Fallout
Chapter 11
Anakin managed to snap his jaw shut and grind out a half-stunned response. "Your message?" he repeated, feeling confusion tugging at the orderly matrix of his certainties, like a grav generator gone haywire. "You mean…the distress beacon? Your droid back there mentioned an emergency signal."
Master Sen Sen Xerxes' expression was difficult to read, behind the obscuring cascade of silver hair. His Force presence was foreign to the young Jedi, and ancient, and equally indecipherable. "Ah, the droid. Yes… the distress signal lasted perhaps six weeks after the initial disaster. Radiation and environmental factors destroyed the surface relay. That was some time ago."
Anakin followed behind as the hirsute Jedi slithered his way back down the dark tunnel. As they walked, glow rods lit and faded in sequence, activated by their motion. A flickering spotlight of dull gold seemed to follow them, casting the warm hues of their robes in rich highlight. Their bare feet and Master Xerxes' scaled hide made only the softest of whispers against the hard stone floor.
"I'm sorry your signal was never intercepted," he offered. The idea of being entombed in a radiation bunker for more than a century sent a thrill of dread down his spine. It was a living death – an imprisonment worse than any he could imagine, beyond that suffered by invalids who were chained to machines to keep their vital functions pumping. He would rather die than suffer either fate. Even though that was not the Jedi way.
The Thisspiasian halted and turned back to them briefly. "Ah, but it was intercepted, Master Skywalker," he intoned.
Anakin startled – there had been no formal introductions. He watched Master Xerxes's gaze travel over to Obi Wan, gravely.
"Your message did reach Coruscant at some point," Obi Wan admitted, inclining his head. "Understand that I had not yet been born, and know of this only from reading official records."
Master Xerxes white head bobbed up and down, knowingly. "You tell me nothing I did not know already, The Force has shown me much in these last years. It is in the past, and no longer exists. However, I am honored that you have chosen to grant my request."
Now Anakin felt his disordered certainties give way and crumble beneath him, sending him into a freefall. "What? Your request? Master, what's-"
"We should speak later," Obi Wan cut him off, the confident authority in his tone completely undermined by the bright gleam of confusion and doubt in his eyes and the Force.
Sen Sen Xerxes twisted his flexible torso round again and continued down the passage way. "You will wish to rest and meditate before we meet with the other Friends," he declared. "I will show you to guest quarters."
"With respect, master, we are pressed for time. There are hostile droid forces on Rhellis Massa's surface as we speak," Obi Wan protested.
But the Thisspasian waved a long arm at him, as though chastening a wayward apprentice. "They will not discover you here. You must have patience and trust in the Force. You came thus far at its prompting; why now do you fret to escape so hurriedly?"
Obi Wan's mouth pressed into a thin line, and a familiar groove appeared between his brows. "Master Xerxes –"
"All shall be made clear," the ancient master announced, with a sweeping imperiousness reminiscent of Yoda at his most determined. "We shall meet again in one hour's time. Rest and be at ease." They stopped at a low arch issuing into a vestibule off which several simple doors stood open, a pale light flooding from each threshold. "I shall convene the Friends. You have arrived none too soon, and they will be eager to meet you."
As his undulating form retreated down the passage, lit by the flickering circles of moving light, Anakin scowled, chafing against the imposed inaction, and the melodramtic air surrounding their arrival. On the other hand, he needed a moment to reorient himself – and to wrest some badly-needed answers out of Obi Wan. "C'mon," he grunted, leading the way into the nearest chamber.
They stepped into a neat and clean hollow, a round-contoured hovel reminiscent of the mud-pack slave quarters on Tatooine. The air was warm, sweet-scented, limpid with a sourceless light. There were sleeping bunks set into the wall, a few tables and storage chests, two molded plastoid chairs. He took this all in with one swift, assessing glance, and then rounded on the older Jedi. "What the kriff is going on here? What message is he talking about?"
Obi Wan was a master of evasion. "You heard him – they apparently set up a broad band distress signal in the aftermath of the final bombardment. Tragically, it was never answered."
"Tragically?" Anakin's eyes narrowed. "You said the signal was intercepted. What do you know that you're not telling me?"
Obi Wan stroked his beard and made a great show of examining the small room's contents, his eyes never meeting Anakin's. "Nothing of importance to our present mission, Anakin. You must trust me-"
"How can you say that when you don't return the favor? What 's so dastardly and grim that I can't be trusted to know about it?"
"That's not the point. I have access to certain… restricted files. Master Yoda granted me permission to see them on strict conditions. It wouldn't be appropriate to-"
"Yeah? Well, Yoda also made me promise to stay close to you. He recognizes that we're a team, that I'm not your snot-nosed Padawan anymore. Why can't you?'
That got his former master's attention. The aloof façade disintegrated into sharp rebuttal. "Perhaps I lack sufficient evidence of the same! Petulant insistence on overstepping your own bounds is hardly a sign of maturity, Anakin. And I might add that-"
"Save the lecture, Obi Wan! I'm not your Padawan anymore, got it?"
"Anakin-"
"No! You drag me halfway across the galaxy on some wild bantha chase, get us into this mess with the droids and this weird Friends cult or whatever, and you expect me to tag along for the ride? No thanks."
"Anakin-"
"And I hate these stupid robes, too. You owe me."
Obi Wan pinched the bridge of his nose and exhaled. "Very well. I'll tell you, against my better judgment." He hesitated, folding his arms across his chest and fixing Anakin with a piercing look, as though to hold a squirming and uncooperative youngling in place. "The Council was aware of that distress beacon a century ago. They chose not to respond."
"What?" Fury rose like a magmaic tide. Anakin bottled it up, tightening his mental shields and his fists. "Why not?"
Obi Wan watched him warily, as a sentinel observes a dormant volcano. "I don't know, precisely," he replied, a bit too carefully. "But both sides of the dispute had refused Jedi mediation before and during the civil conflicts, and one Knight who voluntarily offered his services was killed in a bombing."
The first dribble of oozing wrath spilled over the crater's edge. "So the Council decided to abandon the cause? Let them nuke each other out, justice be damned? How could they do that? There were innocents!"
"Every conflict of this nature is deplorable," Obi Wan answered, eyes bright with battle readiness, and with something else, more personal and unresolved. "There have been other hopeless situations in which help is refused, in which even that given freely, despite such protestations, is twisted and rejected… in which there is nothing else to be done."
"That's …" But Anakin's extensive arsenal of obscenities failed him. And beneath the pompous lecture there was a serpentine flick of pain, of buried memory. He pounded on it, like a krayt hunting a lame bantha calf.. "Melida-Daan," he shot back.
Obi Wan actually hissed. He broke eye contact, briefly. When he looked up, his armor was back in place, impervious, unscarred by memory or emotion. "Yes. That is a relevant example."
Ankin's mouth twisted. "No. It's a personal example. Guess what? You're not the only one who can do some snooping around in the Archives. I might have accessed a few restricted files myself."
One of Obi Wan's eyebrows crept upward with a languid diffidence that told Anakin he had scored a direct hit. "Oh?"
"Yeah." The young man twisted the knife, for good measure. "And know what happens to Jedi who follow their conscience and their heart – and who get involved in a deplorable situation that the Council has already condemned as hopeless ? They get the shaft, master. Disgraced. Abandoned. Or maybe you already knew that."
And if that handful of proverbial dirt in the face didn't prove that Anakin had shed the rank of Padawan forever, then nothing would. He stood toe to toe with his colleague, his equal, and rode the hot currents of the storming Force, the clouds of ash and fire born of his own resentment and the lightning flashes of Obi Wan's outrage. They soared in it together, circling like hawkbats, like angry draigons, and then swooped apart.
"I think this time would be well spent in meditation," the older man gritted out with supercilious precision. "If you will excuse me, Master Skywalker."
"Of course." He only inclined his head, not a full bow that would suggest subordination, or contrition.
Obi Wan stalked out the door, presumably to find another alcove in which to lick his wounds and cry on the Force's shoulder. Anakin ignored the terrible twisting in his gut, and breathed deeply through the first few waves of remorse. Because he spoke the truth, and he was right. And he wasn't done asking uncomfortable questions, either. If Master Sen Sen Xerxes thought he could make a dramatic reappearance from the dead and then yank them around like puppets on a string, he had seriously mistaken his man. Anakin Skywalker was not to be trifled with, even by the Force itself.
The room furthest from Anakin wasn't far enough; even here, the Force churned with the young Jedi's emotions, flared bright and hot with successive waves of bitterness and accusation. But it was a little better, and that would have to suffice. Obi Wan knelt upon the hard-packed floor, and breathed out his own seething tangle of thoughts and memories. They served no purpose but distraction on this strange mission; soon enough SenSen Xerxes would reappear, and he must be ready for whatever revelations awaited. Release, and center.
There was much to meditate upon. I was beginning to think you hadn't got my message. The ancient Thisspiasian did not refer to the defunct emergency beacon – he meant something more recent. He meant the Force's insistent summons, issued in such unfamiliar and yet personal terms. How was that possible? It was true that a powerful Jedi might – under duress, in extreme need – be able to touch the mind of another to whom he was very close… an old friend, a teacher, a Padawan. It was not unheard of. But his own familiarity with Master Xerxes was limited to the perusal of a few entries in the Archives, and the ancient Jedi's connection to him was non-existent.
Although he seemed to know the names of his visitors without being told, almost as though a third party had heralded their coming, made the introductions prior to their arrival. Now there was a strange thought, and an unsettling one. The Force should not be playing messenger boy, for stars' sake! A Jedi 's life was committed, unreservedly, to the service of the Force. Not the inverse. That would be… absurd and unfitting.
Are you lecturing the Force itself? a gently amused voice castigated him.
"I -!" but the protest died on his lips. He breathed in. Release and center. Here, beneath the scarred and radiation scoured surface of Rhellis Massa, the ghosts of the past were silent, solitude no longer invaded by clamoring voices of memory. The Living Force flowed steady and serene. And once again, it appeared to be in a chatty mood.
"This isn't right," he insisted, wincing at the near-petulance in his own voice.
Isn't it? Are you so wise that you understand every mystery of existence? Your heart was not always so heavily armored, I think.
The illusion of intimate conversation with a long-dead friend was heart-rending, far too realistic. He chafed beneath the imposition. Could he not be spared the subtle mockery? The lowliest of the Force's servants he might be – he knew himself to be – but surely he did not deserve torment at its hands?
The very air seemed to sigh, the elusive floral scent grow stale. If you will not yet trust me, then you must at least trust Anakin.
"But I do. I trust him with my life." Speaking aloud relieved some of the terrible pressure in his chest, where longing and denial met in a protracted skirmish.
Then trust him with the less important things, too. You will need him here. You can handle all the most difficult tasks, while he can take care of the impossible ones. You two make a wonderful team. I was quite right about that.
"What about Sen Sen Xerxes?"
I will let him speak for himself, the voice decided, fading away into the interstices between speech and meaning, sound and hearing.
The slither of scaly hide against the stone floor could be heard approaching once again, this time with several pair of feet in tow. He rose, and smoothed the folds of the gold cloth, fingertips brushing last against his 'saber's hilt. And then he went to meet those to whom he had been sent, by the will of the Force.