Legacy IV
Chapter 18
It was not a good day for scum and villainy.
"Karking son of a half-bred trollop!" the most vociferous brigand snarled, emptying his blaster's entire clip in his unexpected foe's general direction. He might as well have shot plasma bolts into a solar wind; the only result was a deadly spray of rebounded energy packets, a hailstorm which blasted into the cave walls, the stagnant pool, and directly back at him and his comrades, inspiring an operatic medley of curses and threats.
For his part, Obi-Wan found it both amusing and good practice. Soresu was not a combat form he had perfected to his own exacting standards; patiently repelling several hundred lethal projectile blasts at close quarters with no room for error was a delightful change of pace from skulking about and waiting for something to happen. He grinned, weapon in smooth perpetual motion, its sonorous reverberation a soloist's flawless aria.
The other two pirates charged, forcing him to backflip away toward the water's edge. A rogue shot form their companion grazed past his shoulder but missed; he landed a trifle off balance and had to duck and roll to avoid further damage, but quickly regained the upper hand when his overenthusiastic assailants closed hand to hand. With his associates locked in strife so close to the target, the first villain was forced to cease fire, leaving the young Jedi with only two immediate threats to life and limb.
The foremost of which went sailing across the rough-hewn chamber to crash heavily into its opposite wall. He hit with a painful thud, slid to the crater-pocked floor, and slumped in an insensate heap.
"You chisszzk- eating chob gobber!" his Weequay crewmate hissed, brandishing a curved and serrated vibro-blade.
Obi-Wan's brows rose. A scimitar, for Force's sake?
Of course, the blaster in the fellow's other hand made a fair argument for creative combat solutions; the 'saber took care of that inconvenience in a single sweeping cut, while he raised his left arm to catch the downward stab intended for his neck. The ensuing tussle was short but violent; they both toppled backward into the pool, sending up a frantic spray of droplets as they thrashed and rolled. The knife was kicked from its owner's hand, the severed blaster seized and tossed aside, and the miscreant himself flung over one shoulder into the shallows, where he wheezed and groaned, one hand clutching at his solar plexus.
On purest reflex, the young Jedi raised his blade to deflect the murderous shot aimed at his head from across the cave; the bolt glanced straight off the sapphire beam into its source, instantly felling the third pirate.
'Saber thrumming hot at the sprawling Weequay's throat, he stood and dripped ominously over his captive. "Don't try anything."
"Kriff-head," his vanquished foe muttered, still clutching at his ribs.
"Master Kriff-head, if you please." An insouciant smirk. "We're not on a first name basis yet."
The moment of levity was obliterated by a resounding explosion; amid a choking cloud of grit and dust, the narrow cave-door blew wide open, leaving a gaping hole through which a truly hulking silhoueete emerged.
"What's this meerblatzu cock-up about, you wretched slime?" a rolling baritone demanded.
Uticus' imposing figure stood straight and tall, blaster in one hand and electro-whip in the other, extravagant top-knot falling over impossibly bulky shoulders. He squinted at his fallen crewmen and scowled, dark eyes glittering beneath a mountainous brow. He locked gazes with the 'saber wielding stranger at the water's edge, then glanced at the Weequay writhing at his feet.
"That was a mistake, runt. Nobody takes out my first mate and lives to tell the tale."
"We'll keep it confidential," Obi-Wan snipped.
The massive pirate captain glowered, eyes narrowing – and then froze on the spot as the distinctive sibilant snap of an ignited lightsaber sounded directly behind him.
He turned, slowly, a vein in his corded neck twitching erratically. Even Uticus had to look up slightly to meet Torbb Bakk'ile's irate gaze. She stood framed in the ragged aperture created by his forcible entry, black synthleather tabards grimed with dust, dark robes billowing in majestic lines to the floor, her black hair and severe expression a fitting match to his own.
"Hells' moons," the infamous privateer breathed. "…Torbb."
The enormous Knight took a single step forward, weapon thrumming with banked menace. "I warned you," she growled. " I told you."
A delicate, but unmistakable frisson ran through the Force, uniting the two ebony-haired giants in a wordless understanding, binding them into a fragile unity. Obi-Wan stirred, reacting to the flare of resentment emanating from Uticus.
But Torbb held up a restraining hand, eyes flashing. "He's mine , Kenobi. This is personal."
Shmi's fingernails were bruising Cliegg's arm where she clutched at him in wordless distress, her eyes fixed in horror upon the viewer screen he'd rented at the concession stand. High in the cheap "nose bleed" seats at the arena's top tiers, they were surrounded by other racegoers with nothing better to do on this festival day, by drunks and gamblers and pickpockets and laggards – but the poor women had eyes for nothing but the tiny speck of her son's podracer, just visible as a glint of light far, far behind the race leaders. Most the cam-bots swarmed the first cluster of vehicles, so most the footage showed their hair-raising progress along the course; through narrow canyons, beneath low stone arches, along ridged valleys, up steep slopes and over the open desert they hurtled, twin engines yoked by energy couplers, stripped down chariots skimming behind them at fatal speeds.
One or two chassis had already come loose from their moorings and careened headlong into stone columns or cliffsides. The resulting explosions had elicited wild cheers of approval from the crowd, and appalled gasps from Shmi. Cliegg endured the spectacle stoically, heart pounding with only one thought:
Anakin was still far behind. His one chance was slipping through his fingers.
He boldly slipped an arm around his beloved's waist – something he had never yet dared to do in public – and he was not rebuffed. Pressed against him, clothing damp from perspiration where the sun beat down upon them through the insufficient awnings, she seemed to melt into a mirage, the raving delusion of a sun-stricken traveler, one about to perish of dehydration on the cusp of an illusory lake.
Cliegg drank deeply of false happiness. Better this than nothing at all, better this present deception than all the inexorable loneliness of the bleak future.
"Oh!" Shmi cried out as the cambots' focus zoomed in upon the race leaders again. Sebulba and the four pod-jockeys vying most closely for lead position had just roared past a series of jutting rock formations at the hills' base, and mounted a steep duneside, when they veered wildly in all directions. Just over the sandy horizon, a sleek starship sat moored – and just behind it, rumbling forward in a drunken stupor, one of the Jawas' lumbering sand crawlers. The colossal treaded machine bore down upon the ship, as though intent upon collision. Several high-power plasma bolts blasted out of the ship's forward cannon but dispersed harmlessly upon the crawler's thick outer hull – even Cleigg knew that weapons designed for zero-grav conditions would not work properly in atmosphere – and then, in a cataclysmic conjunction, the crawler outright smashed the smaller ship flat. Flames billowed, pieces cracked and shattered, debris spiraled off in long trailing smoke trails, the crawler lurched and bumped, ground to a halt and then wobbled forward, caterpillar feet chugging and churning over the ruinous mass beneath it.
The crowd lost its head – this was better than anything they had expected or paid for, and its effect on the race was disastrous. The pods had spun off in all directios to avoid disaster, but their flight was ill-fated, for a fleet of smaller craft – skiffs and gravbikes, swoops and skimmers – appeared from a subterranean cave nearby, insects spiling in a panic from their violated hive. These enraged newcomers set off after the flustered racers, smaller weapons blazing. A fretwork tapestry of red and yellow bolts drove the cam-bots backward, temporarily interrupting the vid-feed; Tatooine's bloodthirsty crowds, watching from klicks away, jeered and booed in dismay.
At last, one beleaguered recording device hovered in close enough to chronicle Sebulba's dramatic fate at the hands of a shrieking Klatooinian pirate astride a modified swoop. The Dug's racing machine went up in a shooting fireball as one of its engines combusted; another racer veering away from his own pursuer was caught in the explosion's annihilating shock radius. The others were ruthlessly gunned down or sent headlong to their deaths against the unforgiving rocks.
Shmi buried her face against Cliegg's shoulder; he stroked her cheek with one calloused hand.
But he also held his breath: for just behind the scene of disaster, mere seconds too late to be implicated, another silver pod streaked past. It was difficult to identify the pilot, for the discombobulated droids did not focus upon him long enough to produce a clear holo – but it was possible… it was just possible…
"He wasn't in that crash, dear heart. He's all right."
He was more than all right. The wonder boy was, by default, against all expectation , against all likelihood, going to win.
The Tuskens he granted the courtesy of swift death, for they were warrior brutes, simple and uncomplicated, and he did not need them.
His crimson blade decapitated each and every one of them, leaving their heads staring up at the suns through the binocular tubes thrust between their wrappings. They had come here to die, and he had bestowed upon them this final benison – a clean and painless demise. The farmers, on the other hand… groveling, cowardly, terrorized by his appearance, by his display of dominance, these were something far different.
These were slaves.
To these men he could give something far more lasting, far more meaningful than mere death. He had them on their knees and begging for his mercy, suckling pigs drinking at the Dark's succulent, over-ripe teats. Fear kindled in them a hunger for life; fear fed that longing until they were glutted on terror, obeisant to his smallest command; fear rendered them trembling, sweating, irrational, sycophantic, despairing.
One or two feigned stoicism, and knelt hard-faced while their comrades pleaded for their families, appealed to weaknesses the Watcher did not have. He prowled about them, where they marinated in their own tears and stench, kneeling in a tight knot, their weapons cast aside, their eyes roving over the scattered bodies of their friends, of the native raiders, of animals great and small, the deep-hued stains upon the white sand, the bones of the krayt curving upward from the desert like the exposed ribs of some sunken vessel – gaunt, bleached, a vast skeletal calligraphy against the heat-drenched sky.
He trod a majestic, leisurely circuit about them, watching them cower. They had seen his weapon, they had seen his power. He need issue no threat, utter no reminder. They were his, a currency of use in only one exchange, a bait to lure in his final victim. He had but to be patient, to wait while the filthy weaklings stained the Force's currents with their dread and desperation. Sooner or later, the Jedi would feel the disturbance, as a deep-ocean fish feels the subtest of ripples, discerns the presence of a predator nearby.
"Who are you?" one of the youngest humans exclaimed, anguish roughening his thirst-cracked voice. He looked up, incomprehension and revulsion stamped upon round, simpleton's features.
The Watcher halted, leaning in to leer at this bold one. "I am your lord."
"We've done nothing to you! Nothing!" the distraught youth cried. "I've never seen you before!"
His repugnance and terror rose like incense in the Dark, sweet aromas to block out the tang of other bodily fluids. Some of the pathetic worms had soiled themselves, vomited in the extremity of their fear. The Watcher smiled, mirthlessly, baring his teeth. "But you will never forget me."
He snarled in contempt for these rank fools and continued his measured prowl about them.
Soon, soon… here at the center of his self-made vortex, he had but to abide in patience and wait, whle all things were drawn inexorably unto him, the eye of a dark storm, the monster laying in wait at the whirlpool's black heart.
He smirked in wicked satisfaction.