[Jedi Apprentice] - 13(21)

“No, you didn’t, Padawan,” Qui-Gon said. “But you did,” Obi-Wan said, confused. “No,” Qui-Gon said. “I saw a body that resembled Fligh. I had my doubts.”

“Ah,” Fligh said. His face was naturally mournful, with a downturned mouth and sad eyes. “I’ve never been clever enough to fool a Jedi. Never will.”

“What are you doing here now?” Qui-Gon asked.

“Following Astri, of course,” Fligh answered. “I thought I owed Didi. Even though I keep losing her, I am doing my best, which isn’t much. But there you go.”

Siri sidled closer to Obi-Wan. “What’s going on?” she whispered. “Who is this character?”

“Fligh is a friend of Didi’s back on Coruscant,” Obi-Wan explained quickly. “He’s the one who stole the datapads of Jenna Zan Arbor and Uta

S’orn in the Senate building. Then he was murdered. Or so I thought.”

“He looks pretty healthy to me,” Siri observed.

“Hey, I lost my eye!” Fligh protested.

“I can see that. I’m sorry,” Siri said.

“I mean my false eye,” Fligh explained. “It was a beauty, wasn’t it?” he asked Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. “But I decided I had to leave it at the scene of my murder. It’s those kinds of touches that convince people you’re really dead.”

“How did you do it?” Obi-Wan asked curiously.

“I have a friend who works at the morgue on Coruscant,” Fligh explained. “And I think my job is tough.”

“You don’t have a job,” Obi-Wan pointed out.

“Being a thief is a job,” Fligh answered huffily. “I get up every morning and go to work, just like everybody else. But this particular morning, I realized that someone was trying to kill me. When you get a whip wrapped around your neck, it wakes you up to the possibility. Luckily my landlord is handy with an electrojabber. But I thought I should disappear for a while. So I spoke to my friend at the morgue, and he found someone with my general characteristics. Who was dead, I mean.”

“We assumed that,” Qui-Gon said.

“My friend did the rest. We drove the body to the alley and left it there. Along with my eye, alas. I knew the security police would not bother to run ID scans on the body - there are some advantages to being someone nobody cares about. Just another piece of riffraff meeting a sad end. They’d accept the text doc identification and just cart the body to the morgue. Nobody would shed a tear.”

“Didi did,” Qui-Gon said sternly.

Fligh brightened. “He did? He is such a good friend!”

“But why would Ona Nobis be after you?” Obi-Wan wondered aloud. “You didn’t have Zan Arbor’s datapad any longer. You gave it to Astri.”

Fligh shrugged. “I was just a loose end, I guess.”

“Oh, I think you were more than that,” Qui-Gon said, crossing his arms. “You’re leaving something out, Fligh. The body was found drained of blood. Why did you do that?”

“Because that was how Ona Nobis left her victims,” Fligh responded. “Six of my fellow riffraff were found that way.”

“But we didn’t know that yet. No one had yet traced Zan Arbor to Ren S’orn, or any other victim. We didn’t even know Zan Arbor had anything to do with the attack on Didi.”

“Ah, Jedi logic, so impressive,” Fligh said nervously. “Are you sure? “

Qui-Gon nodded. “Very sure. Which means that you knew Zan Arbor was behind the attack. And you knew she was conducting experiments that involved extracting blood from her victims.”

“Hmm, interesting point,” Fligh said. “I find I must agree. Maybe I did know that. Maybe I traced a few of the murdered riffraff to Zan Arbor’s lab. Maybe that’s why I stole her datapad in the first place. But I didn’t see why it would help Didi to know that. At the time. I felt badly after he was hurt, of course. Maybe I should have warned him after all. Maybe I should be a better person in general. But at least I am watching over Astri while Didi is in your excellent Jedi hands. I’ll protect her if anything happens. Of course,” Fligh added quickly, edging away with an uneasy smile, “I am hopeless at protection and therefore delighted to see that the Jedi are by her side. Obviously, I am not needed, so I guess I’ll just head off. …”

“Not so fast,” Qui-Gon said, catching Fligh by the elbow. “I have more questions. What about Senator S’orn’s datapad?”

“What about it?” Fligh asked.

“What happened to it?”

Obi-Wan looked at Fligh curiously. He hadn’t thought of the question, but he was interested in the answer. Once they had identified Jenna Zan Arbor as the one who had hired Ona Nobis, they had stopped investigating what was on Senator S’orn’s datapad, or what had happened to it. It seemed a minor detail. But Uta S’orn kept connecting to the mission, whether she wanted to or not. Maybe there was a detail they had overlooked.