The Clone Wars: Wild Space

by Karen Miller

Fear slithered in his belly like a worm. He suffocated it, as Obi-Wan had told him. Don’t feed the dark side. Stay focused. Stay positive.

  I’m not a Jedi, so this place can’t see me, not like it sees him. And that’s already working to our advantage. I’m helping Obi-Wan, so chalk one up for the puny human.

  Lifting his head, Bail stared across the exposed, rocky plain. Took in the distance and terrain they still had to traverse. By nightfall, if they kept a steady pace, they’d reach the end of this unforgiving stretch of ground. Which would be a relief, because even though it wasn’t unbearably hot beneath Zigoola’s sun they were still expending more bodily moisture than they had water to replenish.

  Dehydration is not our friend.

  Beyond the plain there was another stretch of tangled forest, blanketing riotously uneven ground. He wasn’t looking forward to tackling that. And just beyond those trees, he was almost sure, they’d finally reach the Sith temple. He could see the flat black top of it from here, squatting above the treetops like a malevolent stone cloud.

  So we’re almost there. This is almost over.

  Except it was dangerous to think like that. Thinking like that made his throat close, and his eyes burn, and they weren’t there yet. He was getting ahead of himself. He had to stay focused. Couldn’t afford to think about anything except putting one blistered foot in front of the other.

  Five paces away Obi-Wan coughed weakly and blinked at the sky.

  “Hey,” said Bail, cautiously. “Welcome back.” He tugged a precious water bottle out of the single remaining backpack. Their supplies had dwindled alarmingly, but he refused to think about that. Instead he unscrewed the bottle’s cap, filled it, and carried it to the Jedi. “Here.”

  Bone by bone, muscle by muscle, Obi-Wan levered himself upright. “Thank you,” he croaked, taking the miserly offering. Nearly spilled it before drinking it, because his hand was shaking. Then he sat, just sat, breathing deeply. Unsteadily. “How long was I out for this time?”

  “About as long as last time,” he said. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  Obi-Wan handed back the empty cap, his face expressionless. All his secrets contained. “Yes. It’s marvelous.”

  Bail winced and focused on screwing the cap tightly onto the water bottle. If his face was gaunt, Obi-Wan looked cadaverous. Chalk-white skin laid over jutting bone, eyes sunken like hot coals in shadowed snow.

  “You should eat,” he said. He took a step toward the backpack.

  Obi-Wan shook his head. “No. I’m fine. We must press on.”

  “Obi-Wan…”

  With difficulty, Obi-Wan stood. His belt sat too loosely, sagging toward his hips. “Bail.”

  Lips tight, he shoved the water bottle back in the pack.

  This must be what it’s like being a Padawan. Do as you’re told. No arguments. I know what’s best.

  “Bail,” Obi-Wan said again, gently this time. “The longer I stop, the harder it is to keep going. So let’s be on our way, shall we?”

  He was hungry. He was tired. His body ached without cease. He’d dearly love to rest awhile longer. But how could he insist on that, how could he complain, when he could see what Obi-Wan had to endure? So he picked up the makeshift backpack and shrugged it on, wincing again. It was heavy, and clumsy, and it hurt his wrenched shoulder, but that couldn’t be helped. Ignoring the discomfort he settled the pack as best he could and followed Obi-Wan, who walked like a man whose bones might randomly fracture with any one step.

  And so their unkind journey continued.

  Four hours and no more visions later, a storm blew in from nowhere, black clouds edged lurid green boiling across the pale sky, blotting out sunlight, turning the air to ice. A thin wind, sharp as hunting knives, keened across the rock plain, slicing and sleeting and slapping them to their knees.

  They were about an hour from the next tree line. There was nowhere to hide.

  The rain came down like blaster bolts, soaking them within seconds. Exploding against the surrounding rock and their exposed skin, drumming them deaf, as though each drop was an iron ball and the rock was made of metal.

  Bail looked at his hands and arms, expecting to see running blood. But it was water, only water, even though it felt like fire. So he tilted his head back and opened his mouth and let the deluge pour over his parched tongue and down his throat. Swallowing, he tasted metal. Tasted bitterness. Tasted life.

  Obi-Wan grabbed him. Shook him, hurting his shoulder. “What are you doing?” the Jedi shouted, staccato, teeth chattering with the cold. “Not tested—could be dangerous—”

  “If it’s poison, then I’m poisoned,” he shouted back while his own teeth rattled and clattered. “And you’re as wet as I am, so that means so are you!”

  Eyes slitted, Obi-Wan stared at him as the merciless rain hammered down. Eddies and rivulets were gushing past them, tiny rock pools overflowing, water rising all around. “Good point.”

  “And at least we won’t die of thirst now.”

  “No, but we could drown!”

  He laughed. He couldn’t help it. I’m on a Sith planet in Wild Space and my imminent cause of death has become a multiple-choice question. “Or get struck by lightning!”

  “Don’t say it!” said Obi-Wan. “You fool, don’t even—”

  And the first blue spear of lightning stabbed toward the ground.

  “You idiot! You had to say it!”

  More lightning pierced the clouds, thunder roaring behind it. The freezing air crackled. The rain turned to ice. Little pellets, little splinters, little razors kissing flesh.

  “Oh, this is not good,” said Obi-Wan. “Not good at all!”

  No. It wasn’t. If the hailstones got any bigger, they could easily cave their skulls in. Break their bones.

  Bail curled his arms over his head, tucked his chin to his chest, and made of himself the smallest possible target. It helped, but not enough. For all the good his clothes did him, he might as well be naked. The freezing rain flogged him. He could hear himself groan. Hear Obi-Wan beside him, lost in his own distress. More lightning. More thunder. He held his breath, waiting for death to strike him, to be seared flesh from bone. Breha. Breha. Don’t be angry. I didn’t mean to.

  And then as suddenly as it started, the raging storm stopped.

  They barely managed to fill their emptied bottles before the rainwater drained away down the rock plain’s cracks and crevices. The sky was bare of clouds again, all that roiling green-edged blackness vanished as though it had never been. And Zigoola’s sun shone once more, disconsolate, with a pale, halfhearted heat.

  Cold to the bone, Bail thrust the last filled bottle into the backpack and hefted it into place. His spine cracked, protesting. Ignoring that, he looked at Obi-Wan.

  “You ready?”

  Obi-Wan nodded but made no attempt to stand. Instead he sat slumped on the wet rock, shivering inside his soaked, filthy Jedi tunic.

  “Come on. Walking will help dry us off,” he added. “Help us get warm again.”

  Still Obi-Wan didn’t move. His face was pocked with little red welts where the pellets of ice had left their mark. Doubtless he looked the same himself. He certainly felt it.

  “I tried to shield us,” Obi-Wan said, his voice low. “Using the Force. It’s an early Padawan training exercise. You find a waterfall, you stand under it, and then…” He gestured lightly, gracefully, with his bruised, scraped hands. “You stay dry. And after that, you work your way up to rain. It’s not that difficult. Just a question of degree. All in all… very basic. I had barely turned six the first time I did it.”

  Bail crouched before him, keeping balanced with his fingers just touching rock. “But you can’t do it now?”

  “No,” said Obi-Wan, and his thin face twisted with revulsion. “For all that I can use the Force here I might as well be a droid. If you could feel what it’s like—if you had any idea—my blood has turned rancid.”

  Was it wrong, to be so relieved he couldn’t f
eel what Obi-Wan was feeling? Probably. But I am. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish I could help.”

  “I was born feeling the Force,” Obi-Wan whispered. “Every day of my life I’ve lived in its light, every minute, every breath, for thirty-five years. And now it’s gone. All is darkness. And I don’t know who or what I am without it.”

  Bail stared at him, lost for words. How could he answer such quiet misery? How could he counsel a man who had powers he couldn’t begin to comprehend? But how could he say nothing in the face of such naked despair?

  “The Force isn’t gone, Obi-Wan,” he said with all the conviction he could muster. “It’s being smothered. It’s this place. When we leave here, it’ll come back. You’ll be yourself again, you’ll see. You are a Jedi. Nothing can change that.”

  Obi-Wan just shook his head. “I don’t feel like a Jedi. I feel—I feel—”

  And with no more warning than that, the Jedi fell into another vision. More than one. Memory after memory, the longest episode yet. Firebeetles to Tayvor to someone drowning in acid on Telos to Qui-Gon’s death to Geonosis, the battle and then Anakin, losing his arm.

  Bail sat safely apart from him, head propped in his hands, waiting… and waiting. Despair overwhelmed him, but—

  Grown men do not weep.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Obi-wan. Obi-wan. Come on. Come back. We can’t stay out here. Please. Come back now.”

  He didn’t want to. It was too hard. He was so tired. He needed rest. Needed peace. Needed a surcease of pain.

  Die Jedi, die Jedi, die Jedi, die.

  The voice never stopped whispering. Never left him alone. It was wearing him down. Like water on rock, it was wearing him away.

  “Obi-Wan!”

  He opened his eyes.

  “Hey,” said Bail, and cleared his throat. “There you are.”

  Yes. Here he was. Stranded like splintered driftwood on this rocky plain. I’d rather be somewhere else, if it’s all the same to you.

  “Drink this,” said Bail, thrusting a bottle at him. “All of it. We’ve got plenty now. You’ll feel better afterward. Drink.”

  The captured rainwater tasted foul. Tainted by the dark side, like everything on Zigoola. He drank it slowly, stomach rebellious, and took stock of his current condition. His clothes were dry again. His hair. He was almost warm. On the outside, anyway. On the inside he remained freezing cold. It was getting harder and harder to hold back the dark tide. To drown out that spiteful voice. All his years in the Temple, the rigorous study, the dedication… they weren’t enough. He wasn’t dead yet… but he was losing the fight.

  He looked at Bail. At Senator Organa of Alderaan. Would his Coruscant colleagues recognize him in this moment? Filthy. Unkempt. His neat goatee bedraggled and his clothes cousin to rags. A lot thinner than he had been.

  “I did tell you not to come.”

  Bail’s face tightened. One hand came up. “Do not even start. Can you walk?”

  Could he walk? It was a wonder he could breathe. The black slurry in his veins had turned to acid. Every muscle burned him. His bones were on fire. “No.”

  “Too bad,” said Bail. “We can’t stay out here tonight. We need to get to that tree line. Once we reach it I’ll find some deadwood and start a fire. We need to get ourselves warm again, properly warm.”

  Die Jedi, die Jedi, die Jedi, die.

  “You go on,” he said. “Find that temple. See what’s in there. I’ll stay here. I’ll wait for you.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Bail, and without ceremony, without permission, he roughly hauled him to his feet. Held him by the shoulders, glaring. The urbane, sophisticated Senator was nowhere to be seen. In his place this angry, ragged man, with bloodshot eyes and hollowed cheeks. “Look. Obi-Wan. I know this is difficult, but you have to keep going.”

  Die Jedi, die Jedi, die Jedi, die.

  He grimaced, the voice echoing through his tired mind. “That’s easy for you to say.”

  Bail let go of his shoulders and struck him open-handed across the face, hard. “Stop listening to it! It’s just a voice, Obi-Wan! It’s not even that, it’s a machine, a stinking Sith machine, and it’s trying to kill you. It’s trying to get you to kill yourself. Don’t give in to it. Remember who you are. You’re Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, one of the greatest Jedi we have. You’ve beaten the Sith three times now. You can beat them again. You can.”

  His face was smarting where the Senator had struck him. Clean pain. Uncomplicated. Untainted. His heart thudded slothfully, struggling against the sludge. Standing straighter, he felt a flicker of light. His tiny, beleaguered candle, burning in the dark.

  “You have to beat this, Obi-Wan,” said Bail. “Because if you don’t, I die.”

  Yes. That was true. Bail Organa would die. And that was unacceptable.

  The sun was sinking to the horizon, its mean heat draining away like all that stormwater down the cracks and crevices of the plain. Night gathered around the edges, gibbering of darkness, like a Sith, and the cold was creeping in. The Senator was right. They shouldn’t stay here in the open. Not for another night. Two nights were enough.

  Bail had shrugged the makeshift backpack on again and was watching him closely. Wary. Exhausted. Ready to fight. “So, Obi-Wan. Your head’s clear? We’re going?”

  Yes. They were going. For all the good it would do them. “My lightsaber,” he said. “You still have it?”

  Bail nodded, eyes narrowed. “Why? Do you want it back?”

  Of course he wanted it. It was his lightsaber. He was incomplete without it. “No,” he said. “Just keep it safe for me. And… keep it close at hand.”

  Bail hesitated, as though he wanted to say something difficult. Uncomfortable. Then he shook his head. “I will. Now come on. The day’s not getting any younger—and neither am I.”

  A flash of humor. An indomitable spirit. Not your everyday, common-and-garden politician.

  This is an uncommon man.

  They fell into step, side by side. “You know, Bail,” he said, striving for lightness, struggling to drown out that whispering voice, “it occurs to me you’re wasted in the Senate. With a punch like that you’d make a killing in the ring.”

  Bail looked at him sideways. “Sorry. I needed to get your attention.”

  “No, no, don’t apologize. You did what you—”

  DIE JEDI, DIE JEDI, DIE JEDI, DIE.

  His knees buckled. He would have fallen, but Bail Organa held him up. Held him hard and whispered in his ear, drowning out that other voice.

  “Don’t listen to it, Obi-Wan. Don’t listen. It’s a machine. Ignore the kriffing thing and keep on walking. Don’t worry. I’ve got you. I won’t let you fall.”

  He kept on walking, the dark side howling in his heart.

  Sheltered by Zigoola’s drought-stunted trees, they survived another night.

  Waking first, just before dawn, cold despite his heat-seal blanket, Bail stirred up the almost extinct fire, coaxing it to flickering life and adding more fuel. The crackle of flames was almost… cheerful.

  Cheerful. Now there’s a laugh.

  Curled up on the leaf-littered ground, Obi-Wan still slept. A true sleep, at last, after hour upon wearing hour of sliding in and out of wicked dreams. Wrenched with pity, Bail stared down at him. He didn’t know for sure how old Obi-Wan was; he’d guessed that maybe ten years separated them. Now it looked more like twenty. As though the Jedi’s desperate fight against the Sith’s relentless onslaught was gradually stripping him of every adult defense. He was reminded of Alinta.

  No. Don’t think about her.

  Obi-Wan was so pale now his face was nearly translucent, the bones of his body moving closer and closer to the surface. The only word Bail could think of, looking at him, was fragile.

  Obi-Wan Kenobi, fragile. Not even a week ago he never would have believed it. He could hardly believe it now, though the proof lay before him.

  But he’s not going to die here. I won’t let that h
appen. This man has given his life to the Republic. As the Republic’s representative it’s my duty to honor that gift. To not let these Sith destroy him.

  He still found it hard to reconcile that there were only two of them. Two. How could two of anything wreak so much havoc?

  And how is it the Jedi can’t stop them? Can the dark side of the Force really be that powerful?

  It must.

  I never wanted to know this. I never wanted to know most of the dangerous things that I know now. Before the Separatists I used to be able to sleep at night. Now… with the things I know… I wonder if I’ll ever sleep properly again.

  Unsettled, he dumped the last of the gathered wood onto the fire, then stared at the sky as another Zigoola dawn broke, a sickly affair. Nothing like Alderaan’s imperious grandeur or Coruscant’s flamboyant transition. They’d have to break camp soon. But he’d let Obi-Wan sleep for as long as possible. He still needed to repack their ever-dwindling supplies and try to figure out the best way to get from here to the Sith temple.

  With a last glance at the oblivious Jedi, confident the fire would keep burning, he left the small clearing they’d found just as night fell, and pushed his way through the twisted trees and creeping undergrowth, picking his way over and around gullies and rockfalls, looking for a break in the forest that would show him exactly how much farther they had to go. Every ten paces he gouged a mark in a tree trunk with the knife he’d brought with him from the ship, mindful of horror stories about lost tourists in Alderaan’s wilder places. Of tearful relatives and blanched, bleached bones. Zigoola’s trees where he cut them bled their inimical yellow sap.

  There is nothing good here. Nothing beautiful. Nothing sweet, or kind. And that tells me all I need to know of the Sith.

  After maybe half an hour of steady trudging he came at last to the end of the trees and found himself standing above a narrow-based ravine. Not a sheer drop—that was a mercy—but a dauntingly steep tumble of rock and weathered dirt and stunted saplings, nonetheless. A long way down to the bottom. A fall might not be fatal, but it would certainly do some damage. Negotiating it would be a challenge for two fit, healthy men. But when one was mentally bludgeoned almost to immobility… and both were battered and half starved and weary to the point of collapse, well… it was asking a lot.