OOO
Chapter Nine.
OOO
Silence filled the cockpit. Wisps of fog the color of old moss washed across the glass as the shuttle sunk aimlessly deeper into the underworld.
Barriss sat totally still at the helm, knuckles white as she gripped the controls, her jaw tensing every few moments.
A tingly knot coiled through Aiden's stomach, squeezing. She had never looked this shaken before, and the thing expanding inside him only increased as the seconds passed.
He tentatively reached toward her. "Barriss?"
"Don't." Her voice cut like a poison-dipped dagger.
He flinched back. "...Barriss?"
"I told you to run," she said quietly.
His brow knit, and the whisper in his belly grew like tendrils of a vine sprouting up through his torso. "What?"
"I told you to run." She released a breath. Or a breath happened. "And now my master knows I helped you escape custody yesterday. She would have found Dak's data pad on you, and I would have been imprisoned!"
She gripped the controls tighter, and the tendrils coiled around his heart, spreading a cold numbness that settled like lead. "You were squaring off with an armed maniac who could fly. What was I supposed to do? Just leave you there and hope for the best?"
"I would have been fine! I face deadly enemies every day! But now, because of you, I've just had to escape my own master like a criminal!" She tensed her jaw, and the tendrils clamped. He searched desperately for something to say, but all he found waiting for him was a horrible feeling clawing its way through the strange whisper inside him, choking the words right out of him.
One little attempt to do the right thing, and it blew up in his face just like everything else in his life had.
And she's the one who got caught in the blast.
The breath she released ridged in the silence of the cabin, and for the second time in his life, he felt truly lost with nowhere to go.
If she didn't want him to try to comfort her, the least he could do was get out of her face so she didn't have to look at him.
He stood from the copilot's chair against the churning in his stomach, and shuffled to the exit. He placed a hand on the doorframe, and let his mouth speak without clearing it with his mind. "I'm sorry."
He spoke with as much sincerity as he knew how to, but couldn't bring himself to look back at her. Maybe he was a coward after all.
He walked out of the cockpit, drained and emptied, and slumped down into one of the seats lining the compartment.
Dak's data pad stabbed him from his pocket.
He flinched and grit his teeth, and yanked the stupid thing out, drawing his arm back like a pitcher ready to hurl the hardest fastball of his life.
Barriss...
He froze mid-throw, clamping his fingers on the edged, plastisteel casing. She got this for him to use. She stole it for him.
He wasn't stupid. There was only one way she could have gotten Dak Landon's data pad, and it wasn't by asking permission. Just another compromise she had made for him. Just another effort of hers he almost ruined by smashing it across the room.
He sighed long and slow, and brought the data pad down to his lap, holding it in both hands. The look of fire in her eyes that night in the motel room flashed through his mind, her words echoing after: This is what you're going to use to expose Palpatine, and make it all worth it.
He brushed his thumb across the display, 'Access Denied' flashing for a brief moment before going dark again. The blank screen stared up at him as if saying, What are you going to do about it?
He cast a glance toward the cockpit.
Faint hitches of breath from the only person who had ever been good to him floated into the passenger compartment, and he grit his teeth against the growing cavern inside him.
Fine. He tensed his jaw, and turned back to the data pad, preparing to launch his first wave of assault on the lockout system.
He needed to take down Palpatine anyway. It was the only way he was ever gonna get his life back. And now, it was the only thing he could do for her, too.
He owed her that much, at least. And if Palpatine went down in the process, well... That was just giving the bastard what was owed him.
He released a breath, and shook his head. I'll make it worth it, Barriss.
Somehow.
OOO
The inky Coruscant twilight filtering through the Council chamber windows was broken only by the faint dots of light trailing from one end of the night sky to the other behind the gathered master's heads.
Tension lurked under the surface of the room, adding unspoken meaning to every glance and flick of the eye that passed between those present.
Shaak Ti, Ahsoka Tano, and Luminara Unduli stood in the center of the chamber, Ahsoka looking lost as she stood between the two masters, confusion and hurt etched across her face.
Luminara simply stared ahead, her face a mask of calm.
"Perhaps it was a mistake to send Barriss to search, after all," Mace said, casting a glance at Yoda.
Yoda frowned, absently running a finger back and forth along a groove in his walking stick.
"Is it possible Barriss has joined Count Dooku?" Ki-Adi Mundi said.
Luminara's eyes flashed, piercing the mask for the first time. "No."
A fresh wave of silence washed over the chamber.
Obi-Wan cleared his throat, and spoke as carefully as he could. "Can you think of any reason Barriss would ally herself with Stari?"
All eyes turned to Luminara.
She stared back at Obi-Wan, and finally, her gaze lowered. "I don't know."
Ahsoka scrunched her forehead.
The chamber doors opened, and a padawan hurried in. He stopped in the center of the room next to Ahsoka, and bowed to the seated Council. "Masters," he said, slightly out of breath. "Forgive the intrusion, but Chancellor Palpatine has requested an immediate meeting. He says it cannot wait."
Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow, and Mace's jaw tensed.
A rare sigh rattled in Yoda's throat. "Meet with him, we will."
OOO
Palpatine's thumb and forefinger ground together in a vicious circle as he pressed them together so roughly, the veins in his hand ridged.
The remains of a communicator lie broken against the far wall of his office.
Bane would pay for this incompetence. The slicer would die. By Palpatine's own hand if necessary. The little cretin had caused far too much trouble for such an insignificant worm. Nevertheless, every unexpected development, no matter how unpleasant, was nothing more or less than an opportunity to be forged into advantage.
And he had built a career on forging circumstance into advantage.
The intercom on his desk lit up. "The Councilors have arrived, Your Excellency."
"Send them in." He exhaled slowly, and lifted his hand and pulled the smashed communicator to himself, tucking the evidence of his wrath into his robes and forcing the tightness pulling at his lips to relax into a placid expression.
The door hissed open, and Masters Yoda and Windu walked in.
Yoda pulled himself into one of the two red velvet chairs with a grunt, folding his legs under him and leaning on his walking stick, peering over his knuckles at Palpatine. "Unusual it is to call for such an urgent meeting, Chancellor."
Palpatine stared right back at him. "It's also unusual for a Jedi to aid Separatist agents."
Mace narrowed his eyes. "You're well informed, Chancellor. We only learned of it an hour ago."
"Yes. I am." He waited to see if either of them would speak further. Neither did, and he continued. "What are we going to do about this, Master Jedi? This does not reflect well on the Jedi Order. Especially with public sentiment toward the Jedi as mixed as it is. If news were to leak that one of your Order was responsible for freeing a Separatist agent... Who knows what actions might be taken."
Now even Yoda narrowed his eyes at him.
Mace openly shot daggers. "Are you threatening us, Chancellor?"
"Not at all, Master Windu." Palpatine smiled faintly. "I wish to spare the Jedi from any political backlash this news might cause." He leaned back, and laced his fingers in front of his face. "I think it would be best if the hunt for Aiden Stari was taken over completely by the SBI to prevent any accusations of conflict of interest being leveled against your Order."
Mace remained standing and looked down at him, folding his hands in his robes. "There is no conflict."
"Of course not, Master Windu. Nevertheless, public sentiment is a very real factor to consider in these matters."
"The best chance of locating him, the Jedi have."
"You also have a good chance of turning the public against you if it comes out that one of your Order was involved in recent events." A hard gleam cut behind his eyes. "I would hate for that to happen, Master Jedi."
Yoda's clawed fingers pressed ever so slightly into his walking stick.
"If you want to speak of recent events, Chancellor," Mace said. "I'd like to discuss the sabotage of the transport shuttle at our Temple. The only one we informed of the transfer was you. And the very next morning, someone manages to infiltrate the Temple hangar and plant an explosive charge on the craft before takeoff." Mace stared down at him. "Do you have any thoughts on how that could be?"
Palpatine gazed back passively. "The young Jedi who whisked Aiden Stari out of your grasp tonight; she was also the one aboard the transport shuttle when it went down, correct?"
The two Jedi remained silent.
A ghost of a smile haunted his face. "Then it appears her treachery runs deeper than anyone suspected." He turned to some forms on his desk waiting to be signed, and began looking them over. "It's your Order's reputation on the line; it's your decision. I merely wished to make you aware of some of the farther-reaching consequences of dogmatism in this instance. Good day, Master Jedi."
He spared them no further attention as he began adding his signature to the forms.
Lovely anger radiated from Mace like licks of flames.
He buried the smile that tugged at his lips.
Finally, Yoda climbed down from the chair without a word. The clacking of his walking stick faded toward the door, and Mace turned and followed after him a moment later, the door hissing shut behind them.
Palpatine set the forms down, and leaned back in his seat, lacing his fingers together once more. The trap had been laid, and the path leading to it cleared. For all their wisdom, the Jedi never did seem to recognize pitfalls until they were at the bottom of them.
The corner of his lip pulled. Yoda was correct about one thing, however.
A Jedi did indeed have the best chance of finding the little cretin.
He reached for the intercom on his desk. "Kaala, bring a new communicator to my office immediately."
OOO
The stabbing light of Dak's data pad burned Aiden's retinas in the dark passenger compartment, the lines of code scrolling down the display blurring and melding together into gibberish as the hours passed. His eyes had begun to feel scratchy hours ago, but he refused to give them a rest until he made some sort of progress on the first layer of security locking him out of the data pad.
Dak Landon was one paranoid son of a bantha.
"Aiden." Barriss' quiet voice floated out of the cockpit.
He blinked and looked up from the pad, taking a moment to realize Barriss was calling for him. He set the data pad down on the seat next to him, and ran a hand down his face, blinking away the outline of the display burned into his vision before shuffling to the cockpit and peeking his head in.
"Yeah?"
Thick haze choked the view outside the cockpit window, painting the sludge-covered excuse for a landing pad below in a vomitous mist.
How many levels deep were they?
Barriss didn't turn around, but simply gestured to the copilot's chair without much enthusiasm. "I need you to lock in the landing gear while I bring us down."
"Sure." He lowered himself into the chair, looking at the panel in front of him. "Which one's the landing gear?"
She pointed to a lever.
He grasped the lever and eased it back, the shuttle rumbling as they lowered to the ground, touching down with a small jolt.
The hum of the engines dimmed, and the whine faded away, compressed steam slithering out of exhaust ports beneath the ship and weaving together with the obscuring haze like a ghastly, ethereal dance.
He wrinkled his nose. "Where are we?"
Barriss powered down the engines, and stared out the glass as if the ruins of her life stared back at her.
"Our new home."
END CHAPTER