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Post by Ani-Chay Pinn on Jul 24, 2005 15:30:19 GMT -5
HOSTAGE by Anne Davenport
“Ya gotta see this. This one’s really gonna make us.” Yagatz led Muni down the narrow, winding corridor of crumbling, gray stone where Bombi kept his occasional ‘guests’. Muni had no interest at all in whatever grotesque amusement Bombi’s guards were into now, but it seemed safer to oblige her than refuse outright.
“Just as long as it’s quick. I have to get back to Bora City before dark.”
“Ya just gotta have a quick look. You wouldn’t believe what it took to take him down.” They arrived at a dark, metal cell door. Muni looked in the small, narrow window that Yagatz pointed to. The back wall of the cell was one large, dingy mirror so the guard outside could see the whole space inside. A lone figure lay on one of the two bunks.
“What did you do?” He looked human, a boy, as far as she could tell from the back and head that she could see. Dried blood stained the parts of his torn shirt and his bare ankles were shackled. He didn’t move or react to Yagatz calls.
“Open this door,” Muni demanded. Yagatz recoiled.
“You got to be kidding. He’s the one—”
“I don’t care where you got him from or what you plan to do with him. But the only reason why you get me here is because we don’t ask questions if someone needs help. Anybody. And you just showed me another injured person and I’m going to treat him. Now open this door!”
Yagatz had never been very smart. She’d always been a taking-orders kind muscle. But not this time. She called Bombi instead. Minutes later, the Sagast Hills warlord himself showed up. And bodily tossed Muni into the cell with the boy.
She sat, stunned in a corner of the cell and bruised from colliding with the wall and the bunk opposite the boy’s. The door slid shut.
“You want to be in there with him, Muni, you can stay there!” She heard him bellow as he and Yagatz left.
Muni painfully clamored to her feet. “Send down S4 you fathead!” No response. They were both gone. Muni just stared at the now sealed door. What had gotten into him? He’d never get another technician to show up at his hideout if he kept her prisoner. Or if she didn’t return at all. Had he actually gone to the expense of getting his own medical droid? And the medical center and equipment that would have to go with it? No, he hadn’t. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have spent the last three hours with S4 fixing burns on his goons from their last fight. And S4 wouldn’t be much good to him all alone, not without links and supplies from the Bora City medical center.
“Great. This is just great.” She shook her head and looked about. The boy on the bunk had half risen and was looking over his shoulder at her. His face was a mess of bruises. She went to him and he hastily sat up, his legs pulled up to his chest.
“What were they doing?” His mouth was covered with a wide, blue plastic strip. The boy looked wary, but he obviously recognized the green medical technician’s insignia on her shirt. “Sorry,” she apologized. “I’m not much good without the droid. And somehow I think that Bombi’s not going send S4 down.” Muni unhooked one of her pouches. “I’ve got a few things that should help with the bruises.” He nodded and let her sit next to him on the bunk. He looked to Muni like he was mid-adolescent, skinny and not fully grown, but old enough to be treated like an adult.
The first thing she looked at was the plastic covering his mouth, but it had obviously been put on with a permanent adhesive. “I’m going to need S4 for that.” He nodded his understanding. He didn’t look like he was quite old enough to shave, much, but even without sprouting facial hair it was still going to be painful taking it off.
“Can you show me what hurts worse?” His hands were shackled, but he could still point to his ribs. He wore a simple, pale wrap-around shirt with a longer, larger, wrap-around over-shirt over that. Both were torn and bloodied in places. It was impossible to take either one off with his hands bound so, she just lifted them up to look. She had to use a couple of cleaning pads from her pouches to separate cloth from skin where the blood had dried. But when she looked more carefully she could see that the cuts were only superficial. The bruises looked like boot marks and when Muni asked, he confirmed that Bombi’s thugs had kicked him for sport. Muni wished she had S4 to check him for internal injuries. Medicine was droid work. Droid maintenance and repair were her work. She was only trained for first-aid because she accompanied the mobile unit when it was sent out for emergencies.
The boy was amazingly tolerant and only winced when she checked some of his worst bruises. He likely had some cracked ribs, but nothing was broken. He even stood for her and let her check his lower torso and legs, but none of the bruises there were as bad as those on the upper part of his body. He had a lump on the side of his head, too, but his eyes were clear and steady. When she heard a muffled groan, she looked more carefully at his face again.
“Did they gag you, too?” He nodded.
“What did you say to them?” He shrugged.
Aside from the tools she needed to work on S4, the only things Muni had were the first-aid supplies she usually carried. But fortunately, she had a full kit. None of the injuries that they’d dealt with had been anything that simple bacta patches and sterilizing pads would help with. They had all been long, burned gashes and missing limbs. They were unusual injuries, but no amount of violence from Bombi’s ilk surprised her.
Muni applied patches to the worst places on his ribs. And she covered a huge bruise on his cheek and forehead. She also rubbed salve over the raw places on his wrists and ankles under the shackles. Simple as her ministrations were, his blue eyes affirmed his gratitude to her. She inquired about his health in general and commented about the crude manners of Bombi and his kind, but he could only shrug and gesture a little in return, so their “conversation” didn’t go very far.
She invited him to lay back down on the bunk again when she finished. His eyes spoke his gratitude again for her help, but instead of laying back down on the bunk he sat up straight, his hands in his lap, eyes closed. It looked odd to Muni, but it obviously meant that he was feeling better.
He certainly wasn’t your average rich kid, Muni thought, for it was all but certain that Bombi was ransoming another offworlder. His hair was very ordinary for a human, medium brown, short and thick, except for one, long braid tied with colored bands that hung behind his right ear. Her youngest son fancied himself as a fashion maven, but she didn’t remember seeing him wear anything like it. This boy wasn’t local.
What surprised Muni was that the warlord had abused him so badly. The rumor was that the Bombi’s first kidnaping had gone as smoothly as that sort of thing could go, with no injury to the victim and a profit large enough for Bombi’s toughs to make a nuisance of themselves in the Sagast Hills villages.
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Post by Ani-Chay Pinn on Jul 24, 2005 15:31:25 GMT -5
Bombi’s new venture had certainly caused a lot of local talk, but in the end, that was all that happened. People had talked and talked about doing something about the lawlessness in the hills for as long as Muni could remember, but nothing had been done about it. The law enforcement effort would be huge and expensive some factions argued. Others cynically complained that if they couldn’t run the miscreants off to the hills they would just cause trouble in the cities. But Muni was confident that the real problem was that there were too many fools hanging on to the idea that it was somehow romantic to forsake everything an go off to be a bandit in the hills, like running away from home to become a space pirate without the danger of decompression in vacuum.
Even more surprising was the boy’s apparent calm about his situation. Even as badly treated as he was, Muni saw no trace of tears or dread or nervousness. He looked about as unhappy about being in Bombi’s cell as she was, but he wasn’t panicked about it.
Muni looked at the dusty reflection in the back mirror wall of the cell. She sat forward resting her elbows on her knees. She briefly wondered what had made the worn stains on the gray floor. The cell smelled of old sweat and decay. How long would it take before she was reported missing? She was supposed to meet her daughter for dinner; when would she call the medical center to ask where she was? Or would her supervisor notice she hadn’t checked in when she was supposed to and try signaling? She pondered the permutations for quite awhile.
After some time Muni thought about laying down on the other bunk, but looking at it, she wondered if it might be more comfortable to lay on the floor instead. She saw some bunched up material that matched the boy’s tunic that he’d apparently been using as a pillow on the bunk behind him. He wasn’t using it at the moment, but she didn’t feel like taking it. She got up and crouched, looking under both bunks. There were no obvious concentrations of bad smells or signs of live vermin, but plenty of desicate husks of some old pests and the corners were crammed with dark, questionable-looking dust. No, the floor would not be more comfortable.
The boy sitting on the bunk started. Muni looked up at him. His eyes sprang open and he slid off the bunk, balancing on his shackled feet and quickly shuffling toward the cell door.
“Hey!” Muni refrained from grabbing him, but she followed close in case he fell over. He was just tall enough to peer out the window. Muni looked over his head into the gloomy, stone corridor. Bombi hadn’t set a guard, so there was nothing to see, no one to call out to.
“I don’t see anything,” she finally said. But he kept his bandaged face pressed up close to the door, looking as far as he could, first one way, then the other down the corridor.
Rumble.
It sounded like thunder. After another moment it came again. It was not thunder. Muni heard the faint, distant ping of rapid blaster fire.
“Uh, oh.” This time she did put her hands on his shoulders. “Let’s not stand too close to the door.” After first resisting he let her guide him back to the bunk. The battle sounds slowly got closer, louder. They sat together, on the end of the bunk closest to the door so that they wouldn’t be obvious to anyone passing by. The boy remained tense and alert next to the wall; Muni couldn’t get him to sit back further away from the door.
Muni decided it wasn’t just a drunken fight or petty vengeance when the explosions started rattling the cell. The light fixtures in the ceiling flickered briefly. It sounded like an invasion. Fights between warlords were not unheard of but rare. There was enough crime and exploitation to satisfy them and warfare was too much work. It was even more unlikely that the authorities had come after Bombi. Even if they wanted to rescue either of them, they would buy Bombi off before attacking him. At least, Muni would prefer that they choose the safer way of liberating them.
Then the noise stopped. The blaster fire and explosions went ominously silent. Muni could hear footsteps, running down the corridor and a low humming sound. Muni kept the boy from getting off the bunk again. She was not so optimistic that this battle survivor would be friendly. The lights flickered again and went out.
“Obi-Wan?”
The deep voice was right outside.
Then the cell door nearly exploded. They cringed back together from the sparks and light. Metal squealed and a bright green bean shot out through the door and descended. Shocked, Muni watched it cut around the locking mechanism which fell with a bang outside the door. It was noisily slid aside.
A tall, bearded male human entered, the beam lighting everything in the cell green.
A Jedi? Muni thought with shock. They sent a Jedi to rescue this kid? How important was he?
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Post by Ani-Chay Pinn on Jul 24, 2005 15:32:16 GMT -5
“Obi-Wan,” the Jedi rushed forward and even though he held the lightsaber up and away from them, Muni still pressed back away from it. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would use an open-ended energy weapon like that. The boy, Obi-Wan made a muffled sound as the Jedi’s fingers passed over the patches that Muni had applied and then probed the edge of the strip covering his mouth.
“Don’t! You’re not going to get that off without solvent; they used a bonding agent.”
“Do you have any?” the Jedi demanded, looking directly at her, the lightsaber casting his face in deep shadow.
“Well, yes, my droid, but I don’t know—“ His gaze flicked down to her technician’s insignia.
“I’ve seen it. It’s upstairs.” He stepped back. Before Muni could even jump back, the tip of Jedi’s lightsaber flicked forward and back twice. The shackles fell away from Obi-Wan’s hands and feet. He looked back toward the ruined door and then paused to frown down at Obi-Wan’s bare feet. “There’s too much debris out there. I’m going to have to carry you.”
He turned around and crouched. Without any prompting Obi-Wan wrapped his arms around his neck, his legs around the waist so they rested over the Jedi’s dark belt. They warily left the cell, the Jedi leading, his light saber lighting the turns of the narrow corridors. Muni’s boots crunched on shards of plastic and metal and once she almost tripped over something. When they turned into an intersection with a still functioning overhead light, the Jedi extinguished the green lightsaber and put it away. They stepped over the remains of what had been Bombi’s sentry droids as they passed through large and now ruined doorways. One huge, gray door lay on its side, a few droid appendages sticking out from under it. The Jedi was very careful not to bump Obi-Wan, still clinging to his back as he ducked under a low entryway into the stairwell. They went up.
The railings were cut in places, their feet echoed above and below in the silence; the ventilation wasn’t running. Muni flinched when she saw a severed and blotchy, four-fingered hand amidst more wreckage on the stairs. Except for the timing, it might have come from one of the stumps that S4 had been treating hours ago. She’d seen familiar burned gashes on the wall and through the droid torsos they stepped around.
So, Bombi’s ruffians had been fighting a Jedi. They’d exceeded even her expectations for violence. And stupidity. Bombi knew next to nothing about them, but Jedi were reputed to be invincible. Had it been this one? She looked up at him as she climbed. He wore dark pants and boots, a light wrap-around tunic with sashes over the shoulders and around the waist and a dark belt. The cut and color of the tunic were strikingly similar to the boy’s.
Muni wondered that she’d never heard of any Jedi who were that young. But she supposed that Jedi had to come from somewhere. And young as he was, the boy was old enough to be considered an adult, depending on what planet you were on.
They kept climbing up out of the sub-levels. Muni was getting tired, but the Jedi didn’t slow down even though he was carrying Obi-Wan on his back, and young as he was, Obi-Wan wasn’t that small either. Then without looking back, the Jedi signaled for her to halt at top of the stairs. He peered cautiously out the doorway.
“Hurry.” He hustled her along; she didn’t need to ask him where they were going. She could see they were heading for Bombi’s audience hall. There wasn’t much point in being a warlord if you couldn’t be big and imposing in front of people. And even though Muni had only been to this stronghold for medical emergencies Bombi had always made her present herself to him in that great, stone chamber before he’d let S4 get to work.
They entered through a wide swinging, wooden door. The audience hall was a complete disaster. What looked like the rest of Bombi’s sentry and attack droids were in pieces everywhere. And a few limbs. Tables were cleaved in half, chairs and pedestals overturned and broken. Black gashes and blaster shots marred a sunny mural on a far wall. Some of the overhead lights were shot out. She could smell scorched plastic and metal.
They kept close to the walls. The Jedi obviously expected more attacks. Muni hoped they were heading for a transport away from this place, but she didn’t feel like questioning him about it. The intensity of his expression and the amount of destruction he’d caused did not invite conversation. It did occur to Muni that she was being rescued, just not as quickly or as discretely as she would have preferred.
The Jedi set Obi-Wan down on Bombi’s enormous stone desk; only a corner of that had been blasted off.
“Your droid’s hiding over there,” he told her. Muni stepped around him and spotted silver, white and purple between a couple of large cabinets beyond.
“S4!” She heard a familiar whirring and S4 extended a probe with eye sensors around the edge of the cabinet.
“Muni! You’re here! Where have you been?! Look at what’s happened!” S4 rolled forward, her modulated voice coming in a volume and pitch that Muni rarely heard. Her “head” was all sensors and voice grid in a humanoid arrangement of eyes, mouth and ears. Her hands-limbs gestured her distress while her other probe-limbs stayed close to her body.
“I can see. Come on. You’ve got another patient.” S4's head sensors perked up right away. She rolled forward to follow. Then Muni heard S4's servo’s run sharply in reverse. She turned to see the medical droid zooming backwards. “What?” She turned around to look at where S4's pincer probe was pointing. The Jedi crossed his arms and rolled his eyes, looking impatient, a room full of droid wreckage behind him.
“Oh, no,” Muni grumbled. She went and dragged S4 back, her wheels squealing protest. S4 had always had very good self-preservation programming. She had no doubt rushed to cover when the first weapon had been drawn. “He’s not after you. Do you look like an attack droid?” She planted S4 in front of Obi-Wan sitting on the desk. “There.”
“Oh!” Immediately S4 was all probes and sensors. “Oh, oh. Oh.” Obi-Wan sat still and looked unhappy.
“Just take the gag off, we don’t have time for anything more here,” the Jedi told her, scanning the room warily. S4's probes trembled at the sound of the voice behind her.
“Well then do something useful and get some water,” Muni shot back. “S4's reservoir is empty.”
The Jedi’s eye widened in surprise, making him look a bit less imperious. Then he nodded curtly and went to the back of the room toward Bombi’s refreshment alcove. Muni watched him go. He was tall and imposing, with long, brown, aristocratic hair and a trimmed beard. He looked a bit scraggly, his white tunic and sashes smudged and singed in places.
“Thank you.” S4 quietly said, her voice modulation having gone back to its usual low pitch, clearly grateful that Muni had given the Jedi something to do that would keep him busy and away from the medical droid. S4's reservoir was not dry. They had replenished all of S4's stores from their transport just before one of Bombi’s henchmen had dragged her off to ‘see something.’
“Did you do these?” S4 asked, peeling away the patches from Obi-Wan’s face. The swelling had gone down but the bruises were now fully dark purple and black.
“It’s all I had. They locked me in a cell with him.” S4 nodded and click, her lower sensors passing over his chest. She had injectors ready, her slender metal fingers on one corner of the blue strip. “Please remain still. I wish to test this before proceeding.” Obi-Wan gripped the edge of the desk to anchor himself in response.
There was a fleeting chemical smell as S4 applied solvent and neutralizer, her hand peeling back a corner. her extended sensors rapidly scanning and repositioning above. She added another probe with an open bacta gel tube. “This adhesive was not meant to be used on flesh. He will have to be screened for toxic effects along with his other injuries.”
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Post by Ani-Chay Pinn on Jul 24, 2005 15:33:10 GMT -5
“As soon as we get out of here,” Muni promised. S4's hands and probes repositioned themselves and her other hand held up a barrier under Obi-Wan’s nose between it and her working appendages; Obi-Wan steadied himself again and closed his eyes this time. S4 worked swiftly, all her injectors and probes in motion while her hand evenly peeled back the strip and her pincers guided evacuation tubes to take up the excess. She worked around the edges and then moved inward until finally S4 pulled back the strip, a wadded up, bloody gray rag coming with it. Obi-Wan coughed and gulped. S4 gently lifted his chin up; reddish-clear bacta gel was smeared over his jaw, cheeks and lips.
“Here.” The Jedi held up a canister. Only S4's appendages that weren’t touching Obi-Wan trembled, but she extended a tube and drew out the water, passing it through her sterilizer before it gurgled to her injectors.
“Cuts. Ulcers. His teeth are damaged,” S4 listed. Obi-Wan’s eyes watered even as S4 added topical anesthetic, but he didn’t move a millimeter.
“We need to get out here,” the Jedi urged them again. “They could be back any time.” He leaned a little too close to Muni as he watched S4 work. S4 withdrew, her probes clicking back into place. “He can travel, but–” she began.
“Fine.” He advanced and S4 quickly backed up. He handed Obi-Wan a tall pair of boots. And a lightsaber. Obi-Wan silently took both and started to pull on the boots. Muni noticed that the Jedi now wore a long, hooded, dark brown robe over his clothes. Something he’d left upstairs before he’d torn loose and destroyed everything?
“I hope there are still transports left in the bay, because it’s a long walk back to town,” Muni commented.
“We have transport.” he informed her. Obi-Wan slid off the desk, lightsaber in hand. His bruised face looked determined.
A small, tinkling sound echoed in the large chamber.
Suddenly Muni was lifted up, hurled across the desk to land behind it with S4, Obi-Wan and the Jedi nearly coming down top of her. The explosion was so loud that Muni’s eyes registered the white hot flash before the deafening boom. The Jedi had a patronizing hand on her shoulders, unnecessarily preventing her from rising. Muni refrained from snapping the obvious at him, that she was no more likely to get up from the cover of the desk than S4 was, cowering next to her. But she did lift her head.
She smelled new dust and smoke. On either side of the desk the Jedi and Obi-Wan crouched, lightsabers ready, Obi-Wan nodding acknowledgment to whatever the Jedi was signaling to him. They heard noise, crunching footsteps, grumbling voices, droid clicks and whirs. They got closer. The Jedi motioned for Muni to stay. Do I look like I’m crazy, Muni thought testily. The grumbling and voices became more distinct. Muni heard Bombi’s baritone rising above the others.
“You had better be worth this, Ulhar! Look at this!”
“I don’t see any bodies,” an unfamiliar, hissing female said. “They’re still here...”
“Nothing could have survived that detonator! I don’t–” Bombi yelled back.
The Jedi and Obi-Wan simultaneously ignited their lightsabers and leapt around the desk. Obi-Wan’s lightsaber flashed bright, pale blue. They hummed and cracked. Bombi screamed. Blasters fired; bodies fell. Muni wasn’t about to risk a laser bolt through the eye trying to see at what was going on, but S4 telescoped a sensor high enough over the edge of the desk. An overhead light went out with a bang.
“Hey,” Muni rapped S4. “Let me look.” S4 the side viewer on her torso. There was too much smoke and it was too dark to see much more than shadows, but the Jedi lightsabers shone through it all. Constantly in motion, they cut down everything, deflected every blaster bolt. Muni wondered that Jedi didn’t injure themselves with them, they moved so fast. The green blade conspicuously swung larger circles and jumped to more places, but the blue seemed to be in no danger.
It only took a few minutes. Huge droid parts crashed to the floor with the moaning bodies. A few retreating yells were all that remained of Bombi’s gang. Muni didn’t consider peeking up above the desk until she saw the lightsabers on S4's screen extinguish at the far end of the room. S4 trembled. When she did look, the room was strewn with more wreckage, more injuries and a few severed body parts. At least they were fresh this time. They might be re-attachable.
The Jedi strode back toward them, Obi-Wan walking more carefully just behind him. The Jedi was dirtier, more smudged with soot and at least looked like he’d been exerting himself. Obi-Wan’s expression was more pained and he held his left arm close to his chest though he was far more mobile than Muni would have expected from someone who’d been so recently beaten so badly. Muni wondered if Jedi had some immunity to pain along with being invincible.
She nudged the terrified droid next to her, hiding behind the desk. “Come on S4. You’ve got more patients.”
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“Oh, on!!” S4 squealed, pulling away from Muni.
“Hey!” Lubricant squirted on the floor where the droid used to be. Annoyed Muni turned to where S4 frantically pointed.
“Oh.” The Jedi had entered her workroom and stood by the door. One of the city security people had told her his name was Qui-Gon Jinn, though they hadn’t been introduced in any way and she hadn’t seen him since S4 had downloaded Obi-Wan’s specs for the medical center on their way back to Bora City. He’d cleaned up and wore his loose, dark robe, his arms folded before him, looking deceptively academic and harmless. Tall and long-haired, but harmless. For the moment.
“I wanted to thank you for assisting my padawan. That was very kind of you.” Muni didn’t know what a “padawan” was but she assumed that it was Jedi for ‘apprentice’. Muni had heard more than she ever needed to know about Jedi from one of the city security people who’d finally picked them up. Like medical technicians, they apprenticed new workers, but instead of two years of employment, Jedi tutelage lasted for 10-15 years or longer and it was more like a monastic lifestyle than a job. With periodic life-threatening peril and mass dismemberments thrown in.
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Post by Ani-Chay Pinn on Jul 24, 2005 15:34:31 GMT -5
“It’s what I’m supposed to do,” she replied, putting her equipment down and standing. “If someone is sick or injured, we don’t ask questions.”
“An admirable code. And sadly not as well observed in the galaxy as it should be.”
“Hmm, I’ve said that more than once.” Muni thoroughly agreed with the sentiment. “Did they take care of your boy?” You didn’t need to be a medical droid to know that with all the bruising Obi-Wan had, he’d need a half-hour in a bacta tank at least.
“They will be finished shortly. Then we will be leaving, but I wanted to convey my thanks before we left.” He nodded politely. “And now I will leave you to your droid maintenance.”
“Wait.” The Jedi paused in the doorway.
“S4!” Muni raised her voice. “Get over here!”
“What?!” S4's modulator pitch had gone up again.
“You heard me. Get your rusty can over here!” Self preservation was good, but S4 had no excuse for hiding now. S4 slowly rolled from behind the parts cabinet. Muni waited impatiently until she stopped next to her, but still keeping an arm’s length away from the Jedi who looked quite amused. “S4, you did good work.” The Jedi inclined his head in an abbreviated bow toward the medical droid.
“Thank you for your assistance,” he said. “It was much appreciated by my apprentice. And myself.” After a moment while S4's sensors shifted and re-shifted position while staying trained on the Jedi. Muni rapped her torso.
“Oh, yes. You are quite welcome.” Her voice modulator shifted nervously between high and low pitches. “I’m here to serve, of course.”
“Here, we’ll go with you.” Muni hooked her elbow under one of S4's arm, dragging her forward. Her wheels squealed only a little before giving in. “I’d like to see what Obi-Wan looks like without all the bruises.” The Jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn, stepped back, allowing them to exit first. They strolled down the corridor to the lift tubes and discussed Bombi’s demise. They had been able to re-attach his arm, but he was not only in trouble with the local authorities (who’d finally decided that they the warlord had caused enough trouble that they would look bad if they didn’t do something about him), intergalactic authorities were thinking about prosecuting him as well. The Jedi hadn’t had any interest in Bombi at all until he’d invited a criminal that they were looking for into his hideout. At enormous cost (Muni had counted seventeen severed limbs), Bombi had captured the Jedi’s apprentice and had been foolish (no, crazy) enough to try to ransom him. After all, it had worked once before with an interstellar tourist. Bombi’s new status as former warlord and his wrecked holdings proved what a fantastically bad idea that had been.
They exited the lift and turned down the corridor toward the injuries wards. Obi-Wan was still in the tank when they entered the darkened room where they were treating him. The strongest light came from the horizontal tank where the boy floated, supported by the tank harnesses at the head and shoulders, lower torso and feet. The bruises and swelling were nearly gone over his whole body. And the breath mask on his face had an attachment that would accelerate the healing of his mouth as well.
To Qui-Gon Jinn’s credit, his expression softened to something that Muni thought looked like real compassion. In the tank, Obi-Wan stirred, opened his eyes and turned his head so that he looked right at the Jedi. His long, thin braid floated above his face. His hand waved in their direction though his arm motion was limited by the harness. Qui-Gon Jinn responded with a smile and a gesture. He actually had a very pleasant smile.
S4 kept Muni between herself and the Jedi as she scanned the activity before them and clicked to her fellow droids.
“He looks good,” Muni commented. “He should be ready to hack up a whole army in no time.”
Qui-Gon Jinn raised his eyebrows. “You disapprove of our methods?”
“Well, maybe not disapprove. I won’t argue that Bombi didn’t get what he deserved. But I might like to point out...” Muni leaned her arm on what approximated S4's white, plastic ‘shoulder’. “When you’re out there in the galaxy, chopping things off. Just remember.” Her other arm indicated the room, the equipment, the tank, the other droids and S4. “We’re the ones who have to put them back on.”
– FIN –
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