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brachiosaurus-on · 1 year

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happy may the fourth as a treat here's the entire uncut first chapter of race condition for you to chew on while I spend the next year or so finishing the story

All interrogations are kind of the same. The walls have slightly different coloring or there's a few chairs more or less, but in the end it's always a depressing room you're not allowed to leave, locked in with a person who thinks you've done something wrong and will do just about anything to get you to admit it.

It's not really about truth at that point. By the time you're under the hot lights, they've already decided you'll swing and are just waiting for you to supply the right noose. They know the game. They can twist your words around until they've got you saying things you never did or even thought of, anything so long as they can pin you and send you off to rot. It's like that every time--they'll tell you it isn't, but they're lying. You don't make friends in an interrogation.

I sat there, cuffed, across from a man with the same face as mine and sad eyes that could break even the hardest heart straight down the middle. He didn't look like a High General or a Master Jedi or an interrogator--he looked like a tired man who was trying his best, and maybe that's what he was. Maybe it really was breaking his heart to have to handle me this way, but it didn't matter. I'd known my plans would hurt people, even decent ones like him, and that made me sorry, but not sorry enough to stop. If he was anything like me, he would understand in the end. Maybe not enough to forgive me, but I wasn't doing all this for forgiveness.

At that point, we'd been at it for at least two hours, going around in circles. He was good at the questions game, but I was good at being difficult.

"Obi-Wan," he said in that Coruscanti accent of his. "Why did you do it?"

"You'll have to be more specific, dear," I replied.

"Infiltrating the army. Sabotaging Republic military engagements and stealing classified information. Collaborating with Sith. What's the point? What's your goal?"

I shrugged. "I didn't tell you the first ten times you asked, Master Jedi, so I don't see why you think I'll tell you now."

"I'm trying to understand," he said. "You're a reasonable man. You're loyal and intelligent and kind. Why would you betray everyone like this?"

It was flattering, I guess, that he thought so highly of me, despite what I'd done to him and was still planning to do in the near future.

"Betrayal only depends on your point of view, doesn't it?" I asked.

His brow furrowed. "Then what is your point of view, Obi-Wan?"

"You won't believe me," I said, leaning in towards him. "But Master Kenobi, I am trying to save the Jedi."

---

That's not where the story starts.

The story starts a lot earlier on a small trash-covered world on the Outer Rim called Lotho Minor. I'd never heard of it before a witch's Dark talisman had led me there. Even feeling the Force twine tightly around it as I approached, I had a hard time believing that anyone would end up on such a hellhole planet, much less stay there for any amount of time, though I suppose that hadn't been a choice. It wasn't my place to say how the Nightsisters' Dark magic worked, and wasn't as if Lotho Minor had a lot of functioning ships to go around.

It was obvious even from atmosphere that Lotho Minor was not a beautiful planet. Its entire surface was mottled gray and brown, covered over with refuse from other systems--the natural result of interstellar transport being simpler and cheaper than efficient recycling measures. Clouds of steam wafted off of the mountains of trash, either from the planet's natural heat or from bacterial decomposition. I landed my ship on the most stable-looking pile I could find and it creaked and cracked precariously under the weight. It didn't inspire a lot of confidence.

I stepped out of the ship, and even with a respirator the smell was revolting. From where I stood, the steam rising from the unpleasantly warm mountains of trash became endless fog that made it hard to see further than maybe a hundred meters and the sky was stained deep red from all the atmospheric contaminants. The very ground had an unsettling texture from the mix of broken droids and discarded electronics and rotting clothes and food, squelching under my boots on one step and crunching under the next. None of it felt very stable, and I could hear the low rumbling sound of piles shifting and resettling in the distance. I didn't like to think what could be hidden in these enormous mounds--they almost certainly didn't bother to sort their sharps or biohazards in a place like this. Not a safe place, indeed.

I ventured out, following the witch's talisman as its Force pressed against my mind and tugged me forwards. It was not a comfortable sensation--it felt almost like a compulsion and a malicious one at that, trying to claw into my psyche. It had been uncomfortable before, when I had reached orbit, but it was much stronger now that I was planetside, like an invasive weed putting roots through the back of my mind. It felt like obsession, as much of the Dark Side did, and it tried to push me faster and into recklessness.

I breathed deep and took hold of the feeling, then with a practiced hand, excised it. I was not a Master of anything, of the Force or the Light or the Dark, but only I controlled myself and I'd gone through too many of my own angers and obsessions to let someone else's undo me. I was here because I wanted to be, and I would go where I needed to in my own time.

Slowly and carefully, I descended the mountain, watching out for jagged edges and uneven footing all the while. The talisman led me through to a cave which appeared to be the hull of an ancient starship, corroded by chemical waste and partially collapsed from the weight of all the refuse piled on top of it. It was easier to navigate inside than outside--at least the floor was less likely to fall apart beneath me--but there was something supremely creepy about a dead dark rotting starship with all the systems down. Like walking through a towering corpse.

I lit a glow stick and held it out. Small device casings were littered everywhere, shucked for any valuable components and discarded. There were dark streaks across the floors, which I could only assume was blood or other body fluids, and heavy scrapes and scratches across the metalwork like from enormous claws. A few parts of the corridors looked like they had been haphazardly slashed with a lightsaber--out of anger or frustration, if I had to guess.

Even without the talisman, I felt I was close. The Force grew colder with the Dark Side the further I went, flowing slowly and thickly like sludge. It clung to me as I ventured deeper, like hands trying to drag me down into a deep dark hole where I couldn't escape. Someone had hurt here, very badly and for a very long time. I didn't like to think about the implications.

I followed the tracks back to what may have once been the ship's command center. Through the door, there was a muffled humming sound of a working generator. The door jammed slightly when I pushed, and I had to lever my mechanical hand against the frame to get it open. The inside reeked of death.

The first thing I noticed was a jury-rigged broadcasting box sitting on what used to be the data terminal dashboard. It was pretty big, large enough that I wouldn't be able to get both arms around it, and it seemed powerful, like the long-distance transmitters used for distress signals. Chances were, that was its intended purpose, though it wasn't currently operational--my ship would have received the transmission.

The second thing I noticed were the piles of discarded food containers and small animal bones and rotting skins littered across the floor. It seemed that even on a planet that consisted of only refuse, there was still a little sustenance to be found, whether it was refused packaged foods or vermin. Having scavenged for food in much the same way in the past, I could sympathize, though even I would balk at having to survive on it for as long as the size of the piles implied.

The third thing I noticed was the body.

It lay in the corner of the room, a Zabrak with red skin and black tattoos that were stark even under the dim light. It was sprawled on a mass of twisted metal, and it was only when I stepped closer that I realized the body was missing a bottom half.

"Oh, Maul," I murmured. "What happened to you?"

Maul remained senseless as I approached him. He was breathing shallowly and I could still feel the Force moving within him, so he was alive, though not by much. Closer inspection revealed the pile of metal was not droid refuse as I had suspected, but an actual cybernetic prosthesis, a grotesque one with too many limbs. It seemed to have been grafted directly to Maul's abdomen, without even a proper neural port or other surgical mount.

I grimaced. My experience with cybernetics was limited to what was necessary for my mechanical hand, but it didn't take an expert to realize that a bad surgery and a non-matched species prosthesis made for a very bad time.

I took it apart. I didn't really have a choice--Maul was clearly in no state to move himself and there was no way to carry both Maul and his enormous arachnid lower half all the way back to my ship. He could get a new prosthesis--a proper one--after we got off this hellish planet.

I was careful, but there's only so much you can do with a prosthesis that isn't designed for removal and I felt Maul's Force curling in pain as I used my multi-tool to cut connections and pry away layers of metal. It took maybe an hour to strip everything down to the crude socket, an ugly thing like a ragged and open wound in durasteel alloy. Looking at it directly, it was obvious that Maul had not had the luxury of a proper cybernetic technician, nor of any sort of post-op care. The socket was badly fitted, chafing against inflamed scar tissue all around his abdomen, and the prosthesis itself didn't look like it had been serviced once in the last decade. Maul's entire experience with cybernetics must have been excruciating.

I pulled my cloak off to make a sling for carrying Maul back to the ship, and it was in the middle of easing him into it when his eyes snapped open, the Force around him swirling like tongues of fire.

His red-and-gold gaze directly met mine and his lips curled back into a snarl. "Kenobi."

So at least he remembered me. They didn't seem like good memories.

I couldn't feel the Force the same way that Jedi did, but I didn't need that to feel the utter hatred spiraling out of him. I felt him lash out with the Force, whether trying to choke me or otherwise, and I tightened my grip on him.

"Maul," I said. "Calm down. I'm getting you off this planet."

Maul screamed something at me that sounded like a threat of bodily harm, which was pretty impressive considering his physical state.

I didn't have the time or energy to deal with it. I wanted to be off this planet as soon as possible, and the last thing I needed was Maul trying to strangle me on the way there. I pressed hard against Maul's diaphragm, driving the air out of him, and pushed my Force to my voice and said, "Sleep."

Maul flinched from the command, the scream dying in his throat.

"Sleep, Maul," I said, the Force vibrating through my words. It sank into him easily--he was too unbalanced or too unaware to keep it out. "You're safe now. I'm getting you out of here. Sleep."

Maul growled at me again, fighting it, but his eyes slipped closed as unconsciousness took him. When he was well and truly asleep, I secured him in the sling across my back. He was feverish and one of his horns dug uncomfortably into my shoulder, but he was so light that he was easy to carry--and not just because of the missing legs. He needed a lot of care, the professional kind. He needed it a long time ago.

"All right," I said, more to myself than to him. "Let's get off this dump."

---

I'm not a fan of hyperspace.

I'm not a fan of space travel in general, but hyperspace is the worst--it's a big reason why I settled down in Coruscant ten years ago with the intention of staying indefinitely. Hyperspace is empty and endless, and for someone like me who can feel the Force a little bit but not nearly enough, it's like staring straight into a black hole.

Dead and dark.

The only good thing about hyperspace was that it was dead time with nothing better to do, which meant I could finally sit down and think about what the hell was going on.

I had a lot of questions. I'm not unobservant--I can tell when things don't add up, and at the moment, a lot of things were not making sense. Least of all the half-a-Zabrak laying on the cabin bed, deep in Force-induced sleep.

Less than a tenday ago, I had killed Maul. I had shot him dead, a bullet through the heart, and held him until he breathed his last. Three days ago, I had arrived on his home planet of Dathomir and spoken to his family and buried him there according to his last wishes. His mother, the witch, wasn't happy about the situation, not that I expected her to be. She must have taken issue with Maul's death, because she did some kind of Dark magic on him, and maybe on me, though I don't know what--between the strength of the Dark Side on Dathomir and her magic, I blacked out pretty early on in the process.

When I awoke, she shoved a talisman into my hands and led me to a ship and told me to retrieve her son. I asked questions, obviously, but she wasn't in much of an answering mood. From what little she deigned to explain, Maul who was dead was no longer dead, and also on another planet several light years away, and this somehow made it my job to get him.

Fine, okay. I had killed Maul, so the least I could do was grab his resurrected self off whatever planet he'd landed on. I'm not the kind of scumbag who only cares about someone once they're dead, and I'm not the kind of idiot who tries to get on the bad side of a witch who's powerful enough to bring her son back to life, so of course I took the ship and the talisman and went. Magic could bring Maul back to life and resurrect him on a completely different planet than the one he'd been buried on? Sure, whatever. I didn't know a damn thing about magic, and as Master Jinn had once said a lifetime ago, through the Force all things were possible. I could suspend my disbelief long enough to check it out for myself.

I couldn't suspend my disbelief for this.

Maul--this Maul--was not the one I remembered. It wasn't just that he was missing his legs. It wasn't just that he was even more gaunt than the last time I had seen him.

It was that he had a cybernetic socket that looked like it was installed several years ago. It was that he had clearly lived in that alcove in that ancient starship for months, if not years.

The Maul lying on the bed beside me had no scar over his heart--not one where I had shot him dead, nor where Master Jinn had run him through with his lightsaber eleven years ago. I could believe that a magical resurrection might give him more injuries and scars, but to take them away? And not even all of his scars--only the one? That didn't make sense. It was too arbitrary.

This Maul was not my Maul. I could believe that. So why, then, had he recognized me? That didn't seem possible. I was missing something big. Until he awoke and answered some questions, I had no way to find out what.

I sighed and left the cabin. Maul would wake up in his own time, and I would feel it through the Force when he did. Hovering wouldn't help either of us.

I paced the ship slowly, Maul's lightstaff a heavy weight on my belt. That was another thing I couldn't reconcile, when to my knowledge his lightstaff had been stored in the Jedi Archive vaults eleven years ago after Master Jinn collected it from Naboo.

I didn't like to carry it--it's not right to carry a kyber crystal that isn't yours to begin with and the Force around this one was so volatile it was almost physically painful to touch. The crystal felt like it was weeping.

It made my heart hurt in a lot of ways. I hadn't ever seen a kyber crystal treated so cruelly--they were sacred to the Jedi and the Guardians of Jedha both, and respected as companions and for their connection to the Force. Kyber wasn't sentient the way a creature is, with discrete thoughts and feelings, but it was still alive in the Force, and it could hurt and care as much as anything else. For a Jedi, a chosen kyber crystal was practically an extension of the soul, and mutilating one this way was desecration of the worst sort, both to the Force and one's self.

I didn't know why Maul would do something like that--I asked the crystal, but my connection to the Force wasn't deep enough to understand anything from it except vague impressions of pain and blood. I suppose that was answer enough.

It would be nice to believe that Maul had been coerced into it all by his Sith Master and that he was really a decent person deep down, but chances were, that wasn't true. I already knew he was cruel. He had hurt himself and he had hurt others, and all things remaining equal, he would do it again.

Until I knew what was going on, until I knew it was safe, I would hold onto his lightstaff. I don't think Maul's kyber liked that very much, but it seemed to accept the necessity of it. It didn't like me much, either. I could respect that.

I went to the ship's kitchenette, not really out of a desire for food but just to keep moving. Hyperspace made me restless no matter the circumstances--a tendency that had greatly annoyed Jango in the years we had collaborated. Only now, I didn't have Jango to spar me to exhaustion. I was effectively alone in a two-cabin cruiser that was older than I was, whose previous owners were now assuredly dead by the Nightsisters' hands. I supposed I ought to be grateful it still worked at all.

It was a good thing I wasn't hungry, because the kitchenette had very little in the way of sustenance--mostly nutrient powder and other preserved foods which were edible enough, but whose taste, I had found out, had not improved over the years. Food was food, but I sincerely hoped that once we landed I could restock with something a bit more palatable.

Just then, the door slid open and the ship's astromech rolled in, a somewhat junky KY4 model that had gone through some hard times. Its chassis was a small box of about knee height with three omni wheels for movement and a wide-angle ocular sensor on top--an outdated style, but functional enough. I moved to the side so it could roll without tripping me, and it chirped to me in response. My Binary wasn't great, but I got the gist--that all systems were running steady. It was the third time in as many hours it had come to tell me so.

"Thank you, KY4. How much longer will we be in hyperspace?" I asked.

KY4 chirped that it would be about two more hours, then rushed to reassure me its navigation processors were completely functional and that there would be no problems with its calculated course. This was, again, something it had done multiple times over the course of transit.

"I believe you," I said. "Did you need anything else?"

KY4 chirped a negative and skittered off without waiting for a response.

I let it go. Droids might not have feelings the way a person did, but they tended to develop personalities if they went too long without refreshing their firmware, and for better or for worse, KY4 had been alone long enough to discover anxiety. Considering the fate of its previous owner, that was understandable. I didn't know much about dealing with skittish droids, or droids in general, but I'd give it space and maybe once it was used to me it wouldn't feel like it had to flee the moment it stopped talking. Chances were, it didn't know what to do with me under these strange new conditions. It would probably take a while before it felt like it was on level ground.

I guess that made two of us.

---

True to KY4's calculations, we dropped back to sublight just over two hours later. The two of us piloted the ship into low orbit over a small ocean moon known as Bantu IVb, the only inhabitable moon of six orbiting a gas giant in the Dothikan system on the Outer Rim. It was excessively obscure and there was very little notable about it except that I knew a medical professional lived there--Solis Greer, a Mandalorian Duros and acquaintance-slash-sort-of-family-member of Jango Fett. I knew about her because thirteen years ago, when Jango had picked me up with a crushed mechanical hand and a shoulder recently stabbed through with a lightsaber, he had brought me here for treatment.

It was a stretch to say that Solis and I were friends or even friendly--she had obviously known Jango well, but I was only ever her patient. Still, she was level-headed enough that I felt confident she wouldn't shoot me in the face before I could ask her to help Maul.

We held the ship in low orbit and I sent a transmission requesting landing clearance. Even on a planet without a spaceport, that was only polite.

The responding transmission arrived not ten minutes later, to the effect of "who the hell are you?" and also "where did you get those landing codes?", except in much coarser language. I guess Solis didn't remember me--it had been thirteen years, after all.

I responded that I was an old friend of Jango's, and that I had a patient in need of medical care. There was a little more back-and-forth, but about half an hour later she sent me a set of coordinates where I could land safely and said that she would meet me there. I thanked her and started the descent to the planet's surface.

It wasn't an easy landing--Bantu IVb had heavy winds and my ship was not designed for a single pilot with only one fully functioning hand, but between me and KY4, we made it down with only a minimum amount of damage. We landed on a rocky outcropping a few kilometers inland from the shore.

I stepped out onto the bluish shale, getting a feel for the slightly lower gravity, and breathed deep. The air smelled just like I remembered--damp and a bit metallic from dissolved mineral deposits. There were no trees on the island--or at all, if I remembered correctly--giving me a clear view of the moon's enormous oceans with gray hydroturbines and clumps of red algae floating in the distance. The skies were cloudless and tinted greenish-blue, with a large hazy orange crescent hanging a few hand-widths above the horizon--the gas giant this moon orbited. Despite the apparent barrenness, it was far from dead. I could feel the Force all around, flowing in slow currents from plant and animal life hidden just below the water's surface. It wasn't for me, but it was as good a place to live as any.

I felt eyes on me before I heard the footsteps. I turned to face them.

Solis stood ten paces back, in full armor with her blaster rifle aimed at my face. It was not, in short, the welcome I was hoping for. I held up my hands slowly.

Solis did not put the blaster down. "Why come here, Kenobi?" she asked in heavily accented Basic.

Okay. So maybe she did remember me, though everyone seemed unhappy about that lately. "Solis," I said. "I'm sorry for arriving without warning. There's a patient in the ship who needs medical care. You were the only medic I knew who could also do technician work. I have credits--I can pay." I didn't have too much, but it would be enough for this. "If you don't want me here, that's fine. Just tell me where I can go, and I'll leave."

"How do you know this place? Where do you know my name?" Solis demanded.

"I…what?" I asked. "Solis, you treated me, remember? Jango brought me here after I got stabbed with a lightsaber. You told me to get phrik plating for my hand."

This, if anything, made her angrier. "Do you hear words you're saying? Do you think I'm fool, jetii?"

My mind came to a screeching halt. "Jetii? Solis, I'm not a Jedi. I can't even use the Force. You knew my name; don't you remember me?"

"Only fool doesn't know your name. It's on all the HoloNet for the last year." I could hear the sneer in her voice. "High General Obi-Wan Kenobi."

That froze me.

That's a title I had never wanted to hear--one I never thought I would hear. I'd had my war on Melida/Daan and it had cost me my place with the Jedi Order, my hand, and the Force. That was enough war in a lifetime for anyone. Given the choice, I would never pick up that mantle of command again.

My mind whirled. Solis had recognized my face from the HoloNet, because I was apparently High General Obi-Wan Kenobi. A Jedi Master, maybe even a Councilor. That didn't make sense, but it was the start of a picture I could just about see the outlines of.

Solis didn't remember me from thirteen years ago because I hadn't come here thirteen years ago. Like Maul, this Solis was not my Solis.

Or, perhaps more accurately, I was not their Obi-Wan Kenobi.

The very idea of it was absurd. Not just that I could have somehow slipped from one reality to the next, but also that it could happen without my realizing it.

…But I had blacked out. The Force had taken me on Dathomir when the witch had done her magic, and she could have done anything then. Maybe even send me to another universe entirely.

I had a hard time believing it--anyone would--but it fit. It was why Maul was stranded on a distant trash planet for so long, bisected at the waist. It was why Solis would call me a Jedi when I had never told her about my connection to the Force or the Jedi Order.

The whine of a charging blaster coil shook me out of my thoughts.

"No words to say, jetii?" Solis asked.

"I--Solis…" I trailed off weakly. I didn't know how to play this. I didn't have enough information. "Solis, I don't know how to prove this to you, but I am not a High General." Just saying the title made me feel sick. "I'm not a Jedi."

"Playing no-memory now?"

"No, that's not--that's not what I meant. I mean, I'm not the Obi-Wan you know. I'm not a Jedi, Master or otherwise--I don't even have the Force. I'm a private detective on Coruscant and have been for the last ten years. I have my license in my pocket if you want to see it."

Solis tilted her head to one side. I couldn't see her expression under her helmet, but she seemed willing to humor me. "Give it," she said.

I tossed my wallet to her. She caught it with one hand and flipped it open, all while keeping the rifle aimed at me. She looked over my license, then went on to my other ID cards, which was frankly rude. When she seemed satisfied with what she saw, she closed it and tucked it into a pouch on her belt.

"Uh," I said.

"You get it back when I think I trust you. You say you know Jango?"

"I lived with him for two years. We worked together on jobs."

"Jango Fett works with no people," Solis said, then switching to Mando'a, "He certainly did not work with a beansprout like you."

"Don't call me a beansprout until you've fought me," I said, switching languages myself. "I've sparred Jango with or without weapons and won. I could do the same with you."

She paused. "You've got his accent."

"I should think so--he taught me the language," I replied. "He taught me a lot about fighting, too, which I'll happily demonstrate sometime after my friend gets medical attention and when you don't have a blaster pointed at me."

She looked over to my ship, where KY4 was sitting at the base of the ramp, doing the droid version of pacing nervously. "What condition is the patient in?"

"He's stable, but it's pretty bad. It's best if you see him yourself."

Slowly, Solis lowered her blaster and gestured to the ship. "Fine. Show the way, Detective. This isn't over, though. You owe me an explanation--one that isn't full of shit."

I was pretty sure that in this particular case, even the correct and full explanation would sound full of shit. Still, I said, "I'll be happy to explain what's going on as soon as I know what's going on. You said you have a HoloNet connection?"

---

The first thing I did once we transported Maul back to Solis' infirmary and she kicked me out to do her work was lock myself into a fresher and make sure my body was still mine.

I looked at myself in a mirror, visually tracing my features--same gray eyes, same nose, same mouth, same beard. I went on to catalog the scars across my body, from Melida/Daan to the lightsaber scar through my right shoulder to that time I got shot pushing Bail out of the way of an assassin--scars that a hypothetical Jedi version of myself shouldn't have. Everything seemed accounted for.

My hair was still the same length, coming down to my mid-back with singed edges where it had been recently sliced by a lightsaber and my mechanical hand looked like it was supposed to--prosthetic halfway up my right forearm with phrik plating. It was the same simple but robust Jedha model with limited motion in the wrist I was supposed to have. A Jedi wouldn't have chosen a model like this--it wasn't flexible or sensitive enough for saberwork.

I let out a slow breath in relief. By all accounts, I was still me. I didn't know how it could be otherwise, considering my clothes had remained the same through the transition between worlds, but there was so much I didn't know about the situation. I had to be sure, that's all.

The second thing I did was use a borrowed datapad to search myself on the HoloNet. Doing so was…overwhelming.

It took no time at all to find that Jedi Master--a Master at thirty-five? What the actual hell?--Obi-Wan Kenobi was a highly-regarded diplomat known for his calm disposition and charisma who had resolved hundreds of cases of governmental unrest or other diplomatic affairs across the galaxy. Now, with the Clone Wars, he had become notorious for his strategic brilliance as a High General of the Republic army. He wasn't just at the head of the war. He was the face of it.

My stomach churned at the thought.

There were holos of me--of him--everywhere. Candid snapshots, publicity holos of him interacting with younglings and soldiers and senators, blurry holovids of him deflecting storms of blasterfire with his lightsaber--

It was too much. Just about everyone in the Republic must know his name and face, and that was absolutely horrifying.

I found myself staring at a short holovid of him at some kind of Senatorial event--it didn't matter which one. He was dressed up in traditional Jedi robes and tabards and his hair was cut short, cropped at the nape of the neck, and he talked with a distinct Coruscanti accent, the way I used to when I was younger. His face looked just like mine.

That could have been me. In another life, in this life, that would have been me. Not a Temple reject who left the Order after less than a year of padawanship, but a man who fulfilled his dreams of becoming a Jedi Knight. A man who never had to leave his family in the Temple or become permanently disabled in both body and spirit. A man who was respected for doing good across the galaxy.

A perfect Jedi, they called him. Serene, level-headed, and competent--not angry and impulsive like I had been. Not a failure like I had been.

I didn't want to see this. I accepted a long time ago that the Jedi life was not the life for me, but what was I supposed to do when I saw evidence to the contrary so starkly? Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi fit. The life fit him so well that there wasn't any other path he could walk. He devoted himself to the Force and to helping others because that's where he was meant to be.

What did that say about me?

I don't know how long I sat there, staring at that holovid, looping again and again. All I know is that when I came back to myself, I had my face in my hands and the datapad was somewhere on the floor, timed out to sleep mode. I shook myself roughly to snap out of it. Time and place. There was a time and place for those thoughts, and it wasn't now. Jedi Obi-Wan was a personal problem, and I would deal with it later.

Right now, there were more important things to find.

I reached the datapad off the floor and booted it up again to search recent events--surely, my failure to become a Jedi was not the only divergence from what I remembered.

Well, it didn't take long to find out two key points: First, the Battle of Geonosis was fifteen months ago, making it now almost an entire year later than when I had left my world, and second, the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic was still one Sheev Palpatine.

Sheev Palpatine. The Sith Lord.

---

"Solis."

Solis looked up from her data terminal in the infirmary. She wasn't wearing full armor anymore. She'd never explained that to me--maybe as a medical professional it was inconvenient, or the years in near-isolation since Galidraan had made it less important. She looked just as I remembered: purple scaled skin, red pupil-less eyes, thin face, no hair, and a cybernetic left arm with a hand that didn't match--I vaguely recalled she swapped out different hands for different types of work. She had the same strange ageless quality that most Duros seemed to have, and except for modifications to her arm, she hadn't changed at all in the last thirteen years.

"Detective," she said tonelessly in Mando'a. I guess I'd made a good enough showing that she assumed I was fluent--which I was. "What do you want?"

"Is there a test you can run to see how old I am?" I asked.

"Shouldn't you know that already?" she asked. "You know what year you were born. Surely basic arithmetic isn't beyond you."

"I want to make sure I didn't black out for an entire year." Most likely, I had traveled through time as well as across dimensions, but the idea that I possibly hadn't--that I had been in the grip of the Force for an entire year on Dathomir where the witch could have done anything to me--made me nervous. I had already meditated for a while and verified that the Force within me was all mine, but I wanted the extra reassurance.

"Is that a…common issue with you?" Solis asked.

"Nothing that drastic, but I've had episodes," I replied, which was a mild way of saying my soul occasionally, annoyingly, left my body. "Can you find out my age or not?"

Solis hummed. "Hypothetically, yes. There's no magic indicator in a human body that tells you the age of the germ cell, but I can make an estimate based on certain biomarkers and gene sequences." She glanced back at me. "I would need to take needle biopsies."

"That's fine," I said. "Can you do it now?"

"Impatient, aren't you?" she tutted. "You haven't even explained what's happened to you or your friend yet."

"I don't think you'll like the explanation, but I'll tell you what I know now, if you want."

Solis thought about it for a bit, then said, "Fine. Go change into a gown and sit. I need to finish something first."

I nodded and did as she asked. It was a quiet wait, and not too long--maybe only fifteen minutes. Solis finished what she was doing, then had me lay prostrate on a bed and hooked up a vitals monitor to my arm.

She paused before prepping my back. "That's a lot of scarring," she said. "Does it hurt?"

"No. They're from a long time ago."

"Okay." Solis wiped the area clean. "Do you need general anesthesia?" She asked as she set up the appropriate medical droid.

I shook my head.

"All right." She held up a small hypo. "This is a mild nerve disruptor--it's to suppress pain and make it so you'll stay still while the medical droid does its work. It'll last about ten minutes. If you don't want that, the droid can use mechanical restraint instead."

"I can't use most painkillers--I'm allergic to spice."

"This is a different class of drug. It's not a spice derivative."

"Injection is fine, then."

"Okay. You'll feel a pinch in the side of your neck." She jabbed me with the hypo. It did, in fact, pinch, and I could feel an uncomfortable pins-and-needles sensation move down through my body. She stepped back and disposed of the hypo, then took a seat in front of me. "Now we let the droid do its work and in the meantime, you can explain what the hell is going on."

Considering the circumstances of my arrival, she had been very generous. An explanation was the least of what I owed.

I gave her what I could. I told her about where and when I had come from, and about Dathomir's witch and retrieving Maul from Lotho Minor and finding what I'd found on the HoloNet. She let me say it all without interruption, though all told, the story wasn't very long--I had only been in this universe for about two days, of which large parts were spent in hyperspace. Even for me, that wasn't a lot of time to accomplish anything.

"You realize this all sounds insane," Solis said after a long pause.

"Sure, I do. I hardly believe it myself, and I'm the one it happened to, but it's my best guess for what's going on," I said. "I don't really know how to prove it to you."

The medical droid beeped, indicating it had finished its work, and Solis checked its console report. "All three samples are good. I'll have these processed and I can calculate your results after I deal with your friend." She put some bacta patches on my punctures, checked my vitals, and helped me sit up as the drug wore off. "Crazy as it is, Detective, I believe you."

"You do?" I asked, rubbing my lower back. It throbbed a little, but it wasn't bad. With the bacta, it would probably be better tomorrow.

Solis nodded and returned my clothes, turning away so I could put them on with some privacy. "You seem smart enough to come up with a more believable cover story if you were lying, but honestly if you ignore the ridiculousness of it, your explanation makes the most sense. I checked your IDs--they're all legit, except for the fact that they shouldn't exist. You have Jan'ika's landing codes and you speak with his accent."

Jan'ika. Cute. He would have strangled me if I ever called him that.

"And of course, there's your hand," Solis continued. "I'd know my own work anywhere--it would be a pretty big coincidence if anyone besides me designed that. You said I suggested the phrik plating?"

"For defense against lightsabers, yes," I said as I got dressed. "The good news is: it works. The bad news is: even if it can stop the blade from cutting, the heat still gets you. My port got seared pretty badly and I had to get a new hand." I straightened out my shirt and sat back down on the bed. "I'm decent."

Solis nodded. "Well, we already knew the heat would be a problem, but the phrik kept you alive, didn't it? That means it did its job." She handed me a glass of water. "This will help with the pain."

I accepted the glass and drank. It made me feel better, more because of the water than the medication in it--I couldn't remember the last time I'd had anything to drink. Back on the ship, probably.

Solis sat down. "So. You've traveled from one universe to the next. What are you planning to do now, Detective?"

That was the million-credit question.

This galaxy was at war, and had been for over a year, Separatist droids against Republic clones. It was even worse than I had imagined it could be--worlds burned out, millions of people dead, and there was no end in sight. That alone made me ill, but there was more to it than that.

Chancellor Palpatine, the single most powerful man in the Republic, was Maul's Sith Master. He had told me that back in my universe, and there was all the evidence that it was the same in this one--the man had risen to office in the same way, and operated the Republic in the same way, accumulating power towards some horrible end that I couldn't yet see.

And nobody knew. This universe had progressed a year further than mine and nobody knew that the poison was coming from the very top of the system, flowing down to everything underneath--the army, the Jedi, the Republic itself. The circumstances that had led to my discovery of this deceit simply didn't exist here.

A low voice in the back of my mind murmured that I didn't have to do anything with that. This wasn't my universe. This wasn't my business. My concern should be returning to my own world, perhaps with Maul in tow, and going back to Coruscant to my life as a private investigator. It would probably even be easy--the witch had sent me here, so she could very well bring me back.

But I couldn't do that. Palpatine was plotting for a genocide--the genocide of my people. It didn't matter that they weren't my Order or my family. They were the Jedi Order, and while I could never be one of them again, I couldn't let them die just because this universe wasn't mine. I couldn't let a war so great and terrible go on when I could reasonably find a way to end it.

That only left me one option. "I…think I have to end this war."

Solis, to her credit, didn't laugh. "Easy enough to say. How will you do that?"

"I don't know. I know who's behind it and I know what he wants--the end of the Republic and the Jedi Order, and a powerful apprentice to serve him." Maul had told me that much, back in my universe. "I can't let that happen."

"If your problem is one man, then remove the man," Solis said. "Jan'ika taught you how to do that, yes?"

I shook my head. "It's not that simple. This man's got support that runs deep and his pieces are already moving. He's had years to prepare. If I go straight for him without any preparation, he'll kill me and a lot of other people, too. I don't even know if killing him will stop his momentum. I…need to figure out what he's trying to do, first."

That was the crux of the problem.

Palpatine was not stupid--he had a plan, and he was putting it to work as we spoke. How did you destroy a Republic and a people and a culture? Orchestrating a war and forcing Jedi to serve at the head of it was all well and good for thinning the numbers, but it wasn't as if all Jedi could serve in a war, nor would every Jedi who fought in the war fall. A war would find the Order depleted and weary, but they would recover, and I couldn't imagine Palpatine being satisfied with that. Attrition wasn't enough. There had to be something more. Something decisive.

I thought about the Republic's army, the millions of men with Jango's face, commissioned to fight for the Jedi. Jango had hated the Jedi, yet he had agreed to help build an army to fight for them. The Jango I had known wouldn't have done that--he would have died before helping the Jedi who had destroyed his home and his people, so why had he agreed? Even beyond that, the Jedi Mind Healers had detected some kind of Darkness within Captain Rex's mind--was that coincidence or somehow part of this plot, too?

That was the problem--I simply didn't know enough. I knew the man behind it and I knew the end goal, but not the path between the two.

Back in my world, I had gathered evidence against Palpatine--fraud, corruption, and other unsavory deeds--and given them to Bail, who had the resources and the support to raise a political movement against him. I had informed the Jedi High Council of the Sith Lord in their midst. I had spoken to soldiers about the conspiracy that might be brewing from the moment they were commissioned. In my world, a world where the war had only started, that may have been enough.

In this world, with a war that had dragged on for so long and a Chancellor who had gained unprecedented power and influence and the time to place his agents everywhere he needed them to be, there was no way. He was too well-rooted to be taken down unless I uncovered all of his schemes one by one and burned them out beyond any hope of recovery. If I couldn't do at least that, nothing I did to Palpatine would matter, and people would die.

"If you want my opinion," Solis said after a long silence, "I think you will need help to pull this off. I don't know what man you're trying to hunt down--and I don't need you to tell me--but he sounds powerful."

"He is very powerful."

"Then you'll need to fight smart, and you'll need help. Even the strongest fighter can't be in more than one place at a time, and it sounds like you'll need to be in more than one place at a time."

I nodded. "Is that an offer, dear?"

Solis sighed and clasped her hands. "No. You're a friend of Jan'ika's, so I'll help you if you come here, but this fight is yours, and I have my own duties. You're not the only one who comes flying in needing medical treatment."

"I understand."

"I have no love for the jetiise," she continued. "I can't blame them for killing us the way they did--it is only appropriate that the strong survive and the weak perish, and if we did not want to be cut down we should have been stronger before challenging them--but their victory ushered in the end of the True Mandalorians. I can't forgive that."

I bowed my head. "I understand."

"But the jetiise are yours, so you fight for them. It's one thing to hunt and kill in battle, but another thing entirely to purge an entire people, their home and culture and younglings included. There's no honor in that. I wouldn't wish it on anyone." She folded her fist over her chest. "So fight, Detective Kenobi. If you think you can end this war and save your people, then do so. Destroy the man who threatens your family and make it so he can never hurt anyone again."

I folded my own fist over my chest, hardening my resolve for what had to be done. "I will. I'll learn his plans, I'll dismantle each one in turn, and when I've rooted out all his traps and contingencies…I will kill him."

#fanfic #alternate universe #obi wan kenobi #jedi #maul #palpatine #sith #prequels #clone wars #tcw #star wars

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