XI
"The barriers have been broken," Qui-Gon said. He looked around at the Council chamber, his hands folded in his sleeves. One hundred times he had stood here, enough that if felt as if the center were marked with tape, and, as an actor, he stood there on his cue---but this time, tension whitened his hands. What had he released? He needed to go and protect the crowds on Coruscant from the composite Ciaràn had become.
He wasn't sure whether it was a good thing or not that Quinlan Vos thought the same. The Kiffar stood near the door of the chamber, muscled arms folded over his chest.
"Have important data about the Sith we do," Yoda said, "but determine the state of Ciaràn we must."
Determine what to do with him, Qui-Gon thought he meant. Determine whether it is my voice or Quinlan's lightsaber that is the weapon in our right hand.
"Track the ship we can."
Quinlan spoke up. "Masters. Why don't we use the Sith's ship against him?"
"That ship is redolent with the dark side," Saesee Tiin said. "I would beware it."
"It is the fastest ship we have, "said Adi Gallia, "and the stealth capability could keep this whole mission quiet." She didn't say hidden from the Republic, but Qui-Gon knew she was thinking it. This was not to get out; it would make the Jedi appear too weak. It would tell the mere mortals that their gods had made a mistake…
"What say you, Qui-Gon? Master Tiin? Helpful will it be, more than hurtful?"
The Council conferred. The Force linked them all like ley-lines, invisible and silent to an outside observer.
The Force flowed through each Council member's mind like a river picking up silt, carrying each of their thoughts and ideas on to the next. This time, they let Qui-Gon and Quinlan into the meld. It was less a voting process than a debate compressed into seconds, the reverse of what Jedi did so that they could slow down time during battle. They gave both the galaxy and individuals consideration, touching the life lines of every Corsucanti for blocks around the Temple.
The Force sighed, drained out through them, and Qui-Gon felt with all the rest of the Council that Masters Windu and Yoda thought the destinies of himself and Ciaràn were linked—and also connected to the Infiltrator.
The world was left refreshed and clear. Qui-Gon said, "We will find him."
Quinlan remained silent as he walked out beside Qui-Gon.
The human packed his things for a month-long journey. He couldn't help looking over his shoulder at the door, ajar, to Ciaràn's dormitory. The window cast a brightened square of orange on the wall.
Qui-Gon hooked his lightsaber to his belt, wondering whether he would have to use it. Ciaràn had not ran off because of innate evil within him. If he had been completely consumed by the dark side, Qui-Gon was sure, he would have stayed in the temple to wreak as much havoc as he could. Instead, he had been confused and felt betrayed, and rightly so.
But to react so strongly as to attack the deck master and Padawan Ookett…
Qui-Gon picked up his bag from the mussed bed-sheets and headed out, determined to bring his Padawan back.
The Zabrak woke up,stretched out across one of the rows of seats on the hijacked ship. This simple craft had once been used for ferrying Jedi Watchmen and younglings to the Temple. It contained controls configured for one, a central area with rows of seats that could be converted into sleep couches, and an alcove with access to the rear engine nacelles for repairs. No doors separated one part of the ship from another. It had emergency rations enough for a month stowed away in a hatch near the back, canteens of water and small, tasteless protein bars packed with energy. The navicomp had told him it had come from Alderaan, and so the simplest thing to do was to calculate the way back. He knew little about that world in either of his lives, not that he could remember—it mustn't have been important militarily. But getting to it was the simplest thing to do, and what he needed now more than anything was simplicity.
A tension only fully realized after he was awake: he didn't know his name.
It wasn't important alone. He didn't, and didn't think any being did, think of himself by name regularly. That honor was given to a selfish, singular I. But more important than any collection of letters, he didn't know who he was.
Jedi or Sith, young or old, known or historyless…
He sat up, yawned, made his slow way over to the short flight of steps down to the captain's niche. He looked out at the sweeping tunnel of hyperspace. In reality his ship could be traveling in any direction—down, up, diagonally. Direction was relative, and there was nothing to be relative to in hyperspace. But to him it appeared to be an arrow pointing forward, a road he could walk on. A line toward his destination.
He watched his own hands lean against the control board. He was still wearing the tan Jedi robes, and could foresee no chance to change in the near future. Whoever he was, he had no desire to go for weeks without a shower—one thing the little ship didn't have, at least not that he'd found so far.
For a moment he powerfully wanted to go back to his room in the Jedi Temple.
Was Rali alright? He remembered the two bodies he had thrown against the hanger floor.
He remembered Qui-Gon saying we all choose to act like sentients, or like animals. But the Jedi had not even given him a chance to remember his Sith life. The memories were hazy, and he could not be sure which came from dreams—looking out over the Temple and hating, walking the hallways of the Works. Likewise, his memories of his life before his capture—his training under Yoda, his classes before the one in which he had met Rali—had faded, leaving him certain that the Jedi had lied to him until Qui-Gon had chosen to tell the real story. Leaving him without a history.
And without enough filling up his thoughts he needed an outlet for the frustration that washed over him, needed to curl his fists and hit something—
But the ship must remain undamaged.
He sank to his knees at the top of the stairs, trying to meditate, trying to let his memories percolate and appear naturally, when all he wanted was to be able to hook them on a line and drag them flashing and flailing out.
Jedi Master Saesee Tiin had investigated the Sith starship and, after a harrowing process of ferreting out traps, made it safe for use, but still Qui-Gon hesitated on the ramp before stepping into the shadow of the craft. In front of him, Quinlan looked tensely around at the large equipment bay the ramp lead into. Master Tiin had prepared them for what they would sense here, but…the dark side had sank into this ship, had been installed in it with each one of its parts. Perhaps it had been crafted by Republic Sienar Systems, but its workings had been consecrated by Darth Sidious. Qui-Gon sensed the darkness on him as a pressure that made his breaths shallow and the shadows deep, the red low-power lighting—not unusual for a ship not using its complete life support system because it was still in dock—sinister and disheartening.
But he also felt that these impressions would leave him if he just stepped away from the Temple and let the ship take him. That it would show him sights he had never seen throughout the galaxy, bring him to life-forms stranger and more beautiful than he had ever imagined and let him truly know them, without the burden of the formal title Jedi. To the ship, the Force was something more natural than life itself.
And it wanted him to explore that fully. It was a teacher in its own right, a surrogate parent for its pilot, and also a child that needed, wanted, to be guided.
Qui-Gon remembered who had guided it before him and strode up the ramp, determined to ignore its advances.
Behind him, Yoda, Mace Windu, and Kit Fisto watched him go with a grave, silent air. Padawan Ookett stood slightly behind them, his elbow wrapped in gauze.
They turned and left as the ship began to power up.
In the cockpit, Quinlan had taken the controls. These were reassuringly familiar to Qui-Gon, simple and standard—except with regards to the sections of the computer dedicated to the stealth field generator, a technology he had never come across before. As Quinlan slowly moved the ship through official lanes toward the streams of traffic escaping Coruscant's atmosphere, Qui-Gon used the holoprojector in the room behind the pilot's station to pull up a map of the ship. It had two levels in its spherical crew compartment, with the wings and nose entirely taken up by machinery. On the lower level, the sphere was ringed with almost identical-sized rooms; a few storage rooms, a few bunks, a 'fresher and medical station, a few rooms optimistically labeled "detention and interrogation". The upper room looked like a mockery of the Jedi Council chamber and had perhaps been used for business meetings when the ship was a courier; in the middle of the ring of seats, the holoprojector was designed to be able to be retracted into the floor.
The place would have looked normal—albeit as normal as any assassin's mobile fortress—if it weren't for what the Force did to it. In the same way that looking at a sunny day could be cheery if you were happy, or blinding and obtrusive if you were upset, the dark side deepened the shadows and roughened the corrugated floor. It was a weight on his shoulders…
But then, Qui-Gon thought about grief, all the shades and shapes of it, grief that made the days harsh. And that had been a weight. But this…
It was more like a push. A desire to move, to push forward into hyperspace and explore. A thirst for the knowledge gained from subjugating a culture, from dissecting it down to the atoms. It was the fascination of a scientist pushing a glass slide down onto a living specimen.
And watching something die was the only way to tell how it lived…
"Quinlan," Qui-Gon said, raising his head from where he hadn't realized his chin had tipped onto his chest as if in mediation or prayer. "What do you sense?"
The other Jedi's dreadlocked head turned slightly, but he did not adjust his attentive position at the controls. "The dark side is strong here. It takes parts of our minds and…it enjoys us watching it." He shook his head. "There's power here—strength, motivation. Arrogance."
"Yes." A scientist that thought it was more complex than its subjects.
"Focus on the mission, Master Jinn. See if the holoproj or the navicomp contain any files we can use."
Wary that if he stayed too long in one place he might just start meditating, Qui-Gon checked the navicomp first. The ship's former routes, transponder codes, even the registry data and history had been erased, triggered somehow by its capture. The ship might as well have been brand new.
He returned to the holoproj and bent next to it, triggering the previously played messages and contact list. All had been erased, factory standard—except one. A message without a name attached.
"Quinlan. Look at this."
The Kiffar turned and came to stand next to Qui-Gon as he played the message.
A life-sized, hooded figure rose up. Qui-Gon stood to meet its eyes.
The Sith Lord's voice cracked and spat. "Destroy them. The galaxy waits…we work and wait." But then the crackling voice dissolved into static. For a few long moments, the Jedi waited. The figure was not of a good enough resolution—undoubtedly another result of the ship's attempt to destroy all evidence of its previous owner—for Qui-Gon to learn anything about the speaker from the grey-tan, pixilated mess of a face. But words formed again. "…then return to me, Lord Maul."
"It's a trap," Quinlan said.
"Of course it's a trap." Qui-Gon replied. 'He left this for us. But it tells us one thing—"
"One thing we knew before. The Sith we caught is the apprentice."
"No. It tells us that apprentice's name."
The comm buzz scared the Zabrak out of his reverie. Staring into the hyperspace pit, he thought he might almost have succumbed to space madness. But then the buzz went off and he started, pulling in a sharp gasp of breath.
No one should be calling this ship…except the Jedi who knew he had stolen it.
After a moment of whole-heartedly not wanting anything to do with them, he flicked the comm on, out of curiosity. He sat there breathing through his mouth, not intending to say anything to even give them the impression that they'd called the right ship.
But the voice was Qui-Gon's, familiar as the Jedi Code. "We know you're there. You don't need to speak. We've pieced together some of the puzzle, and it could help you to be a part of it. Meet us on peaceful ground and we can discuss this. We have your ship—the Sith's ship."
Silence, then, "Ciaràn. Ciaràn…"
"Darth Maul."
Perhaps they heard his movement; he sat back and blinked, struck to the marrow by the memory—not esoteric knowledge, not a hint of the Force, but memory—of his name.
He remembered it all now. Sith training, Sith Code, Darth Sidious—the name, the face, the Force sense. The hatred. The Jedi were vermin—
And yet both memories existed, two lives crowding him. He could draw parallels between them—the toy chain shattering in Yoda's hands alongside Sidious giving him the first weapon he could remember, a solid wood stick—the Room of One Thousand Fountains alongside the steamy jungle of Dorvalla—
The mission to Tatooine, to retrieve the child queen and the Force-bright boy.
But there the memories ended. The only blur that remained was right between his lives. He didn't remember the Jedi capturing him, or Qui-Gon's part in it all—and so hated them all the more for imagined cruelties.
He would have his revenge. He was Darth Maul!
And yet, a part of him just as strong, wanted to talk to Qui-Gon as Ciaràn.