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Chapter 16

Parallel Force

"How do you know my name?" Obi-Wan demanded.

"The Force has a way of filling in the blanks," Palmer demurred. "But it doesn't know everything. So help me out: what brings you to the desert?"

Obi-Wan despaired. This wasn't the man Mace described. The ex-Jedi slithered between every honeyed word. "I'm looking for a book," Obi-Wan said.

Palmer grinned. "I believe I did have one of those. But I'm afraid I gave it away."

"To the Sith?"

"What if I did?"

"Then you're a traitor," Quinn gnarled.

"A traitor to what?" Palmer shot back. "I don't wear your robes, Master Jedi. Betrayal requires bonds I severed long ago."

Obi-Wan said, "Surely your disillusionment with the Jedi could not blind you to the Sith."

"You think I care about your little war, one way or the other?"

"You should!" Julian growled. "The entire galaxy is at stake!"

Palmer shook his head mildly. "It's a crime so few remember their history," he directed at Obi-Wan. "You see, I know where we've been. I've studied our ruins."

He went on, "Five thousand years ago: the Great Hyperspace War. The Sith struck out with evil intent, but they were driven back and killed. When Exar Kun slaughtered everything that moved, the Jedi thought they were living in the End Times."

"This is different," Obi-Wan said. "The Mercy Seat is—"

"An ancient weapon of unimaginable power. Don't you think that's what they said when Revan found the Star Forge?"

"Is there a point in our future?" Landon wondered.

Palmer smiled coldly. "Evil often wins, but it seldom conquers. Even after five thousand years." He squinted at Obi-Wan. "So, yeah, my man: when a band of Sith Lords rolls up and asks, 'What's it gonna be—your life or this book?' I don't carry the galaxy on my back."

"You're a coward," Quinn said.

"It's more shameful to deny fear than it is to run from danger."

There was nothing to hold onto. Every word was in shadow. Obi-Wan approached him with diminished patience. "What else did you give them? Did you translate the book? Show them anything else?"

Palmer never seemed to blink. Very slowly, he crouched beside a crate. His jacket bunched on one side to reveal an old lightsaber. When he turned back, he was holding a parchment. "There's something I privated. Something only meant for Obi-Wan Kenobi."

"Show me," he demanded.

"Negotiations have stalled," Mon Mothma admitted. "The Sith provide millions in aid, while we offer Halm nothing."

"I wish there was something we could do," Padme said.

"The time has passed. The Sith will annex Halm. Soon."

"It's that dire?"

"They expanded their embassy. Officially, to house more diplomats. But we've seen the transports."

Miler glowered. "And we're lettin' it happen? They'll own the whole sector. The outer rim will fall!"

Mothma leaned on her desk. Her worthless mandate compressed her shoulders. "If there was something I could do, believe me: I would."

Padme felt a rush of pity, unwanted by its recipient. What pain in the realization that you simply aren't useful.

"There's still a way to win this war," Aayla reminded them. "It's why we've come here, Ambassador."

Mothma straightened in her chair.

They didn't tell her the whole truth, but they told her enough.

Vader approached the embassy command center. He had preparations to make. He'd need the generals' support to complete his coup while preserving Sith infrastructure.

"Lord Vader!"

He met a low-ranking officer. The young man reported: "I have word from our agent in the Republic embassy. Senator Padme Amidala signed the visitor log. She and a small contingent are meeting with Mon Mothma."

Vader's jaw tightened. In his mind's eye, he saw Padme opposite the bureaucrat, too regal for her surroundings.

Despite Halm's importance, the Republic wouldn't send a senator to a dangerous outpost. There was only one reason to risk her safety: she was here to access the dig site. And she'd get her way, as she always did. Soon Republic researchers would claw at Halm's innards and find the secrets of the Architects.

Vader was certain this Mercy Seat was no match for the Horsemen, but he could end the threat now and crush the Jedi's hope. "Tell Commander Argyle to prepare his forces for immediate deployment."

"Which squadrons, my lord?"

Vader looked out the window. Beyond wisps of sand blowing through the courtyard, the city awaited. "All of them."

Palmer led them through the abandoned mine. Their only light was his palm beacon.

It was cold down here. The stench of death was strong. Countless miners had perished in these corridors.

Two miles down, Obi-Wan asked: "How much further?"

Palmer made a show of examining his map. "Not far. There's a fork up ahead; we'll follow it right."

"How do we know you're not leading us into a trap?" Landon asked.

Palmer let out a breath that may have been a laugh. No one could see his face. He angled the light to remain in shadow. "Trust me," he said.

"The air's getting stale," Julian remarked.

"That means we're close," Palmer assured him, before glancing at Obi-Wan. "I would've thought you could sense it by now. But you don't feel a thing, do you?" The young Jedi frowned at him. "No matter. We'll be there soon enough."

Palmer had a sinewy strength that often surprised you. Moving a small boulder, he revealed the crawlspace into the chamber.

He entered first, then Obi-Wan and the others. It was total blackness, except for Palmer's beacon, which he set on the ground.

Before its recent rediscovery, the chamber was vacuum-sealed for several millennia. Now there was air, but it tasted foul.

"You wanna turn on the lights?" Landon said.

With a soft hiss, Palmer's saber ignited, and his smile glowed purple.

He walked to the near wall. There was a deep groove in the rock face, filled with cloth, that circled the chamber. Palmer touched it with his saber.

A low flame ignited, spreading each way to make a ring around the chamber. It was enough light to see everything. The ceiling was transformed into a map of the galaxy. The walls told a story in writing and pictograms.

Julian grinned boyishly. The colors had faded, but it was no less spectacular. He swept his eyes across the chamber, turning in a circle. "This is unbelievable," he marveled. "I've neither seen anything like it."

Obi-Wan grabbed Palmer's beacon, scanning the rock face. He took a few steps to Quinn's side. "What do you make of it?"

"It fits the book," Quinn said. "Elements of Rakatan, some other dead languages. The pictograms are consistent with Ancient Halmese. So at least some of this was done by the natives' ancestors."

Obi-Wan faced Palmer: "And you? Can you read all this?"

"Come on, man," Palmer chuckled eerily. "That all you notice: pictures and words? Listen to the sound: the echo of people."

Julian asked, "Are you talking about ghosts?"

"There's no such thing. Not like you think," Palmer said. "Past, present, and future: they aren't separate places. People invented time just to keep from hearing voices."

Obi-Wan's beacon lit an image of two priests standing at an altar.

Julian said, "For those of us who aren't... in touch with the spirit world, why don't you start there?"

Palmer walked to the middle of the chamber. He glanced all around, as if maybe he'd forgotten.

"If you go far enough forward," he mused, "all of history is accused of being myth. If we don't like how it was written, maybe it didn't happen. But I can tell you that the Architects were real. They were the first true sentients. And five million years ago, they set out into space."

Obi-Wan moved the beacon to a disc-shaped craft.

"They wanted to explore—make contact," Palmer said. "But there was no one out there. No one worth talking to. Every race was primitive. They were the first to ask the question: what's the point? Why are we here?"

"Asking myself that right now," Landon mumbled.

"Eventually they stopped wondering where they came from. They took the mantle of creator for themselves. They built cities covering planets; they made the hyperspace routes we use to this day. Every vestige of civilization is owed to their ingenuity."

Obi-Wan shifted the beacon. Beneath some writing he couldn't decipher, there were drawings of many species—Iridonians, Killiks, Columi, Humans—crawling out of swamps toward a humanoid figure holding up shackles.

"But it wasn't enough to build things," Palmer said. "Power is meaningless when there's no one to lord it over. So they went back to those planets. And left pieces of themselves—a foundation for intelligence."

Julian squinted at the drawing. "Are you saying that we—all of us, the whole galaxy—are an experiment? We didn't develop naturally?"

Palmer smiled devilishly. "You say that like it's a bad thing, Doctor. Aren't you glad to know your origin? All our ancestors walked out of the same swamp."

"Out of the swamp—and into slavery," Quinn said.

Everyone's eyes were on the humanoid holding shackles.

"Expansion requires sacrifice," Palmer said. "But if you're wise and strong, you decide who pays the cost."

Obi-Wan dragged the light along an ecumenopolis. "Their empire: how far did it reach?"

"It was limitless. The core worlds. The outer rim. Even the unknown regions. Wherever there was life, the Architects were known."

On one of the other walls, a limestone temple brilliantly glittered beneath a sky with three suns. Men in white and black cloaks stood at the base of it. They held long brown staffs punctuated at the top by glowing spheres. Could these have been the progenitor to the lightsaber?

"They knew the ways of the Force," Obi-Wan said.

"Some. Use of the Force was restricted to priests. Commoners and slaves were punished for its exercise."

Julian scowled. "They sound thoroughly deplorable. All that technology—all that influence—but not an ounce of conscience."

"Conscience is in the eye of the beholder," Palmer said. "You spray your house for insects, you call it fumigation. To the insects? It's a holocaust."

"That's a damn fine rationalization, but that's all it is."

Obi-Wan patted the doctor's shoulder. "Point taken." He squinted at Palmer: "Their robes… black and white…"

"Disagreements developed. For over a hundred thousand years, 'Levolents' were the dominant group. They used the Dark Side to drive the empire's expansion. Eventually, there was nothing else to conquer. So they turned to other realms. They wished to control the incorporeal. That's when a new group emerged. They called themselves the 'Mercians.'"

"A civil war," Obi-Wan surmised.

"The Mercians believed it their duty to follow the will of the Force. The Light Side. They wanted more rights for the lowborn, freedom for the slaves. And eventually they convinced the prime minister." Palmer smiled, amused by it all. "The empire fell into chaos. Most of the planets stood with the Levolents. The war seemed hopeless for the Mercians, until the slaves rose up and evened the odds."

Julian's eyes raked over the war's depictions. His face narrowed and wore down to the sharpest depressions. "Mad men," he murmured. "The whole lot of them."

Obi-Wan studied the wall closely. His mind's eye and Palmer's words formed an illusion of experience.

"Before," he said slowly, putting something together, "you mentioned 'other realms'—controlling the incorporeal. What did you mean by that?"

"The Levolents were masters of the Dark Side. And there was one man in particular, one whose name wasn't recorded, as if even in life he was a spirit not to summon. One Levolent who knew secrets we can't imagine."

"What secrets?" Obi-Wan demanded.

"The secrets. He walked behind the curtain. Saw the workings of existence. He took up creation like an author's imagination."

Obi-Wan cocked his head. "The Force. He became—not one with it, but parallel," he realized. "He influenced the midichlorians to—what? Create life? Steal it?"

"That's a start."

"What happened then? A coup? He took over the Empire?"

"Don't think so small," Palmer chided. "Why would a man sit down to fish if he had the power to drain the pond?"

He watched Obi-Wan with interest. For most people, it's their brain that does the work; for others, the heart. But Obi-Wan's activity was centered in the soul.

"That's what you meant by incorporeal," Obi-Wan said. "The Levolents wanted to transcend their bodies. And this Nameless One: he actually did it. He became timeless. He became a focal point of beginnings and endings, like the Force."

Palmer nodded approvingly.

Landon said, "What the hell does this have to do with a magic chair?"

Obi-Wan shined the light on a Mercian meditating—surrounded by smoky shapes that looked like unformed humans.

"The Mercians worshiped the Force," Palmer said. "They could accept the Dark Side; they could accept that justice, while constant, sometimes moves backwards. But they'd never accept something outside the Force."

"So they created the Mercy Seat," Quinn suggested, "as a means to oppose the Nameless One."

Julian furrowed his brow. "Okay. That makes sense on… some level. But what is its function? What does the Mercy Seat do?"

Palmer only smiled. "When you know that, you'll know everything."

Julian turned to the ceiling. Filled with drawings of star systems, it was a primitive planetarium.

"What's all of this?" the doctor asked.

"The Mercy Seat was constructed on a planet said to be a 'nexus' of the Force. A point of convergence," Palmer said. "It's deep in the unknown regions. Almost impossible to get to. But a small group of Mercians created a narrow hyperspace route through the asteroids and debris."

He gestured to another planet back in known space. "When they returned home, they told no one what they'd done. There were rumors, of course. But those who knew the Mercy Seat's location took it to their graves. The hyperspace coordinates were written only once: on a tablet. It was hidden away in a Mercian sanctuary."

"What happened to it?" Quinn asked.

"During the war, the sanctuary came under siege. The Levolents found the tablet. There was a struggle, and the tablet cracked in two. The Levolents took one piece; the Mercians escaped with the other." Palmer gestured to a part of the ceiling too badly corroded to make anything out. "I can't tell you where the first piece ended up. The writing there: you can see it's damaged."

"And the other piece?" asked Obi-Wan.

"The Mercians' piece ended up in the outer rim. Today, we call the planet Mareth."

"Then that's where we start."

Julian blanched. "Mareth? You can't be serious about going there. It's under quarantine!"

"What are you talking about?" Landon asked. "What quarantine?"

"Ten years ago, there was a planet-wide plague," explained Julian. "The Republic set up a defense grid. No one can get through."

Obi-Wan stared at the drawing before switching off the beacon. He regarded the men calmly. "We'll have to find a way through. There's no other choice."

"There's always a choice," Landon balked.

"I will not allow this galaxy to fall to the Sith," Obi-Wan said sternly. "We know the stakes. We must find the Mercy Seat. And the road starts at Mareth."

He wasn't only the Negotiator for his ability to foster truces. Everyone was silent.

Landon scowled and glanced off.

"Do the Sith know about the tablet?" Obi-Wan asked Palmer.

"Not yet. But it's only a matter of time until they find this chamber."

Obi-Wan scanned the rock for weak points. "What would it take to destroy this?"

"Not much. Three—maybe four proton charges."

Landon sighed. Reaching into his pouch, he produced a stout metal cylinder. He held the permacrete detonator for Obi-Wan's inspection. "Will this do?"

Julian frowned. "Do you carry that everywhere?"

A thousand soldiers blocked the horizon.

They marched behind the Four Horsemen in perfect synchronicity. Rifles were drawn, held parallel to their bodies. The glare from the sun washed out their faces.

The natives peered through windows and alleys. For years, Halm's people had been diplomatically courted; they'd worn as a cloth the sense of their own importance. That was gone now.

Vader imbibed their fear, feeling aroused. Perhaps in his psyche, some wires were crossed. Or maybe fear is a kind of intimacy. Whatever its source, he felt pleasure and power.

The Republic embassy waited in the distance.

The Lanky Man threw the door open. His eyes were wild behind slanted glasses. "Ambassador!"

"What is it?" Mothma demanded.

"Outside! Something—" He shook his head to clear it. "Something's happening."

They followed him to the lobby. Looking out the glass panels, they found a sea of black and gray. Aayla could feel Vader at the helm. Even without the Force, Padme knew, too. The entire war flashed in front of them.

"We have t'go!" Miler barked. "Is there another way out? An evacuation route?"

Mothma blinked rapidly. "Y-yes. Yes. There's an underground exit."

"Where?"

"There's a false floor panel in the staff quarters," the Lanky Man said. "We'll take a tunnel to the landing pad."

"What about the others?" Padme asked.

"We're no good to 'em dead!" said Miler. He spun the Lanky Man around. "Move your ass, lad!"

With a final glance at Vader's army, the Lanky Man obliged. "This way!" He turned a corner—only to meet three men. They cracked him in the face, knocking him to the ground.

Miler moved to help him, but their guns warned him off. The Lanky Man writhed, cradling his chin.

Mothma looked at the men, dressed in embassy uniforms. Her personal guards were now her captors.

"Hello, Ambassador," the lead man said. "I'm afraid I can't let you leave."

Vader flicked his wrist, forcing open the iron gates, which snapped to each side, testing the hinges. The dark lord's cape waved in the wind, dust scattering everywhere.

He led Malice, Wrath, and twenty troopers. Demic took a group to secure the perimeter.

Vader felt their impatience to carry out violence. Of his three Horsemen, Demic was the thinker. The others required attention.

"They're to be taken alive until I say otherwise," Vader decreed. "Be on your guard. I sense Jedi within."

At the top of the steps, Vader shattered the glass entrance with merely a thought. He stepped through the opening and came face to face with the Republic contingent.

Mon Mothma received him defiantly. But all it elicited was a wicked smile. Vader enjoyed strong women, at least in his own mind.

The smile fell from his face when Padme appeared. In the ugly sunlight, her porcelain skin sparkled, and her chocolate eyes were framed perfectly by the curled hair that fell on either side of her.

Vader's eyes were yellow, then blue, and yellow again. He remained perfectly still, perfectly balanced. It only took a moment to force entry into her mind.

Padme didn't like Coruscant. Everything was a construct. Nothing grew or bloomed. The cityscape was a dark intruder; it got into everything, left you breathless. Naboo had never felt so far away.

Today's hearing was miserable, devolving into insults and half-hearted ultimatums. Every vote was blocked by filibuster.

She wondered sometimes if democracy worked. There was a reason the Sith were winning.

Padme climbed the steps to her apartment. All she wanted was a warm bath.

She entered her foyer with a sigh of contentment.

Padme threw down her bag and walked to the living room. She pulled the pins from her hair, so that it fell down her shoulders.

"Lights on."

Padme shrieked at the sight of fourteen-year-old Anakin. He sat silently on her couch, hands folded in his lap.

"Anakin!" Her heart fluttered. "How did you get in here?"

The boy was unashamed. "I'm a Jedi, Padme."

The lamplight filled his eyes, which were totally blank. That was new. Since the day they met, he'd been a bundle of sentiments straining to escape. Now in her living room, he was as empty as a droid.

"You have no right to be here," she said.

Her glossy frown reduced Anakin to the least importance. He lifted his chin: "I just wanted to see you. You're never around. I've been waiting for weeks. Left you notes and no answer."

Padme's eyebrows forced a line in her forehead. "I'm sorry you feel ignored, Anakin, but I'm very busy. Perhaps when the war's over, we can spend some time together. We could go with Master Obi-Wan to—"

Anakin scowled. "I don't want to talk about Obi-Wan. That's all I ever talk about. No one talks about me." Anger offered momentum to his original purpose. He pulled a shiny locket from inside his tunic. The silver chain wasn't big enough to fit a grown woman. "I bought this for you. It cost two weeks of my stipend."

Padme blanched. Hers and Anakin's portraits were inside the locket. It was unnervingly intimate.

Her mouth opened and closed. She was conscious of her womanhood. "Anakin, that's—it's very sweet of you. You didn't have to do this."

"I wanted to."

He held out the locket, but she stepped back to avoid it.

"It's so nice of you, Anakin—it's beautiful—but I can't accept it."

Blackness flooded his eyes. He made a fist with his free hand. "I spent everything I had on it."

"I know. And it was very thoughtful, but—"

"I spent everything I had!" he cried in a high rasping voice. "I do something nice for you and you—you walk all over it! Just like you always have! I'd walk through fire for you, Padme, and you can't even return a message!" His voice grew shriller but his eyes more dangerous. They had a light yellow hue unbecoming of a Jedi.

"Anakin," she harshly enunciated, "it's time for you to leave."

For the first time, Anakin truly understood all life had denied him. He threw a lamp to the floor with a stab into the Force.

"Now," growled Padme.

Anakin burned with anger, out of all proportion to its cause, and he judged that her unreason was driven by her bond with the man he despised.

He left, walking through the manic city, surrounded by right and wrong. Padme's rejection was terribly naïve. The power was his. He was a Jedi—the Chosen One—and she was part of his domain, the same as his lightsaber.

Vader smiled darkly. "Hello, Padme."