Chapter: Eleven: Hindsight
Ch. Summary: Ben comes to some disturbing realizations about his and Obi-Wan's childhood.
The Mandalorians had pretty much moved into the sewers with the Young after about forty-eight hours of being on planet. At first Jango argued that it would be better for the Young to move into the troop transport with the Haat Mando'ade. However, once it was brought to his attention just how many children there were in the Young, he conceded and instead the Mandalorians moved into the sewers, with a rotation of five verde at a time keeping watch of the now camouflaged transport ship and running above ground reconnaissance.
Ben thought the whole argument was rather entertaining since it nearly brought Jango and Cerasi to a shouting match again. Surprisingly enough it was Nield that put an end to it in his usual unimpressed, sarcastic way.
"You do realize that we're never all gonna fit on your little ship, right?" the teen had said when both his co-leader and the foreign king had paused to breathe in the midst of their argument.
"What do you mean? My transport can hold thirty fully armored Mando'ade," Jango said with a frown.
Nield just looked at him like he was doubting his intelligence. Ben had to cover his mouth with a hand lest any of them see his amused smirk. Obi-Wan however wasn't fooled at all.
"There's over a hundred kids down here, Mando," Nield informed him as one would speak to a confused child. "You've only seen about a quarter of us, because we can't all fit in one junction point."
Jango stared at the teen with a blank face for a moment then cursed a blue streak and started shouting instructions and orders to the Mandalorians nearby and into his comm unit.
Obi-Wan raised an unimpressed eyebrow as Ben tried to smother his growing amusement. "It's not that funny."
"It is," Ben protested. "Though I do wonder how many of the children will wish to remain on planet when all of this is done."
"Why?" the teen asked, confused.
"Mandalorians," Ben informed him with a sly glint in his eyes, "love children, as I told you, but it is also a massive part of their culture to adopt."
Obi-Wan eyed the man trying to decide just how serious he was about this becoming an issue. "How exactly do Mandalorians go about adopting?"
"Oh, it's all very straightforward with the Mando'ade," Ben said, and Obi-Wan was not happy with the totally unconcerned tone of his voice. "They just say, 'I know your name as my child,' in Mando'a, the child accepts and that's that."
"What's their criteria for adoption?" Obi-Wan asked. "How long does the general getting to know you period last?"
"Oh, there is no getting to know you period and they're really not picky. They'll try to claim just about any youngling that's struck their fancy." At the teen's uncomprehending expression, he said, "Let me put it to you this way," oh, Obi-Wan really did not like the smirk on his face, "I was seventeen almost eighteen when I went on my first mission to Mandalore and I was almost forcibly adopted four times within the first month."
Eyes widening, Obi-Wan gaped at the man then suddenly darted off to find Cerasi and Nield to warn them. And spread the word to the other kids to be very sure what they were responding to if the Mandalorians start recited weirdly formal sounding phrases at them.
"You know, Mandalorian adoption is not quite that simple."
Ben, because he was a war hardened Jedi Master did not jump is surprise at the young voice behind him. Turning unhurriedly, he gave Pezmah, the young Twi'lek notary a pleasant smile. "Oh, I know, but it's good to keep them on their toes. Also that the children know they do in fact have options."
"So, you don't disapprove of the Haat Mando'ade trying to adopt any of the Young?" Pezmah asked curiously.
"No," Ben answered. "In fact I think it could be a very beneficial thing for some of the children, especially the really young ones, to find new families."
The young Twi'lek stared at Ben as if trying to visually gauge his sincerity then nodded decisively. "I have to speak with the Mand'alor."
Ben watched him scurry off, wondering idly how long it would take for Jango to just establish a permanent Mandalorian colony on the planet and be done with it.
Jango was back in his office on the troop transport ship where the secure comm channels were easily accessable. He'd been sending both Myles and Silas text updates, but now it was time to at least get a verbal sit-rep from Silas who was presumably still on Galidraan gathering intel on the Governor and his possible backstabbing with the Senate.
Strangely enough corrupt interfering Senate osik seemed only at least half as problematic as the situation on Melida/Daan. And none of that was the Young's fault. No, all fault lay with the mysterious Jedi Master and the clearly traumatized and abandoned padawan.
Yes, it had not escaped Jango's notice that they'd glossed over how Obi-Wan had ended up alone on the planet before Kenobi showed up. However, somehow both Jedi had done an admirable job of avoiding Jango so he wasn't able to demand further explanations. Though, the little snippet of conversation they'd overheard between Sheeva and one of the children did bring up some very unpleasant implications.
Those implications being that Obi-Wan's ba'ji, the Cabur Ba'jurir in charge of his education and safety, had voluntarily up and left him here in the middle of a civil war fought by children. And not just left him. Jango wasn't exactly sure what the significance of the braids and beads he'd seen on the few Jedi young he'd spotted over the years meant, but the implications of a youngling suddenly no longer having a braid wasn't hard to parse out.
The fact that Kenobi didn't seem all that happy with Obi-Wan's dar'cabur(1), and was in fact rather protective of the boy, was the only reason Jango hadn't pressed the issue harder. But he still wanted the story. Wanted to know what possible excuse a Jedi could have for leaving not just their child, but over a hundred children to fend for themselves against violent adults.
He entered in the comm code and waited for Silas to pick up the call. It wasn't longer than a few moments before his intelligence office greeted him.
"You're alive, Mand'alor," came Silas's professional greeting in Mando'a.
"So are you," Jango returned with a slight curl of his lips, then his face smoothed out and he ordered, "What have you found?"
Silas huffed and Jango could tell that what he was about to say was not going to be pleasant. "The Jedi was right. Someone tried to set us up."
"Did you track them down?"
"Sort of," Silas's expression wrinkled in displeasure. "I was able to uncover transmissions from the Governor on several known Death Watch channels, and from there I uncovered more transmissions from elsewhere."
"From elsewhere?" Jango didn't like the sound of that. It meant that more than just Death Watch and the greedy Governor of Galidraan had been plotting against them.
"The calls were rerouted through Trade Federation channels, but I lost them from there."
That was not good. Everybody with any sense knew that the Trade Federation were as dirty as they came. Any corporation or guild of supposed merchants that needed battle droids to get things done was knee deep in shit and anyone that says different was on the take or stupidly naive.
"Keep working on that," Jango ordered receiving a nod from Silas, then he asked. "What did you find out from the Senate?"
"Well, any official inquiries into the source and validity of the complaint and request for aid were almost immediately shot down or shunted off into the bureaucratic abyss."
Really not good, then, Jango thought grimly. That meant someone in the Senate with lots of pull wanted them out of the picture.
"And your unofficial inquiries?"
"A little more fruitful," Silas replied with a wry twist of his mouth. "It didn't take my best slicers long, and they didn't find much, but they did discover that a few Senators had received a number of calls from Concord Dawn and strangely enough Kalevala and Sundari."
Jango gritted his teeth. So this wasn't just more cowardly scheming from Death Watch and Vizsla then. This had New Mandalorian fingerprints on it as well.
"Was that all you discovered from the Senate?"
"Well, we dug up the original request for aid," Silas offered and held up a datapad to the holoprojector in demonstration. "The Jedi was right. The Governor claimed a troop of Mandalorians were terrorizing and slaughtering his citizens. He also specifically requested a contingent of Jedi Knights to come and put a definitive stop to the bloodshed."
So it was murder then, Jango scowled at the realization. Whoever was the architect of this entire thing, and he knew it wasn't Death Watch, Tor Vizsla was not this subtle or this clever, really wanted the True Mandalorians not just out of the way but dead and buried.
"Did they include any evidence in the request?"
"No," Silas said, but something in his tone tone made the hairs on the back of Jango's neck raise.
"But?" he prompted.
"But," Silas continued, "we were able to slice into the Jedi Temple's systems and grab a copy of the aid request before they booted us off their servers. Their version of the request was very different from the one the Senate received."
Oh, he did not want to hear this. "Different how?"
"For one thing it has photographic evidence," Silas said with a darkly wry tone. "And from our analysis the images were not doctored in any way."
Jango exhaled a long breath and rubbed a rough hand over his face. So someone in the Republic Senate was working with Death Watch, probably using the Trade Federation as a proxy, with the goal of conning the Jedi into slaughtering the Haat Mando'ade.
"And the Jedi were convinced?" Jango asked, because he needed confirmation.
The expression on Silas's face was not comforting. "Jango, if I didn't know for a fact that we weren't killing anyone on Galidraan, I would have believed it."
"I want you off planet as soon as possible," Jango ordered gravely. "Come to Melida/Daan. Bring as much medical supplies and food rations as you can, but I want all of our people off Galidraan by tomorrow."
"Way ahead of you, Jango," Silas nodded with a smirk. "We started loading up an hour ago. We're almost done breaking camp and we'll be hitting atmo some time around late meal."
"Good," Jango sighed swiping a hand down his face half in relief, half in frustration. "What about that other thing I wanted you to look into?"
"Oh, you mean, the mysterious Jedi Master and his adorable padawan?"
Rolling his eyes, Jango sighed, "I gave you their names."
"For all the good it did me," Silas huffed, earning a questioning look from his leader. "Padawan Obi-Wan Kenobi was easy enough to find, and there was plenty to unpack in his file. I'll get to that later. What was harder and by harder I mean impossible to find was any information on Jedi Master Ben Kenobi."
"Do you mean his file was classified?" Jango asked with a frown.
"I mean, it doesn't exist," Silas corrected. "As in there are absolutely no records of him. Granted I only had about twenty minutes to snoop around before whoever's in charge of their cyber security noticed me and shut me out, but Ben Kenobi wasn't even listed in their Missing on Mission or Killed on Mission rosters. In fact the only other Kenobi I could find, other than the padawan currently on planet with you, was a Jedi Knight from about three hundred years ago."
Jango was quiet for a moment thinking that through. He was sure Kenobi wasn't lying when he said he was a Jedi. Jango may not hear the Ka'ra(2) the way Jaster had, but he trusted himself to know when someone was lying to him. Ben Kenobi for all that he was cryptic and sparse on details of himself, was not an outright liar.
"Could Kenobi be one of their special forces, their Jedi spies or whatever they call themselves?"
"Their Shadows, you mean." Silas tapped around on his datapad before answering. "I didn't get that deep in their system, so I don't know what kind of information black out the Jedi do when one of them becomes a Shadow. He could be, I suppose. If you want a more definitive answer I'll need to either be on site to slice into their systems directly or have a slicing team of at least five and a solid connection with the holonet on planet."
Contemplating this, Jango finally answered, "We'll put that on hold for now. Tell me what you found on Obi-Wan."
The look of wide-eyed disbelief on Silas's face was not reassuring. "Well, I'll give the kid one thing, reading between the lines, if even half of what's hinted at in his file is true he's got some serious Mandokar."
It took a split second of debate then Jango said, "Send me his file."
Silas quirked a knowing smirk at him, but nodded, "Elek, Alor."
As Jango waited for the files to download onto his datapad, he thought about everything he'd learned so far. Someone in the Republic Senate wanted his people dead and was willing to work with Death Watch to do it, Ben Kenobi was an even bigger mystery than he first appeared, and this job on Melida/Daan was shaping up to be a lot more complicated than he'd originally thought.
The first planned raid on the Elders of Melida/Daan was a success. Well, after the arguing and the clashing prides were out of the way, the Mando'ade and the Young worked well together.
Once Nield and Cerasi convinced Jango that some of the children would in fact be on the various raids and assaults they planned, working out the dynamics was relatively simple. The Mandalorians would train all the children in hand to hand against larger opponents and effectively using blasters. Maybe even some knife work since that was pretty much the extent of their weapons variety. However, only the children eleven years and older would be going on the actually raids. This stipulation Ben had no problem endorsing.
He remember trying to keep a five year old from bleeding out from a belly wound when he was fourteen. It was not something he ever wanted to see again. Not to mention sometimes when he looked at the exhausted, emaciated, haunted children he would get a sense memory flash back to the Council Chamber. In his twenty years in the desert there hadn't been a single night that passed without him dreaming of finding those little youngling bodies scattered across the floor, sliced up and dismembered by a lightsaber, eyes clouded over in death, faces frozen in terror.
A shiver ran down his spine and Ben shoved those thoughts, those memories to the very back of his mind.
So, the first raid was on the arms depot. The same one the Young had been taking potshots at so they could get easier access to the medical supplies cache and the communications tower. While the Mandalorians traveled around with enough weaponry to arm small planets, any weapons they could take from the Elders would weaken them. Since the recon and the scouting on the arms depot was already pretty well fleshed out, that was their first target.
They took three Mandalorians, ten Young, and Ben and Obi-Wan on the raid. It was a slaughter. Out of the twenty Elders stationed to guard the depot, one escaped, severely injured, but alive. Ben doubted he would live for much longer however.
The Mandalorians lead the charge, the Young following after them, just as determined and serious. Ben and Obi-Wan flanked their attack and spent the majority of the surprisingly short fight deflecting blaster shots away from the Young and not getting in the Mandalorians' way.
When they were finished loading up the last of the weapons and ammunition, the Mandalorians blew the depot sky high to send a message. It was an effective one, Ben thought as he watched the flames and ran his gaze over the cooling bodies of the Elders. Whether this all would eventually end in a more favorable outcome than his experience on Melida/Daan was yet to be determined. He had hope and despite all the death the Force was still fairly adamant that this was the correct path.
A couple days later, when Ben let himself onto the Mandalorains' troop transport and walked to Jango's office, that was still true. They'd had no injuries, no deaths and the children were slowly, but surly being cycled past Jango's squad medic. There was nothing they could do about the lack of immunizations, but the general check ups and readily given remedies for the various minor injuries and illnesses the children had been suffering with was a boon that Ben was not going to forget any time soon.
"All work and no play makes Jango a dull boy," Ben drawled with humor as he stepped into the open door of the man's office.
The Mand'alor was bent over several datapads on his desk and looked to have been there for a few hours at least. He looked up at the Jedi's arrival with an unamused scoff. "I'll have plenty to celebrate when the demagolkase are dead and the Young are safe."
Nodding in acceptance, Ben came to a stop in front of the desk. "On that, I think we agree, Mand'alor."
Said leader just hummed and leaned back in his seat, making a wordless gesture of invitation to the chairs in front of his desk.
Taking a seat, Ben studied the man before him for a moment. He can admit that he was somewhat surprised when he'd seen Jango without his helmet for the first time. For some reason he'd half expected the man to look exactly as he had on Kamino the first and only time they'd had a conversation in his last life. When he'd lifted his helmet and instead of the hardened, deadly, middle aged bounty hunter Ben was expecting, he saw a serious young man, the spitting image of his long ago second in command. It shouldn't have surprised him since Cody had been Jango's clone, but for some reason the resemblance had still thrown him for a loop.
Now, after close to two weeks of acquaintance, Ben could look on Jango's painfully young face without expecting to see a scar curling around one eye, or hear him call, "General Kenobi," in his Concord Dawn accent.
"You wanted to see me, Mand'alor?"
Jango's expression, for a young man of twenty was surprisingly hard to read. Not that Ben couldn't read him. It was just more challenging than most. "I'm sure you know I've had my people checking into your information about the Governor of Galidraan and the Senate."
Ben tipped his head, but didn't interrupt. Jango would have been stupid not to double check his information and no one could accuse Jango Fett of being stupid.
"Would you be surprised to know that this little frame job looks to be part of a much larger conspiracy to destroy the Haat Mando'ade?"
Well, it appears Jango's intelligence people were a lot more thorough than Ben was expecting. Not that that was a bad thing.
"It wouldn't particularly shock me, no," Ben answered as neutrally as possible.
Jango shot him a scrutinizing look. Not necessarily suspicious, but not exactly trusting either. "I get the feeling you know a lot more than you're sharing, Kenobi, and I don't appreciate being led around by the nose."
Huffing in amusement, Ben almost rolled his eyes. "That was certainly not my intention, Fett. Truthfully, I don't know much more than you do. Someone in the Senate doesn't want the Haat Mando'ade in power. For what reason, I can think of a few, but I have no concrete or even circumstantial evidence."
"What do you know, then?" Jango demanded and Ben wanted to roll his eyes again, but he understood the man's attitude. He'd surely realized that if he hadn't gotten Ben's call he and his people would have been attacked and probably slaughtered by a team of Jedi Knights by then.
"I can only tell you that the Jedi were severely misinformed and it was done entirely on purpose," Ben offered. "This wasn't just an attack on your people, Fett. Someone in the Senate wants to use the Jedi as their own personal hit squad and that I cannot abide."
Oh, the Jedi was clever, Jango thought with a grudging sense of respect. Not only had the man given them a common enemy, but also common footing. He'd equalized the Mando'ade and the Jedi by making them both victims of a nameless politician's machinations. For a man that had presented himself as a simple Jedi following the call of the Force, he was dangerously good at politics and word play.
Dangerously good at word play, though he was, there were still holes in some of the things he'd said. "How did you come by this information about the aid request if you have not been in contact with your Jedi Council?"
Ben paused and cursed internally. He'd known the inquiry was coming, of course he did, he'd just completely forgotten to think up an explanation that made sense from a certain point of view. Fuck it, he thought.
"I had a vision."
The flatly disbelieving look on Jango's face was fair. But Ben was committed now, so.
"It wasn't anything so specific as a corrupt politician in the Senate," Ben assured the man. "I had a vision of Jedi and Mandalorians killing each other. At the end of it, only one Mando'ade was left. And he wore armor just like yours."
Ben let that grim image sink in before continuing. "I had to do some research on the symbols on your armor to figure out the details, but after I found out you were on Galidraan it wasn't hard to dig up the request the Governor sent into the Senate. From there I made some logical conclusions."
Improbably correct conclusions, Jango thought, but remained outwardly impassive. "How does that tie in to you being on Melida/Daan? I assume you didn't have this vision while you were already here."
"Ah, no," Ben conceded. "My presence here was a separate matter. I'd already had the vision of the Haat Mando'ade before I followed the Force's Will to Melida/Daan. When the Young's situation became apparent I figured I could kill two womprats with one stone so to speak. Warn you about the danger on Galidraan and hopefully gain some assistance for the Young."
Jango took a long moment to contemplate that. He could tell Kenobi was not being completely truthful, but his explanation had enough honesty in it that Jango didn't feel like he had malicious intent for whatever he was holding back.
Finally he nodded, then picked up a datapad. "While my people were investigating the request to the Senate I had them investigate you."
Ben sighed then. "And you found nothing."
Jango raised an eyebrow at him, but agreed. "The Jedi have no record of any other Kenobi, but Obi-Wan. If I asked, would you tell me why the Jedi don't have any records of you?"
That was a smart question, Ben acknowledged. Jango knew that if he interrogated Ben he'd get nothing, and to save himself the trouble he'd changed his line of inquiry. It also gave Ben a convenient way to gloss over his lack of a paper trail.
"No," he answered honestly. "There's nothing I can tell you about my lack of records, at least not until I speak with the Jedi Council once all this is finished."
"You are returning to Coruscant when the planet is stable?"
Ben nodded, folding his hands together in his lap. "I've been away from the temple for too long, and Obi-Wan needs to tell the Council his story."
There was a gleam in Jango's eyes at that and it put Ben on edge.
"Speaking of Obi-Wan," the Mand'alor started, "How much do you know about the boy's history?"
He almost let out a wry laugh, but Ben kept it behind his teeth. "I know what he has told me," and everything he didn't tell me. "Why do you ask?"
"Because I've read his file," Jango answered, unrepentant when Ben gave him a pointed look. "And it does not paint the Jedi in a flattering light."
This was a surprising statement. Ben, of course had read his own file and he didn't think that there was anything truly alarming in it. "How do you mean?" he asked almost reluctantly.
In answer Jango silently passed the datapad in his hand over. Ben took it almost warily, pulling it toward himself and looking at the screen.
At first glance it was all pretty standard. His intake form with his planet of origin, name, age, birth date, the name of the Jedi Knight that found him, Feemor MacLeod. Which he had forgotten and for some reason rang a bell in his mind. Then the compulsory medical evaluation and the acceptance form for the creche. None of that was anything out of the ordinary. Maybe the recounting of how Knight MacLeod found him naked and abandoned in a barren desolate field almost blue from the cold was cause for alarm, but it didn't reflect badly on the Jedi.
It wasn't until he'd scanned through a couple more pages of standard progress reports and moved onto when Obi-Wan outgrew the creche and was placed in an initiate clan that he started to see a pattern, a trend that would have made Ben pause if he'd seen this in any other youngling's files.
His memories of Master Vant, the Twi'lek docent that had charge of his initiate clan, were mainly filled with disapproving frowns, criticisms of his work ethic, and admonishments for his anger, arrogance, and supposed aggression. With some-forty years of distance Ben could say that his memory was not actually all that accurate. In fact it seemed the years had faded some of the harshness of his treatment from his clan master, because her written reports reflected very little that was complimentary about him as a child.
Initiate Kenobi is reticent to interact with his peers and displays antisocial tendencies.
Initiate Kenobi displays unbecoming attachment to only a select few of his clan mates.
Initiate Kenobi is quick to resort to aggression when met with peer criticism.
Initiate Kenobi doesn't apply sufficient effort in his studies.
Initiate Kenobi has an attitude of entitlement in regards to his future with the Order that could prove problematic in the future.
Initiate Kenobi shows no particular talent in his utilization and interaction with the Force.
Initiate Kenobi expresses feelings of anger and unfairness when disciplined.
Initiate Kenobi is disruptive at night and has alarmed his clan mates with inappropriately scary stories.
On and on from the time Obi-Wan was five and placed with the clan to when he was assigned to the AgriCorps and shipped off to Bandomeer at barely thirteen. Master Vant hadn't had more than possibly three nice or complimentary things to say about him in those seven years. Ben stared at the words on the screen and felt an odd sort of disconnect.
Logically he knew that the words were about himself. He was Obi-Wan after all. Until they'd met in the sewers over a month ago, they'd shared an identical history. Everything in this file was about him and if he'd been viewing the file as such the content wouldn't have been nearly so disturbing.
As it was he was having a problem not feeling waves of anger at his old Clan Master. He was a fifty-five year old Jedi Master in the body of a mid-thirties war general. He'd seen and experienced more tragedy than any being should. He'd long since come to terms with his attachments and his sometimes aggressively protective streak. When he'd acknowledged that he and Obi-Wan had diverged into two separate people he'd unconsciously laid claim to him as someone he needed to protect and care for.
Initiate Kenobi has acted against Initiate Chun in anger and attacked with a display of violence. Despite Initiate Chun's reasonable peer guided criticism, Initiate Kenobi let his feelings of wounded pride dictate his reaction. Initiate Kenobi seems to have taken an irrational dislike to Initiate Chun, likely a response to Initiate Chun being more competent and a more capable student in many areas of study. Many of the boys' interactions result in a physical confrontation because of Initiate Kenobi's unrestrained emotions.
Considering that Bruck Chun had been an unpleasant young boy and had relentless bullied Obi-Wan almost since the moment they'd met, reading the blatant bias Master Vant had against Obi-Wan made anger burn hot in Ben's belly.
If it was just about himself, Ben knew he wouldn't feel boiling anger at this injustice, but he wasn't thinking about this as an offense against himself. He was reacting to this as he would if the offense had been against his padawan. In fact he remembered when he had been forced to confront bias against Anakin as a child.
Anakin had been placed in several initiate classes to catch him up on the standard lessons new padawans were generally already proficient in. An initiate in his galactic history class, a young Zygarian girl, Ben remembered, had taken an instant disliking to Anakin and had bullied and picked on the boy from almost the moment they'd met. The master teaching the class had done nothing, even though several other children had complained and supported Anakin when he'd attempted to bring the issue to the master's attention.
When Ben had confronted the master about his lack of interference, the being had said that it was an object lesson in forbearance and that Anakin shouldn't let personal feelings or his wounded pride dictate his actions. That was the first time Ben had ever been tempted to draw his lightsaber on another Jedi.
As it was Ben had dragged the master before the Council and forced them to justify their inaction before the full twelve Council members. Needless to say, no one was particularly impressed and they'd relieved the being of their teaching position almost immediately. Unfortunately they'd stuck Ben with the job of teaching galactic history until they could find another competent teacher to take over.
On a positive note that had been the first time Anakin regarded Ben with something like trust and happiness since they'd become Master and Padawan.
With those memories in mind, Master Vant's comments read with the same highhanded self-righteousness as that master's justifications from so long ago.
Ben swiped to the next page and on it was Master Jinn's accounting of the debacle that was the journey to Bandomeer and the clusterkark that whole mission had been.
It was not as Ben expected. It wasn't like the mission brought up any kind of good memories, so he didn't expect any pleasant feeling while reading the report. That didn't exactly make Ben feel better as he read through Qui-Gon Jinn's tellingly sparse recitation.
The master had left a lot out. By which Ben meant there was no mention about the fact that the entire mission was one giant trap set up by his disgraced former padawan. Xanatos was in the report, of course, there was no way his involvement couldn't be mentioned. The conflict between the Hutts and the Arcanons on the freighter, however, the attack by pirates, and the crash landing on the draigon infested planet didn't make more than a footnote.
There were tensions between two mining factions on the transport to Bandomeer. I was forced to stop Initiate Kenobi from getting in the middle of the conflict and possibly escalating matters further. After a brief delay for repairs on an uninhabited planet, we arrived on Bandomeer without lasting problems.
If Ben hadn't been a Master himself for many years, he might have found Qui-Gon's ability for understatement amusing. Now, Ben didn't find anything humorous about the extreme lack of detail the man had put into his report. Whether that was purposeful in this instance or not, Ben didn't know. He was not however unfamiliar with his old master's very deliberate way of wording things in reports, written and verbal to downplay the various shenanigans he'd gotten them both into over the years.
And as he continued to read Qui-Gon's report about the events on Bandomeer, Ben found it no more amusing than he had as an exhausted, exasperated padawan.
Not only had Obi-Wan's kidnapping and enslavement on a deep sea mining facility not been mentioned as anything other than, Xanatos du Crion held Initiate Kenobi against his will as an incentive to trap me in a confrontation. But Obi-Wan's offering to blow himself up so Qui-Gon could save the miners was simply summed up as, Initiate Kenobi's willingness to sacrifice himself for the greater good is admirable and shows a growth in character from his previous aggressive and bordering on selfish tendencies.
What the kark, Qui-Gon Jinn? Ben thought incredulously as he silently stared at the report. Somehow, Ben couldn't remember ever seeing this report before. He didn't know if he'd just never looked it up like he'd never looked up the report on Melida/Daan, but this, he thought staring at the screen, this was not acceptable.
Ben could admit that he was no stranger to creative justifications in some of his reports especially in regards to some of the stunts he and Anakin had pulled during the war, but if he as a Council member had caught a knight or master trying to turn in a report this sparse on details and full of blatantly glossed over elements, he would have put their field status on hold pending a full in person recounting in front of the Council.
That the High Council had allowed Qui-Gon to get away with turning in this bantha-shit was unbelievable.
Sensing Jango's impatience with his seemingly taking his time, Ben flipped past the next few mission reports Qui-Gon had logged in and were consequently cross referenced in Obi-Wan's file until he got to the last one. The one from Melida/Daan.
Padawan Kenobi justified his renouncing of his vows and his place in the Order by citing his attachment to one of the female leaders of this group of young war protesters. He refused to return to the temple with me to explain himself to the Council.
Ben sucked in a sharp breath and stared blankly at the words on the screen.
It hurt, Ben realized distantly. It hurt to learn that his old master had lied. He'd lied to the Council and when they'd reunited he'd lied to Obi-Wan- to Ben. No wonder Ben hadn't seen another Jedi on Melida/Daan until he himself had called in a request for aid. The Council hadn't known a damned thing about the situation on Melida/Daan. They hadn't even known that Obi-Wan was in any danger at all.
Setting the datapad on the desk in front of him, Ben took a steadying breath and looked up to meet Jango Fett's assessing gaze.
"I assure you, Mand'alor Fett, what you read in Obi-Wan's file is not how the Order and it's Jedi normally conduct themselves." Maybe he was lying to himself as much as he was to Jango, but Ben couldn't let himself believe that the way he- the severity of the way Obi-Wan was treated was normal. He couldn't let himself believe that his experience wasn't an outlier, because if not, then he was a little afraid of what he was willing to do to rectify it.
Ben Kenobi knew himself well enough to realize that if he found it necessary to take on the entire Order and remake it from the ground up there was little that any of the Masters could do to stop him. Anakin may have been a force of nature when he'd fixed his mind on a goal, completely capable of great displays of destruction and devastation, but Ben was something else. If Anakin was the roaring sandstorm that could strip the flesh from your bones, Ben was the bright heat of the twin suns. You don't notice it's killing you until you're already a hallucinating dried out husk lost wandering in the Dune Sea.
There must have been something of his thoughts on face, because the Mand'alor's expression flickered, reassessing him.
"What are you going to do about it?" he asked Ben, almost blandly.
Carefully keeping his expression in the practiced neutral Jedi mask, Ben said, "First of all, I'm going to request a full Council audience. All twelve members are rarely called in at once. Not unless there is a truly important issue. Normally a conflict between a Master and Padawan would not warrant even half the Council. This however is much larger than just Obi-Wan's former master's blatant neglect."
"Oh?" Jango's brows lifted in curiosity. So far he'd only picked up on the fact that this Master Jinn was at worst a compulsive liar and at best a decent Jedi that just shouldn't have ever been given charge of a child. Kenobi's reaction, however made him think there was something else in the file that was a lot more serious than Jango had realized.
Ben debated the wisdom of revealing more to Jango. On the one hand it would gain Obi-Wan great sympathy and possibly even Jango's protective attention. On the other hand it would expose far more of the inner workings of the Order than even Ben, heretical reformist that he was, was comfortable revealing.
"Suffice to say that there is evidence of several sever breaches in youngling care protocol that could be indicative of a larger spread issue."
That was a lot of complicated words just to say that someone wasn't doing their kriffing job, Jango thought wryly. And by the look of cold anger in Kenobi's eyes, he figured the Jedi was itching to make heads roll.
"What are you going to do about this di'kut Qui-Gon Jinn?" he asked recognizing that he wasn't going to get anything more on that previous subject.
Now there was a complicated mix of emotions moving through the man's blue-green eyes. Jango caught a flash of regret, anger, and strangely enough grief.
"Obi-Wan is not going back to Master Jinn," Ben said firmly, not worried about divulging this at least to the Mand'alor. "He should have never been entrusted to Qui-Gon in the first place and after having read this, I'm more sure than ever that he cannot return to that man's care."
"If he doesn't have Jinn as a master anymore, who will teach him?" Jango asked, wondering if Ben will be honest or not.
The look of unwavering, confident determination on the Jedi Master's face said it all.
"I will," Ben said and if he'd still had doubts of depriving the boy of the experiences awaiting him under Qui-Gon's tutelage, they were swept away like so much dust in the wind after the truths revealed in Obi-Wan's file. "I'll take him as my padawan."
TBC...
1: Dar'cabur - no longer a guardian (negative connotations)
2: Ka'ra - the ruling council of fallen kings, or the stars (the Force)