Yoda (14 page)

“Come with me for a moment,” Obi-Wan said, waving Anakin away from his own ship. Anakin followed him into his starfighter. “Wipe your feet, or you'll get wet prints all over,” Obi-Wan said. “You know the artoo hates that.”

“When do we get your old artoo back?”

“When its repairs are done. Given the amount of fire it's seen riding shotgun with me, I'm sure it's in no hurry to report for duty,” Obi-Wan said dryly, settling himself in front of the comm console. “You've been sending private messages back to Coruscant.”

Anakin flushed. “You've been tracing my outgoing—” He stopped. “You just guessed.”

“I am a wise and powerful Jedi Knight, you know,” Obi-Wan said, allowing himself a small grin.

The little R2 rolled into the nav-and-comm area and wheeped unhappily at their wet bootprints.

An awkward pause.

“Since part of my duty as your Master is to pass on my vast wisdom—” Obi-Wan began.

“Here it comes,” Anakin said.

“—I suppose I should officially remind you that a Jedi has no room in his life for…some kinds of entanglement.”

“I'll keep that in mind.”

“Nonattachment is a fundamental precept of the Order, Padawan. You knew that when you signed up.”

“I guess I didn't read the Toydarian print,” Anakin growled.

For the first time, Obi-Wan turned away from the holocomm transceiver. “How serious are you about this girl, Anakin?”

“That's not the point,” Anakin said, still flushed and angry. “The point is, we are out here asking people to support a Republic that barely knows they exist, and backing it up with a, a police force of Jedi sworn not to care about them! And we wonder why it's a hard sell?” He waved out through the front viewscreen. “What if Serifa is right? What if we are the ones who have lost our way? I trust what I can feel, Master. That's what you have always taught me, isn't it? I trust the living Force. I trust love. The ‘principle of nonattachment'…? That's an awfully abstract thing to pledge loyalty to.”

“Do you trust hate?” Obi-Wan said.

“Of course I don't—”

“I'm serious, Padawan.” Obi-Wan held the younger man's eyes. “To follow your heart, to either love or hate, in the long run is the same mistake. Your judgment becomes clouded. Your motives, confused. If you are not very careful, Padawan, love will take you to the dark side. Slower than hate, yes, but no less surely for that.”

The air between them crackled with tension, but finally Anakin lowered his eyes. “I hear you, Master.”

“You can hardly help that,” Obi-Wan said tartly. “It's whether you believe me or not that matters.” He sighed. “For what it's worth, most Jedi make the same mistake. Learn from it; grow through it. If the Order were made up only of those invulnerable to love, it would be a sad group altogether.” He turned back to his holocomm transceiver, scanning Arkanian news as he set the encryption key for the transmission he would send back to Coruscant.

“Does that mean there is a woman to be discovered in even Master Obi-Wan's past?” Anakin inquired. “Tall, I imagine, and dark-haired. Pathetically desperate to have anyone at all,
that
much goes without saying—”

“Anakin,” Obi-Wan breathed, staring at the news flashing across his monitor. “Be quiet.”

“I was only joking!”

Obi-Wan swiveled around in his chair. He had never felt so completely at a loss. “It's Master Yoda,” he said. “He's dead.”

“What?”
Padmé cried.

“Ambushed just outside the Ithor system,” her handmaiden said. “The Ithorians have confirmed debris from the Master's ship.”

Thoughts of disaster hurtled through Padmé's mind like meteorites. The loss of Yoda was a crippling blow to the Republic—surely Dooku must have been behind it—what would it mean to Anakin? Anakin loved Yoda, of course they all did; but he also said the old Master never completely trusted him, always held him back—if it was true, who would take up the mantle as head of the Order? Mace was a soldier in a soldier's time, but he did not get on so comfortably with Chancellor Palpatine…

So her thoughts whirled madly, like snowflakes, drifting down to settle finally on one cold fact: Yoda dead, and the whole universe a little darker for it.

Courage,
she told herself.
Hope. When the time grows dark, hope must shine the brighter. If I could trade my life for a chance of a brighter day for the next generation, would I do it?

In a heartbeat.

“I'm going to the Senate chamber. The Chancellor will have the best and most reliable news.” In the doorway Padmé turned to look back over her shoulder at her handmaidens. They seemed shaken and afraid—far more so than if the Chancellor had died. And who could blame them? After more than eight hundred years, it was only natural to think Yoda would be around forever. “I wouldn't write the old Master off yet,” Padmé said. “I'll believe he's gone when I see them bring his body back. Not before.”

“Thank you for receiving me, Chancellor,” Mace Windu said tightly to the holographic image of Chancellor Palpatine projected in the Jedi Council Chamber.

“I am indeed extremely pressed for time, Master Windu, but I value your opinion exceedingly.” Palpatine's intelligent face creased with a small, dry smile. “I think you may safely presume that given a choice between listening to the council of Mace Windu, or that of, say, the honorable Senator from Sermeria, with his startling ability to bring any topic under discussion to a close analysis of its impact on the trade in his homeworld's root vegetables, why, I would rather listen to you.”

Mace Windu had his weaknesses, but an easy susceptibility to flattery was not one of them. “Thank you,” he said briskly, “but may I ask why you have not issued an immediate denial of the reports about Master Yoda? I know—”

Palpatine interrupted him. “This channel is hard-encrypted, Master?”

“Always.”

“I assumed as much, but my security forces tell me that Coruscant is presently infested with spies of every description, including the electronic kind. An unfortunate side effect of our policy of allowing unrestricted free movement to practically everyone, with only the flimsiest of security checks.”

“The best security, Master Yoda once said, lies in creating a society that nobody wishes to attack.”

“Of course! But having somehow failed to convince the Trade Federation, we must play the cards as they have been dealt,” the Chancellor said. “This is not a perfect world, and not all our choices are easy ones.” This was obviously true, and the kind of hard truth Mace Windu found more comfortable than the Chancellor's little sallies into gallantry and compliment. “Leaving the question of spies aside, I accept your assurance that this transmission is confidential. Carry on, Master Windu.”

“I know Yoda was not in the starship destroyed by Asajj Ventress. You know—”

“It was Ventress, then? I think you sent me a file on her some time back.”

“Yes, Chancellor. Or at least, it was certainly her ship. It's a distinctive design, patterned after Count Dooku's. We have analyzed the recordings from the fourth pilot—”

“Who will face a court-martial for cowardice by tomorrow evening, with a swift and public sentence,” Palpatine said grimly.

“—And the ship is clearly Ventress's
Last Call.
My point being,” Mace Windu said doggedly, “I know Master Yoda wasn't in that ship. I told you Master Yoda wasn't in that ship. So why, in the face of news reports of his death that are having a very bad effect on morale, does your office not come forth with a statement?”

For the first time, Chancellor Palpatine's tone held the trace of an edge. “Master Windu, you may recollect that you only thought to inform me that the ship publicly seen to be carrying Master Yoda was a decoy
after
it had launched. In effect, I have only your word that he isn't dead.”

“My word,” Mace Windu said deliberately, “is one of the few things in the galaxy that a Chancellor of the Republic can trust.”

“Of course I trust you,” Palpatine snapped. “It's not enough. We have due process for a reason. The Chancellor serves the people and the Senate, not the Jedi Order. The Jedi, likewise, cannot be seen to be my private army. The people of this Republic must believe their government is directly answerable to them and them alone. It's Count Dooku's whole cry that the Republic is run by a handful of corrupt Senators and their cronies in the Order and the government bureaucracy. If I go before the people and say,
I know you've seen the footage, but my pals in the Temple tell me the whole thing was just a joke, that Master Yoda is still alive, but we don't care to produce him at this time…
how do you suppose that will play?”

Wearily Mace Windu rubbed his face. “You're the politician.”

“I am, Master Windu. Not a profession you hold in much esteem, but I am a politician—a superb politician—and until such time as you hear me giving you helpful tips on how to wield a lightsaber, I beg you to consider I just might know what I'm doing.”

After a brief silence, the Chancellor sighed and the asperity left his voice. “Master Yoda arranged for a decoy so he could travel undetected on his very delicate mission. Tragically, several beings have died to carry out that deception. Shall we throw away their sacrifice? Or shall we honor it, and give Master Yoda a few more days to travel in secret to Vjun, and perhaps end this terrible war?”

“Very well,” Mace Windu said at last. “I just hope we're doing the right thing.”

“So do I,” Palpatine said gravely. “In the meantime, I would take it very kindly if you would take over, on a more formal basis, the daily briefings Master Yoda used to give me.”

“Of course.”

An aide appeared at the edge of the transceiver's view of Palpatine, telling the Chancellor in a low voice that he was very late for his next appointment. “Duty calls,” Palpatine said, moving to cut the comm channel. Then he paused. “Master Windu, since we are being frank with one another today, let me add that in these briefings I wish to hear your own unvarnished opinions—not what you think Master Yoda would have said. He is a great being—perhaps the greatest in the Republic. But Master Yoda is a teacher at heart. You are a warrior. Regrettably, this sad age of the world may be your time more than his.”

“Master Yoda is many things, and I am not his equal in peace
or
war,” Mace said.

“That's too bad,” the Chancellor said, “because right now you are all I have. I expect your best service.”

“For the Order and the Republic, I will give anything and everything, including my life.”

The Chancellor reached to cut the channel. “Good,” he said. “We may need that, too.”

“And in this time of crisis,” Senator Orn Free Taa of Ryloth rumbled on, “of may I say
deepening
crisis, the apparent death, the willful assassination of the Grand Master of the Jedi Order underscores the urgent need for an entirely new level of security. The Jedi will naturally attempt to carry on their good work: but
they are spread too thin.
Master Yoda's tragic death makes that shockingly plain.”

Muttered agreement throughout the vast Senate chamber.

“What we need,” the Twi'lek Senator continued, “is a massive, expert, committed security and counterintelligence force. My fellow legislators, a war such as the one we find ourselves in may be won in battle with great difficulty, but far more easily lost through treachery and sabotage. The resolution I place before you seeks to create such a large, dedicated, aggressive force, not under the jurisdiction of any of our innumerable, glacially slow bureaucracies, but answerable directly to the Chancellor's office and, through it, to us. It is time to put the security of the Republic
first,
” he cried. “It is time to put the security of the Republic directly in the hands of her
people
!”

Meaning us,
Senator Amidala thought, looking at her fellow Senators. All around her, her colleagues cheered, stomped, whistled, and applauded. Padmé's heart sank. Of course, everyone badly wanted to get some control over a situation that felt increasingly uncontrollable. But if the resolution passed—and it looked very likely to pass—then at some level, the charge of securing the Republic was being shifted from the cool, dispassionate, professional hands of the Jedi Order into the shouting, emotional, highly politicized mob of her colleagues.

Somehow, that didn't make her feel any safer.

The ship on which Whie, Scout, Maks Leem, Jai Maruk, and Master Yoda found themselves finally heading for the Outer Rim had originally been christened the
Asymptotic Approach to Divinity
when she came off her Verpine assembly line, intended as a pilgrim boat for a colony of mathemagi cultists. Unhappily, they had lost their communal savings in an investment banking scandal, leaving the
Approach
without a buyer. Rechristened the
Stardust,
she had gone into the glamour cruise business, taking well-heeled sophisticates on tours of exotic galactic sites and events, such as the Black Hole of Nakat, or the much-anticipated nova of Ariarch-17. Unfortunately, a miscalculation of the shock wave coming off the dying star had caused a dramatic and unexpected failure of the ship's artificial gravity, from which dozens of lawsuits ensued. The litigation lasted two generations, until the lawyers defending the
Stardust
's owners seized her in lieu of fees owed, renamed her
Reasonable Doubt,
and sold her off to Kut-Rate Kruises, whose maintenance protocols basically consisted of filling the ship up with breathable atmosphere and then waiting around in spacedock a couple of days to see how fast the air was leaking out.

The Verpine, though excellent starship engineers, were essentially two-meter-tall bipedal insectoids who communicated instantly through radio waves produced in their chests, and whose visual acuity was so extreme that they could distinguish between male and female lice in a nerf's fur at twenty paces. In consequence, the beds on
Reasonable Doubt
were no more than a hand span wide, the intercom system was nonexistent, and the ship signage, while no doubt screamingly obvious to other Verpine, was completely invisible to Scout. On their first day in space, it had taken her nearly an hour to find a refresher station, wandering the corridors with increasing agitation until she finally broke down and asked a crew member for directions. Embarrassing as that had been, coming out two minutes later to confess that she couldn't figure out which bits of plumbing to use had been worse.