The forward ports opened again. The strange display outside collapsed to a dazzling point. With a sharp lurch, the stars returned-the stars, and the distinctive flamin g red and purple pinwheel that dominated the skies of Zonama Sekot.
"Wow," Anakin said, eyes wide. The display was stunning, Perhaps the most beautiful he had ever seen. "Where's our Planet?" the boy asked eagerly.
"Zonama Sekot's sun is behind us," Charza said. "These two spectacular dancers, the red giant and the white dwarf, with their long spiral tail, are its companions."
The pinwheel began as a ribbon of starstuff pulled from the red giant. It then curled around the white dwarf, which flung it outward in interwoven braids of ionized gas.
"You can see Zonama Sekot itself ... it is that tiny green point just ahead." Charza grabbed a long rod with his bristles and tapped it on the port. "There. See?"
"I see it," Anakin said.
The little food-kin scrambled for a better view and cluttered in admiration. Two perched on Anakin's shoulders. A smaller fringed wormlike creature curled around one of the boy's legs and made contented gurgling sounds.
"They do not bother you?" Charza asked Anakin.
"They're fine," Anakin said.
"They feel you are safe," Charza said approvingly. "You have a rare attraction for them!" He swung his couch around and played some of his spikes over another instrument panel. The green planet was already as wide as a thumb tip held at arm's length. "When I came to Zonama Sekot last, I released Vergere on a mountain plateau high in the northern hemisphere, near the pole. I fervently hope she is still alive."
"It is believed she is alive," Obi-Wan said.
"Perhaps," Charza said with a chuffing of his bristles. "There are no pirates here, no commerce centers-indeed, the only inhabited planet for many light-years is Zonama Sekot. But Zonama Sekot is very close to the edge of the galaxy. Beyond this point, there is much that is not known. Anything could happen."
"The edge of the galaxy!" Anakin said, still entranced by the picture. "We could be the first beings to go beyond the edge!" He looked at Obi-Wan. "If we wanted to."
"There are still frontiers," Obi-Wan agreed, "and that is a comforting thought."
"Why comforting?" Charza asked. "Empty places without friends are not good!"
Obi-Wan smiled and shook his head. "The unknown is a place where we can discover who we truly are."
Anakin regarded his master with some surprise.
"So Qui-Gon taught me," Obi-Wan concluded, drawing the long sleeves of his robe in over his booted knees.
"Zonama Sekot itself is not empty," Charza said. "There are beings there, not native to the planet. They arrived many years ago, not known how long. But they invite guests only recently, mostly rich buyers from worlds that do not owe strong allegiance to the Republic or trade with the Trade Federation. I will show you a picture now that Vergere sent to my ship before I left the system."
Charza chuffed orders to a cluster of food-kin perched on one console. They danced on buttons and tugged levers, and a viewer swung into place.
"Best for humans," Charza murmured, and the food-kin adjusted the colorful but blurry image. It floated in the middle of the bridge, suddenly sharpened and took on motion. Obi-Wan and Anakin leaned forward and stared. An intensely green landscape, viewed at sunset, spread before them. The scale of treelike growths that filled most of the image was not immediately apparent until Anakin spotted a structure in the lower left, a kind of balcony with what looked like humans standing on it. Then it became apparent that the trees were easily five or six hundred meters tall, and that the great green domes of foliage in the upper right were easily hundreds of meters across. Green was the dominant color, but the foliage was also rich with gold, blue, purple, and red.
"They do not look like trees," Obi-Wan commented.
"Not trees," Charza said. "Not trees at all. Vergere called them boras."
The planet's yellow sun, setting in a golden haze between the ranks of huge growths, was not the only light in the sky. The vast pinwheel of red and purple gas covered all they could see of the northern sky beyond the boras.
"That is all I know," Charza continued. "I dropped off Vergere, then waited until I was dismissed, and returned to orbit. There was no message to retrieve her, so I departed, as she had ordered. At that time, I detected six ships of known types in the region. All were private craft, I think belonging to customers of the shipbuilders on Zonama Sekot."
"You did well, Charza," Obi-Wan said, getting to his feet. "Perhaps nothing is amiss."
"She may be alive," Charza said, "but I do not think all is well."
"Your instinct?"
Charza burred and lifted his head to the ceiling, then twisted around to regard them with all of his eyes. "Simple observation. Where one Jedi travels alone, perhaps no cause for alarm. Where a Jedi falls silent, and other Jedi follow . . . mishap and adventure!"
Chapter 13
Tarkin marched ahead of Raith Sienar down the tunnel toward the waiting shuttle. "There is no time to lose," Tarkin shouted over his shoulder. "They've emerged from hyperspace, and we've received the tracker signal. We have less than an hour before you must join your squadron and leave Coruscant."
Sienar clutched his travel bag and passed last-minute instructions to his protocol droid, which followed at a quick if lurching pace a few steps behind.
"Come on, man!" Tarkin shouted.
Sienar handed the droid the last thing he had packed earlier that morning a small disk containing special instructions should he not return.
The droid halted at the embarkation slip and gestured a formal good-bye as Sienar joined Tarkin inside the well-appointed shuttle lounge. The hatch slid shut with an ear-popping hiss, and the shuttle immediately pulled from its tower berth and punched through a clear space in the traffic lanes.
It rose rapidly into orbit.
"I hope you understand what could be at stake here," Tarkin said, his thin face grim. His blue eyes grew large and deadly serious as he looked at Sienar. With such wide eyes, his face once more took on the aspect of an animated skull. "At the moment we are merely useful lackeys. We are below the level of awareness of those who will command the galaxy. If this planet and its ships are as useful as they appear to be, we will be richly rewarded. We will be noticed. Some already share my belief that this could be very big. All will share in our success, so our mission has been given level-two priority, Raith. Level two!
"Not level one?" Sienar asked innocently.
Tarkin frowned. "Your cynicism may not serve you well, my friend."
"I keep an independent mind," Sienar said.
"In the long run, that could be extremely unwise," Tarkin told him, and his eyes narrowed to slits.
Chapter 14
Charza Kwinn brought the Star Sea Flower into a high orbit above Zonama Sekot. As Obi-Wan and Anakin prepared their belongings in the dry cabin, Obi-Wan brought out a pouch he had concealed in his robes, drew open a cord, and laid it out on top of his -travel kit.
Anakin looked at it hopefully. "Another lightsaber?" he asked.
Obi-Wan smiled and shook his head. "Not yet, Padawan. Something more appropriate for a planet run by merchants. Old-style aurodium credits. Three billion's worth, in several large ingots."
"I've never seen that much money!" Anakin said, stepping closer. Obi-Wan shook his finger in warning, then opened the packet and showed its contents to Anakin.
The ten pure aurodium ingots sparkled like tiny flames. Each held a depth of mysterious light that refused to fix on one color.
"What they say about the Temple is true, then," Anakin mused.
"That it holds secret treasure? Hardly," Obi-Wan said. "These were drawn from a joint account in the Galactic Capital Bank. Many in the galaxy lend their resources to support the Jedi."
"I didn't know that," Anakin said, a little downcast.
"This represents a few percent of that account. Not that we are going to spend it foolishly
. Vergere carried a similar amount with her. It is rumored that this is sufficient to purchase a Sekotan vessel. Let's hope the rumors are correct."
"But Vergere-maybe she's already bought a ship," Anakin said.
"It may be necessary for us to be completely ignorant of Vergere," Obi-Wan said.
"Oh . . . right."
Obi-Wan rolled up the ingots and tied the cord, then handed it to Anakin. "Keep it with you at all times."
"Wizard!" Anakin enthused. "No one'd suspect a boy would carry this much cash. I could buy a YZ-1000 with this-a hundred YZ- 1000s!"
"What would you do with a hundred old star scows?" Obi-Wan asked with innocent curiosity.
"I'd rebuild them. I know how to make them go twice as fast as they do now-and they're plenty fast!"
"And then?"
"I'd race them!"
"How much time would that leave for your training?"
"Not much," Anakin admitted blithely. His eyes danced.
Obi-Wan pursed his lips in disapproval.
"Got you!" Anakin cried, grinning, and grabbed the packet. He stuffed it into his tunic and strapped it close to his body with the long remainder of cord. "I'll guard your old money," he said. "Who wants to be rich, anyway?"
Obi-Wan lifted an eyebrow. "To lose it would be unfortunate," he cautioned.
Even from thirty thousand kilometers, Zonama Sekot was an odd-looking planet.
A spot of pearl white at the northern polar region was surrounded by an entire hemisphere of rich mottled green. Below the equator, the southern hemisphere was covered with impenetrable silvery cloud. Along the equator, a thin patch of darker gray and brown was broken by what looked like lengths of river and narrow lakes or seas. The edge of the southern overcast curled in elegant wisps, and the wisps broke free to form spinning storms.
While they waited for the planet's answer to their landing request, Charza was involved in a birthing in another part of the ship.
Anakin sat in the small side seat on the bridge with his elbows propped on his knees, watching Zonama Sekot. He had performed his first set of exercises for the day, and his thoug hts were particularly clear. It seemed sometimes, when his mind was settled, when he had tamed his turbulence for the moment, that he was no longer a boy or even a human. His perspective seemed crystalline and universal, and he felt as if he could see all his life laid out before him, filled with accomplishment and heroism- selfless heroism, of course, as befitted a Jedi. Somewhere in that life would be a woman, though Jedi did not often marry. He imagined the woman to be like Queen Amidala of Naboo, a powerful personality in her own right, lovely and dignified, yet sad and shouldered with great burdens-which Anakin would help lift.
He had not spoken with Amidala in years, nor of course with his mother, Shmi, but in his present frame of disciplined consciousness, their memory acted on him like a distant and ineffable music.
He shook his head and drew his eyes up, turning his feelings outward, focusing them until they seemed to make a bright point between his eyes, and concentrated on Zonama Sekot, to see what he could see. . .
Many paths to many futures flowed from any single moment, and yet, by being in tune with the Force, an adept could chart the most likely path for his awareness to follow. It seemed contradictory that one could prepare a path into a future, without knowing what that future would hold-yet that is what ultimately happened, and that is what a Jedi Master could do.
Obi-Wan was not yet so lofty in his accomplishments, he had told Anakin, but there had been hints that before any mission, any disciplined Jedi-even a mere Padawan-could also do a kind of looking forward.
Anakin was sure he was doing something like that now. It felt as if the cells in his body were tuned to a severely faded signal from the future, a voice, large and heavy, as if weighed down, unlike any voice he had ever heard . . .
His eyes slowly grew wide as he stared at the planet.
The boy, Anakin Skywalker of Tatooine, son of Shmi, Jedi Padawan, only twelve standard years of age, refocused all of his attention on Zonama Sekot. His body shuddered. One eye closed slightly, and his head tilted to one side. Then he quickly closed both eyes and shuddered again. The spell was broken. The moment had lasted perhaps three seconds.
Anakin tried to remember something large and beautiful, an emotion or a state of mind he had just touched upon, but all he could conjure was the face of Shmi, smiling at him sadly and proudly, like a protective scrim over any other memory.
His mother, still so important and so far away.
He could never see the face of a father.
Obi-Wan sloshed past the fall into the pilothouse. "Charza is done with his younglings," he said. "They're in training now to tend the ship."
"So fast?" Anakin said.
"Life is short for some of Charza's kin," Obi-Wan said. "You look thoughtful."
"I'm allowed, aren't I?" Anakin asked.
"As long as you don't brood," Obi-Wan said. The look on his master's face was both irritated and concerned. Anakin suddenly jumped out of his chair and hugged his master with a fierceness that took Obi-Wan by surprise.
Obi-Wan held the boy gently and let the moment flow into its own shape. Some Padawans were like quiet pools, their minds like simple texts. Only in training did they acquire the depth and complexity that showed maturity. Anakin had been a deep and complex mystery from the first day they met, and yet Obi-Wan had never felt such a strength of connection with any other being-not even Qui-Gon Jinn.
Anakin drew back and looked up at his master. "I think we're going to face real trouble down there," he said.
"Think?" Obi-Wan asked.
Anakin made a face. "I can feel it. I don't know what it is, but . . . I did some forwarding. Feeling ahead. It's trouble, all right."
"I've suspected as much," Obi-Wan agreed. "Even when Thracia Cho Leem was-"
The bridge was suddenly filled with a crowd of fresh, young, bright pink food-kin, all clattering and clacking with enthusiasm as they took their stations. Charza pushed through the shallow water onto the bridge with great dignity and weariness, as if he had accomplished something both satisfying and exhausting.
"Life goes on," he chuffed to Anakin as he took his seat. "Now ... let us see if there has been an answer from the planet."
Chapter 15
Raith Sienar entered the observation deck of his flagship, the Admiral Korvin, and stepped up on the commander's platform. He looked over the weapons arrayed within the circular assembly bay of the former Trade Federation heavy munitions cruiser, an antiquated hulk. He was both critical at the selection and dismayed that he was expected to coordinate this ragtag force.
To make matters worse, there was not a single craft of his own manufacture on board, a serious oversight, he believed, and perhaps a treacherous one.
Tarkin had either not described the force accurately, or he had remembered it with blind optimism.
Sienar flipped up the weapons list. E-5 droids . . . His lips curled.
The cruiser carried three landing craft, one hundred Trade Federation troops, and over three thousand droids. Three smaller and decidedly less useful vessels completed the squadron that Tarkin was now handing over to him.
It was not inconceivable that one could conquer a planet with these ships a backwater planet, in the dark ages of technology
But nothing more advanced than that. And conquer, but not then control.
"You are not impressed," Tarkin said dryly, joining him on the platform.
"I have never believed in droids as frontline fighters," Sienar told him. "Not even these new ones. Naboo was lost even though the forces deployed by the Trade Federation were hundreds of times larger than this."
"As I told you, these droids have been altered to be capable of independence, and they are considerably more rugged than earlier models," Tarkin said with some irritation.
"Would you trust them to carry out a complicated battle plan on their own?"
"I might," Tarkin said, sucking
in his cheeks as he stared down the ranks of weapons and delivery vehicles. "I must say, Raith, I don't prize complete independence as much as you seem to. The Neimoidians gave central control a bad name. The controllers on this ship are quite competent and flexible. Zonama Sekot is only lightly populated, as you well know. It is mostly forest. These should be more than sufficient."
"Be honest with me," Sienar said, stepping closer to his old classmate. "For both our sakes. If Zonama Sekot were a pushover, as planets go, we could make do with a small expeditionary force. This squadron seems at once too much and perhaps too little, and that worries me."
"It is the best I can put together. The Trade Federation squadrons are being handed over to Republic control day by day, and this is all that they could hold aside."
"Perhaps it is the best you can persuade them to send, with your rank and the quality of your contacts," Sienar said.
Tarkin gave him a surprised, mock-hurt look, and then chuckled. "Perhaps you're right," he said. "When did a military man ever have everything his way? It's what you do with what you have that wins wars. We would both have preferred to design and build our own force, using more imaginative strategic thinking. But the Trade Federation has suffered from this economic downturn as much as the Republic has. A veritable swarm of petty villains have moved in with their old freighters to run the most lucrative goods illegally between systems. Fighting them and reclaiming trade routes and privileges was a matter of life and death for the Trade Federation. Now the Republic will have to police the trade lanes. And the Republic's armaments are, if anything, even sorrier. Frankly, I was lucky to procure even this."
"Spare me the weepy details," Sienar said coldly. "You have put me in charge rather than go yourself, though you are the more experienced in battle tactics. Failure of this mission will taint the commander-will taint me-irrevocably."
"Now who is engaging in weepy details?" Tarkin asked, even more coldly. "Raith, for a decade you have sequestered yourself with your collections, executing small contracts, trying to promote a strategy of small, elegant weapon design long out of fashion, complaining bitterly about lost opportunities and unimaginative buyers. During that time, I have been working my way up a very long ladder. We must make do with what we have. I chose you . . . because you are nearly my equal in tactics, and you will understand Zonama Sekot's factories better than I ever could."