Fallout
Chapter 15
The first of the vultures was waiting for him just above the last cloud layer. Anakin soared through the shredding yellow mist, sickly rivulets of condensation wicked off his cockpit canopy by his sheer speed, the near vacuum of cold outside. He rose beyond the last veils of poisonous atmosphere, into stark night, seven robotic hunters hard on his tail.
Artoo bleeped a shrill warning; the proximity sensors rallied to the astromech's cause.
"I see 'em," the young Jedi grumbled. What fun was there in prolonging the chase? Let 'em come. He slowed, waited until the vultures had him locked on their targeting computers, and then dove, plunging back through the swirling upper atmosphere, a hailstorm of red bolts sizzling just past his thrusters, clipping off the wing shielding in blazes of spattering light. He plunged downward, reaching through the Force to feel his pursuers, feel their trajectories shifting, anticipating his evasive maneuvers.
No such luck, poodoo-eaters. He twisted, reversed, and headed directly back at them, driving straight into their oncoming fire. The targeting computer wasn't fast enough; their point blank shots went wide, sliding past him harmlessly, setting Artoo and the shipboard computer into fits. He laughed, settling into rhythm. The vultures overshot him, changed direction. He looped, rocketed upward again, seven desperate seekers on his tail.
The mists gave way once more to blackness, to an infinity speckled with islands of light. The stars blurred as he accelerated, as the Delta rattled beneath him, as his own heart pounded in unison with the drive uptakes, as his arms and legs and spine became one with the fragile shell of metal and circuits. The starfighter was nothing but a prosthesis welded about his soul, a shimmering armature around pure fire, around burning Light. He whooped, clenched his teeth in near ecstasy, saw the second squadron approaching and charged straight into Death, fearless, unconquerable.
Artoo's objections were lost in the rush of power that flowed through his limbs, through his blood, through the ship's humming drives. He opened the throttle all the way, safety override no longer standing between him and the essence of speed. The first vulture tried to dodge, and got caught in the shock wave off his rear starboard thruster, went spinning into its mate. The third one fired a shot at him; Anakin fired his own straight into the first bolt. The two plasma packets collided, exploded into a supernova of heat and fury. The droid went straight through it; Anakin sailed over the top, twisting his way past destruction by a hair's breadth. In the Force, a hair's breadth was an infinity.
The fourth droid was confused, ended up in front of him. It shattered into fiery bones, sparking innards. The parts rattled against the canopy and shields as Anakin skewered his way past, on a collision course with the next vulture. It pulled to the side at the last moment – he swerved into it, accelerating madly – the droid spun, hit another droid, exploded. Anakin merely felt a jolt as his superior speed and weight carried him through, his maniacal impetus a weapon in its own right.
Artoo screamed something about a battle ship lurking behind the third moon. So Dooku had moved closer. But the lumbering cruiser could never catch him; even its turbo-lasers weren't fast enough to hit him. Without the safety override on the stabilizers, his Delta could outrun their projectiles. Weightless, frictionless, continually accelerating, he tore through empty void, onward to the distant Republic frigate at the system's edge.
Two new opponents ambushed him, materializing out of nowhere as he sling-shotted himself around the star's gravity well,. Magna-fighters, piloted by droid automata, they pounced on him from two directions, running hard to intercept him. He laid on speed. The Delta groaned. Artoo began a long, building crescendo of terror, curved head spinning. Anakin opened fire, loosing a steady stream of plasma directly ahead of himself, a bright and shining pathway. The magna fighters were heavily armed, and joined the fight readily; he corkscrewed, flipped, slid past their shots, never letting up speed. Locked in mortal combat, the three opponents hurtled toward a single point in space, a doomsday tactic worthy of the most desperate madmen…
Anakin got there a half-blink earlier than the droids. The magna-fighters blew each other to oblivion in a fireball that caught his rear stabilizers and sent him spinning dizzily, end over end. Artoo called him something obscene; he told the little astromech to watch his kriffing mouth. They straightened, the Delta's console lit up with a pained litany of complaints, Anakin whipped and cursed and flogged it past the finish line, riding it lame and limping across the frigate's maglev barrier and onto the decks, where he screeched to an inelegant halt on his damaged landing gear, sparks and bits of shorting circuitry trailing behind him like spilled guts.
The hangar bay crew – Gripes and Oafer – ran forward, flamm retardant at the ready, spitting out great clots of foam at the Delta's melting hull, the dangerously smoking access panels. Anakin and Artoo sprang from their respective perches as the same moment, landing on the scarred decking just as the clones managed to quench the last of the fires. The Delta sat, ruinous and reeking, the stink of slagged metal and overheated fuel and molten plastoid sending up a mournful lament, an accusatory trail of blackened smoke.
Oafer chuckled. "You scorched her real good, General."
"Yeah," Gripes seconded. "What's the rush, sir? With all due respect."
"I need to talk to the Commander," he grunted in reply, hurrying toward the bridge with Artoo bumbling along at his heels.
Deep in the Force, enfolded within its deep currents, swathed in Light, there were three of them. Himself, and the old one, and another. Here there were no names, no solid identities; they played like colorful beams over a sun-drenched landscape, refractions of the one unitary Light, separate and yet distinct, other and yet the same. Radiance poured through them, illumined the wheeling spheres of the galaxy, the star, the planet, the tiny community beneath the hard shell of its surface. They rested in it, drank of it, forgot self and other, forgot names, forgot all but limpid serenity.
When once again he opened his eyes, falling back into gross matter, into duty and present time, he could not quite remember why there had been three and not two; for here, kneeling upon the hard packed floor, old and not-so-old, there were only two of them. Obi Wan looked curiously at Sen Sen Xerxes, who placidly mirrored his speculative gaze.
"The Unifying Force speaks to you often," the ancient Thisspiasian observed. "I can feel its scars and bruises upon your spirit."
He frowned. "Scars? Master Xerxes –"
The serpentine Jedi chuckled. "An old figure of speech, before your time. Wisdom is the scar of suffering; insight a bruise left by destiny's blows. Perhaps a bit melodramatic, but the old poets were generally so."
They fell silent again; the strange intimacy of a shared meditation still binding them in an unfamiliar yoke. The pale-walled chamber waited, shielding and sheltering them at once.
"The Unifying and the Living Force are but two aspects of one thing, " the Thisspiasian declared. "It is folly to suppose that one contradicts the other, or that these two things can ever be in true conflict, though this is true often enough of those whom the Force binds to its service."
Obi Wan smiled, a little. How well he remembered the years of endless dispute with Qui Gon Jinn, the irresolvable tension between their perspectives, the frustration often peaking into disrespect, and deserved reprimand. Yes, these two perspectives often clashed, seemingly incompatible.
"Your own…differences of opinion with the Council might be attributed to that fact," he offered, watching the ancient Jedi carefully.
Master Xerxes' long body shifted, uncoiling and rerarranging itself into a knot beneath his torso. The tip of his tail flicked gently against the floor. "Those disputes belong to the past," he replied firmly. "There is nothing to be gained by re-examining them. Unless you perhaps harbor the same objections yourself?"
He bowed his head. "I do not presume to speak for the Council, nor to second-guess it. But I have not been given any explicit direction regarding this mission, besides the…message you spoke of earlier. And I wish to ask you about this."
"Then ask me," the Thisspiasian encouraged him. "I sense that you are disturbed by my means of communicating. Why is this?"
Obi Wan looked up at him, the murmuring chorus of doubts rising within his mind yet again. "We have never met, Master. And yet you were able to speak to me through the Force. Not even in images and feelings, but in distinct words. I felt a presence, even. It does not seem possible."
"Many things are possible with the Force, young one. More than you realize."
"Yes, master, but… even so. How could you send for me in such a direct manner? And… why me?" The last question was the crux of the matter; it slipped out before he could rein in his tongue.
Sen Sen Xerxes studied him for a long minute, head cocked to one side. "Ah, just as you said," he sighed, as though speaking to himself. "This is difficult. But his humility is better credential than many decades of experience."
Obi Wan's brows contracted to a hard line. Was it possible that the ancient master was suffering from dementia? Such afflictions were not unheard of, even among the Jedi. And a century-long isolation here among the Friends might have stressed his aging mind.
The Thisspiasian broke in to a hearty laugh, silvery notes cascading like a fountain, until the Force chimed with mirth. "He thinks me senile!" Then, sobering and smoothing over the strands of his long beard with one knotted hand, he added, "Your question is a fine one. But I fear it is best answered by experience. You must be patient, and in time you may come to understand. I reached you in the only way I could – through an intermediary. That is all I will say now."
It was unsatisfying, but part of him was happy to leave the matter there. The sensation of treading across brittle ice, or balancing on a high and narrow pinnacle, grew more insistent the further he pressed his inquiries. He nodded, and dropped his gaze.
A long silence stretched between them, in which the ancient Jedi considered his guest quietly. The Force stilled into expectancy.
"Master Kenobi," Sen Sen Xerxes spoke at last. "There is more to my legacy here than the Friends. I entrust their safety to you and Master Skywalker, knowing that this is the will of the Force. But I have also wisdom which must be passed on, if you are willing."
Once again, the illusion of a third presence fluttered at the periphery of his awareness, seeming to fill the small room. A weightless breath of warmth raised the hairs at his nape. Wisdom? "What wisdom, master?"
The Thisspiasian folded his hands, interlacing the long, claw-tipped fingers. "I have had many decades to devote myself to scholarship. Before I came to Rhellis Massa in the hour of its need, I pursued the most abstruse and incomparable knowledge, the deepest mysteries of the Force."
"The Temple Archive records say as much, master," Obi Wan informed him.
Sen Sen Xerxes smiled, his long silver hair gently billowing outward as he released a breath of laughter. "Arrogant nonsense, for the most part," he snorted. "I was foolish enough to confuse knowledge and wisdom in those days. But I have been taught better."
"By the Friends? By your exile here?"
"In some ways," the ancient Jedi agreed. "But also by teachers. There is no other means to learn the ways of the Force: one teaches one, in youth and in age. It has been thus for millenia."
Obi Wan felt the peculiar stirring deep in his gut, the subtle twist that preceded a bad feeling. Yet the warning remained nascent, curled in its bud, not yet flowering into acute dread. "What teachers?" he asked, admitting readily to confusion.
"Have you heard of the Order of the Whills?" the Thisspiasian queried.
He held a breath. Well. "Yes," he answered cautiously. "I have heard of them."
"Then you have heard of my teachers. And I have a proposal to make to you. You have come, at the bidding of the Force, against all likelihood, to grant me a boon. I would repay you…. In wisdom."
Exhale. Reality felt slippery, like thin ice. He clung to the Unifying Force, to the sure center. "What wisdom, master?"
"Immortality," the ancient Jedi whispered, his dark eyes burning behind the silver-white snowfall of his hair. "If you are willing to learn, I am willing to teach."
Immortality? "I – Master Xerxes, with all respect –"
"Do not answer lightly," the aging Jedi master warned him. "This path is not laid before many, and is perilous to those that stray. Meditate upon it, and consider gravely; we will speak of it again when you are ready."
The ice crumbled beneath him, and he fell into icy premonition, sliding from treacherous certainty into deep and murky unknowing. "I shall," he promised, half-choking on the words.
This was not at all what he had expected... and not at all to his liking.