On Alderaan…
Obi-Wan floats suspended in a lightning cage, like the one in which Count Dooku confined him in AOTC. Miat Alpha paces around his catch and tells him his plan: interrogate knowledge of the Force out of Obi-Wan and then clone him in order to spawn an unstoppable army of Force-sensitive cloned soldiers for Atha Prime. During his gloating villain monologue, Miat ignites Kenobi’s lightsaber and waves it around, striking and killing one of his own clone henchmen in the process.
On Tatooine…
Padme and ZeeGee access the transmitter in the dead of night. ZeeGee inserts a data prod into the transmitter’s port (R2D2-style). Padme sends the footage to Chancellor Valorum on Coruscant along with a message imploring him to deploy the fleet to Alderaan.
Then Padme and ZeeGee start back towards Owen’s home in the darkness. She gets ambushed by a pack of alien street thugs, who attempt to pry the droid from her possession. Padme shoots one of them and takes off running in the other direction towards the junkyard.
On Alderaan…
Obi-Wan reaches out to his new friend Anakin through the Force. Focusing all of his thoughts on a distant point somewhere out in space, he finds the unique presence that he recognized onboard the freighter. It is not far from that of his brother Owen.
On Tatooine…
Anakin tosses and turns in a bunk. He receives a Force vision from Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan tells him of the history of the Jedi Knights. Thousands of years ago, before the founding of the Republic, the galaxy was ruled by a family of bloodthirsty Sith Lords. In dark avarice they visited countless injustices upon the tired masses under their control. One day a Sith baron taught one of his slaves some of the secrets of the dark side of the Force, the better to drive the other slaves into subservience. But the slave-driver rebelled and decided to use the Force for justice instead of conquest; he vanquished the baron and sparked a great uprising which eventually collapsed the Sith empire from within. Such was the origin of the Jedi Knights, and with them came the Republic which has lasted for over a thousand generations.
Obi-Wan then tells Anakin that the clones threaten to destroy all that the Jedi have built. He appeals to the idealism that he knows resides in the young man and implores him to stop the machinations of Atha Prime.
Anakin tumbles back into reality. He gasps in disbelief at what he just experienced. But there is little time to reflect, as he hears the distant drone of an approaching hostile fighter. Sounds like a Firespray-class, which means only one thing…
To be continued…