Jax smiled grimly. So far so good.
To Probus Tesla, the Cerean’s consciousness was a thing of wonder. With one cortex effectively dormant and the other in a dreaming state, the Inquisitor was able to get a real “look” into the rebel’s mind. It was not the mind of a Force-user, certainly, but it was complex, with layers of ideation that overlapped like the currents of the deep.
Moving among the thought-eddies was like trying to glimpse the activity within a series of translucent bubbles that bobbed and moved with the current. The glimpses were tantalizing, and Tesla was certain that if he could but break one of the bubbles open and spill its contents—something he was sure the surgical procedure would facilitate—he would understand the workings of this exquisite mind.
Then, Lord Vader would realize Tesla’s power and potential.
On the heels of this exhilarating thought came a chill stab of doubt: What if the Dark Lord sees that power and potential as a threat to his own position? What then? Perhaps being clever around Darth Vader is not the best of strategies.
Tesla felt Vader’s summons even as he struggled with this dark epiphany. It was not the sort of summons he was used to. Instead of the usual steely command, what he received was a burst of intense awareness—a strange, dense admixture of disbelief, cold rage, excitement … and puzzlement. But all that was gone in an instant as if a door had slammed shut on the flow of sensation.
What was left was a visual image: Jax Pavan.
Tesla staggered mentally and physically, putting out a hand to steady himself on the side of Yimmon’s bed.
No. It couldn’t be. Pavan was dead. Tesla had seen the ship ripped apart by tidal forces. He had felt the sudden silence from the Jedi. The sudden stillness. He sensed nothing, now, that he recognized as a Jedi Force signature.
He wrenched his mind from its contact with Thi Xon Yimmon and stumbled to a comlink, suddenly aware of the bleating of the intruder alert. He shut down the alarm to the medbay and hailed the command center. “What’s happened?”
“There’s an intruder, Inquisitor,” the officer of the watch said, telling him what he already knew.
“What intruder? How did he get in? Where’s he heading?”
“I don’t know how he got in, sir. He simply … appeared on our monitors. He seems to be heading for the detention block.”
Tesla smiled. Yes, of course he was heading for the detention block. Because he thought that’s where his colleague was. The Inquisitor shot a swift glance at the unconscious Cerean, shut down the comlink, and left the medbay, careful to lock it down at the exterior hatch.
He rounded the corner into the main corridor and found himself face-to-face with a tall apprentice Inquisitor. Renefra Ren, of course. Who else would be so arrogant as to forsake protocol to follow personal promptings?
“What are you doing here, Renefra?” Tesla snarled. “You’re supposed to attend our Master under such circumstances, not follow me around. Come, the prisoner is secure and Lord Vader has summoned me.”
He strode past his apprentice and moved down the hallway, realizing belatedly that the wretched creature hadn’t moved. He swung back.
“Are you deaf? Or do you somehow think you can ingratiate yourself with our Master by hovering about his prisoner? Jax Pavan is on the station.”
“Yes,” said Renefra Ren in someone else’s voice. “He is.”
As Tesla registered the alienness of the voice, two things happened: Renefra Ren seemed to shimmer and shrink, and the turbolift to his right opened, revealing an armed stormtrooper, an R2 unit, and a Sullustan. The stormtrooper stepped out of the lift and took aim—pointing his blaster rifle right at Tesla’s head.
“Back against the wall,” the stormtrooper said in a female voice.
“Sacha, look out!” the Sullustan cried. “There’re two of them!”
The white helm swiveled toward the unknown Inquisitor. Tesla acted reflexively, sweeping his left hand up and out. He Force-wrenched the rifle out of the fake trooper’s hands, lifted her off her feet, and threw her against the wall of the lift.
“No!”
The roar of fear and rage hit Tesla’s ears at the same time the emotions behind it struck his consciousness. An accompanying wave of Force power slammed into him and blew him heels-over-head down the corridor. As he surged to his feet, he heard the sizzle of a lightsaber activating, saw the clear aqua beam of light, and knew that the approaching blur must be a Jedi—must be, in fact, Jax Pavan.
Tesla flung himself up and over the Jedi, careening along the ceiling before dropping back to his feet opposite the lift. A swift glance showed that the woman in the stormtrooper disguise was still out. The Sullustan was kneeling next to her.
The droid … where had the droid gone? If it was really Imperial, it would be sending a call for assistance. If it was with these rebels …
Tesla drew his own weapon and turned to face his attacker. The indigo robes were gone now, and there was no question that it was Jax Pavan he faced.
“This is impossible,” Tesla said. “You’re … you can’t be here. You’re—”
“Dead?” the Jedi asked, then shook his head. “Sorry, no.”
“You were up on the detention level.”
“No.” Pavan’s face lit in a slow smile. “He was.”
Tesla shifted his eyes momentarily to where the Jedi pointed. A second Jax Pavan—identical to the first—stood in the intersection of two corridors, lightsaber gleaming in his hand. The instant of distraction was enough; when Tesla turned back, the real Jedi was mere paces away, his lightsaber already in deadly motion.
Tesla had neither heard nor sensed the movement, and the realization both galled and chilled. He brought his Sith blade up to meet the Jedi weapon, barely in time. The two blades clashed in a shriek of energy.
“I don’t have time for this, Tesla,” Pavan growled. He glanced up over the Inquisitor’s shoulder, that same taunting smile on his face, inviting his adversary to look.
Tesla refused the invitation. He didn’t know how the Jedi had done this, but there could be only one Jedi and only one Jedi blade.
He smiled at Pavan. “Clever. But, of course, he can’t be real. You’re the last Jedi, and you have the last Jedi lightsaber.”
He swung his blade down and around, whipping Pavan’s weapon aside and shoving him backward. Pavan stumbled back a step. Tesla, grinning fiercely, continued his own blade’s arc, sweeping it up and over, letting the Force augment the power of the downward stroke that would cleave Pavan in two …
Tesla’s moment of triumph was interrupted by the sound of a second lightsaber, activating so close he could feel static crawling on his skin. He spun about … and was stunned to realize it was a red blade—a Sith blade—sweeping toward him.
His last fleeting emotion was puzzlement; his last fragment of thought was, Impossible …
Forty-Eight
Tesla was dead.
The agent of his demise stood over him with a Sith lightsaber in her hands, her dark, silver-streaked hair damp with sweat, her body still encased in a stormtrooper’s armor.
Her pale gaze moved from the body to the blade. She deactivated it, bringing a strained silence to the corridor. Then she looked up at Jax. “Wow,” she said. “That was—effective.”
Jax glanced down at the dead Inquisitor. The maroon cowling around his neck was a smoking ruin. “Help me get him out of sight.”
“Here!” Den called from the medbay access corridor. He’d armed himself with the discarded blaster rifle. “Five’s got the doors open.”
Sacha and Jax dragged the corpse as far as the outer hatch of the access, but then Sacha stopped him from stepping into the short corridor and waved a handheld device at the cams over the doors.
“Just in case someone’s watching,” she said.
They entered the corridor, dragging Tesla’s body between them. I-Five—in his R2 persona—had indeed opened the medbay doors, then disappeared. Jax and Sacha deposited their bur
den just within the medbay, but out of sight of the door.
“Den, lock the medbay doors and stand by,” Jax said tersely, then followed Sacha in search of the droid. They found him talking to the computer in control of Thi Xon Yimmon’s autonomic processes.
Jax quashed a surge of emotion at the sight of the Whiplash leader—that this powerful intellect had been reduced to a sleeping hulk. He was struck anew by the horror of what Vader had meant to do.
“Can you wake him?” he asked I-Five.
“I’ve stopped the flow of anesthetic and programmed a mild stimulant. Beyond that—”
“Can we move him like this?” Sacha asked. “When Vader realizes he’s chasing a phantom, this is the first place he’ll go.”
“He already knows,” Jax said grimly. “Which means he’s going to be casting around for me. I’ve managed to blur my Force signature, but it won’t take him long to figure it out. He’s too powerful. We need to get Yimmon out of here now.”
“Jax …” The voice, a mere whisper, came from Thi Xon Yimmon’s lips. “Spirit willing. Body …” He raised a shaking hand, focused his eyes on it, then let it drop.
“We have to move you now,” Jax told the Cerean. “Can you stand?”
“He won’t need to,” I-Five said. He brought an antigrav medical gurney over to Yimmon’s bedside. “Given the circumstances, what could be more natural than for the Inquisitor on duty to order the prisoner moved to safety?”
Thi Xon Yimmon was a big man. It took Jax, Sacha, and I-Five to heave him onto the gurney.
“What ship did you bring and where is it?” Jax asked Sacha.
“The Laranth—well, she’s the Raptor now. Five stole their codes. She’s in the commercial docking area one slip away from the external doors to this lovely place.”
Jax groaned aloud. “That’s where I started the decoy.”
“Yeah, I know. We saw it.”
Jax made a clutch decision. Reaching out with a dart of Force sense, he sought Darth Vader … and found him—on the same level and heading right for them. As soon as the connection was made, he knew he’d given up any hope of cover. Vader was alone—the stormtroopers and Inquisitors were sweeping up from the lower levels of the station, presumably driving any intruders in their path up into the northern hemisphere.
Had Vader not communicated the deception to them?
“Okay,” Jax said. “We’re going to have to take an alternative route out of here. Do you know where there are other exits into the main station?”
“Sure,” said Sacha. “First thing we did when we got here—plot all the access points.”
“If you go back the way you came, you’re going to run into a horde of stormtroopers and Inquisitors.”
She shrugged, rattling her body armor. “Fine. We’ll keep to the upper levels.”
“Good. Whatever I do, you need to get Yimmon to your ship and get him out of here. Understood?”
Sacha and Den both stared at him.
“You’re not coming with us?” Den asked.
“I may not be able to. For one thing, I left the starfighter up in the shuttle bay. I’d really rather Vader not get his hands on it.”
“And we’d really rather he not get his hands on you,” said Den.
Jax closed his eyes. They had no idea. “I won’t let him.”
Moments later, an apprentice Inquisitor, a stormtrooper, and a droid exited the medbay with their two prisoners and got into the nearest turbolift. They headed up. Three levels later, they got off the lift and headed toward the commercial sector of the station. With the bulk of the Imperial forces concentrated below, there were few enemy soldiers on these levels and, though they’d been alerted, they’d be looking for a Jedi interloper, not a security detachment encumbered with two prisoners.
The Empire’s penchant for paranoid secrecy was a two-edged blade. No one they passed in the corridors accorded them more than a glance.
Nor would Darth Vader, Jax thought … except that there was a Jedi with them.
As they neared a junction approximately halfway to the outer perimeter of the Imperial facility, Jax peeled off the Inquisitor’s robe and draped it over the gurney.
“Jax,” Den asked, “what are you doing?”
Jax didn’t answer. Instead he put a hand on I-Five’s turret. “Get them back to the ship, Five. Get them out of here.”
Then he sprinted away down the cross-corridor.
I-Five uttered a single, long note that sounded to Den like a moan. The Sullustan shivered. He watched Jax disappear down the corridor, feeling as if his personal store of courage was disappearing right long with him. He shook himself, kept his feet moving. He couldn’t think like that. They had a mission to carry out.
He glanced up over his shoulder at Sacha—for all the good it did. Encased in her white plastoid armor, she was all but invisible. But he knew she was thinking the same thing: Keep moving. Keep to the plan … such as it was. He had no idea what I-Five was thinking, but knew it must be all the droid could do not to take off after Jax. He didn’t, though. He just kept moving along—steering the gurney.
It struck Den as absurdly funny, at that moment, how blithely they had waltzed in here expecting to break Yimmon out. If Jax hadn’t been there, they would have come face-to-face with that Inquisitor. The surprise would have been on them.
He started to laugh and found, once he’d got going, that he couldn’t stop.
“What is it?” Sacha murmured and I-Five uttered a series of sharp tweets that Den was pretty sure meant “shut up.”
He felt his hysteria subsiding. “I-I-I … What were we thinking? If it hadn’t been for Jax—” He clamped his mouth shut as they passed a trio of Imperials moving briskly in the opposite direction.
“Huh,” Sacha said softly when the corridor was empty again. “I see what you mean.”
They went as far as they could on that level, then Sacha herded them all into a turbolift for the journey down toward the docking level.
“You don’t intend to try to exit the way we came in?” I-Five asked her. “Chances are that empty checkpoint has been discovered.”
“Yeah. I was thinking the same thing. Yimmon, how’re you feeling right about now? Think you can stand?”
In answer, the Cerean sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the gurney. “I believe I can.” He slid off the gurney, holding on to it for support.
Sacha stopped the lift one level above the docking bays but kept the doors closed.
Den looked up into Yimmon’s face. His color wasn’t good, and he was sweating. He moved so that the larger man could put a hand on his shoulder.
“What d’you think?” he asked. “Try a step?”
The Cerean tried two. Wobbly, but not dangerously so.
“Great.” Sacha scooped up the Inquisitor’s robe and handed it to him. “Try this on. Sorry we don’t have one in your size.”
Yimmon smiled and did as instructed. The robe was a bit tight through the shoulders, but it was long enough, and the draped cowl—tailored to afford room for an Elomin’s horns—covered his large cranium adequately, though it left his chin exposed.
Sacha pulled out the Sith lightsaber and put it into Yimmon’s hands. “You’d scare me.”
“I scare myself,” Yimmon said gamely. He put a hand on Den’s shoulder. The Sullustan grunted as the Cerean’s weight shifted.
“We ready?” Sacha asked.
Den nodded. “Let’s go.”
Sacha opened the doors and they moved out, heading for one of the exits that gave onto the civilian sector of the station. The gate guards gave them a once-over, seemed to find them of little interest.
Just as they crossed the threshold into the civilian side of the station, the stormtrooper on the right spoke to Sacha.
“Do you know if they caught the infiltrator?”
She turned and I-Five came to the rescue yet again, throwing his voice so that it seemed to be coming from inside the helmet. “Not yet. But it’s o
nly a matter of time.”
“Heard a rumor it was a Jedi.”
“A Jedi? The Jedi are all dead. Probably just one of those resistance crazies.”
“Yeah. That makes more sense, I guess.”
“Enough chatter,” the tall Inquisitor said. “We have an appointment to keep.” He gave Den a sharp shove that sent him stumbling into the civilian sector, then followed in a swish of indigo robes.
Sacha and I-Five moved crisply after him.
Den supposed he should relax once they’d moved out of sight of the checkpoint and into one of the commercial areas, but he didn’t. His heart hammered in his chest, his mouth felt dry as a desert, and he was certain that any second an alarm would be raised. If the stormtroopers they’d anesthetized had been found and revived, they’d remember having seen a Sullustan at their checkpoint.
But no alarm went up on this side of the station, and they made their way back down to the cargo bays without mishap. Indeed, people seemed to keep scrupulously out of their way.
I-Five now shifted to be their advance guard—moving so swiftly that it was hard for Den, with his short legs, to keep up. He was panting by the time they got back to the ship and followed the little droid up the loading ramp.
Den finally relaxed when they were aboard and behind sealed doors—well, relatively relaxed. It wasn’t as if sealed doors meant squat if Vader came for them, though Den suspected the Dark Lord was too focused on Jax to spare a thought for possible accomplices.
He felt a moment of absolutely hideous relief at the notion, and clamped down on it so hard his jaws spasmed.
Sacha peeled off her armor and headed for the bridge to prep for departure. After a brief argument about his physical condition—which Yimmon won, hands down—the Cerean followed her.
Den made his way back to engineering to make sure everything there was battened down. He was surprised to find the engineering bay empty. No I-Five. He checked the tiny crew commons, the cabins.
He stopped just short of opening up the hold to call the bridge. “Hey, Sacha, is I-Five up there with you?”
The Last Jedi Page 37
