He felt it then, a sick trickle of dread coursing down his spine: the sudden eddy in the Force as someone nearby groped for the one who had just used it.
Kaj sensed purposeful movement in the crowded avenue before the produce vendor’s stall, saw people moving swiftly out of the way of something or someone who was in a great deal of haste. He bit back his fear and threw a desperate, sharp salvo of thought at the bin of daro root. Amplified by a charge of adrenaline, the blast hit the bin like a burst from a repulsor field. Daro roots exploded into the air and cascaded to the ground, rolling every which way. Patrons milling about the booth reacted haphazardly, sidestepping, ducking, bobbing, and weaving to get out of the way, slipping on splattered fruit and stumbling out into the overcrowded avenue.
Kaj used the distraction to scoop up two more of the precious gourd-shaped roots before he hurriedly withdrew, scurrying rodent-like along behind three or four stalls in the row before finally emerging at the corner into a cross-alley. He’d secreted the daro roots on his person by that time and glided into the flow of foot traffic, straightening his cloak.
He smiled grimly, a strange mixture of relief and exhilaration flooding him with warmth. Once again he had barely avoided detection; once again he had eluded the Emperor’s minions. He had a swift vision of himself as a much-sought-after prize. A shadowy rogue Force-sensitive dancing on the fringes of society, always one step ahead of the Inquisitorius and its frustrated operatives. He could almost see himself leaping between the sky-raking buildings, flitting along ledges—an elusive silhouette. A powerful possessor of the Force.
A Jedi.
A sudden, almost overwhelming surge of anger arose in Kaj’s breast to swamp his relief and drown his self-congratulatory daydreams. Once, in a more enlightened age, he would have become a Jedi and been instructed in the ways of the Force, honing his relatively newborn skills—skills that had fully awakened only this past year. But the Jedi Temple lay in ruins, and the Order had been scattered all across the galaxy—if there were any left alive. He alternately hoped for and despaired of that … and raged at the universe and the Force itself.
He gritted his teeth, trying to suppress the seething anger that burned through his veins.
No. There are no Jedi left, he told himself. I’m alone. Alone.
Alone with this power that grew inside him, demanding to be used. He both gloried in it and was terrified of it. Especially in moments like these, when resentful rage burned in him. A rage that had no target at which to vent itself—except, perhaps, the Inquisitors. He hated and feared those shadowy beings, but it was not safe to attract them—not safe to target them with his anger. So Kaj’s rage remained directionless, aimed at no one—and everyone. He held it tightly to him, because to give in to it, to allow it to escape his careful control, would be as good as sending up a giant flare that said to the Inquisitors, Come get me!
Kaj stepped out of the street as a hover-lorry approached, sucking himself tightly up against a stained and pitted support girder that had been erected to shore up the ruined façade of what had once been a gaming parlor.
A tug of awareness made itself felt through the coils of control he struggled to maintain. He tilted his head up and glanced across the way. A man—a human—was staring at him from the dark, crooked doorway of the building opposite.
Before he could think better of it, Kaj erased the man’s memory of him, using the Force to slide into the other’s mind and rearrange his thoughts. He’d never attempted such a thing before, but it was easier by far than he’d expected it to be.
He scooted sideways and insinuated himself into a mixed group of aliens as the hover-lorry blocked his view of the staring man. With just a little more effort, he knew he could have made the other step out in front of the vehicle. It would have been easy.
Too easy.
He shuddered, put his head down, and immersed himself in the crowd.
Den Dhur stumbled sleepily into the central room of the conapt, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. When his vision cleared, the sight that met him stopped him dead in his tracks. In frozen tableau he saw Jax, I-Five, and a strange Sakiyan standing just inside the open front doorway. I-Five was pointing at the Sakiyan as if delivering a lecture … which was what one might think if one didn’t know about the specialized lasers built into each of the droid’s forefingers.
Den knew about them, however.
He shook himself more thoroughly awake, resisting the temptation to rub his eyes a second time. Had I-Five fried a circuit? And what the frip was Jax thinking? This guy could be a potential customer—this was no way to treat a potential customer.
“Uh,” Den said. “Guys? Who’s our new friend?”
The droid’s photoreceptors blinked in a gesture so alive that Den batted his own eyes before he could resist the urge.
Jax cleared his throat. “I-Five?”
The droid made a sound like a human sigh and lowered his arm. “I’ve obviously been around organics too long—I’ve picked up some bad habits. Such as holding grudges.”
“Okay …” Jax said. “May I ask why you’re holding a grudge against our guest?”
“Yeah,” Den agreed, bustling farther into the room. “In fact, why don’t we invite our guest to come in and sit down, get him a drink, and ask him to explain what he might need from us?”
“What I need, first and foremost,” said the Sakiyan as he moved to sit uneasily on the utilitarian couch that graced one gray wall, “is to apologize to I-Five.”
Den stared at Tuden Sal. “You what?”
“Apparently,” Jax said, “Tuden Sal and I-Five have some kind of history.”
The Jedi had perched on the arm of the couch, from which vantage point he could watch both the Sakiyan and I-Five. Wise of him, Den thought. He crossed the room to hand their guest the glass of water he’d just drawn from the tap. The Sakiyan stared at the glass as if he’d never seen anything like it before, and Den had a momentary panic attack, trying to remember if Sakiyans had some allergy to or other problem with water.
But then Tuden Sal accepted the glass, issuing a wheezy laugh as he did so. “History indeed—or the lack of it, in I-Five’s case. It seems rather odd to me, too, I must admit. I’m still not quite used to the idea that I-Five, is—for want of a better term—self-aware.”
“Self-aware,” said I-Five drily, “is a perfectly good term, thank you.”
Tuden Sal nodded. “Yes. I’d forgotten how perfectly good.” He looked directly at the droid, who stood facing him—probably, Den thought, about two subroutines away from firing up his lasers again.
The Sakiyan lowered his eyes and took a moment to straighten the folds of the calf-length coat he wore over his once elegant tunic. Then he looked up at I-Five again. “I’m sorry, I-Five, for what I did to you. I was … shortsighted and selfish.”
“You can add to that disloyal, disreputable, unscrupulous, and cruel,” I-Five told him. “You were, in a word, wrong. You can have no idea what your action ultimately cost the Jedi and the Republic.”
The Sakiyan closed his deep-set eyes momentarily, veiling his thoughts. “No. I don’t believe I can.”
Den pulled himself up into the window embrasure adjacent to the couch. He favored this spot because it gave him the advantage of height—a rare perspective for a native of Sullust—and allowed him to study other people’s faces from a proper angle. “This is all very cozy,” he said, letting his short legs dangle over the windowsill, “but would one of you mind clarifying why this apology is necessary?”
I-Five canted his head pointedly at Tuden Sal, who cleared his throat and rearranged his coat yet again. “Some years ago,” he said, “a … a friend asked me to make sure I-Five and some data he was carrying got to the Jedi Temple here on Coruscant.”
Den didn’t need the Force to see the effect of those words on Jax. The young Jedi stiffened.
“My father. My father, Lorn Pavan, asked you to get I-Five to the Jedi.”
Tuden Sal nodded
. “Yes. I didn’t realize at the time that he … that it was something in the nature of a dying wish. Since then, I’ve come to appreciate that Lorn trusted me with the task because he expected not to live much longer. Unfortunately, he was correct in that expectation.”
“Why didn’t you carry out that wish?” Jax asked, his voice hushed.
Den glanced at I-Five. Though he gave no outward indication of tension or increased interest, his friend knew that the droid had been waiting for a resolution to this mystery for over two decades.
The Sakiyan spread his hands in the universal sign of bewilderment. “Quite simply, I saw a profit to be made from the droid, and with the hubris that often comes with success, I figured I could kill two mynocks with one blast. I had intended to deliver the holocron I-Five was carrying to the Jedi as Lorn had asked, but I first planned on having the droid mindwiped and reprogrammed as a bodyguard for use during my dealings with Black Sun. He had certain … modifications I had never seen in any protocol droid—not in any droid, come to it. Modifications I hadn’t even realized were possible.”
“Yet you failed to note the most significant of them,” said I-Five.
“I did,” Sal admitted. “Frankly, I couldn’t believe what Lorn told me about you. I wish now that I had not been so … shortsighted.”
“Traitorous,” I-Five said simultaneously.
Den had to admit that I-Five’s characterization was closer to what he’d been thinking. How could someone behave that treacherously toward a supposed friend? Den hoped he’d never become so mercenary or so jaded that he failed to put the welfare of his friends or his world before his own short-term benefits.
Tuden Sal sighed. “I can’t deny it. But I did plan on getting the holocron to the Temple. I did.”
“The best of intentions, I’ve found,” said the droid, “are by themselves seldom enough to topple tyrants.”
There came a silence, which was verging on uncomfortable when Jax asked, “Then what happened?”
“I had my fingers in several pies at the time—not all of them legal. I sent I-Five to be reprogrammed, then returned to my business offices and discovered that a competitor had instigated a hostile takeover of my companies—every last one of them. I went from riches to rags virtually overnight. Quite simply, I didn’t get the holocron to the Jedi Council because I no longer had the means to do so. I was under siege. I had to go into hiding and liquidate most of my remaining holdings and property—including I-Five, whom I traded to a spice smuggler with his memories wiped.”
He paused to regard the droid with obvious respect. “Or so I had thought. I had spared no expense, ordered the most thorough quantum cleansing available. Apparently I-Five possesses subroutines and resources that are proof even to that.”
“It took me a very long time,” the droid said with harsh emphasis on the last three words, “but I was at last able to recover my full memory.”
The Sakiyan shook his head. “That should not have been possible. And yet, here you are. And here am I. Unlike you, I have never managed to claw my way back. Eventually, I gave up trying. Especially once I discovered that the takeover of my businesses was not, shall we say, an idea original to my competitor. I confronted him, some years down the line, and learned that he had been bank-rolled by then-Senator Palpatine himself. My ‘friend’ was essentially acting as a proxy, though I daresay he was allowed to keep a good deal of what he took.”
“Why?” Jax asked. “What did you have that the Emperor wanted?”
“I suspect I was simply an easy target,” Sal said, bitterness dripping from each word. “My financial circumstances made me vulnerable, and Palpatine, while by no means in desperate straits, like all politicians preferred to use someone else’s money to finance his governmental takeover.” He smiled a hard, painful smile. “You know what they say: ‘It’s not personal—’ ”
“ ‘—it’s just business,’ ” Den finished. Yes, they’d all heard those words before.
“And I have, I must admit, used, if not those very words, certainly the spirit behind them, more than once. But I was never stupid enough to cross the government.” He shrugged. “Perhaps it was that very hesitancy on my part that made me seem easy prey. Whatever the reason, the new regime ruined me. Worse than that, they blacklisted me and made it impossible for me to recover. Even Black Sun wouldn’t do business with me, which has implications I’m reluctant to think about.” He hesitated, then added, “It wasn’t just the businesses, though the gods of misfortune know how devastating that was. No, I also lost my family—my mate, my children.”
“Ah,” said I-Five. “Ironic, isn’t it, how fickle people can be. Even those you expect to be loyal.”
“It wasn’t fickleness,” Tuden Sal said with some asperity. “It was fear. I didn’t just lose my visibility, I lost the ability to dare visibility. There is still a bounty on my head, I’m sure of it, though I’ve never been able to confirm it. When someone attempted to kidnap my youngest child, I sent my family offworld. I had no choice.”
“And you’ve been living down here, lying low?” Jax shook his head. “I hope you weren’t hoping to hide out with us. I’ve got a price on my head, too. And like you, I don’t know why.”
“I’m through lying low,” announced the Sakiyan. “I’m fighting back. I’ve joined the Whiplash, which is how I came to find you.” He nodded at Jax.
“You joined the Whiplash?” Jax repeated. “For the purpose of finding I-Five?”
Den well understood the skepticism in Jax’s voice. The Whiplash—the underground organization of which Den and his companions were a part—was dedicated to undermining the Empire’s doings and rescuing its victims. It was an organization that thrived on secrecy to the extent that its operatives often didn’t communicate openly for long periods of time, were informed of missions on a need-to-know basis, and did not admit new “members” without having first subjected them to stiff scrutiny.
“No,” the Sakiyan answered. “For the purpose of fighting the Empire. Finding you and I-Five was serendipitous. I had given up on finding you. In fact, I was convinced you were dead and the droid had been broken up for parts by some yokel who had no idea what he was holding. I would never have found you if my first assignment with the Whiplash hadn’t introduced me to Laranth Tarak.”
Jax reacted visibly to the mention of the Twi’lek’s name, but before he could do much more than gape like a Sullustan Fluke fish, I-Five interjected: “Which begs the question—why have you found us?”
The Sakiyan was suddenly quivering with unwholesome excitement. Or at least the glint in his pale eyes made it seem unwholesome to Den.
“I have a mission for I-Five. One for which his special modifications—specifically his concealed weaponry and his lack of certain … standard inhibitions—would suit him ideally.”
“And that would be?” asked I-Five.
“You, my old friend,” said the Sakiyan, smiling for the first time, “would make the ideal assassin.”
“You want I-Five to assassinate somebody?” Jax shook his head. “That’s not the sort of mission the Whiplash usually involves itself in. We protect people, extricate them from unhealthy situations, find them safe passage offworld. We don’t indulge people’s vendettas.”
“This could be seen as something in the nature of a personal mission,” Sal admitted. “Though I assure you it will serve all lovers of freedom, including the Jedi, in ways you can’t imagine. With I-Five’s modifications and the anonymity that comes with being a droid … well, there couldn’t be a more perfect liquidator.”
“Now, just a moment here.” Den raised his hands and slid down from the window embrasure, noting as he did that the wan light falling through it from outside—a weak trickle of half-dead sunlight from above and artificial illumination from below—made his shadow on the ferrocrete floor loom many times his real height. He was glad of that, because he needed to feel bigger just now. Tuden Sal’s last words had turned his insides to quivering gel. “
I-Five, an assassin? What kind of sick nonsense is that? He may be just an anonymous automaton to you, but to me he’s … he’s …”
Den hesitated, realizing that he had never articulated what I-Five was to him. He also realized that the droid’s ocular units were trained right on him. “He’s my friend, okay? And Jax’s friend. And we don’t want to see him put in harm’s way with the callous disregard you’d show a—a …”
“A machine?” finished I-Five with a tone of voice that in an organic would have been accompanied by a raised eyebrow.
“Yeah. He admitted it himself not a minute ago, Five. You’re not a programmable toy. We can’t just pump you full of code and send you into a dangerous situation as if you were some expendable piece of equipment. You have volition. You’re a person.”
Den felt those words in that moment as perhaps he never had before, knowing to the soles of his boots that he would not—could not—send I-Five into a potentially no-win situation alone. A swift chill cascaded down from the crown of his head. And just what did that imply? That he would volunteer to go along?
I-Five’s gleaming metal face was, as always, expressionless. “Yes,” the droid said, “as you point out, I have volition. Which means that I have both the capacity and the right to determine, in consultation with the team, of course”—he tilted his head toward Jax—“what missions I will or will not undertake. But …” He hesitated; something he rarely, if ever, did. “Your concern is noted, Den, and the sentiment behind it mutual.”
I-Five then shifted his attention to Tuden Sal so suddenly that Den felt as if a physical support had been knocked from under him.
“Obviously before we can entertain the idea of such a mission,” I-Five told the Sakiyan, “we need to understand it more fully and weigh its potential for good or ill. Who, precisely, do you want me to assassinate?”
Tuden Sal smiled, and there was an almost mischievous glint in his eye now. “Allow me to test your knowledge of arcane historical esoterica. Have you ever heard of the Monarchomechs?”
Star Wars: Coruscant Nights III: Patterns of Force Page 3
