white face like a cameo portrait.
Qui-Gon rose and stood waiting beside Anakin as the Queen and her handmaidens approached.
'Your Highness,' Qui-Gon greeted with a deferential inclination of his head. 'It will be our pleasure to continue to serve and protect you.'
Amidala nodded. 'I welcome your help. Senator Palpatine fears the Federation means to destroy me.'
'I promise you, we will not let that happen,' the Jedi Master advised solemnly.
The Queen turned and with her handmaidens followed Panaka and the Naboo guards and officers into the transport.
Jar Jar hurried over and enveloped Anakin in a huge hug. 'Weesa goen home, Annie!' he exclaimed with a grin, and Anakin Skywalker hugged. him back.
Moments later they were all aboard, and the sleek transport had lifted off, leaving Coruscant behind.
It was night in the Naboo capital city of Theed, the streets empty and silent save for the occasional passing of battle-droid patrols and the whisper of the wind. In the Queen's throne room, Nute Gunray and Rune Haako stood attentively before a hologram ofDarth Sidious. The hologram filled the space at one end of the room, rising up before them menacingly.
The dark-cloaked figure at its center gestured. 'The Queen is on her way to you,' the Sith Lord intoned softly. 'When she arrives, force her to sign the treaty.'
There was a momentary pause as the Neimoidians exchanged worried looks. 'Yes, my lord,' Nute Gunray agreed reluctantly.
'Viceroy, is the planet secure?' The dark figure in the hologram shimmered with movement.
'Yes, my lord.' Gunray was on firmer ground here. 'We have taken the last pockets of resistance, consisting of mostly primitive life-forms. We are now in complete control.'
The faceless speaker nodded. 'Good. I will see to it that in the Senate things stay as they are. I am sending Darth Maul to join you. He will deal with the]edi.'
'Yes, my lord.' The words were a litany.
The hologram and Darth Sidious faded away. The Neimoidians stood where they were, frozen in place.
'A Sith Lord, here with us?' Rune Haako whispered in disbelief, and this time Nute Gunray had nothing to say at all.
Chapter 19
Aboard the Queen's transport, coming out of hyperspace and approaching the Naboo star system, Qui-Gon Jinn paused on his way to a meeting with the Queen to study Anakin Skywalker.
The boy stood at the pilot's console next to Ric Olie. The Naboo pilot was bent forward over the controls, pointing each one out in turn and explaining its function. Anakin was absorbing the information with astonishing quickness, brow furrowed, eyes intense, concentration total.
'And that one?' The boy pointed.
'The forward stabilizer.' Ric Olie glanced up at him expectantly, waiting.
'And those control the pitch?' Anakin indicated a bank of levers by the pilot's right hand.
Ric Olie's weathered face broke into a grin. 'You catch on pretty quick.'
As quick as anyone he had ever encountered, Qui-Gon Jinn thought. That was the reason Anakin was so special. It gave evidence of his high midi-chlorian count. It suggested anew that he was the chosen one.
The Jedi Master sighed. Why could the Council not accept that this was so? Why were they so afraid of taking a chance on the boy, when the signs were so clear?
Qui-Gon found himself frustrated all over again. He understood their thinking. It was bad that Anakin was so old, but not fatal to his chances. What troubled them was not his age, but the conflict they sensed within him. Anakin was wrestling with his parentage, with his separation from his mother, his friends, and his home. Especially his mother. He was old enough to appreciate what might happen, and the result was an uncertainty that worked within him like a caged animal seeking to break free. The Jedi Council knew that it could not tame that uncertainty from without, that it could be mastered only from within. They believed Anakin Skywalker too old for this, his thinking and his beliefs too settled to be safely reshaped. He was vulnerable to his inner conflict, and the dark side would be quick to take advantage of this.
Qui-Gon shook his head, staring over at the boy from the back of the cockpit. Yes, there were risks in accepting him as an apprentice. But few things of worth were accomplished in life without risk. The Jedi order was founded on strict adherence to established procedures in the raising and educating of young Jedi, but there were exceptions to all things, even this. That the Jedi Council was refusing even to consider that this was an instance in which an exception should be made was intolerable.
Still, he must keep faith, he knew. He must believe. The decision not to train Anakin would be reconsidered on their return and reversed. If the Council did not embrace the boy's training as a Jedi voluntarily, then it would be up to Qui-Gon to find a way to make it do so.
He turned away then and walked from the cabin to the passageways beyond and descended one level to the Queen's chambers. The others she had called together for this meeting were already present when he arrived. Obi-Wan gave him a brief, neutral nod of recognition, standing next to a glowering Captain Panaka. Jar Jar Binks hugged the wall to one side, apparendy trying to disappear into it. Amidala sat on her shipboard throne on a raised dais set against one wall, two of her handmaidens, Rabe and Eirtae, flanking her. Her white-painted face was composed and her gaze cool as it met his own, but there was fire in the words she spoke next.
'When we land on Naboo,' she advised the Jedi Master after he had bowed and taken up a position next to Panaka, 'it is my intention to act on this invasion at once. My people have suffered enough. '
