VII. Greater and Lesser Evils
"Sit. Down. Now." The Jedi Master's voice had more than a faint suggestion of the Force in it, but Cathleen wasn't swayed.
"Where I come from, Master Qui-Gon, privacy is a basic legal right!" She'd almost thrown the small holoprojector across the room when it showed her a view of her own quarters.
Qui-Gon retuned the input, and it shifted to a real-time hologram of his suite's main room. A tiny version of Cathleen gazed, stricken, at an even tinier holographic hologram. "We are Jedi," Qui-Gon tried to explain. "We are family. Privacy is secondary."
"I," Cathleen seethed, "am not a Jedi." And before he could stop her, she stormed out of his quarters.
Alone in his rooms, Qui-Gon turned the holoprojector back to the footage he'd tried to show her.
The door to her quarters slid open. No one entered. Her terminal turned itself on, and scrolled slowly through her files before shutting down again. These could have simply been electronic glitches--except that her writing pad shuffled its own pages, then carried itself out.
Someone with a holodisruptor had been in her quarters, without the Council's knowledge or consent. One would think she would have been more upset at that, than at the presence of a single, innocuous holocam.
He was just reaching for his communicator, meaning to call Obi-Wan, when he saw that Cathleen had left her handbag. One folded edge of flimsiplast peeked out. I am not a Jedi, she'd said. But Qui-Gon Jinn was.
* * *
Cathleen would often joke that running was against her religion. Now, though, she ignored the stitch in her side and the grinding pain in her knees, and made for the nearest portal to the outside air. In all her time here, she'd never felt the slightest desire to leave the Temple. Even when she knew the Council was still keeping a wary eye on her, she had concentrated instead on learning everything she could about her new home. But this was intolerable. She refused to live in a place where she was actively spied upon. Her mind lit on what Qui-Gon had said: privacy is secondary.
Secondary to what?
These days, knowing where all the exits were was a survival skill for high school teachers. Dodging the few berobed figures remaining in the halls at this late hour, she found the nearest outer doorway, and stopped for breath. Most levels of the Temple had several exits. The main one on this floor was a massive set of double doors. She expected them to open slowly, but they sprang apart with a hiss.
Outside, the chill air whipped around her. The dress she wore had been made for the temperate weather of Alderaan, and she was freezing in seconds- -but she refused to go crawling back to those bugged quarters for anything warmer. Lurching down the impossibly floating pier, she tried to hide her shock at the surrounding expanse from other beings on the walkway. Within moments, Cathleen was shaking, and not just from the icy wind. Making a grab for the side railing, she firmly told herself that she was *not* going to go sailing off into space. Her instincts refused to listen.
An air taxi, lit up against the night, pulled up at the end of the walkway. Cathleen didn't care that she had nothing in the way of fare--she just had to get away. Oddly enough, once the open-air vehicle began moving, her agoraphobia eased. She lay back in relief against the seat, not noticing that the driver hadn't asked her for a destination.
She came to her senses, though, when they began dropping through level after level of the city. "Wait a minute, where are we going?" she asked, leaning forward so the driver would hear her over the shriek of wind. At his cold glare, she saw that fare wasn't going to be the problem.
The man--if he was human at all--looked like something Madame Tusseau would have dreamt up. His hair had the rough look of a wig, and his skin.... With a shudder, she realized he really did look like a wax figure. Her mind flashed back to the Zabrak in the Library. He'd had the same stomach- twisting appearance.
The depth of the trouble she was in hit her all at once, and she panicked. She began struggling with her safety harness, but the driver leaned back and slammed his elbow into her face. *Seeing stars is right,* she thought dumbly, and blacked out.
* * *
Removing its masquer, the wretched creature knelt at the Zabrak's feet. He grimaced, knowing what was coming. The thing had already severed three of its own fingers trying to placate its gods.
The Sith order had formed an uneasy alliance with these aliens when their presence was revealed. Despite their absence in the Force--or perhaps because of it--the handful of scouts scattered across the galaxy were snapped up into his Master's service. As spies and assassins, they excelled--and were rewarded with experimental subjects. As servants, though, they were wanting.
"My lord, I have brought you what you ordered. Now I must cleanse myself of these...abominations." Not long after his Master had given him this beast as a servant, he learned of its zealous hatred for technology. At first, it had been amusing to watch its 'ablutions,' but its simpering had long since become stale.
His own masquer did nothing to hide the predatory grin as the Sith apprentice performed his servant's final purification.
* * *
"Obi-Wan."
The Padawan thumbed off his lightsaber, and Darsha, his friend and sparring partner, did the same. He fumbled the communicator out of his belt. "Yes, Master?"
"Meet me at the south entrance near our quarters. Knight Halcyon tells me Cathleen went through there a few minutes ago."
"But Master, she's never been out of the Temple."
"I know. Hurry."
* * *
Cathleen came to suddenly with the realization that she was afloat. And just as suddenly, she was dumped onto a hard floor. Her face exploded in pain, and she remembered her hotheaded taxi ride. Something warm and sticky covered her mouth and chin. Her nose must be broken. She opened her eyes reluctantly. *Hey, I saw those boots at the _Magic of Myth_ exhibit,* her inner idiot gushed.
She closed her eyes against the tears, then, as the pain undid her.
"Get up," a familiar voice growled.
"I can't." It was true. The throbbing that echoed through her skull made her too dizzy to move, much less stand. It didn't matter, though: invisible hands wrenched her to her feet. She stumbled, but caught herself against a wall. Opening her eyes again, Cathleen recognized the place as an abandoned parking hangar. The air taxi was awkwardly parked, and in front of it....
She fell back to the ground, vomiting, but part of her mind remained oddly detached. *He used his lightsaber. That's why there's so little blood.*
The head lay two feet away from the body. A fleshy glob was inching, sluglike, toward the heavily scarified face.
Like a battered marionette, Cathleen was brutally jerked upright again. She gasped as an ethereal hand caressed her jaw line, and focused on her assailant. Despite being robed all in black, he was still wearing the waxen face.
"You know me," the Sith growled. One hand hovered inches away from her, manipulating the lines of power that bound her. The other held a wrinkled sheet of flimsiplast.
*Oh, my god. It wasn't the Jedi....* How could she have been so stupid as to actually sketch *that* face? She choked back a sob: it was too late now to regret her fury at Master Qui-Gon.
"How?" he asked.
Chill fingers stroked the edges of her mind, as a nonexistent vise tightened around her throat; but she shook her head mutely. Cathleen hadn't breathed a word about the future to the Jedi; she wasn't about to tell this...this.... *I have a pewter figurine of this *monster* displayed on my mantelpiece, like an idol!*
The colorless face in front of her undulated, and she almost lost control of her stomach again. The masquer lapped at the base of the horns, then settled back. Maul tapped a button on his wrist link. A ship, slaved to the call button, rose up somewhere behind Cathleen, its roar muting into hover mode.
When she turned around, she half expected to see the Infiltrator. But that part of her mind still running on autopilot reminded her that it would be a few years yet before Sidious had an armed courier converted for his apprentice. Instead, it was a Z-95 Headhunter, an anonymous vessel among the thousands just like it. The ship settled just inside the mouth of the hangar.
Somehow, Cathleen knew that this particular fighter would be just large enough to seat two. A violent shove through the Force sent her reeling toward the craft--and past it, as she took advantage of her momentum. Staggering past one cannoned wing, she let herself fall from the lip of the parking hangar into the permacrete chasm below.
Darth Maul watched her spiral down for a few moments, then climbed into his ship. He had a mission to complete.
"Sit. Down. Now." The Jedi Master's voice had more than a faint suggestion of the Force in it, but Cathleen wasn't swayed.
"Where I come from, Master Qui-Gon, privacy is a basic legal right!" She'd almost thrown the small holoprojector across the room when it showed her a view of her own quarters.
Qui-Gon retuned the input, and it shifted to a real-time hologram of his suite's main room. A tiny version of Cathleen gazed, stricken, at an even tinier holographic hologram. "We are Jedi," Qui-Gon tried to explain. "We are family. Privacy is secondary."
"I," Cathleen seethed, "am not a Jedi." And before he could stop her, she stormed out of his quarters.
Alone in his rooms, Qui-Gon turned the holoprojector back to the footage he'd tried to show her.
The door to her quarters slid open. No one entered. Her terminal turned itself on, and scrolled slowly through her files before shutting down again. These could have simply been electronic glitches--except that her writing pad shuffled its own pages, then carried itself out.
Someone with a holodisruptor had been in her quarters, without the Council's knowledge or consent. One would think she would have been more upset at that, than at the presence of a single, innocuous holocam.
He was just reaching for his communicator, meaning to call Obi-Wan, when he saw that Cathleen had left her handbag. One folded edge of flimsiplast peeked out. I am not a Jedi, she'd said. But Qui-Gon Jinn was.
* * *
Cathleen would often joke that running was against her religion. Now, though, she ignored the stitch in her side and the grinding pain in her knees, and made for the nearest portal to the outside air. In all her time here, she'd never felt the slightest desire to leave the Temple. Even when she knew the Council was still keeping a wary eye on her, she had concentrated instead on learning everything she could about her new home. But this was intolerable. She refused to live in a place where she was actively spied upon. Her mind lit on what Qui-Gon had said: privacy is secondary.
Secondary to what?
These days, knowing where all the exits were was a survival skill for high school teachers. Dodging the few berobed figures remaining in the halls at this late hour, she found the nearest outer doorway, and stopped for breath. Most levels of the Temple had several exits. The main one on this floor was a massive set of double doors. She expected them to open slowly, but they sprang apart with a hiss.
Outside, the chill air whipped around her. The dress she wore had been made for the temperate weather of Alderaan, and she was freezing in seconds- -but she refused to go crawling back to those bugged quarters for anything warmer. Lurching down the impossibly floating pier, she tried to hide her shock at the surrounding expanse from other beings on the walkway. Within moments, Cathleen was shaking, and not just from the icy wind. Making a grab for the side railing, she firmly told herself that she was *not* going to go sailing off into space. Her instincts refused to listen.
An air taxi, lit up against the night, pulled up at the end of the walkway. Cathleen didn't care that she had nothing in the way of fare--she just had to get away. Oddly enough, once the open-air vehicle began moving, her agoraphobia eased. She lay back in relief against the seat, not noticing that the driver hadn't asked her for a destination.
She came to her senses, though, when they began dropping through level after level of the city. "Wait a minute, where are we going?" she asked, leaning forward so the driver would hear her over the shriek of wind. At his cold glare, she saw that fare wasn't going to be the problem.
The man--if he was human at all--looked like something Madame Tusseau would have dreamt up. His hair had the rough look of a wig, and his skin.... With a shudder, she realized he really did look like a wax figure. Her mind flashed back to the Zabrak in the Library. He'd had the same stomach- twisting appearance.
The depth of the trouble she was in hit her all at once, and she panicked. She began struggling with her safety harness, but the driver leaned back and slammed his elbow into her face. *Seeing stars is right,* she thought dumbly, and blacked out.
* * *
Removing its masquer, the wretched creature knelt at the Zabrak's feet. He grimaced, knowing what was coming. The thing had already severed three of its own fingers trying to placate its gods.
The Sith order had formed an uneasy alliance with these aliens when their presence was revealed. Despite their absence in the Force--or perhaps because of it--the handful of scouts scattered across the galaxy were snapped up into his Master's service. As spies and assassins, they excelled--and were rewarded with experimental subjects. As servants, though, they were wanting.
"My lord, I have brought you what you ordered. Now I must cleanse myself of these...abominations." Not long after his Master had given him this beast as a servant, he learned of its zealous hatred for technology. At first, it had been amusing to watch its 'ablutions,' but its simpering had long since become stale.
His own masquer did nothing to hide the predatory grin as the Sith apprentice performed his servant's final purification.
* * *
"Obi-Wan."
The Padawan thumbed off his lightsaber, and Darsha, his friend and sparring partner, did the same. He fumbled the communicator out of his belt. "Yes, Master?"
"Meet me at the south entrance near our quarters. Knight Halcyon tells me Cathleen went through there a few minutes ago."
"But Master, she's never been out of the Temple."
"I know. Hurry."
* * *
Cathleen came to suddenly with the realization that she was afloat. And just as suddenly, she was dumped onto a hard floor. Her face exploded in pain, and she remembered her hotheaded taxi ride. Something warm and sticky covered her mouth and chin. Her nose must be broken. She opened her eyes reluctantly. *Hey, I saw those boots at the _Magic of Myth_ exhibit,* her inner idiot gushed.
She closed her eyes against the tears, then, as the pain undid her.
"Get up," a familiar voice growled.
"I can't." It was true. The throbbing that echoed through her skull made her too dizzy to move, much less stand. It didn't matter, though: invisible hands wrenched her to her feet. She stumbled, but caught herself against a wall. Opening her eyes again, Cathleen recognized the place as an abandoned parking hangar. The air taxi was awkwardly parked, and in front of it....
She fell back to the ground, vomiting, but part of her mind remained oddly detached. *He used his lightsaber. That's why there's so little blood.*
The head lay two feet away from the body. A fleshy glob was inching, sluglike, toward the heavily scarified face.
Like a battered marionette, Cathleen was brutally jerked upright again. She gasped as an ethereal hand caressed her jaw line, and focused on her assailant. Despite being robed all in black, he was still wearing the waxen face.
"You know me," the Sith growled. One hand hovered inches away from her, manipulating the lines of power that bound her. The other held a wrinkled sheet of flimsiplast.
*Oh, my god. It wasn't the Jedi....* How could she have been so stupid as to actually sketch *that* face? She choked back a sob: it was too late now to regret her fury at Master Qui-Gon.
"How?" he asked.
Chill fingers stroked the edges of her mind, as a nonexistent vise tightened around her throat; but she shook her head mutely. Cathleen hadn't breathed a word about the future to the Jedi; she wasn't about to tell this...this.... *I have a pewter figurine of this *monster* displayed on my mantelpiece, like an idol!*
The colorless face in front of her undulated, and she almost lost control of her stomach again. The masquer lapped at the base of the horns, then settled back. Maul tapped a button on his wrist link. A ship, slaved to the call button, rose up somewhere behind Cathleen, its roar muting into hover mode.
When she turned around, she half expected to see the Infiltrator. But that part of her mind still running on autopilot reminded her that it would be a few years yet before Sidious had an armed courier converted for his apprentice. Instead, it was a Z-95 Headhunter, an anonymous vessel among the thousands just like it. The ship settled just inside the mouth of the hangar.
Somehow, Cathleen knew that this particular fighter would be just large enough to seat two. A violent shove through the Force sent her reeling toward the craft--and past it, as she took advantage of her momentum. Staggering past one cannoned wing, she let herself fall from the lip of the parking hangar into the permacrete chasm below.
Darth Maul watched her spiral down for a few moments, then climbed into his ship. He had a mission to complete.