Sohna - The Star Kingdom

Getting over to the next platform was not as simple as walking the distance between them; from their vantage point, a single flat deck did not run the circumference of the building. They were forced to negotiate their way down several levels, figuring out how to use the antigrav lifts, and backtracking here and there due to their unfamiliarity with the rotunda’s layout. The result was that, by the time they arrived on the platform on which the Jedi and chancellor had landed, it was very nearly deserted. They rushed inside anyway, on the off chance Anakin and Padme had not yet finished their tryst, but the couple was nowhere to be seen.

“Great,” muttered Virginia, irritated. “This is starting to remind me of my first trip to the kingdoms, all over again - always just too late from reaching our goal.”

“Huff puff, Virginia,” Wolf replied in a slightly hurt voice, “If you’d found the mirror then right away, nothing would have turned out the way it did. Wendell might still be a dog, the queen ...” he stopped abruptly.

“... I might not have found my mother,” she finished for him, less distressed by the subject than he thought she would be, “and I wouldn’t have fallen in love with you. You’re right. I shouldn’t have used that as an analogy. But it was very frustrating at the time. This ... I don’t know. Maybe we can’t change what happens.”

“I don’t know, Virginia,” he argued, “We got here, didn’t we - even after you pointed out how this all happened ‘long ago.’ I’d say that demonstrates pretty well that we can help them.”

She looked at him dubiously.

“There’s a lot missing from that chain of logic,” she pointed out.

“Huff puff, just because we missed them this time doesn’t mean it’s hopeless,” he declared airily “It probably had to happen this way; he didn’t know she was pregnant until he met her here today. He wouldn’t know what we were talking about until he at least has the nightmare about it.”

She sighed heavily.

“So, you’re saying we might as well give up until tomorrow?” she asked. “Or next week? Or however long it takes him to have the nightmare? Do we even know how long that is?”

“It’ll happen tonight.”

“And how do you know that?”

“The whole movie took place in nine days.”

“Nine days?”

“Uh huh.”

“How do you know?”

“I read it on the Star Wars website.”

She looked at him as if he’d suddenly grown a third eyeball and shook her head. “Okay, so it’ll happen tonight. What’s your great plan?”

He glanced around, surveying the traffic speeding by.

“We could tell Obi-Wan instead,” he suggested. “The major problem is that the Jedi don’t know about ...” he stopped speaking and jerked his head in the direction of the building’s interior.

“Didn’t he go back to the Jedi temple?” she asked. “How do we get there? We’re not exactly brimming with local cash.”

“Huff puff, Virginia, wolfies don’t need cash,” he reminded her.

She glared at him.

“I know you don’t like me to do this, Virginia,” he admitted as he stepped to the edge of the platform, “But it’s for a good cause. A very good cause.”

He waved his hand out toward the traffic in the manner he’d learned to use in New York to hail a cab. To Virginia’s astonishment, one of the small buses actually pulled over for him and the door opened. But they both froze in surprise when they saw there was no driver.

“Now what?” she asked him, and started to walk away, but he remained rooted to the spot, staring confoundedly at the empty bus. “Wolf?”

He glanced at her with a pained look on his face and scratched nervously at his ear.

“Please enter or stand clear,” a tinny voice announced from a speaker somewhere in the bus’s interior.

“We should have expected this, Wolf,” she said.

“Doors closing,” the voice continued, but this time a female voice behind them cut in.

“Wait!” it exclaimed. “Excuse me.”

They turned to see a middle-aged blue-skinned Twi’lek in a long green robe push past them, warding off the closing doors with her outstretched hand.

“You really shouldn’t block the door,” she admonished them. “Why did you hail a taxi if you didn’t want one?”

At her question, Wolf suddenly smiled, his features taking on a predatory look - from Virginia’s point of view, anyway. The Twi’lek never saw it coming.

“We realized we don’t have any money to pay for the ride,” he said truthfully, and then his eyes flashed. “Actually, we don’t have any money at all, and we’re on a mission of utmost importance for the Republic.” Flash, Flash.

She stared at him, mesmerized, her mouth forming an ‘o,’ and her fingers dropped three coins into a fare box on what Virginia supposed was the dashboard. “I couldn’t do less than pay for your fares, in that case,” she told them breathlessly. As they boarded, she asked, “I am a representative from my planet. May I ask what the mission entails?”

Wolf lowered his voice to a whisper as the taxi lifted off. “It’s top secret,” he said. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

She looked slightly shocked, then laughed nervously at the joke. But she didn’t press the point.

By the time they arrived at the main entrance to the Jedi temple fifteen minutes later, Wolf had managed to pry 1500 galactic credits out of the woman, having convinced her she’d helped with a noble cause. Virginia stared at him dubiously, not liking it that he’d resorted to using Persuasion, but glad to have the money all the same. He looked down at her contritely, knowing she disapproved.

“But Virginia,” he excused himself, “I didn’t lie to her. Not once. If we don’t succeed, the Republic will fall. If that isn’t important, I don’t know what is.”

“Nevermind, Wolf,” she said. “We had to have the money, and I can’t honestly say I can think of any legal way to get it in the short time we’re going to be here.”

He smiled happily.

“Just don’t get used to doing that all the time,” she warned as they walked up the steps to the temple entrance.

The colossal door was shut fast, and to their rapidly rising consternation, no controls that might be used to open it were evident as they had been in the rotunda. Nor was there anything that appeared to be a knocker or doorbell. The door was as blank as a section of wall, or blanker, considering the walls were decorated with bas-relief sculptures of long-ago Jedi wielding lightsabers.

“How do we get in?” Virginia asked.

“You must have to be able to use the Force,” Wolf surmised. “Wizards tend to be like that - and I know they’re not wizards like in the kingdoms, but they’re the closest thing to it here.”

Virginia frowned at this information and beat both her fists determinedly on the door. It made disturbingly little sound, but just as she was about to give the door a good kick, a hologram appeared beside them.

The hologram was of a tall, thin man wearing Jedi garb, and with long blonde hair tied back in a ponytail.

“May I help you?” he asked sourly.

Virginia was taken aback by his tone.

“We’d ...” she began, and then cleared her throat to start again, “We’d like to speak to Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

“Master Kenobi is in an important meeting,” the man informed her superciliously, as if it wouldn’t have mattered if Ob-Wan was on the john, he would have considered it more important than riff-raff coming to the door. As an afterthought, he added carelessly, “May I take a message to him for you?” although it was clear he was only asking out of duty.

Wolf and Virginia exchanged an apprehensive look.

“Could you tell us how long the meeting is expected to last?” she inquired.

The man sighed audibly. “The meeting doesn’t have a prearranged schedule,” he informed them, his tone growing somewhat aggravated. “It’s important Jedi business, vital to the Republic.” He emphasized the words heavily, as if speaking to uneducated children. “Now, if you have an important message for him, I will deliver it for you when the meeting is over.”

Virginia hesitated, silently grinding her teeth. She could feel Wolf tense next to her, although they weren’t touching. At last, she said, “We’ll come back later, thank you.”

The man didn’t even bother to nod to her in acknowledgment before the hologram winked out.

Wolf growled in frustration.

“He’s a Jedi! How can he act like that?” he demanded.

“Remember in the second movie?” she reminded him. “Yoda did say a lot of them had become arrogant.”

“But he has the Force! He should know that we really do need to see Master Kenobi.”

Virginia rolled her eyes. “You mean the same way he knows that the chancellor is a Sith Lord?” she asked pointedly. Then, more practically, she asked, “What’s your next plan?”

He looked around at the street in front of the temple, but the buildings were so high they were in a virtual canyon and they couldn’t tell what direction they were facing. This was not really anything new to Virginia, but it was still a bit disorienting to Wolf.

Abruptly, he ran down the steps and into the street.

“Wolf, wait!” Virginia called after him, “I can’t go that fast.”

She navigated down the fairly shallow steps as quickly as she could, glancing off to the left at what had caught his attention: A crowd of people congregated on the corner, and though the street they stood on was oddly deserted, the intersecting street bustled with foot traffic.

Wolf pointed up, and Virginia saw what the crowd was waiting for. Headed their direction was what appeared to be an oversized flying bus.

“Come on, Virginia,” Wolf told her. “We can catch it if we hurry.”

“But where are we going?” she asked again.

Wolf didn’t answer. He was already halfway to the crowd on the corner.