Джуд Уотсон: Secrets Of The Jedi

Qui-Gon Jinn couldn't sleep. Every night he spent some time trying, but in the end he decided to walk off the need for rest.

He didn't understand it. As a Jedi, he was used to sleeping anywhere, in all sorts of conditions. He had slept in cargo holds and spaceport hangars and on a pile of droid parts. He had slept four hours in the middle of a field during a driving rainstorm. When he needed sleep, he told his mind to empty and his body to unwind, and they obeyed.

But in the past, he'd never had to deal with his heart.

He had done the forbidden. He had fallen in love with another Jedi Knight. He had pledged himself to her. And she had died. He was paying a price he was glad to pay, because those few days of loving and of knowing he was loved were worth it. But how to put his heart back together? Tahl had changed him. She had made him whole, and she had broken him with her death. Qui-Gon could not figure out how to reassemble.

So he didn't sleep. He and his Padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi, had been at the Jedi Temple for weeks now. Yoda had called them back for what they'd expected to be a briefing for a mission, but there had been no mission. "Need your Padawan does days of reflection," Yoda had said. "Important they are as days of action."

There had been much action lately. Mission after mission. The Senate was fractured, torn apart by special interests, by warring clans and alliances.

There seemed to be plenty Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan could be doing, but Qui-Gon did not want to cross Yoda, so they stayed. But the weeks at the Temple only made Qui-Gon's sleeplessness worse. He walked the empty halls at night. The glow lamps were powered down to a soft blue, making it a restful time to stroll. It seemed that every hall, every room, held a memory of Tahl, but he didn't court those memories. He tried to allow his grief to be his companion, not his master. He opened his mind and simply walked.

He found himself, at the end of a long night, back near his quarters. Qui-Gon hesitated. He was not ready to return to his small room and stare at the walls.

"Glad I am to find you awake." Yoda scuttled forward, leaning on his gimer stick.

He blinked at Qui-Gon. "And why, my friend, does sleep not find you?"

Qui-Gon did not want to discuss his heart with Yoda. He loved the Jedi Master, but he did not want to confide in him. He had never told Yoda of his feelings for Tahl, and there was no need for Yoda to know how close Qui-Gon had come to violating the rules of the Jedi Order. So instead of the full truth, he said, "I find peace from walking."

"See I do many things in you," Yoda said. "Peace is not one of them."

Qui-Gon didn't answer. He didn't shrug, or turn away, or drop his eyes. He knew Yoda would read the unspoken message. I am not ready to talk about this.

"Need a mission now, you do," Yoda said.

Qui-Gon nodded. "And you have one for me. It's about time."

Behind him he heard soft footsteps. The smell of rich tea came to his nostrils — his favorite, a blend from the leaves of a sapir plant, green and fragrant.

It must be near dawn, then. Obi-Wan had taken to brewing him tea and bringing it to his quarters in the early morning. Qui-Gon had gently tried to discourage him; he didn't want his Padawan to wait on him. But Obi-Wan, in his own stubborn way, kept showing up. Qui-Gon was both irritated and touched by this. Obi-Wan didn't know the details. But he was eighteen now, old enough to make a good guess as to what had happened on Apsolon between his Master and Tahl. He could sense the depths of Qui-Gon's sorrow, and he felt he had to do something to help, no matter how small.

Qui-Gon could feel him hesitating now, back behind a pillar. He did not want to interrupt his Master's conversation with Yoda.

"Step forward you may, Obi-Wan," Yoda said. "Concerns you, this does."

Obi-Wan came out of the shadows. Yoda took in everything in a glance — the small teapot on the tray, the steaming mug, the expression of concern in Obi-Wan's eyes.

His gaze returned to Qui-Gon. In that gaze Qui-Gon read the truth. Yoda knew of his nighttime walks. Yoda knew of the tea Obi-Wan brought every morning. And perhaps he even knew about Tahl. How could Qui-Gon have forgotten that there was so little that Yoda did not know?

Yoda had not called them back in order to give Obi-Wan a chance to reflect. He had called them back for Qui-Gon's sake.

"Not ready I am to let you go," Yoda said. "Yet let you go, I must."

It all started with a young boy who liked to build things.

Talesan Fry was ten years old. He had long ago become bored with school. He much preferred to be home, in his room, working with devices he had built himself. At the age of eight, he had set up a communication system in his home that used voice activation to track his movements. At the age of nine, he had discovered how to get around it by giving the system a false reading so that his mother was never exactly sure where he was or what he was doing. Now, at the age of ten, he had moved on to spying on his neighbors. Perhaps it was a normal pursuit for a young boy, but in this case, Taly made a special effort to spy on neighbors who went to great lengths not to be overheard.

Breaking into the main comm channels on his homeworld of Cirrus was too easy. What Taly liked to do was lurk. He would break into the secure channels, past the security gates, opening one after the other with a few tweaks and clicks on his system. He never heard anything very interesting. Politicians. Security officers. Corporate vice presidents. Nobody with anything worth saying, in his opinion. Still, he kept lurking, because he liked to do what was forbidden.

And then one day he heard something interesting. At first, it wasn't enough to even raise his head from the sleep couch, where he was listlessly flying a model of a Gion speeder by remote. He heard a quick exchange, a communication about a job coming up.

"Negative," someone said. "Concussive missiles attract too much attention in close quarters."

"Wouldn't hurt to have them. I don't care what our employer says. He's not doing the job, we are. No blood on his hands. I want to be able to blast my way out if I have to."

Slowly, Taly raised his head.

"If it comes to that, you'll have half the galactic security force on your tail. It's got to be in and out, quiet and quick."

"You think bagging the leader of — "

"No names." The voice was curt. Taly now had his ear against the transmitter. He had activated a recording rod.

His eyes widened as he listened. He could pick out five distinct voices and it didn't take him long to realize they were bounty hunters. Five bounty hunters working together? Taly didn't know much about bounty hunters, but he knew enough to be sure an alliance was highly unusual.

He knew he had stumbled onto something big. They were talking about a rendezvous on some planet, about an assassination. They had already picked the date, and it was only fourteen standard days away. This was something he could not keep to himself. Something — and this was worst of all — he would have to tell his parents about.

An hour later, after he'd worked up the courage, he brought them the recording rod. His parents were too alarmed to punish him. They contacted Cirrus security, who notified galactic security on Coruscant. Eventually the story of a boy who had information on a major assassination plot made its way to the Senate Investigating Commission on Crime Syndication, Dissemination, and Proliferation in the Core and Mid-Rim Systems. The commission had been deadlocked for two months on the question of whether the scope of their investigation should include the Outer Rim. Taly's news hit them like an electrojabber, prodding them into an action they had been reluctant to take. They called on him to be their star witness.