[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

Covalent Bonds

Chapter 24

"Duranet makes me itch." Siri stood back to back with Obi-Wan in the small space behind the pilot and passenger chairs. She glanced away from the reflective surface of the viewport which showed Obi-Wan adjusting small pads of plastifoam in the concavities of his body. The crotch area had always proved problematical to ensuring that the duranet's elasticity slid smoothly over skin. Even though the suits had been tailored to each of their figures, the foam was necessary to allow freedom of movement while wearing the duranet body stocking as well as to prevent bodily fluids such as sweat pooling in any gaps. The pads made anyone, even a Jedi, crankier than a rancor with laryngitis. Bodily fluids, hmmm. Took care of business before getting into this suit, but -- "Any idea of how long this will take?"

Obi-Wan prodded the last bit of foam around his cock and balls, cradling them in a form-fitting protector that had been pre-cut to his measurements. It would not slip unless he had to make running movements, which he was sure he would not need to do in space. Or unless I become aroused, and if I do, my poor excitement will be strangled in this suit. He slid the heavy bodystocking over his hips from where it had been tugged up to mid-thigh. The effort of donning the five layers of a mechanical counterpressure vac suit was considerable and he broke into a light sweat. The suit squeezed his waist, then his torso and as he pulled it over one arm he recalled that the suit's design used his perspiration to keep his body cool inside the suit's confines. Little grunts and small curses came from behind him as Siri fitted the foam into her own concavities. Good thing she broke down and let me apply Force-healing. A sore bottom would be a distraction any Jedi wouldn't need on an extra-vehicular mission. "My record for space walks is seven hours. How about yours?"

"Nine." Siri fanned herself after sliding one hand through a clinging sleeve. Layer number five, done. "I know it's too far to use umbilicals, Obi-Wan, but these skintight suits are a bastard to put on." She stole a glance to make sure it was modestly safe to turn around. It was. "Here, you've got a ripple across the shoulders." She put both hands in the middle of her partner's back and spread the bubble upwards. The escaping air burped as it cooled her sweaty palms. "Ahhhhh ... "

"Siri!"

"Relax, it was just air." There was a more innocuous sound, a ping, that caught her attention.

"Nevertheless -- "

"Oafy, look at the sensor!" Both Jedi leaned over the red panel. A tiny green dot signifying 'organic' circumnavigated a large device that read 'unknown function.' They looked at each other.

Obi-Wan doublechecked the sizing graph on the screen, wishing their craft had holographic capabilities like the Corellian mother ship. "It's small, it's mobile. There should be nothing here. Drakas was positive." But he appeared exhausted in his report. And he's in the Force now, so I can't comm him about it. Obi-Wan discounted all the incidents he had heard of in various cultures about an afterlife reaching out to the living. That time on Zonama Sekot didn't count. "The dwarf spider droids, even the larger OG-9 homing spider droids have things like infrared receptors and scanners, but not anything with fluidic drives that could possibly be read as alive." He tapped the focus, but the green dot grew no bigger. "It's at its largest view now."

"The creature must be tiny, no bigger than a hoojib. What species could be here? If it's a mynock colony, they are behaving awfully strange." Siri scratched the neckline of her suit. "Ahhh, kriff, the itching will drive me into the Force yet. Come on, finish suiting up and we'll investigate and then get out of this torture." She smoothed her hair back with a Force-bubble, barely concentrating on its shape, affixed the helmet's seal and checked her speeder bike for the final time. Obi-Wan cycled the airlock to open five minutes later, put on his own helmet, boots and gloves and snugged down anything that might float away in the depressurized cabin. The mini-shuttle was too small for its own segregated airlock, so everything would be open to space. With their duffels under the pilot chairs, their earbuds in place and speederbikes ready for action, he finger-signaled 'three, two, one, go' as space rushed in. Jetting their bikes in little bursts to clear the small shuttle, it was a relief to gain the freedom of space. My mods won't help us in zero atmosphere. I'll keep them anyway. The communications array orbited the station in ponderous majesty with the mini-shuttle anchored to it as their speederbikes took them efficiently to the platform's two thousand meter-length of wasted usefulness. They found a docking pier. A simple metal cable -- no magnetization for fear of alerting any sensor on the intruder's end -- secured the speederbikes and then they were off, bounding, putt-putting with their suits' small jets, maneuvering in techniques they had learned as Padawans. From the identical readouts on their portable scanners, they closed in on the alarming presence. Obi-Wan checked his free-floating lightsaber's clip and Siri did the same.

Years of experience at these things as well as their readouts led them to an obviously important enormous room where carcases of spider droids and a few dessicated mynock bodies floated ominously, trapped by inertia in the platform's nonexistent gravity field. An unsteady light emanated from an upright clear cylinder perhaps fifty meters tall and plunging an unknown length beneath the floor of the platform. The cylinder pulsed with lambent green-gray like a stormy sea thrashing under an occasional lightning bolt, though the lightning was muted and more underwhelming than overwhelming as were the storms of Kamino. Obi-Wan heard Siri's lips part in surprise without seeing them through her helmet, a pop sound that his earbud picked up easily. As they settled behind a pillar opposite the very top of the cylinder, Obi-Wan saw that it used to support part of the broken roof that was now a patchwork of tiles and melted beams. The cylinder held all their attention in its continuous activity.

"Spaarti cylinder. The Khommite cloners use them." Siri's voice brushed his ears, sounding distorted inside his helmet.

Cloners. Shades of Kamino. The Khommites used radiation to clone, not nutrient fluids that the Kaminoans' technology employed. Radiation produced a faster rate of growth by ten-to-one, though the Khommites were close-mouthed about their rate of failure. "Where are the decanting units?" Obi-Wan whispered, though he didn't have to. "And how about the incubators?"

Siri edged around her side of the pillar, reaching out with the Force. "I've been around undecanted clones, you've been around undecanted clones. Do you sense anything like what we sensed before?"

Obi-Wan concentrated. "No. Usually it's an unfocused sense of life, like a rotifer's perception of its environment. And there is no fluid anywhere on the platform." He peered around the opposite side of the pillar and froze. A leggy thing moved around the cylinder. A uncloaked leggy thing, not like the last time he had seen it. "Grievous."

What could the military leader of all the Separatist forces be doing here? Is he cloning himself so that he can be on more than one battlefront at a time? But you don't clone durasteel and there is so little of his flesh left ... "Obi-Wan, his internal organs and brain are what the sensors picked up. All told, they don't mass more than a hoojib would."

"Right you are. Look, something's happening." Grievous paced, his claws gripping the deck of the platform with ease, all four arms waving in what an organic would call agitation, whether in happiness or anger. The cyborg stopped circling the cylinder. He reached into a niche on the outside of the cylinder, cradling a small round metal device resembling a caf-dispenser that had heretofore been concealed from their view. It had been as close to the radiation stream as possible without actually floating inside it. The stream of invisible particles shot straight to the reflective canopy covering the cylinder, Obi-Wan knew, and then drove their way back to the origin point. Back and forth they would travel, contained by the cylinder, until the shields would cover the entire tube at shutdown. We can't take him. We need backup.

If we could take him, we could end this war right now. Siri rechecked her lightsaber clip and calculated the trajectory and force she would need to propel herself to the cyborg.

Obi-Wan knew what was going through her mind, because it was horribly similar to what would go through his Padawan's. "Siri."

"You go in on the left, me on the right."

"Siri."

"All right, I'll take the left."

"Siri, no."

He's not the boy I knew who found a cause bigger than the Order and joined it. No matter that it turned sour. "You and I together can do this, Obi-Wan."

"You didn't debrief the Jedi survivors of Hypori. I did." And Fordo's hair turned white. "If we could find out what is in that container, though -- "

"It's his spare hearts or something. I want him." Siri's normally forthright way of speaking became a hiss in his earbud. Obi-Wan caught her arm in a gentle hold, mindful of puncturing her suit.

Meanwhile, orbiting Hologram Fun World ...

"It's a space station. I thought it was a planet, Owen." Beru's eyes never left the Hologram Fun World glittering at the bottom rim of the mini-shuttle's viewport. "The advertisements on the HoloNet say 'world.' It's supposed to be a world, a planet." Something solid. Beru handed Sabra to Anakin. Sabra accepted the transfer and if she had been dangled upside down before the maw of a slavering Hutt, she wouldn't have cared. FlibbertiGibbit bird was down there on the shiny thing. It was going to be a good day.

"Beru, I don't like travel either." Owen turned away from Anakin, who jiggled Sabra up and down and tried not to listen. "It's a break and we both need one. Sabra is looking for us to be good examples." He smoothed her braids. "Come on, be brave for her sake."

"There are reasons I don't enjoy travel. It means I get to be cooped up in spacecraft, looking at the hyperspace lines made me sick, how do I know the food will agree with us and as for the Koann Kondiminiums, they had better be comfortable, that's all I can say." Beru crossed her arms. "I usually agree with what you want -- "

Owen put his arm around her stiff shoulders. "For Sabra's sake?"

"Mmmmmm." Beru whispered in his left ear.

"If it's private enough, sure." Owen grinned. "The Pleasure Dome sounded interesting in the advertisement."

Anakin wanted to be a stable rock for his relatives. "The Kondominium representative said each unit was soundproofed because of all the younglings. I'm sure that means any sorts of noises will be inaudible."

Beru blushed as she took back Sabra. "That isn't very reassuring." She hugged her child, who was straining to leave the embrace and fly through the viewport to the shimmering wonderment below. "All right then, let's go say hello to FlibbertiGibbit bird." Sabra gave her loudest baby-squeal that she would not outgrow for some years and which would return with adolescent girlhood giggles. Beru clapped her free hand over her ear and winced. The things I do for you, daughter.

TBC

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