Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones

by R. A. Salvatore

  Jar Jar stopped bouncing and looked at Obi-Wan intently, his duck-billed face taking on a more serious expression. “Shesa expecting yousa. Annie! Mesa no believen!” His head bobbed a bit more, then he grabbed Anakin by the hand and pulled him along.

  The apartment inside was tastefully decorated, with cushiony chairs and a divan set in a circular pattern in the center, and a few, well-placed artworks set about the walls. Dorm and Typho were in the room, standing beside the divan, the captain wearing his typical military garb, blue uniform under a brown leather tunic, with black leather gloves and a stiff cap, its brim and band of black leather. Beside him stood Dorm in one of the elegant, yet understated dresses typical of Padmé's handmaidens.

  Anakin, though, didn't see either of them. He focused on the third person in the room, Padmé, and on her alone, and if he had ever held any moments of doubt that she was as beautiful as he remembered her, they were washed away, then and there. His eyes roamed the Senator's small and shapely frame in her black and deep purple robes, taking in every detail. He saw her thick brown hair, drawn up high and far at the back of her head in a basketlike accessory, and wanted to lose himself in it. He saw her eyes and wanted to stare into them for eternity. He saw her lips, and wanted to...

  Anakin closed his eyes for just a moment and inhaled deeply, and he could smell her again, the scent that had been burned into him as Padmé's.

  It took every ounce of willpower he could muster to walk in slowly and respectfully behind Obi-Wan, and not merely rush in and crush Padmé in a hug... and yet, paradoxically, it took every bit of his willpower to move his legs, which were suddenly seeming so very weak, and take that first step into the room, that first step toward her.

  “Mesa here. Lookie! Lookie!” screeched Jar Jar, hardly the announcement Obi-Wan would have preferred, but one that he knew he had to expect from the emotionally volatile Gungan. “Desa Jedi arriven.”

  “It's a pleasure to see you again, M'Lady,” Obi-Wan said, moving to stand before the beautiful young Senator.

  Standing behind his Master, Anakin continued to stare at the woman, to note her every move. She did glance at him once, though very briefly, and he detected no recognition in her eyes.

  Padmé took Obi-Wan's hand in her own. “It has been far too long, Master Kenobi. I'm so glad our paths have crossed again. But I must warn you that I think your presence here is unnecessary.”

  “I am sure that the members of the Jedi Council have their reasons,” Obi-Wan replied.

  Padmé wore a resigned, accepting expression at that answer, but a look of curiosity replaced it as she glanced again behind the Jedi Knight, to the young Padawan standing patiently. She took a step to the side, so that she was directly in front of Anakin.

  “Annie?” she asked, her expression purely incredulous. Her smile and the flash in her eyes showed that she needed no answer.

  For just a flicker, Anakin felt her spirit leap.

  “Annie,” Padmé said again. “Can it be? My goodness how you've grown!” She looked down and then followed the line of his lean body, tilting her head back to emphasize his height, and he realized that he now towered over her.

  That did little to bolster Anakin's confidence, though, so lost was he in the beauty of Padmé. Her smile widened, a clear sign that she was glad to see him, but he missed it, or the implications of it, at least. “So have you,” he answered awkwardly, as if he had to force each word from his mouth. “Grown more beautiful, I mean.” He cleared his throat and stood taller. “And much shorter,” he teased, trying unsuccessfully to sound in control. “For a Senator, I mean.”

  Anakin noted Obi-Wan's disapproving scowl, but Padmé laughed any tension away and shook her head.

  “Oh, Annie, you'll always be that little boy I knew on Tatooine,” she said, and if she had taken the lightsaber from his belt and sliced his legs out from under him, she would not have shortened Anakin Skywalker any more.

  He looked down, his embarrassment only heightened by the looks he knew that both Obi-Wan and Captain Typho were throwing his way.

  “Our presence will be invisible, M'Lady,” he heard Obi-Wan assure Padmé.

  “I'm very grateful that you're here, Master Kenobi,” Captain Typho put in. “The situation is more dangerous than the Senator will admit.”

  “I don't need any more security,” Padmé said, addressing Typho initially, but turning to regard Obi-Wan as she continued. “I need answers. I want to know who is trying to kill me. I believe that there might lie an issue of the utmost importance to the Senate. There is something more here...” She stopped as a frown crossed Obi-Wan Kenobi's face.

  “We're here to protect you, Senator, not to start an investigation,” he said in calm and deliberate tones, but even as he finished, Anakin contradicted him.

  “We will find out who's trying to kill you, Padmé,” the Padawan insisted. “I promise you.”

  As soon as he finished, Anakin recognized his error, one that clearly showed on the scowl that Obi-Wan flashed his way. He had been fashioning a response to Padmé in his thoughts, and had hardly even registered his Master's explanation before he had blurted out the obviously errant words. Now he could only bite his lip and lower his gaze.

  “We are not going to exceed our mandate, my young Padawan learner!” Obi-Wan said sharply, and Anakin was stung to be so dressed down publicly—especially in front of this particular audience.

  “I meant, in the interest of protecting her, Master, of course.”

  His justification sounded inane even to Anakin.

  “We are not going through this exercise again, Anakin,” Obi-Wan continued. “You will pay attention to my lead.”

  Anakin could hardly believe that Obi-Wan was continuing to do this in front of Padmé. “Why?” he asked, turning the question and the debate, trying desperately to regain some footing and credibility.

  “What?” Obi-Wan exclaimed, as taken aback as Anakin had ever seen him, and the young Padawan knew that he was pushing too far and too fast.

  “Why else do you think we were assigned to her, if not to find the killer?” he asked, trying to bring a measure of calm back to the situation. “Protection is a job for local security, not for Jedi. It's overkill, Master, and so an investigation is implied in our mandate.”

  “We will do as the Council has instructed,” Obi-Wan countered. “And you will learn your place, young one.”

  “Perhaps with merely your presence about me, the mysteries surrounding this threat will be revealed,” offered Padmé, ever the diplomat. She smiled alternately at Anakin and at Obi-Wan, an invitation for civility, and when both leaned back, shoulders visibly relaxing, she added, “Now, if you will excuse me, I will retire.”

  They all bowed as Padmé and Dorm exited the room, and then Obi-Wan stared hard at his young Padawan again, neither seeming overly pleased with the other.

  “Well, I know that I'm glad to have you here,” Captain Typho offered, moving closer to the pair. “I don't know what's going on here, but the Senator can't have too much security right now. Your friends on the Jedi Council seem to think that miners have something to do with this, but I can't really agree with that.”

  “What have you learned?” Anakin asked.

  Obi-Wan threw him a look of warning.

  “We'll be better prepared to protect the Senator if we have some idea of what we're up against,” Anakin explained to his Master, logic he knew that Obi-Wan had to accept as reasonable.

  “Not much,” Typho admitted. “Senator Amidala leads the opposition to the creation of a Republic army. She's very determined to deal with the separatists through negotiation and not force, but the attempts on her life, even though they've failed, have only strengthened the opposition to her viewpoint in the Senate.”

  “And since the separatists would not logically wish to see a Republic army formed...” Obi-Wan reasoned.

  “We're left without a clue,” Typho said. “In any such incident, the first questioning eyes turn toward Coun
t Dooku and the separatists.” A frown crossed Obi-Wan's face, and Typho quickly added, “Or to some of those loyal to his movement, at least. But why they'd go after Senator Amidala is anyone's guess.”

  “And we are not here to guess, but merely to protect,” Obi-Wan said, in tones that showed he was finished with this particular line of discussion.

  Typho bowed, hearing him clearly. “I'll have an officer on every floor, and I'll be at the command center downstairs.”

  Typho left, then, and Obi-Wan began a search of the room and adjoining chambers, trying to get a feel for the place. Anakin started to do likewise, but he stopped when he walked by Jar Jar Binks.

  “Mesa bustin wit happiness seein yousa again, Annie.”

  “She didn't even recognize me,” Anakin said, staring at the door through which Padmé had departed. He shook his head despondently and turned to the Gungan. “I've thought about her every day since we parted, and she's forgotten me completely.”

  “Why yousa sayen that?” Jar Jar asked.

  “You saw her,” Anakin replied.

  “Shesa happy,” the Gungan assured him. “Happier than mesa see'en her in a longo time. These are bad times, Annie. Bombad times!”

  Anakin shook his head and started to repeat his distress, but he noted Obi-Wan moving toward him and wisely held his tongue.

  Except that his observant Master had already discerned the conversation.

  “You're focusing on the negative again,” he said to Anakin. “Be mindful of your thoughts. She was pleased to see us—leave it at that. Now, let's check the security here. We have much to do.”

  Anakin bowed. “Yes, Master.”

  He could say the compliant words because he had to, but the young Padawan could not dismiss that which was in his heart and in his thoughts.

  Padmé sat at her vanity, brushing her thick brown hair, staring into the mirror but not really seeing anything there. Her thoughts were replaying again and again the image of Anakin, the look he had given her. She heard his words again, “...grown more beautiful,” and though Padmé was undeniably that, those were not words she was used to hearing. Since she had been a young girl, Padmé had been involved in politics, quickly rising to powerful and influential positions. Most of the men she had come into contact with had been more concerned with what she could bring to them in practical terms than with her beauty, or, for that matter, with any true personal feelings for her. As Queen of Naboo and now as Senator, Padmé was well aware that she was attractive to men in ways deeper than physical attraction, in ways deeper than any emotional bond.

  Or perhaps not deeper than the latter, she told herself, for she could not deny the intensity in Anakin's eyes as he had looked at her.

  But what did it mean?

  She saw him again, in her thoughts. And clearly. Her mental eye roamed over his lean and strong frame, over his face, tight with the intensity that she had always admired, and yet with eyes sparkling with joy, with mischief, with...

  With longing?

  That thought stopped the Senator. Her hands slipped down to her sides, and she sat there, staring at herself, judging her own appearance as Anakin might.

  After a few long moments, Padmé shook her head, telling herself that it was crazy. Anakin was a Jedi now. That was their dedication and their oath, and those things, above all else, were things Padmé Amidala admired.

  How could he even look at her in such a manner?

  So it was all her imagination.

  Or was it her fantasy?

  Laughing at herself, Padmé lifted her brush to her hair again, but she paused before she had even begun. She was wearing a silky white nightgown, and there were, after all, security cams in her room. Those cams had never really bothered her, since she had always looked at them clinically. Security cams, with guards watching her every move, were a fact of her existence, and so she had learned to go about her daily routines, even the private ones, without a second thought to the intrusive eyes.

  But now she realized that a certain young Jedi might be on the other end of those lenses.

  = VII =

  Clad in gray armor that was somewhat outdated, burned from countless blaster shots, but still undeniably effective, the bounty hunter stood easily on the ledge, a hundred stories and more up from the Coruscant street. His helmet, too, was gray, except for a blue ridge crossing his eyes and running down from brow to chin. His perch seemed somewhat precarious, considering the wind at this height, but to one as agile and skilled as Jango, and with a penchant for getting himself into and out of difficult places, this was nothing out of the ordinary.

  Right on time, a speeder pulled up near the ledge and hovered there, Jango's associate, Zam Wesell, nodded to him and climbed out, stepping lithely onto the ledge in front of a couple of bright advertisement windows. She wore a red veil over the bottom half of her face. This was not a statement of modesty or fashion. Like everything else she wore, from her blaster to her armor to her other concealed and equally deadly weapons, Zam's veil was a practical implement, used to hide her Clawdite features. Clawdites were not a trusted species, for obvious reasons.

  “You know that we failed?” Jango asked, getting right to the point.

  “You told me to kill those in the Naboo starship,” Zam said. “I hit the ship, but they used a decoy. Those who were aboard are all dead.”

  Jango fixed her with a smirk, and didn't bother to call her words a dodge. “We'll have to try something more subtle this time. My client is getting impatient. There can be no more mistakes.” As he finished, he handed Zam a hollow, transparent tube containing a pair of whitish centipedelike creatures as long as his forearm.

  “Kouhuns,” he explained. “Very poisonous.”

  Zam Wesell lifted the tube to examine the marvelous little murderers more closely, her black eyes sparkling with excitement, and her cheekbones lifting as her mouth widened beneath the veil. She looked back at Jango and nodded.

  Certain that she understood, Jango nodded and started around the corner toward his waiting speeder. He paused before stepping in, and looked back at his hired assassin.

  “There can be no mistakes this time,” he said.

  The Clawdite saluted, tapping the tube containing the deadly kouhuns to her forehead.

  “Tidy yourself up,” Jango instructed, and he headed away.

  Zam Wesell turned back to her own waiting speeder and pulled off her veil. Even as she lifted the cloth, her features began to morph, her mouth tightening, her black eyes sinking back into shapely sockets, and the ridges on her forehead smoothing. In the time it took her to unhook her veil, she had already assumed a shapely and attractive female human form, with dark and sensuous features. Even her clothing seemed to fit her differently, flowing down gracefully from her face.

  Off to the side, Jango nodded approvingly and sped away. As a Clawdite, a changeling, Zam Wesell did bring some advantages to the trade, he had to admit.

  The vast Jedi Temple sat on a flat plain. Unlike so many of Coruscant's buildings, monuments of efficiency and spare design, this building itself was a work of art, with many ornate columns and soft, rounded lines that drew in the eye and held it. Bas-reliefs and statues showed in many areas, with lights set at varying angles to distort the shadows into designs of mystery.

  Inside, the Temple was no different. This was a place of contemplation, a place whose design invited the mind to wander and to explore, a place whose lines themselves asked for interpretation. Art was as much a part of what it was to be a Jedi Knight as was warrior training. Many of the Jedi, past and present, considered art to be a conscious link to the mysteries of the Force, and so the sculptures and portraits that lined every hall were more than mere replicas—they were artistic interpretations of the great Jedi they represented, saying in form alone what the depicted Masters might speak in words.

  Mace Windu and Yoda walked slowly down one polished and decorated corridor, the lights low, but with a brightly illuminated room in the distance before them. />
  “Why couldn't we see this attack on the Senator?” Mace pondered, shaking his head. “This should have been no surprise to the wary, and easy for us to predict.”

  “Masking the future is this disturbance in the Force,” Yoda replied. The diminutive Jedi seemed tired. Mace understood well the source of that weariness. “The prophecy is coming true. The dark side is growing.”

  “And only those who have turned to the dark side can sense the possibilities of the future,” Yoda said. “Only by probing the dark side can we see.”

  Mace spent a moment digesting that remark, for what Yoda referred to was no small thing. Not at all. Journeys to the edges of the dark side were not to be taken lightly. Even more dire, the fact that Master Yoda believed that the disturbance all the Jedi had sensed in the Force was so entrenched in the dark side was truly foreboding.

  “It's been ten years and the Sith still have not shown themselves,” Mace remarked, daring to say it aloud. The Jedi didn't like to even mention the Sith, their direst of enemies. Many times in the past, the Jedi had dared hope that the Sith had been eradicated, their foul stench cleansed from the galaxy, and so they all would have liked to deny the existence of the mysterious dark Force-users.

  But they could not. There could be no doubt and no denying that the being who had slain Qui-Gon Jinn those ten years before on Naboo was a Sith Lord.

  “Do you think the Sith are behind this present disturbance?” Mace dared to ask.

  “Out there, they are,” Yoda said with resignation. “A certainty that is.”

  Yoda was referring to the prophecy, of course, that the dark side would rise and that one would be born who would bring balance to the Force and to the galaxy. Such a potential chosen one was now known among them, and that, too, brought more than a little trepidation to these hallowed halls.