Until now, Qui-Gon told him silently. Until now.
Gorm's plated armor was formidable, but he hadn't yet met a lightsaber. Qui-Gon moved to one side. Gorm followed. He raised his arm to come down on Qui-Gon, believing, no doubt, that he would be faster and stronger. Qui-Gon ducked so that he received only a glancing blow. It was enough to turn his knees to water, but he'd expected that, planned for it. With an upward thrust, he aimed for Gorm's helmet.
His helmet was where his intelligence was. Where his targeting system spoke to his servomotors, where his motivator powered the blasters built into his hands.
Gorm shook his head. Smoke rose from one side of his helmet. He charged at Qui-Gon again. Sensing what Qui-Gon was up to, Adi moved to the other side. Together they delivered simultaneous blows to his helmet.
The helmet melted and fused to Gorm's neck.
For a moment, Gorm looked surprised. Then his eyes turned red with fury. With a scream, he flailed at Qui-Gon and tried to pummel Adi. But the lightsabers had done their work. Signals conflicted. Servomotors malfunctioned. Gorm toppled over.
Qui-Gon bent over him. He was not dead, but he was certainly incapacitated.
Qui-Gon looked up. Magus stood stock-still at the end of the hall. With one quick glance he took in the Jedi and the monster of a bounty hunter down on the floor. He looked right into Qui-Gon's eyes and shrugged, as if to say, Oh, well, this didn't work out too well. Time to go.
He leaped into the turbolift.
Obi-Wan and Siri rounded the corner, frustration on their faces. "We lost him."
"The roof," Qui-Gon said.
They used their cable launchers. When they jumped onto the roof, they saw that Pilot had landed a small cruiser. Magus started to run for it. They could see Taly in the front seat.
Magus stopped and pointed his blaster at Taly's head. The Jedi stopped.
The bounty hunter's eyes stayed amused.
"You want the boy, presumably," he said.
"You know we do," Qui-Gon replied.
"Pilot, bring him out," Magus said.
"He knows our names, our faces!" Pilot yelled. "So do they, idiot. Do it."
Grumbling, Pilot picked up Taly, who was bound hand and foot.
"Pilot will throw him off the roof if you don't allow us to get away," Magus said calmly.
Pilot balanced on the front of the airspeeder. Taly looked out at them. He had been brave for so long. Now his terror touched Qui-Gon's heart.
"You can go," he said to Magus.
But instead of waiting for Pilot, Magus leaped into the speeder. He pushed the power. With a scream, Pilot went flying, dropping Taly. Siri took a leap straight off the roof and caught Taly with her legs. They bounced at the end of her cable launcher, which she had somehow managed to hook onto the roofline even as she fell.
Pilot fell off the roof. They heard his dying scream, and then a muffled thud.
And Magus flew off, free.
Chapter 19
Two planetary leaders had been badly wounded, but all of them survived. Raptor and Pilot were dead. Gorm and Lunasa were taken into custody. It was good to know that the galaxy would be rid of them for a good while.
Taly was being seen to by a medic droid. The boy had a few bruises but otherwise had not been harmed. Qui-Gon squatted next to him as the medic applied bacta to a scratch on his leg.
"How did you manage it?" the Jedi asked. "How did you stay alive?"
Taly grinned, then winced as the medic droid cleaned another scratch. "I told them I'd made another copy of the conversation I'd overheard. And I knew who had hired them, and it was on the recording rod, but it was hidden in a place where if anything happened to me it would be sent directly to the Senate. They were more afraid of the being who hired them, it turned out. Someone powerful who would ruin them, or maybe even hire other bounty hunters to track them down and kill them. They had too much else to do to try to make me tell them. I think they were going to deal with me after the attack. But I knew you Jedi would show up."
"And do you know who hired the bounty hunters?" Qui-Gon asked.
"I'm not sure. There were so many things said, I was confused."
"I don't think so. I think if you heard who hired them, you would remember it exactly."
Taly said nothing. Qui-Gon realized that Taly wouldn't tell him. He might not even tell the Senate. Too much of a burden was on this boy, but he had learned in a short time how to fight. He had been given a lesson in knowledge as power, and he could be holding the most important piece of the puzzle. He wouldn't give that up.
"I would tell the Senate, if I were you," Qui-Gon advised. "Knowledge is power, but it is also danger."
"I can handle the danger."
"You'll go far in life, Taly," Qui-Gon said. He stood with a sigh.
"When can we leave for Coruscant?"
"Soon. The hotel owner is sending his own cruiser to take us back. Should be pretty posh."
Taly brightened. "And my parents? Can we see if we can contact them?"
"Yes. We'll do that, too."
Qui-Gon turned. Obi-Wan and Siri were standing alone by the pool. An alarm sounded in him softly. Something was different.
They were looking at each other. They were not joking, or fussing with their utility belts. They were simply talking.
Qui-Gon felt a quiet dread. There was something between them. Something had happened. He saw Obi-Wan smile and reach up to touch Siri's lip where a small wound was. He had seen all of Obi-Wan's smiles, and he had never seen this one before.
"We have no proof," Adi said, coming up next to him. Qui-Gon was confused for a moment. Had Adi seen what he had seen?
"Nothing on Passel Argente. He'll get away with this. The bounty hunters won't talk, of course. We can suspect the Corporate Alliance, but I don't think we'll be able to prove it." Adi sighed. She saw the same scene he did, two Padawans standing by a pool, but she didn't notice a thing. "So it's a small victory."
"Twenty beings are alive," Qui-Gon said. "Twenty worlds didn't lose their leaders. Twenty families didn't lose their loved ones. I wouldn't call that a small victory."
Adi lifted both eyebrows at him this time to indicate just how displeased she was. "I am not diminishing that, Qui-Gon. I am just saying… oh, I don't know," Adi burst out with uncharacteristic emotion. "It seems that these days, we complete a mission, and we are successful, yet there is always something we could not seem to do. We get the small thing, but not the big thing. Oh, I hate being imprecise!"