Legacy
Book I
Chapter 17
The rain's glittering bead curtains parted, unveiling the harsh silhouettes of six strangers clad in ruddy armor, spikes and crenellations hammered into rough-hewn metal, rivets and straps studding and crossing the overlaid plates. They were huge… taller than Wookiees, just as broad, scarred flesh peeping between greaves and gauntlets, slatted yellow eyes gleaming within deep visors, like the demons rumored to inhabit festival lanterns on Felucia.
Obi-Wan frowned at the spectacle, reality and nightmare blurred together with the mud and blood smearing his sodden clothing and hair, with the angry rumbling of the starless skies.
The hulking figures stopped, forming a half-ring about him. Several of the tallest removed their helms, and peered down at him in astonishment, hairless ridged heads turning this way and that as they spoke with one another in urgent yet strangely hushed tones, their native tongue guttural and thick.
A marathon run… lightning and rain… a battle of one against a dozen monstrous, soulless foes… and now this? Actual Paxellian legionaries, straight from a historical documentary holo?
He couldn't help it; black humor bubbled within his chest, and gently erupted. He chuckled, recognizing that the joke was on him, that the Force had a predilection for absurd irony to beat even his own. His soft expression of mirth hurt like the blazes, too, jostling his dislocated shoulder and exacerbating a hundred smaller bruises and sprains. But he was already in the grip of incipient hysteria, so the fact only doubled his bitter amusement.
The Paxellians drew back a pace, abruptly reverent. He sat straighter, all hope of standing abandoned.
The leader sank on one knee. "Rothschall-dom,"he grunted. "O Olokk-dom."
Obi-Wan's jaw dropped. Olokk. God of mischief and chaos, Paxellian divinity of berserker battle frenzies and trickery. "Oh Force," he breathed, suppressing a renewed and even stronger bout of laughter. They thought he was….
Well, then.
"Greetings." But of course they hadn't a word of Basic. He tried Huttese. "Achuta."
All six mighty warriors, any one of whom could have killed him on the spot, one-handed, sank to the squelching mud and touched their hard-ridged foreheads to the ground before him. The foremost addressed him with visible trepidation, in stumbling Huttese, accepting without question that his own native deity had chosen a foreign tongue as means of communication. But then, Olokk was notorious for shape-changing, preferring the forms of small animals and 'weak" species such as humans or other soft-skinned variants, one aspect of his treacherous and unpredictable nature.
"You lord… " – a brief gesture encompassing the post-battle chaos- "You have made this. See you, we watch."
The truth was the truth. "Tagwa." Yes, he had. He sought the right word, racking sluggish memory. "Na yoka." A joke, a whimsy. He waved a hand at the scattered debris. "Nobata hodrudda." No competition.
The Paxellian and his companions exchanged uneasy glances. "We come for other warlord."
The young Jedi frowned over this. "There is no other warlord. Only me."
However, his assertion was met with respectful denial. "Other come. We hear of raids. Some other come before us. We kill him, take his loot."
Ah. They had heard the same reports that had made their way as far as the Core… if Niffrendi had sought to hoodwink the Galactic Senate by perpetuating the myth of outside attacks, it had been a dangerous game. Their barbaric near neighbors were prurient enough to follow the gossip to its source, supposing a rival tribe to be at the root of the trouble. His mind raced, seeking a way to diffuse the situation.
"This world is under my protection. Mine."
But the leader only redoubled his enthusiasm for bloodshed. "Then the raiders are trespassing. Blasphemers. We will kill them and pour their blood like wine for you."
Lightning seared overhead, followed by deafening thunder. Obi-Wan shuddered, feeling reality slide perilously beneath him again, blackness lurking at the corners of vision. He needed rest and warmth. The Paxellian crept forward on his knees, poking one clawed digit at the young god's blood-soaked trousers. "A drink?"
Thirst blossomed at the word. He nodded, not protesting when a flask was pressed to his lips. Molten alcoholic liquid coursed down his throat, blazing a trail of heat from tongue to belly, swiftly suffusing chest and sinuses. He choked and then covered his shock with a rough, hacking laugh.
"Good? Is good?" the brutish warrior inquired, worriedly.
The stuff made fermis look like warm bantha milk. Obi-Wan cleared his throat and blinked away tears. Stars' end. "I will go with you," he decided. He needed to know more, to determine their intentions and their numbers. "Now."
Obeisant, the scouting party lifted him bodily from the ground and made for their outlandish ship at a rolling jog, while Niffrendi's skies raged onward in perpetual tantrum.
Qui-Gon made no less than a dozen attempts to override the containment field's control mechanism, and then to scramble the generator source beneath him – but the infernal binders conspired to thwart him, sending an unpredictable jolt of energy through his limbs at the crucial moment every time. Had the pain been continuous, it would have been much simpler to sublimate and control his autonomic response; as it was, the sharp surge of electric fire was a capricious and bedeviling tormentor, a gremlin determinedly wreaking minor havoc upon his power to access the Force.
The designer of his ingenious prison knew Jedi limits very, very well indeed.
He pushed the disturbing thought aside and allowed his awareness to expand, past the walls of his featureless cell, into the void of space and the storm mantled planet below, into the vibrant plenum of Light that surrounded and penetrated all things. Within that empyrean expanse, there was neither distance nor size, nor the separation of self and other into impenetrable singularities. The Living Force was a textured and flowing music, wind and chimes at once, water and dancing reflection. Within its entrancing complexity he sought a long-familiar presence, the most proximate beacon-light within a dizzying constellation.
Obi-Wan. Recognition flooded back across an invisible bond, and then an echo of sloppily shielded pain. For a moment, the prior argument was forgotten, reduced to a trivial debate over historical details- mind brushed against mind, images and impressions fleeting through the Force like stark lightning.
The tenuous connection was shattered by Shlomm Tord's unannounced return.
"So. Jedi," the tall Nemoidian simpered, pacing in a wide circle about the perimeter, dark robe hem dragging forlornly behind him. "My consultant informs me that your kind travel and work in pairs. Where is your counterpart?"
The tall man did not deign to give a reply, and his impatient interlocutor made sure he was punished for it.
Panting, he fixed the villainous schemer with a bland look.
"Cooperation will serve your best interests," Tord warned, puffing out his concave chest. "I realize that you will not yield to our … persuasion on your own behalf. But I assure you that we have extensive resources at our disposal. We will find your friend, and detain him as well."
The Jedi master wondered what the real likelihood of this proposal might be – and how many more insults Tord would hypothetically suffer at the second captive's hands – but he remained outwardly impassive.
The Nemoidian paced round to face him again, lisping heavily as he leveled his next threat. "We only need one of you. Tell me where he is, and I promise he will die quickly." Two glazed eyes were half-hooded by translucent membranes, narrowing to a pair of vicious crescents. "Otherwise, I will make sure you watch him suffer, for a very long time."
But the ultimatum fell on deaf ears. "A good businessman would know not to drive a bargain without merchandise."
Tord's mouth twisted into a contemptuous zigzag. "Mockery will not endear you to him," he wheezed, smugly, and then swept out in a rustle of faded opulence.
The Paxellian ship was a marvel of engineering, though not of comfort. Its interior was outfitted with a minimum of insulating bulkhead material, and crude benches bolted to the deck plates. Circuits and controls stood exposed beneath the simple console; debris and …stains… were apparent in nooks and crannies, cracks and scars upon the welded frame. It was a ship kept in perfect functional condition, but never cleaned or cosseted, much like its owners' battle scarred and tattooed bodies.
Much was apparent to the young Jedi, now that they were closeted together in the tight space of the vessel's interior. The scouts were, he sensed, no more than a bachelor group of males out on their first run, possibly hoping to prove themselves outside their tribe or clan's established territory. Their bravado and crudity concealed an underlying insecurity and lack of experience; he concluded that they were his peers in the barbaric piratical culture, warriors just past the trials of initiation but still unseasoned.
And that had already worked to his advantage. Surely their elders might not so easily have mistaken him for a supernatural being. Not that he was about to complain – his unexpected ascension to divinity had, after all, saved his life.
He projected a steady impression of power and esoteric knowledge, drawing upon his arsenal of Shadow's skills not so much to influence his companions' minds against their wills, but rather to enhance the point of view to which they had chosen to cling. Affirmation of another's prejudice was much easier than outright compulsion - a subtle manipulation, one felt as personal conviction, manifest truth. The Force shuddered subliminally, weaving illusion among them, a veil wrought of superstition and cunning.
He had no time to reflect upon the impressive skill of the pilot, who swiftly punched the Raptor upward through a miniscule gap in the roiling storm's spiral labyrinth, for three of the others were busily tending Olokk's injuries. They had ripped open his blood soaked trouser leg and smeared some hellish ointment onto the open wound before he could issue objection; the resulting flood of numbing cold all but took his breath away, though it effectively blocked the nerves. More of the spitfire distillation was poured down his throat, and a pair of rough hands seized his injured arm and slammed the shoulder joint back into its socket with expert ruthlessness.
"Kriff!" he yelped, nearly doubling over.
The Paxellians blanched.
He clenched his teeth, the taste of their vile drink heavy on his tongue. "You have done well," he gasped, holding his chin high. For a moment, blackness swirled before his vision again; he had lost too much blood to be playing these games. But he had no choice, did he? And Qui-Gon needed his help. That much he had sensed clearly, in that one strange moment of connection…
"I will reward you richly," he declared, as was clearly expected. Olokk traditionally remunerated those who healed his battle wounds with treasure, slaves, and a share in his own glory. The young Paxellians cheered, pounding fists against their ornate breastplates.
"Let me see your armor," he commanded, peering critically at the nearest example. The owner stood at proud attention, slatted yellow eyes glinting and long nostrils flaring with excitement.
Obi-Wan stared: what he had initially taken for complex glyphs or decorative motifs were in fact cannibalized cyberboards and pathway integrators, vocabulator cards and processor stacks. "Droid brains," he muttered, fascinated.
The Paxellian grinned, revealing yellow teeth. "Yes, lord. We have destroyed the false mockeries of life. We have kept the Oath."
"You are loyal servants," the injured god improvised, riding on the quicksilver prompting of instinct. "You deserve great glory."
"We will find it!" the young warrior proclaimed, his companions grunting and nodding in agreement. "The Publikos will not stop us! We will plunder their worlds and make them our own. The Worms and the Beasts will fall before us."
Hutts and Togorians, presumably. Obi-Wan scowled; the resurgence of a Paxellian threat in the Rims would pose a serious threat to the delicate balance of power in outlying systems, worlds difficult to protect and patrol in any case, principalities often in crisis as criminal powers vied to wrest them from Republic control. The borders of the galactic commonwealth were at best a shady region, a pioneer's realm where might and right exchanged roles with alarming rapidity. The addition of another contender for power and sparse riches could be disastrous….
His brooding was interrupted by a sickening lurch; the ship bucked and shuddered beneath them as they twisted free of the turbulent upper atmosphere, clawing their way free of the storm and into clear space above. The pilot turned in his seat, eagerly awaiting orders, greed and wild ambition swirling in the Force, filling the cramped cockpit with a fey and reckless spirit, the unrestrained aggression of youth.
Olokk grinned fiercely. "We will punish the trespassers," he commanded, to the undisguised delight of his new minions.
