Star Wars: Rogue Planet (18 page)

Now that he would not meet an unfortunate accident if he did something unexpected and out of turn.

The Baktoid E-5 droid strode with a surprisingly light tread out of the turbolift and onto the bridge of the flagship. It stood just below the navigation deck, clearly visible to all on the bridge. No threat was implied, merely a demonstration of the new way of things. Normally, this droid would not have been activated until battle.

Kett watched with obvious misgivings. “Understood, sir,” he said.

“And show me the astromech reports when the job is completed,” Sienar said, sucking his teeth.

Kett watched him for a couple of seconds, barely hiding his distaste.

Sienar ignored him and glared at the port.

“Reversion,” the hyperdrive control officer announced.

“Realspace!” Captain Kett shouted as the stars whisked back into proper perspective, and space and time returned to their familiar dominance.

“About time,” Sienar said with a sigh. He pushed a lever, and the navigation deck rolled on its track toward the large port until the view filled his field of vision.

He would have reveled in any normal pattern of stars whatsoever, but what he saw now was impressive, very impressive. The outward-spiraling ribbon of the red giant and white dwarf components filled his eyes with a dreamlike, fiery light. Such a sight was a rare privilege.

With some assurance of subtlety and Sienar-bred creativity in his weapons systems, he could actually enjoy the view.

“Our destination planet is in sight, and we are locked on to a holding orbit around the planet’s yellow sun,” Kett said. “We will not approach any closer until so ordered by you, Commander.” Kett, still mulling over his options, was reluctant to leave the bridge.

Sienar did not mind independent thought, so long as it did not become
too
independent.

“You may carry out your instructions … now.” Sienar pointed aft.

“Yes, sir.” Kett hurried to the turbolift, the deep-set and jewel-like eyes of the E-5 droid firmly and balefully fixed on the space between his shoulder blades.

T
he Sekotan air transport took them south over some of the strangest terrain Obi-Wan Kenobi had ever seen. Flying at an altitude of less than a thousand meters, the small, flat craft dodged with dizzying speed over tall, thick-trunked boras with bloated balloonlike leaves that spun and wobbled in their wake.

“I think the settlers use those leaves to make their airships,” Anakin said, looking aft through the windscreen that curved almost completely around the transport.

Obi-Wan nodded, lost in thought. If seed-partners preferred Jedi, then some research was called for. Only organisms strong in the Force could detect Jedi. It was becoming more and more apparent that the life-forms of this world—Sekot, as Gann called the living totality—were special, and that his Padawan strongly attracted them.

“This is really beautiful,” Anakin said. “The air smells great, and the jungle is wizard.”

“Don’t grow too attached,” Obi-Wan warned.

“I’ve never been to a place like this.”

“Remember your earlier feelings about Sekot.”

“I do,” Anakin said.

“You mentioned a single wave, something happening now or in the future.”

“Yeah,” Anakin said. He nodded his head forward, to the door that hid the pilot from them.

Obi-Wan held up his hand. “He is oblivious to our talk. It’s important we analyze what’s happening before we get drawn in further.”

“It comes and goes, this sensation of a single wave. I might have made a mistake.”

“You made no mistake. I feel it myself now. Something coming toward us rapidly, something dangerous.”

Anakin shook his head sadly. “I hope nothing happens before we get our ship made.”

Obi-Wan narrowed his eyes in disapproval. “I am concerned you are losing your perspective.”

“We came here to get a ship!” Anakin said, his voice breaking. “And to find out about Vergere. She didn’t get her ship, so it’s even more important for us. That’s all.” He folded his arms.

Obi-Wan let these words sit between them for some seconds before asking, blandly enough, “What does the ship mean to you?”

“A ship that tunes itself to a need for speed … Wow!” Anakin said. “For me, that would be the perfect friend.”

“That’s what I thought,” Obi-Wan said.

“But it won’t distract me from my training,” Anakin assured him.

Once again, Obi-Wan felt he was losing control of the situation. Before Anakin had been Obi-Wan’s apprentice, Qui-Gon had encouraged behavior in the boy that Obi-Wan had disapproved of. And now, the Council and Thracia Cho Leem, sending them to this world, were once more tempting Anakin in ways that made Obi-Wan uncomfortable.

“We’re going where the Force sends us,” Anakin said quietly, anticipating the direction of his master’s thoughts. “I don’t know what else we can do but observe and accept.”

“And then act,” Obi-Wan said. “We must be prepared for the course laid out for us and receptive to the unexpected. The Force is never a nursemaid.”

“I’ll know when something is about to happen,” Anakin said with quiet confidence. “I like this planet. And the living things here like
me
. And you. Don’t you feel it—something is watching out for us?”

Obi-Wan did in fact feel that—but the sensation gave him no comfort. He did not know who or what could extend such an influence over them, and especially over his Padawan.

The journey continued for another hour. Anakin looked east and pointed out a huge brown scar on the landscape, stretching over the horizon. Obi-Wan had seen this, or something like this, briefly from space—but Charza Kwinn had brought them down before completing a full orbit of Zonama Sekot. The scar had dug clear through to bedrock. Iron-rich red crust opened like the edges of a wound over dark tumbled chunks of basalt.

“What made that?” Anakin asked.

“It looks no more than a few months old,” Obi-Wan said. Thin white threads of waterfalls slipped over the red cliff sides into the gouge. “It resembles a battle scar.”

The craft now turned and headed due south, flying between and through the tops of the unbroken deck of cloud. A seemingly endless scape of billows and whorls puffed and streamed beneath them.

Anakin turned in his seat. “Look,” he said excitedly, and pointed to their right. They were veering southwest toward a jagged reddish black mountain that pushed up through the clouds, its sloping flanks almost bare of
Sekotan growth and its leveled summit capped with snow. It looked like an old, weatherworn volcano.

“We will be at the Magister’s home in three minutes,” the pilot said. “I hope you’ve had a nice nap.”

Anakin smiled at Obi-Wan. “Well rested!” he said.

They crouched low once more to exit the transport, and stood on a level field of crushed lava. A few meters away a flat stone pathway led to a magnificent, fortresslike palace of skewed blocks stacked around a squat central tower. Beyond the palace, four volcanic terraces spilled orange-tinted water over broad, multicolored falls. The air smelled of Zonama’s depths—hydrogen sulfide—alternating with fresh breezes blowing from the south.

Each of the blocks around the tower was over ten meters high and fifty meters wide, its walls lined with windows that gleamed like rainbows in the sunset light. The promontory supported only a few tendrils, barely as thick as an arm, nestled haphazardly between the rocks and around the mineral-spring terraces like lines of red and green thread.

“The Magister lives far from his subjects,” Obi-Wan observed, rubbing his hands on the hem of his tunic, then holding them out palm up and dropping his chin. His eyes swept the horizon shrewdly. “And he makes do with very few attendants.” Looking at the torn wisps of clouds passing overhead, and the darker masses visible to the south, Obi-Wan estimated they were a thousand kilometers below the equator. “Peculiar customs. They seem to prefer their clients be misinformed and kept off balance.”

“At least they haven’t checked us for weapons,” Anakin said.

“Oh, but they think they have,” Obi-Wan said.

“You did that … without my knowing?” Anakin asked.

Obi-Wan smiled.

“You surprise me all the time, Master,” Anakin said with a touch of awe. “But that’s what an apprentice should expect from his teacher.”

Obi-Wan lifted one brow.

“We make a great team, don’t we?” the boy said with a sudden grin. His face colored with the expectation of adventure.

“We do,” Obi-Wan agreed.

“I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re my master, Obi-Wan,” Anakin said. He gave a small shiver, then he, also, rubbed his palms on his tunic, held them out, and looked around. Obi-Wan had learned years ago that Anakin could become both expressive and imitative whenever he felt excited or ill at ease.

The boy looked up at the glowing pinwheel of plasma unwinding from the distant double-star system, obscured by rips and shreds of thin, high clouds. Zonama’s own sun perched on the horizon, turning the sky above into a flaming tapestry easily the match of the astronomical spectacle beyond. “It’s out there now. It’s closing in.”

“Do you see its shape more clearly?”

“It’s a time of trial. For me.”

“Do you fear it?” Obi-Wan asked.

Anakin shook his head but kept staring up at the red and orange sky. “I fear my reaction. What if I’m not good enough?”

“I have trust in you.”

“What if the Magister turns us down?”

“That … seems a separate issue, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” Anakin said, but persisted with boyish stubbornness, focused on what seemed to him, for the moment, the most crucial of their many problems. “But what if the Magister doesn’t want us to get a ship?”

“Then we’ll learn something new,” Obi-Wan said patiently.
The title
Magister
implied someone of accomplishment, of dignity and bearing, and for all his searching the landscape, Obi-Wan received no signs of any impressive human personality.

It was possible the Zonamans could conceal themselves. Jedi Masters could hide from detection, even at close range. Sometimes Obi-Wan could manage to conceal his presence from someone as perceptive as Mace Windu, but never with complete confidence.

Did that imply that whoever lived here could deceive a Jedi for minutes at a time?

Glow lights mounted beside the pathway switched on and illuminated the way to the lowest and closest block of the Magister’s dwelling. A small figure appeared at the end of the path and walked toward them with arms folded.

It was a girl, taller than Anakin but no older, and she wore a long green Sekotan robe of the kind they had become familiar with. It draped to her ankles with its own restless motion.

Anakin stepped back as she approached.

“Welcome! My name is Wind,” she said. The girl had long hair as dark as the stone on the walkway and of roughly the same hue. The pupils of her eyes were black, set in golden sclera. She scrutinized Obi-Wan with mild approval, and he returned her gentle dip of the chin. Anakin she seemed to find unworthy of much notice. This caused the boy to ball up his hands, then relax them. Anakin never liked being ignored.

“My father is bored and welcomes any distraction,” the girl said. “Would you follow me, please?”

The daughter watched them from the entrance to the Magister’s small workroom. Here, he kept only a small central desk and chair.

“I have four daughters and three sons. My sons and two of my daughters are in training around Zonama. They are concerned with defense. Who better to help us than Jedi?”

The Magister was a small man, wiry in build, with a long, narrow face and large eyes as black as those of his daughter. His hair, however, was of a pale shade of gray-blue more typical of a Ferroan. He did not wear Sekotan garments, just a simple pair of pants woven from plain beige Republic broadcloth and a loose-knit white shirt.

He had met them in the hall of the uppermost of three levels in this branch of the palace. The interiors of the three rooms they had seen thus far were plain to the point of austerity, though the furniture was well designed and comfortable, apparently made off Zonama. Obi-Wan was not familiar with Ferroan styles, but he judged that all the furniture here was from the Magister’s birth world and had been carried here by the original settlers.

“My assistants at Middle Distance tell me you paid in aurodiums,” the Magister said. “That was a tip-off. And then … your experience with the seed-partners confirmed my suspicions.”

The last of the sunset glanced from golden clouds down into the room through a spherical skylight, shading golden-orange the top of the desk and a pile of extracts and readers.

The room smelled of ashes, and also of the eternal sulfide of the springs.

“We did not intend deception,” Obi-Wan said.

“You did not announce yourselves as Jedi,” the Magister said. His fingers moved restlessly, rubbing against each other. “Well, there was never a need for deceit. I have nothing against the Jedi. In fact, I owe them a great deal. I have nothing against the Republic they serve, and
I have nothing to hide … except an entire planet. My home.” He chuckled. “That’s all I’m protecting.”