Sohna - The Star Kingdom

For the second day in a row, Obi-Wan watched his former apprentice stomp away after the council meeting, disgruntled. Today, however, he had far less sympathy for him.

[i]How could you have believed the council would have sent you in command of a mission against General Grievous?[/i] he wondered. [i]Just because the chancellor told you so?[/i] He shook his head in disbelief. He’d wanted to believe what his friend had told him the day before; that he would have accepted without question the decision of the council if it had refused to admit him as a member entirely. But now he thought that wasn’t very likely, even if Anakin himself believed it.

His thoughts were interrupted by Master Windu.

“Obi-Wan,” the council head began, “You’ll need to leave immediately. We need to catch Grievous before he moves again.”

“Yes, Master Windu,” he agreed. “I’d planned to get the troops ready and moving, and then leave first thing this afternoon.”

“It won’t wait that long,” Master Windu insisted.

Obi-Wan sighed.

“I have an appointment to meet with someone at noon,” he admitted. “She left a message for me here yesterday while posing as an exchange intern to Alderaan from Naboo, except that neither Senator Organa nor Senator Amidala have any idea who she is or what she wants. They believe she may be an agent of Palpatine’s.”

“Political intrigue is not Jedi business,” Master Windu intoned, as if instructing Obi-Wan in a novice-level class.

“I’m aware of that,” Obi-Wan replied patiently. “But in this case, the political intrigue could end up involving the Jedi. A large group of senators, including Organa and Amidala, are in the process of drafting a petition to ask the chancellor to relinquish his emergency powers. Due to the timing of Virginia’s - that’s her name - message (Senator Amidala just joined them two days ago), they believe Palpatine capable of acting in force against the committee. If he does, the possibility exists that the Jedi could be called out against innocent members of the senate.”

“Why didn’t you bring this up during the council meeting?” Mace demanded.

“Because until I meet with Virginia and find out exactly what she does want, it amounts to nothing except a conspiracy theory,” Obi-Wan explained. “It may in fact turn out to have nothing whatsoever to do with Palpatine. I won’t know for certain until I speak with her.”

The other man considered what Obi-Wan had told him.

“I concede that this meeting must be kept,” he acknowledged. “However, time is of the essence in Grievous’ capture. I will go to meet this Virginia in your stead.”

“With all due respect, Master Windu, that may not serve,” Obi-Wan protested, knowing how intense and forbidding the council head could be to those not accustomed to his style. “She contacted me specifically, not the Jedi as an order.”

Windu frowned.

“I could, however, call her and try to reschedule the meeting for an earlier time,” Obi-Wan offered, the idea having just occurred to him. “And if she is not amenable to the change, I will inform her that you will then be meeting her in my place.”

Mace nodded.

“Yes, that would be acceptable,” he agreed. “And if what she has to say is of interest to the council, we will convene a special session before you leave for Utapau. May the Force be with you.”

“Leave that here, Wolf,” said Virginia as Wolf plucked up the holophone from where she’d laid it on the nightstand after talking with Obi-Wan the previous evening. “We’re not coming back.”

Reluctantly, he laid it back down.

“Huff puff, Virginia, are you sure we have to leave before eating breakfast?”

“Yes, I’m sure,” she replied. “We can’t afford to get stuck having to go to work today - we might not get away for lunch to make it in time for the meeting with Obi-Wan, and even if we do, how do we explain where we’re going? It’s not like we’re going to need a place to stay tonight. We can go home as soon as we talk to him.”

“If we can get into Palpatine’s office.”

“Well, yes,” she agreed, trying not to think that far ahead. “But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.” [i]One problem at a time[/i], she thought. “We can eat breakfast out at a restaurant; we’ve got enough credits left.”

”At Dex’s?” he asked.

She remembered Dex as looking like nothing so much as a gigantic talking cockroach.

“I don’t know about that,” she told him. “But somewhere.”

Somewhat mollified, Wolf left the room with Virginia, and they walked down the hall and got on the elevator. As they rode it down to street level, the holophone chimed unheard in the empty room.

Since she had resigned herself to accepting the money Wolf had acquired from using his Persuasion two days ago, Virginia was pleasantly surprised to discover it was worth much more than she’d envisioned. They had dined in a fairly upscale restaurant, and even with Wolf’s bacon obsession - on which he had seemed to go overboard this morning, hadn’t spent a large percentage of what they had. In fact, she thought, at this rate, they should be able to afford a hotel room for the night if it did turn out they couldn’t access the mirror immediately. Always assuming hotel rooms weren’t exorbitantly expensive, that is - by which she meant exorbitantly expensive compared to New York standards.

“Huff puff, we still have three hours until the meeting,” Wolf observed. “What should we do?”

“I don’t know, Wolf,” she told him. “What do you want to do?”

“Tony’s going to be very mad that he didn’t get to come,” he observed. “Should we get him a souvenir?”

Her mind immediately conjured up the cheap trinkets she’d always seen sold at tourist traps, only with “Coruscant” inscribed on them, along with the points of interest - the senate rotunda, the Jedi temple - and she burst out laughing.

“I don’t think he’d really be satisfied with anything other than a fully functional light saber, Wolf,” she told him. “And you’re not going to try and steal Obi-Wan’s.”

“Huff puff, no,” he assured her. “I’d never give Tony a light saber.”

That wasn’t quite the reason she’d meant he shouldn’t try to steal it, but let his remark pass.

“Why don’t we go to the theater and see just exactly what performance it was that was going on last night?” she said. “And while we’re there, we can see how long it is until the one Palpatine and Anakin were at.”

But when they finally aroused someone on the maintenance crew at a stage door (along with theaters everywhere, this one was almost hermetically sealed during the daylight morning hours), the being, an alien with an elephantlike trunk who reminded her of the spy that had tailed Luke and Obi-Wan to Han’s ship when they’d left Tatooine in the original movie, informed them that last night’s performance was the Mon Calamari zero gravity water ballet.

“How many more performances are there?” Virginia pressed, undaunted.

“None,” the being replied gruffly (at least, its deep, rough voice sounded rather gruff to her).

“None?” She couldn’t believe it.

“No,” it insisted, then elaborated, “The Mon Calamari say their water ballet is extremely demanding on the performers. So they only ever do one performance a year. We were lucky to have gotten them for the second year in a row; don’t expect we’ll be able to get a third - you can probably look on the holonet for where the next one will be. Gotta get tickets way in advance, though, no matter where it is. Pricey, too.”

“Did the chancellor see the performance last night?” she pressed, still unbelieving.

“That he did; had his own box seats for his entourage,” the being confirmed. “Lots of muckety-mucks here for that. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get the place ready for the children’s circus.”

It closed the door.

“I can’t believe it,” Virginia exclaimed to no one in particular. She turned to Wolf. “I just can’t believe it,” she repeated.

“I told you that was what it was last night,” he retorted. “Didn’t you believe me?”

“I couldn’t believe the whole thing took place in nine days!” she exclaimed, ignoring his tone. “Let alone this fast!”

“Huff puff, can we go to Dex’s now?” he whined. “I’m starving!”

“You just ate breakfast!” she replied. “A huge breakfast, even for you!” It was then that his sudden surliness clicked into place for her. “Wolf,” she said slowly, “Does Coruscant have a moon?”

“What if it does?”

“Does it?” she asked evenly.

He stared defiantly at her for a moment, then looked away and mumbled something.

“What?” she asked. “Stop mumbling.”

“I said it has four moons!” he shouted, then added in a more normal voice, “but they’re very small.”

In his more civil moments, Wolf had assured Virginia that, although at least one of Coruscant’s moons was undoubtedly full, he did not feel near the strength of effect from it that he normally felt during the full moon at home - and he pointed out how he was able to be civil - now and then, anyway - as proof of that fact. He’d further convinced her that he would be perfectly fine at Dex’s for their meeting with Obi-Wan - provided he was allowed to eat constantly, which shouldn’t present a problem since Dex’s was a restaurant, after all, he hastened to add - but most certainly because it wouldn’t be night for quite some time and they’d no doubt be back through the mirror by the time the moon rose in the sky. Provided, he added acerbically, it was even possible to see the moon with all the glare from the lights on the planet.

They had gone immediately to Dex’s, where Wolf had kept the droid waitress busy by ordering a series of what seemed to Virginia like everything on the menu. Dex, she noted with chagrin, looked even more like a cockroach in person than he had in the film. Unfortunately, because she didn’t want to provoke a fight with Wolf (in case he happened to be in one of his non-civil moods), she was forced to sit alone with her doubts and fears about the likelihood of their mission being successful. It hadn’t escaped her that Obi-Wan had left for Utapau to fight General Grievous the day following the ballet. The question now was, would he be able to meet them first, or would they sit here all afternoon waiting, while Wolf literally ate away all the cash they had left? Fortunately, like most greasy spoon diners, Dex’s was not terribly expensive. Still, she kept a running total in her head of exactly how much Wolf’s lunar cravings were costing them, and alternated between staring out the window and staring at her watch.

As the noon hour approached, the diner began to fill up, and Virginia began to get anxious. Would he show up? Would he be late or on time? Would ... Outside, in the crush of traffic, she saw a taxi approach. [i]Is this him?[/i] she wondered, not for the first time. As the door opened, she saw a man in Jedi robes, the glint of a light saber fastened to his belt - but it was not Obi-Wan Kenobi.

“Come on, Wolf, we’re leaving,” she said abruptly, throwing the credits they owed on the table. [i]At least some good came of me tallying all that up in advance ...[/i] She pulled on his arm.

“I’m not finished,” he whined.

“Yes, you are,” she insisted, then hissed, “Mace Windu is coming! Get up!”

He looked outside, curious, but yielded to her pull, and she had him up and out the door before the Jedi Master had crossed the threshold.

“Don’t look at him,” she whispered.

“I’m not,” he said in a normal tone, making her wince.

She stared straight ahead at the taxi Windu had arrived in, and inspiration struck.

“Taxi!” she called. “Wait!” And she began to rush towards it.

Not ten feet away, Mace stared at them, fitting Obi-Wan’s description of Virginia - a young human female with pale skin and dark hair, pregnant, probably with an unknown man - to the couple now rushing away from the diner.

“Excuse me,” he said loudly, so as to make himself heard, but they paid no attention. [i]Two can play this game,[/i] he thought, and turned to follow. “Taxi, wait!” he called out.

Virginia stared out the window in horror at Mace’s words. She couldn’t explain it, but he’d always terrified her - even in the movie. There was just something forbidding about his manner the way Samuel L. Jackson had portrayed him, she thought. And while she granted that the real Mace Windu might be nothing like the actor’s interpretation, she wasn’t willing to take the chance that he might be exactly like that. In any case, he would have been absolutely last on her choice of people to warn, even though, as she would think later, he might have a right to know, given that the chancellor would kill him in the next couple of days. At the moment, however, she channeled her panic into the first thing that came to her mind, turned to the front of the vehicle, and said, “Emergency! I’m in labor - quick! Get me to the hospital immediately!”

To her relief, the ploy worked. The door slammed shut and the taxi took off, just out of Mace’s reach. It didn’t occur to her to wonder why he hadn’t used the Jedi leap he’d demonstrated in [i]Attack of the Clones[/i] to reach them - not until she heard the siren blaring, anyway. The taxi had converted neatly into an ambulance. Everyone around would know their destination.

Beside her, Wolf growled, the excitement and fear he felt coming in waves from his mate having driven him deeper into his moon madness. He glared ferally out the window at the dark-skinned man chasing them, frightening his Virginia as the craft lifted from the pavement.

And on the ground outside Dex’s Diner, Mace Windu stared after the taxi turned ambulance in alarm. Surely that had to be Virginia, who had run from him as Obi-Wan had predicted. But he didn’t need to speak to her to know that whatever she had to say, it would concern the council very much: The unknown man with her had the glowing yellow eyes of a Sith lord.