'I'll take you there, but I won't land — at least not until next week,' said another.
Qui-Gon asked half a dozen pilots before he finally found one who was willing to make the journey, a humanoid who wouldn't give them a last name.
'Call me Elda,' she said before agreeing to drop them off and leave immediately. She could not be convinced to wait around for the return trip.
The Jedi could not afford to be choosy. They boarded right away.
While the pilot readied the ship, they settled in for the journey.
'Not many people want to go to Kodai right now,' Elda said as she keyed the destination points into her navcomputer.
Qui-Gon raised an eyebrow. 'I gathered as much,' he said. 'Why is that?'
The pilot turned to look over her shoulder at Qui-Gon, giving him an 'If you don't know I'm not going to tell you,' look.
Qui-Gon didn't prod. It's just as well, he thought. I can get the information from the Temple.
Stepping out of the cockpit and into the hold, Qui-Gon switched on his comlink. He had heard of Kodai, and thought it was located somewhere in the Outer Rim Territories. If he was not mistaken, its surface was mostly covered by a vast sea.
His comlink crackled to life and a moment later Temple Archivist Jocasta Nu's voice echoed quietly in the hold of the ship.
'It is good to hear from you, Qui-Gon,' she said. 'How is the mission going?'
'It's hard to tell at the moment,' Qui-Gon responded honestly. 'I was hoping you could provide me with information on the planet Kodai.'
'Kodai, in the Outer Rim,' she said. There was a brief silence as Jocasta plugged the data for the request into her Temple computer. 'I seem to remember something about a massive, swelling sea.'
Qui-Gon could hear Jocasta pressing buttons and keys on a computer.
Then she spoke.
'Kodai is, in fact, covered by a giant sea — a sea that hundreds of years ago swelled so much that it drowned most of the planet's land- dwelling inhabitants,' she reported. 'Today there is only one pocket of land — a single city. It is sparsely populated by a few thousand Kodaians who spend most of their time trying to preserve their way of life on land, in spite of the fact that most believe that the sea will rage again and kill them all.' Jocasta was silent for a moment. Qui-Gon guessed that she was reading ahead.
'Interesting,' she murmured. 'It seems that the sea has shown no signs of raging in the last hundred years. In fact, the opposite seems to occur. Every ten years, when the planet's two moons sync up, the sea experiences a spectacularly low tide.'
'I see,' said Qui-Gon, filing away this information.
'That's not all,' Jocasta said. 'What's particularly fascinating is that the planet's moons will be syncing up the day after tomorrow.'
'Interesting timing,' Qui-Gon agreed. It seemed obvious enough that Lundi's trip to Kodai at this particular moment and his search for mining equipment were not coincidences. But he was still not clear about why it had been so difficult to find a pilot to take them to Kodai.
Jocasta was quiet for several long moments while Qui-Gon digested this information. When she did not end the transmission, Qui-Gon guessed that she had more to tell him.
'Is there something else?' he finally asked.
'Yes,' Jocasta replied slowly. 'Another collection of Sith materials was found — this time on the planet Tynna in the Expansion Region. And a strange explosion has occurred on the peaceful planet Nubia. Nobody has come forward to take credit for the blast, but a drawing of a crude Sith Holocron had been scraped onto a duracrete wall outside the ruined building.'
Qui-Gon closed his eyes for a moment. The discovery of the additional stash was not surprising. But an explosion was something new — something deadly. The situation was heating up, and he felt a great deal of pressure to defuse it.
'Thank you for the information,' Qui-Gon told Jocasta. 'We will be in touch if we need anything further.'
'Of course, Qui-Gon. I will be here if you need me.'
As Jocasta switched off her comlink, Qui-Gon felt a pang of sorrow.
He wished that those parting words had been spoken by the woman at the Temple who had helped him with research in the past — Tahl. Qui-Gon had been deeply in love with Tahl, and though she had been killed several months ago, her absence still felt like a blade in his chest.
Qui-Gon put away his comlink and sat down on the floor to meditate until the path was clear. He was just beginning to feel his body relax when Obi-Wan rushed into the hold.
'Master!' he shouted, alarmed. 'There's a bomb on board!'
Chapter 9
Qui-Gon was on his feet in an instant. He followed his apprentice to the bridge, where the bomb had been planted underneath a low shelf. Bending down carefully, Qui-Gon examined the device. It was black and square with a simple timer on top — and a crude drawing of a Sith Holocron etched into the side.
'I suppose I should have expected something like this,' Elda griped from her seat at the controls. 'I just hope
