Chapter Text
If there was one thing that an ARF never wanted to see, it would be an unknown light ahead. Boil held up a hand and both he and Waxer slowed to a stop, killing the engines on their speeder bikes. It was the merest glimmer, but in the stillness of the forest, the noise caused by their bikes would alert any sentient from klicks off.
“Boil, Boil, it’s a fire.” Waxer sounded more alarmed than he had any right to be for a single campfire, and Boil glanced over at him in concern before pulling out his own binos and taking a look.
Waxer was right. It was a fire. Not the small and tame campfire that Boil had assumed, heralding sentients, perhaps the inhabitants of the planet, whom they had not seen once despite their recorded existence. No. This was a conflagration. An inferno.
Now that they had stopped Boil could hear the crackling rush of the forest fire from where they were, even as he glassed the woods, looking for the far edge of it. It was headed their way.
“That’s not good.” Boil said, and Waxer laughed, somewhat hysterically.
“You can say that again. We’re supposed to be moving troops this way!”
They stood and stared for a minute longer. Just watching, as the fire ate its way quickly towards them.
Then something struck Boil.
“If this fire is so big, why didn’t we see it before? Why didn’t anyone see it from orbit?”
“Huh. I mean, I suppose we might have missed it?” Waxer suggested. “Or it just started?”
“It goes for klicks in either direction.” Boil countered. “And we’re looking from space.”
“Maybe someone in orbit just didn’t tell us? We are on a comms blackout.”
They looked back at the fire.
“Does it seem to you like the fire hasn’t moved since you last looked at it?” Waxer asked, and Boil nodded. He and Waxer exchanged glances. Something definitely wasn’t right here.
They set up a probe, and directed it to only move once the heat rose, so that they could get some shots from inside the fire as well as of its advance. The notion that it wasn’t a real fire was such a foolish one that neither of them wanted to stake anything on it, but running back the video on both of their HUDs found that it truly did seem like it had just blinked into existence.
Bringing the General out on a scouting run seemed like a dangerous prospect, but when they had returned to camp, their orders for comms silence overriding any concern about a false fire, the General had sent a message up to their ships, and no one had been able to see the fire, or find anything that could be causing it on scans. The Seppies were still entrenched where they had left them, and there hadn’t been any activity in that sector. So bring the General with them they did.
When they returned to the spot where they had left the probe, nothing had changed. The fire hadn’t advanced, there was no further damage. It was as if it had stopped the moment that the two of them had stopped looking at it.
“It truly did just blink into existence.” Kenobi said, shaking his head in amazement as he slid off of the back of Waxer’s speederbike to check on the probe. “This is fascinating. A defence by the people of this planet perhaps?”
“Maybe sir.” Waxer agreed. “But wouldn’t the scans have picked something up if there was people hiding in there?”
“Not necessarily.” Kenobi said. He left the probe where it was and hoped back onto Waxer’s bike. “They may be doing something to scramble our scans. I would like to get closer please.”
They sped back up again, Boil falling in behind Waxer and the General. Someone needed to watch their back, though he figured that an ambush was unlikely. If Boil was the owner of the false flames, he wouldn’t expect anyone to go charging into them unless they were truly desperate. Or a Jedi with more curiosity than what was good for him.
Kenobi called for a halt when they were close enough to the flames that they should have been feeling the heat. But there was nothing. Boil didn’t feel any warmer than he had, and his HUD wasn’t pinging an increase in heat either. The setting didn’t always work, as they were frequently flung between planets of varying baseline heats, so Boil fiddled with it for a moment, but it seemed like it was working just fine.
The General hummed. He slipped off of the bike again, and picked up a stick. Grateful that they wouldn’t have to explain to the Commander that they had let Kenobi stick his hand into a fire without any testing, Boil watched as Kenobi poked at the flames with the branch.
Again, nothing happened.
“They aren’t even following the wind right.” Waxer said as they watched Kenobi poke around. “Look.”
Boil followed where he was pointing, pulling up the air currents on his HUD. Fires often make their own currents he knew, but the lack of heat would have curtailed that. And the fire was moving against the wind.
When Boil glanced back at Kenobi he was, in fact, sticking his hand experimentally in the fire.
“Sir!” He called, swallowing a curse.
“I’m fine Boil.” Kenobi grinned at them. “It isn’t hot.”
“That doesn’t mean it couldn’t hurt you.” Boil said, hopping off of his bike to pull Kenobi back and look over his hands. “Is it holos? Or something else?”
“Oh, I don’t know yet. But it is fine Boil.” His hands weren’t blistered, or turning strange colours, and he seemed fine, but Boil still scowled at him under his bucket. “It’s being generated elsewhere, whatever it is. Shall we go and look for the source?”
“Just be careful.” Boil grumbled, and Kenobi nodded.
“I promise I am not trying to hurt myself.” The two of them returned to their respective bikes, Waxer still considering the flames from where he had parked.
They advanced cautiously into the fire, and even where they accidentally brushed against the flames, no harm came to them.
At a certain point it became clear to Boil that Kenobi was leading them somewhere, that he had caught something in the Force and was intent upon it.
Finally, they came to a clearing, the fire around them blue with a heat that it wasn’t giving off. There was a figure seated in the middle, legs crossed, and they looked up as the bikes came to a stop.
“Well,” they said with a smile, “isn’t this a lovely surprise?”