The Clone Wars: Wild Space Read online

  “Not suffering, Senator?” he said, incredulous. “After Geonosis? After the engagements we’ve fought already? And losing the Falleen battle group? Must the Jedi Temple itself fall before it can be agreed that the Jedi are also paying a price for this war we did not start?”

  “Of course not,” said Organa. “I’m talking about perception, not reality. The bedrock of politics. I think you’ll grant it’s one of my areas of expertise.”

  The least honorable of them all. Obi-Wan nodded. “I concede your point.”

  “And I wish you didn’t have to,” Organa replied. “Master Kenobi, the Jedi have been the Republic’s peacekeepers for generations. Citizens are used to you solving their local problems. Their community disputes. But we both know that what we’re facing is far more complicated. And I promise you, I promise—when things get really bad you will be blamed.”

  Curd-and-vegetable stew forgotten, Obi-Wan stared in silence at the Senator from Alderaan.

  “I’m sorry,” said Organa, turning away. “You don’t have to say it. I’m just a politician. It’s none of my business.”

  Just a politician? No. Far from it. Now it was clear why Padmé liked and trusted this princeling from Alderaan. He was… unexpected.

  “The Jedi aren’t blind, Senator,” he said, at last. “We’re perfectly aware that our elevation in the public eye is problematic. We opposed it vigorously. We continue to oppose it. We are, as you say, peacekeepers. Not celebrities. The Supreme Chancellor should reconsider his tactics. We feel very strongly there is a chance they could end up doing us more harm than good.”

  Surprised, Organa turned back. Then he pulled a face. “Palpatine means well. His problem is he’s not enough of a politician. He never has been. He’s just a kindly provincial Senator who blundered into high office by chance. If the Trade Federation hadn’t invaded Naboo—if Valorum hadn’t lost his grip—someone else would be Supreme Chancellor now. He doesn’t see the pitfalls of what he’s doing. He genuinely believes it’s all for the best.”

  Obi-Wan reached for his mealpack and took refuge from troubling thought in food. “Perhaps it will be,” he said, forking up his first mouthful. The stew had cooled almost completely, but his empty belly didn’t care. “Though I do not think so.”

  “Neither do I,” said Organa. He looked again into his glass. “Think I’ll help myself to another ale. Can I get you one?”

  He shook his head. “Alcohol is not recommended for Jedi. Water will suffice. Thank you.”

  “We’ve still got a few hours’ flying time,” Organa said casually, returning to the cockpit with their drinks. “And I’ve had as much as I can stand of Ralltiir’s whining, at least for now. Fancy a game of sabacc? There’s a pack of cards around here somewhere, and a few tins of pocho-nuts we can use for credits. Unless Jedi don’t gamble?”

  “On the contrary,” said Obi-Wan. “We gamble all the time. Just not on games of chance. Besides, for some strange reason we tend to make our fellow gamblers uneasy.”

  “Can’t imagine why,” said Organa, grinning. “So, sabacc it is. Do you promise not to use any Jedi sleight of hand?”

  “Only if you promise to spare me your wily politician’s ways,” he replied, deliberately placid.

  Organa nodded, still amused. “Deal. We can play in the passenger compartment. The nav comp alarm will let us know when we’re approaching Atzerri.”

  “What?” said Obi-Wan as the Senator considered him, his gaze narrow and speculative.

  “I didn’t think you’d say yes.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” he said, pretending surprise. “Sabacc is a perfectly respectable way to pass the time.”

  “I guess,” said Organa, gesturing. “After you.”

  Hiding a smile in his beard, Obi-Wan pushed past the curtain into the adjoining passenger compartment.

  Yes indeed. It’s perfectly respectable, and a keen diagnostic tool for those who know how to use it. And I intend to use it, Senator. There is far more to you than meets the eye, it would seem.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Obi-wan won the first game, which taught him that Bail Organa was a bold thinker, an innovative strategist, a man not afraid to take risks for the chance of a reward—but one also inclined to act on faith rather than a surety of good cards. The second game he lost, which taught him that Padmé’s friend was a very fast learner who could sum up an opponent quickly and didn’t make the same mistake twice. Armed with these useful nuggets of information, he immediately abandoned his previous tactics and began to play the next hand like Qui-Gon used to. But just as it seemed that he might, possibly, win the third game, the nav comp started beeping again.

  They’d reached Atzerri.

  “You know much about this region of the Republic?” Organa asked as they sat a safe distance off the busy planet’s single, craggy moon.

  He nodded, dark memories stirring. “I know a little. I was involved in settling a dispute on Antar Four—nearly sixteen years ago now.”

  “Sixteen years…” Organa chewed his lip. “The colfillini plantation dispute? You were involved in that debacle?”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Well, I didn’t cause it, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  “I know what caused it,” said Organa, his eyes hot with memory. “Local organized crime. My uncle was murdered by those scum. Killed in cold blood, just for standing up to thugs who thought working people to death was acceptable economic practice.”

  Stinking smoke in the morning. The stench of burned flesh. A scarecrow figure nailed to a stake, charred to friable ash. But not even fire could hide the brutal fingerprints of torture.

  Obi-Wan swallowed. “The agricultural expert? Tayvor Mandirly? He was your uncle?”

  “My mother’s youngest brother.” Organa grimaced. “She never got over what they did to him. In the end his death killed her. So you could say they murdered two members of my family.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Organa shrugged the condolence aside. “Raxis and Nolid should have paid for what they did.”

  “They did pay, Senator.”

  “Fines,” spat Organa. “Money. They should have paid more. They shouldn’t have been allowed to buy their way to absolution. You Jedi should’ve made them pay a real price.”

  He sighed. “We are not executioners, Senator. Nor are we instruments of vengeance. The government of Antar Four asked us to assist them in apprehending those responsible for outrages committed on the planet’s largest colfillini plantation, and we did. What happened after that was an internal matter. We are limited by our mandate.”

  “That’s easy for you to say!” retorted Organa. “Did you see what those animals did to Tayvor? Did you see how he—”

  “Senator, I found him.”

  Found him. And for many nights afterward screamed for him in my sleep. Because you were right, Senator. The Force shows us the past, as well as the future.

  Silenced, Organa stared at him. “I didn’t know that,” he said at last, subdued. “I never knew the names of the Jedi who went to Antar Four.”

  “Yes. Well,” he said drily. “Those were the days when the Jedi weren’t HoloNet news stars.”

  “So. It was you.” Organa shook his head. “Now, there’s a coincidence. Small galaxy, isn’t it?”

  “Sometimes it feels that way.” Except there were no coincidences in the Force… and everything happened for a reason. This was meant. It was meant. The question was, why?

  “I suppose now you think I’m uncivilized,” said Organa, taking Obi-Wan’s silence for disapproval. “After all, no proper peaceful Alderaanian would bay for the blood of those murdering beasts.”

  Such pain in him. Such grief and loss. Sixteen years and the anguish hadn’t dulled. Was this Anakin’s fate, now that Shmi was dead?

  And is it mine, also? Qui-Gon was father and brother to me. Family, as the world outside the Temple counts such things. Is it the relationship that won’t let the wound heal, or the way that they
died? Stolen. Murdered. Ripped from life before their time.

  Perhaps. It was a troubling thought. As a Jedi he wasn’t supposed to care so much. Attachment, again. His perennial stumbling block. Let go, said Yoda. So much easier said than done. Perhaps if he lived a few hundred more years…

  “No, Senator, I don’t think that,” he said gently. “I think you’re a son who loved his mother, and her brother. I think you’re a man who despises greed and cruelty. Who burns for justice.” He hesitated, then added, “Qui-Gon and I also wished they had paid a steeper price.”

  Organa was frowning. “Qui-Gon, who was killed by the Sith?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Just as a matter of interest, Master Kenobi… what happened to the Sith who murdered your Master?”

  Obi-Wan took a deep breath. Let it out, very slowly. “I believe you know perfectly well, Senator.”

  Organa pretended to think. Pretended amazement. “Oh yes! That’s right, Padmé said. You killed him.” A thin, knife-edged smile. “But you’re not an agent of vengeance, or anything.”

  He said nothing to that. There were no words.

  “The thing is, Master Kenobi,” said Organa, still smiling that thin, dangerous smile, “you’re not the only one who can learn things playing sabacc.”

  He took another deep breath. Let it fill his lungs completely; no more twinges from his healed broken ribs. Eased it out again, and with it all emotion. “Apparently not, Senator.”

  And then Organa’s comlink buzzed, and it was time to receive their new instructions.

  “Munto Codru,” said Organa, reading off the nav comp. “That’s… a long way from the Core Worlds.”

  It was indeed. Munto Codru lay in the distant reaches of the Outer Rim Territories. Perturbed, Obi-Wan considered his inconvenient companion. “Senator, I think we need to reconsider our situation.”

  “Why?” said Organa. “We’ve got plenty of supplies. The ship’s still sound. What is there to reconsider?”

  “Your participation in this mission,” he said bluntly. “We have no idea how much farther from home your contact will send us. We might well end up deep within the Unknown Regions.”

  “So far?” said Organa, skeptical. “Surely not. Why would the Sith be all the way out there?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. But with the Sith, anything is possible. My point, Senator, is that it’s not safe out here.”

  Organa pretended shock. “Not safe? Master Kenobi, I had no idea! Why didn’t you warn me? Quick! Let’s go home!”

  “Mock me if you must, Senator,” he said, resisting the urge to grit his teeth. “But I would be remiss if I did not point out that while we have traveled without incident until now, our circumstances might easily and swiftly alter. There is still time to change your mind.”

  Organa looked at him steadily. “Do you want to turn back?”

  “No. But this isn’t about me. I am a Jedi, and this is what we do. You are a married Republic Senator.”

  “I don’t want to turn back,” Organa said flatly. “I don’t want to give up. I want to stop the Sith, and put a face to the faceless people who’ve been helping me all these years. And to be perfectly frank, Master Kenobi, I’m getting pretty tired of your attitude. Would you be asking Padmé if she wanted to turn back?”

  No. But Padmé had long since proven herself. This man was an unknown quantity. “Padmé isn’t here, Senator. I am merely concerned for your safety.”

  “Let me say this for the last time, Master Kenobi: you let me worry about that.”

  The problem with being stuck in a very small spaceship, in what amounted to the middle of nowhere, was that one couldn’t simply… walk away. I swear, he’s as bad as Anakin. But at least I could tell Anakin to be quiet and do as he was told, and he had to obey me.

  “Very well, Senator,” he said. “It’s your decision. I can only hope you don’t come to regret it.”

  And with that trenchant observation, turning his back on Organa, he tried to contact Yoda. But distance and the vagaries of interstellar galactic phenomena combined to degrade his comm signal to fragments. He did, however, manage to raise Adi Gallia, who was battling a Separatist detachment on the comparatively close Outer Rim planet of Agomar. She promised to relay his message back to the Temple as soon as possible, and bade him be careful, whatever else he did. She didn’t ask what he was doing so far from Coruscant; not from lack of concern, but because the days where they could talk freely were behind them.

  Even knowing that, it was on the tip of his tongue to ask her about Anakin, if she’d heard any news, if he was returned safely from his droid hunt. But he couldn’t. He didn’t want to betray Anakin’s miscalculation to a member of the Council. Not before it was absolutely necessary, at least.

  “May the Force be with you, Adi,” he said, and terminated their comlink. Then he turned to Organa, who was running a check on the nav comp calculations. “When you’re ready, Senator.”

  “I’m ready,” Organa muttered, clearly still rankled. “Munto Codru coming up.” He fired up the stardrive and nudged the ship away from Atzerri into open space. When the nav comp beeped the all-clear, he kicked them over into lightspeed.

  Beyond the viewport the stars swirled and streaked. Realspace vanished, and they were at the mercy of otherness.

  Obi-Wan stood. “If you’ll excuse me, Senator, I have meditations to perform.”

  “Sure,” said Organa, reaching for his datapad. “Knock yourself out. Don’t let me hold you up.”

  The words were colloquial, conversational; the tone was curt. The lofty galactic representative dismissing an underling. The hired help.

  I am a Jedi. We do not take such things personally.

  They didn’t attempt to slam curtains, either. But it took a lifetime of training to resist the urge.

  Three more days in hyperspace, claustrophobically cocooned. Such a pity it wasn’t a faster ship. Organa buried himself in the work he’d brought with him, a virtual mountain of domestic and inter-system legislative business. Obi-Wan, observing this, found himself reluctantly admiring. Just like Padmé—and unlike so many other Senators the Jedi had observed—Organa was no pretender. He took his duties seriously. It was a curiously comforting discovery.

  For his own part, he turned captivity to his advantage, surrendering himself to the kind of deep meditations usually practiced by Jedi on retreat or committed to the contemplative life. To his relief, he could sense no lowering danger. No threat from Grievous to these distant hyperlanes. Which wasn’t surprising. There was little out here for the Republic to want. And if the Republic didn’t want it, neither did Dooku and his Separatists.

  What he did perceive, in glimpses, were some of the Jedi’s Outer Rim campaigns. Adi Gallia triumphant on Agomar. Ki-Adi-Mundi defeated almost to death on Barab I. Eeth Koth defending the besieged people of Korriban, surrounded by drifts of dead and dying clone troopers. Saesee Tiin in desperate straits closer to the Core, on Bimmisaari—but no. No, that was not now, that was then. A trade dispute of the past, long since peacefully settled.

  He caught a single impression of Anakin, more feeling than vision. Sorrow. Frustration. A crushing fear of failure. He couldn’t find that wretched droid.

  Well, try harder, Anakin. Did you think I was joking? R2 in the wrong hands could spell defeat for us all.

  Irritation battled with a razor-sharp concern. His greatest fear was that they kept asking too much of the Order’s vaunted Chosen One. That, dazzled by his potential, they blinded themselves to his youth. And now that he’d scored such a decisive victory at Bothawui, with the crisis of war deepening the trend would surely continue.

  But not to his detriment. No matter what it takes, or what it costs, I must continue to protect him.

  It was hard, being out here, so far from the Temple, from the war, suspended in this bubble of waiting. Unable to help Anakin, to help Ki-Adi-Mundi or Eeth Koth. Help any of his fellow Jedi fighting on too many desperate fronts. He�
�d never been like Qui-Gon, able to stop in the midst of action and simply suspend thought and feeling. Accept the moment as it was, without question, until the moment transformed into a new reality. No. He’d always needed to be doing something. Making things happen. Seizing the moment by the throat.

  “You’re a restless spirit, Obi-Wan,” Qui-Gon used to say, rueful and resigned. And as usual, he was right.

  The life of a contemplative is most certainly not for me.

  But he could endure it for a short while, if it meant thwarting the Sith. And when he wasn’t sleeping, or meditating, and Organa was safely out of the way in the cockpit cursing Ralltiir, or whoever, he performed his alchaka forms, disciplining his body as rigorously as his mind, banishing the faint lingering traces of recent injury. Becoming himself again not a moment too soon.

  And so the time passed… and they came at last to Munto Codru.

  “Nearly seven hours and not a whisper,” said Organa, his fingers drumming a staccato tattoo on the console. “They’ve never made us wait this long before.”

  Obi-Wan slid his gaze away from the looming bulk of the planet, a cloud-banded sleeping jewel surrounded by twelve spinning moons. Their ship sat high above the planet’s night side, deep within the twelfth moon’s shadow, unobserved. Below them Munto Codru’s surface was spackled with lights from its cities. Brighter lights flitted like firedrakes, ships arriving and departing at irregular intervals.

  “Be patient, Senator,” he said. “If your contact is as reliable as you claim, we will hear from them.”

  Frustrated, Organa glared at him. Then he punched the helm console. “Patience is all well and good, but we can’t sit here forever.”