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Chapter 48

At Command of a Ghost

"Ahhhh!"

Padme screamed. Coda couldn't move.

The red cylinder of light burned his life away. Skin peeled. One layer. Another.

Padme lunged. Brummel caught her.

"Let me go!" she sobbed. "Obi-Wan! Obi-Wan! I love you! I love you!"

Obi-Wan's face opened to the bone. Soon he'd be dust. The galaxy with him.

His blood began to boil. Thought was no more.

Palmer thrust out his hand. Called Obi-Wan's saber. It flew from his belt into Palmer's grasp.

The cylinder of light turned from red to blue. Obi-Wan went limp. From nowhere—from ether—came muscle, skin, crawling over the bone that had just been exposed.

The light flashed brighter, and Obi-Wan vanished.

Padme fell sobbing to her knees in Brummel's grasp. "Obi-Wan! Obi-Wan! Obi-Wan! Obi-Wan! Obi-Wan! Obi-Wan!"

Tears streamed down Coda's face. "I'm sorry... I'm so sorry..."

A stoic Brummel turned to Palmer. "What happened?"

He stroked his mustache, delaying for effect. "'Have no evil in hand.' Literally. Once I disarmed him—" He showed Obi-Wan's saber. "—Heaven cut him a break."

Brummel cringed at Padme, a pitiful heap. "Amidala, stop crying. Kenobi's alive."

At first it didn't register. He said it again, more harshly. Her quivering mouth pinned flat with hope.

"I think Palmer's right," Coda wiped her own face. "The Journey Well took him... somewhere."

Padme tried to stand but fell on her rear. "Then—then—we have to follow him! He was burned—he—"

Brummel took her blaster, unclipped his saber, removed his gloves. He tossed them on the ground. Palmer added his sabers to the pile.

Coda helped her up, pulling her into a hug. "It's okay," she whispered in her ear. "He's alive."

"What I'll destroy is the Force."

Vader's voice. A hum of power. A cool deck under him.

A star destroyer? No. Older... brighter.

Suddenly a memory: fire, pain.

His hands flew to his face. The skin was supple.

He held out his hands. Perfectly smooth.

The scars of Maul's lightning had vanished from his arm.

Obi-Wan grabbed a railing, climbing to his feet.

The Jedi stood in the midst of a ceaseless citadel. Heaven, they called it. He couldn't argue its vastness or phantasmal semblance. His every sense was confounded.

Over the railing was a lake, on which figures of vapor gamboled to and from being. They were shapes; they were smells; they were sounds; they were living. He could touch them; he could taste them; they were certainly dead.

Surrounding the lake were sprawling walkways, leading to building after building, bridge upon bridge, and great octagonal towers that pierced the horizon, itself a murky black that reminded him of dreams.

The citadel's structures were lustrous gray with subtle blue trim. The only ornaments were trees, lush green in spite of enduring neglect.

Industrial fans dispensed pristine air that seemed not only to enter but to knead his lungs. It made him young, vital, capable of more.

A voice babbled in his ear, at once nowhere and everywhere. It was Yoda's voice, Padme's, Aayla's and Miler's. It was Vader's voice, Anakin's, the Force itself.

Blue light flashed and he whirled around.

Padme appeared, shaking, weeping. She launched into his arms. "Obi-Wan! Obi-Wan Obi-Wan Obi-Wan Obi-Wan..."

She grabbed at his face. She felt his neck, felt his arms, reached into his tunic, where there should have been scars. "Obi," she sniffled. "Your... your..."

"The Journey Well healed me."

Padme touched her own face. Her scar from the crash on Sarna was gone.

Brummel flashed into being in the pod behind them. His first look at the citadel caused him to gasp. "Well, I'll be damned..."

Coda appeared, crying in relief. She hugged Obi-Wan's side. "Obi-Wan, I'm so sorry! It's all my fault! I should've known!"

"Please, my friend—" He pried her off gently. "You did nothing wrong. As I recall, you tried to stop me."

Her chin pulled and she nodded. She took Padme's hand, squeezing for sanity. Their shared touch calmed the nerves roiling both of them.

When her tears abated, she lifted her gaze to the Mercian citadel.

"Welcome home, Coda," Brummel said.

Little Galen slept against Landon. In slumber, he was peaceful.

As a child, when Landon slept, a worried divot formed between his brows. His mom would lay awake pinching it flat.

This wrinkle passed to Han. And Landon picked up his mom's habit of soothing.

"He has a lot of fathers," Bo-Katan said.

"No, just one. I'm the uncle who drinks too much," Landon said.

"Raised by an animal, then."

"I've been all over this galaxy. Seen a lot of things. A talking wolf doesn't rate with the strangest."

"The boy is dishonored."

"Okay, Momma-lorian. What would you do better?"

Wilk turned from his perch, ears erect. "If you are disconsolate at Galen's rearing, address it to his warden...

"May I ask, Bo-Katan, what makes us so different?"

She removed her helmet, reminding Wilk that she was only a teen when the Red Death struck.

"Be honest with yourself," Bo-Katan said. "Are you going to teach a human boy how to be a man?"

Wilk sat on his hind legs, perfectly serene. "Ordinarily I find stories a mistake of conversation. But I bid you indulge one, with its rambling particulars."

"Can we get the abridged version?" Landon asked.

"In the degree I am capable. I assure you it's salient. My entrance into this life was attended with the death of my father. Our acquaintance spanned moments, but I hold it in my heart."

"Sorry, wolfie. What happened?"

"Debris from a craft rained down upon us. He took its brunt, and was burned beyond Reprieve."

"Then he did his job," Bo-Katan said.

"Indeed. A father intends his son will surpass him. I know nothing of mothers. Mine threw out her mutant son."

Landon squinted. "She just... left you?"

"It imparted to me no particular bitterness. Were it not for her rejection, I would not have met Boch."

"Boch?"

"The human who raised me."

Bo-Katan arched her brow. "As his child?"

"In so much as he loved me, and I loved him. You may be disposed to narrower meaning."

She walked to a boulder, set down her helmet, turning to Galen.

This strange child, with untold potential. He had no kin to reunite with, no destiny but his own. Was her kind more adequate to discover its bearing?

Bo-Katan said, "If he finds his way, I will know you are his father."

"And if he does not, I will know I am nothing."

At the mouth of the bridge was a glass stanchion floating in the air. There was nothing on it. No obvious power source. Yet Callum followed his gut, connecting a power pack.

Random blue lines made circuits on the glass. Patterns flashed like strobes before everything vanished.

Analysis complete, the screen read.

Welcome back, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

"Oh my God," Padme whispered. "You—"

"He was here," Obi-Wan said.

You have access to the following areas.

Main core.

Archives.

Officer quarters.

The gravity lift is across the bridge.

"Hold on a second," Callum demanded. "What do you mean—he?"

"A fascinating tale for another time," Obi-Wan said. "Brummel, take Palmer and Callum. See if you can restore main power at the core. Padme, Coda: let's have a look at the archives."

"Here—you'll need this." Callum handed him a power pack. "It should be universal, but don't expect too much. I can't imagine the energy this place eats up."

"Understood. Stay on your comm."

Obi-Wan's group moved swiftly down the bridge. Callum and Brummel found Palmer staring out at the water.

Shapes in vapor plodded like soldiers in faulting formation, smelling of rain and trees and mud, hinting at noise without really making it. They were solid. They were there. They were nothing and nowhere.

"What the hell is that? Ghosts?" Callum asked.

"It's a living story," Palmer said.

"How can a story be alive?"

Palmer never could abide lack of imagination. "How does a story die?"

"What? I don't know. By not being told?"

"Or understood."

Brummel interjected, "We're not here to look at art."

Callum frowned at the vapor, finding no intended meaning and having none he could assign it. "Right..."

Entering the lift was a leap of faith. There was no elevator car, nothing to grasp. It was a large, empty shaft acting like a wind tunnel. Once inside, a feeling a peace came over you.

Obi-Wan, Padme, and Coda were gently transported ten levels down. They were deposited standing on solid ground outside the lift.

Dim lights—like the emergency lights of a helpless destroyer—guided them down a corridor. Coda hung back, feigning fascination with the sleek white walls.

Padme took the Jedi's hand, puffy eyes fixed forward.

"I'm so sorry," he said gently.

"You don't know how it feels," her voice trembled. "It's like I was dying, too..."

"Yet here we are, both. Is that not most important?"

"For how long?" she demanded. "You're not immortal. You're just a man with lucky breaks."

"And good friends. I seem to make more wherever I go."

Padme held her lip from curling. "It's kind of annoying, actually."

Obi-Wan squeezed her hand. She felt—through the Force?—the crashing wave of his affection. She never wanted to surface again.

"I'm not immortal," he said. "I've always known it. My mistake was in the surety that I'd be ready at my time. You've complicated my clean little paradigm."

"And you mine."

The corridor ended, feeding them into the vast room that was the Archives. To one side was a central computer and a small platform of unknown purpose. Ahead vast aisles—comprised of unlit computer panels, storage drawers, and more small platforms—stretched beyond sight.

Coda's megawatt smile outshone the emergency lights. "Marvelous. Positively marvelous."

"This place is massive," Padme said. "We're looking for a drop in the ocean."

"Not necessarily," said Obi-Wan. Standing at the central computer, he attached his power pack to the black glass surface, waiting for a sign of life.

The console was dark. Nothing sounded. But on the small platform a holographic man shimmered into being. He was tall, thin, and immaculate. The white garments he wore would've passed at Vorka's party.

"Welcome to the archives," he smiled. "It's a pleasure to see you, Mr. Kenobi, Ms. Prosper. Shall I continue in this language?"

Obi-Wan looked at Coda, finding her dumbfounded. "Yes, please. May I ask what you are?"

"I am the Curator of these archives. I can answer any questions and locate specific records. Is there anything I can help you with?"

Padme indulged her curiosity. "How old is this sanctuary?"

"Two million, four hundred thousand, nine hundred seventy-two years, eight months—"

"Old then," Obi-Wan said.

"Quite, sir."

Coda regained her bearings. "How long since I was here?"

"Six hundred years, ten months, five days—"

"Do I have any personal recordings on file?"

"One recording, ma'am."

Coda swallowed. "Play it."

"Of course. It's audio only. Beginning playback..."

Many people dislike the sound of their own voice. Those who enjoy it are more enamored with its propagation than they are the tonality. But few of us hear our own voice at command of a ghost.

"All right then," Then-Coda said in the recording. She sounded tired, tinny. "Not sure why I'm doing this. I guess once in a while, I like to hear myself, to know I'm still alive. Maybe one day someone as lonely as me will listen to my voice and feel understood."

Coda flinched, squinting.

"I wonder, sometimes, if I should jump from a mountain. It's a blurry line between Hell and living forever."

Obi-Wan's hand was unfelt on her shoulder.

"It's been hundreds of years since I left the sanctuary," Then-Coda's voice strained. "The cruel lullabies of specters are all I've heard in the quiet. I don't know what's left for me. Yet a little voice in mind—that sounds like mine but surely isn't—tells me to wait. That I'm still important. In what way, I can't possibly imagine..."

There was a long silence. Then-Coda's voice steadied, quieted. "When you live this long, memory falters. I forget where I was born. I can't remember my parents or any man I may have loved. Visiting the archives can help you re-imprint them, but after so long, you just remember remembering."

"The only memory I truly possess," Then-Coda said, "is sitting in that chair... and in one ghastly moment... destroying my people... with no discrimination between Mercian and Levolent..."

A sob that had shown no sign of coming escaped from her throat. "I think I've lived too long," she whispered.

"End of playback," The Curator said.

Coda trembled. Rising tears scorched her eyes.

She hated her voice.

More than she'd ever hated anything.

The main core spanned twelve stories, with platforms and catwalks winding around a massive sphere emitting undulating light.

Callum stood hunched over a console. "I can't make heads or tails of this."

"Why not?" Brummel said. "The readout's in Basic."

"Yes," Callum sneered, "it's translating to my native tongue. Hip hip hooray! Look, these equations are beyond me. I have no idea how this energy matrix works. I'm the smartest man alive, but they were eons more advanced."

"That's big of you to admit."

"I know," Callum sighed.

Brummel almost smiled. He took up a station, punching a few keys. "Let's map out the machine parts. Then we'll worry about what it does."

Callum agreed, before catching Palmer at another computer. "Hey—greaser—what are you doing?"

The ex-Jedi watched a video feed, likely from a drone, moving down a hall on the officer's deck. But how could it work, after all this time, with main power turned off?

Palmer tilted his head, watching it turn a corner, catch a glimpse of a shadow disappearing into a room. A slow, knowing smile spread over his face. "You have your fun. I'll have mine."

"Whatever, creep," Callum muttered.

Coda sat staring into the depths of the archives. She didn't notice Padme at her shoulder, moving hair from her face. Her eyes sank like well buckets into total back.

Obi-Wan squared his shoulders to the hologram. His voice lowered, a cue the Curator didn't follow.

"Tell me about the Mercy Seat," Obi-Wan said.

"I'm sorry," said the Curator. "That information is restricted."

"Restricted to whom?"

"I'm sorry. That information is restricted."

He crossed his arms, walking a few feet. He felt like a padawan beseeching Jocasta Nu. Those infuriating days might serve him now, though.

"Tell me about the war," Obi-Wan said.

"Please specify."

"The final conflict, between the Mercians and Levolents."

The Curator replied patiently, "The Mercian-Levolent conflict spanned 4,528 years. Please—"

"Let's try another question," Obi-Wan said. He smoothed his mustache, finding the pertinent query slinking about in his subconscious, like a fear that can ruin days without entering your thoughts.

"Tell me about 'The One,'" he said. "The Levolent who ascended."

"The intelligence called 'The One' was born two million, one hundred fifty—"

"Yes, long ago. What was his name—when he was still a human being?"

It seemed to stick in the Curator's holographic throat. "His name," he smiled strangely, "was Amaymet."

Obi-Wan looked at Coda in dim hope for a flash of memory. After a beat, he repeated the name, which tasted of copper.

"What was his role in the Levolent Empire?" Obi-Wan asked.

"In his corporeal form, Amaymet ruled the Empire for fifty-thousand years."

"Not fifty-thousand and one?"

"I'm programmed to take a hint, sir."

"Hmm. I take it he wasn't a benevolent ruler."

"Amaymet and his horsemen were feared across the empire. They took the mere mention of an uprising as cause to destroy a planet. Sometimes an entire system. Over one quadrillion sentients died, before the war ever began."

Padme appeared at Obi-Wan's shoulder. "Horsemen?"

"His chosen name for three powerful sorcerers who carried out his will. It's a mythological reference."

"Tell me the story."

"Delighted to," the Curator grinned. "There was no beginning. The universe had always been. Ruled not by God, but by humans, who were immortal. There was no strife, no disease. Their only concern was growing their knowledge.

"But with immortality came a reckoning. Too few planets existed. Humans filled them like locusts, stripping them bare, rationing everything. And so the rulers assembled. This could not continue."

"What did they do?" Padme asked.

"As humans would not die naturally, other means were needed. Together they performed a ritual. Creating out of nothing four black specters. Great hulking, faceless men, clad in black robes, wielding the first weapons in existence. They road gray horses, which breathed plague in the air.

"For one hundred years, These Horsemen came in the dead of night. Murdering innocents. Spreading disease. At first, it cowed the humans. But over time they learned."

"Learned what?" Padme demanded.

"The power of death. They made war on each other. Refined plagues to be crueler. The humans did it so well that eventually The Horsemen, no longer needed, vanished in the night. But there were some who believed, in fear—or, perhaps, hope—that they would one day return."

"Cheery," Obi-Wan deadpanned.

Coda swiped at her face. Her self-pity was left pooling in a stoppered chamber. "Chaos from order?" Obi-Wan turned to her. "The story's backward," she explained. "In creation myths, the gods make order out of chaos."

The Curator laughed, as one does at a child. "Ms. Prosper, they were the gods. Every sentient was born from their seed. These children were the ones who needed myths. The ones who needed order."

Padme bristled. "'Order.' Is that what you called slavery?"

The hologram flickered. The empty smile returned to The Curator's face. "There were many disagreements on the subject of slavery. Would you like more information?"

"No," Obi-Wan interceded. His arms made a right angle, a hand raised to his mouth. "I want to know about you."

"Me, sir?"

"Yes. Who created you?"

The Curator frowned.

"It should be a simple question—for a computer," Obi-Wan said. "Let's try another. What is your power source?"

"The sanctuary's main core," The Curator said.

"Really? Because that console is dead. Try again..."

"I'm sorry, sir. I'm restricted to the Archives. I can't access—"

"Computers don't lie." There was an intensity in his voice Padme had heard only once, nights ago in the Master's lab. "Shall we end this charade? Is your own face so pitiful?"

The Curator's countenance, soulless, sterile, with its unchanging banal smile, flickered and flared, and suddenly its stare was scalding, feral. Its eyes boiled red and it screamed inhuman laughter. Like a demon rising from lava its skin burned, liquefied, dripping from a body that somehow remained whole.

Padme recoiled. Covered her mouth.

Obi-Wan snarled. "Hello... Amaymet."