Legacy IV

Chapter 19

"How is it that you are here?" the astounded pirate barked, still addressing Torbb.

"I've been looking for you a long while," she replied. "As for your loot, this secret den ?" One huge hand swept about the ruined cave, the muddied water. "It was the will of the Force that brought me here. As it was that brought you. It is over, Uticus."

The towering captain snorted. "Empty words, like your previous threats."

Obi-Wan scowled. "You are cornered, your crew disbanded. Surrender."

But Uticus merely chuckled, a rasping hiccup devoid of humor. "Who is this sanctimonious errand boy, Torbb? The Jedi Order must be desperate."

"Drop your weapons and submit to arrest," the enormous Knight snapped back. "Enough stalling."

The pirate captain sighed, then turned his head over one shoulder, looking with pity upon his Weequay mate. "Let Shau'we go," he said. "Let us speak… in private."

To her colleague's astonishment, Torbb nodded in consent. Obi-Wan deactivated his saber, permitting the gasping prisoner to shamble his way past Torbb and out into the passages beyond, where the jabbering voices of Jawas no longer chorused and echoed among the ancient stones. His unsteady footfalls pattered into oblivion, wrapping the three inside the inner sanctum in a mantle of silent expectation.

Torbb closed the distance between herself and her quarry, face hardened into inscrutable lines. "I told you I would find you. I told you I would stop you. Why did you not believe me?" A note of regret crept into her otherwise unrelenting tone. "I thought you knew me better than this."

Uticus smiled, a very little, chin high and mouth straight. "I surrender to no one. Even to you."

The tall Jedi released a long breath, the Force simmering in agitation about her. She swallowed, hard. "Hear me now. I the name of the Galactic Republic, you are under arrest for murder, theft, smuggling, piracy and countless other crimes. Lay down your weapon and submit."

Her massive adversary growled deep in his throat. "Never."

"Then so be it," Torbb rasped out.

In the next instant, they had joined battle, two titans falling upon each other with all the unbridled ferocity of opposed elements, of primordial enmity.. of impassioned lovers. Uticus' final war-cry howled clear and curdling within the cave's broad dome; Torbb's 'saber blade sang a single, agonized chord; the pirate's head toppled form his shoulders, hit the scarred floor, and rolled to the pool's edge wrapped in a shroud of its own silken hair. His body crumpled and collapsed a moment later, in a graceful encore to the act.

Torbb stood, weapon pulsing forlornly in her hand, her head bowed and eyes closed in grief.

Obi-Wan exhaled, grimly. It was done. Whatever it was.

A moment later, his fellow Jedi spoke. "It is finished." Her blade snapped back into its hilt. "I have done what I must." She looked up at him, mutely pleading for absolution.

He glanced from the grisly severed head to the lifeless corpse beside it, then up at Torbb again. "Who was he to you? I sensed…. "

"You sensed my folly," she retorted, abruptly resuming her customary brusque manner. She replaced the weapon's hilt at her belt, though a tremor in her tendon-knotted hand betrayed inner turmoil.

Obi-Wan dipped his head. "Forgive me."

Torbb sighed, crossing both arms over her chest, then relented. "No. Forgive me. I am in your debt; never would I have been able to run him to ground without your help. You have lent me your strength without demand for return, and I have repaid you in discourtesy."

"There was no offense taken," he assured her. "Your past is your own."

"No." The enormous woman smiled wanly. "Nothing is our own, in such a sense. I will tell you. "

The caves' petroglyphs seemed to crowd round, a jury of stark witnesses. The pool stilled into calm, reflecting the dim phosphorescence of the walls.

"Who was he to me? My cousin. We were betrothed before I was born – a planetary custom, you understand."

Obi-Wan nodded, offering no comment.

Torbb gathered her thoughts. "I returned to my homeworld briefly, many years ago, before I was Knighted, to broker an agreement. Our people are few in number, and not fecund. The Council had initially approved an exception to the precepts. Master Mundi was instrumental in this, you understand."

"Yes." There existed among the Jedi a rare few who… exercised certain rights, without attachment. The Cerean Councilor was a well-known example; he maintained four wives on his native planet, for the purpose of further propagating the nearly extinct Cerean race. While the matter was a subject of predictable jest among junior padawans, it sometimes came under more sober scrutiny at higher levels. But he personally had not contemplated its nuances in a long while – since sanctioned exceptions to the Jedi rule of life, such as that Torbb described, were rarer than a dwarf Wookiee.

"It proved.. inexpedient… to proceed with the arrangement," she continued. "The indigenous law was too convoluted and uncompromising to permit me to remain within the Order once a marriage was contracted. After nearly a month of … negotiations, my master and I declined the offer and closed the discussion as diplomatically as possible."

Negotiations. Obi-Wan raised a brow. "Uticus was… offended by your refusal?"

" It is not that simple."

No… it must not be. And in that month of negotiations, what had she allowed herself to contemplate? To desire? Torbb was a creature of flesh and blood, as were they all. "You were… disappointed?" he ventured. Heartbroken. Though she should not have been.

Torbb shot him a bitter look. "We are seekers, not saints," she said, frowning. "I … "

He waited, heart twisting at his comrade's halting confession. It was, as she had so often told him, complicated. How many years had she struggled with a flame forbidden, then suddenly stoked by unexpected possibility, then once more forbidden? How often had she managed, in the course of interstellar journeys, to arrange a brief liaison with her enigmatic relative-cum-suitor? When had he turned to piracy, causing her to issue an ultimatum, and in extremis to keep her vow to the Order and the Republic above all other claims, legitimate or otherwise? Had she dreaded that moment, or longed for the release it represented - for disobedience to exact its own punishment, for an aching wound to be cauterized? Was she to be censured or pitied?

"I am sorry," he said, quietly.

Torrb dipped her head, then bowed. "I have erred, and my shame is deserved." She straightened, and turned her back upon him, shoulders briefly quaking. "By your leave, brother…. I will burn his body. Alone."

It was fitting, and he had no stomach to refuse her request. "Of course." Carefully avoiding eye contact, he slipped past her and wended his way up and out of the caves, mindful that the Jawas and their victims had long since fled into the desert, leaving the catacombs in melancholy solitude.

Sky and sand and the thunder of his twin drives singing in his blood, Anakin screamed past the finish line in a blaze of triumph, elation ripping loose from shi throat in a long howl of release, of victory, of conquering glory!

The wind whipped the sound away, and he shouted again, the sound of his own voice blended with the pandemonium of the crowds, the blaring of trumpets and gongs in the Hutts' pavilion, the terrified bleating of pit droids and gonk units as they scattered before him.

Because he couldn't slow down, much less stop.

"Ooops," he grimaced, holding onto the yoke for dear life and blasting clean out of the arena again, back into the open desert. The stultified announcer's amplified voice boomed over the barren plains, calling for him to come back – but it wasn' t like he had a choice. With the small modifications he'd made just to get his racer started, his only option was to fly the pod until his engines ran out of fuel and grounded him. A swift calculation told him this would take less time the faster he went, and a brief glimmer of common sense told him that he would do better not to streak a few hundred klicks into the Dune Sea only to be stranded without hope of return. He settled on a wide circuit of Mos Espa and the surrounding environs, and opened the throttle.

The sooner he was able to stop, the sooner he could get back to town and claim his prize.

Freedom!

Watto the Toydarian was beside himself.

"What are you talking about you uppazzi-brained sleemo? He's my slave boy!"

But the obstinate racing official was having none of it, and the pair of Hutt-employed enforcers standing at his elbow lent credence to his argument. "You never entered him under your creds… he's not registered as your entry. So the prize money don't go to you!"

"But I fronted the entry fees for him! That counts for something!" Even if it was under the table, not official.

"Get lost," the fat Ruusan sniffed.

Hovering in an infuriated circle, the junk dealer tugged at his scraggly beard and wrung his hands. "All right, all right… you hand over the prize money to him, eh?" under Tatooinian law, a slave could not own property unless approved by his owner. It would be a simple matter to wrest the substantial winnings from the snotty little buki's clever hands, and –

"Slaves can't collect money in their own right," the official scoffed. "You're out of luck."

"What?" Spittle flecks gathered at the corners of Watto's mouth. "What? Then who gets the moolasa, eh? Eh?"

A diffident shrug. "Nobody, I guess. Too bad. Now get lost."

It was the appearance of Jabba's thugs in the near vicinity that got the Toydarian moving fast in the opposite direction. He made a desperate beeline for the nearest exit, panic starting to claw at his innards; he had lost a devastating sum on Sebulba, and now he couldn't collect on Anakin's miraculous win? His skin was quite literally going to decorate Jabba's palace walls unless he found a way to come up with a staggering sum of cash, this instant.

He all but collided with the smug figure of Cliegg Lars outside the tented gambling lounge. "You!" he shrieked, snout undulating. The last thing he wanted right now was –

"Mr. Watto," the farmer beamed. "I have a proposition for you."

"I don't have time for your stinking chisszzk, chubaso!" He was ruined, kaput, washed up and in peril of his life. He didn't have time for an impecunious moisture farmer's bantha bollocks, or his -

Wait a minute.

"I think you do, Mr. Watto. Word has it you're in dire need of some cash, and I've just come into some money. Quite a lot of money, actually. I'm sure we can strike a deal."

The Toydarian's heart sank into his gut. He had told the stinking idiot to bet on his slave boy in the first place - ! Choked with irony and rage, he pointed toward the local cantina, and prepared to buy his life and livelihood back at a premium.

And that damned farmer just bounced on his heels and grinned ear to ear, like the luckiest bastard ever born. Chubazzi sleemo.

"Drinks are on me today ," Lars said.

"Master Jinn! Master Jinn!"

Qui-Gon forged his way upstream against the current of bodies spilling out the stadium's exit gates, shouldering between boisterous race-goers until he reached Shmi Skywalker's slender form. He carved a path out of the living river and drew her aside, a comforting hand on her arm.

"Where is Anakin?"

She shook her head. "I don't know – he won the race but he didn't stop, he's disappeared into the desert – something must be wrong, Master Jinn! He might be in trouble – a malfunction – and he can't be out there alone-"

"He won the race?" The tall man's sharp frown brought the poor woman up short. "Never mind. Which way did he go?"

She gestured with one hand. "Oh please. Find him. The debt collectors will be coming for me any moment – the auctions start this afternoon, after the race. I might never see him again… " her hands twisted in the worn folds of her skirt, dark eyes brimming with unshed tears.

The Jedi master gently held her upper arms, exerted a reassuring pressure. "I will do all I am able. Be hopeful."

Shmi nodded, melting with gratitude. "I cannot ever repay your kindness," she said.

"We come to serve," he replied, already striding away in search of his borrowed gravbike, and borrowed trouble of the variety so oddly rampant here on this Force-forsaken world.

The race was over, but his intuition told him that the day's revelations were far, far from complete.