Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I am Father Christmas and I'm going to give them to myself for Christmas? No? It was worth a try...

oOo

Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and Jar Jar had just disembarked their submarine and were now standing somewhat aimlessly in the middle of a small courtyard with no idea where to look for the queen. Obi-Wan was itching to get going because he felt there wasn't much time to find the queen before she was to be taken away. But it was rather impossible to go ahead and lead the way when one was supposed to walk two steps behind his Master, who didn't show any signs of setting out anytime soon.

Qui-Gon was still standing there, glancing this way and that, obviously undecided in which direction to go.

"Master, I have a bad…" Just catching himself in time before he prompted another lecture, Obi-Wan quickly corrected himself: "Master, I think we should hurry a bit."

Then, as an afterthought to further convince his Master to get going, he added: "It would be most impolite to keep the queen waitimg."

Absently, Qui-Gon nodded, staring pensively at Jar Jar. Obi-Wan's bad feeling he had almost voiced just moments ago increased. And not without reason, as it turned out.

"Jar Jar will lead us through the city," Qui-Gon declared suddenly.

"What, mesa?" Jar Jar gaped at him, mouth hanging open from surprise.

"What, him?" Obi-Wan sounded just as surprised, though it didn't show quite as openly on his face. Again he could barely resist the urge to bang his head against something solid.

"Of course he will. I expressly told you in the Gungan council chamber that we will need him for navigation."

Even as a usually very obedient Padawan, Obi-Wan couldn't leave that unchallenged.

"But Master, he clearly has no idea where to go. Why should he lead the way?"

"Yes, why mesa?" Jar Jar asked, just as confused about Qui-Gon's decision as Obi-Wan.

Qui-Gon gave his apprentice an astonished glance. He wasn't used to such open criticism coming from his Padawan.

"His guess is as good as ours, maybe even better. You know, simple creatures often have a subconscious connection to the Living Force without being Force sensitive. They often perceive its will more clearly than people who rely too much on their intellect and think too logically." At that, he gave Obi-Wan a pointed stare. "It's usually called 'instinct', I believe."

I think it's called arbitrariness. Why did I get the loony Master again? Obi-Wan almost rolled his eyes.

Jar Jar looked at him, seeming somewhat lost. But as Qui-Gon gave him an encouraging nod, he breathed in deeply, then decisively turned into the completely wrong direction and set off at a brisk pace.

"Yousa follow me now, okeyday?" he said, looking back over his shoulder.

Qui-Gon seemed content to just follow wherever his latest project was leading him.

Well, I guess if we follow him just long enough, he will eventually lead us to the queen. By walking around at random, we're bound to get everywhere in time. Obi-Wan shrugged and then caught up with his Master. I just hope this doesn't take too long…

oOo

Twenty minutes later, Obi-Wan finally lost his patience. This was the third time they had ended up in this particular janitor's closet, and the Padawan didn't intend to ever see it again.

So when Jar Jar was about to turn into the same hallway they had gone down the last two times, he reached out with the Force to give the Gungan's mind a little nudge. It was not too hard to do without his Master noticing. In fact, the hardest thing to do was to find out exactly how Jar Jar made his decisions, or if he even thought at all.

Sending just the slightest bit of a Force suggestion to their 'navigator' was sufficient to make him turn around abruptly and walking down another hallway. Finally, the Jedi and their companion were walking into the general direction of the palace.

Repeating this performance at a few more intersections, they ultimately found themselves sneaking onto a balcony that was spanning a street where several droids were escorting some brightly dressed women walking behind a huge black gown. This must be the queen and her entourage, Obi-Wan decided after a hasty glance at the prisoners.

Qui-Gon had obviously reached the same conclusion.

"There, you see? Didn't I tell you that Jar Jar would lead us to the Queen? You have to trust in the Living Force, my young Padawan," Qui-Gon whispered so as not to be detected by the battle droids.

Deciding that now was not the time to give himself a severe headache from banging his head against the wall, either, Obi-Wan took out his lightsaber and threw his Master a questioning glance.

Shall we? He asked with his eyes.

Qui-Gon gave him an almost imperceptible nod while also unclipping his lightsaber from his belt.

As the first droids were arriving below their walkway, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan dropped down gracefully, followed rather less gracefully by Jar Jar who slipped and dangled from the balustrade, kicking and squirming.

While the Jedi made short work of the battle droids, the prisoners were staring at them, dumbstruck. After he had disassembled all the battle droids in his reach, Qui-Gon still found two of them standing off to one side just looking dumb and not doing anything.

Great, more faulty droids he thought as with a flick of his wrist he sent a powerful Force wave in their direction. But instead of dying like every self-respecting droid should – by disassembling into a smoldering heap of junk and metal scrap – they crumpled to the floor, groaning loudly.

Just as Qui-Gon was turning away to address the Queen, one droid kicked the other's shin and silently told it off: "I know that our part was to play dead in case of a rescue attempt, but you don't have to be all that convincing. You're a droid, for goodness sake, not some kind of third-class actor. Droids don't groan! Just look dead, alright?"

The other droid – who actually went by the name of Roger, by the way – threw his colleague a withering glance but said nothing, as dead droids weren't supposed to speak, either. Silently, both reflected on the incredible luck they had had for being chosen to report back to the viceroy, thus not being required to take part in the actual fighting.

Meanwhile, Obi-Wan was taking care of a few more battle droids, easily slicing through their armoured plating.

His Master was taking care of the Queen and her entourage. With a polite nod, he calmly advised the young Queen: "We should leave the street, Your Highness."

At once, Sio Bibble ushered the Queen off to the side where Qui-Gon indicated a concealed alleyway as their route of escape. Dutifully, a bunch of handmaidens followed. Captain Panaka ordered the other pilots that had been accompanying their queen to get the weapons of the battle droids the Jedi had so neatly disposed of.

"Yousa guys bombad!" Jar Jar declared, though it was not clear if he meant the fighting skills of the Jedi or if he was impressed by the way the pilots picked up the guns of their fallen enemies. It was probably the pilots, as he was directly looking at them, admiring their extremely elegant way of relieving their dysfunctional adversaries of their weapons.

Obi-Wan stayed back to make sure that they were not followed while everyone else disappeared into the alley.

"We're ambassadors for the supreme chancellor," Qui-Gon told the Queen.

"Your negotiations seemed to have failed, Ambassador," Sio Bibble immediately criticized.

Obi-Wan wondered who else wanted to compete with him in stating the obvious. That was until he rounded the corner and for the first time got a proper look at the Queen. Then he thought it was not the negotiations but his eyesight that had failed.

While he was walking towards his Master to stand the traditional step behind and to the side of his teacher, he couldn't help but turn his head to stare at Queen Amidala… and promptly walked into a wall.

Feeling more than slightly stupid and still a bit dazed, he looked to the Queen again. The he blinked unbelievingly a few times before returning his gaze to her.

She was frightening to behold.

This so-called "Queen" was no more a woman than Master Yoda was capable of talking forwards. In fact, "she" was almost as tall as Qui-Gon, towering over all the handmaidens and a certain Padawan. He was also easily twice as broad as the young Jedi, and beneath the many layers of silken fabric there were some impressively bulging muscles. The bizarre make-up couldn't quite hide the strong, square jaw, and Obi-Wan figured that these huge hands and thick arms could easily throw him halfway across the courtyard.

Everything about this fake Queen practically screamed "bodyguard". Under the given circumstances, Obi-Wan thought it wise of the Queen to protect herself like that, though maybe she should have been a tiny bit less obvious about it.

Finally reigning in his astonishment, Obi-Wan tried to catch up with the conversation. He genuinely admired his Master's ability to stay absolutely calm when his Padawan didn't trust himself to even open his mouth for fear of bursting out laughing. In fact – aside from being in awe of Qui-Gon's self-control - his whole concentration was focused on keeping a straight face, and so he had no idea what everyone was talking about.

Only when Qui-Gon asked "Do you have transports?" did Obi-Wan's wandering thoughts return to the much-cited 'here and now'.

Captain Panaka pointed in the direction they had been heading anyway. "In the main hangar. This way!" he said.

And with that, he completely shattered Obi-Wan's hard-won composure again. The Padawan was biting on his tongue to refrain from making a sarcastic comment along the lines of how it was really mindboggling that there were actual transports in the main hangar. Surely they wouldn't have thought of that all by themselves. But he didn't have much time to get his mirth under control because everyone was hurrying off towards the main hangar, leaving it to the Padawan to catch up with them.

oOo

Captain Panaka was in a particularly bad mood today. Not only was he not deemed important enough to get a proper first name, his home planet was also currently being invaded by the droid army of the Trade Federation. And as if that was still not enough, now he had been picked as leading security for the queen, today of all days. That was the least favourite part of his job: constantly trailing after the Queen and her numerous handmaidens, listening to their continuous chattering and being subject to all those embarrassing remarks about his apparently noteworthy backside.

But soon he learned that this day could get a lot worse. First being apprehended by a bunch of spindly droids, then enduring the shame of getting rescued by two of these so-called Jedi who wore robes that were far too huge for them and smelt even more piercingly florid than all the handmaidens put together made sure that the captain's mood didn't get any better.

And although the Jedi proved quite efficient in disposing of all these annoying droids, at least the younger one was, in Panaka's opinion, a blundering fool, barely better than the ungainly Gungan they had in tow.

"Get their weapons!" he ordered the other pilots. At least they wouldn't be dependent on the Jedi if they had their own weapons. At least not as much. Panaka wasn't especially delighted at the prospect of his life (or at least his freedom) in the hands of these Jedi. And as if to prove Panaka's point, the young man who had been fighting droids rather gracefully only moments before walked straight into a wall. Panaka couldn't quite suppress a snort, but thankfully everyone was too preoccupied to notice.

"We're ambassadors for the supreme chancellor," the older Jedi said as soon as they were in a concealed corner.

"Your negotiations seem to have failed, Ambassador." Sio Bibble said with as much contempt in his voice as Captain Panaka felt. These ambassadors must have done a really great job if the only thing they had managed with their negotiations was to get Naboo invaded.

"The negotiations never took place. It's urgent that we make contact with the Republic," the Jedi Master said.

"They've knocked out all our communications," Panaka informed him. "Otherwise, we obviously would have called the Police already. The Galactic Police, of course, who deals with all kinds of invasions, illegal armies and big-time meanies as well as all those criminal people who exceed the speeding limit in hyperspace. They are the nastiest of all the gangsters. But as I said, we can't even phone the Alderaanian prince the Queen has a crush on. And she usually calls him five to six times a day. She gets really cranky when she can't phone Bail, you know? And that qualifies as a national disaster; she may start ordering people beheaded soon. You don't want to get on her wrong side when she's in one of her moods."

Quickly glancing over to Queen Amidala, the real one, to judge her frame of mind, he noticed that the Jedi Padawan was staring at Queen Amidala, the fake one, almost gaping open-mouthed. And even though the Captain could completely understand the young man's bewilderment at the obviousness of the disguise, he couldn't help but gloat a bit to have surprised the allegedly unflappable Jedi.

Qui-Gon only looked at Panaka a bit askance, then asked: "Do you have transports?"

Panaka was sorely tempted to tell him that yes, they had transports, and these transports were currently located in the small janitor's closet that Obi-Wan knew only too well by now.

But then he looked at the Queen – the real Queen, not that embarrassing excuse of an authentic decoy that was presently dressed as the Queen – and realized that his remark about her being in a bad mood had not been phony.

So he said in a brusque but not overly insolent tone: "In the main hangar. This way!"

And with that, they marched off towards said main hangar.

oOo

Edited on 27th December, 2010