Tangle 50/77 (PG-13) Anakin, Obi-Wan, others.
Disclaimer: George Lucas owns Star Wars. I am not making any profit from this work of fanfiction.
CHAPTER FIFTY
They had to stop at three different points and wait several hours for updated hyperspace coordinates. Anakin was fairly well convinced that Lorethan Command was just trying to redirect them across half the Outer Rim, but when he said as much, the Lorethans just grinned.
“Well,” Ryn said, stretching past him to reach the caf dispenser, “they don’t call Loreth the hidden planet for nothing.”
“Interesting,” Obi-Wan said. “Would you say that Lorethans as a group are reclusive?”
Anakin was standing close enough to feel Ryn repress a sigh, the abrupt cessation of in-drawn breath that meant she was not going to exhale in a huff. She straightened her shoulders, smiled with determination, and launched into yet another lecture on Lorethan culture while Anakin made good his escape.
[]
Introducing Engine to life on board the Corellian freighter was a little disorienting. Anakin felt as if he hardly knew Ryn any more. It wasn’t that she moved or spoke differently, and she felt much the same as ever, if one allowed for her slowly fading sense of woundedness in the Force. But Engine clearly knew a different girl, and it was as though the Ryn he kept talking to was a Ryn Anakin had never met.
The Ryn Anakin knew was serious and studious and determined. She meditated with Yoda, stood before the Council to face their interrogations about dissident philosophy, cooked dinner with Obi-Wan. She was taking a Senior Honor in hand-to-hand combat, and a Junior in Minor Religions. She trained harder than almost anyone Anakin knew, and it was paying off.
The Ryn Engine knew apparently partied hard, danced provocatively, and told dirty jokes. She had once changed out a Podracer engine in her underwear, covered in motor oil on purpose, for some sort of publicity stunt. (This, evidently, was how she had met Engine.)
Dream Ryn he could mostly ... well, not ignore, but write off as the product of his own overly vivid imagination. His dreams had always been more vivid than they had any right to be, so if Ryn was naked and loving and really kind of hot in his sleep ... well, he’d learned to push his dreams aside, more or less. It wasn’t as though he could do anything about most of them anyway. And at the end of the day - or the night - it wasn’t Dream Ryn he had to deal with. It was Real Ryn, who was frustrating and wickedly funny and who spent one whole afternoon helping him retune the sublight drives because they were operating at ninety-three percent efficiency and he could hear their dissonance and it bothered him.
Real Ryn, who had never mentioned that she’d once had a friend whose background was shockingly, painfully similar to Anakin’s, and she’d left him behind.
Real Ryn, who had told him abut Sarta, but had somehow neglected to mention that he had offered to marry her.
Anakin wanted to trust her. He wanted to believe in her.
But there were a lot of secrets.
So he kept watching her with Engine as the pieces of her past fell like meteorites all around them, and wondered what he didn’t know.
[]
They came out of hyperspace just outside the Lorethan planetary system and crept in, slowly, under escort.
“Trusting sorts,” Obi-Wan remarked drily, peering through the cockpit windows at the fighters flanking them on either side.
“It’s standard procedure now,” Evinne replied. “Has been for a generation.”
“That didn’t save my family,” Ryn said softly. “That’s evidence, if we ever needed any, that the Destructive Device Scanners don’t work. It’s why I’ve always argued for greater restrictions on incoming ships. And yet here I am, defying my own insistence.”
“It’s a funny life,” Evinne said.
They could see Loreth on their way in only until their view was eclipsed by proximity to its moon - one of the three, as it turned out. Two spun blank and bare in space, but the central moon had been terraformed.
They landed on the side facing away from the planet, keeping Fjornel between themselves and Loreth the whole time. When Obi-Wan mentioned this, Evinne said, “Actually, that’s where ships always land. Fjornel has a single spaceport, and traffic is only allowed when it is facing away from our home planet.”
“Another security measure?”
“Partly. But if also helps to regulate traffic. We don’t really have the infrastructure to cope with a lot of traffic, so clear organization is essential. Militia personnel of higher ranks have clearance to take off or set down outside the designated hours, but they have to justify their decisions in an oral review afterward. Nobody wants that.”
“Sounds unpleasant,” Obi-Wan acknowledged.
“It is,” Evinne said. “I’ve had to go through an oral review twice, and I absolutely hated it both times.” She shuddered. “And Orun and I might as well go ahead and brace ourselves. We’ll both face questioning for this business, bringing strangers in-system on an Outside errand.”
“But I thought ... didn’t Sarta tell Ryn to come home?”
“To perform a needless evaluation of Anakin, yes. But bringing Jedi to Loreth under any circumstances is going to go over like a bantha at a birthday party. Sarta may even be up for review himself. The High King’s household is not exempt.”
They came in over ice fields, studded with unhealthy trees as they approached the moon’s equator.
“Fjornel isn’t really large enough to support much of an ecosytem,” Ryn explained. “It doesn’t have the mass to attract anything like breathable atmosphere on its own, so we have to rely heavily on artificial measures that are always in danger of failing. It’s terraforming that didn’t quite take.”
“And it’s gotten worse, just in the last few years,” Evinne added. “Much of the forested land was destroyed in the attack eight years ago that destroyed Orun Shipyards. We depended on those trees to help maintain atmospheric quality. Those that are left can’t quite handle the task. We use scrubbers now, as well as artificial bubbles around the villages. All the outlying farms are gone.”
“What’s left won’t last long,” Ryn said, and Evinne nodded solemnly.
“Another decade, if we’re lucky. Only the Dome really works well, even now.”
The Dome, as it turned out, was a capacious energy shield covering several dozen square kilometers in a deep depression that sheltered it somewhat from the high winds that tore across the moon’s surface. Outside the shield, shy grayleafed plants struggled for life upon a forbidding tundra. Inside the shield, flowers bloomed and water ran freely.
The spaceport was located outside the shield, at a distance of some kilometers - “The Dome’s atmospheric scrubbers couldn’t possibly handle ship exhaust” - so they were obliged to land several kilometers away and hike in.
Sarta met them in the docking bay.
CHAPTER FIFTY
They had to stop at three different points and wait several hours for updated hyperspace coordinates. Anakin was fairly well convinced that Lorethan Command was just trying to redirect them across half the Outer Rim, but when he said as much, the Lorethans just grinned.
“Well,” Ryn said, stretching past him to reach the caf dispenser, “they don’t call Loreth the hidden planet for nothing.”
“Interesting,” Obi-Wan said. “Would you say that Lorethans as a group are reclusive?”
Anakin was standing close enough to feel Ryn repress a sigh, the abrupt cessation of in-drawn breath that meant she was not going to exhale in a huff. She straightened her shoulders, smiled with determination, and launched into yet another lecture on Lorethan culture while Anakin made good his escape.
[]
Introducing Engine to life on board the Corellian freighter was a little disorienting. Anakin felt as if he hardly knew Ryn any more. It wasn’t that she moved or spoke differently, and she felt much the same as ever, if one allowed for her slowly fading sense of woundedness in the Force. But Engine clearly knew a different girl, and it was as though the Ryn he kept talking to was a Ryn Anakin had never met.
The Ryn Anakin knew was serious and studious and determined. She meditated with Yoda, stood before the Council to face their interrogations about dissident philosophy, cooked dinner with Obi-Wan. She was taking a Senior Honor in hand-to-hand combat, and a Junior in Minor Religions. She trained harder than almost anyone Anakin knew, and it was paying off.
The Ryn Engine knew apparently partied hard, danced provocatively, and told dirty jokes. She had once changed out a Podracer engine in her underwear, covered in motor oil on purpose, for some sort of publicity stunt. (This, evidently, was how she had met Engine.)
Dream Ryn he could mostly ... well, not ignore, but write off as the product of his own overly vivid imagination. His dreams had always been more vivid than they had any right to be, so if Ryn was naked and loving and really kind of hot in his sleep ... well, he’d learned to push his dreams aside, more or less. It wasn’t as though he could do anything about most of them anyway. And at the end of the day - or the night - it wasn’t Dream Ryn he had to deal with. It was Real Ryn, who was frustrating and wickedly funny and who spent one whole afternoon helping him retune the sublight drives because they were operating at ninety-three percent efficiency and he could hear their dissonance and it bothered him.
Real Ryn, who had never mentioned that she’d once had a friend whose background was shockingly, painfully similar to Anakin’s, and she’d left him behind.
Real Ryn, who had told him abut Sarta, but had somehow neglected to mention that he had offered to marry her.
Anakin wanted to trust her. He wanted to believe in her.
But there were a lot of secrets.
So he kept watching her with Engine as the pieces of her past fell like meteorites all around them, and wondered what he didn’t know.
[]
They came out of hyperspace just outside the Lorethan planetary system and crept in, slowly, under escort.
“Trusting sorts,” Obi-Wan remarked drily, peering through the cockpit windows at the fighters flanking them on either side.
“It’s standard procedure now,” Evinne replied. “Has been for a generation.”
“That didn’t save my family,” Ryn said softly. “That’s evidence, if we ever needed any, that the Destructive Device Scanners don’t work. It’s why I’ve always argued for greater restrictions on incoming ships. And yet here I am, defying my own insistence.”
“It’s a funny life,” Evinne said.
They could see Loreth on their way in only until their view was eclipsed by proximity to its moon - one of the three, as it turned out. Two spun blank and bare in space, but the central moon had been terraformed.
They landed on the side facing away from the planet, keeping Fjornel between themselves and Loreth the whole time. When Obi-Wan mentioned this, Evinne said, “Actually, that’s where ships always land. Fjornel has a single spaceport, and traffic is only allowed when it is facing away from our home planet.”
“Another security measure?”
“Partly. But if also helps to regulate traffic. We don’t really have the infrastructure to cope with a lot of traffic, so clear organization is essential. Militia personnel of higher ranks have clearance to take off or set down outside the designated hours, but they have to justify their decisions in an oral review afterward. Nobody wants that.”
“Sounds unpleasant,” Obi-Wan acknowledged.
“It is,” Evinne said. “I’ve had to go through an oral review twice, and I absolutely hated it both times.” She shuddered. “And Orun and I might as well go ahead and brace ourselves. We’ll both face questioning for this business, bringing strangers in-system on an Outside errand.”
“But I thought ... didn’t Sarta tell Ryn to come home?”
“To perform a needless evaluation of Anakin, yes. But bringing Jedi to Loreth under any circumstances is going to go over like a bantha at a birthday party. Sarta may even be up for review himself. The High King’s household is not exempt.”
They came in over ice fields, studded with unhealthy trees as they approached the moon’s equator.
“Fjornel isn’t really large enough to support much of an ecosytem,” Ryn explained. “It doesn’t have the mass to attract anything like breathable atmosphere on its own, so we have to rely heavily on artificial measures that are always in danger of failing. It’s terraforming that didn’t quite take.”
“And it’s gotten worse, just in the last few years,” Evinne added. “Much of the forested land was destroyed in the attack eight years ago that destroyed Orun Shipyards. We depended on those trees to help maintain atmospheric quality. Those that are left can’t quite handle the task. We use scrubbers now, as well as artificial bubbles around the villages. All the outlying farms are gone.”
“What’s left won’t last long,” Ryn said, and Evinne nodded solemnly.
“Another decade, if we’re lucky. Only the Dome really works well, even now.”
The Dome, as it turned out, was a capacious energy shield covering several dozen square kilometers in a deep depression that sheltered it somewhat from the high winds that tore across the moon’s surface. Outside the shield, shy grayleafed plants struggled for life upon a forbidding tundra. Inside the shield, flowers bloomed and water ran freely.
The spaceport was located outside the shield, at a distance of some kilometers - “The Dome’s atmospheric scrubbers couldn’t possibly handle ship exhaust” - so they were obliged to land several kilometers away and hike in.
Sarta met them in the docking bay.