He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but he had no way of knowing for certain if his Bothan lieutenant had been alone in his activities. Instinct said yes. Droosh’s motivation had, ultimately, been greed. Greedy people tended not to want to share their potential sources of wealth and/or power with others.
But again, one never knew.
So, as he and Sheel Mafeen made their way into the bowels of the old mag-lev system, hundreds of feet below the original tunnels Whiplash had used, he rehearsed in his mind what an escape might look like if they had to flee before they’d extracted all the information from the system.
Haus pulled his two-person speeder into the lee of the rearmost car and got out, blaster in hand.
Sheel slid out behind him. That she was nervous was obvious in the way her voice trembled when she asked if the train seemed as he’d left it.
“Yes. And since I took the precaution of setting up a sensor perimeter, I can guarantee that no one has been here.” He deactivated the sensors as he spoke and approached the hatch that gave onto the rearmost car—the one that held Tuden Sal’s quarters.
They boarded, and he reset the external sensor field, which was implemented by a set of small discs magnetically clamped to the sides of the train cars. Cheap as dirt to acquire, easy to install, and quite effective.
Once inside, they each had a predefined task. Haus went to the main computer console to begin downloading data to several HoloNet nodes at various locations elsewhere in the city. Sheel, meanwhile, tackled the stand-alone unit in Sal’s personal quarters. She had a handheld retrieval device for that; they’d theorized that Sal’s personal data would be only a fraction of what was in the main node.
They’d been at their jobs for perhaps half an hour—Haus was switching to his tertiary backup node—when Sheel uttered a cry of surprise or distress.
Haus was out of the main car and standing at the door to Sal’s quarters before he’d half realized he’d moved. The room still smelled like death, or perhaps that was only his fertile imagination.
“Sheel, what is it?”
She turned to look up at him from Sal’s private console with an expression of such anguish on her face that he felt a primal need to touch her, to reassure her. He reached her side in two strides and laid a hand on her shoulder.
“What’s wrong?”
In answer, she held her retrieval unit out to him, tilting the screen so he could read it.
“I prioritized the download,” she said, “and had it sequester anything that mentioned Jax, Laranth, Darth Vader, or the Emperor. This entry is from Sal’s private correspondence.”
Frowning, Haus took the handheld and peered at it. There was no holographic data—it was text only. The sent message read: Urgent. Att’n Lord Vader. Some reason to suspect movement of Pavan and “persons of interest” through Myto’s Arrow. This was followed by a range of dates that included the time period Jax and his companions had been moving Thi Xon Yimmon …
“Through Myto’s Arrow …” Haus murmured. He shook his head. “I don’t get it. What …”
“He sent this,” Sheel said urgently. Her eyes were sparkling with unshed tears. “Sal sent this. To the Imperial Security Bureau—to Lord Vader. It was encrypted. One of maybe a dozen encrypted messages, and the only one that mentioned both Jax and Vader—which was why I sampled it. Sal sold them out, Pol. He sold us out.”
With a world-shuddering impact, the information hit home. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think it was for reward. He did this anonymously—encrypted the message, sent it via shadow link so it went through a host of nodes before getting to the target. It’s text only—clearly he didn’t want to be recognized … and he gives only minimal location and timing data, when he knew exactly what Far Ranger’s itinerary was.”
Haus leaned heavily against the bulkhead and stared at her. “He could have sent the Imperials to Toprawa on the exact day of Yimmon’s arrival there.”
“But he didn’t.”
“Again, why?”
Sheel sat down on the edge of Sal’s bunk, her feet inches from the stain left by the dying Sakiyan’s blood. “Maybe he didn’t intend them to be caught, but only … I don’t know … scared off, perhaps?”
Haus nodded. “His plot against the Emperor. He knew Yimmon and Jax would never have allowed it to go forward. If they were running from Vader—hiding out away from any resistance cells—he could do whatever he wanted and they’d be none the wiser until it was too late.” He tried, unsuccessfully, to loosen his jaw. “He could do exactly what he did do.”
“Except that with Yimmon captured …”
Haus closed his eyes, understanding at last why Sal had been so committed to assassinating Palpatine. “He couldn’t abort his plans, no matter what happened. The only way to keep Yimmon’s capture from shattering the resistance would be to kill Palpatine and destabilize the Empire.”
Sheel got to her feet. “We need to finish this up and get out of here, Pol. We need to go over all of this as carefully as we can. And we need to try to reconnect with our allies. We can’t let this kill the Resistance on Coruscant. Whiplash can’t have died in vain.”
He gazed at her, admiring her courage—her sheer stubbornness. He liked stubbornness.
“Died?” he repeated. “I’m not ready to hold the funeral just yet.”
Probus Tesla had made an impression on his prisoner, that much was clear. The Cerean’s thoughts, while hidden behind his still-impressive calm, were more emotional, more unsettled. Tesla sensed trepidation, sorrow, hope, regret.
Now, what to do about it?
Lord Vader had given explicit instructions to him not to interact too directly with the Whiplash leader, but only to observe. Tesla believed he could truthfully say that he had done just that—though perhaps he had given himself something to observe by making veiled suggestions to the rebel that his colleagues were in distress.
Which was only the truth.
It made sense for him to proceed, next, to offering simple reminders of what had already been lost. With that in mind, literally, Tesla visited the holding cell in which Yimmon was imprisoned, and at an unusual time—while the other man was eating his meager meal. Surprise, Tesla knew, was an effective tool in the interrogation process.
Even as he entered the room, Tesla felt the rewards of his effort. The Cerean was startled, momentarily off center. He had not expected this visit at a time he was usually left alone and so soon on the heels of their last encounter. He hastily raised a mental barrier, but Tesla had felt of his inner turmoil. He was thinking of his possibly dead allies back on Coruscant.
Perfect.
Tesla came and sat cross-legged before his prisoner, facing him.
“You have suffered much loss” was his opening gambit.
Yimmon glanced up at him only momentarily, then returned his attention to his meal. He ate slowly, in tiny, careful bites.
“You realize you will suffer more.”
No response.
“Laranth Tarak, Den Dhur, Jax Pavan—all dead.”
A brief flicker of the Cerean’s eyes and emotions caught the Inquisitor’s attention. Tesla pressed on: “You are utterly alone.”
Thi Xon Yimmon raised his gaze to Tesla’s face, his eyes sharp, clear, disconcerting. “Am I?”
Tesla was puzzled by the tickle of emotion he sensed from the Cerean. It was all wrong. Yes, there was sorrow, but not a bottomless pit of despair. Yimmon had … hope.
Hope of what? Hope from what source? Tesla almost asked the questions aloud.
The Cerean pulled his gaze away, and Tesla knew.
“You believe Jax Pavan is still alive? You think he’s going to rescue you? I tell you, he’s dead.”
Yimmon shrugged. He actually shrugged. As if they were debating a meaningless difference of opinion.
“Why do you persist in this vain hope, Yimmon? You were there. You saw the condition the vessel was in. You saw the explosion when it was finally suc
ked into the nexus between the two stars. All life aboard that vessel was obliterated. Utterly destroyed.”
Again, the artless shrug. “Believe what you will. I will believe what I will.”
Tesla trickled more of his Force energies into the gaps in Yimmon’s consciousness. He felt something far stronger than mere hope. Certitude. It was absurd. Infuriating. Mad … yet there it was.
Tesla sat back in sudden disappointment. Is that how Yimmon proposed to escape Vader’s efforts—by diving headfirst into insanity?
The Cerean met his eyes again, calm, serene, certain … implacable. His faith in the Jedi and in the Force was complete. Tesla perceived flashes of it from Yimmon’s perspective: how the young Jedi Jax Pavan had outwitted the Inquisitorius and disrupted Darth Vader’s plans repeatedly … how he had snatched Kajin Savaros from under Tesla’s nose … how—at their last encounter—Tesla had been forced to flee.
The Inquisitor did not try to hide his disgust. He stood slowly, until he towered over the seated prisoner. Then he deliberately pulled back his cowl, revealing his expressionless face and shaved head.
Here is the face of your enemy, Cerean.
“How sad,” he said aloud. “Lord Vader will be disappointed that you’ve crumbled so much mentally as to harbor these … vapid fantasies. But I suppose that will make it easier for him to prise the information he needs from your mind.”
He felt Yimmon’s barriers fly back into place, and smiled inwardly. Too late. Tesla not only knew Thi Xon Yimmon’s emotional weakness, he also saw how it could be exploited.
He replaced his cowl and left the chamber, wondering if he should contact Lord Vader and announce his breakthrough. His dilemma was solved when he received a communication from his Master: having dealt the rebels on Imperial Center a mortal wound, the Dark Lord was returning to Kantaros Station.
Tesla decided he would wait to share his insights. For now, he had to calculate how best to use what he had discovered about the prisoner’s mental condition.
Sequestered in his quarters, he sat in meditation on the subject of Jax Pavan. It was more difficult than he’d expected—every time he tried to ruminate on how he could use Yimmon’s mad faith to advantage, he was forced to face his own deep hatred for the Jedi, forced to remember the stinging humiliation of their last encounter.
It was a shame Jax Pavan was already dead, because Tesla would have liked very much to be the one to kill him.
Thirty-Eight
“Your mate … she was a Jedi, too?”
Magash watched the Jedi out of the corner of her eye, catching the sudden, delicate tightening of the muscles in his face and the flutter of the Force energies around him.
“She was a Gray Paladin. A Force adept but, like you, not trained by the Jedi Order. She … lived by the same principles as Jedi, but the Paladins were less … rigid in their approach to certain things.”
It did not escape Magash that the Jedi picked his way through those words as carefully as they now picked their way across the treacherous defile that led down to the Infinity Plain.
“What sort of things?” she asked.
“Oh … weaponry, for example. The Jedi have used lightsabers as their primary weapon for so long, it’s become part of who we are. The weapon attuned to the warrior, I guess you could say. The Gray Paladins believe that a Force adept should be independent of any specific …” He paused, smiled wanly. “… prop,” he finished, and gave her a sidewise glance. “The Gray Paladin might choose a primary weapon and attune her fighting philosophy to that.”
Magash nodded. “The warrior attuned to the weapon.”
“Yes, but for a Jedi, learning the forms of lightsaber combat is considered key to harnessing and channeling the Force.”
“It is part of your discipline, then. As incantations are part of ours.”
The Jedi nodded.
“So, these Gray Paladins are undisciplined warriors? That seems unwise.”
He shook his head. “No. I didn’t mean to give that impression, Magash, believe me. Laranth …” He paused again, swallowed. “Laranth was very disciplined. In some ways, more disciplined than I am. She taught me a lot about what it means to be a Jedi.”
Magash was pleased with this assessment. This Jedi, it seemed, was more open to different forms of Force channeling than she’d expected. “So,” she asked, “what do you believe? Is the lightsaber the only proper weapon for a Jedi?”
He laughed. “A year or two ago, I’d probably have said that, of course it was. But since then I’ve used … ah … a variety of weapons. And I’ve used no weapons at all. What I believe …” He stopped walking and gazed out over the crazy quilt of slag, rock, and sand. “I believe that a Jedi doesn’t need any weapon. I believe that a Jedi—or any Force-user—is the weapon. What he or she uses as a tool or a focus is secondary.”
He started walking again, his eyes on the rocks beneath their feet. Magash kept pace.
“What do you believe?” he asked her.
“I?” The question startled her. Why would a Temple-trained Jedi care what a Dathomiri Witch believed?
“You have opinions on the subject, I’m sure.” He was smiling at her, now, not at himself. Maybe he was even laughing at her.
She lifted her chin. “I do. I believe … very much what you’ve said. It is the purity of the channel that is important, not what tool she uses to facilitate her channeling.”
She was surprised to hear herself say that, certain that what should have come from her mouth was an endorsement of channeling the Force through spells and incantations. Yet she knew—as surely as she knew the Force flowed through her—that spoken or sung incantations were only a device to focus the energies a Witch wielded.
“The most critical thing,” she added, “is never to concede to evil.”
She felt a shift of energies in the man beside her, as if something had caught within him.
“What?” she said. “Does that not match with your Jedi teachings?”
He nodded. “Yes. Yes, certainly the words do.”
“But?”
He shook his head. “That’s an opinion I shouldn’t share.”
She took two quick steps past him and turned, blocking his path. “I have asked you to share it. I demand that you share it.” She wanted to understand the rift that lay between Jedi and Witch.
He met her gaze, letting her see a bit of the ambivalence behind his eyes. Then he said, “When you look at me, what do you see?”
“What do I see?”
“Yes. Am I a fellow Force adept or am I … an inferior being?”
“You—” She halted. “You are a Jedi.”
“That’s not an answer, Magash.”
She reached into her own thoughts and tried again. “You are …” She stopped and looked at him—really looked at him. She saw a tall, slender, young human male with longish dark hair, eyes that were all colors at once, and a weariness and sadness in his face that usually came with great age or hardship.
He was attractive. She saw that, too, and realized that were he among the men of their village, she might consider him as a mate.
Behind that was the Force. It shone from him just as it shone from her sisters or Mother Augwynne. And that was who she had been conversing with these last several minutes, she realized. The Force adept.
“You are unique in my experience,” she admitted. “It’s true that when you first arrived, I took you as an inferior. But now, I see you as a rare companion in the Force. An adept.”
“But that’s just it, Magash. I’m not rare.” He shook his head wryly. “Well, okay. Maybe I am now. But I wasn’t. In the group of Padawans I grew up with and trained with, there were easily as many males as females. From dozens of worlds and hundreds of cultures. When I set foot on your world, I became, if only for a short while, an inferior being. If I were born here or exiled here, I’d be a slave, just like all the other men of your tribe. I’d have no freedom. I’d be permitted no thought of channeling the For
ce, no matter how accomplished I might become if trained. I would never, on this world, reach my potential as a Force adept … or as a sentient being. I would be poorer for it … and the clan would be poorer for it. If that’s not evil, what is it?”
Her anger was swift and hot. She opened her mouth to retort, but she was struck silent by a vast, ageless sadness that seemed to open up in the Jedi’s eyes—as if he held within him the mingled sorrows of all past Jedi.
She fell back on the lesson learned from birth. “Men of our clan can’t channel the Force.”
“Have you allowed any of them to try? In any event, is that reason enough to enslave them?”
“They are little better than beasts,” she argued. “Taught to use the Force, they would only use it against one another—against us.”
“Have I used my ability against you?”
“You are not of this world. You’ve been trained in a spiritual discipline …”
“Fine. Then let them learn spiritual discipline and wisdom before you teach them how to wield the Force. Let them learn it from childhood. That’s the way all Jedi are taught—were taught. The first thing I learned at the feet of my Master was what sort of person a Jedi must be to accomplish good in life and to avoid falling to the dark side. Channeling the Force came after. If the Jedi could teach that, why couldn’t the Witches of Dathomir? What prevents it?”
He stepped around her and continued down the rocky slope.
She stood and looked after him, then past him at the demented wilderness beyond. Steam and smoke rose through deep vents opened up in the native rock by the cataclysm that had destroyed the Star Temple and the Infinity Gate. They trailed like wraiths over the scorched ground, and wound around the shards of stone and slag that were all that was left of the Nightsisters’ horrific weapon.
Suddenly Magash was not so eager to venture out there with this young-old Jedi. She was not afraid of the ghosts of this place, she told herself, but only angered by this man’s censure.
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