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Obi-Wan pulled his cloak tighter across himself. It was a good, heavy cloak, but the alleyway was a wind tunnel, doing little to protect from the sleet and threatening to pull his hood back down. It was miserable, cold, and wet weather, that no reasonable person would be caught out in.
Master Qui-Gon, of course, was not a reasonable person. And so Obi-Wan was, as was often the case, denied a nice evening by the fireside with a book on venomous fauna and their habitats, and instead subjected to the elements in his own urban habitat.
Not that he could grumble too much, however, not when they had found what they’d been looking for.
The automaton was, Obi-Wan could concede, suffering the effects of the weather far more than either he or his master, with ice clinging to its metal frame and clockworks, its pneumatics struggling feebly to march it forward, without much success.
It was as the witnesses had described – humanlike in stature, but not in features. There had been no thought spared for the aesthetics of the thing, covered in a single dull shade of paint that was clearly only there to keep rust at bay, and its shape purely conceived for function alone. Unlike many of the automatons Obi-Wan was familiar with, that function was not for domestic duties or to demonstrate the skill of its inventor or to amuse a curious audience.
No, this automaton was an assassin.
It was something of an inevitability, really. There was not a tool in all of human existence that they could not turn to the purposes of violence and death. The question, then, was not so much “why?” or “how?” (though they weren’t entirely irrelevant), but “who?”. Who had both the means and the will to create a death machine that walked and killed like men?
Perhaps with it in front of them, they could find their answer.
As afflicted by the displeasure of nature as it was, the automaton was simple to capture. Qui-Gon easily pushed it over, and between him and Obi-Wan, they half dragged, half carried it through the city streets. It was an arduous and slow process – the automaton was heavy, even with both men’s considerable personal fitness, and the wind continued to bite at their faces and tease at their cloak hoods. The temperature was dropping, and the freezing rain beginning to turn to snow, spiraling around in the wind, but the ground was still slick and treacherous from the earlier ice.
But bit by bit they made their way back to their current lodgings, and hauled the automaton – which had thankfully stopped even its feeble struggles – inside, unceremoniously dropping it on the floor. The landlord would be unhappy about that, but Obi-Wan didn’t much care at that point, only relieved to finally be out of that miserable storm. He stamped the snow loose from his boots and shook it from his cloak, and Qui-Gon did the same, before handing his off to Obi-Wan, who brought them over near to the fireplace, and set about getting a fire going.
“Ah, much better,” Obi-Wan said, a contented smile forming on his face. Qui-Gon joined him a moment later.
“Our friend certainly picked an inconvenient time to be found,” he said. “But then, we likely would not have found him at all if not for the weather.”
“It’s odd that its handler would send it out in those conditions,” Obi-Wan mused. “But at least, its failure to return home won’t seem amiss.”
“Indeed. But even masterminds may be careless at times, and we do not know if we are dealing with a mastermind, though this handiwork seems clever enough,” Qui-Gon said. “It seems to have wound down completely, but I’ve restrained it just in case it has some hidden reserve.”
“A good idea, if we’re to share sleeping quarters with such a murderous device. Or are we going to attempt to disassemble it before the end of day?”
“I think,” Qui-Gon said, “we should have supper before we do anything more.”
As the apprentice, meal preparation fell to Obi-Wan, and he reluctantly moved away from the fire to begin his work. But he, too, was hungry after their earlier exertions, and he made quick work of it.
After they had eaten, they turned to examination of their prize. There were no marks of ownership, no inventor’s signature to mark their pride in their work. Unsurprising, given its purpose, but mildly disappointing nonetheless. Their cursory investigation – they had mutually decided that disassembly should wait until they were rested – revealed little else, except that the weapon the automaton carried was merely an ordinary pistol, and not actually integrated into the mechanical design. A curious decision. Perhaps difficulties arose in construction, or the designer planned for simple replacements in case its weapon became damaged?
In the morning, they resumed their work.
The whole may have been unsigned, but parts had to be sourced. And if those could be traced, that could help them track down the automaton’s architect.
Disassembly was careful work. With such a machine, traps weren’t unlikely – if its creator had any sense at all, they would have taken steps to protect their design. It may even have been rigged to self-destruct if taken apart in the wrong way. But, presumably, as a mechanical creature it required regular servicing and maintenance as much as any other, and so it was just a matter of figuring out the right path.
Fortunately, Jedi had talents in such things, trained in their instincts in matters most would consider mere luck or superstition. But their connection to the world was more than that, and between that and observation skills honed to intuition, this was a task well suited to a Jedi. Even Obi-Wan, still a learner, was competent enough that Qui-Gon was comfortable leaving him to work alone for a short time around mid-morning.
When he returned, however, Qui-Gon’s manner was more grave. He did not even remove his cloak or his snow-covered boots after he entered, clutching a newspaper in hand.
“What is it?” Obi-Wan asked, pausing in his work.
“There was another attack. Another death.”
The chill that stole over Obi-Wan had nothing to do with the air that had come in with Qui-Gon. He looked back down at the half-disassembled automaton.
“We had the wrong culprit?” Obi-Wan said. It didn’t sound right. The machine in front of him was clearly designed for killing, and would someone really go to the trouble of creating one only to employ it solely as a decoy?
“No,” Qui-Gon said grimly. “I went to the scene. The tracks in the snow line up with our friend here.”
“There are more,” Obi-Wan realized. “They made more of these automatons.”
How many more?
“And it seems they’re not as impeded by poor weather as we had assumed,” Qui-Gon said. “This one must have just run down too much. Or perhaps he was a prototype.”
“If they’re building several of these, it would explain some of the design decisions I’ve noticed,” Obi-Wan said. “It’s built to easily scale production, not to be the most robust or fastest killing machine. The standard issue pistol makes sense, too. But then...why?” He frowned at the pieces of machinery. “That someone would build an assassin, I understand, as distasteful as it is. But why would they build many of the same design?”
“We don’t know that,” Qui-Gon said. “There may only be two, and his counterpart may exceed him in design.”
“Perhaps,” Obi-Wan conceded, “but I have a feeling otherwise, don’t you?”
Qui-Gon was silent for a short moment.
“I agree,” he said. “That is no assassin, but a soldier.”
“Who would do this?” Obi-Wan wondered. “What do they hope to gain, sending them out to kill like this?”
“I don’t know,” Qui-Gon said. “But I do know that if this operation is truly at scale, then it would take both money and power to hide it well. There are few enough who could manage it…” he trailed off and remained quiet for a long pause as he gazed out the window at the snow that had again started to fall.
“I hesitate to say it,” he continued finally, “but we may need to pay a visit to my old Master. He runs in those circles; either he knows the culprit, or…”
He didn’t need to finish the sentence. The implication hung in the air, and Obi-Wan tightened his grip on the screwdriver in his hand.
If a Jedi had turned their talents to such a morbid enterprise...then their problems had only just begun.