Legacy
Book I
Chapter 16
The metal behemoth reared its ugly head, cannon swiveling about angrily – the banshee's cry of the pressurizer chamber, a clap of furious thunder –
Obi-Wan reached through the Force, his own shuddering cry of exertion blending with the night's clamor, and shoved the barrel to one side, sending the high-power explosive blast askew. The energy bolt smashed into a glacial stone's base, splintering millenia-old rock to shards and indifferent dust; the massive bulk groaned as its weight shifted, its immovable foundation suddenly violated; the stone fell, slowly, countless tons of antediluvian granite falling haplessly into gravity's embrace.
The tank was crushed.
And then exploded – sending a wide supernova of flames and smoldering particles in a rippling shock radius. The young Jedi shielded himself with the Force, twisted boldly to evade impalement, caught a nasty splatter of slag upon his 'saber blade, and then screamed as a tiny, spinning fragment of something whizzed beneath his desperate left-handed guard and buried itself in his thigh.
But there was no time to staunch the wound – he rolled and skidded away a bare half-meter ahead of the next blast, one issuing from the destroyed machine's comrade. The second and third assailants bore steadily down upon him, huge leg joints grinding mercilessly as they propelled the heavy armored killers forward. Just beyond lay the entrance the Folk's mine shaft, their last place of refuge. The killers advanced, targeting the doors now.
"No!" the embattled knight growled, leaping wildly atop the foremost tank, slashing downward with his weapon. The cannon was halved just as it discharged, immolating itself in a wrathful fireball, rivaling the lightning-torn heavens for sound and fury.
Obi-Wan landed badly again, this time taking the weight on his injured leg and sliding dangerously close to the last tank's rear appendages. He was beneath cannon range, but the colossal pistons rose and fell, each clawed foot sinking into sodden earth like a four-tined pitchfork, jagged knives ploughing the soil into muddy gashes. He rolled clear of the last downward strike, panting. The thing's chassis loomed above him, momentarily blotting out the tumultuous sky. He slashed a vicious line into the undercarriage, wincing as hot sparks showered down about him. A hatch fell apart; heedless of consequence, not knowing what it was he did, he buried the plasma blade in the exposed circuits and rolled clear as the automaton lumbered past him, a whine building deep in its chest as it prepared another blast.
The young Jedi slewed round, onto his belly, and then ducked as the intended shot went wide, hurtling into the stone above the opening. He must have damaged the targeting system, for several more blasts missed their target, pummeling the massive rockface until it crumbled and fell, a mighty avalanche of blackened stone obscuring the Wormholes' entrance.
The machine lurched drunkenly , and then stumbled backward a pace, a valiant gladiator struggling to stand in the face of overwhelming odds. Obi-Wan matched it, finding his own precarious balance, raising his 'saber in a last salute, gathering himself for a final spring –
Excoriating light speared downward, a column of blinding radiance briefly uniting sky and earth, melting night into painful noon, melding sight and hearing into a single shout of pain, obliterating the monster in one deafening strike, throwing the solitary witness an easy ten meters backward onto unforgiving stone.
The entire world stank of ozone and smoke; for a moment the rain seemed hot, the cloud-clotted sky seemed an abysmal sea, surprise was pain and pain was sizzling pleasure and the universe itself inverted and blasted asunder into absurd shreds of sensation, meaning scattered like retched dust.
And then he gasped in a shaking breath, mind reeling at his proximity to that last bolt of vengeful fire, his already laboring heart contracting violently as instinct flooded his overworked system with a cold flood of realization: the Scythe was beginning to swing, and that had been no ordinary lightning bolt.
Shaking, shoulder and leg protesting vociferously, he crawled pathetically for cover, for the scant shelter of the nearest boulder's overhang, and pressed himself into its hard curve. His saber's liquid blue flame expired as he clipped it clumsily at his belt and clutched hard at the dark patch on his trouser leg. The wound was bleeding heavily, and was – he noted with the clarity of exhaustion – alarmingly close to the artery. The Force whipped about him, a wild and indocile rainfall of power, its harmony churned into an ugly froth by the battle.
"Blast," he moaned, digging deep for a last scrap of supernal luminance, just enough to stop himself from pouring out his lifeblood on this hell-forsaken plain. The hot drenching beneath his hand slowed to a sticky ooze. He wiped his trembling, crimson-stained fingers upon his sopping tunic and cradled his right elbow in his left hand, grinding his teeth against the renewed pain, the jarring grate of bone on bone.
"Damn it to the lowest Sith hell!"
There was no knowing where Qui-Gon might be…. Nor could he feel the Jedi master in the Force. He was simply too worn out to extend himself so far, to grasp at the Force's infinite power. The refuge of the Wormholes was effectively denied him, for he hadn't the strength to lift the fallen slabs of rock that blocked the doors. He let his head fall back against the stone and watched in fascination as a second and third tree of lightning blossomed on the far horizon, unable to summon the faintest scrap of concern for his own safety, or for anything at all….
And then, to his slightly muddled astonishment, a dark shape descended beneath the clouds, flying low from the opposite direction, behind the low mountains. The pilots must be daring indeed to risk even a low-altitude flight in this storm… but the abstract and emotionless thought was driven from his drifting mind by the shape of the vessel's profile, the distinctive silhouette of a scavenger bird looking for carrion. Even as he watched in vaguely horrified and slowly dawning comprehension, the predatory form circled lower, passed overhead, and landed just outside the wide circle of carnage, the wreckage left by his encounter with the tanks.
He dragged a name, a pang of dread, out of the swiftly darkening morass of thought and memory, just before the world was plunged into a dizzying silence, a roaring emptiness: the Paxellian scout ship.
It was his last coherent thought before he blacked out entirely.
At first he took it for the placeless tranquility of deep meditation- and would perhaps have so remained, blissfully suspended between being and its source, had it not been for the subtle razoring of pain up and down his extremities and spine in random sequence. He grasped for the shores of consciousness, crawling out of murky breakers toward sensation, mind registering a peculiar lack of gravitational pull….
…was he floating? …
But there was no water, no omnipresent fluidity pressing in on all sides, no current flowing about his heavy limbs.
Qui-Gon Jinn groaned and opened his eyes, squinting through a thick blue haze at a blank plastoid –reinforced wall.
Ship's bulkhead. Nemoidians. Capture. Memory snapped back into place, bringing him fully awake and tensing every muscle for action –
"Aaagh!"
He was not a Jedi master for nothing; the moment his involuntary motion caused the lancing thread of fire to shoot through his nerves, he calmed himself. Deep Yamalsa breaths rendered him quiescent, alert but unnaturally still. It was a first lesson, one deeply ingrained. Relax. Think. Use the Force.
He assessed his new surroundings, relying on senses besides vision, on reasoning and instinct. He was suspended in what felt like a powerful counterbalanced grav-repulsor field, a maglev containment cone like those sometimes used to neutralize the weight of heavy cargo loads. Clever – he was immobilized very neatly.
His 'saber was, naturally, gone. His wrists and ankles were each wrapped in a pulsing band of simple conductive material, some substance that attracted electrical energy off the containment field. The resulting discharge throbbed through his body with every slight jostling movement, and faintly washed over his nerves like an acidic ocean tide.
That would make accessing the Force for any long period of time very difficult indeed – and this fact disturbed him. The Nemoidians should not be so…. adept.. at neutralizing a Jedi. Such devices bespoke an accurate knowledge and intimacy with a Force-user's psychosomatic constitution, the intricate meshing of Force and flesh. He exhaled, slowly, willing himself not to move more than necessary. The "consultant" whom Tord had mentioned… who was this insidious person? And did he, like the late Sifo-Dyas, have some connection to the Order?
As though summoned by his thought – or more likely by some remote monitoring system - the slimy Nemoidian financial officer appeared through a doorway behind the prisoner. Qui-Gon heard a second pair of shuffling feet cross the threshold behind Tord, and rightly guessed that this was Boll Ghurb, his underling and co-conspirator.
The pair of simpering reptilians worked their way round to his front, rubbing pudgy hands togther in glee at the sight of their helpless captive.
"Ah," Tord chuffed, rumpled mouth puckering in satisfaction. "I think we are in a better position to negotiate now, Master Jinn."
The tall man cocked a brow at the use of his name. Whomever the Nemoidians had contracted as ally and informant, he was good. Access to Jedi identity documents was highly restricted, to say the least – though, he admitted wryly to himself, he had been about the galaxy enough decades to have left a few loose ends and unresolved grudges lying about.
"There is nothing to negotiate," he asserted, gritting his teeth as the act of speaking cost him a sharp twinge from the crackling bracelets. He relaxed, focusing on the moment and its possibilities.
Tord indulged in an oily laugh. "Admit it… you are outmaneuvered. You should have accepted that drink in the conference room – it contained a vitals blocker. It would have spared you a great deal of trouble."
The tall man released his vexation. Of course; what a fool he had been. The Force had warned him of the danger – but Tord's ploy was brilliant. By imbibing the stasis-engendering drug, he had protected himself from suffocation when the room had been emptied of air. And his willingness to be sealed in the chamber with his prospective prisoner had served as a smokescreen for his true intentions.
It was diabolically intelligent – too much so for the Nemoidian. Something was wrong with the whole scenario, something… elusive. Elsewhere.
Ghurb's slatted pupils widened. "We need to know how much… information… about our affairs you have relayed to Coruscant."
Qui-Gon feigned indifference. "Who is to say I've reported anything?"
His offhand statement sparked vibrant suspicion in his would be interrogators. Ghurb's sickly green face attained the color of putrid swamp water. "He has already told the Senate everything! There will be a Jedi invasion any minute! We are doomed!"
Ghurb was clearly not only a coward but very weak-minded.
"You would do well to release me," the Jedi master intoned, bearing down on the Nemoidian's mind with all the persuasive power of the Force.
But Ghurb balked, wringing his hands and pacing in a distraught circle.
"Pull yourself together!" Tord barked at his nervous comrade. "How much have you reported, Jedi? We have ways of making you talk."
This idle threat evoked a snort of disdain, which cost Qui-Gon another painful jolt from the binders. He focused his efforts upon Tord's equally feeble wits. "Release me now and I will sue for leniency on your behalf."
It was a suggestion that would have bent durasteel – and yet, the mind trick was repelled as though by an invisible ward, a fortification compacted of wild, bone-deep terror and some obscure and unfamiliar artifice. Qui-Gon recoiled as though physically shocked.
Little wonder he had not sensed Tord's duplicity earlier; the Nemoidian's mind was encircled and penetrated by a noxious miasma of Dark energy.
"What are you doing?" the Trade Federation mogul snarled, sensing the tug of war within his own psyche. "Answer my question or you will regret it."
Protocol dictated that no answer be made to such threats, but the Jedi master had perhaps spent too much time in his former padawan's company, for he found himself characteristically throwing standard procedure to the wind and uncharacteristically channeling Obi-Wan's habitual insouciance. "It could not possibly be more regrettable than your face," he blithely informed his captor.
Tord tweaked something in the control panel set into the wall; the Jedi shouted in agony as lightning seemed to course through his very blood. He would have sagged in place had not the grav-repulsors kept him suspended in the glimmering field. Still, having sampled his insolent young friend's methods, he could see the subtle appeal of taunting a captor, despite his own gravely delivered lectures against such imprudent deployment of wit. The pain now had a sweet aftertaste of triumph to it, a honeyed bouquet upon sour wine.
Tord all but hissed with resentment – Nemoidian personal vanity was notoriously boundless - but Ghurb unexpectedly came to the Jedi master's rescue.
"Are you brainless?" he accosted his associate. "Did you not listen to what he said? You cannot make a Jedi cooperate like this…. we must wait."
The two Nemoidians glared at each other for a long span of seconds. Tord deflated.
"It will take time to rendezvous. What if it is too late?"
Ghurb clutched at his ribs with both hands. "We must obey him. He said he can break a Jedi. He will know what to do."
And there was such conviction, and such abject dread, in the reptilian's shaking voice that Qui-Gon knew himself to be in very deep trouble, despite his complete ignorance as to the identity of this mysterious "him."
