Garen dropped them smoothly out of hyperspace, and Obi-Wan took a breath and let it out as his senses recovered from the mild deprivation hyperspace travel always brought with it.
As soon as his senses reoriented themselves, he stretched a tendril of inquiry through the bond he'd established with Garen.
As Garen sent back a wave of confirmation, deepening the bond ever so slightly, the royal cruiser appeared in normal space beside them.
The comm dinged almost immediately, and Obi-Wan answered automatically.
"Transmitting our approach vector now," Qui-Gon said. "Cover us."
"Acknowledged," Obi-Wan replied, his Force-senses already stretching toward the ships ahead of them. The ships hadn't shifted positions – or, rather, they were arranged as they had been before, though of course they might not be in the exact positions they had been.
He let his senses flow around each one, probing gently as he asked the Force to help him find the right one.
"I'm not reading any weapons activating," Garen informed them.
"It's unlikely they would shoot at anyone approaching Naboo." Qui-Gon's voice held the comm distortion no engineer had ever been able to fix. "Only those attempting to leave."
"Unlikely is not impossible," Garen shot back, and Obi-Wan didn't want to spare the attention to send amusement down their bond. "So we'll escort you in as planned, and then shift to our main objective."
And then Obi-Wan had it. "The command ship – the one we landed on – has shifted position. It is now on the far side of the planet."
"That's your target, then," Qui-Gon said as though Obi-Wan and Garen didn't already know that. This had been Obi-Wan's plan, after all.
"And yours is the palace," Obi-Wan said evenly. "May the Force be with you."
"And with you." The comm ended.
"Chatty guy, your former master," Garen muttered as he tucked into an escort position beside the royal cruiser.
"Sometimes," Obi-Wan allowed. "When we're not on mission, he can speak for hours about…well, about whatever has struck his fancy at the moment. Often, that's the most unusual plant on whatever planet our mission took us to. On mission, though, he's very focused."
"If you say so."
They lapsed into silence as the starfighter slid between the Trade Federation's odd-looking ships, which had spherical centers situated within half-torus shapes, their approach uncontested.
As soon as the royal cruiser broke atmosphere, Garen pulled their starfighter up and away from the surface, aiming instead for the command ship.
"Their weapons are coming online," Obi-Wan said as his display lit up.
He hit the comm. "Trade Federation control, this is Jedi Ambassador Obi-Wan Kenobi on peaceful approach to discuss resolution of the conflict with Naboo."
"You don't seriously expect they'll answer, do you?" Garen asked, sending the starfighter out of the crowd of ships and banking around to approach.
"No, but we should make the effort. We are keepers of the peace, after all."
Weapons fire erupting from three of the ships punctuated his observation. Garen swore softly and tucked the starfighter into evasive maneuvers that would've had Obi-Wan diving for an anti-motion sickness hypo if he hadn't had the Force with him.
"…until others around us force us to become violent to restore the peace," Obi-Wan concluded mildly as he activated the weapons system and returned fire.
One starfighter couldn't do much against a single Trade Federation ship, let alone the dozens they faced, but he didn't have to do much. He just had to do enough to keep Garen free to focus on piloting.
Which he was doing with impressive skill. The closest any of the shots had come was more than a meter away.
"Where'm I headed, Obi? Paint a target for me."
Obi-Wan locked his targeting system on the ship that radiated the darkness of murder through the Force.
"Right." Garen sent the fighter twisting out of the way of another blaster volley. "Hang on, this might get a little unsettling."
As it turned out, a little unsettling was Garen's way of saying nausea-inducing in every species.
Obi-Wan drew on the Force a little more to keep his stomach settled.
With the twists and turns Garen was putting the starfighter through, there was no opening even for a Jedi to return fire, so Obi-Wan simply sat and appreciated Garen's skill at what he'd trained for since they were children.
He'd envied Garen back then, however loath he was to admit that even now. He'd envied Garen's certainty of his path within the Jedi, his calling to be a pilot. Obi-Wan's own determination to become a knight had felt almost selfish in comparison, something born of his own desires rather than a true calling in the Force.
It had taken many sessions of meditation and communion with the Force itself before he'd understood that a calling could come in many forms, and his was no less honorable and true than Garen's for all that they felt so different to him.
The realization comforted him then and it did so now, despite the aerobatic maneuvers he endured. Idly, he wondered if those maneuvers were intentional – if, perhaps, Garen were testing him in an echo of their younger years.
Almost before Obi-Wan could complete that thought, Garen was setting the starfighter down in the ship's hangar bay and the canopy was sliding open.
Obi-Wan leapt from the starfighter, igniting his lightsaber to deflect the blaster shots aimed their way, sending most of them back at the turrets from whence they'd come.
As soon as Garen had powered down the starfighter, he joined Obi-Wan, his green lightsaber a counterpoint to Obi-Wan's blue one. Despite Garen's lack of full knight training, the pair of them cut a destructive swath through the droids stationed in the hangar as they moved directly, inexorably, toward the doors leading out of the hangar and deeper into the ship.
Of course the blast doors slammed shut just as they approached.
"Cover me while I burn through," Obi-Wan said.
"No," Garen snapped. As much as a Jedi ever snapped, anyway. "You cover me while I slice through."
The command in Garen's tone had Obi-Wan turning his back to his friend and falling into a defensive Soresu stance almost before he realized he'd decided to do so.
He heard Garen's lightsaber deactivate but didn't have time to wonder what his friend was doing before a squad of eight droids appeared from across the hangar bay and he wove a defensive pattern with his blade that sent the droids' shots back toward them.
The door slid open behind him and he darted through after Garen. The door closed, and he slashed at the locking mechanism. It wouldn't stop the droids in the hangar forever, but it would buy him and Garen some time.
He hoped.
BREAK
Memories of his first visit to this command ship guided Obi-Wan to the bridge, Garen keeping pace with him even using the Force to enhance their speed to make them harder targets.
As expected, the blast doors to the bridge were closed and secured when Obi-Wan and Garen arrived, though the markings from Qui-Gon's attempt to burn through the doors remained, making the approach tactic obvious.
Equally obviously, the Neimoidians would have an ambush waiting on the other side of the doors.
"Qui-Gon's work, when we were here before." Obi-Wan said in answer to Garen's question sent down their bond. He ignited his lightsaber. "I can finish the job."
"Or you can let me slice it," Garen said wryly. "Like I did the others. You can't fight pirates all the time without learning some of their tricks, after all. Besides, you're better with the lightsaber than I am."
"Right." Obi-Wan shifted to a protective stance. "And my apologies – I'm not accustomed to working with a partner with your skill set."
"None necessary, but accepted if you need to hear it."
Oddly, no droids approached them while Garen was working. Had they truly run so quickly that the ship's internal sensors lost track of them? Or had they just gotten incredibly lucky and arrived in the exact middle of the droids' patrol pattern? Or was the Force truly with them?
Obi-Wan couldn't rule out any possibility, including ones he hadn't considered, but privately hoped for the last one. Whatever this mission was, whyever he'd had such a vision surrounding it, having the Force on their side could only be a blessing.
"Ready on my mark," Garen murmured.
Obi-Wan sent acknowledgment through their bond, subtly shifting his stance in preparation for the door sliding open.
"Three. Two. One-"
Obi-Wan shifted just that tiny bit more, muscles tensing, ready to-
"Mark."
The door opened and Obi-Wan leapt past Garen, his lightsaber a blue-white blur as he slid into Soresu for defense.
Nearly a dozen droids opened fire, and Obi-Wan sank into a familiar battle-meditative state, blocking the shots from the droids' blasters, reflecting most of them back to the droid that fired them and deflecting others into other droids or empty wall space.
No reason to kill unnecessarily, after all.
Within minutes, he'd disabled or destroyed every droid in the room. He stood, lightsaber ready in the opening stance of Soresu, surveying the room.
The bridge was barely half-staffed by Neimoidians and, after their droids had been thoroughly routed, not one of them appeared ready to do much more than surrender.
Or possibly soil themselves. One could never be certain.
"We surrender," one of them called, raising thon's hands in the universal signal of being unarmed. "Please don't kill us!"
After that, it was insultingly easy to secure the bridge.
Obi-Wan corralled the Neimoidians in one corner and kept watch while Garen dealt with the program Anakin had written, getting it installed and deployed throughout the Neimoidian fleet.
At Garen's confirming pulse through their bond, Obi-Wan activated his comm and said only, "Deactivation in three. Two. One. Mark."
Garen tapped a command almost absently. Obi-Wan sent a question through their bond and received a response equivalent to, go away, don't bother me, busy, so he left Garen to his chosen task.
He reached out to the Force, asking for assistance identifying anyone who'd worked in communications. The Force directed him to a female Neimoidian sitting slightly apart from the group of detainees. Or perhaps prisoners. Obi-Wan would have to confirm the distinction before he reported on this mission to the Council or the Senate.
For now, though, he gestured to the Neimoidian the Force had identified. "Take your usual station."
She did so, her nerves almost pulsing through the Force.
He pulled a datastick from his belt and offered it to her. "I want a complete, unaltered copy of all communications to and from this vessel since its arrival in this system. Do not attempt to falsify or alter any of those communications. I will know."
The Neimoidian set trembling fingers to work, and Obi-Wan monitored her emotional state as she did. He didn't know enough of her language or alphabet to follow her work, but the Force gave him no reason to doubt that she was doing anything other than what he'd ordered.
It wasn't long before she presented him with the requested datastick, her fingers steadier than they had been when she began."
"The communications logs, sir."
He took the datastick and secured it in his belt with a murmured, "Thank you."
That done, and with Garen still doing whatever he was doing at the other console, Obi-Wan settled in to watch and wait for whatever came next.
What came next, fifteen minutes later, was Garen coming to join him. Obi-Wan sent an inquiry down their bond and got pleased satisfaction back.
"I figured," Garen said in Dai Bendu, a language only the Jedi truly understood, "why not lock down the programming, so nobody can come behind us and reverse what we did? Then I figured, why not do the same to the entire fleet?"
Years of training helped Obi-Wan to keep his expression neutral, instead of allowing his jaw to drop in shock. "You're saying we have control over the entire Trade Federation fleet – of droids?"
Garen nodded, his expression also carefully neutral. "Ships, too. At least the ones here at Naboo. No one can access their weapons or droids but us."
Obi-Wan shook his head. "And to think, everyone calls me a chaos-bringer."