"What about Ke Daiv?" Raith Sienar asked.
"A failure from the beginning," Tarkin said. "Leave him here to rot."
Jabitha yelled for Anakin, but the ramp closed with a hiss and a metallic bang. He felt the ship rise abruptly and climb. Tarkin and Sienar immediately escorted him to the bay where the Sekotan ship had been hoisted and stowed in a catchall harness.
"Stay with your ship, boy," Tarkin said. "Keep it alive. You are very important to us. The Jedi Temple awaits your speedy return."
Chapter 58
They'll keep the sky mines away from that ship," Obi-Wan told Shappa as they ducked in and out of the mountain ravines at the cloud line. "No one trusts them in close quarters not to go after friendlies."
Three droid starfighters still doggedly followed, but Shappa's craft was too swift and maneuverable to be caught.
"They'll take the Magister's daughter!" Shappa said grimly. He pushed his hand even deeper into the console, which wrapped its tissues up to his elbow, shoving back his sleeve.
"I don't think so," Obi-Wan said, brow furrowed in intense concentration. He closed his eyes, feeling ahead for all futures, for the knot rapidly coming unwound, for the strands of fate whirling off in all directions, not unlike the pinwheel that filled the sky.
"You're right," Shappa said as they leapt up over the rim of the field and circled. "They've left her behind, and she's alive!"
"Move in and retrieve her," Obi-Wan said. "Leave me on the field."
"But the starfighters will kill you!"
"Perhaps," Obi-Wan said. "But there's nothing more you can do for me, and nothing I can do for you."
Shappa opened and closed his mouth, trying to think of something appropriate to say, then nodded and concentrated on bringing his ship down.
There was no time for farewells. One moment the Jedi Knight sat beside him, and the next, just as the hatch opened, he was gone like a twist of smoke in the wind.
The next thing Shappa knew, the Magister's daughter dropped through the hatch, kicking and screaming.
"Now go!" Obi-Wan shouted after her, and slammed the ship's hull with the flat of his hand.
Shappa did not need encouragement. Starfighters buzzed up over the rim of the landing field. Jabitha held on for dear life as Shappa lifted the ship away.
Obi-Wan Kenobi flung aside the bandages that impeded his free motion and simultaneously drew forth his lightsaber. The blade hummed into angry green life. Once, the weapon had belonged to Qui-Gon. Holding it in his hands, Obi-Wan felt he now had the strength of two. He needed every gram of hope, and if sentiment gave him strength, helped him focus and emulate his former Master, then so be it.
The Force did not disagree. Qui-Gon had had a special relationship with the Force, and he had taught his apprentice well.
"Come on," Obi-Wan whispered as he stalked across the field. Two Starfighters had remained to see what prey they could find on the mountain. The other had gone off after Shappa's craft. "Come on," he repeated a little louder this time.
He walked up to the Blood Carver's body. It lay in a crumpled heap surrounded by boot prints. Something about it troubled him, but there was little time.
As Obi-Wan rose from his stoop, a starfighter dropped from the sky, laser cannons lighting up the shattered landscape. Obi-Wan deflected two of its blasts with his blade, but their force nearly ripped the lightsaber from his hands. A third blast pulsed brilliant red to one side and hit the Blood Carver's corpse square.
Ke Daiv received his ritual cremation then and there.
The second starfighter joined the first, curving high up into the sky.
From out of nowhere, as if sneaking suddenly between veils of stars, Charza Kwinn's old YT-1150 screamed over the field, guns yelping out quick bolts that shattered the two Starfighters before they could even think about a return run. Their smoking remains slammed into the side of the mountain and started a rumbling avalanche that spilled down over the palace ruins. Boulders tumbled across the field, huge and implacable, worse than any phalanx of warriors.
Obi-Wan raised his blade and swung it over his head as a beacon.
The Star Sea Flower whipped up on end and glided backward like a falling leaf just meters above the smoking, grinding flow of rock and dirt. Its loading ramp dropped like a jaw. Obi-Wan vaulted over the edge of the ramp, and the ship lifted him away just as the last of the landing field was reclaimed by the mountain.
Obi-Wan sloshed through the dank corridors to the pilot's cabin. Food-kin scampered out of his way, snapping with excitement.
"They have your Padawan," Charza Kwinn bristled, bending over backward to peer at the Jedi. "Sit down and buckle up."
Chapter 59
Anakin felt as if he had been swallowed alive. He huddled next to his ship, hand on the fuselage, feeling her quiver in the capture harness. Shoulders hunched, he controlled his rapid breathing and tried to come up with a plan, any plan, to regain control over his life.
He could not shake the vision of the dying Blood Carver. Firing lasers at droids was no preparation for his first personal kill, and the way he had done it…
Anakin moaned. The four guards in the bay turned at the sound, shrugged, and looked away. Just a frightened youngster.
Jabitha appeared beside him. Anakin looked up and blinked. Again the image shifted, and Jabitha became Vergere, then the Magister. Anakin stood and sidled up against the nose of his ship. He did not know if he could stand any more of Sekot's illusions.
"They are trying to destroy the settlements," Sekot said, seeming to kneel beside him. "I can't let this go on much longer."
"What can you do?" Anakin asked in a low whisper.
"The Magister prepared for this, but we have never…" Sekot seemed at a loss for words. "Practiced? We have never had a drill and tried everything all at once."
"Tried what?"
Sekot stared straight ahead. "The engines, the hyperdrive cores.
"What, you're all going to escape in big ships?"
"We will do what we need to survive. Do you know where you are?"
"In a sky-mine delivery ship. I'm a prisoner," Anakin said.
"You are in orbit around me. You are part of the fleet I may have to destroy soon. I would regret harming you."
"You can do that? Blow up all these ships?"
"It's possible. I'm trying not to be too destructive all at once, but the Magister never had time to teach me everything. I do not know what we are all capable of, the settlers and me, working together."
"Did you kill any Far Outsiders?"
"I must have," Sekot said.
"Would this be any different for you?" Somehow, that seemed important.
"I don't know. Every experience is new. I do not know myself very well. I am only now aware of how much death there is in my own parts, how they compete with each other and keep a balance of coming and going, being and ending. All across my surface there is death and birth, all the time. Do I feel bad about this? Do you know when the parts of your body kill invading organisms?"