Title: Lost Light
By: Cassia
Email: cassia_a@hotmail.com
Category: Story, Drama, Adventure, Hurt/Comfort, Angst
Rating: PG (violence)
Spoilers: Minor ones for the JA books
Archive: Jedi Apprentice, Early Years & Qui-Gon Fic
Disclaimer: All recognizable Star Wars characters are the
exclusive property of George Lucas. All others belong to me.
I have no official permission to use these characters, but
I'm not being paid for it either, so that's okay.
Feedback: Yes Please!
Time Frame: 10 years before TMP. Obi-Wan is 15.
Summary: What was supposed to be an investigative mission goes
terribly awry, leaving Obi-Wan blind and Qui-Gon injured.
Having survived the harsh Drojan Death Camps, the two Jedi try get off
planet, as well as aid the one person who might be able to make the Republic
see that they must put a stop to Driosnia's actrocities. But nothing is
simple and everything that can go wrong, will...
LOST LIGHT
PART 11
Qui-Gon's saber flashed so fast it left trails of light before Sheena's eyes. The soldiers had them pinned down in a clump of trees halfway between the hanger and the house. Qui-Gon defended Sheena and himself while trying to figure out a way to break out of the gridlock. He knew that Obi-Wan and the Administrator were in trouble and chafed every instant he was detained here. His right arm ached dully and he was constantly compensating for the motion he did not have.
"Where are you Master?" he heard desperation in Obi-Wan's voice. Yet despite whatever dire circumstances the Padawan was undoubtedly in, Qui-Gon was pleased to feel a certain amount of calm surety in his apprentice. Qui-Gon did not know what was happening, but he guessed that Obi-Wan was no longer letting his blindness hold him back. That was good.
A few moments later however, Qui-Gon felt a surprised jolt that traveled clear up his spine and a shock of intense pain.
Obi-Wan!
Sheena saw Qui-Gon stiffen visibly. "What, what is it?"
"Time to get to the hanger," Qui-Gon said in a clipped, concerned tone of voice, once more seeking a way to break away from this impasse. "I have a feeling that Obi-Wan and Administrator Owskar need our help."
Obi-Wan hit the ground hard and managed to roll beneath the ship. His side was aflame and the pain stole his already short breath, making him struggle for oxygen. For a moment he just lay on his back beneath the low belly of the ship, his head spinning unmercifully. Probing the injured area he found that the shot had not gone deep. The worst of it had probably missed him and he had only caught the edge of the bolt. He was fortunate actually. He had an incredibly nasty 3rd degree burn slashing across his left side from his chest, down his ribs to his low back, but that was all.
"All," Obi-Wan thought sarcastically. It was definitely enough. On top of his other injuries and with his blindness, the pain was nearly incapacitating. He heard the sound of the soldiers' feet. They were coming. They would find him here and they would kill him. He had to move. He had to.
Gritting his teeth Obi-Wan managed to roll out from the other side of the ship. His side screamed at him as he scraped it against the hard floor. The inner side of his left arm was burned as well he realized with a wince as he pushed himself unsteadily to his feet. It wasn't as bad an injury as his side, but it stung when he tried to use it. The shot must have passed right under his armpit. Obi-Wan shuddered. A little higher and it would have killed him; a little lower and it would have taken off his forearm.
Forcing himself back to the moment Obi-Wan dodged around the next two ships, seeking to regain the distance between himself and the soldiers which he had lost. Pain was threatening to cloud his perceptions again, and he nearly ran into the wall before he sensed it. The blind Jedi felt along it, but a quick inspection left no doubt. He had reached the back wall of the hanger. Going left led him straight to another wall, and going right would mean having to cross the entire open expanse of space that separated the right side of the hanger from the left side. In the shape he was now in, he was not about to try that again. The soldiers were closing in, and he was trapped. Obi-Wan leaned against the wall, trying to still his hammering heart. He had reached the end of his rope and found himself left dangling.
************************
Obi-Wan could feel, as well as hear the rapid approach of the
soldiers. They proceeded swiftly, but warily, not wanting to
walk into any traps. It had not taken them long to realize
that they must not underestimate their quarry.
Obi-Wan edged along the wall, feeling it with his left hand while still clutching his saber, un-ignited but ready, in his right. He only wished he could come up with something as devious as they expected him to.
The young Jedi set his jaw grimly. The only thing he could do was try to hold his ground. He assessed the situation calmly, but in his heart, he knew it would be a suicide stand. Perhaps he could hide himself in the shadows and surprise them. Perhaps. The snipers on the catwalks had fallen silent, maybe he could... his hand caught on something. The something turned out to be a ladder, running up the wall as far as he could reach, and farther. What...? Then it dawned on him. This was one of the accesses to the catwalks, that's why the snipers couldn't reach him, he must be standing directly under the beginning platform, blocking their aim.
Unable to go either right or left, forward or backward, Obi- Wan opted to go the only way he could. Up. Grabbing the rungs of the ladder, he climbed quickly. He had to make it up before the ground soldiers saw him or he was a sitting duck. His burned side and arm protested loudly, but he forced them to move even faster. He reached the top just as the soldiers reached the bottom.
"Don't see me, don't see me," Obi-Wan more hoped than directed, swinging silently up onto the catwalk. His body was requiring too much of his strength for him to expend any trying to influence his attackers.
The soldiers seemed puzzled, momentarily unsure of where their quarry had gone. Using the moment of peace, Obi-Wan centered himself and reached out to see how close he was to the other soldiers on the catwalks. He thought there must be about four or five of them, but none in his immediate vicinity, they were all moving away from him, trying to circle around to a point where they could get a clear shot at the ground below. Obi-Wan wiped the perspiration out of his useless eyes and grinned grimly. "Only I'm not down there anymore."
Stretching his senses further, he found Verjl's ship. Good, the engines were almost ready, but where was Qui-Gon? He was just beginning to search for his Master, when something else grabbed his attention. The soldiers that were not pursuing him had concentrated their attention of Verjl's ship. Once they found that their hand weapons were not enough to make a dent in the ship's shielding they had set about finding more drastic measures. Now they had erected a small proton cannon on a swivel base and were firing it up to blast the Administrator's ship.
Crouching down low in an attempt to avoid detection, Obi-Wan made his way towards the front of the hangar once more. He had to stop that cannon.
The ship shuddered violently, throwing Verjl sideways in his seat. He channeled more power into the ship's shields, but he knew there was no way the little craft could take a sustained pounding like this for very long.
Obi-Wan crouched on the catwalk above the ship, assessing the situation. Six men were manning the cannon; the rest were setting up a second one. He would have to-
Obi-Wan threw himself out of the way just in time as a shot zinged by his head. His coordination was a trifle off and his quick dodge turned into a sprawl on the catwalk floor. The sniper stood over Obi-Wan and took aim to fire again, but Obi- Wan knocked the blaster out of his hands with a wave of the Force, sending it skittering to the floor far below them. In the same, quick move, Obi-Wan kicked the soldier's feet out from under him and sprang up. The soldier recovered himself quicker than one would have thought and attempted to tackle the teenager. Obi-Wan dodged, but as he backed away his foot caught on one of the loose planks that made up the catwalk floor. He stumbled and the soldier was on him. The force of the man's rush bore them both down to the gently swaying planks of the catwalk.
Obi-Wan landed hard with the soldier on top of him. The force of the landing knocked the air out of his lungs and his lightsaber out of his hand. He heard the sound of the handle roll across floor, bounce off a guardrail fall with a clatter to the floor below. "Great, just great," was all Obi-Wan had a chance to think before his thoughts were consumed simply with trying to keep the man who had him pinned from crushing the life out of him. As they grappled and struggled, Obi-Wan heard the booming report of the cannon below them. He had to do something soon or it would be too late for Verjl.
He tried to get his knees up to kick his opponent off him, but the man was not about to let him do that. Half sitting, half kneeling on Obi-Wan's hips the fellow held Obi-Wan down quite firmly. The burly soldier both out-weighed and out-strengthed the fifteen-year-old, and although Obi-Wan was holding his own, in his weakened condition he couldn't get out from under the Driosnian. The man tried to get his hands around the blind Jedi's neck, but Obi-Wan caught his wrists and it turned into a wrestling match. Obi-Wan gathered his strength, preparing to use the Force to help him get the man off when the soldier's elbow caught him in the ribs, his injured ribs. Obi-Wan's eyes went wide as the pain of the blow to his badly burned side ripped through him. His grip on the soldier's wrists loosened.
Seeing the boy's reaction and realizing the cause, the man pulled his hands free and hammered down another blow against Obi-Wan's injured ribs.
Obi-Wan nearly screamed.
Acting out of desperation, Obi-Wan gave a hard roll to the right, tossing his opponent off balance. The soldier was shocked, he had thought the boy incapacitated. Using the surprise to his advantage Obi-Wan suddenly reversed direction and rolled left, pulling out of the soldier's grip all together. With a final effort Obi-Wan jumped to his feet. Pain was making his hands shake and he felt disoriented, but he did not let that rule him. Despite the pain, despite his blindness and despite the fear and hopelessness that wanted to take him, Obi-Wan remained focused, and it saved his life.
The soldier jumped up, coming after the boy. Obi-Wan was not sure he would make it out of another altercation with the big man. He didn't have to. Heeding the warning he felt tingle through his bones, the young Jedi ducked, just as a blaster shot from behind whizzed over his head. The blast passed harmlessly over him and caught the other soldier instead. Obi- Wan did not wait to let the other soldiers, who he could feel moving this way, converge on him, but jumped over the railing of the catwalk, using the Force to aid his fall.
A warning light flashed red on the control panel. The tiny craft's shields could not take much more. A few more blasts and they'd be gone all together. Suddenly, through the cockpit windshield, he saw Obi-Wan jump from the catwalk on the ceiling and land on the soldiers surrounding the cannon. The surprised soldiers went down with a cry.
Calling his fallen lightsaber to his hand, Obi-Wan slashed down, cutting the cannon in half before the startled soldiers could do anything about it. Another slash dispatched the second cannon that they had just finished setting up. Leaping backward in a series of quick flips, Obi-Wan backed towards the ship, parrying blaster bolts as he went.
Verjl's heart twisted within him as he realized that to let Obi-Wan in, he would have to lower the shields and open the hatch. Both were fatal options. He had watched men die before for a cause, but rarely any so brave, or so gifted.
There were nearly fifty soldiers on the scene now and more seemed to be arriving each moment. They had the ship surrounded, and had Obi-Wan boxed up against it. Obi-Wan's lightsaber was a blur of light as he battled to keep up with the intense barrage. He could feel himself weakening rapidly; he could not stand off against an entire army indefinitely.
The Padawan's head was spinning again as his backward retreat was finally halted when he ran into back end of the ship. With nowhere left to retreat to, Obi-Wan knew it was over. He drew in a deep breath, lifted his chin in defiance of the death that stared him in the face and prepared to buy Verjl as much time as he could.
Qui-Gon was running so fast that Sheena could not keep up with him. They had finally broken free of the soldiers. It was a good thing too, because Sheena had the feeling that Qui-Gon was going to do something desperate pretty soon if another way had not presented itself. Then, inexplicably, a good number of the soldiers just pulled out and left, enabling them to break through the ones that remained.
Qui-Gon's legs pumped furiously, eating up the distance. He was under no illusions about where the soldiers who had disengaged from the battle had gone. No doubt they had been called away to aide the rest of their force in dealing with the bigger threat in the hanger. Qui-Gon was grimly impressed with how many soldiers Brun, under the sanction of the Krallnorn, had had loyal to him.
Obi-Wan had stopped calling out to him for help, but the silence was even more unnerving to the Jedi Master. What had he sent the boy into? Had he given Obi-Wan more than he could handle? He wanted Obi-Wan to work around his blindness, to see that he could still be a whole person, but had he pushed him too fast, too soon? His own stiff, unusable left arm and the decreased mobility of his right drove home the point that there were actual, physical limitations that some injuries imposed. Had he brushed Obi-Wan's aside too easily? He thought of the words that had passed between them earlier. If anything happened to Obi-Wan now, he would never forgive himself.
Never.
TBC...
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