Before the Throne

Chapter One

I remember a time when Jedi were peacekeepers, not Generals. - Duchess Satine Kryze

Obi Wan Kenobi knew that he would die on Mandalore.

He knew it because the Force showed this to him, as he watched from the deep and silent center of his meditation. The ever-moving future spun its slow-wheeling dance before his inward eye, the gorgeous scintillating choreography of possible and probable, likely and unlikely, chosen and fated, enchanting him with its unifying power. His heart unfurled further from the present moment, seduced into the ethereal dance, and his spirit wheeled within the embrace of the Light. He was caught out of motion for one eternal non-moment, and shown this: here, on Mandalore, he would lay down his life.

He was not afraid. A Jedi does not fear his own extinction. There is no fear, there is no death. There is only the Force. He was not sorrowful. How could he feel grief, when he was already swaddled in the comforting embrace of the Light? He felt, perhaps, a touch of satisfaction; if he had to die somewhere, this was a fitting place. Many Jedi had perished on Mandalorian soil before him. His funeral pyre would burn beneath the same stars as theirs, and his blood soak into the same harsh, infertile earth as theirs, the recalcitrant dust of a world which for so many long generations had refused to be tilled by peace, rejected the seeds of harmony and order.

He would die on her world; and as she was the ruler and symbol of that world, he would therefore die in her arms. He was content.

The wheel turned, the dance wove its endless pattern in grave procession - and the Force softly released him, its parting touch a caress of golden light, a gentle sundering like that which had first breathed his spirit out of unbeing and into a mother's womb. When he died, that sundering would be healed, and the same gentle kiss welcome him back to the Force, his part in the dance complete.

He opened his eyes. The ship's deck beneath his knees no longer quivered. Quieted, the drives' perpetual hum absent from the periphery of hearing, their tiny vessel echoed the void without. Silent. Waiting. He stood, shaking the heavy folds of his cloak over his shoulders, inhaling the cold air. It too was crisp, its subtle edge wakening his lungs to attention. The gravity generator tugged at the space, imposing arbitrary direction and weight, balancing the ship and all within upon its thrumming axis. They waited, and Mandalore waited, two combatants poised upon the brink of war before some preternatural dawn.

He found his way forward to the cockpit.

"Master."

Qui Gon Jinn's clear blue eyes flickered in his direction as he entered, any need for further greeting or expression rendered needless by their long years as teacher and student, yoked together in the Force by a subtle, far-reaching bond. The tall Jedi master gazed forward, through the viewport, his leonine face studying the nearest star, the sun of Mandalore, with a solemn respect.

"We have found an opponent worthily and equally matched," he said thoughtfully.

Obi Wan slid in to the copilot's seat, studying the distant sun through lowered lashes. Even the viewport's automatic tinting function did not dampen the star's radiance sufficiently at such proximity. Its corona bled into piercing colors at the periphery of vision, bright spears and martial banners fluttering in the solar wind. The system was a proud and ancient fortress that would withstand any siege, perhaps even the Force itself.

"Padawan." Qui Gon's sober regard had shifted from the star and its satellites to his apprentice. "I am thankful that I have you by my side on this mission."

Obi Wan felt the gravity of the words. They were sincere; and yet also a parting gift. They stood poised on the edge of battle, against terrible odds. If one or both should not survive, then these words would be their last spoken in the tranquility of the Light, the last remembered. "Master," he answered, throat closing, "Your guidance is a gift beyond my power to repay. I…"

Qui Gon hushed him with a hand on his forearm. Display of emotion, of affection, was not their way. The meager exchange must convey a lifetime of meaning, as the single lightsaber crystal must channel a near-catastrophe of power.

"Keep watch," the tall Jedi instructed. He rose and exited, retreating to the back of the ship to meditate in his turn.

Satine Kryze regarded the sun of her world, as though for the first time. She had been absent from its ubiquitous fiery gaze for months now; the bounty hunters sent after her had driven her and her protectors across the star-scape like a storm-tossed boat. They had weathered the violent storm, endured marooning, and deprivation, and fear, and hunger, and the capricious lightning bolts flung at them by cruel fate. They had prevailed. There were no hunters left to chase the quarry. One by one, inexorably, as they drew near in turn to the prize, the malicious killers had perished. More than one had died on a blue lightsaber blade, gasping in agony, or sometimes convulsing once in wordless shock before collapsing to the earth. One had been hewn into several parts, a swift line of fire grotesquely separating arms and head from armored torso.

She closed her eyes, feeling the deck tilt. There had been other deaths. There had been explosions, and terrible falls onto rocks below; there had been nameless horrors, giant beasts, sucking bogs, poison. Qui Gon Jinn had broken a man's neck, hand to hand, no weapons. But worse than all these, searing across her inner eye, was the line of the blue blade. That blade burned hot, sharp, true. It was more brilliant, more consuming than the star shining ahead. And it struck true. She knew; it burned a hole in her own heart day by day - a blow which, like the star's light and heat, was both life and death. She was already dead, mortally pierced by an irresistible foe. The moment hung suspended, the deathblow dealt but the blade not yet withdrawn. When that sweet agony slipped back out of her heart, out of her life, then she too would collapse and die.

She opened her eyes again, and leaned her forehead against the viewport's cool, dark surface. Dizziness came and went. The star burned uncaring amid its celestial court. It had not saved the men who had come to kill her; it neither smiled not frowned upon their deaths. It did not care whether she now perished, slain by one sent to protect her. It merely burned, self-immolating and ageless. If it had counsel, it was this: surrender. That was the only option left – let that blade's edge reduce her heart to ashes and then to liquid fire, burning like a star, burning in unison with the saber's own deep, pulse-like thrum.

But she was a scion of the galaxy's greatest warriors. A people who did not know surrender. She was a Mandalorian. She rose and steeled her heart for combat.

Qui Gon Jinn breathed out, tasting the metallic tang of the recycled air and then releasing the sensation, releasing the habitual irritation it engendered, releasing any thought about it, or about his surroundings. The ship drifted below him, around him, and he drifted into the Living Force, carried on it through a maelstrom of possibilities and connections, shifting dances of action and intention, into its still heart. He let the giddy tapestry of past and future pass over him like pouring rain, and held fast to the infinitesimal, and therefore boundless moment.

This moment was a fulcrum. Within the Force, he felt the scales teeter and pause. He saw the thresholds illuminated in its Light. At this moment, Mandalore- the entire system – stood suspended between the past and future, which were war and peace. It might tip one way; but then, it might tip the other. He might succeed in his mission; but then, he might fail. Millions upon millions of destinies hung in the balance, hung upon his word and deed. He felt no fear; after all, it was the Force which would ultimately decide.

His focus turned to the other beings aboard this vessel. The Duchess also stood upon a threshold. On one side lay her people's tragedy, and her grief. The loss of her entire clan in the last civil war; the destruction of Kelevala; her disdain for the culture which had begotten and raised her. Loss and grief and anger shadowed this place, and whispered enticements laced with the Dark. On the other side stretched hope and strength; the restoration of a culture; the rebuilding of a city; and leadership which relinquished grief and embraced new joy. On this side lay hard burdens and a rough, treacherous path – but one suffused with glorious, gentle light. Here too lay a choice not yet made. Here too was the difference between victory and utter defeat. Which would she choose?

And then there was Obi Wan. The moment showed Qui Gon the brink of the ordeal, and held him back. For every trial ordained by the Force must be faced alone, and unaided. That was the way, and there was no other. In the timeless present he saw his Padawan upon the entrance to the cave, the dark abyss like the caverns of Ilum, the cold tabernacle of dark visions and crystals full of light. If snow fell perpetually outside Ilum's caves, then it fell in ethereal silence now about the harsh system of Mandalore. Here the Force intended a test, a reckoning, a choice and a sacrifice. It intended to make a Jedi true, as pure and flawless as the lightsaber's blade – or else to break him utterly.

Qui Gon wondered: if and when at last he returned to the Temple…would he be alone?

The proximity scanners bleeped a strident warning, their harsh claxons ripping a gash across the melancholic silence. Obi Wan flicked a hand in the general direction of the console, abruptly ending the high-pitched wail. He had sensed the approaching ship before the computer registered it. Predatory, suspicious, and self-assured, its occupants flared a bright trail across the Force, heralding their imminent arrival as surely as a trumpet blast. These, then, were the Mandalorians.

Qui Gon stepped into the cockpit a moment later. "Shut down all the primary power systems," he instructed, gazing out the forward viewport, where the approaching vessel appeared as a faint speck rising like a maverick star from the distant planet's hazy curve.

"Already done," his Padawan answered. Around them, the quiet ship hushed even further, the life support system reverting to its battery-driven auxiliary mode, the cyclers and purifiers shutting down, the gravitational stabilizer thrumming to a halt. Lights dimmed, the air cooled, and the decks tilted sluggishly to one side, adrift in space without an artificially determined axis.

"It is a scout ship," Satine informed them, gripping the cockpit's narrow doorframe for support as the shuttle slewed further to one side, the faint pull of the planet's gravity vaguely defining the starboard side as down. "We're within restricted space – we oughtn't to be this close without identification or clearance."

They watched the elegant Mandalorian craft cruise closer, then execute a neat loop above them, maintaining a cautious distance. The short distance comm. chimed on an emergency channel.

"They're hailing us, master."

"Respond with a distress beacon- nothing more," Qui Gon murmured.

The scout ship hovered directly above them now, casting a dark shadow in the Force. The Jedi glanced at one another, expressions tight. Satine edged around the doorframe and cautiously traversed the tilting deck to the forward console, grabbing the pilot's seat for stability. "They will be heavily armed," she whispered.

"And therefore confident," Qui Gon pointed out, placidly. "An opponent who does not feel vulnerable is often the least threat."

The Duchess raised one thin brow. "You don't know my people, master Jedi."

A man's voice, refined in accent but girded with an unforgiving steel, addressed them over the open comm. channel. "Republic Relief Corps vessel. You are in Mandalorian sovereign space. Identify yourselves and your business in this system."

Obi Wan's hands brushed over the dormant controls.

"Not yet," Qui Gon warned.

"Republic Relief Corps shuttle. Identify or face immediate action," the voice repeated, an edge of annoyance coloring its acerbic tones.

"They are quite serious," Satine hissed, gripping the backrest more tightly.

The Mandalorian vessel waited perhaps thirty seconds for its recalcitrant Republic counterpart to reply, and then opened fire. Two well-placed shots slammed into the main drives, crippling the engines and wracking the ship with a shuddering impact. The Duchess lost her footing and slipped sideways, only to find herself caught between the two Jedi, held by two pairs of strong hands. She pulled free and stumbled back to one of the acceleration couches in the cockpit's rear.

"Strap in," Qui Gon Jinn advised, a glint of entirely misplaced humor in his grey eyes.

Satine scowled at him, though she obeyed his injunction.

"Republic vessel. You are trespassing on Mandalorian sovereign space," the cold voice repeated. "You will be escorted to a security holding area. Resistance will be met with appropriate retaliation."

The Jedi exchanged another look, and Obi Wan's hands tightened on the helm. The ship gave another hiccupping shudder and slewed sideways again, aligning with the heavier cruiser above them.

"They've locked on a tractor beam," Obi Wan muttered. His back straightened, and the small, feral grin he offered the older Jedi was altogether too familiar.

"You aren't going to fight them!" the Duchess exclaimed, horrified. "They far out-power us! This is reckless folly!"

"We're not in trouble yet," was Qui Gon Jinn's terse reply. He turned to the Relief Corps vessel's console and activated their own tractor beam.

With a juddering twist, the combined power of the two beams sent the smaller republic ship careening into the hull of their captor's vessel. Obi Wan grabbed the yoke and violently banked their ship, bringing their underside into a jarring collision with the Mandalorian's aft docking bays. Sheilding spattered arcs of dissipated energy and clawed pulsing fingers across the viewport, shorting out lights and circuits in the console. Metal sheared across metal, and they came to a slamming halt against the wing nacelle. Qui Gon poured power into the tractor beam, binding the two ships in a deathly wrestling hold.

"What are you doing?" Satine demanded.

The Mandalorian ship veered off in an evasive maneuver, but the tractor held. Obi Wan growled and twisted the stranded Republic ship around, until their stern was clamped against the larger ship's wing supports. Red lights flashed and blared electronic disapproval.

"The drives are both ruptured, master. The safety override won't respond." Obi Wan's voice was tight, his shoulders tensed as he held the shuddering yoke steady.

Qui Gon Jinn, lifted a hand and used the Force to tear off the console's access panel. A green saber flashed, and a burning line severed circuits, feeds and computer interface panels. More lights died and the ship groaned in protest as the directional controls shifted to full manual. Obi Wan grunted as they slid another few meters along the Mandalorian's hull, their wounded ship shaking under the strain of the overloaded tractor.

"Now or never," Qui Gon barked.

His Padawan fired the damaged drives at full throttle. Twin explosions of white fury erupted as the wounded engines blasted apart, splintering the Mandalorian wing support and consuming most the wing in a sudden inferno. Mortally wounded, still locked together in a furious embrace, the two ships began a long, spiralling plummet into the planet's atmosphere, ion trails blossoming around their burning hulls, scraps and slag spangled behind them in a grotesque confetti trail of wreckage.

"This is madness!" the Duchess fumed, eyes wide with mingled terror and fury as they fell, headlong, spinning, toward the distant surface.

"It's a direct flight," Obi Wan quipped, sparing her a saucy glance over one shoulder.

"Jedi," she spat out between gritted teeth. At that moment there seemed no worse insult in the galaxy. She squeezed her eyes shut as the acceleration and the dizzying torque of their descent threatened to overwhelm her self-composure.

Below the clouds, the Mandalorian ship fired its emergency thrusters. The jolt threw the three occupants of the Republic shuttle hard against the crash restraints, eliciting a few muffled grunts of pain. The sickening spiral ceased, and the two entangled ships straightened out, curving into a controlled dive over a bleak landscape of rock and sweeping dust plains. Ahead the land fell sharply away, in a meandering cliff-face which scarred the barren planet's face all the way to the horizon – a great geological feat, an upswelling of the world's rocky crust along some ancient fault line. The failing ships hurled themselves toward this disastrous edge, their speed and vector promising a swift drop into oblivion.

"Master!" Obi Wan shouted. The ship was falling apart around them. Circuits shorted and sprayed the cockpit with hot sparks; the deck buckled underfoot as the overloaded tractor beam and the overheated shields warped the shuttle's armature. Qui Gon remained sitting, hands gripping the console as though in pain, his face drawn into an intense frown. Satine wondered if he were somehow holding the tractor generator in existence with his will…

The thought and her very breath were knocked clean away by their initial impact. The Mandalorian ship hit the unforgiving earth, and the smaller shuttle was thrown free like a rider tossed carelessly from the shoulders of a belligerent nerf. They cartwheeled in midair and then hit the ground again, with a groaning of metal and a colossal wave of force which blacked out vision and hearing. In a black haze, she felt the hull still moving beneath her, saw the approaching precipice through the shattered viewport, and gasped in horror as they sped toward certain destruction, the mangled shape of the cruiser sliding in a comet-tail of dust alongside them, racing them to death's door.

Obi Wan's hands tore at the restraints, lifted her up, tightened around her in a painful grip. She struggled, suffocating, only half-comprehending, her mind still reeling from the impact. And then the world shattered around them. Shards of transparisteel and icy wind sliced past faces, arms, hands, ripped at her clothing. She was flying through the air, through the broken viewport, into the blue sky, the violently tumbling earth. The stones spun to meet them, twisted, slid, and vanished in a hard-soft heap of taut muscle and cream cloth, a tight protective sphere which sheltered and cushioned her fall, and ended sprawled beneath her in an untidy heap.

Qui Gon's tall figure landed beside them, skidding in an almost perfect shoulder roll and righting itself immediately. Satine stared at his scratched and stained boots, then at the cliff-edge beyond, where the corpse of their shuttle and the large Mandalorian cruiser now slid, in a graceful duet, over the rim and disappeared onto the plains far below. The ground shook as they hit bottom, and a plume of fire-edged smoke rose like a grim beacon, trickling up into the tattered clouds above.

"Uuungh," the untidy heap groaned. Satine looked down with a start and hastily pushed off her rescuer's chest. He sat up, wincing. "I truly hate flying."

"You're a decent pilot," Qui Gon observed, hauling his bruised apprentice upright. "It's landings which seem to give you such trouble."

This earned him a rueful half-smile. Obi Wan's eyes travelled to the dark column rising beyond the nearby cliff-edge. "That will attract their emergency services," he said.

"In which case we should wait in ambush," the Jedi master added. "They will have a vehicle we can commandeer for our return to the capitol. The Force is with us – the city is no more than fifty klicks away. I spotted it during our descent."

The Duchess regained her sense of balance and her customary ire in the same heartbeat. "Have you no shame? No honor? Would you steal from a medical response team?"

Qui Gon Jinn's craggy face betrayed no flicker of emotion. "There are no survivors," he said crisply, with the certainty of a man who has seen or felt something for himself, and has no doubt.

She turned to the younger Jedi. His eyes offered her an apology, but he shook his head. "The Force is …full of death," he explained. "We need transport. You must understand-"

"No," Satine cut across his excuses. "You must understand. This is my home. My people. My responsibility. You have managed to slay some of my kinsmen already –" she flung an arm in the direction of the cliff, "before you have even set foot on this planet. There will be no more killing in the name of peace. I absolutely forbid it." She glared at them, at their haughty Jedi faces, at their dirty, sweat streaked Jedi faces, at two tight mouths, two pairs of raised eyebrows, two pairs of disdainful blue eyes, two sets of crossed arms, rigid backs, jauntily spread feet. It struck her how very similar they were, like father and son.

"We are here to protect you," Obi Wan said. He had to have the last word.

Her eyes narrowed. "Then do so without leaving a trail of carnage in your wake," she commanded icily. "On pain of my severe displeasure."

His mouth curled slightly, and one eyebrow remained hovering at a sarcastic angle. "I would by no means occasion your ladyship any displeasure," he growled. The look he directed at her was a burning slap, a blow calculated to stir her anger to greater heights.

Qui Gon Jinn stepped between them. "There is a ship approaching. I suggest we find cover."

The debate ended, or at least suspended in favor of more pressing concerns, they scrambled for safety and shelter behind a ridge of jutting stones. The emergency services shuttle drew closer, unsuspecting, drawn to the crash site as a moth to flame. And the stern eye of Mandalore's sun watched impassively, indifferent to the fate of its vassals, indifferent to the Duchess' homecoming, indifferent to the act of theft it witnessed. Perhaps the sun, like the people whom it nurtured, admired cunning above all virtues but that of strength. It shone on in splendour while the thieves – the Duchess and her strange cohorts – returned to the capitol city, where cunning and strength would be put to the severest test.