YODA
DARK RENDEZVOUS
by
Sean Stewart
.lit by DrB 01/06
1
The sun was setting on Coruscant. Shadows ran like black water, filling up
the the alleys first, then climbing steadily higher, a tide of darkness rising
to drown the capital. Twilight's gloom spread over retail districts and
medcenters, and crept like a dark stain up the walls of the Chancellor's
residence as the sun slipped below the horizon. Soon only the rooftops were
gilded with the day's last yellow light; then the shadows conquered them, too,
swarming up the pinnacles of the Senate Building and the spires of the Jedi
Temple . The long day of the Republic had come to an end.
Dusk on Coruscant.
On a moonless night a million standard years earlier, perhaps even before the
rise of sentient beings, sunset would have meant darkness absolute, except for
the distant burn of the stars. Not now. Even during galactic war, Coruscant was
still the blazing heart of the greatest civilization in the history of the
galaxy. As the sun retreated, the great city began to sparkle with innumerable
lights. Speeders darted between tall towers like glow-flies dancing in meadows
of transparisteel. Signs flared to life along every street, blinking bright
promises at evening passersby. Lights came on in the windows of apartments and
stores and offices.
So life goes on despite the gathering dark, Senator Padme Amidala thought,
looking out her window. Each individual life burning bravely, like a candle
raised against the night. She kept her eyes on the spaceport landing platform
nearest to the Jedi Temple . "It isn't a luxury," she said.
A handmaiden turned to look at he; puzzled. "Pardon?"
"Hope. It isn't a luxury. It's our duty," Padme said. The handmaiden started
to stammer a reply, but Padme cut her off. "Someone's landing," she said.
A ship settled like a dragonfly on the landing platform nearest to the Temple
, lights burning at its tail and wingtips. Padme grabbed for a pair of
macrobinoculars and tabbed the night-vision settings, trying to read the
designation on the courier's battle-scarred side. Searching the hooded figure
climbing from the cockpit.
"M'lady?"
Slowly Padme put the macrobinoculars aside. "It's not him," she said.
Chief Technician Boz Addle loved all the ships in his care, but he had a
special affection for the sleek couriers. He ran a gloved hand along the metal
flank of the Hoersch-Kessel Seltaya-class fast courier Limit of Vision that had
just come home. "Electrical sparking, meteorite pocking, a couple of laser
cannon burns," he murmured. His hand paused over a nasty gash where part of the
ship's protective laminate had boiled away, showing a mass of fused wiring
studded with shrapnel. "And unless I miss my guess, you took a few proton hits
to boot."
Jedi Master Jai Maruk clambered out of the cockpit. His face was gaunt,
stitched with shrapnel cuts, and puckered by a bad burn that lay in a bar of
charred flesh across his cheek. Half healed on the frantic trip home, the burned
skin had bubbled and turned stiff, pulling up one corner of his mouth. The chief
technician regarded him gravely. "You promised you'd bring my ship back without
a scratch, Master Maruk."
Grim smile. "I lied."
The duty medic bustled forward. "Let me check you out." He paused, squinting
more closely at the slashing burn mark on the Jedi's cheek. "Master Maruk!
What—"
"There's no time for that now. I must speak to the Jedi Council at once—as
many as can be found, anyway."
"But Master Maruk—"
The Jedi waved him off. "Forgive me, medic, but now is not the time. I have a
message to deliver that cannot wait, and I have been left, very much on purpose,
in good enough shape to deliver it." Again the grim smile. He strode away,
pausing only at the docking bay doors. "Chief Boz," he said more gently.
"Yes, Master?"
"Sorry about the ship."
The medic and the chief technician stood side by side on the landing platform
and watched him leave. "Lightsaber burns?" Boz asked.
The medic nodded, wide-eyed.
The chief tech spat thoughtfully on the deck. "Thought so."
The Clone Wars like a mighty hand had flung Jedi throughout the stars,
leaving only a few senior Jedi Knights in the Temple at any time. Yoda, of
course, as Master of the Order and military adviser to the Chancellor, was
nearly always on Coruscant. Tonight only two others had joined him to hear Jai
Maruk's story: Jai Maruk's close friend Master Ilena Xan, nicknamed Iron Hand by
the students—she taught hand-to-hand combat, and her specialty was joint
locks—and Jedi Council member Mace Windu, who was too intimidating for
nicknames.
"We were running recon in the Outer Rim," jai said. "Began to think there was
something funny going on in the neighborhood of the Hydian Way . Little drab
transports kept popping up, like a mermyn-trail leading into and out of the
Wayland region. Nothing so unusual about that, the Trade Federation has the
whole region locked down . . . but these were popping in from strange
coordinates. Deep-space vectors, not local traffic. I got a funny feeling about
them, so I dressed up one of the clone transports in pirate's colors and sent it
to intercept. Turned out that little commercial shuttle had legs on it like a
Neimoidian jakrab. Dropped down a burst of plasma fire and jumped to hyperspace
in a heartbeat."
Master Yoda's wrinkled brow rose. "In a nerf's coat, this krayt dragon was."
"Exactly." Master Jai Maruk glanced down at his right hand, which was
trembling. An ugly char mark was burned across his palm. He regarded the hand
steadily. The trembling stopped.
A young Padawan, a red-haired girl of perhaps fourteen, came into the room
with a pitcher of water and some glasses on a tray. Bowing, she placed them on a
low table. Master Xan poured a tumbler of water and gave it to Jai. He stared at
the glassy, oozing skin on the palm of his burned hand, forced it to curl around
the tumbler, and drank.
"So the Trade Federation was shipping something important into the Hydian Way
," Jai continued. "Why? Not new ordnance; we don't have any significant troop
concentrations out there. And why the disguise? They could wear their fleet
colors proudly—it would scare off any pirates or casual raiders, like my poor
clone troopers had pretended to be."
"There has to be something there we aren't supposed to know about," Ilena
said.
Mace Windu studied the lightsaber burns on Jai Maruk's cheek. "Or someone."
Yoda tapped out a pattern on the Council Chamber floor with his cane. "One of
these krayts, followed it did you."
"But you were caught," Mace said.
Jai's face tightened. "I tracked them to a rendezvous on Vjun."
Master Yoda stirred an
d shook his head. The others looked to him. "Strong in
the dark side, Vjun is," he murmured. "Know you the stories?"
They looked at him blankly.
The corners of Yoda's mouth turned down. "A trial of being old is this:
remembering which thing one has said into which young ears. But he knows; I
remember we spoke of it when he was only a Padawan . . ."
The other Jedi stared. "Who knows?" Master Xan asked.
Yoda waved the question off with his stick. "It matters not. Master Maruk,
continue."
Jai took another sip of water. "At first I remained sun-side, hidden from my
krayt, but when it stayed dirtside for longer than just refueling, I had to risk
following it to the surface. I made a soft landing many kilometers away, I kept
my heat and IR signatures crushed down, I swear it—" He slowed to a stop. His
hand was trembling again. "It doesn't matter. She caught me."
"She?" Master Xan asked.
"Asajj Ventress."
A gasp came from the Padawan who had brought the water. Yoda glanced over,
well could have detected the light of amusement in his eye. "Little pitchers,
big ears they have! Duties to attend to, have you not, Scout?"
"Not really," she said. "We've finished dinner, and there's nothing urgent I
have to do before tomorrow. I mean, I was intending to practice in the training
room, but that could—"
The girl flushed and stuttered to a halt under the massed gaze of the Jedi
Masters. "Padawan Scout," Mace Windu said deliberately, "I am surprised to hear
you have this much free time, given the upcoming Apprentice Tournament. I hate
to think you might be bored. Would you like me to find you something to do?"
The girl gulped. "No, Master. Not necessary. As you say—practice—I should
..." She bowed and backed out of the room, sliding the door almost shut, until
they could see only one green eye. "But if there's anything else you need, don't
hesitate to—"
"Scout!"
"Right!" And with a click the door slid shut.
Mace Windu shook his head. "The Force is weak in that one. I don't know—"
Master Xan held up her hand, and Mace fell silent. Xan's fingers truly were
like iron, sheathed with muscle, the joints knotted from years of hand-to-hand
combat training. She flicked her hand at the door in a gentle Force push. The
door thunked and they heard a muffled yelp. A moment later, embarrassed
footsteps pattered away down the corridor.
Mace Windu shook his head impatiently. "I don't know what Chankar saw in
her."
"We'll never know now," Jai Maruk said. Together they paused in remembrance
of Chankar Kim, another Jedi fallen in the ring at Geonosis. At first, there had
been ceremonies and vigils memorializing that horrible slaughter. But time and
the war had gone on, and the Temple was now bleeding from more than that one
great wound. Every week or two, another report would come in of a comrade lost
in a battle on Thustra, or blown up in high space over Wayland, or assassinated
in a diplomatic mission to Devaron.
"Frankly," Mace said, "I was surprised she was ever chosen to be a Padawan."
The tip of Yoda's cane swirled slowly over the chamber floor, as if he were
stirring the depths of a pond visible only to him. "To the Agricultural Corps
she should be sent, think you?"
"Actually, yes, I do." A note of sympathy entered Mace Windu's voice. "There
is no dishonor in that. When you see how hard she has to fight just to keep up
with children years younger than she is . . . Perhaps it would be kinder to let
her work at her own level."
Yoda cocked his head and looked curiously at him. "See her struggle do I, as
well. But if you make her stop, tell you it is 'kind,' she will not!"
"Maybe not," Jai Maruk said grimly. "But children do not always want what is
best for them."
"Nor do Jedi Masters," Yoda said dryly.
The burned Jedi forged on. "Let's be honest. Not every pairing of Jedi Knight
and Padawan will be Obi-Wan and Anakin, granted, but the truth is we are at war.
To send a Jedi into battle with a Padawan who cannot be trusted to hold her own
is to needlessly risk two lives—lives the Republic cannot afford to throw away."
"The Force is not as strong in Scout as it should be," Ilena agreed. "But
I've had her in my classes for years. Her technique is good. She is smart and
she is loyal. She tries."
"There is no try," Master Maruk said, unconsciously letting his voice slip
into the Yoda imitation for which, a lifetime ago, he had been famous among the
young boys of the Jedi Temple . "There is only do."
The other three Jedi in the room glanced guiltily at Yoda. He snorted, but
laugh lines crinkled around his eyes. "Mm. Thinking of students, I am. Best then
I should go to battle with him in whom the Force is strongest, hmm? With young
Skywalker, think you?"
"He's not polished," Ilena said.
"And too impulsive," Mace added.
"Hm." Yoda stirred again with his stick. "Then best of all would be the
strongest student, yes? Wisest? Most learned in the ways of the Force?" He
nodded. "Best of all, Dooku would be!" His eyes found the other Jedi, one by
then drooped. "Our great failure."
The ancient Master hobbled over to the tray and poured himself a glass of
water. "Enough. The rest of your story, tell us, Master Maruk."
"Ventress found me," Jai said. "We fought. I lost." His burned hand was
shaking again. "She took my light-saber. I composed myself for the killing blow,
but instead she took me prisoner. She blindfolded me and bundled me into a
speeder for a short ride, no more than an hour. Count Dooku was waiting at the
end of it."
"Ah!" Mace Windu leaned forward. "So Dooku is on Vjun!"
"You escaped from Dooku and Ventress alive!" Ilena said.
A mirthless smile tugged on Jai Maruk's burned cheek. "Make no mistake, I am
here because Dooku wanted me here. Ventress would have killed me if she could,
she made that very plain, but Dooku wanted a messenger. One he could trust," the
Jedi said, his voice heavy with irony. "One who would report here first, and not
to the Senate. He was very particular about that—I was to deliver my message to
Master Yoda, and only in the Temple , far from other ears."
"And what was this urgent message?" Mace Windu said.
"He says he wants peace."
Jai Maruk looked at the disbelieving faces of the Jedi and shrugged.
"Peace!" Master Xan spat out. "Bioweapons slaughter innocents by the millions
on Honoghr and he wants peace! The Republic is falling like burned logs into the
fire and he wants peace! I can imagine exactly the kind of peace he means."
"Dooku anticipated we might be, ah, wary." Jai Maruk reached for a pocket
under his cloak. "He would send me back, he said, with an offering and a
question for Master Yoda. The offering was my life. But the question was this .
. ." He drew his hand from his pocket and opened it. There on his shaking palm
was a shell—a single, quite ordinary shell, suc
h as a child might find on the
seashore of a hundred worlds.
The Jedi looked at it in confusion, but Yoda, for once, was not so serene. He
drew a sharp inward breath, and his brow furrowed.
"Master?" Jai Maruk looked away from the shell in his shaking hand. "I have
carried this thing across half the galaxy. But what does it mean?"
Sixty-three standard years earlier. It is evening, and the sky is dark blue
above the sprawling compound of the Jedi Temple . In the Temple 's walled
gardens, the twilight sky is reflected in the ornamental pond. Yoda's most
accomplished student is sitting on a rock by the pond's edge, looking into the
water. In one hand he holds a shell, running his thumb again and again over its
bone-smooth surface. Before him, water-skeeters dance on the surface of the
water, light-footed.
The apprentice's attention moves with them, dancing, too, on the surface of
silence; skating on the endless deepness of the Force. He has always been
light-footed; the Force dimples underneath his attention, but holds him up,
effortlessly. Only tonight, for some reason, he feels sad and strangely heavy.
As if realizing for the first time how easy it would be to see his foot fall
through, into that deep power—to sink into dark depths there, and drown.
Tick, tick, tchak. Tick, tick, tchack. Footsteps coming nearer, one, two, and
then the Chunk of a cane stubbed into the white-pebbled path. A glow light
approaches, coming from the direction of the Masters' quarters, a blur of light
moving through the garden's tangle of leaves and vines. The presence is a
familiar one, and the student can feel Yoda, his old mind warm and bright as
that glow light, long before the old one's silhouette rounds the last bend, and
the great Master of the Jedi Order hobbles slowly up to join him.
The student smiles and dips his head. How many times Yoda has told him, in
endless hours of meditation or lightsaber training, that while the outer form of
a figure or an attack need not be displayed, one must feel its intention in
every cell. So that little dip of the head, so casual, carries a lifetime of
gratitude and respect. And fear, too. And guilt.
The Grand Master of the Jedi Order puts down his light and clambers awkwardly
onto a rock, scrabbling for purchase and then hauling himself up to sit