Chapter Twenty-Two: For Parts Unknown

"Pregnant."

Padmé shrugged. "It wasn't exactly something I'd planned on when we started this venture." When he opened his mouth to ask a question, she cut him off. "And no, Anakin doesn't know."

Nodding, Bail took a long, slow sip of caf, then sighed. "I should have been paying more attention. I had no business asking you to continue along this line of thought when you were—"

"In the condition I'm in?" She snorted. "Please. Palpatine needs taking care of whether I'm knocked up or not."

"Still." He set the mug of caf down on his desk and extended his hand. "I was childish yesterday. I have been for a while—letting frustration get ahead of my duty to you as an employer and as a friend. I apologize."

She looked like she was about to poke at him for the stiffness of the statement, but then thought better of it. Reaching out to grip the proffered hand, she smirked. "I mean, I did drag in a Jedi who isn't housebroken yet. I get it."

"Yes, we much prefer the domesticated kind around here," Bail said, breaking into a chuckle as he stood and stepped around the desk to embrace their mutual friend. "Glad you made it, Obi-Wan."

The Jedi had evidently taken the floor of Padmé's room the night before, not wanting to disturb the palace by announcing his arrival—she'd snorted as she told Bail that she'd tried to make the Jedi take the bed but that, having spilled her secret, she hadn't exactly been able to stop him from being gallant. Bail saw her suppress a rueful smile as Obi-Wan pulled back and winced a little at the hug—clearly his back was not thanking him for his chivalry. Aloud, though, he said evenly, "So am I, trust me. Securing passage off Coruscant is much harder these days."

Bail threw a glance over his shoulder out the window behind him, as if he'd be able to see the capital world from here and gauge the length of Obi-Wan's journey. He had plenty of space with which to do so—the senator's palatial offices were about three times the size of his center of operations back on Coruscant, and graced by a transparisteel window that stretched from floor to ceiling with no visible seams or interruptions. Special modifications to the polarizers allowed one to filter out atmospheric impurities—passing patrol ships at night, cloud cover during the day—such that, no matter the time of day or weather, the view was perfect. Whenever Padmé had a conversation with Bail in here, she'd inevitably find herself getting lost in the view and then strenuously denying it when her half-irritated, half-amused boss waved a hand in front of her face. Secretly, the senator sympathized—he'd spent too many hours getting distracted from work and stargazing himself.

"Well," said Bail, eyes still fixed on the panorama, "it seems to me that as long as you're here, we can discuss the two things of most pressing concern. The first is this Vader. The second is what the hell is going on with this Jedi inquiry. Have you been in touch with the Temple?"

Shaking his head, Obi-Wan replied, "Only to alert them to the situation before I left the planet. Now that we're here I might have a more secure vector for contacting them, but I couldn't take the chance of communications being monitored back on Coruscant. I have no idea how much authority this Tarkin character possesses, but considering he's Palpatine's man, I highly doubt something as trivial as a wiretap is beyond his capabilities."

There he is, Bail thought grimly, his head snapping back around to face the two of them. "Yes, Padmé mentioned his name to me when she got back from your meeting. Obi-Wan, how much do you know about him?"

"I'd never heard of the man before I woke up in his office." The Jedi frowned. "I take it you have."

Nodding, Bail took a too-big sip of caf, just enough to start a sizzle on his tongue. With a grimace, he said, "Wilhuff Tarkin isn't from Alderaan—he's from Eriadu. But before he went into federal work, he had employers here. Worked as a lawyer for one of the other Noble Houses." It was almost quaint to remember a time that early in his and Breha's marriage—before he'd even been appointed senator, when his biggest problems were negotiating House Organa's contracts and sovereign rights. Not that he'd felt that way at the time—in a universe before the Confederacy, the Clone Wars, Palpatine, the interminable internecine conflicts of Alderaan's gentry had seemed the gravest enemy possible. "This would have been before we met, Obi-Wan, when you were still working your way up the navy. House Viridia brought him in on a challenge to House Organa's sovereignty over the turbolaser plants—they wanted to whittle us down to a majority share rather than unilateral control."

The Jedi gnawed briefly at his lower lip before replying, "It explains why I hadn't heard of him before. Back then I didn't want much to do with any news about turbolaser plants." A shadow passed across his face, but before Bail could say anything, it had lifted—his friend back to his normally attentive, slightly quizzical expression. "Obviously it didn't work—Breha turned all weapons production over to the new Grand Army."

And the other houses were still giving them hell for that, of course. Another front, another war. "It didn't, but it almost did. That's what's frightening. It's been encoded in the laws for centuries that whichever Noble House holds the throne has total control over the armaments industry here. If we hadn't nationalized it, left it to competing private interests, it would have started an arms race. That rule is one of the pillars of contemporary Alderaanian statecraft."

Padmé snorted. "How is it that you can make this guy sound so boring, Bail? I was expecting a Jedi hunter to have more of a frightening past."

Remembering his recent apology, Bail bit his tongue, but it was a near thing. "He might not have picked a flashy subject, Padmé, but the man was dangerous. He deployed everything he had against House Organa—holes in the laws, an absolute mountain of trumped-up testimony, at points almost blackmail. If we hadn't been so popular at the time"—a memory that was almost unfathomable now—"he very well might have won."

His head of security must have been thinking on the earlier truce as well; instead of bantering back, she nodded and said, "I suppose I do know a thing or two about outsiders waltzing in and changing how your entire planet works."

Clearing his throat, Obi-Wan said, "I take it he didn't stay with House Viridia for long."

Indeed he hadn't. To Bail's overwhelming relief, shortly after the case had been taken all the way to the planetary supreme court and finally dismissed, House Organa's spies had confirmed Tarkin had left Alderaanian employment. "At the time I assumed he'd gone back to Eriadu. Maybe he had. But at some point he decided to go after a higher calling, it would seem."

"And we all know that if there's one thing Palpatine loves," said Padmé, "it's handing over dirty work to rogue operators. Probably saw the guy had screwed with Alderaan in the past and handpicked him for this witch hunt based on that."

The resident Jedi ran a hand along his beard, considering. "Quite honestly, Bail, I don't know how to overcome this. The Jedi have striven for secrecy for hundreds of years. If Palpatine and Tarkin bring this 'investigation' of us to the courts, we can't exactly speak in our own defense when they accuse us of . . ." He hesitated. "Whatever they're going to accuse us of."

"Oh Obi-Wan, don't try to protect him," Padmé broke in, looking annoyed at both of them. Turning to Bail, she said, "They're trying to pin the Clone Wars on the Jedi."

"We don't know that—" Obi-Wan began, but before he could finish, she'd stood and started pacing around the office.

"Come on, Obi-Wan. The goal of your interview might have been to pin you as a Jedi, but that's not the gotcha. Sure, you like to run around in a cloak with a sword during your spare time, that's not a crime. Palpatine can't get anything actionable on you guys existing. But"—here she stopped still, fixing her eyes on the Jedi's—"if Tarkin proves you're in the Order, then works all the way back to Had Abbadon . . ."

"I sent him on that mission," Bail protested, though even as he said it he felt a sudden sickness in his gut, the caf going sour. "It was a direct order from me. Hell, it was my idea in the first place."

"You know that, you were there." She shrugged. "No one else was."

She was right, the senator realized, his perceptions of the room around him growing dim as he frantically went over his memory of hatching the plan. The only other people who'd been privy to it were Typhoon Division—and even they had never had the whole picture, not even when he'd thrown them into the first battle of the Clone Wars to get their general back.

There was an almost invisible prickling at the back of his neck, as if someone were poking at his thoughts—and then, a moment later, Obi-Wan confirmed that he had been. "Due respect, Bail, but it wasn't you who threw them."

When Bail turned to meet the Jedi's eyes, he saw the dawning horror within him reflected on Obi-Wan's face. "You sent me. Then you sent Qui-Gon to rescue me. But it wasn't your idea to send in Typhoon Division. I called and told you to."

Even as the full weight of the memory crashed into him, Bail protested, "It was already an act of war when I sent you in—"

"We all know how Palpatine can spin things," Padmé cut in. "And Bail, you know how this Tarkin can. One general getting captured is a diplomatic incident. The war doesn't start til the shooting does."

"There's no proof that you were the one who told me what to do." It was a tiny thread of hope, but Bail seized on it, making a fist as though he could physically pull it toward them. "I relayed the order to Typhoon Division, and even if Cody told them who it really came from, they're not going to turn on us."

"It wasn't just you and Typhoon, though, Bail," said Padmé. She gave a burst of humorless laughter, as though she too had sifted through her memories looking for something vindicating and found only damnation. "We were there when Obi-Wan made the call. Me and Anakin."

And with that, the last brick clicked into place.

When Bail turned to Obi-Wan, there was no surprise on his friend's face. The Jedi simply stared at Padmé with a deep ache. He, Bail saw, had already realized this. Maybe weeks ago.

Aloud, Obi-Wan said, "I don't think Anakin would consciously betray me."

Not, Bail noted, the Jedi.

"But he's . . . his biggest fault is his urge to help without thinking what the consequences are. He has fears—of the hurt he can cause, of his abilities going wrong—but in the heat of the moment, he always acts or speaks without hesitating. It's his nature, to fix things that are broken.

"So if Palpatine were to come to him, and ask him about how the war started—were to present it as a crucial part of an investigation to help the Republic, to help him . . . of course he'd want to be useful. To tell the truth."

In a rasp, his throat suddenly bone dry, Bail said, "So talk to him. Tell him not to cooperate if anyone asks him about this sort of thing."

"And incriminate myself even further?" the Jedi replied. "If it comes out that I told my former student not to tell anyone about the message I relayed to you, that's as good as an admission of guilt."

Bail had never known Skywalker that well, but seeing the raw pain in Obi-Wan's eyes as he said this was more than he could bear. When he turned to Padmé, he saw the same thing—more hidden, a scowl covering it, but there nonetheless.

So instead he turned to once more gaze out at Alderaan, and at the sky beyond—the window filtering out enough to allow him perfect clarity as he glimpsed the ghosts of distant stars, and even dimmer planets, stretching out forever. A vast universe, and within it a tiny planet, and within that a tiny, tiny man.

What can any of us do?

And then, a still small voice spoke back to him. It wasn't like what Obi-Wan described as the Force—it was Bail's own voice, but calmer. More assured.

You can start by doing the same thing that got you into this mess. Rescue your friend.

He snapped his head back to look at his guests. "Right. Well, we have a lot of ground to cover, so we'd better get moving."

Padmé, who'd resumed her pacing, froze, the pain she'd been covering replaced by startlement. "Wait, what?"

"Due respect, Padmé," said Bail, pushing himself back from his desk and taking up her trail around the room, "but I'm still against your assassination approach, and that goes for Tarkin as well. Getting him out of the picture doesn't accomplish anything—Palpatine will just find another good lawyer. And we're agreed that the Jedi can't just defend themselves in court. So, I have a proposal.

"Since you were going to be leaving me anyway—don't lie, you're terrible at it," he put in as she opened her mouth in protest—"I propose that you and Obi-Wan take direct action against one of our two major problems. Vader is out—we have no idea who he is, and for the moment, while I hate to applaud anything Palpatine orders, his actions against the Confederacy's remains aren't exactly unwelcome. So that leaves this investigation."

Padmé was working furiously to control the smile rising up on her face—it was probably the closest thing to a personal victory Bail had had in months.

"You're not going back to Coruscant to haul that bucket of bolts out of storage, it's too dangerous," he told the pair. "You're going to take one of House Organa's shuttles—covert, of course, no identifiers to tie you back to us—and start your own counterinvestigation. Look into Tarkin, look into what he's planning. If you uncover something that'll cut it off at the head, great. If not, we'll at least know what we're dealing with."

He turned to look at Obi-Wan. Involuntarily, his mind flashed back to the two of them in this very office, years ago, planning to save Had Abbadon. How much younger they'd been then—beards free of grey, shoulders bearing no hint of the weight that would crush down upon them in the war to come.

"Whatever you uncover," Bail told his friend, "whatever we have to do . . . you have my full support."

For a long while, Obi-Wan was silent. Then he managed, "Bail, I . . . thank you. Truly. But I must insist Padmé stays here to—"

"Oh screw you, Kenobi, I'm not a gods-damned invalid." Striding past him, Padmé reached out and punched Bail on the shoulder. "This isn't me resigning, it's vacation time. I expect to keep getting paid."

The senator broke out laughing. "We may have to renegotiate your contract."

The home, compared to the palatial beauty of House Organa, was modest. A couple of floors planted in the midst of a few acres, dwarfed by the landscape around it—a boat floating on a sea of green, seeming almost to bob with the motion of the grass. Even to those who weren't familiar with it, the sight spoke of refuge, of troubles eased and exhaustion assuaged.

It had been home once. Just one of many Obi-Wan Kenobi had lost.

"My parents owned it outright when they died," he told Padmé as they made their way across the grounds, pausing here and there to look at some particularly lovely flowers or tall trees. "So it became Alma's. When she died, even if I'd wanted to keep it, it would have been an extravagance. I had the Jedi, and my bunk on the Coelacanth, and a cover flat on Coruscant. So I gave it to the county. It's a library now."

Bending downward, Padmé plucked a purple set of petals from the ground and began to twirl it back and forth between her fingers. "Nice view for a library."

"Yes, well—that was my one provision. I asked that they keep the grounds unaltered, save for new planting and pruning. I couldn't bear the thought of something like a speeder lot eating all this away."

For a few paces they walked in silence, Padmé whipping the head of her toy around. Then she said, "Because of the tree? The one with the bird?"

Now there was something he hadn't thought of in a long time. "I don't remember telling you about that."

She chuckled, tossing the flower off into the grass. "I bet you remember me eavesdropping when you told Anakin about it."

Indeed I do, he wanted to say, remembering the sick panic rising within him when he'd heard the pair shouting from the engine room and realized what had happened. Instead he looked back at the crumpled plant his companion had cast away. "Pity to uproot it just to throw it away like that."

"It died for beauty. Thought you'd like that, all poetical."

"Ahh, poetry. I haven't had the chance to really read anything in ages. Left all my books at my flat or in the Temple."

"You could snag a volume while we're here. It's your library, sorta."

"I don't approve of stealing even from myself," he replied, bringing his brows together in his best Padmé Amidala imitation.

"It's a loan, just fine yourself if you're overdue." After their polite chuckles at their own banter had faded, she threw a glance at him and asked, "So, the bird?"

It was a dim memory, but he could still capture the core of it in a haze of snapshot images—the shadow of the baby bird passing in front of the sun as it fell, the way time had seemed to grind to a halt, his fingers racing out to catch the little thing and instead pushing it back up into the nest. "Maybe partially that," he said, blinking to disperse the pictures. "But even if that hadn't happened, I wouldn't have wanted them to tear anything up. The Force connects life to life. I wouldn't have liked the thought of my sister being connected to nothing but duracrete."

A wisp of wind tugged at his too-long hair—shaving was another priority he'd let go unattended lately—as if in acknowledgment of his words. The reason they'd come. And indeed, squinting a fair distance in front of them, he was able to make out a single piece of stone rising from the green. "It's just ahead."

It was simple, the way she'd have preferred—a simple plaque polished smooth, block letters etched into it. Alma Kenobi, beloved wife and sister. The years had weathered patches of the stone—Obi-Wan could remember when it had first been installed, shiny and new—but the letters still stood out clearly.

"Owen wanted to bring her back to Tatooine," he told Padmé without looking at her. His eyes ranged over the strokes and curves of his sister's name, as if to reassure himself everything was there. "It was selfish of me to suggest otherwise, but—it just didn't seem the place."

"Owen?"

Ah, he realized, of course she wouldn't know. He'd never mentioned the man to Anakin or his wife, much less Tatooine. Had in fact gone out of his way not to. It had just felt proper, somehow, to spare them his own personal melodramas. Looking back, he couldn't say why.

"Her husband," he told Padmé. "My brother-in-law. We get along . . . icily, is the polite word."

There, said a voice at the back of his mind—not the one that came with the Force, but his own. You've told her something about yourself Anakin doesn't know. How curious.

"Don't know that I can blame him," his friend replied. Obi-Wan felt a weight on his shoulder—when he looked over, he saw she'd placed a hand there.

"So. Tarkin," she continued, looking up from the headstone and off toward the old home. "Where do we start?

"I have a lead. One word. And it was something I lifted by mental suggestion at a very stressful moment, so it might not even be accurate." He remembered back to those panicked few moments on the train, picking through his pursuers' minds before losing them in the station. "Does the name 'Snowblind' mean anything to you?"

Padmé shook her head. "Do you even know it's a name?"

"I suppose not, but it just . . . feels like one, somehow. And I don't think the Force would have steered me that way for nothing."

"Well, if it's part of a super-secret investigation against an extralegal group, I'm betting it's not something we're gonna find through legitimate channels." She furrowed her brow, staring into the library as though if she looked hard enough she'd somehow divine the secret that way. "I can't say I ever heard of it back when I was still a felon, not that I should have."

"Well, I do have an idea of a person who could help me get to it."

The weight on his shoulder vanished, and a moment later he was flinching back from a punch aimed at his neck. "Help us, Kenobi."

Sighing, he turned to face her. "Padmé, I couldn't live with myself if anything happened to you. At any time, but especially not now."

"I'm not seven months in, Kenobi, I'll be able to handle myself for a long while yet." Her hand fell to the pistol at her side in an unconscious movement, one that Obi-Wan couldn't help but feel was meant to reassure herself as much as him. "Besides, you think I could live with myself if you ended up in a jail cell for the rest of your life? Or worse?"

She'd already rescued him so many times. Asking her to do so again . . . it went against everything he was supposed to stand for. He was the defender of peace and justice, sworn to protect those who needed protecting. Not to have friends risk their lives for him.

His hesitation must have shown on his face, because her irritation softened. Calmly, firmly, she said, "Let me do this, Kenobi. If it can't be for you, let it be for me."

He could sense her presence in the Force without even trying—the hot steady pulse of the wood snippet at her neck, and beneath it the ever-moving sea of her emotions. When he touched it, he knew that she meant what she'd said. She needed this, in a way, more than he did.

Gingerly, still telling himself he could change his mind, he reached out; then he felt something beyond himself tell him this was right, and he extended his arm. "I couldn't ask for a better partner."

She didn't smile; just nodded once, sharply, and grasped his hand with her own.

Before they left the grave, she knelt down and held her hand there for a moment. When she stood, a dusting of pinks and blues and purples had covered Alma's name, flowers reduced to tiny flecks of color.

Obi-Wan hoped that somewhere, somehow, his sister could feel them there.

Republic Archives: Eriadu

Located in the Outer Rim Territories, the world of Eriadu serves as the intersection between numerous hyperspace lanes such as the Yankirk Route and the Lipsec Run. In 1083, Eriadu's planetary government successfully lobbied the Republic to remap the Hydian Way hyperlane so it passed through the Eriadu system, rather than the nearby system of Seswenna.

The self-appointed "Coruscant of the Outer Rim" has tried for decades to establish its status as a hub of commerce. Unfortunately, its location at the fringes of Republic-controlled space has made this difficult. Though its residents enjoy numerous amenities and a pleasant climate, the Clone Wars have seen Eriadu's legacy cemented as a war asset rather than a trade and tourism center. Sandwiched between valuable Republic holdings such as Sullust and the Confederate shipyard of Sluis Van, Eriadu has by necessity become a militarized defense outpost rather than the commercial and cultural center its government once strived for.