Legacy 5

Chapter 1

Homecoming

Like a weary dove winging back to its nestled sanctuary at some quiet treetop's pinnacle, the Republic shuttle skimmed past Corsucant's reddening dusk, its dark ribbons of pollutant smoke, its swarms of air traffic, and lighted within the welcoming and open embrace of the Jedi Temple's south-facing upper level hangar bay.

Droid mechanics hastened to moor the meteor-pocked, filth-crusted vessel to its assigned docking space, the automatic pressure valves released opaque and hissing spouts of gas, of instantly crystallized liquid, the radiation dampers whined out long, descending arpeggios as the drives powered down. A hush fell over those waiting upon the decks, for this homecoming brought with it neither the pomp of victory, nor the solemnity of defeat. The Force tolled neither an anthem nor a dirge, merely beating out the hollow syncopation of passing time until the ramp finally lowered.

Torbb Bakk'ile emerged first, ducking beneath the hatchway, her glossy tail of black hair falling over one improbably broad shoulder. The stern Knight caught the eye of those waiting below, summoned or invited assistance with an unspoken word, then disappeared back into the ship's dim interior.

Contrapuntal to the gravity of this apparition, a child's clear sounded from within, an urgent treble brimming with curiosity.

"… Are we there now?"

To which a young man's voice, briskly clipped, and hovering in tone somewhere between humor and vexation, replied. "No… now we are here."

Bant Eerin broke into a jog, dashing up the open boarding ramp; hard on her heels followed Senior Healer Ben To Li and two orderlies propelling an enclosed medical stasis capsule.

"Obi!" the Mon Cal softly squealed, discovering her long-anticipated and much-missed friend in the aft hold. Her intended embrace, however, was rebuffed by a single alarmed and cautionary look; Obi-Wan's eyes flicked sideways and down, resting briefly upon a wholly unexpected and markedly grubby urchin clutching his left hand and staring at the young healer with mouth agape.

Bant awkwardly transformed her spontaneous display of affection into a polite bow.

"Bant," the young Knight said, tightly. "This is Anakin Skywalker. He will be staying at the Temple as a… guest."

Ben To shouldered past them, already fingering his pointed beard in bemusement. Once over the threshold of the passenger compartment, he hissed out some exotic imprecation or another, then barked orders at his assistants.

Guest. Bant's globular eyes blinked, then narrowed. "You didn't – "

"Please, Bant. I need to…." With a helpless gesture, Obi-Wan indicated the bustling cabin behind him. Pain spiked in the Force, a sharp reminder of time and place, circumstance and duty.

The Mon Cal suppressed her burning curiosity, her swiftly burgeoning concern. "It is an honor to meet you," she addressed the unfamiliar boy. "Will you please come with me?"

The child cast an apprehensive and uncertain look upward at his interim mentor, as though dubious of his new acquaintance's credentials.

"It's all right, Anakin. Bant is one of my dearest friends. You can trust her."

"But.. what about Mister Qui-Gon?"

"He is in good hands now. Go…. I'll come find you later. Bant will take good care of you in the meantime. I promise."

Bant found the boy's small hand transferred from Obi-Wan's grasp into her own webbed hand, like the leash of an akk pup summarily thrust into the possession of a new owner. With the barest grimace of apology and gratitude, the young Jedi dipped his head and disappeared into the cabin beyond, leaving his 'dearest friend' effectively tethered to a complete stranger.

Mouth puckered, the Mon Cal healer rallied to the occasion, since she had no choice left in the matter. "Welcome to Coruscant, Anakin," she beamed. "I'll have you come back to the Halls of Healing with me before anything else…. Is this your first time away from your homeworld?"

It was an innocent question, one fueled by rapid calculations and guesses about vaccinations, interplanetary epidemics, relative metabolic rates, allergies, dietary restrictions, space-lag and artificial grav sickness, atmospheric differentials, the thousand-fold demands put upon a growing organic body unseasoned by years of travel between worlds – but it proved the wrong thing to say.

"Uh huh," the boy answered, hiccupping around a brutally swallowed sob.

Bant scowled at the hatchway, willing the Force to bore a smoldering hole through Obi-Wan's gundark-thick, conniving, insensitive, presumptuous, oblivious skull. Then she squeezed Anakin's hand gently and led him away. "It will be all right. Come on. I'll show you some things on the way."

Distraction had to be worth something.

"Okay," her new companion sniffed. He fell into step beside her, blue eyes drinking in the hangar bay from roof girders to decks with a marveling, fanatic light. The sight of so many machines in one place seemed to drive away his pang of nostalgia on a scudding wind of new enthusiasm. "This place is wizard," he breathed , trotting energetically along at the Mon Cal's heels.

"I'm glad you like it," she answered, leading the way through the interior exit and into the Temple proper.

Senior Healer Ben To Li remained stooped over Qui-Gon Jinn's pallid and inert form, one hand delicately spanning the Jedi master's temples, the other hovering over his ravaged chest. "What in the holy hells…." the revered medic muttered, spine stiffening perceptibly as he invisibly probed his patient's condition. "Kenobi."

Obi-Wan acknowledged the curt greeting with a respectful nod, though Ben To remained facing away, his silvering queue snaking down his back, thin shoulders hunched forward in concentration. "Master Li."

"What happened?" the healer barked, leaning yet closer over Qui-Gon's corpse-like face.

The young Knight swallowed down every trace of traitorous emotion. "Lightsaber wound," he grunted.

Ben To craned his head over one shoulder, skewering his tongue-tied companion with a sarcastic glare. "I'd managed to get that far on my own, thank you." His mien softened, as glittering dark eyes raked the younger Jedi head to toe and settled upon his blood-spattered tunic. "…..But this man is neither dead nor alive."

In answer, Obi-Wan offered him the empty cylinder form a pressure hypo. "It's… a vitals blocker. He was… returning to the Force. " A terse nod indicated the extravagant injury, the place where a plasma blade had passed clean through Qui-Gon's chest, just below the heart. "I .. acted as I saw fit."

Ben To gravely accepted the empty cartridge, squinting at its labeling. His perspicacious gaze narrowed, returning to his companion. "As the Force prompted you?"

Silence. The young Knight exhaled, fingers of one hand curling about his 'saber's hilt. His eyes dropped to the decks. "I take responsibility for the decision. It… " A tightening of the muscles about his mouth; a clenching of jaw muscles.

Ben To pocketed the mysterious vial and nodded to his two assistants, waving a hand in permission. They moved forward, began cautiously transferring the limp, unresponsive body to the waiting stasis capsule.

Obi-Wan looked up when a gnarled hand gripped his arm. "Master ," he whispered. "Can you… do anything?"

A textured sigh. Ben To twisted his beard between forefinger and thumb, pensively. "I know next to nothing about these vital blocker compounds – but I do know this: they all have a half-life. Its effect is not indefinite. Before that expiration date, I must discover how to reverse the suspension – and pull off a healing miracle. The internal damage must be extensive. "

The younger man nodded, tightly. "Of course. It will be as the Force wills."

A second hand grasped his other arm, as though to hold him steady in place. "Indeed it shall.. but Master Jinn would be a grievous loss to all of us. There is no dishonor in accepting this, too."

Obi-Wan's gaze slid sideways, evading direct scrutiny. He favored the bulkhead with a melting scowl.

Ben To's voice dropped to a conciliatory murmur. "I can promise nothing; but where the Force dwells, there also dwells hope."

The barest of nods, a mute surrender to destiny more telling in its own way than a trumpet's brassy proclamation.

The healer sighed, and waved his somber companions out the hatchway ahead of him. They propelled the stasis capsule down the ramp and headed off across the decks at a solemn pace.

" Come see me when the Council is done flaying your hide off, young one," Ben To urged the younger man. "I can see you need it." And then he too departed, hurrying after the two orderlies and their ominous burden.

TOrbb Bakk'ile appeared from the cockpit hatchway, on cue. "Well," she demanded bluntly. "You ready for a grilling, brother?"

Obi-Wan cocked one brow and snorted.

His companion adjusted her vast synth leather tabards and straightened her spine. "The Council wants us both, now, without delay," she informed him, matter-of-factly. "I'm not gifted with premonitions, but I'd say we're bugsquat, to quote your little friend's favorite idiom."

"Yes, well," the junior Knight darkly muttered, "This is where the fun begins."

Torbb's comradely shoulder-slap nearly overbalanced him. "Forward unto glory, then!" she proclaimed, leading the way down the ramp at a falsely confident saunter.

Obi-Wan smiled grimly and followed at a sedate pace, well aware that Torbb's bravado was a façade constructed as much for her own benefit as his; they both bore heavy burdens from the last mission, a weight of guilt and uncertainty of the future that could not be equitably nor efficiently distributed among two pair of shoulders, however so broad.

The Force had not granted either of them an easy homecoming.

"….and I got to sit up in the cockpit for like a whole lot of time, too, especially when we were coming down into atmosphere and whoa! This whole planet is like one giant city only I've never seen buildings so tall and so many all crammed together in one place they look like the sandstone columns out by Hell's Gauntlet only taller and more crowded and stuff and all the ships and gondolas and airbuses and magtrains and hovertaxis and speeders and I bet it would be totally rugged to race here on Coruscant like podracing only with more obstacles and stuff only I think it would be even better to learn how to fly a real spaceship I can't wait to learn someday I already can pilot a pod and plenty of other stuff I bet a starfighter would be pretty choobazzi to pilot, and – "

The boy had to pause for breath just below the statue of Master Seva gracing the southside stairwell in the Hall of Concordant Unities. He sucked in a great lungful of cool, incense-tinted air and looked up and up at the magnificent bronzium sculpture levitating its golden orb.

"Whoa!"he exclaimed, the spectacle side-swiping his attention onto another tangent as effectively as a six air-lane pile-up in the commercial district. "…Why's it so big?"

Bant Eerin's mouth puckered in bewilderment at this question; Anakin had not allowed her a word in edgewise for ten solid minutes – and then at the first opportunity to invite her input, he blurted out a deceptively simple question about the Temple's sacrosanct artistic embellishments. She had not, perhaps, so directly considered the significance of the colossal scale on which much the Temple was constructed; doubly nettled by the fact she had never deeply reflected upon this before, and by the near-certainty that Obi-Wan, blast him, would have had a glib and erudite answer ready to hand, she cast about for a suitable reply. "Ummm," she improvised, "Perhaps to symbolize the relative importance of the individual compared to the tradition. The Order is millennia old, and the Force is without age or origin; the big statue reminds us that our own ambitions and achievements are humble in comparison."

The explanation pleased her, and resonated instinctually.

Anakin's nose scrunched. "But that guy was an individual too, right?"

Flustered, the Mon Cal unconsciously flared her vestigial gills. "Well, yes.. Master Seva was a great scholar and sage, and a peerless warrior. However, the point is not to magnify his personality, but rather his dedication and wisdom…. The Jedi have a saying: we come to serve."

But the boy was still not satisfied. "I thought Jedi were heroes, not servants, " he insisted.

Bant nodded. Now they were getting somewhere. "The greatest heroes are servants," she pointed out. "As are the greatest leaders."

Anakin shrugged, consigning her statement to the nebulous realm of grown-up bombast. "Okay," he agreed, diplomatically. " But I think the very, very greatest hero and leader of all would have to be free."