Fallout
Chapter 16
Commander Cody pivoted on the spot as the bridge doors hissed open, snapping into a rigid salute even as his dark eyes narrowed in concern. Anakin strode across the small bridge like a dark whirlwind, yanking the helmet off his head and peremptorily ousting the comm-sat officer from his station. The clone – CT 463589, or "Pyro" – took the usurpation of his throne with predictable equanimity, merely catching his brothers' eyes and raising his shoulders in a shrug which meant there's no figuring a Jedi.
Anakin punched in the codes for an emergency tight-beam signal to Coruscant, and waited.
"I take it there's been a development, sir," the clone commander prompted him.
The young Jedi scowled. "You could say that. Dooku's got a horde of hunter-killer droids down there on the surface, and we've got three hundred some odd people to evacuate."
Cody was a consummate professional. "Yes sir," he responded, voice not betraying an iota of the sharp concern flaring through the Force. The clones were, as a whole, so well conditioned by their Kaminoan originators that they rivaled Jedi for outward stoicism. If anyone were ever to teach them the Force-skill of mental shielding, they would be impressive indeed. Even without the Force, there were aspects of the troops' psyches that eluded Anakin's grasp, as though ordinary parts of their brains or minds had been attenuated, or warped out of their natural rhythms. A clone was- at the deepest level – still unpredictable, a being with part of his own soul locked away out of sight.
The comm. console flickered, and a request to stand by appeared on the relay screen. Anakin swiveled in place, impatient. "Cody. What's the status of the Seppie fleet?"
The clone commander scowled. "They moved their cruiser in behind the second moon, sir. Proximity scanners show no further warships in the sector, but we've picked up a disturbance in the Meershak differential."
Anakin mirrored the clone officer's scowl. Theoretically, that could mean one or more heavy-mass objects approaching a likely reversion point in a nearby hyperlane. Or it could mean nothing, depending which astrophysicist you asked. Slowing hyperdrives to a crawl – barely above lightspeed – and holding off reversion to the last possible minute - a maneuver known in common spacefaring parlance as "looping" - was a good way to waste fuel, and a good way to lay an ambush. Things might get ugly out here if he brought more Republic ships into play. But without calling for a transport, there was no way to rescue the Friends. Or Obi Wan, who wouldn't leave without them.
He gritted his teeth.
"Skywalker." Mace Windu's shimmering effigy blinked into existence over the projector plate. The tall Korun master folded his arms and fixed Anakin with a curious glare.
"Master Windu," he began. "I need to request reinforcements in the Rhellis 5 system. Master Kenobi and I have discovered a refugee group which requires immediate evacuation from a level three radiation environment. We'll need a cruiser to transport them and gunships for the extraction."
"Gunships?" Windu repeated, dark eyes narrowing. "Have you encountered enemy forces out there?"
"Dooku's got a watchdog out here…and there's a legion of new seeker-killers down on the surface. He seemed to know we were coming," he admitted.
Mace's brow furrowed. "That's disturbing," he growled. "Where is Master Kenobi?"
"He's on-planet, master. The refugees can't survive without a Jedi presence – he chose to remain behind pending evacuation. I'll explain later."
Anakin watched the dark man's eyes shift sideways, off-camera, doubtless to Yoda. His mouth had thinned to a hard line, and when he turned back to the holoprojector, his intimidating mien was carved in more unremitting lines than ever. "The Senate will not likely commit more ships and resources to an occupied system for the sake of one group of survivors. An engagement over Rhellis Massa could easily cost more lives than it saves."
Keenly aware of the bridge crew and Cody, silent witnesses to this exchange, Anakin clamped down the churning resentment, stilled his shaking flesh hand, the tremor of random electrical pulses twitching in his mechanical one. "So we're going to abandon them," he stated, flatly.
Mace Windu sighed. "We don't wish to leave Master Kenobi in such a compromised situation," he replied, slowly. "Can he be extracted?"
"He won't go without the rest of them," Anakin asserted, confident that this was true.
"He'll do what the Council commands," Mace cut across him, a flash of cold authority reaching through the Force, even across all the intervening parsecs.
Something cold and leaden plummeted into Anakin's gut. Oh, Force. What would Obi Wan do? He wouldn't abandon the Friends, would he? Not after he had promised to help them… not even if the Council ordered him to leave the besieged planet. Would he? Or would he? "With respect, master," he tried again, "The Force led us here, so that we could help. I don't think Obi Wan's going to give up just because…uh.."
"Because what, Skywalker?" Master Windu demanded, his darkling gaze just as penetrating in the hologram as it was in life.
Anakin swallowed down the bile rising in his throat, the hot and burning lump of anger fighting its way past his control. He forced himself to drop his gaze. He could do this. He had to do this. For Obi Wan – not to save him from destruction at the hands of Dooku's mechanical army, but to save him from himself, from making this choice again. He had to pretend, he had to make himself believe the way Obi Wan did, that the Living Force and the Council were not tangled in fatal opposition. That there had to be a way to reconcile authority and instinct. He breathed in, deeply. He could do this, for his master.
"Because of a difficult obstacle, Master Windu. He trusts me to find a way past the blockade."
Mace relented, a little. Because it was Obi Wan they were talking about. "I should order the pair of you back to the Temple immediately," he sighed.
"Yes, master." Anakin blinked. Had those docile words actually sprung from his own lips? If only his former master could have been there to hear it.
"I'll go directly through the Supreme Chancellor's office," Master Windu decided. "So you had better make this work, Skywalker."
"I will, Master Windu. I promise. You can rely on me."
The imposing Korun master nodded once, a glimmer of … something - not quite trust, not quite hope, but definitely edging on confidence- warming the depths of his eyes for a fraction of a moment. "May the Force be with you," he ended, his blue image stuttering into nothingness again.
"Stand by for reinforcements, sir?" Cody asked, detachedly.
"And I want a special task force assigned to my personal command. I'll take Oafer and Gripes, and a couple veterans."
"Right." Cody glanced round at his hand-picked crew. "Pyro. And you, Slake. Yer goin' with the General once we hit dirtside."
"Sir, yessir,"" the pair of clones chorused, in eager unison.
Obi Wan knelt in the loamy soil of the subterranean garden's uppermost tiers, and felt for the struggling pulse of life beneath its surface. There was nothing; the mycellia of the fungus in this level had perished, leaving but hollow corpses behind. While life still swelled and flourished on every side, he could now sense the growing lacunae in the midst of abundance, the widening gaps where death made ingress upon the magnificent edifice of life. As SenSen Xerxes waned, so did the garden, and therefore inevitably the Friends. This symbion circle had reached the limit of its long and fruitful circuit, and must soon submit to mortality, like all living things.
"Is it dormant?" the Pau beside him asked, hopefully. "Are you able to help it, Master Jedi?"
He shook his head. "No, I'm sorry. It's quite dead. It should be removed – and the soil here amended. " He knew a few things, a scattering of lessons absorbed on Bandomeer, more than twenty years ago. And instinct supplied the rest. With study and time, he could make this work. If he had to.
The Pau sighed. "Let us do it now, then." He clambered over the retaining wall and returned a few minutes later with long-handled spades. Below them, around them, other Pau and Ichth'chtzl labored, taking their turn cultivating and harvesting the dying garden. How many more weeks would it sustain them? When would oxygen production reach a critical low? Water? Warmth? Long before the fungal orchard perished, the Friends would have gasped out their last.
Obi Wan grasped the tool's well-worn handle. It would be much simpler to drag the offending root system out of the earth with a simple application of the Force…but he found that he craved manual labor, an anchor for his tumbling thoughts. Hitching his saffron-toned robe up above his knees and baring his chest like the other workers, he set to work with a will, digging the hardening knots of the dead mycelium out bit by back-breaking bit. The Pau grunted and sweated beside him, uncomplaining.
The thudding rhythm of their tools against the unyielding fiber punctuated his reflections. Immortality. A strange offer. A Jedi did not crave immortality. Indeed, all those who had lusted for unending life over history's long sweep of years had been victims of the Dark, seduced by its lure. The desire for immortality was no mere shadow of greed, but its apex and crown. Life was the Force; immortality claimed for an indiviual the prerogative of the All. Didn't it?
He hacked out an obstinate portion of the root, and lifted it out with brute strength, hissing as he dropped it to one side. There was more to be done. The Pau chuckled, offered him a comradely smile, set back to work.
Master Xerxes did not feel Dark. Nor did the message he had sent through the Force, that painful illusion of familiarity, the bidding disguised as a visitation. These things were unwelcome, perhaps, but they were radiant with Light, with harmony and balance. Why then would the ancient Jedi taunt him with the offer of such a stained and perverted gift as immortality? Was it a test? Possibly. If so, he hoped a curt refusal would suffice. He had no interest in delving deeper into forbidden mysteries, twisted arts. Down that path lay temptation, and he did not intend to set so much as a foot upon it.
His tool struck rock and sent a shock of pain up his elbow and shoulder joint as he hammered down into it. Both he and his companion were coated in a thin grimy layer of perspiration and grit. It was uncivilized… but not intolerable. It was necessary. And far preferable to the gore and filth of a battlefield.
"It fights hard for something which is dead, eh?" his Pau colleague jested, with a deep chortle.
"Yes," he agreed, somewhat absently. All life fought hard to retain its claim upon existence; even Jedi did thus. Life was… good. It was the Force. It was Light. Beings flowed into existence from the Force because… because…Light was self-diffusive, overflowing, abundant by its very nature. To shine, to be luminous, to be filled with the Force – this was the core and the summation of existence. To see that radiance snuffed was painful, undesirable, something to be avoided, A Jedi sacrificed himself for others, that they might not taste mortality prematurely… and so, death was opposed to the Light. Immortality was a natural expression of Life, purest Life, the Force itself, for the Force did not and could not perish. Immortality was merely unending obedience to the Force's will. And besides, there was no death. Immortality, as described by its delusional seekers, as conceptualized by philosphers and fanatic devotees... this was a mere illusion, a trap woven of empty words. Wasn't it?
He stood, wiped at his streaming face. The humidity beneath the cave roof was overwhelming. He felt slightly dizzy. A few deep breaths steadied him, rooted him back in the present moment. With a wry smile, he thrust the flat shovel-blade back into the soft soil. Brooding again - and masterfully so.
The Pau drained a water skin and handed him another. He tipped it upside down, greedily consuming every last drop of warm moisture. The water was heavily laden with minerals, and tasted of rock, of ageless solitude. They stood and looked upon their handiwork, the uncouth mess of mangled root and clotted soil, the grave-like hole where once life had made its abode.
And then he felt it: a cold hand squeezing about his chest. Danger.
Head snapping to the cave entrance below, he unfurled his senses through the plenum, seeking, scenting…
Intruders had found the outer seal, and were even now breaching the radiation lock. A spike of urgency flared through his limbs, the Force sparking to vibrant battle-energy within him. Not waiting to hear his companions' cries of worry and dismay, he sprang from the topmost tier to the floor in one mighty bound, and sprinted for the bunker's shielded entrance, 'saber hilt already leaping, almost of its own accord, into his waiting hand.
They had been discovered.