[Jedi Quest] - 07(4)

Obi-Wan would not give up on Anakin. It was his duty as a Master to teach his apprentice, to help him become a Jedi Knight. All he knew was that he never seemed to have time to address the problem of the tension between them. Every day was packed with things to do, with travel, with missions or Council meetings. The galaxy teemed with trouble. The Senate was sometimes mired in procedures. The problems of an apprentice and his Master got lost in the chaos that surrounded them.

Obi-Wan was all too aware that guilt and shame could percolate and turn into anger, and he was alert for the signs of it. So far, Anakin just seemed remote. This, he had to remind himself, was normal for a young man of sixteen.

That is what you keep telling yourself. But is it true?

His mind had circled around to the beginning. Obi-Wan let out a puff of exasperation, which he hoped Anakin did not hear. He concentrated on his steps through the icy snow.

The kilometers passed in silence. The outpost was tucked into a mountain range that rose from the glaciers. Obi-Wan thought he could make out its outline in the distance with the electrobinoculars, but it was hard to be sure. Land and sky merged in a sea of white. The clouds seemed to lower as they walked, and a few flakes separated from the thick blanket above them and drifted lazily down. Soon the flakes thickened and the wind freshened, driving the snow against their faces.

Obi-Wan looked at the horizon. A silvery clump of snow seemed to be falling fast against the white sky. But he wasn’t seeing snowflakes. It was a cruiser.

“Surveillance,” he said crisply to Anakin. “Drop down.”

It was the only thing to do. There was no cover. They dropped to the ground, their faces in the snow. From above, their white survival gear would blend with the landscape. They heard the whirr of the engines above and stayed perfectly still. The ship was going slowly, tacking over the area in a sweep. Obi-Wan slowed down his breathing and his life processes, a Jedi technique. He knew Anakin would do the same. It would make it difficult for a life-form sensor to pick up their traces. The cold would help them, too.

Obi-Wan didn’t think of the cold, or the imminent danger. He let his mind slow as his body processes had. He made himself a blank, just another piece of white against a white background.

The whirr of the engines softened and waned. They waited until they could hear nothing, concentrating so hard that Obi-Wan heard the tiny plink plink of the icy snowflakes hitting the ground beside him.

Anakin rolled over. Ice had caked in his hair. He blinked the snow off his eyelashes. “I feel like a frozen jujasickle.”

“You look like one, too. But it’s better than being shot at.”

“If you say so.” Anakin stood and dusted the snow off his legs.

“They’ll be back. We’d better hurry.” Obi-Wan consulted the map on his datapad. “We’re close. We have to be careful now. We don’t want to lead the Vanqors to the outpost.”

“Let’s hope they don’t find the - “

A loud explosion suddenly sounded. Obi-Wan and Anakin turned back the way they had come. Obi-Wan put the electrobinoculars to his eyes. He saw a thin plume of smoke.

“They blew up our ship,” he said.

They didn’t need to say out loud what they were thinking. If the ship at the outpost wasn’t operable, they could be stuck on the moon for some time. If the outpost was destroyed, they would have no shelter.

They found the strength to move faster. There wasn’t much daylight left, and traveling in the darkness would be difficult. At least moving faster kept them warmer. The snow continued to fall and then turned into a blizzard. The falling temperature transformed the flakes into icy pellets that stung their cheeks. Despite his discomfort, Obi-Wan was grateful for the storm. It would hamper the search effort by the Vanqors.

“The shortest route will be over the glaciers,” he yelled over the noise of the storm to Anakin. “It’s also the hardest.”

“Let’s do it,” Anakin shouted back. They both knew that the sooner they found shelter, the safer they would be.

The glaciers loomed ahead, tall blocks of ice hundreds of meters thick, some rising up to create mountains of ice. They began to climb upward, using their cable launchers to haul themselves directly up the sheer face of the ice. Despite their thermal gloves, their fingers felt frozen. It was hard to grab the cable and find purchase on the ice. Obi-Wan saw the effort and strain on his Padawan’s face, and he felt it in his own body as he pushed forward, every meter a battle now.

After several hours of hard climbing, they were close to the coordinates of the outpost. The climbing was more gradual now, and they were able to move faster. The darkness grew around them.