Chapter Four
When Anakin had first seen Tru, he had immediately wanted to spend time with him. Now he could hardly wait to leave him behind. This wasn't Tru's fault-Anakin just wanted time alone to explore. About Podracing.
He walked alongside Ferus and Tru. The streets were crowded and they had trouble staying together. Ferus didn't seem to notice. He strode ahead at the pace he always set, talking without making sure the others were able to hear.
"The opening rituals are at Stadium One," Ferus said. "We could take an air taxi, but there don't seem to be many around."
"We can get there on Transit Yellow," Tru said. "Four stops. I memorized the transit system maps on the way here."
"It's the perfect opportunity for us to see all sorts of beings from all over the galaxy," Ferus said. "We should observe customs and protocol."
Leave it to Ferus to have a lesson plan for the afternoon, Anakin thought.
As if he had read Anakin's thoughts and was afraid he would speak them aloud, Tru extended one flexible arm and slid his hand over Anakin's mouth.
Anakin batted it away with a grin. No doubt Tru was remembering their mission to the planet Radnor, when Anakin and Ferus had argued every step of the way. But Anakin had no desire to argue with Ferus again. He didn't care about him enough to argue.
He had more important things to do — like check out the Podracers.
Anakin told himself that someone on the Jedi teams needed to do so.
Logically, he was the best candidate. He was the only one who had raced, and he was sure to know some of the beings involved. He hadn't raced since he was eight years old, six and a half years ago. But the racers tended to keep racing, if they weren't killed.
Of course, Obi-Wan hadn't asked him to check out the Podracers. But he had left him free to choose what he wanted to see. Anakin assured himself that he wasn't disobeying Obi-Wan by going.
Still, he didn't want to advertise his plans to his fellow Padawans.
He could trust Tru, but Ferus was another matter. It would be just like Ferus to make a big deal of it.
"I'll catch up with you later," he told Ferus and Tru. "I have something I need to check out first."
Disappointment clouded Tru's silvery eyes. "Oh?"
Anakin knew that Tru had been looking forward to spending time with him, too. When you made friends among the Jedi, you treasured the times you were together because they could be rare.
Ferus gave him a glance that was more pointed. "Obi-Wan asked you to do something?"
Anakin could not lie. Not even to Ferus. He pretended he had not heard him over the noise of the crowd. He turned to go, and Tru leaned over and spoke softly in his ear. "Transit Red, end of the line."
So Tru did know where he was headed.
"You're a good friend," Anakin said as he dashed off before Ferus could say anything more.
Eusebus had converted its largest air taxis to a free transit system.
He found Transit Red and hopped aboard. He didn't mind missing the opening rituals, which no doubt would be filled with parading teams and boring speeches. The real fun was taking place elsewhere At the last stop on Transit Red, the buildings ended abruptly. There was no gradual thinning of structures. An apartment block ended, the road narrowed, and the horizon was before him. There appeared to be nothing in sight but bare hills.
Now what? Anakin wondered as he descended from the air taxi and looked from right to left.
He closed his eyes and summoned the Force. He felt it rise from the red dust and bound off the hills back at him. And then he felt the Living Force as a wave that gathered momentum and broke over him in a shower of light.
There.
He took off toward the hills to his left. Well, if this mission was supposed to teach him about the Living Force, he doubted there was much to learn. Sometimes he thought he was in better touch with the Living Force than his Master. Obi-Wan lived in his head. His emotions were reserved.
Anakin often had no idea what his Master felt or thought. Sometimes he seemed to respond to the beings they met on their travels simply as ways to get something accomplished. A scrappy pilot with hair-raising stories of smuggling tech parts through the Outer Rim systems was just a means to get from the Manda spaceport to Circarpous Major. A tavern owner who kept pet dinkos was a contact to discover the location of a possible weapons cache.
A young brother and sister bounty-hunting team was taken along just to provide an answer to the mystery of who was behind a Jedi's kidnapping.
It wasn't that Obi-Wan lacked compassion, Anakin mused. It was just that there was a little more distance between him and other living beings.
Qui-Gon had not been able to pass along his connection to the Living Force to his Padawan, Anakin felt.
Anakin treasured his Master. But sometimes he wondered what it would have been like to have Qui-Gon as a Master instead. Would Qui-Gon have shared his feelings more easily? Anakin had felt a connection to Qui-Gon from the start. It had taken more time with Obi-Wan. It was still taking time.
He reached the hills, which were covered with thorny green bushes and small, squat trees. Anakin followed the hillside until he spotted scorch marks, then an abandoned hydrospanner. He was close.
He strode forward ten meters, pushed aside a dense covering of leaves, and found the cave opening. He walked inside, already feeling the presence of living beings. The cave opened out as he walked. There were two security guards, but they were unaware of Anakin's silent tread. Soon the ceiling soared a hundred meters over his head.
He heard the clang of metal. The muffled sound of shouts and curses.
The whine and sputter of engines being tuned and tweaked. The roar of powerful turbines. Someone whistling off-tune and someone else shouting at him to stop or he'd shove an oily rag down his slimy throat.
Anakin smiled. It sounded like home.
The cave opened out and he saw a makeshift pit hangar set up ahead.
Podracers were parked haphazardly while beings of every size and description and varying degrees of oil-soaked clothing worked on them. Pit droids scuttled about, hauling huge lubricant hoses and tugging power cell chargers.
He stopped at the edge and watched for a moment. Hydrospanners clanged and macrofusers flew. Someone yelled for a fusioncutter. Some of the Podracer pilots sat on elaborate folding chairs, sipping grog or tea and keeping a watchful eye on their mechanics. Other pilots, not yet rich enough to have someone else to tweak their engines, worked steadily and with enormous concentration. The smallest mistake could cause a Podracer to turn a fraction too sluggishly, resulting in a spectacular crash.
Anakin recognized Aldar Beedo, a Glymphid he had raced against several times. He was surprised Beedo was still alive, let alone racing. Beedo had never been particularly skillful, but he'd been cunning and fearless and willing to cheat, and that had made him more successful at Podracing than he had any right to be. Anakin would have thought he'd have crashed or been run out of the Podraces by this time. Then again, there wasn't much policing of Podracing. Race officials attempted to keep some sort of control, but Podracers schemed to get away with as much as they could.