Star Wars: Coruscant Nights III: Patterns of Force (17 page)

“You’re angry with your parents for sending you away?”

“No … not them.
Him.
”

“Who? Tell me.”

“The Emperor. He took everything. The farm, my life, my parents, my world. Everything.
Everything!
”

Jax felt it then—the huge gaping hole of loss and loneliness that lay beneath the anger. He had lost his parents, too, but not like this. Where he had grown up in the embrace of the Jedi, Kajin had simply been thrust out on his own, alone, to be overwhelmed by a power he didn’t understand.

The Jedi put his arms around the boy and held him tightly, falling into his rocking rhythm as if they were in a boat on water.

“Not alone,” Jax told him. “You’re not alone. And if you really want to ruin the Emperor’s day, don’t let the anger take you. Don’t let it win.”

“But I can’t hold it in.
”

“Then let it go, Kaj. Don’t give in to it. Make
it
give in to
you.
”

The boy gritted his teeth and drummed his heels on the floor. “I don’t know
how
!”

“Yes, you do. Yes, you do. Say it, Kaj: There is no emotion; there is peace.”

“Peace,” Kaj whispered.

“There is no ignorance; there is knowledge.” Jax saw the boy’s lips move in time to his. “There is no passion …”

“There is serenity,” Kaj whispered, then repeated, “there is serenity.”

“There is no death; there is the Force.”

They finished the credo in unison, Kaj’s tightly wound body finally relaxing a bit in Jax’s arms, the white-hot press of rage cooling. Tears slid from the boy’s eyes and dripped to the meditation mat. A moment later he was
sobbing, and the threads of anger at last loosened and released him.

Jax felt a trickle of perspiration race down his back beneath his tunic and realized he had broken out in a cold sweat. He heard a muffled noise and looked up to see Rhinann standing in the doorway, a well-pulped domrai fruit in one hand and a sodden spot on the front of his weskit.

“Will he be doing that often?” he asked. “If so, I suggest we store the fruit in an enclosed space.”

Jax smiled humorlessly. If Kaj did that often, the fruit would be the least of their worries.

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Two steps from the café, Den looked up to find I-Five regarding him placidly.

“And you were looking for me, why?” Den asked.

“I was a bit … concerned about your sudden disappearance earlier. It seemed as though you and Rhinann had a disagreement about something,” I-Five said.

“Don’t tell me you were eavesdropping, too?”

The droid’s photoreceptors brightened. “Someone was eavesdropping on your conversation with Rhinann?”

Den shrugged. “I’m not sure, to be honest. But Dejah seemed to know what we’d been talking about, and she would neither confirm nor deny.”

“Ah.”

The unspoken question, Den figured, was:
What would she neither confirm nor deny?

I-Five started walking toward the amorphous center of the sprawling marketplace, and Den fell into step. “Where are we going?” he asked.

“To send a message to a friend.” In other words, a Whiplash operative.

“Yeah? Which one?”

“Someone who knows a great deal about the UML.”

The UML, or Underground Mag-Lev, was a route of egress the Whiplash had used for some time to ferry at-risk individuals to facilities within several of the nearby spaceports where they could be smuggled offworld. Its chief asset, oddly enough, was that it was public enough to be private. You simply melted into the crowds, and if you knew the lay of the tunnels that made up a large part of it, you could disappear and reappear somewhere else in the system in such a way that even surveillance could be defeated.

The secret was a series of secondary tunnels and access tubes that had lain in long disuse and whose very existence had been erased from the engineering records of the world-city. A late high-level Whiplash operative had made certain of that erasure and paid for it with his life. Since the Imperial Security Bureau thought he had been after something else altogether—as had been his intention—they simply assumed they had stopped the assassin and saboteur before he could perform whatever dastardly act he had been contemplating and used his demise as a PR coup: Pity Emperor Palpatine—these black-hearted so-and-sos just kept coming after him like madmen. Would they never learn?

“Travel plans for our Togrutan client?” Den asked.

“Yes. Orto is lovely this time of year.”

Den glanced sideways at the droid. “Some part of Orto is lovely at any time of year.”

I-Five gave an irritated click. “Don’t be dense.”

“I’m not. It’s just that that sort of inaccuracy sounds really strange coming from you. Why Orto?”

“The music. Our friend feels that the fact of the Ortolans’ seemingly universal talent for producing highly affective music would be of great benefit for the young lady in question.”

Den thought of Kajin Savaros and felt a little bird of
guilt with tiny, sharp talons roost in his conscience. He said, “Look, there’s something I need to ask you about.”

“Tuden Sal.” The droid looked down at the Sullustan. “I know how you feel about this … enterprise. But think about the payoff if I were to succeed.”

“Fine, if you’ll think about the payoff if you don’t. And think about why you want to do it.”

“I should think that was perfectly clear.”

“It’s not. Not considering the risks.”

“Why do you think I want to do it?”

“Vengeance?”

That stopped the droid in his tracks, Den was pleased to note. His optics glowed bright with surprise.

“No.”

That was it. Just
no
. The droid turned on his heel and continued walking.

Den trotted to catch up. “That sounded an awful lot like denial.”

“It was the truth.”

“Are you sure?”

I-Five kept walking; Den had to stretch his legs to keep up.

“Whatever else you may think me capable of,” the droid said, “I am not given to lying. Who put that idea into your head?”

“What—now I’m not capable of acquiring ideas to put in my own head?”

I-Five mimicked the sound of a supercilious sniff.

“Okay, it was Dejah … via Rhinann, or so I gather,” Den said.

I-Five slowed his pace. “That’s interesting. So they think I’m plotting vengeance on … this person … because he murdered my partner—my friend?”

“That’s the long and short of it, yeah.”

“And it hasn’t occurred to them that while the work we’re engaged in now is annoying and costly to the person
in question, this new plan will cut right to the heart of the situation and remove him completely?”

“It’s occurred to them. But I guess the question is: why do
you
in particular have to do this?”

“I stand the greatest chance of success simply because of who and what I am.”

“Really? I’m thinking they’re thinking that maybe Jax has the best chance of success because of who and what
he
is, and because of that extra little something he has. Which has the potential of becoming a much bigger something extra, thanks to you.”

The droid stopped to stare—there was no other word for it. “What are you talking about?”

“That vegetable juice cocktail of yours.”

“What have they said about it?”

“Not so much said as asked.” Den glanced about, then took a step closer to the droid. “They were interested in where it’s gone, and seem to have come to the conclusion that you’ve given it to me.”

“Did they say why they were interested in it?”

“I think it basically came down to a fear that when the sky fell, Jax wouldn’t have it at his disposal.”

“They think I would prevent him from taking it? Why?”

The thought that popped into Den’s head unbidden filled him with cold horror. “For the same reason you’ve taken on the mantle of martyrdom so readily—because
you’re
afraid of what Jax might do if he gets the vengeance bug and the bota at the same time. You’re afraid he might take it and get sucked into the darkness. This way, he might be thinking about vengeance, but
you’ll
be the one acting on it.”

There was a long, tense pause during which the sounds, colors, and smells of the bazaar seemed to come to Den through thick wads of padding. In all the universe he could see only this droid—this gleaming metal being—this
sentient
who was willing to sacrifice himself in a last, lethal act of protection.

I-Five put a hand on Den’s shoulder … and yanked him out of the main thoroughfare into a dark, grimy corner behind a kiosk that smelled of machine lubricant and dust.

“Kark!” Den squeaked. “What in chaos are you—”

A metal hand clamped over his mouth. “Inquisitors,” the droid hissed. He released Den’s mouth and allowed him to turn within the confines of their bolt-hole.

The skin at the nape of Den’s neck tightened and his dewlaps quivered. There were Inquisitors all right—three of them, moving together in well-rehearsed choreography. Three of them.

“I’ve never seen them travel together like that,” I-Five murmured.

“That makes me feel so much better,” Den said.

As they watched, the Inquisitors paused to speak to the weapons dealer across the alley. The booth appeared to be selling domestic water vaporators and distilleries, but everyone who frequented the area knew that that was only a sideline. The Inquisitors were settling in for a thorough interrogation of the visibly terrified Sullustan proprietor, when one of them suddenly lifted his cowled head and turned to peer down the street.

Den felt a wave of chill pass over him. He thanked every Sullustan deity he could think of that he wasn’t Force-sensitive.

The itchy Inquisitor then turned and said something to his cohorts, and suddenly all three of them were agitated. They moved off swiftly, almost seeming to float above the pocked duracrete of the bazaar, and disappeared into a lift tube at the nearest corner.

Den shivered. Eerie.

I-Five started in the direction of the Sullustan’s kiosk, but Den stopped him. “If they tweaked that guy’s
warmware, having a droid start asking questions might trip some alarms. I’ll go.”

I-Five signified his assent and Den dived into the crowd, maneuvered through the stream of taller beings, and approached the weapons booth, shuffling a little and wringing his hands.

“I saw the Inquisitors,
lequana
,” he said to the proprietor, using a Sullustan term that roughly translated into Basic as “cave brother.” The proprietor still seemed a bit dazed. “Did they tell you who did it?” Den asked. “Did they catch him?”

“Did what? … Oh! The murderer, you mean. No, they only asked me if I’d seen someone.” His brow furrowed as if he couldn’t recall who. Possibly they had wiped that memory.

“Really? They have a description?”

“I … I suppose they must have. A human boy, I think they said.” He shook his head and shrugged. “Thousands like that in this marketplace.”

“Yeah. At least.”

Den turned and headed off down the thoroughfare. When he was out of sight of the Sullustan’s kiosk, he turned his head slightly and found I-Five pacing him about a meter away.

“Nothing,” he told the droid. “If they asked him about anything besides seeing a human boy, he doesn’t remember.”

“Let’s go down a level,” I-Five said. He led Den to a lift about two blocks distant—with luck, a safe distance from the Inquisitorial trio.

On the level below they wandered a bit before entering a stygian side alley and making their way into the kitchen of the Emperor’s Board, a charity whose impeccable handling of its community service work kept it out of the Imperial eye. The ISB hardly cared who fed the
rats as long as they filed the appropriate documentation, which apparently Thi Xon Yimmon did.

I-Five took the lead, presenting himself to the Gungan cook. “I have a price bid for your proprietor on a job he requires performed,” he said, his voice free of inflection, like a standard droid.

“From?” the Gungan asked, eyeing Den.

“A certain purveyor of lighting supplies. He tells me your proprietor has a dim corridor he wishes to make passable.”

“Oh yes.” The Gungan nodded zealously enough to flap his ears and cause his eyestalks to bob up and down. “Yes, me-sa boss is in much need of such. Passage long and very dark. You-sa got the bid?”

I-Five produced a data crystal seemingly from nowhere and handed it to the Gungan.

“When you-sa do the work?”

“Two days at oh seven hundred hours,” I-Five said, then uttered three clicks, each one pitched slightly lower than the one before.

The Gungan smiled pleasantly and cocked his head to one side. “You-sa oughta get that looked at, eh? Me-sa take this to the boss.”

“One more thing,” I-Five said before the cook could pocket the crystal and move away. “Tell the Sakiyan I will see him tomorrow at sunset. He knows the place.”

The Gungan nodded his head, causing his long earflaps to dance about his shoulders. “No problem. Me-sa tell him this.”

When the Gungan cook had gone to deliver the crystal and the message—which was that the “work” would really be done at 0400 hours, three hours earlier than stated—Den looked up at I-Five with dread tugging at his heart.

“You’ve decided what you’re going to do about the plan?”

“No. But I have given myself a deadline. I will decide by the time I see my contact tomorrow.”

“Don’t do it, Five. The risk—it’s just too big. This whole thing is too big.”

I-Five turned to look down at him, optical receptors bright in the dim interior of the charity’s back corridors. “With all due respect, Den—and I mean that—I think I’m in a better position to gauge the risks than you are. My processor, in fact, has already calculated all the possible scenarios and variables inherent in my agreeing. I only await the majority opinion of the team before making my decision.”

“And?”

“I promise you I will not take on this charge if Jax and the others feel that it’s wrong.”

Wrong
. Not inadvisable. Not illogical. Not stupidly dangerous. Not lethal.

Wrong
.