Adrift - PART V
Someone hummed in the dark.
Stars swirled; first lazily, with slow graceful curves, and then with ever increasing speed, until they were hurtling through blackness with their tails blazing, setting the whole universe alight in their wake. Obi-Wan stared at the worlds burning and ached. Anakin's voice sounded from somewhere very far away, but he couldn't make out any of the words; they were drowned out by a continuous heavy thud, which beat again and again like a war drum. It took some time for Obi-Wan to realize that it was the sound of his own heart.
With that thought he returned to reality, back to his own body that throbbed all over. Obi-Wan grimaced, his head pounding with vicious headache, a bile in his throat. However, the worst hurt was in his left arm; a nausea-inducing, stabbing pain was shooting up from the wrist towards the shoulder. It felt like his whole arm was on fire.
Someone hummed, and Obi-Wan frowned. Where was he? Who was with him? He struggled to open his eyes, alarm taking hold of him. Memory was frustratingly slow to return, but flash by flash Obi-Wan put together what had happened. The Refuge – the attack – the patients – the explosion!
Forcing his eyes open, the first thing Obi-Wan saw was a pair of big bright orbs. He blinked and the round eyes staring back at him blinked too.
"You are awake," AZI-2 stated. "I am now going to assess the level of your head injury. Stay still." The medical droid started whirring as its data processors analysed its patient's condition.
Obi-Wan dragged himself awkwardly into a sitting position, shoving aside the thermal blanket he had been covered with. He couldn't help but grunt in pain as his left arm shook, unable to hold any of his weight. "What? Where are we? What happened?" It was hard to concentrate, when it felt like his head would split open at any moment and his arm was being stabbed with hundreds of sharp, hot blades.
"General, you must stay still. Now, how many fingers am I holding up?" The droid asked, sounding a touch irritated as it held up two of its mechanical fingers.
Obi-Wan squinted at the outstretched fingers and sighed, debating with himself if cooperation would give him the answers he needed quicker than a refusal to follow the little droid's bossy commands. "Two," he muttered reluctantly. "Now, what happened?"
AZI-2 blinked, managing to somehow look concerned. "Memory loss is serious, but not altogether unexpected symptom of a head injury. Do you remember your name?"
"Yes, I remember my kriffing name!" Obi-Wan snapped, and then took a deep breath. He had to concentrate. He had to calm down. He had to push the pain and the confusion aside, and draw strength and clarity from the Force. Almost sheepishly Obi-Wan proceeded to do just that, ashamed that he had so totally lost his head. It didn't matter if he was injured and didn't know what had happened – he knew better, he had been trained better.
With a few deep breaths he managed to centre himself in the Force to clear his head enough to at least notice where he was, even if the why stayed still a mystery. He was inside a cold, unlit escape pod, which was empty except for him and the medical droid. The pod was slowly rotating in space, its simple piloting station dark, the flight control systems obviously either switched off or broken.
"The Refuge – what happened to it?" Obi-Wan murmured, hauling himself on his knees nearer to the pod's circular viewport. He already knew what he would see, but he had to be sure –
"General Kenobi, I strongly advise against moving –"
"No." Miraculously the droid fell silent as Obi-Wan took in the view outside, gasping with pain and sorrow. The space was littered with pieces of debris and twisted metal, from small fragments to huge chunks that were still clearly identifiable as parts of a ship. It was a depressingly common sight for Obi-Wan; the aftermath of a space battle, a graveyard of destroyed vessels and dead soldiers. He watched the drifting debris, discerning easily a part of the medical frigate's bridge and the mangled stern of a Separatist destroyer.
Obi-Wan could not see any other escape pods in the vicinity, but there had to be others – even if only one sixth of all of the Refuge's life pods had managed to launch, that would still have been about thirty pods. Each escape pod could sustain up to six people, and even if none of them were full, there still had to be some other survivors beside himself –
"The Refuge was completely destroyed 54 seconds after Healer S'ghan launched our escape pod." AZI-2 came to hover next to Obi-Wan, gazing also at the nightmarish scene outside.
"Knight S'ghan?" Obi-Wan asked dully.
"He took you to the escape pod and ordered me to take care of you," the droid told him matter-of-factly. "He then went to help the other patients. I don't think he survived."
Obi-Wan swallowed painfully. No, the young Mirialan healer had not survived – the Force reverberated with his death with a faint, melancholy echo. "What about – the trooper that was with me?"
"He was dead instantly. The explosion threw you both very hard against the wall and part of the corridor collapsed on top of you."
A bitter, desperate sorrow shook Obi-Wan. Such senseless slaughter and for what? How much longer would the mad war last? How many more lives would be lost to its endlessly ravenous maw? How many times would Obi-Wan have to watch comrades, fellow Jedi – people he cared about – die?
With more ease than he was comfortable with, born of far too much practice, Obi-Wan pushed the grief aside and focused on his present predicament. He took hold of the piloting console with his right hand and slowly dragged himself onto his feet. "How much time has passed? Has anyone tried to contact us? Are the pod's sensors working?"
"General, I advise against standing. You have a serious concussion that requires that you rest. Furthermore, you seem to favour your right arm, which indicates that there is something wrong with your left. I must perform full diagnostics and examine –"
"Later," Obi-Wan grunted, fighting to stay upright on his shaking feet. "Do you want to help me?"
"Yes. It is in my programming to help you as best I can," AZI-2 answered, guileless.
"Good. Then you are going to answer my questions and help me get this pod fully functional. We have got to get the sensors up and running, see if there are any other life pods or ships or planets nearby." Obi-Wan looked at the simple console, knowing he should have had no trouble operating the escape pod's straightforward systems – but the switches and buttons suddenly seemed unfamiliar, their shapes and colours hazy and out-of-focus.
"Oh, I don't think that is a very good idea," the med droid said, wringing its hands.
Obi-Wan stopped, just as he was going to flick on a switch that would have hopefully restored the pod to a full power. Slowly, he turned to look at the anxious droid. "Care to tell me why?"
"Because of the Separatist Droch-class boarding ships. I switched off all but the most essential life support systems so they would not find us. I could not switch off everything, because you humans need air, but –"
"Pod-hunters," Obi-Wan said flatly. Of course, why the frak not? He slumped into the seat next to the console, a stabbing pain blackening his vision for a moment. He blinked furiously, until AZI-2's enormous eyes came into focus right next to him.
"General, I have to examine –"
"No. I order you to tell me everything that has happened since this pod was launched." Obi-Wan fought to centre himself in the Force again, knowing he could not focus on his own injuries, not yet. His life depended on knowing the full scope of the situation, the enemy's position, the possible advantages – if any – he had at his disposal.
AZI-2 blinked its owlish eyes, somehow managing to look offended. Obi-Wan had a sudden though that Anakin would have known how to handle the droid – he always did have a strange affinity with droids and machines. Obi-Wan just tended to get annoyed with them.
"General, you were unconscious for 10.34 minutes. It has been 9.40 minutes since the Refuge was destroyed. I performed an initial diagnostic on you, which was interrupted by several transmissions on the emergency channel. Other survivors informed that they were under attack by the Separatist boarding ships. The transmissions were cut short and I surmised that the other life pods had been destroyed. I calculated that the best odds for survival would be to switch off everything but the life support systems and wait until you had regained consciousness." AZI-2 gave its report tonelessly, hovering next to Obi-Wan.
"Well…that was…good thinking," Obi-Wan admitted reluctantly. The droid had probably saved his life. "Do you know where we are? Did you get a read on the sensors before shutting them down?"
AZI-2 looked pleased with itself. "Yes. We are in the Kushibah system, quite close to the planet Kushibah and its sun and two moons."
"Kushibah…" Obi-Wan tried to remember if he had ever heard or read anything related to the system or the planet. It sounded vaguely familiar, but he just could not remember. Blast! "Did you get any readings on the planet's and moons' atmosphere and radiation?"
"Oh…no." The droid looked crestfallen.
"Never mind," Obi-Wan muttered. "We'll just have to drift here among the debris and play dead. When the Separatist tire of combing through the rubbish, we can switch the flight control systems and the sensors back on."
"That is a sound plan," AZI-2 said approvingly. It went to the back of the pod and started to rummage through the contents of one of the big supply boxes, humming.
Obi-Wan gazed out of the viewport. As their pod slowly turned, more chunks of metal and steel came into view. He recognized the remains of another life pod; its viewport was shattered and its hull was horribly mangled, but the symbol of the Galactic Republic was still clearly visible on its flank. A trooper, wearing thin hospital garbs, drifted next to the wreckage, frozen and still. The sight of the soldier's bare feet made Obi-Wan's throat tighten.
"I will examine your arm now." Obi-Wan startled; AZI-2 had appeared at his side, holding a medpac. With faint concern, Obi-Wan realized he had not noticed the droid moving next to him. Perhaps it would be prudent to let AZI-2 fix Obi-Wan up as much as it could – there certainly wasn't anything else they could do beside wait.
"Go at it," Obi-Wan said and lifted his left arm, wincing as the mere movement increased the hurt tenfold. He bit his lip stoically and let AZI-2 prod and poke and scan to its heart's content. The little med droid hummed and tutted as it worked, finally declaring that the arm was broken in two places, at the forearm and the wrist.
"There is a bone-knitter in the medpac that can be used to set the radius bone and the scaphoid bone, but it would be better if the bones could be mended in a professional medical ward with proper equipment." AZI-2 held the electronic device in its hand, looking at it somewhat dubiously.
"As I highly doubt that I'm going to visit any medical wards anytime soon, just use whatever we have in here," Obi-Wan snorted.
"If you are sure," AZI-2 said and proceeded to inflict the most horrendous prickling and tingling sensation all over Obi-Wan's arm with the device. He gritted his teeth and silently repeated a litany of the more colourful curses he had learnt from Anakin.
After it had used the bone-knitter/torture device enough, the med droid wrapped Obi-Wan's wrist and forearm into a thin but durable cast. "There. The bones are not fully mended, but they are set properly," AZI-2 sounded satisfied. "There is some medication in the medpac that would alleviate the pain considerably."
Obi-Wan thought for a moment. "You can give me something for the pain, but nothing that will make me unconscious or dulls my senses."
After a shot of pain reliever, Obi-Wan breathed deep. Perhaps he was imagining it, but the ache in his head and arm already seemed a little less than it had been – at least his brains didn't seem to be on the verge of a spectacular explosion anymore.
"What now?" AZI-2 asked. Its head swivelled around, as if looking for something to do.
"Now, I'm going to switch you off."
"What? Why?" The med droid sounded quite alarmed.
"Well, it just occurred to me that not all of the pod's electronics have been shut down," Obi-Wan said, grimacing. It was something he should have realized much sooner.
"Oh," AZI-2 exclaimed gloomily, "I didn't think of that."
"Yes, well…neither did I." Obi-Wan gestured at the droid to come closer. AZI-2 followed the order hesitantly, turning so the off-switch at the nape of its neck was visible.
"General Kenobi," the medical droid said quickly. "Please turn me on the moment it is safe to do so. I am responsible for your health and I promised to Healer S'ghan I would take care of you."
Obi-Wan did not answer. He turned the switch and AZI-2 powered down, its bright eyes draining of light and plunging the pod into a more pervasive darkness. The silence was deafening. And Obi-Wan was alone, in a dark and cold tomb, drifting among the dead.
-o-
"I'm sorry General Skywalker, we are unable at this time to establish communications with the Refuge. They must be out of range," a nasally sounding naval officer said wearily, no doubt cursing his bad luck to be the one on duty when a frantic Anakin Skywalker decided to call in the middle of the night.
"I know that!" Anakin hissed with deep frustration. "I want to know where they are!" He had dreaded – no, he had known – that something serious, something bad had happened to Obi-Wan, and therefore the news that the medical frigate could not be reached came as no surprise to him. It only confirmed Anakin's worst fears.
After the harrowing vision of fire and pain and Obi-Wan in the middle of it all, Anakin had rushed to his quarters, a plan already forming in his mind despite the icy panic that tried to drown all rational thought. After immediately contacting R2, he had then called the Republic Naval Command Centre, all the while throwing things he needed into a small bag and hunting his spare boots and cloak from their hiding place under the narrow bed.
"Sir, I cannot tell you where they are now –" The officer started to squeak; Anakin quickly interrupted him.
"I know that too! Just sent me the last coordinates where you know they were."
"Yes sir –" The officer's voice was abruptly cut off as Anakin ended the transmission. He stared at the comlink in his hand, plagued by terrible indecision. He should tell Padmé that he was leaving, that Obi-Wan was in trouble. He should tell her that he loved –
No. Anakin could not call Padmé; he couldn't bear to hear her voice, not now. His heart was curled up tightly, painfully on itself with fear; his thoughts were heavy and dark with worry. If he heard her gentle voice, his barely held together composure would surely crack and Anakin would shatter completely, every nightmarish thought dragging him down. He needed to keep himself coldly focused, he needed to stay unerringly on his task – Obi-Wan's life could depend on it.
Determined, Anakin checked that his utility belt had all the necessary equipment. He threw on his cloak just as his datapad pinged with an oncoming message – the coordinates. Grimly, he stared at the set of numbers that translated into too many light years, a place too far away – all the way on the Outer Rim. It would take days to reach the coordinates and there would be no guarantee that the Refuge would even be there.
But there was nothing else to do – Anakin had to find Obi-Wan.
He hurried out of his quarters, knowing he would be in a world of trouble with the Council, but not caring one bit. Anakin didn't have the time to wake them, to wait as they assembled and interrogated him and questioned the veracity of his vision. The clock was ticking ominously – every second not spent on getting towards Obi-Wan was a second wasted. Anakin did not need the Council's permission to go seek out his Master, for it was his duty and right. When Anakin was on his way, speeding through space, he would contact both the Council and the Navy, and they could muster any help they possibly could spare. But he was going – and nothing and no one would stop him.
Except, it seemed, Master Yoda; the old Jedi was standing in front of the main hangar doors, small and unassuming, but radiating great power. Anakin came to a quick halt, cursing profusely in his mind.
"Master Yoda," Anakin panted, "I don't have the time to explain, but I have to go."
"Obi-Wan, you are going to seek," Yoda said. It was not a question.
"Yes. I saw – I know something has happened, he's in danger." Anakin looked inside the open hangar doors; R2 would have already gotten the ship ready – Anakin just had to enter the coordinates into the flight computer and they would be on their way to Obi-Wan.
"Yes," Yoda admitted. "Dark it is where Obi-Wan is. Dark and cold."
Anakin gulped. "Master – have you seen something? Do you know where Obi-Wan is?"
Master Yoda's big ears drooped. "Nothing definite is. Only a flash, only a feeling. Ever changing the future is."
"I'm going to the last place the Refuge is known to have been, and I'm going to search from there." Anakin changed his stance restlessly; he itched to get moving. He was wasting time!
"Troops we have in a nearby sector; quicker they can the coordinates reach. Find Obi-Wan they can."
"That's good – but I'm going too," Anakin said, determined.
"Here, needed you may be." Yoda sounded slightly reproachful.
Anakin met the old Master's piercing gaze unflinchingly. "Obi-Wan needs me now."
"Hmp, perhaps," Master Yoda parried. "Or perhaps Anakin Skywalker it is, who needs Obi-Wan."
Anakin pursed his lips and said testily, "I'm going."
"Yes, go you will." Yoda nodded and finally stepped aside. Anakin rushed past him without another word – for there was nothing more to be said.