Fallout
Chapter 22
"Anakin!"
He didn't need the warning; the Force blazed in unison with Obi Wan's strident shout of alarm. The two Jedi threw up their hands, summoned the invisible power surging all around them, through them – and pushed mightily against the next chunk of tumbling rock, a massive jagged shard of roof wobbling precariously at the dome's summit. The stone broke free with a deafening snap, and plummeted downward, smashing against the first fallen shard, splitting in two, then plunging down on either side of the garden pyramid.
Anakin gripped the lumpen mass with his mind, gritting his teeth as the pull of gravity translated into a pressure along his spine, under his ribs. Beside him, Obi Wan groaned aloud. The hurtling slab slowed, turned to the side, crashed into the cave floor far from the clustered group of Friends.
"Oafer! Gripes!" Anakin hollered. The clones came running. "Get them out of the way!"
A new cascade of dust and blinding light shafted through the widening gap overhead. Gusts of liquid spattered down, mixing with the swirling dust, into a grey and clinging mud. Anakin swiped the greasy detritus out of his eyes, blinking as the bitter compound set them to burning. Acidic mud – just great.
The Friends shrieked and babbled their dismay, herded fearfully along by the well-trained clones. The full blown crisis stripped the rookie troopers of any naivete, any hesitance. They took to the demands of the moment like battle hardened veterans – and why not? They were bred for life and death situations.
The roof now split and fractured into a web of tenuous seams, a maze of interlocking cracks and crevices, a puzzle threatening to dissolve into a rainfall of boulders at any second.
"Oh, not good…." Obi Wan intoned, eyes fixed on the splintering ceiling.
"It's gonna go," Anakin hissed. "Somebody hit it with a plasma cannon. We need to get these people out- now!"
Battle raged above. The scream of gunships' engines, droid fighters, the frenetic exchange of blaster fire, the hoarse cries of clones on the ground: all of it echoed down into the subterranean chamber.
"Anakin. Go up to the surface. Signal your men to bring the gunships over the opening. We can evacuate the Friends through the roof.."
He shook his head, hating the idea. "What about you?" he demanded, already knowing the answer.
"I'll hold it up as long as I can," Obi Wan said, expression shut down. "You need to hurry."
"No, master! I'm not letting you do that!"
"Yes you blasted well are, Anakin! Now go – that's an order!"
He seethed, hand closing hard about his saber hilt, eyes flitting upward to the expanding network of fault lines in the rock above them. "You can't pull rank on me!" he shouted.
"I just did!" Obi Wan's eyes were ablaze with a rare intensity – anger transmuted to pure willpower by some weird alchemy, by rigid self discipline. "Now get up there before all these people die because of your confounded defiance!"
Teeth clenched, Anakin flashed one last look of utter defiance at his friend, slammed his helmet back on, and jumped. He landed halfway up the garden's shattered tiers, then ran to the smashed pinnacle. The fallen boulders did indeed nearly reach the opening above. He crouched upon their topmost point, face turned up to the chaotic melee erupting in the overworld, and hurtled himself through the opening, saber spitting into life as he flew upward.
He deflected three shots and slashed through his aggressor before his feet touched the muddy ground above. White armored ghosts and twisted mechanical wraiths struggled in a rain-drenched graveyard. The city's ruined dome curved away beyond, sheltering a another battle. Gunships and droid fighters streaked through the wet skies, throwing fiery insults at each other.
Anakin pounded on his embedded comlink. "This is General Skywalker! Converge on my position. Do you copy?"
He prayed that the radiation interference in the atmosphere would not prevent that message from getting through; and while he prayed, he carved through another dozen droids, rallying the troops in his near vicinity. The cave entrance was soon guarded by a ring of stalwart defenders
"Copy that, General," a garbled voice hissed over the link.
They stood and fought, and the ground did not collapse beneath them. Anakin counted the seconds with his heartbeats. A minute. A minute and a half. Gunships soared overhead, blasting droids right and left, hovering in a tight formation.
He could feel the sustained herculean effort begin to take its toll on Obi Wan. A silent scream was building behind his temples, a sympathetic howl of pain as the Force strained against the inevitable, sought to buy the Friends precious minutes of life. "Come on, come on, come on," Anakin muttered, deflecting fire in a frenzied dance of blue light. The gunships laid down a ring of plasma, blowing the remaining droids to smithereens, keeping the perimeter clear.
It took Oafer and Gripes forever to get the Friends up the garden terrace, and even longer for a detachment of clones above to rappel into the cave, ferrying the stunned and terrified denizens of the bunker to safety. He could hear their loud exclamations of dismay and confusion vying with the clones' sharp orders, could feel the heat of the battle raging in a circle around this tightly contained extraction point… feel the ground tremble ominously beneath them.
"Faster!" he commanded, flaying at his troops' minds with the Force. Why was everyone and everything in the galaxy slower than it needed to be? Slower than he was? Why? He could never, ever, be too late, too slow, again.
The trickle of Friends was interminable. They struggled, resisted being loaded into gunships. Many had to be forcibly thrown into the holds. The Force was turgid with their mounting panic, their sheer incomprehension, their instinctual terror.
The last of the evacuees was coming. Slowly. There was a grinding lurch underfoot. He could feel Obi Wan's strength failing, his grip on the roof loosening, his focus sliding, giving way to exhaustion… the last of the troops was through.
"It's gonna go, General!" Pyro hollered at him as he hauled himself over the ledge. "Go! Get on a ship, sir!" The clone jumped for the nearest transport, was hauled in by two sets of gauntleted arms.
Anakin looked up, looked down. He felt the tremor's crescendo rising, heard the rumble of imminent doom…
And jumped down into the pit just as the cave entrance fell away, tumbling in massive fragments alongside him as he dived, rolling in midair, dodging, twisting, managing the impossible. He caught a glimpse of Sen Sen Xerxes still sprawled upon the distant floor, of Obi Wan falling to his knees in exhaustion beside him, of the huge spears and clubs of stone dropping straight down upon them.
"No!" he screamed, his own fall ending on the floor, between two hurtling boulders the size of small spacecraft. And before his helpless eyes, despite his visceral scream of denial, the two Jedi masters were buried beneath the crumbling surface of Rhellis Massa.
The planet itself seemed to fall upon them, as though unable any longer to bear the weight of its history, of its people's misdeeds. Stone ground against stone, darkness thickened to stifling clouds of dust; and danger throbbed in the Force, a heart-stopping pressure blacking out all other realities.
And then it stopped.
Obi Wan exhaled, and then inhaled, choking on grit and dust. He coughed until his eyes ran, spat a mouthful of filth to one side of the inky blackness. He could see nothing, and feel only Sen Sen Xerxes' limp form beside him. Cautiously raising a hand, he grazed fingertips against a rough-hewn ceiling. Shifting slowly, his searching fingers and arms discovered the confines of their tomb: it was barely bigger than an escape pod.
He coughed some more, his lungs rebelling against the influx of ashy dust. How long until they suffocated? Not very long, he was certain. Was there any means of escape? He doubted it; he could attempt to shift some of the rock surrounding them with the Force, but one wrong move would be instant death. Perhaps that would be a reasonable risk – but he was by no means sure that he could shift any of these massive slabs. It would take Yoda… or Anakin in a rage. And how in the name of the Force had they been spared in the first place? It was as though an invisible hand had shielded them from the avalanche, even now cradling them gently in a protective bubble.
He spat again, tasting the harsh and bitter texture of the dust. The air – what little of it there was – could hardly be described as breathable. It would seem he was slated for death by suffocation. Not pleasant. He thrust this morbid line of thought away, felt for Master Xerxes' pulse. It was there still, but thready, feeble.
"Master Kenobi," the dying Jedi murmured.
"Yes. I'm here."
"Your friend…. Skywalker. You must stay close to him."
"Anakin?" Why would the ancient master choose to speak of Anakin in his dying breath? He could not see the Thisspisasian's face. "I do – I will. He is.. a good friend."
Sen Sen Xerxes sighed, a hollow fluting which fractured into a chorus of muted echoes off the ominous walls of their prison. "The balance is shifting… stay close."
Obi Wan frowned over this, shoved it aside to brood over later. If there was a later. There was a long pause, in which he labored to draw in breaths. Perhaps he should attempt to force an escape now… before he lost his strength and focus. But the Light urged him to wait.
"Master Kenobi," the Thisspiasian repeated, so softly that his voice was barely audible over the frantic oxygen-deprived drumming of Obi Wan's pulse in his own ears.
"I'm still here."
"Know this: I did not …betray you….My message…. In good faith."
"Master. I do not doubt your intentions, though I still do not understand."
Sen Sen Xerxes silver beard fluttered as he feebly laughed. "… Nothing to understand. We have…. a friend in common…. ."
A friend in common? Obi Wan felt his brow twist into a pained frown. His heart hammered, his lungs burned, his mouth filled with bitterness. It had tasted the same on Naboo, though he had not been dying then. A friend in common? He did not wish to hear these words.. not now… not when he was so… vulnerable. The blunt assertion, the affirmation of his deeply-buried suspicion, opened a chink in his carefully fortified defenses, his protective rationales. Twin certainties clashed, hammering at a thin barrier erected between deep instinct and what he thought he knew.. His breath hitched. There was no time for this.
"You deny this?" the Thisspiasian challenged him, voice rasping into sharp and grating shards.. "Why do you not… listen… the Living Force?"
"I do!" he protested. Didn't he? Reduced to childish pleading, he stared down at the hidden face of the ancient master, at the closed eyes he could not see in the blackness. The chink widened, threatened to become a wide breach, a gaping wound in his composure.
"Listen," Sen Sen Xerxes whispered.
He sucked in a breath, in time with the dying master's rasping inhalation. Light twisted, rending through the barriers of flesh, returning to its source. Sen Sen Xerxes gasped. Obi Wan gasped. There was a gentle chiming…somewhere. Nowhere. Light called to light. Sen Sen Xerxes shuddered. Obi Wan shuddered.
Listen.
He choked back a sob. Truth wrenched free of its veils, tearing past uncertainty, ripping its feckless way past armor and denial. He admitted to what he had known all along. It was impossible and wrong and a thing of awe and splendor. But he could no longer deny it.
There were three of them, wrapped in the Force's embrace.
Welcome, friend.
Sen Sen Xerxes smiled. "I am coming," he soundlessly mouthed.
It is time.
"Take care of the Friends," the dying Jedi breathed out.
"I will. You have my word." Obi Wan closed his eyes, reaching, longingly, across the indefinable barrier that separated this and that. The Force swelled, until the very dust motes floating in the thin, hot air of the cave seemed to drift, ecstatic, in a warm and laughing breeze, a gale so strong that it robbed him of breath but so faint that it barely stirred the sweat-dampened hair clinging to his forehead.
Sen Sen Xerxes' last exhalation was a joyful release. Spirit slipped its shackles, dissolved its bonds, brought its long labors to rest. Obi Wan squinted unseeing through the choking dark, confusion and disbelief warring for dominance.
He held only a scrap of cloth. The body had utterly disappeared.
Yet there were still three of them.
It was very, very hot, and he could barely breathe. Death loomed close, beckoning. His chest ached, and yet he felt no fear. There were three of them.
He could see the other two now, with his eyes open and with them shut. Blue as Ilum crystals, luminous. Present. His head hurt. His chest spasmed, fighting for air. Sen Sen Xerxes bowed to him. The other smiled. He stared at that other, mind reeling.
"Master," he whispered, armor shattered to dust with the collapsed cave roof. He shivered violently, dying for want of air, trembling with a strange joy.
It's not yet your time, said the now-manifest voice, the presence robed in Light.
Heat sculpted the blackness into clawing shapes, into spears which pierced his lungs and racked his aching muscles. He gasped, futilely, for the last scraps of oxygen, but there were none left. The luminous blue form of Sen Sen Xerxes faded. Obi Wan peered, through smearing veils of tears, at the other figure, unable to speak, to move, to even think. Crimson swirled behind his gaze, roared in his ears.
Anakin is coming. You must wait for him – you must stay close to him. Hold on.
His forehead hit the ground with a soft thud; his eyelids drooped. Smothering blackness closed in, drowning thought. And then, as wondrous as the arrival of the gunships on Geonosis, a breath of sweetest, purest, rain-drenched air – incensed with music, alight with gentle laughter. He drew it in, let it sparkle in his blood, though his lungs had long since clenched into a morbid vise. Crimson darkness clutched at his limbs, his heavy body; yet he stilled himself round the tiny Light-drenched gift, a diver's last breath of life as he descends to the utter deeps.
He could hear Anakin calling his name, now, beyond the wall of stone, through their bond. The other presence faded; until he was alone in the dank tomb of black rock, buried alive with nothing but a fold of saffron cloth and Sen Sen Xerxes' lightsaber. And the intimate touch of death – which did not exist. For there was only the Force.