Galactic Gladiators

by Lilith Sedai

PART IV - The Chase

Obi-Wan stood amidst his guards, waiting to enter the Arena. The sun still had not emerged from behind a high peak, but when it breached the horizon the opening ceremonies would begin, and then the tunnel nearest him would open onto a glacier field, and he could run.

He ran his fingertips along his belly, where a small, fresh scar marked the removal of the Force inhibitor. He still couldn't feel the Force when he reached out; the drugs would take time to dissipate. He thought he could just feel it, faintly, as if he were squinting to see through a smoked-glass lens.

He bounced on his heels, looking around the stands, where patrons had begun to pour in, the cold-hardiest races first. Rays of sunlight streamed from behind the peak, dazzling the atmosphere, which was full of blowing ice-particles.

He had requested and obtained cold-weather gear: an insulated thermal suit and socks lay beneath his cobbled-together false Jedi robes, and he wore gloves, a fur-lined hat, and a pair of goggles so he wouldn't go snow-blind. They had refused him more; he had no weapons, no food or water, and no map.

He occupied his time watching the crowd. He had already spent most of the night compulsively reviewing his cold-weather survival skills: how to avoid crevasses, avalanches, hypothermia.

He reached for the Force again, and it eluded him, slipping through his fingers like water-- but he had touched it, this time. It felt better than good. He let his eyes close as he tried to find his center, growing more aware of the currents of half-unseen power sliding gently around him. He would need it, to survive the ice fields. Without commanding the Force, he could either be careful of his footing or he could run fast-- not both.

He missed the comforting weight of his lightsaber at his belt nearly as much as he missed his master's presence, but neither of those things could be helped.

A sliver of icy white fire erupted from behind the peak: local dawn. A guard prodded Obi-Wan and he stepped forward, calm. From the opposite end of the arena, a line of beings began to stream out as well. They alternated, one going left and the next moving right, fanning out and taking up a crescent position against the arena walls: arranhar, the big cats moving like flowing water, each with a cloaked and helmeted handler at its side. There were thirty-one of them in all, and the last one was enormous-- half again as big as its nearest rival. Instead of taking up a position in the arc, it moved straight forward toward Obi-Wan, stopping between the two horns of the crescent. It clawed the stone impatiently with one forepaw, a terrible screeching wail, and snarled. Its handler put one hand on its shoulder and it subsided, its narrow eyes fixed on Obi-Wan. The handler turned and eyed him as well; he could make out no part of a face inside the helmet, but even without touching the Force, he could feel the man's sharp eyes studying him.

He swallowed hard in spite of himself, confronted at last by the monster of his nightmares, and lifted his chin, defiant. Holodroids flitted and skimmed everywhere, filming every angle, buzzing like wasps around his ears as they circled him.

Other fighters stepped out of the tunnels, bearing banners; they formed two rough lines, a lane leading toward Obi-Wan's escape tunnel. The cloth of the flags snapped and whipped in the bitter wind, the sun lighting them up in a brilliant blaze of colors. Obi-Wan stood very still, conserving his energy, and listened to the roar of the crowd.

A fanfare blew, tinny and off-key in the biting air, and an announcer's voice boomed, welcoming the honored audience to the chase, introducing Obi-Wan and pointing out the arranhar. He invited patrons to visit the wagering windows and enjoy the show, and promised it would be broadcast in the center of the ring, a hologram large enough for everyone in the bowl to see.

Obi-Wan flexed his muscles, performing a set of isometrics to keep himself limber and warm. The steady regard of the cats and their keepers was making him nervous, much more so than the seething audience. He kept very still, giving them nothing, no sense of his fear or his worries.

The announcer's spiel was winding down, so Obi-Wan began to prepare himself for flight, cautiously drawing more air into his lungs, working to elevate his heart rate and prepare his systems for exertion. The Force was slightly stronger now, but elusive. Something tickled at him, but he could not quantify it, the impression floating just out of reach each time he extended his mind.

And then came the sound he had been waiting for: a loud crack, an explosion and a puff of smoke, signaled the start of the chase. He took wing, feet barely touching the ground as he raced down the short length of tunnel and out onto the shadowed expanse of an ice field. There were footprints everywhere, which meant a lesser chance of crevasses, at least for the moment. Obi-Wan struck out for the horizon, keeping the sun behind him-- he could just make out the glint of buildings in the distance, his ultimate destination.

The arena receded behind him, noise fading into the wide, bright sky, and soon all he could hear was the rumbling of transport engines and then, the white, windy silence of the mountains around him. Now there were no prints, and he had to go carefully, longing for a stick to test the ground. His internal clock was counting, and he knew it would not be long before the cats pursued him down the tunnel. Their sense of smell would be acute, and if nothing else, they would see the damned holodroids following him, skimming about like ugly black bats, even if he went to ground.

Obi-Wan reached for the Force, and it was there. He drew it carefully, shivering as it filled him, speeding his steps. Moving this fast, he might miss any crevasses, and it would guide his steps, leading him around dangers. It still felt tenuous, weak and pale, but it was better than water in a desert.

A ribbon of clear ice lay along his course, pure crystal blue, and he moved without thinking, nearing it. It dived into a crack not far ahead, and the Force whispered to him, very softly, but he heard and obeyed.

He leaped and slid down the ribbon into the ground. It took him down a long waterfall, jostling and bumping him mercilessly, but the angle was not steep, and when it spilled into a basin at the bottom of the drop, he was able to bounce away from the ice-crusted pool and land on the bank. There was less snow here, and no wind; plenty of diffuse light came into the cavern from the gaps of crevasses far above.

It would be hard for the beasts to get down here; Obi-Wan's chances depended on seizing small delays and advantages. Ignoring the holodroids, he ran along a ledge, keeping his feet out of the channel of the water, glad that it was still cold enough that the snowmelt was running low. The carved channel would be nearly full at midsummer, but for now there was room enough to run without wetting his feet, and that was urgently important.

They would be behind him, now. Inexorable and patient-- at least at this phase of the chase. He was canny enough to know they wouldn't catch him right away; they needed footage, and killing him two or three hours after the event began wouldn't sell any advertising. This was all about the show. He could guess at what the arena audience was seeing-- artistic shots of his grace and footwork, intercut steadily with shots of the arranhar pursuing him, finding his prints in the snow, examining the crevasse where he had left the surface. He could clearly picture the patient and inexorable descent of the pursuit.

He drew near a bright slit of light, and realized his subterranean river was vanishing under a glacier. Stepping out into the light, he hesitated, pulling his goggles up over his eyes. The sun was well up now, and the white snow shone like the white arc of a welding torch.

He would need water, at some point, but he hoped to be out of the snowfields before he had to drink. Melting ice to drink would drain him of much-needed body heat.

His Force-sense was no stronger than it had been; in fact, it had dimmed as a headache began to flare between Obi-Wan's temples. He squinted gingerly-- he was experiencing withdrawal symptoms, perhaps; normally he wasn't prone to headaches, but his body would be feeling the lack of its usual drug cocktail.

There were no trees here, but wherever sentients went, they left debris-- and a snarl of wires and trash had accumulated next to the lip of the hole where the channel ran under the glacier. He dug through it, tossing aside food wrappers, cups, and junk-- and found what he could hardly have dared to hope for: a metal reinforcing spar about as long as he was tall, thin enough to fit comfortably in his palm and light enough to carry.

It would make an excellent walking stick and spear. It might have even been left deliberately for him to find.

Obi-Wan firmed his jaw and set out across the tumbled surface of the glacier, picking his way over razor-sharp ridges of ice, carved in knife-fingers by the droning winds. Slow and steady, he ignored the increasing spike of the headache and the way his fingers wanted to tremble. The Force eluded him again, driven out of reach by the discomfort, leaving him imprisoned on an endless white plain, where no matter how he struggled and scrambled, he never seemed to get any closer to the far side.

He looked back once and spotted a glint of metal on a high cliff roughly above the place where he had found his spear. A glint, and a dark figure-- a handler and a beast, watching him. There was nothing he could do about the pursuit, so he turned his back on them and pressed onward.

Qui-Gon lowered his electro-binoculars reluctantly, gazing down the sheer face of the granite cliff to the glacier below. He couldn't take this slope with the speeder bike; no land-bound craft could, and Maj'lis couldn't manage it either. They would have to go around. His pada-- Obi-Wan was clever, maybe too clever for his own good. If he could catch up and get Obi-Wan on the speeder bike, they could make a run for it to the Delta Six, cram into the cockpit together, evade whatever aerial pursuit Dramacore could throw together, and endure the cramped quarters for as long as it took to get to a safe world. But Obi-Wan was not an easy quarry.

And where the hell were Misi and Walek? He would give a great deal to know.

Qui-Gon clicked his tongue for the arranha and threw a leg over the body of the bike, settling into the saddle and sweeping the machine about in a tight half-circle, doubling back to look for a way down. The other handlers waited near the edge of the ice shelf, and they gunned their engines to follow him.

Majnun brought his bike up close. "Visual?"

"Confirmed," Qui-Gon responded shortly. "He's going on much as we anticipated. He should make the edge of the glacial shelf by nightfall."

"There's another cache there, and a Jedi ought to know enough to make a snow-cave-- if he has the sense to stop when the temperature falls."

Qui-Gon devoutly hoped he did. Temperatures on the mountains could fall to dangerous levels: a man could spit and it would crack and freeze solid before it ever struck the ground. Any exposed skin would blister and turn black, and trying to breathe the frigid air might cause a lung hemorrhage.

Obi-Wan was flagging badly by the time the sun crossed overhead and began to descend in front of him; he had lost all sense of the Force, and dragged himself along carefully, stabbing with his spear and then feeling the ground ahead with his boot before stepping on the snow. Twice, seemingly solid drifts had collapsed into a void just before he committed his weight to them; it was only luck that had kept him from falling.

His throat was dry and his lungs burned with every piercing breath, but the harsh glacial shelf was nearly behind him now. He could see the gray teeth of a stone ridge thrust through the snow, channeling the glacier down the valley, and he had to force himself not to quicken his pace for fear that he would miss a crevasse and fall.

Finally the last knife-sharp teeth of the glacier were behind him, and he stumbled into the shade of the ridge, blinking at the sudden relative dimness. Something waved in the wind in front of him, and after a few moments he realized it was the long fur of a pelt-- something had died here, died and frozen and had not yet been found by predators.

Meat. He had nothing to cut the frozen carcass with, and nothing to burn for a fire, not so far above the tree line, but there were sharp-edged rocks in the ridge, and maybe one of them would serve as a crude chopping tool.

He hadn't seen the arranhar since mid-morning, when the cliff halted them, but he knew they had been making the best of the day. With their speeder bikes and superior knowledge of the terrain, the handlers could easily get in front of him and herd him along exactly as they liked.

Obi-Wan picked a likely stone and returned to the carcass, choosing a haunch and setting to work. The dull crunching of the stone made his chilled fingers ache, and rattled the headache in his skull. He worried he wasn't thinking clearly, and took care to keep the fingers of his free hand well away from the area where he was chopping. His coordination was off, and he didn't want to amputate a finger, or worse.

Finally he loosened the haunch and dragged it off the carcass. A wide swath of the beast's thick fur pulled away with it, and he lifted the fur and the meat, looking up to the sky. He had maybe half an hour of daylight left, maybe less. The wind was already slicing through his clothing as if he had nothing on; it was time to build a shelter. The ever-present holodroids clicked and buzzed overhead, recording happily; bitterly, he hoped they were satisfied with his performance.

Without tools or a shelter tent, he would have to make do with a snow-cave.

Once again taking up his stone chopper, Obi-Wan began to dig into the face of a compressed drift, packing down snow, working to dig a tunnel, and then to shovel out an area large enough to lie down in. The snow was ideal, heavy and compressed; it did not collapse as he worked, and eventually he constructed a nest large enough to lie down in.

Scraping along the floor to even it, he realized he had struck dirt, and after a moment, understood that it was not dirt at all, but dung, well-dried from the bitter cold. He could burn it, if he could muster enough concentration to find the Force and create a spark.

Entirely too convenient, the drift and the carcass and the dung. They smacked of outside interference-- Dramacore's way of ensuring the chase would make it into a second day. But Obi-Wan was too exhausted and cold to reject the gift.

He drilled a few carefully-placed ventilation holes with his metal pole, then crawled into the shelter with the meat and sat down on top of the bloody pelt. He gathered the dung into a heap and closed his eyes, reaching for the Force. A holodroid extruded a fiber-optic camera through one of his ventilation holes to peer at him, and he swatted it with his metal pole till it withdrew, then tried again.

This time he was left to his peace, and he relaxed himself by slow degrees, his chilled and overstressed muscles quivering. He needed potassium; he would probably have leg cramps in the night without it, but there was no source. There was only the meat, if he could manage to thaw it. Crude protein would keep his brain functioning well, and the fat would give him energy and help him stay warm. It looked to have been a herd beast, nothing that should have been this high in the mountains-- just more evidence that it had been left for him to find.

The Force slid through his fingers, slippery as oil, elusive but there. He stilled his mind, focusing on the soft clamor of the night winds and the settling creaks of the glacier. Deeper, deeper-- a spark. Sunflare warmth, answering his call. The scent of smoke, a fragile glow.

He opened his eyes and carefully husbanded the tiny flame, blowing very softly, feeding it with small fibrous grasses and roots he pulled out of the dung. The dung held plenty of fibrous matter, but did not burn quickly; it caught and smoldered like charred coals, but it made heat. He propped the meat over the small fire, trying to arrange it so that no blood would drip on the fire and extinguish it. Then he lay down, wrapping himself in the long-haired, filthy pelt, and shut his eyes. Some of the meat should be thawed by morning, assuming the fire was not enough to melt the walls of his flimsy shelter. He believed his ventilation would be adequate to keep carbon monoxide from accumulating in his tiny cave and killing him.

Almost immediately, he fell asleep.

He woke stiff and chilled, his leg muscles knotted and cramped, and had to rub them with his hands before he could struggle upright. The fire was out, fuel exhausted, but the meat had softened. He lifted the haunch, gnawing at it, forcing his mind not to dwell on the slimy, chill texture of the uncooked flesh and the metallic taste of the blood as he made himself nourish his body. He thought instead of sitting at the pleasant table in the quarters he shared with his master at the Temple, warm and clean from washing, eating hot palu with Qui-Gon, no worse worries in his mind than whether he might have been overheard touching himself in the shower, and the anticipation of a dull afternoon spent on a Serenity Seeking. It seemed an impossible heaven to him now, a dream rather than a memory.

He could have it again. He would have it again, and he would not chafe at the limitations; he would take anything of his master that he could get, and be grateful. He would count an ocean of sand for it, and call himself lucky.

Grey light filtered into his snow cave, and razor-sharp air from the ventilation holes. Obi-Wan dragged his fingers through the ashes of the fire and smeared black ash on his cheeks and nose to help his goggles cut the sun-glare, then carefully prodded at the snow that blocked up the exit tube and shoved through it, emerging into the bitter-crisp mountain dawn. Holodroids immediately converged on him, zoom lenses humming and clicking.

He forced himself to breathe shallowly and slowly, mindful of his delicate lungs, as he gathered his gear and prepared to set out. His legs were shaky and the headache was back, much worse; his stomach roiled and wanted to sick up the meat he'd eaten, but he forced himself to keep it down, his throat burning with bile. The tremors in his hands were worse also. Definitely withdrawal symptoms; his mind and skin itched, dissatisfied and demanding, and he had nothing to give them.

Obi-Wan tore a strip from the hide and bound his pole to his wrist-- it would not do to drop it and lose it down a crevasse, and he no longer trusted his shaking hands. He knotted the hide around his shoulders and set out, roughly paralleling the course of the glacier, looking for a shortcut down into the next valley. It was still a long way down to the treeline, but at least now he could see individual trees dotting the skirts of the snowfield, then blending into thick clusters of evergreen.

He had walked for nearly two hours when disaster struck; his path blocked by a huge ice-crusted boulder, he ventured out onto the glacier, and despite all his care, the snow gave way beneath him.

He tumbled downward, choking back a cry, and his pole lodged on either side of the crevasse, flexing dangerously beneath his weight.

His eyes flew up to the narrow strip of beast hide, the only thing keeping him from falling into the black, sucking darkness below his feet. Uncured, untanned, it stretched even as he looked up, and he bit his lip, swinging abruptly, his left hand latching onto the pole even as the strip of hide pulled free of his knot and his right hand swung loose, his body lurching. The pole shifted, sliding down another foot before it wedged again, bowing deeply under weight it had never been designed to take.

Obi-Wan struggled to center himself; he would need the Force to escape, but it eluded him. Too much panic, too many drugs-- his mind was a raddled parody of calm, shooting itself panicked, inaccurate messages about vectors and depths and slippage and tensile weight tolerances.

A tremor wracked him, and his left hand began to slip. The holodroids zipped and swarmed, capturing his imminent demise from every possible angle, and he cursed, a hiss of breath through cracked lips. Right hand, up, grasp pole. Now he hung from both hands, glancing around desperately for a ledge or protruding rock, something he could get a purchase on--

And saw the holodroids, clustered around him with cameras extruded. He weighed considerably more than Gida, but it was his only chance.

Obi-Wan released the pole and swung his legs, catching one black carapace between his thighs, curling around it, wrapping his arms around the rounded hull of the droid and clinging for dear life.

Its repulsorlifts whined, and its camera servos rotated, filming him even as he bore it down-- but it accessed an auxiliary power source and recovered, recovered and rose slightly, motors straining. It had just enough thrust to carry him. He snagged his pole as they went by, and flipped his body off the droid as it emerged from the hole, adrenaline sharpening his reflexes enough that he stuck the landing, safely away from the jagged crack in the ice.

He turned, trying to get his bearings, and nearly jumped out of his skin. There was an arranha sitting atop the tumbled boulders that had turned him aside, and a tall blond man standing next to it, looking down at him with a smirk, blue eyes peering out from the depths of a heavy helmet, long yellow ponytail whipping in the wind. His burgundy cloak crackled, streaming out behind him.

"That was a close one, Jedi. The cats won't like it if you let the ice take you, and neither will the bettors." He hopped off the boulder, cat following him, and the whine of a speeder bike receded into the distance.

Obi-Wan stared after him, blinking; something about the man's thick accent tickled at his brain, which sluggishly circled the problem for a moment and then served up a single word: Djinn. The handlers were Djinn. The hasty impressions he carried from the arena clicked into place-- the men's height, their bearing, their hair. Of course they were.

Force fuck it-- and he'd been afraid of the cats.

Obi-Wan Kenobi dissolved into hysterical laughter.

After a few minutes he rose, cautiously made his way around the outcrop, finding the cat's tracks. He felt sharper in the wake of the adrenaline surge, more alert and in control. The Force was near, and he reached for its calm, letting it soothe the remnants of his close call from his mind. It made sense that the Djinn were animal handlers. Qui-Gon had always been excellent at using the Force to reach out to animals; he attracted strays like a lodestone attracted iron filings.

Qui-Gon. Obi-Wan's head snapped up, and he extended his senses, very slow, very cautious-- and found the faintest whisper of his master, somewhere not far away. He was sure of it. It gave him hope and courage, putting heart into him in a way nothing else could.

Still, it didn't sit well that the arranha had been so close; they must have drawn ahead and repositioned around him while he slept. Somehow he had to sneak ahead of them, increase his speed and get clear so Qui-Gon could rescue him before Dramacore pulled out all the stops and went for blood.

And there, lying half-buried in the snow, waited a piece of hull plating. Cameras whirred and whined, measuring him as he studied it. He took up the plate and tested its curve, looking down along the inclined plane of the land. Another obvious gift from his pursuers, it was still perfect.

Obi-Wan laughed again, exultant this time. All he had to do was survive and wait for fruition. Qui-Gon was here; the Force would provide.

Settling the plating on the snow, Obi-Wan climbed aboard and pushed off, using his pole to steer as he skimmed down the slope, away from the glacial ice.

The makeshift sled speeded Obi-Wan's progress considerably, and under other circumstances he would have enjoyed the experience of sliding down the mountain. The adrenaline high still lingered, helping stave off drug withdrawal, and the Force sang to him, guiding him around dangerous hummocks and pitfalls.

The farther he went, the steeper the slope; Obi-Wan sailed over crevices and bounced lightly on the other side, keeping himself upright easily. The treeline was much closer now, and he wondered if he had made it ahead of the arranhar yet. Leaning to the left, he skimmed farther away from the glacier course and toward a winding meadowland. The air was warming; he was losing altitude rapidly. Here, the snow was less powder than ice, and he scraped along, throwing up sparks, accelerating dangerously, so fast the holodroids lagged behind. In no time, he was swooping among the outlying trees, throwing sprays of snow to either side as he banked and twisted, face tucked into dirty animal fur.

The trees grew thicker and the slope evened out; his sled slowed, and eventually he tumbled over deliberately to stop it and get his bearings. He'd come perhaps two-thirds of the way down the mountain in the mad rush of acceleration; the glacier field where he'd begun the morning was a distant dot of white near the peaks. He could see specks sailing along a mile or so below it, paralleling the glacier-- smooth-running speeder bikes and the surging leaps of arranhar. He was ahead of them, then.

Still feeling the Force's call, Obi-Wan floundered through a drift, clinging to his sled, and found a new valley. Seating himself again, he was off-- at this rate, he'd be out of the snow by noon and nearly to the lowlands by nightfall.

Qui-Gon scowled to himself, pacing, watching his Djinn brother's speeder bike draw near, Majnun's arranha bounding in its wake. Awakening to find that Majnun had gone out alone at dawn to scout Obi-Wan's progress had not put him in the best temper.

"He has a few tricks up his sleeve, that one. Found a crevasse the hard way, but didn't need rescuing." Majnun swung down, giving Qui-Gon a curt nod. "It'll make good viewing. I left him a hull plate for snow-skimming; he'll be too smart not to use it. Break camp; we're moving out!"

Qui-Gon turned to his small shelter tent, touching the button that released its spring. It deflated, rippling in the wind, and he folded it, jamming it into his pack. Both Obi-Wan's lightsaber and his own lay solid against his hip under his snow parka. If he hadn't been weak, he could have beaten Majnun out this morning, found Obi-Wan himself, and had his pa-- the boy call for the Delta Six. But once again, his unsettled mind worked against him. After too many nights with next to no sleep, he'd succumbed to exhaustion and overslept himself, delaying Obi-Wan's rescue yet again.

At least he could feel his pada-- Obi-Wan's presence in the Force now; Obi-Wan was managing more connection to it than he had the previous day. But even that was not without worries-- as his abilities returned, he would be harder to catch up with. Qui-Gon tried to project his presence strongly toward Obi-Wan, to reassure him, but had no idea if he succeeded.

The rest of the day proved similarly frustrating. They descended in a series of careful traverses, pausing between each to tend the arranhar. They had not been built for negotiating such harsh, icy terrain, and their paws required constant maintenance, so that chunks of ice didn't wedge in between their pads and cut their feet.

He glimpsed Obi-Wan several times that morning, skimming the snow on his piece of deck plating, swift as a bird, but could not reach his mind; the Force was still dim and erratic around the lad.

The sled allowed Obi-Wan to take and stretch a respectable lead, and by the time the sun sank low, he had made it out of the snowfields into the thick fir forests, where he could no longer ride his hull plate.

Majnun stopped the group and beckoned Qui-Gon aside. "Time to ramp it up. The punters are getting bored with this, and we need to end the day on a high note." He tilted his head at Maj'lis. "Send the cat after the Jedi. Have it stalk him, chase him till he wears out. Jata wants some serious flash, so you'll have to let the cat get close enough to play with him, but don't let Maj'lis harm him, if you can help it. Not yet, anyway."

Qui-Gon hesitated. "The crystal works at a distance?"

"If you can keep your focus and stay on top of the cat's predator instinct, it should." Majnun smiled. "And if it doesn't, we'll find out what that boy can really do."

Qui-Gon nodded, despite misgivings-- if this must be done, he would not have it be done by anyone but him. "Let me check his feet."

"I'll prepare the holodroids."

Qui-Gon carefully knelt and checked Maj'lis. He had developed a shallow cut on one paw pad, and Qui-Gon sealed it with bacta gel, wrapping a cloth bandage around the paw and tying it securely. The holodroids whirred overhead; he ignored them, preparing methodically. Maj'lis was tired from the long day of floundering through snow and leaping from drift to drift, but that would just make him easier to manage.

Qui-Gon fed the beast from their stores of meat, watching him gnaw the joint, rasping meat off the bones with his sharp molars and swallowing the chunks whole. He gave the cat enough to blunt the sharp edge of his hunger, but not enough to slow him excessively.

Majnun and the others lit a fire and pitched their tents; Qui-Gon could smell the sharp tang of woodsmoke. It was not so cold as the previous evening; they had descended significantly, and while the air still had a cruel bite, it did not threaten to freeze the skin off his face.

He approached the fire and seated himself, cross-legged, to meditate, reaching out towards Maj'lis with his mind. He sent a picture of Obi-Wan, a promise of freedom. He sent images of a playful chase, of a bored, well-fed housecat toying with a mouse. Then his promise again, as soon as the longer chase was done.

Maj'lis stretched and yawned, long pink tongue cleaning its jaws, and padded out of the circle of firelight, holodroids trailing after.

Qui-Gon let his eyes close, and sank into the cat's mind, tethered through the control gem.

Night coming. Cold, sharp. Stink of humans left behind. No more snow; good ground for feet.

Qui-Gon slid inside the arranha's mind, feeling the ripples of his instructions spread through its consciousness, slow and deep.

Stalk. The hunt. Prey? No. No. Not food. Mate?

Maj'lis took the idea from Qui-Gon's mind before he could disagree. Better that than prey. ...Mate.

The arranha bunched its muscles and sprang onto a fallen log. Velvet sky, stars. The hunt. It dug its claws into the bark of the tree and stretched, marking the place with scent. Hide. Run. I will find.

It challenged them, any and all who listened, lifting its muzzle and roaring challenge. The forest fell silent before it, a thousand thousand tiny fluttering things gone still. A hundred hundred predators paused, knowing themselves rivaled, beaten.

Through Qui-Gon, it could feel its target in a way it never had before, flickering on the edge of knowledge. Mate. Mine. The mate heard the roar, knew itself sought, and fluttered like the little beasts, the frightened things, the things that ran. Mine.

It roared again, shredding bark, and launched.

The forest gave way like silk, flowing around its shoulders, and it stretched low, belly skimming the ground. Freedom.

Qui-Gon rode, feeling the splash of frigid snow-melt underfoot as Maj'lis bounded across a stream, feeling the spray of moss and earth flying from beneath the arranha's claws as it cornered. Its mind was a red haze of pleasure-- lust, heat, the chase. Belly full. Find the mate.

He could scent Obi-Wan through its nostrils, the sharp human stink tempered as he recognized it, its timbre transmuting subtly from blood to musk, feeding desire. Maj'lis ran on and on, a low purring growl in its chest, eating ground easily, barely feeling weariness, luxuriating in the draw of breath and the clean spring of limb on yielding ground.

Obi-Wan's path was crystal clear, the scent so intense he could all but see it, a warm blur in the arranha's mind. It hung in the air, strongest at the ground, focused around the tracks.

Running now, the mate, trying to evade. The scent more ragged, an acrid edge of fear in it. The trail began to weave through thick tree trunks, under overhanging stones, anything to delay. Seeking shelter, running to ground. He glimpsed his quarry through the trees, sat back on his haunches and dragged the scent into himself, lifting his muzzle again and roaring to the rising moon. Close now. Stalk. He sank his claws into the soft loam, gliding forward, a noiseless trot instead of a gallop. Careful. Find. The human could not outrun him.

Closer, through the velvet night, leaves brushing flanks. Stalking, silent. Pads in footprints, scent in nostrils, the night alive with subtle motion and light. There, a hanging branch-- the human climbed.

Maj'lis circled the base of the tree, prowling, snuffling up scent of earth, scent of human. Obi-Wan. Scent of his mate.

The arranha lifted itself, digging in its claws, and climbed. Branches underfoot, bark between claws. The mate was small and agile; it moved quickly here. Leap. One tree to another, Obi-Wan's heartbeat audible in their ears now, loud and quick, strong. His scent smeared across the bark and on the branches, frosting the edges of the leaves along with the pale white moonlight. The rumble in his chest, the satisfaction. Soon now.

Obi-Wan flashed through the trees, clearly seen in the moonlight, glancing back. A gleam of sweat on his forehead, his eye catching and holding light as he looked back, vanishing as he darted ahead. Lust.

Bisected, Qui-Gon felt the heat of the fire on his face, and the chill of the ground beneath his haunches, only half real-- focus, Maj'lis in his mind; Maj'lis and Obi-Wan and lust. He bit his lip, clinging to both his mind and the cat's, and tasted blood.

Back to the ground again in an easy drop, then he loped, slow and relaxed, behind his quarry. Content to play before he sprang, he dodged around a trunk and let himself be seen, then doubled back to startle. Springing to the fore, he headed the mate off. A dance, this chase, a game. Advance, retreat. Parry, riposte.

Soon. A stumble, the mate's slim body stretched out against the loam. Hesitate. Scrambling upright, running again. Mine. Paws in the tracks of his running mate.

And then the mate dived to ground, beneath the outcrop of a boulder, forcing itself into a small den-cave that lay beneath, desperate, heart and thunder, blood and sweat.

Maj'lis prowled, paced, claws digging up divots of soil, rumbling pleasure in his chest. Dig now.

Enough. No. Mine. Mine.

The arranha snarled, claws raking up furrows of loam, slicing through root and deadfall branches. The mate shrank away, pressed up against the back of the den. Dig out. Mine.

No. NO.

Sweat popped out on Qui-Gon's forehead as he struggled to impose his will. Finally Maj'lis roared again, venting frustration and anger, and turned away.

Qui-Gon slumped as the arranha set out to re-trace its tracks, feeling the chill of sweat soaking his clothes. His limbs shook with the effort of control; across the flames, Majnun watched with interest. He held a holo-pad in his hand.

"Good job. They've got what they need." He stood and offered Qui-Gon a hand up.

"He'll need to cover a female." Qui-Gon leaned heavily on the hand, lurching to his feet gracelessly, trying to reconcile his mind to two legs rather than four.

Majnun grinned, wolfish. "And you?"

Damn it, he was right-- lust still pulsed through Qui-Gon, a white-hot lightning rod at his center. "No females about." Qui-Gon forced himself upright, commanded his legs to steady, ignoring his stubborn flesh. "I'll make do." He sent the promise of a female to the cat, felt Maj'lis speed his progress, resentment blending with eagerness.

"I'll see to him. Get some sleep; we may need you to do that again." Majnun watched over Qui-Gon as he crawled into his tent, then strode away to tend the cat.

He could feel Obi-Wan's presence, flickering fitfully in the Force; Obi-Wan was agitated and weary, but unwilling to remain in the neighborhood of the chase. He loped through the forest swiftly, ignoring the dangers of the night, trying to meditate on the fly and gain control of his fears, even as he called the reluctant Force to guide his steps, faltering as often as not, so absorbed he never sensed Qui-Gon's distant scrutiny.

Qui-Gon sighed, scrubbing his palm over his face, and changed out of his sweat-soaked clothing, huddling around the small thermal lamp that heated the inside of his tent. Outside, cats snarled, Maj'lis triumphant as he mounted the female Majnun provided.

Qui-Gon's lip throbbed where he had bitten it, a sullen pulse in time with his heartbeat, one that echoed in his groin. His body wanted to be touched again, craved release. If Maj'lis had caught Obi-Wan... he shuddered. It did not bear thinking.

Qui-Gon had tasted the cat's hunger, and it had tasted his own. Over and over, he had seen Obi-Wan mounted and ridden in the holovids, pale body writhing as Obi-Wan was penetrated. The boy, fleeing, had been incredibly beautiful in his fear, his scent intoxicating, the moonlight flashing on his graceful, running body. His braid whipped out behind him, his slender, powerful body pushed to capacity, vulnerable, the nape of his neck white under the moon, begging for a lover's bite.

Qui-Gon's flesh ached, and he circled it with his rough palm, jerking upward harshly. Curse all bodies for the inconvenient, demanding things they were. Noisy, messy, weak things, craving pleasure and resisting discipline. Ignoring sense and insisting on the indulgence of passion, no matter the price.

He came joylessly into his palm, lip curling in a snarl, and wiped the mess on his sleeping mat. There, it was done, and be damned to it. And be damned to himself, as well, for enjoying what he had just done-- for looking on the fear in Obi-Wan's expression and continuing to pursue, for scenting the terror and the desperation rolling off his pada-- his Obi-Wan-- and lusting for it, for fucking his own fist and coming with that exquisite scent of Obi-Wan's terror in his nostrils, that intoxicating taste of Obi-Wan's desperation on his tongue.

He curled up miserably and tried to fall asleep.

By morning, Obi-Wan had mastered his fears, but he didn't stop, winding his way down along the shoulders of the mountains. The firs were behind him, and he picked his way down a tumbled trail of broken stone, mossy rocks the size of his head rolling underfoot, threatening to twist his ankles. He was too tired, too hazy to find the Force behind the piercing headache and the weariness, so he moved carefully along the half-imagined path, down toward the grasslands.

That had been a near thing; if not for the den, the beast would have had him. It could have anyway. It had played with him like a cat with a mouse, running him for pleasure rather than purpose, ultimately leaving him, sparing him to be more sport for another day. It had been just like another porno scene, playing for the cameras to bring the audience off.

And today would be worse, as he passed the midpoint of his journey and approached the city. The cat would be back, perhaps with more. What in the world could be delaying Qui-Gon? Couldn't his master sense his whereabouts? Perhaps something had happened to him; Obi-Wan couldn't be sure. The Force was muddy and unpredictable, as likely to skitter away from his touch as to flow through him when he reached for it-- sometimes cool and welcoming in his mind, sometimes aloof and untouchable, sometimes even tinged with darkness.

He followed the curl of a wide horse-shoe ridge, padding quietly through a carpet of crumbling deciduous leaves, looking for an easy way down. He carried a stout wooden staff that he'd found lying in a half-choked stream, but even a staff wouldn't help him down a sheer cliff. Down the throat of each cove ran a tumbling stream, and he'd considered following a few, but so far he'd rejected them. Water sought the quickest path downhill, but that path usually wasn't easy. The snowmelt was frigid, and each stream bed was steep, punctuated with waterfalls and infested with thousands of stones and boulders, treacherous, some of them still glazed with ice.

A bluish haze hung over the land-- water vapor and a faint hint of pollution near the city. This was an animal track, perhaps made by predators, but it was the easiest going he had encountered for some time, so he stuck with it. He kept moving one foot after the other, his weary mind half-dozing. Blue spring flowers lined the walkway, so deep a blue they were nearly violet, almost the shade of Qui-Gon's eyes when his master was at peace, their delicate, neatly furled blossom tubes stretching up toward the sunlight. This would be a good place to meditate, if only he dared slow down-- but he was already moving too slowly, delaying his descent into the grasslands for no good reason, hoping for a trail that wasn't there.

The next time the trail switched back, he left it, descending through a tricky maze of jagged rock outcrops, sometimes using tree branches to swing himself down, bloodying his hands on the harsh stones. The cats would come, he knew, sooner or later.

Master, where are you?

There was no answer, his damaged sense of the Force remote and eerily silent, and Obi-Wan squared his jaw. He was Jedi; he could save himself.

Patiently, he kept moving: forward and down. Maybe he wasn't thinking clearly enough, expecting rescue instead of taking action on his own behalf, waiting for the Force to return to him before he acted. At his current pace, it would take another day or two to reach the city-- and he wanted to, needed to; it was his best chance of freeing Gida.

Without the Force to enhance his speed, he needed mechanical help. One of the Djinn's speeder bikes, possibly?

He turned the idea over in his head, considering. They would not expect him to double back-- unless he was wearing a tracker. That seemed likely. But they had approached him before. Perhaps if he faked being in trouble? The cat had let him escape, and it was a long way to the city-- a long way, a lot of drama, and a lot of advertising still to sell. It seemed a reasonable enough risk.

He cautiously extended his senses, coaxing tendrils of Force into his grasp. Yes, he was being watched-- just there, on the point of the ridge from where he'd descended. A man and a cat watched there, hanging just far enough back that he wouldn't startle.

Obi-Wan scrambled up onto an enormous granite outcrop to scout the horizon. He walked along it for a few moments, his silhouette prominent against the sky, and then crumpled, pretending to roll his ankle, and lay where he fell, his staff clattering to the rock a span from his outstretched hand, his foot neatly wedged into a crack in the stone. He scrabbled against the rock as if struggling to rise, then subsided again.

A few moments passed while he lay panting. Sure enough, he could hear the engine of a speeder, the harsh mechanical noise swelling. He grasped a stone with one hand and his ankle in the other, remembering the toothy snarl of the arranhar, hoping that he was right and they didn't want to be rid of him just yet.

It was the blond man again. Some sort of leader? His cat loped easily after the speeder. He banked in and parked, looking down at Obi-Wan, amusement stretching his lips.

"Such a disappointment you are, Jedi. Broken that ankle, or just twisted it?"

"I don't know." Obi-Wan made a show of cringing away. The holodroids flitted about busily.

The man sat on his speeder bike, considering Obi-Wan for a long moment. "Blasters are no good against you lot," he said at length. "So you'll have to pardon me for using the cat instead."

The arranha padded forward, its muzzle wrinkling as it caught his scent. It seemed smaller than the one he had faced last night. Maybe this wasn't the leader after all, not the same shadowy figure he had faced across the arena before the chase began, the one whose eyes had pierced him so keenly.

The cat stepped delicately over Obi-Wan's body, its claws scraping a warning that made him shudder, and lay an arm's length from him, paws tamped, ready to launch at an instant's notice. Yellow-green eyes glared at him, feral with warning.

Obi-Wan reached for the Force as the man dismounted his speeder bike, almost sobbing with relief when it accepted him. It was not strong, waxing and waning with the pounding of the headache in his temples, but he would not need much, just a little, just at the right moment.

The blond man approached cautiously and bent over, reaching for Obi-Wan's boot, and as his balance shifted, Obi-Wan lashed out with the Force, shoving as hard as he could, summoning his staff and cracking the man across his broad back as hard as possible for good measure. The Djinn fell forward, pitching across him, tangling with the cat. Obi-Wan was already rolling and leaping for the speeder bike, snatching the handlebars and flinging a leg over the seat as the man and the cat separated and the cat leaped for him, all lightning reflex and liquid muscle.

Its claws caught the exhaust manifold as Obi-Wan gunned the throttle and screamed off the boulder. He stabbed it in the chest with his staff, and the bike slewed violently to one side, but the cat fell away with a shriek of claws on metal, and Obi-Wan corrected his trajectory, managing not to crash as he shot out over the canopy, dropping down toward the narrow fold of valley that led to the plains.

Slowly Majnun got up, dusting off his hands, making a face at the bloody scuffs on his palms.

"Damnú ort, streachailt leathair Jedi striapach!" he spat, shifting his shoulders painfully and reached for his comlink.

Qui-Gon's commlink crackled, a hail from Majnun. "Ki-Gün, come down. The little bastard tricked me and took my bike."

Qui-Gon felt his lips curve upward, unable to suppress a hot flare of pride in his apprentice. "Right away," he responded, banking into his turn. And it serves you right for running point. He knew Majnun was only trying to protect his kinsmen, at some considerable risk to himself, but if Qui-Gon had been able to convince Majnun to let him run point instead, he might have reached Obi-Wan himself and rescued him by now.

Or maybe not. His efforts to reach Obi-Wan were getting nowhere, opportunities never ripening, chances never coming, until it felt as if he were toiling uphill in shifting sands. The Force, it seemed, intended for Obi-Wan to reach the city.

Qui-Gon came up alongside Majnun and his arranha, So'lis. "You don't seem much the worse for wear."

"He wasn't interested in killing." Majnun hissed between his teeth, stretching his shoulders gingerly, then picking a curl of torn skin off the heel of his palm. "He only wanted the bike. Now our plans will have to change. It won't take him another day to finish the course on the bike. We'll have to go after him with all we've got."

"The cats can pace a bike?" Qui-Gon inquired neutrally.

"For a time, if they must. And I have a few tricks up my sleeve." Majnun grinned, predatory. "None of the runners have ever stolen a bike before, but that doesn't mean I wasn't ready for someone to try. I have a slave circuit set on it, and I'll have it strand him doing circles in the fields outside the city gate, if need be. I already cut his throttle to 50%. We'll catch him. He didn't sleep last night, and we won't let him rest tonight, either." Majnun's grin deepened. "And something else he doesn't know-- his cocktail's wearing off, and smart money says he'll be a wreck by nightfall, Jedi or no."

"Cocktail?" Qui-Gon's interest sharpened even as his heart sank.

"The tranks. They dose the fighters with all kinds of psychoactives: hyper-benzos and the like, plus a hell of an aphro. It keeps them quiet on the transports, and helps the select few stay sane while the keepers film their pornos. But when the fighters go in the ring, we don't want them dopey and agreeable, so the keepers cut the trank dose to nil. After a couple of days the drugs work out of their systems. It makes them erratic and unpredictable, and that's good holovision. You can always tell when the drugs go, and that Jedi was sweating like a pig; it's one of the first signs."

He vaulted over the saddle, settling behind Qui-Gon. "He went that way, down toward the plains." Majnun tilted his head sharply. "We'll close in around him tonight, get some good video, and take him just after dawn, before he can make the outskirts." He lifted the comlink, broadcasting to their comrades as Qui-Gon drove them over the edge. "Fall in!"

Obi-Wan's ears popped as he descended on his stolen speeder bike, sending a spike of pain through the center of his skull, and he idled at the base of the ridge, glancing back up the boulder he'd just departed. Now there were two of the Djinn there, and two cats, one of them the big one. The sun glinted off the men's metal helmets. Squinting, he could just make out the one he'd tricked climbing aboard the second man's speeder bike; then the two jetted over the edge and down into the winding valley he'd just followed, leaving their cats to follow as best they could.

Enough dawdling.

Obi-Wan gunned the bike, setting out through the low scrub toward the grassland. It wasn't the best bike he'd ever ridden, and he wished in vain for a cycle or two and the right tools to tune up the engine, but it was still much faster than going on foot.

This was a good thing, and also a problem. Judging by the smudge of pollution far out on the plain, he thought he could make the city midway through the following day, if he didn't stop and if the bike's power cell held out.

That wasn't a good thing, though; it meant his pursuers weren't going to keep on pulling their punches. The thought sent a needle of icy fear through him, slicing through his guts, and brought a film of sweat onto his face.

Now that the adrenaline of the theft was ebbing, Obi-Wan realized he felt mildly nauseated and dizzy. Not enough sleep, that was it. It would simply have to wait.

He settled his bike into a declivity where a stream fed through the plains, and opened the throttle as far as it would go.

An hour later, he knew he was in trouble. Cramps seized his stomach, forcing him to halt. Closing his eyes against the pain, Obi-Wan lay face-down over the seat of the bike, dry-retching into the stream. It was the drugs. It had to be. The symptoms were classic: headache, dizziness, nausea, and tremors meant withdrawal from psychotropics. He forced himself upright on shuddering forearms, scowling at the inevitable holodroids. It was going to get worse before it got better.

Gasping and wiping his mouth, Obi-Wan took a moment to survey his surroundings. It was hard to see any progress; all around him lay sprawling meadows of tawny green, young grass rolling in the breeze, dotted with white flowers. If the lazy ripple of the stream hadn't told him otherwise, he would have thought the valley was convex, a shallow bowl reaching up to the horizon on all sides with him in its low center.

But that wasn't what worried him most; he knew he was moving, and following the stream ensured he wasn't going in circles. What worried him was the weather. The sun had passed its zenith, and in the heat of the day, cumulus clouds had begun to mass on the horizon, drifting up against the tall mountains and hanging there, gleaming arc-white in the too-bright radiance of the white dwarf sun. He hoped they would hold off, but the plains were a heat sink, absorbing the sunlight and pumping moisture up into the atmosphere. It looked like an ugly night coming, and he could only hope the cats hated water.

He took a few handfuls of water from the stream, rinsed his mouth, spat out the sour taste of vomit, and drank.

He had to keep moving.

He forced himself back onto the bike and pushed forward, full out. The top speed was much slower than the bike should have been capable of. The Djinn must have sabotaged it somehow.

He shivered, remembering the man's cold blue eyes, so like and unlike his master's. The Djinn and the cats would spend the afternoon overtaking his crippled bike, and tonight they would make their move. Tonight, after he lost the sun. He could remember the fetid breath of the big cat that ran him to ground in the forest, and the fiery green gleam of its eyes. If he looked to one side, he might see the cats again, peering at him through the grass. He knew they were there; he knew it in his bones.

The Force skittered away from him like a droplet of water across hot metal when he tried to locate them.

The land dropped gradually, and his stream joined several others, growing wider and deeper. The natural grasslands abruptly ended, and a checkerboard of cultivated grain fields took their place. That was an advantage. The small river had been ditched between the fields, and its channel ran straight toward the city, interrupted infrequently by culverts where bridges had been constructed to allow harvesting machinery to cross. He could follow the stream directly now, soaring only a few inches above the water, which cut down on turbulence and spared his queasy stomach.

Slowly the sun set, blazing straight into Obi-Wan's eyes, which set off fireburst explosions of pain in his already aching head. He wished he hadn't abandoned his goggles when he left the snow-fields. But the harsh rays didn't last long. The clouds were sweeping in, and they soon eclipsed the sun, bringing premature shadows across the land. He veered up to avoid a bridge, and caught sight of a cat, pacing him easily on his left, leaping across a gully that fed water into the channel where he flew.

Obi-Wan grimaced and leaned farther forward, streamlining his body and willing power into the bike, which stubbornly chugged along exactly as before, ignoring his desperation.

Wind swept in from his left, buffeting the bike and silvering the grain, riffling the surface of the water. He could see rain smudging the horizon, and a yellow-white flare of lightning stabbing into the ground. The rumble of thunder that followed was a distant, but distinct, threat.

When the thunder didn't entirely fade, he realized he was also hearing the distant swelling throb of a heavy engine. Looking over his shoulder, he spotted two troop transports lumbering their way down from the mountains. It would be foolish to hope those had no interest in him. Doubtless they were loaded with armed Dramacore muscle, all committed to seeing that their prize Jedi wouldn't make it across the finish line. The blond Djinn might think blasters were no good against a Jedi, but Obi-Wan was a Jedi without his lightsaber-- and without the Force. He'd be an easy mark.

Thunder erupted again, much closer overhead, an ear-shattering cacophony that sent shockwave turbulence shuddering through Obi-Wan, nearly unseating him. He hastily turned his face forward. The sun flared out from beneath the clouds as it sank below the horizon, feathering the undersides of the clouds with shades of white and blue-purple. His hands began to jerk, cramping on the handlebars.

A cat snarled, making him flinch. This one was on his right; they were probably all around him now. There was nowhere to hide in this country. There wouldn't be any convenient animal dens this time. He might shelter in a culvert, but if he did, he'd only pin himself down. He might as well stand still right out in the open and let the cats shred him, as imprison himself in a dark hole to wait for an inevitable man with a blaster.

Losing light fast, Obi-Wan tilted the bike up and leveled off several feet over the water, ensuring that he wouldn't miss any raised bridges. Sure enough, he could see the cats, a wedge of them loping along, spaced out around him like sentries, biding their time. The wind was cold and wet, and the grain hissed, lying flat against the land. A blue flare of lightning struck perhaps a kilometer away, and the first drops of rain stung his face.

It occurred to him that this was a race he couldn't win.

If it were the will of the Force, he would honor the Jedi and his master by refusing to give up. Dramacore would never take him back to the arena, or to that filthy holo studio. Obi-Wan Kenobi would die first, fighting for his freedom.

Thunder cracked the sky open, and the rain poured down in a deluge, drenching him to the skin.

Qu-Gon split his concentration between the speeder bike and Maj'lis, using the cat's eyes. Obi-Wan was faltering as night approached, just as Majnun had predicted. And yet the Force was singing to Qui-Gon, singing within him, currents leading him forward. There was a path, and Qui-Gon urged the arranha nearest Obi-Wan to show itself, herding Obi-Wan subtly, keeping him near the river, as his intuition whispered was right.

Majnun had summoned troop transports to assist in the final takedown, a most unwelcome tactical stroke. As lightning flashed, Qui-Gon could see the dull steel noses of the ships plowing through the grain, running lights piercing the gloom. The wind was rising, driving a spatter of rain before it, and the last rays of the sun were stretching beneath the clouds, illuminating the land with an eerie violet light.

The Force pulsated with power, savage energies running before the storm. The lightning flickered and stabbed into the fields; the atmosphere was so charged with cations that Qui-Gon's hair wanted to stand on end. The cats could sense it too, their ears flat against their skulls, their bellies pressed near the ground as they ran.

The last rays of the sun went out as rain began to cascade from the heavens, driven nearly sideways by the strength of the wind. Qui-Gon reached out, sensing the different beings around him-- the cats and the Djinn, drawing in tighter around Obi-Wan as he slowed. Qui-Gon could feel him clearly; his energy was ebbing as the withdrawal symptoms worsened.

Holodroids buzzed around them all, repulsorfields protecting their delicate recording equipment. They wouldn't get good video with this much rain obscuring the view, and that was just as well for what Qui-Gon must do.

Nearer now, the Force whispering urgency to him. Majnun drove his speeder bike up next to Qui-Gon's, shouting to be heard over the roar of the rain and wind.

"Can you control Maj'lis enough to keep the Jedi alive, or should I send So'lis instead?"

"I can control him," Qui-Gon affirmed.

"Good; he's the most photogenic. We need to get something stellar-- if you can, have the cat knock him off the bike, slice him up a bit. Escape and recapture a few times. Then we'll let him run again, and we'll send them all after him, keep him going in circles till sunup, and close the gap. I've ordered reinforcements to make sure he doesn't slip through; he's not likely to cause trouble, but he is Jedi."

Qui-Gon nodded curtly. "I'll do what I can." The Force was urgent now, pressing at him, fingers of darkness and light twining around him, the Living Force supercharged with the power of the plasma storm, the Unifying Force battering him with a thousand conflicting messages-- warnings, suggestions, fears, lusts.

Qui-Gon kicked the accelerator of his bike and reached out to Maj'lis, seeing his padawan through the cat's eyes. Leap.

The cat soared, arcing gracefully over the canal where Obi-Wan rode, and Obi-Wan shied, sending the bike into a skid, and toppled into the canal. He came up sputtering, and Maj'lis roared, remembering Obi-Wan's scent and challenging him.

Lightning stabbed, red-white flame, freezing Obi-Wan's terrified face for the cameras. Qui-Gon anchored himself deep in the cat's mind. You will not harm him.

The cat roared again, stalking up and down the bank. Obi-Wan began to scramble out and hesitated, calculating whether the arranha would enter the water for him. His hands were shaking badly, and Qui-Gon could feel his desperate attempts and failures to harness the Force, which had closed to him again.

Trust in me, Qui-Gon sent, knowing he would not be heard, and he heeled his bike over, skidding to a stop, and dismounted.

Obi-Wan saw him, saw him and quailed away-- Qui-Gon could hear his mind, and knew he saw only a faceless Djinn, features hidden inside the helmet, the Dramacore cloak a savage banner in the strobe-flare of the lightning and the punishing percussion of the thunder. Obi-Wan struggled to his feet and began to retreat, stepping backward in the muddy water until he fell, and his courage broke; he floundered away, half-swimming, half-crawling.

The sight of his tormented padawan shrinking from him in terror of his life was all that was required to overcome the final pangs of Qui-Gon's conscience. Something broke inside him: a dam crumbled, releasing fury, pain, and lust. Lust for vengeance, lust for justice-- there was no longer a difference to him. These men had brought judgment upon themselves. They would pay.

He turned away from Obi-Wan with deliberate grace. Ignoring the hail that cannoned down from the sky, stinging like hornets wherever it struck him, Qui-Gon began.

Closing his eyes, Qui-Gon raised his hands to the sky, reaching into the ionized atmosphere, and pulled its seething power to himself. A coronal discharge formed around his palms, glimmering green, clothing his arms in flame. He took as much as he could hold, then dug deeper-- letting the anger consume him, letting his guilt and his pain and his rage swell as his hands filled with lightning. Green flares arced between his outstretched fingers, crawling over his skin, the power building-- until he struck.

Sizzle and flare. The lightning skittered over the transports, arcing over the metal plates and through the walls, running to ground. Men screamed, caught in the arcs, their limbs jerking and flailing, hair and armor smoking. Blaster power packs exploded and engines melted, deafening concussions drowning out the electric crackle of power, blending with the punishing shockwaves of thunder. The lightning slammed down again, again, again, until nothing moved and nothing screamed, and the only sound from the transports was the crackling of flames.

The strikes ceased, leaving Qui-Gon's retinas seared with jagged white afterimages, his fingertips smoking, his whole body quivering with dark exultation, indifferent to the suffering he had caused-- these men had harmed his Obi-Wan, wanted to kill him. They would do so no more.

He strode forward, his feet pulling raw power out of the earth, his hands snaring the sky. Lightning stabbed once more, the thunder so powerful it shuddered his bones. Cats quailed, their tails drooping on the ground, and they skulked in circles, growling with agitation, their slitted eyes blazing. Again the lightning struck, and metal glowed and fused. The Djinn threw themselves off their speeder bikes and onto the earth, desperate to shelter from the storm's fury. Qui-Gon spun away from the transports and lashed out at the bikes as well. Power cells exploded, brief novas that rivaled the lightning. Holodroids chittered and shrieked as liquid fire shot from his fingertips to wreathe them. They jetted across the sky like shooting stars before winking out, plowing burned channels and craters in the ground.

Qui-Gon lowered his hands, and was still.

Every cell of him crackled, supercharged with power; his muscles quivered with it. He could feel the electricity buzzing in him, violent and still seeking destruction. If given nowhere else to go, it would turn inward.

Instinctively he sank to one knee and plunged his fingers into the mud, shoving the power out of him, harmless, into the ground-- out and out and out, all the fury, all the wrath, until he quivered with exhaustion, until he was himself again, until he raised his head and looked at the ruined transports and the twisted, scorched bodies of the men he had destroyed, smoking and steaming in the pouring rain.

He tasted salt on his lips, and only then realized he was weeping.

The Djinn lay scattered, shaken but unharmed, save for a few who had taken minor burns or wounds from the exploding engine cells. Superficial, unimportant. They were his kin. He wondered if that was why he had chosen to spare them.

The cats--

Qui-Gon stiffened, fists clenching. The Djinn had lost their hold over the cats. Even he had forgotten Maj'lis in the heat of the moment-- and the cats, freed, had returned to their instincts. They gathered in the rain, a rough circle around their leader, and turned their glowing eyes on the helpless human in the ditch, obeying Maj'lis, who had but one thought, one instinct left in his mind after the terror of the lightnings: The hunt. The prey.

Qui-Gon flung himself back toward the ditch, just in time to see Maj'lis stalk forward, dipping one clawed paw into the water but then removing it, flicking it with distaste and backing away. The cat's lips peeled back from its fangs as it snarled with anger. The rain still roared down, feeding the stream and flooding it. The water surged and rose, brown and turbulent; even as Qui-Gon reached out toward Obi-Wan, the current toppled the young man, sweeping his feet out from under him, and swept him away.

Maj'lis growled and pursued, loping along the channel, Qui-Gon sprinting behind, trying to push away exhaustion and claim a center that no longer existed, to achieve enough control to levitate Obi-Wan free without harming him--

--But he was too late. Obi-Wan was swept into a culvert, down a long, tumbling incline that splashed out into a wide, dark river.

Qui-Gon reached for the gem Maj'lis wore, and the cat hesitated, looking over its shoulder, the pride waiting, poised, for a signal to pursue their prey. Qui-Gon forced himself to accelerate, bounding up to the cat and leaping onto its back. Maj'lis roared, digging powerful claws into the matted tangle of earth and roots at the lip of the hill, and one by one the cats dove over its top and raced down toward the river below. There was no sign of Obi-Wan other than the spark of the young man's presence in the Force, sweeping along the current well downstream.

Without a speeder bike, there was no way to cross the river; Qui-Gon would have to find the nearest bridge and then pick up Obi-Wan's trail later, in the city. He would have had to anyway, with the cats in tow. He checked his map and sighing, turned Maj'lis upstream.

The cat had only gone a few paces when a flicker of natural lightning revealed a silhouette on the horizon-- more than one, familiar. Majnun was nothing if not a master of his men.

Qui-Gon nudged Maj'lis toward the crest of the hill again, following a whisper from the Force, and rode toward the other Djinn, who squinted up at him through the pelting rain.

"Ki-G?n, you survived." Majnun's eyes brightened as they swept along the pack. "I've never seen such lightning. I suppose that's what you risk if you go out on a flat plain with so much metal, and encounter a plasma storm. But I would have thought the transports were insulated against lightning strikes." A frown clouded his brow as he considered. "If the Jedi was able to call lightning against us, he may not be as damaged as I'd hoped."

"Jedi are unpredictable," Qui-Gon equivocated, his very skin itching with the need to be off.

Majnun nodded, still working through his plans. "Several of us are injured, and none of our electronics function. The bikes are slag, and the transports as well. I don't think So'lis could carry me far; it's fortunate you can master Maj'lis as you do. Will you take up the chase?"

"I don't need electronics, and I'm already on the Jedi's trail," Qui-Gon assured him. "He took shelter in the river, safe from the cats."

"There's a bridge just upstream. If you go quickly, you should make the outskirts before dawn. He'll have to leave the river, and then you'll have him."

"Yes. If the cats and I can beat him to the city, we can complete our mission."

"Be careful, mo dheartháir." Majnun laid a cautionary hand against Qui-Gon's boot. "The Company will send help. I'll be along soon, if I may."

Qui-Gon nodded, nudging Maj'lis with his heels, and the pride was away, stretching out to run with bellies low to the ground.

He nearly missed the bridge, which had no guardrail or curb, but the Force warned him in time and the cats raced over it with Maj'lis in the lead, spreading out again as they emerged onto the highway that led into the city. A handful of surviving holodroids settled in behind them, but he had no time to deal with them; let Dramacore film this, then, and be damned.

The city skyline rose steadily from the horizon, and Qui-Gon knew the journey would be quickly accomplished. Now for the next stage of his plan.

Trusting in Maj'lis, Qui-Gon shut his eyes, reaching for the Force-sensitive gems in each of the cats' collars. There were fifteen with him, and the rest wandered on the plains as their Djinn masters sought to recapture them. He dismissed the stragglers, focusing on those who hunted with him. There were too many to control; all were focused in on the blood lust of the chase, the need to capture their quarry.

Once again, the Force left him no choice.

Qui-Gon drew deliberately on his anger, his pain, his uncertainty and his fear, and felt power swell in him, boiling darkly. He extended it to the cats. If he could not quell their lust, he would direct it, and his own, as profitably as he might.

One by one they acknowledged him, accepted him, and he rode within them, each cat an extension of his will, the heady thrill of it making him laugh.

Obi-Wan was near. He could feel it clearly, and as he did, Maj'lis roared. The flare of fear from his apprentice tasted sweet and bitter all at once. Very well. Let Obi-Wan run, and perhaps they would stay ahead of Dramacore until the end.

He called to the cats, and they responded, angling their course, falling in behind Obi-Wan as he fled toward the finish.

Obi-Wan tumbled and rolled down the drainage culvert, flashing lights starting to appear before his eyes, lungs screaming for oxygen-- and then he was free, splashing down into a deep, swift current, no longer trapped. He floundered upward, sodden clothes dragging him down, boots full of water. He kicked them off and struggled out of the clinging layers, letting them sink, then kicked upward. Lungs screaming, he broke the surface at last, sputtering and spitting muddy water.

The sky still flared and strobed, less frequently now, the thunder distinct, not one prolonged, unending clash. The irrigation canal had dumped him into a river, and as his vision cleared, the bright seared afterimages subsiding, he could make out the skyline of the city, misty and smudged with rain, or picked out in stark white and black shadow from the lightning pulses.

That had been a hell of a storm, like nothing he'd ever seen. He could almost believe it had been sent by the Force to scatter the cats and the men who menaced him, and to bring the flood to sweep him to safety-- or it might just have been a hallucination from drug withdrawal.

He didn't care; he was away from the cats and the current was pushing him rapidly toward the city. He might actually have a chance, now, if the storm had scattered the pursuit adequately.

He turned on his belly and began a lazy breast-stroke, cooperating with the current, keeping his chin above water and watching the banks slide by. His mind felt thick and sludgy, but he knew he needed a plan, a better one than just "get to the city center." It would help if he had some knowledge of the area-- it would help even more than that if he could touch the Force-- but he couldn't even feel the Force now through the headache pounding in his skull, and the chill that permeated every part of him.

Luckily, the river channel was smooth and deep, and there were no snags or outcrops to impede Obi-Wan's progress. By the time the sky began to turn grey, he was within the outskirts of the city, and structures were slipping by, ghostly grey in the mist that rose from the ground and the surface of the water.

He was chilled to the bone, chilled and shivering; it took him a long time to paddle to the bank, and longer still until he found an eddy that brought him to a beach where he could leave the water and climb up the bank. A familiar hum settled in at his shoulder, and he looked up to find a holodroid hovering overhead, filming him; he scooped up a stone and threw it, but the thing only darted aside and returned immediately.

Giving up on it, Obi-Wan left the riverside behind, managing a shambling trot. He needed dry clothes and shoes; his hands trembled uncontrollably and he could barely walk, stumbling along and trying to keep to alleys and empty streets. At least there were no cats, though he kept jumping at shadows, glancing behind himself nervously, always afraid one would pop up over his shoulder.

He stole some ragged breeches and a heavy woolen shirt off a wash-line and dressed himself, tucking his hands into his armpits. His heartbeat was not steady, faltering and racing, and his muscles felt as though he had been stretched on a rack, but he could feel a faint ghost of the Force, and he coaxed it toward him, tentative. It yielded up a direction to him, a sense of where he should go.

It would be over soon, one way or the other.

He was trotting along a back alley when he heard the arranha's roar, its snarling cry clutching his heart with terror. No. So close.

He could not beat it, but he would not give up.

Obi-Wan gathered the last of his strength and began to run. The dream had him; he stumbled through crowds and over shattered glass, up stairways and down alleys, across avenues where traffic skidded to a halt, barely missing him. He could see the cats if he looked behind, but he did not dare slow; the city center was ahead, filled with people. He could almost feel the cats' breath on his heels, though. Their paws thumped softly but implacably on the pavement behind him. His skin crawled as he waited for the leader to spring, waited for its claws--

But it did not, even as he stumbled around the final corner, nearly sprawling on his face, and a thousand startled faces waited, staring at him, eyes wide, as he sprinted past them. He accelerated, running so hard he though his heart might burst, and stumbled across the finish line even as the first blaster-fire erupted, tracing him, knocking fragments out of the pavement to sting his heels. The next shot would strike, if the cat did not--

But the cat was on him, driving him to the ground. He struck with a thud, the last of his breath forced from his lungs, and as he fell, at last Obi-Wan heard the blessedly unmistakable snap-hiss of lightsabers-- first one, then another. His eyes flew open, and he stared straight into the face of the snarling cat; it stood over him, growling, its claws enclosing his arms, preventing him from rising, but it did not strike.

Blasters whined, and past the bulk of the cat he could see lightsabers swinging, green and blue-- in the hands of a Djinn. Suddenly, inescapably, he realized it was Qui-Gon, wearing the livery of a cat handler. The same Djinn Obi-Wan had seen in the storm, he realized with shock.

Qui-Gon had a lightsaber in each hand, moving as Obi-Wan had never seen him, catching each bolt and snapping it back toward the shooters with murderous efficiency, his eyes blazing behind his helmet as he whirled and dived, flipping over one bolt to intercept another, striding forward implacably toward Obi-Wan, his stare fixed on the reviewing stand at the end of the square, its intensity promising death.

Behind him came the cats, fanning out against the crowd, snarling and launching; people screamed and began to scatter, surging mindlessly toward any outlet.

The cats targeted and sprang, bringing down the sharpshooters one by one, even as Qui-gon danced and spun in the midst of a whirlwind of blades, advancing on his goal.

"Shoot him!" That terrified squeal was Jata's voice, unmistakable, but Qui-Gon continued, stalking forward implacably, as feral as the cats themselves, blades deflecting a hail of fire seemingly without effort. He was awash in darkness, so intense Obi-Wan could see it even without sensing the Force-- the tense, murderous energy owned him.

"Master," Obi-Wan gasped, anguished, struggling to breathe; the cat hunkered down and covered his body with its own, its weight constricting his chest, but no blaster bolts came. The shooters were focused on more urgent things now-- the blazing vision of doom who spun and pirouetted and kept moving forward, the scything flurry of lightsabers a brilliant extension of his dark purpose.

Guards abandoned their weapons and fled, but Qui-Gon moved faster; his sabers flashed with deadly precision, and they cut the supports of the grandstand, which toppled, spilling screaming Dramacore personnel and dignitaries onto the ground.

A scream, cut short-- Obi-Wan watched Jata's head fall and roll on the ground, eyes and mouth still opened for his final cry of terror, but his master did not stop. The deadly dance continued, and Obi-Wan realized the Dramacore uniform had become a death mark as his master's blades dipped and lunged with furious accuracy. Qui-Gon flipped, and when he landed he blocked the nearest egress; more people fell, and still more, and still Qui-Gon's momentum built, his blazing eyes filled with unquenchable hate for those he fought.

"Master!" Obi-Wan finally managed to cry out loudly enough to be heard-- these were not the ones who had hurt him; these were clerks and secretaries, unarmed, innocent men and women who struggled to feed their families.

"Qui-Gon Jinn." A woman's voice rang out, and a female Jedi Obi-Wan did not know leaped over the crowd to land before him, her yellow blade igniting, her small padawan behind her, drawing his own. "You are under arrest. Stop, in the name of the Jedi Council!"

The cat growled and rose, stepping over Obi-Wan, who scrambled to his knees, too exhausted and shaky to stand. And there was Gida, struggling towards him, stumbling over bodies. "Obi!"

He caught her as she fell to embrace him, but he only had eyes for his master. Qui-Gon stood still, lightsabers blazing, staring at the woman while the last of the Dramacore employees and spectators took to their heels and scrambled away in any direction they could, vanishing down streets and alleys.

The arranhar yowled, stalking the Jedi and her padawan, tamping down their haunches, prepared to spring. A moment of tension stretched, as the cats' tails lashed and their muscles quivered-- but then Qui-Gon released the blades, and they retracted. Qui-Gon's body relaxed and he stood upright, abandoning his battle stance. That cats sat down, purpose ebbing from their bodies.

The Jedi woman reached, and Qui-Gon handed over a lightsaber-- only one, pointedly clipping the other to his belt-- and at last, his eyes searched and found Obi-Wan. He closed them, drawing a ragged breath, and the rest of his tension flowed away.

He folded his arms beneath his burgundy cloak and stood up straight, expression draining out of his features, leaving a neutral mask.

"The cats are dangerous," he stated flatly. "I may not be able to control them. Take Obi-Wan to safety. He will require healing that I cannot provide."

"You're coming with me to Coruscant." The woman ignored Qui-Gon's words, and Obi-Wan realized she was trying to push his master with her mind, trying to use the Force to make her command assume reality. "The Council must know what you have done here."

"You're mistaken." Qui-Gon's eyes never returned to Obi-Wan. "I'm taking the cats offworld. To hell with the Council." He stepped aside, eyes scanning the wreckage, and bent to take up a small case that lay next to Jata's headless corpse.

Obi-Wan blinked, and accepted Gida's help; her shoulder supported him as he rose, and he stepped forward on bleeding feet, ignoring the pain from the glass embedded in the soles.

"Master!" He clearly heard his own confusion and the entreaty, but was powerless to retain his dignity.

"No longer, Obi-Wan." Qui-Gon looked to him at last. His face was impassive, but his eyes filled with infinite sadness.

"No." Obi-Wan felt dizziness sway him, and leaned on Gida. "I don't know what's happened, but--"

"Hush." Qui-Gon stepped forward, and Obi-Wan was struck by the slow, careful grace of his motion, as if he were holding himself on a knife's edge of vanishing control. His master's eyes held nothing of calm, nothing of serenity, and Obi-Wan hesitated, feeling lost.

Qui-Gon drew off the heavy helmet and cast it away to clatter on the pavement. Obi-Wan blinked; there were wide wings of pure white in the hair at his temples that had not been there before. Qui-Gon unclipped his cloak and let it fall, also. His hand rose, and his knuckles grazed Obi-Wan's cheek, testing the reality of him. His hand curved under Obi-Wan's chin, lifting his face.

"I will not return with you, Obi-Wan." His eyes softened with the faintest touch of regret. "Do not blame yourself; the choices I have made were my own, and the cost is mine to pay. You have survived, and I am satisfied: the reward is sufficient for the cost. Remember that, when you face the choices that will define you. The reward should always be sufficient for the cost."

"Don't be foolish--" Obi-wan began, heated, but Qui-Gon's thumb stroked over his lips, silencing him, and Qui-Gon leaned forward slowly, careful and controlled. Obi-Wan's heart leaped to his throat, his blood kindling in a heartbeat at the thought that Qui-Gon meant to kiss him-- but his master's lips merely ghosted against his forehead, again with that infinitely deliberate sense of power and passion held in check, barely leashed.

Qui-Gon Jinn dropped his hand and turned away.

"The Council will not permit a dark Jedi to--" the woman tried again, stubborn.

"I'm not interested in the Council's permission, I'm afraid." Qui-Gon dismissed her, indifferent. "Come!" he clicked his tongue at the cat that had protected Obi-Wan, and it rose from its haunches, yawning, and followed him as he strode through the wreckage of the grandstand and dismembered bodies toward the Dramacore ship that waited, engines still idling, for the end of the chase, for its dead crew to board and resume their duties.

The arranhar flowed around Obi-Wan, sleek-muscled, tawny bodies calm. Tame to Qui-Gon's call, they padded up the ramp into the transport, one by one.

"Qui-Gon!" Weakened and in pain, Obi-Wan could not find anything else to say, his whole heart audible in his voice.

His master never hesitated and never looked back. The ramp cranked up behind the last of the cats, and the hatch sealed. The ship rose, inexpressibly graceful as it pirouetted and lifted above the rooftops, then darted like an arrow toward the plain, leaving Obi-Wan and the others standing in the square.

The Jedi woman sighed. "Stubborn old fool. Can you walk? I'll help." She bracketed Gida, ducking under Obi-Wan's left shoulder. "My ship is nearby. Walek, run ahead and ready the medical kit. We've got to get that slave-minder out of him before someone remembers and uses it."

Obi-Wan could not tear his eyes from the horizon where Qui-Gon had vanished; his legs would not work and his soul felt hollow, a numb ache where his heart should be.

"This isn't over," Obi-Wan vowed, but even without touching the Force, he understood a long time would pass before he might see Qui-Gon Jinn again.

Too shattered with exhaustion to protest further, Obi-Wan let himself be led away.

This storyline continues in "Rogue Jedi."

PART V - Glossary