Welcome, readers! Here we begin the second part of Some Other Future's Past, picking up a few weeks after Obi-Wan formally accepted Padmé and Anakin as his padawans.

A small cast of characters hitching a ride to Coruscant, where Padmé and her court will attend the Inauguration of Chancellor-Elect Palpatine, has joined the group. Master Windu and Obi-Wan have an event to attend, as well – the Convocation of the Jedi, which occurs only every half-century.

I hope that you all enjoy this rahter long bit. J

~

Some Other Future's Past

Chapter 10

~

Obi-Wan, datapad in hand, settled into the soft cushions of the couch. The subtle vibration of the engines was soothing, as were the rich blues and soft peach colors of the main lounge.

The royal cruiser – recently refitted at the Corellian Drive Yards – was en route to Coruscant, bringing Queen Amidala and entourage to the inauguration festivities heralding Mero Palpatine's assumption of the chancellor's office. The Queen, her handmaidens, four pages, and a dozen guards made a boisterous bunch in the lounge. That was without the presence of their other guests - the Corellian ambassador to Naboo, Garm Bel Iblis, his aide, as well as five Jedi Knights with three padawans between them, and Master Windu.

Well, the boisterous crowd was less two.

Padmé had begged off, pleading hours of work and correspondence to be completed before the next jump point. Ships of different masses and engine ratings used different paths into or out of the Core and Inner Rim. At each coordinate, there was a navigation beacon, a remote traffic log, and a communications node, with traffic control stations at the busier points. Padmé wanted to batch-send a load of traffic via regular channels and some encoded diplomatic communiqués over the secured links.

Anakin was so deeply asleep that a marching band could parade by and his young padawan would not stir. The boy had passed his citizenship exams and two days before departure and has spent the next day flying from bureau to department getting his documents in order. Packing and helping pages Cimmiré, Merol, and Kadran get ready to leave had taken most of the night. By the time Anakin made the landing field, he looked about to fall over, and was actually asleep even before then repulsors came on line and boosted them out of Naboo's gravity.

The reason for the boisterous behavior was a rousing game that pitted one's intellectual flexibility against that of one's fellows. Puzzles, riddles and logic games that little Cimmiré passed tripped the oldest members, while the players coached less experienced members through unfamiliar concepts. Couches that formed a three-quarters circle surrounded a table piled with snacks, and most of the passengers sat or lay among the cushions, though a couple sprawled on the floor.

"So how do you get the bantha into closet?"

"You have take the buffalump out first!"

Sometimes children were the most logical of creatures.

One of the Jedi detached herself from the group and came to sit by Obi-Wan. Copper-skinned Jana Khurchan was a Jedi Obi-Wan's age, the youngest of the dozen various Jedi who had appeared on Naboo over the past month. It seemed as if Mace Windu's presence had been some sort of signal.

Amidala accepted their presence, and welcomed them. The people of Naboo had at first simply gritted their teeth and followed their monarch's lead; the behavior of the Council had engendered hard feelings in the charitable and hospitable folk.

Following them came Jedi that Obi-Wan knew only by name, not Temple Jedi, or those attached to the diplomatic corps, but those who took their missions in the far reaches of Republic space and sometimes beyond it. They came in by dribbles over the next three weeks, the last of them arriving just in time to hitch rides to the Convocation.

They seemed fascinated by the Naboo, especially the pages and handmaidens, but none escaped having a Jedi close at hand. Anakin and Padmé seemed to interest them in particular, and Obi-Wan almost as much.

Jana sank into the cushions, her tall lean frame nearly disappearing between a pair of large pillows. Her tight-curled black hair stood out in a fuzzy aureole about her head and her robes were usually as disheveled as Obi-Wan's.

"I hadn't really thought about it," she said, waving her hand at the assemblage. "But now that I've spent some time with the Naboo, it makes sense."

"What does?" Obi-Wan asked.

"Why there are no Jedi from Naboo."

"Not one?" Obi-Wan was surprised. The Naboo ought to be prime candidates. He had met a great many who seemed to have potential and had been mystified as to why he had never met one Nubian Jedi.

"Self-determination. That's the key. The Naboo believe in the sovereign right of a life form to determine its own life path. They will guide, but never they would never permit a child to making uninformed life decisions." The lanky Jedi nodded at Cimiré, Sabé and Kadran. "Those three for example. They shine the brightest in the group aside from your padawans. By the time the Naboo would allow us to have the children, our own traditions deny them training."

Obi-Wan considered her statements. "It sounds like you are advocating taking more apprentices like Padmé and Anakin."

"Were a dying Order, Obi-Wan. How many Memorials were held last year? Thirty? We find fewer children with the ability every year, and in many cases, the parents refuse to let us have them." She rolled and propped herself on one elbow, spearing him with her sharp golden eyes. "What time and circumstance do not wring from us, the weight of tradition will crush."

Obi-Wan sat stunned and staring at the woman across from him what she was proposing

Was what he had already done.

"Many feel as I do, Obi-Wan. Many of us are tired of protecting the peace and freedom of the Senate to screw things up to a fare-the-well and then sending in the Jedi to clean it up. We're tired of the misinformed and wrongheaded decisions of the Council that either get us killed or send us into situations where we should not be." Then she added hesitantly, "You of all people should understand that. How many times in the past few months have you found yourself holding the dirty end of the stick?"

Obi-Wan quietly reviewed his actions of the past months. He had turned thousands of years of tradition on its head, and far from being in opposition to the Council, he now stood in open rebellion.

The discovery nettled him.

It was probably amusing Gui-Gon no end that his orthodox padawan was now cast in the role of rebel.

"All I'm saying, Obi-Wan, is that there are more factions than you might know. Some want to go back to being a contemplative order, some want to have more of a say in the Republic and preferably more say than anybody else." The lanky woman pushed herself upright and perched with her elbows resting on her knees. "You've chosen a dangerous river to swim in, I just want you to be aware of the currents."

With that, she shoved off and went back to the game, leaving Obi-Wan to wonder just what he was walking into.

~

Padmé finished the last of her obligations, sat back in her seat, and sighed. The royal cruiser had been upgraded with faster engines, which made her push to finish her work and ready it for transmission before they made the next jump point.

The Chancellor's Inauguration was a festive event, lasting upwards of a week with balls, receptions, state dinners, luncheons and whatever other events could be added to an already popping-at-the-seams schedule.

The Embassy boasted a fully equipped fitness center, and from a glance at some of the menus provided with the invitations, she was going to be spending a lot of time there. It seemed that cream-based dishes and deserts were in style and everyone who was anyone had to have a pastry chef from Mindal.

A smile quirked her lips. The Corellians were being predictably unpredictable. Twelve hours after their scheduled arrival on Coruscant, the Corellian Embassy was holding a reception in her honor. The sheer number of invitations – even lacking the input of Senators Palpatine and Goorni – showed that Naboo was now considered a major player on the galactic stage.

A yawn and a longing look at her bed accompanied another stretch. Everyone was trying to adjust their sleep cycles to Coruscant District One time. She wanted to sleep, but had at least another three hours before she could do so.

Obi-Wan had told both her and Anakin that in time and with training they would not need to sleep. Meditation could fulfill the need in a more orderly and concentrated fashion. They could sleep if they wished, even many Jedi found it pleasant to do so, but they would no longer be bound by the body's need to process and renew.

Speaking of renew

A quick check on Anakin proved him to be deeply asleep, small flutters of emotion flitted across her perception as he dreamed.

She had been worried that following the trauma of having the link severed, that he might not be able to rebound in time to take his exams as he wished. Certainly, she had taken weeks to recover, but

Padmé drew a shaky breath and forced herself to think. Someone had spent a lot of time linking to her and turning her into a lethal trap, someone who had seen her often, and probably someone she trusted. Even after many hours spent with Mace Windu and Obi-Wan, they had been unable to even make a start on winnowing the field. The Sith who had set it was a master of camouflage and could be anyone.

The sense of violation was overwhelming and frustrating, too, for she could not explain how she felt to anyone. Not her parents, her friends, not even really to Ani or to Obi-Wan.

Anakin looked at what the Sith had done to him as an act of espionage. The Sith had apparently not had enough time or access to do much more than inflict a thin and unreliable bond on him. However, he looked at what the Sith had done to her as an act of war. Her fellow padawan was reckless and negligent of his own safety, cocky in the way that the fighter pilots were and secure in his own perceived immortality. Padmé wished that he would take his own safety as seriously as he took hers. Any threat to her and the boy turned into someone dangerous. When he had said that he would give deep payback to the Sith who had done this, the expression on his face had frightened her more than his words. Diamond could not have been harder, and liquid nitrogen would have been warmer.

Ani held her together that first week, telling her that she was no more to blame for what had happened than she would be for catching a contagious disease. Infections were opportunistic, and so was the Sith. They covered the same ground ten times a day.

Could she have possibly known what was happening? Did she have training in use of the Force that would have let her know that her natural defenses had been subverted? Could she have stopped it even if she didn't know what was happening? Did she herself attack Anakin? Could she control the thing that had seized her when it took a Jedi Master of some forty years experience and a Knight to sever that link?

The answers were always 'no.'

Master Windu pointed out that the power he had sensed was well trained, well used, and old. The Sith, whoever he was, had been around a very long time. Since the tattooed Zabrak whom Obi-Wan killed was only in his third decade, it was the master whom Padmé had fought. That being was strong enough to kill trained Jedi, not to mention a pair of cubs like Anakin and Padmé.

Obi-Wan let her read the texts that he had used in his research, feeling that if she knew what she had survived, she might be more at ease with it. He also pointed out that even at this early point in their training, either she or Anakin would know if someone tried anything like that again. Not to mention the fact that Obi-Wan would know through their training bond.

All the same, she blinked back tears.

No matter what anyone said, someone she trusted had intended to harm her.

It hurt.

~

How he hated walls.

The Jedi master stared at the dull red rock. Three meters thick, dense and laden with metals that had the odd effect of partially blocking the occupant's attempt to extend his use of the Force outside the room, his aerie prison was growing more intolerable by the day.

Sitting cross-legged on the thin pad that served as his bed, Qui-Gon swore to himself that if he ever got out of here, he would never live in a place without many windows. Since he had awakened in a bacta tank in the Healer's care nearly three months ago

Was it three months? It was hard to tell when he had no method of telling time. Not even the Council's or healer's occasional visits to his prison gave him any idea of whether it was day or night. Even Sifo-Dyas did not keep any type of schedule, making his torments random ones.

Not that they were any less effective.

Every moment of his life as a Jedi was dissected, every thought and action, every motivation and method held up to scrutiny. Qui-Gon could almost feel bits a layers of his self being peeled and flaked away under the constant pressure. His bond with his padawan was subjected to intense critique, and until Qui-Gon remembered that his tormentor had some very bad luck with his own padawans, he had considered severing the bond himself.

Not one of Sifo-Dyas' apprentices had survived to knighthood.

There were good reasons for that – at least on the face of it. One had died in a speeder crash, a hundred vehicle disaster caused by failure of one of the massive floating billboards. Another had been overwhelmed in a firefight when a diplomatic mission to a world embroiled in civil war went from bad to worse. The third and last had turned to the Dark side and had been struck down by Sifo-Dyas himself.

Only now, since an odd series of visits from the Council and some very senior healers, did Qui-Gon sense anything different from the ascetic master - and what Qui-Gon sensed made him doubt his sanity. It must be that his perceptions were being colored by his dislike of the man.

Nevertheless, Sifo-Dyas was the one who proposed cutting his bond to Obi-Wan. Mace Windu and Qui-Gon butted heads often enough to develop a healthy respect for each other, but he had never dreamed that Mace would so thoroughly balk the Council by telling a mere Knight of their plans. Bless him.

Obi-Wan's warning had given him enough time to ready himself for the eventuality. The healers had been very attentive, and frankly, Qui-Gon was feeling better than he had in a very long time. They could not parade the reformed maverick about at the Convocation next week if said maverick died of the tremendous physical shock.

It had taken much to hold on to himself, these past months. Only his bond with his heart-son had kept Qui-Gon from utter despair and soon that would be taken from him in a last ditch effort to break him. How could any of them allow

Qui-Gon sighed. The answer to that lay within the Jedi themselves. Factions had been developing for years and now the rifts were so deep and wide that the Order was threatening to split itself asunder. The Convocation was less of a gathering of the Jedi this time, and more of a last-ditch effort at reversing the tangle of ideological brambles back into quiescent seed.

A touch on the bond proved Obi-Wan and his traveling companions in hyperspace. Moving in those dimensions caused a being's presence to feel attenuated and displaced to one in the mundane flow of space-time. That his former padawan was coming here was no comfort, he might well be walking into a neat trap laid for him and his own padawans, Padmé and Anakin.

~

The view of the setting sun was intoxicating.

Of course, the locale had much to do with it. Mero Palpatine, scion of the Chiavi family of Naboo turned from the window and gazed about his domain.

The Chancellor's Residence was a palace. Meant to reflect the importance of the office, rather than of the being holding it, the Residence was the very distillation of the Republic's breadth and scope of power. Five hundred above-ground stories held living suites, conference rooms, reception areas, dining halls, offices, staff quarters, a private indoor parks, and a shuttle bay. In the fifty below-ground stories were the environmental controls, security systems and offices that handled sensitive materials.

All were staffed with those he knew to be loyal to him

It was a good feeling.

The Office of State was often customized to reflect the tastes of the office holder. In a decade–long term, the user's personality could often be determined from the décor of the room itself.

The former occupant, Finis Valorum, had ruled for fifteen years from an office of muted tones, decorated with inoffensive portraits and abstract sculptures.

Mero Palpatine, known sometimes as Darth Sidious, had gutted the place. Now the walls were lacquered and the floors carpeted in scarlet, his desk stood on a dais before the window with it's impressive view of the Senatorial District skyline. Two large and deliberately uncomfortable couches sat to either side of the entry that bore the Chancellor's seal. Sculptures of some of the more controversial historical characters filled artfully placed niches or pedestals. A scattering of chairs – as uncomfortable as the couches – completed the room. While petitioners might be asked to sit, he would be quite at ease in his own throne-like chair, virtuously behind his desk in service of the Republic.

The smile turned savage, dripping with malice. Petty setbacks were mere annoyances. The breaking of his careful strings to the girl and the brat were negligible, but he would make Obi-Wan Kenobi and Mace Windu pay for his agony a thousandfold. In time, even the Jedi would self-destruct under his care and attention, and the approaching Convocation was just the right time to detonate some charges and set others.

He would serve the Republic, indeed. It would drink and eat the poisons he proffered, dying with each drop and yet eager for more. In the end, when it was too sick, too addled to be of further use to him, he would serve it a death stroke and rule as he had been meant to rule – as Emperor Palpatine, Dark Lord of the Sith.

~

Not far away, the setting sun illuminated another figure. Tall and spare, the being moved up a corridor in the massive Jedi Temple. In the scarlet twilight, the pale robes and long white hair of the creature were the color of the lacquer on the walls of Palpatine's office – the color of freshly spilled human blood.

Syfo-Dyas moved with a stately grace that belied his advanced years. Though nearly one hundred years old, he had the smooth skin and grace of a younger man. His hair was full and healthy, his joints did not creak, all of his organs functioned normally and at levels that made the healers murmur in quiet admiration.

The dead never missed it, anyway.

A small thread tied to another creature's life force kept one in good health for a very long time. A little discretion and extra time dispensed with the need to use elaborate and conspicuous means of reversing the damage caused by immersing one's self in the Dark.

It was a good thing that he had never taught Sidious that trick. The glutton would suck everyone he met dryer than bleached bones.

Stopping to admire the approaching darkness, Sif-Dyas allowed himself to review that mistake. He never shpuld have looked outside the Jedi for an apprentice, but there was young Mero, a staffer for the junior Senator from Naboo. Palpatine had been so hungry, even then, and with such a could grasp on the principles of deceit and misdirection.

Sifo-Dyas had subtly directed the young man, even before they had met. He fed the young man's sense of outrage and injustice with clever manipulations, saw to it that he would enjoy the exercise of power, and when the fruit was ripe, Sifo-Dyas had plucked his apprentice neatly off his branch.

Too late, he saw that Mero's appetite for ostentation and grandiosity. It was only when his sabotaged ship was going down in flames that he understood the betrayal, so courteously explained as the console locked up and his apprentice's laughter filled his hears and fanned his rage.

It was gratifying to watch the thud-fingered little cretin make mistake after mistake. It filled the hours that he had to fold his hands and wait patiently for his own plans to mature.

He resumed his progress to the upper levels of the tower, brooding over the unexpected failure of his plans for Qui-Gon. A vexed noise escaped him as he considered the situation. Dooku had quit the order, going into seclusion far away from his machinations. Dooku had potential as a possible apprentice, but Qui-Gon Jinn now he could have been a Sith to be reckoned with.

It was unfortunate that he was so deeply stubborn. Perhaps his former padawan, Obi-Wan might be turned? The boy had tasted the power of the Dark side in his battle with Sidious' apprentice, and once tasted the Dark was so addictive. Certainly, what Sifo-Dyas was about to do would provoke some very telling emotions from the manchild.

The hallways were narrower now, the widows fewer and farther between. In former eras, the upper levels of this tower had been used to hold former Sith initiates, heretics and madmen. It did more than well to hold one weakened and ailing Jedi master. The door opened to his command and he permitted the benign mask of Sifo-Dyas to fall away, revealing Darth Devastuus.

There was no need to pretend any more. He had the approval of most of the Council for what he was about to do and if Qui-Gon failed to survive, then he was too weak a tool to waste oxygen on anyway.

His lip curled in derision at the sight of Qui-Gon, eyes closed in meditation, at one with the Living Force.

The Jedi's eyes opened, the steely blue at once determined and resigned.

"This will accomplish nothing that you might hope for, Sifo-Dyas."

For a fraction of a second the calm certainty in Qui-Gon's voice made him hesitate, and on the heels of that hesitation came fury. He would break Obi-Wan Kenobi and turn him, and he would make sure this his anguished master saw every last second of his beloved heart-son's fall from grace.

But for now, he gathered his power and struck.

~

Obi-Wan coached Anakin and Padmé though their forms. In time, this would give them the necessary foundation skills for using lightsabers, but for now, each padawan held a thick stick weighted at one end.

Both were making good progress.

Anakin would do well with one of the more aggressive styles of combat. There were many forms and school of saber combat within the Jedi, each suited to a particular build or personality. Mace Windu was a master of a highly aggressive and controversial style that had roots in the earliest days of the order. Perhaps in a few years, he might persuade the enigmatic master to impart some of his expertise to Anakin.

Padmé used a style that mimicked some of her close combat training. Nearly full grown, she would never be a massy powerhouse of a fighter, so she used her opponent's tactics against him. A rush meant to mow her down wound up with her assailant flat on his back, staring at the ceiling and trying to get his breath back.

He had accepted the offers of sparring practice from some of the Jedi and enjoyed once more pitting his mastery of his chosen form against another. Pleasantly tired, he sat on a box in the empty cargo hold that served as a free-use space for the cruiser and watched the pair.

Something caught his attention, something far away yet very close – like a quiver in the stands of a web.

Web.

Strand.

Bond.

::: Master, no! :::

That bond to Qui-Gon, that he had compared in his mind to a rope of spun and twisted diamond shuddered under a blast of power.

And another.

He could feel Qui-Gon resisting, blocking and shielding with every reserve, but weakening as his injuries drained him quickly. Obi-Wan threw his own strength against the assault, feeling the bare deck under his knees and hearing the alarmed shouts of his padawans.

That power batted him aside as if he were a songbird in a cyclone and slammed into the bond.

It shattered under the stress, the rainbow fire searing his soul, blistering his spirit. It felt as if millions of pieces of that diamond strand had lodged in his being, piercing him to the heart and him writhing in an agony too massive for screams to compass. His body and mind sought an escape to nothingness and he fell into it with a prayer of thanks, the soft weeping and murmurs of his padawans like waves lapping at a distant shore.

~