Qui-Gon Jinn blocked the stroke a fraction too late - impact jarring through arm and shoulder. Bright blades spat and thrummed so close to his skin that he could feel their focused power like a brand. Even now, though he could hear his opponent breathing, he couldn't see the face.Who is he?
He foot-swept, trying to hook the other's legs out from under him, pushing at the same time. The move should have sent the brown-cloaked man staggering backwards, giving Qui-Gon an opening of a few seconds, to power in and disarm him. Instead, with an easy surge of the Force, the man leapt vertically, turned in the air - cloak in a flurry of dark wings around him - twisted, and came down behind Qui-Gon with a fluid cut of the blue blade that would have severed Qui-Gon's neck had he not blocked again, panting.
His legs were trembling now from fatigue. Breathing had become a hot ache across his back.
Enough!
Twisting the block, he brought the other's arm down, held it straight, extended. Then with all his strength he smacked the open palm of his left hand into his opponent's locked elbow. Bone cracked with a snap.
The unknown man cried out with pain, his grip on the lightsabre loosening - the blade flicked out and back. He fumbled it into the other hand, and as he did so Qui-Gon kicked out - a stamping kick to the knee.
The joint shattered. The man sagged. Qui-Gon thrust a hand into the shadowy hood, caught him by the hair, pushing the head back as he forced the blade of his lightsabre through skin and ribs, up into the heart.
Crumpling, slumping backwards, the man pulled Qui-Gon with him. The hood fell away. And it was Obi-Wan; Obi-Wan's blue eyes losing focus, his face astonished at death, his body going limp under Qui-Gon's hands.
Qui-Gon recoiled, dropping the warm corpse, lightsabre falling from his grasp. Horror tore into him like a spear of ice.
I killed my apprentice!
He woke, gasping, chilled. It was a long moment before he could nerve himself to sit up and look across the darkness of the cabin to where the boy lay sprawled in his bunk, fast asleep. Hard to see, in the faint blue and red lights of the door-panel, whether he was breathing. Qui-Gon watched, to make sure, filled with the physical certainty that he had killed him.
Under the scrutiny Obi-Wan frowned in his sleep, turned, pulling the cover over his face. When he had settled Qui-Gon got up quietly, picked up his boots and belt, and padded out to the empty bridge.
Smudgy streaks of hyperspace went past silently in the twilight. The computer, responding to his presence, began to switch on lights.
"No. Leave them off."
So, he wondered, was that a premonition, or just guilt? After all he had killed one apprentice already, hounded him across the galaxy, watched him die in scalding agony in an acid pit on Telos.
New every day, the pain rose up, overwhelming him - Xanatos - and the morning began with a struggle to breathe.
He knelt, composing himself for meditation. I accept the pain. I accept the grief... Let them come.
He knew from experience that in time even this would fade, would be reshaped into a source of wisdom. He would keep the good memories and discard the bad, in time. In time he would think of his lost child and smile. But not yet. Here, now, the hurt was still like a sword-blade thrust through his chest. He had to fight not to double over, head in hands, and weep.
Why in the name of the Force had he taken on Obi-Wan Kenobi? Why did Xanatos turn to the dark side? Was the fault in him, or in me? And if in me...how can I stop it all happening again? How can I stop the dream from coming true?
The hyperdrive whine deepened, slowed. There was a moment of suspension, half way between two dimensions, and then the universe gelled into place. Darkness filled the viewscreen - a point of green light intense in the centre, a tiny, pale crescent to its right, the rim's sparse stars scattered grudgingly at the edges.
Time to work. He lifted everything away - emotions, questions - reaching for the Jedi calm. Was it slightly easier to attain than yesterday? Perhaps.
The pilot came whistling down the corridor, lights flicking on before her. Seeing Qui-Gon she stopped, her round, scrubbed face taking on a look of uncomfortable reverence.
"Oh, you're meditating. I can come back in a couple minutes."
"No. I've done."
"Well, the approach is a bit tricky - so many wrecked satellites. If it's OK?" She dropped into her chair, engaged engines. Bursts of fire chased themselves across the view as the shields burnt up debris.
Obi-Wan ran onto the bridge, his spiky hair still tousled and a faint look of accusation on his face. "You said you'd work through the morning meditation with me."
"I did, didn't I." The planet, Nimgon, had expanded to fill the screen, jade colored. A satellite loomed and went past; a hulk of metal, spinning furiously. The green sun's light flashed from blown-in windows, sensor arrays, the jagged edges of empty gun stations. "It'll have to be tomorrow. Go and get ready to disembark."
"I have spoken to the emissaries from the Beta Systems," Qui-Gon folded his hands inside the sleeves of his robe and looked out of the high window of the Ambassador's office. "And I can tell that they are sincere in this offer of peace."
From here he could see over the Embassy gardens to the massive outer wall and beyond it dust and purple flickers of light like hurrying stars. Nimgoni security forces were putting down the latest food riot outside. The whining of the guard's stunpoles trembled up through the fabric of the building, into his bones. "You should bring yourself to trust them. What have you left to lose?"
"We trusted the Beta Systems when we signed the treaty of Pta, and they broke that within five days." said Nam Gillet, the Nimgoni ambassador. He was avoiding the view, but his color was pallid, and the tips of his tentacles twitched on the floor.
Qui-Gon turned to face him, amused despite everything; "That was two centuries ago. Things have changed."
"What, exactly? Their nature doesn't change."
"The Republic wasn't asked to mediate the Treaty of Pta. This time we will be there to make sure they obey the terms. Be confident; you have learned from your mistake."
In the aftermath of his dream the words tasted hollow. Who am I to tell him that? he thought, looking over to the droid niche in which his Padawan stood, impeccably silent and attentive. What have I learned from mine, except to be afraid?
"I'm not sure if I can risk it." said Nam Gillet, and slithered with a sound of suction towards the drinks cabinet. Outside, sirens screamed; the blaze of pulse-rifles joined the stunners for a brief, searing instant. Then there was silence.
"You can't risk it? You can't risk peace?" Qui-Gon stopped before he said too much. The sounds of distant death had filled him with anger and frustration. He had to breathe the emotions away before he could go on.
In the tiny pause Obi-Wan stepped forward, young face glowing with righteousness. "He can't risk angering the pro-war lobby. He can't risk his own precious political career!"
"Obi-Wan!" The sound of his disapproval made the boy stiffen, hurt, but Gillet's skin color shifted from ash to orange, broadcasting pleasure that the young Jedi had been rebuked over his honor.
This was not the message Qui-Gon intended to give either of them. "Obi-Wan," he said pointedly, "Your perceptions may be accurate, but your tact leaves a lot to be desired. When you're speaking the truth do it with courtesy. It's heard better that way."
"Yes, Master. Sorry." the apprentice drew back into his corner again, smiling.
"Why do you insist on bringing a child into these negotiations?" said Nam Gillet irritably - the barb had obviously struck home - "He should be out playing."
"He's not..." Qui-Gon began, and it struck him - like a serpent lunging out of hiding - a ripple of dark force, the piercing knowledge of something evil nearby.
Obi-Wan muffled an outcry. He tore the lightsabre from his belt, powering up.
"Now what?" Gillet snapped, his skin whey colored in the light of the blue blade.
"My apologies, ambassador, we must..." The sense of present evil had grounded itself, threading into the building like a spun carbon cable, connecting with something. It had found victims; Qui-Gon could feel it breaking open a mind, playing with what it found. The sense of violation, of drowning in vileness, rose up like a scream for help.
It was close. One? No, two floors down. In the guest quarters. He closed his eyes, concentrating...
"Master?"
"Quiet!"
The evil thing warped the shining smoothness of the Force like a Black Hole. He had never felt such power. Touching it was like touching damnation, and trying to fight it with his mind was like trying to hold a lit candle in a tornado. It brushed him away, contemptuously.
As it did so he felt the presence of a second victim, not compelled this time, only terrified.
Very well then, he thought, overwhelmed with urgency, We'll do this the boy's way. and he ran for the door.
Once even the corridors of this building had been sheathed in sheet coral. Only fragments had been left unsold. They rattled as he passed, and firefly reflections of the lit sabre glinted along the walls as Obi-Wan followed him.
"Power that thing down." Qui-Gon called over his shoulder. Desperation was clutching at his throat, the sense that no matter how fast he ran he would arrive too late. "What if someone comes out of one of these doors when you're going past?"
The blade snap-hissed into silence. They raced out into the empty light and echo of the massive stairwell. Twenty five meters across, thirty down to the level from which the mental voices rose, pleading. He had begun to taste their pain on the Force like the copper tang of blood.
The boy skidded to a halt beside him.
"Over there," Qui-Gon said, pointing, "Can you jump?"
Obi-Wan looked down - all the thousands of meters to the remote ground, where a shallow ornamental pond lay like a sheet of steel in the centre of the green marble floor. Qui-Gon felt the boy's spirit quail.
"It's really that urgent? I haven't felt anything change..."
So he felt the attacker, but not the victims. Good, Qui-Gon thought, given the brutality of what he was picking up, it was good that the boy was spared that. "It's really that urgent."
"I'll try."
"'There is no try.'"
"I'll do it."
He made himself stop and explain - even though the delay was a torment; "Be calm. Remember that with the Force there is no difference between this and a single step."
And if you fall, I'll be there to catch you. he added silently, and lept.
The boy followed, using the Force with grim determination, clearing the fatal gap easily and slamming hard into the wall on the other side. Strength was not his problem, Qui-Gon noted, only finesse. The feat deserved some praise, even if - and it felt as though it was - the universe was ending around them. "Well done." he said, "We'll work on your control later."
These walls had also been stripped. Bare permacrete amplified the beating of their hurrying feet. Then a new sound tore along the frigid passage; it started sweet, like birdsong, shrilled, and rose beyond human hearing. Dust stirred around their feet as the vibrations of the scream rolled over them.
He reached the door behind which the nightmares lurked - Quickly! - touched the controls, awareness of dark power crawling even over the metal and glass. It was unlocked.
He swung it open. A stench of blood spilled out - Nimgoni blood, thin and black. Evil, like a physical pressure on his chest, held him pinned for a moment, aghast. Calm. Be calm.
Something was moving in the corner of the room, making a scrabbling noise, ugly as the sound of a mynock on a ship's hull. Hard to see what it was; the windows had been blanked out. In the centre of the floor a bundle - the wrong shape for human or Nimgoni - rocked and whimpered. He stepped forward, and his foot landed on a severed tentacle. There were more, pale in the gloom, but the body-mass of the maimed Nimgoni was still alive, whining with pain.
A tendril of dark power touched his mind, like a nosing maggot. He slapped it away, but not before he got the flavor of it; satisfaction, as though an interesting experiment had come off well.
Going down on his knees in the pool of blood he touched the Nimgoni's face - fine skin frayed all over with cuts. Its death was tangible; life draining away second by second. Astonishing that it was still even partly conscious.
In the corner the scrabbling thing raised its head; a young human - one of the clerks from the Beta systems. Cuts from his own fingernails bloodied his eyes, and madness seethed behind them. Qui-Gon could feel the pulse of danger there; knew an attack was coming soon.
Like a cathedral of ghosts animated by one controlling mind, the dark power watched him, pondering its next move.
From the doorway he could sense Obi-Wan; impatient, expecting him to challenge this unholy invader and drive it away.
But if he reacted to any of those things the Nimgoni would die.
Forgetting - with an effort - that there was a madman in the room, forgetting the maelstrom of evil in which he knelt, he reached out for the Force. Sinking deep into meditation, he called the energy to return here; the wounded body to heal. The Nimgoni's spirit clutched weakly at his mind, like imploring hands.
Then the human screamed, lunging out of his corner, vibroblade humming in his hand. Qui-Gon saw the stroke coming down; wild, inept, but very fast. He held the Nimgoni back from death by only moments, and his grip was tenuous on the retreating soul. Panic stabbed him; Will I lose it if I move?.
And suddenly Obi-Wan was under the blow - catching the wrist, twisting, following through the motion with a throw; a classic Temple move. The man went down heavily and Obi-Wan pulled the arm straight, bent back the hand and plucked the weapon out of his grip. Then he stepped back - again a relic of training, that little sporting pause which allowed the opponent to recover - and stood looking blank, as though astonished that the technique actually worked.
I must remember I'm not on my own any more. Qui-Gon thought ruefully; he had wasted time and effort with his moment of panic. He went back to the healing, trusting his safety to the boy.
But now the Darkness had seen what was important to him. Pettily it moved to spoil his work. If he concentrated on one wound, willing it to heal, it opened another. Each time he found his focus it broke it. Playing with him. He felt as though he was kneeling at a cliff's edge, trying to pull a friend from the abyss, while someone bent his fingers back one by one. It was increasingly difficult not to become angry.
Very well, he thought, This matters to me. What matters to you? Fear was the core of the Dark Side. One could not become a dark-side adept without being eaten up by fear. Perhaps he could bluff it?
"The longer you stay." he said aloud, hoping it heard, "The more I'll know you, and the easier it will be for me to lead my Order straight to you. Is that what you want?"
He felt its amusement - as a man might feel when threatened by an ant - and then, suddenly as it had come, it was gone. The universe was clean again, and the Force poured itself into his hands with all its astonishing glory. He lifted the Nimgoni back from the edge and made it sleep.
"What is this?" Nam Gillet's voice spoke from the doorway, flutelike and incapable of inflection. Qui-Gon had to open his eyes to see that the ambassador's color was the ice-blue of horror. "That's Cim Beysan! What have you done to him?"
"Us!" Obi-Wan exclaimed, his bruised face lit with indignation, the madman crouched sobbing at his feet, "Nothing! Well, except..."
"Gods of the Deep! Is this how the Jedi solve disputes? By murder?"
"Ambassador," Qui-Gon got to his feet a little unsteadily - healing was exhausting work, "You are overwrought. Obi-Wan, call for the medics, please."
"Medics!" Gillet's molten-gold eyes flared as he opened his inner eyelids with anger, "I have called the guards! I'm going to have you..."
"Not them!" The knife-man raised his head from the floor, his voice thick with tears, "It was me. It was me...I'm so sorry."
Qui-Gon could place him now; Ibhis LoXin, a minor aide to the Capra Beta party, unimportant, inexperienced, and very young. So many wounds here, and only the physical ones were easy to heal. When he reached out to touch Ibhis' shoulder reassuringly the lad cringed away, like a slave in a Hutt pleasure dome.
"You did nothing." Qui-Gon said firmly, "I won't let you be blamed for this. You're as much a victim as he is."
"No!" Ibhis raised his sticky palms into the light, "The blood is on my hands. I know what I did. I want to be punished!"
"And you will be." Nam Gillet said, guards slithering around him, surging into the room. Tentacles whipped and snapped. "You will be."
Curtains of pared silverice shimmered with a noise like falling water, separating the oppressive grandeur of the Embassy ballroom from its elegant gardens. Inside, the guests had formed into two silent camps, keeping an eye on each other as they ate the rather sparse buffet.
Qui-Gon frowned as he watched them. The mental effort of keeping their hostility down was making his head ache, but it was probably the only thing at this stage which could save the treaty. Calm, and time - to let them remember how desperately both sides needed peace.
A breeze brought the sharp, citrus scent of madderley in from the balcony. He needed time himself - to think - so he brushed aside the silverice and went out into the evening. The sky was tangerine, slashed with pale emerald clouds, satellites winking green as glow-worms in the sunset's depths.
"What was it?" Obi-Wan asked, following him like a mismatched shadow. The bruise on his face had blackened and grown defined; the shape of a boot heel.
He fought a hard battle to defend me. Qui-Gon thought, resigning himself to the company, although he had wanted just a brief moment alone. And I haven't thanked him.
"What did you feel?" he asked.
The boy looked taken aback that his opinion was being sought, but composed himself quickly, "I felt that the thing, whatever it was, was important. Not just big, or powerful, but important." He struggled for more words, but couldn't find them. "I'm sorry."
All the aptitude tests Qui-Gon had read indicated that his new apprentice's gifts were centred in the Cosmic Force: He sensed changes to the galaxy, the onset of the future. He did not sense small things. Therefore, Qui-Gon sighed, this was not a small problem, or a threat localized only to this mission.
"Yes," he said, slowly, thinking it out as he spoke, "That's more or less what I felt too. The attacker itself was one individual - I'm certain of that - but augmented by..." an appropriate description was hard to find; "By a chorus of power that came from outside it. Some kind of Force storage device, maybe. If such things are possible. I can't tell whether it's the individual, or the device which throws echoes into the future. Perhaps it's both."
The sky darkened, the moon X'zim rose, poised like a falling boulder over their heads. Security lamps lit, bathing the gardens in an aquamarine glow.
"Master?"
"Hm?"
"You could have the treaty signed tomorrow if you mind-tricked them into it. Then we could go after this dark force. Why not?"
"Apart from the fact that, once it got out, no senator would ever let a Jedi near him again?" Qui-Gon sighed, paced over to the balcony steps. He could see, over the flowers with their slicing perfume, the white tops of the high walls. Behind them, discretely hidden, lay the refugee camps, the packing crate villages, the strafed out, wasted fields.
"People know when they're being coerced." he said, grimly, "There's no surer way to ruin anything than to force it; the resentment pushes it apart from within. You end up with smaller pieces and bigger grudges than before.
Besides, what gives us the right to make puppets of others? In duress - threat or great urgency - yes. But in honest negotiation? Never."
The breeze blew the yammering of pulse-weapons into the garden. Another riot? Or one gang robbing another of its food? Grief and anger beat down on him at the thought - he wanted to make it better now. If only he could bend a few minds. Make them stop hesitating, and act.
"Obi-Wan, I want you to sit in on the first round of talks for me. Observe, drop a hint here and there, if the demands are unfair or excessive. Steer the topic away from the attack and keep it on the peace."
The boy stirred, pulled at his new braid angrily. "You could get a droid to do that. I want to help with the important stuff."
As though he hadn't heard the gun-shots at all.
"Getting this treaty signed is important. People are dying."
"Sitting around all day listening to other people arguing? What's that going to teach me?"
"Politics. Patience. Obi-Wan, this is what the Jedi are about; finding and maintaining a just peace. It's not glamourous and it is boring, but until you've learned to do it you will have learned nothing."
Obi-Wan stepped forward, a light blue-hot behind his eyes, his face far more adult now it was tightened with anger. He opened his mouth to speak and some thought or habit of obedience stopped him with the accusation unmade. Turning away he began to pull petals from the indigo and gold madderley vines as he breathed down resentment with obvious effort.
What has he got to resent from me? Qui-Gon thought with a flare of answering anger, He's the one who pushed his way into my life uninvited, because no-one else would have him.
For a moment the evening was full of heat. Then he noticed the anger and challenged it; He could have pushed for eternity, I didn't have to yield. It's not his fault that I never can resist a lost cause. The thought was unfair - on both of them - but its affect was good. He smiled.
The boy looked up at the same time; "So what are you going to do?"
"I need to talk to Ibhis. He was in contact with this..." he shrugged at the inadequacy of the description, "This 'Force-nexus' intimately for some time. He may have learned something useful."
He leaned on the balcony rail, looking down to the aviary under the vines, where Nimgon's scarf-like gliders twisted in dim evening colors behind once-gilded bars. "I also want to make sure he's not lynched. I promised to protect him."
Obi-Wan went back to picking apart the flowers, frowning in a way that made his silent protest painfully clear.
"You have something to say about that?"
He straightened, looked up challengingly; "They already don't believe you about the possession." he said. "They think you're helping Ibhis just because he's human. By defending him you're losing credibility as a mediator, and without that the chances are that the peace treaty will fail. Then they'll execute him anyway."
Qui-Gon rather admired the boldness of this analysis. It certainly was one possible outcome - even a probable one. "You've thought it through well. What do you suggest?"
Now the gaze dropped back to the litter of petals - sword-shaped, the color of obsidian in the growing darkness.
But he can't face me with this.
"Ibhis even wants to be punished. I think...I think we shouldn't interfere. The mission's our priority, isn't it?"
He had known it was bad before it came, but this took his breath away. Perhaps it wasn't quite as appalling as the boy's recent offer to ambush and murder Jemba the Hutt in the cause of worker's rights. But he had rather been hoping that would prove to be a fluke.
"Let me get this clear. You're suggesting I let them kill an innocent man - a man we both know to be innocent - just to make the mission easier?"
"No!" Obi-Wan glared at him, as if he was deliberately misrepresenting everything, "To make peace come soon, instead of not at all."
"Peace without justice is oppression."
"But he's just one person. Every day he delays the peace a million other people die. That's got to make a difference."
Cosmic-force Jedi! Qui-Gon thought with a familiar sinking feeling, Why do they always think by numbers?
"No," he said, "There are no quantities with the Force; just as a step is the same as an abyss, so an injustice done to one man is an injustice done to the whole universe. They are the same."
Shouting made the pared silverice shiver sweetly across the doorway. The music of Nimgoni anger answered strident human voices inside the ballroom.
"I don't see that." Obi-Wan said at last, "If you have the choice between one life and a million you take the million. You must."
How could he phrase it and be understood? "We are Jedi. It's our business to find the third choice; the choice that preserves both."
"And if you can't?"
"Then you've failed. But not to look for it in the first place is more than failure - it's betrayal."
The sky was darkening. Plumes of smoke, dirt-colored, drifted up from the refugee camps, scattering the bruised light of the speeding moon. Hostility spilled from the embassy like another dirty cloud, but it could not quite overshadow the resentment his apprentice still carried, tight and secret in his heart.
Should I deal with that now? Qui-Gon thought, reluctantly. No. There's no time for it. Tomorrow, perhaps.
"Let's get back to work." he said and motioned the boy to go inside. In the doorway, poised between the hatred and the calm night, he paused for a second, to review what they had;
A peace-treaty in crisis. An unknown enemy of incredible power. A Master who dreams of killing his apprentice and an apprentice with an unspecified grudge and no morals. The humor of the situation struck him at once; I'm not even going to wonder how it could get worse!
He smiled, and shouldered aside the curtain, returning to the fray.
