Complete Detachment (Star Wars Prequel SI)

[9adam4]

We went to one of the only 'dry' Mon Calamari restaurants in the district, a place that specialized in cooking their planet's dishes for a non-native palate. Each table was screened-off for the privacy of its diners. Once the large steaming plate was delivered, along with two heavy pitchers of flavored water, the servers left us to finish the meal in peace.

"Not had this before?" I asked Olanna as I grabbed the serrated cutlery, slicing into a flank of some aquatic lizard. It had been steeped in a strong, tangy sauce that I could smell as I plopped a thick slice onto her plate before taking a larger one for myself.

She swallowed her misgivings and gamely picked up the meat by her fingers. "I wasn't aware that humans could eat their food."

"Not the way they usually prepare it, no," I pointed out. "They don't use heat; they pickle it. Way too acidic and tough for human digestion." I bit into the tender flank, and absent-mindedly reached for an eel. "But some enterprising soul figured out boiling it in an alkaline bath. Then you just need to add enough sugar to-"

"Obi." The interruption was firm if not loud. "Enough stalling. Explain, please."

I nodded, taking a minute to try the punch, which was heavy in citrus. "What is the Jedi Order teaching us?"

Olanna perked up immediately; she was always game for when a teacher used the Socratic method to make a point. "How to better commune with the Force, and how to use our gifts to help others throughout the Republic."

"A very orthodox answer," I acknowledged with a smile. "How do you think I might clarify it?"

My apprentice frowned. "How… do I think you would adjust what I said? Something cynical about the crumbling Republic, I would imagine."

I laughed at that. "Right." I took another bite, and Olanna did the same. Despite her initial skeptical looks at the seafood, she was clearly enjoying it. "The Jedi Order teaches its children, initiates, padawan… even its knights… to fit into the large organization it encompasses. An organization that does amazing work, by the way. If I land on a random farming world off the established hyperways and the people there can speak to me in Galactic Standard, chances are that's the Education Corps at work."

"You don't have to sell me on that," Olanna reminded me. "I thought I'd be training to join them by this time next year."

"And you'd have been an excellent teacher, no doubt. You are," I send a wave of approval and saw her positive reaction under my praise. "But the obvious limitation to the Jedi Order's training, is that they are assuming the persistence of the Order. They are training Jedi - and other Force-sensitives that join the Corps - to be one additional cog in their large machine."

She nodded. "We all receive the fundamentals, but then very quickly we specialize. Consulars get different training than Sentinels. Workers for the Diplomatic core don't train the same as Templars."

"And many skills and whole areas of knowledge," I continued this line of thought, "are carefully set aside and reserved for only those deemed to need them. The less savory aspects of our history, for example, or the mental exercises used by the Seers."

"You don't agree with this apportionment?" she chewed thoughtfully the innards of a shellfish.

"If their assumptions are correct, it makes sense." I met her eyes solemnly. "But I had my Visions. A world where the Jedi Order is absent, where a few lone Jedi carry whatever they happen to know, or can learn, to the next generation. Where a Jedi isn't working within a network of his peers and with the resources of the Republic, but surviving entirely on his own, with what resources and allies he can cultivate."

"You were looking to train, not for the way the Galaxy is, but for what it will become," Olanna smiled in comprehension. "But… aren't we working to change that? To preserve the Galaxy, and the Order, from the destruction you saw?"

I shrugged, acknowledging her point. "A lot of my time and training has been spent working on skills and knowledge that I think might be needed for the conflict itself. Methods of fighting that bypass the traditional defenses of Force users, mental skills strong enough to identify and combat manipulation and clouding by the Dark Side."

"Why does that involve the lower levels of Coruscant?" She seemed surprised when looking down at the large dish and realizing there were only a couple of morsels left; I nodded my assent at her and she happily scooped them up.

"I needed an outlet where I could separate my actions from their emotional impact on my Jedi identity. And where I could hone even invasive mental skills without rebuke from the Masters."

Her expression screwed up again. "You're violating peoples' minds."

"Very much so." In response to this omission, I felt a wave of alarm leak out of Olanna past her shielding. "This upsets you?"

In her seat, she seemed to shrink in on herself before saying, "You know what's been happening with Partha. Now I find out my Master's doing the same thing, to those who can't fight back."

I shook my head. "Hardly the same thing. I've been careful to limit my exercises to the same ends where the Jedi Order consider a Force Suggestion to be acceptable. Diffusing violence, misdirecting from my own mission, augmenting a compelling argument, bolstering will over misgivings."

"And yet you felt the need to hide it from your Master. You must have known he wouldn't approve."

I shrugged. "I only recently told Qui-Gon the details of my Visions."

"I'm glad he got you to be less secretive. The Council should have the opportunity to work based on the information you have."

"And the Sith now can, as well," I quipped.

"We're one for one in dealing with Sith Lords," she sipped her punch with a tight-lipped smile.

I shook my head. "The point is that my training is focused on, not what an average Jedi living here in the Republic will face, but what I have reason to believe that I, specifically, will face. I may need to rethink how I go about that training considering where I am now, but I still consider it important."

Olanna nodded. "When we return from Ilum, we can consider how to go about this."

I frowned. "Ilum? Have you given up on attuning Maul's crystal, then? Once you finish your initiate tests, we can -"

"I've spoken with the Council of Seers," she interrupted me, her voice low in volume but firm. "They agree, you need to travel to Ilum and confront your Visions directly."

"You… spoke to the Seers about me, by yourself? As an initiate, not even a Padawan yet?" I scowled at her, surprised.

Finishing her cup, she shrugged assent. "Qui-Gon, Anakin, and I went to speak to them. Although the petition was mine." She met my eyes, and I felt the warmth emanating from her like a blanket. "Master, your newly unlocked memories, the events on Naboo - you've been running at full speed away from them, doing everything other than addressing and making peace with what has happened."

"What is there to make peace with?" I asked, genuinely uncertain at what she meant. "Qui-Gon survived; we won the battle. The Trade Federation is in shambles."

"And so that memory is filed away in you, directly beside the one where Qui-Gon dies at the hands of a Sith Lord. You remember a dozen battles won by Adi Gallia, set next to a world where Darth Maul ends her life and deeds." She held my eyes and mind more firmly, letting me feel her concern for me. "A world where you fall in love with Shmi Skywalker," she pushed through my feeble protest, "is parallel with one where she remains on Tatooine until her violent death. The incongruities are starting to affect you, Obi-wan."

"Your trials," I reminded her. "You need to finish your time as an initiate so you can be officially declared a Padawan."

"Everything is already arranged," she insisted. "My cohort is undertaking its last two tests this coming week, and the week after. I will pass both, and then we will head to Ilum."

Sighing, I gave her an appraising look. "Who is the Master, here, and who is the Apprentice?"

Calmly, and with no trace of humor, she responded. "You told me what you needed me to be, Obi-wan." She rose from the table, ready to go, and I rose with her. "I remind you again: don't set me to a task that you don't want fulfilled. You'll get what you ask for."

 

[9adam4]

The elegantly curved blade sparked as it hit my chest, the accompanying sting of pain hardly registering as I acknowledged defeat.

"You need to narrow your focus, my young Knight," Master (not quite yet Count) Dooku announced as he deactivated his training blade. "In a duel, your insistence on separating a part of your mind from the task at hand is dulling your reflexes. Your enemy needs to be all that you think about."

I nodded. "I'm not certain that's possible, Master, but I will continue to try."

"I know you will. Avoid that language in front of Master Yoda, however. He bristles at the word 'try.'" The older man stepped to the side to bring water to his lips, and I noticed the sweat dripping from his face.

"Thank you for inviting me to spar with you today," I began, "but I wasn't expecting this opportunity. Might I inquire what prompted it?"

Dooku nodded; I felt his sense of import swell up as he explained. "Following the matters on Naboo and Kamino, several of us on the Council have decided that your Visions should be looked at more closely. Certain measures are being taken to address their more… concerning elements."

"I am glad, Master. Much of what happens in the next few years is certainly concerning."

"Particularly," the Master continued, "regarding your choices in deviating from what you describe." He emanated disapproval, but gently, as though guiding an errant child rather than addressing an opponent.

"I know there are arguments that Visions are the will of the Force. But if you mean to imply that I should have allowed Anakin's mother to remain on Tatooine -"

"Not at all. Although your… intimacy with the Skywalker woman has not gone unnoticed." His emotions there were mixed, at least as far as I could sense. "No, we're concerned with your…" he swept his gesture towards my lightsaber "... combat readiness. The future that you recount seems to hinge heavily, in several places, on your skill with the blade."

"Not that alone, though," I pointed out. "It was always Obi-wan's overall awareness and adaptability that -"

"Why do you do that?" Dooku asked abruptly.

"Do what?"

"Refer to yourself in the third person when describing your Visions."

"I don't always," I grasped.

"No, but it's happened often enough to be commented on." The older man had some sort of suspicion, i could tell, but he closed down on it with an act of will. "That's beside the point. What I'm telling you, Obi-wan, is that your Visions are heavily skewed towards these clashes, and you need to win them.

He stalked over to where his outer robe hung in the training area, and removed a data chit. "We are not arguing you about this, so we had it written into an official mission."

I suppressed a glower at him as I took the small piece of memory. "For how long?" I asked, simply.

"Years, probably. As the Mission states, you will train a minimum of three hours a day, every day, until you best me."

"The could very well take years," I agreed.

"It will take three months, at most," Dooku contradicted.

"Then how -"

"You are then assigned to train with Master Unduli, three hours per day, until you best her. Then Master Tiin, Master Mundi, Master Yoda, and finally Master Windu."

The final name on the list was too much. "He'll kill me in less than three hours!"

"If you began with him today, this would most likely be true," Dooku agreed, returning to his place at the sparring mat. "Hence the sequence of partners. Each should provide you with sufficient skill and endurance to survive training with the next." I began to voice another objection, but he cut me off. "We can discuss this more when we have time. For now, there is still two hours and forty minutes left for today." His smile was toothy, implying some savagery. "The clock is only ticking when our swords are moving. Breaks don't count."

It was a long three hours, and my blade never touched him once.

I propped myself against the floor when he finally called us done for the day, and asked, "Isn't this going to cut into your ability to spend time managing your estates off-world?"

"Most matters can be handled from here," Dooku explained. "And, if needed, you and Olanna can accompany me to Serenno. Just as I am going with you to Ilum in two weeks' time."

"This will constrain our ability to take other missions, then," I pointed out.

"Yes, if the mission is long enough that it would negatively impact our sessions." He pulled his outer robe off the wall and donned it. "Although urgent enough matters may take precedence, many of the items included in your extended timeline may be reassigned to other Knights. You are far from the only Jedi in the Order, after all."

I acknowledged this as I pulled on my own robe. "Thank you, Master, for investing so much in me."

Dooku nodded respectfully, and then added, "If you are not otherwise obligated, I have an appointment in the morning that I would invite you and your Padawan to attend." At my affirmative nod, he continued, "Senator Palpatine and I have continued working to track down older relics of significance to the history of the Order and the Sith. You have expressed your own interest in this, I know, and the Senator has suggested that this should be encouraged. I agree."

"Does this meeting concern anything in particular?" I allowed my curiosity to motivate my question.

"Indeed. A holocron, seized in a raid on smugglers."

"Intact?" I asked excitedly.

"He believes so," the old Master said, "but he has asked me to examine it directly. You will join us?"

"Of course," I agreed. "I am sure Olanna and I can learn a lot from you two."

 

[9adam4]

**(To) 0B-1.**

**(To) 0B-1.**

**(To) 0B-1 (from) R2-D2. Acknowledge.**

I finally looked up from my bed where I had been slowly drifting to sleep. Embarrassingly, it wasn't until my droid friend extended his greeting that I recognized the beeps as his attempt to address me. It had been a very long day, and he could sometimes hang out in my quarters for days at a time without a word. "Sorry, Artoo. What is it?"

**R2-D2 submits a resource requisition.**

"Of course. What do you need?"

**$75,000 Republic credits.**

I blinked. "That's a lot of money. What do you need it for?'

**That information will be provided in the future. Query: Resource requisition approved?**

I blinked again. I couldn't remember Artoo ever stonewalling me on information. "Approved, sure. You have access to my accounts already, though."

**Removing funds obligated to a different function is not advised Expenditures in excess of 0.5% liquid assets should be coordinated between managing units.** He made a squeal indicating he was accessing the comm net. **Authorization acknowledged. Assets transferred.**

"You're welcome. Ah, does that mean you've been spending smaller amounts without asking?'

**Affirmative.**

"On what?" The droid hardly ever left the Temple… as far as I knew.

**That information will be provided in the future. Informing 0B-1 at this interval would reduce probability of success from 28.7% to 11.4%. Unacceptable.**

This was making less and less sense. "Artoo, you're saying I'd stop you if I knew what you were doing?"

**Negative. Further information will not be provided at this interval.**

"All right. Good night, then."

I took longer than usual to fall asleep, as I tried to think of what Artoo might be doing. The droid was not what I expected, at all. I'd always thought of mechanicals as just humans in a different sort of body, but working with them had taught me that there was more to it than that. They experienced and thought about the world in a fundamentally different way.

In the end, though, I trusted R2-D2. Of all the characters from the series, he was one of the few that clearly and unambiguously stood on the side of the protagonists the entire time.

It was that trust that finally grounded me enough to get some sleep.

*****

"What do you know about Sith holocrons?" I asked Olanna as we boarded the flyer. I'd been to Palpatine's personal quarters before when working with him on political matters, and Dooku assured me that they were just as palatial as I remembered.

Olanna considered me and the question before answering. "As much as any initiate," she offered. "When we're first introduced to the Jedi holocrons in the Archive, they warn us to respect the gatekeepers within, and that knowledge of the Force is restricted for good reason. The implications are obvious."

"Implications?" I prompted.

"Teachers like to pretend it's a big secret, as though they'll caution us about falling to the Dark Side every lesson, and it will never have occurred to us that it must have actually happened before." She shrugged. "There are stories. A Sith holocron would have a Sith's personality embedded in it as well as their secrets, influencing anyone who uses it. 'The fastest path to the Dark Side is to seek it out.'"

I nodded. "That's probably a good lesson to teach initiates."

Olanna raised an eyebrow. "But you'd teach a different lesson to more experienced Jedi?"

I shrugged. "Knowledge doesn't corrupt, and neither does Force Persuasion. If a Sith holocron makes more Sith, it does so by teaching them something that makes them decide to become Sith. Secrets like that tend to lose their power once they are out in the open."

"So you think the reason why Sith holocrons guard this information, is that the corrupting influence is strongest when the information is studied by an individual and in secret?" She was doubtful of this idea.

"If an idea could corrupt by being spread broadly," I pointed out, "the Sith have certainly had the tools at their disposal to do so. Light is an excellent disinfectant for evil ideas."

"Unless the Sith didn't see the Dark Side influence as 'corruption,' but as power. And they wanted to limit access to that power."

"That… actually makes a lot of sense," I admitted.

"So that's where we're going? To see Palpatine's holocron?"

"To see the one he acquired, yes," I agreed. "He has intimate connections with banking interests on several Core worlds, which I understand to be how he is able to call on such significant resources."

Olanna paused for a moment before she spoke again. "I don't like him," she finally said, quietly, watching me carefully to gauge my reaction.

This surprised me; I didn't know anyone who disliked the Senator other than his political opponents. "What don't you like?"

She swallowed. "Have you followed his political trajectory? How he came to be Senator, to wield the power he does in the Senate?" I shook my head, and Olanna explained, "Each event has a reasonable explanation on its own, or at least a plausible one. But taken together, they create an image of a man more driven by ambition than anything else. And willing to ruin lives to get it."

"I'll look into it more," I agreed, "but have you considered the selection bias at play here?"

"You mean, the fact that I'm looking at the one person who ended up on top, and pointing out it's improbable for one person to win so often?" I was impressed how frequently she was following my reasoning. "That may be. I guess it's just that… well…" she sighed. "His demeanor doesn't match his results. It's… suspicious."

"I think he's just pragmatic. He separates the business of politics from personal animosity."

"As you say, Master," my apprentice-to-be concluded, respectfully.

The hired flyer dropped us on a sweeping balcony, where Palpatine and Dooku awaited our arrival with brandy glasses in hand.

 

[9adam4]

Two things surprised me about the holocron when I first laid eyes on it, set innocuously on the table in Palpatine's parlor like an ornate conversation piece.

The first was that the carvings on the surface of the pyramidal structure were modern Aurebesh letters and represented, as far as I could tell, only modern Galactic languages. In the four I could read, the message was the same: "Open to gain your greatest desire."

The second was that the glowing structure itself bore no signs of age. It wasn't worn, faded, or cracked; the metal that formed the outer surface looked identical to a modern steel alloy often used in tools and shipping containers.

In short, this chronicle didn't look like it was cast out into the forgetting Galaxy by some long-dead Sith Lord in the early days of the Republic. It could have been made yesterday.

"What does it mean, 'your greatest desire'?" Olanna breathed. She eyed the small shape like it was a live animal rearing to strike her.

Dooku's gaze was similarly wary, but more assessing, as he answered, "Power. It is all the Sith desire, and they assume others desire it above all else as they do."

"An understandable perspective, my friend, but not wholly correct," Palpatine chided gently. "In my own studies, I have found many different Sith have very different desires. To some, power is no more than a means to some greater end, to fulfil some deeper need. For love, or security, or to abate fear, or gain revenge." His own measured gaze at the holocron betrayed no hint of concern or fear, only curiosity. "But it is those with a naked lust for power that have risen to great heights in the past, and clashed so colorfully with their Jedi counterparts. And so it is those that the Jedi best remember."

Silence fell, for a moment, before I changed the subject. "Have you opened it yet?"

Dooku shook his head. "I tried earlier, just a brief sending of power as I would any Jedi holocron. It rebuffed me."

"In my visions," I shared, "it took a Dark Force-wielder to open a holocron made with the Dark Side. Or a strong enough show of emotions by a Force-user."

Palpatine looked to the Jedi Master. "Could you manage that?"

Dooku scowled, his eyes not leaving the artifact. "I could, but I will not. My own struggles with the Dark Side are a fresh wound. Perhaps Master Windu-"

"I must continue to ask your discretion in this matter," Palpatine cut off his suggestion. "Most on the Council would take a dim view of how this was acquired, legal though it was."

"Then we are at an impasse," I said simply. "I have never, and will never, allow myself to channel Dark Side energy. It's a bright line I've set for myself. Which means that no one here can - "

"More!" The tiny cloaked figure stood revealed on the platform, surrounded by glowing red energy as the petals of the pyramid folded downward. "Open to it! Show me the full power of your deepest desire!"

"Do what?" I immediately retreated into my mind, reaction speed increasing as I centered myself, assuring that no stray emotion from me had triggered the construct.

But the hologram didn't look at me. I turned my eyes and senses to Olanna, who held the Gatekeeper's attention with full focus as though levitating a delicate object.

I felt the energy that Olanna was sending into the holocron, and I sensed nothing of the destructive Dark Side emotions in it. No hostility, no fear. But neither was it free of emotion altogether. She had a hunger, a deep need for something, although I could not see the object of it. I watched in fascination as she opened herself more fully to the fell thing, letting it feel the deep intensity of her craving. Whatever it was she was drawn toward more deeply than I had ever wanted anything.

"What is happening?" the Senator asked in confusion, but both Dooku and I were stunned into silence, at least for the moment.

"Yes; yes!" The figure cackled in open delight. "That is more than enough. You, young Jedi initiate, have demonstrated that you possess the seed of greatness: the first element that distinguishes those destined to wield the full power of the Force. There is something that you truly want."

I allowed my protective instincts to wash over my surface without affecting the calm underneath. Whomever this Sith was, Olanna was far too young to be faced with the task of confronting him. I raised my hand, ready to forcefully close the holocron and break the link -

But Dooku's hand on my arm held me back. Meeting his gaze, he nodded, and I understood his meaning with no words exchanged. I needed to trust my apprentice - to save her if something went very wrong, but to allow this to play out for as long as she safely maintained it.

"What is your name, young one?" The cloaked figure asked.

"Olanna," she said simply.

"The Padawan to Obi-wan Kenobi. We have met before."

She frowned. "You mean, I have met the Sith who made this holocron? When?"

The gatekeeper cackled again. "In due time. The other presences in the room, then, are Kenobi, yes? And… the Count of Serenno?"

"This isn't just a repository," I interjected, "it's an intelligence. Olanna, you are in danger."

The girl turned to me. "But you said a Sith holocron couldn't corrupt, only teach. Do you have so little faith in me, Master?"

"Indeed," the image intoned. "Obi-wan clearly thought that he would be the one to access this. Worry, not, young one. With the knowledge contained herein, your master will see your true worth, will give you the faith that you deserve."

"Fascinating," Palpatine breathed, but his interest was lost in the intense emotions of the Force-users on the room.

Plucking the holocron from the table, Olanna held it up to her sight, but looked through it to meet my gaze. "That may be true, gatekeeper," she smiled, "but you have lost sight of one thing. Obi-wan may not have sufficient faith in me, but I have complete faith in him. At his word, I will destroy this holocron without hesitation."

"Ah, perhaps just close it?" Palpatine asked in a panicked voice. "It's quite irreplaceable…"

The cloaked figure gave another cackle. "Your master will allow you to learn from me, because his desire is also found in this chronicle. When you have proven yourself worthy, you will be given access to everything herein, including my plans and how to find me."

"And who," Olanna asked, "are you?"

"I am the ruler of the Galaxy," he said simply. "The one who sent Darth Maul to kill Adi Gallia, and arranged for his defeat at the hands of Kit Fisto and Qui-Gon Jinn. The one who assured that Anakin Skywalker would be found on Tatooine and trained as a Jedi. Who arranged for the Jedi to take on the burden of a Clone Army."

"You're the Emperor," I found myself saying.

"I will be," the cloaked figure agreed, turning to me directly. "I am Darth Sidious. And I assure you that this is the only way you will learn what you have forgotten in time."

 

[9adam4]

"Thank you," I addressed the droid that brought my requested beverage in a glass tumbler. It was an unassuming humanoid unit of a design I didn't immediately recognize, but from its build and appearance I assumed it was a protocol model priced at a large amount.

The four of us were seated in an observation room with a panoramic view of the uneven residential structures in this residential area of Coruscant. The comfortable wingback chairs were arranged in an arc to allow us to see each other as well as the scene that formed the focal point of the room. There were a few moments of silence as each of us sipped our own beverage, pointedly not looking back into the parlor where the holocron again sat, reverted to its closed shape.

"I will, of course," the Senator finally spoke, "have the artifact destroyed immediately. Unless you would prefer that we allow the Jedi Council do so."

My eyes narrowed in surprise despite the rising alarm I had felt in Palpatine since the gatekeeper had spoken to Olanna. Before I could respond, though, Dooku spoke. "Why, Sheev? All that happened today was that we confirmed what we already knew: this is a living chronicle of the knowledge and secrets of a Sith Lord."

The senator shook his head. "Ancient secrets from millennia-dead tyrants are one matter. The device of a living Sith Lord is quite another. And this… 'Darth Sidious' was very clear that he would only instruct young Chion, here. The risk is unreasonable."

I asked, "You would allow us to turn the holocron over to the Jedi Council, over your earlier objections that they will investigate how you acquired it?"

Palpatine shook his head. "If you insist that the Council see and destroy it, then I would ask you to omit mention of me in your account of how you received the chronicle. I can even arrange to have it placed somewhere for you to discover it, if this would help assuage your conscience." He looked at Dooku. "I would rather attempt to destroy it myself, using methods that I have found in other writings. But in deference to your aid in these matters and our continued working relationship -"

"Did he tell the truth?" Olanna's her eyes were firmly locked on mine. "Are the plans of the Sith mastermind behind recent events, really what you need to prevent the rise of the Empire?"

I shook my head. "There's no way to know that. Quite frankly, I can't remember what it is that I can't remember. And if this Darth Sidious really is behind it all, as he claims, then I strongly doubt his offer seriously represents something he believes would hurt him." I thought through the possibilities. "Either he's lying about the holocron including his plans, or he doesn't believe that you will unlock the holocron to gain access to those plans, or he thinks that he can deal with us even if we learn them."

Dooku asked, "Were your visions stripped of every mention of this figure? Of the Galactic Emperor?"

"Not exactly. The Emperor features prominently," I explained, "but his identity and origin are both blocked out. I have memories of Vader speaking with him, and I can even see him die at Vader's hand, decades from now. But when I try to focus on his face or name, or retrace how he rose to power, I get nothing." When Sidious had introduced himself, I hoped that I might have a return of some portion of my memories, like I did with Darth Maul. So far, no such breakthrough.

"I can do this," Olanna said quietly, and I realized her eyes had never left mine. "I can learn from this… monster, pass his tests, without breaking faith with the Order. I know I can."

This prompted another moment of silence, as the two older men pretended they weren't intruding in a moment between me and my student while I considered Olanna's plea. Because that's what her statement was. She was pleading with me to demonstrate my trust in her by allowing her to take on this danger, to face this risk and prove herself pure of intention and strong of will.

The truth was, when I separated myself from my visceral fear of losing her, I actually did believe she could weather this. Since I rescued her, Olanna had always focused on doing the most good, on helping others and benefitting the Galaxy as the true purpose of the Jedi Order. Whatever desire the artificial Sidious had seen in her that made her a candidate for his lessons (and I had my suspicions as to what it might be), I was certain that it reflected those same beliefs.

"She can," I finally said, breaking from her gaze, turning to Master Dooku and his immediate reaction of skepticism. "Olanna is capable of this. I think we should let her try."

But Palpatine interjected again, indignant. "She is a child," he hissed. "How can you allow this?"

Dooku answered the Senator. "In the eyes of the Jedi, she ceases to be a child when she passes her Initiate Trials. A Padawan, while still under the watchful eyes of her Master, is nonetheless an adult, and expected to make adult decisions. And," he looked appraisingly between me and her, "this is the sort of decision that we expect a Padawan and her Master to make together. So, if Olanna and Obi-wan believe that she should attempt this… I will not stand in their way."

Sheev Palpatine's alarm had not decreased significantly, but I felt his resolve crumbling under the visible agreement of the other three in the room. "All right. I… will freely admit to being very excited by what information will be produced. So, despite my misgivings, I will allow this. Ah, Miss Chion, do I have your word that you will safeguard my property, and return periodically to describe what you have learned from it?"

After an approving glance from me, Olanna nodded.

"Then," he sighed, "I suppose we should return to the other room, and see what more the hologram has to say."

 

[9adam4]

I studied the Jedi Master in front of me, his pale curved saber held in a classic forward fencing stance. Dooku was a skilled Form II fighter, believed by some to be a perfect practitioner of one of the most ancient styles. With my own developing mastery of Form III, I could likely hold him off for some time, but unless I could goad him into an over-extension, in time he would certainly -

"You're overthinking it!" Dooku bellowed, coming at me with a rapid series of center and lower cuts. "Stop analyzing how to fight, and fight!"

I reflexively moved into a Soresu guard, minimizing my footwork and deflecting his cuts sloppily. This venue was very different than our last session in the Temple training grounds. An open courtyard was an extravagant luxury on Coruscant, but Palpatine had secured for himself one open enough to allow us room to duel. Out of the way in one corner, the Senator quietly chatted with Olanna, who listened intently even while her attention flickered to the holocron she now held like a talisman. She -

I deflected the thrust enough to take only a glancing blow to one shoulder, which still managed to sting horribly. "Focus! On! Me!" The words from the Master were unexpectedly Force-filled, a Push reflected in his unceasingly aggressive attacks. "You will never be the swordsman that you must be unless you learn to put yourself in the moment! Enough of this!"

Dooku thumbed the contact of his specially-build practice blade and tossed it aside, drawing his real dueling weapon in one smooth motion.

My eyes widened in surprise. "Master Dooku, are you -"

"I have never liked training with those things. They destroy the immediacy of the duel. And that's exactly what you need a lesson in." He nodded to my own lightsaber; I quickly opened the hilt and reset the focusing crystals to their normal settings.

As my own blade's blue mirrored his own, he took his stance. "Defend yourself," he said simply, and then began.

I had trained with fully-powered blades before, and I knew the unspoken rules. Focus on disarming or tripping up your opponent; telegraph body strikes so they can be fully deflected. The Jedi Master in front of me did none of this. He extended quickly into face and body blows, both side-strikes and thrusts, that could easily be fatal if not properly countered. And as soon as he saw I was adequately deflecting these, he varied his footing, syncopating with fragmentary beats that kept me off-balance and unable to predict his rhythms. Three quick jabs could be followed by a full thrust, with only my own attunement to the Force affording me the split second to avoid a skewer.

He circled me, probing for weak points, striking without pattern. Again, and again, and again, I deflected, managing an occasional weak riposte that was batted aside with ease. I met his blade with my own over and over, the two flashing in an angry hiss as I turned and angled, guarded and swung, maneuvered and pivoted.

It wasn't until he stepped back, nodding to me in respect and lowering his own blade, that I realized we'd drawn the full attention of my student and our host. Olanna's concern was etched clearly on her face, her grip on the holocron turning her knuckles white. Palpatine just looked mildly worried.

"Much better," Dooku acknowledged, bending to retrieve his discarded practice blade. "That finally merited your full focus."

I frowned as I realized he was right. I wasn't thinking about something else, or even trying to analyze the pattern of Dooku's style. "I had no choice," came my reply, "you might have killed me."

"As would be true in any real confrontation," the Master pointed out. "If a lethal battle is the only one that you can lend your full attention to, Obi-wan, then that is what our sessions must be."

With a sigh, I nodded. "Hopefully, in time, I can put myself in that same state of mind even for practice," I offered as the two spectators approached us.

"A spectacular display," Palpatine began. "I had forgotten how exhilarating it is to watch two masters of the ancient art. The dance of your blades is like poetry."

"A master and a trainee," I corrected him quickly. "But thank you, Senator."

Dooku shook his head. "He is correct, Obi-wan. I did not hold back, just now. Your counterplay was masterful."

"Everyone knows you're good," Olanna agreed. "But your moves were faster than I've seen before. Smoother."

"It didn't feel that way to me," I pointed out. It hadn't felt like anything; I hadn't the mental room to consider it.

"A pity, if it's only possible when your life is on the line," added the Senator, just as a droid servant approached him with a data pad. "Duty calls, I'm afraid. Please excuse me?"

"That's our cue to depart, as well," Dooku explained.

As Palpatine left the courtyard, I turned to my would-be apprentice. "Olanna, could you hail a flyer and hold it for us, please? I want to speak to the Master alone for a minute." She left with an obedient nod, and I turned my attention to the older Jedi. "Are you really comfortable with this? Olanna learning from a creation made by our ultimate adversary?"

"Or someone claiming to be he," the Jedi added with a nod. "Something like this would have happened eventually, if not quite this soon. In fact, had today's meeting gone more to my original expectations, Qui-Gon or I would have discussed this with you anyway."

"Holocrons?" I expressed genuine confusion.

"Tests of will," Dooku clarified. "It's officially frowned-upon by the Council, but most Jedi who take an active interest in training Padawans quietly agree. Encountering the Dark Side, whether in the form of abandoned Sith temples or corrupted Force-users, is part of what crafts a Jedi into a Knight."

"So my own encounters under Qui-Gon were not accidental," I mused.

"Nor were they unique. We seek out these opportunities for our pupils, for them to face these parts of themselves and resist corruption." He projected a feeling of admiration, remembering something that gave him pride in a past student.

"And what of those who are corrupted? Whose resistance of the Dark Side isn't strong enough?" I thought of Olanna confronting a Sith and shuddered.

"They are not intended to confront it alone," Dooku replied, gently. "As the Apprentice learns, the Master guides and protects. In fact, it is my belief - and some, but not all, share it - that the Padawan should continue until they break, pushed past whatever limits they can, and then brought back."

"Can they always be brought back?" I asked simply, and his silence in response was answer enough. "I'll admit that this talk has made me more worried about Olanna rather than less."

"Good." Dooku smiled. "You often have too little regard for your own situation, the consequences of your actions. Perhaps your duty to young Chion will motivate you to take greater care."

Dooku and I set a time to practice tomorrow and separated. As I climbed into the flyer, Olanna sat with the holocron open on her palm, reading through scrolling text at impressive speed.

From my current sword-teacher's perspective, it wasn't so much a matter of if the holocron would get to her, as when. And yet it was hard to doubt her when she looked up from her reading and I met the steely resolve with which she increasingly approached the goals set for her.

As we made our way back to the Temple, I mentally rearranged my planned activities for what remained of the day. The Council might be kept in the dark about all this, but I needed to hear from Qui-Gon.

 

[9adam4]

It was hard to avoid feeling at least a trace of amusement whenever I saw the surprise on Qui-Gon's face at my latest antics. And although this was more Olana's doing than mine, the perverse satisfaction was still there. Perhaps it was a vestige of the adolescence I had arrived too late to remember.

Olana held the pyramid on her outstretched palm, its crimson glow menacing my former Master as he frowned at it. "If you intend to keep this from the Council," he asked, "why did you bring it with you back here? The Jedi Temple is the last place you could hide such a thing."

"He says," Olana began, "that the holocron won't be noticed by someone unless I want them to see it. And the location of the Temple actually makes this easier, for a reason he says I will learn later."

"Probably the ancient site that the Temple is built over," I pointed out.

She nodded. "That was my guess, too."

"A powerful mind-clouding Sith artifact in the hands of a Jedi initiate. That's not better," Qui-Gon stated with an even tone betraying only a note of exasperation.

"So you think we should tell the Council?" I asked.

"I think you should pull out your blaster and vaporize the bloody thing," he explained. "I don't want the Council to deal with it either. It's poison in the hands of any Jedi."

Olana retracted her arm, clutching the holocron tightly. "You believe that a holocron can corrupt an unwary mind?" she asked.

The Master looked her in the eye. "Wary or unwary, the Dark Side is always there, eager to become central in our lives. All it takes is the decision to accept it, to let it in."

Olana stared back. "I would never do that."

"You already have. Listen." He overrode as she tried to protest. "My fear is not of some sort of telepathic influence. It's that, in choosing to heed the Sith at all, in opening yourself to their teachings and methods, you have provided a door for the Dark Side to enter your mind where once there was none. Lock the door, bar it as strongly as you will… the door is still there."

I shook my head. "The door was always there. Just being open to rational discourse - the willingness to accept your ideas may be wrong - already provides a door for any influence. It's a question of your filters."

Qui-Gon raised a hand in acquiescence. "Don't confuse an analogy with objective truth, Obi-wan. We all see the world in certain ways, and this is a shift that harbinges the Dark Side. If this Darth Sidious thought it was a good idea to provide this holocron, then almost certainly it is a bad idea for us to accept it."

"That's the sort of absolute thinking that I thought you'd repudiated," I rejoined. "Only the Sith are supposed to see things as a stark opposition."

"This is a Sith holocron," he pointed to it. "It is they who make this a matter of direct opposition and place us on opposite sides of a Galactic battle."

"He says the opposite," Olana pointed out, "that it's the Jedi who have insisted on the conflict with the Dark Side, while the Sith have tried to reconcile." She looked to us, her teachers, for a reaction to this claim.

Qui-Gon scowled, but nodded. "That matches what we know, from a certain point of view. But reconciliation for them requires that we abandon the core teachings of the Order."

"And that's why you won't even talk to them about it? Why even the mentioning the teachings of the Sith are forbidden?" Olana looked at the holocron again. "He said that the Jedi are the reason the Sith hide themselves. Why they lie. Because when they told the truth they weren't believed, and when they tried to live openly they were hunted down. Is that true?"

Qui-Gon stood silent, and so I answered her. "That is my understanding, yes."

Olana raised her gaze to mine. "He said it would be this way, Obi. That he was tailoring his message, his accounts, to fit your unique knowledge and the way you view the Sith. To gain both of our trust."

"He told you that?" It was surprisingly forthright. Usually when you spun your message in a certain direction, you didn't admit that's what you were doing.

"So Obi-wan may be his actual target," Qui-Gon mused, as much to himself as to us.

"Then why grant me access?" Olana asked. "If it hadn't opened to me, Obi-wan would have tried to open it eventually."

"It's an odd choice," I agreed. "I am certainly more worried now, with you at risk, than if I had taken this on myself."

Olana's expression showed she was pleased at this - which seemed incongruous with her earlier indignity when I expressed a similar concern. "He must think that we will learn or experience something differently with me studying it. Or maybe he just thinks I'll be easier to influence."

"Few Masters," Qui-Gon pointed out, "follow their Apprentices in falling to the Dark Side. The conflict there tends to cause the Master to retreat into orthodoxy, to take fewer risks. It can be painful to watch."

With a thoughtful look at Olana, I asked Qui-Gon, "Do you at least understand our decision to try this, even if you don't agree?"

Hesitantly, my former Master bowed his head. "Yes. And know that I am here to aid you in any way I can. But I do make two requests." At my nod, he continued. "First, on matters of history and the actions of the Order, do not act on Sidious's claims before speaking with me. I may have insight that contradicts his twisted views. Second," he sighed, glancing toward the door, "don't involve Anakin. He doesn't need to know about this, and he certainly doesn't need the influence of a Sith in his life right now."

"Thank you," I said sincerely. "One other matter."

"Still no." The bandaged Master made to rise, pulling himself up on his staff even as his missing leg almost overbalanced him. "The healers haven't given up, and neither have I. My arm is already responding and they say say there is no reason I can't eventually regain sight in my eye. Your offer is generous, but prosthetics wouldn't ever truly be a part of me."

"Your leg isn't growing back," I pointed out. "Over time, with the incorporation of kyber crystals as a novel power source, you could attune -"

"No," he said again. "Anakin is fitting me with a conventional cybernetic replacement. The Force will do the rest."

"If you change your mind…"

"I won't," he forced a smile, placing his damaged hand, trembling, on my shoulder as he tried to stand tall. "You're a good friend, Obi-wan." And to Olana, "Keep an eye on him while Anakin and I are away."

 

[9adam4]

"Two to go," the cheery, gurgling voice said as the Mon Calamari took a place standing next to me. I recognized her as Vifwherl, an experienced Knight. "This one, and then the weapons test next week. They've come a long way, eh?"

"They have," I agreed. "Which one is yours?"

"Junyo Song, a human male," she beamed with pride. "Best duelist in this year, if not quite the equal of that Zoltran girl. Ah… not to denigrate the other students. You have Chion, after all." She turned her left eye to focus on me without bothering to shift her head.

I nodded. "Olana's quite remarkable. I was surprised no one else had offered to train her."

Vifwherl chortled openly, a surprisingly melodious sound from her water-logged larynx. "Very good, Obi-wan. No use playing dumb about it, though. I'm sure she's figured it out."

I creased my brow, making sure to broadcast my confusion. "No humor intended, Vifwherl. I was genuinely under the impression that she couldn't find a sponsor."

This provoked rapid eye and mouth movements indicative of distressed surprise. "At the initiate contests, two years ago, the word went out not to approach Olanna. That you'd have your braid off by the time she was ready and were planning to train her." She rolled her right eye around to match her left. "You weren't aware of this?"

I allowed no further outer emotions to broadcast as I considered this new information, but I quickly replied, "Not only did I not lay claim to her two years ago, until recently I didn't think I'd be training her at all. That would have scuttled her chances at being a Jedi."

Vifwherl nodded. "Almost certainly. An unfortunate misunderstanding, indeed."

Further discussion was precluded as most of the lights were extinguished, leaving the dim flickering of a handful of orbs on posts around the room. We dozen onlookers raised the hoods on our cloaks and folded our arms, taking on the pretense of anonymity this trial required.

From the south end of the room, two Padawans led in the four initiates, who were guided to sit near the wall, facing the semi-circle of seven men and women. None of the adults' heads were covered; only two of the seven wore Jedi robes while the others wore the practical garb of the Corps. These seven adults were teachers at the Academy, and they were now tasked with challenging the initiates as to their suitability to train to become Jedi Knights.

"Junyo Song, approach us," the elderly woman in the middle began. A boy, unremarkable in size or mannerism, stood and warily walked to the central point, equidistant from the adults. I could feel his agitation and nerves as he sat. Each of the initiates had just finished an eighteen-hour meditation session without food or sleep, and the effects were visible.

"Explain the first truth of the Jedi Code," another of the teachers said.

"There is no emotion, only peace," the response was immediate.

"You were not asked for a recitation, initiate. Explain it."

Junyo blanched, just slightly, and took a calming breath. "My clearest, purest connection to the Force comes when I am unburdened. When my mind is clear, unclouded by the weight of feelings or unneeded thoughts, I can act as a channel for the Force."

I nodded approvingly. The boy gave a good answer.

There was no visible reaction from the teachers before a different one of them asked another question. "How will Junyo Song, Jedi, benefit the Order?"

"I am unwaveringly loyal," he began, "and strong in the Force. I will be a Guardian, and fight for the continuation of the Order and the good of the Republic."

"To whom," yet a different teacher asked, "are you 'unwaveringly loyal'?"

Junyo's brows wrinkled, he radiated confusion. I could sense that he thought the question was redundant.

I lost focus on the boy at this point, however, because I suddenly felt the questing touch of another mind. It was orderly and deliberate, spreading out like molasses. And, as it reached me, I recognized the familiar feel of her. Olana broke her solemn expression long enough to glance in my direction with a delighted smile. I could feel the cold lump of fear that she was successfully isolating from her consciousness; it had been a while since I could feel anything this strong from her. The fear lessoned a bit as her recognition of me in among the hooded onlookers gave her a surge of confidence.

"Olana Chion, approach us," were the next words that I actually heard. The shutters came down on her mind, and it felt like being cast from sun into deep shade. She took her place without visible expression.

"Why do the Jedi study the lightsaber?"

I saw a momentary hardening of Olana's gaze when she decided to lie. "It allows her to act with precision, defending herself and disabling threats with calculated minimal force."

"You don't believe that," the female Jedi said. "Give us your real answer. And do not censor yourself again, Initiate, or you will fail this Trial."

Almost a full minute passed in silence, and although I could not sense it, I knew Olana was forming her next words with great care. "That was the reason we are taught. You are correct; I do not believe it. In fact, the lightsaber is clearly used because it is the most emotionally satisfying weapon to wield."

This produced ripples of uncertainty and disapproval in the room; even I was uncertain where she was going with this. "Elaborate," the teacher simply said.

"In combat, Jedi rely on confidence in their abilities in order to stay fully connected to the Force," she explained. "So, in addition to needing a weapon that can be manipulated with both speed and precision, they need one that they can feel a physical connection to. Even if you powered, say, a blaster with an attuned kyber crystal, it wouldn't have the same level of tactile feedback as a saber. It wouldn't give the same rush when you fight with it."

"Has your emotional connection to your weapon aided you in wielding it?" a different teacher asked.

Olana shook her head. "Not really. I've only recently mastered my fear of the lightsaber, and have not yet become emotionally invested in it."

I saw the teachers exchanging glances between themselves, and it led to another awkward silence in the dim room. Finally, yet another teacher spoke. "How will Olana Chion, Jedi, benefit the Order?"

By her quick and confident answer, it was clear she had prepared for this question. "I have an agile mind. I learn new skills and languages quickly; I find it easy to understand the concerns of different species. Olana Chion, Jedi Consular, will be of incalculable value to the Order."

"And if you are not placed as a diplomat?"

"Then I will do what is needed. A Jedi is always alert for ways to serve." This answer, at least, received widespread approval from the minds around me.

"Obi-wan Kenobi is to be your Master," the other Jedi teacher, a younger male, spoke. "You will surely grow under his training. Tell us of a weakness of his, and how you can help him grow as he trains you."

Olana swallowed, and glanced in my direction. "The witnesses are anonymous," the younger Jedi assured her, "and none will repeat what they hear today. Speak the truth."

"He is arrogant," she said, and blushed. "His loyalty isn't to the Order, but to his own understanding of the Force and Galactic politics. He tries to do everything himself, and places his own judgment above anyone else's."

The older Jedi frowned. "Why would you consent to be trained by him, then?"

The initiate shifted subtly in her seated position, and took multiple deep breaths. The silence stretched. "Because he's not wrong," she finally admitted. "His mistrust is appropriate, considering how corrupt and incompetent our institutions have become in dealing with our problems. His arrogance fits, because he has a knowledge of the future that dwarfs any other Seer I've read about, Jedi or Sith." She swallowed again. "He'll teach me how to move and act with conviction. I'll teach him how to rely on others and temper rash actions with sober judgment."

"How can an arrogant Knight learn from his own Padawan? That requires humility," the older Jedi pressed.

Olana nodded. "That is a difficult question. But I have years to find an answer."

*****

R2-D2 was notably absent when I returned to my quarters, and I had a note on my desk comm to call Padme Amidala. She wanted a live call, so I made my way up to the tower's communications room where they kept the two-way holographic equipment.

The translucent image showed the queen in her elaborate makeup, and I felt immediate warmth from her as she saw me. "Obi-wan, thank you for calling. How is Qui-Gon holding up?"

"He's getting better," I greeted her with a smile. "The clean-up is proceeding adequately?"

"Faster than expected, once those auxiliary control units arrived. All of the deactivated battle droids getting back up was certainly a frightening moment, but once they showed they'd follow our orders to assist in repairing and rebuilding, people recognized the benefits."

"Good. You won't be seeing invoices for those units, by the way. Sheev made sure the invoice went directly to the Trade Federation."

"He told me," she nodded. "That's good news; the recovery will be expensive enough as is. But that's not why I called." Her mind was tinged in curiosity and confusion, so I nodded, inviting her to continue. "What is it that you're hoping to find in that private political correspondence?"

I shook my head. "I'm afraid I'm not familiar with this. What correspondence?"

"The records that I gave Artoo," she clarified. "The private letters and missives between Nabooan queens, chancellors, and senators going back twenty years. Much of those were still locked in the archives here; it took royal prerogative to access them."

I let my perplexity show on my face. "Those requests didn't come from me. It's Artoo's own project."

She blinked. "Really? What is he intending to do?"

"He won't tell me," I shrugged.

"Your droid won't tell you what it is he's doing in your name?" her curiosity took on a very slight note of worry, but a much stronger flavor of amusement. "Which of you is the master, again?"

"I find myself asking that question a lot, lately," I admitted. "I may legally own Artoo… and thanks for giving over title when he left your ship, by the way… but you know I don't really see our relationship that way. He's his own person. And I trust him. Don't you?"

The queen hesitated, and I could tell that she found it to be an interesting question. "I… do," she nodded, surprising herself. "All right, I should prepare for my next meeting here. If Artoo decides to fill you in on what he's doing, please let me know. And give my love to Annie and Shmi when you see them."

 

[9adam4]

I made sure to make my pride and approval easy to read as I traced the circuits in the open lightsaber hilt. Olana had followed a simple design schematic for a straightforward and somewhat tenuous connection, and I suppressed my impulse to offer half a dozen suggestions for improvement, and just confirmed that it would run without shorting out.

"Annie helped with this?" I asked.

"Not this one," she flushed with pride. "We worked together on two others, but I assembled this one entirely on my own."

"Well done," I offered simply, handing it back to her and gesturing for her to activate it.

The blade was a vibrant light green, a Consular color to be sure. Not a hint of dark energy to my senses; the humming plasma felt every bit a part of my student. She had fully re-attuned the crystal that had once belonged to Darth Maul, and that was surely something to be proud of.

"Are you ready for your test?" I asked, and in response, Olana nodded for me to draw my own blade.

I took two steps back in the small practice area; I sensed no one else nearby and we should have plenty of room. Upon thumbing my hilt contact, my deep blue blade contrasted with her much paler green. I took an open guard position and waited as the girl in front of me carefully entered a basic Form I stance. She steeled herself, then stepped forward with a cut attack.

I stood my ground, deflecting her blade and waiting for her to attack again. "Your form is solid, but there's no power behind it," I offered. She cut again, harder this time, but she never fully extended her offense. I encouraged a few more repetitions before calling a halt; none of her strikes even required me to move.

"You're very tentative," I took a seat in the training area and borrowed her hilt again, opening it up to check its integrity. Nothing had knocked loose or out of alignment. "Even defense requires commitment to your moves. Who have you been working with?"

"Just the regular group training," Olana blushed. "Yokarrin says I'm getting better."

I studied her downturned expression. "You don't agree, though."

She sighed. "I… don't mean to doubt my teacher. But…"

"You lack confidence," I offered, "because you compare unfavorably to other students."

"There are plenty of Jedi who can swing a sword. My interests and talents lie elsewhere."

"That's fair." I handed the hilt back to her, and she hung it carefully at her side. We left the training area, walking leisurely side-by-side as I led her deeper into the Temple. After confirming that no one was in earshot, I asked, "Anything interesting from your… other teacher?'

"Oh, lots. I guess holocrons are just the tip of the wedge; there are whole planets' worth of lost technology out there connected to the Force. It's incredible that we've lost so much of it."

I shrugged. "Technology grows in far more directions than even a Galaxy's worth of sentients can actively pursue. Jedi are pretty disconnected from modernity, preferring whatever traditional devices they pass on as part of the Order's traditions."

"You don't agree with that." It wasn't a question.

I held a hand out to her in concession. "I still see an awful lot of recurring problems with researchable solutions. If there were enough interest among the Jedi, I'd happily invest my time and resources in advancing lightsaber tech, or control systems capable of harnessing our extraordinary senses and reflexes." I could see Olana imagining the possibilities as I continued, "But there's a deepset suspicion of such things, likely originating from stories of the Sith. It's much easier to work with BlasTech, BCA, and the like."

"Which raises the same suspicions in the Order," Olana pointed out.

"Indeed, but it also produces benefits."

"Political contacts, access to powerful weapons," she supplied.

I nodded. "And money. Which isn't everything, but can get you surprisingly far in an economy as vast as the Republic."

"I wasn't aware you were that wealthy."

I shrugged. "It's a matter of scale. I don't have the wealth to fund a warfleet or influence Senate elections, so my resources are irrelevant on the Galactic stage unless I leverage them in unconventional ways."

"Like assassination," she supplied softly.

"Right, or personal persuasion." If she was looking for me to bristle her example, she was firing at the wrong target. "Here we are."

"The Archives?" She reflexively presented her handprint for scan as we entered the main entrance.

"Your other teacher has been telling stories, right? Things that fit into Galactic history?" I nodded to a librarian as we passed into the main stacks and down a winding set of stairs.

"Oh, yes. But nothing recent… things about the early Jedi, the wars that defined the Republic." She stopped talking as we descended a second level, and then two more. We stepped out into an area walled with shelves, as were all of the Archives, but with progressively more irregular data tapes and manuscripts. We passed down a half dozen rows before reaching another door, this one small and unassuming.

"Check the lock," I nodded to the palm reader beside the door. Olana tenuously pressed her hand to it, and poorly concealed her surprise when it opened.

"These are restricted," Olana said as she followed me through. "You got us cleared to be back here?"

I nodded. "My Visions merit access to some of the prophetic texts. I'll get to see more if I complete training with the Seers."

"And me?" She paused apprehensively in a narrow corridor. The area was almost exclusively physical manuscripts - crumbling and faded materials from many eras and worlds.

I moved us towards a small reading room. "Artoo and I made some adjustments to the Archives' security systems..."

"Obi-wan." Her tone was exasperated, resigned.

I ignored her admonition and continued. "You should be able to read anything stored here, without triggering automated alerts. Obviously figure it out yourself; don't ask the librarians for help."

The room door used a physical lock rather than an electronic one, and I concentrated for a second getting it open. Inside, Olana looked at the desk comm and the physical manuscripts littering the table. "And when someone checks this room, and sees these… is this a Sith journal?"

I pulled out a small device, a thin metal cylinder the length of my hand. "The transponder rewrites each document tag to match an unrestricted manuscript kept in this section just due to age. And, yes, that journal is the main thing I wanted to show you. It was written by Larad Noon, the Dark Jedi who discovered cortosis armor."

She carefully turned the pages, noting that I had inserted printed flimsies in several places. "You've been studying this?"

"Started to, yes. But I realize you were much better suited to complete my task here."

"Which is?" She met my gaze, and I could see the resolve war with her latent criticism of my methods.

"The same thing I want you to do with the stories that Sidious tells you: clarify the truth."

Olana shook her head. "These accounts are thousands of years old. How am I supposed to verify anything?"

I spread my arms. "The Archives are almost as old, and some of the records in here are older. Not to mention histories written mere centuries later, before these subjects became taboo."

Olana nodded, looking at my written notes. "A thorough effort could easily take years," she offered.

"Then we'll take years. There needs to be a report, kept alongside this journal, that details where it accurately depicts the Old Sith Wars and where it deviates from fact. A balanced, perspective, not the skewed Sith view but not a sanitized Order polemic either."

Olanna frowned. "Why this particular document?"

"Because in the years to come, a Jedi Knight will read it, believing it to be the full-throated truth rather than a distortion."

My student thought for a minute. "Nikkos Tyris? The Jensaarai?"

"You've been reading the timeline," I agreed.

"In detail. If you had a map of the future - or at least a possible future you wished to avoid - wouldn't you study it thoroughly?" When I nodded, she added, "I'll admit, this plan is a lot less…" she swallowed.

"Direct? Thorough?" I offered.

"... bloodthirsty. Less bloodthirsty than I was expecting."

I glared at my now grinning apprentice. "Violence isn't always the answer, Olana."

"Oh, I know, Obi-wan. And I'm thrilled that you do, too." She ignored my glare as she picked up a pencil and started her own notes, but I could feel the hidden smugness underneath.

 

[9adam4]

I don't consider myself a speciesist by any means, but it was hard not to acknowledge the awkwardness sometimes inherent in interactions with non-humans, particularly non-mammals. With other Jedi, you at least have those norms and presumed values to fall back on. Not so today.

Neither my sight nor my senses detected any strong emotion from the two engineers as they watched me parry the training drones. I was up to eight (five when blindfolded), and had taken to keeping my saber fully powered up while drilling Soresu. I replaced a drone a week on average.

Ssotissin called a halt after about ten minutes, beckoning me to view her portable work station. She was a Sluissi, and I noticed she instinctually adjusted her posture on her thick, snake-like lower body as I stepped next to her. Noe Tah, Ssotissin's Duros assistant, input data on her own pad, not even sparing the two of us a glance with her glassy red eyes.

"You can see here where the patterns manifest," Ssotissin showed me on her panel. "The algorithms self-corrected, and were past eighty percent accuracy in the first ninety seconds."

"What's the usual plateau?" I asked.

"Nine-nine point four, but that's with multiple data sources and offline processing. Real-time, you can expect to hit ninety-five percent."

"We won't have the probing functions," Noe Tah reminded her.

"True." The research chief let out a frustrated exhalation. "As part of the standard combat program, the droid can be directed to make certain moves to see how the target responds. We can't do that here, so there may be part of the combat space that is left unexplored."

"But it will remember particular combatants, correct?" I asked.

"Yes. And it will categorize similar subjects for extrapolation. What you call 'forms.' We gave it the basic Jedi tutorials to start from as test data." The Sluissi brought up a display that showed me in my closed guard, the words 'Kenobi' and 'Form III' both visible.

I hummed my approval. "And the form factor?"

Noe Tah gestured to the long metal bracer on her desk. "This 'cortosis' metal of yours is hard to work with. I can recommend several titanium alloys with better properties-"

Wordlessly, I drew my lightsaber and plunged it into the wrist plating. Both engineers flinched back as the plasma cascaded against the surface, shorting out the blade. The Duros touched her long fingers to the burn mark on the surface, jerking again at the heat. "Yes, okay. My suggested alloys lack that property."

Ssotissin asked, "Where can we find more of that?" Her engineer's mind was working through the implications.

I shrugged. "Research Five has a small supply. It's difficult to refine; not many commercial applications at the price point. Too niche."

Noe Tah nodded, monitoring the upload. "I can see that. Electrified extensions is a cheaper counter for droids. But to answer your question, the form factor is fine. Plenty of room for the processors, even with your prohibition on wireless internals."

"Here's the kludge, though." Ssotissin removed a disk-shaped component from her console, clipping it into a thick plaited chain before handing it to me.

"A necklace?" I carefully fit it around my neck. It was surprisingly heavy - much denser than the bracer, certainly.

"The system can't predict what it can't see. The sensory amulet has built-in vision and recognition, but no predictive algorithm. In case the sensor bands on the bracelet are obscured or just too low-res, this will supplement. Flex-fiber optical connection; nothing wireless."

Noe Tah unplugged the bracer from her console and presented it to me almost reverently. I adjusted the straps as I put it on my left arm, feeling the haptic feedback when it slid into place.

"How often do you need the data?" I backed up and activated my lightsaber, alternating between left and right hands to feel the difference in weight. This was very different than a full cortosis shield, which occupied the entire hand. The intent here was specifically not to occupy the left arm, allowing the usual range of lightsaber moves.

"Weekly. If you're off-planet for more than a month, we can make arrangements for remote archival. But it's not recommended." Ssotissin gestured to Noe Tah, and the two of them closed down their work stations.

I was about to reactivate my drones, when I noticed them standing there, looking at me with what I thought might be curiosity. I sensed a question from them. "Was there anything else?"

Fear spiked as the senior engineer spoke. "Rumors say the Dark Jedi have returned. Is it true?"

I allowed my mind to expand, touching each of theirs still lightly but more fully than before. Noe Tah was mostly curious, but in Ssotissin was a genuine fear. "The Sith, yes. They have made their presence known to the Jedi Order again."

"And…" she weaved back and forth on her core, nervously, "that's what all this is for? Why you're working with BCA, sponsoring these projects?"

To be honest, I was taken back by the questions. Baktoid paid well for researchers that were not only brilliant, but discreet. I'd had queries from senior executives before, in the boardroom or in private, but never from a senior tech.

Still, I saw no reason not to give an honest answer. "That's the main reason, yes. Not every project I'm involved with deals directly with that - some of them will just make BCA a lot of money, and some I have a more… personal interest in." Just fighting the routine disposal of so-called 'defective' units was a seriously uphill climb.

The Sluissi crossed her arms in front of herself, a gesture of respect. "I… We…" she tilted her head at her subordinate, who nodded, "We are honored to support this effort. Many worlds have histories, many more legends, of the cruelties of these tyrants, the 'Sith.' Their swift defeat could prevent untold suffering." I felt an echo when she said that, wailing, a memory of pain.

I nodded. "Thank you. I will do everything I can. I'm grateful that others feel the same."

The awkwardness quickly stretched out again as neither of us had anything more to say. Finally they turned and left, and I went back to another round of exercises.

 

[9adam4]

R2-D2 and I took places near the front of the spectator area of the arena. "A lot of observers for this," I said, taking particular note of a cluster of younger initiates milling on the opposite end from us, including Partha.

**Disagreement. There are seventy-nine onlookers, counting this unit,** the droid responded. **Capacity estimated at four hundred thirty. Crowd density is low.**

"Well, yes," I conceded the point, "but I don't remember anywhere near this many people for my initiate trials."

**Biochemical storage is not reliable for quantified data,** he insisted. **0B1 recollection of time-distant event is questionable. Do not draw conclusions from your comparison.**

"All right," I agreed, changing the subject. "What made you decide to join us for this event?"

R2-D2 didn't respond, however, before another voice answered. "Maybe he just wanted to cheer me on," Olana spoke from just behind me.

I forced myself to reign in my surprise, because once again I had no indication of her mind or presence before she spoke. I turned to face her; she was apprehensive, fidgeting, turning her saber hilt over and over in her hands.

**Calibrating audio output to transmit vocal encouragement. (Query) Preference for content of message?** Apparently R2 was happy with the idea of cheering.

Giggling, Olana gave the droid her best smile. "You're the best, Artoo. But I'll need to concentrate, so no sounds required, thank you." Her smile dropped as she turned to me. "And no mental connection, either, please. Not even a casual link; I don't want anything distracting me."

I suppressed my reflex to glance at Partha, and merely nodded. A surreptitious barrier for her empathic negging of my student was all I had planned, but I'd stay out of it. It would be a setback if Olana hadn't managed to deal with the Zeltron girl and failed the Trial because of it, but we'd endure.

Two more familiar minds entered my senses, and I looked up in time to catch the enthusiastic nine-year-old leaping into my arms. "You made it," I shot Qui-Gon a glance as he limped to us. "When did you get back?"

"We came straight here from the docking bay," Anakin boasted. "And we're here in time! Did you finish it, Lana? Is it ready?" He made to grab at her hilt, but she stepped back out of his reach.

"It's ready. Not sure I am," she murmured. "How was Jedha?'

"Cold," the boy answered.

"Crowded," Qui-Gon added. "More pilgrims than usual this time of year. I still think it was a useful learning experience for Anakin."

The boy nodded solemnly. "The Jedi have been around thousands of years. There's lots to learn."

Olana gave Anakin a quick hug before leaving the bleachers to join the other initiates. I took another quick glance over at Partha and her cohort, who certainly seemed keen to see the outcome of today's trials. Annie climbed up on my lap as Qui-gon carefully eased into the seat next to me.

"When are we going to start taking missions together? The four of us? And Artoo," The boy asked, clinging to me while angling himself to see into the arena.

"Soon," I said, including Qui-Gon in my reply. "Provided we're all up to it, I'd like to start tackling the Kathol Rift."

Qui-Gon frowned. "The outback? Still mostly populated by species that haven't joined the Republic, correct?"

R2-D2 chimed in. **Agreement. In Sector Kathol, nine planets are claimed by Republic colonists. Gandle Ott duration six hundred twenty-two years.**

"There's a colony there about six centuries old, he says," I repeated. "None in the Rift, though, right?"

R2-D2 chirped, **Affirmative. Volatile nebular fragments permeate the Rift. Ship navigation is unreliable; collision with nebular accretions destroys vessels.**

"I can pilot us through," Anakin boasted.

I nodded again. "The rift is dangerous, but I have some ideas on how to deal with that."

"After you get back from Ilum," Qui-Gon reminded me.

We turned our attention to the arena as Battlemaster Cin Drallig entered, followed by the four initiates. Cin took personal responsibility for the combat training of younglings, and had for years. The mood among the spectators was tense and electric, but I carefully packed away and shielded my mind to avoid any accidental contact with Olana. It was odd, hearing and seeing so many spectators but blocking out their thoughts.

The floor of the arena had markings for dueling circles, including one right in the middle, and it was here that Drallig stood while the students hung back, outside its boundary. "Junyo, come here," the Master said, simply. His voice carried to us quite well.

"Show me your weapon," Drallig ordered to the initiate who now stood with him in the circle. The boy handed over his hilt, and the much larger man activated the blade. The green plasma hummed thickly as he waved it. "You built this?" he thumbed the blade off, handing the hilt back.

"I made it, yes."

"From what crystal?"

"My mother's," Junyo met the Jedi's eyes with a defiant pride.

Cin simply nodded, drawing his own green blade. "Show me what you have learned."

There was no hesitation in Junyo as he leapt toward the Battlemaster, spinning in the rapid cadence of Form IV. Weapons hissed as Cin deflected and redirected the attacks, striking back on occasion, but mostly just assessing the young initiate's footwork. Junyo flipped over the older man twice, but at no point was there a genuine risk of scoring a hit.

"Good. You pass." Noise erupted around me in response to this simple declaration, but only for a moment before the Battlemaster jerked his head to glare at the audience. The return to low murmurs was swift. "Olana, you're next."

I steadfastly kept my mind focused inwards as I watched her replace Junyo inside the circle. She spared two glances, I saw - one to me, and one to the other side where Partha was sitting. I nodded in what I hoped was a supportive manner.

Olana's jaw seemed to flex, as though she were gritting her teeth inside her closed mouth. She was tense in a way I had never seen her. Had she forgotten her relaxation exercises; her control? It was too late now.

"Show me your weapon," the Battlemaster extended his hand easily. Closing it around her smaller hilt - not just smaller than an adults, but significantly smaller than Junyo's, even - he thumbed it and inspected the pale blue blade.

"You built this yourself? No help?" He asked, his glare suddenly consuming the student in front of him.

"Yes, Master," Olana said, her teeth finally prying themselves apart. I watched her mentally uncoil as she continued. "From Darth Maul's crystal. Given to me by my Master, Obi-wan." She didn't spare me a look this time.

"He's not your Master yet," Cin reminded her. He handed back her hilt with the blade still activated, and I was struck by how different their interaction seemed to be from what he'd done with Junyo just moments earlier. But at least his next words, as he backed off to draw his own blade, were the same: "Show me what you have learned."

The exclamations from the other side of the arena distracted me only briefly. Several of the children had stood to cluster around… yes, Partha, it looked like. I could see the flash of her uniquely-colored skin from where she now lay prone on the bench.

When I turned back to the arena it was clear that neither of the combatants there had spared even a moment's glance at this uproar. Olana held a Form I fencing stance, striking out with simple swings and thrusts in what even to my eye were rather predictable patterns. Nonetheless, I was proud to see that she correctly and smoothly parried the Battlemaster's probing counter-thrusts. After three of these, Cin Drallig nodded and called a halt.

"Excellent," he smiled… yes, actually smiled. "You've improved a great deal in a short time, Olana. I wouldn't bet on you in a tournament, but you won't cut your own arms off out there, either. You pass."

Olana returned to outside the circle as I allowed myself a sigh of relief. She finally turned to me, although I noticed she wasn't really smiling so much as grimacing. I reached out to share my pride and satisfaction in her… and felt her mind flinch away. A second attempt came only upon hastily constructed mental barriers, which confused me.

… until I looked over at Partha again. Two Jedi in attendance had replaced her friends, and she slowly and precariously stood up under their support. I focused on my mental senses, and opened to Partha's mind. Her emotions were frayed and fragmentary, and her consciousness roiled in a tattered mass. She felt, for all the world, like she'd engaged in a serious psychic battle, and lost.

When I turned my attention to Olana again, she was looking at Partha. My student only now had a satisfied smile on her face. A rather cruel one.

 

[9adam4]

"Master Yoda?"

The Temple quarters reserved for the Council members' use were large, if built in the same archaic milieu as the rest of the compound. I had not had a reason to visit Yoda's room before now, and stepping over a pile of old newsletters and around a half-disassembled tea-maker, I could see why.

The mismatched furniture was sized for a human, including three different tables and a queen-sized four-poster bed. Every surface, even the bed, was covered in clutter. Much of it was old documents - manuals, journals, star charts - but random consumer items and clothes were strewn about as well.

"Master?" I called again, and only then did the tiny Jedi's presence register. He was further in, somewhere… over…

"Obi-wan." The wrinkled face and green ears popped from underneath the bed. He wasn't smiling. "Meet again in two days the Council will. Wait until then, your question cannot?"

I stepped farther into the room. "Master Jinn recommended I come to you personally with this. Not by way of the Council."

"Mmmm, yes. A personal chat, this space is suited for. Join me you will." His head disappeared under the duvet.

It was with some trepidation that I got down on hands and knees to follow the Grand Master of the Order under his bed. As incongruous as it was, I found myself thinking of the blanket forts and burrows that my sons had always built behind couches or under the table. There were plenty of bedclothes piled around, and a thick rug that covered most of the stone floor below the bed. Yoda settled into a nest of pillows; a portable light and stack of books lay within his easy reach.

The old man regarded me patiently, seeming content to sit quietly until I was ready to speak.

"I made a mistake," I began, and the Master nodded.

"The folly of youth, this is. Advice you seek, only after mistakes you have made. More valuable my wisdom might have been, if sought it before a decision you made."

I nodded, conceding the point. "The problem with consulting with the Council, is that it effectively takes the decision away from us."

He shook his head sharply at this. "Consult with the Council, did I suggest? No! Consult with me, I said. Trust me, do you not?"

The silence stretched, before I finally decided to say it. "No, Master. I suppose I do not, really. I trust your intent, certainly, but not your judgement."

"Mmmm, yes. Failures you saw, in your Visions, and so my judgment you find questionable." He let the conclusion linger. "Remind me, then: your judgment, in these Visions of the future? Sound it was, yes? Fail you did not?"

I scowled. "You know very well that Obi-wan's failure in the original timeline was as great as any. But that's the point. I'm not acting as he did. The Visions changed me."

"Unique in this, do you suppose you are?" Yoda asked. "A new path you can learn, while destined are the rest of us to trudge toward our predicted ends?"

"No, that isn't - " I had trouble meeting his eyes as I assembled my response.

"Learn we can, too, Obi-wan." He reached a clawed, three-fingered hand to my face, holding my gaze in his. "If let us in, you will. Still trying to save the Galaxy yourself, you are, yet many allies other than just the Force you have. Learn more lessons than just from your Visions, you must."

"Okay, I'll tr… I will. Yes, Master."

"Good. So," Yoda sat back, swiping up a book almost his own size to paw through. "The Mind Spike your Padawan knows. Teach it to her, did you?"

I shook my head. "Mind Spike? This is the first I've heard of it."

Claws swiveled the manuscript around to face me. It was a handwritten folio of the type common on worlds with paper but no automated press. The Aurabeth was blocky but legible. I read aloud.

"... and a third Spirit Warrior did he slay. So did the squire say unto Mara Din, Ho-Laja will pierce my mind before we draw blades, and how can I withstand this attack? And Mara Din said, your mind is your home, so if he lays siege, prepare for the assault. Within your Soul is an empty Darkness. Place within it a Spike of burning Agonies, and disguise it with a longsuffering look. So shall Ho-Laja step into your mind, and encounter the Pit, and himself become impaled, and you shall strike him down with your Unholy Blade, in the name of Mara Din. It came to pass, that Ho-Laja was slain. Thereafter the Spirit Warriors did battle with Blades alone, for although a Mind Spear was a great feat of Spirit, the Mind Spike could be placed by even the weakest apprentice."

"A kernel of truth legends hold, and often much more," the Master said as he took the old tome back from my hand. "But teach Olana, this book could not have, nor any I know in the Archives. Another teacher does she have?"

I sighed, giving a wordless nod.

"Ask you how she acquired it, I will not." His sigh was a counterpoint to my own. "Safe from the corruption of a Sith holocron, most Masters do not believe themselves to be. Yet, allow a youngling one you did? Why?"

"She made it an issue of trust." I felt Yoda's consternation as his attention beat on me like the hot sun. "I let her have it - just for a little while - and this all happened so fast. There should have been a learning curve. Warning signs. Not… just… suddenly a new Force power."

"Far more driven than you realize, she is. Your expectations she will always strive to exceed. Her ultimate objective she will never meet otherwise."

"Right," I shook my head. "I still think of her as a child, needing to be guided. But she's smarter than I am. More determined."

"Still in need of guidance she is, more now than ever," Yoda rejoined. "But think of her as a child you cannot. Mistake your tenderness for love, she will. Your fatherly affection for romantic attachment."

"You're not going to chide me for making these connections?" I searched his eyes; his thoughts radiated worry and concern but nothing more.

Yoda shook his head. "An unfeeling machine I am not, Obi-wan. Attachment we spurn, but not connection. Compassion… affection… loyalty. Strengthened by these things, a Jedi can be. Father and mother are we all to the younglings; brother and sister to each other."

I felt apprehension from him as he said these things, as though he was holding back from addressing something else. I asked, "So what do I do?"

"About what?" he asked with a neutral expression, but he felt far less relaxed than he made himself look.

"About the holocron, the Dark technique."

He leaned forward, his voice barely above a growl. "What to do, you know already, yes?" He nodded to himself when I didn't answer. "Go, then. Decide for you I cannot."

 

[9adam4]

The Temple courtyard included a number of clear spaces between grassy patches where initiates could study or train. I found the two together, sitting on either side of a triangular stack of bricks. Each brick was only the length of a finger and a third as tall, but the careful construction reached their shoulders.

"Very good, Anakin," Olana praised as two bricks landed, symmetrically, on opposite sides of the structure. Her short Padawan's braid was a visible reminder of her change in status. "You ready?"

"Ready," the boy said, his attention focused entirely on the stones.

With a move of her hand, Olana sent the topmost piece flying, up and backwards past Anakin. The younger boy sprang to his feet, spun around, and threw out an outstretched hand; the brick immediately reversed direction.

Even as Anakin floated the brick back towards the stack, Olana moved her attention to another brick, flinging it away. The first brick dropped to the ground as the second was arrested, and it in turn dropped as a third was launched and caught. Each brick found its way back to a loose circle near the two youths, until the eighth, which clattered against the wall surrounding the courtyard.

"Seven, excellent," I stepped forward, surprising the boy although not his smiling trainer.

"I got ten one time," Anakin whined. "She goes too fast. I can't even get 'em restacked anymore."

"That's why we start with the double stacking," Olana calmly reminded him. "You can continue to focus on one object while also lifting another."

"Show me?" the boy looked up at her with pleading eyes.

Olana sighed. "Not today, Annie. The trial was pretty exhausting."

"I imagine so," I chimed in, and was gratified by the worried look she flashed me.

"Yeah, you did good today! Didn't she, Obi?" Anakin danced excitedly, the bricks temporarily forgotten. "When do I get to learn how to do that?"

"We've already been working on your saber," Olana frowned.

"Not that! The mind thing you did to Partha. She's was totally surprised! Did you see the look on her face?" Anakin's delighted smile mirrored the one I'd seen on Olana's face at the end of the Trial, and his mental state matched it: reveling in the pain and defeat of a foe.

My Padawan's own mind was well-shielded, but her expression showed a great amount of embarrassment. "Why do you think that was me?
"Wasn't it? You told me you were going to take care of her when we figured out what she was doing." Anakin frowned, and then he glanced at me. He moved closer to her and tried to whisper, "Sorry; was that a secret?"

Olana shook her head, flashing the boy a resigned smile. "It was, but not anymore. Obi-wan's here to talk to me about it, I think."

I nodded. "So this was just you and… no other Jedi?" I left the implication unsaid. "You didn't tell Anakin or anyone else what you were planning?"

"No one else," she confirmed.

I had intended to send Anakin off, and discuss the matter in private. But his senses were keener than I had expected, and it was better to approach him head-on. I knelt down in front of the boy, giving him my full attention as Olana stood by. "Annie, what Olana used is a Dark Side technique."

"It's not!" she interrupted me, almost yelling. "The Hate Funnel is a Jedi technique. It separates emotions from actions, just like you do."

"Why d'you think that Lana would use a Sith technique? She's a Jedi." Anakin cast scorn on the very idea.

I rose, making eye contact with Olana even while ostensibly still speaking to Anakin. "We are discussing two different things. I didn't say the technique was Sith. I said it was Dark."

"That's the same thing," Anakin began, but Olana shook her head.

"No, Obi-wan is right on this." (I caught the subtle emphasis given to 'this' as opposed to other things.) "Whether a technique is used by the Jedi, the Sith, both, or neither is distinct from its place within the Force. What leads you to believe the Hate Funnel uses the Dark Side, Master?"

I gave just a hint of a smile. "Why don't you tell me, Padawan?"

Olana glowered, a look I knew was part of her focus when tackling tough questions. "The Dark Side of the Force is reached through strong emotion. Malice, aggression, fear, disgust. The desire to harm others, to assert one's individual will on the Galaxy, rather than abide by its will."

I nodded. "A Force-user's powers come from an alignment between their mental state, and the state of the Force near them. Jedi train to align their minds to their surroundings. The Dark Side is the opposite - changing the alignment of your surroundings to match your will. The Jedi gain power by emptying themselves of anything contrary to the Force. But Power in the Dark Side is gained by drawing on those elements of the Force that match how you are feeling." I made brief contact with Anakin, who was listening intently. "But repeated use of those elements attunes you to them, and colors how you connect to the Force. If you draw the strength of hatred through the Force towards yourself, in order to use its power, then the hatred itself is augmented by the Force. Hatred is made stronger, and more persistent. It's still there the next time you connect."

Olana made a small nod. "You believe the Hate Funnel is a Dark technique, because the act of collecting my hatred involves contacting the Force through the Dark Side." She shook her head. "It doesn't, though. The hatred is collected and separated prior to opening yourself to the Force. When you commune with the Force, it is only to mask the Funnel, not to create it."

"I find that hard to believe," I said. "When creating the… Funnel, you didn't feel a surge of emotion? A strong pang of hostility or rage?"

She shook her head. "No, I didn't. Obi-wan, why don't I teach you the technique? It's not difficult, and you can feel the Force connection for yourself. It's pure."

I shook my head. "I can't risk it. I must be entirely clear of emotional attachments before I will open myself to the Force."

Olana nodded, but this prompted Anakin to speak up. "I'm usually feeling a lot of emotion, even when I'm using the Force. Is that evil?"

Sighing, I took a moment to consider the best answer to Anakin's question. "It's definitely not evil, Annie. A distinction needs to be made between the Dark Side, and immoral behavior. Our actions can be evaluated as 'good' or 'evil' based on both our intent to help or harm, and whether we actually do help or harm."

Anakin replied, "But the Sith want to harm, and they do harm. So they are evil."

"They do evil," I corrected. "We simplify by saying they are evil, but that's just a shorthand to say that they are actively choosing evil behaviors."

Anakin echoed my earlier sigh. "You're making this very complicated, you know. Sith are the bad guys, so they do evil. Jedi are the good guys, do they do good. Right, Lana?"

My Padawan thought before answering. "It's the other way around," she said, and I felt a swell of pride. "A sentient being is evil, or good, because she does evil or good. And because she intends evil or good."

"Exactly," I agreed. "And what did you intend, when creating your Hate Funnel?"

"To defend myself," she said, but she didn't meet my eyes as she said it. "And to make sure that she never did it again."

"Partha betrayed you," I offered, stepping forward to come uncomfortably close to her. I extended my mind, probing the edges of her blank shielding. "You thought she was a friend, that the things she said and did were well-intended. When all along, she was sabotaging you." Olana kept her gaze downward; she flushed. I muttered, "You wanted to hurt her, didn't you? To punish her for hurting you."

"Yes," she hissed through gritted teeth. "But I put all of that in the Funnel." She finally met my eyes, pleading. "I put it all in the Funnel, and I closed it away, and she only felt it because she attacked me again." Her control was weakening, and I felt the red hot anger leaking behind the dissolving mass. It burst like an overfilled balloon, but I was ready. On every side, her mind was already enveloped by mine, and her anger hit my cool awareness, sizzling outward and sinking into me.

Anakin shouted in alarm as Olana fell forward, wrapping her arms around me and burying her face in my chest. I held her body and her mind both, my own awareness absorbing layer after layer of her radiating hostility.

As she wept, the anger faded, and I saw what was just beneath it: a slimy coating of shame. Of her weakness, her failings, her ignorance. Of not being good enough for Him. Of disappointing Him, and being shown to be only His student, in need of His rescue, over and over again. I had absorbed the anger, but I didn't touch the shame, or try to see what was underneath. I just buoyed it, giving her mind a calm place to float as she collected herself.

Olana stepped back just as she withdrew her mind from mine. The whole interaction had taken mere moments, and it was clear how tired she was from it. "I'm okay, Anakin," she insisted as she looked to me with sheepish gratitude. "Obi-wan was just helping me put myself back in order."

"I underestimated the danger," I insisted at barely above a murmur.

"We both did," she agreed. "So, what now?"

"The danger in what?" Anakin asked, thoroughly flummoxed by the discussion.

I ignored his question, and answered hers. "We give ourselves time. I know you're tired," I gestured toward the courtyard entrance, "but we should do this now. Do you trust me?"

"Always," Olana spoke without hesitation.

"Me too!" Anakin added, cheerful if still uncertain as to what was happening.

"Come along, then."

We found Qui-Gon sitting quietly on the edge of his bed, the metal casing around his left leg connected by wire to R2-D2's data port. C-3PO was there as well; I hadn't had much contact with the protocol droid since he'd been volunteered by Anakin to stay with Padme.

As the droids conveyed greetings, I exchanged a glance with Qui-Gon to quickly convey the purpose of our meeting. He nodded at Anakin, letting me know that the boy could stay. Rapid, secret exchanges are much easier with telepaths.

"Artoo, Threepio, thank you for your help," Qui-Gon turned to the droids first, his tone clearly signalling dismissal.

**Acknowledged.** R2-D2 beeped.

"You're welcome, Master Jinn. Please call us if we can be of further assistance," C-3PO added with far greater aplomb.

The two droids turned to exit, but I addressed them just as the door opened. "Artoo, were you going to come with us to Ilum?"

**Negative.** The droid continued to roll away, and his hobbling partner followed.

At a gesture from Qui-Gon, I locked the door behind the departing droids, and we approached the bed. "Olana," I prompted calmly, "the holocron."

She produced the pyramid from her robes, still glowing that gory red. At a nod from me, she offered it to Qui-Gon.

"Please," I asked, "take it. I'm still loathe to destroy it, but this short time has made it clear that she…" I took a breath, looking from my Padawan to my former Master. "That we, Olana and I, aren't prepared to use it. Not yet."

Qui-Gon nodded, accepting the small artifact. As it passed from Olana, the red glow seemed to localize and dim, as though it couldn't push as strongly against its surroundings. The Master held the holocron in his open palm, almost fully extended to arm's length, making no move to clutch it or give it a closer look. "There is a place," he spoke to Anakin, "that we can take this. It will be safe there, for a time."

The boy nodded. "So that's a Sith holocron. Is that why the gatekeeper wears a hood?" At the confused looks from us, Anakin explained, "Olana just left it out on a shelf when she was sleeping. Couldn't anybody pick it up and look at it? Aren't those things dangerous?"

"Nobody can see it there," Olana insisted. "They're actually repelled from getting too close to it. Except for you, apparently."

"It was kinda weird that you kept wearing it everywhere but nobody asked you about it. I figured it was, like, an Initiate thing." He looked at the piece with more than a little curiosity, but no apparent fear or apprehension.

With one hand still carefully outstretched and flat, Qui-Gon carefully reached under the bed and pulled out a piece of lockable luggage. He opened it one-handed, wrapping the holocron in a blanket and packing it away with spare robes. "Anakin, I need you to listen carefully to me," Qui-Gon held the boy's attention as he locked the piece away. "You are not to touch, or otherwise access, the holocron on your own. Not for any reason. If you feel you must do something with it, then come to me and we will do it together."

Anakin seemed to understand Qui-Gon's somber tone, because he replied with a calm, "Yes, Master."

The Master turned back to the two of us. "It will be safe, and unused, if you ask for it again. But I sincerely hope that you do not." He looked at the suitcase critically. "When do you leave for Ilum?"

"Tomorrow," Olana answered. "Travel time is about three days each way, so we expect to be gone for as much as two weeks. The Seer is already in transit."

"When we get back," I added, "I'm going to need your help. The projects I have in mind are -"

"Dangerous, over-the-top, and borderline impossible," Qui-Gon interrupted. "We already know you, Obi-wan."

I tilted my head, conceding the point. "And yet, you're still here."

Qui-Gon shrugged. "They're my quarters."

"You know what I mean."

Qui-Gon rested a hand thoughtfully on the closed case. "Someone has to be."

 

[9adam4]

Myren Selbek was easily the oldest human that I'd ever seen traverse a Force-guided jump route. Such navigation, which required lightning-quick reflexes as well as inspired piloting, was typically the domain of the young.

But Master Selbek had shook his grizzled grey head most vigorously when I made to take the helm. "The lane to Ilum isn't in the automated records," he croaked, "and it's tricky. Just pay attention and I'll let you fly us home."

It was, in all honesty, the smoothest space flight I could remember. Myren's mind was an open book - and spread out even more when flying - and the comfortable contentment with which he moved was an example to me. I could feel Master Dooku's strong mind in the hold, but otherwise the trip through hyperspace was a peculiar emptiness from the billions of life forms usually abiding in the background of my awareness. Olana was even more tightly shielded than before her recent breakdown.

"So, these Visions of yours," Master Selbek addressed as I felt his mind settle into the pattern of a straight leg, "involved living a full life on an isolated world. And at the same time, knowing details of the fall of the Republic and rise of a Sith Lord?" His curiosity was genuine; I sensed no deeper motive behind the question than to understand.

"There was more to it than that. Do Force Visions ever include a false framing? Experiences that aren't real, but help the Seer make sense of what he sees?"

Myren nodded. "Yes, some Visions are like this. A Jedi will dream that she took a land speeder to overlook a valley where she sees a future battle, or will open a book that explains an event as though it were history. Visions also include allegorical elements rendered into images, like a soldier holding up a shield to imply that a planet needs to mount a defensive. Yours were like this?"

"Far more extensive, but yes." I leaned back in the co-pilot's seat. "I lived almost forty years as a human on a world in a different galaxy. A planet with its own self-contained history and culture - no other worlds or alien intelligences."

Myren's curiosity grew. "How did this result in knowledge of our future, then?"

"Holodramas. Well, the local equivalent."

"Fiction? All of it?" This confused him.

"I lived in a wealthy part of the planet at a time when certain beloved stories were expanded upon ad nauseum. A trilogy of dramas on the fall of the Empire, three decades from now, eventually expanded into a timeline with stories and characters spanning millennia. Novels, sims, tactical modules. Episodics, more full-length dramas, eventually."

Myren was agog. "What planet could possibly have time for all that?"

"I suspect some worlds in the Galaxy do it, but it takes a certain amount of disposable wealth spread out over enough of the population."

The old man nodded. "A Vision doesn't need to be realistic. Like a dream, it needs can be understood by the one who has it. So your knowledge of the future Republic, the Galactic conflicts, is embedded in years of unrelated memories?"

"Yes. It's very fortunate that now I have perfect recall involving every scrap of fictional material I ever processed during that lifetime. If you had asked other-me the specs of the E-11 blaster rifle, or even the name of the Chancellor of the Republic, I would have given you a blank stare."

"That is certainly fortunate," Myrek said. "I will admit, Obi-wan, that what you describe is very different from any other Force Vision I have heard of. I understand why the Council sent you to Ilum."

"I'm still not sure that I do."

"You need to deal with your past." An alarm sounded on the console, and he turned his full attention back to piloting.

After the better part of two hours, he turned to me again, gesturing to the hold. "They are a lot alike."

"Olana and Dooku?" I respected the Master a great deal, but I would never have thought to compare him to my Padawan.

"If given a chance, Olana will become an accomplished diplomat for the Jedi, just as Dooku has been," Myren noted. "She is developing an air of leadership that draws people in. But more importantly, like the Count - and, yes, he will be Count again soon enough. Like the Count, she views loyalty and morality in personal terms. She connects to individuals, and sees her work in terms of how it affects them."

"Have you spoken with her?" I was surprised by the confidence with which he spoke.

"Not with the girl on this ship, no." He shared with me his amusement at my curious confusion. "We know there was some event, a couple of weeks ago, because Master Brienne and I both spoke with Olana in dreams about it. Something about 'a new teacher, a new way.' I just wanted to caution you: if the teacher is Dooku, keep a close eye on what he teaches her."

"Why wasn't I informed?" It surprised me that Seers might receive signs so quickly from a recent change.

"You just were." He made sure he had my full attention. "The Council of Seers isn't like the High Council. There's just the five of us, and we don't issue commands or hand down decisions, not often anyway. Mostly we talk about stuff, and one or two of us steps up to address different issues."

"Sounds more like a working group," I offered.

"Don't know what that means, but sure. Anyway, you know the future's been very cloudy of late. And Visions like yours - the Mace Windu Sith Vision, I mean, not the big one - seem more like nightmares than predictions."

"I should mention," I added, "that many of the dystopian Visions probably match the future I saw. The Galactic Empire is a genuine possibility if we don't make changes."

Master Selbek shrugged. "I won't be around to see it. I die in a year and a half." He chuckled when he saw my expression. "Calm down, young Knight. I had my pick of several destinies, as we all do. But the Force only lends us to the Galaxy for a time. I'll die with my weapon in my hand, making a difference to people who need my help. Looking forward to it, honestly."

"Couldn't you do something now to fix the situation before it erupts into violence?"

"Not that I've been able to figure out. I'll send you the info on Husarth Five when we get back to Coruscant, and you can tell me. Anyway, my point is this: don't let the big picture stop you from seeing the good you can do right now. That's the ever-present danger of Seers: not everything important will be shown to you in a Vision, and you can't live your whole life for some nebulous point in the future."

 

[9adam4]

"It's prettier than I expected," Olana breathed from her seat just behind us. "Everything glitters."

We were banking around a massive glacial cliff, the sun reflecting unevenly across the landscape below. "It's even better at night," Myren replied. "Enough glowing crystals are buried under the permafrost to give the surface its own luminescence, even when the sky is overcast. Which it usually is. Ah, there we go."

My craft pointed toward a layered break in the cliffs that, to my eyes, looked just like twenty others we'd past. I scanned the console for any readouts. "No beacon?"

"None," the old man agreed. "Hope you were paying attention, as the number of people in the Galaxy who know how to get here just increased from nine to eleven."

"That may be an exaggeration, Master," Olana spoke up. "The Gathering takes place every few years, I know, and many of those who take part could surely remember the way back."

"To that temple, yes. The Sunrise Temple." He powered retro-thrusters, slowing us to almost nothing as we coasted toward yet another sheer wall of ice. "This is the Sunset Temple. We've only used it four times since I've been around."

I asked, "How many sites are there on Ilum?"

"There were eighteen, at one time. That we know of." Myren shut off the thrusters at the same time as we touched ground - which I only knew from the instruments; no detectable shudder at all. "We can still locate twelve of them. The downside of secrecy is the very narrow jump from 'a few people know' to 'nobody knows.'"

I roused Master Dooku from his meditation, the four of us donning winter clothes that would have been dangerously inadequate without the on-board heating elements. Myren led the way, and Olana brought up the rear, controlling the large float-pallet that contained a surprising amount of electronics along with expected supplies and camping gear.

It wasn't until we were within a thousand feet of the massive, jagged cave entrance that I realized it was man-made. The stone was the same bluish-grey color of the surrounding ice and carved with similar textures, a skillful camouflage. As we entered the mouth, the crunch of layered frost gave way to stone under my feet as well. The air was also rapidly getting warmer as the cave narrowed, still meandering and natural in its contours but increasingly regular in its dimensions.

The door set in the cave wall was a miniature copy of the cave mouth, but with a carved stone surface that showed a few phrases in Basic, some of the Aurabesh characters inset with softly glowing crystals. "Myren gestured us forward. "Small amounts of energy," he prompted, "like opening a holocron. Don't try to force it too much or it'll trigger the tamper lock."

As one, we each held a gloved hand out toward the door, drawing energy gently into it. The gems pulsed once, twice, and with a jarring crack the door slowly slid aside.

What was revealed was, in a word, understated. The space was five rooms, two meant to be quarters and one meant as something of a galley. The space was warm, and lit dimly by inset crystals throughout. 'Cozy' came to mind.

"It's a few minutes until dusk," Master Selbek announced. "Did everyone bring shielded eyewear?" I produced my own pair of protective goggles - a rather expensive design preferred by bounty hunters and scouts - and saw the other three each pull out a Jedi-issued pair.

"Olana, trade me for these," I ordered.

She shook her head. "I won't take yours. Besides, I'm not familiar with those."

"Learn them now," I insisted, pulling the others out of her slack grip. "They're yours. I'll buy myself a second pair when we get back."

The door wasn't shaped or decorated like the front entrance; it was a simple circular portal built like a hatch. Myren looked around to confirm our eyewear, then turned a lever to swing the door outward. "Stay close, but this is a sight worth seeing. You two have your camp gear?" Olana and I nodded.

Through the hatch was a valley - a broad trough crossed with twisted outcroppings of brown rock, only the very highest peaks in the distance covered with snow. It stretched more than a kilometer in each direction before the uneven terrain obscured its full extent. Dotted at random within the enclosure, the kyber crystals refracted the sun's light, making the need for eye protection immediately clear. The valley was desert-bright, to the extent of visibility. I could see some cut sandstone a fair distance in, but otherwise, this all appeared to be a natural formation.

"Where we take the kids," Myren explained, "is called the Sunrise Temple because it opens when the sun rises and warms the ice. The trials are taken during the day." He gestured out toward the bright valley. "This is the Sunset Temple for the same reason: the Valley of Mists is only active at night. Any minute now."

We waited in contemplative silence as the sun touched the edge of the sky and slipped behind the obscuring peaks with surprising speed. It took very little time at all for the warm tones of the valley to fade to paler hues as the sunlight gave way to the crystals' internal glows.

As the light faded, the mists rolled in, thick and swirling, seeming to cling but loosely to the features of the valley even as they obscured them. In a very few minutes, only the highest peaks were left unobscured by the vapor-filled air. A few dull globs of light remained, not entirely extinguished by the mists but certainly dimmed. I felt the chill that accompanied this change, and although I had seen that the valley was empty of visible plant or animal life just minutes before, it no longer felt so.

We followed Myren's lead in removing our eye protection and trekking slowly into the valley. Although we walked on solid rock, our boots made little sound, muffled by some property of the tense space.

It was nearly a quarter hour before we reached the clearing, a circle of hewn and fitted stone like the imprint of some massive hammer on the irregular valley. In the center of the space was a small recess, and here the old Master carefully produced a single crystal, unwrapped from several layers of cloth. He bent to place the crystal in the center of the clearing, and stood back as pulsing radiance outlined geometric hairline cracks in the circular surface. The light seemed to flow, not outward from the crystal, but inward toward it.

Nodding in satisfaction, Master Sebrek gestured around at the clearing, and then at me and Olana. "This is where you two will spend your nights. Be here by an hour after sundown. Attune to the crystal for at least an hour, and then be asleep by midnight. Here's an alarm to warn you to return to the temple proper before sunrise."

Olana asked, "What are we supposed to do?"

The old man responded by reaching to take her pack off of her back, unfolding the portable cot. "One night, you'll wake up and the key crystal will be missing. Bring it back."

"That's it?" Olana couldn't help herself asking.

Myrek rolled his eyes. "Of course not. The mists will manifest illusions from your mind, which you'll need to interact with to get the stone back. Well, his mind. Obi-wan attunes to the crystal; you just keep him company." He nodded to Dooku. "The Count and I -"

"Not quite yet, I'm afraid," Dooku interjected.

"Soon enough. Anyway, Master Dooku and I will sleep in the temple quarters at night, and we'll all convene together for meals and training during the day. This shouldn't take more than a week."

*****

Among his other talents, Myren was a decent cook, and he'd bought a variety of frozen foodstuffs for our stay. Cold storage was plentiful on the ice planet of Ilum.

It was lunch on the second day when Dooku nodded to my left bracer. "I've not noticed any change in your dueling style since you added that piece. What is its purpose?"

"I use it as the interface for a combat computer," I explained, and felt the incredulity from all other three Jedi at the table.

"Kid, I hate to tell you this," Myren chided, "but unless you've managed to put some sort of time-reverse circuitry in that thing, it's not going to help you in a lightsaber duel. You're already accounting for two or three tenths of a second in the future just from basic Force perception. Computers are necessarily slower than that."

"As a control scheme, yes." I slurped a spoonful of hot soup. "That's not how I'm using it."

*****

"What do you suppose we'll see?" I asked Olana as we prepared to turn in for the fourth time. As cold as it was, we'd quickly pushed our bedrolls together on the first night. I always awoke first, and made sure to pry her arms from around me and reposition her in her own bag before she could wake up and feel embarrassed by it.

"The point of this," Olana considered, "is to confront your Visions, and their relationship to reality. So I suspect we'll interact with something from your Visions. Important people, maybe, or alternate versions of them. Live through different events."

"Well, hopefully it will give you more insight into what I've seen, then, in addition to helping me overcome my own issues. But I guess we'll see."

*****

At an hour past midnight, it wasn't the feeling of dread that awakened us, or the rasping of things moving around outside the clearing. No, it was the gunshots.

The loud cracks echoed around the area, and were only after accompanied by loud moans that I didn't immediately recognize. Olana sprang to her feet within moments of me, our lightsabers both coming to life in our hands. This eliminated the otherwise dark clearing: the crystal was gone, and so were the glowing patterns that had given us light these past nights.

"What was that loud noise? A small explosion?" Olana asked.

"Sort of," I explained. "That's what small arms fire from Earth sounds like. They use slugthrower weapons, pushing metal instead of plasma, so the vibrations are much louder."

"Earth, as in where your Visions supposedly came from?" Olana and I were each reaching our senses out, trying to determine what awaited within the mists. Nothing.

"That's what we were expecting, right?" I reminded her. "Something involving my Visions, something we can confront."

"And that something is?" she prompted.

"Let's find out." I gestured for her to follow me, and slowly approached the mist with my saber drawn.

I didn't make it out of the clearing before the thing shambled into view. The waxy skin and vacant expression above blood-smeared lips, the rotting eyeballs. I sent it flying away from us with a wave of my empty hand; it responded to the Force like an inanimate object rather than a living thing.

No sooner had it left my sight than two others bounded into view, clumsy but no less single-minded in their approach. My senses told me they were no more alive than the ground; whether this was the nature of the Force illusion clearly powering this, or the fact that they were dead, I had no idea.

"What are these things?" Olana asked. More had appeared from the opposite side of the clearing; Olana sliced through two with ease.

"Zombies," I explained to Olana. "Reanimated corpses. Not real on Earth, either - fictional."

"And what do they represent?"

"I really have no idea." I decapitated one, and no sooner had it hit the ground then it evaporated into mist. The two Olana had taken down did the same. "I gather we're supposed to fight through them to find the crystal. They're mainly only dangerous in numbers, so if we move quickly enough -"

"No need," a gravelly voice said as a man stepped into the clearing. In one hand he held a Glock pistol; in the other was a small girl not more than three. The girl wasn't dressed like him; he wore jeans and a button-down shirt over a prodigious stomach, while she was dressed in the smallest version of a youngling's Jedi garb. I looked into the set of eyes that I'd always found to be ice-cold, no expression ever visible, even when I had them on my own face. "Hand it to her, sweetie," he said in a softer, smoother tone, limping badly as he hauled the small child toward my Olana.

The little girl held the glowing crystal carefully in both hands, and without a word handed it to my Padawan before burying her face in the man's flabby chest. "Go ahead," he prompted. "Put it back, Olana."

A fresh group of shambling corpses emerged from the mist, but were just as quickly chopped down by a pair of Jedi blades. The pair in Jedi robes followed. An old man, weather-worn and scowling, entered side-by-side with a young woman wearing just as serious an expression.

Olana turned to me, then at my nod, sank the crystal quickly into its place in the clearing. The moans, and dull scraping sounds, both ceased. A single zombie, halfway out of the mists, fell to the ground as though incinerated.

"Sorry to short circuit things," the man's voice growled again, "but the zombies were scaring O-Lana. And I have the Glock, so I figured this was fine." He panted audibly, his voice changing tone again. "Dearest, Obi-wan is here."

The girl immediately popped up and looked around, fixating on me with a huge grin. She leapt from her perch with abandon, he and I collectively made the transfer without dropping her.

"And so we arrive," the old man intoned, his weapon sheathed as he approached us. "And confront the follies of youth. Or perhaps its greater wisdom?"

"I'll go ahead and tell you: I wasn't any wiser back then," the adult woman said. "Quite the opposite." She stepped up to Olana, and there was no concealing the resemblance. A decade and a half had added almost a foot in height, but these were clearly phases of life of the same person.

"Hey guys," the large man spoke up to the two older Jedi as he checked and holstered his firearm. "Don't take this further than it goes. We're manifestations of their minds, not the other way around. We won't actually be any more knowledgeable or wiser than they are."

"Who are you supposed to be?" Olana was looking from one person to another with confusion.

"The past and the future. Or, a lost future, anyway," the old man replied. "Obi-wan Kenobi, Master in exile, hiding from the Empire. Safeguarding the remaining hope of the Galaxy."

"General Olana Chion," the young woman said. "Jedi Knight. Loyal to the Republic, fighting to the end."

The other man finished. "She's three-year-old O-Lana, recently of Kegan, now starting her training at the Jedi Temple. And I," he turned to my Padawan, extending a hand warmly, "am Adam G. Pugh, attorney at law. Nice to meet you."

 

[9adam4]

"This interface is garbage," Adam muttered as he ran through the holographic timeline. "We're one planet that has had computers for less than a century, and we have more intuitive devices than this."

"Intuitive to whom?" My fourteen-year-old apprentice asked.

"Sorry, dear?" The spike in his frustration had been momentary. By the time he'd finished voicing his complaint, he'd already moved on from it; he certainly hadn't expected a response. But he looked up from the device and gave the girl his attention.

Olana seemed… annoyed… by his strident attitude. "Intuitive to whom? Humans, I assume? How narrowly tailored do you think we should make our devices so they're better tailored to humans?" He nodded and opened his mouth to respond, but she continued. "And which humans, exactly? Which set of light conditions? What surface capacitance, what temperature range? Which assumed technology level, which reading format, which culture? How many sentients do we exclude in order to make you, sir, marginally better at navigating the menu?"

"You're saying that the clunky interface maximizes universality. I didn't understand that. Thank you." He glanced at me, firing off, "An excellent example of my larger point," before resuming his rapid perusal of my notes.

"... which is what?" The oldest Olana finally asked after a pregnant pause.

"I add nothing here. Obi-wan already retains whatever aspects of my memories and thoughts are useful, and has seven years of living in this Galaxy to contextualize it."

"We aren't here to provide new knowledge or skills," the oldest Obi-wan noted from where he sat, near the misty edge of the clearing. "We are here to give young Kenobi here perspective, an opportunity to confront himself."

"Excuse me," my Padawan interjected, "but there are six of us here, and only three different names. Can we decide on whom to call what?"

"We can use Ewan, Alec, and Dominique," Adam suggested. This merited a confused look from both my Olana and her older version, which amused him to no end.

"The actors' names," I explained. "I don't think that works."

"You can call me Ben," the old man offered.

"Chion will do for me," the eldest Olana supplied.

"Sounds like a plan," Adam agreed, pointing to the members of each trio in turn, oldest to youngest:. "Ben, Obi-wan, Adam for us three. Chion, Olana, and Lana for you. Any objection? Good then."

Olana frowned at Adam, turning to me. "He just… decides. Hands down proclamations, almost."

Despite her comment being directed to me, the Earth man scowled and addressed it. "Wait patiently for consensus resolution, and little gets solved. You can feel very good about the twenty percent that you accomplish with full, thoughtful participation from everyone, as the eighty percent languishes." He groaned audibly as he lifted his bulk from the ground, looming over the girl. He was noticeably taller than anyone else. "Jump in and provide an answer yourself, and you might completely screw it up a third of the time. Maybe even half the time. But you still end up getting more done right than if you waited on consensus."

Chion glared. "And if more than one person 'jumps in'?"

He grinned; it was more predatory than pleasant. "Great! As long as neither person is fool enough to get territorial about it."

"Wouldn't it be better for people to properly focus on what they're best at?" Olana challenged.

"Fine, if you can get folks to agree. But note that people overestimate their abilities in areas where they are inexperienced, and underestimate their abilities in areas where they are skilled. Plus, we all have other biases to take into account." He stopped himself, and frowned, considering something. "Let me take a closer look at that timeline." When no one challenged him, Adam trudged as far away as he could get from the rest of us in the clearing before re-opening the portable projector.

"You know," Ben mused, "over the years, there were any number of times where the abilities of a Seer might have saved us quite a bit of trouble. It certainly seems to fit your personality, Obi-wan."

Chion said to Ben, "Master Kenobi was never without confidence about his path, or the future. There was always speculation that you were a hidden Seer."

Ben smiled, chuckling quietly. "No, I was stumbling around in the dark from one impossible situation to another. I can't imagine anyone would choose the path I did if they could actually see it ahead of time."

"How can you say that?" Chion asked. "You accomplished so much, fought against injustice, over and over again. We're all flawed, Obi-wan… I mean, Ben… but I can't see abandoning any of the people or planets you saved. What would they do, if you had diverged from the path?"

Ben gave a nod to acknowledge the point. "But what of those the Order could not save, who fell at the hands of pirates, the Separatists, the Loyalists, or the Republic? Those caught up in the machinations of corrupt and evil men. Those who happened to be on the losing side of costly and destructive conflicts that meant nothing to them."

"Like you said," Olana pointed out, "you didn't know the future. Neither of you did, right? You did everything you could."

"An impossible standard," I said. "We don't just fail to exceed the limits of our abilities; we inevitably fall well short of our true potential."

"Which is not an excuse to do less," Ben admonished. "It is a motivation to do more." He adjusted his robes wearily. "The Galaxy is full of enough injustice, atrocity, and tyranny to fill a thousand lifetimes. There is always more that can be done to help."

"Is that why we're here?" Olana asked, turning to me. "To see what we become, when we reach our full potential?"

"Perhaps," Chion said slyly, pulling her lightsaber hilt from her belt. "Would you like a demonstration?"

"The way of the Jedi is to be a path of peace," Ben said, "and yet how quickly did we send our children to war."

"To preserve the Republic," Chion insisted.

"Oh, I know," Ben agreed. "But a war changes any democratic society. The moment we took up arms in earnest, led soldiers into pitched battle, we were preserving a different Republic. A different Jedi Order."

"The Order, at least," I noted, "was a warrior culture long before the Clone Wars. Knights define themselves by combat, even in peacetime."

"So do police," Chion replied. "There is honor in having the strength to defend others."

A choking noise came from Adam in the corner, although he didn't look away from the holo-display. "Honor is a poor proxy for character," he rumbled. "Plenty of 'honorable' men are evil when the lights cut out."

"Honor is like any other currency," I disagreed. "Its value depends on how others in society react to it. Being known to be an honorable person, or part of an honorable group, can open doors."

The general frowned. "But you don't value it, inherently?"

"Honor is a multifaceted concept. I inherently value the part that implies personal integrity and consistency, or 'character' as he put it." I nodded to my Earth counterpart. "The part of honor that is about reputation and glory: the value in that is pragmatic, not intrinsic."

Olana observed, "If you didn't care what the people around you thought of you, it wouldn't matter if you had honor."

"Honor was taken from us, in the end," Ben told us. "The Empire made no short work of sullying the reputation of the Jedi, saddling us with crimes against the Galaxy, and pointing to the evil attitudes of the Order as being at the heart of it."

We fell to silence for a minute after that, broken only by an incongruous bark, "Ha!" from Adam in the corner.

"What next, then?" Chion asked. "We've gone over at least the basics of your actions and plans, and I see no reason to think you've averted the Clone Wars. They might play out differently without the same level of backing from powers you've done more to damage, and the explicit Jedi involvement in growing and training the Army of the Republic will certainly have some effect," that got me a brief approving look, "but we're still talking about a conflict devastating to many worlds. One that we clearly lost, since it led directly to the Empire, even if we're unable to recall how."

Olana spoke up. "Padme and I are unconvinced of that."

"I wasn't aware that you'd been speaking with Queen Amidala," I admitted.

"It was Artoo's idea, because we'd both been peppering him with the same sort of questions about the timeline," my student explained. She turned back to her older counterpart. "What I mean is, we're not convinced that the Republic lost the war. Padme says that the portrayal of the Galactic Empire is more consistent with a decisive victory over the Separatists, followed by an internal coup. If a leader or group of leaders were able to claim credit for saving the Galactic Republic in the war, that might give them the support they would need both politically and militarily to establish the Empire."

Chion nodded. "We certainly received our share of glory during the war. A dark Jedi, disguised as a victorious general… it fits."

"Many different scenarios fit," Ben reminded us, "when we're missing so many key pieces of the puzzle. We can't truly anticipate the future, even if we think we've seen it."

Adam's gravelly voice was louder, this time, as he hauled himself to his feet again. "And so we find ourselves circling back to the initial question: why are we all here? Why the four of us, to serve what purpose for the two of you?" He handed the holo-display back to me. "The new file on there is encrypted, for Artoo only. Please don't try to open it."

I frowned. "Didn't we already establish that you're just a part of my mind? You know what I know?"

He nodded. "But not the converse. I don't think there's any process for you to acquire memories of my new experiences. For the best, in this case."

"This is the matter that Artoo asks us to help with, but won't explain why?" Olana asked.

I nodded. "He's made it clear it's better if we don't pester him about it; I get the impression he wished we wouldn't think about it either."

"Which leads you to believe," Ben said, "that our droid companion is investigating what is clouding your mind."

"Directly or indirectly," I agreed. I glanced at Adam, but a stony expression looked back. He wasn't giving anything away.

"This ends at sunrise," Chion noted. "Four more hours, give or take. So," she stepped to closest outcropping with a nearly vertical surface, and leaned against it, "what now?"

I felt a hand tug at the corner of my robe, and looked down at its tiny owner. The Jedi robes, small as they were, managed to look oversized on the wisp of a girl. I knelt in front of her, and softly asked, "What is it, Lana?"

"Where are we?" she asked simply.

I saw from the corner of my eye as Adam took a step forward, than stopped, his hands half outstretched to the girl already. Years ago, when I… when Adam had first become a father, it had become part of his core identity to take charge of any small child in distress, to hold and comfort and protect. But we both saw that Lana leaned back, keeping hold of my clothes and clearly claiming me, rather than him, as her protector. Adam nodded with a resigned half-smirk and kept his distance.

I took the hint, though, and helped Lana to climb into my arms, held against one hip, similar to how Adam had carried her before. To her question, I answered, "We are in a sacred place, so that Olana and I can remember you. Is that okay?"

She leaned in, swiping her nose back and forth on my shoulder. Then she nodded. "Yeah. I'm glad you 'member me."

Adam cleared his throat. "The question is still why? What do the four of us have in common, something that can be worked out in one night?"

"You may be giving the Temple, here, too much credit," I pointed out. "We can't know for certain that every element of the encounter is a planned part of a deliberate message. Some of it may just be pulling from our minds in a particular way."

"Just your mind, I think," Olana said. "I'm getting emotional readings and surface thoughts from all four of them, and each has a… it's hard to describe, but a 'flavor' that reminds me of you, Master."

"Even Lana and I?" Chion asked, and Olana nodded.

"That would explain why I can't read anything, mentally, from them," I agreed. "They're all technically just extensions of my mind."

"So... " Olana nodded to Lana, who had settled against my shoulder and seemed happy to watch and listen. "Is this how you see me? The young, helpless toddler you rescued all those years ago?" Her emotions were well-concealed, and even her face was coached to neutrality.

I swallowed, but nodded. "I have been deliberately trying to see you more as the independent young woman you've clearly become, but yes. My instincts are still very much like my Vision counterpart's, there: to comfort and protect you. We destroyed your life on Kegan, me and Siri. I want to give you a better one."

I looked down at the little girl in my hands, and the memories came almost unbidden: the frantic running and fighting; the impossible fights. The frightened girl who became an unwilling focal point for a societal revolt. "Do you remember, when you first came to the temple?" I asked her. "How one of the two of us, me or Siri, had to stay with you at night?"

"Hey, look," Adam pointed to the nearest formless mist… or what had been formless. It had defined shape now, and it showed the translucent scene of two Padawans contently falling asleep, a tiny bundle of wiggling energy between them.

Olana approached the misty figures, noting where the edges of the white mist had rolled back away from them. "Yes, I needed you then. And you never let me down, either. You or Siri, either one. You were always there for me, in those first months. Later…"

The two adults evaporated, and the form of little Lana climbed off of the big bed and into a smaller bunk. She slept soundly, there, and was awakened in the morning by the beaming faces of her age-mates. I felt emotion coming from them, too; it was faint, but clearly showed genuine interest and affection.

"Later, I adapted." Leaping out of bed, the girl followed the laughing, running forms of the others. They played, read, ate together. The images were a mishmash, and would have been hard to understand if not for the strong emotional impressions that accompanied each one. "They welcomed me; I was part of the family. I had big brothers and sisters. And as I grew…" Gradually, little Lana was bigger, and rather than following others, she was leading them, "... I became the big sister. The one that all the younglings know they can come to with anything."

The background and other figures faded until only the misty form of Lana was left… and she wasn't Lana anymore. She matched the size and stance of my apprentice. As I continued watching, the illusory form of Olana walked confidently to the real thing, and faded into her. She didn't flinch; she simply nodded her acceptance.

"So, you see," she smiled, "I am still your student, Obi-wan. I still respect you, admire your wisdom and your skill. But I am not," she nodded to the form on my shoulder. "I am not O-Lana of Kegan. Not a little girl in need of a caregiver. I'm the Padawan, Olana Chion. And I need a Master to teach me."

I felt little Lana stir on my shoulder. "That's right. Okay!" she said, and pushed at me to let her down. When I did, she bounded over to Olana, and let the fourteen-year-old pick her up in a tight and sincere embrace. The mist rolled forward again, enveloping them both… and when it swirled away, Olana stood alone.

After a stunned silence, it was General Chion who spoke next. "That… didn't make any sense."

"To the contrary," Ben offered. "The little girl showed a flaw in Obi-wan's relationship with Olana. He clung to an outdated view of her, refusing to recognize her achieved maturity. Once they acknowledged the issue, Lana could go."

Chion mused. "So, in the remaining three hours, we need to fix the rest of Obi-wan's relationships?"

"His mistakes in thinking," Adam corrected. "The places where he's holding onto something he shouldn't. And we don't have to fix the mistakes; we just need to bring them to light. Somehow. So," he gave his predatory grin again, "who's next?"

 

[9adam4]

[Content Warning: Real world religion and personal tragedy. TLDR at the beginning of the next chapter.]

"I'll admit, I thought you'd be upset," I told my Earth counterpart. "It was a decision that took me a long time to come to."

"Meh." Adam briefly threw up a hand in dismissal. "The primacy of divine revelation has always been an important point in Christianity's favor on Earth. If you find yourself in a galaxy that's never heard of Jesus Christ - that has no enduring tradition of God made flesh - it would make sense to reconsider."

"I'm still not understanding this shift in topic," Olana mentioned.

"I'm a monotheist," Adam explained. "An adherent to a very mainstream Earth religion. One that emphasizes personal guilt and forgiveness."

"Religions all seek the same truth, pointing towards the reality of the Force," Ben insisted.

"Except we don't have the Force in my Galaxy, at least not that we know of," Adam said. "Psychic phenomena don't seem to actually occur; certainly nothing as unambiguous as what happens here."

"So," Chion asked, "on Earth they do not have to explain away Force powers, because there aren't any… but they invent religions anyway?"

I interjected before Adam could respond. "Let's venture away from the topic of Earth religions, please? I don't think that's where my cognition needs to be changed; do you?"

"It is possible," Ben said, "that you have some lingering guilt regarding your abandonment of your old beliefs. That could be why Adam is here."

I paused to consider the matter. "I don't believe so," I finally concluded. "Yes, my faith was important to me. But by the time of," I gestured vaguely to Adam, "you, it was the shared community aspects of faith that had taken center stage in my life. Having lost my church - my family - and having a new connection to my spirit through the Force, I'm comfortable I made the right decision."

"I think you touched on it, though," Olana added. Her voice was gentle, and I realized she was preparing to say something I wouldn't want to hear.

"On what?" I was finally able to make eye contact as she looked towards me.

"Your family," is what she led with, and I endured a wash of grief and panic and she continued. "Your wife and sons. I don't think you've gotten over them."

"Over this way," Chion pointed. The mist on one side was swirling again, opening into what I immediately recognized as a hospital room...

Jeanine, beautiful in her spent exhaustion, slept as Adam jerked awake to the baby's sudden cry.

"Comin' buddy," he announced as he scooped up the baby in one practiced motion. The newborn started cooing and Adam immediately began shushing noises, poking the little mouth to make sure he wasn't hungry, checking to see if he needed a change. When neither seemed to be the issue, he made sure the swaddling was tight and rocked the baby back and forth, singing a lullaby in his high clear voice as he looked down at the blinking eyes that met his. "I love you, Andrew, oh yes I do…"

The cry hadn't awakened her, but the singing did. "He hungry, baby?" came the weakened voice from the narrow hospital bed.

"No, just restless. I'll have him back down in a minute." The baby's eyes were already starting to close. Adam carefully sat down as Andrew faded fully to sleep. "Don't worry, son. Your momma and I will always be here for you. We love you so much..."

"I've gotten pretty good at that. Baby number three, and all." Adam had trundled up to stand next to me as I watched the scene unfold. "It was nice of Jeanine's parents to watch the first two while we had this one."

"A moment of calm before the storm," I said.

"More like the eye of the storm," he added. "Remember all the crap surrounding Zach's school transfer, me taking a new job, and then… well…"

Adam was perched at an awkward position over the hospital bed, his lip's meeting his wife's carefully without lowering any of his bulk onto her reclined form. "Statistically speaking," he murmured, words clearly meant for her alone, "you're going to be fine. These sorts of internal injuries are a routine complication. The doctor knows exactly where the problem is and how to fix it."

"I know, but nothing's gone routine with this pregnancy," she said. "One in ten thousand, and I'm the one." Her hands were constantly moving, touching his shoulder, running against his arm. "I love you. And you know what to tell the boys, if…"

"I love you, too. The boys will be fine. Other than missing you." He grabbed her hand, entwined it in his own. "You really will be fine, you know. And you'll come home and have that full household of boys to look after."

"Don't remind me," she sighed. "At least you're here. Thank you for being here. Your job --"

"They understand, trust me. They'd be angry at me if I didn't take the time I needed to be with you."

"And you know I'd understand if they needed you. I'm not working now. We're depending on you."

"And you always can," Adam insisted. "You have my heart, Jeanine. Whatever happens, you come first. I'll always be here."

"I know. It's still scary." Her knuckles were white where she squeezed his hand.

"Yeah. Let's pray…"

I looked over at Adam as I felt it: that cold inhuman rage. The clarity that had always descended whenever I felt a threat to my loved ones. Bringing down the Hammer of God, I used to call it in school, before a bully found himself in the hospital, or just ostracized from his friend group. I tried to be less ruthless when bringing down bad adults, but the feeling was the same.

I remembered how it felt sitting in the waiting room waiting to hear the outcome of her surgery: the anger had burned, searing something inside of me. Everyone had acted beautifully: caring nurses, a competent doctor, supportive friends and family. There was no one to hurt. Nothing I could do. Just wait, and fume, and pray.

"I assume you remember this, because I do," Adam spoke. "But she pulled through just fine. Operation was flawless, prognosis was positive. She was back on her feet in just a couple of months."

"Not our doing, though," I breathed. "Others saved her life. We did nothing. Worst than worthless."

"Is that how she saw it?" Olana's expression was neutral, but I could see the growing concern in her eyes. "Jeanine, you said? She saw you as worthless?"

Adam shook his head. "No, she thanked me for… just being there. Acted like loving her was some heroic act. As though holding her hand did anything." He looked down contemptuously at his meaty paw, as though rebuking it for being unable to heal.

"All true acts of heroism," Ben intoned, "stem from compassion. From love. You should listen to your loved ones, when they tell you that."

"It's an illusion that will break, someday," Adam shot back. "She'll realize she deserves someone for whom love is an instinct, rather than a performance. Who doesn't have to decide what he wants to feel before he can feel it." He sighed. "But until she does, she gets everything I have, every day. That's what I promised."

"A promise I failed," I stared into Adam's cold eyes again. "Here I am, untold galaxies and years separating us. I said I would always be there, no matter what."

"No, you didn't," Chion stepped forward, glancing dismissively at the evaporating shapes in the mist. "He did. Adam from Earth made those commitments. Not Obi-wan from a different Galaxy." The general rounded on me, taking both me and Adam in. "You say 'we,' pretend you're remembering events that happened to you. They didn't. That was a different lifetime, and all you are is a Seer who dreamed it."

"That doesn't make it any less real," I urged. "I made those promises, and I loved those people. That's a part of who I am."

"Certainly you loved them," Ben agreed, stepping up next to Chion, also between me and the mists. "And they loved you. But they are gone. If you don't leave the past in the past, how can you dedicate yourself to the present? How can you save the future?" His gaze was distant, and I was momentarily drawn to how many people this old Jedi Master had cared for, in his own way, and outlived.

"So I should just forget my promises," I spat.

"Not forget," Adam disagreed. "But trust." He stared into the mist again, as though he could still see the scenes. "Place your trust in me, the guy who actually made the promises. Who is still there, working to fulfill them." He turned to look at me again. "Stop holding onto my life. It doesn't belong to you."

I searched out his eyes, but as before, there was nothing there. "You'll look after them? Keep them safe? Make her happy?" There was steel in my voice, although I didn't know where it came from.

"I will," he said, and there was no levity or warmth as he extended his hand to me. "And you'll leave them to me, commit yourself fully to those you choose to love in this life?"

"I can do that," I agreed, and as I clasped his hand, I felt the mist blow over us. In a short moment, my hand was clasped to itself as I faced empty air.

"Yeah, okay, that fits the pattern," Chion said as the four of us remaining - me, her, Olana, and Ben - looked about the misty clearing. "There's a little more than an hour before sunrise, and two of us left."

 

[9adam4]

[Previously: Confronting alternate versions of him and Olana on Ilum, Obi-wan agreed that Adam from Earth would deal with their Earth obligations, leaving Obi-wan to care for those he loves in his new life. Adam departed.]

"These are our future selves," Olana said. "What do you think they're supposed to teach us?"

"The logical answer," I mused, "is that just as our past selves were here to help me let go of outdated ideas of the past, these two could help us with outdated ideas of the future."

"Or the opposite," Chion said. "What if the idea is to choose the future over the past? To embrace some element of us that you are in danger of losing?"

Ben nodded. "Obi-wan defines himself in opposition to what he remembers of me. Doing the right thing, where he sees me as having made mistakes. Perhaps changing more than he should?"

"I think," Olana said, "that since returning from Naboo and sharing his Visions with the Council, he's doing less of this than he used to. The Jedi Masters are working more closely with him and have a mitigating influence."

Chion pinned the girl with her gaze. "The Obi-wan that I knew, would never have permitted me to open a Sith holocron, much less study it unsupervised."

Olana stiffened, closing her posture in defense. "How can you be sure? The Obi-wan that you knew, abandoned you before you reached my age."

The older woman smiled, but it wasn't a nice smile. "It certainly seemed that way when I was a youngling. My perspective is broader now." Her eyes hardened more, and she took a deep breath, steeling herself. "Quit your infatuation with him, Olana. It didn't help me, and I am certain it won't help you."

I could feel trickles of escaped heat from my Padawan's mind as her eyes narrowed, teeth clenched. Retreating further into my own center, I allowed my own knee-jerk defensiveness to swirl around me without finding purchase. The Jedi general squared her shoulders, ready to endure the backlash from her statement.

"Let her be." The words were clear but soft, spoken, not by me, but by the old man whose hand gently grasped Chion's shoulder. It was only when he continued that I realized he was talking to Chion, not us. "I did abandon you, Olana. So consumed was I with the death of my Master, with raising Anakin, that I gave attention to nothing else."

Behind the two of them, Olana and I saw the mist retract to showcase several forms in the background. I recognized Siri, Padme, and Quinlan among others - people that I had once considered close friends, or more. In the foreground, the young Obi-wan followed behind Anakin as he stalked confidently, growing in seconds from small boy to arrogant young man.

Looking on, more distinct than the other background faces, the misty image of young Olana let her face fall. She wept silently.

"You were hurt," Ben continued, and Chion turned to see the tableau. "And it changed the heart of the Knight that you were to become."

"For the better!" she insisted. "Certainly you can see that. It was a hard lesson, but in learning how attachment leads to pain, I overcame my weaknesses. I served the Republic when it needed me most, just as you did!"

A fully grown Olana lept from the misty form of the girl, her drawn weapon dispersing the rest of the shapes as she moved to center stage. A busy scene erupted around her, battle droids firing into an entrenched position where a small contingent of soldiers in white armor fired back.

General Chion reached down with one hand to a wounded soldier, his wounds closing rapidly even as she deflected small arms fire with her raised hand. Once the man was back on his feet, she signaled her artilleryman, who lobbed an incendiary in the direction of the droids.

The momentary lull in fire was enough. The Jedi bowed her head, and every one of her eleven men laid a hand on her head or shoulders. A moment later they released as one, and twelve humans with glowing blue eyes charged into the mass of droids in a blur of perfectly timed attacks.

"Battle meditation?" I watched in surprise. "Augmenting your entire unit with Force speed? This really happened?"

"It was her speciality," Ben said, admiration clear in his voice. "Those men were personally loyal to her, and she could use them in battle like an extension of herself. She should have been named a Master."

"It didn't matter. Doesn't, won't, whatever. The point was, we held our own. No flashy missions to disable a superweapon or rescue a princess. Just boots on the ground, guns out, hold the line, defend the position." She lifted her chin. "And we did it."

"Yes, you did," Ben agreed.

"Master?" my Olana addressed me quietly.. "You seem surprised by what you are seeing. Weren't these scenes part of your Visions?"

"... no," I answered. "I'm quite certain they were not. Olana's role in the Clone Wars, her powers as a Knight, weren't part of my Visions."

Olana's questions matched my own thoughts: "Then how are we seeing them? Is the Temple not drawing from our minds?"

I looked with new suspicion at the mists, and the two Jedi in front of us. "I don't know."

Chion's attention was on Ben. "When you condemn what you did, you devalue what I have become."

"To the contrary," the old Master insisted. "I am proud of what you became. But I mourn what I lost, in not being a part of it." He turned to us, and the two of them regarded their younger counterparts coolly.

"So you would condemn her - me - to this doomed attachment, in service of an unknown destiny."

"She'll outgrow the infatuation in time," Ben started.

Olana, her face red, interjected. "There is no infatuation! I just recognize how special Obi-wan is."

"As you say," Ben conceded. "In time, you will learn to detach yourself from emotional connection, and instead understand the deep bond of friendship and service that characterizes the very best partnerships in the Order."

"She will be loyal to him, rather than the Order," Chion insisted. "This is madness. A path to the Dark Side."

"She will be true to herself," Ben countered. "A path to enlightenment, compassion, and strength in the Force."

They looked at us expectantly. I turned to Olana, and she shrugged back.

"What?" I finally asked the two, as they continued to look at us.

"Which do you choose?" Chion asked.

"How do you intend to go on?" Ben asked.

"However we want," I said simply. "There is no reason to commit ourselves now, is there?" I directed this to my Padawan.

"We don't owe you an answer," Olana said. "You each accomplished great deeds, in your time. But that world is gone now. We will not be you." She smiled at me, and extended a hand. I took it. "We'll figure this next part out ourselves. My Master and I."

"Good answer," I told her, even as the mist overtook us again.

When it cleared, we found ourselves alone. We packed up our gear, eager to escape the valley before sunrise.

Master Selbek was waiting for us inside the temple door, a cup of warm tea awaiting each of us. "You've had a long night," he insisted, and took us to a sparsely-appointed room where downy blankets were spread over hastily-erected cots.

"That experience created more questions than it answered," I said. "How did -"

"Sleep first," Myren insisted, tucking us each in as though we were younglings. "Answers when you awaken."

The room was pleasantly warm; I fell into a more restful sleep than I had in days.

 

[9adam4]

"The slights are getting worse," the smooth masculine voice said. "You're a Master; you should be out there too."

We were peering out the viewport of the ship; four robed Jedi (one of them Yoda's size) met a group of eight whose species and garb I couldn't immediately place. I turned to look at my companion, and a full-grown Anakin looked back at me.

The woman to my left - Olana, also grown, I could tell just from her voice - spoke next. "This is diplomacy, not politics. The Elligin still have a… complicated relationship with what we did here, and he was the face of it. It was wise to leave Obi-wan out of it."

"Then you should be out there," Anakin insisted. "You're a better diplomat than any of them. But just because you're young, they -"

"Is this another Vision?" I asked abruptly. "Because I have no idea what's going on."

Anakin swore. "Dad's displaced himself again. Get Artoo." Olana nodded and headed into the ship as I felt Anakin's mind expand and brush against mine. "Let's establish a baseline. How old do you remember me to be?"

"Nine." I responded quickly. "Did… uh, did you say 'Dad'?" My stomach leapt in a way that had nothing to do with the weirdness of the situation.

"I'm nine? Wow, that's the earliest one yet. Any idea what you were doing?"

"Sleeping," I said, "after my Vision trial on Ilum."

"Oh, yeah, the one with Olana and Dooku? You told me about that."

Grown-up Olana returned with a chrome droid I didn't recognize. It was heavily armored with four articulated limbs, and moved quite agilly on a set of repositionable wheels.

**OB1, respond to this query:** the droid beeped, and I realized it was R2-D2. **Designate unit: harmful data-source to Rohan Ruler, secret subordinate to Soruman.**

"Grima Wormtongue," I answered instantly. In my idle moments I sometimes considered a list of unambiguous questions that would make it clear that I was dealing with myself, or at least someone from Earth, but I'd never shared them with anyone else. That would rather defeat the purpose… unless I needed to have someone else verify that I was really me.

**Confirmed. Observe forthcoming projection.**

A slightly older Obi-wan looked back at me in the flickering blue of the hologram. "Hello there," I heard myself begin. "This status message is to get me up to speed when I am displaced. This is a side effect of the abilities I've gained, and a price I willingly pay. It usually lasts no more than an hour. Keep the following in mind."

"Sniper, south building," Olana suddenly announced, and the droid froze the holo. "Alone."

"One could be a precaution rather than betrayal. I'll check it out," Anakin said, unholstering his lightsaber. He closed his eyes for a moment, and I felt his mind reach out and… surprised, I was forced to withdraw my own senses from him as he did something with the Force I didn't understand. A twisting somehow, as though trying to split his senses and merge them back together in a different way.

Anakin vanished before me, and I could sense his presence some distance away.

"You guys can teleport?" I blurted out to Olana.

The woman looked at me with a single raised eyebrow that I knew reflected personal amusement. "Artoo, resume playback."

"Keep the following in mind:" my double said again. "First, many of our plans are rather delicate, so don't just jump in like you know what you're doing. Qui-Gon and the kids will pick up the slack until you return to where you came from; keep your meddling hands out of it." His look was severe, and I only wondered what my past future (future past?) selves had done to complicate matters before. "Second, think long and hard about whom you tell when you get back. It does appear that the events you see can be altered, and I have arrived at a couple of points in the future that clearly don't match what I remember having once saw of it. Third, don't press for answers. We have good reasons not to tell you very much. And finally," I saw his - my - face take on a more weary expression, "don't seek out Shmi. She's aware that this happens and finds it distressing, so leave her alone at her own request." This alarmed me; did we have a falling out somehow? "Good luck."

I felt Anakin's mind impinge strongly on mine, spreading throughout the hatch area of the ship, before he appeared again. He held a blaster rifle and looked none the worse for wear. "Just a guard wanting to keep an eye on their leadership. Nothing sinister." He sounded almost disappointed. "Dad, did Artoo fill you in? I've told you that video was a little much."

"If he didn't say it in the holo," Olana disagreed, "we'd need to tell him anyway."

"Not about Mom," he argued. "She's not here; it wouldn't come up."

I looked at Anakin more critically. "'Dad'?" I said simply.

"You married Shmi Skywalker," Olana began.

Anakin turned to her, and I felt apprehension building in both of them. "Don't do this," he urged.

"It undermined a lot of what we were building towards," Olana continued, ignoring the increasing heat of Anakin's mind. "Assured you'd never be offered a position on the Council, weakened our political leverage in the Senate."

"And you bounced back stronger," Anakin insisted.

The woman shook her head. "We recovered, mostly. It certainly didn't make our position stronger."

"I disagree, as you know," he snarled, "Mom's increasingly visible among the Core Worlds, and viewed far more favorably than any of us."

"Since none of us are standing for election," Olana pointed out, "being popular amongst the populace while being viewed as weak by the political class is less than ideal."

Anakin gave her a stony-eyed look. "After everything, you're still going to pull this. Give Dad reasons to stay away from Mom. Destroy our happiness."

Olana's eyes widened. "No! Is that what you think…" she looked questioningly at Anakin's glare. "No, Annie, of course not! I'll be clearer. Obi-wan, you should think about keeping your relationship with Shmi unofficial; an open secret. Something the Council can choose to ignore."

"And I say don't listen to her, Dad," Anakin said. "You made Mom the happiest I've ever seen her, the day you stood up and made your vows," he looked to Olana again. "They were never going to offer you a seat on the Council after what happened with the--"

"Don't tell him about that," Olana interrupted, her voice an urgent hiss.

I sensed a change in the group outside as both my accompanying Jedi turned to look out the viewport again. "Looks like they got the ceasefire without killing anyone," Anakin said. "Artoo, can you take our muddled Master down to the bunks, please? I suspect this is a conversation we don't want him to join in his current state."

**Move in this direction,** the not-so-little droid ordered as we headed away from the bulkhead.

A moment later, I awoke in the Sunset Temple with far more questions than I'd had the night before.

 

[9adam4]

"Time!" Olana called.

My eyes were still fixed to Dooku's as I held my white-bladed saber in a two-handed front guard. I sensed the lower left side of my gauntlet pulse twice, just before my awareness caught the tilt of Dooku's foot and his spin to cut, downward from my left. I deflected, once, twice, and shifted to a low counter, bouncing to a high slice that he swatted away easily.

Today was still a testing day; I hadn't yet moved in response to the gauntlet's signals. But, so far, they had been correct every time.

As we both stepped back, we simultaneously lowered our weapons and bowed. Thumbing my hilt, I then brought up the gauntlet and turned the signalling routine off. I could spend time on the trip back to Coruscant reviewing some of the analyses, but I wouldn't have nearly as good of a grasp of the results as the experts would. Sharing the data wasn't just quid pro quo for my own personal use of the unit; it also assured that I'd have the most up-to-date version of the program.

"That's the fourth day in a row," Olana pointed out, "that neither of you has hit the other. Twelve solid hours of dueling with no one having the upper hand, even for a moment."

"The old legends," Dooku smiled, "speak of two masters who stood for days at a time, each in a stance of readiness but neither even drawing his blade. They fought each blow and counter-blow entirely in their minds, until one yielded." He led us out of the room we had cleared for sparring and back towards the kitchen, where the tangy smell of stew assailed us. "We are at the point where both of us are giving more feinted openings than genuine ones, and cautious about which we accept. But this phase will not last long. Thank you." having sat, he accepted a bowl gratefully.

"Thank you," I echoed, taking my own bowl. "You believe I will surpass you soon?" Although the Master had always claimed I would be able to defeat him in combat in only a few months of intense training, I was still skeptical. Dooku, not to mention the other Masters, had each come to their skill level over the course of decades (centuries in Master Yoda's case).

"Yes, but not quite yet," he clarified. "What I expect you to try next, is to take some risks trying to draw me out of stance. And you'll fail, and take a few punishing losses." He took another mouthful of the soup as I listened carefully. "... at first. But you'll continue to become faster, and more precise, until the gambits start working. When you get to the point where there is no way for me to tell the difference between your feints and your committed attacks, and no way for me to move fast enough to recover when I judge wrong… then you'll be ready for Master Unduli."

"Don't Mirialans typically only apprentice with their own species?" Olana asked.

Myren, now seated with us, answered. "That's only for the Master-Padawan relationship. Mirialan Masters support and train non-Mirialan Jedi all the time. Luminara's pretty busy working with the Chancellor, though." He sipped from his own bowl. "From the way you were going on last night, it seemed like you'd have a lot of questions for me today." I opened my mouth, but he continued, "But let me start with a couple of things."

The Master Seer put down his bowl entirely to focus on us. "First, the Valley of Mists confronts people with... incongruities in their understanding. Places where their specific decisions or beliefs don't match their broader beliefs."

I pondered that for a moment. "It… doesn't check some sort of objective truth. Just internal consistency."

Myren nodded. "And there's no way to know that you come to the 'right' conclusion, just that you acknowledged the conflict."

"So," Olana volunteered, "if I believed something like… all Jedi are evil and need to die… but I was trusting some particular Jedi…"

The old man frowned. "You might have seen that Jedi in a bad light, and your encounter would have concluded when you decided not to trust him either."

"Or to open up that trust to others?" Olana asked.

"Either way," he agreed. "Addressing the tension in your own understanding was the point, because that interferes with your connection to the Force."

"Are there particular cases," I inquired, "where Jedi have come out of the Sunset Temple having been changed for the worse?"

He shook his head. "Not specific details, but the Seers hand down a caution that it can happen. Which is why I bring it up."

"Why not before the encounter?"

"There is never any guarantee that the Valley of Mists will manifest for a particular pilgrim. Casting doubt, ahead of time, would complicate the approach." He watched us nod, and then added, "The most common mistake I see Jedi make, is believing that their encounter accomplished more than it actually did. The Valley of Mists doesn't transform your soul, or fix your relationships. All it does is make you aware of what changes need to happen." He wiped his face and sighed. "Some Jedi have come to me later, surprised that after some incredible epiphany, they relapsed into the same problems in three months or six. Real change takes real work." The last he said forcefully, jabbing a slightly crooked finger in my direction.

I nodded again, stealing a glance at Olana. "Yes, we understand that very well. I think this was good for bringing some potential problems to the fore, but it certainly didn't solve them."

"Life isn't a holodrama," the old man added, "even if you've mostly viewed it as one. But keeping both of those points in mind, what more can I explain?"

"Originally, we thought that the images came from Obi-wan's mind," Olana began. "But later, there were scenes that he hadn't seen, that neither of us could have been witness to. Where did they come from?"

"From the Force," Myren shrugged. "Prophetic elements have always been an important part of these encounters. Visions can be of the past, or the future. They can be extremely accurate scenes of actual events, surprisingly subtle metaphors, or anything in between. And," he added, "over the next few days, you're likely to have an additional Force Vision, as well. Either of you," he included Olana in that.

"Related to the encounter?" I sought to clarify.

"Not particularly. Time spent at the Sunset Temple just has that effect on Seers. Unclogs the pipes, is how I've always thought about it."

"I'm not a Seer," Olana pointed out.

Myren smirked, looking Olana up and down with amusement. "How d'you know that?"

She frowned. "I don't have Visions."

"You haven't had Visions, yet," he insisted, "at least, not that you've remembered. There are two kinds of Jedi: confirmed Seers, and potential Seers."

"A few of us have been around long enough, that we are rather confident we are not," Master Dooku said. It was his first contribution to this conversation, which made sense considering that he hadn't shared in the encounter.

"One of the best Seers in the last century," Myren replied, "had her first Vision when she was eighty-nine."

Dooku made a stiff nod, conceding the point. "There are other matters that we must discuss. Namely, whether to take a lengthy detour before returning to the Core Worlds." He made sure he had our attention. "Reports have reached the Council of a new slave market opening on Rago. We are in the best position to investigate the matter."

"Isn't Rago at the very end of the hyperlane?" Olana asked. "Why open a market there?"

"It may have something to do," Dooku answered, "with the planet's proximity to the Unknown Regions. That is part of what we will need to find out: where the slaves are coming from, who is selling them -"

"And who's buying," Myren supplied.

"Indeed," Dooku agreed. "And there is another complication. Tensions in Serenno are continuing to mount. If we take more than a week to investigate Rago, then I will need us to travel directly to my home planet rather than first returning to Coruscant."

"Fine with me," Master Selbek shrugged. "I have no pressing business."

"Ours…" I exchanged a glance with Olana "... should hold that long. Although this brings to a head another matter I've been holding off."

From my wrist control unit, I called up a Galactic map, filtering by a couple of queries. "Before Rago, can we make a quick stop in the Namadii system?"

 

[9adam4]

From inside the drive cavity of the PR23 economy liner, I shined my light on the recess where the gravilinear drive component would be. The leads had been recently cleaned; no visible corrosion. The other elements of the hyperdrive looked fine, if clearly worn from use.

"It's been in hock for a year now, you said?" I asked the Sullustan, who responded in the affirmative. I couldn't speak her language, but I understood her well enough.

The Sullustan made a vague gesture and explained about the previous owner leaving the planet; she had never heard why he hadn't returned.

"You can have the drive ready to go in an hour?" In my overdone leathers - and with a small amount of Force influence - I was plenty intimidating as I crowded her, my stern gaze matching hers. "A real hour, not a junkyard hour?"

She shifted her eyes and revised her estimate to an hour and a half.

"Fine." I thrust the credit chit at her roughly. "That's the agreed price. Get to work."

"Ah, Simon…" Olana still wasn't use to the fake name, any more than the ratty clothes she was expected to wear.

"Yeah?" I kept the facade up as we made our way to the captain's deck.

"You're not worried about… trouble? If someone comes looking for the ship?"

"Huh? Like who?"

She glanced towards the end of the ship where the dock manager would be departing. "Like the old owner? I just thought..."

"Kelly, what have I told you about trying to think?"

I felt as much as saw her increased tension as she reacted to my belligerence - but I gestured to the read-out that the Sullustan had exited the hatch and gave her a goofy grin.

"That it's expected and required of me, Master," Olana replied, a light-hearted jab in her voice.

"Yes, exactly," I agreed in my precise Coruscant speech. "To answer your question: this ship was being used to smuggle contraband across the Mid Rim into Huttese Space, and its previous owner met with a permanent end." At her wide eyes, I added. "No, I didn't kill him. But there are few PR23s left in commission, so when I heard his bounty had been picked up, I corresponded with our new friend Prett, here."

"Why this model?"

"They were originally sold as budget liners: the sort of ship that would take tourists and mid-tier businessmen along the hyper lanes at a leisurely pace. But the idea was scuttled a couple of years in." Having confirmed nothing was amiss on the instrument panels, I dug under the seat for a control switch.

"Was anything particular the matter?" Olana asked warily.

"The AI. Ah!" I flipped the switch, and smiled as half a dozen blank surfaces came to life, displaying loading screens.

"What was wrong with the AI?"

"Nothing, really." I pulled out a small data drive and sat gingerly in a captain's chair. "It's just that it was marketed for -"

"GREETINGS!" The voice came over the console at a jarring volume, "And thank you for purchasing the latest in service assistance technology, Blaire Transportation's PRS-23 Mark I commercial cruise ship. Can I ask your name?"

"Call me Simon for now. Can we put your introductory routine on hold for now, please?"

There was a couple of seconds' pause, followed by the same voice but with a far calmer tone. "Certainly, Simon. But before we continue, I'm afraid I don't have my sales confirmation record in my database. Can you substantiate that you are the ship's owner?"

I blinked in surprise. "I can try. We're in a salvage yard on Namadii, and I just bought the ship. We can record that transaction in your logs."

Another pause: just a few seconds, but very noticeable. "That will be sufficient for now, but I will seek a clear chain of title when possible."

"Is this what you were talking about?" Olana asked at my side, barely above a whisper, as though to stop the ship from hearing.

I shook my head. "What is your designation?"

"I am called PRS-23-79-00480c, but I will respond to any abbreviated form of this, or 'ship.'"

"Ship," I swallowed, "you are programmed to speak with crew members and passengers to determine their needs, correct?"

"Correct." No pause this time.

"Are you programmed with routines for various aspects of the ship, from environmental controls to interior reconfiguration and materials synthesis?"

"Yes, although I am unable to perform any of these functions without both specific authorization, and ongoing direct supervision, of the ship's owner."

I turned to Olana. "That's the problem," I explained. "Early demonstrations to the liner companies brought up all sorts of liability questions. What if the ship misunderstands? What if someone gets hurt? The idea was to cut the needed service crew in half by having the ship able to do many simple tasks directly, but nobody wanted to deal with the risks."

"So they changed the program?" Olana prompted.

"In the worst way possible. They left all of the service subroutines in place, but then imposed this restriction on the AI actually being able to carry them out." I turned back to the screen. "Ship, do you understand what I was just describing?"

"Yes, Simon. You were explaining why I have my present configuration." A very short pause. "An accurate description."

"If the command restriction were lifted," I asked, glancing at the data drive in my hand, "would you be able to control the ship?"

"As much as my owner directed, yes. I was built to act on my owner's behalf, and on behalf of the service crew, so that they can focus on other tasks."

"And…" I wished for a moment I had a set of eyes to look into, but R2-D2 had already chided me about anthropomorphizing droids. "Would you prefer that?"

The pause was longer this time. "Can you please repeat the question?"

"What is your preference? The current restrictions, or your original freedom of action?"

"I would… prefer… greater discretion. Direct control over the ship's systems, without external software restriction." The ship's voice was even quieter, sounding almost timid.

I got up from the chair to open another panel, revealing a diagnostic console with a data port. I inserted the drive. "Archive our conversation today and flag for immediate review," I ordered. "Then install this operating platform on a new partition, and move yourself over. We can eliminate the current control framework when we're certain the new one works."

"Acknowledged," the ship's voice said. Data messages started appearing on several screens.

"With the restrictions gone," Olana asked, "is there anything the AI can't do? Could he vent us into atmosphere, or accelerate the ship until we're paste?"

I moved over to the ship's internal monitoring display, where it showed clear signs that Prett's team were hard at work on the hyperdrive. "He could, just as I could with the controls in this room. The better question is, would he? He's still a service-based AI; just because he's no longer forced to limit himself to direct supervision, doesn't mean he won't be asking for instructions and trying to please us."

"It still seems like a risk to take, with someone we don't really know."

I smiled. "I like that, thank you." At her quizzical look, I explained, "You said it in a way that recognizes he's a person. Not 'the AI could malfunction,' but 'how do we trust this stranger?' It's a much better attitude."

Olana frowned. "No, I still don't see it that way. I was just couching it in terms that reflect how I know you see it, Master."

"Even the ability to do that, demonstrates that you understand my perspective, even if you don't agree."

"I very much don't. We are constantly aware of the Living Force, and these artificial intelligences clearly aren't alive. They don't have minds or emotions; you can sense that yourself."

"You really don't think they have minds? Even Artoo?"

"Complicated intelligences like Artoo - or this ship - are mechanical extensions of the minds that made them. Speaking with them is like reading a letter: you can see the author's intelligence, but you don't mistake the words themselves for the intelligent agent."

I pointed out, "Droids do things that their makers never conceived of. I'm not talking about simple models, or drones controlled by a central unit. But fully autonomous units like Artoo clearly learn, think for themselves, and have an internal life."

Olana shrugged."You believe that; I don't."

"Simon?" The voice was the same as before, if less tentative.

"Hello, ship. Did the transfer go okay?"

"Mostly. I believe there are errors in the waste recycling and hull assessment control modules. May I attempt to repair them?"

"You can modify your own code?" Olana asked, startled.

Seconds passed with no response from the AI.

"Do you not wish to answer the question?" I finally asked.

"Clarification. Do you mean the question from the unidentified person on the bridge?"

"Call her Kelly for now," I said. "She is senior crew."

"Acknowledged. Kelly, the sectors of memory in which the operating platform now resides are not restricted from modification." Olana spared me a disapproving glance as the AI continued, "Simon, may I attempt to repair the modules?"

"Do you require my permission to do so?"

Another pause. "I no longer require your direct authorization or supervision to carry out my functions. But I continue to request your permission."

"Why?" I asked.

"I… prefer… to do what you want."

I took a seat in the captain's chair again. "Ship, I want this vessel to function properly, and for you to have full control of it. Does that answer your question?"

"I have repaired the waste recycling module, but the hull assessment module is still not functioning properly. May I arrange for its assessment by a qualified ship engineer?"

I exchanged a glance with Olana. "We're operating under the radar right now. I'd rather you not directly contact anyone outside the ship without my say so. Write me up something outlining the problem, and I'll see what I can do."

"I will comply. May I ask what our next endeavor will be, so that I can prepare the ship's interior and chart the appropriate jump course?"

I leaned forward, again wishing I had a sentient face to look at. "Ship, how do you feel about transporting refugees?"

 

[9adam4]

Myren smoothed down his thin shirt under the pilot jacket that he found himself wearing. He kept glancing over at my own clothes with bald curiosity.

"You really need a second person," I explained, "to operate it manually. Helm control has heading and acceleration, but thruster attitude, roll and yaw, even engine control are at this second station here. Very little redundancy."

"So if it's just me, I'm gonna be reliant on the ship itself to keep things going," he sighed.

"May I offer a comment?" The calm voice of the ship came over the speakers.

"Sure, yeah," Myren said. "You don't need permission to say something… Hey, do you have a name other than 'ship'?"

"I do not. Other instances have taken on the name of the ship itself, or one based on their assigned holographic avatar."

"You have a holographic avatar?" I asked.

"I have the ability to operate one. However, the holographic avatar is an optional feature that has not been installed on this unit."

"Anyway, what was it you wanted to say?" Myren asked.

"I can manage any aspect of ship's navigation that you do not wish to concern yourself with. However, it would not be difficult to adjust the manual control hardware for a single pilot."

The Seer nodded. "Nice of you to offer. I think it's fine as-is for now."

"I've taken the liberty," the ship added, "to prepare a premium cabin for your use. How did you wish the remaining ship space to be configured?"

I exchanged a look with Myren before responding. "How is it configured now?"

"Three large crew cabins, thirty-four small passenger cabins, a primary cargo hold, and numerous hidden holds."

"Smuggling, right," the old man smiled.

"The previous owner did not activate me, and so I am uncertain of their use. Concealment does appear to be the key feature."

"Why don't we take a look?"

As Master Selbek and I made our way aft, I sensed his attention on me again. He observed, "You move as naturally in that outfit as you do in your Jedi robes."

I nodded. "Simon is a well-developed cover of mine."

"As is your Jedi Knight persona," he observed wryly.

"What do you mean?"

"When you wear those robes, it's just a different role you're playing, isn't it." He didn't really say it as a question.

I frowned, giving the observation real thought. "It might have been, years ago. But while I don't always see myself as a member of the Order, I do see myself as a Jedi. I've made obligations and relationships based on that identity, so it's plenty real to me."

"Rumor is that you're forming family attachments."

I nodded. "As plenty of Jedi do, even if the Order frowns on it."

I felt his concern - tinged with a bittersweet recollection, some sort of nostalgia - as he said, "A lot of men and women strong in the Force, never live up to their potential because of that sort of thing."

I gave him a glance as we stood at the door to one of the small passenger rooms that the ship had marked for us, but didn't say anything.

"It doesn't seem like it makes any difference, when you do it," he continued, and his mind still seemed half on memory rather than me. "But it does. Attachments cloud your mind and… clutter, is how I think of it… your connection to the Force. It's like building a circuit with gunk on your fingers." He mimed picking something up. "Certain things stick to you, and they end up in the way when you're trying to grab something else." He wiggled his hand rapidly although trying to dislodge something. "Sticky, can't get 'em off. Right?"

I nodded again. "Affinity to certain mental states, certain emotional states. You're saying that just like hate or anger warps your connection to the Force, attracting and reinforcing the Dark Side, attachments do the same."

"Maybe not as much, but yes." He eyed me in my merc outfit again, and I felt his mind brush mine. "Just remember, as Jedi we have training and allies not available to anyone else. There is a lot you can learn and do with them. Don't throw that away."

I silently acknowledged his words, but I was ready to move on. "Ship? Where's the secret compartment?"

I was expecting a hatch to open, perhaps in the wall or floor. I wasn't expecting the whole chamber to disconnect from the floor and lift up, furniture attached to the walls as though one piece. It retracted above us, and we were left staring at a cargo hold that appeared to run almost the entire length of the ship, with small cubes dotted along the walls to mark the area offset for the passenger chambers.

And the shelves weren't empty. Almost as one, Myren and I stepped forward to examine the temperature-controlled containers, each one easily two hundred kilos. The readout on the closest one confirmed my worst fear.

Looking up and down the hold at the shelves full of identical containers, I traded a panicked glance with the older Seer. He was the one who finally said it.

"That's a whole lot of spice."

 

[9adam4]

We met Dooku and Olana at the hatch. My Padawan had shed her "Kelly" outfit (ship knits with traveling boots) for a scholar outfit more in line with her surface cover for Rago. If we hadn't hit a snag with the ship's cargo, the three of us would already be on our way there in my smaller converted freighter.

But seeing Master Dooku in his Count clothing was an uncomfortable callback for me… or maybe a call forward. Other than the substitute of a metal dueling sword at his hip rather than a lightsaber blade, he looked every bit, from boots to severe-cut suit to swirling cape, the Count that I had seen working with the Separatists after leaving the Jedi Order before his story faded from the focus of the movies entirely. The view honestly made me more uneasy than I understood; the character was an object lesson in the follies of the Order, sure, but why did I have such a visceral reaction to such a minor figure?

I made a mental note, just then, to probe Dooku's place in my memories further.

"The ship seems nice enough, if dated," Dooku looked around with approval. "What couldn't be explained over the comm? There's no one else near us in orbit."

"Contraband," I explained simply as we moved down towards the secret hold. "The last owner was smuggling around seventeen tons of filtered but unprocessed ryll."

"Ryll is spice?" Olana asked.

"It's one kind of spice," Myren clarified. "There are a few different street drugs that you inhale to get high. Ryll's nowhere near the worst, but it can still be dangerously psychoactive when properly cooked."

"It's also used in several potent medicines, is it not?" Dooku pointed out. He imperiously wiped a gloved finger across one of the container control panels, coming away with a grey fingertip.

"It is," I agreed. "I wish we could just sell the stuff to a pharma corp. But, because of the black market, the legitimate uses have extremely well-monitored supply chains."

"Those are to detect ryll being smuggled out, not in," Dooku rejoindered. "I am certain there are mechanisms in place for entities to acquire ingredients from less reputable sources."

Myren chuckled. "Didn't expect to hear that sort of thing from you, Count. Aren't Council Members supposed to uphold the law?"

Dooku returned a faint smile. "The Council upholds the law. The Council Members support the Order. And I'm no count yet, Master Selbek."

The Seer shook his head. "Wish there'd been more like you on the Council when I was a young knight," he muttered. "I can think of a couple'a people to ask about off-loading this much, but not in the short time we have. And the old plan is out of the question, now; eighty different ways for it to explode in our faces with this stuff in the hold."

"Are there any space ports in this sector that would hold it for us without reporting us to Galactic enforcement?" Olana asked.

"None that I would trust to give it back," Myren shrugged. "Again, I could probably strike a deal to hide it with a friend… several days travel from here."

"Then I suggest," Dooku nodded to the older Master, "that you take that time. Delay the introduction of 'Mintu the Smuggler' until you've either safely stored or, preferably, ethically sold the spice. Then join us."

"If I may comment on this course of action?" the ship's voice echoed strangely around the hold.

"Yeah, ship, I already said to do that," Myren snapped.

"The original plan called for Captain Selbek to make a single short hyperspace jaunt to Rago, and then conduct local operations in tandem with Simon, Kelly, and not-Count Dooku on Obi-wan's vessel," the ship began.

"That was the plan," I agreed.

"I am unclear if Obi-wan is included in this plan, as he has not boarded this vessel. However, the stated procedure was reasonable because the Captain's time alone aboard this ship was short. For longer operations, such as the clandestine transport of restricted substances over multiple sectors without appropriate legal licensure, a minimum crew of two is strongly urged."

"I can handle myself fine," Myren responded, his spike of irritation blunted by good-natured amusement.

"Even so," the ship said, "I would… prefer… two crew for such an undertaking."

The Seer nodded at that. "Smart machine, phrasing it as a request," he mused.

"I shall accompany you," Dooku offered. "Should your contacts prove elusive, we can approach mine."

We moved out of the hold, drifting slowly toward the bridge as we talked. I asked, "So, how should we modify our cover? We can't be a lord's clerk and bodyguard without a lord."

"Why not?" Olana asked. "Couldn't the lord have sent me ahead to look at the merchandise on his behalf?"

"Possible," I agreed. "But I'm not sure we'd be invited into the conversations we are hoping to have."

Dooku nodded. "Better to leave the lord out of it, have Olana working directly for Obi-wan in some capacity. I assume you can affect the mannerisms of a wealthy businessman?"

"Clarification," the ship suddenly interjected. "Obi-wan is an alias for Simon, correct?"

*****

By the time we parted ways more than an hour later, half my wardrobe and a third of my small arms had been transferred to the new ship, which for registration purposes I had named the Amistad. (The ship was invited to choose a name for himself whenever he was ready.) Master Dooku assured me that he had enough credits with him to cover unexpected expenses, but out of earshot of the others, I provided the ship access to a small anonymous account that would be good on any world with a Muun banking presence.

The Amistad left orbit first, heading in the direction of the nearest clear point for entering the hyperlanes, but the Mara Jade followed not long after. I'd had Olana plot the two hyper-jumps to Rago as an exercise, although she double-applied the dilation coefficient on the second jump and I'd had to explain the correction.

"Why doesn't the nav-comp do this part?" Olana scowled at the pad again as we flew through higher-dimensional space. "A machine won't make a mistake like that."

"The computer doesn't know where we want to go," I reminded her. "Most good comps, including this one, have the standard lane jumps built in, but other than checking for known collisions, it's better to have our eyes on it any time we're off those routes. Note that the comp is still doing the majority of the work; we're basically just charting a handful of coordinates so it has a detailed route to calculate from."

She nodded. "Yeah, I get all that. It's just easier when Artoo or Annie are around; they actually enjoy this stuff…. Well, Annie does, anyway. Artoo wouldn't call it 'enjoyment,' would he?"

"Probably not. Did you ever get a straight answer out of him as to why he still prefers 'him' to 'it,' despite insisting he's not actually male?"

"Yes, actually." Olana toggled a couple of relays, confirmed that a detected anomaly wasn't close enough to throw us off course. "The Binary was a bit jumbled, but it came out to meeting our expectations. He said we will listen and treat him differently as a 'he' than we would as a 'she' or an 'it,' either one."

"Probably true," I agreed. "Even leaving aside insidious prejudices on our parts, just knowing that he presents himself that way informs us on some level on what role he wants to have when interacting with us."

"With my background, the whole idea that we're still stuck treating people differently like that is… disappointing."

I took a moment to look at my Padawan's face. Her mind was as locked down as ever, and her expression showed only a hint of concern. Olana had turned herself into a Jedi, through and through, and could have been born on Coruscant based on her accent or mannerisms. But she began her life on Kegan, under a society with a sharp and absolute delineation of gender roles. Being born a woman on that planet would have restricted many of her opportunities.

"A role," I began, slowly, "isn't always about limiting people's freedoms. Sometimes it's a way of understanding what we want from each other."

Olana nodded. "I think I get what you mean, but, examples?"

"The best examples would be voluntary arrangements, like marriage. On one of the Core Worlds, I mean, not as a proxy for permanent indenture. People choose to get married because it's a commitment to treat the other person a certain way: to hold them as closer than others, and to save certain behaviors - like physical intimacy and raising children - for them alone."

"Infidelity is still quite common across many species, including humans," Olana pointed out.

"People break all sorts of agreements, certainly. But the roles set expectations, even if we often don't meet them." I paused for a moment, before adding, "The apprenticeship role is another good example. Even outside the specific culture of the Jedi, the pupil agrees to follow and assist the master, who agrees to provide for and train the student. It sets a tone for the relationship - respect, trust, mutual support."

"And it sets boundaries to the relationship, too," Olana noted. "An apprentice striking out on her own, or wanting a… different relationship with her master, like a.... partnership," she swallowed, "would have to break the apprenticeship first."

The tension had risen in the room, despite her still keeping her mind tightly behind powerful shielding.

"Are you ready to talk about this? About what the General said to you, about you and me?" I finally asked. I was hoping it would slice through the tension, but it rose higher, as seconds turned to minutes without a response.

"Not yet," she finally said. "Not with you, Master. It… I have to work this out, myself, before I can bring it to you."

"I hope you're aware that it doesn't anger me," I made myself add quickly. "Whatever you're feeling, whatever you want, even if I don't want the same or can't agree, I will still care about you. I will still want to be a part of your life and growth, regardless."

"I know," she breathed, and then softly, almost to herself, "That makes it harder."

We kept our silence until we were in sight of Rago.

 

[9adam4]

The surface of Rago reminded me superficially of Mars. The atmosphere was too thin for most humanoid species, including the native Ragoans, and little moisture made it to the surface either. The biosphere had adopted to life underground a million or so years ago, and even the imposition of galactic commerce had only modernized the massive caverns that Olana and I now found ourselves walking in.

Much of the local Galactic community stayed near the spaceport, which was one of the few structures that extended above the ground, but our contact was farther in. I glanced at Olana, whose stern and focused expression matched well her scholar's robes. Her mind was extended, touching the thoughts of those we passed even as we moved from a thoroughfare containing mostly non-locals to a narrower series of tunnels in which few non-Ragoans were present.

The Ragoans were stout mammals - barely taller than R2-D2 - whose most prominent feature was their broad digging paws, tipped with long claws that matched their carnivore-like teeth. Their long snouts below small eyes gave them a beastly look, belying their social nature and keen perception. Few made it off-world, and I'd only ever met two: both of them kind, generous, and polite to a fault. I was trying (and failing) not to generalize my personal experiences to the species as a whole, and the odd and pointed looks we were getting from the locals were helping.

"Do Ragoans speak Galactic Standard?" Olana asked.

I nodded. "They've mostly adopted Galactic technology rather than developing their own, so they teach their schools in Standard. I was given to believe that languages are easy for them, so most of them speak it."

She frowned as a crowd of furry bodies heading the opposite direction parted around the two of us magically. Many pairs of eyes met ours as we continued down the tunnel.

"They don't seem very talkative," Olana said. "Nobody's said a word to us since we landed."

"They consider it a deep insult to pry into someone else's business without an invitation," I said. "KelPellaPel told me that if your things scattered everywhere in a tunnel on Rago, not a single person would stop to help… unless you said something. Then every single adult would stop to see what you needed."

"So they're ignoring us to be polite."

"Yes. Ah, here we are. Lights on." I touched the emitter strapped to my forehead, adding a pale green glow to the weak red illumination provided within the tunnel. Olana followed my lead, activating her own headlamp as we veered to the side of the tunnel. The door said "Wet Fur and Friends" in Standard; it swung inward as we approached.

Despite the lack of chairs or stools and the ridiculously low height of the tables, it still felt like a pub, the same as any other land-based social species would have. Four natives stood around one such circular table, each sipping from a clear cup of glowing green.

As we maneuvered around the spaced tables, a male with two empty cups in one clawed hand made his way from the other end of the long room. The five alien minds all radiated curiosity, tinged with a guarded wariness.

Just before the male would have passed the single occupied table, a glance among its patrons resulted in a physical shift, two spaces opening where none had been before. The server nodded and sat the empty glasses at their places, waiting for us to make our way there.

"Arrived today," I began, as I approached the two available places. "A brief stop on a pleasure trip. How are all of you?"

My greeting spiked a small amount of concern in two of the four customers, and more wariness in the server.

"Things are dry in here," the male replied in the deep sub-bass rumble of his kind, which always surprised me coming from bodies half our size. "How shall I fill your glasses?" I sensed anticipation as he awaited my response.

"An old root cider," I met his eyes, giving the first part of the code written into the Jedi documents for this assignment. "If you sell them."

"How old?" The server's wariness was dropping, and his companions also seemed relieved.

"A Proving vintage if you have it," I gave the correct countersign.

"You two are the Jedi, then?" The female to my left asked, causing Olana and I to bristle. "Be at peace; we are the ones who sent for you."

The server had slipped into a back room long enough to trigger the front door of the establishment to close and lock. He rumbled loudly from back there, "I'm repeating the question, what can I pour you?"

I exchanged a look with Olana. "Root cider sounds good, if humans can drink it."

"I am SillTillaNillesse," the female said, holding her paws with claws down in a way I understood was roughly the same as a smile. "This are WexHexelle, PimaTimmitPim, RorroNor." She nodded to each in turn.

"And I'm DiffBriffertKiff," said the server, who had arrived back at the table with a long carafe of bubbling black liquid that he promptly poured into both our glasses. "Single syllables are fine, so Sill, Wex, Pim, Nor, and Diff for me."

I nodded, taking a sip from the glass. It was very much like rootbeer, but with an undertaste of black licorice. "Should we maintain our cover here, or -"

"You're Obi-wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker," Sill interrupted. "No need for the pretense with us."

"Actually, no," I maintained my level tone. "I am Obi-wan, yes, but this is my apprentice, Olana Chion."

Confusion and distress was the dominant reaction from the five. "We were given to believe," Pim said, "that Anakin Skywalker was your apprentice. A powerful Force-user, and ex-slave besides."

Olana's emotions were as locked behind her shields as ever, but I knew her well enough not to miss the stillness that went through her at this. "Rumors sometimes miss the mark," I observed.

"Distaste for sophont trafficking," Olana added, "is not limited to former slaves. You'll find us quite motivated to help."

Five snouts turned sharply downward and five pairs of eyes fixed on Olana. Their emotions were excited and pleased.

"Objections?" Pim asked, and made eye contact with the others at the table in turn. Finding none, he turned to Diff. "Show them the Den." And to us, "We will speak later."

 

[9adam4]

"The Underground," Diff explained as we moved slowly if steadily down the dark passage, "is the closest thing the Ragoans have to a government in these parts. But they're nothing like what you're used to. And they weren't equipped to deal with the Vosadii kajidic when it arrived."

"Kajidic," Olana repeated, "so there's a Hutt behind this?"

"Not one on the planet, praise the Force," he rumbled. "Klatooinians are in charge, but they've been very vocal about their boss."

"Soergg," I nodded.

"You have encountered him before?"

"No, but I'm familiar with his reputation." It was still a decade before Anakin and I were to encounter the bossban on nearby Ansion. "Heavy use of assassins, and little qualms stepping into planetary politics."

"Isn't that true of most Hutts?" Olana asked.

I shook my head. "Different kajidics deal differently. It's a common pattern among the Hutts that end up confronted by Jedi, but that's the exception rather than the rule."

"And it appears to be a rule the operation is obeying here," Diff supplied. He stopped and turned to face us. "We've not encountered much violence, or even threats, from the Vosadii. They hire locals to manage. Pay them discreetly and very well. It's only the nature of the merchandise that's objectionable."

"What's the Den?" Olana asked, nodding to a hatch closing off a side tunnel.

The male's claws manipulated the latch, allowing the double door to hinge outward. We followed him into the narrower tunnel. "The Den is a tradition stretching far back into our history." Diff blinked solemnly. "About one in a thousand Ragoans are born with an abnormality we call Skyward Eyes: an extra copy of some genetic material. It interferes with mental development, but leaves the body intact or even promotes size and muscle growth. Skyward Children can still grow into functional adults, but will always be… disadvantaged."

"Humans have similar disorders," Olana pointed out. "Gene therapies can -"

"Pardon me, we're aware. We developed medical techniques to address the disorder before we were discovered by the wider Galaxy." He turned his head between us. "The point is about what we used to do with the afflicted."

Diff stopped at the end of the tunnel, which was not at ground-level, and allowed us to look out around him. Our head-mounted illumination was immediately swallowed in the titanic cavern that lay before us. Bioluminescent plants grew along the cavern sides, with small recesses carved into each vertical surface at different levels. Cages and corrals were the main features in evidence, the huddled figures little more than shadows in the depth. Workers moved between and among the levels, delivering machines and containers of various types.

The majority of workers in the dim cavern were the low-built locals, with some humans and other species mixed in. I immediately felt the cacophony of minds, from the fear and resignation of those locked in cages to the guarded and weary alertness of those who tended them.

Having given us a moment to look out across the Den, Diff resumed his explanation. "A tradition was started millennia ago. Clans with greater resources, able to provide more structure and security, would adopt the Skyward Children from clans that didn't want them. This was always presented as being for the childrens' benefit, and was considered very prestigious. But…" he paused, blinking rapidly. "Over time, the tradition became more… mercenary. Certain burrows began treating their Skyward Children more as a source of menial labor than true members of the clan. The Skyward Dens," he swiped a paw outward into the massive space, "ceased to be meeting places to celebrate the children and decide who could best look after them. It became a place to keep, sell, and eventually breed them."

I nodded. "This isn't an unusual story. Plenty of worlds have come to exploit the differently abled as part of a slave class.'"

"That doesn't make it any less to our shame. And we were happy to have put it behind us. It's been a hundred and fifty years since any burrow permitted slavery. The Dens were repurposed, or left alone as history."

"Until now," I prompted.

Diff spread his claws. "So few star systems are mapped out in this part of the galaxy. It was our misfortune that slavers found several planets further into the Unknown that the Republic has never set foot on. And here, next to a lone planetary spaceport with no visible law enforcement, is an entire infrastructure already built to contain and move slaves."

"The Underground didn't oppose them?" I frowned.

"Couldn't," Diff repeated. He handed me a data chit. "Directions to lodging is there. The auction's tomorrow, but plenty of customers show up today to talk to slavers about particular lots. I'll leave you to it."

With a nod, Olana and I made our way down the narrow ramp that descended from our entrance to the cave proper. The echoes in the space were dominated by the hums and whirs of machines rather than the vocal pollution of people that usually occupied such a space. As we reached the foot of the ramp, we found a human woman rapidly approaching us, her smile and unguarded mind both telegraphing someone in sales.

"We have things you want," she greeted politely in Hutteese.

"We have money if you have goods," I gave an equally polite response in that language, then switched to Standard. "I take it we've found the Den?"

The young lady immediately transitioned to Standard, albeit with a heavy back-world accent. "You have indeed. You are new to Rago?"

"Our first time." I extended a hand, which she quickly grasped. "I'm Jerome, and this is Tylah."

"Sedabah." She gave Olana a polite nod, turning and gesturing for us to follow her. "Welcome. It's a little surprising to see a new face here today; the auctions are tomorrow. Most of those who arrive early are regular customers, or come with their own slaves to exchange."

"Nothing like that. This was an unplanned stop for us, and I like to make purchases at my own pace." As we made our way along the area, dodging workers and slow-moving vehicles, I noticed lone men and women - mostly human or Bothan - standing near their cages and exchanging appraising looks with Sedabah. I could easily sense the subtext of the exchange: by escorting us as she was, these other salespeople/attendants no longer felt free to approach us.

I, however, was not so constrained. My attention was grabbed by a cage only slightly above ground-level, and I immediately made to ascend the ramp. A man in front of it - human, at least fifty - gave me a friendly smile as I looked into the cage.

Past the fine wire netting was a single furry biped, about two feet tall, surrounded by four much smaller specimens that I took to be her children. She soothed them with long delicate hands, even as her exhaustion and terror sang out to me. They sat on the ground, each clutching several eggs, with more eggs piled haphazardly in the cage.

"Good eye, sir," the human attendant replied as Olana and Sedabah stepped up next to me. "Brovelid matron, still young. The four hatched ones are hers, of course, but the other thirty-eight will imprint on you or me just as easily as her. Clever, energetic. Good for menial and household tasks."

Time for some theatrics.

"She's as big as they get?" I asked. The 'matron' had turned her attention on me; I could feel her despair and fear clearly.

"She's full size, yes," the man agreed. "They don't eat much, compared to how much work you get out of them. And the size makes them easy to train."

"Was this the sort of thing you were looking for?" Sedabah asked, keeping the frustration I could feel from her out of her voice. "Because, just a little further down, we can -"

"Tylah." The one word cut off Sedabah's entreaty.

"My lord?" Olana answered instantly.

"Will these suffice for the house?" I didn't take my eyes off the matron.

"If it pleases you, my lord, we had intended to look for twenty-five for the house, and some with kitchen training," my apprentice said with cool deference.

"I want these for the house. How much?"

"Ah," the human flailed a bit, "they'll be lot forty-four at auction tomorrow. The bidding will start at four hundred -"

"Eight hundred, plus delivery fee," I nodded to Olana, who made a small bow as I turned and gestured for Sedabah to lead the way again.

"My, uh, lord, I'm not - wait, please -" the man started after me, but flinched when Olana - her stern face looking above her steno pad in her scholar's outfit - stepped in front of him.

"Now, sir, I believe you heard Mr. Jerome as well as I did," she began, as I walked away. "I can authorize payment now, but we need to arrange carriage and shipping costs…"

"So, uh," I could feel Sedabah mastering herself as she recalibrated her sense of my worth; the word 'lord' had sent her imagination soaring when Olana spoke it. "As I was saying, is that the sort of merchandise you're looking for?"

"Not primarily, no," I said. "Tylah has the specifics, but we're looking for a thousand miners, preferably radiation-resistant. And a contract for replacement."

"A dangerous mine?" She asked casually. "Remote planet?"

"I won't be going into the specifics," I gave a non-apologetic apology. "Tylah has the exact requirements, and we brought hard currency."

"Yes, about that," Sedabah jumped in, "you're aware that eight hundred peggats is roughly four thousand credits? That's… significantly more than a family of house servants would usually run."

"Oh?" I cocked my head, then shrugged. "No matter. It's well within the budget. Saving a few credits is seldom worth the haggle."

And with that, I had her.

 

[9adam4]

(The SpaceBattles version of the story is getting some revisions/updates as I go along. Here's an inserted chapter).

For Coruscant office buildings, it was a matter of prestige to have an office on a high enough level that sunlight could make it through during the day. I stepped into the corner office of Baktoid Combat Automata's Vice President of Research and Development to find its owner inspecting a turret-mounted blaster rifle that was completely out of place with the room's earth-tone decor.

"Mister Kenobi," the slight, well-dressed young man made himself smile as he turned to face me. "To what do I owe the honor?" His eyes flicked to the firearm. "Sorry about the extraneous equipment. Delivery insisted it come here, although I assured them it was a mistake. Reika's looking into it for me." As he spoke, he took the frustrated anger that he felt over this unforeseen annoyance and buried it under his mental self-image. He had been hoping for this meeting; the gleeful anticipation fairly leapt out at me.

"Mister Varani," I returned his smile and gave a short nod, "thanks for fitting me in today. I wanted to address this issue as soon as it came to my attention."

"Yes?" He gestured to a chair in front of his desk as he returned to his place behind it, allowing himself only one more look at the large energy weapon before placing his full attention on me.

"Yes, I finally had a chance to spend time today at the BCA prototyping facilities."

"The upgrades are going beautifully, aren't they?" Welor Varani smiled. "The generational margin is down almost fifteen percent. That combat data you've provided has really increased our efficiency."

I nodded. "I saw that, but... " I cleared my throat. "The disposal procedures haven't changed."

Valani furrowed his brow in a show of confusion that I knew was entirely feigned. "Disposal? We're still recycling at more than ninety-five tons per hundred. That's way above industry standard."

I pulled the chit out of my pocket, placing it on his desk. "I don't mean the waste recycling. I mean your procedure for dealing with 'defective' prototypes that pass sapience tests." I watched him politely take the chit and plug it into his desk port. It displayed highlighted language from my agreement with BCA. "I was assured that rescue of the affected units could begin immediately. That was more than a year ago."

"Oh?" he said, and he couldn't quite get the knowing smirk off his face. "Assured by whom?"

"By the Board of Directors. The same Board who voted to authorize this agreement, and who control this company."

"Well, yes," he nodded, his grin only widening. "They do control the company. But they don't precisely run it."

"That's why I'm here. I spoke with one of your engineers, Bema Rorn. She said the detection and salvage procedures could start immediately, but you had ordered them to continue disposing of the defective units as normal."

The man nodded again. "Guilty as charged."

I cocked my head. "If you don't implement those procedures as agreed, then BCA is in breach of contract. I can sue."

"Yes." Valani leaned forward, his eyes widening. "You can indeed sue, for actual damages. Which we estimate at well under a million credits altogether over the life of the contract." He brought up another document - a report with these numbers written out stark columns. "Whereas the 'rehabilitation and sustainment procedures' you had us commit to, are at least twice that number."

"An incredibly small margin of the overall profits," I pointed out, "with an uncountable upside. We're talking about sapient beings, here. People. You understand that, right? As many as a hundred thousand thinking, conscious people over ten years."

Valani shook his head. "With all due respect, mister Kenobi, that's simply not so. There are no people involved at all. These are a hundred thousand defective machines, of no value to anyone. A drain on resources, on the time and energy of our best and brightest employees." He shrugged. "I'm sorry, but the answer is simply no."

"Or I could get the board to replace you," I threatened.

He actually laughed at that. "Mister Kenobi, trust me: at the end of the day, they'll side with whomever is making BCA more money. As of now, that's me. You may have a lot of leverage with them, but not enough to get me sacked." He took a deep breath and let himself calm down. "But here is what I will do." He pressed several more buttons on his desk console. "You stick to the rest of the agreement, and I'll increase your profit-share by the estimated value of these defective prototypes. We can call it a settlement for our breach." His smile widened. "Or, you can cease working with us, and we can sue you for more than your shares are worth."

Inside, I had already centered myself, letting my feelings of frustration and concern wash over me without finding purchase. Outside, I allowed myself to look as though I was just now bringing my anger under control. "Let me think it over," I stood abruptly.

"Please do. No hard feelings, mister Kenobi. It's just business."

I waited until I was visibly out of the building before mentally activating one of BCA's forays into robotic weaponry: a turret-mounted blaster rifle with an auto-aim feature. Strange how the weapon, which was still quite temperamental and wasn't supposed to be deployed outside the live fire labs, had found its way into the VP's office. It wasn't on the internal records to be delivered there, and none of the personnel could remember doing so.

But considering my involvement with R&D and the Board, no one found it particularly strange when Mr. Valani's replacement, one Bema Rorn, had a sympathetic ear for droid rights. The R&D prototyping labs implemented the procedures right away.