by Jude Watson
They found the Constellation Suite. A trio of guards stood outside the doors.
"Nobody gets in," the leader of them said. "And nobody gets out. We're in lockdown."
"They'll get in somehow," Qui-Gon said. "You have to let us examine the suite."
"We've got it covered," the guard repeated frostily.
"Listen," Adi said, "you've got four dead friends down the hall. You might want to allow us to help you."
"Something wrong with your hearing? We've got it — "
Suddenly, his eyes glazed, and he fell over. Qui-Gon bent over him and saw the dart in his neck. He twisted and saw that Adi was already running.
"Magus!" she told Qui-Gon.
The remaining guards looked resolute, holding their blasters forward but occasionally glancing down nervously at their fallen comrade. Trusting that they would not fire at him, Qui-Gon barreled through and used his lightsaber to create a hole in the locked door big enough for him to leap through.
Twenty planetary leaders sat at a large meeting table. Apprehension turned to panic when they saw Qui-Gon jump in, his lightsaber blazing.
"I'm here to help," he said.
Boots thudded against the window. Lunasa had used a liquid cable to rappel down. In the same quick movement she cut the transparisteel with one hand and tossed in a grenade with the other.
"Down!" Qui-Gon shouted.
The blast rocked the room. Qui-Gon pulled as many as he could with him under the table as debris rained down. One leader was wounded. Another lay still. Qui-Gon didn't wait for the dust to clear. He leaped for Lunasa, who was reaching for a repeating rifle on her back. He slammed into her, knocking her straight out the window. Both of them flew through the air, down ten stories, and landed with a splash in the pool.
Choking, Lunasa surfaced. She tried to swim away, but Qui-Gon caught her by the legs, flipped her over, and dragged her from the water. She lay gasping on the duracrete while security officers ran toward them.
"Don't let her move," Qui-Gon told them. "Not even a centimeter."
He saw Adi on the roof. Magus was using a repeating blaster, a powerful weapon that even a lightsaber had trouble deflecting. Qui-Gon raced toward the wall. Where was Gorm? Once again he wished for the Padawans.
He deployed his liquid cable and heard it whistle as it drew him at top speed up to the roof. Once there, Qui-Gon charged toward Magus, lightsaber swinging.
Magus surprised him. He didn't continue the attack. He ran.
Qui-Gon and Adi leaped, whirling in midair as Magus changed course and dived off the roof. He landed on a roof several stories down and smashed through a skylight.
They had left the planetary leaders unprotected, and Gorm was still on the loose. But Magus was so close. What to do? Adi and Qui-Gon landed lightly on the roof and exchanged a quick glance.
"We've got him!"
Obi-Wan yelled the words from below as he appeared, streaking across the roof with Siri. They jumped into the broken skylight, lightsabers held aloft.
Without another word, Qui-Gon and Adi activated their launchers and slid down to the meeting room. The leaders had upended the table and were crouching behind it as flames roared in from the hallway. Gorm was using a flamethrower.
The heat was intense. Qui-Gon felt it scorch his skin. The table burst into flame and the leaders scrambled backward. Gorm flipped the flamethrower back in its holster and advanced, firing. Qui-Gon and Adi leaped in front of the smoldering table. Their lightsabers were a blur of light and movement. They drove Gorm back. Half-being, half-mechanical, he was more solid than most. Although his armor had blackened from the fire, nothing had slowed him down.
Qui-Gon wanted to end this. The beings behind him were terrified for their lives, and he intended both to protect them and to make this ordeal shorter. Jedi did not fight with anger, but bounty hunters always annoyed Qui-Gon. To kill was despicable. To kill for money was worse. He did not understand the mentality of a being who would hire himself out to hurt beings. Even ten-year-old boys.
He pressed forward. Gorm's disadvantage was his belief in his own invincibility. He thought he was a fortress. He thought he was unbeatable.
Until now, Qui-Gon told him silently. Until now.
Gorm's plated armor was formidable, but he hadn't yet met a lightsaber. Qui-Gon moved to one side. Gorm followed. He raised his arm to come down on Qui-Gon, believing, no doubt, that he would be faster and stronger. Qui-Gon ducked so that he received only a glancing blow. It was enough to turn his knees to water, but he'd expected that, planned for it. With an upward thrust, he aimed for Gorm's helmet.
His helmet was where his intelligence was. Where his targeting system spoke to his servomotors, where his motivator powered the blasters built into his hands.
Gorm shook his head. Smoke rose from one side of his helmet. He charged at Qui-Gon again. Sensing what Qui-Gon was up to, Adi moved to the other side. Together they delivered simultaneous blows to his helmet.
The helmet melted and fused to Gorm's neck.
For a moment, Gorm looked surprised. Then his eyes turned red with fury. With a scream, he flailed at Qui-Gon and tried to pummel Adi. But the lightsabers had done their work. Signals conflicted. Servomotors malfunctioned. Gorm toppled over.
Qui-Gon bent over him. He was not dead, but he was certainly incapacitated.
Qui-Gon looked up. Magus stood stock-still at the end of the hall. With one quick glance he took in the Jedi and the monster of a bounty hunter down on the floor. He looked right into Qui-Gon's eyes and shrugged, as if to say, Oh, well, this didn't work out too well. Time to go.
He leaped into the turbolift.
Obi-Wan and Siri rounded the corner, frustration on their faces. "We lost him."
"The roof," Qui-Gon said.
They used their cable launchers. When they jumped onto the roof, they saw that Pilot had landed a small cruiser. Magus started to run for it. They could see Taly in the front seat.
Magus stopped and pointed his blaster at Taly's head. The Jedi stopped.
The bounty hunter's eyes stayed amused.
"You want the boy, presumably," he said.
"You know we do," Qui-Gon replied.
"Pilot, bring him out," Magus said.
"He knows our names, our faces!" Pilot yelled. "So do they, idiot. Do it."
Grumbling, Pilot picked up Taly, who was bound hand and foot.
"Pilot will throw him off the roof if you don't allow us to get away," Magus said calmly.
Pilot balanced on the front of the airspeeder. Taly looked out at them. He had been brave for so long. Now his terror touched Qui-Gon's heart.
"You can go," he said to Magus.
But instead of waiting for Pilot, Magus leaped into the speeder. He pushed the power. With a scream, Pilot went flying, dropping Taly. Siri took a leap straight off the roof and caught Taly with her legs. They bounced at the end of her cable launcher, which she had somehow managed to hook onto the roofline even as she fell.
Pilot fell off the roof. They heard his dying scream, and then a muffled thud.
And Magus flew off, free.
CHAPTER 19
Two planetary leaders had been badly wounded, but all of them survived. Raptor and Pilot were dead. Gorm and Lunasa were taken into custody. It was good to know that the galaxy would be rid of them for a good while.
Taly was being seen to by a medic droid. The boy had a few bruises but otherwise had not been harmed. Qui-Gon squatted next to him as the medic applied bacta to a scratch on his leg.
"How did you manage it?" the Jedi asked. "How did you stay alive?"
Taly grinned, then winced as the medic droid cleaned another scratch. "I told them I'd made another copy of the conversation I'd overheard. And I knew who had hired them, and it was on the recording rod, but it was hidden in a place where if anything happened to me it would be sent directly to the Senate. They were more afraid of the being who hired them, it turned out. Someone powerful who would ruin them, or maybe
even hire other bounty hunters to track them down and kill them. They had too much else to do to try to make me tell them. I think they were going to deal with me after the attack. But I knew you Jedi would show up."
"And do you know who hired the bounty hunters?" Qui-Gon asked.
"I'm not sure. There were so many things said, I was confused."
"I don't think so. I think if you heard who hired them, you would remember it exactly."
Taly said nothing. Qui-Gon realized that Taly wouldn't tell him. He might not even tell the Senate. Too much of a burden was on this boy, but he had learned in a short time how to fight. He had been given a lesson in knowledge as power, and he could be holding the most important piece of the puzzle. He wouldn't give that up.
"I would tell the Senate, if I were you," Qui-Gon advised. "Knowledge is power, but it is also danger."
"I can handle the danger."
"You'll go far in life, Taly," Qui-Gon said. He stood with a sigh.
"When can we leave for Coruscant?"
"Soon. The hotel owner is sending his own cruiser to take us back. Should be pretty posh."
Taly brightened. "And my parents? Can we see if we can contact them?"
"Yes. We'll do that, too."
Qui-Gon turned. Obi-Wan and Siri were standing alone by the pool. An alarm sounded in him softly. Something was different.
They were looking at each other. They were not joking, or fussing with their utility belts. They were simply talking.
Qui-Gon felt a quiet dread. There was something between them. Something had happened. He saw Obi-Wan smile and reach up to touch Siri's lip where a small wound was. He had seen all of Obi-Wan's smiles, and he had never seen this one before.
"We have no proof," Adi said, coming up next to him. Qui-Gon was confused for a moment. Had Adi seen what he had seen?
"Nothing on Passel Argente. He'll get away with this. The bounty hunters won't talk, of course. We can suspect the Corporate Alliance, but I don't think we'll be able to prove it." Adi sighed. She saw the same scene he did, two Padawans standing by a pool, but she didn't notice a thing. "So it's a small victory."
"Twenty beings are alive," Qui-Gon said. "Twenty worlds didn't lose their leaders. Twenty families didn't lose their loved ones. I wouldn't call that a small victory."
Adi lifted both eyebrows at him this time to indicate just how displeased she was. "I am not diminishing that, Qui-Gon. I am just saying . . . oh, I don't know," Adi burst out with uncharacteristic emotion. "It seems that these days, we complete a mission, and we are successful, yet there is always something we could not seem to do. We get the small thing, but not the big thing. Oh, I hate being imprecise!"
"I know," Qui-Gon said. "Many of us feel this. The Senate is becoming more fractured every day. Groups like the Corporate Alliance are becoming more bold in their trickery. I have visions of a day when we are no longer peacekeepers, but warriors."
Adi looked troubled. "Visions come and go."
"This one remains."
"I hope you are wrong."
"No more than I do." Qui-Gon's gaze rested on Obi-Wan and Siri. "No more than I do."
Taly's eyes grew huge as the Senate buildings came into view. "I knew it was supposed to be big. But this . it's beautiful. And how can you get anywhere in these space lanes? Everything is so crowded."
"You learn your way around," Obi-Wan said. "Here's the landing platform."
The pilot guided the cruiser to a smooth landing. Taly looked back with regret at the luxurious interior of the ship. "This is probably the most amazing ship I'll ever ride on."
"Somehow I doubt that," Qui-Gon said.
They personally escorted Taly to the meeting with the Senate committee. They watched him walk inside. He hid his nervousness well.
"I hope he tells everything he knows," Adi said.
With a glance at Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon said, "No one tells everything they know."
Back at the Temple, the Jedi split up to return to their quarters to rest. Qui-Gon beckoned to Obi-Wan.
"Let's take a walk," he said. He saw the puzzlement on Obi-Wan's face. A walk after a hard mission and no sleep for three days? Obi-Wan's exhaustion was evident, but he turned without a word and fell into step beside Qui-Gon.
Qui-Gon led him to the Room of the Thousand Fountains, the place where they had always had their most significant talks. The cooling spray revived them as they walked silently along the twisting paths.
"A hard mission for you," he said. "You must have thought the worst when you were aboard that ship."
"We did not expect to survive," Obi-Wan admitted.
"And how did that make you feel?"
Obi-Wan shook his head. "It made me feel many things. Fear, of course. And regret."
"Regret?"
"Regret for things not yet done," Obi-Wan said. "Regret for not recognizing earlier . . . not being able to have . . ." He struggled and fell silent.
"Siri," Qui-Gon said.
Obi-Wan stopped. "You know?"
"I saw it between you." Qui-Gon began to walk again, and Obi-Wan moved next to him. "It happens sometimes, between Padawans. Especially during extreme situations —"
Obi-Wan stopped again, and Qui-Gon saw that he was angry.
"Don't," the apprentice said. "I realize what I am about to hear from you. But don't diminish it."
He spoke like a man. He is a man, you fool, Qui-Gon told himself. And he is right. Who are you to reduce his love?
"I'm sorry, Obi-Wan," Qui-Gon said. "Come, let's keep walking. So, you know what I'm going to say, do you?"
"That attachment is forbidden. That I have chosen this path, and I must walk it. That there is no place for such personal commitment in the Jedi Order. That each of us must be free of personal attachment or we cannot do the work we are meant to do. That a Force connection is a gift that we must honor not only in our hearts, but in our choices."
"You say these things as if they have no meaning."
"Sometimes everything falls away when you realize that you love."
And what could Qui-Gon respond to that except to say I know?
"We have been together for many years, Padawan," Qui-Gon said instead. "I think we have earned each other's trust and respect. It wounds me that you don't want my advice on such an important matter."
There was a struggle on Obi-Wan's face. "I don't want your advice because it will break my heart not to follow it," he said finally.
"So you will not ask for it."
"Of course I want to hear what you think, Master," Obi-Wan said finally. "I don't want to wound you. Yet it seems inevitable that someone will get hurt."
"Ah," Qui-Gon said. "And there is your first lesson on why love is forbidden between the Jedi."
Obi-Wan said nothing. There was just the whisper of footsteps and the soft calming splash of the fountains.
"I advise you to give her up," Qui-Gon said as gently as he could. "This is based not so much on the rules of the Jedi, but from what I know of you. Of both of you. Obi-Wan, you are a gifted Jedi. The path is one that is ingrained on your heart. On your character. If you give it up, something in you would die. I feel the same about Siri."
"But I won't give up the Jedi," Obi-Wan insisted. "The Order could change its rules."
"Know this, Padawan," Qui-Gon said. "The Jedi Council will not change the rules."
"But —"
"They will not change the precepts. Not unless the whole galaxy changes, the whole Order changes, not unless an upheaval happens that changes everything. Then, perhaps, the rules will change. But with this Jedi Council? No. Make your choice. But do it with your eyes open."
"You are asking me to tear my heart in two."
"Yes," Qui-Gon said wearily. "I am. My advice is based on this — I feel that for both you and Siri, the heartbreak of losing each other will lessen over time. You will not forget it, it will be a part of you forever, but it will lessen.
Whereas if you leave the Jedi Order, that regret will nev
er lessen. It will always be between you and part of you. Between the two, losing each other — something that seems so terrible, so painful — will be, in the end, easier to bear."
"I can't do it." Obi-Wan looked at Qui-Gon, his gaze tortured. "Don't make me do it."
"I can't make you do anything, my Padawan. You must choose. You must talk to Yoda."
Obi-Wan looked startled. "Yoda?"
"I contacted him about this. I had to. He will keep it to himself. He has always been, next to me, your closest advisor, Obi-Wan. He is seeing you, not as a member of the Council, but as your advisor and friend. And if you cannot face him," Qui-Gon added lightly, "then you are not ready to face the Council."
They turned a corner, and Yoda sat waiting, leaning on his stick, in the middle of the path.
At the sight of him something inside Obi-Wan seemed to break. Qui-Gon saw it. Yoda did not have to say a word. Yet within this small creature was all the nobility and wisdom that Obi-Wan aspired to. Here was the best that the Jedi path could lead to.
"Sacrifice, the Jedi Order demands," Yoda said. "No reward for you in it, either, Obi-Wan. Support you, we will. Change the rules for you, we will not."
Obi-Wan sank heavily down on a bench. He put his face in his hands. Qui-Gon saw his shoulders shake.
He did not think it was possible for his heart to break any more than it was broken already. Yet this must be it, the worst thing for him to have to bear. To give to the boy he loved like a son the same pain he felt. To hand it over, knowing what it would do to his heart.
It took a long time for Obi-Wan to regain mastery over himself. Qui-Gon and Yoda waited silently. At last Obi-Wan raised his face to them both. "What about you?" he said quietly to Qui-Gon.
Qui-Gon started. He knew, of course, what Obi-Wan was referring to. Tahl. He did not expect to be challenged about it. He did not expect to have to talk about it.
Yet, why not? Obi-Wan had every right to raise the question.