Missing in Action

I.

He wakes: abruptly, completely, cold hard sensation slamming against his eyes and ears, nose and throat like an acrid ocean. There is cold, and hard light, noise – blip blip blip tocktocktock hummmmmm – and blaring white, and that horrible sticky scent, sharp sweet at the back of his throat.

He is staring at an inverted plane, ceiling-pale, a sky of plaster and paint punctuated by crude constellations of light and dark, the mechanical workings of some vast technical orrery. Blinking makes it spin. It also makes him dizzy.

Eyes closed, there is more cloying scent and ominous click click drip hummmm, but less piercing white and no things looming near. Given a moment to think and take stock, he realizes that he is swathed in softness, a languor wrapped about his limbs both outward and inward. He has been turned to jelly, limp and fuzzy somehow, all squished up like the messes Reeft makes of his food in the refectory. Also, parts of him are uncomfortable and itchy – his arm is smothered in a hard thing he cannot get off and there are lots of small, knobbly things taped to his belly and chest. One is even stuck just beneath his ear.

Much scrabbling with his free hand gets some of them off – they are curious little barnacles made of plastoid and faintly pulsing when he touches them, but their fate is to be flung to the floor.

The floor is far away, and smooth. He peers over the edge of his prison and judges the drop. Normally it would not intimidate him in the least, but at the moment his stomach gives a mighty lurch as he leans over the edge, and his heart thumps in agreement. He clutches at the edge of the railing for support and peers from beneath a blanket's hem at the door, improbably far across the room. He has to get out, and get home.

Surely by now he has been missed and Ali Alaan is frantic with worry.

He wakes: abruptly, completely, a cold vacuum of sensation howling in his ears and throat, clamoring behind his temples and in his lungs. The Force is alight with need and a sticky sweet ache, the acrid tang of animal fear. Vaguely he wonders to whom it belongs.

He is staring at a blank void, stifling dark and so close, so very near that it threatens to collapse inward upon him. Reflexively he puts up a hand to stop the concavity from crushing him. His fingers slide, slick and hot, over smooth metal, ridged and scored, pocked by a city-scape network of lines and intersections. Liquid dribbles down his knuckles. Oil? Or is it merely his blood? The iron-scent of it might mean either one.

Eyes closed, there is Light, and suffocation seems a less imminent reality. Drifting, his rational mind seeks vainly to comprehend how he, at roughly 80 kilos, has been crammed into such a ridiculously tight compartment. Cephalopods in the Coruscant zoo have been observed to squeeze their boneless bodies into astoundingly narrow apertures, a voice in distant memory academically observes. Perhaps he has been jellied, his skeleton disintegrated, and -

Not a salutary thought.

He jerks his attention back to the present moment. There is not much room for anything else here, in this dark, smothering place.

Much scrabbling with his free hand – meaning the one he can move because it is not pinned fast in place by constricting metal - brings his slick-wet fingers closing about the hard cylindrical hilt of his weapon

The walls of his prison – coffin, his inner pundit supplies, unhelpfully – are cramped and unforgiving; he has barely enough room to wriggle, much less bring the 'saber's business end into proper position. If he hits the activation switch now, he will end up sans a toe or two, or perhaps with a hole in his thigh. When he chuckles, sardonically, he can feel the hot-damp gust of his own breath. It whispers against his sweat-soaked skin, and he wishes with a very small vexed part of himself that he could wipe the clinging strands of hair off his forehead. Quite aside from the risk of asphyxiation, being trapped here is even worse than flying. And that is saying something. He has to get out, and get back.

Surely by now he has been missed and Anakin is frantic with worry.

His first bid for freedom is short-lived.

It is a simple matter to wriggle backwards off the high cot, bare toes splayed out, seeking the cool floor. He slides downward, tongue peeking out, brows furrowed in concentration, until a small drop deposits him upon the polished tile, in a heap of shapeless cloth that sags off one shoulder and pools about his feet. He hitches the ridiculous garb up in one fist, and squints at the cumbersome cast molded about his entire left arm.

Pain ghosts beneath the surface, a memory of something prior. If he wasn't so muddled on the inside, he feels sure he could recollect exactly what has transpired, and why he is in this strange and hostile environment. The machines in the room continue to blip – steadily now, as though they are aggrieved by his escape – but they do not move or come for him. They are very stupid, stationary droids, he concludes.

Deep breaths, like those he has practiced with his crechemates, bring the giddy world back to a standstill. One more deep inhale, and he sprints for the door, feet pattering softly pitpitpitpitpit . The smooth plastoid panel yields to his will, swoosh-hiss, and he darts through the gap and straight into a pair of tall legs clothed in long blue healer's robes. Hands, kind but firm, seize him; a small gasp of dismay, a muted rustle of cloth, and he is looking into a pair of liquid amber eyes.

"No, no, no."

The Twi"Lek healer's blue lekku twitch as she purses her lips and frowns, casting a swift glance over one shoulder and then down the corridor. Her voice is gently accented; the words come out with an exotic timbre halfway between reproach and amusement. "What do you think you are doing, little one? Tsk. Back into bed. Come."

And before he can protest, or formulate an escape plan, she has scooped him up bodily and carried him back into the dim chamber beyond.

He throws a very small tantrum when she deposits him back at his starting place, which is to say he thrusts out his lower lip, scowls as hard as he can, and stares at the ceiling until its pale color washes out into stinging blurs. He also kicks, just a little, and squeezes the blankets into a strangled ball with his good hand when she grimly fixes the knobbly objects back in place. They are cold and he does not want them on his skin, and when she tries to explain it to him about 'biosigns' and 'monitors' he turns his head sideways and does not listen to her sophistical claptrap. His deliberate snub produces nothing more than a soft sigh, one laced more with pity than indignation, and this is doubly frustrating. His teeth grit together hard and his toes curl in, but for all his fire and passion, which are forbidden, all that happens is that the machines start blipping merrily away again and the blankets are smoothed over him.

He wishes he knew some bad words. Juicy, gritty, shocking ones.

The healer cards though his short hair, fingers seeming to tingle pleasantly where they trace over his scalp. "Sleep," she murmurs.

His war-cry of defiance wells up into a hiccupping grunt, and he is slack-jawed and snoring the next instant.

His initial bid for freedom is not particularly suave.

It is no simple matter to twist his body sideways within the excruciatingly tight confines of the crushed… cockpit, the abstract part of his mind supplies. 'Saber gripped behind his back, arm blazing with pain, which is good because that means the nerves are not severed or damaged – he switches the plasma beam on and gags on the choking fumes as the arc-wave blade reduces metal to slag. He thanks the Force for the blessing of armor when he hears the tell-tale spatter and sizzle of sparks. When he has punched some kind of hole through the hull behind him, he writhes his back around and works a knee up against the hot bulge, near the ragged and glowing gap.

Hard not to cough and choke, but he manages it.

A vicious shove and a sloppy, amateurish thrust outward with the Force, and the whole side gives way. Cold, fresh air tickles his skin, and he sucks in great lungfuls, drunk on a barely attained liberty, and shuddering with the ebb and flow of pain. Complicated. There are several places where he must be bleeding…. Puncture wounds, possibly shrapnel? … but the black energy dispersal suit beneath his armor plates provides a kind of all-over pressure bandage. He should be fine as long as he does not try to treat the injuries.

This is funny. He smiles, wanly.

And then he hears the clankclankclank of a droid patrol, and adrenaline erases any thought but that of survival. There is at the back of his mind a niggling urge to piece together the immediate past - something about flying and defensive fortifications and enemy lines and the CIS shipyards, but the details fit together unevenly , like a badly-crafted puzzle.

Clankclankclankclank.

A harsh vocabulator grates out fateful words: "There. Enemy starfighter. Scan for life forms."

He silently mouths a rich volley of expletives. Juicy, gritty, shocking ones. In five languages.

"Roger roger." The creak and crick of servos draws nearer, and then the nearly inaudible whine of a standard biosensor array.

"One life form registered."

"Proceed with extreme caution."

More clanking and clicking, as the trepidated patrol inches closer. A few deep centering breaths, to rally what dregs of strength might be lurking at the bottom of his reserves, and his fingers slide lovingly along his saber's hilt. One against twenty or so…. In his present condition, it's almost a fair contest.

The droids halt, covering their doomed captain with loaded blasters. A spindly hand and conical head appear silhouetted against the smoke-clotted sky. Its flat optic plates gleam dully.

"You are under arrest, in the name of the Confederacy of Independent Systeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaa-"

Decapitating the foremost droid and tumbling out of his cramped hiding place in one motion, he hits the rocky ground and deflects stun bolts in a feverish whirl, sapphire blade screaming out a long, continuous peal of defiance. He has carved his way through eight or nine of his assailants and is happily contemplating the other half of the inept platoon, when he catches sight of the looming heavy cannon tank in his peripheral vision.

For stars' sake.

When the droids cease fire, he falters slightly, panting hard and reassessing his initially optimistic diagnosis of his injuries. He might possibly be in a spot of trouble, here.

The tank's canopy pops open to reveal the head and shoulders of a brutish, heavy-jowled fellow in CIS naval uniform. "Ah, General," this individual grunts, in a peculiarly nasal voice. "I am told a Jedi never surrenders, but I do hope you will seriously consider an exception clause to the policy… there are a few matters I'd like to discuss with you at our headquarters."

The droids are joined by another troop, one with an extraneous shielded droideka or two in their ranks.

So gauche.

He twirls his 'saber in an idle Soresu opening salute, and grins a bit shakily. It is true that a Jedi is rumored never to surrender; it is also true that legends seldom tell of one passing clean out in the middle of a pitched conflict. He weaves on his feet, philosophically debating which of these two likelihoods would technically be more tarnishing to the Order's mystique, but his speculation proves inconclusive.

His overtaxed body decides matters for him, and drops him on the spot.