Lineage IV
15.
Soll Carthag kept up a steady stream of incoherent ranting under his breath as he made adjustments to the deactivated hunter-killer drones. Their dark, spheroid bodies rested sedately upon the decks, their various lethal appurtenances tucked inside the gleaming curves of their armored carapaces. The Klatooinian muttered and cursed, eyes squinting balefully at his two captives every few seconds as he worked.
Obi Wan's heart skipped a beat; he squeezed Siri's fingers. "They're coming," he whispered.
"I feel it, too."
The Force shuddered with their sudden, giddy relief, and Carthag glanced up suspiciously, sensing their unexpected spurt of elation. "What are you two so happy about?" he hissed, setting the two drones into hover mode.
"Choollo's on his way," Obi Wan boldly asserted. "You're finished. He's bringing reinforcements."
The killer stood, and fiddled with the remote programmer for the droids, his blunt fingers tapping fiercely at the input controls. "They don't have reinforcements at the Agri-Corps," he scoffed. "What are they going to come after me with? Pitchforks and torches?" He snickered loudly, tucking the remote into a pocket.
"He's bringing other Jedi. He must have pre-arranged it," the Padawan continued. "He's hoping you'll kill us – that way the Jedi will have license to kill you. It's simple."
Carthag spat on the scuffed floor. "You vaping wretch! Shut your mouth. Besides, Jedi don't kill if they can help it."
"You don't know my former master," Obi Wan told him softly. "He's a monster. That's why I left – I was glad to be expelled. Anything to get away from that madman."
The escaped convict muttered something else and paced to the cockpit again, from which vantage point he had a good view of the surrounding environment, and any approaching ships.
Siri rammed an elbow into her fellow Padawan's side. "What in the name of the Force are you playing at? He's on edge! Do you want him to kill us?"
"I want him off balance."
She jabbed him again. "Would you let our masters handle this? They're on their way – don't ruin our chances of surviving because you're too arrogant to keep your mouth shut and let someone else take the lead."
A hot retort sprang to his lips, but at that moment he felt a distinct presence, a gentle tug at his awareness, beneath sensation and rational thought. Qui Gon. Nearby. He shut out all distractions including the significant one known as Siri Tachi, and felt for the Jedi master through their shared bond.
Qui Gon was an immovable pillar in the Force, a column of gentle, immutable Light, deep wisdom edged with laughter. Obi Wan basked in it. There was a sense of questioning. Are you all right?
He conveyed a confident affirmative, and then narrowed his focus, hoping to delineate the hovering droids, the twin threats waiting to be unleashed. He recalled the criminals' conversation, enumerating Carthag's weapons. He summoned an image of the Klatooinian in a state of distrust, of nervous tension, pacing and cursing.
There was a subtle nudge in the Force, an acknowledgment. Be ready.
Be ready? For what? For some signal? For an attack?
Qui Gon's reassuring presence seemed to surround him for a moment. Let the Force guide you. And then it faded.
"I'll go in first," Choollo ordered, tramping his way down the hatchway ahead of the two Jedi masters. "You stay here." He waited to be sure his command was obeyed, and then crossed the short distance between the shuttle and the blackened wreck of the passenger liner at a smart clip.
Adi and Qui Gon moved slowly to the ramp's base, the Force shimmering, battle-bright about them. An uneasy coil of darkness slithered through the plenum, an unpredictable element, one that Qui Gon recognized as Soll Carthag's suspicious unrest. Obi Wan had done his job well… perhaps too well. His fingers brushed against the two saber hilts hanging at his side.
Presently, Chucabra Yollo reappeared, a slight frown deepening between his brows. "We have a small problem," he said.
"What do you mean?" Adi Gallia's gaze traveled over his head, to the expanse of forest stretching up the hills beyond.
"Ah. It would appear my associate is not as trusting as I am," Yollo smiled tautly. "He has removed the hostages and made a strategic retreat."
"He'll kill them," Adi said, her deep voice edged with a rare emotion. Then, her saber's blade flaring into sudden life, its pulsing blade reflected in Yollo's startled eyes, "And you are still under arrest."
Qui Gon wheeled, facing the rocky tumble of land behind the crashed ship, the panoply of shadows beneath the forest's silent eaves. "Carthag has seeker probes out here," he said, grimly. "This might be a ploy to lure us away and take the ship. You stay here; I'll go after the Padawans."
Adi's expression tightened into reluctant agreement. "He already has the upper hand, then. Be cautious." And in that recommendation lay embedded a wide gamut of meanings: a caution against anger, a plea for her Padawan's safety, a settling of her iron will into acceptance, into stoic Jedi calm. Qui Gon nodded once, and was off, in pursuit of a desperate killer without remorse or conscience.
The trees seemed to lift their dim mantle to admit him into their realm, where hunter and hunted flitted wraithlike, bloodthirsty, beneath their quiet, watchful vault.
"We could move faster if we weren't tethered together," Siri complained.
"Shut up," Carthag grunted, loping forward uphill at an alarmingly swift pace, giving the wire leash connected to both their crude collars a savage tug. The two young Jedi nearly stumbled onto their knees, but managed to stay upright and moving, half-dragged along behind the powerful Klatooinian as he ascended the edge of the forested slope. "Try to double cross me, would you, Yollo? We'll se about that." He shifted the flechette rifle slung across his back and withdrew the remote seeker control, punching in a command. "He's dead. And your Jedi masters are dead, too. Nobody beats me at my own game."
He clambered up a rocky promontory and stopped at the summit, overlooking a sharp drop into a valley riverbed below. Panting, Siri shot a sharp look at her companion. Obi Wan shook his head. Not yet. They were at a disadvantage; Carthag was heavily armed; they did not know in which direction help lay. Patience.
Siri's jaw clenched a little, the set of her shoulders declaring that she was spoiling for a fight. "You're going to be the death of me, you know."
"Don't say that." The Force drew nigh, the future breathing down his neck, its shadow dimming his inner vision. Death loomed over the horizon, coming for him, or for her, or for all of them, His heart beat to the slow dirge of its advent, to the Force's merciless bidding.
"Are you all right?'
"No!" He hadn't meant to snap at her, but she barely noticed, so accustomed had they grown to each other's tempers. There was a cold comfort in that fact, one he could not spare any attention or time to brood upon.
Carthag was staring at them speculatively. "Someone's coming after you," he rumbled. "I can feel him."
"You should release us and surrender," Obi Wan suggested. "You've no hope of surviving this. It's Master Jinn. I already told you, he's a lunatic."
Carthag squinted at him, grinding his teeth. "You talk too much!" the Klatooinian cursed, thrusting an angry fist in the air. "Shut up!"
The Padawan opened his mouth again, but Siri Tachi swiftly yanked upon the loop of wire binding them together. "Shut up," she hissed.
The Klatooinian hauled them in , hand over hand, until he had a clawed fist tight under each of their collars. His breath wafted, hot and reeking, over their faces. His tongue was a purple serpent flicking behind the ramparts of his teeth. "There is more than one lunatic loose in this forest," he warned them. 'I only need one of you as a bargaining chip. Let's play the quiet game. Whoever talks first is the one I dump. Understood?"
Siri nodded mutely, blue eyes aflame with rebellion, but prudence holding her tongue.
Carthag leaned in closer to Obi Wan, tightening his grip on the wire coils until the Padawan could barely breathe. "I have a feeling it's going to be you, chatterbox. I look forward to it."
The young Jedi sucked in a sharp breath, baring his teeth at their captor, but Siri's swift kick to his shin prevented any further vocal exercise of his wit. The Klatooinian dropped them both heavily to the ground.
"Get up," he grunted, tersely. "We'll head for higher ground," He accented this order with a sharp jerk on the wire leashes, pulling them roughly forward again. "The forest is thicker up there. We'll find a nice secluded spot where I can leave a message for your lunatic friend." He bared his ragged line of teeth and dragged them onward, up the rock-strewn footpath toward the more established forest.
The two young Jedi exchanged a fleeting glance, one in which hope and determination blended in equal measure. Their chance – their sole opportunity to make a bid for freedom – lay ahead. They would be ready.
Stumbling, awkwardly tangled together, they followed the insane convict up the hill toward Alepo's buried security sensor perimeter.
Qui Gon needed no trail or tracking scent. Images flashed across his mind, carried on the churning Force across his bond with Obi Wan: some fragmented, others blurred by bursts of emotion, but most of them crystal clear – a testament to the young Jedi's discipline and powers of observation. The tall man smiled grimly. There was nothing like extreme adversity to teach the value of maintaining a calm and centered focus.
He moved swiftly in the frigid mountain air, the cold swell in his lungs smothering some of the invisible fire thrilling in his every nerve. Each step brought him closer to the Padawans and Carthag; he could almost imagine that the danger diminished as he closed the gap between them, as though his mere presence would dissolve the horrible tension into a cloud of explosive retribution.
He breathed out, slowly, releasing anger in a stream of white vapor. Calm and centered focus, Jinn, he silently reprimanded himself. Take your apprentice's example, he added wryly.
In the ensuing silence, a second presence, a mere subliminal tapping at his awareness, made itself felt. The Force rippled, ever so delicately…
…and he twisted sideways, ducking beneath an energy blast that sent tree bark and hot ash spraying through the air.
Qui Gon's saber blade leapt from its hilt, intercepting the next three shots in an elegant comet-tail of sweeping green flame. A sphereical seeker-killer droid thrummed closer, dodging and weaving deftly among the tree trunks, erratically shifting its altitude and half-rotating in place, firing off warning shots in a random sequence to hold him at bay. The Jedi master moved with his foe, sliding between the forest's stately columns, slipping between shafts of verdant light and mottled shadow, eluding the hunter in a fluid dance, inviting it closer even as he seemed to retreat, luring it into saber range.
The thing dropped, and let loose another volley, one he almost missed because it was so lethally silent. Dark, solid projectiles winged their way toward him, a continuous streaming swarm of thin darts.
His 'saber caught most of them. A few escaped beneath his hasty guard, burying themselves in his cloak hem and the thick nerfhide of his boots. The droid charged forward, aiming an explosive cannon blast at the fallen log upon which the Jedi crouched. He leapt forward as the explosion scattered burning debris in all direction, deflected more shots in midair and slammed his blade into the killer's round body on his downstroke, landing neatly in the underbrush behind it.
The probe fell heavily to the mossy forest floor, sparking where it lay. Qui Gon flourished his blade and severed it in two for good measure.
And then he felt it: a wild spurt of desperate energy, a jolt in the Force that sent a vicarious flood of adrenaline rushing through his own veins.
"Obi Wan," he hissed, pelting uphill toward the still too-distant source of the disturbance.