by Watson, Jude
“Who is the timekeeper?” Tru asked. “Do you think he is the one who will transmit the information?”
Anakin nodded. “A race referee. The computer system is already in place. Dering has already designed the program. This person will just follow instructions.”
Ferus frowned. “Isn’t there any way to tell whoever is in charge of the race what is going on? Surely it would be better to simply cancel the race. Did you think of that?”
Anakin’s cheeks flushed. Ferus was questioning every detail of what he had learned as though he were a Jedi Master and Anakin was his Padawan.
“I’m sure Anakin thought of it,” Tru said. “But we can’t be sure who knows that the program is a cheat. Whoever it is could alter it with a keystroke and we’d never know who was behind it, or why.”
“Maybe there is still some way to find out,” Ferus said. “Tru and I will investigate.” He glanced at the Podracer. “You can go back to your energy-binder plate.”
Tru hung back as Ferus walked off. “He’s just being careful,” he told Anakin.
Anakin’s teeth gritted. “Is that what you call it?”
“You’ll understand him one day,” Tru said. “After you become friends.”
“I will never be friends with Ferus Olin,” Anakin answered savagely.
Tru studied him for a moment. “I feel…some darkness from you, Anakin. Your enemy is here. But Sebulba cannot hurt you anymore. Remember, Jedi do not have enemies.”
“I just want to win,” Anakin said.
“You mean you want to prevent injury and ensure fairness,” Tru corrected.
Anakin nodded. “That too.”
Chapter Sixteen
The Sleek Cruiser Inn was just as Didi had described it, a dilapidated building made of patchwork plasteel sheeting. Seeing a way to rake in more credits, the owner had leased out space in the hallways and closets. Travelers from around the galaxy had stashed gear in every spare space and were cooking up meals on portable stoves in the hallways. Others had rolled themselves in bedrolls in various corners and were trying to catch a nap between events. The smell of bodies, food, and dust was overwhelming. Even this far from the Games, the hum of the crowds in the arenas could be heard. Obi-Wan, Siri, and Ry-Gaul picked through the mess and knocked on Fligh’s door.
“I said I would settle the bill on the way out!” Fligh yelled behind the door. “Such a hospitable establishment, I can’t wait to return!” He flung the door open and saw the Jedi. He swallowed. “Ah, Jedi. Always a good sign.”
He stepped aside and let them enter. Belongings were stuffed into an open case. Still-wet laundry spilled out of a travel pack. A half-eaten meal was spread on the sleep couch. It was clear that Fligh was in the midst of a hasty departure.
“Leaving so soon?” Obi-Wan asked. “The Games have just begun.”
“I’m not a fan,” Fligh said, shrugging. “There you go.”
“Yet you came here to see the Games,” Obi-Wan pointed out. “Don’t you want to see how your bets turn out?”
Fligh laughed. “Why? You have made sure I don’t win. I may as well return to Coruscant and make my living honestly, as a thief.”
Siri and Ry-Gaul closed the door and stood in front of it. Obi-Wan casually flung one leg over a stool and sat. “A funny thing happened after we left you this morning. We took an air taxi—”
“Always a good idea,” Fligh said nervously. “The streets are so crowded.”
“—and the pilot tried to crash it,” Obi-Wan went on. “Odd that he knew just where we were and where we were headed.”
“Maybe you were just lucky.”
“Maybe you’d like to accompany us to the security office of the Ruling Power and talk about it,” Obi-Wan said. It was a bluff. He did not want the Ruling Power to know that they were investigating.
Fligh gave a squeak of disappointment and threw himself down on the unmade sleep couch. “I knew I’d never make it off this blasted planet. All right. When you came to ask me about the fixed events, you made me nervous. Why wouldn’t I be? I saw my fortune disappearing in front of my eyes. So I might have alerted someone as to your presence. They weren’t supposed to kill you. Just delay you. I swear! Didi is my friend. I would never allow harm to come to him. And if you think I’d tangle with Jedi, you underestimate my cowardice.”
“Yet you lie to us,” Obi-Wan said.
“And that is never a good idea,” Siri said.
Ry-Gaul did not have to say a word. His fierce looks spoke for him.
“Yes, I see what you mean,” Fligh said, backing away on the sleep couch.
“Now, tell me again about your friend Quentor,” Obi-Wan said, leaning forward.
“Ha ha,” Fligh said. “I see you know about my little joke. I thought it better to protect a friend than expose him.”
“Who?” Obi-Wan asked softly. “And tell me the truth this time.”
“Aarno Dering,” Fligh said. “Weeks ago, I was contacted anonymously. Through messages on my datapad. I was asked to find someone who could rig a false timing device for a major race. Credits were transferred into my account with a promise of a sure bet to come. I happened to know just the person they needed. Aarno had been the timekeeper for races in the Outer Rim. He was known for a certain…uh, casualness when it came to scorekeeping. Then the anonymous person said they would hire Aarno for the Galactic Games. The Galactic Games! I had no idea it was for something so grand.”
“How could he pass scrutiny?” Siri wondered. “The timers and judges are screened very closely.”
“That was just my question,” Fligh said, nodding. “They told me not to worry about it. To my great surprise, Aarno was hired for several events. To Aarno’s surprise as well.”
“That’s why you concluded that an insider had to be involved,” Obi-Wan said.
Fligh nodded. “Who else could get Aarno hired, with his record? So we came to Euceron and Aarno got his instructions. It seemed like a deal as sweet as a piece of blumfruit. Aarno would find a way to shave a few seconds here and there and we’d take off with a small fortune. I didn’t expect anyone to get hurt. Didi was almost killed, and Aarno got run over by a speeder.” Fligh shivered. “I’m going back to Coruscant, where I’ll be safe. I just paved the way for some bets to be placed. I didn’t want anyone to get killed.”
“You got the false text docs for Dering,” Obi-Wan guessed. “Why did he suddenly want to get off-planet?”
“I guess he lost his nerve,” Fligh said with a nervous glance at Ry-Gaul.
Siri had moved so that she was now sitting in front of Fligh on her haunches, her hands dangling. Her bright blue gaze was piercing. “There is something you’re not telling us. Why was Aarno so afraid?”
Fligh fingered one of his long ears. “I had an appointment to drop the text docs off to Aarno right after the swoop race. As soon as you left, I went to his quarters and waited for him. He was in a big hurry to leave Euceron, and I asked him why. He said if I knew what was good for me, I’d leave too. Of course, I had to pressure him. I withheld the text docs until he told me. He thought he had been hired just to fix the events. But then he found out something else. Something’s going to happen during an event. Something will go wrong. They want people to get killed during an event so that the Senators will be blamed.”
“Which event?” Obi-Wan asked.
“I don’t know,” Fligh admitted. “Aarno didn’t tell me. He found out by mistake. He was afraid they would come after him because he knew.”
“Who are they?” Siri barked in frustration.
“I didn’t ask,” Fligh said with a shudder. “I don’t want to know. I’m in over my head. And if I know anything about anything—which I don’t, but I know about this—sooner or later it’s going to occur to them that I know too much. And it’s going to be sooner, not later. All in all I’d rather be on Coruscant, so if you don’t mind—”
Obi-Wan, Siri, and Ry-Gaul turned toward the door at the same instant. The surge in th
e Force had warned them. At the same time, the sound of heavy rolling could be heard in the corridor outside Fligh’s room.
“Hey, I’m over here, guys,” Fligh said. “Are you going to answer my quest—”
Before Fligh could finish the word, the door blasted apart and a squad of droidekas appeared in the smoldering opening.
Chapter Seventeen
Fligh dived behind the sleep couch as the Jedi ignited their lightsabers. The droidekas unfurled and snapped into attack position, blaster bolts firing. Obi-Wan’s lightsaber was an arc of moving light, deflecting the shower of blaster fire. Beside him Siri’s lightsaber swung in a continuous arc of precise movement, with Siri’s two-handed grip and her graceful footwork. Ry-Gaul did not move. He did not need to. His long arms were a blur in the air as his lightsaber shifted from hand to hand.
The three-legged droidekas were built for battle and close to invincible—but these droidekas weren’t shielded. Their heavy armor shells and volts of firepower as well as their maneuverability made them capable of cutting down opponents with fearsome efficiency.
It wasn’t as though their power alarmed Obi-Wan. But he still was not especially pleased to see them. There were twelve of them, so he was glad to have Ry-Gaul and Siri by his side.
The air filled with smoke as the blaster bolts zinged, but the Jedi deflected them and struck blow after blow at the heavy armor plates on the droids. Because the doorway was narrow, the droidekas began firing through the wall itself, quickly tearing gaping holes in the structure. After a sweep from Siri’s lightsaber, one droideka smoked and fell, and another, its legs gone, bobbled and spun until it crashed against a wall. Obi-Wan sliced a droideka in two and sent one piece flying over the sleep couch and crashing into the wall. Fligh shrieked as pieces of hot metal rained down on him.
Droidekas had control centers, not brains. They could not feel fear or apprehension. The amazing skill of the Jedi was lost on them. They continued to advance and fire, continued to evade by rolling themselves into balls and repositioning themselves to fire again. Time after time they attacked, and time after time the Jedi struck blow after blow until the harsh smoke and the heat caused Fligh to have a coughing fit. The Jedi did not react to the smoke. Their minds and bodies were focused on battle, and nothing else mattered but the moment.
Suddenly all three Jedi exchanged a glance. They leaped back as the flimsy wall collapsed on the remaining droidekas. Ry-Gaul, Obi-Wan, and Siri finished the rest off, disabling them with lightsaber thrusts. At last the droidekas lay around them in pieces. Fligh raised his head from behind the sleep couch.
His voice was hoarse. “Can I go now?”
“He can’t help us,” Obi-Wan told the others. “He’s told us everything he knows.” He deactivated his lightsaber. “Yes, Fligh. You can go.”
“Until next time, Obi-Wan,” Fligh said fervently.
“I certainly hope not,” Obi-Wan answered. Wherever Fligh was, trouble was soon to follow.
With a last bow, Fligh ran from the room, his belongings trailing from his packing case.
“If they’re sending Destroyer Droids, they must be worried,” Siri said. “Whoever they are.”
“One of us should attend each event,” Obi-Wan said. “The Padawans are already at the Podrace and it’s scheduled to begin in…fifteen minutes. Can you head out there, Ry-Gaul? I’ll contact Anakin and tell him that something is supposed to go wrong, but I’d feel better if you were there.”
Ry-Gaul gave a short nod and left the room, stepping over a pile of droidekas in the doorway.
“I’ll take the bowcaster skill contest,” Siri said. “It’s at Stadium Seven.”
“That leaves me with the obstacle course,” Obi-Wan said, nodding. “Stay in touch.”
“I just wish I knew what I was looking for,” Siri said.
Obi-Wan tucked his lightsaber into his belt. “That makes two of us.”
Obi-Wan was able to give Anakin an update on the way to Stadium Nine. There was nothing much for Anakin to do except what the rest of them were doing—being mindful, and watching.
Obi-Wan strode into the stadium. He felt the heat and the noise of a crowd eager for the event to begin.
As the Euceron hero and record-setter for the event in the last Galactic Games, Maxo Vista was here as well. Obi-Wan found a seat as close to the judges as he could and watched on a viewscreen overhead while Vista’s podium zoomed to the center of the stadium.
“Welcome, all,” he said, his voice amplified throughout the stadium. “I’d like to introduce myself. I am—”
“MAXO VISTA!” the crowd roared.
“You may not remember me—”
The crowd roared once again.
“—but I was at this event seven years ago—”
A cheer went up.
“—I didn’t do too badly—” Vista paused and waited for the cheers and laughter “—and I truly hope that today, my record will be broken. I’m just a Galactic Games official now, seven years older and seven years slower, so I’d better make way for the next generation of athletes.”
The broad grin still on his face, Vista suddenly vaulted off the platform. The crowd gasped, but a cable launcher hidden in Vista’s belt let out a long line, and he bounced at the end of it, only centimeters away from the ground. With a powerful thrust, he flipped his body upward, then twisted, flew through the air, and landed on his feet. His movements were so graceful it was more like a dance than an athletic feat.
The crowd erupted in cheers and applause. The cheers went on and on.
The cheers fell away for Obi-Wan. He heard only the absence of sound, the silence of concentration and revelation.
The lines of Vista’s body were suddenly familiar, the fluid, powerful way he moved. The way he made something that took great effort look effortless.
Maxo Vista was the air-taxi pilot who had tried to kill them. And he was the speeder driver who had run down Aarno Dering.
Which meant that the great hero of Euceron was the insider who was behind fixing the Games.
Chapter Eighteen
It was his fault. If he hadn’t been so irritated at not knowing who Maxo Vista was, he would have looked closer at him. He had made a mistake worthy of a Jedi Temple student, not an experienced Jedi Knight. He had allowed his own perspective, his own emotion, to color his perception.
Perception comes from not one but all angles at once.
Yes, Qui-Gon.
Obi-Wan raced down the moving walkway that circled the stadium. He had to make it down to Level Twenty, where Maxo Vista would enter the VIP box. He could not risk losing Maxo Vista the way he had lost Aarno Dering.
He was almost at the door of the box when Astri dashed toward him, curls bouncing and robe swirling. “Obi-Wan!”
“Later,” he said tersely, striding toward the door.
She grabbed his arm. “You must know this! The Podrace! Something terrible is going to happen!”
He half-turned and searched her dark eyes. “How do you know this?”
“Bog,” she said. “He went to Maxo Vista to tell him what you had discovered—”
Obi-Wan almost groaned aloud.
“—Vista wasn’t there, and so Bog accessed his datapad. He thought as a fellow Council member he could do this—” Her hand to her throat, Astri got the words out fast, between her panting breaths. “—and discovered that the Podrace is not only fixed, but booby-trapped. The nav computer will lead the Podracers close to the city’s hub. The lead Podracer will get taken over by the nav computer. It will be made to crash into the crowd! We don’t know if Vista himself is aware of this, it could have been sent to his dataport without his knowing. We cannot believe that Maxo Vista would be involved. Bog replaced the datapad and told me what he’d seen. He is going to tell Liviani Sarno. But I came to you.”
“Does Vista know about this?” Anakin is in danger. Obi-Wan reached for his comlink as he asked the question.
“I didn’t. But now I do.” Vista’
s voice came from behind him. He smiled as Obi-Wan turned. “I promise you, I can explain everything. This way, Obi-Wan.”
Obi-Wan hesitated.
“Trust me.” Maxo Vista had a blaster pointed at Astri, but the friendly grin was still on his face. Astri could not see the blaster, which was on his other side.
“This way,” he repeated meaningfully to Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan stepped inside. He would follow Maxo Vista’s instructions, but only for a few seconds. He had to make sure Vista would not hit anyone with blaster fire.
The floor moved under his feet. He realized that he had not stepped out into the VIP box, but onto a moving podium. It suddenly zoomed to the center of the stadium. Vista’s hand dropped and the blaster was lost in the folds of his cloak.
“It is a long-range model, and it is still pointed at Astri,” he said pleasantly.
Obi-Wan tried to signal Astri to move, but she stood watching him from afar, not knowing the blaster was pointed at her. He could reach for his lightsaber, but he wasn’t sure if even he could be fast enough to block the shot.
Light suddenly hit his eyes, dazzling him for a moment. “Welcome to the exhibition match!” Maxo Vista’s voice was amplified throughout the stadium. “Jedi against athlete! Let the event begin!”
The crowd roared. A cube of white light settled over Obi-Wan. Another flashed over Maxo Vista. A holographic image of a treton, a wild creature from the planet Aesolian, appeared in front of them. On the tip of one pointed ear a green laser glowed. His snarl was amplified and echoed through the stadium. There was a collective ooooohh of fear. Even though the spectators knew the treton was holographic, its fierce battle cry struck terror into their hearts.
An announcer’s steady voice boomed over the stadium. “Ten seconds. Contestants, prepare.…”
Obi-Wan reached for his comlink to contact Anakin, but it was dead. Now he remembered that in the stadium center a jamming device was employed so that no contestants could use hidden devices to aid them in their events. Maxo Vista had trapped him, no doubt in order to buy time.