Star Wars - Series Fan Fiction ❯ Covalent Bonds ❯ Chapter 43

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

"There's another reason that I want to leave, Obi-Wan. I want to explore new territories, too. Not just drinking, but in myself."

"I do understand." I was young once.

"I need to grow." He's never had this happen to him. I'm his first Padawan. Anakin patted his Delta-7 as if it were a snorting, prancing, eager-to-race steed. "And I'll be helping the Order, the Republic."

"Anakin."

"What?"

"Go."

Anak in nodded. The timing of this, the kriffing Dark Side timing. "Now? I know I said that I wanted to go alone, but --- "

"You no longer need my permission, Anakin." Master Yoda and the Council agreed on this. You and I talked about it last night until I hit you with a sleep compulsion.

There is a thing to dislike about ceremonies. You are supposed to feel far different inside afterwards. And instead, he was looking to his former Master for direction. Well, all right then. He placed his duffel with its spare clothing and fifteen bags of almond-kwevvu crisp munchies on the duracrete launchpad and faced Obi-Wan squarely. "Obi-Wan, if at any time something goes wrong about the twins, comm me."

Not even for them will I endanger you. "Nothing will go wrong. We'll talk each Standard night here, same Coruscant time, same Temple frequency. Scrambled, of course, and if you need me at any other point in the mission, it goes without saying that you'll comm me. I am your dedicated liaison."

Get it off your chest, Skywalker. "If things were like they were one year ago --- "
"There are some things a Jedi just can't fly around." There are younglings swimming inside me now. I can't endanger them. "You have to go without me, Anakin. It wouldn't be right for me to ask to leave with you. You'll be fine." He smiled, not fooling Anakin at all. "By the time you're a Master, you'll have had enough experiences for ten Trials. "
Anakin grimaced. "So you think I might make Master right away, skipping years of Knighthood?" This wasn't like their face-off on Olanet, but came close.
"I can't change that part of the process. I would if I could."
Anakin crossed his arms. "Well, why can't you?" Not very Knightly, but I don't want to leave you now. Or I don't want you to leave me. His resolve to leave on his own seemed to have leaked away during the night.
"For kriff's sake, Anakin, I'm not the whole Council! Master Yoda and all of us changed the code, due to you in part, isn't that enough?" Don't overreact, don't overreact. It's the condition speaking. How Siri would have loved to have heard this. He could hear her now. "'Oafy-Wan, stomp him. Who's the Master here?'" But Ferus wasn't your lover, Siri. And even if he were, he wouldn't have thought of asking this.
Obi-Wan smiled encouragingly. "We'll be together more than when you were my Padawan, what with your away scramball tournaments and all." Except for the physical part. He pressed a smooth coil into Anakin's hand. "Here is your Padawan braid. I count it among my most precious possessions. Take it with you." Show it to no one. And bring it back to me." Unharmed.

Anakin nodded again. If something happens to me, he'll have no part of me left. He took a deep breath and stepped closer to Obi-Wan until their foreheads touched. They held hands. Their imprinted bond surged in response, a confluence of two rivers, one plunging into a cataract making white plumes of mist, the other wide and deep and steady, a river that could flood other rivers, if it chose, and overwhelm like Gitchy in springtime's full flow. But it did not choose. Like two open-ended circuits of nearly equal power, their Force abilities commingled, their bond flared and then separated into twin streams. They breathed in tandem before coming back to themselves enough to kiss goodbye. Anakin climbed into his Aethersprite and hung the coil of hair on his rearview sensor sprocket.

"May The Force Be With You."

"May The Force Be With You."

Their farewell that morning ran through Anakin's head as he checked his coordinates for the second time. Scan Serenno first. Dooku'll be wily enough not to return there, but I might gather some clues. He cracked his knuckles before punching in his next jump. At the dawn briefing this morning, Saesee Tiin had unbent enough to share his experiences using his telepathic navigational senses. Anakin knew this had to do with Anakin's new status as Knight. Saesee's terse recollections were better than nothing. "Knight Skywalker, pick out the brightest star after you come out of your last jump. Fix that star in your mind. Use the Force to shape a map of a sector in your thoughts. Take a moment to Sense the star itself, its beautiful shape in the Living Force" --- and here Saesee had turned quite cosmic; certainly Anakin had never heard him use the word 'beautiful' before --- "and its Unifying Force sense, where it will be in the future, red-shifting or blue-shifting. And then you can plan your return trip as well."

"Adjusting for what time? How will I know how much time has passed when I am out of the flow of time, so to speak, in hyperspace?" I know you designed my fighter's internal hyperdrive and the meditation seat that will allow me to rest during long hyperspace jumps. I know I shouldn't, but I want more, more of any support you can give me.

The Iktotchi came close to smiling. "Trust in the Unifying Force, Anakin. It has led you this far. You don't need to know any more than what it will reveal to you in its own good time." You still have much to learn. But you're getting there. He thrust his broken horn in Anakin's direction. "I didn't listen to the Unifying Force and had to eject sooner than planned, and it got me this." Anakin supposed that this was the closest that Master Tiin --- no, it's 'Saesee' now --- ever got to humor. Then a carrier craft rose from the umbra of Serenno and Anakin could concentrate only on the present. The flyers detaching from the craft's slots commenced firing at once. He wondered if Obi-Wan would have evaded their fire without returning it, all the while trying to negotiate some mutual peaceful understanding. He fired back anyway. A simple scan triggered this?

Serenno's flyers were as elegant as most of the world itself. They looked made of Alderaani porcelain, thought Anakin as he blasted one to bits. Their white bisque surfaces were not aerodynamic at all, but then they didn't need to be as wave after wave spun away from their square carrier. He juked one way and jinked another; his opponents' attack strategy was minimal. Straight trajectories, fire continuously, it looked to Anakin less subtle than a carnival mountebank's routine using spinning plates. Their flyers are attractive, but not practical. What is their defense? The flyers fired, then spun away after firing, that is if they weren't blasted by him. They looked like shell-backed borcatu presenting their resistant backs to his followup fire. This is too easy. Something changed in their battle stategy after the last flyer departed its mothership. From straight-on firing, the fleet of thirty remaining flyers now maneuvered in a set pattern: fire, turn away, next one fire, turn away. They are still as predictable as those skinny battle droids from the Naboo Invasion, the kind that the Separatists rarely use anymore. Time for aggression. He upped his speed of return fire, spinning, diving, unwilling to waste any more time on them. When their pattern remained unchanging as if his actions weren't even being monitored, suspicion set in. Like the skinny droids, they must be preprorammed. After he had whittled down their number to twenty-six, he loosened his concentration on his attack to throw out a tendril of the Force in their direction. Droid pilots. Typical. So what was different? Fire, turn away, spin. Fire, turn away, spin. It was as if they were knitting a garment. Too late, Anakin Felt the touch of the Dark Side in their regimented movements. The Delta-7 was surrounded by a cloud of ceramic fragments in a disturbing pattern that commenced to whirl, against all the laws of physics in space. The effect was that of a localized tornado, with the Delta-7 as its eye. Ceramic. Superconductor of electricity. Could these ceramic bits conduct the Dark Side's power and could ---

"Ahhhh!" No resistance to the conduction of electrons, ceramics also reject magnetic flux lines, I'm being taken somewhere! Anakin nearly panicked as his instruments displayed sheer nonsense. The navcomp, which he needed for his base jumps even though he could navigate from there without its further help, showed values all the way from negative-zero to positive eight billion. Its screen was a sickly orange that flared into streaks of shaky indigo and back again. If he'd had Obi-Wan's hypersensitive stomach, he would have heaved his guts out as the Delta-7 spun, or seemed to. He wasn't in hyperspace, no, but he might as well have been flying blind as the cloud of ceramic particles swirled in sickening Dark Side waves. And then it was over, ten minutes, ten hours, he wasn't sure which. He found himself in orbit around a greenish blue planet orbiting a binary star, the planet's two moons visible on either side of his fighter. It's like Tatooine's system and the moons are like lintels to step through to go planetside. I must be cautious. His instruments he thought were fried, except for the short-range communications array. All the constellations looked unfamiliar. I'm lost. Kriffing ceramics with their kriffing ionic interatomic bonds. I hate them all. Even the ones with covalent bonds. I'm lost. "Kriff!" He undid his harness and yanked off his headset, unwilling to have anything else restrain him. Well, Chosen One, is this territory new enough for you, huh? Anakin opened a packet of almond-kwevvu crisp munchies and settled in to think his next step.

" ---lling unknown Jedi. Come in, unknown Jedi." His comm board crackled, making Anakin jump and knock his head against the hatch cover. He cursed again as he fumbled for the switch to activate his caller's unscrambled, basic frequency. Whoever this was had to be completely unafraid of the Separatists, or could they be so far off the Galaxy's HoloNet web that they had no knowledge of the war? At least they knew his ship was of Jedi origin.

"Knight Skywalker here. Who is this?"

"At last, at last! Are you here to rescue us?"

Meanwhile, back at the Temple ...
Stass Allie and Adi Gallia had been strolling together outside the infirmary as Obi-Wan entered for his followup appointment with Luminara before she returned to New Holstice and her regular duties. Their dark heads together, their arms inside their sleeves, the cousins' stances reminded Obi-Wan of initiates in the Hall who were sharing secrets, particularly when Stass congratulated him on his part in subduing T'ra Saa, as if she were surprised he'd had the capability to be active at all. He pushed aside the impression for the time being and closed the infirmary door securely behind him.
"Obi-Wan! How are you feeling?" Luminara asked.
"Fine. Nothing strange to report."
Luminara pulled a scanner from her travel bag and Obi-Wan saw that she was packing her personal instruments before leaving this afternoon. He released his unease about her departure into the Force. She poked the scanner in his direction, hmmed once and then said, "Yes, you are fine. You are healthy, just like I said, Obs." Now for the unsettling news. "I've called in Stass to consult and we've discovered something since your last visit. All the signs point to your parturition date being normal, completely normal, at eight Standard months, thirty-six weeks instead of the single birth forty. You have a month off, haha!" Need to work on that jollity, Luminara.
Good. The sooner this is over, the better. As long as everyone remains healthy, of course. He looked sideways at her. "I'm suspicious of you, Lu. Why don't you drop the other boot?" That is not her normal laugh.
"You're going to experience placental abruption, Obs. I'm sorry." Luminara steadied her voice with some difficulty. More bad news, or unwelcome news, just plain weird news to her patient. He's going to need a completely new file addition to his casefolder. Perhaps an entire abstract, treat his file like an article in Internal Journal. "During a burst of midichlorian strength due to auroral radiation causing somatic hypermutation and upon additional Spaarti cloning cylinder radiation exposure, one male human Jedi, aged thirty-eight, experienced morphogenetic changes to his genome and developed female internal genitalia; upon congress with his partner, male human Jedi, aged twenty-two, conception occurred. Results included fully viable twin younglings, herein documented from near point of conception to live birth. This article will explain the rationale of the boosted midichlorian count, implantation of the younglings in the functioning uterus, subsequent growth and successful birthing. It will look finally at the odds of a recurrence of this happenstance." Luminara gave a delicate huff. Not bloody likely. She waited as she always did for startling news to permeate a being's consciousness and the processing necessary to sanity to begin. It seemed she had to do that a lot for one Kenobi, Obi-Wan, Rank: Master.
"That sounds unpleasant." What next? Live feed of the birth on the HoloNews?
"An abruption means that the placenta pulls away from the uterine lining prior to its natural occurrence postpartum. It's a serious complication in your species' normal female pregnancy. It's ... painful. Your special case requires it as a sort of analog to vaginal birth. When the placentas pull away, the babies are ready to start breathing and be removed from your uterus, along with the placentas, of course. At the same time that I open you up, I'll remove the uterus and ovaries and seal the interface, all in one go, so you don't need to come back to me for any other procedure. You might need to be put out for that part." She forced a bright smile. "I'll monitor you for a day, and then you can go home. Anakin may take the babies, or they may stay with you. You won't be nursing them, so we really don't have to keep them in the infirmary if they are health--- "
"Nursing them? Is that even a possibility?" I can't handle any more changes, I really, really cannot.
"No, no! Stass and I didn't ever consider that as happening! The research indicates it won't be possible, don't you worry. You might have tender nipples from the ovarian hormones of childbirth, but not anything more than that. No, I'm trying to make you aware of everything that will oc--- "
"I don't need to know any more details, Lu. You're taking good care of me and of them. This abruption is merely another pile of shit to step over." I think the Dark Side is in the details.
"Master Qui-Gon used to say that, didn't he."
"Yes, another in a string of hearty, lusty comments he made at times. Where he got them, I don't know. He made planetfall on many crude planets, interacted with many crass cultures long before I knew him." You'd be enthralled by this whole process, Master. "The Sanctity Of Life, The Wonders Of The Force," I can hear you now.
It's getting to him. "Obi-Wan, I can put you out for the entire process once it begins. You won't feel a thing."
"Won't that affect the younglings?"
"It's a delicate process, but no, I don't think so." I'd need someone on the anesthetic exclusively, could it be Bant, if she's up to it ... maybe ... Stass, no, she will be handling two younglings later on ...
The twins deserve all I can give them. They'll likely be one Standard month early anyhow and it won't be worth the risk. "I am a Jedi Master. I can deal with it."
"You can always change your mind, once things start happening. It's no disgr--- "
"Noted." Obi-Wan plastered an almost-convincing smile on his face. The things I do for you, younglings.
TBC