. I am what might have been, and what you might have seen before you, but was never meant to be."
He mentally sighed at the conundrum. Just for once, could I get a straight answer? "Why do you refer to fate?"
"Because it has taken hold of both you and Anakin Skywalker. He has an important part to play."
He would not let this Padawan apparition distort his perception of the harsh reality. "Anakin Skywalker is dead."
"How can you be sure of anything?"
Obi-Wan found himself agreeing with the vision. It was impossible to second-guess the Force…if that was what was behind all this. "You are telling me that Anakin was meant to become Darth Vader. That is a speculation that I find difficult to embrace."
The Padawan before him merely smiled, an expression utterly filled with a mixture of sympathy and peace. "I won't try to force any belief on you. Because then you would not be truly believing. You are only asked to listen, and keep your mind open."
Obi-Wan did not find him reassuring, and wondered how much annoyance he had really caused Master Qui-Gon during his training. "But did Fate force Anakin to decide to turn his back on all he had believed in? On the Jedi Order?" He felt a fresh onset of pain. "On me?" He stared at what he had once been, and continued: "Or do you imply that our decisions themselves continually alter Fate, that it strives to come up with the best possible solution with what we give it?"
He had never before seen a more earnest expression. "We think you know what needs to be done."
Obi-Wan's lips parted in sheer incredulity at both the Padawan's words and his sudden dissipation. Within a few seconds the vision had scattered and blown away with the wind.
We think you know what needs to be done.
We? He wondered what the Padawan apparition had meant by "we". The collective dead, perhaps?
And why did "they" choose to appear as me in my Padawan years? Is there something I should be looking for that I had in my youth?
Obi-Wan sighed, dropping his speculations for now, and wandered down to the beach. The air smelled clean of the briny scent that often hung near the ocean. While he found that pleasant, the idea of clean drinking water appealed to him more now that he had spent an entire decade on Tatooine.
He pulled his boots and stockings off and let his bare feet cool in the lake's water. It was refreshingly cold, sending a shiver up his legs. He waded in until the water lapped at his kneecaps, and scooped some into his hands.
It poured down his throat; he could feel it going all the way down to his stomach. The water was pure and sweet. He sank to a kneeling position and bent over, drinking straight from the water, closing his eyes, but no matter how much he drank, he was still raging with thirst, his face hot.
Then he suddenly felt as if the world had turned underneath him. Water drizzled into his mouth steadily. Confused and disoriented, he opened his eyes, feeling pressure on his back.
He was lying down. He was awake, back in his hermitage.
Someone was pouring water down his throat.
Obi-Wan inhaled at the implications of this and began coughing, trying to sit up.
Whoever it was began jabbering at him to calm down, calm down, it was just a bad dream…
Obi-Wan shook his head and blinked a few times, and then looked into the glowing yellow eyes under the hood and recognized the Jawa standing beside him, holding his half-empty waterbottle. "K-Korhi? No, it was a good dream, you only surprised me…" What really surprised him now was that he recognized Korhi in particular even after five years, and what with all Jawas looking relatively the same…Perhaps it was the metallic cybernetic limb protruding from one of Korhi's sleeves.
He saw the light cast from the windows; it was late evening, less than half an hour before the first sun set. I've been unconscious for quite a while.
Korhi shrugged, a distinctly human gesture he must have picked up in his tradings, and held up a metal cylinder, telling Obi-Wan he brought it in payment, and that it could power this house for at least a year…
Obi-Wan shook his head. "You don't owe me anything."
Korhi actually swore at him, and shoved the power cell onto Obi-Wan's lap, rattling off a stream of complaints, that humans were sometimes such lousy bargainers, wondering when would he ever learn…
"All right, all right, if that's how you feel about it." Obi-Wan shook his head and inspected the cell, more to quiet the Jawa than of his own curiousity.
Korhi, not about to be silenced, began describing the difficulties he had had in acquiring such a cell, that he hadn't been able to come across a functional one for these five years in all his scavengings, and had finally found one at an abandoned farmhouse. He had, in fact, found two of them, and would Ben be interested in trading the second one for the small droid that was lying by the door?
The droid. Obi-Wan had forgotten about it. "There's a tracer on the power switch, and this particular droid is being looked for by Jabba the Hutt."
The Jawa chortled, and said he could easily tackle a simple power tracer.
"Very well, we have a deal. Although I seem to be getting the better end of it."
"Hikig," said Korhi, sounding excited, and almost tossed the second power cell onto his lap. "Ukara morak!"
"Yes. Thank you for reviving me." Obi-Wan only now realized his head was still throbbing a bit. "And farewell," he added as Korhi disappeared out his door.
Well. I never thought I'd be seeing him again. He winced and lowered himself back onto his bed, setting the power cells on the floor. Tipping the waterbottle upside down, he swallowed the last mouthfuls of water and cast it onto the floor as well, letting his mind wander.
Perhaps that's what they wished me to see. Whoever they are. Did they arrange for Korhi to come just now, to tell me he had not forgotten?…But then, such a memory isn't always a good thing. Especially if it's Darth Vader that holds to a memory.
But I will not forget Anakin Skywalker. Particularly not the part of him in Luke…
***
Tatooine's climate, though uncomfortable to many foreigners, was ideal for stargazing. The night sky was pitch-black as Luke trained the pair of macrobinoculars on one of the smaller constellations. He had a fascination with the heavens that most of his friends didn't understand.
Biggs did, of course. But right now his thoughts were occupied with something else as he crept up to his friend. "Luke. Do you see it?"
Luke was startled back down to earth. "What? See what?"
Biggs rolled his eyes, the effect accentuated by the soft moonlight that lit up the whites of his eyes strangely. "The rat. Where's the womp rat?"
"Oh. Right." Luke began to focus back in on the trench. "It's been grubbing around down there for the past ten minutes—oh."
"Oh what?"
"It's gone."
"Luuuuuke…"
"I'm sorry," Luke protested.
Biggs rolled his eyes again. "You said you'd keep an eye on it."
"I did! I mean…I was…oh, come on. We can find another one."
Biggs hefted the rifle that he had been toting. "We'd better. I want to get another one, and you said you'd help."
"Yeah, well, maybe we'll look for two of 'em, so I can shoot one too."
The boys looked into the trench in silence for a moment.
"How long is it gonna take, for us to find another two?" wondered Luke.
Biggs shook his head. "You'd better hope it's not gonna be long. Your uncle might realize you snuck out, then we're both gonna be in real deep—"
"What was that?" said Luke suddenly, cutting off his friend.
Biggs was annoyed; he had wanted to use the interesting word he had picked up off the street the other day. "What was what?"
"There was a noise. Down there." Luke trained his macrobinoculars on the trench floor. "It was kinda like a rustling."
"Maybe it was the womp rat." Biggs made a successful grab for the binoculars.
"Hey!" Luke complained. "I was looking!"
"Not anymore." Biggs squinted through the lenses. "I think I see something."
Luke tried to see down into the canyon himself. "Yeah, there's something moving. That dark blob there."
"There's lots of dark blobs."
"No, that one. Almost looks like…"
"It's a Jawa. Wonder what he's doing out here all by himself. Maybe he's hurt?" Biggs zoomed in. "Nope. He looks okay."
Luke snatched the binoculars back with a few protests from Biggs. "Lemme see. He's got something in his hand." A glint of moonlight gave away the object. "It's something metal."
"What is it?" asked Biggs, a little too loudly.
***
Korhi was still chattering away, softly complaining to himself about the conditions of bartering these days. Jawas generally traveled this way when they were alone or in a small group, for safety reasons, because the Tuskens didn't frequent this area; they only came once or twice a year to give sacrifices. Korhi had heard stories about this place. The Sand People believed it to be haunted by a ghost that had slaughtered an entire village in one night, leaving strange burn marks everywhere. They sacrificed some of their victims to appease the ghost every now and then, but other than those times they stayed clear of the area.
Korhi didn't believe in such nonsense, though. Some of his clan members who had seen the burn marks said they looked awfully like a laser beam had cut through the Tuskens, as the slashes had been precise and cauterized. Korhi's father, Kiniuk, said a long time ago he had given directions to a young human that carried one of those Jedi laser swords (Korhi was bent on dissecting one someday; the things sounded so very fascinating). The young man had wanted to know if Kiniuk had seen any Tuskens go by with prisoners, and Kiniuk had directed him accordingly. Korhi supposed it might have indirectly been his father's fault that the camp of Tuskens had died, but he didn't pity the slain desert savages. They were not so much to be pitied as to be feared.
Which was why he traveled with one hand constantly resting on the butt of his little blaster, the other hand holding the droid, chattering to himself in a hushed voice. But he stopped talking, stopped moving when he heard the faintest of sounds.
He drew his tiny blaster and swirled around, peering up to the top of the canyon. The noise had come from up there, he was sure.
***
Luke gasped and ducked behind a rock, pulling Biggs with him. "Shh. He's looking."
"Are you sure?"
"He turned around."
Biggs let slip a little giggle.
"Quiet," said Luke. "He's got a blaster or something."
"Really?" Biggs sobered somewhat. "Is he going to shoot?"
"How should I know? I'm not going to look again yet."
"What if he comes up and shoots us for the binoculars?"
"Don't be silly," Luke scoffed. "Jawas are nicer than that."
"How do you know?" Biggs baited. "Maybe they just act nice when they deal with people, but inside they're really thinking how they'll come into your house when you're asleep and kill you and walk out with all your droids and stuff…"
"Shut up," scowled Luke, a bit nervously. "It was your big mouth that made him turn around in the first place. If he's gonna shoot anyone, it's gonna be you."
Biggs grinned. "I was just kidding. Don't worry, I'm not gonna tell anyone that you got scared…"
"I'm not scared."
"…though I bet Deak and Fixer would really like to hear all about it."
"Shut up, I'm not scared." Luke glared at Biggs.
"Prove it."
"How?"
"Take another look." Biggs was still grinning. "Maybe the Jawa's still looking."
"Fine," said Luke. "I'm not scared. I'll take another look. And if he does shoot," Luke added, "I bet it'll hit you."
"Go on," said Biggs. "I'm waiting."
Scowling, Luke took up the macrobinoculars and crept up to the edge, holding them up to his eyes while Biggs looked on in sudden dead seriousness.
Luke's elbow slipped, and hit a loose rock. "Uh-oh."
***
Korhi whirled around again as the sound of a falling rock reached his ears. He heard the clack-clack of the stone bumping down the side of the trench, then everything was still except for the small cloud of disturbed dust that disintegrated into the night air, spiraling off with the light breeze. He kept his shooting arm up, tense and alert to any movement, shifting his head from side to side…
He saw something in the corner of his right eye and fired.
***
The boys screeched simultaneously as the blaster bolt singed past them out into the sky, and scrabbled back to cover as another shot followed.
"You lost," Biggs gasped.
"Huh?"
"Your bet. You bet he was gonna hit me. Well, he didn't."
"But I didn't put anything on it. And," Luke proclaimed triumphantly, "you were scareder than I was."
"Was not."
"Yeah, you were. You screamed."
"You screamed, too."
"Well, you screamed louder. That makes you scareder." Luke grinned.
Biggs scowled deeply. "Does not."
Luke started laughing helplessly. Biggs suddenly joined him as the two wondered what it would've felt like to get shot.
***
Korhi holstered his blaster disgustedly down in the ravine as a loud scream reached him, followed by the sound of laughter. Probably just a couple of those farm kids. It was a good thing he hadn't been shooting to kill.
***
His tears made muddy streaks down his dusty face. Luke flicked them away with his fingers and gave one last giggle as Biggs struggled to sit up.
"That," snorted Biggs, "was really stupid."
"I couldn't help it. I knocked the rock down on accident." Luke grinned. "You still wanna shoot some womp rats?"
"Yup." Biggs slung the blast rifle across his shoulders by its strap. "Let's climb down there and see if there's anything."
"There won't be. The Jawa scared everything away."
"It wasn't the Jawa, it was your stupid rock."
"The Jawa was there before I even knocked it over."
Biggs shrugged. "Maybe there's still something down there anyway. C'mon. I'm going to check it out."
One part of the cliff sloped somewhat, the rock face giving the boys plenty of handholds as they climbed down. Biggs reached the bottom first and squinted into the shadowed areas. The moons gave the trench an eerie blue color.
Luke jumped the last few feet and brushed the dust from his tunic. "I don't see anything."
"You never looked." Biggs held the rifle ready and meandered down the trench.
"Wait for me," called Luke, breaking into a jog to catch up to his friend. They walked together around the bend that curved the ravine sharply to the left.
Suddenly the cliffs on either side of them fell away to a flatter landscape, the dunes rising farther away. The boys stopped and looked at the view silently.
Before them was a beaten-down circle of weathered cloth, wooden rods, and a few dented metal objects. Biggs began walking toward it, curious, but Luke suddenly reached out and grabbed his sleeve.
"Hey." Biggs wrested his sleeve from Luke's hand. "I want to take a look."
Luke's eyes were round, shining in the moonlight. "I don't like this place," he whispered, half to himself.
"Aw, come on. There's nothing here 'cept for a few junked-up pots." Biggs approached the camp wreckage and kicked one of the metal pots, scored from years of sandstorms.
Luke came cautiously closer. There was something about this place that made him feel afraid, as if he was being hunted by something. He gasped suddenly and cringed, flinching from his brief vision.
Biggs looked at him strangely. "What's the matter?"
Luke turned around and around, looking fearfully at the sandblasted items. "I thought I saw a blue light."
"There's nothing here. You just saw a reflection of the moons or something." Biggs kicked at a circular-cut piece of faded cloth. The edge looked singed all around, as if it had been cut by flame.
Luke found his gaze drawn to the three moons overhead. They were in a line tonight, the first one the largest, and the other two diminishing accordingly in size. They hung in the sky, cold and distant, directly over a tall cliff. He swallowed hard; the whole place gave him a dire feeling he'd never had before. It felt terrifyingly dark, despite the moons' bright glow. "I think I'm going back home."
"But we haven't gotten a womp rat yet."
Luke turned back to look at his friend. "Maybe next time. I don't feel so good."
Biggs sighed. "Okay. I guess I'll go, too." He stumbled over something on his first step and tripped.
Luke came over while he was scrambling up. "Biggs…what's that?"
They stared down at a white-bleached skull that grinned horrifically back up at them.
Biggs gaped at the death's-head. "Maybe you're right. I don't think I like this place, either."
***
It was a dark night. Obi-Wan could feel the lightlessness trying to snare his very soul, creeping through his house and reaching out for him.
So he focused on light, on the light cast from the glowing moons, on the lights installed in his power units—and on the light that resided within himself. Then the darkness diminished in power. Then it had no hold on him.
Finally there was the peace he had sought after for so long; it came to him during the darkest night he had ever known on Tatooine. It came despite the fact that he still didn't know what needed to be done. It came through the swirling malignancy; it was his eye in the hurricane, and he reveled in it.
Let tomorrow's burdens come with tomorrow. Tonight I forget. Tonight I will just be who I am, and nothing more.
There is a certain beauty to the desert, if one but takes the time to look for it.
Beauty lay directly outside his window, right out his door. He had but to glance out, and it waited for him. It was the only way he could define the spirit of the desert: savage grace. He rose from his cross-legged position on his bed, glad that he could still do it without the aid of the Force or his hands, and stepped quietly outside.
The moons cast a clear shadow at his back. He heard a voice rise out of the wilderness, and followed it, followed the path that his steps took him. Perhaps he was a crazy old hermit wandering aimlessly, perhaps he was out here for a reason. He favored the latter idea, and kept going. The cool dry air cleared his mind, and lent a crisp quality to the moonlight. His cloak swept the sand behind him, shifting it over his footprints.
His trail led him to the towering hoodoos, massive pillars of eroded rock that spread out at the top to form small plateaus, islands in the air supported by a thick column. Here on the hard-packed surface of the saltbeds he made almost no trail at all. He didn't know what his guide was, or if it even existed, but he knew he followed something, if not pure randomness.
Obi-Wan's eyes drifted from the starlight above to the ground before him, and he realized his feet were tracing a different set of tracks. Wide-spread tracks, made from the impact of a huge body on large clawed feet. He stopped to inspect one that stood out sharply in the moonlight. On the extended toes he could make out the patterning of scales. It had been a huge reptile of some sort. He didn't finish the line of thought, however, and kept going, coming toward a looming cliff with many enormous crevices and ravines furrowing into it.
An animal cry pierced the night stillness, made from a voice that carried a predatorial menace. He stopped in his tracks and considered the sound. It had been almost identical to the one he had learned to use to scare away curious Sand People.
Which meant a krayt dragon was nearby. Oddly enough, the fact didn't instill any fear in him; tonight he was beyond fear, perhaps dangerously so. Instead, a burning curiousity filled him. He wanted to see what a krayt dragon looked like. Oh, yes, he had seen a holo or two that Cliegg had shown him years ago, but holos always paled in comparison to reality, and now reality presented itself. He knew, deep inside, that he likely wasn't thinking straight, but the thought itself was irrelevant to him now. He wanted to see this krayt dragon, no matter how big or dangerous the creature might be.
Maybe he was going crazy, after all.
Obi-Wan reached out with his senses a bit to determine exactly where this dragon was. Another roaring scream ripped through the air, and he focused on one cavern in particular, and thought he saw a glint of scales. He walked closer.
An immense head swung out of the shadows, its yellow-brown scales gleaming like a precious metal, green eyes roving restlessly. The dragon let out a snort through its slitted nostrils.
He stared in fascination, rooted to the spot. The beast's head was two, maybe three times as big as he was, and the fangs extended to the length of his arm. It was said that the dragons carried valuable pearls somewhere within them. One of these pearls would be enough to buy a spaceship and supply a person with everything they needed for an entire year. Many was the legend pertaining to krayt dragons, and with one glance at the creature, he could see a truth in every one.
The cavernous mouth opened and the dragon lent a deafening bellow that echoed far away, likely frightening the wits out of any Tusken Raiders that were within a five-kilometer radius.
The Jedi Master stood stock-still, reaching out to sense the mind of this gargantuan reptile. He found a surprising amount of intelligence underneath the overwhelming current of predatorial instinct that drove the beast.
The krayt dragon took a few lumbering paces out of the cavern, and Obi-Wan saw a large extent of its body. He supposed he might have called it compact if the dragon had been a few times smaller; its midsection wasn't very elongated, but thick and muscular. The tail began as wide as the stomach and tapered off to a thorny point. Spikes stood out all along the dragon's spine. Then Obi-Wan felt his first misgivings as the dragon took another few paces in his direction.
The krayt dragon sensed something was amiss, but since it hunted by detecting motion, and the nearest living organism was not moving a muscle, it couldn't discern what was the problem, and became agitated, its tail thrashing from side to side.
Obi-Wan reached out soothingly and quieted the creature's mind. The dragon calmed down and snuffled inquisitively, coming even closer. Now the two were almost face-to-face, Obi-Wan getting a much closer inspection than he had hoped for. He found himself looking at the dragon's incredible teeth, how thick and long and sharp they were…
The krayt dragon raised its head a bit and Obi-Wan saw directly into its mouth. It inhaled in a rush of air and he closed his eyes instinctively as the dragon moaned right in his face, a vile wave of reptile breath washing over him. He resisted a grimace and opened his eyes again.
The dragon, head turned to a profile, was staring right back at him through one malachite eye. The fine hair on Obi-Wan's back raised as he looked into the deep pupil, awestruck at the shimmering beauty of its eye.
Snorting again, the dragon blinked, a transparent film sliding over its eye and back, and turned around to tread back to the cavern.
Obi-Wan began sweating despite the coolness of the night as he realized just how close his encounter with nature had been, and knew he would never forget his insane venture. Even more; he would treasure the memory. After all, he knew something like this would remain vivid no matter how many years passed.
It had been the strangest night of all, and curiously satisfying, as it were.
***
His meditation chamber in the Palace was dark, the dim lighting providing Darth Vader with his ideal atmosphere for focusing. He was deep in already, probing the nearby area for anything interesting, when he suddenly received a call from his master via the Force to come to the throne room.
Jolted out of his meditation, he stood and exited the chamber, sweeping past suddenly wide-awake guards on his way out. Vader rarely asked for an escort; he found that the mere sight of his imposing figure was enough to make any passers-by think he was carrying out a task of great importance. To them, Darth Vader was a dark masked terror that waited for anyone to err. He enjoyed the thought of his suit and mask taking on such a character, hiding and guarding the damaged and vulnerable body of Anakin Skywalker underneath. The body was almost comparable to a corpse; its primary, if not sole function was to encase the brain that carried out Darth Vader's every whim, the brain that carried Darth Vader himself. Vader did not exist in the heart, in the soul of Anakin Skywalker, simply because he could not. Every day, Vader sought to weaken Skywalker, to make the strength in his soul dwindle until it was a mere controllable spark. It could be no less than that; if Anakin died, Vader died with him, and that was a constant driving fear within the Sith lord. He had to both sustain and control Anakin, a difficult task, but one he had to undertake nevertheless.
His black cape swept behind him, leaving a malignant trail potent enough for even the least-gifted sensitive sentient to feel. And so his path took him to the throne room, the forbidding chamber of his master.
The doors opened before him, shrinking back like some frightened live thing. No one was in the throne room except for the Emperor and a man he vaguely recognized. He strode in to stand a meter back from the stairs, waiting for the Emperor to deign to turn and look upon him.
Palpatine's chair swiveled around slowly, and the yellow vulture-like eyes set in his ravaged face focused in on his servant. "Lord Vader. I wished for you to see the plans of the new Imperial battlestation." He waved one claw-like finger, and a massive holograph sprang from a projector at the side of the room.
The spherical station, though simple in outward appearance, was sinister in a way Vader could not quite put his finger on. He watched in silent appreciation as the holograph rotated three hundred sixty degrees, then dissolved into a three-dimensional wireframe blueprint, the only sound in the room coming from his mechanical breathing. After the holograph had rotated another revolution, his gaze dropped to the man standing behind the projector, and finally recognized him as Bevel Lemelisk, though the man seemed far younger than he had the last time Vader had seen him. Even so, Lemelisk still looked slightly eccentric.
"You remember our friend," the Emperor commented, feeling the recognition. "He constructed the plans for this Death Star shortly before the Clone Wars. Lemelisk will be overseeing the construction of the battlestation."
Lemelisk had an odd resigned look to him that Vader seldom saw in anyone the Emperor had direct contact with. Vader realized he was looking at a cloned version, likely the last in a series. No doubt the Emperor had already killed him several times. That would explain the faint flavor of apprehension the man carried with him.
"The Death Star. An appropriate designation," Vader said, half to himself. "Construction is ready to commence, then?"
The Emperor said nothing, allowing Lemelisk to respond.
"We have the materials standing by," he said, nervousness underlying his tone; understandably so. "I only await the command."
"Consider it given," Palpatine said, and watched the Death Star holo rotate once more before waving it off. "It will be the tool to subdue the galaxy to the true authority."
Vader remembered the indentation he had seen; no doubt some sort of superweapon. "What is its firing capacity?"
Lemelisk answered again. "It will possess enough firepower to destroy an entire planet with a single shot, my lord." This time his voice carried an excitement—a pride, rather, thought Vader. Lemelisk was evidently quite aware of his engineering genius; presumably the reason Palpatine had killed him so often. One had to be strict with arrogant subordinates, or they would run free as they pleased.
***
Obi-Wan rose later than usual the next morning because of his late night. He could vividly recall every detail of the magnificent krayt dragon, and almost had a desire to see it again.
No—I must restrict myself to only one fool's errand per decade, he thought wryly.
He could feel his body was ready for his usual morning walk, and so he started off on the trail after downing an entire waterbottle.
The suns were already high in the sky and the heat was rising; he knew he would have to make this walk shorter than usual if he didn't want to collapse from exhaustion again. He suspected next time he would not be so fortunate as to topple over right in his own doorway.
The waves of heat heightened a putrid stench that reached his nostrils; he grimaced but kept walking, wondering what kind of a rotting carcass would produce such a horrific smell.
His answer lay just around the corner of the looming cliffs. The same krayt dragon he had seen the night before lay sprawled out over the rocks, its head smashed and bloodied.
Obi-Wan's eyes widened in horror at the sight. He stepped hesitantly closer to the massive head, and saw some burn marks near the top of the head. Someone had attacked the beast with something akin to a cutting torch. But why? he wondered, circling the huge cadaver, feeling a heavy sorrow.
Then he knew as he came within view of its abdomen, which had been torn open and ravaged. Someone had been after the pearls, and had been willing to risk their lives to attain such riches. They had had no regard to the price that the dragon had had to pay for them.
He walked back to the head, transfixed with grief. It wasn't the blood and ichor strewn around that disturbed him so much as the greedy killing of the majestic creature. The beast's demise was such a striking analogy to the Order, and his own life, thus far. His soul had been killed and pillaged, left to wither. But his spirit had remained strong; it was the only thing keeping his head out of the water.
His hand reached out to touch the dragon's muzzle. The edges of the scales were rough, but their surfaces were smooth and ridged, almost in the manner of fingernails. He stroked one several times, as if in sympathy for the creature, then left, knowing the memory of the night before would always be haunted by the remains of the brutality he had seen.
It seemed that everything he came into contact with was destroyed.