Greg Bear: Rogue Planet

Zonama Sekot had never been more beautiful. She shimmered against the backdrop of the pinwheel and the far, rippling sheets of stars. Her clouds and vast tampasi faded beneath a sunrise that could not compete with Sekot's own, self- generated energies.

"She's leaving!" Obi-Wan cried out. He reached out to grab hold of something, an instinctive reaction, completely futile.

All the stars around the planet's circumference seemed to suck inward and then bounce back. In the pit of his stomach, Obi-Wan could feel a huge emptiness in space and time, unlike anything he had ever experienced.

He lost his extra senses, his connection with Sekot. Only a brief farewell lingered, the last touch of a far-reaching tendril, ancient and young at once.

Anakin was still lost in their ship's pain. Behind them, Tarkin's confused fleet scattered as if caught in a great wind. All the ships' orbits had changed unexpectedly, and the navigational systems could not compensate. Mines collided with mines and Starfighters, delivery ships smashed into defense escorts, and at least two escorts rammed the Rim Merchant Einem.

Not his concern. Anakin knew they had only a short time to go where they needed to go. Take us, he told their ship.

He entered a state where he understood the ways of the higher spaces. The vastness of the universe no longer frightened him. The ship rooted him to their reality. Even in her pain, she was teaching him how to navigate the more difficult dimensions.

Anakin in turn gave the ship what considerable skills he possessed.

Together, they took themselves into hyperspace and fled the triple star system that had once held the secret promise of Zonama Sekot.

The ship was indeed faster than anything that had ever flown before.

Obi-Wan slept. Exhaustion caught up with him, and sleep came without his even being aware of it. He awoke a few hours later and saw Anakin also asleep, arms still embedded in the console. The boy's eyes twitched. He was dreaming.

Obi-Wan stroked the ship lightly. "Any friend of Anakin Skywalker's is a friend of mine," he murmured.

The console rippled beneath his touch. A display of the ship's vital systems appeared before him. She was giving everything she had to get them to where they wanted to go, but that wasn't going to be enough. The ship's injuries were too great.

Obi-Wan leaned forward. "There's another station," he said. An emergency outpost, a barren, rocky world thousands of parsecs closer than Coruscant, sometimes used by Jedi, unknown to anyone else, and otherwise almost deserted. He had been there only once, after a particularly harrowing adventure with Qui-Gon.

The ship accepted his coordinates. A new display affirmed that the ship could reach this destination.

"And when you can, send a message to the Temple." He provided the transponder frequencies. "Someone should meet us at the outpost. Mace Windu, or Thracia Cho Leem. Or both. It is very important that my Padawan be counseled by another Master after his ordeal."

Anakin came awake and blinked owlishly in the warm cabin lights.

"You were dreaming," Obi-Wan said.

"Not me. The ship," Anakin said. "Or maybe we were dreaming together. We were traveling around the galaxy, seeing wonderful things. It was so great to just be free. You were there with us. I think you were having fun, too."

Anakin held out his hand, fingers spread, and Obi-Wan met it with his own hand. A few more years and the boy would reach his full growth.

In more than just size.

"I'm going to give her a name," Anakin said, looking away.

"What?"

"I'm going to call her Jabitha."

Obi-Wan smiled.

"It's a pretty name, isn't it?"

"It is a pretty name."

"Do you think they're still alive?"

"I don't know," Obi-Wan said.

"Maybe they all just vanished and no one will ever see them again."

"Perhaps."

Anakin had a hard time asking the next question. "Our ship is dying, isn't she?"

"Yes."

Anakin stared straight ahead, face blank.

The boy loses everything he loves, and yet still he is strong.

"Vergere…" Anakin began.

"Tell me more about what Vergere said."

"I'll get the ship-I'll get the Jabitha to show you the entire message."

Vergere appeared once more in the cabin, head feathers awry, slanted eyes wary, communicating the news of her discoveries to any Jedi who might follow in her path.

The Jabitha, lay in a cold and flimsy hangar on the outpost world Seline. The Sekotan ship's skin was rapidly losing its color and iridescence.

Anakin sat on a bench before the ship, chin in his hands. Outside, winds howled and spicules of ice shattered with a harsh, tinny rattle against the hangar's thin metal skin.

Anakin tried to imagine the Jabitha back in her birthplace of warmth and lush, tropic beauty, back with her family. . wherever they might be.

Seline was a poor place for a Sekotan ship to die.

Obi-Wan and Thracia Cho Leem entered the hangar. Thracia removed her weather gear. Anakin looked up, then returned his gaze to the ship.

Thracia approached the boy.

"Not so young now, Anakin Skywalker?" she asked, sitting on the bench beside him. Anakin slid over a few centimeters to make room for the diminutive Jedi Knight.

Anakin did not answer.

"Young Jedi, you have learned some hard truths. Power and even discipline are not sufficient. Self-knowledge is the most difficult of our many journeys."

"I know," Anakin said softly.

"And sometimes wisdom seems impossibly far away."

Anakin nodded.

"You must let me feel what is within you now," Thracia said gently. Then, with the faintest tone of warning, "You are still being judged."

Anakin screwed up his face, then relaxed and let her probe.

Obi-Wan slowly turned his eyes to the dead ship, now good only for cold and heartless research, and left the hangar. This was not for him to witness. There had to be an objective evaluation; that was half the essence of Jedi counseling.

As for the other half. .

That was Thracia's greatest skill-healing.

There would be many more battles for his apprentice, many more disappointments. And many more joys. More joys than sadnesses, Obi-Wan fervently hoped.

This was how it was, how it felt, to have the heart of a Master.

Coda

No more Sekotan ships are made. In a few years, all of them are dead or destroyed.

Tarkin and Raith Sienar manage to bring the crippled fleet home. Inspired by what he calls a "great example," Tarkin redeems himself before the Supreme Chancellor with secret plans for a moon-sized battle station. Tarkin claims sole credit for the design. Sienar does not dispute him; it is a brainchild he is eager to disown. Sienar has a bad feeling about such an expensive concentration of might.

The new order will find both Tarkin and Sienar useful.

Charza Kwinn and his shipmates survive and reach Coruscant, where they are assigned new missions. In later years, with the rise of the Empire and a decline in cordial relations with nonhumans, Charza becomes a smuggler and pirate to feed his food-kin. He limits his prey to Imperial vessels.

A legend grows in the galaxy: of a rogue planet that wanders between the stars, forever lost, ruled by either a madman, a madwoman, or a saint, the legends are never clear which.

Months after Thracia Cho Leem counsels Anakin Skywalker, without explanation, she leaves the Jedi order.

Obi-Wan Kenobi has his work cut out for him. The young man, his Padawan, is growing stronger, overcoming disappointment, acquiring discipline. But the knot in Anakin's future has not completely loosened. The trial is not over; it may not be over for decades.

No balance.

No balance yet.