Legacy IV

Chapter 2

Anakin had the store clean and tidy before second sun-up. You had to get moving early on Tatooine – most business happened in the early morning, before the heat waxed to intolerable intensity. In summertide, the suns moved more slowly across the sky. He'd wondered about that a long time. The Jawa traders said it was because the two stars were bickering lovers, and tarried along their road in heated debate during the hot months. The spacers said it had to do with elliptical orbits, but couldn't proffer more detailed explanation; Shmi, who knew everything important in life, told him not to worry about it so much.

"It's how it is for us, Ani. Why do you have to understand? You can't fix it and you can't change it."

He polished the greasy countertop and perched upon its smooth curve. But what if he could fix it? Pretty much anything could be fixed if you knew how it worked on the inside. Like that racer he was building for Watto. It was going to be the Fastest Pod Ever, simply because Anakin did not merely know how to build a racing machine. No, he knew more than that: he understood the nature of speed itself. And so, he was its master.

"Master Anakin." He tried the syllables out, softly under his breath and grinned. It had a nice ring to it. Sometimes he fantasized about living in a big luxury palace with Shmi, droid servants tending her every need, doing the cooking and cleaning and work for her so she could rest and learn to read like she'd always wanted. And lots of hangar bays out back where Anakin would build things. Racers and aircars and swoops and .. other stuff. Wizard stuff like he didn't know what, yet.

That was a good daydream. It was safe, unlike the other one, the scary one that felt more like a glimpse of the future. In that dream other things happened. He was far away from Shmi and bad things plagued his every step, things he had to fight. Dark things, rimmed in fire and ice.

He shuddered, and hopped off the counter just as Watto banged though the front entrance, setting the door chime jangling.

"Ehhhh, you little chiszzzk, stop lounging around and do some work!" the gruff Toydarian greeted his hapless underling.

"Cha 'uzzcha," the boy retorted. The work's all done.

"Huh." Wings fluttering madly, the junk shop's owner heaved himself into his private lounging nest above the back room – the grotty little hammock where he kept his money and slept the long afternoon hours away. "Don't give me lip," he warned, lackadaisically.

"Okay, okay." A figure was already darkening the doorstep, the morning's first customer. Anakin squinted, and then made a face.

He didn't like that man. Or, he didn't trust him. He busied himself with sorting spare parts, hunkering down behind a display shelf so he could listen without being spotted.

"'Day to you,"" the visitor called out.

"Buki!" Watto hollered. Then, "Where in Hukasa is that little –ehhh! What can I do for you, eh? Some more vaporator parts? You wish!"

The broad-shouldered man entered, politely brushing dust off his trousers and boots before crossing the threshold. "Actually, no. I ah… well, I've come to make a business proposition, Mr. Watto."

"Bees-ness, eh?"

Anakin could hear the intrigued pumping of the Toydariuan's wings – thump thump thump as they batted the air about his bloated body. In his present financial straits, Watto was vulnerable to the rapine and greed of his neighbors. A business proposition might be anything – a veiled ultimatum, a bad investment scheme, an opportunistic rival seeking to further his ruin. Or it could be a mutually beneficial arrangement. There was no way to tell – but the humble moisture farmer standing before him was no match for the conniving junk dealer's wit, in any case. He was not a real threat.

"Yes, sir. Perhaps I can buy you a drink at the cantina, and we could discuss it?"

The local watering hole opened before dawn, like any other respectable establishment. "All right. Buki! Hey, you-"

"I'm here." Anakin popped out from his place of concealment, all wide innocent eyes and pert attention.

Watto's bulging eyes slatted suspiciously. "Tend shop while I'm gone, eh? I'm at a business meeting if anyone asks."

"Okay, Mr. Watto sir."

"Hhhnnu," the Toydarian grunted, hovering his way into the blazing early morning with the farmer in tow.

Anakin hopped back onto the counter, twisting the hem of his stained tunic. A funny pit had formed in his gut, a queasy premonition niggled at the back of his mind. Cliegg Lars had a look about him – a desperate, last-resort kind of look. Anakin didn't like it. He didn't like any of Lars' looks, especially the one that he bestowed on Shmi, when he sneaked into the slave quarter to speak with her. She'd invited him into dinner once or twice, too, and stayed up long into the night talking to him.

Anakin wasn't stupid. He'd grown up around animals, and he knew stuff.

"That farmer just wants to e'chuta schozza, Mom."

"Ani!" Brown eyes widening in pained disapproval, Shmi had fixed him with a reprimanding look. "That's not true. And you're too young to think about such things."

"I'm not too young, Mom. And he's a sleemo."

"He is a good man. Can't you feel it?"

All Anakin could feel was the hard lump in his throat. He didn't want Lars in his house, and especially not talking to Shmi, or looking at her in a way that made her look back at him. It wasn't right ; it threatened to punch gaping holes in his carefully fortified oasis, his happy home, his sanctuary.

"Ani…." Shmi tried, cautiously. "Have you ever thought what it would be like to have a home? A real home, and freedom?"

Of course he had! "I'm gonna free us, Mom! Just give me more time!" He was going to invent something fabulous he could sell in the Core, and find their slave implants and remove them, and steal a starship and learn to fly it so they could run away and be free and rich and …and all kinds of stuff. As soon as he was old enough, had learned enough. She wasn't giving him enough time. "And we have a home! Right here! Why are you being stupid?"

He never heard the answer, because he had run away – and later, when the storm had passed, Shmi never mentioned the exchange again.

Anakin had hoped that maybe Lars would give up, or move to the other side of the Dune Sea. Or maybe be eaten by a krayt dragon or something. But the stupid bantha head didn't and hadn't. And here he was again, seeking Watto's favor. Anakin had a clear idea just what that business proposition entailed. Once again, he didn't have enough time.

There was a filthy little hovel of a fresher attached to the shop's back porch. He vomited his guts out and then felt better.

And the seeds of a plan germinated in his imagination – a desperate heroic plan, one wild enough and bold enough to satisfy the ambition of a man cursed by a deficit in years and an excess of talent. Freedom beckoned, and so did glory. The Boonta Eve Podrace was just around the corner. And if he played his sabaac cards right….

He could fix everything.

"That dust is going to wreak havoc on the reactor coolant intakes. We'd better cycle down all the way."

Qui-Gon Jinn agreed with a curt nod; his mind was already reaching out past the dust-clouded viewport into the wild expanse of sculptured rock and oceanic sand dunes beyond. The Living Force scudded like precious dew over the barren landscape, drawn thin like purest blown glass, almost harmonic in its brittle intensity here. "Gorgeous," he murmured, despite himself.

Beside him, Obi-Wan raised a sarcastic borw, flicked his eyes forward to the desolate and storm-smeared desert outside, and then back to his former mentor. A barely bridled witticism sparkled unspoken in his gaze.

He didn't need to say it. Torbb Bakk'ile filled the cockpit hatchway, hands on broad hips. "With respect Master Jinn, you've an odd notion of beauty."

"Much depends on relative perspective. He's just spent weeks studying exotic specimens with Master Pertha on stars-know-what forsaken septic pit in the far Rims. This is a resort by comparison."

The tall woman peered critically at the shifting veils of sand and wind. Gravel particles hailed against the transparisteel enclosure, ghostly hands clawing for admittance. "All the same."

Qui-Gon held up one hand, placidly. "Feel it," he told his subordinates. "The Light grows pure and potent when attenuated; in weakness, peculiar clarity- in limitation, furled potential. A fit place for a Vergence."

"You are waxing poetical in your senility, Master."

"The Force is paradoxically strong here, where Life must struggle so valiantly."

Torbb Bakk'ile set about shutting down the console and packing survival gear, opting for pragmatic silence.

"Of course," Obi-Wan drawled. "Hence the paucity of violent crime and the staggering effusion of cultural achievements on Tattooine. I can hear the Force singing, Master…. Oh wait .That's just the drunks at the local cantina. My mistake."

His companion rose to his full and impressive height and towered over the insouciant Knight, arms folded. "You are far too young to be such an incorrigible cynic, Obi-Wan."

"I'll grow into it," the younger man blithely assured him.

Torbb cut across the friendly banter. "All right. Kenobi, you and I should follow up that tracking beacon. He's docked within forty klicks of this location – we'll take the swoops. I've got goggles and helmets for both of us."

"Fine." Obi-Wan pulled a tattered duster's thick folds over his head.

"You haven't managed to lose it yet," Qui-Gon remarked, feigning amazement.

He received a sardonic glare in reply.

"I shall make a sortie into the nearest settlement," the Jedi master decided. "If there is to be a black market auction, the locals are sure to be gossiping about it."

"My thanks," Torbb responded, making him a shallow obeisance. "Your assistance is deeply appreciated, Master Jinn." She disappeared into the aft compartment, en route to the cramped cargo bay where the lightweight grav bikes waited.

Obi-Wan hesitated upon the threshold before following her. "There were no ransmissions from Coruscant."

"The Council will not notice your …delayed.. in returning for another half-cycle."

The younger Jedi frowned. "I was hoping for word from Bant…"

Qui-Gon grimaced in sympathy. The rim patrol mission had ended in disaster, for his young comrade: three of his friends had been injured, two of them gravely, in the aftermath of a slave raid and ambush. "It was your choice to participate in Torbb's quest," he gently admonished. "Focus on your purpose here, rather than your anxieties."

Obi-Wan nodded, wryly, as though chastising himself for needing the reminder. When he raised his eyes again, a question lurked in their depths. "Why did you come? Truly?"

An evasive smile. "For the scenery."

"Truly, Qui-Gon." There was a hint of unlikely emotion behind the vexed inquiry.

"Truly?" He spread his hands. "I felt you might need… an accomplice."

The young Jedi snorted, dismissing his own ill-ease along with the conversation. "Don't take candy from strangers or pet strange akks, Master," he advised, an edge still rasping under the jesting words.

"I shall endeavor to honor your teachings in all things," the tall man quipped, bowing low.

Obi-Wan smiled despite his effort at control, and disappeared through the hatch in a skirl of duster folds and scuffed filed boots.

A few minutes later, two swoops sped away in an easterly direction, kicking up billows of white sand behind them, while a single lonely figure trudged doggedly toward Mos Espa's dilapidated outskirts, cloak and long hair streaming behind him in the angrily rising wind.

High on an outcoropping of sun-bleached stone, just within macrobinocular range, the hunter watched them depart.

He had caught their pustulent stench the moment he'd descended his ship's ramp: Jedi. Two headed into the open wilderness, and Hutt territory – the other tramping like an aged pilgrim for the spaceport town.

They knew where the Child was hidden. He could taste it, feel it in the Enemy's signature, the trace of contact, the stamp of destiny. And why else would they be here, on Tatooine, than to recover what they had hidden? He had only to track them down, intervene and capture the prize before they managed to smuggle it off-world.

But there were three, and he had learned his bitter lesson already – destruction had nearly found him on Paxel, when the Enemy had blown an entire port sky-high; the hunter had escaped the conflagration by a burning hair's-width, fleeing the scene even as his opponent sped away in cowardice.

Let the Jedi run. He would run himself out, eventually, to the labyrinth's heart where love and hate melded together into one monstrous amalgamation, where the hunt would find consummation and release.

In the meanwhile, the hunter would wait and watch. Two compact probe droids winged their way down either side of the craggy slope, eager hounds pursuing their unwitting quarry. When the spies had dwindled into specks amid the swirling dust, the hunter wrapped himself in his sable cloak and returned to the ship, there to keep his patient vigil and to nurture the hearth-flame of his contempt.