Rogue Planet

Chapter 57

Anakin stayed close by Jabitha, as much for his sake as for hers. The atmosphere within the chamber was thick with dust. Dust sifted from the ceiling, puffed from the outer halls as ceilings collapsed elsewhere in the ruin.

Tendrils on the floor moved with deliberation toward Jabitha, encircled her. Sekot itself would protect the Magister's daughter. In some fashion Anakin could not yet fathom, the figure before him regarded the Magister's children as brothers and sisters.

"You are the Jedi apprentice," the image said.

Anakin nodded.

"And your master is elsewhere, fighting the new invasion."

"I feel him out there," Anakin said.

"How I would love to learn the secrets of the Jedi! What can you teach me?"

"Who are you?" Anakin said. Like Obi-Wan, he was now finding mystery and delay to be a real irritation.

"I don't know for sure. I'm not very old, but my memories go back billions of turnings. Parts of me saw the pinwheel grow in the sky."

Anakin thought of Vergere's message contained within the seeds. "You're the mind I sensed, aren't you?" he asked. "The voice behind the seed voices."

"They are my children," the image said. "They are cells in my body."

"You really are Sekot, then, aren't you?" Even under the present circumstances, he could not help but feel awe and wonder.

"I tried to be the Magister, but I can't continue. I grieve for him. He was the first to know me. The Magister was going to reveal me to his people, but the Far Outsiders arrived. I had never known anything like them. The Magister's peoples were gentle."

"Can you see around the entire planet? What else is happening outside?"

"I see wherever my parts reach. I am almost blind down here. They burned me down here. I've never known such pain. The Magister told me to burn them back, so I helped him make weapons. But I did not know what to believe."

"Why?" Anakin knelt beside Jabitha. The tendrils encircled them, rustling faintly across the floor.

"He told me I was the Potentium, the force behind all life. He thought I reached everywhere. I don't. I'm just here. He saw what he wanted to see, and told me what he wanted to hear me speak into his own ears. He said there was no evil in the universe, only good. I did not see how wrong he was until he died. Then I reached out with the weapons we had made, and I killed. The Magister had said that would be good, but I knew it was not."

Anakin sucked in his breath. "Just like me," he said.

"I killed more, but it was still not enough. It was Vergere who drew away the Far Outsiders. She did not kill them; she persuaded them. I wish she was still here, but there is only a little part of her. The message to you and your master."

"Did she know the Magister was dead?"

"No one knew, until now."

Anakin held out his hand to fend off a questing tendril.

The image seemed to be hurt by this. "Why do you distrust me? I want to protect her."

"I don't distrust you. But I don't think either of us knows what we're doing. We should get her outside and wait for my master to arrive."

"It is you I feel closest to," the image said. "The Magister's peoples made me their servant, and you were a slave. I did what they told me to do. You did what your owner told you to do. So like me! I tried to be like the others, but I am not like them. My mind is made up of so many parts, spread out over so much of my world. And your mind is so different from the others. I have no real parents, and your parents-"

Anakin interrupted with a stammered question. "What m- made you wake up? Why did you suddenly appear, after bil lions of years?"

"I had to come into being to communicate with the new ar rivals, the Magister's peoples. All of me came together, reached up to talk with them, and I was-"

A large chunk of the roof collapsed on the far end of the chamber, showering them with splinters and shards of broken stone. "We have to go now!" Anakin said. "Can you help me?"

The image emerged from the swirling dust, glowing faintly in the darkness. "I will shore up the hallways. You will carry her outside."

Tendrils grew from trunks that pushed up through cracks in the floor. They spread ahead of Anakin, forming red and green vaults overhead, as he picked up Jabitha and slung her over his shoulder. As a deadweight, Jabitha was not easy to carry. He was beginning to regret putting the girl to sleep, but it had been the best thing to do at the time.

She came out of her trance as they passed through the last open doorway, and struggled to get down from his shoulder. "Where are we?" she cried out, and then stared up at the pinwheel in the night sky and the rolling blanket of stars beyond.

A shadow passed over the landing field and their Sekotan ship. It blocked out the pinwheel and then dropped down to cover the ship like a predator pouncing on its prey. This was not another Sekotan ship, and it was not the Star Sea Flower. Anakin heard the whine and roar of repulsor engines pounding against the rock.

It was a sky-mine delivery ship, doing double duty now as a landing craft.

A shaft of light appeared in one side of the hulk. Troops marched down the ramp in quick tight cordons and surrounded Anakin and Jabitha. A squad circled the body of the Blood Carver.

Two officers walked down the ramp with more dignity, as if they had all the time in the universe. Anakin thought they might be brothers, they so resembled each other, though they wore quite different uniforms. Both were thin and carried themselves with assurance and perhaps too much pride. Both looked arrogant. He knew instantly, with instincts he had developed long before becoming a Jedi, that they were very dangerous. They turned toward the boy and the girl.

In the ordinary scheme of things, neither would have cared much for the fate of two children. The taller of the two, by a spare centimeter or two, lifted his hand and whispered something into the other's ear.

"Him," the shorter man said, pointing imperiously at Anakin. "Leave the girl here."

Anakin tried to stay with Jabitha. She reached out for him, and their fingertips gripped for an instant before a bulky soldier dressed in a Republic Special Tactics trooper uniform pulled him away. For a second, the boy's anger threatened to flare again, but he saw they were not going to harm Jabitha, and he could not kill them all.

And would not if he could.

"My name is Tarkin," the shorter of the officers said to him in deeply mannered tones. "You're the Jedi boy who collects old droids, no? And marvel of marvels, you're now the pilot of this ship?"

Anakin did not answer. Tarkin rewarded his silence with a smile and a pat on the head. "Learn some manners, boy." Two soldiers hurried him, struggling, into the innards of the dark ship.

"What about Ke Daiv?" Raith Sienar asked.

"A failure from the beginning," Tarkin said. "Leave him here to rot."

Jabitha yelled for Anakin, but the ramp closed with a hiss and a metallic bang. He felt the ship rise abruptly and climb. Tarkin and Sienar immediately escorted him to the bay where the Sekotan ship had been hoisted and stowed in a catchall harness.

"Stay with your ship, boy," Tarkin said. "Keep it alive. You are very important to us. The Jedi Temple awaits your speedy return."