Джуд Уотсон - Secrets Of The Jedi

"But why outlaw comlinks?" Adi asked.

"Don't believe in 'em. Comlinks make distances shorter. And when distances get shorter, problems get bigger. We like to slow things down on Quadrant Seven. Which reminds me, you need a permit to send a HoloNet message off planet. It will be monitored and archived, too."

"And who has access to the archives?" Adi asked. "Everyone. Makes beings nicer if they know they can't send out messages that aren't public."

Adi and Qui-Gon stared at each other in frustration. That meant if they sent a message to the Temple, everyone would be able to see it. The bounty hunters could trace them.

"Can we buy a speeder to travel to Settlement Twenty-three?" Qui-Gon asked.

"Sure. But you have to apply for a permit. All outlanders do."

"How long will it take to get a permit?"

"Hard to say. Could be a week."

Adi was becoming used to the dealer's way of talking. "Or…?

"Could be a month. Hard to say."

"This is ridiculous," Adi muttered. "What a way to run a planet."

"We haven't had a war in five hundred and seventy-three years," the dealer said. "Don't have toxic pools or chemical air. Everybody pretty much gets along. That doesn't sound too ridiculous, does it?"

Adi just sighed.

"If I were you, I'd wait for the freighter. Quadrant Seven is a nice place to visit. Of course we don't have much in the way of hotels or cafes. And we don't go in for amusements the way they do in other places. There's not much to do. But still."

"Look, we don't have time to wait," Qui-Gon said. "Can't you find a way to help us?"

"Nope." The dealer's face was still blandly polite. He would be friendly, but not help them. That much was clear. They walked out of the shop.

"Looks like we're waiting for the freighter," Adi said. "We'll just have to lay low. We could send a coded communication to the Temple… "

"But why risk it?" Adi completed the sentence. "If by some chance the bounty hunter searches the planet, that's the first place he'd investigate. Even a coded message would stand out."

"We can canvass the area, look to see if anyone owns a ship and try to buy it," Qui-Gon said.

Adi nodded. "It doesn't appear that Quadrant Sevens travel, but we might get lucky."

"It's only five days," Qui-Gon said. "The assassination will take place in a week. This can all work, if nothing else goes wrong."

He felt the dark side surge as a warning just as Adi pulled him back from walking out into the watery sunlight. The bounty hunter was striding by on the street, his pale eyes flicking into the shadows.

"Something else just went wrong," Adi said.

"Let's follow him," Adi murmured. "Better to know where he is — and perhaps we'll learn something."

Qui-Gon nodded. They melted into the crowd in the street. It was rare that a being knew when he was being followed by a Jedi. They were able to use the Force to direct objects to move into their path if someone turned to look behind them. They were able to move before their prey could track their steps. After a short time, the Jedi were able to so absorb their quarry's way of moving that they could predict it and easily avoid discovery.

The bounty hunter was good. He was careful. Yet he was no match for them. Adi and Qui-Gon followed him easily as he walked to the opposite edge of Settlement 5 and then struck out across the hills and rocks.

This area was even more rugged than where they'd left Obi-Wan and Siri. They trailed him through a series of small, deep canyons. The boulders offered plenty of hiding places. At last he slipped into a narrow opening and disappeared. Qui-Gon and Adi carefully moved forward. Positioning themselves behind an outcropping, they peered into the opening.

It led to a canyon that was just a cleft in the landscape. They recognized the bounty hunter's light freighter. Next to it was a slightly larger ship. Together they took up nearly the entire width of the canyon.

The bounty hunter disappeared into the larger ship. The ramp was down, and Qui-Gon and Adi slowly made their way there. With a glance at each other, they agreed to try to observe what was going on. It was worth the risk.

They crept up the ramp and slipped inside the ship. They heard raised voices coming from the cockpit.

Good, Qui-Gon thought. If a group was arguing, they would be too distracted to stay alert.

Tall and graceful, Adi moved ahead of him down the hall, her boots soundless on the polished floor. She beckoned to him. She had found a vent at eye level, in a storage room right off the cockpit. Qui-Gon could see quite clearly into the next room.

His heart fell. There were five bounty hunters in the cockpit, including the one chasing them. Among them was one he recognized — Gorm the Dissolver. He was a formidable presence, dwarfing the others in his plated armor and helmet. Created by Arkanian Renegades, he was half-bio, half-droid. His bio parts were made up of six different aliens. His droid components allowed him to be a nearly invincible killing machine. Gorm's tracking skill was legendary and his merciless attacks were spoken of in whispers in spaceports throughout the galaxy.

All of these bounty hunters in one place, for one assassination? Qui-Gon wondered again who the target could be.

"We've only got a week," one of the bounty hunters said. It was a humanoid woman, small and compact, dressed in a leather tunic and leggings. Her fair hair was twisted in many braids that fell to her shoulders. She appeared to be completely ordinary, if you didn't notice the firepower strapped to her waist, her wrist gauntlets with an array of weapons systems, or the armored kneepads she wore. By the look of her armor, Qui-Gon guessed she was a Mandalorian, or at least that she had somehow procured some of the warrior army's famous weaponry. "You shouldn't have blasted that escape pod, Magus," she went on. "Now we don't know for sure if you got the kid."

The bounty hunter who had chased them on Cirrus turned slowly and rested his steely gaze on the female.

"Don't give me that black-hole look, Magus," she said. "You know I'm right. We need proof that the kid has been neutralized. If he's still alive, he could compromise the mission. I don't mind pulling this off, but I don't want anybody to know I was involved. Those Senatorial committees can get touchy about political assassinations."

"We're only a week away from our hits," another bounty hunter said. He was a tall creature with green-tinged skin and a cranial horn on top of his head. "I for one don't relish the thought of assassinating a world leader if security is waiting for me. And we've got twenty targets. That's twenty times the security."

Qui-Gon and Adi exchanged a glance. Twenty planetary leaders?

"I told you, they won't have their regular security," Magus said.

"We still have no way of knowing how much this kid knows and who he's alerted," the female bounty hunter continued.

"You promised they wouldn't be expecting us, that we'd have the element of surprise," the third bounty hunter said to Magus. He wore a greasy cloak and his leggings were thick with grime. Tufts of wiry hair stood out on his head like horns. On his grimy face gills flapped open and closed with his breathing. He looked like a large, unkempt fish. A name floated into Qui-Gon's head. Raptor. This could be the bounty hunter he'd been hearing about, the one who was willing to take any job, no matter how dangerous or cruel. "That's one reason we agreed. Well — that and the fee. But if security gets tipped off, I'm heading back to the Core and picking up another job. What does our employer say?"

Magus rose slowly. If he was bothered by the dissension in the others, it wasn't apparent. "Our employer leaves the details to me. As you should."