Lineage IV
9
Klepp To was slumped over the greasy bartop of the Brainsucker, one of a dozen disreputable cantinas lining Shagra Sedd's lower streets.
Adi Gallia perched upon the stool next to him, and the red-eyed freighter pilot squinted up at her hopefully. "Getyoushomething, beautiful?" he slurred.
"She's with me," Qui Gon informed him, taking up residence on the pilot's other side. Another patron appeared to have fallen into a stupor upon the floor beneath his plastoid stool, but the seat was, for the moment, unoccupied.
Klepp To found it difficult to focus on the Jedi master properly. He pointed a wavering finger at the tall man's face. "You – long-haired pillock – get a job and take a bath."
"You would like to buy me a drink," Qui Gon retorted calmly, making a subtle gesture.
The inebriated pilot promptly hailed the many-armed barkeeper and ordered a round of his usual. Three fluted glasses of vile green liquid were slammed onto the counter in front of them. Adi looked at hers with apparent disdain; Klepp To downed his in one go, and Qui Gon took a cautious sip.
"What…uh, to what do I owe this pleshure?"
Adi leaned forward. "You are the captain of the Privateer," she said quietly.
"Tha'sh right. Best little smuggle-bunny in the Rims," To leered.
"I'm sure." The Tholothian Jedi was unimpressed. "You had an extra passenger on your last trip. Where is he now?"
The pilot blinked, in obvious stupefaction. "No passenger. He washn't there."
The two Jedi exchanged a meaningful glance.
"Soll Carthag was on board your ship," Qui Gon pushed. "Where is he now?" The Force pressed in against To's besotted mind, making the pilot squirm in his seat.
"No! He was never there! No passenger! We never stopped at Karnas!" Klepp To whimpered, clutching at his head.
Adi nodded grimly.
"We were never here, either," Qui Gon told their interlocutor, who groaned and promptly collapsed forward onto the bartop, his face smashed against the polished duraplast. Wet snores drifted upward.
"You overdid it," Adi frowned.
"Hey! You gonna pick up his tab, or what?" the bartender hollered at them as they made to depart.
Grimacing, Qui Gon tossed a sizeable credit chit in the fellow's general direction and swept out the door on Adi's heels.
Pedestrians swelled the walkways of Shagra Sedd with a jumble of life. "So, Carthag did board his vessel, and convinced him to stop at Karnas before using mind-influence to eradicate To's memory of the event," Adi stated. "Karnas is an unlikely detour."
Qui Gon watched the crowds ebb and flow, reaching into the Living Force. "He must have been meeting his accomplice there," he decided. "We should follow in his footsteps."
They stepped over the inert forms of one or two gutter-dwellers, and made their way back to their waiting transport.
Every spare centimeter of the extensive Agri-Corps headquarters on Ord Ursolon had been overrun by the evacuees – as was right and good. Even the housing unit had been appropriated as a makeshift hospital in the course of the long day, and Obi Wan had naturally volunteered his small assigned room as part of this relief effort. He tossed his satchel of belongings into a corner of the refugee area and sought out a place to meditate in peace. Alepo had kept him hard at work until nearly sunset; and the line for dinner – mandrangea bean patties, a stunning novelty – had taken nearly an hour to navigate.
His nerves were frayed and he dearly craved the release which only the Force could provide.
The comm. center was empty. With a sigh, he knelt in the middle of the dark room, the satellite and short-burst transmittor equiment blinking steadily in the gloom. There was a faint hum beneath the floor- distracting, but no worse than the everpresent thrumming of drives on a spacecraft. He closed his eyes and sought for his center.
The Force was very disturbed here, as one would expect. With so many injured, disoriented, frightened, and anxious sentients cooped up in one place, it was nearly impossible to sort out the tangled threads of unrest and dark emotion. He waded through the knotty mess, the confusing mélange of feeling and imagination, breathing slowly and deeply, letting his focus find its own path. He harbored anxiety, too – unreleased, pent up fragments, the backlash from his actions aboard the crashed ship. He recognized them, named them, released them. The Force swelled gently, washing them away.
Fear. Choking gas and raging heat, the threat of imminent explosion. He let it go. It was in the past. Sorrow. There had been bodies left on board, those who had perished in the crash, There was nothing to be done for them, now or ever. He let it go. Another deep breath. Anger. Why had it happened at all? There was sometimes no answer. Anger was a path to the Dark side. There was always a reason, though perhaps it would forever be hidden in the Force's mysterious depths. He let the anger go, too. Something else… he steadied himself, sought deeper. Oh. Yes. The cockpit. Horror… horror and revulsion. He balked, even within the serenity of his meditation, even with the Force kindling in his breath and blood, intimate and close. Release. But to release, one must first accept.
The pilots were dead. He reeled, hands and boots slipping in gore, stomach heaving.
Accept. It had happened; he had seen it. Deep breath, the Force trembling in its core, a vital flame consuming the dregs of instinctual distress. He looked, and saw, and accepted that this was part of his experience. And then he let it go, exhaling with an almost audible relief. In the wake of horror, there was a swell of bright, analytical clarity. Those men had not been killed in the crash. Their bodies had been free of the harnesses, sprawled upon the decks. The cockpit itself had not been crushed, nor the viewport shattered by the impact. Their injuries, the manner of their death, had been…. Murder.
His vague disquiet solidified into a cold point of certainty.
"Are you all right?"
He opened his eyes. For stars' sake! Siri Tachi was more invasive than any of the weeds he had uprooted in Alepo's greenhouses, or even the tentacled thing Qui Gon had adopted. Was there no place in the galaxy a man might find some privacy?
His thoughts must have carried across the taut Force, for she arched one brow sardonically. "I'm sorry to interrupt your private meditation with my duties."
He glanced about the glimmering walls of the comm center. "This doesn't appear to be the crèche or the kitchens," he drawled, unaccountably annoyed by her presence.
"Nor does it appear to be a chisszk-heap, so what are you doing here, Kenobi?"
"Suffering for lack of pleasant company, I should think."
"It must be unbearable torment to live with yourself," she shot back.
He rose to his feet. "If your conversation is the alternative, I think I'll take the torment."
"A battle of wits is above your station in life, farmer."
He bowed. "I won't duel with an unarmed opponent."
Siri Tachi's hiss of indrawn breath was eerily similar to the snap of a saber blade. She was on her feet the next moment. "As I recall, Kenobi, last time we met in a dojo, you went limping away with a nasty burn."
He cocked one brow. That was true ; but this was now. He was twice as skilled now, and she was twice as provoking. "Your insufferable sanctimony is predicated on some dim memory of past glories? How pathetic."
Siri's sky-blue eyes flashed with actinic fury. Her lashes were transparent gold filaments, delicate fretting beneath her thunderously beetled brows. "I can still take you," she asserted- though, he noticed with a sharp pang of satisfaction deep in the gut, there was a undertone of bravado there, a hesitance born perhaps of seeing his kata practice the other morning. And he was taller, more muscular now.
"I look forward to it," he said, truthfully. The pang in his gut seeped lower, twisted in the Force between them.
Siri's face was flushing, a lovely mottling of pink over high cheekbones and well-defined nose. Her lips pressed together determinedly.
The console behind them chimed, indicating an incoming transmission. It would have been difficult to say which of them sprang to answer the call first.
"Padawan," Adi Gallia's elegant figure shimmered slightly above the projector plate. "What is the status of the other teams' missions?"
Siri Tachi composed herself, brushing a stray wisp of hair behind one perfect ear and straightening her spine. "Two other escapees have been apprehended, master," she reported. "And Master Piell reports that he and Knight Koth may have discovered the hiding place of another group. If that's so, then the only one left is Carthag."
Adi nodded, the tails of her headdress swinging with the motion. "Good," she replied. "Keep up the fine work. I trust all is well at the Agri-Corps?"
"There was a passenger liner downed in the hillsides here," the young Jedi informed her teacher. "We staged an emergency rescue and the Corps headquarters has been turned into a temporary shelter. But there weren't many casualties."
Adi turned to someone off-camera, and presently Qui Gon Jinn appeared over her shoulder. "And you are both helping with the relief effort?" he asked.
"Yes, master. As best we can," Obi Wan responded.
"Obi Wan was the initial relief effort," Siri interjected, generously. "He evacuated the ship at the crash site. Most the passengers got to safety just before it went up in flames.'
Qui Gon's brows rose, and he peered meaningfully at his Padawan. "Are you all right?" he inquired, sternly.
"As you can see, master." Obi Wan spread his hands and bowed slightly, thankful that this exchange was being made over hologram, and in company.
"Hm." The tall Jedi looked suspicious but he mercifully refrained from further comment.
"Your transponder code shows that you are en route to Karnas," Siri remarked. "Are you close to finding Carthag, master?"
Adi's expression was grim. "He has left a sinuous trail behind," she told her apprentice. "But we will catch up to him. Contact me as soon as Master Piell reports in again; possibly some of Carthag's accomplices can be persuaded to help with our hunt. They may have valuable information as to their ringleader's whereabouts."
"Yes, master," Siri nodded.
Adi Gallia inclined her head regally. "May the Force be with you," she told her Padawan, glancing up at Qui Gon to confirm that he, too, was finished.
But instead of signing off, the tall Jedi master leaned in closer over the holocam. "Obi Wan," he said quietly. "You are disturbed. What is it?."
The young Jedi smiled ruefully. He had been naïve to suppose distance and the technological medium would serve to blunt his master's perceptiveness. "Master, with your permission, I should like to investigate the crash site here. I … have reason to suspect foul play. I do not think it was entirely an accident."
Qui Gon's brow furrowed slightly. "The local authorities will also look into the site," he reminded his Padawan.
"Yes, master, I know…. But something isn't right."
"Is this an occasion of obstinate self-sufficiency?" Qui Gon inquired, with a meaningful look. His apprentice colored slightly, wishing momentarily that Adi and Siri were not witnesses to this conversation after all.
"I could take Padawan Tachi with me," he offered, apathetically.
Qui Gon's mouth twitched. "There is no need. But be cautious."
"Yes, master, I will."
"Good. And, Obi Wan – how is our mutual acquaintance faring?"
The Padawan beamed. "We have reached a satisfactory compromise," he informed his teacher, blithely. "I believe it is adjusting quite well."
The Jedi master's eyes narrowed, but he kept his thoughts to himself. "We will return as soon as possible. May the Force be with you."