Part Seven

The rest of the trip was uneventful, in twelve year old Qui-Gon's opinion. It was duly noted by both he and Ashanti that Bova the Hutt and her faithful pleasure slaves returned to the transport to continue the journey to The Planet of Thoughts without further accompaniment. The more Qui-Gon thought about the mission, the more nervous he became. After all, a knight and his padawan had come to a bad end on this mysterious planet.

Ashanti had tossed the information pad on the planet and their mission to Qui-Gon the first evening from Space Station Projenii. The brief paragraph concerning the Jedi knight and his padawan had caused Qui-Gon discomfort. The knight had been in service to the Jedi Order for many years and this padawan had been his first. They had been together seven years and he had reported great satisfaction with the padawan's progress. The padawan would be a great addition to the pantheon of Jedi knights in the galaxy, it had been noted.

How could he, a brand-new padawan, with a Jedi knight who also had never had a padawan before, hope to succeed where these two had failed so disastrously?

Ashanti looked up sharply, having sensed Qui-Gon's despair, and frowned. "Don't think negative thoughts, Qui-Gon," she reprimanded. "If you dwell on them long enough, they will come to pass, and I for one like breathing as an extracurricular activity."

Qui-Gon sighed heavily and placed the pad next to him on his bunk. "Ashanti," he said, "many things have been bothering me about this mission. We have not even reached our destination and already I feel I'm playing a role written for me, but I have no script to guide me."

Ashanti studiously avoided his eyes when she answered. "Sometimes the Force is like that."

"No, it's not," insisted Qui-Gon, swinging his lanky legs from the bed. He pressed his arms against his ribcage, bracing his hands on the bed frame. "Why am I considered a fortune? I'm only a human, a poor Jedi student from a planet that is still battling the effects of a horrible plague. What use could a Hutt have for me?"

At his insistent tone, Ashanti looked up briefly and then looked back down. Unwilling to speak, she shook her head. "What aren't you telling me?" Qui-Gon slapped down the accusation, knowing he probably overstepped his bounds, but he had to know the answer.

Ashanti's eyes flashed momentarily when she looked back up at him. "It's information you'll need to know when I decide you need to know it, Qui-Gon Jinn, and not a moment sooner!" she snapped.

"Will that moment be before this Hutt kills me?" Qui-Gon scrambled back at Ashanti's fury directed at him.

"How dare you!" she snarled, leaping from her casual sitting position to stand over him, a good seven meter jump from the bunk she was sitting on to his. "I would never put you in danger, my padawan learner, so put that doubt from your mind this instant!"

"I can't!" Qui-Gon told her, trying not to tremble at his master's fleeting fury. She was quite frightening when she needed to be, he noted to himself. "It bothers me. I can't shake the feeling that there is something important in what you are not telling me!"

Ashanti stepped down off his bunk and walked back to hers, but did not sit down on it. Her back was to him, so he could not make out her expression. Her tail, however, always a better mood indicator than her face, was still dragging on the ground. It's length, longer than her own small frame, looked absurd when it wasn't in motion as it usually was.

With a heavy sigh, Ashanti spoke. "Qui-Gon, you are not some poor Jedi student, but from a powerful family on your planet. Your parents left you a considerable fortune, but as a Jedi, you have no need of it. We live simple lives in service to the Republic, a life dedicated to peace and justice. The Hutt wants that money. He thinks it will bring him power, as all greedy folk do."

"Why does he want my money specifically?" asked Qui-Gon, confused.

"When I took you from your home, he tried to take custody of you. Your father had already drawn up papers stating that upon his and your mother's death, I would be your guardian. That didn't sit well with Marteene the Hutt, who looked forward to manipulating the system to gain custody of you and control of your fortune." Ashanti looked up, seeing something Qui-Gon could only wonder at. "And through your fortune, he would have a stake in the government. It's was a powerful play that I safeguarded against, with the foresight of your father."

"So I'm your padawan only because of a promise you made my parents?" Qui-Gon was hurt. A padawan not because of his ability but because of a promise!

Ashanti whirled to face him. "No! That is not the case!" she told him insistently. She smiled at a memory. "I knew you would be my padawan the first time you burbled some unintelligent baby talk at me. The link was already there, Qui-Gon, I just had to impatiently wait for you to grow up enough that Master Yoda would let me take you. I wanted to take you at age ten, but Yoda about had a heart attack. He insisted no student was ready so young." She shrugged. "One only gets so far arguing with a wall and Yoda, I have discovered over the years, is more steel than brick."

"I did not 'burble'," Qui-Gon protested mildly, feeling better at his master's words.

Ashanti gave him a crooked grin. "Of course not, you were communicating in an advanced form of verbal communication that is lost in the later stages of maturity." Obviously he was over his pique enough to be mildly insulted at the idea of himself as anything but a 'grown-up'. Burbling must not be 'manly'. Ashanti's grin grew wider.

Qui-Gon grinned back. "Just so you remember that," he informed her with as much haughtiness he could muster. He then went back to being serious. Ashanti groaned inwardly. Like his father, Qui-Gon was never going to let a subject go until he had chewed it to death. "So this is more revenge for losing the fortune and me than anything else?"

"I don't know. He cannot have the wealth now. If it belongs to anyone, it belongs to the Jedi Temple until you become of age per the Republic and your planet's laws." She shrugged again, sitting down on her bed. Qui-Gon's mouth opened to toss another question at her. "Please, let's drop this matter. It is of no consequence with Marteene's involvement with the missing knight and his dead padawan."

As she hoped the topic was diverted to the mission itself. Thankfully, Qui-Gon wasn't as tenacious as his father. Ron-Seng would have berated her for even changing the subject. Qui-Gon seemed content with the answers she had given him, at least for now, but she would not be able to hold him off for long in the next round.

Bartender stopped wiping his pristine bar when Ashanti strode in. Just looking at her, he could tell she was wound up tight and ready to explode. He picked up a glass and began to polish it with deliberate ease. When the Titainien plopped on a barstool in front of him, he knew it was serious.

Ashanti hated sitting around bars. She attracted too much trouble to stay in one place for any amount of time.

"Something wrong with your padawan, Ashanti?" he asked, sliding a bottle of amber liquid in her direction. He set the glass down next to it and splashed some of the drink in the crystal clear glass.

"Why do you always serve me root wine, Bartender?" she complained half-heartedly, swishing the liquid around the glass and watching the kaleidoscope of browns swirl in the bad lighting.

"Because you always ask for it when I inquire as to your choice of beverage," he responded, smiling slightly as she tossed the full glass back and coughed once.

"Oh." She dragged in air. "So why is your version ten times stronger than everyone else's?"

Bartender leaned forward. "Why are you skirting around my question?"

Ashanti eyed him warily and then heaved a huge sigh. Bartender was impressed. Ashanti's natural cheerful nature rarely gave her the opportunity for morose contemplations. That she was in one now indicated great seriousness indeed. "Qui-Gon and I already had a fight," she confessed. "I lost my temper, but I think things are smoothed over again."

"Surely you didn't lose your temper!" exclaimed Bartender in mock surprise. To call Ashanti temperamental was to say that Jawas had a slight odor, in short a gross understatement.

"I thought bartenders were supposed to listen?" she snapped peevishly. Bartender shrugged. "He's questioning the mission, whether we should be on it. That," she added wryly, "and he's dying to know why the galaxy considers him a great fortune and why Marteene the Hutt has a price on my head."

"Padawans are nosy creatures," sympathized Bartender splashing water into her glass this time. He leaned against the bar. "So what did you tell him?"

"As little as I could get away with," she muttered, tail lashing once in frustration. She sighed again. "The less he knows right now the better off he's gonna be."

Bartender didn't think she sounded convinced. "So now that you've convinced him of that, who's going to convince you?"

She glared at him. "Who said I convinced him? The boy's too smart for his own good."

"SoHo forbid he should be able to think on his own, let alone reason."

Ashanti glared at him again, and then snorted in laughter. "Okay, you have me there. Intelligence in a padawan is high on the priority list but he's tenacious and my little fob-off explanation will only satisfy him for so long."

"So you told him just enough to keep him happy?" Bartender shook his head in disgust. "Ashanti, if you can't trust your padawan learner, who can you trust?"

Ashanti looked pensive. "Well, it ain't a Hutt that's for sure."

"What about Marteene? He's going to drag the whole thing in whether you think it's connected with the missing knight or not." Bartender watched her closely. If there was one thing he knew about Ashanti, it was that predictable wasn't in her vocabulary.

"Marteene holds a grudge against me for that incident we've discussed before." She gave him a look of inquiry and he nodded. He and Ashanti were good friends. He knew about the Hutt incident on Plumera and Qui-Gon's circumstances when he was brought to the Temple. "That I'm on this mission with Qui-Gon is coincidence," she stated confidently. "We can handle it."

Bartender grabbed her again empty glass and dumped it in the dish washer. "You're that sure it was a coincidence?" he asked her, walking away.

Ashanti mulled over those words as she returned to her quarters.