Coruscant never slept. The city was divided into sections, and then into neighborhoods. Most people on the planet never saw the real sky. Each section had its own time zone, and the public lighting corresponded to conventions that had been determined by each borough hall. The town halls had all the characteristics of a local government, with its chief and members of their cabinet, as well as diplomatic officers to manage relations between neighboring districts.
The Senate and the Republic High Council were in charge of governing the galaxy, and were not concerned with how the citizens of Coruscant lived their lives.
In the district councils, actual policies were made, which could change dramatically from district to district. Districts often fought political wars for the wealth and the ressources, because a world like Coruscant could not produce anything nor provide raw materials. It's sole interest resided in supporting the thousands of artificial levels that made up the sprawling city.
It had been millennia since anyone had actually reached its natural soil.
Coruscant was thus totally dependent on supply chains that came from beyond the planet. The moons of the local system had been mined to the bone, and were now all mere hollow shells that had also seen myriad habitats flourish.
Coruscant's actual wealth and influence on the galactic scene remained in the incredible centralization of brainpower and education that it offered to most of the individuals in the Galaxy.
Each year, millions of persons happened to leave their home worlds for education, and through the myriad of professional opportunities, never really left Coruscant. The demographic pressure was thus supported by a very high immigration of educated individuals, supporting the pillars of the system. This had the advantage of keeping Coruscant truly at the center of the galaxy, but it also had the consequence of keeping its underprivileged, often indigenous, population in constant misery.
Each district fought against each other to attract both the right kind of population and their credits. There was a complex form of endemic corruption, which allowed the richest to continue to build their houses on the existing ones. The constant urbanization of the planet reflected the perpetuation of privilege, the wealthy stepping on the poor to reach the top.
The poor on Coruscant never saw the sunlight.
Obi-Wan knew Coruscant well. He had spent a significant portion of both of his lives there, though he was more familiar with the safe haven of the Jedi Temple than the soaring streets of the city-planet. Coruscant was a heart, beating unerringly, that had seen the rise and fall of many regimes without being affected.
Indeed, the advent of Palpatine's Empire had not fundamentally changed the planet's essence, and Old Ben had taken advantage of the planet's peculiarities to hide and conduct undercover operations that had often spanned several decades. Obi-Wan had used this valuable knowledge to build his own network of informants to exert influence.
One of the members of his network happened to be Dexter Jettster. Dex wasn't privy of the internal organization of Obi-Wan's network, but he knew that Obi-Wan somehow was passing messages to the rumored Scholar. Obi-Wan was simply playing the middleman.
So, while he had pressing matters to attend to, Obi-Wan didn't mind going to Dex's eatery to please Anakin. He could take the temperature, and find out how the underworld was taking the news of the Chancellor's forced removal.
Anakin, true to himself, ordered a Dex's special, which was composed of the most caloric foods available on Dex's menu. They were seated in the usual booth, not too far from the door, with a solid wall behind them. The establishment had a lively, relaxing atmosphere, where one could enjoy comfort food confortably. Patrons were essentially hard-working laborers employed in CoCo Town.
When Obi-Wan came to Dex's with Anakin, it usually gave him a strange feeling of disconnection. Or rather, reconnection, because those moments were so similar to what he had experienced before everything fell apart, before he had died inside on this fateful day. In no other circumstance in his current life, Obi-Wan could allow himself to pretend that nothing has changed. While eating at Dex's, Obi-Wan and Anakin were still Master and Padawan, brothers in arms, and, above all, family.
"Anakin, you're eating too fast. You'll choke on your food."
Anakin was in the process of ravishing his plate. "It's still better when it's hot, Obi-Wan." He glanced at Obi-Wan's dish, filled with various marinated greeneries. "You don't care, your stuff is already cold. That's not even real food. It's not like that you'll build muscle."
Obi-Wan responded with a non-committal smile, while gingerly placing a roasted sunberry on a lettuce leaf. He added pickled seed pods, and put the carefully arranged fork in his mouth. The combination of sweet, sour and savory flavors pleased his palate. He had not been in a mood for greasy and aggressively spiced food, and was quite content to settle for subtility and delicacy.
"So, what have you been up to? I haven't seen you much lately."
Obi-Wan gave a tight smile, and took a sip of his drink, which happened to be a chilled Corellian ale. Perhaps alcohol wasn't such a good idea, given his advanced state of fatigue. His head was already spinning. He gently put his glass down, then his fork, before massaging his temple.
"Not much, apart from the mission the Council has entrusted me with. Besides, I mustn't delay too long, it seems to me that I have a report to make in the afternoon. What about you? The new race pod is coming along?"
Obi-Wan knew exactly what question to ask to keep Anakin talking. He let the younger man launch into an elaborate and incomprehensible explanation of the technical aspects of the new ion thrusters that he planned to adapt to his new pod. Obi-Wan forced himself to relax, to enjoy the moment, when he could almost be lulled by the animated tone and uninterrupted flow of his would-have-been Padawan.
For the first time since the day before, he let himself be overcome by a quite, unadeltered joy. Here he was, with Anakin, having finally succeeded in saving him from a fate worse than death. The young man no longer had that fateful sword swinging precariously above him. Everything Obi-Wan had endured, he had done so to ensure a future for those he loved.
In this life, Obi-Wan had made sure to stay within Anakin's friendly circle –while avoiding interacting with Mace, who happened to be Anakin's Master– in order to monitor and repel Sidious' attempts to influence the young man.
The fact that Anakin had been integrated into the Temple folds at a very young age gave him the support that his psyche needed. Being temperamental, Anakin needed a stable and secure environment, one that allowed him to develop a secure and strong attachment. Obi-Wan was pleased to see that the change in his early life experience had dramatically changed his ability to trust those around him.
In Obi-Wan's previous life, Anakin's insecurities had served as fertile ground for the seeds of corruption planted by Palpatine. In this life, Anakin did not need the attention of a remotely old man, even if he was Chancellor of the Republic.
Obi-Wan had made sure to spend time with Anakin regularly to monitor his psyche. Several times he had purged him of the corrupting influence of a Sith mental spell without Anakin even realizing it.
"-Wan. Obi-Wan! Are you listening to me?"
Obi-Wan flinched. His mind had begun to slip into slumber. He ran a hand over his face, while blinking several times to chase away the drowsiness. Anakin regarded him thoughtfully.
"Looks like you didn't sleep at all actually last night." Anakin was being uncharacteristically observant. Or maybe missing falling asleep in the middle of a conversation was telling enough that even Anakin couldn't miss it.
"Don't worry, I'll go to sleep after." He glanced down at his half-eaten plate, but he was no longer hungry. He leaned back against the backrest and stretched, while glancing in Dex's general direction. Dex was a respectable-sized besalisk, with the characteristic bulk of his species. The cook was mixing a drink for a customer with efficient, but unhurried movements. He met Obi-Wan's eyes and nodded imperceptibly.
Obi-Wan answered with a minute nod as well. Dex had something to tell him, and he wouldn't wait to arrange a secure holonet connection to transmit the information he had to share.
"It was nice to see each other Anakin, shall we do it again soon?"
Anakin, always eager when it came to getting out of the Temple, nodded vigorously. "Damn right! Anyway, I'll come after you if I don't think you've gotten out of your cave enough. The Archives' artificial light is bad for your complexion. You look like a ghost."
"Well, we're not exactly at the beach either to get a tan, here, but I see your point."
They paid for their meal, saluted Dex, and walked out into the street.
"Until next time, Anakin!" Obi-Wan waved, when Anakin obliviously took the public transport to go uptown.
Obi-Wan waited a minute, before turning around and walking back to Dex, who gestured him to the back. They walked through the kitchen and scullery, to finally enter a cramped, dark, but spotless clean office. Stacks of flimsi were neatly arranged on the desk, and shelves attached to the walls displayed various interesting objects, a significant proportion of which were weapons from various origins.
Dex, before being a cook and running a respectable culinary establishment, had been a reasonably well-known arms dealer in his milieu. He had hung up his job to lead a quieter life, but he had kept a foot in some pretty obscure business. He was more on the news side these days.
"I'm always glad to see you around, Kenobi," Dex smiled appreciatively. "There's a lot of talk around here about the Chancellor's assassination."
"Oh, perhaps you have some interesting information to pass on to my employer?"
Dex laughed, displaying his impressive row of teeth. "I've always liked you, my friend, and if I've followed you all these years, it's because I have an instinct and an eye for genuine people. You know, in our game, it's a talent that has saved my ass many times."
Obi-Wan nodded. "It is certainly a very useful talent, my dear." Rephrasing without giving any additional information, while maintaining his role in the conversation, was a skill Obi-Wan had developed while being a Republic diplomat and Jedi Council representative. He wasn't sure what Dex was getting at.
"So, I hear that the person for whom we share a common bond would have something to do with the events surrounding the High Chancellor's death."
Obi-Wan, intellectually, had known it wouldn't take long for investigators to make the connection between Abner Ravenwood and the identity he used with his various informant networks. Still, he didn't expect the connections to go the other way so quickly. One of the investigators, with access to the investigation's details, must have been asking the right questions to the right people.
From what he had gathered about the people involved since last night, it had to be the good Master Sinube. He sure hadn't wasted any time.
"That may be true, unfortunately, I don't have access to any specific details regarding this matter." Obi-Wan chose the route of the plausible deniability. He might have to offer something of value to appease Dex if it became necessary, but Obi-Wan would instead let the interaction unfold naturally. "Does this call into question our... collaboration?"
"You're a tough nut to crack, aren't you? The Jedi have no idea what's hiding inside their ranks, do they?"
"If you could be so kind as not to mention my... peculiar position, within the Jedi Order."
"The Chancellor was killed by a Force user. Those with a keen enough eye and a fast mind have already connected the dots."
Obi-Wan felt his perpetual serene smile tense. "Maybe someone had indeed been sloppy."
Dex considered eye. He seemed to be assessing Obi-Wan, behind a face that gave nothing away. Obi-Wan felt no hostility in the Force. "They say things about Chancellor Palpatine, too," Dex said. "If those things turn out to be the truth, the Republic will be much better off with him gone."
Obi-Wan, despite his usual verve, didn't know what to say in response. Fatigue and the psychic damage –from which it would take him a long time to recover– prevented him from thinking efficiently.
"Kenobi, we've been helping each other for a long time, and I have it on good authority that you've gotten me out of a few difficult situations in the past, without imposing any debts on me. I don't know if the conclusions I've reached are correct, but I want you to know that if my deductions got me there, others will too. That's friendly advice, and I'd rather know you've been warned." Dex smiled good-naturedly. "Meanwhile, you look pretty bad. Did you fight a krayt dragon?"
Obi-Wan shook his head, and couldn't help but respond to Dex's genuine smile. "I wish it were, but it was much worse."
Dex laughed out loud, and with a friendly tap, escorted Obi-Wan out of his office with the words, "Be careful, my friend. Go get some rest, I think you're going to need your energy before long."
On the street, after being ushered out, Obi-Wan felt a little disoriented. He wasn't sure of what had really happened, but it seemed that Dex would keep his secret.
]o[
Obi-Wan was stationed across from the barracks entrance, tucked away in an alcove, watching the comings and goings as he considered his options.
He knew that the barracks were monitored in some way. If he went in through the front door, recording devices would necessarily capture his image. Even if he had a Force technique capable of jamming the electromagnetic waves, he did not feel capable of maintaining this kind of cloak for more than a few minutes. Too little time for what he had to do.
He still had to decide how to get in, and under what guise. He could go in as himself, claiming to be on a Jedi Council mission, but it wouldn't take long for the investigators to make the necessary connections. He had no choice but to obscure his features in some way, but that would also raise alarms.
So he had to wear his mask and remove all the distinguishing marks from his clothes, and sneak as quietly as possible through the barracks to the infirmary. This would be no easy task.
He would probably have to plan a diversion, and get the Clones' attention elsewhere, although he knew from experience that injured Clones were never left alone. There would probably be the CMO and his aids to neutralize.
Usually, this kind of operation had to be carefully planned and prepared, but he didn't have the time to wait any longer. He didn't know what the Clones with the activated control chip would remember about the episode, if it were taken away from them now. They had seen his face, and had accompanied him to one of his hideouts.
Obi-Wan had to intervene.
Securing the mask over his features, Obi-Wan put on the hooded jacket that would help him remain anonymous for as long as possible, and donned sturdy, reinforced gloves that would protect him if he had to fight. He secured his satchel as close to his body as possible with the straps, and followed an alleyway parallel to the west wall of the barracks. The alley was clean, the garbage cans neatly arranged for pickup. Not a single piece of trash was littering the ground. The clones apparently made sure to maintain what was theirs.
Although not citizens, this part of the city was theirs, and they took care of it.
Obi-Wan stepped onto a raised ledge, and with a Force-assisted jump, grabbed a metallic panel from the wall opposite. He pulled himself up with his right arm to preserve his still painful left shoulder, jumped again, and reached the roof. The Clones barracks were close enough to the upper level not to have been built upon, and a good portion of the roof was used to park various types of transports for the Clones' use. They were other barracks scattered all over the planet, to accommodate the sheer number of Clones, but this one was the most imposing, and was well-protected.
Obi-Wan had just the right kind of diversion in mind to help him sneak into the building.
The barracks had been built in a hurry, to house the Clones who had just been delivered by the Kaminoans without anyone –apart from Sidious of course– knowing of their arrival. The buildings, built in the record time of only a few days, were doing the job, but were full of defects. Finishing touches were obviously lacking, and although the Clones had taken it upon themselves to fix up their quarters as best they could, they had little opportunity to review the essential technical aspects of the building.
Obi-Wan was counting on this for his diversion. He moved discreetly between the vehicles, which gave him the cover he needed, to the most central point of the building. There, Obi-Wan sat down, against a LAAT/i gunship, and closed his eyes. He extended his senses through the Force, tuning it up for one particular echo.
He was searching for perpetual movement, which was the basis of all life on a molecular scale.
There. In Obi-Wan's mind, the water grid of the building lit up. As expected, there was only one supply line for the entire building.
Obi-Wan seized the ambient thermal energy present in all the surrounding matter and channeled it into the water system. These kinds of Force manipulation were tricky at first, but not really much more so than those that affected gravity and movement. These techniques were less spectacular, however, and less usable in a combat situation, but being able to heat up water was still of interest, especially for making a cup of tea in the middle of a battlefield.
But this technique was also helpful for dramatically increasing the pressure in a pipe system, that was already failing because it was designed and built in a hurry. Obi-Wan released the energy in one fell swoop to generate a sudden increase in pressure that couldn't be regulated by the valves and other devices designed to reduce pressure. Through his Force-enhanced senses, he felt the sudden rupture of the water pipes throughout the building.
He got up quickly, his mind and body focused on the action thanks to the adrenaline. He forgot about fatigue and pain, and got moving.
Obi-Wan had a pretty good idea where the infirmary was located, and ran to the entrance of the hangar, whose door was already open. Crates of supplies were stacked, waiting to be emptied and the contents dispatched.
Water gushed from a pipe running along the inside wall and began to seep onto the floor. Two armored clones faced the leak, and one appeared to be trying to communicate with someone in charge. The rest of the hangar was empty. Logically, many other troopers would be trying to reach their chain of command to report the event, effectively saturating all communications. Obi-Wan draw near silently, taking the approach that allowed him to move without a sound. Using the Force to make sure no one was looking in his direction, he touched the two troopers on the shoulders and wove a powerful Force suggestion, which he directed mercilessly into their minds.
"Sleep."
The technique took hold without hitch, and the troopers collapsed bonelessly. Obi-Wan winced. The use of the Force reinforced his headache, which reminded him that he was not far from Force exhaustion. He had not recovered enough from last night to make such extensive use of it.
To preserve his abilities, he set about dragging the two unconscious men behind a pile of crates out of sight, using only his physical strength. He felt that he was pulling dangerously on his healing wounds, but he did not have the leisure to wait until he was better to act.
He stripped the first trooper of the most essential pieces of his armor, took off his jacket and mask, stuffed them into his bag, and put the Clone's armor on him while keeping his own boots on. He pulled back his longish hair back in a catogan, before putting on the bucket. Having spent years fighting among the Clones, and having worn his own armor that had been provided by the clones themselves, Obi-Wan could put it on with his eyes closed.
When he stood up, he thought he could pass for a clone if they didn't look too closely. He wouldn't pass close inspection, but his diversion was there to create the necessary confusion. He reattached his satchel to his shoulder, and secured his lightsaber in his right boot. Finally, he took the blaster and set it on stun mode.
Five minutes must have passed since the pipes broke, and the water was still flowing. The Clones had not yet succeeded in shutting down the main power supply, which kept the building in a state of chaos and confusion.
In the corridors, the Clones were shouting and fidgeting, most of them unable to do anything about what was happening. Some tried to plug leaks with whatever they had on hand, but the larger ones resisted all attempts, while other troopers made sure to raise furniture and objects so they wouldn't come in contact with the water.
The clones were in various states of dressing. Some had their armor on, while others were simply wearing their blacks.
Obi-Wan blended in just fine, and no one tried to stop him. He made his way up the corridors to the infirmary, whose doors were closed.
He did a quick scan with the Force to assess who was behind them. He didn't recognize any of the signatures of the ten or so people there. He would decide what to do once he had a better idea of what to expect, and entered the infirmary.
It was a set of rooms, which were articulated around a central hub that served as a waiting room, a reception desk and a dispatch room. Other rooms were connected to it: the operating room, the recovery room and the hospitalization rooms.
All in all, it was perhaps the best equipped and designed area in the entire barracks, but unfortunately the plumbing here was no better, and the unit had also suffered a major leak, as evidenced by the waterlogged floor. The Clones must have found a way to fix this one, because Obi-Wan could neither hear nor see the leak that caused the flooding.
A trooper, wearing armor but without his helmet, was busy mopping the floor in the main room. The Clones Obi-Wan was looking for were occupying one of the inpatient dormitories, whose access door was behind the front desk.
"Ah, vod, nice of you to come to help me," the trooper grunted. "Would you mind emptying that bucket in the bathroom for me?"
Obi-Wan approached the unsuspecting man, and used the Force to suggest, "You must report, in person, to your division commander and tell him the infirmary is operational. On the way, you'll help anyone who needs a hand."
The trooper straightened up and said, "I'm putting you in charge of sickbay, brother."
Obi-Wan nodded and watched the trooper leave, before entering the room he was interested in. He had to act quickly, for the soldiers would not remain disorganized for long. After all, they had been engineered and trained to deal with a wide variety of situations, and reacting appropriately to the unexpected was one of the advantages of using human soldiers rather than droids.
In the hospital room, the five soldiers who had helped him last night were there, sitting up in bed, staring blankly. They turned their heads toward him as he entered, but said nothing. Their faces did not change in expression.
Obi-Wan held back a shudder, gritted his teeth, and sat down in the chair next to the bed furthest to the right of the door. The trooper occupying the bed had his forearms tattooed with names and numbers, which were probably the names of the brothers who were important to him.
"I'm sorry for what I did," Obi-Wan whispered, putting pressure on the man's shoulder to invite him to lie down. The man complied without flinching.
Obi-Wan removed his gloves, placed them on the side of the bed, applied his bare palms to the soldier's skull, and closed his eyes.
He had never had the opportunity to study the exact principle of how control chips worked. He didn't have the medical culture to understand the technical pamphlet he had managed to obtain. What he had grasped, however, had allowed him to integrate the additional order, without altering the rest of the design.
Obi-Wan's strategy had paid off, as he had an effective way to neutralize the entire Grand Army of the Republic. However, he had not been certain until last night that his scheme had been effectively implanted. Circumstances had forced him to act with uncertainty and without prior testing, and now he had to find a way to fix his mistakes, with no safety net and very little time to spare.
Obi-Wan knew what he was looking for, and quickly located the chip, easily bypassing the darkside weave that interfered with its perception.
Obi-Wan could feel what he needed to do to make the chip permanently inactive. But he didn't think he could return it to its original state. He had passed the point of no return from the start, and owed it to these men to return their minds unadulterated. Mostly unadulterated: he would make sure to implant one or two suggestions to block access to specific memories.
With a careful and pointed action with the Force, like an ethereal scalpel, he incised precisely the part of the chip responsible for the mental compulsion's broadcast. He did not touch the rest, for fear that it might have other unforeseen consequences on the man's health. Obi-Wan immediately felt a kind of release, as if he had freed a bird from its cage. He held the trooper in a state of disconnection, not quite unconsciousness, in order to access his most recent memories.
They were curiously gray, as if devoid of color and depth, but were perfectly accessible, as Obi-Wan had feared. With a precise maneuver, he tried to install a sort of rerouting on the neural pathway that led to the memories that concerned him directly, such as his physical appearance or the one where the Clone clearly remembered him putting on his Jedi outfit.
The precise weave seemed to take. The man would remember the same scene, where his unit had seen Obi-Wan emerge from the nightclub, when he would try to dig deeper into his memories. He completed his procedure by putting the Trooper to sleep. He would awaken in twelve hours, hopefully in full possession of his senses.
Obi-Wan breathed a sigh of relief. At last, he was getting somewhere. It seemed he was finally getting his footing in the disaster that was his life for the past eighteen hours. He got up, went to the bedside of the second trooper in the adjacent bed, and focused his mind to repeat the procedure.
He was abruptly shaken out of his concentration by the unmistakable snap-hiss of a lightsaber being activated. He whirled back, immediately grabbing his own lightsaber, before facing the door.
There, Quinlan Vos stood on guard, clearly expecting to have to fight. Bant Eerin and Commander Fox had also adopted martial postures, and were looking at him, their faces closed and hostile.