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In the sterile silence of the brig, Cody was hyperaware of every beep and chirp of terminal as he punched in the access codes. He had already switched off the cameras, but he still felt the prickle of imagined eyes on the back of his head.
The cell door irised open.
It was a clinical, barren room, and the containment cell itself only taking up as much floorspace as a refresher cubicle. The shimmering energy field looked like a soapy transparisteel window. Inside, the prisoner sat with his arms crossed over his bent knees.
“Cody?” The prisoner croaked. “What are you doing here?”
“Give me a moment, sir,” Cody said. The long string of numbers he had entered into the control panel flashed red and he tried again. This time the energy field receded in a bloom of blue.
“Let me see the cuffs,” Cody said, holding out the keychip.
Obi-wan shifted onto his knees. His electrostatic manacles only gave him enough slack to kneel, but he still managed to look commanding, even with dirty robes and a bruise swelling over his cheekbone. “Slow down. Cody, is that really you?”
“Of course it is,” Cody said. “Listen, General, we don’t have much time.”
“I’ve not been a General in quite some time,” Obi-wan said. His chains hummed gently. There was a heavy force-repressing collar around his neck. “You’ll have to forgive my hesitation. This seems a little improbable.”
“I…” Cody faltered. “I only switched off the cameras in the hallway and this room for an hour. We have to get you free quickly.”
“How many people are you working with?” Obi-wan asked.
“Nobody else,” Cody said. “I don’t know who else I can trust. Something happened to the clones—They aren’t how they should be. Nobody will speak freely, even when we’re all alone. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s been like this for months and months, I feel so crazy.”
“So you haven’t been able to contact the rebels?” Scepticism coated every word.
“It isn’t a trick,” Cody protested.
“Really?” Obi-wan frowned at him. “I sense you believe that. But would you know if it were otherwise?”
Cody opened his mouth. His heart panged. “I-I think I would know. I knew that when I shot at you… it’s so hazy. I couldn’t think, not like I can now.”
Obi-wan looked pensive. “Sit.”
Cody felt a sharp sting of frustration—they needed to be moving, and moving now, if they were going to slip away undetected. Every minute that passed ramped up the likelihood of disaster.
Cody sat before him. When Obi-wan beckoned, Cody bowed his head, pulling his helmet off and setting it beside him. He felt horribly exposed.
Obi-wan put his hands over Cody’s skull, fingers sinking into his curls. Every touch made Cody’s skin prickle almost uncomfortably. Obi-wan pulled him forward into a kelbade, cold forehead to cold forehead, and Cody nearly jumped out of his skin.
“I can barely use the force with this collar,” Obi-wan murmured, eyes falling shut. “Luckily, they’ve kept it on so long… I’m beginning to develop a resistance.”
Cody felt a sheer stab of anger on his old General’s behalf. “Let me unlock your collar and chains, sir. I have an escape pod waiting for you. You can get away.”
Obi-wan’s brow wrinkled. “Your chip is partially displaced. I can sense the little spot of darksider energy in your head, it’s easy now that they’re all activated.”
“What chip?” Cody asked. “Is that what’s controlling the vod?”
“You tell me. Why did you fire on me? What does Order 66 mean, exactly?”
Cody flinched at the name. “I was ordered to execute the Jedi as traitors to the Republic.”
“Where did you first learn about the order?”
Cody felt that disconcerting, weightless feeling of thinking back but finding no clear answer. “I don’t know when or where. I’ve always known… as if someone whispered it to me when I was sleeping.”
Obi-wan hummed in assent. “You won’t execute the order anymore. What’s changed?”
“It was wrong. I’m so sorry. I should have been strong enough to—”
Obi-wan opened his eyes. They were so close that Cody could count every pale eyelash. “Answer the question, soldier.”
Cody forced himself to calm. “I don’t know. It’s like it used to be smothering me, but now it’s only nagging at me. It feels like a fog has lifted. CC-2224 wants to follow orders, but me, Cody, I know they aren’t right. Please, you have to believe me.”
Obi-wan finally pulled back. His eyes were like a stormy sky.
“I thought you were dead for so long,” Cody said, unable to keep the catch from his voice. “You don’t know what it did to me, when they told us you’d be transported as a prisoner on this ship. I had to get you out. I can help you, but we have to leave now.”
Obi-wan nodded, vaguely. “And your plan?”
“I have an escape pod waiting. It won’t take us more than ten minutes to reach it from here.”
“These cuffs are alarmed,” Obi-wan said.
“I’ve thought of that, sir,” Cody said. “I severed the alarms system in a way that looks like a fuse breaking. This ship is pre-Empire, it’s known for technical faults.”
“And after the escape pod launches, what stops them from blasting us into a fireball?”
Cody bit the end of his tongue. He hadn’t planned on coming with Obi-wan, instead he intended to provide some sort of diversion at the transport bay, but he could cross that bridge later. “Most of the top snipers are asleep right now, and those that are awake can be avoided.”
“They can? This ship is equipped with trapshooters designed just for hitting small crafts.”
“It might be difficult, but you were once the best pilot in the Republic army, sir.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Obi-wan said. His brow furrowed. “I relied too much on my Jedi abilities. Now, my connection to the force…”
Cody waited for him to continue, but the old General didn’t. Cody realised with a plunging feeling that he was losing the argument. Cody hadn’t even there would be an argument. “We’re passing over a planet with minimal inhabitants. There’ll be a spacecraft you can buy or steal to make it off planet again.”
Obi-wan’s eyes were distant as he looked around, as if he were peering through the miles of durasteel and machinery that surrounded them and out into the cold unfolding night of space.
“Minimal inhabitants that we’re putting at great risk,” Obi-wan muttered. “All caught in the crossfire.”
“It’s an inevitable part of war, sir,” Cody said.
“Yes… I’m aware,” Obi-wan said, distantly. He came back into focus. “And from the planet, where then?”
“I don’t know yet, sir,” Cody said. “I don’t plan that far ahead. No plans survive contact with the enemy, as you always said.”
“Still best to have them, my brave commander,” Obi-wan said. He breathed out slowly. “I’m sorry. Without an immediate connection to the rebellion, without backup, without any secure destination, I can’t approve this plan.”
Cody felt like the floor had dropped away. “What do you mean?”
“I think you should reset the energy field and withdraw from my cell,” Obi-wan said.
“You can’t be serious sir,” Cody said, desperately. “You’re overruling your own rescue attempt?”
“I am,” Obi-wan said. “I’m ordering you back to your original position, Cody.”
“No, I won’t go,” Cody said, immediately. He grabbed Obi-wan by the shoulders. “You’ve been under so much strain. You aren’t thinking right. This isn’t like you—you wouldn’t give up like this.”
Obi-wan just shook his head. “Do you know how many members of the 212th have already attempted to rescue me? So many good men die for nothing.”
“It won’t be like that this time, sir,” Cody said. “You have to have faith. I’ll get you out.”
“I’ve escaped three times already,” Obi-wan said. “Every time, I’m released at a great personal cost, and then within a few months the Empire tracks me down. I have to return to them or risk them massacring every sentient being on the planet I take refuge in. It’s not a choice I relish in being forced to make.”
Cody struggled to find something to say. All the words got stuck in the lump in his throat.
Obi-wan slipped his arms around Cody’s shoulders, electric chains humming softly. “I’m sorry, old friend. Don’t lose hope. Your time will come. The rebels can make great use of you, if you can find a way to contact them securely.”
“You—you shouldn’t be comforting me,” Cody said, wrapping his arms around Obi-wan’s middle. He was far skinnier than he had been during the war, the cogs of his spine felt hard through the thin robes. “Please, can’t we try?”
Obi-wan didn’t respond. He rested his head on Cody’s shoulder.
“I can’t just leave you down here,” Cody said.
“The righteous path asks much of us.”
“You don’t understand,” Cody said, turning his head so he could speak into the crook of Obi-wan’s neck. The hard metal of the force-suppressing collar stopped him. “Every day since I shot you, I’ve thought about it. I know I can never undo it, not shooting you, and not relaying the order. So many Jedi are dead because of me. I have to be able to help you. I have to be able to be able to do something.”
Obi-wan turned his face slightly and kissed Cody’s ear. It was far more affection than he had ever shown during the war, but for some reason, it felt perfectly normal.
“If not now, when?” Cody asked. “I don’t know if we’ll get another chance like this again.”
“This isn’t a chance,” Obi-wan said. “And if there is a way out, the force will show us, in time.”
“But we could’ve gotten you out. Doesn’t that make it a chance?”
“Without far more help than you can provide, I would never be free of the Empire. As a Jedi, the whole galaxy is my prison.”
The gentle, almost fatherly tone Obi-wan was using was painfully familiar, just as he’d remembered it. Cody felt that tugging, tugging in his chest. He felt like a trapped animal, raging against the bars of his own cage.
“There’s so much I never got to tell you,” Cody said. He pulled back slightly, so that he could look in Obi-wan’s eyes. “So much that I can’t tell you, until we’re both free.”
Obi-wan inclined his head. “Don’t worry, I know it. I’ve always known it.”
“I don’t care. I want to tell you myself, someday,” Cody said.
Obi-wan’s eyes were brimming with that tenderness. He looked over Cody’s face as if he were seeing him for the first time, scouring every pencil-line wrinkle and curve of his cheek, the sharp arched dark eyebrows, the broad, defined nose, the scrape of dusky stubble, those clear black eyes. That face was the same as every other of his brothers. It was a face Obi-wan must know from every angle, inside and out, so firmly engrained into his mind that he has to know it blindly and thoughtlessly, maybe even keener to him than his own face.
There was so, so much Cody wanted to say. It all crowded around the back of his throat, blocking his words, like six troopers trying to enter the same doorway at the same time.
Softly, Obi-wan ran his thumb over Cody’s moulded cheek. Cody’s eyelids flickered slightly, distracted by the touch. It was warm.
Obi-wan kissed him. Dryly, chastely, and unmistakeably. Cody’s mouth had never been kissed before. His eyes widened.
“Your time is up,” Obi-wan said. “You should be far away from here when the cameras switch back on.”
“I’m not leaving you, sir.”
“I’m sorry to ask you, Cody. But you must.”