by Timothy Zahn
Abruptly, he heard the STAPs behind him twitch their drives to full power. A droid voice shouted a raspy warning -
And, like an avenging angel, a Jedi starfighter shot over the house out of the rising sun, its laser cannon spitting destruction as it tore through the middle of the STAP formation.
Obi-Wan was already in motion. He leaped to one edge of the droid circle, slashing with his lightsaber, then spinning around to deflect the blaster shots belatedly coming his direction from the more distant droids. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the Swens family running full speed toward the house, safely out of the battle area. Overhead, the rest of the survey team shot past in the starfighter’s wake, its laser cannon systematically dealing with the STAPs Anakin had missed.
Smiling grimly, Obi-Wan stretched out to the Force, settling his mind and body into Jedi combat mode.
Three minutes later, it was over.
“I’ve heard all the stories,” Kirlan said, shaking his head in amazement as he fingered the steaming mug of misti in front of him. “But I’d never actually seen a Jedi in action.”
“It was cool,” Kit said with barely contained excitement. “Can you teach me how to do that?”
“Kit,” Trissa said reprovingly as she set mugs in front of Obi-Wan and Anakin.
“Actually, I can’t,” Obi-Wan told him. “Not unless you were born with the ability.” His comlink beeped, and he pulled it out. “Yes?”
“All clear,” Commander Fivvic’s voice came. “We got most of the backups, except for a few who managed to escape into that big gorge to the east.”
“So that’s it?” Trissa asked.
“It is for now,” Anakin told her. “We’ll alert Coruscant that there’s definitely a Separatist presence here, and when they can free up a task force they’ll send it here to clear them out.” He looked at Kit and Zizzy, “That is, if they don’t give up and run away before that.”
“But you’ll be leaving?” Zizzy asked.
“No,” Obi-Wan said. “Not just yet.”
Anakin looked at him, and he could sense the Padawan’s surprise. “Why not?”
“Because there’s something wrong here,” Obi-Wan said, trying to put his thoughts and impressions into words. “That droid commander said that they’d seen Kit and Zizzy in the fields when at least one of them should have been working on the crop stubble. But that kind of reasoning is way beyond combat droids. That means there must be some Neimoidians or other living beings here as well.”
“Doesn’t sound right for a small garrison,” Anakin said, his voice suddenly thoughtful.
“It isn’t,” Obi-Wan agreed. “But it’s exactly right for a research or development facility ... and my scout was taken out by an attack I didn’t see coming.”
“A new weapon,” Anakin murmured, gazing out into space.
“Looks like it,” Obi-Wan agreed. “And Fivvic said that the surviving droids just now fled into the gorge. How would they know there was enough room for them to fly in there unless they’d already checked it out?”
“That could be where their base is,” Kirlan suggested. “Those cliffs go back ten kilometers. Plenty of room in there for any kind of facility they want.”
“I agree,” Obi-Wan said. “But when they first came searching for me, they didn’t come from that direction. They came from the west. I remember that because the barn was blocking their view.”
“That’s right, they did,” Kirlan murmured thoughtfully- “Huh.”
“So what does that mean?” Kit asked.
“It means they took the time to circle way around so that no one would guess where their base was,” Obi-Wan told him.
“But they just showed us where it is,” Zizzy objected.
“Exactly,” Obi-Wan said. “Which implies that whoever’s in charge decided it didn’t matter anymore if we knew. Which implies in turn that whatever they’re doing in there is about finished.”
He looked at Anakin. “Which implies that we’d better take a look while we still can.”
“I don’t know,” Anakin said doubtfully. “The survey team’s on a pretty tight schedule, and there aren’t any attack teams anywhere in the sector.”
“So we’ll let the survey team go,” Obi-Wan told him. “They can leave us your starfighter and one of the scout ships, and we’ll rejoin them when we’re done.”
“Wait a second,” Trissa put in, starting to sound alarmed. “You’re the one who told us a Jedi couldn’t take on a whole enemy base.”
“I said a Jedi couldn’t take on a base alone,” Obi-Wan corrected, smiling tightly. “Now, there are two of us.”
Kirlan shook his head. “Why,” he said, “do I suddenly have a bad feeling about this?”
To Be Concluded...
SYNOPSIS
PART 1:
GUARDIAN OF THE PEOPLE
Obi-Wan Kenobi has ventured to the planet Dagro to discover that the rumors of the Separatists’ occupation are true. After barely escaping one battle that left him injured and in the care of locals, Kenobi again engages battle droids, only to be assisted at the last moment by Anakin Sky-walker and his survey team. The two Jedi now find themselves on a mission to deal with an even bigger Separatist threat....
PART II
PEOPLE OF THE GUARDIAN
With a final salute through the canopy of his scout ship cockpit, Task Force Commander Fivvic lifted off the ground, the rest of the survey team close behind. Standing outside the Swens family barn where he’d spent the past four days, Obi-Wan Kenobi watched the ships disappear into the Dagro sky, wondering if this might possibly not be the smartest decision he’d made this month,
Beside him, Anakin Skywalker stirred. “It’s not too late to call them back,” he pointed out.
Obi-Wan took a deep breath. Smart or not, it was what they had to do. “Yes, it is,” he said firmly.
“Good.” Anakin turned to face east, holding a hand up to shield his eyes from the early morning sun. “So they’re in there, huh?”
Obi-Wan turned, too. Cutting across the vast expanse of farmland in the near distance was a line of tall, gray cliffs. A kilometer or so south of where they stood, a raging white-water river boiled out of a narrow gorge in the cliff face, the turbulence subsiding as the water spread out into a wider riverbed and turned toward the north. “So it would seem,” he told Anakin. “The trick’s going to be getting in there with them.”
“Flying in is definitely out,” Anakin mused. “They’ll be expecting that, and a gorge that narrow doesn’t leave much maneuvering room. Could we rappel down from the top of the cliff?”
“That would be an awfully long rappel,” Obi-Wan pointed out doubtfully, measuring the cliff face with his eyes. “At least half a kilometer. And we wouldn’t know where to start-Kirlan said the mountains run 10 kilometers back from the cliff face.”
“Then there’s only one approach left,” Anakin said. “If we can’t fly or rappel, we’ll have to swim.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that,” Obi-Wan said. “Let’s go see what Kirlan says.”
Kirlan Swens’s response was pretty much what Obi-Wan had expected. “You two,” he declared, “must be insane.”
“That goes without saying,” Anakin agreed. “But is it possible?”
“Not a chance,” Kirlan said, gesturing them to the table. “Trissa, can you get us some misti?”
“Sure,” his wife said, crossing over to the simmering urn. “You children, go work on your chores.”
“Aw, Mom,” 10-year-old Kit protested. “Can’t we stay and listen?”
“We won’t interrupt,” his younger sister Zizzy added. “We promise.”
“Off, both of you,” Trissa said firmly. “This is grownup talk. Maybe later you can spend some more time with our guests.”
Silently, clearly under protest, the children left. “First problem’s the current,” Kirlan said, turning back to the Jedi. “You’d need a high-speed dive boat to make any headway, only I doubt
a dive boat would have enough room to submerge in that maze of boulders where the river comes out.”
“What about going in from the upstream direction?” Obi-Wan asked.
Kirlan shook his head. “The entrance to the gorge is even narrower than the exit. I don’t know of any dive boat that would fit in there.”
“How about a regular boat?” Anakin asked.
“They’re bound to spot anything on the surface,” Obi-Wan pointed out. “Could we climb our way in from the upstream end? Say, halfway up the cliffs where they might not have any sensors placed?”
“You could try rappelling,” Trissa suggested as she brought a fresh pitcher of misti to the table.
“They’ll be watching for intruders coming in from above,” Obi-Wan told her.
“I didn’t mean that kind of rappelling,” Trissa said. “1 meant the underwater type.”
Obi-Wan blinked. “Excuse me?”
“It was something my friends and I used to do when we were younger,” she explained. “You fasten a cable above the
entrance to the gorge, then hold on and slide along it, letting the river current carry you downstream.”
Kirlan looked at her, his mouth hanging slightly open. “Your mother told me you’d been a wild child,” he said. “But that’s just nuts.”
“Remind me to tell you sometime about Anakin’s career in Podracing,”
Obi-Wan said dryly. “Trissa, can this be done completely underwater, or is the river too shallow at that point?”
“We never submerged completely,” Trissa said, frowning in concentration. “At least, not on purpose. But as long as we stayed in the middle of the channel, I don’t remember the rocks being a problem, I think you could get far enough underwater to be hidden and still be safe. Of course, you’d need some kind of breather equipment.”
“Those we’ve got,” Obi-Wan told her.
“What do you think, Anakin?”
The younger man shrugged. “If it was easy, everyone would do it,” he said. “Let’s go see how much cable we’ve got with us.”
The river was a narrow torrent of foam and spray cutting through a groove in the mountains as it raced toward the taller line of cliffs ahead and the valley beyond them. “We usually started further downstream, right at the beginning of the cliffs,” Trissa said, her voice barely audible over the noise, “1 don’t know any good places to attach your cables up here.”
“We’ll find something,” Obi-Wan assured her, looking around. It would indeed have been simpler to start at the gorge itself, but the Separatists would have sensors planted there to watch for intruders. Here, a couple of turnings upstream, they could hopefully get far enough underwater to slip in unnoticed.
“How about that?” Anakin asked, pointing to a short but thick-trunked tree growing between two large boulders on the far side. Without waiting for an answer, he did a Jedi leap over the roiling water to land beside it. He gave the trunk a couple of experimental tugs, then turned and nodded.
Obi-Wan nodded back. “Looks like we’re set,” he told Kirlan and Trissa. “Thanks for your help. And thank Pickers again from us for letting you borrow his landspeeder.”
“Sure.” Kirlan looked down at the river. “Do you want us to wait for you someplace?”
“No, just go home,” Obi-Wan said. “We’ll let you know if and when we need a pick up.”
“All right,” Kirlan said. “Good luck,” Turning, he started picking his way through the boulders back toward where they’d left the landspeeder. Trissa lingered for one last look at Obi-Wan, then nodded silently and followed her husband.
Obi-Wan watched until they were out of sight. Then, stretching out to the Force, he leaped over the river to where Anakin had just finished fastening his line around the tree. “Trissa doesn’t seem happy about this,” the younger man commented.
“She was pretty angry with her husband for bringing me to her home after I got shot down,” Obi-Wan explained as he pulled out some cord from his cable dispenser. “She was polite enough about it, but it was obvious. I think she’s working through some guilt over that.”
“Well, ! sure wouldn’t want to risk my family for a stranger,” Anakin said darkly. “I mean...if! had a family.”
Obi-Wan’s throat tightened as he felt the ache in his Padawan’s heart. It was 12 years after his mother’s death, yet her absence was still as fresh as the day Anakin had lost her. Someday, he would have to get the young man to tell him the whole story of that incident.
“That water’s not going to get any warmer,” Anakin pointed out, and Obi-Wan could sense him pushing the pain away into the back of his mind.
“Right,” Obi-Wan said, checking his line and then Anakin’s. The tree they were using had broad purple leaves; pinching off a handful of them, he stuffed them into his tunic.
“What’s that for?” Anakin asked.
“You’ll see,” Obi-Wan told him, pulling his Aquata A99 breather from its pouch with a twinge of painful memories of his own. The breather would always remind him of that mission to Naboo, and the loss of his Master Qui-Gon....
He shook the thoughts away. “Watch out for sensors,” he said and set the breather between his teeth. Getting a grip on his cable dispenser, he waded into the river.
He’d made it only knee deep before a sudden surge in the flow knocked his feet out from under him, He toppled backward, but Anakin was ready and caught him in a steadying Force grip. Regaining his balance, he played out the cable and lowered himself the rest of the way.
Once, a long time ago, he’d been caught in the open during one of the sudden monsoon rainstorms of Matarri, where huge drops driven by strong down-draft winds came down with enough force to bruise the skin and occasionally even kill small animals. This was very much the same sensation, except that instead of lukewarm tropical rain, the water here was mind-numbingly cold. It pounded his head and shoulders, tearing at his hair and tunic, buffeting against him and trying to twist his head sideways as he moved deeper into the stream.
Half a meter below the surface, thankfully, most of the turbulence was gone. But the current was, if anything, even stronger. Instead of a rainstorm, he now felt as if he was being dragged through a lake by an angry acklay running at full speed. Bowing his head slightly to try to see past his feet, wincing as the shift in posture funneled a torrent of the icy water straight down the back of his neck, he started downstream.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something large ease past him. It was Anakin; but unlike Obi-Wan’s more cautious feet-first approach, his Padawan had turned himself around and was heading face-first down the river, his cable dispenser held tightly against his chest, the line caught in a loose grip between his boots for stability. He looked at Obi-Wan as he passed, his face crinkling with a brief grin behind his breather, and continued on. Mentally shaking his head, hoping the other didn’t brain himself against a rock, Obi-Wan followed.
They had cleared their second curve when he felt Anakin’s warning flash into his mind. Stop!
He sent an acknowledgment and slowed to a cautious crawl. Anakin was waiting a short distance ahead, five meters back from a point where the sunlight streaming through the foam abruptly faded away, marking the entrance to the gorge. There, fastened to a boulder at the dividing line between light and
gloom, was the small black disk of a visual scanner. Apparently, the Separatists weren’t taking chances on even such an unlikely back door as this.
Unfortunately for them, their security setup hadn’t taken Jedi into account. Getting a one-handed grip on his cable, Obi-Wan dug out the tree leaves he’d collected earlier. He held them up in front of Anakin’s eyes, caught the other’s flash of understanding, and let them go.
The current caught the leaves, sending them skittering down the channel. Stretching out to the Force, Obi-Wan guided their paths, running them around and past the scanner. Then, just as the second-to-last leaf was passing, he caught it in a Force grip, holding it quivering in front of the s
ensor as if its stem had been caught by a crack in the rocks.
Anakin was gone in an instant, sliding down his cable at typically reckless speed. Obi-Wan was right behind him, keeping the leaf in front of the scanner until they were safely past, then releasing it to shoot past him and disappear. Slowing to a safer speed, watching for more sensors, the two Jedi continued on.
With no idea where along the 10-kilometer length the Separatists had their base, Obi-Wan had had some concerns that he and Anakin would run out of either air or cable before they reached it. As it turned out, though, there was no need for worry. They had gone only a couple of kilometers when the current suddenly subsided to a manageable level, and a moment later, he spotted a forest of large pillars rising from the boulders at the bottom of the river at a point where the dim light from overhead went completely black. Tapping Anakin’s shoulder, Obi-Wan gestured, and together they worked their way over to one of the pillars to their left.
They floated to the surface and found themselves a couple of meters below the edge of a permacrete platform spanning the entire width of the gorge. The pillar was too wide to get their arms around, but the steady hammering of the river had gouged handhold-sized pits in its surface, and with only a little trouble, they were able to climb up to the platform.
Carefully, they eased their heads over the edge.
It was a Separatist research facility all right, exactly as Obi-Wan had expected. What he hadn’t expected was that it would be this big. There were at least a dozen buildings perched on the per-macrete slab, some of them the relatively compact size of research labs and power generators, others the larger droid storage and recharging facilities, and others were larger equipment storage or repair shops. One building near the center was definitely Neimoidian-style living quarters.
But it was a pair of extra-large buildings butting up against the opposite sides of the cavern that sent a shiver down his back, a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold water he’d been soaking in for the past hour. Each was three stories high with walls that were featureless except for wide doors at ground level and rows of small windows beneath the roof overhang.
