ACROSS THE STARS
Chapter Ten

Three Days Later
Arcadia

Rosé stood at one of the thick transparisteel windows, watching the Arcadian system come into view with growing anticipation. She had enjoyed the trip—it had indeed been an adventure—but now she was glad to be home.

The transport had landed on Naboo twenty-two hours earlier, and, as she had never been there before, Rosé had insisted upon disembarking for a little while to see what she could, much to Ruth and Maira’s dismay. Rosé had pointed out that she would be with Jack, who had escorted her everywhere the past two days, and would be walking with Anakin and Padmé for a little while before they boarded another transport to take them to another part of Naboo, but Ruth had only grudgingly given her consent, and Maira had reminded them to keep an eye out for any dangers and to keep a close watch on the time so that the transport didn’t leave without them.

They had gotten back with time to spare—the transport had been there for two hours—but Rosé had been glad for the chance to get some fresh air and sunshine, taking in the sights of another world. Padmé had been happy to tell her about Naboo—the Senator was far more relaxed when she wasn’t on official business—and Rosé, who had counted Padmé as a friend for some time, was glad to get to know her better. They had quite a bit in common—both loved and wanted the best for their home worlds, had a strong interest in what was happening in the galaxy, and had strong independent streaks—but Rosé envied Padmé her freedom.

Padmé was a Senator, with the ability to openly influence what happened on her world and in the galaxy, and she had been a queen when she was younger, but Rosé doubted that she herself would ever have such influence. To be sure, many Arcadian women worked behind the scenes and advised their husbands, fathers, brothers, and male friends in political matters—though Ruth had shown more interest in social activities than politics, much to Cleon’s dismay—but being permitted open influence was rare. Cleon had permitted Rosé to sit in on Senate sessions, and had asked her what she thought, though he had often pointed out the flaws in her youthful reasoning—but she doubted that she would be permitted even that much after she wed Caledon.

Rosé envied Padmé’s freedom in selecting her own husband, too—and even in deciding whether or not to marry at all. Marriage was not considered so essential to a Nubian woman’s life as it was to a Parnian woman’s, and arranged marriages were rare on Naboo—and divorces far easier to obtain in an unhappy situation. Rosé was not looking forward to her marriage to Caledon, but she didn’t feel that she had much of a choice now.

Before Anakin and Padmé had left, Rosé had asked Anakin if she could speak to him alone for a moment. He had agreed, leaving Padmé with Jack—Padmé had looked relieved to be away from his constant scrutiny for a moment—and followed Rosé to a spot by a fountain where they would not be overheard.

Rosé had taken a deep breath, not sure where to begin, then said, "You tried to catch me the night I almost feel from the balcony of my apartment in Coruscant."

He’d shrugged. "I was trying, anyway. Luckily for you, you didn’t fall."

"Yes. I was lucky. Padawan Skywalker…"

"Anakin."

"Anakin, what did you see before I fell? Did you see anything?"

"I saw a woman standing on the balcony wall—I didn’t know who you were then. I thought you might fall, so I tried to get under you with my speeder."

"And do you know why I was standing on the wall?"

"Well, people who stand up on a narrow balcony wall above the city like that are usually crazy, drunk, or intending to jump off."

"And which do you think I was?"

"I don’t know."

Rosé had glared at him, trying to see if he was telling the truth, but his expression was unreadable.

"I don’t want you mentioning this to anyone. Not Padmé, not your Master, not anyone. I am a Senator’s daughter, and if anyone were to get the wrong idea about what happened, my reputation—and that of others—could be damaged."

He’d shrugged again. "Sure."

She hadn’t been sure if she’d believed him or not.

Rosé was drawn from her thoughts as Ruth came to stand beside her at the window. "We’re almost home, Rosé," she said, looking sad as Arcadia’s star grew from a bright spot far away to a star with visible planets.

Rosé thought of her father’s ashes, carefully packed away in one of her mother’s bags. "It won’t be the same without Father there."

Ruth felt for the locket she was wearing beneath her shabby clothes, a gift from her husband on their wedding day containing holos of both of them in their youth. "No, it won’t."

"I’d rather be on Arcadia than Coruscant, though. It’s…calmer at home, especially in the wilderness."

"I’m still not sure it’s the best place to go. It’s so far away from everything. If something happens…"

"I agree with the Jedi, Mother. Very few people can find Father’s wilderness estate unless they know where it is. At the city house—everyone knows where that is. Tourists stop and take holos of it…it would be easy for an assassin to get close there."

"But there would be others to help if there was trouble."

"There were others on Coruscant," Rosé whispered, "and Father still died. We were almost killed, too." She felt tears pricking her eyes and blinked them back, leaning against her mother when Ruth put an arm around her.

"I miss him, too, Rosé. Our marriage was arranged, but…he was a good man, and I learned to love him."

In that moment, Rosé almost told Ruth that she didn’t want to marry Caledon, that she wanted to call the betrothal off…but then Maira and Jack stepped up to the window beside them, and the moment passed.

The was a slight jolt as the transport came out of hyperspace, proceeding more slowly through the system’s seven planets. Arcadia was the fourth planet, with seven moons of its own.

Rosé’s sorrow faded somewhat as she watched Arcadia coming into view. At two hundred sixty-one thousand kilometers in diameter, the planet was one of the larger inhabited worlds in the galaxy, and even though the Parni had been inhabiting it for five thousand years, and the Nem for twenty-five thousand, much of it was still unexplored.

The gravity of Arcadia was not nearly so strong as its size suggested. The core of the planet was mostly dense gas, with an outer crust of soil, water, and stone. At an earlier time, the gravity had been more intense and the atmosphere less oxygenated—hence the small, sturdy stature and barrel-chested build of the Nem, the original human inhabitants of Arcadia—but as the dense gas inside the planet had broken through weak spots in the crust, the oxygen level had risen and the density of the core had decreased somewhat. Even so, the people and animals of Arcadia had extraordinarily strong bones that did not break easily, and the few flying creatures were very small. Trees and shrubs had dense wood, and even the grasses and herbs had strong stalks and stems. In response, the animals that fed on these grasses and herbs had strong teeth that ground the tough stems easily, and the insects that fed on the tough parts of the plants had developed a strong acid that dissolved the plant tissue before it was eaten.

Most travel was done on the ground, rather than by flying, as it took much less effort and energy to travel along the ground or on the water than to fight gravity. Flight was mostly reserved for journeys too long to be undertaken on the ground or water. Arcadia’s gravity was fifty percent stronger than that of the Arcadian moon, Parni, that the people who called themselves the Parni had originally come from—a far smaller world, at only thirteen thousand kilometers, and many a weight-conscious visitor had been horrified at the sudden drastic increase in their weight—caused, of course, by the stronger gravity.

Some visitors found walking tiring at first, with the stronger gravity, and anyone who stayed on Arcadia for long began to develop stronger muscles, bones, and lungs in order to cope with it. Some visitors found the gravity to be too strong for them, and soon left—or suffered a great deal. The earliest Parni to live on Arcadia, already weakened by the harsh conditions on the moon they had left, had died in large numbers, leaving only the strongest as their descendants.

Rosé looked out the window as the transport circled Arcadia, watching each of the seven moons come into view—Cinati, Rebmets, and Egayo, all dry, rocky, and atmosphere-less, with little or no life to be found on them; Inos, with its atmosphere and ocean of methane where a few hardy species of bacteria thrived; Jenon, some eleven thousand kilometers in diameter, which had a tropical climate and millions of species, but which was seldom visited due to the fact that the moist heat quickly rusted the metal parts of transports; Ramis, five thousand kilometers in diameter, a desert moon with a low oxygen atmosphere that was nevertheless home to a few thousand hardy plants and animals and a small community of Nem who had settled there after fleeing the civil war on Arcadia eighteen years before; and Parni, from which Rosé’s people had fled five thousand years earlier when the moon had been rendered largely uninhabitable by unchecked pollution that had triggered catastrophic climate change, rendering the once lush moon into a place composed largely of ocean and desert. A handful of Parni had remained behind when the others had fled—mostly criminals and political dissidents—and in the ensuing millennia had rebuilt their civilization on the slowly healing moon; they were fiercely protective of their home, permitting no industry, little tourism, and immigration only if the human population dropped below five hundred thousand.

At last, the transport entered Arcadia’s atmosphere, dropping slowly towards Telsni, the planet’s largest city and the major political seat of Arcadia. It was here that Arcadia’s koning, the planet’s leader, resided, as well as his advisors. Though the koning position was technically an elected one, the same family usually held the position for several generations before being pushed out by someone close to them. The Bukaters’ city house was in Telsni, and it was there that Cleon had resided when he had political business on Arcadia, as had his father and grandfather before him, both Senators themselves.

Rosé rushed to collect her belongings as the transport landed, leaving the others running and dodging others to keep up with her, and hurried off of the transport as soon as she was able, taking deep breaths of the fresh air. She whirled around, taking in the landmark visible even from the city—Arcadia’s second-highest mountain range, the highest peak twenty-nine kilometers high and often invisible in the clouds—but it was visible today. She could smell the Alaan sea, a large inlet of the ocean that surrounded each of Arcadia’s twelve continents. Telsni itself was located on the southeast coast of the North Alaan continent; the Bukaters’ wilderness estate was five hundred kilometers to the northwest, located at the edge of a heavily wooded valley, the house built against the base of a cave-honeycombed mountain that caused the building to blend into the landscape, making it virtually invisible unless one knew where to look.

Ruth caught up with her before she could disappear into the crowd. "Rosé, you need to stay with us."

"Mother—"

"She’s right, Mistress Rosé," Maira told her. "We don’t know who might be here. You need to stay close."

"But we’re back on Arcadia!"

"Nevertheless, you need to stay close. We will be stopping by your father’s city house so your mother can collect some belongings, and then we will begin the trip to the wilderness estate."

Rosé sighed, some of her earlier enthusiasm fading. "I’m just so glad to be home…"

"I know, but it’s the duty of Padawan Dawson and I to make sure that you stay safe, even here. Once we get to the wilderness, you’ll have more freedom—but even then, my Padawan will be accompanying you if you wish to go very far."

Chapter Eleven
Stories