
DARK WARNING
CHAPTER ONE
He was getting closer. Within minutes, he would spot them.
Obi-Wan Kenobi watched from the cockpit of a grounded, dilapidated cruiser as Boba Fett
methodically searched the crowded Red Twins spaceport, looking for his prey. The Jedi saw Fett's
compact body move down the rows of space cruisers, his helmet turning as he and his surveillance
devices took everything in.
Obi-Wan could see that Fett was moving in a pattern that only seemed random. The bounty hunter
was cutting over after every third ship to the next line, then skipping a row, moving backward, then
moving forward on alternate rows. It was a complex pattern to follow for an ordinary being, but riot for
an exceptional tracker like Boba Fett . . . or a Jedi like Obi-Wan. To an observer, Fett would seem to
be ambling in a casual fashion, but within a few minutes he would have checked out every ship in the
spaceport. Including the Jedi's.
Obi-Wan saw his companion, Ferus Olin, watching Fett from the shadows of the cockpit.
"I give us three minutes," Ferus said.
"Two and a half," Obi-Wan amended.
Ferus and Obi-Wan had landed at the Red Twin spaceport just a few minutes before, along with
their stowaway, thirteen-year-old Trever Flume. They had tangled with Boba Fett on the planet Bellassa,
and were acutely aware of his skills. Plus, he had another bounty hunter with him — D'harhan, a cyborg
with an unattractive but lethal laser cannon for a head. Imperial security forces, led by the Inquisitor
Malorum, had hired the bounty hunters to catch Ferus, a hero of the resistance movement on Bellassa.
Even as Obi-Wan ticked off their possibilities for escape, he wanted to kick himself down the
spaceport for being here in the first place. He had been on Tatooine when he had heard Ferus was in
trouble — Tatooine, where he was supposed to stay and watch over the young Luke Skywalker.
Obi-Wan had always liked the former Jedi apprentice, who had left the Order right before he was
scheduled to take the Trials — in fact, he had been relieved that someone who had been so close to the
Jedi was still alive. But was saving Ferus enough of a reason to risk leaving Tatooine? Obi-Wan had
been racked with indecision . . . until he heard his former Master, Qui-Gon Jinn, who had at last spoken
to him, thanks to Qui-Gon's training with the Whills.
What a shock it had been to hear Qui-Gon's voice, and how unsurprising it should have been that
Qui-Gon had been the one to tell him to leave. Things much bigger than Ferus were at stake, and
Qui-Gon told him he needed to follow the Living Force . . . and his feelings.
So he had followed them to Bellassa, had become tangled up with the resistance, and had barely
escaped with Ferus. Now he was halfway across the galaxy from Tatooine, with two bounty hunters on
his tail. Meanwhile, Inquisitor Malorum was getting closer to the truth of Luke and Leia's existence, by
investigating Polis Massa, the place where their mother, Padme Amidala, had died. Obi-Wan knew he
had to stop Malorum ... but first he had to dodge the bounty hunters on his trail. Obi-Wan couldn't return