Chapter Thirteen: Of Special Investigations

Before stepping up into the interview room, Obi-Wan reflexively checked his belt for the umpteenth time to make sure his lightsaber wasn't there. For the umpteenth time, it wasn't—he'd left it back in his apartment before catching public transit to the plaza. Ordinarily when he was in a public place he simply kept the weapon concealed up his sleeve, but today felt . . . different. The Force had no concrete warnings for him, but all the same, the lingering unease he'd been feeling since the meeting with Luminara and Qlik was enough. Best not to carry secrets with him.

You've no weapon, you've done nothing wrong, and you're late. Come on.

Squaring his shoulders, he pushed the door open.

Much like the rest of the Office of Special Investigations, a building so nondescript that Obi-Wan must have passed it every time he entered Capitol Plaza and simply never noticed, the interview room was a study in anonymity. Beige walls, a simple table equipped with central holoprojector, and three chairs. One stood at the side of the table nearest Obi-Wan—the other two were occupied by inhabitants as beige as the walls.

Both were human, and both were dressed in nearly identical formal wear. The one on the left, Obi-Wan noticed with a vague sense of irritation, must have been a good ten years his junior, with a shock of sandy hair that spoiled his otherwise polished appearance; the other man was squarer, greyer, with a bulbous nose and a smile that if nothing else seemed more genuine than his companion's.

Through the Force, both reeked of ill intent.

The older one stood first, reaching forward to shake Obi-Wan's hand. "General Kenobi, a pleasure. Anton Vargot." Obi-Wan was careful to return a smile that matched Vargot's politeness and went no further, then extended his hand to the young man.

The grip he received was perfunctory, as though this one didn't want anything to rub off on him. "Ponce Held," the man said in a clipped tone, immediately withdrawing his hand and returning to his seat.

Under other circumstances, Obi-Wan would have been slightly amused by the uninspired nature of the interrogation setup. At the moment, he was feeling unsettled by the fact that this was clearly what it was.

"Thank you very much for coming, General," said Vargot, settling back in his chair with a low grunt. "Of course, in the aftermath of this tragedy, we want to make sure all of us are doing our utmost to ensure no such damage can befall the Republic again. I'm sure that, as a retired Defense Force officer, you feel the same way."

"Of course." After this response, both interviewers simply . . . sat there, just long enough for Obi-Wan to know they were doing it on purpose. Then, clearing his throat, Vargot continued.

"Now, you were a member of the Defense Force for some . . . thirteen years, is that correct, General?"

"Yes," replied Obi-Wan, keeping his voice pleasant. Don't act annoyed at the quiet, see if you can't irritate them by cooperating. "After I left school I joined up. I was a general for six years, after which I retired."

"Retired," Ponce Held said abruptly, drawing out the word in a sneer. "Weren't discharged?"

The Jedi injected just enough ice into his smile to let the younger man know he saw exactly what the two of them were attempting to do. "Resigned my commission with the Royal House of Alderaan and took my leave."

"After the siege of Serenno, yes?" Vargot shook his head, a shade of solemnity entering his expression—Obi-Wan probed and found it genuine, if shallow, the kind of sorrow one would feel watching a newsvid and seeing that a storm had destroyed some homes several systems over. "Such a tragedy. I must tell you, General, being here, seeing all the death that occurred . . . I can't imagine having to go through that more than once. I'm so sorry."

As Obi-Wan nodded, he kept his eyes on Ponce Held. The young man reached up for his stray flap of blonde and combed his fingers through it quickly, almost reflexively, as though trying to force it to stay put. His eyes flicked to Vargot, then back to Obi-Wan, as he spoke. "It's curious to me that, as the man who oversaw the—shall I say disastrous?—defense that led to Serenno's near destruction, you were allowed simply to resign and retire in peace. In other circumstances, I imagine an investigation might have been conducted. Much like the one that is currently underway."

Whatever this investigation is, it's not about Coruscant, Obi-Wan knew then and there. And it's probably not about me. Not directly.

Whatever it was about was very, very bad.

Now it was his turn to say nothing. He simply stayed fixed and upright in his chair, eyebrow arched just enough to indicate I'm waiting for your question. Ponce Held sniffed once, sharply, as if in an allergic spasm, and then said, "Bail Organa did not see fit to inquire as to your conduct while under his command?"

"Bail Organa does not oversee the Defense Force," Obi-Wan replied, letting his fear prove useful and manifest itself as a note of iron behind the statement. "Chancellor Palpatine does."

"Did," Vargot put in helpfully. "Before it was reorganized into the Grand Army."

"Quite."

Raising a hand to cut off his junior's next barrage, Vargot gave a low chuckle and threw Obi-Wan a look that could be roughly translated as Kids these days, eh? Aloud, he said, "But General Kenobi, speaking from the realm of politics, we both know that it's not a Chancellor's job to involve himself in military investigations, especially not under the old Defense Force system. You served the Republic, yes, but you answered to the Royal House of Alderaan—in fact, I believe that's how you put it just now, isn't it? Resigned my commission with the Royal House of Alderaan. Not Resigned my commission with the Republic. It's a matter of course that, were there to be an investigation into your conduct, Bail Organa would be the one to order it—or to not order it, as was the case."

The error was so unforced that Obi-Wan for a moment was overcome with pure frustration at himself. Self-flagellation won't get you anywhere, he thought, and allowed himself a single, shallow inhalation and exhalation that he hoped the Force would utilize to calm him as best it could. Before the pause could stretch into something incriminating, he replied, "Indeed—as was the case. Mr. Vargot, with due respect, I have to say I am unclear on how the issue of whether Bail Organa was justified in his acceptance of my resignation is relevant to the attack on Coruscant."

"You've continued working with Senator Organa since he accepted your resignation, have you not?" Ponce Held asked, that incongruous shock of hair catching the overhead light in a way that seemed to amplify the urgency of the question. "I believe the official term is 'consultant.'"

"I've offered him my assistance as an advisor, yes."

"Curious, don't you think, that he should still rely so deeply on the advice of a former soldier whose last act was to allow thousands of noncombatants to be killed? Who, prior to that, enabled Senator Organa in starting a war whose death toll is in the millions and growing by the day?"

Once again, Obi-Wan found himself bristling at the nerve of a man barely out of university interrogating him, but he forced the feeling down. Think. Reaching out with the Force, he delved into Ponce Held's aura and felt the simple cleanliness of a man who said as he felt. The boy was playing a role here, of course, but it was a role in line with his feelings—beneath the surface he was the same buzzing temper and snide contempt.

Beneath Anton Vargot's surface emotions, on the other hand, the Jedi felt deeper workings—steady, passionless calculating. Ponce Held is the one who's here to goad you into a trap. Vargot will be the one to spring it.

The strategy was simple, then. Ignore Ponce Held. Let that agitate the boy enough that perhaps he spilled something. Treat Vargot as the only equal in the room.

To that end, rather than replying to the young man, Obi-Wan bypassed him entirely. "Mr. Vargot, you've not answered my question. What does any of this have to do with the stated reason for my being here?"

Once again, before the junior member could snap at the Jedi, Vargot chuckled and raised a hand. "Forgive us, General, please. We don't want to be rude, especially when touching on such . . . sensitive areas. It's just that, as you'll surely agree, we're all shaken at this breach of the planet's defenses. We want to make sure our security is in the most optimal condition—gaps in that security can be exploited to unconscionable ends, as we all witnessed over these last several weeks. My colleague and I"—the barest flick of a condescending glance at Ponce Held, as if to assure Obi-Wan that "colleague" was purely a nicety—"are of the opinion that if you want to shore up gaps, you'd best look at where they appeared in the past. Simply good bookkeeping."

He could rebuff this, clamp down entirely and refuse to talk. But not only would that imply guilt, it would let the two of them know Obi-Wan had detected their true target here and was protecting him. Being uncooperative won't save Bail. You have to play along just enough. And so he nodded and said, "Of course I understand." Keeping his eyes fixed on the older interviewer as though he'd asked the question rather than Ponce Held, whose mouth worked in minute little jolts at the slight, the Jedi said, "As far as Senator Organa's reasons for continuing to seek out my advice, the two of us had a close working relationship over my time in the Defense Force and his time as a politician. And while I'm no longer an active member of the military, he finds my familiarity with the broader galaxy useful. I wouldn't presume to advise him on matters of war—as you pointed out, my last campaign ended badly." Here, finally, he turned to the younger interviewer and offered a smile that showed just a hint of teeth. "But I've had experiences he has not. He appreciates a broad perspective."

"A close working relationship seems an understatement." Ponce Held had pulled himself as erect as seemed possible, perhaps to emphasize that he was just slightly taller than Obi-Wan. "As I said, it was you, General Kenobi, who by accepting an extralegal mission to Had Abbadon enabled him to begin—"

"I'm sure General Kenobi doesn't need us to remind him how the war began, Ponce," said Vargot, who'd given up the pretense of looking at the other man at all. As he spoke, Obi-Wan reached into him and felt that simple reptile's calculation once more.

Though—and this was curious—Vargot's calculation . . . didn't seem to be leading toward the question he was about to ask.

"That said, General," the older man continued, folding his hands together to form one loose fist, "my colleague is correct. For you to commit to an action you knew Bail Organa had no authorization to command . . . it must have been a quandary."

Carefully restraining himself from frowning, Obi-Wan plumbed deeper into the Force and willed it to slow things—not by much, just enough that he'd have a few precious seconds longer to ponder this. As soon as Ponce Held had brought up Bail, Obi-Wan had thought he'd known where this was going—the endpoint was so obvious it couldn't have been anything else. Palpatine was using the CIS attack to tie up as many loose ends as he could, starting with the formation of a unified military that had been his dream since the prototype Peacekeeping Corps on Naboo. This, then, was simply another one of those loose ends—using an official government inquiry as a pretext to bring up Bail's old sins and remove him from senatorial office.

But Vargot's mind didn't show that line of thought as an endgame. It was simply a waypoint—one placed along the route to a different, murkier goal for this conversation.

What that goal was Obi-Wan couldn't discern—whatever Vargot might have been, he wasn't weak-minded, and the Jedi couldn't afford to take the time to penetrate his mental walls. But if it's not Bail and the war . . .

Aware that he'd taken just a moment too long to reply, Obi-Wan snapped back to real time and said, "He was my commander in chief. I obeyed his orders. I would have done the same regardless of who was in power."

"But you agreed with him?" asked Ponce Held in a rush, forcing the words out before Vargot could cut him off. "That his orders were ultimately correct." His expression held a strange triumph, and the older man shot him a look that Obi-Wan could see carried none of the calculation of the previous ones—this wasn't a move made to engender Obi-Wan's good graces but genuine anger. But Ponce Held spared his partner no glances in return—he kept his eyes on Obi-Wan, their sharp gleam contrasting with his absurd scruff of hair.

One strategy of Obi-Wan's, at least, had paid off. He'd irritated the young man into reasserting his importance—into giving away a move he shouldn't have.

They don't actually care about Bail. But Ponce Held cares very deeply about my answer to that question. Curious.

Regardless of curiosity, though, Obi-Wan had no intention of carrying this any further. He'd engineered a single slip from his interviewers—he likely wouldn't get another one, not on this uneven conversational ground. And whether or not Bail was the reason they'd brought him here, he was under no circumstances going to say anything further about his friend. "I will not comment on that. As I said, the Chancellor gave me an order. I obeyed. My feelings don't enter into it." As he formed his next words, he imbued them with a touch of Force power—one that he hoped would make his interviewers just a bit more amenable to what he had to say. "Gentlemen, with due respect, if you have no questions that pertain to your stated purpose, this is a waste of all our time. I really must be going."

Pushing his chair back and rising, he watched the pair closely. For a moment, Ponce Held's eyes went slightly glassy, and he himself half-rose from the table. Then, a Vargot whose gaze was quite clear reached over and gripped his partner by the sleeve. That polite affability slipping just enough for an edge to be detected, he said to Obi-Wan, "It would be very helpful to us if you were to stay for further questioning, General. In fact I really must insist—"

Here, at last, Obi-Wan let his own mask fully slip. He spoke not with the measured politeness that was his custom but with the sharp tone he had, in his past life, reserved for giving subordinates who truly needed a dressing down. "If you are not going to charge me with something, Mr. Vargot, then you have no pretext under which to hold me. I respectfully decline, and bid both of you a good day. I hope for our citizenry's sake that the rest of this inquiry is focused on Coruscant, and on those responsible."

The slight widening of the two men's eyes was all the reaction the Jedi was going to get. It was nonetheless extremely satisfying.

Before either of his interviewers could summon a response, Obi-Wan had opened the door and started for the turbolifts.

On the way to the lifts, he passed door after door, rooms he could only assume served a similar purpose to the one he and his two interviewers had occupied. How many conversations are going on behind those doors right now? he wondered. And to what end?

Whatever this was, as soon as he got back to his flat—not the Temple, not for a few days at least—he'd have to immediately contact Bail and warn him about this. While his friend may not have been the endgame here—and Obi-Wan had no reason to doubt the Force on that point—he was one of the pieces. That had to be taken care of, and soon.

As they had in his rendezvous with Mace Windu, his thoughts flickered back to that conversation with Padmé about Theed. About what she and Bail had done there. At least both of them are off planet. And if there's one thing Windu won't do, it's cooperate with an investigation started by Palpatine.

The lift nearest him opened just as he emerged from the hallway. Obi-Wan watched it disgorge its contents—half a dozen soldiers dressed in the white armor that the Peacekeeping Corps had prototyped, that now clad the infantry of the Grand Army. There was a disquieting air of automata to the gleaming plastoid plates, to the black lenses on the helmets—it reminded Obi-Wan of the time a planet of droid manufacturers had given him a tour of one of their larger factories. Rows and rows of "eyes," all staring in exactly the same manner . . .

Suppressing a tiny shudder of distaste, he nodded at the soldiers as they moved past each other. Whatever you're doing here, he thought as the last of them left his sight, I do hope it doesn't involve any of the subjects who are being interviewed.

Moving quickly, he entered the lift and punched at the ground-floor button. At ten floors up, it wouldn't be long til he was out of here and on his way home. I'll call Bail, then after a while I can contact Qlik and Luminara and see what they have to say about all this. And after that—no, he couldn't push things with Anakin by asking his opinion. Not when things were so close to possibly working o—

The back of his neck prickled with a warning, just before he heard the muted clack of boots against the turbolift floor.

Even without turning, he knew who it was. The half dozen soldiers he'd passed had decided to catch the same lift back downstairs.

"Excuse me, sir," one of them said. The helmet rendered his voice flat and lifeless, speech made electronic signal. "If you would please come with us."

Obi-Wan twitched his hand, and the turbolift doors slammed closed far faster than they should have.

As the lift began moving downward, he ducked.

The stun baton the nearest soldier had aimed for Obi-Wan's head instead slammed into the transparisteel of the lift's far wall, discharging in a rain of sparks. The Jedi slid to one side to avoid the baton's continued downward arc, then seized the soldier by the wrist and bent, with the Force as well as his grip.

As the soldier cried out and his grip slackened, Obi-Wan ripped the baton away and flailed wildly, catching another soldier on his helmet. The blow didn't discharge through the plastoid but did seem to render the trooper flash-blind; at any rate, Obi-Wan couldn't follow up with another strike, as he had to wrench himself backward and block with the baton to avoid another strike from a third soldier.

Of all days, he thought grimly as he stuck his leg out and swept another trooper's ankle, to leave my bloody lightsaber at home.

In these close quarters, he wouldn't get anywhere fast—it was only a matter of time before one of the half-dozen stun batons in play caught him through sheer coincidence as much as intent. He had to get out—

As he thought this, a whisper in the Force made him lift his left leg just in time to avoid one of the fallen troopers grazing his ankle with a baton. All right, that does it, he thought, and sent a dart of mental energy at the lift's control panel.

The doors wrenched themselves open and the car ground to a halt—not quite level with the closest opening in the shaft, unfortunately, only half of which was visible. Taking up the bottom half of the turbolift's open doorway was a slab of duracrete wall.

He'd chance it. Deciding to risk one last use of the Force, Obi-Wan sent a wave radiating outward—not enough to cause any damage to the lift's other occupants but enough to knock them back. In the second's time this afforded him, he hurled himself at the duracrete wall and hauled himself upward.

Two officials who'd evidently just exited the other lift looked aghast at the sight of a bearded man crawling out of a turbolift onto the fifth floor. Obi-Wan, heaving himself over the lip and onto solid ground, readied a mental suggestion that would leave both of them sure the sight of him had only been a passing mirage—

And then four stun batons connected with his ankle at once.

Before he could feel himself tumble back to the turbolift floor with a sharp thump, blackness overtook him.

Jedi Archives: The Hidden Knights - Operating in Public as a Jedi

[text excerpted from an invitation to an optional instructional lesson at the Jedi Temple, dated the 5th of Saresh, 1149]

Not every Jedi enjoys the freedom of an Outer Rim posting, where no one pays any attention to the lightsaber hanging from your belt and you can't accidentally get followed to the Jedi Temple. For those of us who must operate as Jedi Knights within the Core Worlds of the Republic, a more subtle approach is needed.

This seminar, presented by Knight Qui-Gon Jinn, will provide an overview of some essential techniques for Jedi Knights both old and new. Topics of interest include lightsaber concealment, choosing your mental suggestion targets wisely, and surreptitious Force techniques to get you out of a jam.

Session begins at 18:00 in the Temple Courtyard.