Moment of Truth (9781484719794) Read online

  “Once we get out of here, we’ll head straight for the landing pad,” Obi-Wan said crisply. “We’re going to have to steal a transport. Can you do that?”

  Why was Obi-Wan talking to him as though he were a fourth-year student? “Of course.”

  “Follow me then.”

  Obi-Wan led the way. As they approached the security desk, Obi-Wan began talking loudly.

  “If I say that the valve shutoff is broken, then it’s broken. There’s no need to talk to my superior.” Obi-Wan rolled his eyes at the security officer. “He’s going to tell you the same thing I said. I said, it’s broken, you have to shut down the system. If you want to know about a bacta bath, go to a medic. If you want to know about valves, come to me. Understand?” Obi-Wan kept talking as the security guard released the security shield. Obi-Wan activated the door and waited for Anakin to walk through. “He’s going to say the same thing. You have to shut down the system.…”

  The door hissed closed behind them. Obi-Wan headed down the path. Anakin strode next to him. He was content to follow his Master’s plan.

  No one stopped them as they walked across the compound and moved onto the landing pad.

  “This looks fast.” Obi-Wan climbed up on a small starship. “We need something that can get us to Typha-Dor.” He accessed the cockpit and jumped in. “Let’s go, Anakin.”

  Anakin leaped up on the starship and slid into the cockpit next to his Master. He looked at the controls. “I’m going to have to hot-wire it,” he said.

  “That’s the idea,” Obi-Wan answered.

  Anakin opened the sensor panel. Even though he still existed in the bubble of his calm, he remembered exactly what to do. He switched wires and juiced the ignition. Then he closed the panel and slid back into the pilot’s seat. The engine started on the first try.

  “Great,” Obi-Wan said with relief. “Let’s get out of here. Now,” he added urgently, as a security officer began to wave frantically at them. No doubt he assumed they’d forgotten the departure check proceedings.

  Anakin eased the throttle. The graceful ship rose, and he shot away from the camp.

  Obi-Wan let out an audible sigh. “Things aren’t usually that easy.”

  Anakin glanced at the cockpit indicators. “They aren’t this time, either. Apparently by hot-wiring the ship, we skipped an essential step in the procedure.”

  A red light was blinking on the console. Obi-Wan leaned forward. “What’s that?”

  “We should have entered a code on the ground. It’s a system to prevent escapes, I guess.”

  “And what is it?” Obi-Wan asked impatiently.

  “The ship is programmed to self-destruct,” Anakin answered.

  Chapter Eleven

  “I’d guess we have about four seconds,” Anakin said as he increased the ship’s speed, heading toward the surface.

  “You guess?”

  Anakin cut back on the speed, almost throwing Obi-Wan to the floor. He leveled out the ship. “We’d better jump.”

  Anakin’s calm was getting to Obi-Wan. “Excellent notion.” Considering that the ship is about to explode.

  Anakin raised the cockpit dome. They jumped to the top of their seats. Obi-Wan knew he had about two seconds to pick a place to land. Anakin had plotted the course well. They weren’t over rocks, but a gradual slope. Still, landing would be tricky.

  “Jump!” Anakin shouted as the siren began to sound.

  They jumped. The Force pulsed around them. Obi-Wan looked down at the hard ground below. It became less than solid in his mind, an accumulation of particles and pebbles. It would yield to him. He would fall as lightly as a leaf.

  He landed hard for the second time that day. Obi-Wan groaned. The Force was with him, yes, but the ground was still hard. He landed more like a tree trunk than a leaf. He fell onto his shoulder. He felt his tunic rip and a rock scrape his cheek.

  Anakin landed more gracefully, seemingly without effort, and went into a roll to absorb the shock.

  Above them, the ship exploded.

  Now the danger was from the sheets of falling, flaming metal. Obi-Wan and Anakin kept rolling down the slope, gaining speed now. Obi-Wan saw a cluster of boulders ahead and simply rolled right up to it. Anakin did the same. They huddled in the shelter of the largest boulder, watching the metal fall to the surface and burn out.

  Obi-Wan leaned against the boulder. “That was fun.”

  “Sorry, Master. I didn’t realize.”

  “Not your fault. There was no way to know.” Obi-Wan sighed. “Without transport, we’ve got a problem,” he said. “We’re in the middle of a wilderness infested with gundarks.”

  “We’ve got another problem,” Anakin said. He pointed to the sky. A fleet of STAPs and two security transports with mounted laser cannons were headed toward them.

  “No doubt the self-destruct sensor sends a signal back to the camp that an escape is in progress,” Anakin said.

  “No doubt,” Obi-Wan said dryly. He scanned the area for cover. The only good cover lay in the deep craters. “Here’s a question. Would you rather take your chances with a fleet of STAPs or a nest of gundarks?”

  The first laser cannonfire thundered. Obi-Wan and Anakin exchanged a glance, then began to run. They would take their chances in the craters and hope to avoid the gundarks.

  The cannonfire ripped the ground behind them as they ran. The air rolled into them with the shock of the blast. It was hard to stay on their feet as they dashed toward the deeper craters.

  “Not that one!” Obi-Wan shouted as blaster cannonfire thundered past his ears. He recognized the prints of gundarks outside the crater.

  Anakin veered. He was running fast, moving and weaving, but Obi-Wan picked up no communion with him, no Force connection. It was as though he were running with a stranger.

  Anakin had lied to him. He knew that. Something had happened to him in that medical building. Did whatever it was somehow prevent Anakin from telling Obi-Wan about it? Or was it Anakin’s decision to hide something from him?

  I don’t know the answer to that. And that means I don’t trust him. Not completely. Not anymore.

  One of the security transports dived toward him. Dual laser cannons blasted. Obi-Wan jumped, but the impact of the explosion against the rocks threw him further into the air. The next thing he knew he was falling, blasted headlong, deep into the black hole of a crater…and a gundark nest.

  Chapter Twelve

  Obi-Wan landed on his sore shoulder inside the wall of the crater and ricocheted into midair again. He called on the Force to help him. He pictured a nest of gundarks at the end of his fall. He felt time slow down. He was able to pick out a clear landing site below.

  He landed on a smooth stone floor and crashed up against a boulder, slamming his head. Relief coursed through him as well as pain. At least he had stopped in relative safety. There was no way to judge how big the crater was. He was more than a hundred meters into a pit left by an astroid thousands of years ago. He couldn’t see through the black gloom. He could smell the gundarks, however, and hear them. They found the craters to be ideal nesting grounds, safe from other predators, and good bases from which to launch lethal attacks on their prey.

  It was said that the cry of a gundark could freeze a being’s blood. Obi-Wan didn’t know about that, but the sound of them didn’t make him feel very comfortable.

  Gundarks had keen eyesight and good hearing. Their sense of smell was excellent. So far they had not realized an intruder was in their nest, but it was only a matter of time. He would have to use his cable launcher, and it would be a huge risk. The launcher would not reach high enough to get him completely out of danger. The sides of the crater were hundreds of meters high. Climbing out would be a long process, and would bring him into close proximity with the creatures.

  He looked around cautiously. Through the gray gloom he could see now that tucked into the sides of the crater were deep caves. That was the source of the gundarks’ noise. They were nesting
there.

  He peered above. He wondered how Anakin was doing with those security droids. Had he found shelter?

  The roar of gundarks suddenly echoed in the crater. Obi-Wan began to quietly move away from the sound. He knew that if he was discovered, he could not fight the gundarks alone, even with his lightsaber and the Force. There would be too many of them. He would need Anakin.

  He couldn’t risk a glowrod. He felt his way forward cautiously. If he could find some footholds in the wall, he could climb it. Climbing would be slower, but it would attract less attention. He would have to risk the journey.

  A roar and the sound of a gundark rolling over made him freeze. He could smell the creature. Surely the creature could smell him. Obi-Wan didn’t move. He tried not to sweat. The gundark snorted, then rolled over again. Obi-Wan realized it was asleep.

  He moved carefully away. The ground was more uneven here. Several centimeters of fine dust covered some kind of rock shale. It was slippery and the rocks shifted under his weight. When a rock slithered and cracked, he held his breath.

  Nothing. The gundarks roared again, but their roars had covered up the sound of his movement. And the one in the cave to his left was still sleeping.

  Obi-Wan felt the side of the crater at last. He ran his hand along it. It was pockmarked with holes. Good. He should be able to climb it without the launcher.

  He put one foot in a cavity and tested it. Then he cautiously lifted himself up. So far, so good. He climbed up a few more meters.

  He was balanced to take his next step when he felt a soft breath tickle his ear. Now he knew what it meant to have his blood freeze. He felt as though his veins were clogged with ice.

  A baby gundark had snuggled into a deep cavity in the wall. It was sleeping only centimeters from him.

  Just…don’t…wake…it up.…

  He could not have been faced with a worse prospect. It was disaster to fall into a nest of treacherous beasts. It was a catastrophe to blunder into one of their young.

  Holding his breath, Obi-Wan began to ease his way past.

  RRRRAAAAWWWWKKK!

  The roar split the air. The crater shook with the impact of a gundark’s running footsteps. The young gundark awoke. Rrrraaaaawwww!

  Obi-Wan dropped the distance he’d traveled back to the floor. He ran. The gundark let out a scream and leaped up, heading straight to its young to ensure it was safe. Then it leaped down to deal with Obi-Wan.

  The creature wasn’t tall, but the strength of its four arms was immense. A common tactic was to grab prey by the claws of the massive arms that rose from the gundark’s shoulders. Then the creature crushed the captured prey to death with the two slender arms that rose out of the muscled chest. The long, sharp claws could also rip a being to shreds. Of course, a gundark was also capable of simply tearing off the head of its prey with the large teeth that jutted out of its lower jaw. Once its bloodlust had been awakened, rare was the gundark that did not achieve its objective of rendering its victim into pieces of flesh and bone.

  Obi-Wan was completely exposed, and he knew that caves were all around him. He couldn’t hide. He drew his lightsaber even as he backed up but held it by his side, trying to show the creature he did not mean it harm.

  But gundarks were not known to be reasonable.

  The attack was ferocious. The gundark made for him, all four arms reaching, trying to claw him. Huge teeth snapped and saliva poured out. Obi-Wan smelled heat and anger. He was forced to slash at the gundark as it came at him relentlessly, its howl filling the cavity of the crater.

  He heard the thump of footsteps. More gundarks were approaching. Obi-Wan fumbled for his cable launcher. He’d have to risk it. He sent it flying above. It hit something. He tested the line. He activated the launch, but the gundark grabbed him with one claw and threw him back down on the floor. He felt the jolt in every bone. He rolled away as the creature swung down to finish him off. The gundark missed, scoring the rock with deep grooves.

  Four more gundarks thundered into the space, snarling, ready for the kill. Obi-Wan felt his back hit the wall of the crater. Desperately, he looked above. He reached out to the Force even as he sent up a shout he knew had little chance of being heard.

  “Anakin! Anakin, I need you!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  If Anakin had felt that there was a veil between him and his surroundings before, he was now beginning to feel breaks in that veil. There were moments of clarity, brief flashes, in which he knew he was seeing reality. During those moments he felt something deep within him, like a hook lodged in his heart, and he was glad to slip behind the veil again.

  It was odd that he was able to achieve battle-mind, but he had. The movements were so ingrained in him that he leaped and twisted and ran without feeling the effort, much as he did when the Force was with him. He had taken down at least five security droids on STAPs, and maneuvered so that another two fired at each other. He still had three more STAPs to contend with, as well as the Vanqor guards on swoops. He was fighting as well as he ever had.

  When Obi-Wan had been blasted into the crater, Anakin hadn’t had more than a second to react. He assumed that his Master could handle whatever was down there. Obi-Wan could get out by himself.

  Somewhere inside, Anakin knew this was a curious decision for him to make, one that he wouldn’t have made normally. But it seemed logical, too. Obi-Wan was a Jedi, used to getting out of tight spots.

  Besides, Obi-Wan had always told him not to jump into things, to take his time. So why shouldn’t he? His first priority was to take care of the droids and get the disk to Typha-Dor.

  Anakin felt the veil slip again. It was happening more frequently now. He missed his calm. He wanted to be back in the garden. He didn’t want to feel fear, or apprehension, or pain. He wanted to feel serene, as though nothing could touch him. He wanted it so badly.

  Gundarks in the crater suddenly roared. Anakin fended off blaster rifle fire and drew closer to the crater. He thought he heard Obi-Wan calling him. The call came from within him, as though he heard it in his heart.

  Something tugged at him. The hook that was buried so deep that he could barely feel it. He did not want to reach for it. He wanted it to lay buried.

  Obi-Wan needed him.

  But I needed him. And when he came, he asked for the disk. He did not come for me.

  The pain this thought caused him to grab the remains of the veil. He wanted to wrap himself into its brand of unconsciousness.

  I don’t want to feel anymore!

  Anakin leaped up and severed a droid in two that had the misfortune to pilot his STAP too close to the ground. Hunks of smoking metal clattered to the rocks below.

  He realized what was wrong, what the essential conflict within him was. To be a Jedi was to follow his feelings. But if his feelings tortured him, what was he to do with them?

  Grief.

  Guilt.

  Resentment.

  Shame.

  He had felt all of these things. Because of leaving his mother, because of Yaddle, because of Obi-Wan.

  I don’t want to feel!

  He struck out savagely at a STAP that had come in low, its lone droid pilot firing dual blaster rifles. He cut the droid’s head off.

  “Anakin!” He could hear Obi-Wan clearly now, his voice strained and desperate.

  I don’t want to feel!

  The hook in his heart seared him, and he knew its name. It was love.

  The love he felt for his Master was lodged firmly within him. It was a connection that had grown from the first moment Obi-Wan had told him that he would take him and train him.

  He had learned one thing about love: It was besides the point. It didn’t make anything smoother, or better. Most of the time, it just complicated things.

  Why would he want to feel again, when feeling hurt so much?

  Why would he want to remember Shmi with guilt as well as pleasure?

  Why would he want to revisit his torment over the death of Yadd
le?

  Why would he want to take up the burden of caring what Obi-Wan thought or felt about him?

  Because it’s right.

  Anakin groaned aloud. The thing he couldn’t get away from, the certainty within him, the essential truth he had learned through all his training at the Temple, that was what he could see now. He knew what was right.

  He ripped the veil and felt the Force flood in with all its power. He realized that the Zone of Self-Containment had not allowed him to access the Force except at the most basic level, and he hadn’t even known it. Now he felt it grow.

  Along with the Force he felt his emotions again. They came at him in a rush, as if they’d been held back and now were free to overflow. They bombarded him as cruelly as the laser cannons shooting above. He wanted to sink to his knees from the tide washing over him, all the emotion he had suppressed and hoped never to feel again.

  “Anakin!”

  His Master’s cry filled him.

  He stood, drawing the fire of the droids and guards. He began to run. Explosives shattered the rocks behind him. Two droids on STAPs dived, shooting both blaster rifles at him, trying to catch him between them.

  Accessing the Force, he tumbled through the gap between them, allowing the power of the blast to catapult him in the direction of his Master’s voice, straight into the dark pit of the gundark nest.

  Chapter Fourteen

  One gundark had raked Obi-Wan’s back with its claws. Another had thrown him against the wall. His left leg was going numb. He had killed one gundark, mortally wounded another…but would more come? He was weakening. He was losing. He was trapped in the dark with the roaring, ravenous beasts, and he had no doubt he would be torn limb from limb. They knew they had wounded him, and they were circling in for the kill.

  If this was where he would become one with the Force, so be it. Yet he would fight to his last breath to prevent it. He would prefer a less gruesome end than this.