Covalent Bonds

Chapter 7

"No, I'm not suggesting that Master Yoda has been touched by the Dark Side, Plo! He's not touched by it, he's not touching it. He's just different now since the Code has been massacred."

Plo entered the test results on his scanner. Adi had become less strident in the past two years. Thanks, Healer Regork. Your work here is done.

"Adi, we are on the Council."

"Yes, and it was an honor for so long that it sustained my belief in myself. But the times are different now. I've fought in the war, as have you. Don't you think we've served enough, given enough?"

But the Order has given us in return. "See this lab? How can I leave it, leave my experiments, my work? And when I'm in the field, my pilots depend on me."

"You speak of attachments. You are not indispensable, Plo. Other Jedi are coming up in rank and will replace you."

True. Cutting, but true. "Adi, like it or not, we've a responsibility --- "

" --- to ourselves as well. The Force will follow us as we follow it, never fear. Whether we end up as vagabonds like Fay and Choi or lab techs or diplomatic aides, the Force will provide." Adi had never had a vision. She spoke as if she had.

"We are doing well at this point of our lives, as well as can be, considering that the Republic is under siege from the Separatists." Plo perched on a lab stool, his favorite since his Padawanship under Master Tyvokka. Unlike his far-seeing Wookiee Master, Plo Koon had never had a vision of the future. How he wished for Tyvokka's rumbled advice. "Remember on Troiken? We both had our missions, you to protect Valorum and me to rally the Republic's forces. Different missions, same goal. I'm thinking" --- he deliberately angled his upper body towards Adi, remembering that humans needed positive reinforcement with body language, especially when they could not see his visage through his mask --- "that this is the case here." Master, your memory serves me today. Plo did something he had rarely done anywhere, and never in his own lab. He took Adi's hands in his, careful to keep his talons curled inward toward his palms. "Like Luminara, my doing the Force's will devolves upon having equipment to aid my senses. I cannot see where I would be better outside the --- "

"Gooooaaaall! Gooooaaaall! Incoming message for --- Plo. Koon. --- from --- Olanet. --- flagged --- Urgent. --- repeat --- "

"Excuse me. Priority message from ... Obi-Wan?"

Adi crossed her arms and moved away from the holoemitter. Her body language spoke of tightly-controlled frustration to Plo's discerning eye. He leaned closer to the holoemitter.

"Plo, I need your expertise. I'm out of my element here."

Plo closed his eyes briefly. "Are you hurt? Your old problem?"

"Not me. Many troopers were exposed, along with Master Tachi and Knight Olin, to an agent of chemical warfare. The clones are not responding to any treatment whatsoever from the med-techs. I'm sending you all the data we have."

"And Siri?" Plo remembered her as a raw-boned 'tween on a camping trip to Ragoon-6 where he had been clan guardian. She had done slightly better than he had on accessing the Living Force.

"No outward lasting symptoms to her or Olin. Anakin and I did a laying on of the Force, which reduced their symptoms greatly, and they have done healing trances this entire morning. They are capable of returning to battle, but the clones may never be, according to the latest tests. It's despicable, Plo, it's going to ruin their lives. It might have been better if they'd joined --- "

"Obi-Wan, all data ready to transmit." A black glove came into the holoemitter's range. "Chip activated. It'll be on permanent feed from the field lab, in case there are any new results."

"Chemical warfare. Gas? Fallout? Contaminated water?" Plo's mind churned. Not another Ohma-D'un.

"Sonic screamers on nanobots covalent bonded with digoxis gas. We fumigated the befouled gear and clothing with ionized dioxis so that it's neutralized, but the agent had already been taken in by them as surely as if they'd inhaled it on purpose. They are remarkably brave, but to see them stumble when they used to march in formation is appalling. Their eardrums will regenerate quickly, the med-techs say. Knight Olin and Master Tachi have already reported that they have repaired their lesser aural damage."

"How did you get the idea to do that fumigation? That's something that would have take me some time --- " Plo had been concentrating on Obi-Wan's response and gave a small jump when Adi approached his side.

"One minute, Master Kenobi. Please put Siri and my Grandpadawan on."

"Master Gallia? Of course. Plo, here's the data and May The Force Be With You." The holoemitter rolled a blue image of horizontally frazzling bars before Siri appeared before her old Master. There was the usual growling sound as the transmittal began.

"Ferus is still healing, Adi. He'd gotten a squirt of the gas in his eyes."

"Progress?"

The holoemitter automatically pulled back its focus as Siri bent over Ferus on his cot, her hand brushing back his forelock. Adi saw Siri's face lean near to Ferus' closed eyes and her lips tightened as Siri's lips grazed the young man's eyelids as if to kiss them, then pulled back. "He'll rouse within the hour. No permanent damage. How are you, Adi?" Siri looked ready to reenter a trance herself. She needs to look after herself. Nobody will do it for her.

"Well enough. I'm finished seeing Soul Healers for the moment. Only every three months, now."

"Good news! For the Council, for you, for m--- "

"Yes, thanks. It is. And I'll have other news for you soon. You may have some input to that, Siri."

Siri's voice and glance dulled. "I ... see. More of what we discussed before I deployed?"

"Of course. It's important."

"Till we see each other then. I'm tired now, Adi."

"You look it. Rest. We'll talk later. Gallia out." She handed the thrumming holoemitter back to Plo, who placed it carefully down at his lab table. "Maybe we'll talk more later, too, Plo?"

Plo studied the readout that was starting to form above the holoemitter. "Hmmm? Oh. I suppose. Whenever I can find the time. This looks like nothing I've ever seen before. Hand me that datapad, would you? Thanks." He turned his back on Adi, knowing she would not misinterpret his preoccupation for rudeness, at least more than anyone else non-Kel Dor did. He tensed as her hand squeezed his shoulder.

"May The Force Be With You." The timeworn phrase spoke of Adi's determination for future meetings.

Plo nodded and mumbled the farewell response. I'm asking for a change in seating order in the Council chambers. Something closer to a window for me, and farther away from you. The holoemitter ended its growling sounds. Plo settled onto his stool for a long session.

xxxxx
In the messtent, Siri and Ferus tried to regain some sense of well-being by forcing themselves to eat. The meals offered were neither better nor worse than any for the week.

"Anakin said that the Force helped us with reversing the digoxis' effects, but that it would take a Force-sensitive to join in for a laying on of the Force, and the clones aren't, not any of them. If the clones knew, Anakin says, they might feel like second-class Republic soldiers, so he says not to tell them. He's thoughtful that way, Anakin is."

Ferus, dear, sometimes I believe you were born middle-aged. No traumas that you can't handle, nothing really to lift you out of equanimity. Kicking the cot must have been an anomaly.

"Don't swallow everything he gives you, ex-Padawan-mine."

Ferus continued cutting his nerf steak into ten-millimeter-wide strips as he always did. "What did you mean by that, Siri?" he asked after a time.

"Don't take everything he says at face value. His Master is Kenobi, remember." Siri poured on her favorite hot sauce, the one labelled, "Use With Extreme Caution -- Not For Mon Calamari Younglings." The edges of her meat dripped crimson. She sliced off a slab and ate voraciously. Protect ex-Padawans. It's been hard-wired into me.

"Anakin and I haven't any problems. That was long ago and now we work together fine. Maybe he had to put on a tough show for all of us when he was growing up, but he's past that now." Ferus defended his fellow Jedi with the earnestness that permeated his every pore. "We've fought together, he helped me put my speeder bike back together after Muunilinst fried it." It was his favorite bike, though if asked to give it up, he would have. He was pleased that no one asked, and that no one noticed the small tasteful decal of a stylized kybuck near the exhaust. The loosened Code had touched even his standards.

Their discussion did not qualify as an argument, but Siri was displeased, nonetheless. She centered herself before speaking again. "Kenobi can twist things and I'll bet Skywalker can, too. Kenobi left the Order for a while, you know."

"I know. He came back, though, and did well enough to be seated on the Council."

"I thought he was all right, too, but after I came back from undercover and found out how difficult it is to remain Jedi when all your fellows aren't about you, I started to doubt his commitment. And then there was the way he treated our Chosen One." Siri attacked her yot beans, made by Cookie into a refried slop with Byss cheese substitute smeared on top. It's protein. That's about all you can say about it.

"How so?" Ferus stopped chewing.

"Anyone could see that Skywalker was special and needed different treatment. Obi-Wan needed to train him, sure, but not exclusively. I think" --- Siri gulped her drink --- "that Skywalker could have benefited from a female presence more than a male one, at that stage of his life. He had been in a mother/son soul bond --- "

"Ewww, Ma--- Siri!"

" --- hush, you know what I mean --- for all his life. No man at all, regularly anyway. If Master Gallia or I could have had his training for part of the time, the boy would not have been so jarred, don't you see?"

Ferus' heavy eyebrows drew low. He put down his knife and spork. "Is that so."

"But right about then, I left to play pirate, Master Gallia began seeing Soul Healer Regork and Skywalker got into trouble with garbage pits," Siri continued heedlessly. "Wouldn't have happened if I had had him."

"I went on hiatus as a Padawan waiting for you to get back and become a Knight so that you could take me on. Does this mean the whole time you were gone, you were thinking of being Anakin's Master and not mine?" Ferus banked his hurt feelings, but Siri had known him for too long not to notice them.

"Ferus, you were an exemplary Padawan. I couldn't have been happier with your progress." This is just us talking. Or did I misjudge your maturity?

"It's what anyone might think, hearing you."

"Skywalker is our Chosen One, Ferus! I believed Master Jinn to be correct about that and so did my Master. Both of us wanted to see him treated differently than he was, but Master Gallia was new on the Council and didn't have much say. Maybe now that we have loosened up some, she could have gotten herself heard, but then ... "

"He turned out okay without you or my Grandmaster. He and Master Kenobi make a fine team." You're making me ... angry? Is that what this is?

What? "Look, I'm treating you like my friend, talking to you like I can't talk to Kenobi about what happened, what I thought about things ... don't get hurt, now ... " Tachi, you've gotten hot under the collar again and blundered. He and the Chosen One were scramball teammates, and he's defending his teammate to me. I don't always get it about bonding.

"I'm not sure I want to talk about this. Anakin is just a Padawan still and maybe we shouldn't. I don't think I ought to, at any rate." Ferus couldn't put it any plainer. I need to drop the subject before I lose any more control. Siri, you'll make me curse in a minute.

Shut up, Tachi, and comm Luminara tonight. "All right, Ferus. Let's go get our clothing back, all right? Those space heaters aren't doing the trick for any of us. I'm still shivering."

Ferus glanced at Siri's chest and then quickly away. He held his tray down low in front of him as he walked to the recycling bin and threw it and his leavings in, keeping his back to her for a long minute. Then he straightened his broad shoulders under his smock and turned around, smiling. "Sure, Siri." I stood up to her. I'm able to disagree without being disagreeable.

Everything outside was the same. The line had not moved much as troopers tried to get back their individual helmets and bits of armor. Ferus thought that these more individualized clones would have had chances to customize their kit and naturally wanted the results of their efforts returned. It'll comfort them, since they have no idea that their damage is long-lasting. Or do they? From the end of the line to its head, troopers supported each other. When one became dizzy, another supported him, another looked in the pile of gear for him, and another led him back to his unit. The symptoms were not fatal, but the persistence of them depressed Ferus. He glanced sideways at Siri as they shuffled along with all the rest of their squadron. She had refused cuts in the line and smiled a genuine smile at her outfit. Ferus followed her example. The cloaks and tunics, leggings and Siri's unisuit lay mixed with helmets, greaves and cuirasses. He plucked his own gear out, thankful that Anakin had placed his precious lightsaber along with Siri's under their cots. What a Knight he'll be.

TBC

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