Legacy IV
Chapter 21
Anakin was no tender naïf when it came to death; he'd seen plenty and more in his eight and three-quarters short years. He'd witnessed animals and people drop dead of heat exhaustion in the gutters, seen a guy get blown away in a blaster-fight at Flaky's Cantina, watched Sebulba the Dug skewer another guy with a shiv, right in the marketplace. He'd observed podraces in which more than one contestant had ended as a charred mass of bone and blackened blood. And there was that runaway slave last month, the one whose spattered brains had – reputedly- been discovered on all four corners of the property. Not that Anakin had personally been there, but still. When he was really little, one of Gardulla the Hutt's slaves had staged a short-lived insurrection and been whipped to death in the public courtyard. Watto's uncle Schmatto had been felled by a massive coronary a few years back, in the middle of the shop. He'd been in high dudgeon, screaming at his nephew about some business deal gone wrong, when his apoplectic fit turned into something worse. Anakin hadn't even blinked. Shmi had been perturbed by her son's lack of emotive response, but that was Mom all over.
Always sweating the small stuff.
Thisgrisly spectacle, however, he recognized as death on another scale. It wasn't just the swift and brutal extinction of life to which by now he was utterly inured. The desecrated corpses of Tusken warriors, the gore-beribboned skeleton of the krayt dragon, the pathetic heaps of flesh that might have been animals or maybe people before the teeming scavengers had arrived: this obscene collage was more than a stark fact of nature. This was a twisted artistry, wrought upon the desert's bleak canvas by a hand and mind saturated in something far more terrifying than mere death. Anakin didn't have a word for what this might be, but it resonated within him with an awful clarity, forming a heavy pit in his gut, rousing hairs at the back of his neck. It was as though death was a mere glyph, its various forms but the diverse shapes of a foul language, one speaking of emptiness. Hunger. Domination. Despair. Hatred.
He shivered despite the day's pummeling heat, wriggling down further into the duneside, instinctively attenuating his presence, shrinking himself to a grain of sand. The words of this new tongue echoed harshly in his blood, even when he clamped hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes tight. Korah. Ratah-mah. Yoodah. Korah.
The most powerful thing in the universe was a black hole, because it could eat everything, even Light.
Power. Power. Power, his heart drummed.
What if something could swallow a black hole, though? What if someone could outrace a black hole and win? What if someone could fight a black hole and win, like with a laser sword, blue lightning cleaving through festering blackness, spilling its guts, emptying it of emptiness, forcing it to regurgitate all that it had so wantonly consumed?
Power against Power. Strength against strength. Salvation.
He looked up, a new and shuddering boldness seizing his limbs, eyes squinting hard in the blinding white glare. And there he was, the author of this ruinous scene. It was him- the bad guy, the one who had grabbed him before and almost kidnapped him, run away with him in the desert . Anakin's blood ran cold, then hot again: the black-mantled figure was pacing back and forth, back and forth, in front of a squalid cluster of prisoners – moisture farmers, by the look of them, a pathetic clutch of supplicants, kneeling and groveling at the monster's feet while he calmly prowled before them, the hilt of his laser sword in one gloved hand.
The tattooed, horned guy going to kill them, too- Anakin just knew it. But for now he was waiting, like a sarlacc coiled at the bottom of its hunting pit, not eating the small animals that wandered into its trap because it knew a larger prey would thereby be lured into its clutches.
Mister Qui-Gon sir had admonished him repeatedly, and sternly, not to venture out onto the desert alone, nor to seek out danger. But it wasn't like he'd chosen to fly all the way out here into the boondocks, nor to crash right on the cusp of disaster. And Mister Qui-Gon himself was a Jedi. He went around the galaxy helping people. Saving people. Prob'ly blitzing evil guys with his laser sword. And Anakin might not be a Jedi…. but he'd been sort of unofficially invited to Jedi school, which had to count for something. And, he was the only human and youngest ever Boonta Eve Classic podracing champion.
So basically, he could do anything.
And Mom always said that true courage was doing the right thing even when you were so scared you wanted to wet your pants. Not that Shmi put it in those exact terms, but that was the gist of her sentiment. Today, Anakin was not only going to free his beloved mother, he was going to make her proud. He was gonna be like the Jedi, and save the day. He cast about, frantically scouring his surroundings for something that might help him achieve his lofty ambition. There weren't any stray weapons or much else, but the farmers had arrived here in a bevy of assorted vehicles: swoops, speeders, a couple rickety gravsleds. One smaller repulsor-bike leaned drunkenly in the sand a handful of meters away, on Anakin's side of the dune.
He might be able to use it…
The prisoners had plenty of ways to escape, if their overconfident guard were otherwise occupied. They just needed a window of time. A distraction. He could totally handle that.
The thunder in the Force deepened gradually to a roaring cataract, the unruly conjunction of disparate rivers; silt-laden murk churned into clear-running waters, and then crashed tumultuously into a burbling upsurge, powerful and untried. What had been stained currents now frothed and seethed with chaotic white foam, the violent rapids of a flood without containing banks, a wild directionless torrent plunging recklessly toward the cliff-edge of fate, plummeting headlong toward a fathomless drop into the future.
Qui-Gon gritted his teeth and powered onward, accelerating with the rushing current, riding destiny's waves, his blood rushing along the same breathtaking course toward the same inevitable end.
Go, go,go,go…
He crested the last sun-bleached rise and hurtled down the dune's far side, eyes widening at the blasphemy scrawled across crimson-soaked sand. Strewn like bloody offerings upon a savage altar, bodies littered the desert floor in a wide swath about the derelict corpse of a krayt lizard. The Jedi master's fleeting glance encompassed severed heads, burn-scored bodies, skulls and jutting bones, everywhere the bell-toll of agonized death, the last clawing scars engraved upon the Force by voice after voice, every one of them abruptly silenced.
In the heart of this dark sanctuary throbbed a black and vile cancer, a thing clothed in night and alight with a dark nimbus, a face masked by harsh lines, crowned in a hellish circlet of spikes, bejeweled with lurid yellow lamps. The Force billowed about this figure, inked and turgid, full of twisting power. His heart leapt in alarm, in recognition.
Sith.
Impossible.
But there was no time to reflect, no time to hesitate. Behind the demon cowered a knot of panicked innocents, farmers young and old, men brought to their knees and desperation by a foe utterly, absurdly beyond their power of comprehension, their feeble means of defense. And – like the thundering river, the white rapids of destiny – hurtling toward this enemy on a corroded dust-bike, young Anakin. The boy streaked straight for the cloaked Sith, his hacked-together swoops' drives shrieking like twin banshees, his tiny fist upraised in defiance.
"Run!" he hollered at the appalled farmers, and plowed straight into his opponent.
Three things happened simultaneously: the tattooed warrior flipped out of the way with effortless grace; the stricken prisoners scattered like startled lizards, skittering over the sand in all directions, pure fear driving them before a gale-wind; Qui-Gon launched himself from his own swoop and landed a mere meter from the Sith, 'saber blazing into life as he fell.
"Anakin! Get away from here!" he barked, already sweeping his emerald blade up to block the first ruthless strike.
He could not see whether his injunction was obeyed, for the fight absorbed every particle of his focus. This foe was young, arrogant in his strength, in the deadly precision of his form, of his speed—
The Jedi master leapt away from an off-speed decapitating blow and regrouped. Two blades. He sucked in a breath, summoning abundant Light to his aid, eyes narrowing as the Sith spun his double weapon in a taunting circle, a blazing disc of crimson howling a single deep note into the hollow heaven s above. Scavenging birds wheeled and cried, caught in an updraft of wind and heat.
The thing was well trained in the Jedi arts. In the ways of the Force. Except…
They clashed again, striving to land a severing strike, a scorching deathblow to neck or torso, blades spitting and screaming luminous arcs about them, grazing the sand, the krayt's jutting bones, setting the very air between them alight with actinic wrath.
"Old fool," the Zabrak hissed, blackened lips curving in a leer.
"Mister Qui-Gon!" a shrill voice called, from the sidelines.
The Jedi master's heart skipped another beat. No! "Anakin!" he panted, blocking and pivoting, strike and reverse, cut and parry, twist, strike, block – "Go! Now!"
The Sith's triumphant sneer widened, even as they locked blades and scowled at one another across the sparking, hot-bright barrier, red and green 'sabers chorusing in exquisite dissonance Korah Matah Yoodah Ratah-Mah –
The Force exploded into a meteoric fountain, a dark rainfall. With a flick of his wrist, the Zabrak warrior raised the abandoned swoop and hurled it at the boy, a swift and deadly projectile.
Qui-Gon parried a hard downward strike on his right, raised his free hand and diverted the careening hunk of metal in mid-air, sending it crashing into the krayt's skull.
Anakin yelled, blue eyes widening to saucers.
The Sith slammed a boot full in his opponent's jaw, seizing the momentary distraction and hammering the tall man to the ground.
"Noooooo!" the child screamed.
A pulsing red beam throbbed angrily at the Jedi master's throat, its sparking heat like a steady drip of blood, like the solemn beat of a dirge. One foot casually slammed into Qui-Gon's wrist, sending his 'saber skidding. It flew into the Zabrak's outstretched hand.
Anakin launched himself bodily at the conqueror, only to crash into an invisible wall and sprawl helplessly in the sand. His hands went to his throat, gasping for air.
"Obey, or he dies," the Sith rasped.
"Let the boy go. He is of no interest to you," the Jedi master asserted, bringing the Force to bear upon his enemy's mind. The words were repelled by shields like polished obsidian, walls of impenetrable rage. A heavy black boot connected with his ribs, robbing him of breath.
Anakin writhed, face splotching, chest spasming futilely.
Qui-Gon summoned the Force and –
Yelled as a livid line of fire traced itself down his side, from clavicle to flank and over one thigh, a sinuous brand of displeasure.
"Die, Jedi." A hand fisted itself in his hair, hauled him upright onto his knees. The hilt of a 'saber pressed close beneath his vertebrae, promising instant obliteration, threatening to impale him on a shaft of blazing vengeance.
Anakin collapsed, sucking in a sobbing breath, hands clenching in the scalding sand. He raised bloodshot eyes to his captor, horror and rage scudding over his youthful features as he beheld the plight of his friend and would-be savior.
Qui-Gon closed his eyes, reaching for the tattered, strife-torn Force, for the bleeding scraps of Light shimmering elusively about him, a diaphanous polar aurora, gashed and burning like his flesh, like the tapestry of Tatooine's arid wastes. Why had the boy not obeyed?
The grip on his hair tightened, pulling his head back and baring his throat. The weapon's hilt behind him shoved harder against his ribs, promising annihilation. Execution. Defeat.
There is no death. There is the Force.
But the boy…. !
"I am your master now," the Sith informed the panting, shivering child.
"Don't kill him! Please!" Anakin begged.
"Silence, whelp!" An invisible whipstrike sent the miscreant slamming backward, clutching his solar plexus, grunting in pain.
The Zabrak's fetid breath wafted hot against Qui-GOn's ear. "Do you feel it, Jedi? Now is the reckoning. He is coming, isn't he?" A thrill of sheerest lust, of strange and melting hate, churned darkly in the Force's deepest nexus. "He is coming to me now. He is mine."
Dread clawed cold fingers across the Jedi master's clouding, pain-wracked senses. For here, and now, in the present moment, the white frenzy in the Force, fate's cruel deluvia, reached a crescendo of deafening, obliterating intensity. The world itself seemed to contract and collide into a singularity, a tidal wave crashing down, down upon all their heads, tipping the galaxy over that last fateful chasm-edge, into the abyss of the future. The sky spun, the Force roared, the vergence climaxed in this one chosen arena, this graveyard, this slaughtering ground, this cataclysmic meeting place.
Obi-Wan appeared at the crest of the last dune, both weeping suns glittering in a double nimbus behind him.