CONNECTION

by Anne Davenport

Part 1

"That's not supposed to happen." Coomens ran his hands through his graying, sandy hair and looked despairingly at the one-way window into the gray cell. The Jedi had uncrossed his legs; they twitched, his head fell forward and he shuddered. Then he stilled again; his hands rested in the lap of his blue kaftan, palms up. They hadn't seen him sleep or rest in the two days they'd had him. Except for these occasional spasms, he didn't move.

Najiid shrugged and scratched under one of his yellowing tusks. "He's a little early this time," Najiid noted. "Not that he really keeps a schedule."

"Not him. That." Coomens pointed at the blinking red activity indicator on the status screens under the window. Najiid leaned over to look. It stopped. They stared at it, then at each other.

"That thing's not working. It can't be. If it were, he would have been climbing the walls yesterday!" Coomens shouted at the screens that now indicated normal function. Najiid made a low rumble from the back of his throat.

"According to this, his brain is getting nothing but white noise from anything." Najiid waved a claw at the readouts. "No sight, sound, taste, smell or touch. Nada." The Jedi sat cross-legged again, in the middle of the floor, facing them. The senso-block band was still clamped around his forehead; the ready lights blinked normal. They waited. In the cell, the Jedi sat still, apparently oblivious to anything, eyes half closed, bearded jaw slack, his long brown hair falling down his shoulders. He wore nothing but the pale, blue disposable caftan they'd put on him before locking him up.

He twitched again. The indicators flashed red again. His spasms looked disturbingly more purposeful this time; hands, then wrists, then arms. Then he stopped. The indicators went back to green.

Najiid looked back at Coomens. "You want to go in and check?

"No," Coomens responded quickly, pulling back.

Najiid grunted. "You're afraid to go in there."

Coomens crossed his arms. "I'm not stupid. He shouldn't even be sitting there like that. I don't want to find out what else he's not supposed to be able to do." Aside from his unnatural motions, Jedi were also trained fighters and Coomens barely came up this one's shoulder.

Coomens warily sat down next to his partner. His expensive blue suit was rumpled and not very fresh anymore. He had not left their hidden "spa" since their people had starting leaving. A pile of stale food cartons and a collection of cups cluttered the shelves on the wall behind them. One of their bio-engineers had absconded with their droids on his way out the door. Coomens reached inside his tailored jacket and fingered the small hand blaster in its holster.

"You don't think we should..."

Najiid scoffed. "We're already up to illegal bio-trafficking, accomplice to a negligent death of a family member of a well-connected politician and unlawful imprisonment of a Republic Judicial Official. They'll double the punishment for that last one if we added attempted murder."

"What do you mean by 'attempted'? Who says I'm not going to do it."

"You do. Every time you won't go in there." Najiid's small green eyes challenged him. "Come on. If we were up to killing him we'd be clawing our way to the top in the Outer Rim instead of making a cushy nest for ourselves on a core world."

Coomens gave in; his partner may have the tusks, claws and bulk of a tough, but he had the soul of a lawyer. And neither one of them had a taste for killing. Or keeping hostages, either. It was far too perilous.

At first it had worked. It had been just dumb luck that Coomens had the Senso-block with him when the Jedi had confronted Dirgish about the Baron's son. The resulting panic, and Najiid setting off all the security and fire suppression systems on their floor, had given Coomens the chance slip the band over the Jedi's head in the middle of the scuffle. With all his senses scrambled, the Jedi had been completely helpless while they'd stripped him, scrubbed him and tossed him into the holding cell until they could figure out what to do with him. But shortly afterward he had actually gotten up off the floor and turned to the observation window as if he could see through its mirrored surface. Even while the monitors showed only minimal, random brain activity, he'd settled down for this vigil. That was when their cohorts had began to crumble.

"How's he doing it?" Coomens asked, not really expecting an answer.

Najiid shrugged. "I don't know. I guess a lot that mystical hoodoo they say about Jedi must be true. He's using the Force. That's what Dirgish said before she bailed." Their most reliable chemist had taken the pittance than Coomens had offered her and bolted the planet, emphatically telling them never to ever contact her again for her services. So had their bio-engineers. Even the hired muscle had left town with a fraction of their expected pay. Now it was just down to the two of them. And the Jedi.

He wasn't moving. Again. For now.

"Do you still think we can wait him out? Until we can get more off world?" Coomens asked without looking away from the window.

Najiid leaned over the console and punched up the Acquisition Alert that had frozen their accounts more than a day ago. The screen text flashed large and red with a matching bleep warning everyone that all transactions were frozen until further notice. "Sorry for the inconvenience" glowed steadily green in tiny text at the bottom of the screen. "They can't keep this hold on forever. No one else can spend anything, either. All we need is a minute."

And it had been such a sweet operation, too, Coomens moaned to himself. The highest and mightiest in the planetary government could go to work, do their jobs, get a few illegal thrills on their breaks or after hours and no one would know. No sneaking off to the dingy parts of town, no hiding strange expenses from their families. Once again Coomens regretted ever taking the Baron's son's money, especially after they had been so careful about screening their customers (none of the others had given a pittance of information to the Inspectors; they knew how to cover their tracks). He'd obviously lifted one of their products with him on his last visit and had managed to kill himself with it, in front of witnesses. In the family pool. The Baron had been on a rampage ever since, first harassing the municipal police, the government inspectors, the planetary regulators and finally he had escalated it to the interplanetary judiciary.

Coomens keyed up the Missing-Alert on the Jedi. There was a picture of the Jedi's long, bearded face and a listing of last known locations. The description said that his name was Qui-Gon Jinn, but he was just "The Jedi" as far as Coomens was concerned. He did not know any other Jedi and right now he really didn't care to. Jedi were supposed to have all kinds of mind powers, but until now Coomens had always attributed it to hyperbole.

The Jedi twitched. A little noise, a quick inhale came from the cell speakers. The Jedi slowly raised his hands.

"No..." Najiid started to rise from his chair. The Jedi had his hands on the senso-block.

"He can't." Coomens was out of his seat as well and pointing at their prisoner. He looked down at the senso-block's key chip, resting on the console. "He CAN'T."

The Jedi's fingers tapped and pressed the black, plastic band at his temples. For long minutes they only heard the tiny movements of the Jedi's hands. Then there was an audible click. The senso-block slipped, falling down over the Jedi's nose and then clattering on the floor. The Jedi immediately followed, toppling over to the side. He twitched and made involuntary grunts. But that didn't reassure them. He'd done the same thing when they had first put the senso-block on him and it had taken less than an hour for him to right himself.

"How much of our assets did you say we got off world already?" Coomens asked without taking his eyes off their 'prisoner.'

"Less than twenty percent."

Coomens shrugged. "I can live with that."

"Yeah, me, too."

Strange, Qui-Gon thought. He had never thought plain gray was such a violent color. But the ceiling above him assaulted him just by his being able to see it. The floor was hard like needles. Pungent air washed through him. Echoes rained down on him. Long minutes passed before the impact of his surroundings seemed to lessen and he finally lay still.

He knew he had been cut off from his body for days, but not much beyond that. Jedi could control their senses, meditate and immerse themselves in the Force. This was the first time he had ever felt...trapped by it. He shuddered and unsuccessfully tried to rise. His hypersensitivity to the room around him made him feel ill. He closed his eyes again and lay still again.

Qui-Gon ruefully thought about how sure he'd been that he had created his own balance, how prepared he was. But no Jedi training, no exercise, no meditation cut one off so completely from the world. The body, the senses were always there, available. Now he saw that without them, he had simply been clinging to where he should have been, an external specter to the body he could sense and move only through the Force.

His captors were near. He could sense them as well, only two left nearby. And...Obi-Wan was coming. He had almost lost himself in the ever-expanding void of living beings of the crowded building, the district, the city around him until he'd sensed something, someone familiar to focus on. Distance had meant nothing; he could concentrate and feel a better connection to Obi-Wan than he had to himself. But Obi-Wan was whole, mind and Force, while he was...disjointed. And worse, he was weakening. While the Force gave strength to his spirit, it did little for the body he could barely access.

But without any reference to the living world he could do little more than randomly agitate his Padawan for days. How strange that he couldn't even conceive of words or pictures without a body. He'd had only the intuition of memory without any of its form. It was only when he had reached out to Obi-Wan when his Padawan was deep in his own meditation that they had merged what Qui-Gon knew with the world. It had been a huge rush of images and sounds, a jumble of days compressed into fleeting seconds, but it gave Obi-Wan the landmarks he needed to locate him and Qui-Gon enough thought to know what had cut him off from his senses and what to do about it.

He opened his eyes again. Not surprisingly he was in a cell. He felt the Force around him and he reached out to it. His hypersensitivity increased, but he could push himself up off the floor and then slowly he stood. His body felt unfamiliar and clumsy and he was covered with only a single, long, rough piece of fabric. His mouth was parched; his joints hurt. his head ached. He needed focus.

Qui-Gon staggered to the large mirror he faced, pulled back and drove his hand through the reflection. Hand and Force went through the wall, bending it back and crushing the edges away from his arm. His lightsaber landed in his outstretched hand; his fingers closed around the hilt and it ignited. He heard cries and panic and retreat beyond the mirror. He pulled the lightsaber carefully back through the hole.

Back now turned to the wall, he slid down it to sit on the floor. He felt utterly drained and he dispassionately thought that he had rarely used the Force with such focused and intense power like that. But it gave him no strength. That made him feel sad.

Qui-Gon closed his eyes, his hands in his lap, lightsaber held up in a salute. He concentrated only on its physical presence, denied to him for so long. The hum of the blade buzzed too loudly. The hilt balanced poorly in his hands. The floor was too hard. The wrinkles of fabric that he sat on irritated him. He felt discord even in the air.

Other noises and sounds intruded on his attempt at solace. He ignored them. Motion, voices, footsteps. He shut them out, ignoring their meaning. But equilibrium eluded him. After long minutes he realized that he was just shutting things out again. At least trying to, and doing it poorly. He felt sad again.

Something touched him. His lightsaber shut off. Qui-Gon opened his eyes. Obi-Wan leaned over him, his thin Padawan's braid hanging down from behind his ear. The rest of his short, brown hair was untidy, sticking out in odder ways than usual.

"Master?" Obi-Wan's hands covered his. Qui-Gon hadn't realized he'd been clutching his lightsaber so tightly. He loosened his grip, letting Obi-Wan take it away and lay it on the floor next to him.

"Obi-Wan." He had no voice; it was just a whisper. His Padawan looked worn and tired, his blue eyes looked gray with worry.

"I don't look that bad?"

Obi-Wan's concern brightened when he smiled.

"You have looked better, Master."

"Hm." He nodded weakly. "I suppose I can do something about that now." But his words seemed to have no strength behind them.

Inspector Mazik watched his lieutenant lead the suspects away. Sargent Hosim set loose a couple of audit droids on the computers. It had been a very productive day. She peered into the gray room where they had found Jinn sitting on the floor. With that lightsaber on, no one would go near him except his partner. He looked terrible and a medical droid was already there. Kenobi hovered nearby. At least that kept both Jedi busy and out from underfoot and away from the real police work.

They did get the job done; Mazik had to admit that. After Jinn had gone missing and Kenobi could only insist on the vaguest, hazy 'feelings' about what had happened, Mazik had thought about locking him up; Jedi or not, two days without sleep made anybody crazy. Then he had planted himself in her office to 'meditate' and three hours later, pow, he'd had a vision. Mazik had been shocked to discover that a Jedi vision was actually sufficient evidence for a warrant from a Republic magistrate, if you got the right one. Their methods were weird, but they got the job done.

Kenobi led them right to Jinn. And everything else they were looking for. Illegal bank accounts. Embezzlement. Illicit services. And records for everything. Jinn had apparently kept them so badly rattled that they hadn't erased much at all. All their underlings had disappeared but the real culprits were in custody. Mazik savored how really rare that was. The big ones usually got away.

Mazik had not imagined that the Baron would go so far as to get the Senate to send Jedi to help with his son's death inquiry. Mazik had seen that there was something big connected to it right away and had maneuvered the grieving father into demands that aided her. He hadn't needed much prodding; the Baron had gone completely over the edge, spinning tales about deep rooted corruption in the government that could only be uncovered by powerful outsiders. How odd that now it looked like some the pod scrapings that he'd spouted had actually been true. She'd known that they were using government accounting to hide their profits, but Mazik never imagined that the criminals she was looking for were actually operating from the central government buildings.

Kenobi approached and told them they were taking Jinn back to Couroscant. The Baron had dispatched his private ship to ferry them back to the central world. Mazik thanked them and wished them well. She'd recorded everything they did for the courts; she didn't need them anymore. Mazik decided that if she didn't get a promotion for this case, she would lodge a protest.

End Part 1