by Sean Stewart
war would carry weight. At the very best, it's diplomatically damaging, and a
public relations nightmare." Obi-Wan turned and slogged back to their ships.
They had landed far from any settlements, to avoid drawing undue attention to
themselves, but for a weary moment Obi-Wan was missing a cozy bar with a good
fire and a chance to drink off one tumbler of excellent Arkanian sweet milk—a
demure term for a creamy mead that could leave a strong man under the table.
"Come with me for a moment," Obi-Wan said, waving Anakin away from his own
ship. Anakin followed him into his starfighter. "Wipe your feet, or you'll get
wet prints all over," Obi-Wan said. "You know the artoo hates that."
"When do we get your old artoo back?"
"When its repairs are done. Given the amount of fire it's seen riding shotgun
with me, I'm sure it's in no hurry to report for duty," Obi-Wan said dryly,
settling himself in front of the comm console. "You've been sending private
messages back to Coruscant."
Anakin flushed. "You've been tracing my outgoing—" He stopped. "You just
guessed."
"I am a wise and powerful Jedi Knight, you know," Obi-Wan said, allowing
himself a small grin.
The little R2 rolled into the nav-and-comm area and wheeped unhappily at
their wet bootprints.
An awkward pause.
"Since part of my duty as your Master is to pass on my vast wisdom—" Obi-Wan
began.
"Here it comes," Anakin said.
"—I suppose I should officially remind you that a Jedi has no room in his
life for . . . some kinds of entanglement.
"I'll keep that in mind."
"Nonattachment is a fundamental precept of the Order, Padawan. You knew that
when you signed up."
"I guess I didn't read the Toydarian print," Anakin growled.
For the first time, Obi-Wan turned away from the holocomm transceiver. "How
serious are you about this girl, Anakin?"
"That's not the point," Anakin said, still flushed and angry. "The point is,
we are out here asking people to support a Republic that barely knows they
exist, and backing it up with a, a police force of Jedi sworn not to care about
them! And we wonder why it's a hard sell?" He waved out through the front
viewscreen. "What if Serifa is right? What if we are the ones who have lost our
way? I trust what I can feel, Master. That's what you have always taught me,
isn't it? I trust the living Force. I trust love. The 'principle of
nonattachment' . . . ? That's an awfully abstract thing to pledge loyalty to."
"Do you trust hate?" Obi-Wan said.
"Of course I don't—"
"I'm serious, Padawan." Obi-Wan held the younger man's eyes. "To follow your
heart, to either love or hate, in the long run is the same mistake. Your
judgment becomes clouded. Your motives, confused. If you are not very careful,
Padawan, love will take you to the dark side. Slower than hate, yes, but no less
surely for that."
The air between them crackled with tension, but Anakin lowered his eyes. "I
hear you, Master."
"You can hardly help that," Obi-Wan said tartly. "It's whether you believe me
or not that matters." He sighed. "For what it's worth, most Jedi make the same
mistake. Learn from it; grow through it. If the Order were made up only of those
invulnerable to love, it would be a sad group altogether." He turned back to his
holocomm transceiver, scanning Arkanian news as he set the encryption key for
the transmission he would send back to Coruscant.
"Does that mean there is a woman to be discovered in even Master Obi-Wan's
past?" Anakin inquired. "Tall, I imagine, and dark-haired. Pathetically
desperate to have anyone at all, that much goes without saying—"
"Anakin," Obi-Wan breathed, staring at the news flashing across his monitor.
"Be quiet."
"I was only joking!"
Obi-Wan swiveled around in his chair. He had never felt so completely at a
loss. "It's Master Yoda," he said. "He's dead."
"What?" Padme cried.
"Ambushed just outside the Ithor system," her handmaiden said. "The Ithorians
have confirmed debris from the Master's ship."
Thoughts of disaster hurtled through Padme's mind like meteorites. The loss
of Yoda was a crippling blow to the Republic—surely Dooku must have been behind
it—what would it mean to Anakin? Anakin loved Yoda, of course they all did; but
he also said the old Master never completely trusted him, always held him
back—if it was true, who would take up the mantle as head of the Order? Mace was
a soldier in a soldier's time, but he did not get on so comfortably with
Chancellor Palpatine...
So her thoughts whirled madly, like snowflakes, drifting down to settle
finally on one cold fact: Yoda dead, and the whole universe a little darker for
it.
Courage, she told herself. Hope. When the time grows dark, hope must shine
the brighter. If I could trade my life for a chance of a brighter day for the
next generation, would I do it?
In a heartbeat.
"I'm going to the Senate chamber. The Chancellor will have the best and most
reliable news." In the doorway Padme turned to look back over her shoulder at
her handmaidens. They seemed shaken and afraid—far more so than if the
Chancellor had died. And who could blame them? After more than eight hundred
years, it was only natural to think Yoda would be around forever. "I wouldn't
write the old Master off yet," Padme said. "I'll believe he's gone when I see
them bring his body back. Not before."
"Thank you for receiving me, Chancellor," Mace Windu said tightly to the
holographic image of Chancellor Palpatine projected in the Jedi Council Chamber.
"I am indeed extremely pressed for time, Master Windu, but I value your
opinion exceedingly." Palpatine's intelligent face creased with a small, dry
smile. "I think you may safely presume that given a choice between listening to
the council of Mace Windu, or that of, say, the honorable Senator from Sermeria,
with his startling ability to bring any topic under discussion to a close
analysis of its impact on the trade in his homeworld's root vegetables, why, I
would rather listen to you."
Mace Windu had his weaknesses, but an easy susceptibility to flattery was not
one of them. "Thank you," he said briskly, "but may I ask why you have not
issued an immediate denial of the reports about Master Yoda? I know—"
Palpatine interrupted him. "This channel is hard-encrypted, Master?"
"Always."
"I assumed as much, but my security forces tell me that Coruscant is
presently infested with spies of every description, including the electronic
kind. An unfortunate side effect of our policy of allowing unrestricted free
movement to practically everyone, with only the flimsiest of security checks."
"The best security, Master Yoda once said, lies in creating a society that
nobody wishes to attack."
"Of course! But having somehow failed to convince the Trade Federation, we
must play the cards as they have been dealt," the Chancellor said. "This is not
a perfect world, and not all our choices are easy ones." This was obviously
true,
and the kind of hard truth Mace Windu found more comfortable than the
Chancellor’s little sallies into gallantry and compliment. "Leaving the question
of spies aside, I accept your assurance that this transmission is confidential.
Carry on, Master Windu."
"I know Yoda was not in the starship destroyed by Asajj Ventress. You know—"
"It was Ventress, then? I think you sent me a file on her some time back."
"Yes, Chancellor. Or at least, it was certainly her ship. It's a distinctive
design, patterned after Count Dooku's. We have analyzed the recordings from the
fourth pilot—"
"Who will face a court-martial for cowardice by tomorrow evening, with a
swift and public sentence," Palpatine said grimly.
"---And the ship is clearly Ventress's Last Call. My point being," Mace Windu
said doggedly, "I know Master Yoda wasn't in that ship. I told you Master Yoda
wasn't in that ship. So why, in the face of news reports of his death that are
having a very bad effect on morale, does your office not come forth with a
statement?"
For the first time, Chancellor Palpatine's tone held the trace of an edge.
"Master Windu, you may recollect that you only thought to inform me that the
ship publicly seen to be carrying Master Yoda was a decoy after it had launched.
In effect, I have only your word that he isn't dead."
"My word," Mace Windu said deliberately, "is one of the few things in the
galaxy that a Chancellor of the Republic can trust."
"Of course I trust you," Palpatine snapped. "It's not enough. We have due
process for a reason. The Chancellor serves the people and the Senate, not the
Jedi Order. The Jedi, likewise, cannot be seen to be my private army.
The people of this Republic must believe their government is directly
answerable to them and them alone. It's Count Dooku's whole cry that the
Republic is run by a handful of corrupt Senators and their cronies in the Order
and the government bureaucracy. If I go before the people and say, I know you've
seen the footage, but my pals in the Temple tell me the whole thing was just a
joke, that Master Yoda is still alive, but we don't care to produce him at this
time . . . how do you suppose that will play?"
Wearily Mace Windu rubbed his face. "You're the politician."
"I am, Master Windu. Not a profession you hold in much esteem, but I am a
politician—a superb politician—and until such time as you hear me giving you
helpful tips on how to wield a lightsaber, I beg you to consider I just might
know what I'm doing."
After a brief silence, the Chancellor sighed and the asperity left his voice.
"Master Yoda arranged for a decoy so he could travel undetected on his very
delicate mission. Tragically, several beings have died to carry out that
deception. Shall we throw away their sacrifice? Or shall we honor it, and give
Master Yoda a few more days to travel in secret to Vjun, and perhaps end this
terrible war?"
"Very well," Mace Windu said at last. "I just hope we're doing the right
thing."
"So do I," Palpatine said gravely. "In the meantime, I would take it very
kindly if you would take over, on a more formal basis, the daily briefings
Master Yoda used to give me."
"Of course."
An aide appeared at the edge of the transceiver's view of Palpatine, telling
the Chancellor in a low voice that he was very late for his next appointment.
"Duty calls," Palpatine said, moving to cut the comm channel. Then he paused.
"Master Windu, since we are being frank with one another today, let me add that
in these briefings I wish to hear your own unvarnished opinions—not what you
think Master Yoda would have said. He is a great being—perhaps the greatest in
the Republic. But Master Yoda is a teacher at heart. You are a warrior.
Regrettably, this sad age of the world may be your time more than his."
"Master Yoda is many things, and I am not his equal in peace or war," Mace
said.
"That's too bad," the Chancellor said, "because right now you are all I have.
I expect your best service."
"For the Order and the Republic, I will give anything and everything,
including my life."
The Chancellor reached to cut the channel. "Good," he said. "We may need
that, too."
"And in this time of crisis," Senator Orn Free Taa of Ryloth rumbled on, "of
may I say deepening crisis, the apparent death, the willful assassination of the
Grand Master of the Jedi Order underscores the urgent need for an entirely new
level of security. The Jedi will naturally attempt to carry on their good work:
but they are spread too thin. Master Yoda's tragic death makes that shockingly
plain."
Muttered agreement throughout the vast Senate chamber
"What we need," the Twi'lek Senator continued, "is a massive, expert,
committed security and counterintelligence force. My fellow legislators, a war
such as the one we find ourselves in may be won in battle with great difficulty,
but far more easily lost through treachery and sabotage. The resolution I place
before you seeks to create such a large, dedicated, aggressive force, not under
the jurisdiction of any of our innumerable, glacially slow bureaucracies, but
answerable directly to the Chancellor's office and, through it, to us. It is
time to put the security of the Republic first," he cried. "It is time to put
the security of the Republic directly in the hands of her people!"
Meaning us, Senator Amidala thought, looking at her fellow Senators. All
around her, her colleagues cheered, stomped, whistled, and applauded. Padme's
heart sank. Of course, everyone badly wanted to get some control over a
situation that felt increasingly uncontrollable. But if the resolution
passed—and it looked very likely to pass—then at some level, the charge of
securing the Republic was being shifted from the cool, dispassionate,
professional hands of the Jedi Order into the shouting, emotional, highly
politicized mob of her colleagues.
Somehow, that didn't make her feel any safer.
The ship on which Whie, Scout, Maks Leem, Jai Maruk, and Master Yoda found
themselves finally heading for the Outer Rim had originally been christened the
Asymptotic Approach to Divinity when she came off her Verpine assembly line,
intended as a pilgrim boat for a colony of mathemagi cultists. Unhappily, they
had lost their communal savings in an investment banking scandal, leaving the
Approach without a buyer. Rechristened the Stardust, she had gone into the
glamour cruise business, taking well-heeled sophisticates on tours of exotic
galactic sites and events, such as the Black Hole of Nakat, or the
much-anticipated nova of Ariarch-17. Unfortunately, a miscalculation of the
shock wave coming off the dying star had caused a dramatic and unexpected
failure of the ship's artificial gravity, from which dozens of lawsuits ensued.
The litigation lasted two generations, until the lawyers defending the
Stardust's owners seized her in lieu of fees owed, renamed her Reasonable Doubt,
and sold her off to Kut-Rate Krui ses, whose maintenance protocols basically
consisted of filling the ship up with breathable atmosphere an
d then waiting
around in spacedock a couple of days to see how fast the air was leaking out.
The Verpine, though excellent starship engineers, were essentially
two-meter-tall bipedal insectoids who communicated instantly through radio waves
produced in their chests, and whose visual acuity was so extreme that they could
distinguish between male and female lice in a nerf's fur at twenty paces. In
consequence, the beds on Reasonable Doubt were no more than a hand span wide,
the intercom system was nonexistent, and the ship signage, while no doubt
screamingly obvious to other Verpine, was completely invisible to Scout. On
their first day in space, it had taken her nearly an hour to find a refresher
station, wandering the corridors with increasing agitation until she finally
broke down and asked a crew member for directions. Embarrassing as that had
been, coming out two minutes later to confess that she couldn't figure out which
bits of plumbing to use had been worse.
Three days later she and Whie were lost, again, trudging through the
labyrinth of corridors that were all slightly too narrow for human comfort.
Master Yoda, who loathed being trapped in the R2 shell but was still trying to
maintain his disguise, had sent them out to get food well over an hour ago.
(Kut-Rate Kruise Lines had no time for frills such as room service.) Other
luxury services—bedding, for instance—were also conspicuous by their absence.
Scout had spent literally all her life dreaming of the day she would fly
offplanet, escaping the Jedi Temple and crowded Coruscant for the wonders of the
galaxy. But there had been some kind of mix-up in customs that kept them sitting
at spacedock for hours, so that she had actually been asleep for the moment of
liftoff, dozing fitfully on what was more like a plank than a bed, still dressed
and wrapped in her cloak, aware of the great moment only because a sudden lurch
had dumped her onto the floor. It had been a bit anticlimactic, and she had been
grumpy ever si nce.
Plus she was now quite certain that Jai Maruk, her Jedi Master, didn't like
her at all. But she wasn't going to let herself think about that just now.
As for the food ... Scout shuddered. Master Yoda ate it without complaint,
but then, perhaps he had evolved beyond ordinary mortal concerns.
