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Obi-Wan's pale blue eyes slowly ran over the gray walls surrounding his shuttle. I'm not certain whether I'm reckless or just crazy, he thought wryly.
Under the pretense of a suicide run, he had smacked the shuttle straight into the exhaust port and battered his way through the hatch. He had lodged his craft inside the enemy warship. It was a maneuvar that he had never heard of before, and he only hoped that no one looked for him here.
He sighed and rubbed his knee, a habit that seemed to be sticking to him since his injury. Now... now he had another task for himself, one that required Jedi skills rather than piloting skills.
He drew on the Force, closing his eyes and turning inward.
From within the Force came a thousand jabbering voices in a tangle, a thousand minds aboard this cruiser. He sensed the growing power in the engines, propelling the ship faster and faster. There was a jolt, almost painful, and Obi-Wan knew that the hyperdrive had just kicked in.
He dropped out of the trance, feeling tired, and began to calculate how long it would take them to reach Thalon...
Darkness. Pain.
All that Qui-Gon could sense. His torso and face were aching still from the paingiving drugs he had been injected with, the nerve probes, the cuts from the vibroblades. His eyes were shut tightly, as if trying to shut out the sight of the dungeon. His raw hands were still bound in the manacles, keeping him suspended on his feet and not allowing him to slump forward.
His body was battered and weakened. His mind was roiling, flailing in anger and pain. He could barely draw on the Force to alleviate some of the agony, let alone try to call to Obi-Wan again.
He was torn between heat and cold. The heat of his injuries and the flowing blood from his wounds, and the cold of the unyielding wall he was bound to. They had stripped his tunic from him, and his bare skin was turning bluish with the growing cold as night fell outside. It rasped on his throat, raw from screams he had choked back, and lack of water.
Outside the fortress, darkness fell. With it went the last shreds of light in Qui-Gon's cell. He strained to see through the darkness, and failed. Even the chemical lamps had gone out.
They never asked anything, he thought dazedly. They never asked me a single question... about the Republic, the Jedi, about me... nothing. They didn't ask me anything.
His mind continued in its circuitous motion for some time. Then he slowly drew on the Force, only a thin thread at first. He pulled it back and reached into the manacles, seeking the locking mechanism... seeking some imperfection that he could use...
Obi-Wan curled up, shuddering, in the pilot's chair. Sweat beaded his boyish face. Qui-Gon was alive. Alive and in agony...
"General!"
Tathor stopped in mid-stride at the high-pitched plea from a dark alcove. He turned slowly, to enhance the terror radiating from the shadowy figure. "Yes?" he asked slowly.
The figure scuttled out of the shadows, revealing itself to be a doctor that he had recruited. Doctor Mayon, a spineless creature. His large bluish-green eyes only made his pinched face look more pinched. Dressed as a guard, he had put his excellent grasp of anatomy to use during the torture of the Jedi.
Mayon bobbed once and stared, quavering, into Tathor's eyes. "My leader... I do not think that we should continue with the Jedi."
Cold jade eyes stared into Mayon, making him shrivel. "Why is that?" Tathor said coldly.
"He has no intention of telling us anything. And..." Mayon shivered. "He hates us. I could see it when we were... torturing him. He hated us."
Tathor smiled coldly. "Good, Doctor. That is what I want: for hate to rule him. When hate rules him, he will be far more inclined to agree with our plans."
Mayon stared at the floor, looking shocked and stunned.
Tathor turned on his heel and stalked away. Then he stopped, slowly turned, and glared at the cowering doctor. "As for you, DOCTOR, you will do to the Jedi what I tell you to. Any deviation from my orders, and you will share his fate."
He walked away, and Mayon sank back into the welcoming darkness of the stone alcove.
Click.
Obi-Wan woke out of a doze at the sound of a blaster being aimed. And the hard metal pressed against the back of skull showed just where it was. Oh, I hate this, he thought.
"Don't move," a clipped Thalon voice said.
Obi-Wan smiled a little, his eyes becoming unfocused as he slowly uncurled his hand, stretching the fingers toward the niche where he had stashed his lightsaber. It twitched, clattered, and spun through the air to his hand, igniting bright blue in mid-air.
Obi-Wan twisted in the pilot's chair and neatly bisected the guard's blaster, then punched the Thalon in the jaw. He staggered back, terrified by the sight of the armed Jedi.
"All right," Obi-Wan said calmly. "I need someone to tell me what's happening on Thalon, and you're the best candidate. So..." He slowly inclined his lightsaber towards the soldier's head. "Start talking."
The man gulped, started to look defiant, then glanced at the humming blue blade and thought better of it. "Civil war," he croaked. "General Tathor led the military into a civil war... he's promised that we'll rule this sector of the galaxy, and be a major part of the Republic. The general population is in camps..."
Obi-Wan eyed the man and decided that he wasn't lying. "Qui-Gon Jinn," he said abruptly. "A Jedi Master... do you know where he is?"
The soldier shook his head frantically, eyes still locked on the lightsaber held only inches from his face. "I can't..." he whimpered. "I can't... they'll kill me..."
"I promise not to tell anyone who told me," Obi-Wan said through gritted teeth. He twiddled imperceptibly with the power, causing an alarming buzz to emit from his lightsaber. The soldier quivered again. "Now... WHERE is he?"
"The capital," the man whispered. "I... was part of the detail who... tortured him."
Obi-Wan felt his insides go cold at those words. He wasn't dead. It was impossible that Qui-Gon was dead. He was certain that if his master had died, he would have felt it. "He's still alive?"
"I don't know," the soldier confessed. "General Tathor wants to... use him... as a part of... his conquest plan."
Obi-Wan bit down on the red-hot rage that was building inside of him. This man had tortured Qui-Gon, and didn't seem to care at all. That sort of callousness was something that Obi-Wan had been raised to find repugnant, and he found it even more so when he actually encountered it.
Obi-Wan jerked his head at the back of the shuttle. "Get back in there and sit down on the floor."
The guard walked to the rear wall and sat down, trembling. Obi-Wan hit the wall, and a small compartment popped open, revealing safety harnesses. Obi-Wan pulled one out, stretched it, and nodded. This would do.
He hurriedly rippped the harness into long straps and tied the man's arms and hands tightly together. Then he tied his ankles. Finally, he took a camoflage strip and gagged him. "Sorry to leave you here," he said sarcastically, powering down his lightsaber and clipping it to his belt. "But your friends will probably be here before long... and I will be very, very far from here."
For a long time, Qui-Gon stood alone in the darkness, his battered body numbed by the unchecked cold. His strong features were occasionally twisted by pain or anger, as he wrestled with something that had lain dormant in his mind for a long time. He had fought it his entire life. Now, he was weakened and angry.
He wanted revenge. He wanted it more than he had wanted anything in his entire life...
Qui-Gon shook off the thoughts, tried to keep his mind clear. But the never-abating pain that wracked him and the anger at his helplessness only enhanced his growing fury, a white-hot blaze that begged to consume him.
Some deep, dark part of him desperately wanted to hate Tathor and the minions who had done this to him. He wanted to hate them, wanted to hurt them, wanted to make THEM feel the pain and hatred and helplessness that HE felt.
No. Those thoughts came from the dark side... he would not give in to them. He was strong enough... he hoped. Yoda's round, wrinkled face rose before him like a specter. "Anger, fear, hate--the dark side are they," rang in Qui-Gon's ears.
Qui-Gon took a deep breath, focusing on the inner mechanism of the manacles. He felt stronger than he had in what seemed like years.
Within the manacles, the Force nudged a metal slip from a ridged surface. The manacles slipped from Qui-Gon's wrists.