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bedlamsbardTitle: Bad Moon Rising (6)
Author:bedlamsbard
Fandom: Star Wars (prequel trilogy)
Rating: PG-13
Content advisory: none
Summary: Returning to Coruscant from a mission, Obi-Wan Kenobi and her Padawan Anakin Skywalker are reunited with the newly-appointed Naboo Senator Padmé Amidala, who unwittingly draws them into the murky world of Republic politics. Lady!Obi-Wan AU, set six years after the events of TPM and three years before the events of AotC.
Disclaimer: Star Wars and its characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to George Lucas, LucasFilm, and Disney.
Author's notes: Part of the Oxygen and Rust series. There's some confusion about the chapter numbers, since AO3 went ahead and numbered the Interlude as Chapter 5. On AO3 there are seven chapters, with the interlude as 5; on LJ and DW there are six with the interlude unnumbered.
Previous chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Interlude: Anakin | 5 | AO3
Read this chapter at the AO3
Obi-Wan had a distinct sense of déjà vu as she stood in front of the Jedi High Council. Rain battered against the transparisteel windows of the round chamber, just as it had barely a week ago, and Obi-Wan was once again dripping water on the polished floor while the Council pretended not to notice. Although the sky had been clear when she had left the Jedi Temple the previous evening, at some point during the night the weather had taken a turn for the worse; their open speeder had emerged topside into a torrential downpour that had soaked the four Jedi inside within the seconds it took Aayla to get the convertible roof up. Anakin, predictably, had squealed like a blistered piika kit, his desert heritage reasserting itself.
Upon returning to the Temple, they were immediately been whisked in front of the Council for an emergency debrief. Obi-Wan recounted the events of the previous evening, trying to gauge the Council’s mood towards her appearance at Senator Mothma’s dinner, then her actions after she had woken up at the warehouse. She left out the conversation she had with the Sith Lord, though she hesitated over it and knew that they realized it. The holocomm Padmé had returned to her remained in the belt pouch where she had tucked it away, a small weight that seemed heavier than it really was. Sometime between retrieving it from Padmé and arriving at the Temple, the insides of the device had melted down to slag, rendering it essentially useless.
She stepped back from the center of the council chamber as Quinlan and Aayla began their debrief. Anakin should have joined them, but he moved to stand beside Obi-Wan instead, apparently content to stay quiet instead of adding his voice to Quinlan’s account. Obi-Wan could feel him in the Force, a warm and comfortable presence that stood in stark contrast to the earlier hysteria that had stabbed at her mind. With her Padawan beside her, safe at the heart of the Jedi’s most sacred sanctum, Obi-Wan finally felt her own breathing start to even out, her shoulders slumping as her earlier tension drained out. The wound on her abdomen, now plastered with bacta bandages, throbbed dully, but the pain was little more than a distant distraction, easily pushed aside by the Force. Lulled by the bulwark of Anakin’s affection and the warmth of the chamber, Obi-Wan let her vision slide out of focus, feeling her mind slip into a quasi-meditative state.
Blasterfire in the distance. The smell of smoke was heavy in the air, even here at the highest spire of the Temple. The younglings had fled at the urging of the crèche master, but in the chaos they had lost track of the Padawan tasked with getting them out of the Temple. Instead they had found the turbolift that rose directly to the top of the Council Spire and retreated here, hoping that they would be found by a Master or a Knight who would know what to do. At the sound of the lift rising, most hid behind the empty chairs. All of them carried lightsabers, but while they could repel blaster bolts, they were otherwise useless as weapons – just practice lightsabers that weren’t meant to do serious damage while their bearers learned their use. If it came to a fight, they might be able to hold off their attackers for a few minutes at most, but then they would die. Here in the council hamber there was nowhere else to retreat.
The lift had gone back down some time ago. Now it rose again, steadily ticking upwards towards the chamber. The doors slid open, revealing a familiar hooded and cloaked figure inside.
“Master –”
A lightsaber ignited with a hiss.
Obi-Wan let out a small gasp as the vision threw her out, her eyes sliding back into focus. The entire experience had only taken a few seconds; none of the other Jedi in the chamber seemed to have noticed her brief trance. Only Anakin had turned to look at her, his eyes wide and concerned. He would have felt it in the Force, of course.
She felt his question reverberate in her head, so clearly they were nearly real words rather than just a collection of emotions and images. Master? Are you all right?
She shook her head slightly, hoping that the Council members were too focused on Quinlan and Aayla’s report to notice the gesture. Anakin dropped his gaze. Obi-Wan could sense his desire to reach out to her, but even he knew better than to do so in front of the Council. As a general rule, most Jedi weren’t terribly keen on physical touch, since it could easily serve as an accidental conduit in the Force between careless individuals.
As Quinlan finished, she saw Master Yoda’s gaze move to her. He raised one green, three-fingered hand and said, “Distracted you are, Master Kenobi. Something else you are keeping from us there is?”
Obi-Wan felt Anakin stiffen, the thread of his fury sliding through the Force before he wrestled it down, but ignored it as she reached inside her cloak and removed the holocomm from her belt pouch. She stepped forward as Quinlan and Aayla retreated to stand beside Anakin in front of the chamber doors, Quinlan’s hand closing on the sleeve of Anakin’s cloak to keep him from following Obi-Wan onto the floor.
“My apologies, Masters,” she said. She held the holocomm out so that they could see it, balancing it on her palm as she spoke. Psychometry wasn’t one of her wild talents, as it was Quin’s, and neither was a connection with electronics the way it was Anakin’s – though he denied his skill as a mechanic had anything to do with the Force – but even she could feel the deadness in the device. It was as though every scrap of history that it had had ever had, that it should have had, had been wiped clean from the Force.
“This is the holocomm that the bounty hunter Bey’aaan used to speak to her employer,” she went on. “I activated it in an attempt to contact the Temple, but found that it had only one dial available. I called it hoping that I would be able to identify the employer.”
“And did you?” Master Ki-Adi-Mundi asked.
Obi-Wan shook her head, picking her next words carefully. “His face was concealed, I’m afraid, and I didn’t recognize his voice.” She hesitated, but there was no way around saying it. “I felt the Dark Side around him, just as I felt it around the Sith Lord on Naboo.”
She could not have caused more consternation if she had released a live nexu into the room, since that disturbance would have simply been accounted for by one of the Masters igniting their lightsaber and taking care of the disruption immediately before returning to the matter at hand with barely a breath lost. Instead, although no one in the chamber moved, it was as though the air itself had suddenly become electrified. The lights flickered, the transparisteel windows bowed outwards, and the holocomm shuddered in Obi-Wan’s palm before it flew off. Master Windu caught it neatly, and Obi-Wan lowered her hand.
Her head throbbed with the power surrounding her and yet, somewhat to her surprise, Obi-Wan found herself standing her ground. She could feel the Force as she had only felt it once before, pressed so close and so thickly around her that she half-fancied that she could reach out and shape it with her bare hands, use it as she pleased without repercussions. It hummed along her skin, sat thick and rich on her tongue, murmured in her mind. Threat, the Force whispered to her, and, kin.
Flames rolled across the insides of the windows before her. Distantly, as if from another life, Obi-Wan heard the sound of children screaming and the relentless hum of a lightsaber stabbing through flesh.
Almost as soon as it had begun, the moment passed. Obi-Wan found herself breathing hard in the sudden emptiness of the room, her hands clasped into fists beneath the concealing sleeves of her robe. Anakin’s alarm throbbed in the back of her skull, though she didn’t look over her shoulder to see if he had made any physical indication of it. What remained in the chamber wasn’t wrath, but a kind of wariness that she had never felt before. Mention of the Sith no longer meant the purely academic concern that had accompanied Qui-Gon’s report of the Zabrak assassin on Tatooine; the Jedi knew now that their oldest enemy had returned.
Windu turned the holocomm over in his hands, his expression inscrutable. Even from here Obi-Wan could feel the deadness in the thing, like a black hole in the Force. “Are you certain, Obi-Wan?”
“This is not the first time I have felt the power of the Dark Side,” Obi-Wan said. “I would not mistake it for anything else.”
“What did he say?”
Obi-Wan recounted the conversation that they had. Balance, my dear, she remembered the Sith Lord saying, and felt the Force beat so strongly at her mind that she thought her skull would explode.
“Troubling news this is,” Master Yoda said after she had finished.
“Is there a reason that you sought to conceal this from us, Master Kenobi?” Adi Gallia asked.
“No, Master Gallia,” said Obi-Wan, ignoring Anakin’s flush of anger. “The holocomm has been destroyed, leaving no traceable psychic residue – Quinlan Vos can vouch for that. There is no way to verify what I have said.”
“How is this possible?” asked Ki-Adi-Mundi, though the question wasn’t directed at her. “I have never heard of such a thing in living memory. I thought that skill lost.”
“Difficult, such things are,” said Master Yoda. “But not lost. A skill seldom practiced by Jedi it is. For a long time little need has there been.”
“This is a Jedi skill?” Obi-Wan said, surprised. “I thought –”
“Few skills there are only Jedi, only Sith,” said Yoda, his tone faintly rebuking.
Obi-Wan bowed her head in apology.
“No one else touched this after you took it?” Windu asked.
Obi-Wan hesitated, then admitted, “I gave it to Senator Amidala of Naboo to give to the Council in case I didn’t return, but Padmé – Senator Amidala – isn’t Force-sensitive. She wouldn’t be able to do this. Besides, when she gave it back to me it was still active.”
“Amidala of Naboo is known to us,” Windu said. “And to you, Obi-Wan. From your account, this – Dark Acolyte – seemed to recognize you.”
“It was not Senator Amidala,” Obi-Wan said, sensing Anakin’s outrage and cutting him off before he said something that they would all regret. “The speaker was a man, I’m certain of it. And Padmé was imprisoned along with the other senators at the time.”
“But they were not imprisoned together,” Adi Gallia point out.
“Padmé isn’t a Sith Lord!” Anakin burst out. “That creature on Naboo tried to kill her!”
Obi-Wan didn’t drop her head into her hands, but it was a near thing. Instead she focused her gaze on a point just over Master Windu’s right shoulder as Ki-Adi-Mundi said, “We must consider all possibilities, young Skywalker, no matter how unlikely.”
“If this Sith did recognize me, Master Windu,” Obi-Wan said, without meeting his eyes, “then it was nothing more than coincidence. The bounty hunters didn’t know that I was going to be at the party; I didn’t know until the day before, and Senator Mothma wouldn’t have spread my name around without knowing for sure that I was going to be there. If their employer had planned on my capture, there would have been plans in my place for my, um, disposal. Instead they seemed to be making it up as they went. But,” she added reluctantly, “he did know my name. He recognized me when I activated the holocomm. Bey’aaan never used my name. I don’t think that she knew it; she only called me ‘Master Jedi.’”
At this, Anakin’s alarm rang through the Force like a struck bell. Obi-Wan shut her eyes, knowing that the Council had to have sensed this and hoping that they didn’t take it as anything more than a Padawan’s concern for his Master. She didn’t want them to know just how fragile Anakin’s control really was when it came to the emotions that most Jedi should have tamped down by this point in their training.
If anyone in the Council noticed it, they made no sign. “This development is troubling,” said Windu, finally laying the holocomm aside. “It bears further investigation – not by you, Obi-Wan, I’m sure that you understand that you are emotionally compromised on this matter.”
Obi-Wan bowed slightly. “I understand perfectly, Master Windu.”
It seemed to be a dismissal, and Obi-Wan was prepared to take it as one before Windu went on, “Chancellor Palpatine has requested an audience with you, Obi-Wan. I’ve put him off until tomorrow so that you can get looked at by the healers and have a night’s rest. I trust that you’ll keep these recent developments inside the walls of this chamber.”
This time it was a dismissal. Obi-Wan bowed to the Council, noting the empty chair with Shaak Ti normally sat, and retreated. Anakin fell into step beside her, glancing over his shoulder as Quinlan was called onto the floor again. Hopefully his psychometric talents could find something where Obi-Wan’s more ordinary ones had been incapable.
“They don’t seriously think that Padmé is a – a Dark Acolyte, do they?” Anakin said after the turbolift doors had closed behind them and they had begun their descent. He stumbled over the unfamiliar phrase, which was seldom heard even in the Temple’s classrooms. “I mean, that’s crazy!”
“I don’t,” Obi-Wan said, letting herself lean back against the lift wall. “And I don’t think anyone in the High Council does, either. It doesn’t make any sense considering what happened on Naboo and they know that.”
This appeared to satisfy Anakin. He went quiet, his arms wrapped around himself. Obi-Wan thought about reprimanding him for his earlier outburst in the Council, but decided against it; he would have already sensed their disapproval. Besides, he had been through enough already in the past day.
“Why does Palpatine want to talk to you?” Anakin asked abruptly.
Obi-Wan rubbed a hand over her forehead. “I don’t know.” He probably wants to make cutting remarks about how the kidnapping never would have happened if Anakin had been there.
Unfortunately, Anakin caught the thought. He looked at her and began, “I could have –”
She pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “Does it really matter, my young Padawan? It’s passed.”
He glanced down. “Sorry, Master.”
The doors opened, depositing them on the ground floor of the spire. Obi-Wan pressed her fingers to her bandaged abdomen as they made their way towards the Halls of Healing, Anakin continually shooting her worried looks.
As usual, there were few other Jedi in the Halls of Healing – a few Padawans and younglings who had injured themselves in training and a handful of Knights recovering from wounds sustained offworld. Obi-Wan was swept off by the Chief Healer, a Twi’lek woman named Vokara Che, and sat down on one of the nearest beds, pulling her tunics and undershirt off to reveal her hastily bandaged wound. Anakin sat down cross-legged on the bed beside her, watching curiously as Master Che carefully peeled the bandage away.
“A Wookiee did this?” she asked, picking up a container of antibiotic salve.
Obi-Wan nodded. “I didn’t sense any poison on her claws, but I wasn’t exactly at full strength.”
Anakin glanced down, his cheeks reddening. “I didn’t sense any either,” he said quickly. “And I put the bandages on.”
“You did well, young Skywalker,” Master Che said, holding the salve in one hand as she held the other a few centimeters over the wound. Obi-Wan felt the Force gather around her, cool and green against her skin before Master Che released it. “No need for a healing, I think. Another day of bacta and you’ll be well except for a scar.”
“What about the concussion?” Anakin asked worriedly as she began to spread the salve on. Obi-Wan hissed a little; it stung.
“Let me see,” the Chief Healer said, putting the salve aside and standing. She wiped her fingers clean on her robe and came around the side of the bed to tilt Obi-Wan’s head forward, parting her hair with her long fingers. “Nasty, this. What happened?”
“I was stunned, I clipped my head on a marble floor going down,” Obi-Wan explained. The Force hummed against the back of her skull as Master Che prodded at the lump.
“This I can do something about,” she said. “Most concussions are harmless, but there’s no point in not being careful.”
Anakin’s relief warmed the Force, counterpoint to the cool of Master Che’s touch. Obi-Wan shut her eyes, breathing in and out in a brief meditative pattern to aid the healing process. Within seconds, she felt the ache in her head face and cease entirely, the flesh closing up and knitting back together. Master Che took her hand away. “Much better,” she said.
“Thank you, Master Che,” Obi-Wan said.
Master Che came back around and resumed bandaging the wound again. “Your Padawan hasn’t yet taken a course in healing, I believe.”
“Um,” Anakin said, as Obi-Wan said, “Not yet, no. I’ve done what I can, but I don’t have much skill at healing myself.”
“Why not do a term in the Halls of Healing while your Padawan takes a class?” Master Che offered. “Many Knights and Padawans do so. Your own Master did.”
Obi-Wan bowed her head. “That was more than ten years ago. Yes, I remember. I will consider it, Master Che.”
The Twi’lek Healer finished bandaging the wound and sat back, wiping her fingers clean. “Please do, Obi-Wan. I think that it would be good for both of you. Besides,” she added, a twinkle in her eye, “it might keep you out of trouble.”
“A welcome thought,” Obi-Wan said, but some quirk of the Force made her add, “though not, I think, a likely outcome.” She reached for her discarded undershirt and tunics, but Master Che whisked them away before her hand fell.
“I’ll dispose of these,” she said, since the garments were torn and covered in blood and bacta. No one in the Council chamber had so much as raised an eyebrow at a Jedi Knight coming before them looking as if she had just stepped off a battlefield.
You haven’t seen a battlefield yet, Jedi, the Force whispered. You will. The thought was there and gone again so quickly that her mind barely registered it.
Obi-Wan looked down at the brassiere that was now the only garment she wore besides her trousers. Anakin was staring at the ceiling with a studiousness that it didn’t deserve, although Obi-Wan didn’t know what was so distracting; it wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen her in less before. “Um,” she said.
Master Che laughed. “I’ll find you something to wear,” she said. “Just a minute.” She whisked Obi-Wan’s bloodied tunics away, returning a few moments later with a clean undershirt in Obi-Wan’s size, though not her usual colors.
Obi-Wan pulled it on, grateful for the dry fabric. Despite the warmth of the council chamber, she was still soaked through from the rain shower on the planet’s surface. She was looking forward to a hot bath, clean clothes, a hot meal, and sleeping for the better part of a standard day, in that order.
“Yes, I think that would be wise,” Master Che said, apparently having caught the thought. “Come back tomorrow or the day after and someone will look at that wound again.”
Obi-Wan picked up her sodden cloak and stood up. “Thank you, Master Che. I’ll think on your offer.”
Anakin scrambled off the bed after her, bumping his shoulder familiarly against hers as they left the Halls of Healing. Obi-Wan hadn’t recovered her comlink, but Anakin still had his, and she used it to call the Temple kitchens and have them send something hot up to her rooms, since neither she nor Anakin seemed up to cooking tonight. By the time they got there, someone from the Temple kitchen staff had already been and gone, leaving a covered tray on their kitchen table.
Obi-Wan dropped her cloak onto the coatrack, kicking off her boots and nearly tripping over her own feet in the process. “Stars’ end,” she said wearily as the door slid shut behind Anakin, then saw the blinking light on her holocomm and swore again, this time in Huttese.
Anakin’s eyebrows went up. “Where did you learn that?” he said, sitting down on the floor to take off his own boots. He sounded impressed.
“From you, my young Padawan,” Obi-Wan said, making her way over to the holocomm. She pressed the playback button, running a hand through her loose hair. “Learning goes both ways, I’ve found.”
Bail Organa appeared in the projection. He was wearing the same clothes that he had been wearing when the Senate Guard had taken him back to 500 Republica, but his expression was more harassed than Obi-Wan had ever seen him before. “Obi-Wan, Bail Organa here,” he said. “I know the Supreme Chancellor has summoned you tomorrow. I need you to come by my office before you meet with him. It’s important.”
The transmission ended. Obi-Wan rubbed her hand over her face. “I have a bad feeling about this,” she sighed. “What now?”
“Sleep on it,” Anakin advised. He lifted the cloche over the tray sent up by the kitchens and made an appreciative sound. “There’s dawasek soup, Master. And steamed chuwa buns. And –”
“Go ahead and eat if you like, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, cutting him off. “I need to wash the blood out of my hair and put on something dry. I advise that you do the same before you catch cold.”
Anakin dropped the cloche back over the tray. “Um, yes,” he said.
Obi-Wan dragged both hands through her hair, wincing at the movement pulled at her wound, and went into her room to find something clean to wear once she had showered. Anakin was right. If something else was happening, she wanted to be clean, well-fed, and rested before she had to deal with it.
*
When she left the next morning, Anakin was still asleep. At some point in the night he had crept into her room and curled up next to her, the way he hadn’t done since he was younger and still desperate for the human comfort that he was accustomed to from his upbringing. Obi-Wan could vaguely remember waking up just enough to acknowledge his presence and make sure that he had brought a blanket with him before falling back to sleep with his contentment warm in the back of her mind.
Although it was still early when she arrived, the Senate Building was already busy with activity, senators, staff, lobbyists, and droids rushing past her and shouting at each other. Votes on the preliminary bills would continue throughout the week and into the next, then the Senate would break for a short recess before beginning debates on bills that had been passed the previous season. It was an arduous and, as far as Obi-Wan was concerned, largely pointless process since the few bills that actually made it to the floor of the entire Senate tended to be so innocuous as to be utterly useless to the Republic.
Not all senators retained private offices within the Senate Building itself, but Alderaan did through long tradition as one of the oldest members of the Republic, even though Bail Organa was a relatively junior senator. Obi-Wan made her way there, dodging politicians as she went. Several times she was hailed by someone she half-knew and endured a minute or two of polite conversation – there was a certain prestige in being seen with a Jedi Knight, especially one with a minor galactic reputation like Obi-Wan. Security seemed much higher than it had been the last time she had been here, Senate Guards in evidence at regular intervals throughout the building’s twisting corridors as well as patrolling in pairs. Obi-Wan, in her Jedi robes, wasn’t stopped, but she saw several others pulled aside and marched off by the Blues.
She recognized one of the Guards standing outside the doors to the Alderaanian offices from his presence at the warehouse yesterday. Although his face was concealed by his helmet, he had a strong, clear presence in the Force that suggested a clarity of spirit, as well as a sensitivity that might have given him a place in the Order if he had been discovered early enough.
“Officer Omin,” she said, nodding to him.
“Master Kenobi.” He didn’t seem surprised that she had recognized him. “Senator Organa is expecting you. Please, go in.”
Bail somehow looked even worse than he had yesterday, apparently on his third cup of caf of the morning (if the empty mugs were anything to go by) and surrounded, as usual, by datapads and flimisplasts. To Obi-Wan’s surprise, Padmé was there too, perched on a corner of the table and holding up a flimsiplast.
“Senators,” Obi-Wan said, raising an eyebrow.
“Obi-Wan!” Padmé said, dropping the flimsiplast. “You look much better.”
Obi-Wan eyed her. “You don’t,” she said; there were bags under Padmé’s eyes, barely concealed by her makeup, and her long hair was pulled back into three plain buns at the back of her head rather than anything more elaborate. “You don’t look like you’ve gotten any sleep at all. Nor do you, Bail.”
“There were a few hours in there,” Bail said, indicating a chair. Obi-Wan had to move a stack of flimsiplasts in order to sit down, waving aside the droid that came up to offer her a cup of caf. “The Military Creation Bill is up tomorrow, and Padmé and I both have two more before the vote ends. And of course the damned Planetary Sovereignty Bill passed while we were locked up, vape it all.”
“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan said, sighing. She had suspected as much, and checking the HoloNet reports before leaving the Temple had borne out her suspicions. “A kidnapping isn’t grounds for a revote?”
“Welcome to politics, Obi-Wan,” Bail said, rolling his eyes. “Kidnapping is a very old and sadly very effective tradition in the Senate. I’m half-tempted to go slap Rush Clovis across the face with a glove and accuse the Banking Clan of masterminding the whole thing, since they got the results they wanted, except it’s too subtle for them.”
Obi-Wan raised her eyebrows. “That’s subtle?”
“For the Galactic Senate? Sadly, yes. The only person who actually got shot was you, after all, and they didn’t expect you there.” He tapped a stylus against his desk. “But that’s not why I asked you to come by.”
“It has something to do with what happened yesterday?”
He and Padmé glanced at each other. “What did the High Council say?” she asked, evading the question.
Obi-Wan shrugged. “They’re interested in who was behind the kidnapping, but there isn’t really much to go on.” At Padmé’s raised eyebrow, she shook her head slightly, not wanting to go into it. “There was some talk of assigning someone to investigate – it won’t be me, probably Master Vos and his Padawan – but it’s not really Jedi business since my involvement was accidental. We don’t really like to interfere on Coruscant unless we’re requested. The last thing the Order wants to do is get into another jurisdictional spat with the Blues.”
Bail stroked his beard. “Well, now there’s even less to go on. The Guard transport speeder carrying the bounty hunters back from the warehouse crashed on its way back to the surface. Everyone onboard was killed.”
“What?” Obi-Wan said, startled. “An accident?”
“According to the Guard. Apparently it was struck by a freighter that was emerging from one of the other levels. Food pastes scattered down the descent corridor from Level 367 to Level 1510.” He picked up his mug, looked at it – empty, apparently – and put it back down. “I’m no detective, Obi-Wan, but that’s a little suspicious, isn’t it?”
“More than a little,” Obi-Wan said softly, twisting a braid around one finger. “Especially considering – other things.”
His eyebrows went up. “You Jedi did find something out.”
Padmé said, “We’ve already swept the room for bugs twice already today. Tell him, Obi-Wan.”
Obi-Wan held up a hand to forestall her and shut her eyes, letting her consciousness roll out. Scanning for electronic surveillance with the Force wasn’t easy, but she had learned a trick or two from Anakin, who had a gift for such things. She opened her eyes.
Padmé began to speak, but Obi-Wan held up a hand to stop her and walked over to the serving droid that had offered her the caf. “Can I be of service, Master Jedi?” it asked.
“Excuse me,” Obi-Wan said, reaching around to shut it off.
“What –” Bail began indignantly.
Obi-Wan held up her hand again, cutting him off, and ran her fingers down the droid’s chestplate until she found the latch to pop it often. The bug was smaller than her smallest fingernail; Obi-Wan used the Force to pry it loose, turned around to show it to Bail and Padmé – both of them gaping – and ignited her lightsaber, dropping the bug onto the blade. It dissolved in a burst of sparks and melted circuitry.
“That’s all I could sense,” she said, extinguishing her lightsaber and hanging it on her belt. “Sorry about the theatrics, Bail.”
“We could have traced that,” Padmé said slowly as Obi-Wan resumed her seat.
She shook her head. “I’ve seen them before. They’re expensive because they’re hard to detect, but there are a dozen sellers on Coruscant alone that I know of. One of the Jedi who works primarily onworld would know more.”
Bail covered his face with his hands. “Stars’ end! Essee’s been in here all day every day since I came back from Alderaan for the new session – has she been bugged that entire time?”
Obi-Wan shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, Bail. It does suggest that something you’re doing has drawn attention.”
“Which is a good thing,” Bail said. “I think. At least Essee stays here instead of coming back to 500 Republica with me, so she hasn’t been transmitting anything from my apartments. I’ll have my people look into it. You don’t think Padmé –”
“I can sweep your office and your apartments for you if you’d like,” Obi-Wan said to her, “or get Anakin to do it, he’s better than I am at that sort of thing, but you’re probably safe because you’re so junior – no offense.”
“None taken. Mon, though –”
“If you were bugged, Bail, then she certainly is,” Obi-Wan said. “Do you have any idea who? As far as I know, those devices don’t transmit more than a kilometer or so.”
“It could be almost anyone in the Senate,” Bail said. “Including the Supreme Chancellor.” He rubbed at his forehead again. “Well, now that I know to yell at my security staff, what was it you were going to tell us, Obi-Wan?”
She sighed. “I was hoping that you had forgotten about that.” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees as she tried to decide the best way to put it without giving too much away. “After I overheard Bey’aaan and her employer bargaining for my purchase, I snuck in and tried to use her holocomm to contact the Jedi Temple. I couldn’t – there was only one dial available, so I called that instead. I thought I could find out who had hired Bey’aaan to kidnap you and the other senators.”
Bail frowned. “I thought we didn’t know – that’s something the Blues should know, Obi-Wan –”
“No,” Obi-Wan said. “It’s Jedi business. I didn’t recognize him – he covered his face – but he recognized me.”
“That still doesn’t make it –”
“He was a Force user. A user of the Dark Side of the Force.”
Padmé let out a small gasp, but when Obi-Wan and Bail looked over her expression showed no sign of her distress. “Was he like the assassin on Naboo?” she asked – what Maul had been called in the official reports.
“Yes,” Obi-Wan said. “I’m afraid that he is.”
Her friend’s eyes went wide with alarm. Bail looked between them and said, “I’m missing something, aren’t I?”
It was clear that he wouldn’t be content to be fobbed off without a further explanation. “There are two sides of the Force,” Obi-Wan said, picking her words as carefully as she would in front of a classroom of younglings. “Jedi use what we call the Light Side, but there’s another, the Dark Side. It’s – it’s inimical to everything the Jedi stand for. A long time ago, my order had an opposite. They called themselves the Sith.”
“The Sith Empire?” Bail said, surprising Obi-Wan. “But I thought they were wiped out millennia ago by the Old Republic.”
“The Sith and the Sith Empire aren’t the same thing, no more than the Jedi and the Republic are,” Obi-Wan said. “There used to be a – I suppose you’d call it a Sith Order, though that might give them too much credit. Their way of using the Force – the Dark Side – isn’t exactly conducive to having thousands of them running around. One reason that the Jedi have always been able to hold them off is because they spent as much time killing each other as they did killing us. Until about six years ago, we thought that they had wiped themselves out a thousand years ago.”
“Six years ago,” Bail repeated. “You mean – the invasion of Naboo. But the Trade Federation was behind that, weren’t they?”
Obi-Wan ran a hand through her hair. “Yes. But there was someone else involved. We don’t know who – the Neimodians weren’t talking, unfortunately. Whoever he was, they were more afraid of him than they were of the Jedi.” She glanced at Padmé, who looked back steadily. “I was upset. My presence might not have helped. There was an assassin, a Zabrak, who used a red double-bladed lightsaber – we call it a saberstaff. My Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, thought that he had been sent to assassinate the Queen.”
“You,” Bail said to Padmé; she nodded.
“When we took the Palace,” Obi-Wan went on, “he met us there. It wasn’t Padmé that he was after, it was us – Qui-Gon and I. We dueled him there. He was –” She licked her lips, the memory still far too vivid despite the intervening years. “He was very skilled. He managed to separate us; there are ray shields in the reactor room at the Palace and I was cut off from Qui-Gon. He killed my Master,” Obi-Wan said. She wasn’t looking at him, but she heard Bail’s sharp intake of breath. She glanced down at her hands, at the lightsaber hanging on her belt. “I killed him. That’s why I never stood my Trials. By long tradition, a Padawan who kills a Sith Lord has passed their Knight’s Trials in combat.”
“I don’t understand,” Bail said. “What does this have to do with the Sith? I thought that you said they were extinct.”
Obi-Wan ran her hands through her hair and straightened up. “That’s what we thought too. We’ve had Dark Jedi before – Jedi who turn to the Dark Side of the Force, for one reason or another. The Dark Side can be…very tempting.” She glanced down at her hands again, now hanging loosely between her knees. “Some of them even call themselves Sith – there’s a title for that. Darth. Nute Gunray of the Trade Federation told me what this assassin was called.”
“Maul,” Padmé said softly. She had remained in the throne room while Obi-Wan had interrogated Gunray, cold with grief and rage and the Force humming through her. “Darth Maul.”
“That’s a terrible name,” Bail said, still looking puzzled.
“Yes, well, the Sith aren’t terribly keen on subtle,” Obi-Wan said. It was easier to think of it as ancient history, something long dead. “In the Jedi histories, they all have names like Scourge and Bane. According to our accounts, they leave certain traces in the Force. Think of it like – like a blight. Those traces were there on Naboo. They can last centuries on some planets, but Maul wasn’t on Naboo for very long. They faded soon after the Council arrived, but remained long enough to be identified. There might have been other evidence that wasn’t explained to me at the time, since I was –” She looked down again. “I was distracted. And I was very junior, then. It’s not the sort of thing that you tell a green Knight with a new Padawan if there’s any way to avoid it.”
Padmé’s hands were clenched into fists. “The Jedi High Council told me at the time that they believed that an unknown Sith Lord – apparently they always come in twos?” She glanced at Obi-Wan.
“Master and apprentice,” Obi-Wan muttered. “Like the Jedi, but twisted.”
“That an unknown Sith Lord may have been behind the Trade Federation’s occupation of Naboo,” Padmé finished. “Gunray said as much to me and Obi-Wan, but he was too afraid to give us a name, even with Maul dead. Unfortunately for us, the Federation lawyers showed up before the rest of the Jedi did.”
Obi-Wan sighed. “We weren’t able to interrogate Gunray and the other Trade Federation officials further. Actually, they sued us – well, me, but our lawyers cleared that up.”
“The Jedi have lawyers?” Bail said, raising his eyebrows.
“You would be surprised at the number of lawsuits filed against us every year,” Obi-Wan said. She sat back, dragged her hands through her hair again. “Anakin alone has had a dozen in the past six years. Mostly traffic violations, to be fair.”
His mouth quirked, then his expression sobered again. “What does this have to do with our abduction? You think that the man who hired the bounty hunters is one of these Sith?”
“Because he told me that he was,” Obi-Wan said. “He knew who I was. He knew my name. And he knew what had happened on Naboo. There are only a handful of people who know what really happened on Naboo, not just the story that we told the Senate and the HoloNet. Two of them are sitting in this room. You make three.”
Bail shook his head. “But why us? What kind of interest would a – a Sith Lord have in the Planetary Sovereignty Bill? In Republic politics, for that matter?”
“I don’t know,” Obi-Wan said. “That’s why this has to be a Jedi matter.”
“Obi-Wan, I don’t know –”
“She’s right, Bail,” Padmé said. “The Sith on Naboo – he was beyond anything that any of us could have dealt with. No ordinary being could have faced him and lived.”
“But if this is a threat to the Republic –”
“Then we will handle it,” Obi-Wan said firmly. “I know that some members of the Senate doubt the Jedi, but we serve the Republic, Bail. The Sith are our fight. They have been for more than six millennia.”
Bail massaged his forehead, looking at Padmé. “You knew all this already.”
“I did,” she nodded. “Grand Master Yoda explained some of it to me on Naboo six years ago. Chancellor Palpatine knows too. We agreed – we all agreed – that it was best to keep it quiet.”
“I don’t know,” Bail said again. “I really don’t –”
“There’s one more thing,” Obi-Wan said, and when they both looked at her, explained about the ruined holocomm. “Hopefully Quinlan can get something off it,” she said, “but I don’t think that he will. And if he can’t, then there isn’t anything there. He has the strongest psychometric gift that the Kiffar have seen in over a century, the Jedi in six.”
“So there’s no proof,” Bail said, shutting his eyes. “No proof for any of it.”
“Just my word,” Obi-Wan said with a forced smile. “And my word on the subject of the Sith is notoriously unreliable because I’m emotionally involved.”
“You Jedi,” Bail said, sounding weary.
“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan said. “I know that it’s not easy to take in. It wasn’t for me and I was there. We thought they were extinct until one of them killed my Master.” She touched her fingers to the hilt of her lightsaber again, reassured by the cool metal. “Bail, Padmé, what I’ve told you – it can’t leave this room. It wasn’t even supposed to leave the council chamber, let alone the Temple.”
Bail shook his head. He still looked mildly stunned. “Who else knows?”
“Just a handful of other Jedi – the High Council, Anakin, Quinlan and Aayla.”
“The Supreme Chancellor?”
“That’s the Council’s decision to make,” Obi-Wan said.
“I’d forgotten that you don’t like him,” Padmé murmured.
It was true, but Obi-Wan didn’t need to hear it out loud. She glanced up as the chrono on the wall chimed the hour. “Fierfek! Speaking of His Excellency, I’ve got to get to the other side of the dome in the next fifteen minutes or get taken to task for being late as well as incompetent.”
She sprang up, raking her fingers through her hair to order it. “I’m sorry to run out on you like this –”
“It’s all right,” Bail said. “You’ve certainly given us a lot to think about.”
Padmé climbed down off his desk and took a step towards Obi-Wan, close enough to push one of Obi-Wan’s braids out of her face and over her shoulder. Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow as she said, “We won’t tell, Obi-Wan. You have my word.”
“Thank you,” Obi-Wan said and on impulse, pressed a quick kiss to her friend’s cheek before she could think better of it. She felt Padmé’s rush of pleasure in the Force and backed away, a little confused by it. “Send me a message about the surveillance equipment, if you like,” she said. “Anakin will love a distraction.”
Once back in the corridors of the Senate Building, she almost had to run to make her meeting on time. Jedi or not, she was certain that the Blues would stop her if she did so, even if it hadn’t been too crowded in the building’s many corridors for that, so she contented herself by walking very quickly instead, slipping into the Chancellor’s antechamber just as the chrono chimed the quarter-hour.
Sly Moore, Palpatine’s senior administrative aide, gave her a disapproving look. “Master Kenobi,” she said. “The Supreme Chancellor has been expecting you.”
“Well, here I am,” Obi-Wan said, smoothing her hands down her robes. “May I go in?”
The Umbaran inclined her head, which Obi-Wan took as agreement. The doors to the Supreme Chancellor’s office slid open as she approached, closing silently behind her.
Palpatine was sitting at his desk, which was considerably more orderly than Bail Organa’s had been. He looked up as she entered, smiling genially. “Ah, Master Kenobi, I’m glad to see you well and in one piece.”
“That makes two of us, Your Excellency,” Obi-Wan said. “What can I do for you?”
“I thought that we might have a talk about what happened at Senator Mothma’s party,” said Palpatine. He made no invitation for her to sit, so Obi-Wan remained standing, folding her hands inside the sleeves of her robe. “I’ve already read Commander Bey’s report, of course. I admit that I’m a little confused.”
Obi-Wan remained silent, waiting patiently despite Palpatine’s raised eyebrow; he clearly expected her to respond. When she didn’t indulge him, he continued, “I’ve always considered you a remarkable woman and a quite competent Jedi, Master Kenobi. Why is it that you were unable to defend against these bounty hunters when they first appeared? Surely one Jedi Knight is more than a match for a handful of disorderly rabble.”
Anakin, Obi-Wan reminded herself, would not appreciate it if she punched his friend across the face. Nor would the High Council. “The risk to life was too great, Your Excellency,” she said. “If the bounty hunters had wanted to kill the senators, they had ample opportunity to do so earlier. If I had tried to resist, then there would have been bloodshed.”
The Supreme Chancellor was quiet for a moment, studying her face. Obi-Wan met his eyes, knowing that the strength of the Force was behind her own steady gaze. After a moment, the Supreme Chancellor glanced down, making a move to straighten a handful of flimsiplasts on his desk.
“Of course I’ll defer to your professional judgment in such matters,” he said. “Such a pity for poor Mon Mothma, though. She did work so terribly hard to make sure that bill didn’t pass, but there’s always next season. If only Master Kim had stayed behind – or you had brought young Anakin with you.” He looked up at her with mild cow-eyes.
Obi-Wan dug her nails into the soft skin of her wrist. “If only the airspeeder carrying the prisoners hadn’t crashed,” she said. “We might have been able to get some answers.”
For a millisecond, those cow-eyes narrowed to something sharper and more dangerous, a krayt dragon crouching in the sand, and then only Palpatine remained. “Yes,” he said, “an appalling tragedy. The descent corridors can be horribly dangerous. I’ll have to do something about that.”
He bent over the flimsiplasts again. Obi-Wan remained where she was, studying the view outside his floor-to-ceiling windows. “Oh, my dear girl,” said the Chancellor eventually, as if he had just remembered that he hadn’t dismissed her yet, “I’m very glad that you weren’t seriously injured. It would be very unfortunate to have young Anakin’s training interrupted by this unfortunate incident.”
“It was nothing, Your Excellency. I’m told that these things happen in politics.”
“Yes, the Senate can be quite the gundark nest, can’t it?” said Palpatine, with a soft laugh. “Well, I hope you’ll give Anakin my regards. I’m so glad that he won’t be exposed to that dreadful man after all.”
Obi-Wan blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Count Dooku,” he clarified. “He’s left the planet. Some sort of emergency back on Serenno, I’m told. I’m sure that you were looking forward to your – how did you put it, Obi-Wan? – your family reunion, but I must admit I’m glad that he won’t be able to exert any untoward interest on our boy.”
“I don’t think that it was Anakin Dooku is interested in,” Obi-Wan said without thinking, and could have bitten her tongue off for saying as much.
Palpatine’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t comment on that. “Well, run along, my dear girl. I can only hope that you’ll be around to save Senator Mothma and her friends the next time her campaigning draws untoward attention.”
“So do I, Your Excellency,” Obi-Wan said. She executed a bow of the proper depth for the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, no more and no less, and departed. Palpatine didn’t look up as she left, but Obi-Wan still felt watched, the Force shuddering and sliding along her skin and down the length of her spine.
There was a droid waiting for her in the corridor, watched suspiciously by the members of the Red Guard that served the Chancellor alone and operated independent of the Senate Guard. It was a little rabbit droid, apparently content to sit back on its heels and watch the senators who were lined up to try and speak to the Chancellor. When Obi-Wan emerged from the antechamber, it sprang up and scampered towards her.
“Obi-Wan Kenobi?” it inquired.
“That’s me,” Obi-Wan said, moving to the side of the hallway, out of the way, and crouching down so that she and the droid were at the same level. “What can I do for you, my friend?”
“I’ve brought you a message,” it said, proffering a small holoprojector. It was a different brand than the one Obi-Wan had taken from the warehouse, but like that one the serial numbers had been scraped away. The blinking light on its base showed that it had one message pre-recorded and not yet played back.
She took it with suddenly numb fingers, automatically probing at it with the Force, but it lay quiescent in her hands. Not dead, but no different than any other piece of electronics either. “Who is the message from?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t know that,” said the rabbit droid. “A human male in one of the speeder bays told me to bring it to you, but he said that he’d been paid by someone else to deliver it. I wasn’t really interested.”
Droids, Obi-Wan thought wearily. If she took it back to the Temple, then Anakin might be able to get more out of it, but she didn’t feel terribly sanguine on that point. “Is that all?”
“Can I go now?”
Obi-Wan sighed and nodded. “Yes. Thank you.”
The droid waddled away, leaving Obi-Wan alone with the holoprojector. She contemplated it silently, then straightened up and went to go and find a private niche in which to listen. It wasn’t difficult – there were many such places in the Senate Building – and after Obi-Wan had drawn the protective curtain closed across the entrance and used the Force to shield it against being overheard she set the holoprojector down on one of the velvet-covered benches and pressed the playback button.
For a few seconds, all that Obi-Wan saw was blue static, then it steadied into a now familiar form. Obi-Wan leaned forward, shuddering as she felt the Dark Side drop around her like a cage. Her mind strained to hold her shields as they bowed outwards under the immense Force pressure.
The Sith Lord, a pale blue figure who stood twice the length of her hand in the projectioin, raised his head. His eyes were hidden beneath his hood, but beneath the shadows that covered his face Obi-Wan could make out a pale, neatly-clipped beard. “Well done, Master Kenobi,” he said, his thick lips stretching into a smile. “It’s a pity that our meeting has been delayed by the incompetence of my hirelings, but never fear, our day will come.”
Obi-Wan pressed her hand to her mouth, as though she could conceal her dismay from the recorded figure. She felt sick, not knowing if it was the Dark Side trying to work its way into her blood or her own disgust at the words. At his next words, she bit the side of her hand so hard that she tasted blood.
“I’ll see you soon, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
end
---------
The Jedi Healer Vokara Che appears in Karen Miller's Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Wild Space.
Author:
bedlamsbardFandom: Star Wars (prequel trilogy)
Rating: PG-13
Content advisory: none
Summary: Returning to Coruscant from a mission, Obi-Wan Kenobi and her Padawan Anakin Skywalker are reunited with the newly-appointed Naboo Senator Padmé Amidala, who unwittingly draws them into the murky world of Republic politics. Lady!Obi-Wan AU, set six years after the events of TPM and three years before the events of AotC.
Disclaimer: Star Wars and its characters, situations, settings, etc., belong to George Lucas, LucasFilm, and Disney.
Author's notes: Part of the Oxygen and Rust series. There's some confusion about the chapter numbers, since AO3 went ahead and numbered the Interlude as Chapter 5. On AO3 there are seven chapters, with the interlude as 5; on LJ and DW there are six with the interlude unnumbered.
Previous chapters: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Interlude: Anakin | 5 | AO3
Read this chapter at the AO3
Obi-Wan had a distinct sense of déjà vu as she stood in front of the Jedi High Council. Rain battered against the transparisteel windows of the round chamber, just as it had barely a week ago, and Obi-Wan was once again dripping water on the polished floor while the Council pretended not to notice. Although the sky had been clear when she had left the Jedi Temple the previous evening, at some point during the night the weather had taken a turn for the worse; their open speeder had emerged topside into a torrential downpour that had soaked the four Jedi inside within the seconds it took Aayla to get the convertible roof up. Anakin, predictably, had squealed like a blistered piika kit, his desert heritage reasserting itself.
Upon returning to the Temple, they were immediately been whisked in front of the Council for an emergency debrief. Obi-Wan recounted the events of the previous evening, trying to gauge the Council’s mood towards her appearance at Senator Mothma’s dinner, then her actions after she had woken up at the warehouse. She left out the conversation she had with the Sith Lord, though she hesitated over it and knew that they realized it. The holocomm Padmé had returned to her remained in the belt pouch where she had tucked it away, a small weight that seemed heavier than it really was. Sometime between retrieving it from Padmé and arriving at the Temple, the insides of the device had melted down to slag, rendering it essentially useless.
She stepped back from the center of the council chamber as Quinlan and Aayla began their debrief. Anakin should have joined them, but he moved to stand beside Obi-Wan instead, apparently content to stay quiet instead of adding his voice to Quinlan’s account. Obi-Wan could feel him in the Force, a warm and comfortable presence that stood in stark contrast to the earlier hysteria that had stabbed at her mind. With her Padawan beside her, safe at the heart of the Jedi’s most sacred sanctum, Obi-Wan finally felt her own breathing start to even out, her shoulders slumping as her earlier tension drained out. The wound on her abdomen, now plastered with bacta bandages, throbbed dully, but the pain was little more than a distant distraction, easily pushed aside by the Force. Lulled by the bulwark of Anakin’s affection and the warmth of the chamber, Obi-Wan let her vision slide out of focus, feeling her mind slip into a quasi-meditative state.
Blasterfire in the distance. The smell of smoke was heavy in the air, even here at the highest spire of the Temple. The younglings had fled at the urging of the crèche master, but in the chaos they had lost track of the Padawan tasked with getting them out of the Temple. Instead they had found the turbolift that rose directly to the top of the Council Spire and retreated here, hoping that they would be found by a Master or a Knight who would know what to do. At the sound of the lift rising, most hid behind the empty chairs. All of them carried lightsabers, but while they could repel blaster bolts, they were otherwise useless as weapons – just practice lightsabers that weren’t meant to do serious damage while their bearers learned their use. If it came to a fight, they might be able to hold off their attackers for a few minutes at most, but then they would die. Here in the council hamber there was nowhere else to retreat.
The lift had gone back down some time ago. Now it rose again, steadily ticking upwards towards the chamber. The doors slid open, revealing a familiar hooded and cloaked figure inside.
“Master –”
A lightsaber ignited with a hiss.
Obi-Wan let out a small gasp as the vision threw her out, her eyes sliding back into focus. The entire experience had only taken a few seconds; none of the other Jedi in the chamber seemed to have noticed her brief trance. Only Anakin had turned to look at her, his eyes wide and concerned. He would have felt it in the Force, of course.
She felt his question reverberate in her head, so clearly they were nearly real words rather than just a collection of emotions and images. Master? Are you all right?
She shook her head slightly, hoping that the Council members were too focused on Quinlan and Aayla’s report to notice the gesture. Anakin dropped his gaze. Obi-Wan could sense his desire to reach out to her, but even he knew better than to do so in front of the Council. As a general rule, most Jedi weren’t terribly keen on physical touch, since it could easily serve as an accidental conduit in the Force between careless individuals.
As Quinlan finished, she saw Master Yoda’s gaze move to her. He raised one green, three-fingered hand and said, “Distracted you are, Master Kenobi. Something else you are keeping from us there is?”
Obi-Wan felt Anakin stiffen, the thread of his fury sliding through the Force before he wrestled it down, but ignored it as she reached inside her cloak and removed the holocomm from her belt pouch. She stepped forward as Quinlan and Aayla retreated to stand beside Anakin in front of the chamber doors, Quinlan’s hand closing on the sleeve of Anakin’s cloak to keep him from following Obi-Wan onto the floor.
“My apologies, Masters,” she said. She held the holocomm out so that they could see it, balancing it on her palm as she spoke. Psychometry wasn’t one of her wild talents, as it was Quin’s, and neither was a connection with electronics the way it was Anakin’s – though he denied his skill as a mechanic had anything to do with the Force – but even she could feel the deadness in the device. It was as though every scrap of history that it had had ever had, that it should have had, had been wiped clean from the Force.
“This is the holocomm that the bounty hunter Bey’aaan used to speak to her employer,” she went on. “I activated it in an attempt to contact the Temple, but found that it had only one dial available. I called it hoping that I would be able to identify the employer.”
“And did you?” Master Ki-Adi-Mundi asked.
Obi-Wan shook her head, picking her next words carefully. “His face was concealed, I’m afraid, and I didn’t recognize his voice.” She hesitated, but there was no way around saying it. “I felt the Dark Side around him, just as I felt it around the Sith Lord on Naboo.”
She could not have caused more consternation if she had released a live nexu into the room, since that disturbance would have simply been accounted for by one of the Masters igniting their lightsaber and taking care of the disruption immediately before returning to the matter at hand with barely a breath lost. Instead, although no one in the chamber moved, it was as though the air itself had suddenly become electrified. The lights flickered, the transparisteel windows bowed outwards, and the holocomm shuddered in Obi-Wan’s palm before it flew off. Master Windu caught it neatly, and Obi-Wan lowered her hand.
Her head throbbed with the power surrounding her and yet, somewhat to her surprise, Obi-Wan found herself standing her ground. She could feel the Force as she had only felt it once before, pressed so close and so thickly around her that she half-fancied that she could reach out and shape it with her bare hands, use it as she pleased without repercussions. It hummed along her skin, sat thick and rich on her tongue, murmured in her mind. Threat, the Force whispered to her, and, kin.
Flames rolled across the insides of the windows before her. Distantly, as if from another life, Obi-Wan heard the sound of children screaming and the relentless hum of a lightsaber stabbing through flesh.
Almost as soon as it had begun, the moment passed. Obi-Wan found herself breathing hard in the sudden emptiness of the room, her hands clasped into fists beneath the concealing sleeves of her robe. Anakin’s alarm throbbed in the back of her skull, though she didn’t look over her shoulder to see if he had made any physical indication of it. What remained in the chamber wasn’t wrath, but a kind of wariness that she had never felt before. Mention of the Sith no longer meant the purely academic concern that had accompanied Qui-Gon’s report of the Zabrak assassin on Tatooine; the Jedi knew now that their oldest enemy had returned.
Windu turned the holocomm over in his hands, his expression inscrutable. Even from here Obi-Wan could feel the deadness in the thing, like a black hole in the Force. “Are you certain, Obi-Wan?”
“This is not the first time I have felt the power of the Dark Side,” Obi-Wan said. “I would not mistake it for anything else.”
“What did he say?”
Obi-Wan recounted the conversation that they had. Balance, my dear, she remembered the Sith Lord saying, and felt the Force beat so strongly at her mind that she thought her skull would explode.
“Troubling news this is,” Master Yoda said after she had finished.
“Is there a reason that you sought to conceal this from us, Master Kenobi?” Adi Gallia asked.
“No, Master Gallia,” said Obi-Wan, ignoring Anakin’s flush of anger. “The holocomm has been destroyed, leaving no traceable psychic residue – Quinlan Vos can vouch for that. There is no way to verify what I have said.”
“How is this possible?” asked Ki-Adi-Mundi, though the question wasn’t directed at her. “I have never heard of such a thing in living memory. I thought that skill lost.”
“Difficult, such things are,” said Master Yoda. “But not lost. A skill seldom practiced by Jedi it is. For a long time little need has there been.”
“This is a Jedi skill?” Obi-Wan said, surprised. “I thought –”
“Few skills there are only Jedi, only Sith,” said Yoda, his tone faintly rebuking.
Obi-Wan bowed her head in apology.
“No one else touched this after you took it?” Windu asked.
Obi-Wan hesitated, then admitted, “I gave it to Senator Amidala of Naboo to give to the Council in case I didn’t return, but Padmé – Senator Amidala – isn’t Force-sensitive. She wouldn’t be able to do this. Besides, when she gave it back to me it was still active.”
“Amidala of Naboo is known to us,” Windu said. “And to you, Obi-Wan. From your account, this – Dark Acolyte – seemed to recognize you.”
“It was not Senator Amidala,” Obi-Wan said, sensing Anakin’s outrage and cutting him off before he said something that they would all regret. “The speaker was a man, I’m certain of it. And Padmé was imprisoned along with the other senators at the time.”
“But they were not imprisoned together,” Adi Gallia point out.
“Padmé isn’t a Sith Lord!” Anakin burst out. “That creature on Naboo tried to kill her!”
Obi-Wan didn’t drop her head into her hands, but it was a near thing. Instead she focused her gaze on a point just over Master Windu’s right shoulder as Ki-Adi-Mundi said, “We must consider all possibilities, young Skywalker, no matter how unlikely.”
“If this Sith did recognize me, Master Windu,” Obi-Wan said, without meeting his eyes, “then it was nothing more than coincidence. The bounty hunters didn’t know that I was going to be at the party; I didn’t know until the day before, and Senator Mothma wouldn’t have spread my name around without knowing for sure that I was going to be there. If their employer had planned on my capture, there would have been plans in my place for my, um, disposal. Instead they seemed to be making it up as they went. But,” she added reluctantly, “he did know my name. He recognized me when I activated the holocomm. Bey’aaan never used my name. I don’t think that she knew it; she only called me ‘Master Jedi.’”
At this, Anakin’s alarm rang through the Force like a struck bell. Obi-Wan shut her eyes, knowing that the Council had to have sensed this and hoping that they didn’t take it as anything more than a Padawan’s concern for his Master. She didn’t want them to know just how fragile Anakin’s control really was when it came to the emotions that most Jedi should have tamped down by this point in their training.
If anyone in the Council noticed it, they made no sign. “This development is troubling,” said Windu, finally laying the holocomm aside. “It bears further investigation – not by you, Obi-Wan, I’m sure that you understand that you are emotionally compromised on this matter.”
Obi-Wan bowed slightly. “I understand perfectly, Master Windu.”
It seemed to be a dismissal, and Obi-Wan was prepared to take it as one before Windu went on, “Chancellor Palpatine has requested an audience with you, Obi-Wan. I’ve put him off until tomorrow so that you can get looked at by the healers and have a night’s rest. I trust that you’ll keep these recent developments inside the walls of this chamber.”
This time it was a dismissal. Obi-Wan bowed to the Council, noting the empty chair with Shaak Ti normally sat, and retreated. Anakin fell into step beside her, glancing over his shoulder as Quinlan was called onto the floor again. Hopefully his psychometric talents could find something where Obi-Wan’s more ordinary ones had been incapable.
“They don’t seriously think that Padmé is a – a Dark Acolyte, do they?” Anakin said after the turbolift doors had closed behind them and they had begun their descent. He stumbled over the unfamiliar phrase, which was seldom heard even in the Temple’s classrooms. “I mean, that’s crazy!”
“I don’t,” Obi-Wan said, letting herself lean back against the lift wall. “And I don’t think anyone in the High Council does, either. It doesn’t make any sense considering what happened on Naboo and they know that.”
This appeared to satisfy Anakin. He went quiet, his arms wrapped around himself. Obi-Wan thought about reprimanding him for his earlier outburst in the Council, but decided against it; he would have already sensed their disapproval. Besides, he had been through enough already in the past day.
“Why does Palpatine want to talk to you?” Anakin asked abruptly.
Obi-Wan rubbed a hand over her forehead. “I don’t know.” He probably wants to make cutting remarks about how the kidnapping never would have happened if Anakin had been there.
Unfortunately, Anakin caught the thought. He looked at her and began, “I could have –”
She pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers. “Does it really matter, my young Padawan? It’s passed.”
He glanced down. “Sorry, Master.”
The doors opened, depositing them on the ground floor of the spire. Obi-Wan pressed her fingers to her bandaged abdomen as they made their way towards the Halls of Healing, Anakin continually shooting her worried looks.
As usual, there were few other Jedi in the Halls of Healing – a few Padawans and younglings who had injured themselves in training and a handful of Knights recovering from wounds sustained offworld. Obi-Wan was swept off by the Chief Healer, a Twi’lek woman named Vokara Che, and sat down on one of the nearest beds, pulling her tunics and undershirt off to reveal her hastily bandaged wound. Anakin sat down cross-legged on the bed beside her, watching curiously as Master Che carefully peeled the bandage away.
“A Wookiee did this?” she asked, picking up a container of antibiotic salve.
Obi-Wan nodded. “I didn’t sense any poison on her claws, but I wasn’t exactly at full strength.”
Anakin glanced down, his cheeks reddening. “I didn’t sense any either,” he said quickly. “And I put the bandages on.”
“You did well, young Skywalker,” Master Che said, holding the salve in one hand as she held the other a few centimeters over the wound. Obi-Wan felt the Force gather around her, cool and green against her skin before Master Che released it. “No need for a healing, I think. Another day of bacta and you’ll be well except for a scar.”
“What about the concussion?” Anakin asked worriedly as she began to spread the salve on. Obi-Wan hissed a little; it stung.
“Let me see,” the Chief Healer said, putting the salve aside and standing. She wiped her fingers clean on her robe and came around the side of the bed to tilt Obi-Wan’s head forward, parting her hair with her long fingers. “Nasty, this. What happened?”
“I was stunned, I clipped my head on a marble floor going down,” Obi-Wan explained. The Force hummed against the back of her skull as Master Che prodded at the lump.
“This I can do something about,” she said. “Most concussions are harmless, but there’s no point in not being careful.”
Anakin’s relief warmed the Force, counterpoint to the cool of Master Che’s touch. Obi-Wan shut her eyes, breathing in and out in a brief meditative pattern to aid the healing process. Within seconds, she felt the ache in her head face and cease entirely, the flesh closing up and knitting back together. Master Che took her hand away. “Much better,” she said.
“Thank you, Master Che,” Obi-Wan said.
Master Che came back around and resumed bandaging the wound again. “Your Padawan hasn’t yet taken a course in healing, I believe.”
“Um,” Anakin said, as Obi-Wan said, “Not yet, no. I’ve done what I can, but I don’t have much skill at healing myself.”
“Why not do a term in the Halls of Healing while your Padawan takes a class?” Master Che offered. “Many Knights and Padawans do so. Your own Master did.”
Obi-Wan bowed her head. “That was more than ten years ago. Yes, I remember. I will consider it, Master Che.”
The Twi’lek Healer finished bandaging the wound and sat back, wiping her fingers clean. “Please do, Obi-Wan. I think that it would be good for both of you. Besides,” she added, a twinkle in her eye, “it might keep you out of trouble.”
“A welcome thought,” Obi-Wan said, but some quirk of the Force made her add, “though not, I think, a likely outcome.” She reached for her discarded undershirt and tunics, but Master Che whisked them away before her hand fell.
“I’ll dispose of these,” she said, since the garments were torn and covered in blood and bacta. No one in the Council chamber had so much as raised an eyebrow at a Jedi Knight coming before them looking as if she had just stepped off a battlefield.
You haven’t seen a battlefield yet, Jedi, the Force whispered. You will. The thought was there and gone again so quickly that her mind barely registered it.
Obi-Wan looked down at the brassiere that was now the only garment she wore besides her trousers. Anakin was staring at the ceiling with a studiousness that it didn’t deserve, although Obi-Wan didn’t know what was so distracting; it wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen her in less before. “Um,” she said.
Master Che laughed. “I’ll find you something to wear,” she said. “Just a minute.” She whisked Obi-Wan’s bloodied tunics away, returning a few moments later with a clean undershirt in Obi-Wan’s size, though not her usual colors.
Obi-Wan pulled it on, grateful for the dry fabric. Despite the warmth of the council chamber, she was still soaked through from the rain shower on the planet’s surface. She was looking forward to a hot bath, clean clothes, a hot meal, and sleeping for the better part of a standard day, in that order.
“Yes, I think that would be wise,” Master Che said, apparently having caught the thought. “Come back tomorrow or the day after and someone will look at that wound again.”
Obi-Wan picked up her sodden cloak and stood up. “Thank you, Master Che. I’ll think on your offer.”
Anakin scrambled off the bed after her, bumping his shoulder familiarly against hers as they left the Halls of Healing. Obi-Wan hadn’t recovered her comlink, but Anakin still had his, and she used it to call the Temple kitchens and have them send something hot up to her rooms, since neither she nor Anakin seemed up to cooking tonight. By the time they got there, someone from the Temple kitchen staff had already been and gone, leaving a covered tray on their kitchen table.
Obi-Wan dropped her cloak onto the coatrack, kicking off her boots and nearly tripping over her own feet in the process. “Stars’ end,” she said wearily as the door slid shut behind Anakin, then saw the blinking light on her holocomm and swore again, this time in Huttese.
Anakin’s eyebrows went up. “Where did you learn that?” he said, sitting down on the floor to take off his own boots. He sounded impressed.
“From you, my young Padawan,” Obi-Wan said, making her way over to the holocomm. She pressed the playback button, running a hand through her loose hair. “Learning goes both ways, I’ve found.”
Bail Organa appeared in the projection. He was wearing the same clothes that he had been wearing when the Senate Guard had taken him back to 500 Republica, but his expression was more harassed than Obi-Wan had ever seen him before. “Obi-Wan, Bail Organa here,” he said. “I know the Supreme Chancellor has summoned you tomorrow. I need you to come by my office before you meet with him. It’s important.”
The transmission ended. Obi-Wan rubbed her hand over her face. “I have a bad feeling about this,” she sighed. “What now?”
“Sleep on it,” Anakin advised. He lifted the cloche over the tray sent up by the kitchens and made an appreciative sound. “There’s dawasek soup, Master. And steamed chuwa buns. And –”
“Go ahead and eat if you like, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, cutting him off. “I need to wash the blood out of my hair and put on something dry. I advise that you do the same before you catch cold.”
Anakin dropped the cloche back over the tray. “Um, yes,” he said.
Obi-Wan dragged both hands through her hair, wincing at the movement pulled at her wound, and went into her room to find something clean to wear once she had showered. Anakin was right. If something else was happening, she wanted to be clean, well-fed, and rested before she had to deal with it.
*
When she left the next morning, Anakin was still asleep. At some point in the night he had crept into her room and curled up next to her, the way he hadn’t done since he was younger and still desperate for the human comfort that he was accustomed to from his upbringing. Obi-Wan could vaguely remember waking up just enough to acknowledge his presence and make sure that he had brought a blanket with him before falling back to sleep with his contentment warm in the back of her mind.
Although it was still early when she arrived, the Senate Building was already busy with activity, senators, staff, lobbyists, and droids rushing past her and shouting at each other. Votes on the preliminary bills would continue throughout the week and into the next, then the Senate would break for a short recess before beginning debates on bills that had been passed the previous season. It was an arduous and, as far as Obi-Wan was concerned, largely pointless process since the few bills that actually made it to the floor of the entire Senate tended to be so innocuous as to be utterly useless to the Republic.
Not all senators retained private offices within the Senate Building itself, but Alderaan did through long tradition as one of the oldest members of the Republic, even though Bail Organa was a relatively junior senator. Obi-Wan made her way there, dodging politicians as she went. Several times she was hailed by someone she half-knew and endured a minute or two of polite conversation – there was a certain prestige in being seen with a Jedi Knight, especially one with a minor galactic reputation like Obi-Wan. Security seemed much higher than it had been the last time she had been here, Senate Guards in evidence at regular intervals throughout the building’s twisting corridors as well as patrolling in pairs. Obi-Wan, in her Jedi robes, wasn’t stopped, but she saw several others pulled aside and marched off by the Blues.
She recognized one of the Guards standing outside the doors to the Alderaanian offices from his presence at the warehouse yesterday. Although his face was concealed by his helmet, he had a strong, clear presence in the Force that suggested a clarity of spirit, as well as a sensitivity that might have given him a place in the Order if he had been discovered early enough.
“Officer Omin,” she said, nodding to him.
“Master Kenobi.” He didn’t seem surprised that she had recognized him. “Senator Organa is expecting you. Please, go in.”
Bail somehow looked even worse than he had yesterday, apparently on his third cup of caf of the morning (if the empty mugs were anything to go by) and surrounded, as usual, by datapads and flimisplasts. To Obi-Wan’s surprise, Padmé was there too, perched on a corner of the table and holding up a flimsiplast.
“Senators,” Obi-Wan said, raising an eyebrow.
“Obi-Wan!” Padmé said, dropping the flimsiplast. “You look much better.”
Obi-Wan eyed her. “You don’t,” she said; there were bags under Padmé’s eyes, barely concealed by her makeup, and her long hair was pulled back into three plain buns at the back of her head rather than anything more elaborate. “You don’t look like you’ve gotten any sleep at all. Nor do you, Bail.”
“There were a few hours in there,” Bail said, indicating a chair. Obi-Wan had to move a stack of flimsiplasts in order to sit down, waving aside the droid that came up to offer her a cup of caf. “The Military Creation Bill is up tomorrow, and Padmé and I both have two more before the vote ends. And of course the damned Planetary Sovereignty Bill passed while we were locked up, vape it all.”
“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan said, sighing. She had suspected as much, and checking the HoloNet reports before leaving the Temple had borne out her suspicions. “A kidnapping isn’t grounds for a revote?”
“Welcome to politics, Obi-Wan,” Bail said, rolling his eyes. “Kidnapping is a very old and sadly very effective tradition in the Senate. I’m half-tempted to go slap Rush Clovis across the face with a glove and accuse the Banking Clan of masterminding the whole thing, since they got the results they wanted, except it’s too subtle for them.”
Obi-Wan raised her eyebrows. “That’s subtle?”
“For the Galactic Senate? Sadly, yes. The only person who actually got shot was you, after all, and they didn’t expect you there.” He tapped a stylus against his desk. “But that’s not why I asked you to come by.”
“It has something to do with what happened yesterday?”
He and Padmé glanced at each other. “What did the High Council say?” she asked, evading the question.
Obi-Wan shrugged. “They’re interested in who was behind the kidnapping, but there isn’t really much to go on.” At Padmé’s raised eyebrow, she shook her head slightly, not wanting to go into it. “There was some talk of assigning someone to investigate – it won’t be me, probably Master Vos and his Padawan – but it’s not really Jedi business since my involvement was accidental. We don’t really like to interfere on Coruscant unless we’re requested. The last thing the Order wants to do is get into another jurisdictional spat with the Blues.”
Bail stroked his beard. “Well, now there’s even less to go on. The Guard transport speeder carrying the bounty hunters back from the warehouse crashed on its way back to the surface. Everyone onboard was killed.”
“What?” Obi-Wan said, startled. “An accident?”
“According to the Guard. Apparently it was struck by a freighter that was emerging from one of the other levels. Food pastes scattered down the descent corridor from Level 367 to Level 1510.” He picked up his mug, looked at it – empty, apparently – and put it back down. “I’m no detective, Obi-Wan, but that’s a little suspicious, isn’t it?”
“More than a little,” Obi-Wan said softly, twisting a braid around one finger. “Especially considering – other things.”
His eyebrows went up. “You Jedi did find something out.”
Padmé said, “We’ve already swept the room for bugs twice already today. Tell him, Obi-Wan.”
Obi-Wan held up a hand to forestall her and shut her eyes, letting her consciousness roll out. Scanning for electronic surveillance with the Force wasn’t easy, but she had learned a trick or two from Anakin, who had a gift for such things. She opened her eyes.
Padmé began to speak, but Obi-Wan held up a hand to stop her and walked over to the serving droid that had offered her the caf. “Can I be of service, Master Jedi?” it asked.
“Excuse me,” Obi-Wan said, reaching around to shut it off.
“What –” Bail began indignantly.
Obi-Wan held up her hand again, cutting him off, and ran her fingers down the droid’s chestplate until she found the latch to pop it often. The bug was smaller than her smallest fingernail; Obi-Wan used the Force to pry it loose, turned around to show it to Bail and Padmé – both of them gaping – and ignited her lightsaber, dropping the bug onto the blade. It dissolved in a burst of sparks and melted circuitry.
“That’s all I could sense,” she said, extinguishing her lightsaber and hanging it on her belt. “Sorry about the theatrics, Bail.”
“We could have traced that,” Padmé said slowly as Obi-Wan resumed her seat.
She shook her head. “I’ve seen them before. They’re expensive because they’re hard to detect, but there are a dozen sellers on Coruscant alone that I know of. One of the Jedi who works primarily onworld would know more.”
Bail covered his face with his hands. “Stars’ end! Essee’s been in here all day every day since I came back from Alderaan for the new session – has she been bugged that entire time?”
Obi-Wan shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m sorry, Bail. It does suggest that something you’re doing has drawn attention.”
“Which is a good thing,” Bail said. “I think. At least Essee stays here instead of coming back to 500 Republica with me, so she hasn’t been transmitting anything from my apartments. I’ll have my people look into it. You don’t think Padmé –”
“I can sweep your office and your apartments for you if you’d like,” Obi-Wan said to her, “or get Anakin to do it, he’s better than I am at that sort of thing, but you’re probably safe because you’re so junior – no offense.”
“None taken. Mon, though –”
“If you were bugged, Bail, then she certainly is,” Obi-Wan said. “Do you have any idea who? As far as I know, those devices don’t transmit more than a kilometer or so.”
“It could be almost anyone in the Senate,” Bail said. “Including the Supreme Chancellor.” He rubbed at his forehead again. “Well, now that I know to yell at my security staff, what was it you were going to tell us, Obi-Wan?”
She sighed. “I was hoping that you had forgotten about that.” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees as she tried to decide the best way to put it without giving too much away. “After I overheard Bey’aaan and her employer bargaining for my purchase, I snuck in and tried to use her holocomm to contact the Jedi Temple. I couldn’t – there was only one dial available, so I called that instead. I thought I could find out who had hired Bey’aaan to kidnap you and the other senators.”
Bail frowned. “I thought we didn’t know – that’s something the Blues should know, Obi-Wan –”
“No,” Obi-Wan said. “It’s Jedi business. I didn’t recognize him – he covered his face – but he recognized me.”
“That still doesn’t make it –”
“He was a Force user. A user of the Dark Side of the Force.”
Padmé let out a small gasp, but when Obi-Wan and Bail looked over her expression showed no sign of her distress. “Was he like the assassin on Naboo?” she asked – what Maul had been called in the official reports.
“Yes,” Obi-Wan said. “I’m afraid that he is.”
Her friend’s eyes went wide with alarm. Bail looked between them and said, “I’m missing something, aren’t I?”
It was clear that he wouldn’t be content to be fobbed off without a further explanation. “There are two sides of the Force,” Obi-Wan said, picking her words as carefully as she would in front of a classroom of younglings. “Jedi use what we call the Light Side, but there’s another, the Dark Side. It’s – it’s inimical to everything the Jedi stand for. A long time ago, my order had an opposite. They called themselves the Sith.”
“The Sith Empire?” Bail said, surprising Obi-Wan. “But I thought they were wiped out millennia ago by the Old Republic.”
“The Sith and the Sith Empire aren’t the same thing, no more than the Jedi and the Republic are,” Obi-Wan said. “There used to be a – I suppose you’d call it a Sith Order, though that might give them too much credit. Their way of using the Force – the Dark Side – isn’t exactly conducive to having thousands of them running around. One reason that the Jedi have always been able to hold them off is because they spent as much time killing each other as they did killing us. Until about six years ago, we thought that they had wiped themselves out a thousand years ago.”
“Six years ago,” Bail repeated. “You mean – the invasion of Naboo. But the Trade Federation was behind that, weren’t they?”
Obi-Wan ran a hand through her hair. “Yes. But there was someone else involved. We don’t know who – the Neimodians weren’t talking, unfortunately. Whoever he was, they were more afraid of him than they were of the Jedi.” She glanced at Padmé, who looked back steadily. “I was upset. My presence might not have helped. There was an assassin, a Zabrak, who used a red double-bladed lightsaber – we call it a saberstaff. My Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, thought that he had been sent to assassinate the Queen.”
“You,” Bail said to Padmé; she nodded.
“When we took the Palace,” Obi-Wan went on, “he met us there. It wasn’t Padmé that he was after, it was us – Qui-Gon and I. We dueled him there. He was –” She licked her lips, the memory still far too vivid despite the intervening years. “He was very skilled. He managed to separate us; there are ray shields in the reactor room at the Palace and I was cut off from Qui-Gon. He killed my Master,” Obi-Wan said. She wasn’t looking at him, but she heard Bail’s sharp intake of breath. She glanced down at her hands, at the lightsaber hanging on her belt. “I killed him. That’s why I never stood my Trials. By long tradition, a Padawan who kills a Sith Lord has passed their Knight’s Trials in combat.”
“I don’t understand,” Bail said. “What does this have to do with the Sith? I thought that you said they were extinct.”
Obi-Wan ran her hands through her hair and straightened up. “That’s what we thought too. We’ve had Dark Jedi before – Jedi who turn to the Dark Side of the Force, for one reason or another. The Dark Side can be…very tempting.” She glanced down at her hands again, now hanging loosely between her knees. “Some of them even call themselves Sith – there’s a title for that. Darth. Nute Gunray of the Trade Federation told me what this assassin was called.”
“Maul,” Padmé said softly. She had remained in the throne room while Obi-Wan had interrogated Gunray, cold with grief and rage and the Force humming through her. “Darth Maul.”
“That’s a terrible name,” Bail said, still looking puzzled.
“Yes, well, the Sith aren’t terribly keen on subtle,” Obi-Wan said. It was easier to think of it as ancient history, something long dead. “In the Jedi histories, they all have names like Scourge and Bane. According to our accounts, they leave certain traces in the Force. Think of it like – like a blight. Those traces were there on Naboo. They can last centuries on some planets, but Maul wasn’t on Naboo for very long. They faded soon after the Council arrived, but remained long enough to be identified. There might have been other evidence that wasn’t explained to me at the time, since I was –” She looked down again. “I was distracted. And I was very junior, then. It’s not the sort of thing that you tell a green Knight with a new Padawan if there’s any way to avoid it.”
Padmé’s hands were clenched into fists. “The Jedi High Council told me at the time that they believed that an unknown Sith Lord – apparently they always come in twos?” She glanced at Obi-Wan.
“Master and apprentice,” Obi-Wan muttered. “Like the Jedi, but twisted.”
“That an unknown Sith Lord may have been behind the Trade Federation’s occupation of Naboo,” Padmé finished. “Gunray said as much to me and Obi-Wan, but he was too afraid to give us a name, even with Maul dead. Unfortunately for us, the Federation lawyers showed up before the rest of the Jedi did.”
Obi-Wan sighed. “We weren’t able to interrogate Gunray and the other Trade Federation officials further. Actually, they sued us – well, me, but our lawyers cleared that up.”
“The Jedi have lawyers?” Bail said, raising his eyebrows.
“You would be surprised at the number of lawsuits filed against us every year,” Obi-Wan said. She sat back, dragged her hands through her hair again. “Anakin alone has had a dozen in the past six years. Mostly traffic violations, to be fair.”
His mouth quirked, then his expression sobered again. “What does this have to do with our abduction? You think that the man who hired the bounty hunters is one of these Sith?”
“Because he told me that he was,” Obi-Wan said. “He knew who I was. He knew my name. And he knew what had happened on Naboo. There are only a handful of people who know what really happened on Naboo, not just the story that we told the Senate and the HoloNet. Two of them are sitting in this room. You make three.”
Bail shook his head. “But why us? What kind of interest would a – a Sith Lord have in the Planetary Sovereignty Bill? In Republic politics, for that matter?”
“I don’t know,” Obi-Wan said. “That’s why this has to be a Jedi matter.”
“Obi-Wan, I don’t know –”
“She’s right, Bail,” Padmé said. “The Sith on Naboo – he was beyond anything that any of us could have dealt with. No ordinary being could have faced him and lived.”
“But if this is a threat to the Republic –”
“Then we will handle it,” Obi-Wan said firmly. “I know that some members of the Senate doubt the Jedi, but we serve the Republic, Bail. The Sith are our fight. They have been for more than six millennia.”
Bail massaged his forehead, looking at Padmé. “You knew all this already.”
“I did,” she nodded. “Grand Master Yoda explained some of it to me on Naboo six years ago. Chancellor Palpatine knows too. We agreed – we all agreed – that it was best to keep it quiet.”
“I don’t know,” Bail said again. “I really don’t –”
“There’s one more thing,” Obi-Wan said, and when they both looked at her, explained about the ruined holocomm. “Hopefully Quinlan can get something off it,” she said, “but I don’t think that he will. And if he can’t, then there isn’t anything there. He has the strongest psychometric gift that the Kiffar have seen in over a century, the Jedi in six.”
“So there’s no proof,” Bail said, shutting his eyes. “No proof for any of it.”
“Just my word,” Obi-Wan said with a forced smile. “And my word on the subject of the Sith is notoriously unreliable because I’m emotionally involved.”
“You Jedi,” Bail said, sounding weary.
“I’m sorry,” Obi-Wan said. “I know that it’s not easy to take in. It wasn’t for me and I was there. We thought they were extinct until one of them killed my Master.” She touched her fingers to the hilt of her lightsaber again, reassured by the cool metal. “Bail, Padmé, what I’ve told you – it can’t leave this room. It wasn’t even supposed to leave the council chamber, let alone the Temple.”
Bail shook his head. He still looked mildly stunned. “Who else knows?”
“Just a handful of other Jedi – the High Council, Anakin, Quinlan and Aayla.”
“The Supreme Chancellor?”
“That’s the Council’s decision to make,” Obi-Wan said.
“I’d forgotten that you don’t like him,” Padmé murmured.
It was true, but Obi-Wan didn’t need to hear it out loud. She glanced up as the chrono on the wall chimed the hour. “Fierfek! Speaking of His Excellency, I’ve got to get to the other side of the dome in the next fifteen minutes or get taken to task for being late as well as incompetent.”
She sprang up, raking her fingers through her hair to order it. “I’m sorry to run out on you like this –”
“It’s all right,” Bail said. “You’ve certainly given us a lot to think about.”
Padmé climbed down off his desk and took a step towards Obi-Wan, close enough to push one of Obi-Wan’s braids out of her face and over her shoulder. Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow as she said, “We won’t tell, Obi-Wan. You have my word.”
“Thank you,” Obi-Wan said and on impulse, pressed a quick kiss to her friend’s cheek before she could think better of it. She felt Padmé’s rush of pleasure in the Force and backed away, a little confused by it. “Send me a message about the surveillance equipment, if you like,” she said. “Anakin will love a distraction.”
Once back in the corridors of the Senate Building, she almost had to run to make her meeting on time. Jedi or not, she was certain that the Blues would stop her if she did so, even if it hadn’t been too crowded in the building’s many corridors for that, so she contented herself by walking very quickly instead, slipping into the Chancellor’s antechamber just as the chrono chimed the quarter-hour.
Sly Moore, Palpatine’s senior administrative aide, gave her a disapproving look. “Master Kenobi,” she said. “The Supreme Chancellor has been expecting you.”
“Well, here I am,” Obi-Wan said, smoothing her hands down her robes. “May I go in?”
The Umbaran inclined her head, which Obi-Wan took as agreement. The doors to the Supreme Chancellor’s office slid open as she approached, closing silently behind her.
Palpatine was sitting at his desk, which was considerably more orderly than Bail Organa’s had been. He looked up as she entered, smiling genially. “Ah, Master Kenobi, I’m glad to see you well and in one piece.”
“That makes two of us, Your Excellency,” Obi-Wan said. “What can I do for you?”
“I thought that we might have a talk about what happened at Senator Mothma’s party,” said Palpatine. He made no invitation for her to sit, so Obi-Wan remained standing, folding her hands inside the sleeves of her robe. “I’ve already read Commander Bey’s report, of course. I admit that I’m a little confused.”
Obi-Wan remained silent, waiting patiently despite Palpatine’s raised eyebrow; he clearly expected her to respond. When she didn’t indulge him, he continued, “I’ve always considered you a remarkable woman and a quite competent Jedi, Master Kenobi. Why is it that you were unable to defend against these bounty hunters when they first appeared? Surely one Jedi Knight is more than a match for a handful of disorderly rabble.”
Anakin, Obi-Wan reminded herself, would not appreciate it if she punched his friend across the face. Nor would the High Council. “The risk to life was too great, Your Excellency,” she said. “If the bounty hunters had wanted to kill the senators, they had ample opportunity to do so earlier. If I had tried to resist, then there would have been bloodshed.”
The Supreme Chancellor was quiet for a moment, studying her face. Obi-Wan met his eyes, knowing that the strength of the Force was behind her own steady gaze. After a moment, the Supreme Chancellor glanced down, making a move to straighten a handful of flimsiplasts on his desk.
“Of course I’ll defer to your professional judgment in such matters,” he said. “Such a pity for poor Mon Mothma, though. She did work so terribly hard to make sure that bill didn’t pass, but there’s always next season. If only Master Kim had stayed behind – or you had brought young Anakin with you.” He looked up at her with mild cow-eyes.
Obi-Wan dug her nails into the soft skin of her wrist. “If only the airspeeder carrying the prisoners hadn’t crashed,” she said. “We might have been able to get some answers.”
For a millisecond, those cow-eyes narrowed to something sharper and more dangerous, a krayt dragon crouching in the sand, and then only Palpatine remained. “Yes,” he said, “an appalling tragedy. The descent corridors can be horribly dangerous. I’ll have to do something about that.”
He bent over the flimsiplasts again. Obi-Wan remained where she was, studying the view outside his floor-to-ceiling windows. “Oh, my dear girl,” said the Chancellor eventually, as if he had just remembered that he hadn’t dismissed her yet, “I’m very glad that you weren’t seriously injured. It would be very unfortunate to have young Anakin’s training interrupted by this unfortunate incident.”
“It was nothing, Your Excellency. I’m told that these things happen in politics.”
“Yes, the Senate can be quite the gundark nest, can’t it?” said Palpatine, with a soft laugh. “Well, I hope you’ll give Anakin my regards. I’m so glad that he won’t be exposed to that dreadful man after all.”
Obi-Wan blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“Count Dooku,” he clarified. “He’s left the planet. Some sort of emergency back on Serenno, I’m told. I’m sure that you were looking forward to your – how did you put it, Obi-Wan? – your family reunion, but I must admit I’m glad that he won’t be able to exert any untoward interest on our boy.”
“I don’t think that it was Anakin Dooku is interested in,” Obi-Wan said without thinking, and could have bitten her tongue off for saying as much.
Palpatine’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t comment on that. “Well, run along, my dear girl. I can only hope that you’ll be around to save Senator Mothma and her friends the next time her campaigning draws untoward attention.”
“So do I, Your Excellency,” Obi-Wan said. She executed a bow of the proper depth for the Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, no more and no less, and departed. Palpatine didn’t look up as she left, but Obi-Wan still felt watched, the Force shuddering and sliding along her skin and down the length of her spine.
There was a droid waiting for her in the corridor, watched suspiciously by the members of the Red Guard that served the Chancellor alone and operated independent of the Senate Guard. It was a little rabbit droid, apparently content to sit back on its heels and watch the senators who were lined up to try and speak to the Chancellor. When Obi-Wan emerged from the antechamber, it sprang up and scampered towards her.
“Obi-Wan Kenobi?” it inquired.
“That’s me,” Obi-Wan said, moving to the side of the hallway, out of the way, and crouching down so that she and the droid were at the same level. “What can I do for you, my friend?”
“I’ve brought you a message,” it said, proffering a small holoprojector. It was a different brand than the one Obi-Wan had taken from the warehouse, but like that one the serial numbers had been scraped away. The blinking light on its base showed that it had one message pre-recorded and not yet played back.
She took it with suddenly numb fingers, automatically probing at it with the Force, but it lay quiescent in her hands. Not dead, but no different than any other piece of electronics either. “Who is the message from?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t know that,” said the rabbit droid. “A human male in one of the speeder bays told me to bring it to you, but he said that he’d been paid by someone else to deliver it. I wasn’t really interested.”
Droids, Obi-Wan thought wearily. If she took it back to the Temple, then Anakin might be able to get more out of it, but she didn’t feel terribly sanguine on that point. “Is that all?”
“Can I go now?”
Obi-Wan sighed and nodded. “Yes. Thank you.”
The droid waddled away, leaving Obi-Wan alone with the holoprojector. She contemplated it silently, then straightened up and went to go and find a private niche in which to listen. It wasn’t difficult – there were many such places in the Senate Building – and after Obi-Wan had drawn the protective curtain closed across the entrance and used the Force to shield it against being overheard she set the holoprojector down on one of the velvet-covered benches and pressed the playback button.
For a few seconds, all that Obi-Wan saw was blue static, then it steadied into a now familiar form. Obi-Wan leaned forward, shuddering as she felt the Dark Side drop around her like a cage. Her mind strained to hold her shields as they bowed outwards under the immense Force pressure.
The Sith Lord, a pale blue figure who stood twice the length of her hand in the projectioin, raised his head. His eyes were hidden beneath his hood, but beneath the shadows that covered his face Obi-Wan could make out a pale, neatly-clipped beard. “Well done, Master Kenobi,” he said, his thick lips stretching into a smile. “It’s a pity that our meeting has been delayed by the incompetence of my hirelings, but never fear, our day will come.”
Obi-Wan pressed her hand to her mouth, as though she could conceal her dismay from the recorded figure. She felt sick, not knowing if it was the Dark Side trying to work its way into her blood or her own disgust at the words. At his next words, she bit the side of her hand so hard that she tasted blood.
“I’ll see you soon, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
end
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The Jedi Healer Vokara Che appears in Karen Miller's Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Wild Space.