Legacy 4

Chapter 10

Cliegg stepped out of the sonics with a sigh of relief. It felt good to literally shake the dust and sweat of the day off his skin… with a rueful grimace at his pile of rumpled clothing, he wondered if the same could ever be said of his garments. He had a pair of comfortable old togs for 'round the house – not sturdy enough to wear outdoors, but possessed of a nice, elastic waistband and made of soft fiber worn thin by time. He'd bought them in the Core, more than a decade ago. The memory produced a small pang of nostalgia – but only a small one.

He made his way to the sunken farmhouse's kitchen, where Owen was busily chugging down a bottle of blue milk. "Da," he greeted his sire, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand. "I'll fix us some dinner."

Cliegg sank into a creaking plastoid utility chair. "'Sallright, I had plenty this afternoon. You polish off those chonkers and we'll grind some new foo'm for the week." He leaned back heavily, glad to get the load off his aching knees and feet. The vaporators had needed a full tune-up, and he wasn't getting any younger.

Owen eyed him warily. "You were gone a long time yesterday," he said, rummaging in the conservator.

"Mm."

But the younger member of the Lars household was not so easily put off. "You, ah, ask that sleemo Watto about her yet, Da?"

Her meant Shmi. How Owen had found out, Cliegg might never know. But the moisture farm community was a small one, and stars knew there was nothing to do out here but gossip about one's neighbors. "Nn," he responded, non-commitally. Owen didn't need to know about the wager. "Piece of chisszzk Toydarian won't let her go for less than a fortune."

And she won't go without the boy being freed, too…. He sighed.

Owen plunked a plate of food in front of him, despite his voiced objections. "Cmon, Da, eat something. Day starts early tomorrow." A wan smile as the young man tucked into his own flavorless repast.

Cliegg munched stolidly at the nutritious bean paste. "Let's talk about you instead. How's things?"

A shrug, then a smile accompanied by a small blush. "New family over by the Meerscob ridge. Nice folks. Gotta daughter, 'bout my age."

Cliegg noted the carefully calibrated indifference of this statement. "Pretty?"

"Da!"

They ate, and drank, and ran the dishes through the pulse-cleaner.

"You're old enough to start thinking about the future," Cliegg resumed the previous discussion. "You have my permission. And when the time comes… if it comes…. we could always expand the house. Dig another wing in on the south side. Rock's solid."

Owen grinned. "Her name's Beru."

Cliegg nodded. "Mm. Well. I'd like to meet the lass sometime."

His son offered him a small smile and excused himself to check on the storage shed and the perimeter alarms. The early hours of night, when the heat of day was just dying off and most predators had yet to emerge from hiding, were a good time to walk and think. Cliegg leaned back in the creaking chair and did some thinking of his own. They could expand the subterranean dwelling… maybe a bigger bedroom next to his own, turn that into a place for the boy. They could all fit, make it work.

He shook his head. That way madness lay – he had to keep his focus firmly in the here and now, the present and concrete and certain. What would be would be…. The Boonta Eve Classic would determine the course of his future, and the size of his house.

It was out of his hands now.

Qui-Gon Jinn listened to the boy's rant patiently, both thumbs hooked through his belt, one boot propped up on the low retaining wall outside the slave quarter.

"…And they'll do it, too, Mister Qui-Gon sir! They mean it – they actually like killing people and stuff. You cross Jabba and you're bugsquat. Everybody knows that. "

"I am well aware that such mercenaries are not above punishing innocent victims for the transgressions of others," the Jedi master agreed, grimly. "You wish me to protect your mother; I give you my word that no harm will befall her at the hands of your new friends."

Anakin beamed. "Wizard! So you're gonna blitz them! Can I come and see?"

The tall man frowned, reminding himself how very harsh the world of slavery could be, how damaging to those enmeshed in its snare. "You think they would best be served by a swift death?"

His small interlocutor shrugged, a fierce scowl gracing his infantile features. "They've got it coming," he insisted.

Qui-Gon sighed, turning to sink down upon the wall. "Here," he said, patting the hard-baked clay beside himself. "Let us talk about this for a moment. Suppose – for the sake of discussion," he amended, seeing the nova-bright gleam in the boy's blue eyes, "that I were to blitz them , as you suggest."

"With your laser sword."

"With a weapon, or my bare hands," the tall man continued, placidly. "What good do you think that would accomplish?"

"It would stop them from ever doing evil stuff again," his young friend promptly replied, nose wrinkling. "Obviously."

Qui-Gon nodded sagely. "Ah… but who is to say others would not replace them?... and others after that, hm?"

The boy thrust his chin out, stubbornly, kicking soft wrapped feet against the wall. "It would teach them a lesson, anyway," he insisted.

This evoked a wry smile, one laced with peculiar nostalgia. "I have another acquaintance – a student of mine, in fact – who once said something rather similar. He espoused the idea that evildoers ought to be inspired to amend their ways. And he thought that a lightsaber would make the instrument of inspiration, par excellence."

Anakin grinned widely. "He sounds smart."

Qui-Gon's brows crept upward. "He is indeed. But we spent the better part of ten years correcting that fallacious line of reasoning. You cannot make anyone 'be good' – particularly not by force of arms. A Jedi's mandate is not to punish wrongdoers, but to keep the peace. There is a significant difference."

The boy gazed up at him dubiously, mouth twisted to one side and blond hair falling in ragged strands over a furrowed forehead. "Okay," he said, with patent skepticism. "But I still wish you would blitz those guys."

"I will keep your mother safe," the tall man repeated, firmly. "Let that suffice."

"Fine," Anakin mumbled. "But I still think-"

Qui-Gon held up a hand. "And that is the problem. Now off you go – it's late, and surely you are missed."

Shmi's voice sang out over the evening quiet. "Ani! Ani… where are you? It's time for bed."

The boy hopped down from his perch and scampered away, pausing a few paces away to address the Jedi master again. "Thanks, Mister Qui-Gon."

The tall man's eyes narrowed. "And you are not to take the matter in your own hands, either," he warned.

Anakin's face stilled into stunned obstinacy. "…'Night," he said, tersely, before dashing off to obey his mother's summons.

The Jedi master leaned back, inhaling slowly, and considered the living enigma posed by Shmi's unique – and passionate – offspring. The Force warped about this place and time, this strange meshing of realities, crossing of destinies. He had not been wrong to return here, to pursue the elusive feeling Obi-Wan had reported…. But he had the distinct impression that he played with rarefied fire, a thing neither safe to handle, nor to leave alone.

Difficulties lay ahead, any way he looked at it.

The Wastelands were beautiful. From a certain point of view. At the moment, under starlight, they spread out from their rocky shores like a velvet sea, purple and indigo tides rolling ceaselessly against the encircling hills, visible only as a darker line against the sky's mantle. Through macrobinoculars, one could discern specks of life – creatures great and small, wise and wonderful, creeping and slithering, burrowing and sneaking among the barren slopes of sand, the shifting worldscape in which they fought tenaciously for the right to exist. The Force remained resonant, tympanum-taut, fine as blown glass, a luminous film in which to scry out future and past, the tangled nexus of the present.

Though the night breeze was cool, an ambient warmth still radiated up from the desert, the mother-heat of the vast planet , the liquid dross of countless eons' torment beneath beating suns. Obi-Wan folded his cloak over the swoop's handlebars and let the sweat on his skin evaporate in the brisk wind. His vantage point, atop one of the rocky promontories overlooking the arid basin, was a place for unfettered speculation . And Torbb's tardiness in making the rendezvous left him with time to think- to brood, or meditate, in turns.

The recent past gnawed at him, relentlessly. Feld Spruu, Zhoa, Garen: all three injured on his watch, perhaps due to his negligence. Their fates would remain unknown to him until he too returned to the Temple, there to face the Council's inevitable displeasure at his willful delay. The present task preoccupied him: Uticus had proved to be allied with the Hutts, and self-assured in his superiority of numbers, set in his defiance. It could not end well – and a deep instinct bade him wonder what secret underpinned Torbb's fascination with the pirate. He sensed a personal interest. The future loomed darkly as it ever had, but with alarming proximity, as though hungry to consume the present and past, absorb them into its own obscure and mutable depths.

Flesh crawling, he dared to sink deeper into the Force's currents, to taste the ethereal winds on this forsaken world, to really feel what lurked here in the desert – and there it was again, a shadow haunting his steps, a perverse mirror image following, always following…. the unmistakable signature of the Other, the Enemy. He surfaced abruptly from the half-trance, running a hand through unruly hair.

Paranoia was so uncivilized. This place was getting to him.

"Nice," Torbb Bakkile's slightly husky voice, on the baritone extreme of recognizably female, interrupted his musings. "You always stand around navel-gazing in the dark, Kenobi?"

A gentle smile. "Do you really want to know?"

"Ha. No, not really." The enormous Knight found a wind-smoothed slab of rock and sat, unabashedly massaging her buttocks. "Fierfek! Those gravbike seats are designed for skinny-arse runts. That's the last time I ride one of the damned things, by my oath. "

Obi-Wan raised an admonitory brow, to no effect.

"Find anything?" his blunt-mannered colleague demanded.

He gazed out over the shadowed vales below. "Your friend Uticus was at the Hutt's palace. We exchanged words… as you predicted, he proved uncooperative."

"Told you he wouldn't submit to arrest," Torbb snorted. "…It's not in him to surrender. We have to do this the ugly way."

Obi-Wan nodded. "You?"

"I," she replied, matter-of-factly, "Have located Uticus' secret cache, in a cave formation fifty klicks from here. Actually, the place is sacred to the Jawa people – they're none too happy at the invasion of privacy."

"They've stored their loot until the auction, to keep Jabba's grubby hands off it. He must only have contracted for a cut of profits… I wonder what they've got stockpiled for sale on the black market."

Torbb thrust a hand into a large belt pouch and withdrew a few small items. "I took some time to take inventory. Barves hadn't even left a sentry- too confident in the obscurity of their hiding place, I suppose. Looks like Uticus has been dealing in the usual narcotics, raw minerals, tech components, .. and this." She held up a labeled vial, a thin cylinder of fluid for insertion in a hypo-spray.

Obi-Wan peered at it intently, borrowing his comrade's glowrod to have a better look. "More drugs?" he wondered aloud. "But these are biomedical symbols… is it a cure for some pathogen? That might be valuable to the right buyer."

Torbb grimaced. "It's a vitals blocker. Instant suspension of all animate function – the perfect simalcrum of death. It's reversible, of course…. But you can see the usefulness for smuggling. Inject one of these and you could sneak past the best bio-sensor scanners on the market… straight through any security blockade, automated screening check, anything. "

The younger Knight turned the curious tube in his hand. "Or subdue a foe, I suppose. A bounty hunter might like some of this. Simple, elegant, effective." The fine print on one side arrested his attention. "Arbor Industries. I should have known."

But Torbb was less concerned with the chemical's point of origin than its present owner. "You keep it for a souvenir," she quipped. "The important point is this: we have our ambush location."

A fair proposal, with only one flaw. "We're still vastly outnumbered. His crew must be comprised of hundreds. He'll send a considerable detail to transport the gods from that cave to the auction site. And armed vehicles, probably blaster cannon. I suggest sabotage."

"Too risky," Torbb argued. "We have the element of surprise. I say we utilize it. And besides, I may have acquired some useful allies of my own along the way."

Obi-Wan glanced up, comprehension dawning. "The Jawas," he breathed.