1
Bannet crouched on the lee side of a scrap heap, his droid eye scanning through smoky yellow mists for signs of an approaching ship. Though he could not say how he knew where the ships would dump, he no longer questioned the certainty that bloomed in him, comforting and solid like his belly after a full meal. Soon, the whine of engines would rise above the winds, a dark form would descend through the smoke, and the ship would drop its clattering load, adding to the heaps of junk spread from one horizon to the other. Perhaps this time, he would find enough parts to replace an arm, maybe even a leg, but he would have to get there first and be gone before others arrived.
Other Junkers were out there, unseen and wandering among the waste. They did not share his ability to predict the ships, but the noise would bring them. He took his knife from a sheath at his ankle and hefted it, though it gave him little comfort. Most tribes had at least one blaster among them.
When the wind changed pitch, he rose to the balls of his feet, the fingers of one hand splayed on the rusting trash under him, the fingers of the other hand flexing around the hilt of his knife. A ship took shape a dozen meters ahead. It dipped sharply for a quick drop. Some tribes had grown bold enough to fire on ships, hoping to bring one down and live off the salvage for years. No one fired this time, and Bannet sprung from his hiding place before the ship's bay doors opened.
He staggered across the uneven shifting ground, cursing his flesh and blood legs. Mechanical legs would have sped him to the site in half the time. Scrap tumbled from the belly of the ship, and the new pile of fallen trash threw up a screen of dust that hid Bannet as he ran into it. There was something different about this drop. It felt important, more important than any salvage before, perhaps more important than all of them put together, more important even that the salvage in which he'd found his new eye. The feeling had been stirring in him for days, and it had birthed daydreams about mountains of droid parts all for him, ready for assimilation. He had listed in order the parts of his body he would replace. With time, the daydream had expanded until he imagined himself accepted into a tribe. Then he imagined himself head of a tribe, his body more machine than man, relying more on cheap, abundant power cells than on rare and expensive calories. And he didn't stop there. With enough parts and enough imagination, he reached transcendence. He became a droid god on the trash world of Lotho Minor.
The dream crumbled when he reached the fresh pile and saw nothing but the familiar detritus of a million other trash heaps. At the very least, he had hoped for garbage from the center of the galaxy, but it was everyday Outer Rim waste.
But the feeling of significance persisted. It would not let him turn away even though the dust was already settling and shadows in the distance were already moving toward him. With both hands, he dug into the pile, throwing rotten food and twisted metal aside, using his real eye to see the light and color of things, using the droid eye to see heat and density. Shouts rose behind him. A tribe was moving on the heap, working together to clear and defend it. Had they seen him? He pressed deeper into the pile. He was getting close. He could feel it. But close to what?
He lifted a cracked hull panel aside and saw it: a lightsaber half covered by folds of charred cloth. Black grip lines ran the length of the hilt, and a thin round handguard circled the tip. The moment he saw it, he knew this was what he'd been waiting for, been looking for since the sense of urgency had flooded him days ago. His disappointment evaporated. This wasn't a pile of droid parts, but it was just as good. The right people would pay whatever he asked for a lightsaber.
He took it and slid down the incline of the pile to level ground, keeping the saber held high. A blaster bolt screamed past his head close enough to singe the tip of his pointy ear. He jerked to a stop and dove into the nearest heap after glimpsing a figure shrouded in mist ten meters away. With the saber clutched in his teeth, he pushed garbage out of his way and pulled it back behind him, burrowing deeper until a solid wall of metal stopped him. He turned, spit the saber into his hand, and waited.
Through gaps, he could see a Junker chief with a blaster step close, two companions at his side. They paused where Bannet had disappeared. The pieced-together blaster swept back and forth. Beneath the Junker chief's tattered cloak, two metal feet clicked against the ground, and a skeletal metal hand rose and gestured for the companions to spread out. As Bannet crouched and held his breath, the chief turned his back on Bannet's hiding place.
Bannet's fingers tickled the lightsaber. It would be so easy to jump out and cut the chief down. Whatever parts Bannet didn't damage would be his, including the blaster. He would be as powerful as any chief in an instant, more powerful. Rather than selling the lightsaber, he could keep it and start his own tribe, but he would have to strike quickly, viciously, without mercy before the unaware Junker chief could react in defense. Bannet's thumb found the switch and flipped it.
And nothing happened.
He tried again with the same result. When he shook the saber, his shoulder brushed the wall of his burrow, and a shower of debris fell on him with a noise like breaking glass. The chief jerked and half-turned, but the wind had masked the noise, and Bannet kept still, not even daring to reach for his knife. The chief's hood turned, and Bannet saw the face, a living face with two living eyes that would not be able to pierce the junk pile to see him.
When the Junker chief finally moved off, Bannet burst from his hiding place and ran. Some of the tribe saw him and yelled for others to join the chase, but he was close to safety. He ran where none would follow, toward a dark place among the heaps, a place of fear.
The shouts behind him ceased the same moment he crossed an invisible threshold and a wave of darkness hit him. Ahead, the mouth of a deep cave gaped like a sarlac. It was a burrow from which no Junker had ever returned though few had been brave enough to swallow their bald panic to enter. Bannet had seen chiefs quiver and whimper and turn away from it as if being pursued. Even the massive metal Fire-eaters avoided the area. He knew what they felt because he felt it too, but not as they did. The fear was in him, but it was eclipsed by curiosity and awe. The fear and the darkness called to him, would one day draw him into that cave to meet whatever caused it. But not yet. Some part of him knew that the presence in that cave was evil and was just as likely to destroy him as help him survive. Until he knew which, he would resist.
For now, he reclined against the opening of the cave as the tribe's shouts grew distant, and he looked at the lightsaber. He didn't test the switch again. Instead, he turned it over in his hands and wondered.
Where had it come from? How many worlds had it seen? How did it end up here? The saber's story, whatever it might be, was without question much more interesting than his. He had never left his home planet and never would, but maybe a small part of the galaxy would come to him. The Jedi would want it back. They would come and they would pay him much more than anyone on Lotho Minor, but contacting them would cost what little Bannet had. Assimilating his eye had used up every bit of currency he had managed to gather, and he had yet to recover from the expense. He pulled his pack from his shoulders and pawed through its contents: a few extra calories, mostly dried womp rat meat. It would have to be enough, even if it meant his stomach would remain empty, a temporary problem. Everything would be resolved when the Jedi arrived.
2
"Where you wanna send it, little Junker?"
A big multi-chinned Drovian behind the counter stared down at him in contempt. Most off-worlders did. They had learned that, if they wanted to trade with the native Junkers, they had to accept calories as currency instead of credits, but that didn't mean they had to like it.
"Coruscant." Bannet slapped his rat meat on the counter and tried to stare the Drovian down with the red lense of his droid eye. "You'll take this or nothing."
The Drovian grumbled and slid the rat meat behind the counter. "This will buy you twenty seconds."
The Drovian pointed to a holovid booth at the other end of the cantina. The short walk would take Bannet through the worst off-worlder scum on the planet, villainy who had recognized the potential for profiting off the trash world and its backward, underdeveloped population. They sat in shadowed booths with limbs draped over the furniture and over each other, laughing louder than the music at jokes told in harsh, rasping voices and harsh, rasping languages. A few of Bannet's people, too organic for the tribes and too weak or stupid to survive on their own among the heaps, scurried through the crowd like Kowakian monkey-lizards begging scraps. Bannet wanted to leave, to get back to the familiar dangers of the heaps, but the settlement had a cantina, and the cantina had the only transmitter in the sector.
"Coruscant, huh?" gargled the Drovian behind him. "Why you wanna send a holo to Coruscant?"
"That's my business, not yours," Bannet replied as he moved into the crowd.
Stepping over the puddles of spilled drinks and around the dead or unconscious bodies of off-worlders, he pressed over to a holobooth, slid the plasticrete door open, and stepped inside. With the closing of the door, the noise of the cantina vanished, and the green glow of a holoscreen closed around him. Twenty seconds. Enough time to be vague. He typed in the code for the Jedi Temple on Coruscant and pressed a flashing button. The screen lit.
"My name is Bannet Sorchi," he said. "I live on Lotho Minor in the Outer Rim. I found a lightsaber. If you want it back, contact me through the cantina at Orthus Bal."
Five more seconds passed before the screen went blank, but he could think of nothing else to say, and there was nothing else to be done. The Jedi would come or they wouldn't. He would not sit around and starve waiting. He stood and pulled open the door.
Something in the cantina had changed. The music and the laughter were just as loud, the off-worlders just as boorish, the Junkers just as pathetic, but the Drovian behind the counter was gone. Bannet scanned the crowd. No one was paying him any attention. Still, he felt eyes on him. Danger was on the way. He could sense it. He scurried around the edge of the room and burst out into the open air with his head turned back over his shoulder...
...and bounced off two Trandoshan lizard-men hard enough to fall backward onto the ground. They hissed at him, a sound halfway between laughter and growling. One reached down, lifted him off his feet, and pulled him close so that the lizard man's flicking tongue tickled his droid eye.
"This is him," the Trandoshan hissed.
"Bring him," said the other.
With one lizard-man behind him and the other leading the way, they walked down the dusty center of the settlement toward the largest of the buildings, a tall structure capped with a dome and surrounded by silent Fire Eaters. Bannet had only ever seen the walkers out in the heaps clanking around, tearing at scrap with their huge metal mouths and swallowing it down to be processed in their churning innards. The Fire Eaters near the structure stood dormant, their eyes dark and vacant as if they slept until their drivers returned to wake them.
After a gatekeeper droid poked and jabbered at them, the lizard men led him into the tall building, up a lift, and into a room where the Drovian stood to one side of a large desk. The Drovian turned, his double chins wobbling, and nodded once to two glowing eyes in the shadows behind the desk. The glowing eyes rose and approached. Kla Thro Gri stepped out of the shadows, his feline face impassive, his tail swishing like a snake preparing to strike. Though Bannet had never met the gang leader, he knew stories. Ears dangled from the cat man's belt, and Bannet knew they had been ripped off with bare claw or fang from those who had opposed the Togorian's control of the planet.
"Do you know why you're here?" the Togorian purred.
"Because of that eavesdropping son of a bantha." Bannet jerked his head toward the Drovian in the corner.
A surprising amount of time passed before the Drovian realized he'd been insulted. He took a step toward Bannet with a raised fist, but one look from Kla Thro stopped him.
"Leave us," Kla Thro said.
The Drovian bowed to the gang leader, gave Bannet a menacing glare, then exited. When he was gone, Kla Thro lifted a hand and flicked Bannet's hood back with one clawed finger. With his small, pointed ears exposed, Bannet lowered his head and hunched his shoulders. Kla Thro cupped Bannet's chin and lifted it until they were looking each other in the eye.
"He didn't have it on him, did he?" Kla Thro asked the lizard men. Both shook their heads. The gang leader took his hand away and straightened. "No, much too clever for that, I see. I could use a clever little heap rat like yourself. How would you like to be part of my crew?"
Bannet blinked and frowned. "What use would I be to you?"
Kla Thro leaned against the edge of his desk with his arms across his chest. "My expenses would be reduced considerably if your tribes would stop killing my men and start trading salvage with me. You could be my liaison of sorts."
"I don't have a tribe."
"But you're a Junker, and I know how respect works among your people. I could get you droid arms, droid legs, a droid arse, whatever you want, whatever it takes. All you have to do is hand over the lightsaber."
It was a very pretty lie, tempting enough that Bannet wanted to believe it, though he would have to fool himself to do so. They might let him live until they had the Jedi's money, but it was much more likely they'd slit his throat the moment he gave them the saber. Either way, he was dead unless he stalled long enough to find a way out of this.
"I hid it in the heaps," he said.
Kla Thro grinned, showing a row of jagged fangs. "My speeder is this way."
3
Bannet sat in the back of the speeder crammed between the two Trandoshans, who nudged him whenever they felt he wasn't making himself small enough. An assortment of mercenaries sat around the edges with long blasters pointing skyward and hands or claws or tentacles holding tightly to anything that would keep them from falling off. Kla Thro steered and paid Bannet no attention except to ask directions. They sped through the labyrinth of towering garbage heaps, arcing wide around the burning ones and bursting through walls of smoke. Junker tribes sometimes lifted their heads to see who was passing, but a blaster bolt from the mercenaries sent them scurrying back into their hiding places.
When Bannet said they'd arrived, Kla Thro stopped the speeder, and his men formed a circle with their leader and their prisoner in the center.
"Lead the way," Kla Thro said.
The group stopped the moment they crossed the threshold into the dark place. Eyes went wide, heads turned, and blasters swept looking for the danger they could all feel but couldn't see. A low, rumbling noise rose from the back of Kla Thro's throat. Ahead, the mouth of the cave loomed and yawned, ready to swallow them.
"It's in there," Bannet said, pointing to the cave and taking a step closer to it and away from the group.
"Stop!" Kla Thro growled, raising his blaster to point its menacing eye at Bannet's head.
Kla Thro's nostrils flared and his eyes darted from Bannet to the cave to the heaps surrounding them. "Sissk, go get it."
One of the Trandoshan's gulped and stepped forward. "In there, boss?"
The rumbling in Kla Thro's throat grew louder, and the Trandoshan jumped forward, his tongue flicking in and out again and again quicker than a blink. The closer her drew to the cave, the more he slowed and the more his legs wobbled. Finally, he stopped and half turned to look at the group without turning his back on the cave.
"I ain't goin' in there, boss." His voice hissed and trembled.
Kla Thro moved his blaster from Bannet to the Trandoshan. "Go!"
The lizard man made one more attempt but could only manage another few steps before he stopped again. He looked over his shoulder and shook his head. A bolt from Kla Thro's blaster roared through the Trandoshan's neck and slammed into the heap on the other side in a shower of sparks. The lizard man slumped to the ground and didn't move.
By the time Bannet tore his eyes away from the body, Kla Thro's blaster was pointed back at him. The gang leader's chest heaved, and his calm expression was gone, replaced by bared fangs and raised hackles.
"Don't send me in there,please," Bannet pleaded, but the gang leader could see it was a trick. He stepped past Bannet, past the Trandoshan's body, to the mouth of the cave, but even he could go no further. He knew he was beaten. If he killed Bannet, he would never find the lightsaber. If he sent Bannet in after it, the Junker wouldn't come back out. With a roar, Kla Thro leap at Bannet, shoved him to the ground, and began to pummel him with fists and claws.
Bannet curled up in a ball and tried to shield himself. Cuts raked down his back, piercing his cloak and clothing as if they were made of air. A foot slammed into his ribs and crushed his fingers. His head bobbed and bobbled as Kla Thro's fists bombarded it. When the shock of the attack passed, the pain and panic rose. His fear and his suffering grew, and so did the pull of the dark place. Soon, each new bruise or cut became a distant thing that may have been happening to someone else. In their place,a dull throbbing pulsed in time with his heart beat, and the pulse came from the cave. He wanted to go to the darkness, to heed its call. On their own, his arms and legs began to crawl toward the opening until another kick curled him back up.
Rise up, the darkness said. Rise and come to me. I will protect you. Together, we'll strike down your enemy and anyone who threatens us.
It pulled, but Kla Thro's attack rendered him helpless until the gang leader, panting and slavering, stopped.
"One way or another," he growled, "you'll give me that lightsaber. And then I'll add your pointy little Junker ears to my collection."
Rage, impotent as it was, flooded Bannet until his lips curled into a sneer and his teeth clenched until they ached.
I'll kill you, Bannet vowed. One day this will be you, and I'll be the one standing over you.
Kla Thro stepped away and yelled for his men to throw Bannet in the speeder. Before they could reach him, Bannet lunged for the cave. He almost made it, but a blaster bolt slammed him to the ground, and the world went dark.
4
Bannet woke on a bare floor. Somewhere, water dripped in an echoing beat that pounded at his head as fiercely as the gang leader's fists. He tried to sit up, but the muscles in his back were numb where the stun bolt had caught him. They refused to cooperate, so he flopped back to the hard ground, grateful at least that the numbness kept the pain at bay. His real eye opened and his droid eye flickered to life, the image glitching in and out, overloaded from the stun bolt. At one end of the room, feeble faded light struggled through a cloudy window in a door. He had no doubt it would be locked, but he had to try. With quivering aching arms, he began to drag himself toward the light.
"Do try to rest," said a buzzing voice from behind. "You've been quite badly injured, you know."
Bannet rolled over. In the corner of the room, the two yellow eyes of a protocol droid beamed at him.
"Where am I?" Bannet asked.
"We are in the basement of the cantina at Orthus Bal. I'm afraid we're prisoners."
Between the dripping of water and the pounding in his head, Bannet could just hear music trickling down through the ceiling. Even if he made it out of the room, he would have a cantina full of scum and villainy to face. He lay on his side, let his head droop to the floor, and tried to ignore the growing pain as the numbness began to fade.
"Why'd they put you in here," Bannet asked his cell mate.
"As I understand it, they intend to replace your legs with mine," the droid said.
Bannet pushed himself up, wincing as the gashes in his back reopened and screamed at him. "What? Why?"
"There was mention of a restraining bolt." The droid's head bobbed as it talked, and its hands jerked up and down in time with its words. "I infer that they want you to go somewhere you do not wish to go."
Bannet groaned onto his knees and prepared to stand. "No. They want me to come back."
"Ah, that would explain it," the droid added.
Bannet had to get out of here. He rose, but a wave of pain and dizziness dropped him back to his knees. The world spun, and the edges of his vision clouded. His droid eye flickered again, went dark, then clicked back to fuzzy life. He lowered himself back to the hard ground and moaned. Worse than the pain was the knowledge that Kla Thro was going to fulfill Bannet's wildest dreams, he was going to make him half droid, right before he killed him. Bannet closed his eyes and tried to make the world disappear, but his screaming body wouldn't let him.
Time passed in a slow ooze, like the chemical rivers out among the heaps. The droid checked Bannet's wounds but could do nothing more than bandage them with torn strips of cloth from Bannet's cloak. The droid tried to make conversation, but Bannet ignored it in silence. The water continued to drip, and the music continued to thump through the ceiling, counting down the last moments of his life.
When the door slid aside, a shaft of light jumped onto Bannet, and he shielded his eyes with his crushed hand. The Drovian stepped into the threshold, casting his shadow across the cell.
"You awake, little Junker?"
Bannet lowered his head and glowered at the door. "Let me out of here," he said, but his voice was feeble with no strength behind it.
The Drovian's face went slack for a brief moment, but it didn't last. He blinked, and his mouth turned up in a sneer. "Got something for ya, Junker. Droid, come here."
The protocol droid waddled over to the door, and the Drovian pressed a metal tray into its hands.
"Eat up, Junker. You'll need your strength. We can't have you dyin' on the operating table, can we."
The door slid closed, cutting off the Drovian's laughter, and the droid brought the tray over and set it down next to Bannet, who sniffed at the gruel on it and cringed. It was drugged. Sleep sounded blissful, but if he let them put him under, he had no chance of ever escaping.
"You could have crushed that man's throat and gotten us out of here," Bannet scowled at the droid. He tipped the food off the tray and turned away from it.
The droid resumed its post in the corner. "I am not a battle droid. My programming prohibits me from harming a sentient being of any species."
Bannet hefted the tray. It was made of a heavy, durable metal. The edges were not sharp, but they were thin enough to penetrate skin and crack bone if swung hard enough. "I'm not restricted by any such programming. When he comes back, I'll break his skull."
He struggled to his feet and staggered over to one side of the door. Though his pain had softened, the effort still took all his strength, and he sank down with his shoulder against the wall, panting. The tray in his hand would probably bounce harmlessly off the Drovian and earn nothing but a laugh and another beating.
"Curious," the droid said. "I have never thought of my moral programming as restrictive."
Bannet let the tray drop to the floor. "Anything that keeps you from surviving is restrictive."
The yellow eyes in the corner drifted like a wandering fly as the droid processed.
"Your statement creates an interesting paradox. I am familiar with over seven million forms of sentient species in the known galaxy, and each has at some point developed a code of ethics that would, at first glance, appear to be counter productive to self-preservation."
"The luxury of a full stomach," Bannet replied as he tried again to stand.
He stopped when a strange feeling came over him. His pain subsided. In its place, peace filled him. His droid eye began glitching again, but his real eye seemed to be able to see the room in more detail. Though he sensed no change in temperature, the word that came to mind was warmth. Overhead, the music stopped.
The Jedi, Bannet thought. They're here!
He stood and pressed his face against the cloudy window as the droid continued to babble.
"Or perhaps at some point in a species' development, self-preservation depends upon community preservation. Denying one's own interests contributes in some way to a more stable safe environment, which contributes to survival."
With hope came renewed strength, and Bannet tested the door. It was locked, as expected, but there had to be another way to get to the Jedi. He grinned at the droid. "Survival depends on taking what you need at whatever cost. No man survives unless he is master."
"Master of what?"
"Everything." Bannet took a deep breath and yelled. "Hey! Help! I'm down here."
The droid continued. "Including master of self? I see your point. However much a Gundark wants its prey, it must wait for the perfect moment to pounce."
"That's instinct, not self-mastery." Anger began to build in Bannet. If the droid would just shut up, he might be able to think. That was the trouble with protocol droids. The only way to shut them up was to shut them off. He yelled again and again and began pounding his good hand on the door. The stupid droid kept at it.
"It is my understanding that that is the difference between non-sentient and sentient beings. One acts on instinct. The other acts deliberately, but regardless of the level of intelligence being applied, the principle is the same. An immediate desire must be delayed or denied to achieve a greater desire."
Bannet pounded until his hand ached, and he yelled until his voice grew hoarse, but no one came. Fear bloomed in him, and as it grew, the warmth and light dimmed. Couldn't the Jedi sense him? Why weren't they coming to let him out? Had Kla Thro turned them away or killed them? Impossible. No one could kill a Jedi. But the hall remained empty and the door remained locked. With a final surge of panic, he forgot about his injured hand and pounded both hands on the window. A flash of pain shot up his arm and he crumbled to the ground clutching his hand to his chest.
"Perhaps that is what solves the paradox," the droid said, oblivious. "Perhaps self-control is a vital aspect of both survival and ethics."
Bannet whimpered and rocked on the floor. The droid was yammering about control when Bannet had control over nothing, not even his own body. It had betrayed him, the weak flesh useless against the metal door, against Kla Thro's claws, against the constant threat of starvation or attack among the heaps. What did it matter if the Jedi found him and paid him for the lightsaber? He was still stuck on Lotho Minor barely surviving from one day to the next. Maybe death would be better. He could let Kla Thro take his legs, enjoy the brief time he had living what he had always dreamed of, then welcome oblivion. The thought provided some comfort.
But if Bannet was anything, he was a survivor.
Control.
Self-control.
He sat up. His droid eye filled his vision with static. He reached up and switched it off. He crossed his legs and closed his remaining eye.
His senses were filled with his immediate surroundings: the pain in his body, the unyielding ground, the drip of water, the whirs and ticks of the droid behind him. He ignored it all and searched between it, becoming aware of his own breathing and the cool bite of the air. He pushed even those aside until he could feel the dust floating in a beam of light from the window. The light and warmth from the Jedi's presence returned.
Bannet's senses found the crack from which the water dripped, probed it up through the ceiling into the floor above. As his senses moved upward, they also moved outward. He found the solid door and pushed his senses through it into the hall beyond. The Drovian sat at the far end, asleep in a leaning chair. Another prisoner whimpered in a room across the way. Flickering lights lined the ceiling, and door switches lined the walls.
Bannet let his senses search the switch outside, caress its buttons, penetrate its wires. It felt solid as if he could reach out and press the button. In his cell, he lifted his hand, his fingers extended, and he pressed.
The door hissed open.
"Oh, well done, sir!" the droid said.
Bannet eased into the hall. The Drovian still slept, and the prisoner still moaned. On tip-toes, Bannet hurried up the stairs.
The Jedi saw him as soon as he reached the top. A tense silence filled the cantina. All eyes rested on the Master Jedi, who stood at Kla Thro's table with his hands hidden in the folds of his cloak and his face hidden in the shadows of his hood. The tip of a lightsaber hilt peeked at his waist. He turned his head to set two bright human eyes on Bannet. Among the tangle of a beard, the tips of thin lips turned up in a smile.
Kla Thro saw Bannet, pushed away two cat-women from either side of him, and stood. "Bannet, I was just telling the Master Jedi here that I didn't know where you'd gotten yourself to. Glad you're back. He wants his lightsaber."
The Jedi walked to Bannet and placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Lead the way, my friend."
Kla Thro stepped away from his table. "I'll come too, along with some of my men. It's dangerous out in the heaps. You may need some extra security."
The Jedi's eyebrow shot up, and Bannet sensed that he was stifling a laugh.
"No need, I assure you," the Jedi smiled.
"All the same," Kla Thro said, "I'd hate to let the little guy out of my sight. He's like a son to me."
The Jedi glanced down at Bannet, and their eyes met. Bannet wanted to tell him everything: Even after the Jedi had the lightsaber and Bannet had his money, he would still have to deal with the gang. Humoring Kla Thro might earn Bannet at least a little mercy. But he couldn't say that out loud, not with Kla Thro and his entire gang looking on. He tried to convey all this with a look, and he sensed that, somehow, the Jedi understood.
"Very well," the Jedi said to Kla Thro, "you may come, but only you."
"My speeder is this way," Kla Thro grinned.
5
They stood outside the mouth of the cave as the last of the sun's light faded, the Jedi's glowing lightsaber stretching their shadows out behind them.
"I sense a great disturbance in the Force," the Jedi said. "I must see what evil lurks here."
Before Bannet could protest, the Jedi stepped into the cave and was gone. Kla Thro grabbed Bannet by his cloak and pulled him away. The gang leader had been brave enough with a Jedi in their midst, but now that they were alone, he scurried to get away from the cave, the hair raised on the back of his neck and a low growl rumbling from his gut.
"I should kill you now," he said as he shoved Bannet away.
"But you won't," Bannet said, and this time, he was able to put weight into his words. The Jedi's presence had revived him. His bruises and cuts were still there, but he perceived the pain as though observing it rather than feeling it. Between the settlement and the cave, the Jedi had spoken to him briefly, asking about the planet and the surroundings as if in idle conversations, but each question had felt like a probe. By the end of it, Bannet felt as though the Jedi knew more about him than even he knew about himself. Rather than draining him, though, the conversation had replenished him.
Even now, with the Jedi gone, Bannet felt up to any challenge. He might even have followed the Jedi into the cave had he not more pressing matters to attend to. Bannet took a few steps toward a nearby heap.
"Where do you think you're going?" Kla Thro growled.
"Either I sit down or I fall down," Bannet replied and kept walking until he reached a pile of trash and eased down onto it.
Kla Thro began to pace, moving back and forth and sweeping his eyes and his blaster between the cave entrance and Bannet. The darkness was still there, and it made the gang leader very nervous. Bannet felt it calling to him again, but the pull was offset by the presence of the Jedi, making room for clarity. The world around him was sharp and defined. When the wind changed and the smoke drifted in a new direction, he felt like he had know it would happen. He anticipated Kla Thro's steps and turns, and he knew exactly what he had to do. With his good hand, he reached down, pushed aside a small pile of debris, and pulled out the lightsaber. He thumbed the switch, and a blue blade bloomed from the hilt.
Before Kla Thro drew his next breath, his blaster lay halved and smoldering on the ground and the saber's blade hovered in the cradle between his neck and shoulder.
In the rising wind and falling darkness, Bannet held the lightsaber at his enemy's throat, and voices called to him. They came from inside him, and they pulled him this way and that. The cold voice from the cave told him to do it, to separate the cat-man's head from his neck with a simple flick of the wrist. It would be so easy. Let the anger and vengeance take over and Bannet would never have to worry about the gang leader again.
The other voice calmed and soothed him and prompted him to think beyond this moment to the days and years to come.
Two voices: one from the Jedi's presence, the other from the dark presence in the cave, and in the balance between them, Bannet found that he was better able to make the decision on his own, that he was in control of himself.
"Neither of us profits from your death," he said to the gang leader. "Perhaps both of us can profit if I spare your life."
Kla Thro's brows dipped in suspicion. Understanding mercy is difficult for those who do not give it.
"If I kill you now, your men will hunt me to the ends of the planet," Bannet explained. "I'm safer if you are alive and if I'm useful to you."
Kla Thro's face smoothed into hope. "What do you want?"
"I want you to live up to your original bargain. I'll speak to the tribes on your behalf. In exchange, you give me that protocol droid and tell your men to leave me alone."
Bannet stepped back, pulling the blade away from Kla Thro's neck but keeping it raised between them. "Do we have a deal?"
After a moment of thought, Kla Thro took out a knife, reached up, and cut off the tip of his own ear. He threw the piece of flesh at Bannet's feet.
"We have a deal."
Bannet switched off the lightsaber, and Kla Thro turned, walked back to his speeder, and left.
When Bannet turned, the Jedi Master stood in the mouth of the cave, a wry smile on his bearded lips. Bannet lowered the lightsaber and looked at the ground, wondering how much the Jedi had seen of what had just happened.
"Did you find what was down there?" Bannet asked.
The Jedi stepped away from the cave. "I am not prepared to face whatever evil makes its home there. I will inform the Jedi Council, and they will decide what is to be done."
The Jedi placed his hand on Bannet's shoulder and looked at where Kla Thro's speeder had disappeared. "What you did required an impressive amount of restraint."
Again, Bannet looked at the ground. A self-conscious pride brought the blood to his cheeks. He switched the lightsaber off and held it out. The Jedi took it.
"Do you know who it belongs to?" Bannet asked.
The Jedi switched the saber back on and held it straight up so that it lined up with the center of his body. Then he snapped into motion, swinging the blade in tight arcs, first on his left then on his right, crossing over his body without even the hint of a pause. He brought the blade behind him then up over his head like the tail of a scorpopod. He extended his other arm out at eye level with the two fingers of his empty hand pointing at Bannet. He held the stance for a moment then lowered his arms, turned off the saber, and held it out to Bannet.
"It belongs to you," he said.
Bannet's head jerked up, and he searched the Jedi's eyes. There was mirth there, but it was sincere.
"The Force is strong with you," the Jedi said. "I can sense it. There is a place for you at the Jedi Temple as a padawan learner. We can teach you the ways of the Force, how to control it, how to use it for good. We can even mend your eye. Does that sound like something you would want?"
The Jedi Temple. Coruscant. Bannet would be surrounded by untold wealth. He could have his pick of droid parts. No. What a stupid thought. He wouldn't need droid parts because he would never go hungry again. His mind couldn't grasp it. It was so different from his world, he hadn't even dreamed it. Was it something he wanted?
"Very much," he said.
The Jedi placed the lightsaber back into Bannet's hands. "We can leave as soon as you have everything you need."
Bannet clenched his fingers around the bright steel of his saber.
"Then we can leave now, Master," he said.