The Moment

- Part 2 - - - by ardavenport

Yewmakkor howled with animal rage and Qui-Gon froze with surprise as the Wookiee went roaring toward the source of the fire. No more shots came toward them or the angry Wookiee, but they heard a squeal and crack as Yewmakkor's blade came down on the weapon. They could barely make out the outline of the intruder. Whoever it was had dressed for concealment in dull, random patterns and colors.

Deactivating his own saber, Dooku sarcastically commented about rash, impulsive Wookiees. Eenid didn't say anything. They jogged toward Yewmakkor's lightsaber which was lowered toward their attacker who now knelt on the ground. When they got there they found the cowering figure unharmed though her blaster was a ruin on the damp ground.

"Our competition," Dooku announced. They could not see her very well; she looked Calamari, or Del-Agwa, or one of a number of related amphibious species.

"They didn't tell me they were sending Jedi," she grumbled in a high, breathy voice.

Yewmakkor demanded who 'they' were. Qui-Gon silently marveled at the calm he now sensed from the Wookiee. He had felt such ruthless bloodlust from her that he had half expected to find their attacker cleaved in half at the Wookiee's feet; the rage had been so intense. But it had completely vanished, gone into the Force like water into the ground.

Their new captive cringed and volunteered nothing other than her name, Gooly.

They did not really need information from this being. They had seen the Zhoret Union ship in orbit when they had arrived and they had gone immediately down to their objective regardless of the storm. Their ship had been right behind the Zhoret landing craft but they had lost it on their scopes and Yewmakkor had been forced to land. They had immediately disembarked hoping to make their way to the outpost, but even Jedi couldn't fight the enormous whirlwind that the storm suddenly spawned behind them.

Yewmakkor growled about useless errand lackeys and told Eenid to get her up. Gooly cringed when the Whiphid Padawan snatched the back of her multi-hued bodysuit and hauled her to her feet.

There was now enough light to see by. It was a gloomy, half-light where all colors were washed out into gray tones. Dooku's pale skin had an almost white glow, his dark brown hair, prematurely gray in places, looked black. Yewmakkor's robe looked more gray than brown, her fur had only a hint of its rich dark brown color. Eenid, whose shaggy mane and skin were mostly gray anyway, looked even grayer, her off-white tunic and tabards pale on her shoulders, but the light was enough to see faces by.

Dooku turned away, shaking his head with disgust. He paused, his eyes widening for just a second before he spoke.

"Qui-Gon, you and Eenid take our 'friend' here back to the ship." He nodded to Yewmakkor who agreed. "We will collect the cyborg and join you." Both Padawans nodded their heads and the two groups separated. With only a brief glance at his locator, Qui-Gon led. Eenid followed with their captive between them.

Qui-Gon knew that his injury must look very bad to cause his Master to pause like he had, to show any visible shock. He could now see the swelling, crowding into his vision under his line of sight. His nose had not stopped hurting; it throbbed with every step, and ached from the swelling, his skin hot and smooth and stretched. He had just become accustomed to ignoring the pain.

As they walked they occasionally passed broken and twisted scraps of gray plasti-steel, shreds of poles, bent corner supports with bits of wire clinging to them. The flat, gray pieces looked familiar to Qui-Gon. A piece of similar debris has found his face the night before. It likely had come from the outpost, but the whirlwind had been behind them and the outpost had been ahead. Qui-Gon did not know if there could have been more than one such storm, but he wondered what the Masters would find when they arrived at where the outpost was supposed to be.

Gradually, with the increasing light, one feature on the horizon resolved into their ship. It lay crookedly on the ground, one stubby tail-wing plowed into the ground. When they got close, they circled, inspecting the damage. Eenid kept one large clawed hand on Gooly as they did.

The landing struts, front and back were completely snapped off. The rear tail fin was bent, but other than dirt and scraped paint there was no other obvious external damage. However, the ship did not power up; neither remote signal from them would open the door on the side of the ship tilted upward to the sky. Scrambling up onto it, Qui-Gon crouched, balancing himself next to the door on the steep slope of the ship. Relaxing, he gathered the Force to him, feeling the connection from himself to the ship and the door. One palm out, he pushed. With a loud scraping sound of metal on metal, the door slid open a little bit.

Qui-Gon exhaled, his shoulders dropping, the image of the door dimming in his concentration. The mechanism was not damaged, but either the door or the body of the ship was bent somehow. With that and the broken landing struts the ship could not possibly be spaceworthy.

Still crouching, he repositioned himself, his bent legs tucked close to his body. Closing his eyes again he lifted both arms. The Force glowed and strengthened around his mental self-image. It pushed outward to the door, forcing it back. Metal and plastisteel groaned and complained, the abused surfaces grating against each other.

He stopped when he sensed that something else would break if he continued. Opening his eyes, Qui-Gon saw that it was open just wide enough for Eenid to fit through–he glanced at the Whiphid–if she turned her head to the side.

Eenid grinned back at him, her long lips curling back from the two cruel tusks that jutted upward. Her gentle yellow eyes, pale in the gray gloom, smiled back at him as well. Qui-Gon lowered himself into the dark ship. There were bolts on the floor that he used to keep his feet from sliding down to the opposite end of the ship. The ship was dead and dark inside, except for the gray light coming through the main view port in front. Using handholds on the ship's bulkhead, he made his way to the controls.

The screens were blank. Sitting in the pilot's seat, he tried some of the buttons with no results. Qui-Gon leaned to the left and pulled down on the manual power lever. Something clicked.

The ship's controls and interior lights flickered into life. After hours and hours of darkness and a desolate plain of nothing but dark grays there was suddenly color and light again, multicolored blinking controls, blue, padded seats, red trim around the view ports and along the walls. He waited for the computers to reboot and then keyed up the diagnostics; the engines and antigravs were fine; the fuel tanks showed no damage. Sighing, Qui-Gon sat back, head against the backrest of the seat. Even if they couldn't make orbit, they very likely could fly the ship in atmosphere to the planet's one spaceport.

He got up and, clinging to the bulkhead, made his way back to the open door. He saw Eenid's eyes peering down at him from over the edge. She reached down one large clawed hand and he took it, letting her pull him up. She stepped back as he pulled out first one leg, then–

WHACK!

In the fraction of a second before it struck him, Qui-Gon realized that the narrow gray plank that hit him in the face was almost the same color as the thing that had hit him the night before.

Qui-Gon's control shattered when the pain went right through to the back of his head. He fell backwards, down into the ship. In THAT second of weightlessness he saw the rectangle of gray sky receding above him before he hit the deck and slid down to the opposite bulkhead. He heard a murderous Whiphid roar and felt a moment of terror that Eenid would lose herself utterly to the dark side if she killed Gooly. He flailed, trying to get his legs under him, spurred on by the white hot bloodlust that he felt through the Force..

Then it was gone.

The furious rage burned itself out and dissipated. Qui-Gon heard Gooly's high voice yelling loudly about being abused. Eenid replied in a much lower volume; Qui-Gon couldn't make out the words, but the tone was no more or less calm than usual for her.

Even with the pain in his nose, his face, now his whole head, he didn't think anything new had been broken by the impact. He wondered if his swollen face had cushioned the blow somehow, but the pain was heating up. He stopped struggling to rise and lay sprawled on the floor where it met the wall. He now had bruises on his legs, back and arms along with his broken nose. Qui-Gon drew the Force to him, struggling for his earlier control. It came slowly.

He heard noise and more complaining from Gooly. Qui-Gon didn't move, keeping his mind focused on his injuries. He heard Eenid's claws scrabbling on the hull and the open door above him darkened with her shaggy head. Then a squirming Gooly, trussed up with cord, was lowered into the ship, the collar of her body suit bunched up around her head where Eenid's clawed hand grasped it. She was swung back and forth and then landed, mostly, in one of the rear seats of the cabin.

Then Eenid's great bulk squeezed in; she did have to turn her head to get it though the jammed door. Qui-Gon smiled reassuringly up at her concerned gaze, though he feared that it had come out more like a grimace. The Whiphid did not look reassured. She turned her head to growl at Gooly, who immediately stopped squirming and huddled fearfully, clutching the edge of her seat as well as she could with her bound hands.

Using handholds on the wall, Eenid went to the rear of the cabin. She returned with the ship's medkit. She helped Qui-Gon up into the rear seat opposite Gooly's. She buckled the body strap over his shoulders when he started to slide out toward the wall and then picked out a scanner and held it close to his face.

"I'm sorry." Eenid apologized. "I did not see that she had picked up a piece of debris. She had hoped to force me to help you and let her escape." Eenid's yellow eyes flicked toward the amphibian. Gooly glared back, but with her hands tied before her and her legs lashed together she couldn't go very far. Qui-Gon realized that Eenid must have used the line from her cable launcher.

"I didn't see it either," he reminded her. He had hardly spoken at all since the accident and with his flattened nasal passages his voice was flat with suppressed consonants.

She shook her great head sadly. "I was watching, but I did not see. I was watching you instead." Eenid lowered the scanner. "It's broken, but the bones are mostly still in place and there are no small pieces."

Qui-Gon looked up with surprise. He had been sure that his nose had been mashed into bits. The huge, bulging lump under his eyes certainly looked nothing like the prominent and straight nose that he was used to. The swollen mass at the bottom of his vision could not be ignored. He touched it lightly with a finger; it felt hot with injury and the skin hurt.

"The airways under your eyes are clogged with blood and mucus, but they are intact. We should wait until we reach a medical facility to clear them," Eenid said, pointing with one huge claw to where his sinuses should be. She offered him medicine for the pain but he declined anything stronger than a local anesthetic for his face. The pain from the second blow had peaked and declined to something manageable again, but Qui-Gon was not so full of bravado that he would not accept help when it was sitting right in front of him.

Cool numbness spread out from his nose as Eenid next took a sterile cleaning cloth and multi-cast out of the medkit. First she cleaned his face, then applied the multi-cast; it molded to his features and stiffened under his eyes down to just above his upper lip. Eenid held the tips of two claws a short way up his nostrils while it hardened to hold open a space for him to breathe through.

He rubbed a finger on the hard shell now clinging to his face. Even with the openings, he could hardly breathe through his nose, but he knew he did not want the airway closed. He thanked Eenid for her help.

"Why were you watching me?" Qui-Gon asked. "When Gooly hit me, you said you were watching me," he explained to Eenid's surprised look.

"When you used the Force to open the door. It came so easily to you, but you are so young." She nodded her shaggy head in approval. "The Force is very strong with you Qui-Gon."

Qui-Gon knew that he had exceptional gifts for a Padawan of only sixteen years, but he only warily compared his skills to others, as if that would automatically negate them. Dooku rarely spoke of it; he just expected Qui-Gon to give him his best effort. Qui-Gon found that he preferred the simple expectations; he knew that the praise would be sincere if it only came in exceptional circumstances.

"The Force is with you in more than strength," he replied, his brow wrinkled as he tried to form his question. "How did you and your Master...when she attacked Gooly, when Gooly attacked me. I was...surprised by the rage. I didn't know a Jedi..."

Eenid rumbled; perhaps it was a laugh.

"That was the Moment of the Living Force. Killing passions do not run so strongly in your species, Qui-Gon, as it does for me and my Master. It is part of who we are." She put one large, clawed hand to the side of her head. Those curved gray claws were as deadly as a lightsaber; the tips were blunted, but with the strength of a Whiphid, they could gut him in an instant.

"When the anger comes, it is not to be denied. When it comes, it must. It flows through me, but it does not guide me and it flows back to the Force when it is spent." She lowered her head, her yellow eyes downcast. "I do not explain it nearly so well as my Master does."

"You explain it very well," Qui-Gon prompted, hoping she would continue. Eenid hadn't said anything that he had not already learned as a Jedi, but in that moment, he felt like he was really understanding it for the first time. Master Dooku had told him that he was strong with the Living Force, but that only he would know when he was ready to actually learn what that meant.

Qui-Gon knew that his Moment had come.

Unfortunately, for him, it didn't stay.

Eenid rose to run full diagnostics on the ship's systems. Qui-Gon tried to get up to join her, but one great clawed hand gently held him back. It didn't take both of them to issue commands to the ship's computer and she needed him to rest so he could help her later with righting the ship. She moved forward, stopping to strap Gooly into her seat first. Qui-Gon's attacker gave him one cross glare and then turned her head away from him.

Qui-Gon lay back, closing his eyes.

Though he leaned to the side with the ship, the seat's wide flight straps held him in place; he was comfortable enough. His body settled into an easy inactivity. Relieved of having to ignore the pain of his injury, he settled back into a healing mediation. Blood flow and energy diminished where it wasn't needed and increased around his injuries. With rest and proper nutrition his injury could be completely healed in, maybe, twelve days. Jedi healing techniques were hardly competitive with a fully staffed med-center, but they were still more productive than just sitting around feeling hurt.

Time passed with little meaning for Qui-Gon. The little noises of the others in the cabin did not disturb him though the activity increased; he shut it out. Qui-Gon's mind sank deep into the Force; it was all around him, inside him. Qui-Gon had always thought of meditations like these, where he felt almost merged with the Force to be his "Moment", but now he realized that it was static, unmoving. The Moment for Master Yewmakkor and her Padawan was one of motion and action and he felt that even with his years of training, at sixteen he hardly knew anything at all.

Something touched him. The Force rippled around him like a still pond disturbed by a leaf lighting on the surface.

End - Part 2