Part XI
It was a loud and sudden burst of laughter that woke him. He didn't wake fully, the sound wavering on the edge of his consciousness. He would have been quite content to slip back under except that he was hit by a sudden and brilliant spotlight that hurt even through his closed eyelids. Squeezing his eyes shut tighter, Obi-Wan tried to turn onto his side, away from the painful light. He managed to lift his shoulders up, nothing more. His wrists, his ankles, even his lips were held in place by thick durasteel bands.
"So our guest has finally woken," a cultured voice murmured from off to his right.
Daring to open his eyes then, Obi-Wan's entire body jerked at the sight of the blue haze that surrounded him. It took him only a moment to realize that it was energy, his nerves tingling with its force. Obi-Wan shut his eyes again, hoping that when he opened them he would find it all to be nothing but some horrible dream.
"There is no sense in denying it, my dear boy. All you would do is waste your energy," that same disembodied voice cautioned.
"Where am I?" Obi-Wan demanded with as much anger as he could muster.
"Ah, there is that fire I had expected from the student of my old padawan," a regal looking older man mused as he strode into view. "But, to answer your question, we are currently aboard my battle cruiser on route to Geonosis."
"Geonosis? What's on Geonosis?" Obi-Wan tried his best to maintain his enraged front while inside fear was creeping in on him.
The last thing he remembered was Anakin stepping behind him to remove the collar. Anakin's left hand had been on his shoulder, squeezing lightly. Anakin had been panting nervously, his breath hot against Obi-Wan's ear. Nervous as he had been, Obi-Wan had felt confident that it would turn out all right. He didn't know what had happened during the time in between, but he couldn't feel the collar around his throat any longer. Obi-Wan didn't know what the advantage was of not having it on as he couldn't feel much of a difference. Of course that could very well have been the blue field of electricity that surrounded him.
"You need not worry about Geonosis," the aging man said in what he most likely assumed as a reassuring tone. "All that is required of you is your presence."
That, to Obi-Wan, sounded most sinister of all.
Both his mother and Beru had survived the attack relatively unscathed. Neither had been physically attacked, but had instead been rendered unconscious by tranquilizer darts. The explosion itself had occurred in the courtyard, charring much of its surface and walls, but doing little structural damage. There was no doubt, however, that the purpose of the attack had been to abduct Obi-Wan. The purpose of the abduction was irrelevant, so long as Obi-Wan remained unharmed.
Since he couldn't get the speeder back to Mos Eisley without wasting precious time fixing the thing, Anakin had contacted R2-D2 a second time, instructing the astromech droid to pilot the starfighter to the moisture farm. He turned on the tracking beacon on his comlink so that R2-D2 knew where to go before returning to the homestead.
Even as he reached the bottom of the staircase leading into the courtyard, Anakin knew that he was no longer welcome. Shmi, even, was tense around him, despite the ready smile she offered as he approached. It just didn't reach her eyes. Not like it had before that morning.
"Artoo will be here soon with my starfighter," Anakin announced as he approached the group who were busy cleaning up the broken furniture and tools. "You can just tow the speeder out a little ways into the outlands and leave it there. They'll think I was attacked by Tusken raiders when its found. No loss to them."
"What about to me?" Cleigg demanded, holding up to broken parts of a chair. "My family? This bounty hunter or whatever it was could have very well killed my wife and my boy's girlfriend. My home is damaged-- a home that has been in my family for generations --and you act as though nothing has happened. We can't even be sure this Obi-Wan fellow is a Jedi. He certainly didn't act like one."
Anakin pursed his lips, reigning in his anger before it was given life. Cleigg was frightened for his family. Anakin understood that. Had his lot been exchanged with the farmer he would no doubt have been frightened for his family as well. Except that Obi-Wan was his family, the only family that he had known for the past ten years. As much as Anakin loved his mother, he felt as though he barely knew her she had changed so much since he'd left with Qui-Gon and Padmé.
"Obi-Wan was not himself because he had first been betrayed by people he thought of as friends and then again when he was taken by the Tusken raiders. You saw the state he was in," Anakin insisted, fists clenched at his sides. "Those monsters would have killed him if I hadn't found him. They would have tortured him until they'd killed him. So do not dare degrade him because you will not find a better man in all the galaxy."
"Muted is Obi-Wan's presence," Yoda mused from his seat in the Council chambers. His great round eyes passed over the other Jedi in the room, holding their gaze for a moment each. "Strong it was, for a time, but gone once again, it is. Nearly faded. Creeps in on us, the Dark Side of the Force, it does. Undo, we cannot, what the Force has set in motion."
Ki-Adi-Mundi leaned forward slightly, glancing around the Council room. "And what of young Skywalker? Is it wise to allow him to fly about the galaxy unchecked?"
"Skywalker is far too attached to Obi-Wan," Mace Windu spoke up. "He gives into his emotions far too often. Chosen One or not, Skywalker is a magnet to dark energies."
"A reason for everything there is. Therefore, trust in young Skywalker we must," Yoda said, nodding his head emphatically.
Anakin had been on Tatooine three days too many. Those three days he had been scouring the underbelly of the various settlements, searching for some clue as to who had hired the bounty hunter that had taken Obi-Wan. He had been to every seedy bar, every pod racing arena, every back alley gambling ring, and every illegal gathering point that he could find. Even when pressed, none would tell him anything.
The easiest thing to do would have been to track Obi-Wan's Force signature to wherever he had been taken. Anakin had tried that, the first day, and it had led him nowhere. While he could still sense Obi-Wan's presence in the Force, something was blocking him from tracking the older man. Even there training bond had some type of blockade that was preventing him from determining just where in the galaxy Obi-Wan had been taken.
It was a HoloNet report, as he sat at the bar in a canteena the fourth morning, that gave Anakin his first clue as to just what was going on.
"Once again negotiations between the Republican Senate and the leaders of the Separatist movement have failed. With each day more and more systems ssecedefrom the Galactic Republic to join the counter movement led by former Jedi Master Count Dooku...."
The HoloNet reporter continued to ramble on about things that mattered little to Anakin. Events that mmatteredeven less when he caught sight of a slightly burred figure standing in the hbackgroundof a resent image of the Separatist leaders. An armoured figure with a helmet identical to the bounty hunter who had taken Obi-Wan. The caption at the bottom listed Geonosis as the location it had been taken. A fact that Anakin saw no reason to doubt as the Republic currently posed no major threat to the Separatists. The Republic currently had no army to speak of, only the Jedi who were too few in number to mount a serious offensive.
Leaving his meal mostly untouched, Anakin fled the canteena, making a beeline for his starfighter. Geonosis was not far away, only a few parsecs, but Obi-Wan had already been there for too long.
Since Artoo had started a blaster fight the night before after insulting a particularly sensitive cyborg, Anakin had left him with the starfighter this time. Anakin hadn't understood the insult himself, but from what he could tell it had been a serious one that had got them banned from that particular bar. It was only some fast talking and some liberal use of the Force that had kept them from being run out of the settlement.
"Come on, Artoo, we're getting out of here," Anakin announced as he approached the starfighter. "I need you to set us a course to Geonosis."
As he climbed into the cockpit, Anakin allowed himself a brief moment to wonder at why the Council hadn't attempted to contact him during the four days that had passed since he'd removed the collar from Obi-Wan. Anakin wasn't fool enough to think that the Council actually trusted him. That fact had been perfectly clear from the first day he had been brought before them by Qui-Gon ten years ago. Even after all the good he had done as Obi-Wan's apprentice had not earned him the trust of the Council.
At that moment Anakin didn't care about the Council. His only concern was his master's safety. He would not abandon Obi-Wan.
Their prisoner was an amusing individual. The boy had no control over the Force whatsoever and it showed each time he launched one of the guards across the room if they happened to startle him. The first time it had happened, the boy had panicked, backing himself into a corner. As his panic had increased, the guard would be flung about even more as the Force swirled around the captive Jedi. The construction of the cell itself kept those outside safe from the random swells of Force use. It also served as a way to block other Force users from tracking the copper-haired man.
"Is it wise to keep the Jedi here?" Nute Gunray demanded, coming to stand beside Dooku in the observation room next to the cell. "Surely others of his kind will track him here."
"As I have stated before, Viceroy, we want the Jedi to come here. It is why we allowed that picture to be leaked out," Dooku reminded the Neimoidian, scowling at him.
"Our operations are not complete. We are not ready for an assault from the Jedi," Gunray insisted, his voice raising in pitch as his unease increased.
"Things are in motion that you could not possibly understand," Dooku murmured, gazing through the screen at Obi-Wan who was curled up tight in a corner, rocking back and forth slightly.
There was someone watching him. Even though he couldn't see whoever was watching him, Obi-Wan could feel the eyes on him, trembling as a result. Being watched made him even more uneasy than not knowing what was going on. He had been locked in that blue electrical prison, unable to move and trapped in an uneasy limbo, until they had landed on what he assumed was Geonosis. Another desert. As he was being transported to the cell that he still now locked in, Obi-Wan had a fleeting memory of a lush, green landscape spotted with waterfalls. It had been all too brief, gone in the space of a blink, the intense sun replacing the vision.
Obi-Wan had watched, each time a guard had entered the room, hoping that he could find some way to escape his cell. He didn't want to be used as bait to lure in Anakin a second time. The loss of his personal history was no reason for him to be so vulnerable. The old man that had taunted him that first day hadn't reappeared since, but Obi-Wan was certain that he was being watched by that same man. There was an uneasy thought niggling at the back of his mind, insisting that he should know who that man was. Either by reputation or by personal experience he should have known him.
Only when he could no longer feel the unyielding eyes on him did Obi-Wan uncurl himself. In the far corner of the room was the tray that one of the guards would bring his meal in with. It had been left behind as the man had rushed out in a panic when the bowl had been launched from the tray, spinning about before clattering to the ground, almost as soon as he had entered. Obi-Wan focused on the tray, pouring all of his concentration into it. After only a few seconds it began to shudder and bounce about, rattling against the durasteel floor. Then, in a movement so quick he couldn't track it with his eyes, the thing flew across the room, slamming into the wall with enough force to crumple the striking edge.
"Well, that was certainly interesting," Obi-Wan mused, reaching over to pick up the ruined tray. He turned it about in front of his face. A moment later it was ripped out of his hands and sailed across the cell once again.