Hi folks looks like I lied, my internet was down Friday and Saturday. Here we go from last week…
The Virgin was descending far too fast. Qui-gon struggled fiercely with the screen to control the cruiser, which was careening through the sky like an injured bird. The shots on the hull had greatly compromised the ship's heat resistance, but there was not much anyone could do about that. The landscape of the moon was covered with a mosaic of green, dusty red, and beige patches. Qui-gon steered them toward an expanse of open plains close to a mountain range, which was about the best he could do.
Mina stared at single tile on the floor, her eyes open but unseeing. Obi-wan put his hand against the wall and explored the inner cavities of the cruiser through the Force. He crept around the engines, sensing the damage and some of the causes behind failure. With agonizing concentration he sent tendrils of the Force to coax more power out of the energy converters. Mina was there as well, clearing away tiny bits of debris which were interfering with the cruiser's function.
"Leave it at that, strap in and get ready for impact in seventy seconds," Qui-gon said.
With great difficulty Obi-wan lurched to his feet, stumbled to the nearest harness and strapped himself in. For all their effort, the ground still rushed up toward them with incredible speed. They approached the ground at a shallow angle, positioning over the surface of a green lake. The cruiser slammed against the surface of the water, jarring Obi-wan's brain around his head, and bounced back off. It slammed into the water again and the latch on one of the storage hatches broke open. Spare bits of metal and measuring equipment flew through the control room. Obi-wan reached out with the Force and parted the river of metal scraps around his space. Mina was able to deflect the three hundred pound power cell away from her body, but she could not stop it from clipping her leg as it sped by.
The shoreline rushed onto the viewing screen and the Virgin skidded across the deep sand. It traveled one hundred yards and left a deep rut in the ground before grinding to a halt. No one said anything for a full minute, although the cockpit was filled with sounds of groaning metal and the static from frazzled circuits.
"That," Qui-gon said, "was not a bad landing. Is everyone alright?"
"Yes," replied Obi-wan, amazed he could answer in the affirmative.
"Mina, how hard did that power cell hit you?"
"Ha ha, let us see." Mina propped her foot gingerly up on her seat and put her hand on her lower leg. There was a forced grin on her face and her eyes were watering. "Not too bad. I think it is a very clean, straight fracture. Everything I need to treat it is on the ship. Where are we, anyways?"
"Ah, the name "Begerave" flashed once on the screen before flaring red warning lights took over the console," Qui-gon said.
"We have crash landed on the moon Begerave?" Obi-wan asked. His eyebrows wrinkled as he rearranged a couple letters. "Of course we have."
"Is there something unique about that?"
Obi-wan rechecked his spelling to make sure 'beverage' and 'begerave' had all of the same letters in them. Speaking of which, Ditillo InterStellar Hound, maybe also known as D.I.S.H. Talk about exasperating coincidences.
"It is not particularly important, Master."
They spent an hour inspecting the Virgin and found encouraging news. The final attack across the dorsal side had left an ugly gash and had knocked off whole chunks of shielding. It appeared as though the impact had rattled the Virgin's delicate internal circuit protector, making the circuit connections more susceptible to environmental overload. The ship's failsafe mechanism overrode Qui-gon's attempts to steer away from the moon because the maneuver would have put too much strain on the unprotected circuits, a situation which could easily lead to a fire or an extensive failure which would have left the ship too disabled to make a survivable landing. Crashing was the better alternative to staying in a fight with a superior ship, anyways. Fix the protector, and she would be flyable. At least in theory.
Qui-gon seemed markedly happier that they were sitting in the prairie at the base of an unknown mountain range, rather than arguing with some computer programmer in an iron-clad room.
"I want to see what is out there." According to the ship's radar, there is a developed area very close to here. Obi-wan will come with me. Mina will…"
"Mina will guard the ship," Mina said. The black splotch spreading over her leg was visible through the transparent bacta gauze she had wrapped around it. There was a loud pop as sparks showered the bridge. "And try to fix it."
"Mina will guard the ship," Qui-gon agreed. "If there were one Jedi who could make this washing machine travel worthy again it…" he tapped his fingers against his lightsaber. Mina wrinkled her brow. "It would not be you."
"It would not be me," she said, shaking her head in agreement.
Obi-wan and Qui-gon got ready quickly. Mina leaned in the threshold of the cruiser's entrance as they stood outside and checked their packs a final time.
"Be careful, boys," she said.
"Do not let your guard down. You may not be any safer than us."
Qui-gon and Obi-wan marched briskly into the cool, sweet-smelling afternoon. Each breath filled Obi-wan's lungs with oxygen-rich air, giving his limbs more energy for the indefinite hike. The mountains, about ten miles away, jabbed into a purple sky. It was hard to tell how much daylight they would have – moons could have rather erratic periods of night and day based on how their own rotation interacted with their path around a planet.
"The settlement I caught on the screen had a very high level of technology," Qui-gon said. "An isolated pocket like that is probably very important."
"Do you figure that whoever was intercepting your data was successful in barricading this planet?"
"That conclusion requires quite a few assumptions I am not willing to make," Qui-gon said abruptly. "But yes, I would suppose that is what happened."
"Then this settlement we are running to could be hostile, or under occupation, or otherwise very dangerous."
"Yes."
"That's exciting!"
"We will have to be very delicate."
"Yes, and it should be fun!"
Two years ago, Qui-gon might have started off a lecture on caution and arrogance. The two of them had passed that point some time back, and they ran they ran the eight miles to the feet of the base of the mountains in an easy hour and in comfortable silence. It seemed unwise for two people as tall as Obi-wan and Qui-gon to be running in the open toward a place of seclusion, where anyone waiting in the rocks could see the Jedi long before the Jedi could see them without even trying. Master and apprentice knew this without ever mentioning it, and while they could blend in to the scenery and avoid notice much longer than the average man, they could not regain the upper hand.
"It looks like we are closing in on the last kilometer to the settlement, Master," Obi-wan said. They had entered the forest at the foot of the mountains, a labyrinth of wood and rock. It was hard to call the life forms which made the forest trees, for they were all connected to each other at the base and at the top, creating a structure which resembled a gigantic honey comb. Vines with furry projections rather than leaves crept up the strange, flat, "trunks" of the woody plants.
"It is straight over that hill," Obi-wan said, pointing to a large hill covered in white-gray boulders. "I know that we cannot see very far, but it might be worth it to look over that area. Maybe we can see something helpful."
Qui-gon nodded in agreement and pressed up the hill. Obi-wan scrambled a few paces behind Qui-gon, panting lightly. Toward the top they ducked low and lumbered toward the top of the outcrop on all fours, careful to stay below the boulders. A few meters from the top, Qui-gon stopped and waved Obi-wan next to his side.
"Keep an eye open for me, it looks like I can get a good look through this little gap."
Obi-wan nodded as his master slipped between the rocks and disappeared. There was a soft beep from Obi-wan's tracker. His eyes widened as they fell upon the screen, recently corrected to match their current position.
"Er, master!"
He hurried through the rocks after Qui-gon. The rough stone squeezed and jostled him as he weaved through the narrow passage.
"And when I said one kilometer, master, I actually meant one hundred-"
A pair of strong arms yanked Obi-wan away from the exit of the passage and a hand molded across his mouth. He wound up crouched underneath a boulder, looking straight into the face of a miffed Qui-gon. The scowl lines on the Jedi master's were so deep they looked like the cracks lining the hull of the Virgin Frontier. The glare would have forced most to look away, but Obi-wan had (for better or for worse) fallen under that scowl many times before and knew how to face it.
He stared straight back and mumbled "Meters," through Qui-gon's hand.
Qui-gon put a finger to his lip, nodded, and took his hand away from Obi-wan's mouth. He indicated with a nod that Obi-wan should look over the rock they were huddled against.
With the sleek grace of a cat Obi-wan slinked over the six foot boulder and peered over the edge. The metallic glint of buildings shone through the trees. A white pathway wound through the community, broken by the various humanoids as they scrambled back and forth across the roads. Qui-gon slid up next to Obi-wan.
"That," he whispered crossly, "is not a kilometer."
"But it probably is a hundred meters. I'm sorry, Master, it took longer for the positioning system to adjust to our movements than I thought it would."
"We are already within the perimeters of the city. We passed by the first security posts without realizing it! We might have been caught."
"Well… we weren't."
"Do not say that yet. Someone could be coming for us now."
Oh, good point.
"It looks like an outside group is occupying whatever this station is," Qui-gon said.
Obi-wan pulled out his binoculars and zoomed into the streets. It only took him a few minutes to make sense of the chaotic ramble in the city. Humans and a few other species dressed in civilian clothes were under the control of the figures clad in black jumpsuits and sleek helmets. While the captors were clearly in charge, the prisoners had considerable freedom to move back and forth within given boundaries.
There was a third group, a race of humanoids. They were about four feet tall and were completely covered in scruffy grey fur. Each one of them wore a green vest, brown trousers, and sleek black boots. The jumpsuits had the fluffies corralled in tight ranks at gunpoint. Many of the humanoids were injured or bound at the wrist by devices that Obi-wan could not quite recognize from such a distance.
"I am thinking the humans run this establishment. The figures with helmets are occupying it, and the furry grey things are a hired police force for whatever this base is," Obi-wan said. "We can only see a small section of the situation – I can see maybe three hundred people. There could be as many as ten thousand, depending on how far back this city goes."
"There is a lot of confusion down there," Qui-gon said thoughtfully.
"We could stay up here for a while and try to see what sort of pattern their activity has. This is not blind chaos, there is a pattern and we could figure it out with a little bit of time. There might be a way to access those buildings without anyone noticing. We could get on a computer, and – master?"
Qui-gon had left Obi-wan's side and was striding casually down the hill, well-hidden by the high rocks. He paused and waited for Obi-wan to stumble down the steep slope and join him.
"Enough talking," Qui-gon said. "I have an idea."
"He could at least tell me what it is before we do it," Obi-wan muttered before following him.
That's it till next week, this time it really should be up by Friday as I'll be going somewhere with a very reliable connection, unlike the place I am now. Any type of review is appreciated, it's nice to know I'm not talking to myself