Someday Out of the Blue

by Tilt (tilt@vol.com)

Archive: master_apprentice. Will also be on my own website sometime in the near future.

Category: AU Action/Adventure Drama

Rating: PG-17

Warnings: SPEW WARNING! You might not want to eat or drink while reading this, there's some funny bits that might take you by surprise.

Spoilers: None, pre-TPM and very much AU.

Summary: Qui-Gon gets hijacked while on a mission by a young speeder-bike racer who turns out to be more than he seems. Bad Guys are popping out of the woodwork, but what would they want with a speeder-bike racer?

Feedback: Gratefully accepted, thoughtfully considered, thanked-for profusely, and saved for later gloating.

Disclaimer: All hail the Great Prophet Lucas, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom filmed, thy will be done, on THX as it is in fandom. Give us this year our TPM, and forgive us our fanfic, as we forgive thee for inflicting Jar Jar upon us. For thine is the Emperor, the Qui-Gon and the Obi-Wan forever, Amen.

Notes:
The virtual game is based on Doom2 by Id Games. The descriptions of the Pinkies, the Demons, the Plasma Spiders, and the Maulotaur are my own description of monsters in the game, as are the basic premise and the weapons. No disrespect or profit made from this story and none intended, just awed gratitude for a game I still enjoy.

Cameo appearance: the player hiding in the dark room in the game is Mad Harry, the same guy who inspired Torin Ghanbari in my Mystics AU. He liked to hide in dark rooms a lot while playing Doom...

Lena and her silver tube dress and tartan jacket ensemble came originally from a weird dream I once had, and led directly to my swearing off Taco Bell right before bedtime.

The title comes from Elton John's new song of the same name, "Someday Out of the Blue" from his "Eldorado" soundtrack. It's also the theme song for this story, mostly for the last scene. Hit 'Play' when Windu says "Master Jinn."

Inspired by that pic of a long-haired Ewan in a black leather jacket on a motorcycle...

A slurred laugh boomed across the room as Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn was led across the marble mosaic floor by a wary Rodian aide to Barukka the Hutt's slab-like throne. The mirrors placed at intervals along each of the room's five sides and the rich colors of the brocades of the Hutt's sycophants made for a heady and disorienting swirl in the dim orangish haze of light. The high ceiling and stone walls echoed the sounds of the G'thitri swing-bop band honking away in the furtherest corner, the wailing sounds mingling dizzingly with the loud buzz of conversation in a dozen languages. Yet still Barukka's drunken laugh drowned them all out.

Variel Station belonged to Barukka the Hutt, for the most part. The deed of ownership might have "LyraTech Industries" as the owner but it was Barukka's cadre of guards, techs and smugglers who kept it guarded, maintained and supplied. It was Barukka who paid for the wings of starfighters that patrolled the ten lightminute perimeter the station held as sovereign space. It was Barukka who decided who came and went from Variel.

The Rodian stopped before the throne and nodded and bowed nervously to the massive Hutt reclining on his repulsorlift throne, the masses of oozing loose flesh almost pulsating with every breath. The Rodian finally stopped bobbing his obeisance and spoke. "Great Barukka, may I present Master Jinn, Jedi Knight..."

Barukka's huge slash of a mouth widened even further with a leering grin, the golden eyes irising open to regard the tall human Jedi. In deference to the human he switched from Huttese to Standard. "Hahahaha! Jedi! Come to try to mindtrick me into agreeing to the contract again? I thought I made my demands clear the last time you were here!"

"Indeed you did. I have come to present you with a counteroffer, great Barukka." Jinn folded his hands inside his cloak sleeves and regarded the corpulent Hutt steadily with guarded blue eyes. "You are certainly aware of how desperately the Zharvanans need a means of transport for their goods. I have been authorized by the Chief Magistrate to offer you ten percent of the net profits."

"Ten percent!" the Hutt burst out on another wave of loud laughter. "Alga is bulky, Jedi, and cheap! Ten percent of a load's profits would not cover even fuel costs!"

"Perhaps at first," Qui-Gon said tentatively. "Yet you would have an exclusive contract with the planetary export authority for ten years, with an option to renew the contract for three year periods afterwards. The Magistrate's economists predict they will increase production by twenty-five percent over the next five years. And that certainly will mean greater profits for you. Perhaps there are other, less bulky, more profitable exports from Zharvan which may interest you?"

An animal roar sounded from the door of the room, and the costumed and coiffed hangers-on all turned as one to peer toward the ornate fruitwood doors. A giant Wookie stood in the doorway, long furry arms stretched across the double doorframe, chortling in his species' version of convulsive laughter as he peered into the overdecorated space of the Hutt's throne room. The Wookie himself might have given the various silk-wrapped and brocade-bound aliens a lesson in gaudiness; his long-furred pelt was died in waves of neon colors, blues, greens and oranges. Perched on the furry head was a huge floppy, wide-brimmed hat adorned with a curling fluffy purple feather. Tiny blue diodes blinked in sequence around the edges of a gigantic pair of wrap-around sunglasses. Strapped to the Wookie's arm was a microcomp, the computer's neurojack buried in the fur of his head. Slung over the Wookie's shoulder was a pink leather bag that practically dripped with jingling gold chains and semiprecious gemstones.

Waves of titters and whispers and squeaks raced around the room as the garish Wookie staggered forward toward Barukka's throne, the Hutt's groupies quickly moving out of the way. It soon became clear the Wookie had perhaps had a little too much to drink, but then again the party had been going strong for almost thirty-six hours. The huge room outside the Hutt's throne room thumped with the wild cyberelectronic beats and holos and upwards of a thousand people were jerking around the dance floor as if in the throes of perpetual epileptic seizures.

*What am I doing here?* Qui-Gon asked himself for seemingly the thousandth time on this mission. He watched warily as the nine-foot-tall shambling wall of multicolored fur approached, still chortling with laughter. As the Wookie came into conversational range Qui-Gon moved aside with a slight nod to the Wookie. It was never a good idea to get on the bad side of a drunken Wookie. The furry humanoid hit a sequence of buttons on the microcomp on his arm and the computer began speaking with a synthesized voice.

"Gotta tell ya, Barukka da great, dis is one wild party! Wanted to say thanks." The Wookie dug his hand into his pink leather bag and tossed a small greenish plastic ball onto the floor. In an eyeblink the ball began to hiss loudly and the Hutt's courtiers quickly cleared the area around the throne. Barukka didn't move and Qui-Gon gave the Hutt a questioning look before moving slowly to the side, his eyes once more trained on the swaying Wookie.

In the length of a heartbeat the green plastic ball burst in a contained explosion of hissing air, the plastic sphere unfolding like a flower blooming. The smell of ozone and a whiff of propellant and before the Hutt's throne was now a blow-up neon-purple and green cartoonish dragon, smiling goofily and rocking with the movement as it exploded into form.

"Be seeing you, old man!" The Wookie's microcomp said cheerfully as he waggled large furry fingers at the Hutt and turned to go, lurching toward the door.

The Hutt laughed uproariously even as he waved a hand at his guards. The Wookie was seized by both arms and steered around back to the Hutt's throne.

"Scan it!" the Hutt hissed to the Rodian who still hovered by his side.

The Rodian bobbed his acknowledgement and took a handheld sensorcom from his belt, scurried around to scan the inflatable dragon.

"There he is!"

Qui-Gon glanced around to the young voice at the ornate doorway. Three of the Hutt's Gamorrean guards now held their axes across the doorway, preventing two young humans from entering the throne room. The younger of the pair, a girl with a short fall of straight red-gold hair, was trying to reach one hand past the razor-sharp blades toward the Wookie. An elfin, freckled face and a huge pair of startlingly luminous blue eyes peered between the blades. She looked no older than thirteen or fourteen, tiny and slender, dressed in an improbable assemblage of a red tartan plaid man's jacket over a short silvery spandex tube dress with matching silver ankleboots. Qui-Gon's first impression was of "demented fairy".

The other young human stood behind her, one arm around her shoulders, giving the Gamorreans a disarming grin before turning his eyes again to the scene in the throne room. For the briefest of moments Qui-Gon was caught by emerald eyes and then the boy's gaze moved on around the room.

And he felt the Force brush through him with the touch of those eyes. Startled, he sharpened his gaze on the young human male as the Gamorreans began to shift nervously.

"It scans clean, oh great Barukka," the Rodian quavered, stepping away from the inflatable dragon and bobbing once more to the Hutt agitatedly.

"Clean, you say?" Barukka asked rhetorically. The Hutt's huge yellow eyes regarded the psychedelic Wookie for a long wary moment before gesturing again to his guards. They released the Wookie and the Gamorreans at the door moved away.

The two young humans rushed forward to retrieve their drunken furry friend and Qui-Gon got a good look at the young male at last.

Skin-tight black leather pants molded over sleek muscled legs, thick-soled spacer's boots. A leather speeder bike racer's jacket, revealing the well-defined muscles of a slender, wiry body. Long golden hair, and as the boy moved forward Qui-Gon saw the silver glint of a neurojack just behind an ear that held a pair of ear cuffs connected by thin silver chains that ran through a thin loop of gold through the earlobe. He moved with the casual, boneless grace of a hunting cat with a half-amused smirk on his face. He fit every stereotype Qui-Gon had ever heard of the typical speeder-bike racer; young, cocky, living fast and loose with little regard for the rules, fiercely competitive in an illegal and life-threatening sport.

Barukka's booming laugh sounded again and Qui-Gon tore his eyes from the two young humans starting to lead their Wookie friend from the room. The Hutt's bloated form rippled with his laugh and the tiny hands fluttered like drugged birds. "Khatar! What is this your Wookie threw on my floor?"

The young human male turned back and gave the Hutt a lopsided smirk. "A toy, Barukka. They're popular at parties like these," he jerked one thumb toward the door into the flashing dark of the party beyond. "There's proabably twenty of them being batted around over the dance floor right now. Hit the button on the nose and it'll fold back up into a ball. Toss it onto the floor or against a wall and it'll re-inflate." The young man eyed the pig-like Gamorreans warily. "Want me to get it out of here?"

The Hutt laughed again. "No! I like it! Annoys everyone! Jedi!" The Hutt waved at Qui-Gon and then toward the young human. "This is Branden Khatar, the craziest human I've ever known! He races speeder bikes!"

Khatar slid amused emerald eyes to the Jedi and then back to the Hutt, the smirk turning arrogant. "I gotta hand it to you, Barukka, you pull in all types. Rich kids, flare riders, assassins, smugglers, racers, and now Jedi?"

Barukka grunted. "Business *and* pleasure, remember Khatar? My cardinal rule!"

Khatar snorted a laugh at that. "As if you had any. I'd better go make sure Lena gets Soupy back to our room, d'you know how hard it is to try to scrape a plastered Wookie out of a lift car?" With a nod at the Jedi Master, Khatar turned to go, deliberately turning his back on the Hutt in a blatant show of disrespect. Several of the brocaded sycophants began whispering as he did so, but the Hutt just rumbled a chuckle.

"Crazy human! But he's not lost a race in three years!" The Hutt waved the Jedi back to resume their interrupted negotiations.

Qui-Gon heaved a weary sigh as he passed by the Gamorreans and left Barukka's throne room. He winced and closed his eyes briefly as he was assaulted on all sides by movement, light, color and wild synthesized dance music. Various smells made the air thick enough to cut and he began to get lightheaded almost immediately. The Force only knew what exactly was contained in that haze but he'd hazard the few credits to his name that there were more than a few controlled substances mixed in. He moved quickly around the periphery of the room, wrapping his cloak around him, touching the Force and allowing it to guide him around the alien and humanoid bodies that littered the edges of the dance floor and sprawled across chairs and piles of pillows in assorted stages of undress and inebriation.

*The madness of the young,* he thought. *What am I doing here?*

Finally regaining the relative quiet of the corridor leading to the banks of lifts, the Jedi Master took a deeper breath at last. Shaking his head, he passed by the knots of giggling and chattering young humanoids, eyeing the strings of blinking lights two of the females wore entwined in their hair and around their limbs. Save for a few scraps of spandex it was *all* they wore.

*What am I doing here? The trade agreement. For the Zharvanans. That's what I'm doing here. Negotiating with a Hutt because Zharvan can't afford the Federation's tariffs.*

Just as he reached out to hit the lift call button, an overwhelming flash of light ripped through the air behind him, the concussion drowning out the music on a wave of deafening sound that dashed the Jedi to the corridor floor.

Screams began to shred the air around him, the lights of the dance abruptly winked out leaving more than a thousand panicking people in pitch black darkness. After a moment the red emergency lights burst into life and a far klaxon began to wail somewhere beyond the huge converted hangar where the party had raged only a moment before. Qui-Gon lurched to his feet, feeling the rumbles through the corridor deckplates, and picked his way quickly through those now beginning to recover their stunned wits, made his way to the door leading back into the old hangar.

The lurid feeble crimson glow illuminated a scene of tragic chaos.

*Great Light! A bomb?!*

The screams, the injured...

Catching his breath, Qui-Gon steeled himself and forced himself back into the red-tinged darkness, toward the worst of the injured. These people needed him, some of them were dying and would not survive until the med crews could arrive.

The fear threatened to choke him, clawed itself up from the little corner of his mind he tried daily to forget. His feet felt like lead weights, his hands like ice, his blood ran cold in his veins.

He was halfway through the recovering, frantic crowd, fighting against the tide of alien and human bodies beginning to rush toward the exits, when he glimpsed a lithe, dark humanoid form moving along the girders and catwalks high above the ruined dance floor. It was moving with unimpeded quickness toward a point just to the right of the area of the explosion. Then Qui-Gon could only file the event away for later as he reached the first of the critically injured and dropped to his knees beside a blue-skinned boy hissing in some alien tongue, trying to revive a girl lying unconscious in his arms.

*No time now for fear* Qui-Gon thought to himself fiercely and brought all his training to bear to stuff his terror back into that box in his mind. Ignoring his surroundings and the panic all around him, he put his hands on the girl's head and breathed deep, and reached for the Force.

It came at his call and he was still faintly amazed it would still do so, and unutterably grateful that it would. There were times in the last few years when he feared (along with all the other fears that dogged him, but this was the worst) that one day he'd reach for the power and it would no longer respond to his touch. Yet here and now it allowed him to direct it into the assaulted biosystem of the young girl beneath his hands, and felt the rush of lifeforce from his hands. The screams, the spikes of panic, the red-lit darkness faded away.

Immersed as he was in the tide of the Force, he cried out instinctively when it lurched around his mind as if a Rancor had yanked it sideways. Startled out of his healing trance, he opened his eyes to find himself entangled in a net of clinging polymer filaments, rapidly rising upward by the power of the Force, already high above the shattered party and the bodies scattered over the dance floor. And then a twist of the Force propelled him through a hole in the high ceiling where a cooling system vent had been removed.

He had barely a second to register a slender humanoid figure in a black, light-absorbing bodysuit, the head covered by a close-fitting smooth black face mask. Then the Force turned upon him and his mind fell into gray numbness.

Soft pastel lights wove in slow patterns through Qui-Gon's closed eyelids. Gentle echoing music sounded from somewhere nearby, just quiet enough that he was uncertain of the source, nearly subliminal. Electronic windchimes, he suspected, set to sound in the solar winds.

Voices, indistinct, several rooms away through at least one closed door. It was laughter that had wakened him. The air was no longer the thick, choking atmosphere of the party on Variel Station but fresh, clean, slightly chilly, with only a faint scent of some sort of incense.

And there was something moving over his chest, something long and muscular. Qui-Gon froze completely still again and waited for whatever it was to move away.

A door hissed open somewhere nearby and a moment later he heard a low chuckle and footsteps. Then the moving thing on his chest was gone.

"It's all right, it's a droid. A cybersnake. It doesn't bite."

Qui-Gon recognized the voice and opened his eyes at last to find himself sprawled across a huge round bed, half-buried in stuffed animals, pillows, and fake fur blankets. Batting an orange stuffed fish away from his face, he looked up into a familiar smirk and glittering emerald eyes.

"Welcome back to the land of the living, Jedi," Branden Khatar said, one corner of his mouth quirking up into a brief grin.

"You -- oh Force, what have you done?!" Qui-Gon surged up out of the pillows and stuffed animals, tugged his cloak around him again before it could slip off his shoulders. "There were people dying on Variel, I was working to stabilize them until the med teams got there!"

"Were you?" The racer snorted a soft cynical laugh. "And just how many do you think you could have saved, Jedi? One? Two? Half a dozen?" The emerald eyes went hard and cold then. "Save your strength. The med teams on Variel are top of the line. Barukka wouldn't have it any other way, he's a hypochondriac."

"You kidnapped me?" Qui-Gon asked indignantly.

"Whoever did saved you from your own altruism," Khatar said, moving away from the side of the bed toward a tall window showing the streaks of hyperspace.

"Did you plant that bomb?" Qui-Gon demanded.

A harsh laugh. "I'm a speeder-bike racer, Jedi, do you think I'd know how to plant a bomb? The only time I worry about life and death is between the start line and the finish line. Anything else is a breeze."

"I must call the Council," Qui-Gon said and struggled up from the huge bed, straightening his uniform and -- "Where is my lightsaber?"

A snort of laughter from Khatar. "I threw it out the airlock."

"WHAT?!" Qui-Gon whirled to stare at the racer, his eyes blazing with anger.

Khatar's green eyes blazed right back at him. "Y'know, Jedi, it's people like you who perpetuate all the violence in the galaxy. Running around with your lightsabers, ready to slice people at a moment's notice, sanctioned by the Senate and your gods-be-damned Jedi Council! What in the hells of the Core do you have to protect, anyway? The galaxy is going to go on right the way it's always gone on for thousands of years and nothing you say or do is going to change that! Get over yourself, Jedi!" The racer stalked forward toward the angered Jedi, the spinning pastel light of the lightglobe hovering near the ceiling making his eyes dark and colorless, hard as stone. "Relax, Jedi. The universe doesn't need you anymore. The Council can assume you died in the blast on Variel. Start over. Have fun, be irresponsible." The smirk returned then. "Be late without a good excuse."

Qui-Gon glared at the racer's challenging look and refused to be challenged. "I have duties, I have a mission to complete!"

Khatar rolled his eyes and firmly peeled the cybersnake from around his arm and neck, tossed the darkly gleaming droid back onto the bed. He crossed to a set of bins built into the wall near the door, began digging through folded clothing as he talked. "You didn't hear me, Jedi. *You're assumed to be dead.* You have no duties. You're free."

"I am *not* dead," Qui-Gon growled emphatically.

"No, reports of your death were slightly exaggerated," Khatar said with a chuckle. "I've always found death to be rather boring. Unless I wasn't really dead, of course. Then it's a laugh riot."

Qui-Gon watched as Khatar pulled out various items of clothing. "We'll have to stop somewhere and get you some clothes, none of my stuff would fit you. I've got a race in two days on Errai Matar. Hmm. Korolis is on the way. We'll stop there and go shopping." Turning back to the Jedi Master, Khatar flashed a brief smile and for the first time since he'd come into the room Qui-Gon noticed the racer wore only a loud, multi-colored silk robe. Glancing around the room, he finally noticed the streaks of hyperspace outside the wide viewports of the ship, the pastel lightglobes illuminating the room, the giant glow-in-the-dark holopics of fractals, the zero-gee webbing across the ceiling. Several neurohelmets were spread across a nearby worktable in various stages of repair, wires and electrodes springing out of the hard siliplastic shells. Clothes were strewn across the floor in sloppy disarray. The stuffed head of what looked like a giant horned grunk leered from above the doorway, it's spiralling horns festooned with tiny flashing lights, a pair of racing goggles over the sightless eyes. Khatar saw the Jedi's eyes fix on the grunk and chuckled again. "A former rival. Thought he could pass me on turn eighteen on Yavin at the Galactic Free-for-All last year." The smirk turned feral. "That's the only part they found intact."

Qui-Gon dropped down onto the edge of the bed again and rubbed his eyes wearily, feeling a headache beginning. A rustle in the darkness and he opened his eyes again, blinking in surprise as Khatar pulled on a pair of tight black jeans, the worn denim molding around every curve of muscle and bone, seemingly oblivious to the older man eying his naked body. Turning, Khatar snorted a soft laugh at Qui-Gon's bemused expression and dropped an ancient, very well worn t-shirt over his head. The picture on the front of the t-shirt was of a stick figure of a human pulling a piece of string through it's ears with the caption "Mental Floss" below. Khatar grinned and dug out a pair of combat boots from under the bed, sat down and began to tug them on.

"Come on, Jedi, lighten up," Khatar said as he rose from the bed and headed for the door. "Come meet the peanut gallery."

*Peanut gallery?* Qui-Gon asked himself, then shook his head free of questions and followed the racer out into the corridor.

The thumping sounds and synthar riffs of dance music came from a hatchway down the short corridor. Thankfully they turned the opposite direction toward an open area ahead. The two walked through a curtain of beads and ribbons into the ship's common room, Khatar turning to the left toward the ship's tiny food-prep area.

" 'Bout time you woke up," said a female voice behind them, and both turned to see the girl who had been with Khatar in Barukka's throne room all but stomping down the corridor leading to the ship's cockpit. She still wore the silver tube dress but was barefoot and had shed her tartan plaid jacket. Flashing angry blue eyes pinned the Jedi as she stood with her hands planted firmly on slender hips.

"Can it, Lena, it wasn't his fault," Khatar said without turning. "Did you remember to get --"

"Of course. Third shelf."

"A- HAA!" Khatar pulled his head out of the cooler and triumphantly held up a large glass jar of some sort of dark brown thick glop. "Here, Jedi, is nature's most perfect food! It has all the essential food groups, sugar, salt, fat, caffeine and chocolate." With a happy sigh he dug into a nearby drawer to retrieve a knife. "Chocolate peanut butter..." He reached up into a cupboard and snagged a container of bread and began to make sandwiches with the brownish chocolatey substance. "Lena, go see if Soupy's hungry."

"Hungry? He's not even awake yet. The hangover."

"Oh, yeah." Khatar frowned and shrugged. "Lena, change of course. We need to stop at Korolis and go shopping."

The girl brightened at that. "Shopping? Goody!" She turned and disappeared up the corridor to the cockpit, then a second later reappeared and pinned Khatar with a hard and hostile stare.

"I can feel your eyes drilling holes in the back of my head, Lena," Branden said, refusing to turn to look at her.

Lena transferred her stare to Qui-Gon for a moment, then turned and retreated back into the cockpit.

"Don't mind her, Jedi," Branden said, stacking sandwiches on a plate and turning to get drinks out of the cooler. "By the way, Barukka didn't tell me your name."

Qui-Gon sank slowly into one of the blastchairs around the large table in the common room. "Qui-Gon Jinn." Something dug into his backside and he shifted to pull it out. It was an electronic game, a small round disk with buttons around the edges and a holoprojector crystal in the middle.

Branden put the plate of sandwiches down on the table with a plastic bottle of some sort of fruit juice. He took the game from Qui-Gon's hand and nodded at the food. "Eat."

Qui-Gon sighed and reached for one of the sandwiches. It was almost revoltingly sweet, chocolatey and peanuty, something the Initiates at the Temple would devour three times a day with glee. Branden sprawled back into a blastchair on the other side of the table with his own sandwich and sighed happily as he began to devour it.

"Who was your teacher?" Qui-Gon asked as he managed to choke down the last of his sandwich and washed it down with the tangy purple fruit juice Branden had given him.

"What teacher?" Branden said and took a huge bite out of his second sandwich.

"Whoever taught you to use the Force," Qui-Gon clarified.

Branden choked and swallowed hurriedly, took several gulps of his juice before swiping a hand across his mouth and glaring at the Jedi in disbelief. "You're going delusional, Jedi! Whoever knocked you out hit you too hard!"

"Granted your control isn't what it would be if you'd been trained at the Temple, but --" Qui-Gon began.

"But nothing, Jedi!" Branden snapped and sat up from his comfortable sprawl, his emerald eyes flashing with anger. "Get one thing straight, Jedi. I am *not* a Jedi. I have no abilities with the Force. I am simply a speeder-bike racer. That's all."

Qui-Gon raised an eyebrow as he felt the Force brush through his mind, carrying the imperative on a strong wave of thought. He turned the suggestion aside but not easily and smiled frostily at the racer as Branden's eyes widened, realizing the attempt hadn't worked. "Somehow, I don't believe you, Khatar."

Branden blinked for a moment, then sprawled back in his chair and stared contemptuously at the Jedi Master. "No one *trained* me, Jedi. I trained myself." He stuffed the last of his sandwich in his mouth and picked up the electronic game Qui-Gon had sat on, turned it on. A hologram puzzle sprang to life over the game's tiny hologrid and the racer proceeded to ignore the Jedi.

Lena came bopping down the hallway from the cockpit, a thin cable snaking from the neurojack behind her left ear to a chipmusic player on her wrist. Dancing and singing along to the music only she could hear, she spun and glided over to the table, swept up the last sandwich and whirled away to skip and sway down the corridor. Branden barely glanced up at her as she passed him.

Qui-Gon had almost nerved himself to break the silence when the faint dance music from down the corridor stopped abruptly and a loud Wookie wail replaced it.

"Well, Soupy's awake," Branden said with a snort of laughter and turned the puzzle off. He pushed himself to his feet and glanced at the Jedi Master. "Come on, you'd better stay in my room until the crazy nit's got a hot meal and some analgesics down his throat. He can be kind of touchy when he's got a bad hangover and I really don't want to scrape your innards off the bulkheads."

A few moments later, ensconced once again on the edge of the huge round bed in the company of only stuffed animals and the head of the horned grunk, Qui-Gon realized that none of his questions had been answered.

"You can drop me off on Korolis and be about your way, Khatar."

Branden yelped at the voice and banged his head on the engine cowling of his speeder bike as he straightened involuntarily. Pulling himself out from under the bike's molded duranium carapace, he pulled off the magnifying goggles he was wearing and glared angrily at the Jedi Master standing in the hatchway of the ship's hold. An irritated rumble from the multi-colored Wookie beside him and Soupy also pulled his shaggy head out of the engine's workings to glance at the Jedi. Branden squeezed the Wookie's shoulder and moved away, stood up and crossed his arms over his chest. "Sure, we could."

"But you do not wish to?" Qui-Gon asked.

"Why do you want us to?" Branden said with a snort. "Oh, yeah, I forgot, honor and duty and oh gods we've got to save the universe!" The racer rolled his eyes and reached for a torque spanner as the Wookie held up a fur-covered hand the size of a plate.

The hold of the ship was obviously the garage for Branden's speeder bikes, of which there were two intact and functional at the moment. The sleek, glossy metal beasts gleamed in the overhead lights, bright neon orange with jagged black lightning racing stripes, rounded sculptured curves seeming to fly without moving. Tools were strewn across the long worktable against the wall in careless disarray, hung on the pegboard over the table. Buckets underneath the table held coolant, grease, engine lubricant. The floor was littered with fasteners, wire snippets, smeared with dried oil and overlaid with the greenish oily gleam of coolant. Branden's face bore a smudge of black grease across one cheek already, his hands were black with oil and grime.

"Your cynicism will not make my duties go away," Qui-Gon said sternly. "I am not your property. And I do not have either the time or inclination to wander aimlessly about the galaxy with --"

" -- three children," Branden finished with a grimace. "Well, guess what, Jedi, that's just what you're going to do! High and mighty Jedi Master! If -- and that's a damned big If, like starcruiser size -- you ever manage to save the universe, just who do you think you'll be saving it for?" The racer leaned back against the worktable, handed Soupy another tool as the Wookie whurffled at him. "Guess what, Jedi? You'll be saving it so that children - yes, 'children' like me! - can go wandering around the galaxy! Getting into trouble and going to week-long parties and running illegal races and selling drugs and smuggling spice. Being irresponsible." A mirthless laugh and Branden's emerald eyes met his for the first time since the morning. "Still so sure you want to save the universe?"

"No, actually, I've no intention of saving the universe, now or ever," Qui-Gon snapped back. "If the Jedi save the universe it will not be through the actions of any one Master or Knight. It will be through all our contributions together, working for peace and harmony. Individually we are unimportant. Collectively, we make a difference in the galaxy and I challenge anyone to say differently." Qui-Gon allowed his eyes to drill into Branden's. "Even you, Khatar, cannot deny that over our history the Jedi have made a considerable difference in the galaxy. I will not abandon my duty."

A long moment's pause from Branden and the emerald eyes lost some of their hardness and a glimmer of mischievous humor flashed. "We'll see about that, Jedi."

The Wookie looked up from his work and up at the racer, and Branden scruffled the orange fur on the broad shoulders before kneeling again and pulling his microgoggles back on and focussing once more on the speeder bike's innards. Qui-Gon fumed at being ignored for a moment before the commpanel on the wall by the hatchway beeped twice.

"Coming up on Korolis, guys, five minutes. Better tie down the china and lock up the silverware," Lena's voice piped up through the commpanel's small speaker.

"Right, Lena," Brendan called toward the comm. "Be there in a flash. C'mon, old man," he said, tugging on the Wookie's arm and getting to his feet again. "Better go on up forward and get strapped in, Jedi."

Qui-Gon glared at the racer, then turned and disappeared up the corridor.

Soupy snorted a violent Wookie sigh after the retreating form of the Jedi Master and took his microcomp from the worktable, slipped the straps onto his arm and plugged the cable to the neurojack hidden beneath the fur of his head. "D'you know what you're doing here, kid?" the microcomp said in it's smooth droid-like voice. "What's your game, anyway?"

Branden smiled slowly as he hurriedly began putting tools on the rack over the table. "Doin' what I always do, Soupy old bean. Flying blind."

"Ah, Korolis...Coruscant's evil twin," Branden said airily as the ship dropped below the brownish-gray clouds of petrochem smog that perpetually shrouded the urbanized planet. "Acid rain, sulphuric fog, mutant rats and lizards, ah, truly a garden paradise!"

Lena had the temerity to giggle at the racer's sarcasm as she barrel-rolled the ship and slipped smoothly into a traffic pattern heading east into the slightly brighter dayside of the planet. Qui-Gon, sitting behind the girl, was very glad he'd actually strapped in to his seat, the girl was a showoff and twisted the ship through rolls and swooping dives on the way to the approach vector. The Jedi Master tried to close his ears to the angry complaints of KorolisCom as the ship strayed from the strictly enforced flight paths for approaching the busy city-world below.

The jagged field-shielded steel and glass, stained by the aforementioned acid rain and sulphur mists that passed for weather on Korolis, swept by below the blunt nose of the ship. It never really was clear on Korolis, the rain was constant and the yellow-gray mists pervasive and icy cold. Unlike Coruscant, people did not go outside on Korolis without heavy protective gear and breathing masks, and even then the longest safe duration was half an hour. The city honeycombed a mile deep into the crust of the planet and two hundred stories above the surface, towers and spires thrusting up into the angry atmosphere in dark, electrified teeth. Shielded tunnelways connected the buildings like the delicate threads of a web. The spotlights of security 'hoppers and passing ships threw glow in hellish ochre and flame yellow through the clouds and rain and mist.

"Flamers," Lena muttered crossly and punched the button on the console beside her to mute the squawking from the comm. Sighing, she muttered something darkly in some alien tongue, then shook her head and turned the comm back on again. "Korolis Command, may I have my landing grid number please?" she said as sweetly as she could manage.

Qui-Gon closed his eyes and clenched his fingers tightly on the arms of his chair. *Why do I suddenly have the feeling that I've lost total control of this situation?*

Amazingly the ship landed without further incident and the Jedi Master breathed a silent sigh of relief as the shielded bubble-dome began to slide closed over the ship, protecting it from the acid rain and sulphur mists.

"Droid-car will be here in five minutes," Branden said, locking down the navigator's board with brisk efficiency. The racer whirled in his chair and caught hold of Qui-Gon's cloak as the Jedi Master rose to his feet. "Oh no, you don't, Jedi. Hold your Taun-Tauns."

Qui-Gon glowered and pulled his cloak out of the racer's grip and turned down the corridor, heading for the ship's main hatch.

Branden found him standing at the top of the rampway as it began to descend.

"I have had enough of your sarcasm and cynicism, Khatar," Qui-Gon said with great dignity, settling his cloak around his shoulders and pulling his hood up over his head, obviously preparing to depart. He tucked his hands into his cloak sleeves, staring straight ahead at the dim twilight of the dome beyond the ramp's end and the airlock a dozen yards distant.

Branden peered up at the tall leonine Jedi for a moment, then sighed gustily and ran a long-fingered hand through his golden hair. For a moment the racer looked nervous and at a loss for words. "Wait a minute. Don't leave. I'll be right back," Branden said and Qui-Gon looked down at the racer, hearing something plaintive in the usually cynical, sneering voice.

Soupy, coming around the corner from the cockpit, lurred a low interrogative as Branden flung the bead curtain aside and ran back down the corridor to his room, then the Wookie turned to give the Jedi Master a very puzzled glare before throwing up furry hands in exasperation and disappearing down the corridor to his own room. Lena appeared and gave the Jedi another half-hostile silent stare, then slipped past him and into the corridor and disappeared into another hatchway.

Branden swung out of his room, shrugging into his leather jacket. He'd changed t-shirts (this one said "Forget the Whales -- Save the Humans!" ) and scrubbed the grease off his face and hands. He dug in the pocket of the jacket and began fastening on the earcuffs and thin chains onto the gold loop in his right ear. Then he stopped beside the Jedi again and straightened to look him in the eye.

"I'd like you to stay," was all the racer said, artlessly. He reached inside his jacket and held out Qui-Gon's lightsaber.

Relief flooded through the Jedi Master as he slowly retrieved his cherished weapon from the racer's hand. Then he looked down into dark emerald eyes.

And found he couldn't tear his gaze away, caught in the myriad of possibilities and complexities of those green depths.

Behind the bead curtain, Lena watched the two standing silent, looking into each other's eyes. The seemingly young face shifted with wariness and a distant aloofness. Soupy's hand fell on her bare shoulder and she looked up at the furry face. The Wookie shook his head in silent confusion and indicated the racer and the Jedi standing transfixed.

"Kiss him, you fool!" Lena yelled into the silence.

*What am I doing here?* Qui-Gon asked himself. He got no answer to the mostly rhetorical question and briefly wondered if the Force had gone deaf. Or at least become selectively inattentive.

Korolis' South Five Mall was one of the largest malls in the Republic, in a class with Coruscant's Galleria and Aldhara's Inner Worlds Mall. A massive, thirty-mile square sprawl of stores, outlets, and eateries, it boasted it's own medical center, network domain and amusement park.

Artificial lighting sluiced spectroscopically correct shades of simulated sunlight down from the liquid-crystal vidscreens that occupied the ceiling far above, flickering between the leaves of trees and vines. Water sculptures and small waterfalls bubbled and frothed at hallway intersections. The mall, like every other structure on Korolis, was built to a hexagonal grid and the very regularity of the straight hallways and precise, identical turns was disorienting. Qui-Gon could not keep track of where he was, felt like he was being led in circles.

Perhaps he was. Lena was leading the group, skipping along half-dancing as she bopped to the beat of the chipmusic player once more connected with her neurojack. The huge psychedelically-furred Wookie and the girl in silver and red plaid had found themselves between the Jedi and the racer and any attempt to move out from between the two only engendered a silent and swift return to opposite ends of the group. Neither spoke to or looked at the other.

"So what are we here for?" Lena asked brightly, catching Branden's arm and tugging, trying to get the racer to pull his hand out of his jacket pocket. The racer gently pulled his arm out of her grip and gave her a half-smile. "Not that I care, I mean, never could resist a little recreational shoplifting. But when you said Korolis you sounded like you had a mission."

Soupy whurffled in agreement and tugged down his hat. This time, he wore an improbably tall, black and white striped top hat with the obligatory fluffy purple feather.

"Hmmm," Branden answered his friends as he looked around, scanning possibilities. "Well, we *are* on a mission, kids." His mouth quirked into a grin and he winked down at Lena conspiratorially. "Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to turn this rock of a Jedi Master into -- into -- "

" -- something other than an uptight martyr with an energy weapon fetish?" Lena supplied helpfully.

Branden shook his head. "Nah! Something -- Something --"

" -- Cool and fruity and five different shades of green?" Soupy asked via his microcomp.

"Oooh, that sounds good," Branden said mischievously. "But not green. He wouldn't look good in green."

"I beg your pardon?" Qui-Gon asked flatly.

Branden glanced quickly at the Jedi and then away. "No. Not green. Help me here, Lena, you're the fashion guru. Not green. So what?"

Lena turned to give the faintly annoyed Jedi Master a long appraising look. "Paisley. Definitely paisley. The long-haired mystical look. Definitely paisley."

Branden pulled the girl around and kissed her forehead soundly. "Kid, you're a genius!"

"This is not neccessary," Qui-Gon grumbled as he was dragged by the hand toward yet another doorway. "My uniform is sufficient for my needs, there is no call for this."

"Sure there is, don't be such an old lame-o," Lena said, her tiny hand latched around the Jedi Master's wrist. "Jeez. D'you wanna stick out like a dweeb? D'you wanna shout 'I'm a narc! Come stomp me!' to every sassin and snitch this side of the Core? Sure as hell Bran don't want to hang out with someone who fades into the woodwork."

"I am a Jedi, I must maintain a certain level of dignity --"

"Augh! Again with the 'I'm a Jedi!' schtick!" Lena wailed. She whirled and planted her hands on her hips and glared up at the tall Jedi Master. The top of her head barely reached the middle of his chest. "Listen, it's real flamin' obvious you're a Jedi! You walk like a Jedi, you talk like a Jedi. You raise your hand and mountains walk, you see into souls, you walk tightropes without a net, all the usual Jedi legend glopola. Don't try telling me that without your uniform you're not a Jedi, 'cause even I know that ain't gonna fly."

Qui-Gon sighed and slumped. "But -- I have a mission -- I -- "

An exasperated sigh from the girl and she threw up her hands. "Just come on! You've got to have *something* to wear while the droids wash that precious uniform of yours anyway! Though from the way Bran's acting he probably wouldn't mind it one bit if you ran around the ship naked!"

"WHAT?!"

Soupy chortled at this and clapped a furry hand on the Jedi Master's cloaked shoulder. Branden smirked half-heartedly at Lena and shoved his hands deeper into his jacket pockets silently.

"See? What'd I tell you?" Lena asked, flinging a hand out to indicate Branden's silent and patently false nonchalance. "Damn, Jedi, d'you know how many women --and men -- fling themselves at this boy? If I were you I'd be laying myself out like a rug and promising my firstborn child."

"Leeee-na!" Branden whined. Qui-Gon was slightly surprised to see a faint blush on the racer's face as he turned away in embarrassment, rolling his eyes at the girl's frankness.

Lena punched the leather-clad arm lightly. "I'm your pilot, not your mother!"

Branden snorted. "Coulda fooled me."

"Come on, Bran, work with me here," Lena muttered and darted forward to capture the confused Jedi Master by the hand again. "Now. Come along, Jedi Master. It's not the Walk of Fire here. "

Qui-Gon heaved a weary, defeated sigh and let the girl pull him forward.

Qui-Gon never really did figure out at what exact point he lost complete control of the situation.

Five hours later, he found himself sitting at a table in South Five Mall's food court area, exhausted, foot-sore, and brain-fried, while beside him the giant Wookie gnawed happily on a skewer filled with some sort of purplish-brown meat.

"Not exactly a day at the office for you, is it Jedi?" Soupy's microcomp asked as the Wookie delicately tore off another strip of meat from his skewer.

Qui-Gon shook his head and simply said, "No. It's not." He eyed the several bags of clothing at his feet, the bright colors and odd amoeba-like patterns of silks and light cottons. "May I ask your full name? I find it disrespectful to call you simply 'Soupy'."

The Wookie chortled and his huge blue eyes looked down at the Jedi with a great deal of humor. "My name is Soupalanala. Trust me, Jedi, it's a lot easier to just call me Soupy. I certainly don't mind."

"I have always admired your people," Qui-Gon said wearily. "And your homeworld."

Soupy gave a long sigh and shrugged slightly. "Just don't expect us all to be tree-huggers, Jedi. Some of us are a lot more...jaded...than that."

"I know this too," Qui-Gon nodded. "There are always exceptions to every rule. That is the way of life."

The Wookie nodded.

"Well, kids," Lena said as she bounced back up to the two, Branden following behind somewhat slower with a half-grin on his face as the girl twirled about in front of the Jedi and the Wookie. "Whaddya think, Soupy?"

Lena was now sporting a wild ensemble of rainbow-dyed long skirts, a shirt made of a patchwork of blues, greens and shocking pinks, and a twisted bandana around her head that trailed down her slim back. The silver ankleboots had been replaced with soft black leather ankleboots with floppy cuffs.

"You look like a ship-gypsy," Soupy's microcomp said as the Wookie chortled softly.

"Oh goody, that's the effect I was hoping for," Lena said airily. "Now then. What next, Bran?"

"Mission accomplished, kids," Branden said, nodding at the several bags of clothing at Qui-Gon's feet. "Your call, Lena."

"Warpin'! Let's have this stuff sent back to the ship and go check out the braingames!" The girl scooped up several of the bags and shoved them into the racer's hands and took the rest herself.

Fifteen minutes later they were relieved of their burdens as one of the mall's delivery droids trundled off to the spaceport and the _Mad Mouse_, Branden and Lena's ship. Watching the girl and the racer chattering away with the Wookie about music and which party they would attend after Branden's next race in two days' time, Qui-Gon suddenly found himself wondering about these three vagabonds. From what little he knew of the speeder-bike race circuit the prize money Branden won could easily keep the three and their ship and Branden's speeder bikes in parts, fuel and food. Soupy was certainly old enough to be on his own, but Branden and Lena both seemed far too young to be away from their families.

*Stop it, Jinn. Don't get involved. Just find a tactful and graceful way to extricate yourself from them and call the Temple for a transport. Walk away. You have your duty. These children can obviously take care of themselves.*

"Yo, Jedi! Wake up!"

Lena's fingers poking him in the ribs broke Qui-Gon out of his thoughts as the three turned a corner and made a bee-line for a braingame arcade that occupied one whole hexagonal section of the mall. "I do not have a neurojack. I cannot play these games."

"Not all of them are neural," Branden said quietly without looking at the Jedi.

The arcade was a multi-level wonderland of holograms, flashing colors, aliens, voices yelping in triumph or defeat, the vibrations of power and concussion. Holoprojectors of all sizes sent simulations of alien horrors, spaceflight, fantasy warriors with swords and axes, abstract puzzle games. There were banks of neural network stations where participants jacked in to a shared virtual world, creating and manipulating the virtual environment, or entering the creations of others to explore or challenge themselves against the artificial intelligences that inhabited the worlds. One large walled-off section of the arcade was built as a maze for a game where players fought with infrared laser weapons or stalked small remote-controlled droids piloted by players outside the maze. Yet another section was filled with flight simulators for any craft from landspeeder to Republic Fleet starfighters. The cacophony and haze of light was dizzifying.

Lena immediately dragged the Wookie off into the maze of games, and Branden and Qui-Gon were left alone.

Branden's faint grin reappeared as the racer scanned the nearby games. "Here, Jedi," Branden said, nodding in front of him as he turned to make his way to another section of the arcade. The simulated explosions of a starfighter dogfight sounded in a burst of white noise as a young Rthikin nearby attained some difficult level. The blooms of light from the holo displays painted Branden's face in gold and blue, made the emerald eyes glitter coldly in the half-light.

The racer led the Jedi Master to one of the virtual world games. Qui-Gon looked up at one of the large holodisplays that showed the world and the representations of the players already within the game, and several odd geometric objects being manipulated and transformed. Branden picked up a set of neural skin-contact electrodes and handed them to Qui-Gon as he pulled a cable from the game console to attach to his own neurojack.

"What kind of game is this?" Qui-Gon asked, looking blankly at the electrodes in his hand.

"It's -- not really a game, there's no goal to it. You put those on your temples, red on the left, blue on the right," Branden said, gesturing with one hand to the dangling wires. "It'll take a minute or two to calibrate, and you won't 'see' the world in your own mind but from the screen here. I'll be jacked in direct." The racer nodded encouragingly. "Whatever you think, you create, Jedi. Your focus determines your reality."

Qui-Gon looked up at the racer sharply but Branden was smirking again, waiting to be sure Qui-Gon could adjust to the virtual world before he jacked in himself. *You claim you were not trained by a Jedi, then quote one of Master Yoda's favorite aphorisms at me. What is your game here, Khatar?* Deciding to take the bait from the sudden intense look in Branden's eyes, Qui-Gon slowly pressed the electrodes to his temples and settled on one of the chairs at the game console.

Branden calmly snapped the cable into his neurojack and hit the "Go" button.

There was a brief flash of pressure behind Qui-Gon's eyes and his vision dimmed for a moment, then cleared. Before him on the the console's holodisplay was a silvery-chrome roughly humanoid figure, devoid of features, floating above the floor of a small wooden room. After a moment the perspective shifted to the view from the silver humanoid's eyes. Floating slightly above the floor were several glowing spheres of various colors. As he watched one of the green spheres expanded and then burst to reveal an odd, blurred, wraith-like figure. Emaciated limbs in tattered black rags, the hair a bristling wild tuft of wires and glittering strings of lights, skin alabaster white and mottled with bruises. As he watched the figure lifted it's head and looked up, and Qui-Gon saw blood tears seeping from jewel-like emerald eyes. Then it spoke and he realized it was Branden even through the distortion and phasing of the voice.

"Just follow me, Jedi." The wraith moved to one of the walls and lifted a hand and a hidden door opened onto a brighter, larger space.

Fumbling to follow, trying to will his icon forward after the racer, Qui-Gon barely registered the other figures darting and flying around them in the open air arena they found themselves in. Smooth green stone beneath them, the walls were white marble overlaid with fluttering computer-generated lichens and ivy. In the middle of the space was a square dais raised several steps above the ground and atop it a cubical structure with a single unblinking blue eye on each side, staring out at the participants. A covered walkway ringed the edges and another open walkway beyond that in concentric rings. Within the arena, more of the glowing colored spheres appeared and burst to reveal other participants in the game, most of whom darted off immediately to other areas. Some figures remained, and they appeared to be building or creating various objects.

Branden's icon turned toward him and spoke again. "This is a sort of starting point. You can go off into the other games from here, but I don't think you're ready to be running down dark corridors infested with demonic horrors yet." Qui-Gon could hear the smirk in the voice. "But there's more to this world than chasing monsters and fighting. You can create things here, anything you can think of. There's even a special area for it. Come on, I'll show you." The wraith turned again and began to float away and Qui-Gon willed his icon to follow, watching the scene on the holodisplay change smoothly as he kept the wraith in sight.

They came to a doorway in one of the walkways and the wraith put up a hand and it opened with a hum and hiss. Down a short metal-walled corridor and they were in another area of the game, a huge hangar-like room. Qui-Gon willed his icon to look around and saw the ceiling was lost in darkness far, far above his head. Doors opened onto this area at several places and there were structures that looked like computer terminals arrayed around the floor. Several dozen figures, some custom-created icons like Branden's, others the flat featureless icons of non-neural participants, were scattered around the floor. Objects were appearing from thin air as the participants created them, calling them from computer-generated nothingness to illusory form. Branden led him to a vacant computer terminal structure.

"Are you the artistic type, Jedi?"

"Not really," Qui-Gon answered, subdued, still trying to get the hang of moving his icon around quickly.

"Hmph. Why'm I not surprised? See, watch me. All you have to do is *think* of something and the game creates it. At least in this room it does. See, if I wanted to go out to the other areas of the game I could create my weapons here." A red sphere appeared in front of the wraith and burst to reveal a wicked-looking plasma rifle. "Or my bike." A white sphere appeared and burst, revealing the familiar orange and black form of Branden's speeder bike. "Or how about a corned grunk and cabbage sandwich named Ralph?" A green sphere appeared and revealed a huge sandwich piled with greenish meat and leaves of cabbage. The sandwich sprouted a pair of skinny blue legs and ran off under it's own power. "So there's only one question, Jedi."

"What's that?" Qui-Gon asked.

"What do you want?"

Qui-Gon looked across at the racer's still form, his eyes closed as he concentrated on the virtual world he could see directly in his mind. There was a small enigmatic smile on Branden's face.

"I don't know what you mean," Qui-Gon said slowly.

"No. You don't, do you?" The wraith moved and the plasma rifle jumped into his hands. He swung onto the speeder bike and the computer-generated vehicle purred to life. "I'm gonna go kill something large and stupid. Be back in a little."

Qui-Gon quickly grew bored. He wandered over to some of the other groups to watch what they were doing. A group of half a dozen were cooperating to create a great multi-leveled contraption filled with improbable cartoonish gadgets that hooted, whistled, and exploded. Another was creating a set of figures, mystical beasts, linked to the virtual world's artificial intelligences to give them a semblance of life. Yet further, seemingly abandoned, was a large blob of multicolored goo that writhed and convoluted in hypnotic, organic patterns. He watched it for quite some time, let his mind wander as the fluid curves moved and convulsed. Almost like two lovers, writhing together... Jerking his mind away from such thoughts, he wandered back to the computer terminal structure where Branden had left him.

"Computer," he said tentatively. "How do I find a specific participant in this game?"

The crystal screen brightened and a voice responded. "Specify player?"

"Branden Khatar."

"There are no players by that referrant in the system at this time."

*Predictable, that he would not go by his real name in this game,* Qui-Gon muttered to himself, peering over at the racer's silent and still form, the eyes flickering under the closed eyelids, obviously far into his game. *One can create whatever they wish here...*

Concentrating, carefully building up the visualization of Branden's icon, he felt the slight tingle as the game system picked up the image. He re-focussed his eyes on the holodisplay and saw that while it was not perfect it was close. The details certainly were memorable, Branden's icon was a mystery just like the racer himself. "Computer, find this icon."

"There are no players by that referrant in the system at this time."

Qui-Gon grimaced. *I shall have to find him.* He concentrated again, building up another visualization piece by piece in minute detail...his lightsaber, as familiar as the lines on his hand. A red sphere appeared and burst and the silver and black hilt dropped into his hand. He pressed the power button and the green blade burst into life, humming much more menacingly in this virtual world than in real life, spitting sparks from the scintillating blade. He headed for the door Branden had taken and braced himself as the heavy hatchway slid upward and he walked forward into inky darkness.

A darkness that echoed with sepulchral sounds, the faint distant roars and screeches of monsters, the maddening drip of water, doors opening and closing, switches being thrown, the voices of players screaming, explosions, weapons fire.

*How can anyone consider this a game?* he wondered, then paused. Perhaps some further creations were in order. He turned and went back into the Creation room, quickly visualized a hoverlight. He detested walking in darkness. *If one can create whatever one can imagine, I should be able to create a shield of sorts.* He thought for a moment, then visualized a small electronic device and it burst into form from a blue sphere and landed in his hand. "Computer, I wish this device to function as a force-shield against energy weapons and physical attacks."

"Object complete. Parameters set. Shielding Level 6. Specify name of object."

"Shield Bubble. Activation code, 'shields'." Qui-Gon attached the device to his arm and activated it, took the small hoverlight and activated it, then headed once more for the door into the game.

He felt as if he'd been wandering for hours, lost in dark corridors, stumbling into water or glowing greenish ooze. He was immensely grateful he was not attached to the game via a neurojack because he soon understood that the greenish ooze was some sort of acid that burned. If he'd been jacked into the game direct he'd have felt that burn several times. He'd been nearly crushed under a falling ceiling, chased by odd flesh-colored beasts that seemed to be nothing more than a pair of muscular legs, eyes and a ravenous toothy mouth. Brownish humanoid demonic shapes threw balls of fire that were thankfully turned aside by his shield, as were the plasma gun charges fired at him from a huge spider-like monster that looked like a brain with legs. Other players ran past him, chasing each other, shooting at each other, racing to blue or white spheres that appeared every so often in the corridors and rooms. He quickly found that the blue spheres represented energy and the white recharged weapons. None of the racing figures was Branden's wraith icon.

*Wait. He created his speeder-bike. He could not ride it in anything other than large spaces. Unless he abandoned it. But he said he was going to find something large to kill. So. A large room or space with a large monster.*

He stumbled into a dark room and the hoverlight illuminated a single player standing motionless against a gray-metal wall.

"May I ask you something?" Qui-Gon asked the other icon.

"Sure," the player responded. The icon appeared to be some sort of military archetype, dressed in dark gray armor and forest camouflage, and carried a variety of guns.

"Where can I find the biggest monster in the game?"

"The Maulotaur," the player answered. "Two levels up. Ask the computer for a guide. You think you can go up against the Maulotaur with only *that*?" the icon gestured at Qui-Gon's lightsaber and shield.

"What would you suggest?"

"Rocket launcher, plasma rifle, BFG-9000," the player said. "And a room full of recharge spheres."

"Ah," Qui-Gon said gravely. "I take it this monster is nearly indestructible."

A shrug from the other player. "It can be killed, it just usually kills you first. Several times. The game regenerates it ten hours after it's killed, y'see. When you hear something that sounds like a mechanoid walking, watch your ass."

"Understood," Qui-Gon nodded gravely as the player flitted out the door of the room. "Computer, I need a guide to the Maulotaur."

A double-beep of acknowledgement and a glowing white line appeared on the floor. Qui-Gon set off at a quick trot down the corridor, following the spark of light as it extended ahead into the darkness.

*This must be the place.*

Qui-Gon's icon knelt just out of blast range of an open archway that led into an immense open area of the game bounded by cliffs of lunar rock. The setting appeared to be the surface of a rocky and dead moon; A black sky filled with the pinpoints of stars, a distant and small sun illuminating the landscape of gray and black. The archway was in the high wall of the crater wherein the Maulotaur prowled. Giant boulders and hidden doorways into tiny boltholes were scattered about the crater walls, steep stairways climbed to ledges. Qui-Gon could hear the thumping of massive feet from the crater floor below, the sounds of rocket launchers and plasma rifles. Several players were gathered here, darting from behind boulders to fire at the immense beast while it's back was turned.

The Maulotaur was gigantic. Qui-Gon estimated it's apparent height at 150 feet. Half-cybernetic, half animal, it rippled with muscles and roared it's challenges to the players in a voice that shattered the air. The tread of the metallic hooves made Qui-Gon's heart lurch with fear. What it must be like for those directly jacked into the game, he couldn't say and didn't want to know. The left arm of the beast was a seemingly inexhaustible rocket launcher. The beast acted with a great deal of intelligence, varying it's firing patterns every few shots so that the players could never count on a rhythm, waiting in silence for a nervous player to bolt from hiding before opening fire.

Qui-Gon saw a flash of orange to the right as he cautiously moved into the archway to peer out. Branden's speeder-bike construct was a heap of wreckage at the bottom of the crater some fifty feet below. As he watched the wreck vanished, reclaimed by the game system. So Branden was here, but hadn't been here long. Qui-Gon had noticed that game-killed monsters and players were reclaimed by the system about three minutes after they were killed.

Gathering himself, he waited, listening intently. When the sound of the Maulotaur's massive tread grew faint as it moved to the other side of the crater, he quickly left the protection of the archway and jumped from ledge to ledge toward the floor of the crater.

A third of the way down, a rocket exploded directly beneath his feet and he automatically tried to use the Force to slow his fall, remembering too late that the Force would not respond to him here. Fortunately the laws of physics were somewhat kinder in the game world than in real life and he landed unharmed and on his feet. He dived for the protection of a boulder as the Maulotaur's footsteps began to come closer. He found a steep stairway cut into the side of the boulder and scrambled upwards, came to a hatchway and hit the switch beside it to open the door. He tumbled inside as rockets began to pound into the face of the boulder he'd just scrambled over, threw himself away from the door as a rocket actually flew inside and exploded against the ceiling of the chamber before the hatch closed automatically.

The hoverlight, somehow still hovering obediently over his shoulder despite all the dives and leaps and running, illuminated the body of a dead player, another of the flat featureless humanoid shapes like Qui-Gon's own icon. A plasma rifle and a rocket launcher were scattered over the floor beside the body. Qui-Gon quickly scooped them up before the system could reclaim them and looked around. The small room was smooth gray metal and black corrugated deckplates. In one corner was a teleporter pad. Long hatchways along the walls provided rocket-proof shutters for the wide windows.

*Well, now what Jinn?* he asked himself as he stood there, hearing the thumping heavy tread of the Maulotaur just outside his bolthole and the explosions of rockets and the ratcheting bursts of plasma gun fire. *Two ways out, the door and the teleporter. The door leads out into the fight, the teleporter to the unknown.*

The teleporter pad flashed and a figure stepped out of the greenish light. It was small, child-sized, but otherwise it was a featureless white humanoid figure. It carried a rocket launcher and as Qui-Gon backed up a step it brought the weapon to bear on the Jedi and fired.

In the real world of the braingame arcade, where Qui-Gon still sat across from a motionless Branden, the Jedi Master reeled back in his chair as the overwhelming flash of red light blanked out the holodisplay before it went dark. Flung so abruptly out of the virtual world, it took him almost a minute to readjust to reality. When he had finally shaken the aftershock of the attack off, he looked back at the holodisplay to find his icon had returned to the Creation room.

"Had enough, Jedi?"

Qui-Gon willed his icon to turn around and there was the wraith again.

"Where have you been?" Qui-Gon growled to the racer.

"I could ask the same of you," the wraith answered, the voice dropping to a skittering whisper like dried leaves across concrete.

"I went looking for you," Qui-Gon muttered.

"Sure you did. I told you not to go into the game. You can't handle it, Jedi. It takes more imagination than you have to give." The wraith tilted it's head and Qui-Gon saw the sheen of the blood tears tracking down the pale white face. "Time to jack out, I think. Hit 'Quit' on the console and it'll shut you down."

Qui-Gon did so, annoyed with the racer. He took the electrodes from his temples and looked over at Branden with a faint scowl as the boy straightened and took a deeper breath, then reached up and took the cable from his neurojack. He opened his eyes and Qui-Gon saw something like a shiver pass through the lean, muscled form.

"Come on, let's go find Soupy and Lena," Branden said and rose to his feet. Qui-Gon gathered himself and stood --

--only to stumble as his brain tried to readjust to moving his real body instead of his game icon.

Branden caught him as he started to tumble and draped one long arm around his own shoulders to hold the Jedi Master upright. "Are you all right?"

Qui-Gon closed his eyes against the sudden faint nausea and the headache swiftly building in his brain. "I will be with some time to meditate. I forgot there is a good reason that Jedi do not enjoy these games."

"Why's that?" Branden asked.

"Neural games of any sort interfere with our attunement with the Living Force," Qui-Gon answered raggedly. The warm wiry strength of the racer's body against his own provided yet another distraction in the midst of the sick spinning in his brain as his inner ear fought to realign itself with his body and his environment. "It *appears* to be real, as real as the real world, yet subconciously we do not feel *connected* to that reality. Haven't you felt this as well?"

Branden snorted a soft laugh at that. "No, Jedi. I haven't. Then again, I'm not much on the Living end of the Force."

"Oh," Qui-Gon said dazedly. "Your talents are in the Unifying Force."

"And here I thought they were in the Irresistable Force," Branden said with his usual smirk. The blond hair flopped over into the racer's eyes, making him look all of twelve years old as he hovered at Qui-Gon's shoulder. The Jedi Master regained his equilibrium and began to walk on his own again.

Lena glanced across at the Jedi Master and bit her lip worriedly. Then her eyes caught Branden's and the racer's tense, veiled anxiety told her she had good reason to be worried. The Jedi Master's face was gray and lined with exhaustion, and suddenly all three were noticing the gray in the long brown hair and in the short beard.

The maglev was nearly deserted this time of night. It was well past local midnight and the only passengers were a small group of shift workers going home from work and a pair of Baradans hissing at each other in deep conversation. The small group was tired now after a long day of shopping and braingames and junk food. Or, at least Soupy and Lena were. Branden's energy seemed inexhaustible.

"You barely ate at dinner," Branden said quietly to the silent Jedi beside him.

"Do not concern yourself with me," Qui-Gon answered, eyes focussed out the window at the flashing lights of the buildings.

"The hell I won't." Branden's eyes flashed and he quickly put a hand up to the Jedi Master's shoulder. Qui-Gon felt a clumsy scan sweep through him, almost upsetting the precarious balance of the Force he'd been desperately maintaining since he was attacked in the game some hours before. He suppressed his gasp of surprise at the intrusion. "You feel like five miles of hammered shit."

"Your tactfulness could use some work, Khatar," Qui-Gon returned. He put up a hand to rub his aching eyes.

A snort of laughter from the racer. "I'll take that to mean you agree."

"The lifestyle of a speeder-bike racer does not suit me, Khatar. I cannot live on candy and frozen tsala cream." Qui-Gon shook his head. "And I'm sorry, but chocolate peanut butter is *not* nature's most perfect food."

The grin on Branden's face was lopsided. "You were never young, were you Jedi? You hatched ancient."

"On the contrary. I did a great many stupid and silly things in my time, but that time is long past."

Branden was silent at that and Qui-Gon looked up at the racer wearily. With his blond hair falling forward to veil his face and his green eyes focussed on the floor, he looked totally unguarded and open for the first time since they'd met. Branden must have felt the touch of Qui-Gon's gaze. He straightened from his deplorable slouch and glanced up at the Jedi briefly, then raked his hair out of his eyes and looked up at the maglev's status display over the nearby door. "We'll be at the _Mouse_ soon. If I made you some real food would you eat it?"

Qui-Gon sighed and nodded shortly.

"Good," Branden said firmly.

That was when the maglev's emergency gravitic braking system kicked in with a scream of metal, and the lights abruptly winked out.

Qui-Gon felt Branden lunge out of his seat and dive for the floor. The Jedi Master leapt to his feet, his lightsaber instantly in his hand. Qui-Gon caught six distinct slide-clack sounds in the darkness. The blue-green triangle of a smartgun targetting laser arrowed out of the darkness at the Jedi Master's chest. Qui-Gon let go of his mind, let the Force guide his hands then, as all hell broke loose around him.

Purple flashes and deafening sounds in the small confined space of the maglev car, the concussion of shockwaves thrown off by the plasma rifles. The acrid scent of ozone and scorched plastic. The sudden snap-hiss-hum of Qui-Gon's lightsaber and the greenish-white light banishing the dark as the blade whipped around with the fluid grace of the Force, deflecting shot after shot into the walls, the Jedi Master within the neon whirl of the blade moving with perfect balance amid the lurching of the train and the sudden screams. Then new sounds, the firing of weapons other than the plasma guns of their attackers, and bodies began falling with cries of pain.

Emergency lighting began to come to life as the plasma rifles went abruptly silent. Qui-Gon stood motionless for several seconds before opening his eyes, straightening up, and switching his lightsaber off. Then he blinked in astonishment at the sight before him.

Branden, Lena and Soupy were standing back to back some few feet in front of the Jedi, smartlinked needlebeam blasters in hand, all three in combat stances. Their eyes scanned the orange-tinged half-darkness with swift and practiced efficiency, their guns' muzzles tracking where their eyes focussed. Branden and Lena moved to cover the Wookie as the great shaggy multicolored form knelt by one of the dead bodies. The Wookie roughly turned the body over and tugged off the tight-fitting hood shrouding the head. All six of the dead attackers were garbed from head to foot in a flat, matte dark gray material that clung to their bodies as if painted on. They even wore full-face masks of the material with a mesh strip over their eyes. Each had carried a smartlinked plasma rifle. Soupy unplugged his smartgun's cable from his neurojack and plugged in his microcomp so he could speak.

"Holographic camouflage suits. Sound cancellers. They were probably back in the empty seats at the back of the car the whole time."

"Understood," Lena snapped.

"The passengers," Qui-Gon said abruptly and moved toward two of the slumped forms at the front of the car.

"Leave them, Jedi," Lena commanded harshly. She no longer sounded quite like the carefree teenager he had assumed she was. Her voice was cold and held a snap of command that would accept no arguments. "Bran?"

"On it," Branden said and moved back toward the door. "Help me, Jedi, I can't do this one handed."

The racer reached up for the emergency manual release for the door and yanked it hard. The clamps holding the door secured released and a series of sharp clicks indicated the pressure seals had released. Qui-Gon moved to help as he saw Branden take hold of the door's pullbar and begin to tug it open.

The maglev still moved slowly but would be at a complete stop in only moments. They had gone underground while the gunfight had raged and were now in a tunnel some two levels below street level. Beyond the orangey half-light of the maglev car was unfathomable darkness.

"Toss them out," Lena commanded the racer and Wookie, "I'll cover you."

Branden nodded and snapped the cable from his neurojack, tucked his gun into the holster in the small of his back and gestured to Qui-Gon to help him as he bent to drag the bodies of their attackers toward the door.

"What are you doing?" Qui-Gon asked indignantly, "These bodies are needed for evidence -- "

"No, Jedi, they're not!" Lena nodded to Soupy and the Wookie rose and hauled one of the bodies up by the arms, tossed it easily out into the darkness. "These are clones. They're little more than organic robots. They have no fingerprints, they have identical and untraceable retinal patterns, even tissue matching won't turn up anything."

Branden helped the Wookie dump the last of the bodies out the door as the maglev glided to a full stop at last. "Done," Branden said as he again took his blaster and plugged the cable back into his neurojack.

"Good. Let's go." Lena jumped out of the doorway and they heard her land lightly on something metallic.

"But -- " Qui-Gon started to protest.

"Jedi," Branden said urgently and grabbed the Jedi's forearm. "Trust me."

Qui-Gon couldn't see the emerald eyes in the dimness of the emergency lighting, but the low, almost pleading tone of voice decided him. He followed the racer into the blackness.

"We lift in five minutes," Lena said as the group swarmed up the ramp of the _Mad Mouse_. "Soupy, with me. Jedi, Bran, get everything secured."

"Got it," Branden replied. He caught up the several sealed packages of clothing the delivery droids had left at the bottom of the ship's rampway and ran through the bead curtain. A moment later he was back and wriggling out of his leather jacket, tossing it onto one of the blastchairs in the common room. Soupy and Lena had already disappeared up the corridor to the cockpit and the rampway was retracting into the ship. He waved at Qui-Gon to follow him as the Jedi slid out of his cloak and left it with the racer's jacket. "We've got to get my bikes secured."

In a moment the two were pushing Branden's speeder bikes between thick bars of duralanium welded to the walls and floor of the ship's hold, securing the orange and black machines with webbing and cables wrapped in padding. As they worked they felt the engines begin to rumble the deckplates with increasing intensity. Then Branden was tossing tools into bins and Qui-Gon was sealing up the buckets of coolant and lubricant.

"One minute to lift," Lena's voice said curtly over the comm.

"Acknowledged," Branden yelled toward the comm. "Come on, Jedi, let's go!"

Qui-Gon followed the racer out of the ship's hold as Branden sealed the hatch behind them. As they again made it into the common room sounds of plasma gun fire came faintly from the area of the main hatch.

"Lena, company!" Branden yelled up the corridor to the cockpit.

"I know!" came the acknowledgement. "Get your ass up here!"

The racer fled up the passageway, Qui-Gon at his heels, and they threw themselves into the weapons and comm officer seats behind Lena and Soupy. Branden wriggled into his safety harness even as he began flipping switches on the weapons console.

"Let's see those bastards deal with sulphur fog," Lena snarled and hit the toggle for the radio. "Korolis Command, this is the _Mad Mouse_, Landing Grid 224, requesting retraction of landing bubble."

The yellow glow of the sulphurous fog over the spaceport began to show through the crescent-shaped opening as the landing bubble parted and began to retract. Then Qui-Gon heard the whine of servomotors and the sounds of blaster fire as Branden activated the ship's dual-mounted cannons. Flashes of actinic blue light brightened the left edges of the canopy as the shots sounded from beneath the ship, and Lena brought the ship to a hover as the bubble retracted back into the ground.

"Everyone ready?" Lena asked. Qui-Gon barely registered Soupy and Branden's answers as the girl turned the ship on it's tail and cut in the ion engines at full power.

The _Mad Mouse_ exploded off the landing grid, screaming upward on the column of blue fire, the shockwaves of multiple sonic booms shaking the entire ship as the brownish-yellow clouds blurred outside the canopy. Ships dived and banked frantically out of the way as the small ship came arrowing toward them, several colliding with each other in their haste. In less than a minute the _Mad Mouse_ lifted free of the chemical soup of the lower atmosphere and was escaping from Korolis' gravity well as it passed the patrol ships in high orbit.

"Soupy?" Lena asked as her hand hovered over the hyperspace slide-bars.

"Ready," Soupy's microcomp answered, and the stars blurred, shifted color, and they escaped into hyperspace.

"I want answers, Khatar, and I want them *now*."

The voice stopped the racer cold as he was trying to escape into the common room. After a moment he gestured with one hand down the corridor. "I said I'd make you something to eat -- "

"That can wait."

Lena squeezed past the two and gave Branden an unreadable look before continuing down the corridor.

"Look, Jedi, we're all tired and strung out from the fight and I know you're still pretty loopy from the braingame." The racer turned and looked up at the Jedi Master. "And to be honest, I think if you ate anything right now you'd regret it. Can we talk about this later?"

"No, Khatar. Now." Qui-Gon straightened, crossed his arms on his chest and glared down at the racer.

Branden's shoulders slumped and he sighed deeply and dropped his eyes. Then he nodded. "Come on, then. I'll be damned if I do this covered in tunnel gunk."

Qui-Gon followed the racer back to his bedroom, pausing only to retrieve cloak and leather jacket from the common room. The rainbow pastel lightglobes registered their presence as they entered and flickered to life, adding gentle pink and blue and green light to the ethereal glow of hyperspace outside the viewports. Branden tossed his jacket over the back of the chair at the worktable, took Qui-Gon's cloak and folded it roughly over the chair as well. He dropped down to sit on the floor and tugged off his combat boots, then rose to his feet and began stripping out of his jeans and t-shirt. He caught up the blaster in it's holster as his jeans fell to the floor and moved past Qui-Gon silently to place the weapon on the shelf of the bed's headboard. Qui-Gon watched him wordlessly the entire time.

"Here," Branden said simply as he moved to the bins that held his clothes. He took out several fluffy towels and tossed two of them to the Jedi. "I'll be out in a minute."

Qui-Gon heard the water start in the 'fresher cubicle a moment later. Exasperated, the Jedi Master went to open some of the sealed packages of clothing that Branden had left scattered on the bed when they'd made their escape from Korolis. Wondering exactly what Branden had in mind for "answers," he chose a pair of loose, soft black leggings and a dark blue paisley silk shirt that tied with a sash, much like his Jedi uniform tunics.

He turned as he heard the water cut off in the 'fresher and a moment later Branden reappeared in his bright multicolored robe. The racer was combing through his long blond hair. "I won't go anywhere, Jedi. Take your time. There's plenty of hot water."

*Do I have any idea what I'm doing here?* Qui-Gon asked himself as stinging hot water sluiced down his body and through his hair, dulling the aches of tension that had knotted every muscle in his neck and shoulders. *These children were attacked on a maglev train in the middle of the night by unknown assailants for unknown reasons. Assailants that are apparently mind-controlled clones. Yet these three so-called "children" eliminated those assailants with military efficiency. And there is still the mystery of Branden's talents in the Force and why he was not found as a child and taken to the Temple. What is going on here? And why does he insist on dragging me along?*

Mystified, he set about getting the slime from the maglev tunnel out of his hair.

"All right, Khatar. Talk."

Branden was sitting cross-legged on the bed, leaning back against a huge bright purple stuffed ape, his hands on his knees, his eyes closed. For a moment he didn't move or speak and Qui-Gon wondered if he'd fallen asleep.

"My name is Ben Kenobi," he said softly, wearily, not bothering to open his eyes. "I'm a Lieutenant Commander in the Republic Security Forces. I specialize in undercover and covert operations."

Qui-Gon sank onto the edge of the bed, his eyes rivetted to the young face that suddenly seemed years older. Branden -- Ben -- still refused to open his eyes.

"For the last three years I've been someone else. Speeder-bike racer Branden Khatar." He shrugged one shoulder indifferently. "Three years ago, an ultra top secret file was stolen from what was supposed to be the most secure data archive in the Republic. This file contained the most detailed map of Coruscant ever made, complete with the locations and detailed inventory of all security checkpoints, weapons installations, and shield generators. It even shows the Supreme Chancellor's real residence, not that overdecorated drafty tomb they try to foist off on the public." Branden opened his eyes a slit and regarded the Jedi in the half-darkness. "With this map, two wings of starfighters, a thousand elite troops and a bit of planning, any loud mouth with an attitude could take down the Republic." He closed his eyes again and seemed to sink down into the purple ape's embrace. "The Commander, Soupy and I have been on the trail of the map ever since, as it's changed hands. Since money hasn't been involved except for a few bribes we hope we're tracking it back to whoever is masterminding the operation. The file can't be copied, it will self-destruct if anyone tries. So we know there's only the one original disk copy. Every try we've made to recover the disk has failed. Whoever they are, they've got damned good instincts or a hacker shadowing their every move. Probably both."

"You tracked them to Variel?" Qui-Gon asked.

Branden nodded.

"Did you plant the bomb?"

"No, Jedi. I told you before I didn't." Branden's eyes opened and he pinned the Jedi with a hard glare.

"But that was you in the black bodysuit, and you kidnapped me from Variel," Qui-Gon pressed.

"Yes, but only because you were wandering into the line of fire. Your presence at Barukka's court was making the suspects nervous. They planted the bomb on Variel to distract you -- and us. You did the same thing today, in the game, when you tried to follow me. I was tailing one of the suspects, we thought they might be meeting in the game, arranging to meet face to face to hand off the disk to the next courier. The player who shot you in the game was Lena. You were about to barge in on the suspects and their contacts." Ben reached up to rub his eyes wearily. "They must have detected the transmissions from Soupy's dragon on Variel."

"Dragon? That toy he threw on the floor in Barukka's throne room?" Qui-Gon asked, puzzled.

Branden grinned faintly. "Lieutenant Commander Soupalanala is a neuroelectronics and nanotech specialist. He invented a circuitry film that operates on light absorbed from it's surroundings. It's something like three atoms thick, he grows it in a culture solution full of nanos in a vat in his room. That so-called 'toy' he threw on Barukka's floor was coated in the stuff. It was transmitting audio to us the entire time it was sitting there in his throne room. That's how we knew when the bomb would go off. We heard you leave Barukka's throne room, and we knew the suspects wanted you dead." Branden shifted a little and sighed. "If I'd let you help those kids at the party, you'd have been shot through the ear with a needlebeamer."

They were both silent for long moments as Qui-Gon absorbed these revelations. Then the Jedi stirred and Branden opened his eyes to see the troubled deep blue of Qui-Gon's eyes filled with comprehension. "I remember you now, vaguely. You were an Initiate at the Temple, weren't you? Why did you leave?"

Another squirm from Branden. "I gave up on my training when I was twelve years old. I was sure that I'd never become a Padawan. I went straight into the Security and Intelligence branch of the Fleet Academy. I thought it would be easier than becoming a Jedi." A bitter smile then that held no mirth at all. "I was wrong about that. In many ways it's worse."

Again they were both silent. Qui-Gon saw now in his mind's eye the only memory he had of the racer -- the undercover cop -- as a child: a blond-haired whirlwind racing down the marble-walled main hallway of the Temple, chased by two of his yearmates, all of them yelling like enraged banthas. Ben had run straight into Qui-Gon as the Jedi Master rounded a corner and knocked himself down. Qui-Gon had helped him up, scolding him for his recklessness. "You could have dropped me off anywhere after you kidnapped me from Variel. Why have you insisted that I remain with you?"

Ben tilted his head and peered at Qui-Gon for a long moment, then sat up from his comfortable sprawl and crawled across the expanse of the wide bed. He stopped only inches from Qui-Gon, looking deep into the shadowed blue of his eyes. "That's the worst kept secret of all, Jedi," he whispered.

Qui-Gon should have been surprised, but for some unfathomable reason he wasn't. He simply caught Ben as their lips touched softly and pulled him closer, and Ben responded by wriggling into the Jedi's lap, never breaking the kiss. Ben Kenobi was silken liquid fire in his arms, a maddening creature of puzzle and distraction...and for a split-second Qui-Gon wondered if this was another misdirection, another diversion from the truth.

"Is this real?" Qui-Gon asked in a husky voice as Ben pulled away to catch his breath. "Or is this another of your distractions?"

"No distraction," Ben breathed softly in his ear. "You remind me why I'm doing this, why I'm out here living a lie, why I'm out here putting my ass in the line of fire." Qui-Gon could all but hear the smirk in the whisper that tickled his neck. "I'm out here trying to save the universe..."

Qui-Gon blinked in astonishment, then burst out laughing.

"Be that as it may," Qui-Gon said with a smile as he caught his breath from his laughter and settled his arms more firmly around the silk-wrapped body straddling him, "It has been a long and tiring day."

"Hmm," Ben agreed and kissed him again, slowly and hungrily. Qui-Gon felt the surge of desire ripple through the Force, enfolding him, sending a delightful shivery charge of need straight from his lips to his groin. "I'm not tired," Ben said as he broke the kiss at last.

"But I am," Qui-Gon said, kneading the strong muscles of Ben's back. "And I wish to be awake and aware and free of pain when you reduce me to a puddle of goo."

Ben thought about this for a moment, running his fingers through the still-damp strands of Qui-Gon's unbound hair. "You're right. We're both too tired for this right now."

"Tomorrow," Qui-Gon promised.

Ben wriggled off his lap and crawled back up to the pillows, tugged the thick covers down. With a teasing glance at Qui-Gon he slid the silk robe off his shoulders and tossed it to the floor, then held out a hand in invitation. "Care to join me?"

"Two can play at that game," Qui-Gon growled and stood up. He slid the leggings off slowly, feeling the renewed surge of desire in the Force as his hands banished the soft material. Then he allowed the silk tunic to slither off his shoulders to the floor.

Ben whimpered.

"Tomorrow," Qui-Gon admonished and curled up around the lean muscled form. Settling an arm firmly around Ben and resisting all attempts to move his hand lower, he chuckled and kissed the back of the racer's neck. "Sleep," he murmured into the golden hair, and the small brush of the Force he sent dropped them both into warm darkness.

The cadence and tone of voices woke Qui-Gon some eleven hours later. He stretched luxuriantly and reached for the warm solid weight that had been in his arms, but found only Ben's pillow. The ship was in normal space again, he could see the slowly moving stars and the orange-yellow glow of a desert planet through the viewport. Apparently they were in low orbit. Then the voices sorted themselves out and he frowned faintly. Slipping out of bed, he hurriedly retrieved his clothes. Pulling them on, he crept to the door of Ben's room which had been left slightly open.

It was Lena's voice, cold and hard and angry, coming from her room across the corridor from Ben's.

" ... brought up on charges of insubordination at the least, reckless endangerment at the worst! The Jedi Council will more than likely add 'interfering with the duties of a Jedi' to that list as well. We cannot involve the Jedi in this mission, Kenobi. It's too dangerous and we're in too deep. And he's not suited for the work. It's obvious to me the man's only a few breaths away from a nervous breakdown as it is."

An indistinct murmur that Qui-Gon couldn't make out, but the voice was Ben's.

"What was that, Lieutenant?"

"I said would you rather I'd left him on Variel to die?" Ben's voice held an angry snap in it. "It was either interfere with his mission or watch him die. I should think the Council would much rather he got sidetracked than get in the way of a needlebeamer shot. They don't have so many Masters that they can afford to lose even one."

"That's not the point, Kenobi. The point is you've endangered our assignment --and Soupy and myself -- by dragging this Jedi along with us. He's a diplomat, Lieutenant. I did some checking while you were cuddling. For the last two years the Council has been giving him easy missions that had little chance of turning sour and dangerous. Why? Because he was captured by those militants on Darylon and held for seven months as a prisoner of war. Does the phrase 'emotional and physical torture' have any meaning for you, Kenobi? The man's barely holding himself together as it is. We're lucky he didn't crack on us last night during the fight on Korolis."

There was a long, long moment of silence. Qui-Gon sighed softly, wondering if he should go to Ben's rescue.

"Well then, Master Jinn and I have a great deal in common," Ben growled softly, and Qui-Gon heard the edge of steel in that voice. "This assignment has gone on far longer than any of us thought it should. I'm beginning to believe my own lies, Commander. I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night and I can't remember who I am. I've been 'Branden Khatar' so long that it's Ben Kenobi that feels like the lie. I have a hard time recognizing the guy I see in the mirror every morning. And there's no exit strategy, no parameters to meet, just chase the disk from hand to hand and risk my life time and again trying to snatch it out of the next contact's hands. In between speeder bike races of course, and the slightest wrong move could get me wrapped around a tree or a rock. If you can handle that kind of stress indefinitely you're a better man than I, Commander. If trying to keep myself from total dissociation with my true identity is insubordination, then I guess you'd better convene the Tribunal 'cause I'm guilty as charged. I'll give up my life but I'll be damned if I give up my sanity."

A long, charged silence, then Lena's voice again sounded. "He stays on the _Mouse_ and out of sight while we're planetside. We're dropping him off on Eltanin after the race. That's all, Lieutenant. Dismissed."

Qui-Gon barely had time to take two steps backwards before the door flew open and Ben almost collided with him as he swung himself angrily inside. The Jedi Master caught him automatically, felt the spike of surprise from Ben as he did so, then the relief.

"Ben, what --"

Ben held up a hand to forestall the Jedi Master's questions, then turned in Qui-Gon's arms and shut the door firmly, coding the lock. Then he turned back and pulled Qui-Gon's head down to his level and kissed him deeply, desperately. Qui-Gon ran his hands down the sleek-muscled back, faintly amused that Ben wore nothing but his multicolored silk robe.

"I take it you heard what she said?" Ben asked softly when they came up for air.

"Not all of it."

"I'm sorry," Ben said sorrowfully. "You should never have heard all that."

Qui-Gon shrugged slightly. "Her dedication to her mission is admirable. And I cannot fault her for wishing to eliminate anything that might put you and Soupy in danger."

Ben breathed a soft laugh. "You're being far too nice. She's a bitch, pure and simple."

"It is nothing that won't be cured by time and experience."

"Is that something they teach Padawans, how to be tactful no matter how much someone deserves otherwise?" Ben took Qui-Gon's hand and pulled him back toward the bed.

"It is a useful skill for a diplomat."

Ben sank onto the edge of the bed, still holding the Jedi Master's hand and looking out the viewport at the slowly spinning planet below them. "Was she right...about you?"

"About Darylon, you mean?" Qui-Gon squeezed the fingers that still held his own and sat down beside him. He took a deep breath and nodded a little. "Yes, I was held as a prisoner of war for seven months. But as for being on the edge of a nervous breakdown, that stage has been past for some time now. I think your Commander underestimates the abilities of a Jedi to deal with such things."

Ben snorted a mirthless laugh. "She does. To her, if it's not RSF it's a spineless slug."

"She is projecting her insecurities on others," Qui-Gon said.

"Was that why you were afraid on Variel, when the bomb went off?"

Qui-Gon turned to look at the handsome young face framed by tousled blond hair, his fair skin glowing in the golden light of the desert planet from the viewport. Emerald eyes looking at him with a mixture of boldness, shyness and concern. "Not so much the confinement as how I was captured," Qui-Gon answered after a moment. "The Darylon-sa rebels hired a company of mercenary elite to kidnap the grandchildren of the Imperator. The Imperator's palace was designed to withstand attack and seige, but it was designed and built before Darylon became a starfaring people. The mercenaries dropped onto the palace grounds from one of their starships while two others bombarded the palace's defensive weaponry. I was caught in the keep. There were ... many wounded and maimed. I -- many people died in my hands." Qui-Gon shrugged in weary resignation. "It is not something that can be overcome with a few hours of meditation. But life goes on."

"I'm sorry I kidded you before," Ben said softly, contritely.

"Don't be, you had no way of knowing." The Jedi Master picked up the hand still entwined with his own and kissed the long fingers reassuringly. "I have not been dealing with the aftermath of Darylon very well. Perhaps I needed someone to jerk me out of the rut of blind duty. I fear I was operating on autopilot until you came along. There are not many who so boldly insult a Jedi Master."

A small smile from the cop then. "Like I needed someone to remind me why I'm doing all this."

"Saving the universe is a lofty ambition," Qui-Gon said gravely.

"And you should know," Ben said with a chuckle and shoved the Jedi Master back onto the bed with playful force. "And we've got unfinished business!"

"Indeed," Qui-Gon answered, then caught his breath as Ben moved to straddle him. The multicolored silk robe was flung away carelessly. "Are you certain it's legal to be this dangerously handsome?"

Ben rolled his eyes at this and leaned down til they were nose to nose. "Will you shut up and kiss me?"

Qui-Gon obeyed dutifully and felt Ben's flash of amusement in the Force before the wriggling warm weight surrounding him chased such thoughts from his mind entirely. He reached up to run his hands through silky golden hair, then down strong shoulders, tracing down Ben's spine lightly. Ben shivered and wiggled a little at the tickling touch, arching up slightly into the teasing fingers like a cat.

"Why aren't you naked?" Ben grumbled and sat up to untie the sash on Qui-Gon's silk tunic. Then he stopped and Qui-Gon smiled as he saw Ben's eyes go wide. "Damn you're beautiful," Ben said softly, reaching down a hand to caress Qui-Gon's cheek.

Qui-Gon just rumbled a happy purr and held the caressing fingers to his face, then turned to kiss the palm.

"Oh no, I'm in trouble," Ben groaned and closed his eyes, shivering. "You can purr."

Qui-Gon chuckled and caught the cop's arms, turned them both over and settled his long frame around Ben's smaller form. "You like purring?" he asked and gently nudged the cop to turn his head, then rumbled another soft purr into his ear and kissed his neck.

"Oh gods yes," Ben whimpered and Qui-Gon felt the wave of lust suddenly swamp the cop's mind, felt the flush of incredible heat in the velvety skin he nuzzled. "Clothes. Off. Now."

"Yes, officer," Qui-Gon quipped obediently. Ben laughed breathlessly and whapped him playfully on the leg as the Jedi moved away.

"Wow..." Ben sighed as Qui-Gon tossed the silk tunic away, revealing the well-defined muscles of his chest and abdomen once again. The cop's eyes roamed hungrily over the tall lithe form, the unbound mane of gray-streaked brown hair, long muscular legs ... and the very aroused, delightfuly long and thick cock freed as the leggings were once more banished to the floor. Ben rolled over and crawled further up the bed, then stopped and wriggled in pleasure as a large, warm hand stroked down his back and trailed down between his legs to stroke his balls softly.

Then he was pulled back into strong arms and against the broad chest, and he felt Qui-Gon's erection hard against his back. His hair was brushed gently aside and Qui-Gon's lips were beneath his ear again, nibbling on his neck, his shoulder, the soft purr sending a spike of lust directly from the his neck straight to his painfully hard cock. He dropped his head onto Qui-Gon's shoulder and groaned helplessly, then hissed and jerked with a small cry as the Jedi's hands travelled softly down his chest, skimmed over his straining flesh and descended to stroke the insides of his thighs.

"Beautiful," Qui-Gon murmured in Ben's ear as his hands continued to slide along the tender skin of his thighs, up to his chest and back down, allowing only one finger to brush the cock that jumped at every touch. "Have you any oil or --?"

A shaky nod and Ben freed one hand from Qui-Gon's arm, held it out and the pillows and stuffed animals at the head of the bed jumped and moved as the Force moved among them. A small bottle flew out of the pile and into Ben's hand.

"Thank you," Qui-Gon whispered. He dripped some of the oil onto Ben's back and began kneading the tensed muscles. Ben toppled over onto the bed, leaning on his forearms, dropped his head onto the bed in a tumble of blond hair, his legs still straddling the Jedi's as Qui-Gon knelt behind him. Qui-Gon's cock rubbed teasingly along the crack of his ass at every move the Jedi made. Ben couldn't help but wiggle against it even as the big hands on his back moved around and beneath him, searching out his neglected hardness.

Then Ben jumped as more of the cool oil dripped onto his backside and he felt a finger began to push gently through the resistance, slipping inside as Qui-Gon's fingers swirled around his cock. He gasped and pushed back hungrily, needing more, whimpering and begging in incoherent hunger. Then he felt another finger slip inside him, stretching carefully, and he cried out as the long fingers brushed over that spot inside that brought sparks to his vision from the pleasure. Again and again Qui-Gon's fingers unerringly found that spot and Ben rocked with the sensations, thrusting his cock into the enfolding oil-slick hand, teetering on the very edge of control.

The head of Qui-gon's cock was against his opening, rubbing teasingly before sinking inside smoothly in one motion. Ben screamed in frenzied pleasure as he lost all control, driving himself onto the exquisite thickness and then forward into the hot, slick hand wrapped around his cock. He felt Qui-Gon moving, heard the demanding growl, felt Qui-Gon's free hand guiding his thrashing body's movements.

"Yes," Qui-Gon hissed softly, pulling Ben up and thrusting hard into the sweaty, ecstatic, hungry body writhing against him. "Ride me," he growled and moved both hands to enfold Ben's cock.

That one growled command sent Ben over the edge at last. He screamed again and clenched both hands convulsively in the bedcovers and came explosively, filling Qui-Gon's hands with his seed. Qui-Gon felt his release and howled as he followed his lover into mind-shattering bliss.

The insistent beeping of the comm woke the lovers some three hours later. Ben raked his hair out of his eyes and somehow made it up to the head of the bed, slapped at the annoying device on the bedside table. "What?" he grumbled.

"Fifteen minutes til planetfall, Kenobi."

"Acknowledged, Commander," Ben answered with a sigh and flopped over onto his back in the pillows. "Damn."

"Life goes on," Qui-Gon said softly. "No matter the joy or the pain. No matter who you are."

"Yeah," Ben said wistfully. He turned to see the Jedi watching him, curled naked amidst the stuffed animals and pillows, the dark blue of his eyes accentuated by the golden glow of the planet shining through the viewports. "I just wish it'd hold off for a while longer."

Qui-Gon blinked sleepily. "I know."

Errai Matar was a world never meant for human habitation. A medium-sized planet, it was just slightly too close to it's yellow-white primary to provide a stable climate or sustainable biosphere. There was almost no water, only enough to provide a very thin and marginally breathable atmosphere, too little for vegetation. From pole to pole there was nothing but hard-packed and crackling salt flats, rock, and an endless sapphire sky that had never seen clouds. It was about as worthless a rock as could ever be found, unremarkable and forgettable.

Which made it perfect for illegal activities.

Qui-Gon peered out from the viewports in Ben's room on the _Mad Mouse_, grateful for the dark polarization of the vitriglass. Even darkly shaded Errai Matar's noonday sunlight was almost blinding, the white of the salt flats throwing glare into his eyes. Yet with very little atmosphere to retain the heat reflected from the planet's surface it was frigidly cold.

A line of starships spread out before him, small groups of droids and humanoids and aliens moving about in the small shelter from the sun beneath each ship. Speeder bikes were being brought out from the holds of the ships, bright colors and metal gleaming in the glaring sunlight. Security droids paced in twos and threes down the line of ships, blaster rifles held at the ready. The crews worked quickly, efficiently. They might have only hours before the Fleet patrol of this sector discovered their presence here. The crews and racers must be prepared to leave at a moment's notice.

He heard the door open behind him and turned. Ben came inside and quickly locked the door behind him.

"You'll be all right?" Qui-Gon asked, slipping his arms around the cop in a gentle hug. Ben wore a thick parka over his usual jeans and t-shirt. He and Lena and Soupy had been busy for the last few minutes fueling and running final checks on the speeder bike Ben -- Branden -- would ride in the race.

"Yeah," Ben sighed and nuzzled the patch of skin left bare at Qui-Gon's neck by the silk shirt. Qui-Gon was silent and Ben pulled away to look up at him wonderingly. "What's wrong?"

Qui-Gon took a deep breath and tried to gather calmness around him but could not. "I don't know what's wrong. But clearly something is, or will be." He held the cop at arms' length then and looked searchingly into emerald eyes. "Promise me you will be careful."

"Always," Ben answered, nodding. He reached up to hold Qui-Gon's forearms and looked away. "I have to get ready for the race."

Qui-Gon nodded and let him go, watched as Ben began gathering up gloves, neurohelmet, boots. Then chuckled as Ben stripped off his clothes and began tugging and pulling and wriggling into the skin-tight, slippery black bodysuit. "Damned -- umph -- armor suit -- why can't it be frictionless on the inside too? Can't get the damned thing on -- ouch! -- without an emergency session of the Senate and -- the flamin' Force -- There! Finally!" He stood up from the edge of the bed and tugged the long zipper up to his neck, then did several stretches to settle the clinging rubbery material. The cop saw Qui-Gon's small grin as he sat down again to pull on his boots. "So glad I'm amusing you, Master Jinn."

"You do, yes," Qui-Gon answered and ran his hands down the slippery stuff that seemed painted onto Ben's body, leaving nothing to the imagination. His hands slid over the sleek limbs and back with nearly no resistance as the material was virtually frictionless. "More than amusing, actually."

Ben got to his feet again and caressed Qui-Gon's cheek, fingers twining in a lock of gray-streaked hair. "Whatever you do, do *not* purr for me or I'm going to be in serious pain."

Qui-Gon nodded gravely, but Ben saw the mischievous grin twitching the Jedi Master's lips.

They held each other silently for a long moment, too conscious of time flying away from them, too conscious that these would be some of their last moments together no matter if Ben won his race or not. Whatever happened, it was only a two hour jump in hyperspace to Eltanin from Errai Matar, and then they would have to part.

Finally Ben pulled out of Qui-Gon's arms as gently as he could, retrieved his neurohelmet and gloves from the bed. He turned back, pulled Qui-Gon down for a lingering, desperate kiss.

"The Force be with you," Qui-Gon whispered.

Ben nodded, and he was gone.

The high-pitched scream of engines ripped through the thin air as Branden Khatar swung up onto his speeder bike and took his neurohelmet from Soupy's hands. Making sure his hair was securely held out of his eyes by his bandana, he took the cable from inside the helmet and snapped it into his neurojack. He shoved the helmet down onto his head, settling the heavy siliplastic shell as the displays inside began to light up with status readings and race route diagrams.

*Something's wrong. Qui-Gon is right. I can feel it too.*

The Force was elusive and unsettled here.

"Ready to go, kid?" Lena shouted over the engine noises around them, looking lost in the huge fur coat she was wearing against the chill.

"Yeah," Branden yelled. "Ready to rock."

"Go for it," Lena yelled in answer, then stepped away as Branden brought the speeder bike to life, adding one more distinctive scream to the cacophony building around them.

"How's it look?" Soupy's microcomp asked in his ear, transmitted via his neurojack.

Branden checked through the status readouts for the bike, power, fuel, engine temperature ... all seemed normal. "Looks good," he answered the Wookie. "Let's rock."

With a final nod to Lena and Soupy, he put the bike in gear and made his way to the line of bikes gathering at the Start.

*Focus. I've got to focus.*

It was all familiar, he knew most of the riders here by sight if not personally, nodded in greeting as he took his place among them. Twenty in the field today. The dust of Errai Matar blew up around the line of speeder bikes as engines revved and riders pulled up the final few feet to the line delineated by the blue laser beams glowing in the dusty air.

*Nothing's wrong. I've got to focus. I know all these people ... * He looked down the line, and his eye caught on a bright blue and green bike midway down the line. He didn't know that color scheme.

*I don't know that guy.*

And suddenly every instinct screamed warnings at him --

--Just as the Start line lights began cycling through red to yellow to green. The blue laser beams flickered out of existence. He snarled a curse at himself for his inattention and Errai Matar's dun-colored lanscape blurred around him as his bike leaped forward.

Qui-Gon felt the jump in the Force as the race started, smiled at his lover's unskilled but demanding tug on the power. Kneeling in meditation before the darkened polarized vitriglass of the viewport, he felt Ben's call on the Force as if the younger man had grabbed his soul and shaken it by the scruff of the neck.

*Whyever did you think you'd never be chosen as Padawan?*

Centering himself again, he banished such speculations and turned his thoughts inward again. He could almost trace the progress of the race by Ben's bright presence in the Force...

There always came a moment when the world seemed to snap into place, when the rush of air and dust took on that fluid quality of water flowing over rocks, when he became not an intruder in the silence but part of the wind. When time seemed to push him along on the crest of a wave of probability, not weigh upon him like unseen stone.

The clouds of dust blown up by the wind buffetted the black plexi of his faceshield, slipped around the frictionless surfaces of his armored bodysuit. Body and mind worked as one, small shifts of balance and weight directing the blindingly fast bike around rocks and over the undulating surfaces of dunes. Beacons delineating turns in the course flashed by, the green strobe lights blinking rapidly through the murky tan of the dust. His limbs tucked into the organic molded curves of his bike's fairings, Branden became part of the machine, as if he was the brain for a mechanical body. The Force sang through him, carried him along, as if there would never be a Finish line. As if the race could go on forever.

Even if the only one he appeared to be racing against was himself. He had pulled far ahead of the pack, far enough away that he could sense only the edges of humanoid presence in the Force. Errai Matar was desolation, the only energies those of the lightest of winds. The dust storm he rode through was of his own making, brought about by his own passage through the thin air. The Force carried him unerringly around turns at full speed, allowed him to withstand the sudden g-forces engendered by changing direction at nearly the speed of sound. The concerns of the body, the worries, the sharp suspicion of the unknown rider, all of it fell away in the suspended, surreal wash of the Force.

The roar of the wind around him hid the sounds of another engine, but he felt the presence of menace suddenly burst onto his awareness from high above in the rocks through which he rode. Obeying instantly the shrill warning in the Force, Branden twisted the accelerator and shifted his weight, flipping the bike upside down to skim along the canyon floor. He felt the plasma rifle shot impact on the armored underside of the bike, felt the jump as multiple bolts slammed into the orange and black molded hide of the beast. Flipping back over upright, he shot away through the rocks and off the race route entirely, disappearing into the maze of tiny twisting canyons amidst undulating wind-sculpted sandstone.

Behind him, he could feel his attackers following.

Qui-Gon's eyes snapped open in startlement and he was on his feet before he knew quite what he was doing, his lightsaber flying to his hand from beneath the scattered pillows on the bed.

He felt the intrusion of a nebulous presence, something that disturbed the normal auras of the ship imprinted by Soupy, Lena and Ben. An intruder. Moving silently, he carefully pulled open the door enough to peer down the corridor.

There were two distinct wavering shimmers, like the distortion of heat over concrete, creeping down the dim hallway leading to the main cabin. Roughly humanoid in shape, the shimmers were eerily silent. Qui-Gon saw the bead and ribbon curtain part seemingly of it's own volition as the shimmers reached it and passed through, still in that odd enveloping silence.

Qui-Gon snarled to himself and flung the door open, leaped toward the shimmers, his lightsaber snapping into scintillating life in his hand.

The intruders reacted instantly. The shimmers faded away, revealing two identical slender figures in matte gray bodysuits. Needlebeam blaster bolts erupted from the guns held at the ready. Qui-Gon deflected the bolts into the walls, pushing forward toward the two in holographic camouflage suits, smelling the scorching of siliplastic and metal. Sparks flew as one of the bolts hit a power cable and severed it. Instantly darkness fell around the three, broken only by the green-white light of Qui-Gon's lightsaber blade darting and parrying the blaster bolts with unerring precision.

He heard the bead curtain rattle behind him, and whirled, lunging forward after the intruders trying to escape. They were no match for a Jedi Master's quickness. His hand caught the holographic camouflage suit of the one following and punched his lightsaber through the clone's back, dropping the already-dead body as he rushed down the corridor again to the ship's hold.

The second intruder was frantically shoving fairing panels and tools and parts off the metal shelving into the floor, trying to trip the Jedi up as he fled toward the hold's broad rampway. Qui-Gon simply blurred across the hold after the intruder, allowing the Force to carry him safely over the obstacles. The clone swung his needlebeamer around and Qui-Gon ducked as the multiple shots impacted with the tool racks behind him, scattering metal and plastic and fasteners in a stinging rain. The clone fled into the white glare at the end of the hold's ramp. Qui-Gon rushed after him, saw the holographic camouflage suit shimmer and change to the image of a racer's frictionless armor suit, bright blue and green slashes of color, as the clone leaped onto a speeder bike.

Qui-Gon didn't even stop to think, merely jumped for Ben's second speeder bike where it waited at the end of the hold's rampway, slapped at switches and clutched convulsively at the controls as the bike jumped into gear. In a heartbeat he was flying down the line of ships and bikes after the fleeing figure of the clone, the terrific wind of the speeder bike's passage tearing at his hair and clothes, numbing cold instantly enfolding him, sand stinging like icy needles in his eyes.

Ben ducked the speeder bike into an overhang, killed the engine hurriedly. He slid off the bike and unlatched the seat, pulled it open. As usual, Soupy had left a small disruptor pistol in the tiny compartment. He glanced around and scrambled for a break in the rock wall ahead, found a tiny canyon barely wide enough to stand in and huddled down, waiting.

"Soupy," he said, mentally keying on the commlink in his helmet via his neurojack.

"Here, kid."

"I'm in trouble." He shifted slightly to get a better view, mindful that perhaps a black armor suit was not the best camouflage in a landscape of orange and yellow sandstone. "That new fuelcell's leaking, bad. I need a lift back."

Soupy, however, recognized the code phrase Ben had just used, *I'm in trouble, I need back-up.* "Got it, kid. Hang tight. Bummer about the race."

"There's always another race to run," Ben muttered. "Hurry, old man, it's not exactly a tropical paradise out here."

Silence then, while he waited. Long minutes passed. He steadied his breathing and touched the Force, searching. Anything living would stand out like a flare in the Force. Then he felt it. The curious muted presence of a clone, the single-minded absorption. Somewhere in the sinuous twisting of wind-blasted rocks ahead of him, past where he'd left his speeder bike, stone shifted and tumbled.

Ben fired by reflex, his aim directed by the Force. A slender column of rock exploded from the disruptor's shot, spraying shards of rock and dust in all directions. As it did so he saw the figure in the blue and green armor suit jump out of the way, but not nearly quick enough to avoid all the shrapnel. Ben slipped from his hiding place to a boulder nearby, glancing around, every sense on the alert.

"Bran," Lena's voice came over the commlink then. "Your friend's disappeared. Looks like someone wouldn't take no for an answer when he told them he gave at the office."

*Qui-Gon!* Ben bit his lip and ruthlessly shoved the sudden anguish back down. *So you took one of these bastards out? Good. At least I know you're safe.*

Then the Force jumped in his mind and he felt a sudden subtraction, a loss, and a wave of desperate denial.

A ship roared by just overhead, the ion engines throwing up a sudden violent storm of dust that blinded the cop and drowned out every thought in the overwhelming wash of noise. As the ship flashed by the figure in the rocks ahead of him suddenly jumped out of hiding, staring skyward after the departing ship, the blue neurohelmet turned upward. He was dead before he hit the ground.

Creeping out of hiding, feeling no other threats, Ben paced forward and kicked the clone over onto his back. There was a neat hole burned through the chest, the holosuit sparking from severed and shorted circuitry around the hole.

He had survived. But he knew Qui-Gon would not be waiting for him.

*The Force be with you,* he thought numbly after the already vanished ship. *Take care of yourself...*

"The Avior situation is by no means stable, my Master. I request permission to return and attempt once more to make it so."

The Council chamber was bright with Coruscant's springtime day, the light of Coruscant Alpha streaming through the facetted crystal at the apex of the domed roof illuminating the mosaic floor and the tall Jedi Master. All twelve Councillors sat listening as he told of the deteriorating situation he had left on Avior, the Prince who had successfully ousted his brother the King from the throne and begun a civil war in the process.

Yoda blinked up at him serenely, measuringly, his small green hand flexing on his walking stick. Yet it was Mace Windu who spoke.

"The fighting has escalated, Master Jinn. And Knight Saranya and Master Dellyn have been briefed on what to expect. Your diplomatic talents are no longer needed there, and -- "

Qui-Gon's slightly challenging half-smile stopped Windu cold. "I believe I can handle the situation, Master Windu. Saranya and Dellyn just returned from Alnizar. I spoke to them just this morning, and if their condition is any indication of their previous mission's demands they are in dire need of a vacation. I can handle the situation on Avior. The Prince's forces are being supplied by smugglers who are somehow managing to avoid the Fleet. I am positive that with the help of the King's Guard and his Intelligence resources I can discover how they are doing so and hopefully put an end to it. And thus the King can regain his throne. We need Avior in stable, competant hands. I will do whatever I must."

Windu stared up at Qui-Gon with his usual poker-faced control, his brown eyes betraying nothing of the misgivings he felt. So he looked to Yoda.

The diminutive Jedi Master was still looking up at his former apprentice with speculative eyes, then humphed softly. "Help we will send with you, to deal with the smugglers. Requested, it has been, by the Senator of Avior."

"If you think it will be helpful, Master," Qui-Gon said with a nod. He folded his hands inside his cloak sleeves, accepting.

"In many ways," Yoda said, and Qui-Gon gave the old one a long questioning look.

"Go now, but stay close," Windu said in dismissal. "You'll need to meet with the security officer who's to accompany you to Avior and make plans." The Councillor nodded to one of the pages standing watch at the door of the Council chamber and the young Initiate immediately turned to key in a request at the commpanel. "May the Force be with you, Master Jinn."

Qui-Gon nodded, bowed and left the Council.

As requested, he didn't go far, just out onto the balcony just off the Council chamber. He turned his face up to the light of the sun and closed his eyes, feeling the wind tugging at his hair and ruffling his cloak. The peace of the Temple folded about him in the quiet hum of ship traffic above him, the soft fingers of the wind on his face. He had a moment to relax. Once on the way to Avior there would be little time for anything other than the mission.

For the first time in many days he was at peace and not expecting blaster shots at every corner. While he was certainly grateful that for the moment he didn't have to worry about getting shot (or worse, that the young King of Avior would be harmed), the moment of respite allowed his mind to dwell on other familiar worries. Six months had passed since he had chased a cloned assassin up the rampway into an unfamiliar ship and found himself battling for his life. Six months since he had last seen Ben Kenobi.

He had not tried to contact the undercover cop. He had not even inquired of the RSF Command here on Coruscant. Ben, Lena and Soupy were operating undercover, therefore they were not in contact with RSF Command. And any messages attempted through unofficial channels would undoubtedly be intercepted by those the trio were pursuing. And expecting an answer was out of the question.

And besides, he had no indication Kenobi would wish to continue their affair...

Yet still he felt the ache of loneliness, and wondered what might have been. And wondered if he would turn around one day and see that smart-assed smirk across a crowded room, or that lithe form would appear at his side as if he'd never left, or that unskilled, rough tug on the Force that was uniquely Ben.

"Master Jinn."

Qui-Gon turned at Mace Windu's voice --

--and fell into laughing emerald eyes.

"May I introduce Commander Obi-Wan Kenobi of the Republic Security Forces. He's to accompany you to Avior to deal with the smugglers. Commander Kenobi, this is Master Qui-Gon Jinn."

"Commander Kenobi," Qui-Gon said serenely, surprised he could say anything at all. "Congratulations on your promotion."

He could tell Ben was fighting to keep from shouting with hysterical laughter.

Windu looked from one to the other, puzzled at the greeting. "Ah, you've met? Then you'll have no problems working together?"

"Not at all, Councillor Windu," Ben said easily, nodded to the dark-skinned Jedi.

"Then I'll leave you to discuss your mission," Windu said. "The updated Fleet reports are being forwarded to your quarters, Qui-Gon. You may leave at your convenience."

"Understood, Councillor," Qui-Gon answered with a half-bow. Windu gave the two another questioning look before retreating back inside to the Council chamber.

They stood looking into each other's eyes for what seemed an endless moment, unable to believe the quirk of fate or the Force that had brought them here and now. Trying to think of what to say first out of all they wanted to say. Finally Qui-Gon swallowed and took a deep breath and let himself get a good look at him.

"You look good," Qui-Gon said, gesturing at the black RSF flightsuit, the needlebeam blaster in it's holster on his hip, the black combat boots. Ben's golden hair was pulled neatly back into a tail, the earcuffs and tiny chains glinted at his ear. Qui-Gon reached up to tug on the three small gold triangles on the open collar of the flightsuit. "So, Commander Kenobi. Your previous mission was successfully resolved?"

Ben laughed softly at the formality. "Yes, Master Jinn, I managed to save the universe." He leaned back against the railing of the balcony and looked the Jedi up and down. "And you?"

Qui-Gon shrugged a little and joined him, facing out over the endless skyline of Coruscant, and lifted his face to the sun. He felt like he was about to scream in joy or burst out laughing at any moment. "I am not quite as skilled at saving the universe as you are, Commander. I'm only up to saving one planet at a time. I'm trying to collect the set, you see."

Another soft laugh and he felt a hand on his cheek, turned willingly. "Will you shut up and kiss me hello properly, or am I going to have to get rough with you?"

Qui-Gon melted into the slow sweetness of that first kiss, then felt the hunger that matched his own in the second. When they broke apart to breathe they found themselves in each other's arms.

"How I've missed you," Qui-Gon said softly, resting his cheek on silky golden hair.

"I was so worried you'd get killed," Ben answered in a whisper. "You're all right? Truly?"

"Right as rain," Qui-Gon soothed. "Better than ever, now that you're here." He pressed a kiss to Ben's forehead and looked into his eyes smiling. "Come, then. Shall we save the universe again?"

"Oh yes," Ben answered, "I've got some time to kill."

--The End--