I could not find my center after that. It would be much easier to teach Kian hand-to-hand combat. He was already a good fighter; that much had been clear on Tatooine on our first meeting. Still, he would need polish: Jedi do not defend with their fists.

I secured him a training 'saber and took him to the salle.

Kian's movements, like his body, were powerful and quick, but graceless. He was not nimble, only fast in the simple way that any two-legged animal is. Katas would be difficult and aerial maneuvers were out of the question.

We sparred for a good while at quarter speed; I taught him foundation movements and stances. He enjoyed himself, it seemed, until the time came for us to move up to full-fledged fighting. It was then that he began to have real difficulty; several times he came away from a match with a singed hand or a scorched patch on his tunic. He could street-fight with his hands; that did not extend to use of a blade.

"I do not have the speed for this," Kian told me as we stopped for the final time, his breathing quick. "But I am very good with a staff." He swung the training 'saber experimentally, examining its hilt. "Do you have, perhaps--"

"No," I said sharply. "Jedi do not use staves. If you cannot learn with a 'saber, then we will secure you a hollow hilt and a blaster for emergencies. You do know how to fire a blaster?"

Kian narrowed his eyes. "A blaster is acceptable but a staff is not?"

"That is beside the point!" I retorted, staring at a corner of the training mat. "Jedi do not use staves!" Forcibly, I caught and calmed myself, closing my eyes and steadying my breathing.

"It doesn't matter," I told him after a long moment. "If we reach a point at which weapons are required, your cover will have been blown already." I dismissed the subject. "Act like you know what you're doing. You don't have to be a Jedi; you only have to pass for one."

"I already do," he pointed out coolly.

"Jedi?" Kian slid into the meditation room during another one of my failed attempts. His voice, for once, was quiet and respectful and it immediately made me wonder what he wanted.

"What?" I closed my eyes briefly, knowing that I would have to learn to control my reactions to him if we were ever to work together. As yet, the Council had told us nothing; We did not know when we would be expected to leave for the Yavin system, or even if we would.

"You showed me something the other day." He waved his hand toward my knees. "Will you show me again?"

"Why? I thought looking like a Jedi was enough for you."

Kian sighed, eyes hard. "Very well. If you will not--" He turned to go.

"No. Wait." When he paused in the doorway, I made room for him on the small circle in front of me, and then I made way for something much larger. I set my pride aside and swallowed, watching him as he knelt.

"I apologize, Kian." I bent my head and looked at my hands. "Your circumstances are not your fault and I did agree to help you. Treating you as... well, as second best is doing you no good, and I am sorry for that." I let out a long breath and met his gaze.

"That is unexpected, to say the least," Kian said distrustfully, and then seemed to catch his words as I had done. "Very well, Jedi. A truce. Though gods know I have tried to be accommodating enough."

"To be sure," I muttered, trying very hard not to think of our nights together, but I said nothing more, indicating that he should sit in front of me. He did so, folding his legs in that odd position and resting his hands on his knees, so close that I thought I could feel warmth from him.

/You're losing your mind,/ I admonished myself sharply and glanced away, making a pretense of adjusting my own kneeling position.

"Now. Listen to my voice," I began, then hesitated. Should I go on as though he were Force-sensitive? I realized I might as well; he wanted to learn to center and calm himself and hearing the true philosophy would firm up his understanding of the Jedi even though it was all theoretical to him. I spoke slowly and clearly, quietly, using the calm voice and demeanor that Qui-Gon had used to guide me into meditation.

"A Jedi feels the Force flowing through him. He takes calm in it, knowing that everything, in whatever form it comes, is as it should be. A Jedi gleans peace and a sense of his center because the Force is all-encompassing. No one is alone who knows how to listen. Every being has reach of it, but only few are strong enough in it to gain strength from it. A--the Force--"

I faltered and broke off, feeling. It was there again: the clear, shining presence of my master. I pulled in a breath and went still, staring at Kian. His eyes were closed, his body relaxed, his mind effortlessly centered in the Living Force, and so help me, I felt Qui-Gon there.

This was no Force ghost. There was no channeling. Kian radiated Qui-Gon's essence, but it was not obtained from any outward source. He generated Qui-Gon's strength, his energy. It came from within.

I felt tears sting my eyes and released half of a harsh breath, too stunned to move. I could only stare and feel. It was not possible, and yet there it was before me. Kian was not only Force-sensitive, but radiated the strength of a full-blown Jedi--and his signature, now, was completely, wholly Qui-Gon. What had begun as a few stray cells now carried the essence of the whole man.

He opened his eyes and looked at me calmly. "What is it?" he asked, his voice puzzled but mild. Qui-Gon's voice, only confused.

"I--" I gasped, then shook my head, my voice broken. I struggled for calm, for my center, but then only choked out, "You carry the Force within you. Qui-Gon--" My throat closed and I shook my head again, staring at him, at his eyes, his hands, trying to grasp at things about him that were not of my master--the unbroken nose, the darker skin and hair. It was fruitless. I felt Kian; I felt my master.

He reached a hand for me, seeming to feel my grief, suddenly renewed where there should have been relief or even joy. I raised my own hand as if to fend him off, then scrambled back off of my knees, landing hard on the floor before bounding to my feet.

"Please," he said apologetically, still holding a hand out to me, but that voice and that presence was too much.

"No," I breathed. "I can't. This can't be. You cannot be him." I shook my head sharply and stumbled from the room, trembling.

I left the quarters altogether. I ran away. I did not remember, nor would I have bothered, to take my robe. I paced the Temple for hours, my mind racing and my heart aching.

/He cannot be,/ I said to myself over and over. /It isn't possible. He is not Qui-Gon. He is not my master./ I related the mechanics of the process to myself based on what I had read. I remembered the charts and diagrams of cell structure, DNA and protein composition, the electrical impulses that made up thought and generated hormonal responses and enzyme reactions. In the end, that was all fruitless as well.

I had felt him.

The urgency that I had felt when I was on Tatooine, of needing to speak with the Council and report this to higher authorities, returned with a vengeance. But the Council rotunda was not where I went. I did not approach the office that coordinated the Consular sessions. I did not request audience. I only paced up and down the halls, around fountains, through the archives, finally finding my way out onto an exterior balcony.

I stared out over the cityscape, feeling lost and somehow more alone than I ever had since Qui-Gon had died on Naboo. I had held him in my arms as he'd faded. I had felt that signature, that essence drain away, leave me behind in a galaxy that I still struggled to believe was worth saving. I loved him, much though I vacillated and tried to deny it. I loved him strongly, and here he was, essentially reborn before my very eyes.

/It is not him,/ I protested myself weakly, slumping over the railing and tipping my head down, staring into the dark depths of Coruscant below.

I realized then that it did not matter how many times I chanted the mantra denying it. Kian was, if nothing else, putting me closer to Qui-Gon than I'd been in seven years--but it was not Qui-Gon who held that energy now. It was Kian. Kian was the one who embodied that strength. He was here, now, and he wanted me. That thought galvanized me and made me straighten, turn, and rush back to my quarters.

He was waiting just inside the door, and he knew somehow that I would come back for him, starved. I slammed into him, barely getting the door palmed shut behind me. I wondered what it meant, or if he would try to use it, but in the moment I did not care. Kian's mouth was rough and harsh with the beard he was growing out; his kisses scraped. His hands grasped as desperately as mine did, and I wondered at his ardor. Had he needed me like this from the beginning, or was he responding to my hunger?

Once more, I didn't care. He backed me against the wall and pressed forward, growing hard even as he kissed me. His mouth was so good then, and it felt so perfect to be pushed into the wall and held there by his body, his hands on either side of my head, trapping me.

I knew then that I was no longer trying to make love to Qui-Gon, even now with his feel on the air between Kian and me. Qui-Gon would have been cool, reserved, perhaps tender and slow, but this starved man in front of me, holding me captive with his mouth, this was not my master. He was never meant to be.

"Kian," I groaned when the kiss broke off and he trailed his mouth down my throat. I fumbled with clothes, peeling mine off, then his. Then we were stumbling toward the padawan bed, closest to the door. He shoved me onto it and I landed hard, scrambling to the center as he reached under a corner of the mattress and came up with a small vial of lubricant. I bent my knees and parted them for him, grabbing him to me as he moved over my body.

Kian prepared me with an urgent clumsiness that I might have been impatient with on any other night. The sharp ache of penetration cleared my head, though, as his hand worked and stretched me, pressing the place that wrung shudders out of me. He watched me closely as if relishing my reactions, my moaning and arching, my tugging at the blanket or his arm. When he moved between my legs to take me, I focused on him: Qui-Gon's energy in another man's body. I shook the thought away and pulled him down to me.

Kian. Kian. I chanted the name in my head as he pressed into me steadily, then began to move inside me, trying to be gentle. I shook my head and raised my hips, urging him on.

"Please," I gasped. "I need this."

He made a low noise, folded himself over me, and twined our legs together, rolling us over. It put us immediately against the wall; I had no room but I didn't care. It was my new mantra: nothing else mattered but this moment, this act.

I sank onto him quickly, shuddering again. "Force," I breathed, bracing my hands on his ribs. "Good."

He nodded and thrust up into me. I cried out, rocking, impaling myself on him, staring down at the face I should have had the courage to tell my feelings to all those years ago. A sob escaped my throat and Kian's eyes widened in alarm. He froze.

"No, no--" I choked out. "Don't stop." I kept moving, bringing my hand up to touch his face. Qui-Gon's face. The Living Force that had inhabited that beloved body now inhabited this one--

"Oh Kian," I said brokenly, realizing all the inadvertent hurt I'd done him. Here was a man strong enough to contain my own master's living essence, with enough sense of purpose to want to do good against near-impossible odds in a strange world. Qui-Gon had died, and then Kian had been "born," but what did it mean? Was this Qui-Gon, resurrected?

I cried out and threw my head back, hiding my pain from him. He did not need to see my grief any longer; he had already been a victim of my angry sorrow too often. But there was something new breaking through now, something that was as clear, strong, and familiar to me as Qui-Gon's own signature within the Force. Something that broke through the haze of my loss like a moonbeam. I looked down at Kian then, unashamed when tears slid down my cheeks. He reached up to me, his huge hand cupping my face, thumb brushing one of my damp cheeks.

"Ben," he moaned, and another sob broke free of me. My name from those lips, in that voice...

Bright, hot pleasure built inside me, first a gentle fall, then an avalanche. I cried out again, rising and falling over Kian as he thrust up into me hard and fast now, unrelenting.

"Now, Ben," he panted, and then gripped my hips, holding me to him hard as he groaned loudly, coming. I pulled up once more as he relaxed his hands and then threw myself down onto him, gasping and calling a name. His name. Kian.

I do not know how long I knelt there with him still buried inside me, panting. After a while he reached up to me, encouraging me off of him and taking something up from the floor, perhaps a tunic, to clean us with. He tossed it aside and opened his arms and I went to him. As soon as I was nestled in his arms, against his warm chest, safe, I began to cry in earnest, sobbing out the lost time, the pain of having wasted so many words, the anger of having stung him, Anakin, Yoda and myself again and again in Qui-Gon's name. Qui-Gon would never have wanted it, but I had allowed my grief to blind me. Now it slid out of me, falling away harmlessly at last.

Kian held me, stroking my back, whispering inanities until I calmed.

"Was it me you wanted, then," he asked quietly into the darkness, "or him?"

My throat tightened and I swallowed, waiting a moment until I thought I could speak.

"You," I told him, and knew it was true. "It was you, Kian. You have his strength, his power, the possibility to be just as he was, but you have come by that on your own. That cannot be cultivated. It has to be achieved."

He tilted his head, pulling back to look at me, perhaps to ascertain if I was telling the truth. I brushed my fingertips over his beard and simply looked back at him.

"Very well," he said quietly, settling me to his chest again. "I will confess: that makes me glad."

"I understand that Master Yoda's very busy," I said, just less than patiently, into my comm. "But you must understand that I would not be asking to speak to him were it not absolutely crucial."

"I'm sorry, Knight Kenobi. It's just not possible. He's in private session."

Disgusted, I switched off my hand comm and sighed. I had to get in to see Master Yoda and it had to be now.

Resolved, I looked at Kian, who was regarding me with apparent curiosity.

"Stay here," I said firmly, and left our quarters to insinuate myself on the High Council.

I put my hood up as I strode quickly through the Temple. I did not want to be distracted from my purpose, and I had a bit of thinking to do before I reached Master Yoda.

I could find no explanation for what had happened. As Kian and I had lain awake in the darkness, I could feel the Force settling into him, as though it had lain dormant somehow in his biogenetic coding and then awakened with the slightest call. Two meditation sessions, one broken and one more complete, and it was there, like a beacon. The most amazing thing about it was that it appeared to be, in every sense, the Force signature of Qui-Gon Jinn.

But Kian wasn't Qui-Gon. Much as I'd been telling myself this as a denial mechanism against what was growing between us, I knew it to be true on several levels. Was it a biogenetic response, then, or was it truly the will of the Force?

If it truly was Qui-Gon's life force inside Kian, rather than just appearing to be... was Qui-Gon trying to reach me?

As the thought struck me, I stopped cold, there in the hallway just outside the Council's antechamber. Did Qui-Gon... inhabit Kian? I shivered and pressed a hand to my throat, suddenly aching again. Given the sudden relationship between the clone and myself, I felt guilty and unsure about the idea of Qui-Gon... well. Watching.

I shook my head and blew out a shaky breath. /Now is not the time for this,/ I told myself harshly, entering the antechamber, going directly for the side room, where the Council debated but did not take audience.

They were about to take audience, regardless.

"Master Yoda," I said as I barged in, "I must speak with you."

Eight of the twelve Councilors sat in attendance and most of them glared at me heavily. When Master Yoda did not immediately address me, I raised my hands in apology.

"Master Yoda," I repeated, more calmly this time, "I must speak with you."

He glared harder than the other Councilors a moment, then, grunting, hopped down from his seat and beckoned me into a smaller side room. I wager he might have dragged me out by the ear if he'd been able to reach it.

"Have a good reason for this, you had better," Master Yoda warned me before hauling himself up into a broad chair.

"Master, Kian has developed Force use."

The old master's reaction was immediate and gratifying. His expression turned keen and interested and he nodded his head, folding his legs in front of him. "A very good reason that is," he muttered, then looked up at me sharply. "Tell me."

I did. I explained the meditation sessions, abortive though they were. I explained exactly the techniques I had used to bring Kian to a state of what I'd thought should only be relaxation. I explained my theory of the dormancy of the midi-chlorians in his system. In the middle of the telling, Master Yoda raised a hand.

"Stop. Asked you for this, did he?"

I frowned, puzzled. "Yes. I assumed we would find something he enjoyed; perhaps it calms him."

Master Yoda shook his head. "Make sense, that does not. No use for meditation has a man like Kian. Why not fighting, hm? Why not piloting? No, no. Knew about this, he must have." The little master punctuated his words with a clawed gesture.

I stared out a thickly-paned window into the city. "How could he have known?" I breathed.

There was a pause before Master Yoda spoke again, looking at me seriously. "Watch him, you must. Know his motives, we do not. Know his loyalties, we do not. And--yes," he added when I opened my mouth to question. "Continue to train him, you must."

"How can I train him if I cannot trust him?" I asked, barely a whisper. I felt ill, betrayed and lost.

"Find the answer to that yourself, you will. Be careful, Obi-Wan, hm? Allow your pain to rule you, you must not." He looked at me shrewdly when I turned to him, surprised.

"Allow your heart to rule you, you must not," he amended quietly.

He was pacing the floor of my quarters when I returned.

"Well?" demanded Kian, looking at me sharply.

"I'm to train you," I told him, removing my robe and hanging it by the door. I tried to keep the resignation from my voice, but his eyes were questioning me. "We must see how far this goes, how much you are capable of." I sighed inwardly, fighting the double meaning of my own words.

To my surprise, Kian smiled broadly. "Then let's get started. I want to see this as well. I want to know what can be done."

I narrowed my eyes, remembering his earlier reluctance at the idea of slogging through philosophy, history, 'saber work, katas.... "Why?"

He shook his head and stepped close to me. I had to fight myself to keep from stepping back.

Kian spoke softly, brushing his fingertips over my cheek. "I want to know what you know. I feel this power coursing through me and I want to control it."

"This not about controlling the Force," I corrected him archly, taking that as my cue to move away from him. His touch left me shaken, wishing I had never succumbed to him, or if nothing else, wishing I hadn't succumbed repeatedly. I turned away, making a pretense of checking my 'saber and the other items on my utility belt. "You must know what you want here; you must be clear about your desires. This is not a quest for power; it is a quest for balance. Understand that first."

He chuckled. "Yes, Master."

I closed my eyes, swallowing. Oh, Force, if I could not handle a sixteen-year-old boy, how in the stars was I going to manage Kian?

"Do not mock me," I said weakly.

"Never," he whispered, moving close behind me and placing his hands on my shoulders. "Teach me. I want to be a knight like you are."

I felt my stomach knot itself up at his words, so simple as to be almost childish, and wondered how I would hide the fact that the trust that we'd only begun to build had been shattered in an instant. I had been blinded by my desire to make something of Kian; despite my denials to myself and him, I had wanted to make something between us--and now I had it and no longer knew what to do with it. Everything was changing, happening too fast.

/I have no choice,/ I realized, my heart sinking. /It's all a ruse; I must play it out./

"Very well." I turned around and looked up at him, wishing that he would move away from me or that I did not have the memories of last night's driving passion in the back of my mind. When he kissed me, I allowed it. I only allowed it.

/I cannot trust him. I cannot want him. But I must find a way to train him./ I did not know what the Council had in store for us, but I supposed I would soon enough. Perhaps there was yet an explanation to be found. Perhaps it was not as Master Yoda said. As I looked up at Kian, though, I realized the doubt was more firmly in place than the desire for faith had been.

I had, more than ever, a very bad feeling about this.

Kian was stunned when he discovered all there was to learn and certainly shocked to discover all of the tests that had to be done on him before we could proceed. No adult had ever been taken on to be a Jedi; certainly no one with a biological age of forty--never mind his chronological age. There were too many variables here; we did not know the rate of speed at which Kian would continue to age, nor did we have any idea about what his capabilities were, physiologically, under extreme duress.

"I am capable of quite a lot," he informed me dryly. I waved him off with a hand and glanced at the healer's assistant, who was laying out testing equipment. He looked at me, then at the clone, then made a tactful exit.

"Don't get prideful," I said tersely, turning to Kian. "You have no idea the stresses of Jedi life. The vaccinations alone could kill you and we would never know until it was done. Your body--"

"--is human. You seem to enjoy forgetting that in spite of the number of times I've proven it to you."

He was angry, and rightfully so, I supposed, in light of my suddenly-shifting moods. I reined myself in with great effort and moved close into his space, backing him onto a cot and then speaking directly down at him, glaring.

"Do not get prideful," I repeated. "You are a clone. You are a chemical, biological and physical copy of a human. It is a fact of your life. Another fact is that we have no idea about your makeup. You could suddenly die tomorrow. What if they implanted you with a time-release virus to guarantee a short life span? What if they implanted you with something that would react to a certain vaccination?"

He blinked, startled. I smirked.

"You see? We simply don't know. Now be still and let the healers do their job."

The healer came in and began the testing sequence. Even I had to admit the range was astounding. She tested his vision, hearing, pain threshold and tolerance to light, heat and cold. Then she began to do the bloodwork and, for lack of anything better, compare it to Qui-Gon's.

"Midi-chlorian count is identical," she told us absently, not turning away from her viewscreen. "Antibodies, genetic predispositions, all of it. No foreign biological substances. He's ready to be vaccinated."

The immunizations were done over the course of three days, during which time Kian remained in the ward. He hated it as much as Qui-Gon always had, that much was true, but the respite was invaluable to me. I could not tolerate the idea of him trying to share my bed now, but I did not want to risk blowing the entire operation--whatever it might entail--by calling him on his possible dishonesty.

On the third day, when I went to retrieve my would-be padawan, I ran into my erstwhile one.

"Master," he greeted quietly, bowing. I masked my pained surprise quickly and bowed in return. He looked completely different than he had; his tunics were made of thick, dark leather and his eyes were harder than they had been.

"Padawan Skywalker. It is unexpected to see you here in the ward. I hope everything is well with you." The formalities stung me; we had tried, but Anakin and I were comfortable enough together to drop them. Now they were only too pointed.

"Master Hamp required some bacta," Anakin explained, a completely unreadable look coming into his eyes. "I slipped during a sparring session. And you? Rumor has it you're training the clone. Auspicious of you, don't you think? Master? Training a bioengineered thing to be a Jedi?"

I ignored the barbs, wondering what had come over my former apprentice to turn him so against me. "I see you still refuse to learn acceptance of authority. This is none of your concern."

Anakin laughed and deliberately reached up to toy with his padawan braid. "My acceptance or rejection of authority is none of your concern any longer, Master. Now if you will excuse me...?" He moved quickly past me, his shoulder brushing mine. His audacity was astounding but that was nothing next to the keen sense of foreboding I felt in that moment.

I gritted my teeth against it and shook my head, moving on through the halls to Kian's room. I had more immediate things to worry about; Anakin Skywalker was not one of them.

Kian was leaning on the edge of his bed, fully dressed and looking rather impatient.

"It took you long enough," he groused, straightening and taking up his robe. "I've been in here three days. Three days, Jedi, taking injections, elixirs, tablets--"

I waved him down. "I went through it when I was ten; stop complaining and let's go." As we turned to leave, the healer, a small blond girl who looked younger than Anakin, presented me with a dataslate. I glanced at her nameplate: Knight D'Sal.

"Authorization," she said. "For processing."

I started to beckon Kian over, but the healer shook her head. "You have to, Knight Kenobi. He is your apprentice; you must take responsibility."

My eyes widened. First the Temple administration had listed him as Master Kian, now he was my apprentice?

"I don't think--" I broke off, glancing at Kian, who looked torn between irritated and amused.

Insistently, she pushed the datapad toward me. "We have to have a second code for anyone ranked below knight. Padawan Kian cannot authorize the filing of his own vaccination records."

My stomach turned over lazily and I wondered why I hadn't thought of it before. Of course. For all intents and purposes, he would have to go on record as being my padawan.

The turns this situation had taken were rapidly reaching the unbearable.

"Very well," I sighed, pressing my thumb into the oval on the 'pad, muttering to myself about bureaucracy and the perils it placed unsuspecting warrior/diplomats in.

"Great," she said brightly. "That's everything." The healer bustled out, leaving me utterly dissatisfied and perplexed.

Kian stepped up to me and shrugged into his robe. "Padawan Kian?"

"You wanted to be a Jedi," I reminded him tightly, preceding him out of the room and down the hall. I struggled against a perverse sense of satisfaction that he felt so... demoted.

"I wanted to be a knight," he corrected.

"It doesn't work that way; you can't simply be knighted to start with. Don't be difficult about this, Kian. I don't like it any more than you do."

I felt his close regard and sighed, rubbing at my forehead. I became dimly aware that Qui-Gon would gently berate me for such a useless fidget. Kian noticed; I did it often enough that he surely knew by now it indicated my tension and worry.

"What's wrong, Ben?"

I kept my eyes fixed in front of me as we moved through the Temple proper, heading for the Force manipulation training rooms. "I--" I began, then hesitated. Now was neither the time nor the place to tell him the sexual aspects of our relationship had to end. I wanted to string together some modified Code reference; something about master/padawan relationships and the intricacies of training not being conducive to sex, but of course that would make me a hypocrite, a coward and a liar.

"I will address it with you later," I told him after a moment. "Look there." I pointed into one of the wide training rooms with its high, vaulted ceiling and its intricate array of tools and devices for training crechelings and padawans in gross and fine Force manipulation. Inside, there was a child of roughly ten years, hovering a set of rings before herself, eyes closed in concentration. After a moment, a yellow ring began to spin. Her master nodded and gave a command, and in response, the girl stopped the spinning ring with a gesture and started up a blue one.

"Incredible," Kian remarked. "And I will--be able to do this?"

I looked at him carefully but there was no real way to ascertain whether his fascination was real or staged. I disliked having to attempt the distinction. "Yes. Not at once; you will have to work hard at it. Are you ready?"

He nodded and stepped into the room, looking for all the galaxy like a huge padawan, wide-eyed and amazed. It made me regret my own suspicion as I guided him into the room, making for a station that was loaded with colored blocks, designed to exercise middle-range Force capabilities.

"I want you to take up one of those blocks," I told him. "Focus on it; concentrate. You know what the Force feels like--use it. Feel it moving through you and direct it."

Kian looked at me, then nodded. He raised his hand and held it up, facing his palm toward a large blue block. I could feel him pushing; the block shuddered and hopped once, then rose smoothly into the air. Kian's sense of pleasure radiated from him.

It was too easy.

"Another," I said tersely, and he raised his other hand, lifting a red block.

"Spin them." He did. In fact, every exercise I assigned to him, he completed. Soon we had moved on to fine Force manipulation; he tied knots in microfilaments and drew runes in powdered sand. Then came the gross strength exercises; he was able to heft an ultra-dense half-tonne block of carbonite above his head and pass under it.

"Astounding," he breathed, only mildly exerted.

"Indeed," I muttered, my heart sinking.

We moved quickly through the Temple to the Council rotunda. I could sense Kian's confusion but had told him nothing other than we'd received a missive to appear before the Council immediately.

"A problem, we have," Master Yoda said without preamble, before we even reached the center of the rotunda.

"Master," I nodded in greeting--and agreement.

"Some things, there are, that it is time for you to know." Master Yoda sighed and shook his head, both hands folded over the head of his gimer stick. We waited while he gathered his thoughts; Kian looked hard at me but said nothing.

"We have known about the cloning operation for quite some time," Master Windu broke in; I pulled in a breath at this news; it was certainly not what I'd expected to hear. He looked at Master Yoda questioningly, and the little master gestured for him to proceed.

"The heads of every major government organization down to the planetary level have been aware of it for years. It is not something that is widely distributed knowledge, though it stands to become so, very quickly now. It is confirmed that, yes, Master Jinn's genetic sample was taken on Tatooine, and cross-referenced data from the files at the facility state that the information was transmitted to--and the material picked up from--Mos Espa. That is not the problem."

I waited, my heart threatening to pound out of my chest as Master Windu pulled a datapad from beside his seat.

"We suspected that Kian knew about this," he waved the 'pad, "so we had your quarters searched, Knight Kenobi. This is what we came away with." He held the 'pad out to me. I stepped forward and took it, flipping through the first three or four documents filed within, growing hot with angry adrenaline.

I turned to Kian, who was suddenly pale.

"What--?" I demanded. "Not only did you know but you lied to me, you lied to the Council--"

"Enough," Master Windu said quietly. He nodded toward the 'pad. "You will find, Knight Kenobi, that everything you need to know is there. This clone of Qui-Gon Jinn is fully Force-capable. He has been masking that ability since before he escaped from the compound."

Kian looked as sick as I felt. I clutched the 'pad and shook my head, struggling to control my tone in the heat of shock-induced adrenaline. "I knew--or at least I should have. He completed every physical Force-manipulation task with too much ease. I should never have been assigned to him."

Master Yoda sighed. "Have our reasons, we did. Bigger problems have we now, Obi-Wan." He looked at Kian, who merely hung his head. After a moment, Yoda closed his eyes, pressing a small panel open on the side of his seat and hitting a button within it.

I drew in a breath, widening my eyes and staring as two armed security guards entered the chamber door, making directly for Kian and flanking him, each taking an arm firmly. He did not struggle; he only kept his eyes down and sighed. He looked as though he'd been expecting this, while I felt as though the floor had opened up beneath my feet.

"Aware, the cloners are, that Force capability has been achieved," Yoda went on, as though nothing else were happening in the room.

"Not every Force-gifted clone had the presence of mind to shield his abilities," Master Windu went on. "Unfortunately, the others in the prototype lot have been systematically murdered by the facility's heads of operations. The special ops teams we have in place at the facility do not know why. We would shut the facility down immediately, but we haven't enough proof. Too many governments are hanging too much money on this."

Kian let out a choked noise. I kept my eyes fixed firmly to the floor, trying to control my quickening breathing. Angry words leapt into my head and threatened to pour out of my mouth; I held them in by dint of will alone, trembling with my own astonishment at having been played so.

"What of Kian?" I asked, firming up my voice just enough to be heard, though it seemed I should have none left. I jerked my head toward him to disguise my shaking.

Master Windu looked across the chamber at another Councilor and I turned to face Master Adi Gallia.

She looked down at a datapad. "This is more a security measure for his safety than anything else, Knight Kenobi. There have been several transmissions to an unidentified Tatooinian location placed from your comm, as well as financial transactions in and out of a depository there. Intelligence is still triangulating the receiving end. Sensors cross-referenced the voiceprint of Master Jinn during one of those transmissions." Her gaze flicked up to Kian's. "We would have continued monitoring, but the situation has become dire. The other end is moving. They have another donor in mind. Now it comes down to this, Kian. We can have you interrogated, or you can tell us here and now what you know."

I finally found the strength to look at Kian. He embodied Qui-Gon, no longer stricken but cool and collected, even with all of this information branding him as a traitor to what I believed was his cause.

"The transmissions I was making were to an operative in the anti-cloning underground," Kian said, his voice quite calm. "She is the head of a branch of the planetary coalition headed up by Alderaan, fighting the facility itself and the advocacy of the Senate. The only thing we have learned recently is that--"

"How can we believe you?" I broke in at last, my words tense and angry. My voice began to rise of its own volition, marking my pain as I fought back mental images of his face close to mine in the dark--what else might he have been pretending at? I shook my head sharply. "You've been lying to us all along, you've been lying to me! Hiding--" My voice broke as the depth of his deception continued to amaze me, but I plunged on, "I cannot possibly imagine how you can expect the High Council to--"

"Knight Kenobi," Master Windu broke in firmly, startling me, "if you do not control yourself, you will be dismissed from these chambers." He turned back to Kian. "What have you learned recently?"

Kian took a breath. "Chancellor Palpatine is much more heavily into the cloning operation than we first realized. He is not only advocating a takeover by the Senate, but he is also investing heavily: Republic as well as personal funds."

I gritted my teeth, trembling inside my robes, gripping the datapad hard enough to make my hand ache. How could the Council accept anything from this man as valid?

"This is bothersome," Master Gallia said quietly. "It is unlike the Senate to list so heavily in favor of an organization. The motive must be militaristic in nature, or the Chancellor is working outside the knowledge of the main body of delegates." She turned to me. "You will need to go back to Tatooine and develop Kian's contacts further. You will be funded and provided transport. Beyond that, you're on your own. You must pose as a civilian. No weapons if at all possible; certainly no lightsaber. Stay out of Mos Espa completely. Understood?"

I stared, giving no reply; it made no difference, as I had no choice. After a moment, I found my voice again. I turned to Master Yoda, forcing calm into my voice.

"With all due respect, Master, I request another knight be assigned this mission. I am afraid my feelings in this matter will bias me--"

"Denied, your request is," Master Yoda countered with a swipe of his stick. "Concentrate on your feelings, you should not," he added sharply, "and tell you this again I will not. A task you have been given; perform it you will." He gestured toward the door, dismissing me. Kian was escorted out.

I stilled my features, defeated, and trudged out of the chamber.

"I have reasons for holding back," Kian called back to me over his shoulder, still tugged inexorably toward the detention block.

I glared at him for a moment as we walked, once more burying a flash of pain and question. I fought to keep myself from bothering to wonder "why." I did not respond to his words. There was no response left worthy of a Jedi.

I turned away from the path I was on, the path that paralleled his, taking a different way through the Temple to my quarters.

I packed, collected my credits and boarded the transport. I told myself that Kian's incarceration was good; if it was to protect him, fine, but I thought perhaps he could use a little time to consider what he'd done, what he'd compromised. At least this way he was unable to try to ply me with rationalizations.

/Or come to my bed,/ I added, and winced. How could I have been so blind? To think that this impostor had anything even remotely in common with my master beyond his looks... I sighed, staring out the portal.

I remembered the last time I'd been mooning about in a cockpit. Kian had slipped in, murmuring, "Jedi..."

I closed my eyes and swallowed, immediately recalling my name falling from his lips.

"Force," I breathed, choking back the rest of it but unable to keep it from sliding unbidden into my thoughts: /I miss him./

I was only mildly surprised to learn that this "underground" operation was literally underground, in an abandoned cave once occupied by a Hutt drug lord. Beyond that fact, the cave was full of technological amenities that would have given Master Gallia's resources a run for her credits. This explained the deposits Kian had been making.

The sole member of this side of the operation stepped out of a side room, nodding at me. She was tall--taller than Kian, in fact. She appeared to be a Tatooinian native: her most remarkable feature was her height but beyond that she was plain and weatherworn. She did not smile.

"Mai," she said flatly, extending her hand. "I'm glad you're here. The resistance has heard good things about you."

I tilted my head, vaguely surprised, shaking her hand in return. "Thank you."

Mai nodded toward a terminal and gestured for me to sit down. Keying in a code, she brought up a screenful of data that made very little sense to me. "We've just received another report from our operatives at the spaceport. The next donor is on his way here." She pointed to a code, "CAS-SS-1138.F," and continued, "He'll be here within the day. We have so little time." She sighed and muttered something in a native tongue and I heard Kian's name in her words. "We need more information. If we can't stop the donor, then we have to take out the information system--we don't have enough operatives in place for that."

I stared at the screen a moment, puzzled. "Why is time so important? The last lot took two years to incubate." I winced inwardly but hid my reaction; it was difficult, even indirectly, to talk about Kian in this way.

"This is a younger specimen," Mai explained. "Forty years of age--from a sixty-odd-year-old donor--wasn't ideal, but it made for a good test lot. If they could reproduce a mid-life human male, then there's almost no limit to what they can do with younger cellular structure, since the programming is based on actual age. Also, once they have a viable clone embryo, it's no good just destroying the data on the system; they could ship the embryos off to as many locations as they want and cryogenically freeze them. Each clone is encoded with its inception data. They could reproduce the clones from anywhere, then. They could set up a dozen facilities with just the information in one cloned cell." She punched another screen up. "In addition, there's data indicating the intention this time is to only bake the clones to half-age. If they start with a thirty-year-old male--"

I stopped her with a raised hand, then stopped myself from rubbing my forehead. "I apologize, but can we not--is bake the technical term?"

She looked at me with a dry, impatient expression. "Of course not. The intention is to incubate the clones to half-age. We think they're shooting for a fifteen- to seventeen-year-old clone."

I frowned. "Why?"

Shrugging, Mai hit another screen. "Why do Jedi procure their initiates at such young ages? Because you can indoctrinate the young much more readily. Structure, religion, behavioral patterns, academics--you see where I'm going with this." She pointed to a block of data on the screen that was headed with "CAS-SS-1138.F * 1K".

I was astounded. "A thousand?"

She nodded. "Not enough for an army, too many for a government. We don't know what they're doing. Most of the data we have is technical, gleaned from Kian's information and the cellular information we were able to get from his genetic coding."

Mai took me through the information, screen by screen. Every time we moved on, something nagged. I knew I was missing something crucial. We worked together well into the night until I was familiar with procurement procedures, methods of donor payment, genetic manipulation... more than I'd ever wanted to know about clones in a lifetime.

By the time I collapsed onto the small cot I'd been provided, rubbing my eyes with exhaustion, I'd come no closer to determining how we were going to get what we needed to stop the operation. The Order was concerning itself with things like damage control and interplanetary public opinion but at this point, I felt as though those were not going to figure in at the end.

Wearily, I went back through the data in my head once more, looking for a crack in it, a way to open the code that must lay there in those walls of information. Someone, apparently, had been very well-paid to make certain the data was inaccessible to the layman.

The thought made me sit up in the cot, staring into the darkness of the cave. Mai slept soundly on a cot against the opposite wall, so I quietly picked my way through the black of the room and turned on the data comm where we'd been working earlier.

There was a key there in the payment, somewhere. Kian had said Palpatine was channeling funds to the cloners. Mai had explained that donors received payment for their contributions; many donors had come from offworld governments, but that was not what concerned me now.

"Mai," I said urgently into the dark, my voice low.

"Mmmh."

"Mai, get up. Remind me what these donor codes mean."

She turned over on her cot but made no move to rouse herself. "Hells, Jedi--"

"Mai!" I said sharply. "Tell me again what the codes mean."

"Ahhhgh," she groaned and got up, rubbing her head. "How many times did we go through the... ahgh. It's like this: The location where the sample was collected, the name of the donor, the name of the payment recipient, the wing where the clones were baked-- ai, incubated--in the facility, and the lot code. 'T' is 'test,' 'A' is 'aborted,' 'D' is a duplicate batch, 'F' is a final batch."

As she spoke, I followed along Kian's donor code, TQGJ-SS-1138.T, muttering to myself. A painful knot congealed in my chest as I cross-referenced the data, then double-checked it the payment information against the donor code of the proposed half-age clones. I realized then that they were not going for a fifteen- to seventeen-year-old clone. If they wanted a reproduction half the age of the donor, then they were aiming for an eight-year-old clone.

I drew in a breath but could not force myself to finish aloud what was plainly in front of me in the new donor code, CAS-SS-1138.F:

Coruscant, Anakin Skywalker. Shmi Skywalker. 1138. Final.

I raced to Mos Espa in Mai's speeder car, ignoring half the directives I'd been given by Master Gallia about the secrecy of this mission.

"A thousand!" I shouted into my comm, trying to be heard over the scream of overheating engines and the roar of wind. "I'm on my way to Mos Espa--"

"No... -Wan," I barely heard Master Windu say. "--Late... this. Anakin... transp-- ....dangerous. Return... Corusc--Now."

"You're breaking up, Master!" I yelled, switching off the comm. There was no way I was stopping now: I had to attempt to deter my former apprentice from allowing himself to be cloned a thousand times. Perhaps I could reach him, emotionally speaking, through his mother.

It was only too late that I realized my journey to Shmi Skywalker's home was fruitless: Anakin was standing in the doorway.

"It's already been done," he said without preamble. "The sample has been shipped; they'll have an embryo soon."

My stomach fell. "Anakin, they'll have a thousand embryos. Why?"

My former apprentice shrugged. "I don't care. They've paid my mother enough to support her for the rest of her life. I'm going to stay with her and make sure nothing else happens." He shifted his weight to one leg and tipped his head down, then glared at me. "Do you have any idea, Master, what the cloning did to her the first time? She believed the Force was with her when the Jedi finally landed here by accident. When Qui-Gon came, she took advantage of his presence and look what happened." He was growing angry, his words petulant and hard at the same time. "As soon as the Republic caught word that the genetic material had been gathered here, they abolished slavery and destroyed everything--and the people blamed it on me. But she had a life then, at least. A way to support herself. But it only lasted so long, so of course when she told me she needed one more Force-sensitive donation, I did it. I had to. I don't care what they're doing with the clones; Chancellor Palpatine assured me my mother would be well-taken care of and that's what I care about."

I swallowed. "Anakin, have you any idea--have you looked at the data? At your own genetic information?"

Anakin shook his head. "What difference does it make? I know I am a powerful Force-user. That's what they needed." He shrugged. "Maybe they're rebuilding the Jedi--you've been on a decline."

I bit back my amazement at his apathy and, in spite of his hardness, his naivete. But I had no time to explain it to him now. I backed away, half-expecting him to stop me, then turned and leapt into the speeder car.

"It's too late," he shouted. "You can't stop it."

"We'll see," I muttered, kicking the engines on.

The speeder ride was a waste of time. I hated the delay; I could neither comm nor use the resources afforded me properly. It did, however, give me time to think.

I jumped out of the speeder in time to see Mai coming out to greet me.

"Your people have been trying to reach--"

"No time," I told her quickly. "I have to use your comm and you have to tell me everything you know about the data system at the facility."

She sighed impatiently. "Taowa shigo, she cursed at me. "How many times do I have to go over the--"

I stopped her, raising my hand in a halting gesture and then pointing in the direction of Mos Espa. "Your donor has arrived. The transfer of material has already happened. We very little time to destroy the databanks before the embryos reach a state where they can be duplicated. Even if we kill the embryos, we won't have time to remove them all from the facility--and I'll wager you can make a clone from dead genetic material as well as you can from living. So stop wasting time worrying about what we've been over and go over it again."

"I told you, we don't have enough operatives--"

"You're going to have to trust me," I gritted out.

Mai went still, staring at me, her face expressionless. Then, she led me back inside to run the information again.

"Are you sure about this?" Master Windu demanded, sounding very doubtful.

"Yes," I assured him. "I won't have time to take it all out. You have to send Kian. Make sure he connects with Master Gallia's operatives to ensure his...." I gritted my teeth. He had no loyalty, that much was clear. "Just make sure he follows through. How many operatives does Master Gallia have in position on Yavin 4?"

Master Windu sighed into his comm. "You're well beyond your authorization, Knight Kenobi." There was a pause as he retrieved the data, conceding heavily, "Enough to implant the system--if we can get a shutdown program written in time."

I ignored the admonition and reiterated the plan: take out the control towers and implant the system before it backed itself up and came online using auxiliary power. Then we would have to take out the secondary system. We would need fighters, intelligence teams... it was a huge plan, but one that had to work or we would see a thousand eight-year-old Chosen Ones running around at the behest of a politician who could not have wanted good things with them.

Master Windu began to go on about the public fallout, but I interrupted him again, "I am going to that cloning facility. I need the operatives inside the facility. They have to release the shutdown device so I can take out the control towers just afterward. That will at least ensure that a system worm can't trigger a backup."

I could hear Master Windu cross-referencing the information I gave him. After a moment he said, "Very well. A team will be waiting for you on the other side of the moon with fighters." His voice had lost the reticent tone it normally carried as he added, "May the Force be with you, Obi-Wan."

I descended into the atmosphere of Yavin 4, one of the moons rotating around the Yavin gas giant. I had made contact with the fighter team and made the rendezvous point. As I disembarked, one of the Jedi pilots approached me.

"Knight Kenobi? We have a problem."

"Great," I quipped. "I needed something to increase the difficulty level of this exercise." But I bowed my head, listening. The knight told me that the three Jedi who had ushered Kian in, and the one who'd accompanied him from the Temple, had dropped out of communication. Master Gallia's intelligence crew had fitted everyone with trackers, but only four units were visible.

The knight led me to the comm unit where the team was being followed. He pointed to a cluster of spots on the screen, bright green against the monochrome background.

"They're here, but they're not moving. They haven't in approximately forty minutes." He indicated a place on the grid that represented about a four-square-meter block. One of the blips was moving back and forth along one side of the square; the other three were stationary.

"And the fifth one is missing. You're sure?"

The knight nodded tightly.

"Bastard," I muttered to myself, biting back Kian's name and going to the equipping station. I shouted over my shoulder, "Get them out," and swept an arm toward the fighters. I turned and strapped on a safety vest, adding, "Send that information back to Intel and tell them if they don't hear from us within three hours--" I sighed. "Tell them we'll have to have backup. A lot of backup."

Gritting my teeth, I boarded a fighter, checked the facility plans and fired up the engines. I did not know what was happening inside that facility, but I thought I might be able to hazard a guess--and it did nothing for my confidence.

"Kian, so help me..." I muttered under my breath, then broke off the oath before I could finish it. It had been my idea to send Kian, though I supposed in retrospect that Mai would have been a more reasonable choice. It was too late now: I released my anger into the Force, then did it again, struggling for clarity. After a moment I found it, only just in time to be signaled out the bay doors of our makeshift landing center.

There were eight control towers that maintained communications, air traffic and power flow to the facility. We had six fighters to take out the towers and five undercover team members inside to take out the system--/Four,/ I corrected grimly--and somehow, I had the feeling it wasn't near enough. Now, it looked as though the timing was off; ideally the system and the towers needed to go out at the same time, so that no recovery contingency could be employed. Mai had warned me over and over that this was insane; a government-sanctioned crew of about thirty with explosive devices and three different comm-driven system worms would be more up to par.

"It's an astoundingly tight system," she'd said as I had marveled over it. "Well, what do you expect? It's unsanctioned, unprotected by the Fleet and bending the laws of life. You don't hide that kind of operation unless you're in a vacuum inside a vacuum."

"Base to Blue Squad, copy?" a young voice said over my comm, breaking my reverie.

"Blue Three," I confirmed as the rest of the team did as well.

"Be aware, Blue Squad, we've detected laser cannons."

"Lovely," I bit out, but reined in the desire to display my invective to the whole team. I set two controls and bore down on the sector that housed Tower Six, my first target.

It wasn't a facility--it was a full-blown compound. The wide, octagonal building half-obscured in the forested surface was a murky green; it would likely go undetected if a ship not looking for it were to move overhead. The eight control towers were positioned each to a point around the building, set a bit away from the facility itself. Outside this wide, round area, which I was astounded to realize was much larger than the layouts had described, was an intricate fencing system. I wondered if they had cloaking devices.

What I didn't understand was how had this gone undetected for so long, cloaking devices or no. Yavin 4 was a reasonably well-populated moon.

"A vacuum inside a vacuum," I muttered to myself, wondering how far, exactly, the conspiracy reached.

/It reached into me,/ I thought to myself, remembering Kian's eyes as he had "discovered" his supposedly latent Force talents. A spike of hurt struck me before I could release it.

A spike of laser nearly struck my fighter.

I veered and glanced down, but could see nothing through the dense layering of trees.

"Blue Three, are you hit?" The young Jedi's voice was urgent now, intensely so.

"No," I replied, still staring down at the ground. "I'm bearing down on T6."

The undergrowth became a blur below me as I decreased altitude and leveled off, angling my fighter between intermittent cannon blasts. There it was: target one. It was slender and tall, nothing more than pipelines and wiring, but at the base of it was one of the eight generators that cornered the large octagon. The instant I took out that generator, alarms would go off all over the compound.

"I'm on target," I informed Base.

"Confirmed. Blue One and Blue Six are closing; Blue Four--oh no!"

I felt it before I turned my head. Blue Four took a hit; a white explosion blew off the tail and the fighter spiraled end-over-end before crashing into the forest below in a yellow fireball. A cold shudder went through me.

/No time for grief,/ I informed myself with the cool, placid logic of my master. I turned my face forward again, took aim, and fired.

Tower Six's slightly widened base exploded in a burst that looked satisfyingly like the one that had just taken out my fellow Jedi. I smirked and swooped away as a series of electrical reactions took the tower out from base to tip before it folded in on itself, disappearing below the topmost surface of the trees.

"Take that."

The Jedi in charge of our courses commed again just as another tower went up in a series of explosions. "Blue Three, you're going to have to take out T4 and then--" Another explosion rocked the comm channel as I narrowly missed being blasted myself in the crossfire of two cannons. I was right over the facility and could see the patterns now.

"That was Blue Two," Base sighed.

"Get Five and Six to flank me," I ordered quickly, resetting my controls, "and send One after the towers. The cannons are at 00 and 06, and there are two more at 02 and 10. We'll have to take them out; the compound's got to be on alert by now. If we draw their fire, One can take the rest of the generators out before I go in and get the others."

"Knight Kenobi," the young voice said, suddenly stern, "that is not within the parameters of the--"

"Base," I replied calmly, laying my fighter on its side to avoid another blast, "I'll tell you what you can do with your parameters. You might be in charge of this mission, but I'm relatively sure that in the rest of the galaxy I outrank you. Now get Five and Six to flank me."

I sighed as the two fighters drew up to my sides.

I flew straight up and the others followed. Cannons fired uselessly; even in crossfire range, three one-man ships flying vertical was too much of a challenge. Immediately I looped over and descended, firing first at one cannon--missing--and then a second, taking it out in a shower of sparks.

"There," I whispered to myself as Blue Five began to fire on one of the other cannons. They had the idea. There were two cannons left, trained on us, and as I moved into position to take out another, I was hit.

"Taowa shigo," I swore, guiding my shuddering craft down into the treeline. Mai's curses weren't nearly satisfying enough as I crashed through several branches and onto a mossy creek bank.

"....Three?" the comm blurted suddenly, spewing static as I came to a halt, nose in the water. "Blue Three, copy?"

"Copy." I unbuckled myself from the cockpit and hit the hatch release, only to find the cover was bent closed. "I'm--heading--in," I informed Base as I upended myself and kicked at the hatch. "Can't do any more good for the other fighters from the ground. Status report."

Base faltered.

"Yes," I snapped. "I am demanding a status report. Now stop acting like I'm some wayward subordinate and tell me if they've taken out the towers."

"Yes, Master," Base replied rather meekly. "Blue One lost a wing tip and is down on the opposite end of the tower--but safe. Communications are good. The towers are all down and so are the cannons."

"Fine." I softened my tone. "Thank you. Now I'm going into a comm-silent situation. Remember what I said about notifying Intel."

"Yes, Master."

I sighed. There were plenty of things I never wanted to hear again, and I didn't care how dire the situation was: that was one of them.

The underside of the compound was networked with huge tunnels. Mai had speculated that some smuggling in and out of supplies went on; I didn't care what these underground routes were for--they got me inside.

I came up very cautiously through a hatch in the floor, glancing around before pulling myself up and replacing the tile.

"Facility breach," a dronelike female voice intoned over the sudden blare of klaxons. "Security personnel to the oh-six area. All others evacuate through the one-oh wing. Repeat: Security to oh-six; all others evacuate."

I moved quickly down the sterile-feeling hallway, allowing my vision to adjust to the yellow auxiliary-power lighting. No one arrived to challenge me; it was unlikely I'd slipped in without notice but everyone was, if nothing else, distracted. I mentally checked my location against what I remembered from the facility diagrams: Wing 06 was where the cloning process began, but the Jedi were being detained at the other end of the compound. I hesitated only briefly before heading to the detainment center.

They were in a small room, sealed in by a heavy plasteel door. The three of them wore the uniform of the facility--of course: they were deep undercover. The room was Force-shielded. Immediately as I appeared in the doorway they gathered near--but not too near--as I palmed my lightsaber and seared an opening for them.

"Thank the Force," a tall, pale-skinned female breathed. "There have been explosives in place all along--they're going to seal off the clones and blow the rest of the compound."

"Where is Kian?" I demanded, then stopped, pointing to the empty facility jacket that lay in a corner of the floor. "There was a fourth Knight--"

"Master Hamp," the woman said, her dark eyes flashing angrily before she banished the emotion and bowed her head. I stared at her as she continued, "Master Hamp and Kian betrayed us; they have--"

"Come on," I said tightly, whirling about and tucking my hilt away. "We're getting inside that sealed area."

Anakin's new master. I bit back a curse and a wave of self-blame as I gestured, directing the other three to move quickly.

We darted down the hall, flanking the open space and following close along the walls. The further inward we moved toward the center of the compound, the more pronounced the auxiliary lighting became. Suddenly the klaxons stopped sounding and that flat, feminine voice intoned, "STAT breakdown initiation sequence, one minute warning."

"Force," one of the younger Jedi males whispered, his eyes wide. Panic rolled from him in sheets.

"Focus," I said sharply, pinning him with my gaze. I pointed to a juncture that led off forty-five degrees to the right. "I need you completely with me when we get in there, Knight. The lighting, the alarms--that should have all been taken out when we destroyed the control towers, but it's not. If I'm correct, that means there's one other central point we need to hit--and to do that, I need your complete attention. Understand?"

Swallowing and bringing himself under control directly, he nodded and we moved out.

The outer door to the cloning chamber was wide open when we reached it--"STAT breakdown initiation sequence, thirty second warning," warned that infuriating voice, though I could see no guard. Cautiously I crept forward, realizing that it felt too good to be true. Security had been dispatched to this chamber: unless they'd performed some last-minute check and then evacuated themselves--

"Master."

I closed my eyes. The rich, resonant voice, complete with derision, was of course unmistakeable.

"Kian," I spat in greeting.

He stepped out from behind the doorway and only then let down his tight shielding. He held a blaster trained on the youngest Jedi among us. I felt a shift from behind me and raised my hand to stay the older knight. I was sure a spontaneous battle with Force manipulation would end disastrously.

"And Master Hamp?" I demanded. "Is he here, too, or did you betray him as well?"

"Oh, he's here. He's inside. I have not betrayed him." Kian smirked. "Of course, the day is yet young."

I glared, too angry for more words.

"STAT breakdown initiation sequence," the intercom 'droid said again, "fifteen-second warning." The yellow lighting clicked off.

Kian sighed as though pained. "Ah well--platitudes...." He waved his hand. "I prefer to cut right to the heart of the matter." The clone pinned me with a stare, then gestured with the blaster, waving us into the inner chamber. "And I know too well about Jedi cunning; best come inside where I can kill you myself. I don't trust you not to escape before the charges go off."

I preceded the others into the chamber. Kian, smirking, plucked my 'saber hilt from my belt as I passed. The young knight sighed as the door sealed behind us.

Kian paused as though savoring his victory, then held a hand up. "Wait for it," he smiled, and then nodded as a low, jagged rumble erupted all around us, signaling the explosions that were detonated by the third failsafe device. The floor shook minutely before everything went still.

"That was it; decades' worth of work annihilated." Turning toward the chamber proper, Kian gestured. "But look. This is worth so much more."

We looked, and I never have felt such a wave of remorse sweep over me.

There were, indeed, a thousand clones. They floated, mere specks from this distance, in amnionic chambers. They hung from cabled suspension rods below us; the catwalk that we stood on gave an overview of the medical precision of the place. Bright lighting and stark white preparation areas punctuated slate-gray walkways and equipment chambers, which were in turn spotted with guards in pale gray uniforms. The clinical horror of it pulled a gasp from me.

"I'll spare you the lengthy, heartfelt explanation of why I betrayed you in the face of our burgeoning love," Kian said coolly, turning toward a panel on the wall and clicking a large switch up. Immediately I felt a dampening effect, a muffling of my senses. He had, with one movement, cut us all off from the Force.

I swallowed, fighting the sudden dryness in my throat as I kept the defiance in my eyes.

Klaxons began to sound again. "STAT breakdown complete. System backup in progress." The hum of more auxiliary generators sounded. Kian gestured to someone down below, then flicked his blaster toward us.

"Move. That way."

We headed down the catwalk to a set of steps leading to the main floor. There, awaiting us, was Master Hamp.

I sighed, utterly, completely defeated. The other Jedi flanking me only shifted in place.

"That's enough, Kian," Hamp said. He stepped forward, a squat, broad little man. He, too, had shed his Jedi clothing for the steel grays of the cloning facility. "Get it over with. Take them back there where you won't contaminate the new samples." He gestured to a wall along one side that seemed detached from the rest of the chamber's structure.

Shrugging, Kian pointed. "There you go."

Sullenly we moved ahead of him. My thoughts were frantic as I reached into the Force as deeply as I could for an answer to this madness.

Unbidden, Qui-Gon's voice came to me: "Another solution will present itself."

I swallowed and closed my eyes as I moved behind the wall where Kian had planned to kill us. The three Jedi looked to me for escape and I could provide them nothing; Kian had a blaster and was, if not as fast as I, more at the ready to blow a hole in me. There were at least thirty guards within the chamber, all of them armed.

"Get back," Kian said sharply, focusing his attention on the youngest of us, who was restraining his fear admirably. "Against the wall. Now lie down."

"That's it, Kian," I muttered into the floor as I sprawled out prone. "Kill three Jedi unarmed. Shoot us all in the back--"

"Be quiet," he growled. "I've about had enough of you."

Defiantly I turned and raised my head to look at him. He was pulling something from an inner pocket; another weapon. It was small and light with a single trigger mechanism.

I began to recite the Litany of Serenity for the sake of the youngest among us, struggling against his fear. "Go in Light," I sighed, squeezing the knight's shoulder, and then Kian pressed the trigger.

I was aware of three things before blackness claimed me: unbearable heat, unbearable light, and Kian's weight thrown over my body.

I was on fire.

My skin burned and ached; my bones were filled with agony. That I hurt, I realized abruptly, was a sign of life.

I attempted to shift but the weight over me was too much--far too much--and I moaned at the sharp pain all over my body. I felt broken in a dozen places. I remembered the other knights who had been with me when the explosion had gone off; were they alive? I took a pained, careful breath as I realized I had never even asked their names.

As I risked opening my eyes, I heard shuffling a good distance away from me but still within what must have been the hollowed-out remains of the cloning chamber.

"...Incendiary," someone said, and I recognized the voice of Blue Five. "Force, it took everything out."

"Five," I sighed, then tried again: "Five." It came out a whisper. I didn't know his name, either.

"...Nothing more we can do here," another voice said. Carefully placed footsteps, picking their way through crunching plasteel shards and rubble, moved away.

I shifted my hand and tried to pull my arm down to my side; the pain sparked white-hot flashes behind my eyelids and I cried out.

"Wait--did you--?" The footsteps moved closer.

"Yeah. Come on."

I heard the hum of a lightsaber and shifted again, stirring the rubble under my hand.

"Force--there's someone alive here!" Blue Five said, and broke into a run.

"Thank you," I thought I said, but I cannot be sure.

There was bacta everywhere, and it shifted nauseatingly: at least the pain wasn't so bad.

I woke with a dull ache in my head and a pastiness in my mouth that I had always associated with the ward. I heard a chime sound and then the whoosh of a door opening.

"Hello," a familiar voice greeted, soft and feminine. I opened my eyes to the achingly bright room and saw the golden-haired girl who'd taken care of Kian.

"Knight--" I croaked to greet her out of formality, but she held up a hand.

"Never mind," she said quietly, and injected my shoulder with something. "You've suffered extensive injuries, some of them to your internal organs. You had fifteen broken bones including several vertebrae. You were burned over sixty percent of your body. You've just regained the ability to breathe on your own; you do not need to be talking." She spoke firmly but with a gentleness that made the laundry list of my critical injuries somehow more bearable.

Still, I could not resist: "Kian--?"

Knight D'Sal regarded me a moment, made a note in her datapad, and then said, "I am not prepared to divulge any information regarding Kian, Master Kenobi," before leaving the room silently.

My stomach fell and my chest tightened as I realized that he must have been killed in the blast. Slowly, it came back to me: by design or accident, he had been standing when he'd detonated the device that had destroyed the cloning chamber wholesale. I should have seen it: he had no need to make us lie down before he killed us; we were all in his control. Then he had thrown himself over me. But the weight that had held me down was too unaccountable to be the product of one man's body and another man's weakness. The shielding wall must have fallen.

Closing my eyes, I swallowed around the ache in my throat. He had played out a ruse, a perfect ruse to make Master Hamp and Padawan Skywalker believe that he was with them. He had risked us all, but it was a better risk, a surer one, than allowing the clones to come to fruition.

I sighed and allowed myself to shed tears once again for a man I had loved and hidden from, a man I had disrespected when he had only--

/If only he had told me--/ I cried in my mind. Ah, yes. Another seven years of "if only" awaited me. I choked back a sob at the thought.

"Of course, Kian knew all along," Master Windu explained a week later, though I only half-listened. "Master Hamp was his contact here, though the depth of his duplicity was only plain at the end. We will never know why he chose to follow Anakin on this course; perhaps Anakin's power was too great a lure.

"At any rate, Kian knew that Anakin was the intended donor. He must have felt that if he'd told you, you might compromise the coalition's efforts." He waved me down when I made a pained face. "Not that you cannot be trusted, Obi-Wan," Master Windu said, sighing. "Only that if something had gone wrong, you would be safer if Hamp and Skywalker believed you to be against Kian."

"Hamp and Skywalker--" I began, my voice only marginally stronger than it had been.

"Anakin Skywalker has disappeared. His last public transaction was a purchase of two tickets to Coruscant, as a matter of fact, but he has since dropped out of scan completely. Chancellor Palpatine has disappeared as well." There was a pause, and then the Councilor added without malice or regret, "Hamp was killed in the blast. The wall that nearly crushed you saved your lives."

That statement heartened me even as I absorbed the shock of so much news. "Lives...?"

"Master Rollia and Knight Vars made it. They are only slightly better off than you are. Knight Shild--"

"The young one?" I questioned sadly.

Master Windu sighed. "He was too close to the edge of the containment wall. The heat...." He trailed off and I was grateful. I did not want to hear any more. I had not known Master Hamp; certainly, no matter his involvement in the operation, I did not feel he'd deserved to die.

Anakin's disappearance, though... I struggled with it. Had he really even considered himself Jedi in the end? Even I could not fathom the consequences had he lived. Palpatine would be taken into account, but I had a feeling we had not seen the last of him yet. Had we seen the last of Anakin?

Putting his hands on his knees and pushing up, Master Windu placed a hand on my shoulder. "You've too much of your master in you for my taste; this renegade streak of yours wears me thin. But this time...." He nodded solemnly. "This time, it's done well by you." He patted my shoulder once and headed for the door.

"Oh," he said, sounding surprised. "A visitor."

Dully, I turned my face toward the door. Healer D'Sal entered, bearing a tray of food. Immediately behind her, in a gliding hoverchair, was Kian.

I pulled in a breath and struggled to sit, the shock welling hotly in my chest.

"Easy," the healer warned, adjusting the controls on the bed so that it shifted upward, repositioning itself into a chairlike structure. Setting the tray down on a wheeled table, she glanced between us and said softly, "Ten minutes." Then she was gone.

I stared at Kian, dazed. He had managed to shave--or they had shaved him--and his hair was pulled back in a tail at his nape. The stark white ward clothing did nothing for him, but all I wanted to do was fling myself at him in apology and need. He had saved us, all of us, and I had hurt him time and again in mistrust and doubt.

"I am sorry," he choked out inexplicably. "I have caused you so much pain... Truly if there had been another way--"

"No," I sighed, and reached for him hesitantly. "I--" I laughed shortly, tears coming to my eyes. "I thought you were dead."

Struggling with the chair controls, he moved forward, stopped, then moved forward again until he could reach my hand comfortably. His eyes were both sad and hopeful as he said, "And I thought you were. I suspect--they did not want to distress us. I was--very badly injured." He glanced downward at his torso pointedly.

I nodded, at a loss as to what more to say. We had borne the same weight, but he had taken the wall without benefit of a cushion of human body above his. I looked at him closely, taking in the bandaging that peeked out of the V of the robe he wore, the small tank of fluid attached to the hoverchair, the tube that ran to the middle of his torso and disappeared inside the wrappings. It was a hope, but a slim one, that he might walk again.

Momentarily, as we stared at each other, seeing too many questions without answers, it came to me. It was the most important thing I could ask, the one thing that would allow the rest of the questions to be answered in time.

"Your aging." I closed my eyes. "Can they--?"

"We don't know." He shook his head. "Believe me, Ben, if I ever wanted a reason to live a long human life, you are it."

I nodded and smiled as best I could, pulling his hand to my cheek. He cupped my face and stroked it with his thumb, smiling in return. It was the most beautiful smile I had ever seen.

"I hope that you might consider..." I cleared my throat. "I have a lot to atone for. Would you spend whatever time you have left--"

"Yes," he said immediately, sliding his hand upward to card it through my hair. "Yes."

(Epilogue)

Ten years later:

I stood in a small corner of the Lower Gardens, feet spread, hands folded behind me, contemplating the stones that marked the many passings the Jedi had seen since its inception. Some of them were worn almost unreadable, but the one I studied now was relatively fresh. Sadly fresh. Jedi went into the Force; it was a fact of life, but the truth of it made it no more bearable for those of us left behind.

That thought gave me pause, made me struggle every year as I meditated on the two deaths that had impacted me most in my life. Anakin was listed there, too, though no one knew what had become of him. Perhaps the Council thought that he had been influenced by Master Hamp somehow, or drawn to the lure of political power by Chancellor Palpatine--perhaps they believed he was innocent, and had died for his cause.

I knew better.

Each stone marked a hundred names. There were hundreds of stones; all the names of Jedi killed in service to the Light, taken before they had reached the age where they had done all they could and were willing to give themselves to the Force.

"You still miss him."

I turned and looked over my shoulder, nodding. "I always will."

Kian approached in his hoverchair, studying the stones carved with so many names. So terribly many names, and one of them had nearly been his. One of them had nearly been mine.

"Do you regret me, Jedi?" he asked softly, reverting back to that old, slanderous implication though he was now Jedi himself.

"No," I said, turning away from the stones and bending to press my forehead against his, cupping the side of his neck in my hand. "And neither would he. He would never have wanted me to deny myself this."

Nodding, satisfied as he always was after such questioning, he tipped his head up and kissed me before pulling back to tilt his head. The gesture revealed a small bacta patch on the side of his neck.

"Another year," he sighed, smiling a little. "I would say it is tiresome to be so saddled by these injections, but--"

"Quiet," I admonished. "It would be much more tiresome for you to haunt me in my middle age, spinning my dinner plates and the like."

Kian nodded, his smile brightening. "That it would." He took my hand and turned his chair fluidly. "Come on, Master Kenobi. Your padawan is waiting for you. She is most unimpressed with spinning things and would much rather spar."

I turned and saw my eleven-year-old apprentice standing at the edge of the garden, dutifully hovering a block above her hand and looking very bored by the universe.

"Very well, Lucida," I said briskly. "Sparring it is."

The anniversary of Qui-Gon's death always weighed heavily on me, though in truth my life had come full circle. My love for Kian was complete and whole. My padawan was true. I was a master in my own right, no mere by-title padawan keeper anymore, but designated such by virtue of my accomplishments. Qui-Gon would have been proud.

I wondered, as I always did, if I would ever stop feeling the keen pain of his death on these days when I visited the stones. Ah, but that was useless meandering. Kian was here.

He opened his arms to me in our bed and I went to him, kissing him until we were both gasping and starved, then moving over him and taking him inside me, riding harder when the weakness of his hips would not allow him the ability to push into me as he wanted to. We cried out in release together and I sank over him, shuddering. He stroked my back, murmured into my ear, carried me down from the grief as only he could do so well. Every year he has borne me through the sorrow of the stones. Every year he has rejoiced with me in our gratefulness over the injections.

Where once I had wondered how it was I looked on the face of my dead master, now I wondered how I had survived without it. Where once I had berated him for being a mere facsimile, now I knew better. He still bears the mark of the created, but he is as human as any of us.

He is not my master. But he is mine.

End.