something over and over, like a muted recording.
Anakin raised his hands, and the panel let go with a soft sucking sound. The image vanished. He made as if to wriggle the tension out of his fingers. 'Got to get used to these controls.' He looked at the Blood Carver. His fingers instantly formed the graceful shape of compulsion.
Ke Daiv seemed unconcerned.
'You should let me take you back to Coruscant,' Anakin said. 'I could show you the Temple where I live.'
Ke Daiv regarded him, eyes small and somehow sad, his oddly handsome face almost unreadable. 'We are not destined to share clan.'
'No, just a visit.'
Anakin moved his hand to another position, a milder form of persuasion, and felt for connections in the Force. Jedi must be in sympathy and understanding with what they seek to control. You and he are not that different.
'We're not that different.'
'We are different, Jedi. You have honor. I have merely the duty to work my way out of disgrace.'
'Tell me about it,' Anakin said. 'I was a slave.'
'You are valued among the Jedi. And those who command tell me the Jedi pose a danger.'
'We defend, we don't cause trouble.'
'That is young talk,' Ke Daiv said.
'You're young, too.'
Ke Daiv looked at his set of controls. One of several displays spun into view in front of him. He tensed in the seat, which would not let him sit comfortably. 'There is a ship chasing us. It is the ship that brought you here. And. . there is another. Go faster.'
Anakin squinted at him.
Ke Daiv swung his flexible arm back, and the lance nearly caught Jabitha in the face. She screamed.
'Faster, to the Magister's mountain,' the Blood Carver insisted, his voice chillingly calm.
'We're going as fast as we can!' Anakin cried. He did not have the training or the concentration now to compel the Blood Carver to do anything. He placed his hands on the controls.
The little creature instantly returned, filling his eyes and his mind. There was no sense fighting her. The image was crystalline. Her expression, what he could read in the piebald arrangement of feathers and whiskers, was stern, and her large, slanted eyes darted left and right, anticipating danger. Anakin recognized her now. This was Vergere.
'Jedi,' she said. 'Whoever you may be. I have left this message in my seed-partners, in the hopes they will find you, or you will find them. There is little time left. I am leaving with the visitors who have provoked a war here and wiped out half of Zonama Sekot. It is the only way to study them, and the only way to avoid a greater war and save this world.'
Anakin tried to stay calm. The integrated seeds contained all of the message that Obi-Wan had caught only a fragment of. That the ship was delivering the message now, in the middle of his trial, when he was at his most vulnerable, seemed grossly unfair.
But fairness had never played much of a part in Anakin Skywalker's life.
'The Zonamans call these visitors Far Outsiders. They are different from all the living things we have studied. The Far Outsiders know nothing of the Force. And the Force knows nothing of them.Yet they are not machines, they are definitely alive, and they may pose a great threat to us all. They are fascinated by me, by my abilities, and they have accepted me in exchange for breaking off their attack and leaving this system.
'I go with them to learn their secrets, and I vow, as a Jedi Knight, that I will survive and report my discoveries. But also, I lead them away from a planet I have come to love. Know this, Jedi-'
Vergere's face seemed to glow with enthusiasm. 'There is a great secret here, which you may discover in time. The heart of a great living creature has started to beat, and a great mind has become aware of itself. I have witnessed the birth of an amazing being-'
Vergere turned aside, and the message ended abruptly.
There was no more.
'What are you staring at?' Ke Daiv asked, thumping the lance on the bulkhead over Anakin's seat. The lance tip left a mark that quickly closed up and healed.
Anakin jumped. 'Just let me fly,' he said, frowning.
Suddenly, the Sekotan ship, his childish enthusiasm for machines, his resentment at the turns his life had taken, everything that had before now defined Anakin Skywalker, seemed vague and unimportant.
Vergere might have sacrificed her life to pass this information to another Jedi.
Anakin now saw more clearly the shape of his trial. He knew why he was important, and why he must defeat Ke Daiv and all the others who might try to destroy him.
The survival of the Jedi themselves could be at stake.
Chapter 48
