Chapter 4
"We're going to get really sick of fruit and protein bars for dinner," Anakin remarked, poking the slices of melon on his plate.
"Learn to cook," Sabeeth retorted.
"Who's going to teach me? Not you, that's for sure!"
"I survived on Rannok by what I could scavenge," she said. "We can live here the same way, and a lot easier. You can't take two steps on Sylvar without bumping into something edible."
"Unless we're stuck here until winter. Then we'll starve."
"He won't be gone that long. And we can always walk to the village and buy food there. Since he so considerately left the money I gave him."
They both looked at the empty seat. A full day now, and already Obi-Wan's absence was getting to them.
Part of it was the snub ... he'd been summoned alone, most pointedly alone. That bothered Anakin far more than it bothered Sabeeth. She had neither the expectation nor the desire to be involved with the Jedi Council any more than was possible.
"I have a bad feeling about this," he said.
"So do I."
"They know more than they told him."
"I think so too."
"And I can't get past the feeling that he's going to be in trouble."
She jabbed a chunk of melon fiercely. "There's nothing we can do. You're an apprentice and I'm an outcast, and the Council doesn't want to hear from either of us. We couldn't have gone with him."
"No ..." he trailed off, getting a faraway look. His eyes widened but didn't see her, his mouth dropped into an open O of alarm.
"Ani?" It was too much like the way Obi-Wan had looked in the practice yard. She reached over and shook the boy. "Ani, what is it?"
He came out of it and blinked at her. "Sabeeth, I see things sometimes," he began.
"Yes, the visions, I understand. Obi-Wan says it's common."
"I saw something now." The fright in his tone communicated itself to her, overpowering her carefully-constructed barriers as if they didn't exist. For the first time, she grasped an inkling of what the Jedi meant ... how much stronger it was in Anakin than in anyone else she'd met.
"Possibilities," she said, her grip tightening on her spoon because her hands wanted to tremble. "He says they are only possibilities."
"This isn't like the time I saw myself fighting him!" Anakin protested. "This felt real! He's in serious danger. I'm scared."
"There's nothing to be scared of --"
"Sabeeth, stop it! I know you feel it too! Quit denying it! Obi-Wan says we've gotta trust stuff like this!"
She exhaled slowly. "I don't want to feel it, Ani. If I have to sit here and think that something might happen to him, I will lose my mind."
"Then let's act on it and not just sit here!"
"Go after him?"
"Yeah! So we're defying the Council; who cares?"
"But how? This is Sylvar, one of the most out-of-the-way planets in the galaxy! There won't be another courier ship until spring, and I doubt the Council's going to send us one."
"Vance Antilles has a star cruiser."
"Vance Antilles isn't going to give us a ride anywhere. You know how he babies that thing, washing it twice a week and coddling it more than he does his wife."
He leaned across the table, his eyes dark and piercing. "We have to try, Sabeeth. With or without Antilles' help."
"How do you suggest we do that?"
"You're the pirate. Think of something."
"Anakin, are you suggesting we steal the personal star cruiser of a retired fleet admiral?"
"If you can get it, I can fly it."
"Why don't you just use the Force and convince him to give it up?"
"Okay."
She clapped her hands over her face. "Ani ..."
It came to her then, striking her with an effect not unlike being whacked in the back of the head with a plank.
The damaged interior of a transport ... bodies struggling to rise ... Jefin Valtac among them, the pilot cradling a shattered arm against his side ... smoke and screams ... metal peeling apart ... Obi-Wan crumpled in a corner, eyes closed, so still ... so still ... shapes through the smoke ... man- shapes in black armour and crimson capes ... helms designed in snarling gargoyle-faces...
She came out of it with a harsh gasp. "Obi-Wan!"
Anakin nodded. "You saw it. We've got to go, Sabeeth."
"Yes." She shoved her chair back from the table in one hard motion. "Let's go see Admiral Antilles about a ship."
XXX
"This vun is powerful," Darth Tepes said, brushing his fingers across the screen.
The Vigilant, their target, stood out unmistakably against the pale backdrop of Festri's many-banded rings. Conversely, the gas giant's clutter of moons provided the perfect cover for the Strix to creep ever closer.
It wasn't the ship itself that interested him. Or the scenery, spectacular as it was. No, it was what his heightened powers told him was aboard the Vigilant.
"Called you home, did they?" he chuckled. "Little knowink they'd only make my job so much easier. Vun more Jedi..."
Torek Roth approached and bowed sharply. "Do ve attack?"
"Yes. The usual orders apply."
As Roth went off to deliver those orders, Tepes folded his six-fingered hands in an intricate formation and smiled, quite pleased with himself.
The Vigilant had come out of light speed just beyond the outermost planet of the system, and was now cruising at a more sedate speed through the clutter of moons and asteroids on its way toward Coruscant, the fourth world from the sun.
"So predictable," he said. "You, my as-yet-unseen friend, vill be the final factor. How good of you to be so prompt."
"Ve're in position," Roth reported. "Your team is ready."
"Goot." He turned to the five black-armored men waiting nearby, and brought one closed fist to his forehead.
They mimicked the motion, and Tepes nodded approvingly as the psychic cloud that surrounded them intensified until it was nearly visible.
The Strix closed in, just another craft wending its way through the moons, no hint of threat detectable ...
"Their transmission systems vill shut down at your command," Roth said. "They'll have no chance to send a distress signal."
"Do it in the same moment ve begin the assault, Roth. Ve vould not vant the sudden loss of their communications to varn them of their peril."
"Yes, Lord Tepes."
"Fire," Tepes said.
A barrage of energy projectiles burst from the Strix's guns. The Vigilant's defensive shields lit up under the onslaught, the smaller ship slamming side to side from the impacts.
"Again." A second barrage was sufficient to tear the shields away in glimmering threads, leaving the Vigilant utterly exposed.
"Hold," Tepes said. "Single shot, propulsion drive."
One bolt lanced from the Strix's forward laser cannon. An explosion rocked the craft.
"Pick off those droids," he ordered irritably as a trio of squat dome-heads trundled across the hull of the ailing ship.
Three shots did exactly as he wished.
"The Vigilant is at your mercy," Roth said. "Lower bay open; tractor beam engaged. Ve're pullink her in."
Tepes gestured to his five soldiers. They left their post, the spots immediately filled by standard crewmen, and followed him into the bowels of the ship.
XXX
The Vance's Pride decelerated out of light speed smack in the middle of Festri's moons. Sabeeth recoiled as it seemed one barren cratered lunar surface was coming directly at her face.
"Whoa!" Anakin shouted, with far more exuberance than concern. He yanked at the controls. The ship squealed like a wounded animal. The thrust of the sudden turn pressed Sabeeth so far into her plush ultra-leather seat that she thought she was going to come out the other side.
They soared over the cratered horizon with what looked like mere yards to spare, and then a moon that looked like a solid ball of deeply-crevassed ice loomed dead ahead.
"Uh-oh!" Still exuberant, Anakin took them into a dive that caused all the etched-glass and silver-gilt decorations in the passenger compartment to musically detonate.
"You'd better just crash us," Sabeeth said grimly, holding on, "because if we survive and Vance Antilles sees what you've done to his ship, our lives won't be worth a nubbat dropping."
"I haven't done anything that can't be easily fixed --"
As they passed through one of the gas giant's rings, a smallish chunk of ice and rock met the soaring swooped intimate cocktail lounge that rose from the tail section.
"Except that," Anakin finished. "Better seal off that section or we'll lose pressure."
"Already done."
Something struck them with a clang and a small explosion. The lights in the cabin stuttered, then came back steady.
"I see Jefin's ship!" he crowed triumphantly as they punched through the wide flat ring and left a roiling hole in their wake. Ahead of them, the crippled Vigilant was being drawn into the underbelly of a larger craft.
"No!" Sabeeth slammed the heel of her hand on the brushed-velvet console. "Too late!"
"Obi-Wan's aboard, but he's unconscious." Anakin started to say more, then hissed through clenched teeth. "Sabeeth, barriers, now!"
She didn't debate, but instantly stopped her faltering attempt to contact Obi-Wan and pulled her mental cloak close around her thoughts. "What is it?"
"Someone on that ship's trying to sense us, and he's not friendly. I better open fire."
"With the pathetic weaponry on this glorified space-yacht, I'd be better off holding my breath and climbing onto the hull to take a swipe at it with my lightsaber."
Their arrival had been anything but subtle, and now the other ship was coming about to have a look. Sabeeth detected a foul spidery crawling sensation on the surface of her mind.
"Well, if we can't attack, what are we going to do?" Anakin shivered, feeling the same thing. "Sit here and get disintegrated?"
"I'd hope you would take evasive action."
"I'll do better than that ... I'm getting us out of here!"
He sped straight toward Festri's misty surface, a sight that reminded Sabeeth of Cahaldra except that Festri was mostly in shades of orange and brown.
"Are you --" she began.
He went to light speed.
The rest of Sabeeth's sentence turned into a yell as the Vance's Pride plunged into the gas giant.
She had a momentary impression of murky yellow, then the familiar streaked starfield of space, then Anakin slowed down and the stars returned to their normal shapes.
"Woo! Did you see that? Right through the planet! Wow!" Seeing her wrathful glare fall on him, he rushed on. "See, I figured, the only solid part of these kind of planets, if they even have a solid part, is a rocky core down at the center, no bigger than, say, Sylvar. We went in at an angle, not straight, so there was no way we were going to hit that part. And going as fast as we were, the atmosphere's acidity and turbulence couldn't touch us."
"I ought to ..."
"Hey, we made it, didn't we?"
"All right, since you have all this so well under control, what next?"
"We go back."
"Not at light speed! You could have popped us out the other side of that planet and straight into a moon."
"Oh ... I didn't think of that."
She moaned and sank her head into one hand.
"I recognized the ship," he added.
Her head came back up. "What?"
"Not it specifically, but it's a Bram ship. From beyond the White Nebula. We can go straight to Coruscant, tell the Council --"
"No."
"They'll listen! This is an emergency! I picked up some stuff from whoever was on that ship... the Council's in danger! All of the Jedi are in danger! We have to --"
Sabeeth turned her seat and grabbed him by the chin. "Worm slime to the Jedi Council," she said deliberately. "We're going after Obi-Wan."
He stared. "But ... you know he'd tell us not to. He'd tell us that the safety of all those people were more important than just one --"
"You can take the escape pod if you want; it should have enough fuel to get you to Coruscant or at least picked up by another ship."
"You can't fly this --"
"I'll manage."
"You really, really love him," he said in awe.
She averted her eyes. "Send a transmission to the Council, then."
"Can't ... our communicator's down ... might have been when we passed through the atmosphere."
"Then let's go."
Continued In The Next Chapter
"We're going to get really sick of fruit and protein bars for dinner," Anakin remarked, poking the slices of melon on his plate.
"Learn to cook," Sabeeth retorted.
"Who's going to teach me? Not you, that's for sure!"
"I survived on Rannok by what I could scavenge," she said. "We can live here the same way, and a lot easier. You can't take two steps on Sylvar without bumping into something edible."
"Unless we're stuck here until winter. Then we'll starve."
"He won't be gone that long. And we can always walk to the village and buy food there. Since he so considerately left the money I gave him."
They both looked at the empty seat. A full day now, and already Obi-Wan's absence was getting to them.
Part of it was the snub ... he'd been summoned alone, most pointedly alone. That bothered Anakin far more than it bothered Sabeeth. She had neither the expectation nor the desire to be involved with the Jedi Council any more than was possible.
"I have a bad feeling about this," he said.
"So do I."
"They know more than they told him."
"I think so too."
"And I can't get past the feeling that he's going to be in trouble."
She jabbed a chunk of melon fiercely. "There's nothing we can do. You're an apprentice and I'm an outcast, and the Council doesn't want to hear from either of us. We couldn't have gone with him."
"No ..." he trailed off, getting a faraway look. His eyes widened but didn't see her, his mouth dropped into an open O of alarm.
"Ani?" It was too much like the way Obi-Wan had looked in the practice yard. She reached over and shook the boy. "Ani, what is it?"
He came out of it and blinked at her. "Sabeeth, I see things sometimes," he began.
"Yes, the visions, I understand. Obi-Wan says it's common."
"I saw something now." The fright in his tone communicated itself to her, overpowering her carefully-constructed barriers as if they didn't exist. For the first time, she grasped an inkling of what the Jedi meant ... how much stronger it was in Anakin than in anyone else she'd met.
"Possibilities," she said, her grip tightening on her spoon because her hands wanted to tremble. "He says they are only possibilities."
"This isn't like the time I saw myself fighting him!" Anakin protested. "This felt real! He's in serious danger. I'm scared."
"There's nothing to be scared of --"
"Sabeeth, stop it! I know you feel it too! Quit denying it! Obi-Wan says we've gotta trust stuff like this!"
She exhaled slowly. "I don't want to feel it, Ani. If I have to sit here and think that something might happen to him, I will lose my mind."
"Then let's act on it and not just sit here!"
"Go after him?"
"Yeah! So we're defying the Council; who cares?"
"But how? This is Sylvar, one of the most out-of-the-way planets in the galaxy! There won't be another courier ship until spring, and I doubt the Council's going to send us one."
"Vance Antilles has a star cruiser."
"Vance Antilles isn't going to give us a ride anywhere. You know how he babies that thing, washing it twice a week and coddling it more than he does his wife."
He leaned across the table, his eyes dark and piercing. "We have to try, Sabeeth. With or without Antilles' help."
"How do you suggest we do that?"
"You're the pirate. Think of something."
"Anakin, are you suggesting we steal the personal star cruiser of a retired fleet admiral?"
"If you can get it, I can fly it."
"Why don't you just use the Force and convince him to give it up?"
"Okay."
She clapped her hands over her face. "Ani ..."
It came to her then, striking her with an effect not unlike being whacked in the back of the head with a plank.
The damaged interior of a transport ... bodies struggling to rise ... Jefin Valtac among them, the pilot cradling a shattered arm against his side ... smoke and screams ... metal peeling apart ... Obi-Wan crumpled in a corner, eyes closed, so still ... so still ... shapes through the smoke ... man- shapes in black armour and crimson capes ... helms designed in snarling gargoyle-faces...
She came out of it with a harsh gasp. "Obi-Wan!"
Anakin nodded. "You saw it. We've got to go, Sabeeth."
"Yes." She shoved her chair back from the table in one hard motion. "Let's go see Admiral Antilles about a ship."
XXX
"This vun is powerful," Darth Tepes said, brushing his fingers across the screen.
The Vigilant, their target, stood out unmistakably against the pale backdrop of Festri's many-banded rings. Conversely, the gas giant's clutter of moons provided the perfect cover for the Strix to creep ever closer.
It wasn't the ship itself that interested him. Or the scenery, spectacular as it was. No, it was what his heightened powers told him was aboard the Vigilant.
"Called you home, did they?" he chuckled. "Little knowink they'd only make my job so much easier. Vun more Jedi..."
Torek Roth approached and bowed sharply. "Do ve attack?"
"Yes. The usual orders apply."
As Roth went off to deliver those orders, Tepes folded his six-fingered hands in an intricate formation and smiled, quite pleased with himself.
The Vigilant had come out of light speed just beyond the outermost planet of the system, and was now cruising at a more sedate speed through the clutter of moons and asteroids on its way toward Coruscant, the fourth world from the sun.
"So predictable," he said. "You, my as-yet-unseen friend, vill be the final factor. How good of you to be so prompt."
"Ve're in position," Roth reported. "Your team is ready."
"Goot." He turned to the five black-armored men waiting nearby, and brought one closed fist to his forehead.
They mimicked the motion, and Tepes nodded approvingly as the psychic cloud that surrounded them intensified until it was nearly visible.
The Strix closed in, just another craft wending its way through the moons, no hint of threat detectable ...
"Their transmission systems vill shut down at your command," Roth said. "They'll have no chance to send a distress signal."
"Do it in the same moment ve begin the assault, Roth. Ve vould not vant the sudden loss of their communications to varn them of their peril."
"Yes, Lord Tepes."
"Fire," Tepes said.
A barrage of energy projectiles burst from the Strix's guns. The Vigilant's defensive shields lit up under the onslaught, the smaller ship slamming side to side from the impacts.
"Again." A second barrage was sufficient to tear the shields away in glimmering threads, leaving the Vigilant utterly exposed.
"Hold," Tepes said. "Single shot, propulsion drive."
One bolt lanced from the Strix's forward laser cannon. An explosion rocked the craft.
"Pick off those droids," he ordered irritably as a trio of squat dome-heads trundled across the hull of the ailing ship.
Three shots did exactly as he wished.
"The Vigilant is at your mercy," Roth said. "Lower bay open; tractor beam engaged. Ve're pullink her in."
Tepes gestured to his five soldiers. They left their post, the spots immediately filled by standard crewmen, and followed him into the bowels of the ship.
XXX
The Vance's Pride decelerated out of light speed smack in the middle of Festri's moons. Sabeeth recoiled as it seemed one barren cratered lunar surface was coming directly at her face.
"Whoa!" Anakin shouted, with far more exuberance than concern. He yanked at the controls. The ship squealed like a wounded animal. The thrust of the sudden turn pressed Sabeeth so far into her plush ultra-leather seat that she thought she was going to come out the other side.
They soared over the cratered horizon with what looked like mere yards to spare, and then a moon that looked like a solid ball of deeply-crevassed ice loomed dead ahead.
"Uh-oh!" Still exuberant, Anakin took them into a dive that caused all the etched-glass and silver-gilt decorations in the passenger compartment to musically detonate.
"You'd better just crash us," Sabeeth said grimly, holding on, "because if we survive and Vance Antilles sees what you've done to his ship, our lives won't be worth a nubbat dropping."
"I haven't done anything that can't be easily fixed --"
As they passed through one of the gas giant's rings, a smallish chunk of ice and rock met the soaring swooped intimate cocktail lounge that rose from the tail section.
"Except that," Anakin finished. "Better seal off that section or we'll lose pressure."
"Already done."
Something struck them with a clang and a small explosion. The lights in the cabin stuttered, then came back steady.
"I see Jefin's ship!" he crowed triumphantly as they punched through the wide flat ring and left a roiling hole in their wake. Ahead of them, the crippled Vigilant was being drawn into the underbelly of a larger craft.
"No!" Sabeeth slammed the heel of her hand on the brushed-velvet console. "Too late!"
"Obi-Wan's aboard, but he's unconscious." Anakin started to say more, then hissed through clenched teeth. "Sabeeth, barriers, now!"
She didn't debate, but instantly stopped her faltering attempt to contact Obi-Wan and pulled her mental cloak close around her thoughts. "What is it?"
"Someone on that ship's trying to sense us, and he's not friendly. I better open fire."
"With the pathetic weaponry on this glorified space-yacht, I'd be better off holding my breath and climbing onto the hull to take a swipe at it with my lightsaber."
Their arrival had been anything but subtle, and now the other ship was coming about to have a look. Sabeeth detected a foul spidery crawling sensation on the surface of her mind.
"Well, if we can't attack, what are we going to do?" Anakin shivered, feeling the same thing. "Sit here and get disintegrated?"
"I'd hope you would take evasive action."
"I'll do better than that ... I'm getting us out of here!"
He sped straight toward Festri's misty surface, a sight that reminded Sabeeth of Cahaldra except that Festri was mostly in shades of orange and brown.
"Are you --" she began.
He went to light speed.
The rest of Sabeeth's sentence turned into a yell as the Vance's Pride plunged into the gas giant.
She had a momentary impression of murky yellow, then the familiar streaked starfield of space, then Anakin slowed down and the stars returned to their normal shapes.
"Woo! Did you see that? Right through the planet! Wow!" Seeing her wrathful glare fall on him, he rushed on. "See, I figured, the only solid part of these kind of planets, if they even have a solid part, is a rocky core down at the center, no bigger than, say, Sylvar. We went in at an angle, not straight, so there was no way we were going to hit that part. And going as fast as we were, the atmosphere's acidity and turbulence couldn't touch us."
"I ought to ..."
"Hey, we made it, didn't we?"
"All right, since you have all this so well under control, what next?"
"We go back."
"Not at light speed! You could have popped us out the other side of that planet and straight into a moon."
"Oh ... I didn't think of that."
She moaned and sank her head into one hand.
"I recognized the ship," he added.
Her head came back up. "What?"
"Not it specifically, but it's a Bram ship. From beyond the White Nebula. We can go straight to Coruscant, tell the Council --"
"No."
"They'll listen! This is an emergency! I picked up some stuff from whoever was on that ship... the Council's in danger! All of the Jedi are in danger! We have to --"
Sabeeth turned her seat and grabbed him by the chin. "Worm slime to the Jedi Council," she said deliberately. "We're going after Obi-Wan."
He stared. "But ... you know he'd tell us not to. He'd tell us that the safety of all those people were more important than just one --"
"You can take the escape pod if you want; it should have enough fuel to get you to Coruscant or at least picked up by another ship."
"You can't fly this --"
"I'll manage."
"You really, really love him," he said in awe.
She averted her eyes. "Send a transmission to the Council, then."
"Can't ... our communicator's down ... might have been when we passed through the atmosphere."
"Then let's go."
Continued In The Next Chapter