I arched up into Qui-Gon's touch when he fastened
his teeth on my neck just behind the top corner of
my jaw. I could feel his tongue doing fantastic,
amazing, miraculous things -- even after so many
years, I don't know what it is he does that turns my
bones, my insides and my resolve into mush. I tried
to pull him down -- I love to feel the pressure of his
weight on me, particularly when we're both
bare-chested -- but all it took was his right hand at
the base of my sternum for Qui-Gon, his strength
undiminished with age, to hold me down. His left
hand remained at the inside curve of my shoulder,
bracing me where I was so I didn't collide with the
headboard, fingers stroking my neck and tangling in
my hair as he held it back from the spot under my
ear. My legs kicked uselessly; my hands wandered
with no direction over Qui-Gon's back and sides; I
could hardly breathe.
Qui-Gon shifted his body slightly, and I could feel
the warmth of him fractionally closer to my leg. I
wanted more. Just the warmth, just the pressure, the
tangible, immutable proof that he's there with me,
beside me, on me, is more to me than anything. I
may have whimpered very slightly in the back of my
throat; I inched as much closer to him as I could and
turned my head so the worrying at my neck would
have to become a kiss.
Indistinctly, I heard the front door open. I knew
Qui-Gon had heard it too, but he growled and left
my lips in favor of my throat. We heard rushing
feet and someone shouting; Qui-Gon waved his
hand behind him and locked the door to our
bedroom. For my part, I used the opportunity to
haul him down to me; with a grin that crinkled his
eyes, he propped himself up on his elbows only far
enough to kiss me again, before zeroing in on an
even hotter spot just above my collarbone. Our legs
tangled together. I could only gasp his name.
In impossible slow motion -- as though they were
events that existed entirely independently in time,
like twine that had been untwisted -- the bedroom
door crashed open; Qui-Gon rolled off me with a
roar the like of which I don't think I'd ever heard
from him in twenty-seven years; and I caught my
breath and opened my eyes and sat up far enough to
see Sionnach, her back turned to us, her posture
ramrod-straight and her shoulders square. My last
thought before the twine wound back together and
time sped up again was that I wished the word that
had occurred to me hadn't been 'ramrod.'
"I'm so sorry, so sorry," Sionnach was saying, on the
verge of hysteria. "Anakin sent me. He's still there.
Master's gone to get Inayouk and Knight Ferriling,
and --"
"Where is Anakin?" Qui-Gon pulled his shirt on
and threw mine to me.
"He's with the Council," she said. "He tried to call
you, but you weren't answering your comm, so he
said I should come and --"
"What's he doing with the Council?" Qui-Gon
interrupted as he yanked on his boots and got to his
feet.
I buckled my belt and did the same. "And how long
has he been in there?" I asked.
"Not long," Sion replied. "It's the chancellor."
"What?"
"Chancellor Palpatine came to meet the Council,
and Anakin got them to agree that you should be
there, only he couldn't reach you, so he stayed and
he sent me after you." Qui-Gon and I grabbed our
cloaks and moved swiftly for the door, sweeping
Sionnach along with us as she saw us pass her. "I
guess they believed him when he said you were the
only
Jedi who knew about the cloning thing, but
of course he knew because he's your padawan. And
he made them note that he objected to the whole
meeting on your behalf," she added, hurrying to
keep up with us. "But of course they kept going
anyway. We're supposed to wait at my quarters --
Master is rounding up everyone else, and Ani will
come and tell us what's going on. I'm sorry about
your door."
"Never mind our door," I said. "You and I are going
to go back to your quarters, but Qui-Gon, I think
you should hurry to the Council chamber. Who
knows what they're telling him."
"You're right," Qui-Gon said. He stopped abruptly
and pulled Sionnach into his arms for a quick hug.
"Good girl," he said, giving her a squeeze and
letting her see the approval in his eyes. Those eyes
then turned to me with a glow that I know nobody
else is ever allowed to see, and Qui-Gon slid his
hand to the side of my head. "I'll see you later," he
murmured, leaning in for a whisper of a kiss and
touching his forehead briefly to mine. He turned on
his heel and strode away down the corridor, calling
over his shoulder, "Sha, I'm very sorry we didn't
answer the door."
Sionnach, now that she'd had a chance to take a
breath and regain her composure, didn't even miss a
beat. "It's hard to reach the door from the ceiling,
Qui." He threw back his head and laughed at that,
but kept right on walking. Sion turned to me. "I
hope the quartermaster doesn't have a coronary
episode when he sees the damage."
"The last thing we need to worry about right now is
the quartermaster," I told her as we continued
toward the quarters she shared with Joma. "You
know what they say about the blind leading the
blind, don't you?"
Sionnach nodded grimly and palmed open her front
door. Inside, we found Joma standing on her
dining-table addressing an assembly of twenty or
thirty of our underground runners. Several heads
turned when the door opened. "General!" Inayouk
s'Deki waved, and I smiled. The kid had been
calling me 'General' since the operation had begun,
when it had been necessary to hide our identities
from our fellow-Jedi as well as from civilians. With
Qui-Gon acting as the point man with the Council, I
was effectively the senior member of the
underground, and Inayouk's joke had actually had
very positive effect; it gave the group a structure
and lent it legitimacy, so that everyone who was
aware of us (without actually knowing who we
were) knew that someone was in charge and
responsible. We weren't just a gang of vigilantes. It
was true that several of our number wanted to
destroy all the confirmed clones; Qui-Gon, on the
other hand, wanted to send them to a remote planet
and let them have lives of their own. In
compromise, we kept the clones in stasis in a hidden
location, pending a decision.
The next hour or so was tense and quiet; none of us
could plan anything without at least a sliver of an
idea what was going on at the Council meeting.
The Council knew there was an organized group
taking out cloned senators; Palpatine knew things
kept happening to his senators -- they were killed,
injured, recalled, or any one of a dozen other things
that would get them out of office -- and new ones
kept arriving. We sat and waited and wondered
how all this limited knowledge was being put to
use.
The sound of the door chime roused us all back to
alertness. Joma waved the door open to admit
Qui-Gon, with Anakin behind him; they looked
calm and unruffled, but as soon as the door had
closed behind them, Anakin spun on his heel and
struck it with his fist.
"Padawan!" Qui-Gon's voice was stern.
"Yes, Master." I could hear Anakin grit his teeth as
he contained his anger and frustration, releasing it to
the Force slowly and carefully so as not to harm
anyone -- particularly Joma or Sion, the other
Adepts in the room -- with all of it in one rush.
"It went well, then?" Joma asked conversationally.
Qui-Gon did his best not to glare at her. At its best,
their relationship was cordial; this was hardly the
time to get into the sort of disagreement that
normally characterized it. He glanced at me, then
spoke to the rest of the room. "The Council," he
said, "in what we have no choice but to believe was
an earnest effort to ameliorate the cloning situation
--"
"Has gone and done the most -- sorry, Master,"
Anakin said. He folded his hands together, one fist
inside the other, and very carefully sat still.
"The Council has told Chancellor Palpatine that the
senators who have been replaced were clones,"
Qui-Gon said. A gasp went around the room, and
several people started to speak, but Qui-Gon raised
a hand for silence. "They still do not know we have
organized to combat the clones; they believe the
party responsible for replacing the clones, led by
this mysterious general --" he smiled in my direction
-- "is responsible to Senator Organa of Alderaan."
"What?" a girl said.
"It's Senator Organa's staff who arrange the
meetings with the suspected clones that enable us to
nab them," Inayouk pointed out. "Makes sense."
"The Council named Senator Delvin of Corellia and
Senator Mothma of Chandrila as well," Qui-Gon
continued. "The chancellor promised he would get
to the bottom of this."
"That doesn't sound so bad," Sion said, caution in
her voice. "What else happened?"
"After leaving the Council chamber, that idiot
Palpatine went straight out and gave a speech
promising to find who's been making the clones and
deal with them summarily," Anakin said. "He got
the people pretty fired up. They're calling for
immediate action."
"But we've been acting," I said. "They know we've
been replacing the clones. What more do they
want?"
"They want us to find the clones faster," Qui-Gon
replied, "and turn them over to them."
"What for?"
"Presumably so they can tear them limb from limb."
This was the trouble with the civilian population
getting wind of the whole thing: they, by and large,
were gangs of vigilantes. "Look," I said, "I can't
speak to them directly, but we can use the usual
channels and get the word out that the general is
keeping the clones in stasis. Let them believe we'll
hand them over eventually. Maybe they can get
angry at the actual people responsible for all this
instead, and we can sneak the clones out when they
aren't looking." Everyone more or less agreed.
"The situation isn't critical just yet, everyone," I
went on. "But it could very well become so.
Remain on the alert, and page me the
instant you
see anything that worries you." Nods all around.
"And try not to go too far," I concluded. The
meeting broke up, and our cohorts began drifting
away.
As the apartment emptied, I stepped over to
Qui-Gon. He was speaking quietly and earnestly
with Anakin. I slid my arms around his waist.
Qui-Gon moved his elbows out of my way and
rested his arms on top of mine, acknowledging the
embrace, but did not look back at me and did not
pause in his conversation with Anakin. I laid my
head between his shoulderblades and waited, and
soon, Anakin had gone.
Qui-Gon bent his neck to look at my hands where
they rested at his belly. "I seem to have sprouted
some extra appendages," he murmured, gently
stroking my fingers. I smiled and did not move.
"Come, Obi-Wan." Qui-Gon unhooked my hands
and turned around within the circle of my arms. He
draped his own arms over my shoulders when we
were face to face. "What shall we do now?"
"I can't imagine," I said. I raised myself up on tiptoe
and nudged the end of Qui-Gon's nose with the end
of mine. He turned his head enough that I could
meet him for a kiss.
He dropped one arm from my shoulder to my waist
and pulled me closer; I hooked my arm around his
neck to compensate. I felt his hand flex on the
small of my back, and we simultaneously parted
our lips.
"Hey, now," Joma called, snapping her fingers and
whistling through her teeth. "None of that. You
have your own quarters, if I'm not mistaken."
Qui-Gon withdrew from the kiss and laid his cheek
on the top of my head. "We thought we'd save
Sionnach a trip," he muttered. I chuckled. "We
can't go back to our own quarters, Knight Phrel."
"No?"
"Your padawan has blasted through our bedroom
door," Qui-Gon said, winking at Sion. She blushed.
"We'd have no more privacy there than here."
"There's one important difference, Master Jinn."
"What's that?"
"I'm not standing in
your living room. Now get
out of here." Qui-Gon and I grinned, joined hands,
and complied.
Not five days later, Palpatine had found the source
of the cloning operation. With a curious cross
between ashen-faced shock and boiling fury, he
reported to the assembled crowds that three of his
own staff had been quietly kidnapping senators and
replacing them with clones. This had apparently
begun in an effort to secure votes for the
Trans-Galactic Trade Commission. He took a
couple of pointed digs at the Jedi in his speech;
without actually overtly criticizing the Order, he
implied quite nicely that we had known of this for
some time and been unable to solve it, while he had
rooted out the culprits within days of learning of the
problem. We could tell the Council intended to
speak to him about that.
"But rest assured," Palpatine told the cheering
crowd, "that I have dismissed the individuals
responsible for cloning
your senators. Such
treachery has no place in a representative
government. They will be sent to Kessel tomorrow
morning." At that point, I knew those staffers were
dead. They'd very likely have died in the spice
mines of Kessel anyway, whether from the dangers
of the mine itself, an overdose of glitterstim, or the
violence when their fellow-prisoners learned of their
crime; but I knew then they would never make it to
the transport ship. The mob would be waiting for
them, and would crush them to death. I closed my
eyes and shook my head. "And," Palpatine
continued, shouting over the noise, "I have released
the senators who were imprisoned while their clones
were in office."
My instinct was to look sharply around to see if
Qui-Gon, Anakin, Joma, Sionnach, or anyone else
in our group had reacted to the chancellor's words as
I had, but I managed to suppress it. Drawing
attention to ourselves, even at this stage, would
have been dangerous. But releasing those senators
had been a stupid thing to do. The people knew, of
course, which senators had been replaced when we'd
removed the clones, and had been harassing Senator
Organa's staff in attempts to learn the clones'
whereabouts. It was too much to suppose that all
those angry people would, upon seeing the released
senator, assume he was the original and leave him
be. More likely, they would assume he was the
clone, and set upon him without bothering to
determine which he was. Palpatine had endangered
his own senators' safety by releasing them without
consulting us.
Casually, unobtrusively, I made my way toward an
entrance to the government complex, knowing that
as many underground runners as could were doing
the same. We would wander around inside for a
while, letting Palpatine continue speaking to his
supporters, seeing if we didn't meet the released
senators first. We needed to get them and their
replacements together to work out just who was
going to continue to represent their constituents; this
was a side of the problem Palpatine had evidently
not considered. From Qui-Gon, I felt a hazy mental
suggestion that he go to the clones and transport
them all, en masse, to someplace far away, before
anybody accidentally got hurt, and I agreed.
Once inside, I meandered for some time, mentally
checking off a list of cloned senators as runners
reported to me that they had them safely in custody.
Distracted for a moment by the requirement that I
think and walk at the same time, I crashed
spectacularly into Anders Delvin coming around a
corner. "Senator," I said. "Please excuse me. I'm
very sorry. Here, let me give you a hand."
"Thank you." He let me help him stand up, and
chuckled as he dusted himself off. "We don't often
expect to see you folks over this way."
"No," I agreed, and we resumed walking in the same
direction together. "Seems the chancellor's turned
loose the senators who were cloned, without
thinking that the mob outside can't tell the
difference between a clone and a man. We don't
want them to go after the real thing; we're trying to
round them up and keep them safe."
Delvin looked impressed. "That's awfully decent of
you," he said. "Many left to find?"
"Just three," I said. "Gewan, Eictorr, and Borsz.
And I've got people all over the building." My
commlink chirped. "See?" I grinned. "Excuse me.
Kenobi," I said into the link, turning slightly away
from Delvin.
"Ferriling here, General," the knight's voice said. "I
have Senator Borsz here, and Senator Delvin of
Corellia has offered to help us find Eictorr and
Gewan."
I had been about to respond, but now I looked at the
link in my hand, puzzled. "Say again," I instructed.
"Borsz is safe with us, and Delvin is helping us find
the others," Ferriling repeated.
Without really looking at him, I reached over and
laid a hand on the arm of the man next to me.
"Knight Ferriling, tell me where you are," I said,
walking more quickly and guiding Delvin -- was it
Delvin? -- at my side, not letting go of his arm.
Ferriling named a floor and a wing not far from
where we were, and I turned down a corridor. "And
tell me how you came to meet Senator Delvin," I
went on, speaking quietly into my commlink.
"Shouldn't he have been outside listening to the
chancellor's speech?"
"I'd have thought so, but he wandered up and asked
if he could help us," Ferriling replied. "Said he
wasn't used to seeing Jedi over here in this
building."
That sounded familiar. "And he's with you now?"
"No," Ferriling said, puzzled. "He's helping us look
for those other two senators. He went off on his
own about five minutes ago."
I stopped walking. So did Delvin, who was looking
at me with a frankly worried expression. "Which
way did you send him?" I asked, not bothering to
hide my words from my companion any longer.
"Um ... when he left here, he went east. Said he was
going to start at the top of J wing and work his way
down."
I'd met Delvin -- literally -- in the second floor from
the top of J wing. "All right. Thank you, Knight
Ferriling."
"What's up, General?"
"You'll laugh; this whole thing must have me
paranoid. I was afraid Delvin had been cloned
without our knowledge. He's here with me now, but
I was at the top of J wing, so he must just have
come from you when we --" I was interrupted by
the sounds of several men shouting, lightsabers
humming, and a brief volley of blaster fire.
"Ferriling! What in hells was that? Is the mob
coming in to the building already?" Delvin and I
took off again at a trot. There was no answer from
Knight Ferriling. "Kustin!" I called. Still no
answer. I switched the commlink to another
channel. "Phrel, Skywalker, Boeler, Aah," I paged,
"possible man down on G-26, repeat, incident on
G-26, shots fired, possible man down, stop what
you're doing and get over here and block whoever
shot at him from leaving." I waited for four 'Yes,
General's before putting away my link and breaking
into a run, Delvin at my heels.
We reached G-26 just behind Joma and Sion.
Ferriling and his padawan both lay on the floor,
their lightsaber hilts in their hands; Ferriling had a
blaster as well. Joma went swiftly to their sides and
assured us both were alive, but unconscious.
Several meters away, just this side of an intersection
with another corridor, were three other bodies.
Joma could tell us from where we were that they
were dead. All four of us moved carefully --
weapons drawn, except Delvin, who had none --
toward them. The first two we didn't recognize, but
the third --
The third was Anders Delvin.
Joma's lightsaber buzzed into life; she whirled
around, her amber blade stopping just centimeters
from the living Delvin's throat. "Which one are
you?" she hissed.
"Oh, Joma, stop it," I said, "he's going to tell you
he's the original either way. Sithspawn!" I swore. I
paced back and forth; Joma hovered on the brink of
severing the living Delvin's head; Sionnach stared
open-mouthed at the dead one.
Anakin came running around a corner. "What's
happened?" he asked. Knight Boeler and Master
Aah arrived immediately after him. We filled them
all in, briefly, and they looked from one Delvin to
the other, all equally nonplused. Sionnach had just
gone to try to revive Inayouk and Ferriling when
Anakin's commlink chirped. He muttered a curse
and yanked it off his belt. "Skywalker," he barked.
"Anakin," I heard, "Sen....ga....nap."
"What?" I whispered at Anakin.
He waved for us all to keep quiet. "Hello," he said,
"Skywalker speaking. Master?"
"
Anakin," Qui-Gon's voice repeated. "You
must....scu....mediat."
"Master, where are you?" Anakin asked. "You're
coming through very choppy."
Qui-Gon hadn't heard him. "No...mtolose," he said
-- and then, wherever he was, he came into a spot
where the signal was no longer obstructed and the
next thing we all heard him say was "Senator
Organa has been kidnapped."
I yanked the commlink from Anakin's hand.
"What? Qui-Gon? When? How?"
"Obi-Wan?" Static interfered again. "It was....den.
He s....d."
"Anakin, Joma, Sion, hang on for a minute," I
ordered. "Shield up. I don't know how far away he
is." When all three Adepts had nodded to me that
they had braced themselves, I reached out with the
Force to try to reach Qui-Gon's mind. [[Don't
bother with the commlink, love,]] I said. [[Just Tell
me.]]
[[He was with me when we put the clones on a safe
transport,]] Qui-Gon projected, [[and I turned my
back for one moment and he disappeared. I tried to
raise him, and at first I got static, and then I got
nothing. His commlink is either masked or
destroyed. I can't find him in the Force. I need
Anakin's perception.]]
[[Listen,]] I thought to him, [[
I'll go with Anakin
to try to find him. You keep in touch with Palpatine
and the Council.]]
[[Anakin's my padawan --]]
[[I know that, Qui, but he's here with me now, and
you're the one the Council trusts, and ...]] I trailed
off, managing to stop myself from sharing the next
thought in the queue.
But Qui-Gon could tell there was something else.
[[And what?]]
Oh, out with it, Kenobi. [[And I'd prefer that
Organa be grateful to me rather than to you.]]
[[Do you really think --]]
[[I think he's besotted. He knows you're off-limits,
but that doesn't stop him swooning over you. Not
that any of this is a good reason for me to be the one
to go; I should be the one to go because I'm more
likely to succeed.]]
I could hear Qui-Gon's smile. [[Now, that's not --]]
[[And the longer we stay and chat, the farther away
he gets. I'm taking Anakin with me. Get someplace
where your commlink isn't masked, and keep
talking to Sionnach.]]
[[Yes, sir.]]
[[Right. I'll talk to you later.]]
[[And I love you,]] Qui-Gon murmured, just before
we withdrew back into our own minds again.
[[Love you, too, Master,]] I smiled, though I wasn't
sure if he could hear me. I turned to the others.
"Right," I said. "Boeler, Aah, keep looking for
Senator Gewan and Senator Eictorr. Joma, Sion,
stay here with Ferriling and s'Deki. Anakin, you're
coming with me. We're going to find Organa."
"What am I supposed to do with this?" Joma asked,
gesturing to the man at the end of her saber.
I shrugged out of my cloak and handed it to
Sionnach. "I have to make all the decisions? Ani,
grab their guns," I said, gesturing to the three dead
men on the floor. I picked up the blaster Kustin
Ferriling had dropped and checked the charge.
"We'll have to determine if he's the original or the
clone, Joma. Now, Sionnach. Qui-Gon is going to
call you and want you to tell him how we're doing,"
I said. "Anakin's going to be pretty easy for you to
find, so just keep a lock on him, all right?" She
nodded, her eyes wide. "Good. We won't be long."
I hugged her quickly; Anakin did the same. "You
might also keep a mental eye on us, Joma," I
mentioned. "If you're not too busy." I grinned, and
Anakin and I ran away down the hall.
"Still got him?" I whispered.
Anakin nodded. "If that's him," he whispered back.
Quickly realizing that trying to find Senator Organa
in the Force would be a fruitless effort, as the man
was not sensitive to the Force and therefore had no
distinct Force-presence, Anakin had felt for and
locked onto the strongest sense of fear he could
locate in the immediate area. "Even if that's not
Organa, odds are whoever took him is scared
witless," he'd decided.
The fear-beacon had brought us to a secured wing of
the Senate compound, a collection of conference
rooms and communications centers set apart from
the areas where most of the governing of the galaxy
took place. The guards had been easy to distract
with a touch of the Force to their suggestible minds,
and Anakin and I crept stealthily through dim
corridors toward, it seemed, the chancellor's private
residence. "Looks like he didn't get the right staff
members," I commented.
Anakin nodded again. "Close by," he murmured,
then looked sharply at the wall next to us. "Here."
He stepped to the wall, placed his hand on it, and
closed his eyes. Even I could feel the waves of
concentration radiating from him now. He
grimaced with the effort. "On the other side of this
wall," he reported. "Around that corner somewhere
there must be an entrance to --"
A blaster bolt came out of the wall centimeters from
Anakin's head. He jumped back and lit his
lightsaber at the instant I lit mine; evidently satisfied
now that he was no longer touching it, the wall did
not shoot again.
We exchanged glances. Sabers at the ready, we
advanced slowly toward the rigged wall; it did not
seem to sense our approach. "It can't be solid,"
Anakin said. "So we ought to be able to get through
it."
"Quicker than going around," I agreed, "and if the
wall's shooting at us, we're probably in the right
place. But be careful."
I made sure no part of my body touched the wall as I
brought my lightsaber close to it and began to melt
through, as Qui-Gon had done on the Trade
Federation's flagship all those years ago. Anakin
busied himself with locating the wall's guns, which
-- as he destroyed them -- turned out to be more like
land mines than anything else. I could never have
made it here, much less through this wall, on my
own. Anakin, with his Adept sensitivity and
reflexes, could find the hot spots where the wall was
armed without actually touching the wall, and thus
stab through them before they detonated. The
contact from his saber did explode them, of course,
so the fireworks around us ended any hope we had
of remaining concealed. I was nearly through the
wall.
A wedge of the wall fell away, leaving a space large
enough for a man to fit through, and Anakin pulled
me back. "Let me go first," he offered, stepping in
front of me preemptively. "You'll be safer." He
held his lightsaber in front of him in his left hand,
ducked his head, and stepped through the gap,
steadying himself with his right hand on the jagged
edge I had cut away.
The spot under his hand exploded, and Anakin
screamed.
I had pulled him back through the gap in the wall
before I realized what I was doing, and now genuine
blaster fire was coming through it. We ended up on
opposite sides of the hole. Anakin still held his
saber in his left hand; his right hand was tucked
under his left elbow, and his jaw was clenched so
tight I thought he would crush his teeth to powder.
"What happened?" I yelled over the din.
"Missed a mine right next to the gap," he told me.
"
Stupid stupid stupid sonofa ..." he winced when
he moved to try to deflect the blaster bolts back at
their shooters.
"Let me see it!"
"It's fine," he called back. "I can fight one-handed.
Let's get the blasted senator and get out of here."
"Go back! I'll get him!" I, too, was intercepting
blaster fire as we argued.
"Due respect, Knight Kenobi, but you can't do this
by yourself."
"You haven't --"
"And the longer we stay and chat," he said, forcing a
smile, "the farther away the senator gets. I tell you
I'm staying."
I hated it, but he was right. If I'd been injured, I told
myself, I'd never have left him behind. As long as I
could stand and hold a blade, I'd keep fighting.
"How bad is it?"
"It's
fine. Let's go!"
"Let me see it," I called again.
His face contorting with the pain, Anakin extracted
his right hand from under his left elbow and held it
up, palm facing me.
Or he would have, if a hand had been there. At the
end of the wrist was a charred, bloody half of a
hand. The thumb was where it belonged, but the
index finger ended at the first knuckle, and the other
three fingers and most of the palm were gone. The
bone and sinew and ash dragged from the severed
edges of the wrist and hand. My mouth went dry.
"Now let's get the damned senator," Anakin
repeated.
I gritted my teeth and nodded. Anakin tucked the
stump of his hand under his left elbow again, and
this time, I went first. Careful not to touch the wall
at all, I stepped through the gap, deflecting blaster
fire the whole time. I could hear Anakin behind me,
neatly parrying the bolts that missed me. As he
came fully into the room, he moved to my left side,
bouncing fire back toward the right; taking the right
angle, I directed my fire back toward the left, and
soon it was much less.
The room was dimly-lit, presumably only
illuminated when it was in legitimate use, but
through the laser light and the smoke we could
make out three human figures. Two were firing on
us with both hands; one had an inert form draped
over its back, but had a gun in one hand and hadn't
let up on the trigger. Two more were slumped on
the floor; we'd hit them with their own shots.
Five blasters on two lightsabers; five hands on
three. Keeping my lightsaber in my right hand, I
reached blindly for the blaster I'd taken from Kustin
Ferriling. "Come and get us, Jedi!" I heard one of
the men call. The next shot I deflected burned the
gun out of his hand. Four blasters on two
lightsabers. "You'll run out of luck before we run
out of ammunition!"
I stopped concentrating on deflecting their fire and
let the Force take over. Focusing on my left hand, I
shot one of the men in the knee. He screamed, fell
to the floor, and stopped shooting. Three guns on
two lightsabers. "We don't want to kill you," I
called, my blaster trained on the man without the
body over his shoulder. "Give us the senator and
we'll go."
"You'll have to kill us to get him," the wounded
man on the floor said, taking aim again at Anakin.
Anakin deftly bounced the shot back at the man's
right hand, blasting it clean off. The man screamed
again and passed out from shock.
"That was uncomfortably satisfying," Anakin said
as he took a step closer to the remaining two
adversaries.
"I think you'll find that you'd rather have given us a
choice," I said, advancing steadily.
"You'll find that you have no choice," said the man
with the body on his back. He shifted his burden so
that the senator's body shielded his own.
Undaunted, Anakin and I moved toward the pair.
The charge ran out on one of the two-handed man's
guns, and he threw it aside. Two blasters on two
lightsabers and a blaster. Three hands on three.
Our opponents had begun to back away. When
Anakin had taken down the man not carrying the
senator, the last adversary stopped shooting at us
and pointed his blaster at Organa's head. "Don't
come any closer," he said. "I'd prefer not to kill this
guy until after we've cloned him, but I'll do it now if
I have to."
"That's stupid," I said. "If you give him to us, we'll
take him and go. If you kill him, we'll kill you.
Which would you rather?"
"If I let him go, I'll be killed, no mistaking that," he
shot back. "Don't come any closer!"
"We're not coming any closer," I said soothingly. I
was sure the mind-control would have its effect, but
to be safe, I did not close the distance between us.
Anakin stayed where he was; I moved on an arc,
away to his right, slowly.
"Why don't you put the gun down," Anakin
suggested evenly. I stared at him. Mind-control
was one thing, but it was more effective at
convincing a target of 'truths' than at persuading him
to actions.
"Don't be stupid! Why would I put the gun down?"
Then I saw Anakin's purpose. He hadn't really been
trying to mind-control the man; he'd been trying to
make him think he was trying to mind-control him,
in the process distracting his attention from me. So
he was, in effect, controlling his mind ... I stopped
thinking about it and took two more steps to my
right.
"It'll be a lot easier for both of us if you put the gun
down, put the senator down, turn around, and walk
away," Anakin said. I took three more steps. Soon,
soon, I'd be able to blast the gun from the man's
hand without endangering the senator. "See, and I
can hardly even fight you. Your mined wall took
off my hand." Peripherally, I could see Anakin
display his maimed hand to the captor. Two more
steps.
"I tell you my only choice is to --" I shot the gun
from the man's hand. He whirled around,
presenting Organa's body as the largest target, and
swore out loud at me. "Kill him, then!" he shrieked.
"You'll have to kill me to get him, and he'll die
before I do! You --" Now that there was no more
danger, I dropped my lightsaber so I could reach out
with the Force. Quickly, I lifted Organa from the
man's grasp and set him well out of reach. Before
the man could realize what I had done, I had flicked
my blaster's setting to stun and shot him three times.
He fell gracelessly to the floor.
Anakin rushed up from behind him. His left hand,
holding his lightsaber, shook; actually, his whole
body shook, and he was glaring at the heap of the
man on the floor with a look in his eyes like --
"Anakin!" I said sharply.
Anakin blinked and shook his head, and stared at
the man on the floor and then at me, still trembling.
In his eyes I saw only pain and exhaustion, and it
occurred to me that he was trembling with fatigue,
not with rage.
"We have the senator," I said, pointing to where I
had dropped him.
Anakin clipped his lightsaber to his belt and hurried
over to Organa. "Let me carry him," he insisted
when I approached and tried to take the burden
myself. "I'm bigger than you are, and you have two
good hands. This way's more efficient."
"Carry him on your back," I said. "You can still
reach your saber if you need it."
"Let's go." We hoisted Organa to Anakin's back,
and hurried back the way we had come.
As we reached the far wall with the gap in it, a
blaster shot flew past us on the right; I reset the gun
to kill, whirled around, and shot the man on the
floor -- how had he revived so soon? -- without
giving it another thought. "Force forgive me," I
whispered.
"It will," Anakin grunted. "It gave you those
reflexes. Come on." And we ducked through the
hole in the wall and ran as fast as we could for
home.
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