Star Wars: Coruscant Nights III: Patterns of Force (15 page)

She shook her head. “No, he knew it. He must have known it, to have used it so carefully that I never suspected. If it were a random effect, he would have disappeared emotionally at random moments, not … merely when he wanted to. Not merely
how
he wanted to.” She seemed to struggle for a moment with the idea, then added, “I thought I was party to his private thoughts and feelings, the direct reflection of his soul. But he was only allowing me to catch a muted echo.”

“Oh, surely he wouldn’t be so cruel.”

“He wasn’t being cruel.” She looked up at him with wide, tear-filled eyes. “He was just being private, independent. It’s too much to expect a non-Zeltron to be as—as public as we are. He just wanted to keep some of himself … for himself. And so he died, surrounded by his barrier of light. It has always bothered me that I didn’t feel even a touch of fear or pain from him that day, and now I understand why. Even the day his world died …” She put a hand up to her mouth.

“I doubt you would have wanted to feel that, my dear,” said Rhinann, trying to go for an avuncular impression. “Your kind are not known for their tolerance of negative emotions.”

“No, and right now I’m feeling … betrayed. I know I shouldn’t. I know it was just his way of retaining a sense of privacy, but …”

“Consider your friend’s kindness in sparing you the full brunt of his grief,” Rhinann suggested. “Perhaps that will assuage your feelings of betrayal.”

She smiled wryly and wiped her nose on the sleeve of
her garment—a gesture that Rhinann found strangely charming, given his usual distaste for such things.

“Count my blessings, Rhinann?” she murmured. “An odd sentiment, coming from you.”

Yes, it was, rather. He caught himself, realizing what was happening. In her agitated state, Dejah Duare was undoubtedly pumping more pheromones into the atmosphere than she usually did, so much so that some of them were creeping past his natural immunity. He shook himself. He must not be distracted from his goal.

“My dear,” he said, retaining the endearment because he thought it useful, “can you be thinking that Jax Pavan also might use this technology to hide from you, as you put it?”

She blinked up at him, eyes sparkling with tears. “It—it … Now that you mention it, yes, he certainly could. He has the Force to hide behind, of course.” Her mouth turned up at the corners and her eyes shed bereavement as if it were a transient film, to be flicked away with a wink. “But that’s entirely different. The Force, even used to filter or block, has such interesting … textures. In some ways it’s more satisfying to the touch than the emotions it conceals.”

Rhinann was intrigued and annoyed simultaneously. This hedonistic telempath clearly had a higher midi-chlorian count than he did. If she did not possess a capacity for Force manipulation herself, she clearly could sense it.

“Textures?” he repeated. “How interesting.”

“Oh, more than interesting.” She drew her knees up under her chin and hugged them. The gesture was at once child-like and seductive. Or would have been, if the Elomin were capable of being seduced.

“Even when Jax pulls the Force across himself like a curtain,” she continued, “it’s a curtain of amazing depth and nuance. Like … a warm bath, like sun-heated sand
beneath your feet, like morning grass at the first touch of the sun, or—” She looked up, caught the look on Rhinann’s face, and laughed. “I don’t do it justice and still you think me overimaginative and overemotional.”

“No, my dear, of course not …” He did think those things, but they were potentially useful things, so he tried not to dispense with them. “I was merely wondering how you would perceive the effects of the bota extract if Jax were to use it.”

“The what?”

Rhinann gazed into the Zeltron’s eyes. Ploy or honest puzzlement? He couldn’t tell which. “The bota. The plant extract once deemed a panacea—”

“Yes, I know what bota is—or was. It’s pretty much just a weed in its current form, isn’t it? It mutated or something. Years ago.”

“It did. But I was speaking of its ability to enhance the use of the Force. I thought perhaps you’d know about that—being, as you are, so close to Jax.”

She shook her head, her burgundy brows drawn together above her eyes. “
Enhance
the Force? What are you talking about? Jax has never mentioned anything to me about such a thing.”

“Ah. That’s odd. According to the droid, a Jedi named Barriss Offee serendipitously discovered that an injection of bota extract amplified or expanded a Jedi’s Force perception and ability exponentially. While they were on Drongar together, she gave a vial of the extract to I-Fivewhycue to bring to the Jedi Temple. By the time he arrived, of course, Order Sixty-six had been implemented, and so—”

“So I-Five has it? And Jax knows this?”

“I assume one of them has it. Though I could be wrong. The droid might have given it to someone else, or hidden it somewhere.” Rhinann shrugged as if the location
of the bota were of no interest to him at all. “I’ve no idea.”

“But why hasn’t Jax used it? If it amplifies the Force as you say, mightn’t that make him powerful enough—” She paused, took a deep breath, then continued with a lowered voice, “to destroy the Emperor?”

Rhinann was no thespian, but he put every gram of acting ability he had behind his next words. “Indeed it might. Perhaps the droid isn’t the best candidate for an assassin, after all.”

“So why hasn’t Jax taken the bota?”

Gazing down into the Zeltron woman’s avid face, Haninum Tyk Rhinann had an epiphany: if something was missing, the more people you had looking for it, the better.

He frowned and tapped his thin lips with one flat fingertip. “Perhaps because he doesn’t know where it is. I begin to suspect that the droid has not yet given it to him. That perhaps he has hidden it instead.”

“Why would he do that?”

Rhinann shrugged. “Who knows? Were he a normal droid, the answer would have to be because someone instructed him to do it. But I-Five is not a normal droid, so that opens up a score of possibilities. Perhaps he wants to be the hero, instead of Jax. Perhaps he wishes to exact vengeance on the Emperor and Darth Vader himself.”

Dejah looked thoughtful. “No. That’s not like him. More likely he’s trying to protect Jax.”

Feign innocence
, Rhinann instructed himself.
Project guilelessness
. It, along with his natural immunity to the Zeltron’s wiles, seemed to be working. “Protect him from what?”

“From making himself a tool of vengeance. To do that would be to give in to the dark side, wouldn’t it? Or maybe he’s afraid of side effects.
Are
there side effects?” She glanced up at him askance.

“I don’t know,” he said, irritated by the digression. “I do know—or understand from the little I’ve learned—that the extract would make the Jedi who takes it … well, very nearly god-like in power and abilities.”

“But for how long?” she murmured, her eyes going to the static view of the dead world projected into the niche above her “window” seat. “And at what cost?”

“Cost?” repeated Rhinann.

She gave him a gamine look from beneath her long, blood-red lashes. “Nothing is without cost, Rhinann. Nothing.” Her eyes moved back to the image of the world that no longer was. “It’s all a matter of trade-offs. Of knowing what something is worth.”

“Different things are of varying worth to different people,” he observed neutrally.

“Yes,” Dejah murmured. “They are.” She reached over and tapped a small touch pad next to the image niche. The view of the once verdant surface of Caamas disappeared, to be replaced by a panorama of a junglescape in which the dominant color was red. Rhinann assumed it was an image of Dejah’s homeworld, Zeltros. Sitting before the landscape, she all but disappeared into it.

She turned her gaze back to Rhinann. “Do you think I-Five is wrong to keep Jax from the bota—if that’s what he’s about?”

“Wrong?” Rhinann splayed a thin, spidery hand over his heart. “I can’t judge the wrong or right of the situation, my dear. I only know that it exists as a possibility. And as for what the droid is about, look at the evidence: Jax wants nothing more than to destroy the Emperor and Darth Vader and to restore not only the Jedi, but the fortunes of the Republic. The bota could give him the means to do it, but he hasn’t used it, or even
suggested
that he use it. The only logical reason I can think of for that is that the droid has hidden it from him. If the droid were a biological life-form, Jax could influence his
thinking. But he isn’t, and he follows orders poorly or not at all. Therefore, he is impervious even to Jax.”

“Yet I detect no strain between Jax and I-Five,” Dejah observed. “At least, Jax doesn’t seem to have any negative feelings for the droid.”

“Perhaps because our mechanical friend has done a good job of convincing him that withholding the bota is for the best. I-Five can be quite persuasive when the need arises. After all, he is—or was—a protocol unit.”

Dejah shrugged. “Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps it is for the best.”

Rhinann’s smile was so brittle, he feared it might crack his lips. “I’m sure of it, Dejah,” he said. “After all, who knows the Jedi better than I-Five?”

Dejah Duare merely smiled.

“My, look at the time,” Rhinann said, glancing at his chrono. He left quickly, on the pretext that he was expecting a data dump from one of the Imperial intel links he was monitoring, and went away unsure of what, if anything, he had accomplished. Clearly Dejah Duare had known nothing of the bota until he had mentioned it. Had that mention fueled a further sense of betrayal? Had it intrigued her? Amused her? Frightened her?

He gave up his maundering. Who knew what a creature like that was likely to do? She was, as Pavan was wont to note, an atypical Zeltron. In some ways that made her as hard to read—and as frustrating—as Pavan’s metal guardian.

He exhaled gustily, then winced. His nose tusks were vibrating so much lately from sighing that the anchoring flesh was getting sore.

“The prefect removed our tracking devices within minutes of returning to his headquarters.”

Darth Vader’s gloved hand moved in a dismissive gesture. “That was to be expected.”

“He’s a traitor then. He’s chosen his side.”

“Has he?” The Dark Lord turned, and Probus Tesla saw his distorted reflection in the curved black surfaces of the Dark Lord’s optic panels. His image was warped, but the marks of his brush with death were still clearly visible on his face, notwithstanding the hours spent in a bacta tank. No matter. The scars served their purpose: they reminded him that hubris was a failing he could not afford and that false assumptions based on hubris could be deadly. He would not forget that hard-learned lesson.

“Or,” Vader continued, “is he just being a prudent and cautious officer of the prefecture? Do you imagine that those we seek would not check for tracking devices? If they found them, Pol Haus would become useless to us. They’d never trust him.”

“Then we still don’t know where he stands.”

“No.”

“How will we know?”

“If he continues to evade our attempts to track him, we’ll know he’s Thi Xon Yimmon’s man. But if one day he is less than vigilant about such things …”

Tesla smiled. The gesture hurt, tugging at the new flesh on his barely healed face. The pain, like the scars, was also good. It was a reminder of his personal goal: with or without the help of Prefect Pol Haus, he would track down the Force prodigy who had done this to him—be he Jedi or not—and either bring him as a prize to his master, or destroy him utterly.

“I don’t get it,” Den said. “Why are you asking
me
this?”

“Obviously,” Rhinann replied, his face, his posture, his entire
person
saying that he thought the question idiotic, “because I thought that perhaps you knew.”

Den gestured at the virtual
SEND
icon on the holodisplay and watched his message to Eyar Marath soar away on wings of … well, whatever such messages soared away on. “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose I assumed that Five had it or had done whatever he thought appropriate with it. Maybe he gave it to Jax.”

“Doubtful.”

“Why doubtful?”

Rhinann shrugged. “Jax has said nothing about it. And he obviously hasn’t used it.”

“Well, yeah. I kind of think we’d know if he had … considering what it’s supposed to do. But he wouldn’t just use it without warning us.”

“What makes you say that?”

Den gave the Elomin a withering glance. “I know Jax Pavan.” He got up from his workstation. “I just remembered it’s my turn to do the shopping. Gotta run. I’ll see you later.”

“You must realize what could happen if that substance should fall into the wrong hands.”

The words turned Den around in the doorway of the
workroom. “Yeah, Rhinann. I’m not a total milking moron. I do get it. But frankly, there’s not a whole lot I can do about it … other than trying to talk my good friend the droid out of doing something abysmally dangerous.”

“So you’re not even curious?”

Den shook his head. “No. Not even.”

“An odd state of mind for a
journalist
, don’t you think?”

Heat flashed up the back of Den’s neck and around the rims of his ears. “Now, that was just plain
low.
”

“I only meant—”

“You only meant that you don’t think I’m much of a journalist. Well, maybe I’m not. And maybe I don’t want to be anymore.”
Oh, now
that
was a mature comeback
.

Rhinann’s eyes narrowed. “You have it, don’t you?” he murmured. “You’ve got the bota.”

“And you’ve got a loose sanity chip, big guy. There’s no way that I-Five would trust me with that stuff.”

“Nonsense. I can think of no one else he’d trust more.”

Den shook his head. “Well, then you’ve been into the dreamspice, Rhinann. Because I don’t have it, and I don’t much care who does.”

The Elomin didn’t try to stop him again. Den managed to get out of the conapt and make his way down several levels to a little café on the fringes of the Ploughtekal that he frequented. There he ordered himself a hot caf and a steamed bun stuffed with vegetables and meat—the provenance of which it was wisest not to inquire about—and sat at a metal table under an arbor covered with plants that were no more real than the “meat” in the bun.