Trial by Tide

1.

Sekk Rithee, the planet's most burdened and least recognized internal security officer, chomped hard on his gob of sticky as he watched the diplomatic frigate lower itself to the landing pad on repulsors. He was trying to quit bacci, but the chewy glob stuck inside his cheek was doing little to alleviate his nervous jitters. Either these Jedi from Coruscant would get a hold on the situation – or all hells would break loose here on Vandor. And Rithee, naturally, would get either none of the credit or all of the blame. Either way you cut it, he was screwed, professionally speaking. That was the down side of his job: overseeing the internal affairs of the various ghetto communities which had settled, like jetsam on a dirty shore, here on Coruscant's dowdy sister-world. It was thankless task, all the way around.

The whine of the sublight engines as they cooled and slowed to a safe zero-state, and the hissing of hydro release valves as the ship adjusted its internals after a swift atmospheric descent briefly, drowned out all other sounds. Rithee spat the sticky into a corner of the tarmac, alongside a clutter of other trash. The droids would be round this evening to sweep the decks and tidy up. Vandor Intergalactic Spaceport had a grand name and a homely face; litter seemed magnetically attracted to its nooks and crannies, just as sentient clutter was attracted to its underpopulated continents. At last the ship's boarding ramp lowered to reveal the long awaited visitors: two figures, both cloaked and hooded, striding out of the ship and into the cool, misty evening of late summer with an air of impalpable confidence. Jedi.

Rithee met the pair at the edge of the oblong landing area, where he could stand on the curb of a pedestrian walkway, giving himself a small boost in height. It hardly made a difference; one of the men was so tall that he still dwarfed Rithee. The Jedi lowered their hoods, in a strange synchrony of movement, and the security official recognized the elder at once. They had met before- a while back, but still. Jedi Master Qui Gon Jinn was difficult to forget, even after ten years. Rithee noted with pleasure that Jinn had a good deal more grey in his long hair, and a few more deep grooves on his face now, much like himself. It was good to know that even Jedi weren't exempt from the humiliations of aging. Of course, he couldn't help but also notice (with much less pleasure) that Jinn had not the slightest sign of a burgeoning paunch, nor of any need for a stiff joint remedy, quite unlike himself.

And who was this accompanying him? A much younger human, nothing but a teenager in fact, rigged out in the same Jedi gear: long robe, boots, all the usual, right down to the ornamented pommel and hilt of a lightsaber at his belt. Rithee didn't need to spot the thin learner's braid to identify this character; the way the youth watched Jinn's every move with respectful attention immediately branded him as the apprentice. Strange. He had pegged Jinn as the independent I-work-alone type… but the Jedi wouldn't be the first lone wolf to have mellowed considerably in his middle age.

Formal introductions were exchanged; Rithee tried to break the ice with the youth. "Kenobi, is it? I met a Kenobi once…meanest star-forsaken bar brawler I ever got in a fight with. Relative of yours, by any chance?"

It was a jovial remark, delivered with a conspiratorial wink, but the Padawan's tiny, fleeting smile might as well not have been there at all. "Is there a resemblance?" he asked, blue eyes widening.

Rithee decided that he needed to set this youngster at ease. "I hope not!" he guffawed, amiably.

The Padawan bowed his head – a subtle dipping motion which was just shallow enough to suggest irony. "Then let us not seek to discover one."

The security official continued his good-natured chuckle automatically, for another few seconds, as his mind frantically grasped at the slippery meaning behind these words. He bobbed and smiled on the outside – but inside he was seized with a private doubt. The sharp and unmistakably repressive look Jinn directed at his apprentice confirmed Rithee's suspicion that the exchange had in fact been at his expense.

Better get straight down to business. "Were you able to peruse the holodoc I sent you during transit?" he asked.

"Of course," Jinn answered smoothly. "Has the situation changed at all in the last six hours?"

"No, no."

"That is good; we were unexpectedly delayed by an ion storm coming back into the Core."

Rithee nodded, sorting this out. So they hadn't been sent straight from Coruscant at his behest…apparently what registered as immediate crisis in his sphere of influence was no more than afterthought to the Jedi Council. Jinn and his protégé had been told to stop here as a detour on their way back from a more important, pressing affair. He snorted and glanced again at the younger Jedi. The Padawan definitely had that can we go home now, please? look in his eyes. It was satisfying to see Jinn's tiny admonitory frown and the resultant swift change of mien on the younger man's part. This was important to Vandor, after all, and Jedi were meant to serve without bias or preference.

He stuck his hands in his belt and continued on as though he had not noticed. "Both sides of the dispute have agreed to suspend hostilities pending the arrival of the Republic's peacekeeper. But I doubt they'll listen, even to you. It's too volatile, and personal…and they have little or no understanding of our laws. …Immigrants," he shrugged.

Vandor 3 was the other, and forgotten, inhabitable planet in Coruscant's system. In striking contrast to its near neighbor, much of the natural environment of the world was still visible and relatively healthy, including vast oceanic regions. Its populated areas were sprawling not with high rollers, eager entrepreneurs and the ubiquitous criminal underworld of Coruscant, but with the city-world's overflow: eager immigrants to the Core who did not possess the money or the ruthlessness to survive on the capitol planet, and who resultantly ended here in a much less glamorous suburban orbit. While Coruscant was a center of culture and sophistication, Vandor was home to ghettos and enclaves of outworlders who had not yet adjusted to the demands of such a life.

Keeping peace among the various settlers' groups was no easy job – and nobody knew this fact better than Sekk Rithee. Even a Temple prodigy could stand to learn a thing or two from him when it came to the sordid details of his particular duties. "You may not be familiar with the Quinloxa refugees here," he said patronizingly to the Jedi apprentice.

The Padawan's eyebrows lifted. "The Quinloxa hail from Querred Minor, which is controlled primarily by off-world industrial tycoons. The majority of the native population has been co-opted into factory work and the refinery interests that now support the planet's economy. In the last ten standard years, a significant portion of the dispossessed have relocated the Core, seeking refugee status inside the Republic. They tend to settle in tight communities where they preserve their native customs, and are slow to integrate into modern life. Presently, of course, they lack independent representation in the Senate and are not recognized as a sovereign political entity. Vandor has a Quinloxa population in the tens of thousands, scattered over the north-eastern continent, primarily in the outlying coastal areas designated as non-incorporated."

Rithee grimaced. "Didn't know Temple education extended to that kind of detail," he remarked, halfway between impressed and aggravated.

"We do have access to a ship-board database," the young Jedi informed him dryly.

"Obi Wan," Jinn said, in a dangerously quiet tone. The two exchanged another inscrutable look, and the youth again dropped his gaze and snapped his mouth shut, chastised. "Who are the two clan leaders with whom we must meet?"

Relieved to be dealing with the master again, Rithee gestured toward the spaceport's central building, where a ground transport awaited them. They set off at a brisk pace, the Padawan falling a respectful step behind. "Coraloxa, and Loxanthan. Both families claim that the child in question is theirs by legal right, and each accuses the other side of kidnapping and manipulation. Sordid affair."

They reached the boundary of the landing area, and boarded a spacious speeder which would bear them to the Vandor government outpost on the coast of the southern ocean.

"And you are certain they would actually go to war over this?"

Rithee snorted in disgust. "These are primitive and stiff-necked people, Master Jedi. And first skirmishes have already occurred – young males on both sides taking pot shots at each other, you understand – not full out clan warfare yet, but it's a matter of time. Give 'em enough of it, and they'll exterminate each other before we can intervene. They refuse mediation from the local authorities. They claim we're all corrupt, taking bribes from the other side…you get the picture. Even the idea of Jedi wasn't received with enthusiasm, I have to warn you."

"We stand duly warned." Jinn's smile was a mere crinkling around his eyes, not much.

"Do they understand the consequences if they attempt clan warfare?" the Padawan ventured. Apparently his period of penitential silence was done. Rithee wondered if Jinn and his student had a standing arrangement about these things?

"Well," he mused. "They have been informed repeatedly that the survivors will be deported, exiled, and the clan leaders prosecuted in a Republic court. But do they understand…?" He shrugged again.

"They most likely are incapable of seeing that far ahead," Jinn remarked, addressing his student. "Anger is a marvelous antidote to foresight and prudence."

"Hence the need for a Republic peacekeeper," the security official sighed. "Someone has got to make them see reason – whatever it takes, Master Jinn. I don't want a battlefield to clean up, and I don't want any of my people getting killed trying to break up the fray. Good luck. Perhaps you Jedi can find a solution and avert a bloodbath."

"Perhaps," the tall Jedi said, making no promises. "How soon will they speak to us?"

"Tonight, if you don't mind such a short deadline." As far as Rithee was concerned, the sooner he transferred this particular problem to the Jedi, the better. The Quinloxa tempers were running short.

The Jedi master merely laughed, humorlessly.

Qui Gon Jinn and Obi Wan Kenobi skimmed over the surface of Vandor's southern ocean in a small craft provided them by Vandor's government. The lightweight craft's repulsors barely ruffled the swelling waves below them, left hardly a wake behind. Salt wind picked up as they increased speed, flying over the deep blue waters along the coastline at an economical speed. The Padawan was left in charge of piloting; he managed the unfamiliar controls with relative ease, pushing them forward steadily, following the natural contours of the land, keeping the speeder low to the surface, hugging the rumpled face of the waters, preferring control and accuracy to wild speed.

Qui Gon watched the unchanging horizon thoughtfully. The sun sank below the hazy line, expiring in its own reflected glory. The heavens deepened to purple and then to black. Clouds obscured the distant constellations, but he could make out the bright spot which was Coruscant, an evening star to its homely cousin Vandor.

"Why would the Quinlox pursue a bitter rivalry here, when they fled their homeworld to escape oppression? I would think that being a minority group, far from home, would unite them in the face of greater challenges. It makes no sense to me, master."

The Jedi master shifted his attention back to his Padawan. "They brought their social structure with them – their entire culture. And, sadly, an engrained facet of that culture is resentment and suspicion. In the absence of a common enemy and oppressor, they have turned their habitual hostility upon one another. Anger does not need its original object in order to flourish, once it is deeply enough rooted," he replied. His many years of experience had confirmed the truth of this ancient and heartbreaking truth,

His apprentice nodded, thoughtfully, and checked the compass. Soon they should be able to glimpse the jagged peaks of the coastal islands where the immigrant Quinloxa had made their new homes. According to Sett Rithee, ownership of the small landmasses had been strictly divided between the warring families. Though this conflict was a mere child's squabble in size and scope, compared to some of their other recent missions, its internal dynamic was the same, the difficulty of resolution equal in measure. Planets, nations, cities, islands, families, individuals: peace was hard-won no matter its place and circumstance. A Jedi understood this, for he struggled also to establish absolute peace in his own heart. Size mattered not.

"Do you think there is any hope of our negotiations succeeding, if the Quinloxa are so irrational?" Obi Wan asked at length.

"There is always hope," Qui Gon reassured him. "Our problem is time. We must speak to both tribes tonight, and convince them to meet together at a summit, let us say one planetary rotation from now. Any longer delay will surely result in disaster. And most importantly, we must locate this missing child they are so angry about."

"The child…master, what if the boy no longer lives?"

Qui Gon paused before making reply. He had entertained this dark thought himself, and gone to the Living Force to seek answers. He waited for his student to find his own way. There was a long silence as the Padawan mulled over the possibilities, sought in the Force for knowledge.

"The present, not the past," Qui Gon reminded him.

Obi Wan's shoulders slumped a little. "I can't really see anything, master."

"In time. Be patient. But I think the boy is alive; I can feel the balance of things here; there are undiscovered possibilities. We must be mindful and act in the moment. Remember this when you speak with Coraloxa tonight."

"Yes, master."

"Oh, and Obi Wan?"

An expectant silence.

"When this affair has been concluded, and we see Sekk Rithee again, you will ask him for a detailed exposition of his views on the immigrant legislation currently pending before the Senate. I want a full and accurate report on his perspective - in written form - four standard after we arrive back at the Temple."

A displeased but guilty silence. The Padawan took his eyes off the scintillating blanket of waves long enough to meet Qui Gon's eyes, perfect understanding brewing in their depths.

"...Yes, master," he sighed.