XVIII. Hidden Places
For a man like Han, who measured his personal freedom by distance and speed, there was nothing more frightening than being immobilized. The way the ship shuddered unnaturally in the pull of the tractor beam carved a hollow terror in Han's chest and left his hands trembling wildly as he left the cockpit. A fight he could handle. Making a run for it, even better, was his specialty. But this hellish wait, this feeling of entrapment, was more than he could bear.
"Alternatives to fighting," he muttered. "Alternatives, alternatives."
The power converters were shot; there was nothing left to them. He calculated how long it would take him and Chewie to swap the new ones in without exterior access: too long. And he suspected they wouldn't help; he'd flashed his afterburners more than once at star destroyers that had locked on their tractor beams, with a power none ever seemed to expect out of a timeworn cargo freighter. But this was no star destroyer. It was a world made of metal, the likes of which he had never imagined.
Chewbacca barked something about the escape pods. Shyriiwook was a hard language at the best of times; it was even harder to understand him precisely when he was this agitated.
"Yeah, if we hadn't dumped Jabba's cargo in them," he agreed.
Chewbacca pointed to the last pod, barely big enough for one—barely spaceworthy enough to get one passenger back to the planet that didn't seem to exist anymore.
"We're in this together pal, okay?" Han cuffed the Wookiee by the side of the neck.
The farm boy almost barrelled into them both, running down into the corridor.
"What about the escape pods?" he asked. Han rolled his eyes.
"They're gone, kid," he said. "Haven't had the money to replace 'em."
"What? You take on passengers without working escape pods?"
"This may come as a shock to you," said Han, "but we're not exactly operating above board here."
"What happened to them?"
"Not the time, kid. I was hauling glitterstim for the Hutts and had to dump it."
"You wasted all your escape pods for people on some cargo?"
Han turned and glared, raised a threatening finger—then smiled.
"People," he muttered. "Cargo. I got an idea. Get your droids and bring 'em down here, double-time. Chewie, fix the logs. We set course for Alderaan, but abandoned ship just out of Mos Eisley to throw them off." A compliant bark was all he needed to hear.
The farm boy went for the droids. The old man, who had stood gawking at the station for far too long, shuffled down the hallway just as Han was unlatching the hidden floor compartment.
"Impressive," said Obi-Wan.
"All right, is the Empire looking for those droids of yours?"
"You might say that," said the old man. "Best to keep them out of sight."
Han nodded; there was no time even for complaint. He heard the metallic groan, felt the shudder in the hull as a remote override lowered the ship's landing gear.
"It's gonna be a tight fit," he said.
As the ship touched town with a dull thud, Luke was racing back with the two droids. He followed Han's frantic gestures to the second compartment latch and slid open the hidden panel in the floor. The R2 unit whistled brightly.
"Get in and power them down," said Han. "They'll send up an armed boarding party first, then clear them out for a scanning crew. We'll have one window to make this work."
"Oh my," said the protocol droid. "There doesn't appear to be much room."
"It's always something," Han muttered as he helped the Wookiee lower the astromech droid into the secret hold. "The droids ride with you, old man."
"Wait—you said you jettisoned the cargo?" Luke asked. "When you had these compartments right here all along?"
"Sure did," said Han.
"But why?"
The smuggler shrugged. "Because they're not really that hard to find," he said, smiling nervously.
That seemed to shut him up. Luke nodded, wide-eyed, and lowered himself numbly into the compartment. Artoo banged heavily as the mighty Wookie hoisted the astromech into the next compartment over. But he felt no pain, as such, and the whistle of alarm he gave had an altogether different meaning.
"They're coming!" the protocol droid translated. "Hurry!"
Ben was swooning, lightheaded, on the edge of the compartment when the last of his strength suddenly left him. The Force had sustained him this far; it had carried his bones a long while. But the sudden obliteration of a world teeming with life had torn a terrible hole in that living fabric. They stood now in place marred by that desolation, hovering on the edge of emptiness. There were traces of its energy, always. In time existence itself would heal, and the Force would come rushing back. But the death of a world left so very little to cling to.
Chewbacca, sensing the old man's fall, caught him quietly with a paw and helped him descend. Ben waved away the gesture of kindness—a powerful sign among Wookiees—and Chewbacca's mood changed.
"So soon?" Chewbacca said. At least, Ben thought that was the jist of it.
"Leave me be, now," he said, lowering himself into the dark. Chewbacca released him at once, his hairy face a mask of sadness.
"I'll protect him," said the Wookiee as he climbed into his own smuggling compartment. "I'll keep him safe, for as long as I can."
Ben nodded. "Luke," he called. "Remember, the Force—"
"Shut it!" snapped Han. "Here they come!"
Han slithered down into his compartment and jerked the panel into place. Ben lay in the darkness of the shallow hold, feeling the gentle warmth of his own ragged breath against the panel just above his nose.
What would become of Luke? The smuggler would save him—that much he could see. It would be all right. The Force brought him many visions as he prepared to pass into it: a wiser Luke, a true Jedi, beside an older, ragged Han Solo in the desert. The two of them, both men, embracing before a bonfire a galaxy away.
He was meant, perhaps, to bring them here. And that was all.
His work was done.
There were few moments in Ben's life—all of them hidden far away from the light of day—when he had been given the luxury of living for himself. Qui-Gon saw that seriousness in him, and in his own roguish ways counselled against it. Be mindful of the future, he had advised, but not at the expense of the moment. In the desert, in his simple way, he had found them. There had been a garden, once, in the years before the drought—a hydroponic wonder that brought him some happiness in the longest days of his vigil. He smiled in the darkness, letting his thoughts wander to it. More than his thoughts, he realized. He was there, tending the exotic shuura fruit in his early middle age. His skin was coarse, leathery from a hard summer, but there was such strength in him still.
As it had before, Ben's whole life opened up before him. The places and times his own presence had rippled the Force called him eagerly back, not into memory or dream, but the truth of spacetime. For the first time, he drifted away from himself, from the middle-aged man tending the shuura bushes in the last glow of a binary double sunset. Wheeling upward toward the sky, he found himself afloat on the desert currents, where a pack of reptilian skettos circled over some withered prey that had wandered out to the Jundland Wastes to die.
It was the farthest he had come from himself, this place in the sky. He knew the fetters that bound him would soon be gone. All this, the Force as it was or had been or would be, would open to him as he let go of himself and passed into its embrace. The ties binding him to the desert hermit were so flimsy, now. And yet it was this hermit, this Ben Kenobi, whose pleasures he had come at last to enjoy. He returned, for a while, to taste the yellow shuura fruit on his parched lips, and to remember a little while longer. what it was to be…
"Obi-Wan."
This was not where he had expected to come again. His solitude, his quiet contemplation in the desert had been enough. It…
"Obi-Wan!"
He was in another place, another memory. The Jedi Master had let his guard down for just a moment, and they had been hemmed in on the edge of the old market. The ground forces would not hold the line for long before the Republic's reinforcements wiped them out. But the all-out assault was more than Obi-Wan had ever anticipated. In an instant, his lightsaber sprang to life again, and Padmé was safe within the arc of its blade. After a squad of Grievous's personal Jedi-killers, the battle droids were little more than a nuisance.
"They shouldn't be here," said Padmé. "There's nothing to be gained by a ground assault."
Obi-Wan led her into a crumbling tunnel adjacent to the old market. "Nothing," he said, "except a distraction. Whatever their true intent, they're concealing it well."
Beneath the polished streets of the old market, the rich, rank smell of foodstuffs from a hundred worlds still rose to meet them. Only minutes ago, oblivious to the fighting in the sky, it must have been business as usual. But at some point, a rumour must have slipped through: the cramped stalls and makeshift storefronts were dark and their holos shut down so hastily that a glowing sign or two still hung shimmering in the misty air.
They passed a transparisteel cabinet of synthetic foodstuffs as well as an assortment of edible roots and fungi brought up from the deep levels. Behind it, a heavy blast door that led to a freezer was shut tight. From his belt, Obi-Wan produced a passcard that somehow tripped the lock.
"We're almost there," said Obi-Wan. "It's not in the Temple records, this one. Even Dooku doesn't know we have—"
The whine of a vintage blaster rifle powering on stopped him in his tracks.
"Hello, Leia," said Obi-Wan.
Through the hatched pipe in the black wall, a heavyset old woman with suspicious eyes peered through the steam of the rapidly condensing fresh air. She had the scent of death sticks about her.
"Who goes?" she barked. "Kenobi, is that you?"
"None other," he said; then, correcting himself, "well, one other. Padmé, this is Leia Sindriss. An old friend."
"A spy, honey," said Leia Sindriss, offering a meaty hand. "I'm properly called a spy."
"A spy?" Padmé asked. "Against the Republic?"
The old woman nodded. "A spy for the Republic, really. But for itself, against itself, you might say."
"I don't understand," said Padmé.
"No need to understand," the old woman barked. "Just follow. I didn't think you were comin', Kenobi."
In the next freezer over, the woman rolled aside a heavy tank full of ion eels, thrashing and raging in their frozen tank. Beneath the tank, a single trapdoor opened into a low tunnel.
"We nearly didn't make it," said Obi-Wan. "The fighting's worst at the Senate, but it's a full-scale assault. They came at us with everything they've got."
Leia Sindriss narrowed her eyes and scrutinized the young woman at his side.
"That's her," she sneered. "That Senator you're always—"
"Yes," shot Obi-Wan, frowning. "That senator. The one who's been targeted time after time for assassination." He lowered his voice. "If we hadn't made it out of the Senate, she'd be dead. Dooku's come himself this time—I can sense it. He knows every inch of the Jedi Temple, every nook and cranny of the official buildings."
"If that's true," said Padmé, "Not even the Chancellor is safe. If Chancellor Palpatine should be killed, or taken—"
"He'll be all right," Obi-Wan assured her. "Anakin will be with him."
"Anakin?" Padmé asked. "With…the Chancellor?"
"Yes," said Obi-Wan. There was something dark and troubled in her, then, but the young Jedi Master was preoccupied.
"Enough politics," snapped the old woman. "Here's what I've heard. The Invisible Hand is locked above the Senate. Comms are still down, but a couple of the defensive squads are using the smuggler frequencies."
"How are they doing?" Obi-Wan asked.
At the sound of blaster fire above, Leia motioned to the trap door.
"Get in and keep moving," she croaked. "That's how they're doing."
Obi-Wan and Padmé dropped to their bellies in the narrow trap door and slithered into the low tunnel. With surprising dexterity the old woman was behind them, stopping only to trigger the trapdoor mechanism.
"The ion eels will keep them from getting a scan on the hatch," she explained. "Doesn't mean you're home free yet."
They moved in near-silence for a time, except for the clatter of Leia's blaster rifle against the side of the tunnel. The hatch it led to was biometrically sealed and she had to crawl over them both to get it open. It took a facial scan, fingerprints, and a few smacks with the butt of her rifle to get the latch unhooked.
"The finest in Core World living," she said laconically.
"It's funny," whispered Obi-Wan. "It was Dooku himself who told us, when I was still a Padawan, to keep a hidden place for myself, unknown even to the Jedi."
Padmé scrunched up her face. "Dooku said that?"
Obi-Wan nodded wistfully. "He always said the Jedi were vulnerable to corruption. When I was a boy, he warned us someone very high up would one day fall to the Dark Side. I suppose he just didn't know it would be him."
"Bad time to get sentimental," said Leia Sindriss. "Get in." She gave the Jedi Master a hard swat on the rear, as if guiding a stubborn nerf into a pen.
"You're saving our lives," said Obi-Wan. "One tends to get sentimental."
Padmé looked at him with wonder. "I didn't think the Jedi—"
"Oh, they're human, too," said Leia. "Leastwise the human ones. Aren't they, Obi?"
Obi-Wan turned about in the little capsule and fixed her with his steel-grey eyes. It was high enough to crouch, not to stand.
"Listen to me," he said softly. "Once we're locked in, Leia, I want you to get yourself clear, get to somewhere safe. Don't get caught up in the fighting. You haven't seen action like this, not here, not anywhere."
"I can handle myself," she said.
"If you get shot up there, we starve down here."
"Just the same," said Leia. "I'm going to take a few of those rustbuckets with me before I go out."
Obi-Wan sighed sadly. "If that's what you feel is right. But remember—the battle droids are no laughing matter."
Leia nodded. "The battle droids are no laughing matter," she repeated.
"Be sure to keep your distance from the fighting."
"I'll keep my distance," she promised.
"You must come back for us."
"I must come back for you."
"Now get going…and thank you."
"I'm going," she said dizzily. She backed out of the entry hatch and shut it with a hiss of air. Obi-Wan powered on some controls and dialled in a warmer temperature. It was frightfully cold.
Padmé cast her eyes around the cramped interior. "Is this an escape pod?"
Obi-Wan smiled. "It was a very fine escape pod, several decades ago."
"That's brilliant," she said. "Protected from surface scans. It'd take a Star Destroyer's scanners to pick up life in here." She sat up awkwardly on her elbows as Obi-Wan patted the wall appreciatively.
"What they cannot see, they cannot fight," he said. "We're deep below the Senate markets, now. And the life support is adequate for deep space. It ought to last forever down here, planetside."
Padmé looked around the pod nervously.
"Forever," she whispered.
"I hope you're not claustrophobic."
From a future years away—from a galaxy with no escape pod, with no Alderaan, no blue dress, no Padmé—Ben Kenobi watched himself with the eyes of age. He watched her, across time, across space, across the gossamer wall between life and death.
Yes.
This was where he would wait for the end. This tiny pod, this hidden place—hidden even from himself—was where he felt the Light strongest of all.
"I'm not claustrophobic," she said. She was very near him.
"It's hardly luxurious for a Senator," said Obi-Wan.
"It's luxurious enough for a Jedi," she said.
He shrugged. "We are accustomed to doing without such comforts," he said.
"You deny yourself so much."
Obi-Wan nodded. "It's the way."
"You deny them until they're gone."
"Yes."
"You miss her," she said abruptly.
Obi-Wan looked at her. "The Force is stronger in you than you know."
She shook her head. "No, I didn't sense it. I just know what it means…to regret things."
"I have regrets," said Obi-Wan.
"Regret without memory is a terrible thing," said Padmé.
Obi-Wan smiled. "Do you remember when we used to talk like this?" he asked her.
"Years ago," she said. Then, "Before…"
"Before everything."
"Yes."
"That was a long time ago," he sighed. "Far, far away from here."
"Another galaxy," she whispered against his ear. "Another time."