THEY ARE PRIMITIVES - Part 4
by ardavenport
"What else do you know about them? These Jedi?" Tras asked.
"They're...they're supposed to be like Guardians," he gestured toward her formal garb, a symbol of her own service. "Except for the whole Republic. They come from a temple on the capital planet. They're supposed to have...special powers."
"Really?" Tras looked at them, then at the destroyed cameras on the high ceiling above. "I never would have guessed."
"What do you think of them? You've fought them. Seen them fight. You're the expert." They spoke with hushed voices, trying not to attract attention.
"I've never seen fighters like them," she admitted. "They're not just fast. They are always where they need to be, before you even move. They command the air," she said in a respectful whisper.
"So good that even you can't hit them?"
"That blade was aimed right at his head," she hissed. "I couldn't have missed. But he moved his hand and it just turned in mid-air."
"Are you sure he did that? That it didn't just go wild?" She glared back at him, offended by the suggestion. "Sorry," he amended. "I should have known better." The two Jedi had moved to coms table. "But you have to admit, they got all the way in here and you didn't even see them."
"I caught a glimpse of one of them hiding after we came in here and I was trying to get you to leave, so we could cut the power and trap them. But you were too busy telling them everything they needed to know." Tras's heated whisper replied. "And I forgot to congratulate you on your brilliant thinking of trapping us in here with them."
"Why thank you, my Dwen. I'm flattered that you noticed." He graciously accepted her sarcasm as if it were a compliment and she huffed in exasperation.
On the other side of the room, the older, taller Jedi looked up at the ceiling, apparently disappointed. Dani followed his gaze. He was scowling at the vents by the ruined cameras. Dani chuckled out loud and the Jedi's bearded face turned to them.
"The ventilation in this room is very inefficient," he announced to them.
"Yeah, it always gets stuffy in here during drills. But," Dani lifted his hand up, pointing to the very small vent openings, "people coming and going through the air vents. How obvious is that?" He smiled sympathetically. The Jedi just frowned back.
"I'm Dani Orliss," he started out. "I'm Leader–"
"So, I'm told." The Jedi cut him off.
Dani regrouped. "And you are...?" he invited, looking for an opening.
"That is not important." He turned his back on them. With a possibly sympathetic glance their way, Obi-Wan followed.
"Tough room?" Tras said from the side.
"I like a challenge," Dani responded, his eyes still on the two. The taller one put the hood of his robe on and Obi-Wan did the same, now presenting him with impenetrable fabric.
"Well, if you can actually get through to them, try to distract them."
"Huh?"
"Fall down or knock something over or do something that will keep their hands busy."
Dani looked at her. She had a disturbingly familiar fixed gaze on the Jedi. "What are you talking about."
"I still have two dart guns under my cloak." She spoke very softly now. "I think I can—"
"What?!" Dani's exclamation was loud enough for the Jedi, shrouded in their robes now, to look their way. Tras and Dani froze, not-funny smiles fixed on their faces. After another moment, the Jedi went back to their own business.
"Have you forgotten what's already happened? We don't need two more bodies, Tras." Dani managed to keep the volume down this time, but his intensity had gone up. "Assuming you could actually hit them with anything this time. What do you expect us to do with them if you do?"
"We go back to the original plan, of course. It's all we have," she answered. "We're stuck in here. But so are they. Captain Bella must have seen that they were trapped here before they destroyed the security eyes. They might as well be our hostages. But the Ithnun couldn't tell the difference. And nobody even knows that negotiators are dead, either. Luro's probably already sent a message to Ithnun that we have them, too."
A look of horror crossed Dani's face. "No."
"What? You don't think Luro will–"
"No, that's exactly what Luro will do. Of course he's already done it by now." He looked back at the robed Jedi. "And how many of them do you think they're going to send to rescue these two?" He pointed emphatically as he spoke. "This a bad plan, Tras. We should never have sent that transmission. What was I thinking?"
"This is our only plan, Dani," the Dwen insisted. "What do you think they're doing out there while you're stuck in here with the coms out. Do you think Luro, or Palef or any of the other Councillors are just going sit around while you...what?"
Dani Orliss's expression had changed. Dwen Traskyuler started to recognize it as his 'idea-forming' look, the kind of expression he got when he figured out how to convince the river towns to accept a new dam or pay for the expansion of the Great City...or convince a doubting Dwen that they could reach beyond the Ithnun Lords grip on their world to the worlds beyond. He suddenly reached out and patted her face.
"There is another plan, Tras." He jumped up, stood and rubbed his bandaged arm, then strode up to the coms table.
"You." Qui-Gon turned to the man pointing at him. "You can cut right through that stone wall there, right? What, it's only five, maybe ten body-thicknesses? No problem, right?" Qui-Gon didn't answer. Orliss kept going. "Considering how quickly you got through that steel door." Qui-Gon stood still, not giving him any reaction at all. "I don't know how we're going to pay for that," he finished, looking at the hole, momentarily distracted. Qui-Gon remained silent.
"Look, you don't have any better ideas for getting out of this. Or you would have done it." Qui-Gon couldn't deny that. His best idea had been to cut a tunnel through solid rock to a hopefully unused corridor and sneak out that way.
"And what, precisely, are you proposing?" he finally asked looking down at the man, his arms tucked inside the opposite sleeves of his robe. Orliss seemed quite unintimidated.
"Here it is." He held up a hand for emphasis and moved toward the door. "You cut us out of here with those..." He gestured vaguely toward Qui-Gon's waist.
"Lightsabers," Qui-Gon supplied.
"Lightsabers," he finished, pointing at the hole in the thick, shielded door. "I call out first to stop anybody from trying to shoot you. We walk out together. We take you out through the city." His hands pantomimed them leaving. "Then, we escort you to whatever craft you came in and then you leave," he concluded, his hands falling down at his sides.
Qui-Gon was shocked back into silence. But he hastily covered his expression when the man started to look a little too pleased with himself.
"That was our original plan. He must have told you." Dani Orliss pointed at Obi-Wan. "All we wanted to do was show the negotiators who we were. Get them away from the Ithnun lies and tell them the truth about us. Show them that they could trade with us directly and not through the Ithnun." He frowned. "We had planned on dinner and maybe a little sport, too. But we can skip that."
"We have no authority to negotiate," Qui-Gon Jinn stated.
"Not even for yourselves?" Traskyuler asked as she stood and stepped up to Leader Orliss's side.
Qui-Gon Jinn's eyes narrowed.
"Well, I do have the authority to negotiate," Dani went on, ignoring the antagonism between Dwen and Jedi. "And that's what I'm proposing. We get those doors open and...we let you go."
"We have no reason to trust you."
"You don't have anything better to do," Orliss shot back. "And you're not going to get a better offer." Qui-Gon did not like it, that this man was right. Next to him, Obi-Wan waited, obviously ready to accept. Qui-Gon finally nodded.
"Great!" Orliss announced to Qui-Gon's great annoyance.
He stepped up to the central control console and flipped a manual switch on a com unit. It turned out to be a voice com. After some surprise from the people on the other side and some over-dramatic complaints from Orliss about why they hadn't tried to signal him sooner, someone named Luro agreed to be waiting when they came out.
The Jedi took off their robes and while Orliss and the Dwen watched they first widened the hole in the shield door (Orliss moaned again about the cost of fixing it). Then Obi-Wan carved out chunks of the stone while Qui-Gon used the Force to pull them away from the door, dribbling molten rock as they fell. The room soon smelled like an overheated oven.
Orliss carefully stepped closer as Obi-Wan made a final cut. His lightsaber sizzled through the stone and then out, making a small hole in the remaining slab of rock. Orliss held back, cringing a little from the blobs of glowing rock. After a moment, when nothing came back out of the hole at them he spoke loudly.
"Luro, are you out there?" Orliss bent forward, so his head was more level with the hole.
"Leader, you said you were coming out."
"I'm coming;" he answered cheerfully. "I just want to make sure you know that this is a real truce." The Dwen came forward and yelled her own confirmation as well. Then she stepped back, letting Orliss finish.
"I hope Luro doesn't think that we're trying to send him some kind of code that he thinks means shoot on sight," the Dwen grumbled below Qui-Gon's shoulder.
"Even if he does, that shouldn't be a problem," Qui-Gon answered smugly, folding his arms before him. Traskyuler gave him a dirty look.
Obi-Wan cut the last arc and pulled away. the stone fell outward, away from his outstretched palm and thudded solidly on the ground. Silence. Someone on the other side of the opening coughed.
Orliss brushed off imaginary dust from his one-sleeved shirt. "We're coming!" Traskyuler went to his side and they ducked under the metal edge of the inner door. "Stay behind us," he told the Jedi for the fourth or fifth time. Orliss, then bent low, well under the recently melted rock edges of the opening. Then Traskyuler went. Then the Jedi. Orliss grimaced up at Qui-Gon who emerged and stood at his usual height, almost two heads taller than the Leader. 'Getting behind them' was purely symbolic. Qui-Gon gave him a tiny shrug and a small, innocent smile.
Orliss turned and addressed the people assembled at the door. Guardians, sentries, soldiers and councillors lined the hallways. Orliss raised his hands, expressing his happiness to see no weapons raised, though there were plenty at the ready. Luro, a slender, younger man with short, dark hair, carefully stepped forward, a few other well-dressed people fearfully fidgeted behind him.
"If I may speak with you privately, Leader..."
"Oh, we've said enough." Orliss cheerfully but firmly shut him out. "Now, here we are," he gestured to everyone, including the Jedi behind him. "We have guests. They came for the negotiators. They fought well," he looked directly at the Guardians and soldiers. "And they fought honorably. And now they're taking the negotiators' place. And we will show them every courtesy that we would have shown them. Show them who we are. And what we are. And how much better we are than the so-called 'Lords' of Ithnun.
"Just like we planned." He finished, his stance daring anyone present to oppose him. No one did.
The people backed away. They lined the hallways, Guardians in their pastel tunics, pants and short capes, city defenders in body armor, hammered metal for most of them, lightweight, super-strong plastiform for a lucky few, Luro and other councillors and their attendants. They shrank against the walls as Orliss went forward snagging Luro on his way, the Jedi behind him, Traskyuler behind them.
They went through the maze of hallways and entryways in the fortress. And as they did, Orliss began to talk about the places they passed, the rooms, the halls, their history. He prodded Luro to join him, but he seemed capable of only a few words at a time. There were quite a lot of wrecked doors, blaster burns and long, burnt gashes, but Orliss ignored those. Luro mostly kept looking fearfully back at the two large intruders behind him. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon kept their expressions neutral, but this did not seem to reassure him. Orliss finally let him return to his companions when they paused to hear about the local art in a long, high-ceilinged room.
As they entered a room of polished, bluish stone with a ceiling so low that Qui-Gon Jinn had to duck his head to avoid the light fixtures, Orliss talked about the long past millennia when tribal leaders were brought to wait there for audiences at the great and mysterious Hold built by the powerful Sky-Lords, the Ithnun. Being primitives, tied to the harvests of the land, and not knowing any better, the Rathinun had obeyed and worshiped the Ithnun. But the servants of the Ithnun learned that their masters were hardly all powerful and that the machines and devices of the Sky-Lords worked just as well for them. The Ithnun had long since been driven back to their own moon, but they still controlled all the technology needed for space travel and the Rathinum had not succeeded in getting any from the smugglers and pirates they could contact on their own.
Orliss and Traskyuler opened a pair of ornate doors together, pushing them outward. The others in the group stayed back, keeping some distance between them and the Jedi. So, only the two leaders and the Jedi walked through the portal of the waiting room into the huge entry hall of the Hold. They stopped and they stared.
End Part 4