Дэйв Волвертон - Jedi Apprentice 1 - The Rising Force

Qui-Gon cocked an eyebrow. “This is not your affair,” he warned. “If you went looking for those thermocoms, all you would find is trouble. You must stay out of it. And stay away from the Offworld side of the ship. You’re not fully recovered yet, Obi-Wan.”

With that, Qui-Gon turned and strode from the room. Obi-Wan waited for a few seconds. Then he carefully got up from bed.

“But the Jedi said you’re not recovered!” Si Treemba cried in concern.

“Si Treemba,” Obi-Wan said slowly, “how big are those thermocoms?”

“Not big.” Si Treemba held his hands up eight centimeters apart. “Not hard to conceal.”

“If we find those thermocoms, then we’ll know who did it,” Obi-Wan asseted.

“That’s true Obi-Wan,” Si Treemba agreed. Then he stopped and made the same odd hissing sound again. “We are sorry. But when you say ‘we’ —“

“I mean you and me,” Obi-Wan said.

“Ah,” Si Treemba said. His greenish skin seemed to pale. “We would have to go to the Offworld side of the ship.”

“I know,” Obi-Wan said quietly. He knew the risk. And qui-Gon had ordered him not to. But he was not Qui-Gon’s apprentice. He was not honor-bound to obey him.

No doubt Qui-Gon thought him unworthy of the task ahead. But Qui-Gon’s hesitation paled next to the Jedi principles. Justice must be sought out.

“Si Treemba, Clat’Ha has great courage,” Obi-Wan explained. “But Jemba has power on his side. He is ruthless as well as cunning, and he will stop at nothing. Therefore, he has to be stopped. It’s as simple — and as difficult — as that. I understand if you don’t wish to help. Truly. We will still be friends.”

Si Treemba swallowed. “We will follow you, Obi-Wan,” he said.

Obi-Wan’s sense of purpose made him feel strong again. He and Si Treemba decided search the Arconan half of the Monument. It made sense to eliminate the easiest task first.

Obi-Wan and Si Treemba were able to search the kitchens, storage rooms, exercise rooms, and lounges without looking suspicious. Obi-Wan even had Si Treemba lower him down the garbage chutes. They found no dign of the missing thermocoms.

“We have to search the cabins, Si Treemba,” Obi-Wan said, picking a stray piece of garbage from his hair. He sighed. Over four hundred Arconan miners were in those cabins. He couldn’t imagine that they would let him just search their rooms.

“That will be no problem, Obi-Wan,” Si Treemba replied.

Obi-Wan had forgotten how Arconans think. They had no word for me or mine. So Si Treemba wandered from cabin to cabin, searching each bunk and storage compartment. A dozen times, Arconans asked, “What are we doing?”

Each time, Si Treemba answered, “We are looking for something that was lost.”

To which the Arconan would ask, “May we help find it?”

And Si Treemba would merely answer, “We need no assistance.” The Si Treemba and Obi-Wan would search the room and leave.

But not all the workers for Arcona Mineral Harvest were Arconan. Some were short, silver-haired Meerians returning to Bandomeer, some Human. Obi-Wan had to treat these carefully. More than once he found himself using the Force to convince some burly miner to let him search.

It was exhausting work for someone who was still recovering, but Obi-Wan ignored his own pain and weariness. A Jedi did not give into such feelings.

After a long day, Obi-Wan and Si Treemba went to the kitchens for a late meal. Obi-Wan ate a full dinner of roast gorak bird cooked in mall petals from Alderaan. Si ate Arconan fungi covered with dactyl, a type of yellow ammonia crystal. The Arconan’s food smelled… well, the fungus wasn’t bad, but the dactyl smelled like poison.

Obi-Wan wrinkled his nose. “How could anyone eat that stuff?”

Si Treemba smiled. His faceted eyes glittered. “Some creatures wonder how Humans can drink water, yet you take delight in it. Dactyl is as necessary to us as water is to you.” Having said that, he took a couple of crunchy yellow stones and popped them into his mouth like candy.

When Obi-Wan reached for salt, Si Treemba pulled his plate away in fear.

“Salt increases our need for dactyl a hundredfold,” Si Treemba explained. “It is a very dangerous substance to Arconans.”

Obi-Wan sprinkled the salt on his gorak bird. “We all have our own poisons, I guess,” he said cheerfully, taking a bite.

Si Treemba grinned at him and crunched on his dactyl. It was almost like being back at the Temple eating with Bant or Reeft, Obi-Wan thought. He missed his friends, but he liked Si Treemba more and more as he spent time with him. The Arconan had courage and determination that impressed him. And Obi-Wan was aware that it took nerve for an Arconan to break off from the group and help a stranger.

“You know,’ Obi-Wan remarked, “there’s one think I don’t understand. Jemba puts on a good show. But I sense he’s afraid of Clat’Ha and the Arconans.”

Si Treemba swallowed a mouthful of dactyl and fungi. “We think you’re right, Obi-Wan. He fears us. Even though it is not or intent, he knows we will destroy him.”

“How is that?” Obi-Wan asked.

“In Offworld mining, the chiefs and overseers make fortunes, while the common workers make nothing. Many of them are slaves. But at Arcona Mineral Harvest, we have no chieftains, no overseers. Each worker shares in the profits. This did not bother Offworld until Clat’Ha began to expand our operations. So she contacts the better workers at Offworld. If they are slaves, she offers to buy them and set them free if they will work for us. If they have signed work contracts, she offers to buy the contracts.”

“That sounds fair,” Obi-Wan said.

“It is fair,” Si Treemba agreed. “That is exactly why Jemba fears us. Many good workers wish to join us, only the bad will stay at Offworld.”

“I see,” Obi-Wan said. “So in a few years, Jemba will have only chiefs with no one to boss around. He’d hate that.”

Si Treemba grinned, then turned serious. “But Jemba has stalled us. He has raised the price on labor contracts and slaves. We can no longer afford to hire Offworld workers.”

Obi-Wan was beginning to see that the galaxy was a far more complicated place than he’d realized. The Temple had prepared him for so many things. But they had not prepared him for this. He had known that most worlds in the galaxy had outlawed slavery, and he had assumed that it was rare. But here were hundreds of workers locked in an illegal practice.

Obi-Wan was horrified at the idea of slavery. Since Offworld had paid good money to buy and train slaves, the company wasn’t likely to sell them cheap — or to let them go without a fight. Clat’Ha had been right when she told Obi-Wan he had stepped into a war. This battle would probably wage through mining camps on hundreds of worlds.

He wanted to race to the other side of the ship, lightsaber in hand, and right every wrong. But that wasn’t the way, he knew. He had to find those thermocoms. Exposure was the only way to fight Jemba.

He pushed his plate away. “We’ve searched everywhere on this side of the ship, Si” he said. “The thermocoms must be in Offworld territory.”

The Arconan boy took a deep breath, then released it slowly. “Good. We are pleased.”

“Pleased?” Obi-Wan asked. “But now we have to invade Offworld territory. I thought you were terrified of Hutts.”

“That we are,” Si Treemba agreed. “But still, we are pleased because if the thermocoms are not here, it means that we are innocent. Someone at Offworld Mining is really trying to kill us.”

“Yes, I can see how that would be comforting,” Obi-Wan teased, though he did understand. The Arconans were hatched from eggs and raised in huge nest — with hundreds of brothers and sisters growing together at the same time. From their youth, they were trained to think of themselves as a group. The thought that any Arconan — any of Si’s brothers or sisters — would do something that might hurt or shame the groups must have filled the young Arconan with dread.