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Obi-Wan leaned close over the panel that blinked madly, carefully leaning on his left leg. Next to him was the comm droid, long spidery limbs outstretched and moving across the panels. "There are only six planets within range, sir," the droid intoned in a deep voice. "Shall I attempt to hail them all?"
Obi-Wan winced a little and nodded. "Government officials should know if Qui-Gon is there."
He was careful to keep his voice neutral. He was getting more and more nervous--not just because Qui-Gon was missing, but because no sign of the transport had been found. A part of Obi-Wan was screaming with frustration and guilt, guilt that he hadnŐt been with Qui-Gon. If he hadn't been so stupid during that sparring round...
The droid tilted its head and focused on Obi-Wan's odd stance. "Excuse me, sir. Are you in pain?"
Obi-Wan shrugged, trying to act nonchalant. "I took a bad step on a Temple training platform and broke my leg...in several places. It's healing, but I wasn't able to come on this mission."
The droid analyzed this and apparently decided not to push the matter. Its eyes glowed briefly. "Five of the planets in question have responded to the hail. The sixth, Thalon, has not responded, and no outgoing traffic is detected."
"Sounds suspicious," Obi-Wan said, limping to the door. "Thank you for your help."
The young Jedi exited the room, enveloped in a cloud of gloom. The droid said nothing in reply, then turned back to his work.
Outside the comm room, Obi-Wan sighed and sagged against the wall. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself. But the tiny frenzied voices that had been screaming at him continued, kept screaming onward. A neverending chorus that told him to find Qui-Gon as soon as possible. They cried to him to go to Thalon. Qui-Gon was there, Obi-Wan knew it.
A poke in the knee brought Obi-Wan back to reality. He looked down to see Master Yoda holding up his cane. "News have you?" the Jedi Master asked, his eyes keen.
Obi-Wan awkwardly dropped to one knee so he could look Yoda right in the face. "Yes, Master Yoda. There are only six planets within range--and Thalon is not responding to hails. I think..." He stopped, swallowed, and tried again. "I believe that Master Qui-Gon is on Thalon."
Yoda frowned a little. "Go there you must."
Obi-Wan nodded, ignoring the shooting pains from his newly-healed leg. The voices that cried to him to find his Master and his friend were louder.
After three hours of lying in the chute, Qui-Gon was developing a screaming case of claustrophobia. His entire body shook with the effort of not shrieking in fear and frustration, of the mad impulse to flail around, to search for some open space. He knew that if he so much as whimpered, his life would end at the business end of a blaster rifle. So he kept silent, quivering in the sodden, stinking dark.
The soldiers showed no inclination to leave, and Qui-Gon was too tired to do anything like the mind-trick, let alone on two people. He had tried several times, even on only one of them. The result was always the same--the soldiers shrugged the commands off like mosquitoes.
Slowly, he tapped into the Force and managed to calm himself. The quivering stopped, but the impulse to move remained. Qui-Gon rested his cheek on the slimy chute floor, too numbed by his experiences to recoil at the putrid stench. It wouldn't be much longer before he couldn't stand it anymore, before he let out some telltale cry.
Better to get this over with.
Qui-Gon took a deep breath, braced his arms against the uneven chute walls, and gathered the Force around him. The lined grate approached with dizzying speed as he shot forward, knocking the grate from its resting place and hurtling him onto the street. The soldiers
Qui-Gon lay on his stomach for half a second, gasping once before pushing himself onto his knees and yanking the lightsaber from his belt. The soldiers aimed their blasters, only to have the barrels neatly lopped off by a bar of green light. The remaining pieces of their weapons sparked and died, useless.
The guards stared in astonishment as Qui-Gon slowly got to his feet, aiming his lightsaber at them, ready to arc it through their chests if they moved. "Run," Qui-Gon rasped. "Run, and keep on running."
The soldier continued to gape at the angry Jedi, as if uncertain as to his motives. They stared at each other--why is he letting us go? Is he going to kill us?
"GO NOW!" Qui-Gon growled. His lightsaber began to buzz alarmingly. The guards turned and ran down the narrow street, never looking back. Their wings spread, like huge mutant butterflies, and launched them into the air. In a few minutes, Qui-Gon Jinn stood alone in the spacious street lined with regal towers.
With a weary groan, he deactivated his lightsaber and stretched his cramped muscles. Walking into a narrow--but thankfully clean--alley, he sat down and surveyed himself with a wry chuckle. His robe was a wreck, coated with greenish slime, and he suspected that his hair and face looked much the same. As he pulled the sodden robe off, he found that his leggings and shirt were mostly unscathed. Time to count my blessings, he thought.
He used a semi-clean corner of his robe to wipe the slime from his eyes and cheeks. He had no idea how to deal with the sludge in his hair, or deal with the stench clinging to his body.
Perhaps I can take a dip in a river, he thought. The way I am right now, they could home in on me just by SMELLING me!
Five minutes later, a somewhat cleaner Qui-Gon walked down the broken-up street, glancing at the buildings to the sides of it. Normally, the graceful arches and minarets were laced with a glorious mosaic of jewels and precious metals, but many of them had been stripped away--probably by soldiers given free reign over the city.
He hadn't, he realized, seen a single Thalon who wasn't a soldier. The civilians, he thought, had probably been shipped off to the camps that one of the soldiers had mentioned before.
What was this General Tathor planning? He put everyone in camps and tried to capture a Jedi. Qui-Gon could see no logic in the man's plans whatsoever.
He wished that Obi-Wan were there. Obi-Wan's enthusiasm and intelligence not only heartened Qui-Gon, he functioned better when he had someone to bounce ideas off. But the boy had been injured in a sparring match and had to stay on Coruscant during the mission to Malastare.
Qui-Gon's lips quirked into a tiny smile as he remembered Obi-Wan's frustration at being left behind. He had lain there on a medical table as a healer tended to his battered leg. "Master, I can't just stay here!" he had protested. "It's not serious."
"It's serious enough," Qui-Gon had replied. He had put a large hand reassuringly on the boy's shoulder. "It's just a simple dispute among the governers on Malastare. Nothing exciting or unusual. I'll be back in a week." Obi-Wan had tried to accept it, but it was clearly hard for him to just be dropped from a mission like that.
A flash seemed to zip through the Force--Obi-Wan! Qui-Gon eagerly grasped at the flicker of his apprentice's presence... and found nothing. His hope was sliced apart by the sudden despair as he realized that he was just deluding himself into thinking that Obi-Wan might be there. Even if he weren't recovering, Qui-Gon wasn't yet overdue... was he? Could all of this really have happened in only one day?
Qui-Gon interlaced his fingers and stretched his arms, cracking his knuckles. After the hours of running through the cramped sewers and swinging down balconies, his back was beginning to ache. But for the first time all day, Qui-Gon was beginning to feel that matters might improve.
BLAM!
The pavement only inches from his boot exploded. Qui-Gon broke into a sprint, kicking himself mentally for letting his guard down. His lightsaber was in his hand and ignited, deflecting one beam after another.
All except one.
The beam hammered into Qui-Gon's back, sending a chilling numbness from the point of impact, radiating outwards. The lightsaber dropped from his fingers as he fell to his knees, a look of surprise on his face. He fought the effects of the blaster fire, tried to hang onto consciousness. But a dark tunnel was rapidly enveloping his vision, and a deafening roar filled his ears.
He couldn't feel his arms or legs. His heart pounded like a drum, the only thing he heard clearly and loudly.
"Shoot him again."
Another blast. Qui-Gon drifted out of consciousness and dropped to the ground...