"...and he said, I know, it's driving me nuts!"
Ben laughed against her knee, his amusement genuine and his beard tickling her hand where it rested on the mattress. She wished she was in a less awkward position so she could see his face clearly. Her shoulders had been jammed into one end of the bunk with her head wedged tightly into the corner. Her legs were folded up and one of Ben's hands had been pinned between her ankle and the glass screen that had slammed down to separate the bunk from the rapidly depressurising cabin. Ben was curled up behind her in a bunk designed to accommodate a single person. They could hear the air being recycled through a wheezing pump, though there was no telling how effective it was or how long it would last. She knew that without the screen they probably would have been killed much earlier but after forty minutes her muscles were arching and her gratitude to her sister's ship design had faded; the bunk was starting to resemble a coffin rather than a life pod.

"Are there any more?" he asked.
She tried moving her neck around to see more of her sister's scribblings.
"No," she said, shaking her head. "Not that I can read from here."
"Are there any in the other bunks?"
"Not that I've seen. This was the only one."
"I wondered why you wanted this one so particularly."
"Bet you thought it was because of you, huh?"
Ben didn't answer.

Emalda sighed and wished she could turn her head enough to see more than just the bunk wall.
"Are you sure Qui-Gon's alright?" she asked, for the fourth time.
"Trust me. He's fine. I can sense it."
"Well, I've managed to provide forty minutes of entertainment. I say the next forty minutes is up to you."
"I'm not particularly good at telling jokes - especially not your kind of jokes."
She manoeuvred one of her hands around far enough to flick him on the nose.
"My kind of jokes? I ought to be mortally offended," she teased. "Are you saying there's something wrong with those jokes?"
"Never mind about the jokes."
"Jokes is general or just my kind?"
"Forget the jokes! No more jokes. How about I tell you a story instead?"
"Go on, then."

She hoped that her growing headache was being caused by the discomfort of her position rather than their oxygen running out. She didn't know if the air pump was capable of sustaining two people when the bunk was only intended for one. Ben shifted around behind her.
"Have I told you about the time Anakin snuck out of the Temple to join an illegal garbage pit race?" asked Ben.
"No. How do you race garbage pits?" Emalda asked teasingly.
He slapped her lightly on the rear with his free hand.
"Sorry," she said. "Do go on."
"I haven't started yet."
"Well?"
"Well... by the time I met I met him, when he was about nine years old, he was already an exceptional pilot. He used to be a podracer. Have you heard of pod racing?"
"I didn't think humans were capable of it."

Ben shifted again, accidentally elbowing her.
"Sorry. What was I...? Pod racing. Normally humans don't have the reflexes for it - the professional circuit is just too fast. It's also illegal but a lot of blind eyes get turned, especially in the outer rim when there's a lot of money involved."
"A Jedi racing illegally?"
She clucked her tongue disapprovingly. Ben shifted again and this time she wasn't sure the elbow was accidental. She would have stuck out her tongue if she thought he could see it.
"He wasn't a Jedi at the time. That's just what he was doing when we met him."
"We?"
"Master Qui-Gon and I."
"And Qui-Gon didn't report him for racing illegally?"

He sighed loudly. She didn't bother to restrain her grin since she knew he couldn't see it. He shifted again.
"Do you have enough room for your parcel up there?" he asked. "Only it keeps digging into my ribs."
"Pass it here."
The parcel was wriggled through the space between her ankles. She grabbed it with one hand and tucked it against her chest.
"Anyway, Anakin - illegal racing when he was young. Then he was brought to live in the Jedi temple. Now, the Jedi Temple is a wonderful place but it's not exactly brimming with illegal activity."
"So, he went looking for trouble?" she asked, tugging at the cords around her parcel.
"You have no idea."

Ben chuckled warmly and his amusement was contagious.
"By the time that boy was twelve," continued Ben. "I knew every illegal, dangerous or disreputable establishment within a thousand kilometre radius of the Temple."
"Your Temple was on a heavily populated planet?"
Ben paused and Emalda swallowed guiltily. She wished she could see his face and see whether he had been upset by mention of the place he had once called home.
"He sounds like a right handful," Emalda prompted him, hesitantly.
"He can be," said Ben wistfully. "Anakin has always been precocious."

Ben subsided into silence and Emalda again wished she could see his face. She pulled her parcel open, manoeuvring the paper by touch until she could see it clearly. She frowned and reached out to touch, just to confirm what she was seeing.
"Ben?"
"Hmm?"
"I think I know why they tried to mug me."
Without thinking, Ben tried to raise his head to look at her. His head bumped against the glass instead and he huffed in frustration.
"Inquiring minds would like to know why," he said at last.
"They weren't after me," said Emalda, her stomach sinking. "They were after the jade statues they'd stashed in my costume."

Ben was silent for a moment.
"You mean the costume you smuggled past customs and onto the ship?"
Wincing, she passed a palm-sized sphere down to him. The stone was surprisingly smooth in her hands, contrasting with the warmth of Ben's fingers as he took the object from her.
"This could be a problem," said Ben gravely. "Any idea who could have slipped these into the parcel?"
"I didn't have any dealings with thieves, just a tailor!" she snapped.
If there had been enough space to cross her arms and glower at him, she would have.

"On Wefhuk, the tailors would know the local laws," said Ben firmly. "They knowingly broke the law to make and sell you this. You had contact with criminals - even if you don't consider the laws they broke to be particularly serious or just. Now, who gave you the parcel?"
She sighed, "I was given the parcel by a droid at a bar."
"Was the droid alone?"
"I spoke to it alone but I think both the bartenders were in on it."
"Descriptions?"
"One human, one twilek," said Emalda, straining her memory and hoping she wouldn't be expected to provide more detail. "The human was named... Chara Polli, and the scrambled little droid was W3-D7. I don't know the Twilek's name."

"Did you talk for long? How many times did you meet?" asked Ben, firing off the questions with such calm efficiency that she was forcibly reminded that Ben was a professional.
"Only once and only long enough for Chara to point me towards the droid. The bar was crowded and she wasn't feeling in a chatty mood."
She regretted now that she hadn't paid more attention at the time.
"Do you remember anything special about the droid? Was it modified in any way?"
Emalda paused. She didn't see that the droid would be very important, since they could so easily be sold, salvaged or memory wiped.

"I don't know," she said testily. "It was serving droid. It had one wheel."
"What makes you say it was scrambled?"
"It kept repeating itself. It wasn't up to very complicated conversation."
He laid a hand on her leg, "Are you sure?"
"What do you mean, am I sure? Yes, the droid's logic circuits were about as crossed as they come!"
"That's not good," he said unhappily.

He didn't continue and she had no choice but to ask.
"Why not?"
"Because I've personally dealt with the WA-7, which was a much older precursor to the W3 series," he said quietly. "If that W3 droid is anything less than a competent server, and couldn't even carry on a conversation normally, then it's likely that its processing power has been used for other things."
"Oh. Like what?"
"Slicing into computers and alarm systems, for a start."
She digested that for a moment before conceding, "No. That's not good. Not good at all."