Chapter Text
STAR WARS
Episode I: The Looming Force
Had Abbadon burns. A mysterious CLONE ARMY, led by unknown forces, has laid siege to the planet from orbit, hoping to recover the precious resources buried beneath its crust.
If captured, the planet will be the cornerstone of the clone offensive against the GALACTIC REPUBLIC, defender of democracy and justice in the galaxy for millennia.
While the Galactic Senate debates their response to the situation, Chancellor Bail Organa has taken matters into his own hands. He has sent his most trusted general on a secret mission to stop the bombing of the planet and restore peace to the system . . . .
* * *
A cinder hung in space.
Had Abbadon, formerly a mud-brown sphere whose only distinguishing characteristic was the sheer dullness of its appearance, was covered in a lattice of glowing embers. It shone orange and yellow and crimson, as if lit by a million tiny torches. From orbit, one could almost find it beautiful.
The beauty diminished once one realized what each of those million points of light represented.
Every one of those flickers was the result of a single turbolaser blast ripping through space and into the planet’s crust. Emerald masses of superheated plasma hurled themselves toward the planet’s surface every hour on the hour, boiling the air around them, destroying life down to the microbial level, and setting fires that lasted long after their source had dissipated. The intensity of those fires had begun to diminish, of course—only so much organic matter could be consumed before they burned themselves out. But it hadn’t affected the light show one bit. As soon as ember decayed to ash, the warships rained hell down anew.
Right now, though, those ships were simply hanging in the void, waiting for their signal to renew the spider’s web of flame. There were five of them, great lumbering beasts of metal swarmed by starfighter-gnats. Like the Had Abbadon of old, the only thing remarkable about them was their ugliness—each was essentially a series of layered boxes, distinguishable from its fellows only by how big it was.
The prisoner was headed toward the biggest.
After he’d been slapped in binders, he’d expected his captors would throw him in the cargo hold for the duration of their voyage, but they had instead seated him to the rear of the cockpit and let him watch through the viewport. This, he supposed, was for one of two reasons. Either they thought the sight of an entire planet wreathed in flame would overwhelm any sane being’s morale, rendering him an easy source of intel; or they knew he would be dead within the hour and thus posed no secrecy risk at all.
He stroked his beard, weighed both options, and decided that the unpleasantness of either one was enough that it didn’t really matter which was true.
The shuttle veered left, its viewport filling with the conglomeration of hard edges and right angles that was the flagship Helios . The prisoner idly tried to remember how many guns bristled from its towers, decided that wasn’t really helping matters, and gave up.
From the comm came crackling, then a voice: “ Shuttle Mithran , confirm manifest and passcode. ”
An identical voice replied from within the cockpit. “Manifest consists of one prisoner, intercepted in-system. Password Chloroplast.” The prisoner repressed a small shiver of distaste; he didn’t think he’d ever get used to the sensation of the same person speaking through more than one mouth.
A few moments of silence passed. The prisoner shifted back and forth, cleared his throat. “Oh dear,” he tutted in a clipped Core accent. “Perhaps they’ve changed the passcode.”
Shuttle pilot and co-pilot turned to present him with matching sneers of contempt. Literally—not only did each man’s lip twist the same way, each man had the same lip. The same thin nose; the same high cheekbones; the same near-translucent skin. The same eyes, so pale blue they were almost ice-white.
At the same time, the comm crackled again. “ Shuttle Mithran , you are clear to land. An honor guard is waiting to escort the prisoner to the bridge. ”
“Ah,” said the prisoner, his voice carrying a note of cheer entirely at odds with the present situation. “Damn.”
The pilot sneered again, and laid a hand on the pistol at his waist. “Shut up.”
Nodding pleasantly, the prisoner did just that. Leaning back in his seat, he considered the eyesore of a war machine growing ever larger in the viewport.
The object left much to be desired, but, thought the prisoner, one really couldn’t argue with the view.
* * *
It had been a while since Captain Ennam had found himself feeling optimistic. When you’d spent weeks watching the biggest guns on your ship throw everything they could at a planet’s surface, only for the stubborn piece of rock to refuse to blow up properly—well, it had a way of making a man feel powerless. Especially when Admiral Valis kept sending updates letting him know how displeased the warlord was at the apparent lack of progress.
But when he’d received a message that said his ships had intercepted a spy entering the system, and then a follow-up that said the spy had been taken alive, and then a follow-up that clarified that the spy was in fact none other than Bail Organa’s pet general . . . that had lent a certain spring to his step as he marched toward the bridge.
“Time to next salvo?” he asked the clone to his immediate right, scraping a mote of dust from his uniform’s sleeve rather than looking his subordinate in the eye. He knew it was silly, but he found he could never hold a wetwork’s gaze for very long, and preferred looking indifferent (which he was) to looking weak.
“Fifteen minutes, sir,” came the reply.
“Ah, excellent! Perhaps the general will be able to witness the fireworks himself before he’s taken to a cell.”
Very good, sir, he thought, or We’ll put on a show for him, sir. But no—no acknowledgment of his jab was forthcoming. He brushed at his sleeve just a bit more savagely. Having underlings who followed your every order without question was fine in theory, but he did wish the cloners had found a way to make their crop a bit more . . . ingratiating.
Sighing, Ennam turned to the viewport to take in the planet. The gossamer network of fires was certainly pretty, even if it was serving next to no use. Exceptionally thick mineral composition, the fleet had been briefed, can withstand heavy bombardment. At the time, he’d assumed this meant the Helios would have to drain its batteries slightly lower than normal before burrowing into the caverns and their bounty. Instead, it meant . . . this.
Ah well. He consciously forced a smirk back onto his face. With the prisoner they’d just captured, he wouldn’t be surprised if the clones were granted permission by the Republic to simply waltz into the caverns on foot.
“Sir, prisoner and honor guard approaching the bridge,” said another crew member.
Ennam cast his gaze around the room—floors gleaming, durasteel walls looming, faceless man after faceless man pecking away at his console. Utilitarian. Impersonal. Sterile. All in all, an excellent conductor for the kind of mental state he was looking to induce. He let the smirk grow slightly larger. “Well, let them in,” he said, and faced the double blast doors.
With a swish of processed air, they parted. In walked the general.
So this was him, Ennam thought, nodding to the half-dozen armored troops who flanked his prize. General Kenobi. A military commander whose tactical brilliance was merely alleged because things somehow never seemed to get that far when he was involved. Those he spoke to simply laid down their arms, as if the power of his voice had convinced them that maybe it was best if everyone just . . . got along.
If there was supposed to be something overwhelming about his aura, Ennam didn’t see it. Average height, no more imposing a figure than usual; a blandly handsome face covered by a neatly cropped beard, blue-gray eyes with a hint of a twinkle to them. Then again, he reminded himself, how many people have ever seen him bound and captured?
He strode forward. “Well, well. Kenobi the Negotiator. I must say, I was almost disappointed when I heard you’d been intercepted so easily. Clearly the days of Alderaan’s military sparing no expense are behind them.”
The general simply shrugged. “Well, what can I say? Desperate times and all that.” What could have been a smirk much smaller than Ennam’s played across his face. “Lucky for you that we’ve been letting our reconnaissance craft go.”
The captain’s smile slipped just a millimeter or so. Not that he wanted the clones’ respect—they served just fine without it—but he was not in the mood to sling witticisms with a prisoner in front of his men. “Has he been searched?” he asked the foremost of the honor guard.
The helmeted head tilted upward. “Nothing was found on his person.”
“Excellent.” He moved closer, noting with a certain amount of satisfaction that he was slightly taller than Kenobi. “What was Chancellor Organa thinking, Kenobi? Sending his most prized general off on a mission he could have sent a droid to do. It seems breathtakingly foolhardy. Though,” he conceded, “not out of character.”
If this barb had penetrated the general’s uniform, he gave no indication of it. “The Chancellor’s reasons are his own. Mine is to follow orders.”
“Funny you should mention that. I happen to have some for you.” Ennam threw a glance back at the viewport and spread his arms wide to encompass the sight before them. “Had Abbadon is already a flaming ruin, one the Republic clearly has no interest in protecting. The locals are dead or driven underground. And now, I have Bail Organa’s pet general in my grasp.” He turned his back to Kenobi and strode toward the conn. “I am about to order my men to send a transmission wideband to all Republic channels. You will speak to the Republic and tell them that if the Chancellor wants his man back, he is to cede control of Had Abbadon to Confederate forces. All espionage will cease, and we will be given free reign to export the planet’s raw materials as we see fit.” He snapped his fingers at the wetwork manning comms. “If you refuse, you will be executed, the Republic will lose one of its chief military assets, and we will seize the planet regardless. Do I make myself clear?”
When the general spoke, he somehow didn’t seem to be taking any of this seriously. “What was it you called me before? The Negotiator? Very well, then. Let’s talk terms.”
Ennam whirled around. The smirk on Kenobi’s face had grown larger.
The captain resisted the urge to move toward the prisoner and slap it off. He increased the wattage of his own smile, though it was an effort. “I don’t think you’re in a position to make demands.”
Kenobi smiled back, and stared, and suddenly Ennam thought he could maybe understand the hyperbole that had grown around the man’s name. His eyes were a darker blue now, for some reason, and seemed . . . deep , like twin pools. “You will cease orbital bombardment immediately and order your troops to stand down. All Confederate forces will withdraw from the system at once without firing another shot. I will be turned over to the nearest Republic military vessel.” The words had an echo, as if the general were speaking from within some cave. “In exchange, you get to keep this ship.”
There was dizziness, and tiredness, and a feeling of inexplicable, overwhelming lightness, and for a moment it seemed to Ennam that this was the most perfectly reasonable thing in the world, that the general had arrived at the solution that was best for everyone. He opened his mouth to thank the prisoner, extended his arm to shake.
And then, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a wetwork staring at him. Not speaking, not moving, just watching his commanding officer being made a fool of with quiet dispassion. And with revulsion, and fear, and rage, Ennam snapped out of it.
“Take him to a holding cell,” he told the guards, voice shaking just a little. “For enhanced interrogation.”
The armored units turned as one, hands clutching rifles to their chests. The bridge doors slid open.
Kenobi’s hand—twitched. The faintest bit.
Without warning, the console nearest Ennam shattered.
Sparks shrieked through the air, and a sudden burst of overwhelming heat hit the left side of his body. The captain wrenched himself away, slapping at his uniform in a panic in case one of the stray sparks set a fire. The clone who’d manned the console displayed no visible emotion, but shoved himself backward a fair degree faster than was normal. Absurdly, the part of Ennam’s mind that was still functioning at a rational level reflected that it was the comms console that had just gone up in smoke.
Everyone on the bridge stared at the prisoner, boxed in by armor and dwarfed by captors yet somehow, terribly, in control.
He inclined his head. “Would you care to reconsider?”
Ennam raised a gloved, trembling hand and pointed at the rifle-bearing guards. “ Take him! ”
Safeties released. Priming levers clicked. Kenobi raised an eyebrow.
The bridge exploded.
Sparks and smoke flew from every electronic panel in the room, blinding everyone within range just as the guards fired. Ennam hurled himself back, and through the cloud of smoke watched six armored men topple to the deck, dead. He briefly considered the extremely horrible luck that had to be involved in multiple rifles backfiring at the same time—he’d really have to speak to the ship’s armorer about this—and barked, in a tone the same detached part of his brain noticed was about an octave too shrill, “ Where is he? ”
No one answered. Ennam glanced to his right and flinched; the clone on that side had a piece of shrapnel protruding from his chest, his head slumped against the remains of his console.
The captain raised his voice. “I order you to stand down—”
Hmmmmmmmm
A cool blue glow refracted through the smoke. Every few seconds, the glow shifted—almost as if its source was moving. And then, as the haze started to dissipate, the blue concentrated itself into a single cylinder.
Finally, one of the clone officers spoke. “He’s got a lightsaber— ”
Before he could finish, Ennam was moving, ripping the sidearm from his holster and firing in the general direction of the beam of light.
The beam swatted left, then right, and two officers screamed.
And then Kenobi began to move.
He emerged from the haze, one foot calmly in front of the other, blade held vertically across his chest. His face was just as calm as before, but where his eyes had previously held something like amusement the captain now saw nothing but the promise of swift, final justice.
Ennam growled, adjusted his aim, and fired again. Moments after he pulled the trigger, a searing pain slammed into his shoulder. He crumpled to the floor, grunting in agony, wondering why his uniform seemed to be steaming. It absently occurred to him that those rifles hadn’t backfired after all.
Approximately thirty seconds after the kill order had been given, Obi-Wan Kenobi was still on his feet. At least ten men were down. And his wrists were still bound.
With as much strength as he could muster, Ennam raised his unscathed arm, pointed at the general, and screamed: “ Attack! ”
Blaster bolts flurried outward from across the bridge—the clones had evidently been preparing, and Ennam found a corner of his mind annoyed that they hadn’t thought to act before receiving a direct order. Kenobi danced from foot to foot, snapping his saber back and forth with his cuffed hands, deflecting shots or sidestepping them altogether. Officers scrambled from their stations to swarm the general, armored limbs held up to counter the saber, but the fact that he was outnumbered seemed not to matter. Every time a clone got near him, the Jedi simply swept to one side and flicked his saber outward. Sparks flew, and the wetwork was in pieces on the deck.
His first three attackers dispatched, Kenobi turned and spotted an officer across the bridge, struggling to free himself from a mess of tangled wires emerging from his destroyed console. The general hurled his lightsaber across the bridge, ducking another shot simultaneously.
The saber slashed across the entangled officer’s chest, then somehow looped back toward Kenobi. As it flew over his head, the general held up his hands. Sparks flew, and the binders that had held his wrists shut clattered to the floor. He caught hold of the hilt just before it sailed out of reach, swinging it around into the leg of an attacking clone officer in one smooth motion.
Ennam struggled to push himself up on his elbows, staring in horror. Unless he was much mistaken, his entire bridge crew had just been wiped out. He himself had been wounded in action. His flagship’s bridge was little more than a smoking wreck.
And Obi-Wan Kenobi was a Jedi.
The former prisoner sighed, wiped his brow with one sleeve, and retracted his saber’s sky-blue blade. Looking down at Ennam, he managed a reassuring smile. “Now, about those negotiations.”
The captain managed a low whine.
Kenobi shook his head. “Come now, captain, be reasonable. You’ll be returned to the Confederacy after we get you patched up, good as new. There may be a demotion in your future, but, if you’ll excuse the assessment”—he extended his hand—”you seem to have made a second-rate officer.”
Ennam considered a number of things he could say, prior to spitting in the general’s face and collapsing in death like a hero. But then it occurred to him that the man before him would somehow manage to ruin things by having the last word.
Trembling slightly, he reached out to grasp the proffered hand. “I surre—”
And then the scream.
General and captain alike shot their attention to the same target—the clone officer Kenobi had cut down from afar, still tangled by his console and clearly moments from death. But he had managed to free one hand, and that hand held a blaster.
Just before the shot slammed into his forehead, Ennam had time for one last thought. Bloody wetwork.
* * *
REPUBLIC ARCHIVES: HAD ABBADON
The world of Had Abbadon is the fourth planet of the Had system, which lies near the outer edge of the Mid Rim. It was first settled over 400 years ago when explorers found an underground lake of fluid extremely similar to bacta. A “gold rush” to exploit the fluid fizzled out as quickly as it began when it was discovered the fluid was not nearly as effective as bacta at healing injuries. Now, the fluid is mostly used by local doctors as a cheap bacta alternative for treating minor wounds.
Though the surface of Had Abbadon is technically habitable, its harsh conditions ensure only the poorest of residents live on the many small communities dotting the landscape. The upper layer of the atmosphere is known to wreak havoc on communications, and anyone wishing to send a message offworld must pay to use one of several signal-boosting towers erected on the surface by the well-to-do communities of Had Abbadon’s cave system.
Beneath Had Abbadon’s crust, a network of caves and dried up riverbeds snake together to form a massive maze. This is where the majority of Had Abbadon’s population lives, although cost of living is much higher in the underground settlements. Over the centuries, communities have formed in certain sections of the cave network, only to later abandon their settlements and move on. These “ghost caverns” are the subject of many local legends, and there are a handful of HoloNet sites dedicated to the mythology of the creatures that supposedly lurk in the oldest tunnels.