Timothy Zahn - Outbound Flight

“Our friend—the Padawan you ran into earlier—was following him,” Obi-Wan said. “She’s disappeared, and I can’t raise her on the comlink.”

“Too bad,” Riske said. “Nice kid, but not much combat savvy.”

“We’re not ready to give up on her quite yet,” Obi-Wan growled. “You have any idea where Jhompfi might have gone to ground?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be hanging around here,” Riske countered. “I’ve got people checking out the Mining Guild centers, but if Jhompfi’s not coming home I doubt he’d be stupid enough to go to any of them.”

“So what do we do?” Anakin asked.

“What I’m going to do is head back to the hotel and make sure we’ve got our security set up,” Riske said. “I’m figuring it’ll come tonight—the duracrete slugs always disappear just before they drop the house on you.”

“Or they might try for the city administration center tomorrow,” Obi-Wan suggested.

“Unlikely,” Riske said. “Jhompfi’s hardly going to attack a place where his own guildmaster is busy negotiating for him. No, it’s got to be the hotel, or maybe the route to the admin center in the morning.”

Unfortunately, Riske’s analysis made sense. “Okay,”

Obi-Wan said. “You tie down that end, and we’ll keep looking for Lorana.”

“Good luck.” Riske shook his head. “You know, I almost planted a tracker on her earlier, just so I could make sure she was staying out of my way. I wish now I had.”

“I wish you had, too,” Obi-Wan said. “We’ll just have to manage on our own.”

“Jedi are supposed to be good at such things,” Riske said, pulling out a data card and handing it over. “This’ll give you a direct connection to my comlink, running it through one of our encryptions. Call me if you hear anything, okay?”

“I will,” Obi-Wan promised, sliding the card into his comlink pouch.

Riske nodded and moved away. He reached the far end of the hedge, glanced over it, then slipped back around and headed off at a brisk walk. “Now what?” Anakin asked.

“We’d better let Master C’baoth know what happened,”

Obi-Wan said reluctantly. “He and Lorana may be close enough for him to be able to detect her Force-signature.”

“Maybe,” Anakin said doubtfully as they returned to the end of the hedge and back onto the walkway. “You know, maybe we all should carry trackers.”

Obi-Wan looked sideways at him. “I can think of at least one person who ought to have one,” he muttered under his breath. “What was that?”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “Never mind.”

C’baoth, when they finally raised him on the comlink, wasn’t at all happy about being disturbed. He was even less happy when he heard their story “For the moment we’ll pass over the fact that you involved yourself with the Barlok situation against my direct order,” the Jedi Master rumbled, and Obi-Wan could imagine his eyes flashing from beneath his bushy eyebrows. “The important point right now is that you’ve put my Padawan at risk.”

“I understand your anger, Master C’baoth—” Obi-Wan began.

“Anger?” C’baoth cut him off. “There is no anger, Master Kenobi. Not for a Jedi.”

“My apologies,” Obi-Wan said, trying hard to suppress some annoyance of his own. A situation like this, and all the man could do was recite Jedi canon? “It was an improper choice of words.”

“Better,” C’baoth rumbled. “What about you, Padawan Skywalker? Have you any thoughts?”

Obi-Wan angled the comlink toward the boy. “Notreally, Master C’baoth,” Anakin said. “Mostly, I’m concerned about Lorana’s safety. I’m worried that she may have been killed.”

For a moment C’baoth didn’t answer. “No, she’s not dead,” he said at last. “I would have felt such a disturbance in the Force.”

“Then you can locate her?” Anakin asked hopefully.

“The one does not necessarily follow from the other,”

C’baoth told him. “Unfortunately, I can’t pick up her Force-signature at the moment. Master Kenobi, you said you’d spoken to the boy who obtained the boosters. He might know where Jhompfi’s favorite hiding spots are.”

“I don’t think so,” Anakin said. “He doesn’t seem to be a part of the actual conspiracy.”

“Yet he knows Jhompfi, and may have seen something in the past that will point the way.”

“I doubt he’d be willing to discuss it,” Obi-Wan said.

“At least not with strangers.”

“Did I ask if he would be willing?”

Obi-Wan felt his throat tighten. “Are you suggesting I force his mind?”

“No, of course not,” C’baoth assured him. But the words, Obi-Wan knew, were for Anakin’s benefit. That was, in fact, exactly what C’baoth had been suggesting. “We’re the protectors of the weak, not their oppressors. At the same time, a crime has been perpetrated against a Jedi. Such a thing cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. Even if Padawan Jinzler chose not to fight in her own defense,” he added darkly.

Obi-Wan frowned. “What do you mean?”

“There have been no reports of lightsabers being seen in the city, Master Kenobi,” C’baoth said patiently. “Nor hasnews of multiple severed limbs reached my ears. Lorana Jinzler is only a Padawan, but I have certainly instructed her in combat better than that.”

“Of course,” Obi-Wan said, a sudden idea striking him.

If C’baoth was right about Lorana going quietly with her kidnappers… “Thank you for your time, Master C’baoth.”

“I will expect my Padawan to be at my side when I meet Iviagistrate Argente and Guildmaster Gilfrome in the morning,” C’baoth warned.

“Understood,” Obi-Wan said. Breaking the connection, he slid the comlink back into his belt.

“So how are we going to find her?” Anakin asked.

“Master C’baoth gave us the hint himself,” Obi-Wan told him. “He’s right: if Lorana had fought against her attackers, we certainly would have heard of it. Therefore, she didn’t.”

“Okay,” Anakin said. “And that means what?”

“It means that she must have decided that surrendering quietly would gain her more than fighting,”

Obi-Wan said. “She probably hoped she’d be taken into the center of the conspiracy where she could meet the people in charge. But.”

He let the word hang expectantly in the air, hoping Anakin would pick up the train of logic. “But they’d be crazy to bring a Jedi to their leaders,” the boy said slowly. “Even a Padawan.”

“Exactly,” Obi-Wan said. “And what’s the fastest way to tell if someone like Lorana is a Jedi?”

“If you catch her carrying a lightsaber,” Anakin said, his voice suddenly picking up on Obi-Wan’s own cautious hope.

“So she had to get rid of it!”

“Right,” Obi-Wan confirmed. “And she probably gotrid of it on the spur of the moment, someplace near where she was kidnapped.”

“Someplace close enough for us to be able to sense its Ilum crystal,” Anakin finished excitedly. “But we’ll still have to get pretty close, won’t we?”

“True, but at least out in the street we’ll be able to get that close,” Obi-Wan pointed out. “If she and her lightsaber were both inside a house, we probably wouldn’t be able to spot the crystal, at least not from outside.” He gestured down the street, darkened now except for the faint glow of streetlights. “We’ll start here in the Covered Brush area. Jhompfi was smart enough to stay away from his own house, but he may have been stupid enough to go to a nearby friend’s. If we don’t find anything, we’ll start going through the poorer neighborhoods of Patameene District.”

“Because that’s the sort of neighborhood Jhompfi’s used to?”