THE QUARRY
By: Scatterheart a.k.a. Hallospacegirl
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CHAPTER FOUR: NEGOTIATIONS
She was still asleep two hours later as the ship soared into the pearly, sea-foam Alderaanian atmosphere and settled onto the landing strip of the small spaceport of the Rebel Alliance.
A forest, Obi-Wan observed. The spaceport and indeed the whole secret Rebel base had been cleverly built into a forest of cool, watercolored trees. Above shone one late-afternoon sun in the soft blue sky, and in the distance, the tips of a rolling, lush mountain range peeked out over the expanse of flora.
How long had it been since he'd last seen a forest? Or heard birds sing? Or sat by a brook and meditated while the water burbled over the stones?
The door of the transport ship lowered open with a muffled thud against the compacted soil runway, and sweet, fresh air swirled into the cabin. The woman stirred in the center seat, moaning slightly.
Don't wake up now, he thought. He couldn't keep his eyes off of her, even when the five Rebel soldiers – three humans, a Twi'lek and a young Mon Calamari – filed into the ship with blasters drawn. The sun was glinting off of her hair and setting it afire. Don't wake up.
"General Obi-Wan Kenobi?" The first Rebel queried. He was an older, dark-skinned man with short, white curly hair. "I'm Captain Feyd Caruthers. And I speak on behalf of everyone on Alderaan when I say that it's an honor to finally receive you on our humble planet." He held out a hand; Kenobi rose from his seat and shook it. Then Caruthers gestured with his blaster to the sleeping figure. "Is this the Imperial Stormtrooper, General?"
"Yes, Captain. She's injured."
"Will we be needing a stretcher to transport her to the base?"
"I don't – yes. Bring one."
The captain snapped his fingers at the Mon Calamari. "Capkary, send for the medics and for a stretcher."
"Right away, sir." She nodded and stepped from the transport.
Kenobi glanced outside; fifty Rebel soldiers and several officials were already gathered in a semicircle around the ship, he estimated, and the assembly was steadily growing. They weren't going to take any chances with this one. "Tight controls," he remarked to Caruthers.
"Ah, yes. At the express orders of your old friend Senator Organa. He's eagerly awaiting your arrival outside. You're free to see him now and leave the Imperial to us. You've already done more for the Rebellion than we could possibly ask of you, General Kenobi, and we're more than happy to take it over from here." He smiled, warmly. "Enjoy the scenery of Alderaan, General. Stretch your legs. Bask in the summer sun. We heard it's slightly more bearable than that of Tattooine."
"Just barely," he said, and forced himself to return the smile. He looked to the young pilot, Crix Nadine. "Will you be coming with me?"
"No, sir. I'll be continuing to help with the Imperial operation until she is safely secured. It was an honor flying with you, sir."
Kenobi nodded, once. The woman, Lena, A-186. Now, an Imperial operation. He didn't look at her when he abruptly turned on his heel and left the ship.
Outside, the ground held firmly yet softly under his feet; unlike sand, it didn't crunch, sink under his weight and pull him down. Above him, veiled behind some white clouds, one sun shone benevolently, and a light, cool wind blew across his skin. He inhaled until the air filled his every pore.
A Jedi lives in the present, never the past.
And Lena. Lena was the past now, he reminded himself. Now let her go, and release her memory into the wind…
A tall, olive-skinned man with a dark mustache and deep blue robes was parting the crowd and jogging up to him with both arms outstretched.
Bail Organa.
"Obi-Wan! You sly Jedi, you! You did it!" he was shouting as he ran.
Kenobi closed the distance between them and wrapped the senator in a firm embrace. "It's been too long, Bail, my old friend."
"I'll say." He broke from the embrace, held the Jedi at arm's length, and searched into his face. "By the Maker, Obi-Wan, without that beard you look just like that first time I met you. How old were you then? Twenty-five? Thirty? Tell me your secrets."
He laughed, but the sound came out too soft, too heavy. "Tattooine, Bail. Tattooine."
"And how the deuce did that happen to your temple?"
"Clumsiness," he replied.
The senator shook his head slowly, whistling low. "By the Maker, five whole years there with no one around. I can't imagine how you did it, Obi-Wan."
"Patience, perhaps?"
"It's only your mantra, after all." He stepped to Kenobi's side and gestured for him to follow; a narrow path leading to a shiny silver building complex had been cleared from the crowd. "Come see the new Rebel headquarters. Just completed two months ago. It's the pride and joy of the Rebellion."
Fifty pairs of eyes were observing them, Kenobi realized as he trailed after Organa. While just a day ago he had slipped through the milieu of life forms in Mos Eisley like a forgotten ghost, now he was unable to take a step without someone seeing, someone noticing. Someone remembering.
Just like old times, he repeated to himself. He had been a general once – no, not a feigned identity taken from someone already lost to the Ultimate Maker – he had been a bona fide general, commanding an actual army unit, and he had thrived under the watchful expectancy of hundreds and thousands of life forms…
He found that his head was aching dully from the concentration of attention in the Force. He picked up his pace and fell into stride beside the senator. Searched for something to say. "How's your wife? How's Leia Skywalker?"
The smile on the senator's mouth wavered slightly. "Oh, the ladies are excellent, Obi-Wan. Just excellent. Leia Organa, my daughter,has just read her first picture holo-book this morning, in fact. Not bad for a five-year-old, don't you think?"
"No, not at all. Congratulations, Bail." Inwardly, he winced. Leia Organa. Of course. He would have to keep in mind that the name of Skywalker was now but a remnant of the old Republic, having been dismembered and re-titled and split across three corners of the galaxy. He couldn't make the same mistake again – he had felt Bail's acute discomfort through the Force.
"I take it you'd want to visit them in the near future, Obi-Wan?"
"Yes, Bail. Soon."
"Wonderful, when you're fully rested I'll arrange for you to…" The senator trailed off in a frustrated sigh. "Obi-Wan." He stopped abruptly in his tracks and turned to him, placing a light hand on his upper arm. "I'm not a Jedi, but I'm also not an idiot. Something's wrong."
What was wrong was that they had stopped in the middle of the throng of soldiers, in midst of the fifty pairs of staring, memorizing eyes. "What do you mean?" he asked as cordially as he could.
"Don't try to fake it with me, Kenobi," Organa replied gently. "You're preoccupied. You look… miles away. You're not happy to see me. Why, my friend? The operation succeeded admirably, just like you planned."
Yes, Kenobi told himself. The operation was a success. He focused his mind on the senator again, tried to rein it from its wanderings into the forbidden territory behind him. "Bail, you are my dear friend and nothing could change that," he said at last. "I'm simply tired, and I apologize for my listlessness."
"Ah, I see." The senator nodded, but Kenobi could sense that he hadn't been completely convinced. "Well, come inside the headquarters and have some dinner with me. Then do as you please – nothing is off limits for you at this base. When you decide to call it a night, we've arranged for you the presidential suite overlooking the lagoon."
"It's more than I could ask for. Thank y—"
"Obi-Wan Kenobi!"
They both wheeled around to the shout behind them; to Kenobi, the female voice was all too familiar, yet completely foreign as it yelled out a name he had never heard her use before…
Lena stood at the base of the transport ship, arms bound in energy-cuffs before her. Three soldiers flanked either side of her – four more were gathering behind, holding an empty stretcher. And though he knew that she was physically too far away from him for him to notice, he thought he could discern the sunlight shining golden into her overwhelming, scorching eyes.
The entire gathered assembly was quiet, Bail Organa and the soldiers and the politicians and everyone, as she opened her mouth and enunciated distinctly across the cleared path, "I hate you, Obi-Wan Kenobi."
And then the soldiers were leading her roughly away in the opposite direction of the headquarter building, and she didn't fight, but she was still craning her head back to look at him, still freezing him with that gaze, and she didn't let go until the crowd had swallowed them up in its midst… and yet he could still feel her presence within him, privately echoing the same sentiment she had proclaimed for everyone to know.
I hate you.
The Force assaulted him with her fury, and he felt his vision reeling, and suddenly everything was coalescing to black, but he was too tired – too deathly exhausted – to reach out and save himself. He let the blackness carry him into the sweet, cool soil.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Bail Organa followed the turn in the hallway and continued down the corridor until he reached the private medical quarters of the Rebel base. He rapped lightly on the door – when he received no reply, he twisted the handle and let himself in.
The dim morning light floated silkily into the large room through the satin shades that were drawn over two bay windows. Upon the dining table a half eaten breakfast of porridge and spice-pie still sent up faint wisps of steam. The bed was ruffled, slept in, and empty.
"Obi-Wan?" he called, scanning the cool, silent quarters.
It took him a moment before he could discern the cross-legged, gowned figure, sitting in the farthest corner of the room and half enveloped in its smoky shadows. Sighing, he strode over to the Jedi master. All members of the Jedi creed were known for being disciplined and difficult, but Obi-Wan Kenobi was legendary for being exceptionally so. He dropped to his knees and peered into the man's slack, expressionless face. "Obi-Wan. It's Bail." The eyes remained closed, the posture unchanging. "Are you awake?"
"I was never asleep," came the soft reply.
"What are you doing?"
"Meditating."
He might as well have said "go away," but Organa wasn't about to give up. "Obi-Wan, you're meditating on the floor. There is a bed in here, you know."
"Then that would be called sleeping, Bail." The blue eyes opened, crinkled in a small, serene smile. "Good morning."
Organa stood slowly and ran a hand over the taut, fatigued planes of his own face. While the Jedi had slept through all of last evening in a trance-like state that had perplexed the officials and health personnel to no end, he had spent the entirety of that time contacting every department at the headquarters, negotiating with leaders about the Imperial hostage, firmly calming the anxieties of all who had questioned about Kenobi's health.
After the collapse at the landing strip, they had rushed the Jedi into the medical bay, where the first readings of the man's vital statistics had nearly sent Organa into shock. Heart rate ten beats per minute. Blood pressure close to zero. And yet the medi-droid had still repeatedly proclaimed him to be perfectly healthy, and had firmly advised against Organa's orders to submerse him in a bacta tank.
"Obi-Wan Kenobi is in a healthy, alternate state of consciousness," it had intoned with programmed cheer, hovering and darting about the prone body like a protective queen bee against the frantic senator, and it was only when his elderly aide Marina Mare suggested that perhaps this was a form of Jedi meditation that Organa had finally relented to the medi-droid's diagnosis.
"I sense that you're not entirely happy with me."
He started as the voice broke him out of his ruminations – Kenobi had hopped lightly to his feet and was standing at the dining table, picking out marble-sized berries from the fruit basket in the center.
Damnation. Even after all these years, the Jedi knights' silent, liquid way of moving still awed and unnerved him. And this Jedi in particular – coupled with his thoroughly ingratiating calm…
Organa allowed his annoyance to flare out in full force. "What was this whole thing yesterday all about?"
"I believe I fainted, my friend," Kenobi answered, placing a berry in his mouth and chewing thoughtfully.
"And after that? Acting effectively like a – like a corpse – for the entire evening? Then miraculously regaining all your vital stats so that the damned medi-droid moved you straight from intensive care to here? Then – meditating on the floor like nothing happened? Obi-Wan, if the rest of the base knew half as much as I did about your condition, they would have worried themselves to death. To them, you are a hero. A legend. You can't imagine what the pandemonium was like out there after you crumpled to the ground like a rag doll."
The Jedi looked amused. "What makes you believe I took any voluntary part in all of this?"
"Knowing you and your kind, Obi-Wan…"
"All right, Bail. I apologize. Prior to my arrival, I hadn't slept in two nights, and so I decided to give my body a rest—"
"By fainting without warning. Look, if the medi-droid hadn't diagnosed you to be completely healthy, we would have buried you already."
He smiled sheepishly. "I admit the… deep meditation… probably wasn't the best thing to do, given that I didn't bother with a warning beforehand, and I'm sure it caused a lot of needless worry. But I'm perfectly well now, and I can go out there today and have a word with the members of the base if you'd like."
At least he had regained his usual loquacious good spirits. Organa sighed raggedly. "I'd prefer for you to keep to yourself until the shock of yesterday afternoon wears off from the base. In the meantime…" He anxiously searched into Kenobi's face; it appeared healthy, alert, refreshed. He chose not to evade the topic any longer. "In the meantime, Obi-Wan, we – that's you, me, and three closest secretaries of my cabinet council – need to discuss the Imperial hostage situation."
The Jedi's pleasant countenance remained smiling and unchanging, almost like a mask of amicability that soothed the senator, yet at the same time made him vaguely unsettled at the thought of what could reside behind it. "And when would the meeting be?" Kenobi asked.
"As soon as possible – as soon as you're up to it, that is."
"I'm fully rested now," he replied in that same smooth and unhurried tone, finishing the berries in his hand.
"Good. I'll leave you thirty minutes to get ready. Then C-5MO, the medical protocol droid, will come and escort you to the meeting room."
"I'll be ready."
Organa turned to leave; decided against it. He let out another heavy sigh and placed his hand upon Kenobi's shoulder. The muscle beneath the knit fabric felt too tense, too stiff for someone who had proclaimed to be "fully rested." Scrutinizing the Jedi's face, he thought he could discern the darkened circles under the eyes and the trench of a frown between the strong brows. "My friend, I know it's not fair to drag you into this so soon. I would let you rest longer if I could, but…" He leaned in and dropped his voice, a gesture more out of habit from the enemy-laden days of the Republic than anything else. "But things have been… difficult. With the hostage."
"Difficult?" The furrow between the Jedi's brow had deepened. "Explain, Bail. I sense through the Force it's more than just a difficulty. Did she attempt to escape?"
"Not from the reports I've heard. She's being held in a maximum-security cell, and I believe she's intelligent enough to know it's nearly impossible for a human to escape from it. Three negotiators visited her last night for a short, preliminary…" – he searched for the most appropriate word – "…interview, so to speak. Of course, we consistently use the most diplomatic and humane methods to treat our subjects, even during the latter stages of interrogation. And this was only the first phase. A simple, ten minute session."
The Jedi was rubbing his chin with a hand and did not speak – Organa continued following the brief silence. "However, I'm assuming that after she realized that we were trying to extract the details of the Imperial planet from her, she attempted suicide an hour after the interview. Tried to strangle herself with her handcuff cords. Luckily, alarms went off and the guards saved her in time, and now she's being held under suicide watch. Obi-Wan."
He had walked abruptly away from Organa, and was sliding open a closet door. He swiftly flipped through the racks inside and pulled out several items – black trousers, a simple white tunic, a belt – and threw them upon the bed. "We'll meet in ten minutes, Bail," he announced. "Gather together your cabinet and I'll see you at the conference room."
"Are you—"
"Yes, I'm all right. If this is the situation, then we don't have time. I'll need to change. Go now, my friend."
Yet as Organa stepped out the door, the Jedi called to him again, and this time his voice was… odd, somehow, the senator mused, turning around. Hoarse.
"About Lena."
"Yes, Obi-Wan?"
"Is she—"
There. He saw it. During that split moment he had seen the Jedi mask of nonchalant peace drop crashing to the floor, and it was replaced with an expression of utter – and then it was gone. Gone before he could tell what it was.
"Never mind," Obi-Wan Kenobi was saying, hurriedly waving him out. The Jedi façade surrounded his entire being like an impenetrable blast shield. "I will see you in ten minutes."
"But you were going to say someth—"
"It's best if we save it for the meeting," he interrupted. His frown was stern, and left no room for disagreement.
Shaking his head, Organa stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
They were gathered around a circular black marble table in the middle of the sparse and windowless conference room; a holo-projector computer unit took up much of the central space, and was currently buzzing out a faint blue cylinder of static halfway to the ceiling.
The senator Bail Organa stood at the end of the table, holding in his hand a miniature keypad. To his right sat an old human woman and a young male Ithorian – Kenobi recognized the woman to be the presence he had felt last night while he had submersed himself inside the Jedi trance. Marina was her name, he remembered from the snatches of conversation he had overheard. Marina Mare. The Ithorian he didn't know, nor the female Bith beside him.
Kenobi himself sat between the Bith and the senator – he drummed his fingers against the cold tabletop and settled back in his chair to avoid the icy stone surface from touching the skin of his torso. In fact, he was almost shivering, he realized, even though the temperature was apparently warm enough for Mare to don a half-sleeved shirt and not raise the goose bumps on her forearms. Almost inadvertently he thought back to Tattooine. By this time in the morning his hovel would have already been as scorched and stifling as the interior of an oven – the rough linen shades would have been drawn to reduce the amount of sunshine searing inside, and he would have been sunk deep in meditation in the coolest corner of the room.
But as the introductory proceedings went on – the Ithorian and Bith introduced themselves as Chig Nugla and Cam'ria Ban, respectively – Kenobi realized that it was more the prospect of this meeting that chilled him rather than the jolt of being away from the Jundland Wastes. Prior to the war he had always detested diplomatic gatherings; he found that even after an entire five years of exile he had not changed in this respect. The rooms were always too cold, the chairs too hard, the layered conversations too ceremonial. The varying sensations sent in through the Force – the jubilant vibes of triumphant senators mixed with the anger and humiliation of the not so fortunate always collided in the pit of his stomach like ten tracks of discordant music played simultaneously.
And on the occasions he chose to shut himself off from the Force, to save his brain from exploding with the dull ache of sensory onslaught, he found that he would often begin slipping into extended periods of silence, or launching into winded speeches that garnered him the disapproving looks of all across the board.
Maker knows he would have opted out of this meeting if it weren't for the fact that it centered on… well, the Imperial operation. The Stormtrooper. A-186.
He pulled himself out of his own thoughts and focused his attention on Bail Organa. The senator had pressed a series of commands on his miniature keypad and a holo-illustrated image of A-186 had materialized from the blue cylinder of static at the center of the table. Despite the crudeness of the generated image, the classical face was undeniably hers, framed by the tumbling black hair and veiled by the enigmatic smirk playing upon a full, bow-shaped mouth.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we're here to discuss the matter of the Imperial situation," Organa announced, catching the eye of every member in turn. He stopped when he reached Kenobi, fixing his dark brown gaze into the Jedi. "Stormtrooper A-186. Lena, as she calls herself. It's an alias she used to register for the Imperial Academy. Her real name is Larmé Sarena Narona. Larmé Sarena of Naboo."
An uncomfortable shuffle filtered through the Force, a rearranging of feet, a series of suppressed coughs.
Larmé Sarena Narona. Kenobi mentally rolled it over his tongue. A peaceful sound, like lazy water tripping over rocks. Such a quintessentially Nubian noblewoman's name, Larmé Sarena. Too ornate and soft for the Imperial Academy, of course – small wonder that she had shortened it to Lena upon registration…
"Yes, Obi-Wan?"
He realized he was still emptily staring at Organa; he shook his head in apology and glanced down at his hands. "Go on, senator."
Larmé Sarena… could it really be her? A-186? The one and the same?
"Our research shows that Larmé Sarena was born in the capital city of Theed," Organa was saying. "The exact date of her birth is not known, but we can approximate her to be three or four years younger than former Nubian queen, Padmé Amidala. As many of you may know, Queen Amidala, later Senator Amidala, lost her life at the end of the war, and her unborn child as well." He cleared his throat.
Kenobi couldn't help the bitter smile from tingeing his lips. So the Skywalker children continued to remain unknown to even the top leaders of the Rebellion. How hidden they were, hidden from the very organization that pledged to keep them safe.
"Records from Amidala's childhood show that the queen-in-training invited to her tenth birthday gala a younger playmate whom she called Larmie," the senator continued. "This we can guess was Larmé Sarena, especially since her parents, Thurkin and Shané Narona, are the fourteenth Duke and Duchess of the Northern sector of Naboo. Larmé Sarena is their only child. Now, take a look at this." He pressed another button on the keypad, and the illustrated image of Lena – Larmé Sarena – gave way to a rotating, three-dimensional scan of two leaves of paper. Kenobi squinted, made out the flickering blue headlines upon the sheets.
Old Republic military agreement contracts. For Thurkin and Shané.
"These papers – this means that the Duke and Duchess were working for the Republic during the war," Marina Mare whispered. Her powdery pale face was drawn into a web-laden frown, the corners of her lips downturned. "But Naboo's official stance during the war was neutral. It was a pacifist planet. No one was allowed to leave the planet in order to fight."
"For either side," the Bith Cam'ria Ban added, nasally. "Republic or Separatist."
Organa nodded again. "It was the perfect opportunity for the Naronas to set up an underground organization to recruit Republic sympathizers from Naboo. They recruited young men and women under the pretence that these volunteers were building a Human/Gungan diversity center on the banks of their largest swamp. These individuals then paid them a fee of three thousand credits to board Republic vessels designed as cargo ships. The ships would carry them to the nearest Academy where they would train. As many as fifty thousand Nubians took part in the flight out." He hesitated to catch his breath, then resumed, on an audibly more somber note, "We all know too well that when the war ended, the Republic dissolved into the Empire."
"And the Naronas' recruitment center?" Ban asked.
"Unfortunately, that remained, and it now pledged allegiance to the Empire. People love to side with the majority and with the security it offers, I suppose," Organa remarked, lifting his shoulders in a small, wry shrug. "It continued to funnel Imperial army hopefuls into the Academies. Eventually, even their only daughter, Larmé Sarena."
"But against the parents' will," Kenobi guessed. It didn't seem very plausible they would relinquish their hold on their only child and heir, and give her up to a bloody war.
"That would be correct," Organa replied. "By the time Larmé Sarena wanted to join, her parents' Imperial service had grown considerably. Secretaries upon secretaries, agencies upon agencies. A vast underground bureaucracy. The Naronas sat at the top like royalty – applications no longer filtered upward to them. So it was simple for Larmé Sarena to change her name to Lena Narona and file an application."
"What with 'Narona' being such a common Nubian surname," Mare added.
"Exactly. She slipped through the system and joined an Imperial Academy. And here's where the story gets very interesting. But you must first excuse me for a moment, ladies and gentlemen, while I find a glass of water."
As the senator signaled for the protocol droid at the door, Kenobi leaned in and folded his arms across the table. He ignored the cold marble pressing into his ribcage, and realized that unlike the countless number of meetings he had attended before, this one had managed to hold his rapt attention.
The history Organa was revealing to them seemed like a bedtime story the older Padawans used to whisper to younglings on stormy nights at the Jedi temple. He recalled the tales he had spun to the huddled clusters of wide-eyed children, now all slaughtered and dead and scattered to the four winds. He had told tales of the dangers of the Dark Side, mostly – fables designed to strengthen the belief in the Jedi code. And they had almost always ended in tragedy for the poor misguided Jedi, the woefully imprudent abusers of the Force.
Tragedy. He sensed that it was a path toward which Organa's story was quickly veering. Except, he corrected himself, it wasn't a mere story that had been embellished and enhanced through generations of repetition. It was a factual lifeline, and it was Lena's lifeline, and Lena was the main character, that fallen, broken main character…
At that moment Kenobi felt slashing through the Force a rare moment of premonition. Unlike Anakin Skywalker's vividly detailed dreams of the future, the premonitions he received were more akin to brief flashes of feelings rather than prolonged visions. And this one – pain.
Not physical pain, but something else much deeper and more private, and right then and there in the middle of the conference room, surrounded by a senator and three secretaries, he felt it gouge through him like someone had taken a shovel and dug out his heart.
A cold sweat broke out across his forehead as the premonition left him. In the name of the Force! He clenched his left fist, relaxed it, splayed his perspiring fingers over the icy tabletop. A Jedi should feel no fear. It had left him too quickly, he realized. It had left before he could discern whose pain it was. His or hers? Or both of theirs?
What was going to happen to him, or to her, that would cause such horrible pain?
No – damnation! Why did he still continuously factor Lena into his thoughts when she was effectively out of his range of concern forever? When the necessary questions were answered and the meeting adjourned, he would walk out of this room and leave all further procedures regarding the Imperial operation – and that was all she was – to the capable members of the Rebel base.
His work here would be finished.
It needed to be – light years away, on the baking, sunlit dunes of a desert planet, a little boy awaited his protection, while he languished here in a sunless, climate controlled conference room…
A hand was tapping hesitantly at his shoulder. "General Kenobi?"
He turned to the owner of the hand – it was Cam'ria Ban who had spoken, and now she was regarding him worriedly out of lidless black eyes. "You feel all right, General? You look white. Ill."
He inhaled sharply to disperse the shadows churning within him, and to shake the traces of the premonition from his bones. Brought himself to the present moment. "I'm fine, Secretary Ban. Simply a little tired from last night. I had – oh, never mind." He tilted his chin toward Organa, who had finished his glass of water and was resuming his position at the head of the table. "The meeting's starting again."
"As I was saying, ladies and gentlemen, here is where the story gets interesting," Organa declared in a newly hydrated voice once the side conversations had trickled to a stop. "I told you before that the Naronas charged three thousand credits for every individual they sent to the militia. But this was not the price they had reported to the Republic, and later the Empire. The reported price…"
Another document scan blinked into the holo-projector. It was the business agreement, signed by both Emperor Palpatine in his thin, spidery handwriting, and by the Naronas in their similarly small and cramped signatures. Kenobi scanned the document until he found the pertinent details. Two thousand credits must be paid per person, it said. Eighty percent of which would go directly toward the Empire for Academy expenses. This left twenty percent to the Duke and Duchess.
He felt his lips twisting into a humorless smile. "The Naronas under-reported their price to Palpatine himself, and kept an entire thousand credits for every individual they transferred."
The Ithorian Chig Nugla let out an odd-sounding scoff through his twin mouths. "They must have prospered."
"That they most certainly did," Organa replied. "They quickly became one of the most influential families on Naboo – nearly became the most influential family, if it weren't for the fact that Larmé Sarena escaped before the parents could marry her off to the widowed father of the queen-elect. If they had succeeded with the marriage, under Naboo's matriarchal laws, all of the royal powers would have flowed straight to the Naronas. All the money. The control. They would have owned Naboo within the week."
Lena had known. Kenobi held his surprise in check. The night he had rescued her, she had told him that she'd chosen to enlist in order to avoid a stifling marriage, but he couldn't believe her explanation anymore – not fully, anyway. She must have known of the consequences of the union; it would have given her power and luxury beyond her wildest dreams. Yet, despite it all, she had fled it. Perhaps she had felt the injustice of it, the web of deception behind her parents' lucrative business…
And then it became clear to him, the reason why she had chosen to throw away her riches to don the spotless, faceless mask of the Stormtrooper. She wanted to escape the lies of the outwardly peaceful and politically neutral planet. She wanted to live for a clean, untainted stability. For truth.
Two emotions welled up within him. One was sadness – Oh, Lena, you could have picked something else, anything else but this… The other was admiration. He kept both at bay. He ordered himself for the hundredth time that matters regarding the Imperial situation should no longer stir him personally, and that he, as a practitioner of the Jedi code, needed to remain calm. Focused. Collected.
Untangled in the sticky, inescapable mess that was human emotion.
He held up a questioning finger to Organa. "What is the situation with the Naronas now? Still rich? Still powerful?"
"Well…" The senator paused, and an electric silence filled the conference room as each met the anticipating glances of another. "That depends on us," he finished.
Ban let out a high-pitched squeak through her tiny, puckered mouth. "What do you mean, senator? Please clarify."
"See, we're certain that the Emperor does not yet know of the Naronas' deception."
"And why is that?"
"Because the Naronas are still alive. If the Emperor knew, they most certainly would not be. If Palpantine knew."
Kenobi understood now; he had unfolded the subtle layers of diplomatic double-talk that had streamed like coded messages into his ears, and now Organa's proposed plan of action lay starkly before him like the text scrolling across a children's holo-book. "What the senator means to say," he translated into the room, "is that we may use the knowledge of the parent Naronas to our advantage while dealing with Larmé Sarena. We give her two options. Either she tells us the location of the Imperial planet, or we send a message to the Emperor of her parents' deception, and her parents will surely be assassinated. Blackmail."
A hushed, troubled silence marred by harsh intakes of breath. The squeal of a chair as it swiveled. Tension mounted in the Force like sand in a storm, and it dissipated only when Bail Organa coughed uncomfortably into a fist.
"Yes. What General Kenobi said is… very roughly… the idea," the senator declared stiffly; Kenobi did not miss the glare Organa had cast his way, and he sensed, too late, that perhaps this had not been the most politically correct thing to say. He clambered for a patch-up. "Of course, I didn't mean that—"
"Now, the reason I mention this idea to all of you," Organa interrupted, "is that I am fully aware of its implications and its ethics. In fact, this issue hits especially close to home, since I am a settled family man, and I have a single young daughter of my own. So I am fully aware of its ethical dilemmas, ladies and gentlemen. Fully aware."
Kenobi settled back into his chair and gave up. He had said the wrong thing – he had said the truth, but the wrong thing. Again. Unlike the half-jesting annoyance he had felt from the senator earlier this morning, the wounded indignation that now flowed from Organa was soberly serious. And if he wasn't mistaken, did he detect an oblique personal attack in his friend's words as well? Settled family man… single young daughter. Given his status as a Jedi master, this was a world he would never understand… so how could he presume to venture to break of the infinite bonds of family love?
He sighed. He would have to talk to Organa after the meeting, try to assuage the unfortunate bruise he had just caused in their friendship…
"Technically, though, Senator Organa's plan is not in any way illegal," Nugla declared stereophonically, the two mouths on the either side of his flat neck opening and closing simultaneously. "The galaxy, officially, is still in a state of war. There hasn't been active fighting for years, but no peace agreement or treaty has been signed either. Palpatine simply crowned himself the Emperor – that doesn't constitute a peace treaty. So as of now, Stormtrooper A-186 is our prisoner in a war that is still raging. The options that Organa proposed don't violate the prisoner of war codes outlined in the Just War Convention. I move that we go through with this brilliant plan."
"But…" Marina Mare exhaled unevenly, clasping her translucent hands together beneath her chin. "Secretary Nugla, I understand that it's a legal move. But, still, deep down I feel that it's… it's not something that we should be doing."
"Why not?" Nugla countered. His suppressed irritation mixed with Mare's indecisive anxiety in the Force, filled Kenobi's brain with conflicting static. "If she gives us the location of the primary Imperial planet, trillions upon trillions of lives will be saved. A full-blown war between the Empire and the Rebellion doesn't even have to start!"
"But she's just a girl, Chig—"
"A Stormtrooper," he corrected.
"A human being." Mare's gray eyes hardened. "Underneath that armor is a young human being who deserves to be treated as so. If she refuses to tell us, we'll be murdering her parents with our bare hands."
"Which gives her all the more reason to comply with us! And the officials at the holding cell are treating her as humanely as possible, I assure you, Secretary Mare. If you're ever doubtful, check the surveillance tapes, which are available at any public library or database across Alderaan. And if you're still worried, then think of the estimated ten thousand Rebel prisoners the Empire is holding hostage, two hundred of whom are Ithorian, seven thousand of whom are human. What kind of treatment are they receiving when they're sent home missing body parts and inner organs? How much longer does this need to go—"
"Secretaries!" Organa called, raising both arms in the air like an air traffic director. "Secretaries, secretaries. Please. All this dialogue just goes to show that this topic is… sensitive indeed. I propose we all go home and think about it calmly for a day, then convene again tomorrow morning with our ideas."
The senator continued on for several more minutes with more trivial announcements, but Kenobi had already drawn his awareness back inside himself. What to do with the Imperial operation? What to do?
What stand should he take?
Well, it hardly mattered what he felt emotionally about it – for a Jedi, personal emotions always stood secondary to the grand flowing rhythms of the Force. And if a drastic action needed to be taken to prevent a catastrophe… then let it be, he thought.
And as the senator and the secretaries filed out of the conference room and he rose to follow them, he reminded himself that all this had been the fruit of his idea.
"Obi-Wan?" A voice at his shoulder. It was Bail Organa.
"Yes, Bail?"
"We need to talk this afternoon, Obi-Wan. Meet me in the garden two hours after lunch. You…" He trailed off, and Kenobi sensed that the indignation in his blood had cooled and given away to a weary regret. "You take care, my friend," he finished, and swiftly left.
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To be continued. Thanks for reviewing, everyone! Please leave comments! Flames, constructive criticism welcome.
