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They’re crossing from the Outer Rim to the Mid-Rim, returning to Coruscant after a completed mission, when their nondescript ship is hailed on the comms.
“Master, you should listen to this,” Obi-Wan calls, his brow wrinkled in concern. His master rises from his meditation and comes to his side, dropping a hand to his shoulder as they both listen to the emergency broadcast they have been sent.
“ Please, please, if anyone is out there, help us! ” a voice heavy with an accent calls, their tone desperate. It sounds like Basic is not their first language, but their plea is easy enough to make out. “ This is a slaver’s ship, and we have been boarded by pirates! I have managed to escape for now, but if not the slavers, then the pirates will kill us all! Please, there are children aboard —”
The call cuts out suddenly, an ominous blaster shot echoing just before the silence. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon exchange looks.
“It could be a trap,” Obi-Wan reckons as he works away at the ship console, trying to raise the call again.
Qui-Gon cocks his head. “This close to the Mid-Rim? Unlikely.” Momentarily, he closes his eyes and reaches into the Force. “It seems to be a genuine distress call. Prepare yourself, padawan.” He grins, an expression that Obi-Wan has learned to dread. “We’re going to fight some pirates.”
“And I thought the excitement ended with our mission,” Obi-Wan murmurs ruefully, but dutifully, he navigates the ship closer to where the call came from.
When they board the ship, they are greeted by an eclectic crew of mercenaries in makeshift armor, all with blasters pointed at Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon.
“Get off this ship,” their leader orders. He’s a Trandoshan with a menacing smile.
“And who might you be?” Qui-Gon asks. He crosses his arms over his chest, unbothered by the weaponry aimed at the Jedi.
“Get off this ship!” the Trandoshan reiterates. Over a dozen blasters click to echo his sentiment.
“They don’t seem to be the best hosts, Master,” Obi-Wan says to his master, loud enough for the mercenaries to hear. Directly to the blasters, he asks, “Are you the slavers or the pirates?”
A red blaster bolt flies at his face, only to be blocked by the shimmering blue blade of Obi-Wan’s lightsaber.
“I think they took offense to your question, padawan,” Qui-Gon says, bringing his own green lightsaber to bat down a bolt that would have singed his beard.
“ JEDI! ” someone yells in fear, and the mercenaries break up in a scattered panic. Some backwheel down the hallway, attempting escape, and some inch forward, trying to land a shot on Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon.
All efforts are blocked by lightsabers as Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon steadily proceed down the hall. “Sorry about this,” Obi-Wan says as he elbows the Trandoshan in the face and then the gut as the leader lunges at him. A solid knock on the head by the hilt of his lightsaber knocks the being out. “But also, not really.”
“Let’s not try that,” Qui-Gon warns to his own opponent, a Duros who has the brilliant idea to reach for the blade of his lightsaber, “not if you fancy your hand.” But the Duros does not listen, and so Qui-Gon is forced to throw them against the wall with the Force, and they slide to the ground in a crumpled heap.
Master and padawan make quick work of their greeting party, leaving them groaning and twitching in the ship hallway next to the airlock.
“Let’s split up, Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon says. “You try to find out where the distress call came from and hail the nearest Republic authorities. We won’t have space on our ship for all these arrests. I will try to find the slaves and lead them to safety.”
“Oh, you just want the glory of taking out the slavers and pirates, Master,” Obi-Wan teases, when they both know that the reality is that Obi-Wan is the better slicer between the two of them.
“You know me all too well, padawan.”
At first, Obi-Wan encounters very few live mercenaries on his way to the ship’s cockpit but all too many dead bodies, most armed but a few wearing slave collars. He says a prayer to the Force for each innocent he finds slain.
It seems that by the time the Jedi managed to board the ship, the pirate raid succeeded, and the deeper he gets into the ship, following the tugging sense of the Force, the more the crowds of pirates thicken.
First, he stumbles into a gambling bunch in what appears to be a bunk room, their nostrils stained with the familiar orange powder. He makes easy work of them, all their reactions so dulled and stumbling by spice that he almost feels bad actually trying.
A cowering slaver tries to knife him down another hallway, so Obi-Wan reflexively chops his knife hand off with his ‘saber and breaks his legs with the Force. He’ll likely still be there when the Republic descends on this ship.
There is a buzz on his comms, and Obi-Wan lifts his communicator to his face.
“ Ah, Obi-Wan, I seem to have found the cockpit ,” his master says, his voice slightly staticky. “ I have raised a nearby planet’s authorities, and they are arriving within a few minutes. ”
Obi-Wan frowns. “I was wondering why the Force was leading me so deep inside the ship, where the cockpit could not be.”
Qui-Gon laughs. “ It seems that the Force has plans for you that we cannot predict. Continue following the will of the Force, padawan. I’ll find the slaves .”
After passing by and taking down a few more spiced-out pirates, Obi-Wan discovers how they became so quickly drugged out: this slaver ship is also a spice transport, though the pirates have already broken into the stash Obi-Wan discovers, spreading spice everywhere like a trail.
He follows this trail to the sounds of fighting and discovers a battlefield in the cargo hold, a space indiscriminately filled with crates of spice and cages. It stinks here, smelling like unwashed beings, urine, and worse, but now, excessively of blood and death. Bodies are everywhere, slavers and slaves indiscriminate, but the heart of the struggle is three dozen slaves facing off against half as many pirates.
While the slaves have more numbers, they vary in age and strength, and many are severely injured or disabled. Some of them have gotten their collars off, but more still wear their chains, lucky that the pirates have not yet gotten possession of the remotes to their collars. A few of them possess blasters compared to the pirates, but they shield their more vulnerable allies and try to block off the cages where more of the slaves are still imprisoned.
It’s a brave but mostly disorganized effort, led by a bear of a human man with tangled curls and a grown-out dark beard, his clothes tattered and his tan skin pale like he hasn’t seen the sun in years. The man aims his blaster like an extension of his hand, blowing out pirate after pirate’s brain, though some of his movements are clumsy and jerky, as if he has forgotten how to use his body. When his aim fails, which it rarely does, he barrels into his opponents with a roar and tears them apart with his hands alone.
Briefly, a stunned Obi-Wan watches as a young Togruta girl falls victim to a pirate’s shot, and her hurt scream burrows into his brain and jerks him into movement.
He somersaults over the pirates’ heads and lands in their midst, cutting off limbs and stabbing pirates and tossing them into a wall using the Force without discrimination. He falls into a trance where nothing exists but the Force and the way it flows through his body, in sync with himself in a way that has come to him more and more naturally over the years. He cuts the pirates down from twelve, to eight, to five, and then to two without so much as breaking a sweat.
There is prickling at his back, and Obi-Wan whirls around just in time to stab an approaching pirate through the shoulder before sending him flying several feet away. He extinguishes his blade just as the remaining pirate falls to a blaster shot to the stomach from a Twi’leki girl, who hesitates standing over him as the pirate blubbers and begs for mercy. His cries are silenced as his head bursts into brain and gore from a shot from the leader of the slave rebellion.
“No mercy,” he growls to the shellshocked Twi’lek. “He would not have spared you.”
Just like his body in battle, the words are slightly stiff and out of practice.
“Hello,” Obi-Wan says, stepping forward and extending his hand in peaceful greeting, “between my teacher, myself, and all of you, I believe that—”
Several slaves scream and Obi-Wan drags his lightsaber up with unbelievable speed to block the blaster shot that would have destroyed his brain very much like it did the pirate’s.
“That’s not very nice of you!” Obi-Wan says, outraged, and uses the Force to drag the blaster from the human man’s hands. “I just helped you!”
“ Jetii !” the man roars and lunges forward with preternatural speed that would almost make Obi-Wan believe him to be Force-sensitive if he couldn’t already sense that the man was as Force-sensitive as a rock (the one from Qui-Gon disregarded). He pins Obi-Wan up to the wall, his hands iron vices around his neck as Obi-Wan dangles, and Obi-Wan is too stunned and too fearful of hurting the man to throw him off with the Force. The man begins to squeeze down. “ Aruetyc demagolka !”
“Let me go!” Obi-Wan demands, futilely tugging at the man’s thick hands and kicking uselessly. Now, when he calls on the Force, it does not answer, and dread grows in his chest. There’s an odd prickling at his neck, the skin there growing too warm, but Obi-Wan can’t pick the sensation out as he’s choked.
He hears faint cries for the man to stop, to let him go, but they all clearly fail.
His attacker has incredible strength and an all-consuming rage in the Force. Obi-Wan’s vision begins to grey, and he feels the dread burn into fear. Is this how he is meant to die, choked to death on a spice transport by a slave he helped save?
Master, Master, please , he cries out into the Force, feeling like a young padawan. Master, please save me!
And then, suddenly, he can breathe again, air rushing into his lungs with a ferocity that burns. His master’s face covers the entirety of his spotty vision as the world settles around him. His attacker is nowhere in sight.
“It seems that our roles are reversed, my young padawan,” Qui-Gon tells him. “It was my turn to chase after you.”
His expression is humorous, but there is genuine concern in his eyes and his hair is in a disarray, like he used the Force to speed his way unhumanly fast to the cargo hold.
“Yes, well,” says Obi-Wan between severe coughing, rubbing his aching throat, “I don’t know if I like this way as much.” He tries to peer past his master. “What happened?”
“You tell me,” Qui-Gon says. He notices Obi-Wan’s curiosity and steps aside to reveal Obi-Wan’s attacker crumpled near the opposite wall. It’s not too difficult for Obi-Wan to put the past few minutes together.
“He just attacked me, Master,” Obi-Wan says in bewilderment, and Qui-Gon stiffens, reaching for his lightsaber, as the man starts to stir, pushing himself up.
The man begins to murmur in the same language from before, and Qui-Gon inhales sharply as Obi-Wan races to place the language. It seems familiar, not one he’s learned before but definitely at least encountered in his studies.
Qui-Gon glances at Obi-Wan, who is still rubbing his aching throat, and then his master’s face pales.
“Obi-Wan,” he says gently, “your throat.”
“What?” asks Obi-Wan, glancing down. “What about—”
There, just barely in his line of vision when he cants his head, barely visible beyond the blooming purple bruises ringing his neck, are two blue handprints, lined with just enough silver to be anything but another bruise. A soul mark.
“No,” Obi-Wan hears himself say as his gaze travels to the shaky hands propped on the opposite wall as the man pushes himself to his feet. Those scarred fingers are covered in blue and silver, as if they have been dipped in a well of paint, trailing to the palms. “It can’t be.”
Qui-Gon has an indecipherable expression on his face as the man stands, slowly lifting his head and murmuring to himself. Beneath tangled dark curls is a hallowed face with dark eyes blown out with spice and yellow teeth as he sneers at Obi-Wan before those very eyes catch on his hand and contort in horror.
He can’t be any older than thirty, and he might even be considered handsome when cleaned up and healthy again, but Obi-Wan can’t help but remember his murderous expression as he choked Obi-Wan.
“Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon begins remorsefully, “meet the missing Mand’alor , Jango Fett.”