Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones

Chapter Ten

Anakin Skywalker and Jar Jar Binks stood at the door separating Padme's bedroom from the anteroom where Anakin and Obi-Wan had kept watch the night before. Looking through the room to the broken window, the pair watched the Coruscant skyline, the endless lines of traffic.

Padme and her handmaiden Dorme rushed about the bedroom, throwing the luggage together, and from her sharp movements, both Anakin and Jar Jar knew that they would do well to keep a fair distance from the upset and angry young Senator. As the Jedi had requested, Chancellor Palpatine had intervened to bid Padme to return to Naboo. She was complying, but that did not mean that she was happy about it.

With a profound sigh, Padme stood straight, one hand on her lower back, which ached from all the bending. She sighed again and moved before the two observers.

"I'm taking an extended leave of absence," she said to Jar Jar, her voice thick and somber, as if she was hoping to inject some of that gravity into the goofy Gungan. "It will be your responsibility to take my place in the Senate. Representative Binks, I know I can count on you."

"Mesa honored…" Jar Jar blurted in reply, standing at attention, except that his head was wagging, and his ears were flopping. One could dress a Gungan up like a dignitary, but such a creature's nature was not so easily changed.

"What?" Padme's voice was stern and showed more than a little exasperation. She was entrusting something important to Jar Jar, and was obviously not thrilled to hear him acting like his old, goofy self. Obviously embarrassed, Jar Jar cleared his throat and stood a bit straighter. "Mesa honored to be taken on dissa heavy burden. Mesa accept this with muy… muy humility andda-"

"Jar Jar, I don't wish to hold you up," Padme interrupted. "I'm sure you have a great deal to do."

"Of course, M'Lady." With a great bow, as if trying to use pretense to cover up the fact that he was blushing like a Darellian fire crab, the Gungan turned and left, flashing a bright smile Anakin's way as he passed. Anakin's eyes followed the retreating Gungan, but any levity or sense of calm he felt from that last exchange was washed away a moment later, when Padme addressed him in a tone that reminded him that she was not in the best of moods.

"I do not like this idea of hiding," she said emphatically.

"Don't worry. Now that the Council has ordered an investigation, it won't take Master Obi-Wan long to find out who hired that bounty hunter. We should have done that from the beginning. It is better to take the offensive against such a threat, to find out the source rather than try to react to the situation." He meant to go on, to claim credit for asking for such an investigation from the very beginning, to let Padme know that he had been right all along and that it had taken the Council long enough to come around to his way of thinking. He could see, though, that her eyes were already beginning to glaze over, so he quieted and let her speak.

"And while your Master investigates, I have to hide away."

"That would be most prudent, yes."

Padme gave a little sigh of frustration. "I haven't worked for a year to defeat the Military Creation Act not to be here when its fate is decided!"

"Sometimes we have to let go of our pride and do what is requested of us," Anakin replied-a rather unconvincing statement, coming from him-and he knew as soon as he spoke the words that he probably shouldn't have phrased things quite like that.

"Pride!" came the roaring response. "Annie, you're young, and you don't have a very firm grip on politics. I suggest you reserve your opinions for some other time."

"Sorry, M'Lady, I was only trying to-"

"Annie! No!"

"Please don't call me that."

"What?"

"Annie. Please don't call me 'Annie.' "

"I've always called you that. It is your name, isn't it?"

"My name is Anakin," the young Jedi said calmly, his jaw firm, his eyes strong. "When you say Annie, it's like I'm still a little boy. And I'm not."

Padme paused and looked him over, head to toe, nodding as she took the sight of him in completely. He could see sincerity on her face as she nodded her agreement, and her tone, too, became one of more respect. "I'm sorry, Anakin. It's impossible to deny you've… that you've grown up."

There was something in the way she said that, Anakin sensed, some suggestion, some recognition from Padme that he was indeed a man now, and perhaps a handsome one at that. That, combined with the little smile she flashed him, had him a bit flushed and put him back up on his heels. He found an ornament sitting on a shelf to the side, then, and using the Force, picked it up, letting it hover above his fingers, needing the distraction.

Still, he had to clear his throat to cover his embarrassment, for he was afraid that his voice would break apart as he admitted, "Master Obi-Wan manages not to see it. He criticizes my every move, as if I was still a child. He didn't listen to me when I insisted that we go in search of the source of the assassination-"

"Mentors have a way of seeing more of our faults than we would like," Padm agreed. "It's the only way we grow."

With a thought, Anakin used the Force to lift the little globe ornament higher into the air, manipulating it all about. "Don't get me wrong," he remarked. "Obi-Wan is a great mentor, as wise as Master Yoda and as powerful as Master Windu. I am truly thankful to be his learner. Only…"

He paused and shook his head, looking for the words. "Only, although I'm a Padawan learner, in some ways-in a lot of ways-I'm ahead of him. I'm ready for the trials. I know I am! He knows it, too. He feels I'm too unpredictable-other Jedi my age have gone through the trials and made it. I know I started my training late, but he won't let me move on." Padme's expression grew curious, and Anakin could well understand her puzzlement, for he, too, was surprised at how openly he was speaking, critically, of Obi-Wan. He thought that he should stop right there, and silently berated himself.

But then Padme said, with all sympathy, "That must be frustrating."

"It's worse!" Anakin cried in response, willingly diving into that warm place. "He's overly critical! He never listens! He just doesn't understand! It's not fair!"

He would have gone on and on, but Padme began to laugh, and that stopped Anakin as surely as a slap across the face.

"I'm sorry," she said through her giggles. "You sounded exactly like that little boy I once knew, when he didn't get his way."

"I'm not whining! I'm not."

Across the room, Dorme, too, began to chuckle.

"I didn't say it to hurt you," Padme explained.

Anakin took a deep breath, then blew it all out of him, his shoulders visibly relaxing. "I know."

He seemed so pitiable then, not pitiful, but just like a lost little soul.

Padme couldn't resist. She walked over to him and lifted her hand to gently stroke his cheek. "Anakin."

For the first time since they had been reunited, Padme truly looked into the blue eyes of the young Padawan, locked stares with him so that they each could see beneath the surface, so that they each could view the other's heart. It was a fleeting moment, made so by Padme's common sense.

She quickly altered the mood with a sincere but lighthearted request.

"Don't try to grow up too fast."

"I am grown up," Anakin replied. "You said it yourself." He finished by making his reply into something suggestive, as he looked deeply into Padme's beautiful brown eyes again, this time even more intensely, more passionately.

"Please don't look at me like that," she said, turning away.

"Why not?"

"Because I can see what you're thinking."

Anakin broke the tension, or tried to, with a laugh. "Oh, so you have Jedi powers, too?"

Padme looked past the young Padawan for a moment, glimpsing Dorme, who was watching with obvious concern and not even trying to hide her interest anymore. And Padme understood that concern, given the strange and unexpected road this conversation had taken. She looked squarely at Anakin again and said, with no room for debate, "It makes me feel uncomfortable." Anakin relented and looked away. "Sorry, M'Lady," he said professionally, and he stepped back, allowing her to resume her packing.

Just the bodyguard again.

But he wasn't, Padme knew, no matter how much she wished it were true.

On a water-washed, wind-lashed world, far to the most remote edges of the Outer Rim, a father and his son sat on a skirt of shining black metal, watching carefully in the few somewhat calm pools created by the currents swirling about the gigantic caryatid that climbed out of the turbulent ocean. The rain had let up a bit, a rare occasion in this watery place, allowing for some calm surface area, at least, and the pair stared hard, searching for the meter-long dark silhouettes of rollerfish.

They were on the lowest skirt of one of the great pillars that supported Tipoca City, the greatest city on all of Kamino, a place of sleek structures, all rounded to deflect the continual wind, rather than flat- faced to battle against it. Kamino had been designed, or upgraded at least, by many of the best architects the galaxy could offer, who understood well that the best way to battle planetary elements was to subtly dodge them. Towering transparisteel windows looked out from every portal-the father, Jango, often wondered why the Kaminoans, tall and thin, pasty white creatures with huge almond-shaped eyes set in oblong heads on necks as long as his arm, wanted so many windows. What was there to see on this violent world other than rolling waters and nearly constant downpours?

Still, even Kamino had its better moments. It was all relative, Jango supposed. Thus, when he saw that it was not raining very hard, he had taken his boy outside.

Jango tapped his son on the shoulder and nodded toward one of the quiet eddies, and the younger one, his face showing all the exuberance of a ten- year-old boy, lifted his pocker, an ion-burst-powered atlatl, and took deadly aim. He didn't use the laser sighting unit, which automatically adjusted for watery refraction. No, this kill was to be a test of his skill alone.

He exhaled deeply, as his father had taught him, using the technique to go perfectly steady, and then, as the prey turned sidelong, he snapped his arm forward, throwing the missile. Barely a meter from the boy's extended hand, the back of the missile glowed briefly, a sudden and short burst of power that shot it off like a blaster bolt, knifing through the water and taking the fish in the side, its barbed head driving through.

With a shout of joy, the boy twisted the atlatl handle, locking the nearly invisible but tremendously strong line, and then, when the fish squirmed away enough to pull the line taut, the boy slowly and deliberately turned the handle, reeling in his catch.

"Well done," Jango congratulated. "But if you had hit it a centimeter forward, you would have skewered the primary muscle just below the gill and rendered it completely helpless."

The boy nodded, unperturbed that his father, his mentor, could always find fault, even in success. The boy knew that his beloved father did so only because it forced him to strive for perfection. And in a dangerous galaxy, perfection allowed for survival.

The boy loved his father even more for caring enough to criticize.

Jango went tense suddenly, sensing a movement nearby, a footfall, perhaps, or just a smell, something to tell the finely attuned bounty hunter that he and his boy were not alone. There weren't many enemies to be found on Kamino, except far out in the watery wastes, where giant tentacled creatures roamed. Here there was little life above the water, other than the Kaminoans themselves, and so Jango wasn't surprised when he saw that the newcomer was one of them: Taun We, his usual contact with the Kaminoans.

"Greetings, Jango," the tall, lithe creature said, holding up a slim arm and hand in a gesture of peace and friendship.

Jango nodded but didn't smile. Why had Taun We come out here-the Kaminoans were hardly ever out of their city of globes-and why would she interrupt Jango when he was with his son?

"You have been scarce within the sector of late," Taun We remarked.

"Better things to do."

"With your child?"

In response, Jango looked over at the boy, who was lining up another rollerfish. Or at least, he was appearing to, Jango recognized, and the insight brought a knowing nod of satisfaction to the crusty bounty hunter. He had taught his son well the art of deception and deflection, of appearing to do one thing while, in reality, doing something quite different. Like listening in on the conversation, measuring Taun We's every word. "The tenth anniversary approaches," the Kaminoan explained. Jango turned back to her with a sour expression. "You think I don't know Boba's birthday?"

If Taun We was fazed at all by the sharp retort, the delicately featured Kaminoan didn't show it. "We are ready to begin again."

Jango looked back at Boba, one of his thousands of children, but the only one who was a perfect clone, an exact replica with no genetic manipulation to make him more obedient. And the only one who hadn't been artificially aged. The group that had been created beside Boba had all reached maturity now, were adult warriors, in perfect health.

Jango had thought that policy of accelerating the aging process a mistake- wasn't experience as much a part of attaining warrior skill as genetics? — but he hadn't complained openly to the Kaminoans about it. He had been hired to do a job, to serve as the source, and questioning the process wasn't in his job description.

Taun We cocked her head a bit to the side, eyes blinking slowly.

Jango recognized her expression as curiosity, and it nearly brought a chuckle bubbling to his lips. The Kaminoans were much more alike than were humans, especially humans from different planets. Perhaps their singular concept, their commonness within their own species, was a part of their typical reproductive process, which now included a fair amount of genetic manipulation, if not outright cloning. As a society, they were practically of one mind and one heart. Taun We seemed genuinely perplexed, and so she was, to see a human with so little apparent regard for other humans, clones or not.

Of course, hadn't the Kaminoans just created an army for the Republic? There wouldn't be wars without some disagreement, now, would there? But that, too, held little interest for Jango. He was a solitary bounty hunter, a recluse-or he would have been if not for Boba. Jango didn't care a whit about politics or war or this army of his clones. If every one of them was slaughtered, then so be it. He had no attachment to any.

He looked to the side as he considered that. To any except for Boba, of course.

Other than that, though, this was just a job, well paying and easy enough. Financially, he couldn't have asked for more, but more important, only the Kaminoans could have given him Boba-not just a son, but an exact replica. Boba would give Jango the pleasure of seeing all that he might have become had he grown up with a loving and caring father, a mentor who cared enough to criticize, to force him to perfection. He was as good as it got concerning bounty hunters, concerning warriors, but he had no doubt that Boba, bred and trained for perfection, would far outshine him to become one of the greatest warriors the galaxy had ever known.

This, then, was Jango Fett's greatest reward, right here, sitting with his son, his young replica, sharing quiet moments.

Quiet moments within the tumult that had been Jango Fett's entire life, surviving the trials of the Outer Rim alone practically from the day he learned to walk. Each trial had made him stronger, had made him more perfect, had honed the skills that he would now pass along to Boba. There was no one better in all the galaxy to teach his son. When Jango Fett wanted you caught, you were caught. When Jango Fett wanted you dead, you were dead.

No, not when Jango "wanted" those things. This was never personal. The hunting, the killing, it was all a job, and among the most valuable of lessons Jango had learned early on was how to become dispassionate.

Completely so. That was his greatest weapon.

He looked at Taun We, then turned to grin at his son. Jango could be dispassionate, except for those times when he could spend time alone with Boba. With Boba, there was pride and there was love, and Jango had to work constantly to keep both of those potential weaknesses at a minimum. While he loved his son dearly-because he loved his son dearly-Jango had been teaching him those same attributes of dispassion, even callousness, from his earliest days.

"We will commence the process again as soon as you are ready," Taun We remarked, bringing Jango back from his contemplations.

"Don't you have enough of the material to do it without me?"

"Well, since you are here anyway, we would like you to be involved," Taun We said. "The original host is always the best choice."

Jango rolled his eyes at the thought-of the needles and the probing-but he did nod his agreement; this was really an easy job, considering the rewards.

"Whenever you are ready." Taun We bowed and turned and walked away. If you wait for that, you'll be waiting forever, Jango thought, but he kept quiet, and again he turned to Boba, motioning for the boy to put his atlatl back to work. Because now I have all that I wanted, Jango mused, watching Boba's fluid motions, his eyes darting about, searching for the next rollerfish.

The industrial sector of Coruscant held perhaps the greatest freight docks in all the galaxy, with a line of bulky transports coming in continually, huge floating cranes ready to meet them and unload the millions of tons of supplies necessary to keep alive the city-planet, which long ago had become too populous to support itself through its own resources. The efficiency of these docks was nothing short of amazing, and yet the place was still tumultuous, and sometimes gridlocked by the sheer number of docking ships and floating cranes.

This was also a place for living passengers, the peasantry of Coruscant, catching cheap rides on freighters outbound, thousands and thousands of people looking to escape the sheer frenzy that had become the world. Blended into that throng, Anakin and Padme walked along, dressed in simple brown tunics and breeches, the garb of Outland refugees. They walked side by side to the shuttle exit as they approached the dock and walkway that would take them to one of the gigantic transports. Captain Typho, Dorme, and Obi-Wan stood waiting for them at that exit door.

"Be safe, M'Lady," Captain Typho said with genuine concern. It was clear that he was not thrilled with allowing Padme out of his sight and control. He handed a pair of small luggage bags over to Anakin and gave a nod of confidence to the young Jedi.

"Thank you, Captain," Padme replied, her voice thick with gratitude. "Take good care of Dorme. The threat will be on you two now."

"He'll be safe with me!" Dorme put in quickly.

Padme smiled, appreciating the small attempt at levity. Then she embraced her handmaiden in a great and tight hug, squeezing all the tighter when she heard Dorme start to weep.

"You'll be fine," Padme whispered into the other woman's ear. "It's not me, M'Lady. I worry about you. What if they realize you've left the capital?" Padme moved back to arm's length and managed a smile as she looked over to Anakin. "Then my Jedi protector will have to prove how good he is." Dorme gave a nervous chuckle and wiped a tear from her eye as she smiled and nodded.

Off to the side, Anakin held his smile within, deciding consciously to wear a posture that exuded confidence and control. But inside he was thrilled to hear Padme's compliments coming his way.

Obi-Wan shattered that warmth, pulling the young Padawan off to the side.

"You stay on Naboo," Obi-Wan said. "Don't attract attention. Do absolutely nothing without checking in with me or the Council."

"Yes, Master," Anakin answered obediently, but inside, he was churning, wanting to lash out at Obi-Wan. Do nothing, absolutely nothing, without checking in, without asking for permission? Hadn't he earned a bit more respect than that? Hadn't he proven himself a bit more resourceful, a Padawan to be trusted?

"I will get to the bottom of this plot quickly, M'Lady," he heard Obi-Wan say to Padme. Anakin seethed inwardly. Hadn't that been exactly the course he had suggested to his Master when they had first been assigned to watch over the Senator?

"You'll be back here in no time," Obi-Wan assured her.

"I will be most grateful for your speed, Master Jedi."

Anakin didn't appreciate hearing Padme speak of any gratitude at all toward Obi-Wan. At least, he didn't want Padme to elevate Obi-Wan's importance in all of this above his own. "Time to go," he said, striding forward.

"I know," Padme answered him, but she didn't seem pleased. Anakin reminded himself not to take it personally. Padme felt that her duty was here. She wasn't thrilled with running offplanet-and she wasn't thrilled with having another of her dear handmaidens stepping into the line of fire in her stead, especially with images of dead Corde so fresh in her mind.

Padme and Dorme shared another hug. Anakin took up the luggage and led the way off the speeder bus, onto a landing where R2-D2 waited.

"May the Force be with you," Obi-Wan said.

"May the Force be with you, Master." Anakin meant every word of it. He wanted Obi-Wan to find out who was behind the assassination attempts, to make the galaxy safe for Padme once again. But he had to admit that he hoped it wouldn't happen too quickly. His duty now put him right beside the woman he loved, and he wouldn't be happy if this assignment proved a short one, if duty pulled him away from her yet again.

"Suddenly I'm afraid," Padme said to him as they walked away, heading toward the giant star freighter that would take them to Naboo. Behind the pair, R2-D2 rolled along, tootling cheerily.

"This is my first assignment on my own. I am, too." Anakin turned about, taking Padme's gaze with his own, and grinned widely. "But don't worry. We've got Artoo with us!"

Again, the levity was much needed.

Back at the bus, waiting for it to take them back to the main city, the three left behind watched Anakin, Padme, and R2-D2 blend into the throng of the vast spaceport. "I hope he doesn't try anything foolish," Obi-Wan said. The mere fact that he would speak so openly concerning his student showed Captain Typho how much the Jedi Knight had come to trust him.

"I'd be more concerned about her doing something than him," Typho replied. He shook his head, his expression serious. "She's not one to follow orders."

"Like-minded traveling companions," Dorme observed.

Obi-Wan and Typho turned to regard her, and Typho shook his head helplessly again. Obi-Wan didn't disagree with Dorme's assessment, however innocently she meant it. Padme Amidala was a stubborn one indeed, one of strong and independent thinking and more than willing to trust her own judgment above that of others, whatever their position and experience. But of the pair who had just left the speeder bus, she wasn't the most headstrong.

It was not a comforting thought.