Adi moved noiselessly across the floor. She had to bend over him, only centimeters from his cheek, as she slid the datapad back in place. Wrinkling her nose, she jerked her chin toward the door. Time to go.
Moving slowly, she withdrew from the sleep couch. Suddenly, Pilot's hand shot out and grabbed her tunic.
"Where do you think you're going?" His eyes snapped open and confusion shot him to a sitting position. "And who are you?"
With a quick movement Adi dislodged herself from his grasp and kicked him in the chest, sending him back across the sleep couch with an oof.
She and Qui-Gon hurtled out the door, drawing their lightsabers. As they ran, an alarm began to clang. There must have been an alert button right near the sleep couch.
They heard pounding footsteps behind them. Lunasa must have slept half-dressed. She still wore a tunic and boots, but she was bare-legged and her hair was matted from sleep and stood out in dark wisps around her head. A small rocket whistled toward them and then blaster fire richocheted in the air. Qui-Gon sliced through the rocket while Adi deflected the blaster fire.
From the opposite side of the corridor, Gorm the Dissolver strode toward them, fire shooting from the blasters in both hands. Adi and Qui-Gon kept constantly circling. Pilot had advanced out from his stateroom and joined the melee.
"Any ideas?" Adi muttered to Qui-Gon as she twirled, deflecting fire. The corridor was filled with smoke.
"Seems like a good time to escape," Qui-Gon said. "How about the pod?"
An ominous clacking came to their ears. Droidekas suddenly rolled down the corridor, unfurling to their full, deadly length.
"The pod sounds good," Adi replied.
Qui-Gon and Adi moved grimly forward.
Qui-Gon moved to the left, trying to get Gorm between him and the droidekas. But the two had excellent homing devices and moved accordingly. Gorm kept on a steady pace, thumping forward, blasting with a repeating rifle.
Qui-Gon saw that he had to end this. Between the droidekas and the bounty hunters, he saw a danger of being wounded or captured.
He surged forward, cutting off the leg of a droideka and almost getting clipped by blaster fire in the process. The droideka lost its center of balance and spun. Blaster fire peppered out in a random pattern, almost hitting Lunasa. She yelled and hit the ground, still firing at the Jedi. Raptor almost got in the way, and had to leap over Lunasa, placing himself between Gorm and the Jedi.
All this happened in just a few seconds.
Qui-Gon and Adi leaped through the door of the escape pod hatch. They accessed the door and tumbled inside. They could hear the bounty hunters pounding after them.
"The airlock!" Adi yelled.
Qui-Gon hit it. He quickly activated the prelaunch sequence. The door thudded with the impact of blaster bolts.
"Not a grenade, you idiot!" Lunasa shouted. "You could damage the —"
They never knew who the idiot had been, but the grenade exploded. At the same moment the escape pod shot out into space, rocking with the motion of the grenade blast. They heard shrapnel pepper the shell of the pod, but it did not damage any systems.
Qui-Gon took over the manual controls. He pushed the speed to maximum.
"That was close," Adi said.
They had escaped. But where were they headed?
CHAPTER 12
With the ship in hyperspace, Obi-Wan and Siri were able to relax for the first time in days. Taly fell asleep curled up on a cushion in the cockpit. He was exhausted.
"At least the bounty hunter has a well-stocked galley," Siri said in a low voice. "When Taly wakes up he can have a decent meal."
"We should get some rest, too," Obi-Wan said.
Siri went over to sit next to him on the cushioned seat in the cockpit. She hugged herself for a minute, hands on her elbows in an uncharacteristically nervous gesture.
"Obi-Wan? I just want to say thanks."
"Thanks for what?" Obi-Wan asked.
"I could have put Magus on our tail by selling my crystal. He might not have known for sure we were alive. Or that we were close to Settlement Five."
"We don't know that."
"I feel it. And I shouldn't have done it. But thanks for not telling me that."
"I admire you for what you did," Obi-Wan said. "Taly needed to know that you'd take care of him. He was losing hope, and I didn't see it. You did. It would be logical for Magus to go to Settlement Five to watch the boarding of the freighter. Even if he hadn't found the vendor, he would have been there."
Siri's gaze was warm and amused. "You're a terrible liar, Obi-Wan Kenobi. It's one reason I like you so much."
"Ah, so you like me," Obi-Wan said lightly. "I thought I'd lost your good opinion."
She leaned against him for a moment, nudging him, then swung away. "Don't worry so much."
Siri's smile was so free of tension that it transformed her face. It was almost as though he had a glimpse of another Siri, a Siri without the engine that drove her, the need to excel, the stubbornness, the discipline. There was a Siri inside that Siri, someone he didn't know very well at all.
Obi-Wan felt his cheeks heat up. He looked down at his hand, resting next to hers on the cushion. He knew the shape of her fingers, the texture of her skin almost as well as his own. He had to fight the urge to slip his hand over hers, wind his fingers around hers.
Obi-Wan stood quickly. He turned his head away to hide his flaming cheeks.
Siri stretched out on the cushioned bench. She grabbed a blanket and drew it over her. She closed her eyes. He could tell she wasn't sleeping. Had he hurt her feelings by getting up so abruptly?
Obi-Wan had never worried about things like that before with Siri. Why was he so conscious of it now? Why was he so conscious of her?
He didn't like the feeling. But he liked it, too. Thoroughly confused, Obi-Wan stamped over to stare with unseeing eyes at the nav computer and try not to look at his friend again.
A day later, they drew close to the coordinates for reversion. They were almost to Coruscant.
"By nightfall, we'll be sitting in the Temple," Obi-Wan said with satisfaction. He would be glad to be back. Glad to get Taly to safety. Glad to put this mission behind him.
Siri worked at the nav computer. "Coordinates set for reversion outside Coruscant airspace."
Obi-Wan began to flip switches. He frowned. "Everything okay?"
"I'm getting a funny readout from one of the security system checks. I've never seen one like it before."
Obi-Wan went to the manual security scan. He ran through the readouts. Suddenly, he felt the blood drain from his face.
Taly drew closer behind him. Siri spun around in her chair. "What is it?"
Obi-Wan's throat felt tight. "It's an anti-thievery device. Magus did have a surprise for us. The ship is programmed to self-destruct upon reversion." He turned to Siri and Taly. "We can't get out of hyperspace without blowing up."
CHAPTER 13
Obi-Wan looked at Siri. "How much fuel do we have?" Siri hesitated. She glanced at Taly.
"Say it," Taly said. "I need to know, too."
"Two hours. We barely had enough to get to Coruscant."
"Cancel reversion," Obi-Wan said. "We have to dismantle this device."
"Let me look," Taly said eagerly. Obi-Wan motioned him over and pointed to the schematic on the datascreen. "There are two places to try to dismantle it — at the switch, or at the source. The only problem is . . ."
"If you do something wrong, you destroy the ship," Taly said, nodding.
Siri leaned over the datascreen. When she turned to speak, her face was very close to Obi-Wan's. She quickly moved away. "These kinds of things aren't my strong suit," she said. "I don't know engines like you do, Obi-Wan."
Obi-Wan didn't know them that well, either, but he decided it was better not to say that. He, like any Jedi, could diagnose problems, even if the shipboard computer wasn't functioning. He knew how to bypass systems and tinker with a sublight engine
. But this was way over his head.
"I can try to find the contact point for the device," he said. "If only we could contact the Temple and someone could talk me through it!"
But there was no comm service in hyperspace.
"We can send a distress signal to the Temple," Siri said. "We should at least do that, so they know we're in trouble."
Even if they can't help us. Obi-Wan knew exactly what Siri would not say.
She leaned over and sent the distress signal.
Taly was flipping through diagrams on the screen. "Let me study this schematic for awhile."
Taly leaned closer to concentrate. They watched as he studied diagrams and readouts. Then he turned around. "Uh, guys? Would you mind not hovering? It's not helping my concentration."
Obi-Wan crossed to another datascreen. He and Siri went over the same information as Taly.
"I don't know what to do," Obi-Wan confided to her. "I could go over this information a thousand times, and I don't think I could figure it out."
"You'll think of something," Siri said. "Or I will, or Taly will."
"We have two hours," Obi-Wan said.
Time seemed to creep, but suddenly, an hour had passed. Obi-Wan tried not to look at the chrono on the instrument panel, but the seconds ticked by in his head. Taly had his head in his hands.
"There's one thing we can try," Taly finally said. "Disrupt the reversion process during the last cycle and reverse it. Then go forward again, but this time, switch over to auxiliary power. "
"In other words, you'd activate the explosion, then cancel it, and hope it doesn't reactivate in time," Obi-Wan said.
"But we have no way of knowing how fast it will re-arm," Siri pointed out. "We could blow ourselves up."
"That's the danger," Taly conceded.
Obi-Wan and Siri exchanged a glance.
"At least Taly's plan gives us a chance," Obi-Wan said.
Taly balled up his hands into fists. "I should be able to figure this out! I should be able to dismantle it!"
Obi-Wan put his hand on his shoulder. "Taly, it's all right. It's very ingenious. Very detailed. None of us can dismantle it."
"Let's wait until the last possible minute, to be sure we can't come up with another idea. Then we can follow through," Siri proposed. "Agreed?"
"Agreed," Obi-Wan said.
Taly nodded, his face pale.
It was a gamble they could pay for with their lives, and they knew it.
They had nothing left to try.
Taly sat in the far side of the cockpit. He had accessed the holomap and was simply flicking through space quadrants, one after the other, staring at the light pulses that indicated planets and moons.
Siri had disappeared from the cockpit. She had been staring at the datascreen. She had climbed down into the engine bay. She had gone over operations manuals. She had not come up with anything. Obi-Wan knew she felt just as helpless as he did. They weren't used to feeling this way.
He went searching for her. She was curled up in the cargo hold, on the floor, wrapped in a blanket. Without a word she opened the blanket so Obi-Wan could slide next to her. It was cold. He was reminded of the early morning hours they spent in the cave, watching the sun come up.
"I think we've hit something we can't solve," Siri said. "That's not supposed to happen."
"Yoda would say that Jedi aren't infallible. We are only well prepared."
"Well prepared, we are," Siri said gently in Yoda-speak. "Infallible, we are not."
They laughed softly.
"When the moment comes, we'll be together," Obi-Wan said.
He put out his hand. Siri slipped hers into it. At her touch, something moved between them, a current that felt alive.
At last he felt what it was like to touch her. He realized that he'd been thinking about it for days. Maybe for years. She wound her fingers around his, strong but gentle, just as he knew she would. He could feel the ridge of callus on her palm from lightsaber training, but the skin on her fingers was soft. Softness and strength. He'd known he would feel that.
Something broke free inside him. He felt filled up with his feeling, even though he couldn't name it. He couldn't dare to name it. Yet it was suddenly more real than anything in his life. More real than the danger they were in. More real than the Jedi.
"Siri ."
Her voice was a whisper. "I feel it, too."
She turned her face to his. Her eyes were brimming with tears. She half-laughed, half-cried. "Isn't this funny? Isn't this the strangest thing?"
"No," Obi-Wan said. "This has always been there. I just never wanted to see it. Since that first time I spoke to you, when you were so angry at me for leaving the Jedi," Obi-Wan said. "You were eating a piece of fruit. You just kept chewing and staring at me, as though I didn't matter."
Siri laughed. "I remember. I was out to get you. I wanted to make you angry."
"You made me furious. You always knew how to do that."
"I know. And you were always so right. So fair. You made me furious, too. Lots of times."
"And then we became friends."
"Good friends."
"And now," Obi-Wan said, hardly daring to breathe, "what are we?"
"On a doomed ship," Siri said. "So I guess the question is, what would we have been?"
She tightened her grip on his hand. She leaned forward, and put her lips against his cheek. She didn't kiss him. She just rested there. In that instant Obi-Wan felt something: a connection that bound him to her, no matter what. Siri. He wanted to say her name out loud. He wanted to never move from this cold floor. He wanted to touch the ends of her shimmersilk hair and breathe in the scent that came off her skin.
"Whatever happens," she whispered against his cheek, her lips warm and soft, softer than he could ever imagine, "I'll remember this."
CHAPTER 14
Qui-Gon piloted the pod to the nearest landing available, a spaceport moon aptly named Haven. The bounty hunters tried a pursuit, but they weren't very determined and it was soon clear that they didn't regard the Jedi as much of a threat. They had somewhere to get to that was vastly more important. Bounty hunters were always concerned most with finishing the job and receiving their payments.
Qui-Gon and Adi sat at a table in a dingy café called The Landing Lights. They had tried to contact the Temple, but a meteor storm in the upper atmosphere at the spaceport had temporarily cut all HoloNet communication and grounded the ships. They had managed to procure a ship, a fast star cruiser with a pilot who would cheerfully do anything for the Jedi. It was fueled and ready to go. The only trouble was, they had no clue as to where they were going. If all had gone well, Obi-Wan and Siri had caught the freighter and were on their way to Coruscant with Taly. Their Padwans could even be waiting for them to be in touch.
"Well, we didn't learn much by boarding that ship," Adi said. "Was it worth it?"
"We acquired the tiniest bits of information," Qui-Gon said. "But with this last one, we might be able to put the puzzle together."
"M-T-G," Adi said. "A meeting."
"Exactly. So we can assume that all twenty targets will be present."
"Twenty planetary leaders at one meeting," Adi mused. "That could be any morning at the Senate. How can we possibly pin it down?"
"I don't think the meeting is at the Senate," Qui-Gon said. "Remember that Raptor said if he cancelled the mission, he'd head back to the Core? If the mission was on Coruscant, that wouldn't make sense." Qui-Gon glanced up at the display monitor overhead. "Interference is cleared. We can contact the Temple."
He reached for his comlink. "Let's find out what Jocasta Nu has to say." Qui-Gon quickly contacted her. Her crisp voice greeted him in seconds.
"Qui-Gon, it's about time you contacted the Temple." Jocasta Nu's tone never failed to make Qui-Gon feel like a disobedient student. "Are you aware that your Padawan has sent a distress signal from deep space?"
"No." Qui-Gon exchanged a worried glance with Adi. "From where?"
/> "It is not my job to interpret distress signals," Madame
Nu said huffily. "However, from what I understand, the signal was sent from hyperspace. We have been unable to track whatever ship it was sent from. It's not a registered ship."
"They aren't on the freighter," Qui-Gon said to Adi worriedly.
"Now, I suggest you tell me why you are contacting me." "Adi Gallia and I are on the trail of a team of bounty hunters that are headed by a leader named Magus. They are set to assassinate twenty planetary leaders at a meeting." "Twenty! That's rather ambitious."
"They are five very capable assassins. Do you have any background on Magus?"
"Magus . . . I know that name. One moment." Qui-Gon waited, knowing that Madame Nu was accessing her vast store of knowledge. All Jedi had access to the Archives, but Madame Nu had a gift for interpreting unrelated facts, as well as an unbelievable memory for names. Once she heard a name, she never forgot it. "Yes, Magus has done work for the Corporate Alliance in the past. Nothing illegal. But we suspect him of being a secret assassin. If you could confirm that, we could put him on the Galactic Apprehend List."
The Corporate Alliance! Of course. With the devious Passel Argente as Alliance Magistrate, the organization had changed from one that promoted good business relations to one that used trickery and intimidation to extend its power. But would they go so far as to back an assassination plot?
"I should be able to confirm that very soon. Now can you check on interplanetary meetings within the next five days?"
"Master Qui-Gon Jinn," Jocasta Nu said in her firmest voice, "are you aware how many interplanetary meetings there are every day in the galaxy? Hundreds, at least. Why, on Coruscant alone . . ."
"You can exclude Coruscant. And any planets in the Core. Let's start with any meeting that would concern the Corporate Alliance. And . . . my guess is it will take place in some sort of high-security location. Somewhere so safe that the leaders will forgo their usual security measures."
"All right, then. That helps. Somewhat." Qui-Gon could picture Madame Nu's thin-lipped frown. "Let's start with the treaty database . . . yes. Hmm. No, that wouldn't .. . perhaps . . . no. No, no, maybe? Let me try . . . wait . . . this is a possibility. Yes, yes, I think this is definitely a solid possibility. It's not an official meeting — not recorded, but we pick up things here and there. It's hard to keep a high-level meeting completely secret. Twenty planetary leaders, all heads of the largest worlds in their systems. They have various grievances against the Corporate Alliance and are considering a twenty-systemwide ban against conducting any business in the Alliance. They are trying to pressure Passel Argente, I imagine."