body. The pilot's two-toed feet were pointing at awkward angles.
"It looks that way," Qui-Gon replied. "As well as being struck on the
head." He stood up with a sigh. "It may be several hours before we are even
able to talk to him."
Obi-Wan held back his exasperation. Another roadblock. They were on
an important mission, yet had no idea where they were going or what they
were supposed to do. And to top it off, they were stranded on a planet with
someone who wanted to stop them, possibly for good.
Trying not to let frustration overtake him completely, Obi-Wan turned
his back on the pilot and sat down to wait.
Two hours later, the pilot groaned and sat up groggily. Looking
around, he appeared to take in the two Jedi and the empty space where his
ship had been a few hours ago. There was a moment of heavy silence before
he began to shout in anger. He tried to leap to his feet, but quickly sat
back down. Gingerly feeling the back of his neck, he found the lump and
shouted some more.
"Try to remain calm," Qui-Gon said in a soothing tone. The pilot
cursed but didn't attempt to stand up again.
"Your ship was stolen, then?" Qui-Gon asked. He got up and crossed
the hangar in a few quick strides.
"Well, I don't think I misplaced it," the pilot replied hotly. The
sound of his voice was strange, since it came out of his two mouths at
once. He eyed Qui-Gon with distrust. "Who are you?"
"I am Qui-Gon Jinn and this is my apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi," he
replied. "We believe the being we are following may have stolen your ship.
Can you tell us what happened?"
The captain gently rubbed the lump on the back of his neck. "I was
working on my ship - making minor adjustments to the hyperdrive. Someone
came up behind me and whacked me on the back of my neck." The pilot winced
as he continued rubbing his wound.
"Did you see your attacker?" Obi-Wan asked.
The pilot shook his head. "I didn't see anyone. Or hear anything,
actually. It could have been any thief or scoundrel. There are plenty
around here."
"Do you think it was the being who hired passage on your ship a few
hours ago? The Quermian?"
"How do you know about the Quermian?" the captain asked. But before
the Jedi could reply he waved his hand through the air dismissively. "It
doesn't matter. But I don't know why he'd attack the pilot who was about to
take him to a place he asked to go."
"Perhaps he was interested in piloting the ship himself," Qui-Gon
mused.
"Or saving the fare," Obi-Wan added.
The pilot sighed. "There are many thieves on Nolar. This kind of
thing happens all the time." He looked around the empty hangar and a spark
of fury came into his eyes. "Just not to me."
Obi-Wan knew how the pilot felt. He'd been frustrated with this
mission pretty much since it started.
But at the moment he and Qui-Gon needed information more than
anything else. He had to stay calm and focused.
"Can you tell us where you were going to take the Quermian?" he
asked.
"Of course," the pilot said. Obi-Wan noticed that he seemed more
willing to help the Jedi. Perhaps he thought it might get his ship back. "I
had just finished keying the information into my navcomputer. I remember
because it's not a planet I'm asked to fly to very often. In fact, I can't
say I've ever been there."
"And the name of the planet?" Qui-Gon asked.
"Kodai," the pilot said. "We were going to Kodai."
CHAPTER 8
Qui-Gon thanked the pilot and got to his feet. He had no way of
knowing if the ship was really going to Kodai or not; Dr. Lundi was
certainly smart enough to throw them off the trail or even deftly set a
trap. But they had nothing else to go on. The sooner they could get to
Kodai to investigate, the better.
"Do you need help getting somewhere?" Qui-Gon asked the pilot.
The pilot got to his feet. Though it had been only minutes since he'd
woken up, he was already quite steady. "No, I'll be fine," he replied. "But
if you find my ship, you know where I am."
"Of course," Qui-Gon said. "We'll do what we can."
Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon quickly left the small hangar and made their way
down the street and into a larger one. It was full of ships of all sizes,
and pilots from all over the galaxy talking shop or tinkering with their
vessels. It seemed like it would be easy enough to hire one of them.
Qui-Gon strode up to a pilot and asked if he would take them to
Kodai. "Kodai?" the pilot repeated. "You've got the wrong guy."
"I'll take you there, but I won't land - at least not until next
week," said another.
Qui-Gon asked half a dozen pilots before he finally found one who was
willing to make the journey, a humanoid who wouldn't give them a last name.
"Call me Elda," she said before agreeing to drop them off and leave
immediately. She could not be convinced to wait around for the return trip.
The Jedi could not afford to be choosy. They boarded right away.
While the pilot readied the ship, they settled in for the journey.
"Not many people want to go to Kodai right now," Elda said as she
keyed the destination points into her navcomputer.
Qui-Gon raised an eyebrow. "I gathered as much," he said. "Why is
that?"
The pilot turned to look over her shoulder at Qui-Gon, giving him an
"If you don't know I'm not going to tell you," look.
Qui-Gon didn't prod. It's just as well, he thought. I can get the
information from the Temple.
Stepping out of the cockpit and into the hold, Qui-Gon switched on
his comlink. He had heard of Kodai, and thought it was located somewhere in
the Outer Rim Territories. If he was not mistaken, its surface was mostly
covered by a vast sea.
His comlink crackled to life and a moment later Temple Archivist
Jocasta Nu's voice echoed quietly in the hold of the ship.
"It is good to hear from you, Qui-Gon," she said. "How is the mission
going?"
"It's hard to tell at the moment," Qui-Gon responded honestly. "I was
hoping you could provide me with information on the planet Kodai."
"Kodai, in the Outer Rim," she said. There was a brief silence as
Jocasta plugged the data for the request into her Temple computer. "I seem
to remember something about a massive, swelling sea."
Qui-Gon could hear Jocasta pressing buttons and keys on a computer.
Then she spoke.
"Kodai is, in fact, covered by a giant sea - a sea that hundreds of
years ago swelled so much that it drowned most of the planet's land-
dwelling inhabitants," she reported. "Today there is only one pocket of
land - a single city. It is sparsely populated by a few thousand Kodaians
who spend most of their time trying to preserve their way of life on land,
in spite of the fact that most believe that the sea will rage again and
kill them all." Jocasta was silent for a moment. Qui-Gon guessed that she
was reading ahead.
"Interesting," she murmured. "It seems that the sea has shown no
signs of raging in the last hundred years. In fac
t, the opposite seems to
occur. Every ten years, when the planet's two moons sync up, the sea
experiences a spectacularly low tide."
"I see," said Qui-Gon, filing away this information.
"That's not all," Jocasta said. "What's particularly fascinating is
that the planet's moons will be syncing up the day after tomorrow."
"Interesting timing," Qui-Gon agreed. It seemed obvious enough that
Lundi's trip to Kodai at this particular moment and his search for mining
equipment were not coincidences. But he was still not clear about why it
had been so difficult to find a pilot to take them to Kodai.
Jocasta was quiet for several long moments while Qui-Gon digested
this information. When she did not end the transmission, Qui-Gon guessed
that she had more to tell him.
"Is there something else?" he finally asked.
"Yes," Jocasta replied slowly. "Another collection of Sith materials
was found - this time on the planet Tynna in the Expansion Region. And a
strange explosion has occurred on the peaceful planet Nubia. Nobody has
come forward to take credit for the blast, but a drawing of a crude Sith
Holocron had been scraped onto a duracrete wall outside the ruined
building."
Qui-Gon closed his eyes for a moment. The discovery of the additional
stash was not surprising. But an explosion was something new - something
deadly. The situation was heating up, and he felt a great deal of pressure
to defuse it.
"Thank you for the information," Qui-Gon told Jocasta. "We will be in
touch if we need anything further."
"Of course, Qui-Gon. I will be here if you need me."
As Jocasta switched off her comlink, Qui-Gon felt a pang of sorrow.
He wished that those parting words had been spoken by the woman at the
Temple who had helped him with research in the past - Tahl. Qui-Gon had
been deeply in love with Tahl, and though she had been killed several
months ago, her absence still felt like a blade in his chest.
Qui-Gon put away his comlink and sat down on the floor to meditate
until the path was clear. He was just beginning to feel his body relax when
Obi-Wan rushed into the hold.
"Master!" he shouted, alarmed. "There's a bomb on board!"
CHAPTER 9
Qui-Gon was on his feet in an instant. He followed his apprentice to
the bridge, where the bomb had been planted underneath a low shelf. Bending
down carefully, Qui-Gon examined the device. It was black and square with a
simple timer on top - and a crude drawing of a Sith Holocron etched into
the side.
"I suppose I should have expected something like this," Elda griped
from her seat at the controls. "I just hope your famous Jedi powers can
defuse that thing before it blows up my ship - and us along with it."
"I'll do my best," Qui-Gon said wryly. "Do you have a set of tools we
could use?"
The pilot pointed to a small box in the corner. "You should find
everything you need in there," she said.
Obi-Wan brought the tools over to his Master and crouched down beside
him. "This symbol is becoming familiar," he noted. "But the device itself
does not look too sophisticated."
"It should not be a problem to defuse," Qui-Gon said, casting a
glance toward the captain. "But I'm not so sure about our pilot's temper."
Obi-Wan cracked a smile. Leave it to Qui-Gon to find humor in a
moment like this.
Qui-Gon opened the tool kit and pulled out a long, slender pick.
After carefully inserting it into the side of the bomb casing, he slid it
back and forth until he heard an audible beep. The box opened and several
strands of colorful wire popped out. A timer behind the wires indicated
that the bomb would go off in less than a minute.
"Not much time," Obi-Wan murmured quietly.
Qui-Gon knew his Padawan was right, and he had not expected to see so
many different colored wires inside the bomb. It was a more complicated
design than he'd originally thought.
Focusing his energy on the bomb, he snipped all of the red wires. But
the timer did not switch off. It now read forty seconds, and was counting
down.
"Perhaps it is this black wire," Obi-Wan suggested quietly.
Qui-Gon did not think this was likely. It was the only black wire,
and too obvious a solution. But as he studied the wire, he sensed that
there was indeed something significant about it. Still, he wasn't sure that
cutting it was the right thing to do.
"Twenty seconds," Obi-Wan said.
Qui-Gon looked at the bomb more closely. One end of the black wire
ran directly into the metal inside the casing. At the other end the black
plasticoating ended a few millimeters before the wire touched the metal.
Underneath the missing black coating was a series of bright yellow wires.
They fanned out to form a row and slid neatly into a metal jack.
"Ten seconds."
Qui-Gon reached down and placed his thumb and forefinger on either
side of the yellow wires. Closing his eyes, he twisted them away from the
jack. There was a small popping sound as the wires pulled free.
The timer on the bomb continued to count down. But when it reached
one second, it suddenly stopped.
"You did it, Master," Obi-Wan said, sounding relieved.
Qui-Gon opened his eyes and saw the number frozen on the timer. "With
time to spare," he said wryly.
"I guess you Jedi are good for something," Elda grumped. But there
was humor in her voice, and she was smiling broadly. "Thank you," she added
quietly.
Qui-Gon put the tools back into the case and got to his feet. "You're
welcome," he said.
Back in the hold, Qui-Gon closed his eyes and started to meditate for
the second time that day. The planted bomb was something else to consider.
Was it meant to kill them, or simply throw them off guard? And who had
planted it? It must have been someone who was following them closely,
someone who was highly prepared. Not much time had elapsed between the Jedi
arranging their travel and their subsequent takeoff.
Qui-Gon began to breathe deeply, letting his mind clear and then
focus. But something was interfering with his concentration. His Padawan
was pacing.
Qui-Gon opened an eye. "Why don't you try some meditation?" he asked.
Obi-Wan nodded and sat down. Even after he had stopped pacing the
room, Qui-Gon could tell he was still agitated. With both eyes open now, he
studied his Padawan. Obi-Wan sat cross-legged in a chair with his eyes
closed. But his shoulders were tensed, and beneath his eyelids Qui-Gon
could see movement.
"Are you all right, Obi-Wan?" Qui-Gon asked softly.
Obi-Wan opened his eyes and met his Master's gaze. "Yes," he said
slowly. And then, "Well, I don't know."
"You are afraid," Qui-Gon stated plainly.
A look of shame came over Obi-Wan's face, but he did not deny it. "My
heart is full of dread," he admitted. "I wish we were on another mission -
any other mission. I am not sure I have the courage to face the Holocron...
"
Qui-Gon leaned toward his apprentice. "You have every right
to be
afraid," he said quietly. "Allow yourself to feel the fear - really feel it
- and then let the emotion go. If it comes back, feel it again and let it
go again. There should be no shame in one's emotions."
"I am not at fault if it comes back?" Obi-Wan asked, looking up.
"No, Padawan," Qui-Gon replied. "We cannot control how we feel. Only
how we choose to handle our feelings."
A look of true relief crossed Obi-Wan's face, and he smiled slightly.