At first, she had returned the Sith lightsaber to its hiding place. That had lasted only hours, though, and she’d brought it out again, fascinated by it. She’d propped it up beside the miisai tree in the wall niche, where it would be invisible to anyone standing in the doorway. She picked it up at intervals, turning it in her hand. The hilt seemed to fit her hand well, which made her wonder if it might have been a woman’s weapon.
In a rare moment in which she’d been alone on the vessel while Den and I-Five oversaw the loading of cargo, she’d timidly activated it … and turned it off seconds later. The power that flowed from the thing—that seemed to connect her hand, her arm, her entire body to it—had been overwhelming.
And unsettling.
And exhilarating.
The truly odd thing, in her mind, was that she’d felt no evil from it. Power, yes, but no evil. No darkness. Puzzling, that. She wondered if there was some deficit in her own mishmash of virtues that made her incapable of sensing evil.
No. She’d been in proximity to Inquisitors. She knew evil when she felt it.
Maybe, as Jax Pavan’s ownership of the weapon indicated, the Force was agnostic about such things. The difference was in the person who wielded the weapon. She had heard Force-users argue endlessly on the subject: Was there indeed a dichotomy of intention? Or was the Force merely raw power, the distillation of the cosmic Will, and as such above sentient concepts of right and wrong? Or was it beneficent, requiring the venal desires of sentients to use it to dark purpose?
The next time Sacha activated the lightsaber, she held her ground, though her hands trembled and her bones vibrated and her brain itched. She held it, moved with it—albeit gingerly—and finally ventured out into the larger engineering bay to pretend at fighting with it. She loved the way it balanced in her hand. It felt more natural there than any blaster she’d ever owned.
So caught up was she in her dance that she barely registered the sound of the cargo ramp clamping shut. Only when she heard voices in the passageway beyond engineering did she hastily deactivate the lightsaber.
She tucked it into the front of her jacket just in time to hear I-Five say, “Peculiar.”
Two seconds later he and Den appeared in the engineering hatchway.
“What’s peculiar?” Den was asking.
“Yeah,” Sacha echoed, leaning nonchalantly against a circuit panel. “What’s peculiar?”
I-Five fixed her with his pit droid oculus. “I heard something from within this chamber just before we arrived. It sounded like a lightsaber.”
Sacha laughed, knowing her face was flushed.
“What’s so funny?” Den asked, blinking at her.
Sacha recovered her balance, gesturing at I-Five. “Him, talking to me. I can’t get used to the idea of Ducky with a genius-class brain.”
“Ducky doesn’t have a genius-class brain,” I-Five said. “The genius-class brain has Ducky.”
“Yeah. Right.” Sacha cleared her throat. “We ready to fly?”
“Ready as we’ll ever be,” Den said. He wiped his hands on his coverall. “Which is to say, not.”
Sacha patted the Sullustan on the shoulder as she swung out of engineering to head for her cabin. “Ah, we’ll be fine. When we step off this ship at Kantaros Station we’ll look like we were born and raised in Black Sun. I’m gonna go make sure my cabin’s buttoned down, then I’ll join you on the bridge.”
She went aft, whistling, feeling the pit droid’s monocular gaze burning into her back until the turn in the corridor. Inside Jax’s cabin, she quickly returned the lightsaber to its hiding place and stroked the miisai’s boughs, cursing her carelessness.
“Swiftbird, don’t do stupid stuff like that as a matter of habit. Deal?”
She sketched a salute at her reflection in the miisai’s container, then hastened to the bridge.
She’d no more than dropped into the copilot’s seat when the communications array pinged. “Incoming,” she said, peering at the display. Then she gave Den a startled glance. “From Coruscant.”
I-Five activated the unit. He was careful, Sacha noted, to establish one-way visual communication—they would see their “caller” if an image was sent, but would not be seen.
The holographic display showed a Zabrak man and a Togruta woman. Sacha recognized them, but their setting was obscured—probably with purpose, in case someone else was sampling the message. Not likely, but it could happen.
“Jax,” the man said, “Jax, it’s Pol Haus and Sheel Mafeen.”
I-Five activated the visuals from their end, then nodded at Den, who swallowed and said, “Hi, Pol. Uh, Jax isn’t with us at the moment. We … uh, how bad are things there? Is it … is it as bad as you thought?”
“Yes and no,” the Zabrak said with a glance at his companion. “The Whiplash leadership is gone, except for us. Tuden Sal … died rather heroically, as it happens. But not, as I first supposed, during the assassination attempt on Palpatine. There are still lower-level operatives around, though. People who have supported the effort for years but who, thankfully, weren’t inside Sal’s plot. That’s the good news—there’s some remnant left of Whiplash, after all. Though not much. And we were able to retrieve all of the data from HQ and destroy the physical evidence.”
“I take it that means there’s more bad news—apart from Sal and the others being dead.”
Haus nodded and Sheel Mafeen said, “Sal was the one who tipped Vader off that Yimmon was leaving Coruscant.”
Sacha felt as if all the blood had drained out of her face. “I don’t understand. He put Whiplash, the resistance, and the Ranger operation on Toprawa in danger … for what?”
“Revenge,” the Togruta said, her voice unsteady. “He wanted the Emperor dead that badly.”
Haus added: “To be fair to Sal, we don’t think he meant for Yimmon to be captured or for anyone to be killed. We think he meant only to force Yimmon and Jax into deep hiding so they couldn’t interfere with his assassination plot. So I tried to interfere with it. What I didn’t realize was that when Yimmon was captured, Sal had no way out. He had to go through with it.”
“That,” said I-Five, “explains a lot.”
Sacha found herself nodding. “Like why Vader’s knowledge of Far Ranger’s route was only approximate.”
“Exactly,” the droid said. “If it had been a Toprawan operative, he would have known exactly where to intercept us, which he didn’t—apparently until he sensed Jax and Laranth through the Force.”
“We thought you should know,” said Haus. “Tell Jax he can trust his allies on Toprawa.”
“If we ever see him again,” Den murmured.
Forty
Jax sat cross-legged beneath the apex of the cairn, eyes open, hand and mind cradling the planes and vertices of the Sith Holocron. He felt the Force rise up within him, quivering in the twilight that wrapped around him like a soft cloak. With questing tendrils of sense he prodded at the artifact’s locks—following the sigils on the incised planes.
He trembled as the liquid warmth of blood ran from the Holocron to pool in the palm of his hand before cascading to the rock on which he sat.
The Holocron responded just as he had suspected it would—as he followed the tracery of arcane symbols with his senses, the caps on the vertices turned, one after the other, the one at the apex last of all.
The Holocron opened like a blossom and revealed the data crystal within.
The soft, musical chanting that had filled the ruined chamber ceased. Jax lowered his left hand, looking up to meet the gazes of the three women who knelt with him, their hands joined above the Holocron, their blood mingled with his on its etched surfaces.
They withdrew their hands and Duala made quick work of binding first Augwynne Djo’s wounds, then Magash’s. Magash returned the favor, wrapping her sister’s hand before turning her attention to Jax.
Jax barely felt her ministrations. His entire focus was on the open fountain of knowledge in his hand; he couldn
’t have looked away if he’d tried. The Holocron had him, and was pouring its Force-sealed contents into his mind. A thousand lights pulsed; a thousand voices whispered, a thousand tendrils of the Force attached themselves to his spirit—to his mind.
He was drowning in the flood of knowledge, and he could not look away.
“Is it readable, Jedi?”
Duala Aidu’s voice came to him as if from a great distance.
Readable? He almost laughed. The physical crystal, he had no doubt, could be inserted into a holoreader, granting the user access to some of the more mundane information it contained. But this river of knowledge was meant only for the Force-user who had opened it—a Force-user Darth Ramage would have assumed must be aligned with the dark side to even contemplate the act he believed necessary to open his cache.
Jax doubted Ramage could have imagined that a group of Force-users would freely cooperate and commingle their lifeblood to that end.
“He is reading it, child,” Augwynne Djo murmured. She leaned toward him, staring intently into his face.
Jax saw her through a veil of amber light, her own Force energies seeming to form a bright halo around her. He wanted to thank her, but he could neither speak nor move. He concentrated on the flow of images, ideas, experiments. Surely there must be a way of choosing the sort of information that might be of benefit to him. Or at least of sorting through it to winnow it out.
Fear niggled at him. What if he couldn’t understand what he was being fed? What if there was too much? What if there was, after all, nothing of use to him?
Pain shot through his head.
Breathe!
The command seemed to come from within and without simultaneously.
No fear. No ignorance. No chaos. Only the Force. Breathe.
He breathed, opening himself to the knowledge, letting it flow through him, over him, into him, without attempting to sort it or filter it or impede it. He was a bottomless pool being filled with water. He offered no resistance to the flood.
With the suddenness of a door slamming shut, the flow of information ceased. Jax knew a moment of silent, dark stillness before he lost consciousness.
Forty-One
“This gonna work?” Den asked, his eyes on the wall of floating rock that dominated the vista from the ship’s forward viewport.
They’d entered hyperspace near Mandalore and exited in the Bothan system, flying the ident codes of the Raptor. Now they skirted the Fervse’dra asteroid field, looking for the best point of entry.
“Do you want the odds?” I-Five asked. He was back in his augmented I-5YQ chassis, manually copiloting the ship and feeding navigational data directly to the navicomp from his own matrix via his right index finger.
“No, thanks,” Den said, “I’ll pass. It’d probably just make me squirm.”
“As you wish.”
The droid’s optics blinked and a holographic tactical display of the asteroid field appeared over the control console.
“According to my calculations, Kantaros Station will be there.” A blossom of red bloomed amid the field of tumbling rock, which was called out in blue-gray on the display.
“And we are here,” Sacha said from the pilot’s seat. She nodded at the bright spot of amber on the outer rim of the field, matching speed with the asteroids.
“There are a number of ways to approach this,” said I-Five. “Laterally, from the front, from the rear …”
“I say we skim underneath the field,” Sacha said, “until we’re in hailing distance of the station, then come up from below and behind. Less chance of getting creamed by a big one that way. If we’re traveling with the flow of debris, it’ll be easier to stay out of its way. Or …” She pointed at a third point of light that had just appeared on the screen. “We could follow that in.”
That was a large Toydarian freighter scuttling along the top of the asteroid field like a fat beetle.
“I’d be willing to bet,” she said, “that they’ve done this before. And if we follow in their wake, we’ll have the benefit of their navigator’s familiarity with the protocols.”
“What if they haven’t done this before?” Den asked.
She shrugged and threw him a gamine grin. “They’ll clear the way for us either way. Ship that size has gotta have repulsor shields brawny enough to shove a few rocks out of its path.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Boy, you are quite the little pessimist, aren’t you?”
Den glared at her in mock outrage. “Who’re you calling little?”
She laughed. “If they don’t have strong enough repulsors, they’ll still clear the rocks out of our way. I’m not gonna get so close that we’ll get skragged if they blow, okay?”
“Promise?”
“Promise. So what’ll it be, boys?” she asked, putting both hands firmly on the steering yoke. “We going in after ’em?”
“Aye,” said I-Five.
“Sure,” Den said. “Why not?”
Sacha handled the ship like a pro. It moved gracefully and deftly under her hands. It was almost, Den thought, like having Jax at the helm. Who knew, maybe this particular Podracer had some Force sensitivity. That might account for her success in the sport.
Whatever the reason, at the helm of the Laranth she was nothing short of amazing, weaving balletically through the upper strata of asteroids to settle in behind the Toydarian, where she kept the perfect distance and aspect. There was no sense of tension, no uncertainty. It was as if she did this every day of her life.
“The Toydarian just started sending,” I-Five said.
“Then so should we,” Sacha told him.
“Aye, Captain.” The droid began sending their own set of ident codes—or rather the ones he had lifted from the real Raptor.
In a matter of moments, they were hailed by the docking authority and their ident codes acknowledged. Their amber locator blip was joined by a bright green one buried in the depths of the asteroid field. It overlay I-Five’s predicted location almost exactly.
Den practically held his breath as they followed the homing beacon to Kantaros Station. The very sight of the Imperial craft that were synced with the installation made his dewlaps sweat. But they glided serenely in abaft the larger freighter, their only communication with the station coming in the form of a docking bay assignment in the “southern hemisphere” of the station.
“Not bad,” Sacha said, turning the helm over to the automated docking beacon. “Small size does have its advantages.”
“As I’ve often said,” murmured Den.
“Chiefly that we get to dock closer to the heart of the operation.”
“Uh-huh—and then what?”
“Then,” I-Five said, “we blend in, get the lay of the land, do some eavesdropping, and start snooping around.”
“Blend in,” Den repeated, eyeing the droid skeptically. “You expect to blend in—in that getup?”
To say I-Five looked peculiar—and menacing—would be to understate the case. He was a gleaming nightmare—one-third protocol droid, one-third Nemesis assassinator, and one-third who knew what. One arm seemed almost normal—it wasn’t—and the other, in pristine white, looked like a rocket launcher, which was not too far from the truth. One leg was silver, one was gold; both were augmented with antigravity repulsors. The long, helmetlike cowling that formed the back of his head was encrusted with short, conical spikes—he could kill someone simply by falling over backward on them.
Diplomacy with an evil twist.
The droid had all sorts of surprises up his metal sleeves, Den was sure. During their recent stay on Toprawa, he’d acquired the ability to move from chassis to chassis on his own and, therefore, work on his “upgrades” by himself. Den had lost control—and even knowledge—of the modifications from that time on. I-Five might have battle droid parts installed beneath his metal skin for all the Sullustan knew.
“I think he’ll be brilliant,” Sacha said. “We’ll all be brilliant. We’ll look
so Black Sunny that no one will have any reason to question us.”
“Black Sunny?” Den repeated.
“You know—scruffy, but well heeled; hard-boiled, but eccentric. Colorful.”
Den peered at her. She was colorful, all right—from her formfitting black-and-red coverall to the artful streaks of silver she had introduced into her shoulder-length hair. She wore a blaster on each hip, carried a hold-out pistol in her right boot, and had a vibroblade hidden in her left. Only she knew what else she’d secreted in the inner pockets of her flight jacket.
Den was no less “eccentric” in dress—she’d made sure of that. He was covered from neck to toes in black synthskin. He was also armed to the teeth—all Black Sun operatives were armed to the teeth.
They looked as much like pirates as Jax had.
Den experienced a sharp pang of loss, wondering where Jax was now, and what he was doing.
And if they’d ever see him again.
Forty-Two
The place Jax Pavan stood was dark. He had the impression of a vast space and reached out with the Force to augment his eyes. Gradually, the place came to light—literally—as soft areas of multihued ambience bloomed in the darkness. These vague lights fanned out away from him on both sides in orderly rows that rose to a great height. They were too regular to be stars.
He knew—and had loved—this place. It was the great library at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. It no longer existed.
He swept his gaze over the darkened walls with their spectral lights—lights that were growing in brilliance with every passing moment. They were the “books” lining the library shelves—dataspheres, memory chips, holocrons, light scrolls, even old books composed of bound flimsi and ancient scrolls of flowing text on plant fiber.
He had been standing in the broad doorway of the vast chamber; now he stepped forward toward the center. Among the ranks of lights, some grew brighter. Here, an amber halo surrounded a datasphere; there, a datascroll gleamed like a tube of palest gold. He wondered at their contents … and found himself many meters in the stygian air, reaching for a datascroll, knowing it contained a treatise on Force projections.
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