Lineage IV
16.
Soll Carthag's left foot crossed the buried magneto-line first; a heartbeat later, the security system was triggered, a white sheet of lightning sizzling for a long instant in the air above the boundary, a wall of electric fire intended to stun trespassers.
Carthag toppled over heavily onto the far side, inadvertently pulling his captives across the perimeter in his wake. A second flash of energy snapped in the chill air; Obi Wan and Siri leapt through as one, landing tangled together on the opposite side, legs dead and numb, muscles convulsively shaking.
"Quick," Obi Wan panted, rolling over, scrabbling at the Klatooinian's inert form. "My knife." His hands, still bound behind his back, fumbled clumsily in the killer's jumpsuit pockets, searching for the small weapon.
Siri rolled into a ball, groaning. "Stars end…!" She clutched at her solar plexus.
"Got it." Obi Wan wriggled forward. "Siri. Hold still.' Cutting their way free of the restricting wire was an agonizing process; Carthag stirred, and moaned. Obi Wan tugged and pulled, bloodying his own wrists as he yanked desperately free of the tight cords. Fingers slick with red liquid, he set to carving through the wire about Siri's wrists, the collar digging into the white skin of her neck. A bright red welt surrounded her throat. He cast aside the fraying wire, tugged Carthag's rifle out of his slack hands, found the pouch of grenades, tossed these aside too.
"We have to subdue him."
Siri struggled to regain her feet. "I can't stand," she hissed. "Kenobi – he's going to wake up any second. Go!"
"Not without you. Help me tie him up –"
But it was too late. The Klatooinian sprang back into awareness, making a sudden lunging grab at Siri, felling her atop himself. She struggled, her unresponsive legs refusing to cooperate. She threw two swift punches at his face and was rewarded with a violent slap across her own jaw and a Force–push that sent her tumbling against a nearby tree.
Obi Wan crouched for a spring; Carthag lurched to his feet drunkenly. Rocks lifted from their places in the earth, and sailed through the air, careening toward the two combatants. Obi Wan ducked, threw another projectile at Carthag, slithered backward as the Klatooinian rushed him. He slashed downward at the killer's arm as they closed, kicked the heavy Klatooinian off himself, and grunted in pain as a hard fist buried itself beneath his ribs. He rolled over winded, and then rolled again to avoid another crushing blow.
Carthag summoned his rifle into one hand; Obi Wan caught its barrel with a roundhouse kick and flipped away, toward Siri, roughly hauling her upright.
"Come on!"
Teeth gritted, eyes bright with pain, she wheezed a hissing negative. "I … can't… just go.."
Carthag leveled the flechette rifle at them both; the Force screamed in warning; and Siri Tachi slewed round, slamming Obi Wan against the rough bark of the tree, screening him with her own body.
Twenty razor sharp projectiles sliced through her tunics, embedded themselves in her belly and sides. Obi Wan shouted out with her, went down beneath the weight of her sinking body, gasped as a surge of hot protective wrath choked off his voice. He held out a hand, closing his fingers in a fist; Carthag's rifle barrel collapsed beneath the crushing pressure of an invisible fist. The weapon backfired, exploding, sending the Klatooinian tumbling backward with an enraged curse.
Siri clutched at the crimson pool spreading along her front. "Go," she whispered. "You chosski."
To stay would be to condemn her to certain death; to leave would be to abandon her to the Force. He wavered, and then dashed away, snarling at Carthag as the furious madman made a snatch for him, crying out his desperate resolve into the Force. The Klatooinian was after him in an instant, pounding up the steep incline in hot pursuit, leaving Siri to her fate, hellbent on catching his other quarry.
Obi Wan ran flat out, bounding over twisted roots, dodging among the tree trunks, slithering over jutting boulders, evading projectiles. A small sphere sailed by his head, and on sheerest blind instinct he leapt as far forward as he could, feeling the disruptor's shock wave before he heard the sonic disturbance. He was jolted out of midair by its explosion. Shards of stone and the dust of mighty trees showered round him, a deadly hail. Sharp fragments sliced at his skin, pelted his back and shoulders.
He picked himself up and kept running, drawing Carthag further toward the place… the cliffside,… madly formulating a plan, the shadow of a plan, the merest desperate hope of a plan, pulse racing, breath heaving, reaching out through the stained and shredded Force toward Qui Gon, sending both apology and determination, assurance that he would die like a Jedi, fighting to the last.
And Carthag pursued, relentless.
Qui Gon thundered into the small clearing, a minute too late.
Horrified, he dropped to one knee beside the small crumpled form hunched at the base of the tree. His hands gently shifted Siri Tach's weight. Her eyelids flickered open.
"Master… Jinn,' the wounded Padawan muttered. Her skin was a deathly grey.
Heart skipping, he waved a hand over her bloody sides. The thin flechettes pulled loose, scattered in the fallen leaves beneath them. Siri cried out, weakly. "Hush," he told her, pressing hands against the sopping, dark-dyed cloth of her tunics, channeling the Force's healing power into the injuries, counting the precious seconds and minutes as they trickled away, Obi Wan's danger increasing with every heartbeat. But this took precedent; this was the Force's first command.
Siri went limp in his arms, fainting. He pressed his lips together, felt for her thready pulse. He pulled bacta and an insufficient pressure patch out of his belt pouch, applied them with a haste and efficiency which made him glad the Padawan was unconscious, and then stood. There was nothing more he could do.
He centered himself in the Force, banishing his own fear to the edges of awareness where it smoldered, dark embers of panic gnawing at his self possession. And he ran.
Obi Wan skidded to the edge of the forest, where the cover of the trees failed him and the hillside fell away into the barren ravine below. Snow frosted the rocky heights above. The air was chill, and damp with coming rain. Even the sky darkened, glowering at him, chanting a silent condemnation. The future rolled within the distant thunder, drummed behind his temples. Death. Nearer. Nearer.
Carthag's heavy footfalls echoed among the trees, his silhouette rising up out of the gloom like an avenging ghost. Obi Wan backed away, cold and calculating detachment claiming him. Death would not take him without a fight. He set himself in a ready stance, facing the threat squarely, summoning the Force to his aid, feeling the swelling current of destiny rise up, a dark wave ready to crash down over him.
Carthag burst from the cover of the trees.
Obi Wan felt something coil about his ankle.
No! He glanced down, horrified, and saw the other tendrils snaking their way toward him, eager now, writhing as they slithered across the gritty soil, wrapping around knees, waist, his left arm.
Carthag's eyes widened. Obi Wan struggled, violently, slashing at the blasted thing with his knife. A thick tentacle closed about his wrist, snapping the weapon out of his grip. Another curled about his chest, two more about his waist. He shouted at the thing, grasped at the blearing Force, tried to throw it off, but more and more tendrils assaulted him, until he was bound in a cocoon of smothering green, falling to the earth, dragged down beneath their constricting weight.
Carthag leered, and idly tossed another disruptor grenade. It hit the gorund, rolled, and stopped a meter from the captive Padawan.
"No!" Obi Wan kicked and fought with savage strength, resisting the inexorable pull of the tentacles. They closed round him, covering even his face, cutting off the world and life and hope…. The last thing he saw was a thin suckered tendril reach out to grasp the small ticking spheroid, hoist it into the air, and then pop the morsel into the plant's gaping mouth.
He was shoved face-first into the earth by a crushing mass of green. And then came the shock wave. And then the sonic disruption. His prison erupted into a diaspora of particles, splattered green sap and sticky shreds blown sky-high, strewn in a ten-meter radius. He gasped – shocked, appalled, giddy with relief – and sprang to his unsteady feet amid the blackened ruins of the plant.
Carthag howled in disbelief and hefted two more grenades.
A figure appeared at the forest's edge, Light rippling about its edges, a fury equal to Carthag's rising within the tumultuous Force.
"Obi Wan!"
A disruptor sailed in a long arc toward Qui Gon, hurled by the killer; a glittering cylinder curved through the air toward Obi Wan, tracing a high parabola over Carthag's head. The second grenade skittered over the earth in the Padawan's direction. He leapt, Force-propelled, upward, intercepting his 'saber in mid-air, a melting fire burning in his veins, the command of Light, the weight of past deeds descending with him, like blue lightning, as he twisted, blade screaming, flashing, and severing Carthag's head from his body in one perfect stroke even as the twin grenades detonated, blasting gaping craters in the hillside, sending up choking clouds of disintegrated rock and wood.
Obi Wan's boots hit the soft earth; Carthag's decapitated body slumped to the ground in slow surrender to death; and the clouds let loose their tears, pouring down cold approbation upon the scene, dancing in coils of steam along the thrumming 'saber's edge.
Qui Gon sloughed through the driving rain, the rubble and dust, to stand just behind his Padawan. Gently, he reached down and covered the young Jedi's sword-hand with his own, thumbing the activation switch. The blue blade hissed back into its hilt, leaving them in a stunned silence while the torrential rain spattered about them, soaking them through. The tall man gripped his apprentice's shoulders tightly, feeling the slight tremble of overtaxed muscles beneath the damp cloth. Carthag's head lolled at Obi Wan's feet, the grisly face upturned in a wide leer of surprise, as though destruction had caught him off guard, at a loss. Rain water pooled in rivulets and trickled along the ridges and scales of the grotesque features, filling the glassy eye sockets and over-spilling in endless weeping trails.
Adi ran to meet them as they made their way back down the slope, Qui Gon carrying Siri in his arms, Obi Wan half-stumbling behind. The rain had lightened to a melancholy drizzle.
"Padawan!"
"She'll be all right," Qui Gon assured the Tholothian. "Where is Yollo?"
Adi half turned, holding out an arm in the direction of the Republic shuttle sitting a short distance away. At the foot of its boarding ramp, the mangled remains of a second seeker droid lay scattered at the feet of a cowering Chucabra Yollo, guarded over at blaster point by the redoubtable Alepo Sator. "He made a run for it while I was occupied with the probe unit," she explained. "Unfortunately, he ran straight into Director Sator, who nearly ran into him with his landspeeder."
Alepo grinned. "I knew you Jedi couldn't handle this on yer own."
The two masters exchanged an arch look. Adi laid hand against Siri's pale face. "The evacuation team has finally arrived. They brought medics – let's take her back to base."
Qui Gon nodded, waiting for Obi Wan to catch up.
"Carthag?" Adi asked as they hurriedly ascended the ramp.
"Dead," the tall man answered, succinctly, casting a sideways glance at her, one which prevented any further inquiry.
He hastened onward into the tiny passenger hold, an exhausted Obi Wan on his heels. Alepo nudged their prisoner into the ship, and Adi followed last of all, grimly closing the hatch behind them.
Somewhere on the ruined hillside, Soll Carthag's corpse continued to stare unseeing at the weeping sky. And only the plaintive carrion birds overhead cried a shrill lament for his passing.