“He did what?” Den Dhur stood in the doorway to his quarters, his already large eyes looking huge in the wash of full-spectrum light from the room’s cleverly concealed indirect illumination.
“Kaj, this is Den Dhur. A member of our team.”
The short, stocky Sullustan came farther into the room, his eyes on the newcomer. “Oh, great. Sure. Let’s make polite introductions while every Imperial stormtrooper on Coruscant is out looking for him.”
Jax shook his head. “Den, didn’t you hear what I said?”
“Yeah, I heard what you—”
“Kaj is a potential Jedi,” said Jax patiently. “The Inquisitor was after him. He didn’t get him. That’s good news.”
“Good news? He’s a potential time bomb, Jax. Can’t you—” He cut off as I-Five’s metal hand came down on his shoulder.
“Den, it’s rude to talk over someone as if they weren’t there. I know—people do it to me all the time. What Jax is telling us is that the Emperor failed to get yet another valuable prize. For all his trying, he has failed to capture Jax, and now he’s failed to capture our new friend—” The droid tilted his head toward the boy, who blinked.
“Uh,” Kaj said. “Kajin. Kajin Savaros.”
Jax steered Kaj around the Ves Volette light sculpture that Dejah had installed in their living space and into the seating area. He sat him down in a formchair, then moved to sit on one corner of the couch, facing him. “Are you hungry, Kaj? Thirsty? It can’t be easy living out there on the street like that.”
“I’m starved actually. I’d stolen some stuff from the market, but the Inquisitor smoked me out before I could eat much of it.”
Jax started to rise, but I-Five waved him down. “Allow me. Laranth, would you also like some refreshment?”
The Twi’lek opened her mouth, glanced at the droid, then simply nodded and followed him over to the beverage dispenser.
“The Inquisitors are after you, too?” Kaj asked Jax, pulling his eyes from the light sculpture’s kinetic, ever-changing display. “Because you’re a Jedi?”
“That’s the official reason, I guess. It’s really a lot more complicated than that. What about you? How long have you been dodging Inquisitors?”
“Since I turned fifteen six weeks ago. That was when the Force really woke up in me. Before that, I was just another street kid who occasionally made strange things happen.”
“But you haven’t always lived on Coruscant.”
Kaj shook his head, his eyes lighting up at the sight of the plate of ghibli fruit and a tall glass of some sort of red tea that I-Five carried toward him on a tray. One of I-Five’s soothing concoctions, Jax figured. The boy accepted the food and took a healthy bite before answering Jax’s implied question.
“I got here about … oh, seven months ago, I guess. From M’haeli.” The expression on his face froze, and Jax could feel the cold, swift stab of grief that lay behind it. “My parents’ farm was destroyed by Imperial troops. My father was a local elder. They wanted to make an example of him—show that they were the leaders now. So they sacked the farm and drove us off it. Mother and Father put me on a transport to Coruscant, hoping …” He shrugged, swallowing a mouthful of fruit. “I’m not sure what they were hoping. My parents knew I was different. Since I was a baby I’d occasionally, like I said, make strange things happen—you know, levitate something to make it come to me, that sort of thing.” He drank most of the tea in a single gulp. “They knew the Jedi Temple was gone, but I think my mother was hoping I might find someone …” His eyes sought Jax’s, then moved to Laranth, who had come back into the room behind I-Five.
“Someone who would train you,” Jax finished.
“Train who to do what?” Dejah Duare swept into the room, unwinding a long, pale scarf of translucent golden synthsilk from her deep crimson hair, which blazed when the light hit it.
Jax felt his throat constrict and used a tendril of the Force to fend off the effects of Dejah’s sensual aura. At first he thought she must have caught something of the tenor of their discussion and that concern had caused an unconscious spike in her pheromones. Then he realized that her gaze was not on Kaj, but on Laranth.
The Twi’lek didn’t so much as twitch a muscle, but she disappeared from Jax’s sense of the Force almost as effectively as if she’d put on taozin-scale armor.
“I need to report to Yimmon,” she said. “Let me know what you decide, Jax. Good-bye, Kaj. May the Force be with you. You’ve found a good teacher.”
She glided past Dejah without so much as a glance. Jax opened his mouth to call after her, but couldn’t think of anything to say. He shrugged mentally; that was just Laranth’s way. He should be used to it by now.
“Report what to Yimmon?” Dejah asked coming farther into the room, settling the scarf about her shoulders. “Decide what? What’s she talking about?”
Den, who’d been hovering between anteroom and living area, scuttled quickly out of her way and took a seat next to Jax on the couch.
Only when she’d rounded the chair Kaj was sitting in did her eyes fall on him. She smiled, radiantly, her smile like a benediction.
Kaj’s eyes widened, then flicked toward Jax as if seeking instructions. “You’re a Zeltron,” he said with something like awe in his voice.
“Oh boy,” Den muttered.
Jax elbowed him. “Dejah, this is Kajin Savaros from M’haeli. He just had a narrow escape from an Inquisitor. Laranth and I were lucky enough to have witnessed Kaj’s powerful use of the Force in defeating that Inquisitor. Alone. Unarmed.”
Dejah drew in a deep breath and exhaled, her eyes meeting Kaj’s. “Remarkable. Then … are you a Jedi?”
“I want to be. I’m hoping Jax will teach me.”
Dejah’s regard swung to Jax. “That’s what you meant, then. Teach him to become a Jedi. You want to take him on as a Padawan. There, you see, it’s just like I-Five said: if the Jedi Order is to be rebuilt, you’ll have to have a hand in it. Surely you can see that now.”
“I wasn’t blind to it before,” said Jax gently. “I was just aware that there are other priorities.”
“What could be more important than that?” Dejah demanded. “What could be a more valuable thing for you to do than to train this young man?”
She was trying to make points with him by flattery, of course, Jax realized. Trying to convince him to stay out of Tuden Sal’s plottings. He smiled, warmed by the fact that she cared so much for him.
Den growled. “What a bunch of bilterscoot.”
I-Five stirred and made his throat-clearing sound. His sudden reappearance in the conversation startled Kaj. Jax saw the boy’s reaction as a sudden appearance of a multitude of Force spikes that darted out and receded as soon as he registered the source of the sound and movement.
Jax frowned. That had been an involuntary reflex; Kajin Savaros was wearing the Force awfully close to the surface. If it was that easy for Jax to sense him, how much easier would it be for an Inquisitor?
“While I agree with Dejah Duare in principle,” I-Five said, “it does seem to me that in light of the way Kaj came to be among us, we should be prepared to move him—and ourselves as well—if it becomes necessary.”
“Why would it become necessary?” asked Dejah, looking from Jax to the droid to Kaj.
“Maybe you didn’t hear Jax clearly, Dejah,” said Den acerbically. “Kajin, here, defeated an Inquisitor. Which probably means that the entire College of Sith flunkies is about to come down on our heads.”
Dejah swung around to look at Kaj. “But you killed him, surely?”
“I—I don’t know,” Kaj stammered, then looked to Jax. “Is there a way we can tell?”
Jax shook his head. “All I can tell you is that he wasn’t conscious when we left the area. I didn’t detect any Force threads from him at any rate.”
“Force threads?” repeated Kaj.
“Metaphorically speaking.”
“What difference does it make if he’s dead
?” Den asked sharply. “The Inquisitors aren’t loners. They stay connected to their boss. If you killed him, then he just became a big, fat blank spot on Vader’s sensors, and if he’s still alive, he’ll go scurrying back to his lord and master to make a full report.”
“He’s already a big, fat blank spot, Den,” Jax explained. “Laranth told me that the Inquisitors have started using some sort of taozin by-product to block detection.”
“How much danger do you think we’re in?” Dejah asked.
“No more than we were before. But I do need to start Kajin’s training.”
“Good,” said I-Five. “That should give you incentive to complete the lightsaber you’ve been working on. And, if we can find another crystal, you might even be able to retrofit the lightsaber you’re carrying now to emit a less sanguinary hue.”
Dejah laughed, the sound trilling and warm. “I resent that remark,” she said without rancor. “I find crimson a most appealing color … don’t you, Kajin?” She cocked her head pertly to one side, sending a thick lock of burgundy-colored hair over one eye.
The boy nodded mutely.
“Oh please …” Den slid off the couch and disappeared into his room. After a moment, I-Five followed him.
Jax looked at Kaj. The boy’s eyes were still on Dejah, but they seemed unfocused, vague. “You up for starting your career as a Padawan?” Jax asked.
The boy shook himself visibly. “I’m pretty tired. Is there someplace I could sleep for a while?”
Jax took Kaj to the sleep alcove in his own quarters and bedded him down, hoping he wouldn’t have any Force dreams. With power like Kajin Savaros had shown, a Force dream could wreak havoc on their homestead.
He’d soft-pedaled that just now, he realized, and he said nothing of his concern to Dejah when he returned to the living room to find her sitting in the chair Kaj had lately occupied.
“This is a good thing, isn’t it, Jax—this boy?” Her eyes were eloquent with the need to be reassured.
“It’s a very good thing. Once he learns to use his ability—well, I can only imagine the sort of things he’ll be able to do. You should have seen him, Dejah. He was nothing short of astounding. I’ve never seen anyone do what he did—just by instinct, I think. He handled repulsor energy as if it were malleable—clay in a sculptor’s hands.”
“Or light?” She smiled up at him, obviously thinking of her late partner, whose light sculptures had been the pride of Coruscant’s elite collectors, and to whom she’d been completely devoted.
That devotion was an unusual trait in a Zeltron. As a species they were naturally inclined to swift, passionate relationships, torrid love affairs, brief obsessions. Dejah was different, and Jax suspected at times that she had not completely transferred her devotion from Ves Volette to him—that beneath her air of sultry flirtation lurked a deeper current of mourning.
He shook the thought away. He was a Jedi. He didn’t want her to transfer her devotion to him. It was dangerous—to both of them. But he answered dutifully and with a smile, despite the chilling thought: “Like light. In fact, it looked as if he were molding light in his hands. Then he hurled it like a weapon. He manipulated the repulsor fields as if they were curtains made of this.” He moved closer to her chair to lift a corner of the synthsilk scarf that lay in soft folds over her shoulder.
She gazed up at him raptly, eyes bright, lips parted. A frisson of something indescribable tickled the back of Jax’s neck. He dropped the scarf. “And he’s only just turned fifteen,” he said quickly, stepping back from the chair and the female in it. “He has no training, no formal practice in how to control the Force. Only his instinct, and his instinct is apparently very good.”
“He must be very powerful,” Dejah murmured, lowering her eyes. “Yes. Yes, I can see. That much raw power would have to be trained, controlled, channeled.” She smiled again and shook her head, sending the light dancing through her hair. “You certainly have your work cut out for you, young Jedi Master.”
Jax flushed. “I’m not a Jedi Master. Barely a Jedi Knight. But you’re right—I do have my work cut out for me. I’m going to have to train Kajin Savaros to be a Jedi, whether I’m up to it or not.”
“What’s the matter with you?”
At the sound of the mechanical voice, Den turned to find that I-Five had entered his room on silent droid feet.
“What’s the matter with me? I was gonna ask what you thought was the matter with everybody else around here. Well, not everybody. Just Jax and—well—you, not to put too fine a point on it.”
“Ah. Of course there’s never anything wrong with you, is there? You’re Den Dhur, the journalist. You observe all and are touched by nothing.”
Well, that took the scathing prize. “Look, you mean-spirited bucket of bolts, I’ve never claimed to be untouched or completely objective or any of that nonsense. Any journalist who claims he’s impartial or uncaring or uninvolved has got hash for brains, is lying to himself and the Universal Mind, and is betraying the very purpose for which he became a journalist in the first place. A jaded journalist is a journalist who should frippin’ retire.” He paused to take a breath. “I should frippin’ retire.”
I-Five managed to make his stationary metal eyebrow ridges look as if they had arched in feigned surprise. “Really? I should say you’re too far from jaded for that. Something has obviously set you in a high dudgeon.”
Den stared at the droid, wondering if this was a golden opportunity to spill his guts and receive reassurance, or just a solid-brass opportunity to look like a complete idiot.
“It’s that Duare woman. She’s—she’s …”
“Yes, yes, I caught the childish mutterings. That’s nothing new. This is.”
Den crossed to his bed and threw himself onto it, folding his hands behind his head and staring up at the duracrete ceiling. It had, at some point in its existence, been painted a soothing shade of gray-green that reminded him of the color of the cavern ceilings back home on Sullust. He could be there, he realized for the thousandth time, reclining on a formcouch in his own cave, having a peaceful conversation with Eyar and not in enemy territory, hiding out in a dive, staring with nostalgia at a ceiling, and having a frustrating dialogue with a protocol droid.
What had he been thinking when he decided to stay here on Coruscant? Oh well, he knew what he’d been thinking—that I-Five would never leave Jax and that he would never leave I-Five. Jax was Five’s—what, adopted nephew? Adopted son? How twisted was that?
No more twisted, he supposed, than that his best friend in the whole universe was made of metal and had a synaptic grid network instead of a cerebral cortex.
“Well?” said his best friend in the whole universe, looking and sounding arch.
Den sat up. “In case you hadn’t noticed, our young Jedi has brought home a stray human. A potentially dangerous stray human. I don’t know if you caught the subtext of what Jax was saying—or, rather, trying not to say—but I did.”
“The boy is being sought by the Inquis—”
“Not that. We’re being sought by the Inquisitors. The boy is freakishly powerful and untrained.”
I-Five cocked his head to one side. “He’s a raw talent, yes.”
Den sighed. “Are you being intentionally obtuse, Five, or have you fried some capacitors? Jax and Laranth are very careful about when and how they use the Force—around our neighborhood, especially. Our houseguest apparently drew the Inquisitor to him through an injudicious use of the Force. Who’s to say he won’t suffer a similar breach of protocol here?”
“Jax.”
Den opened his mouth to protest that Jax was not omniscient, but I-Five raised a hand.
“Trust, Den. This whole team that Jax has gathered around him is based on trust. If Jax thinks he can train this boy, then I have to trust that he can.”
Den snorted. “Trust? You think you can trust Rhinann or Dejah or Tuden Sal?”
“No. Not even as far as I could throw them—which woul
d be a considerable distance, actually. But every one of us knows that we can trust Jax. He’s the core. The heart. All our threads connect to him. Of course, you also know that you can trust me; and I know that I can trust you. But in the final analysis, it’s our trust in Jax that holds us together.”
Den swung his legs off the bed and leaned closer to the droid, his mind reaching for something he’d been trying to articulate for some time.
“But can we trust him, Five? Can we trust him when she’s working on him? Reading his emotions, playing to them, maybe manipulating him?”
“By she you mean Dejah Duare, of course.”
“Who else? She’s a Zeltron, Five. I’m not saying she’s got ulterior motives when it comes to our Jedi. Her motives are perfectly clear. She wants him. I just think she’s a distraction. And under the circumstances, Jax can’t afford a distraction like that. We can’t afford a distraction like that.”
I-Five’s metal face was as unreadable as it was supposed to be. “Jax has noted, as have I, that Dejah does not seem to be a ‘normal’ Zeltron. She seems capable of a longer emotional attention span, for one thing. And in Jax’s estimation, capable of a surprising amount of loyalty. Jax would remind you that she could be back on Zeltros or some other world far removed from the Empire’s dark heart. She has chosen to remain here with us instead. He would also remind you that she has been very useful both in our relations with Pol Haus and with the various informants—willing or otherwise—that we have occasion to use.”
“I know what Jax would remind me of, thank you. I’m just surprised that you’re reminding me, too.”
“Are you? Well, something I will assuredly remind you of is that Dejah Duare agrees with you about Tuden Sal and his plan to terminate Emperor Palpatine. I’m surprised you haven’t seized on that as a means to forge an alliance with her.”
On that note the droid turned on his metal heel and exited the room, leaving Den to ponder his last words: Forge an alliance with Dejah Duare?
Could be useful, he supposed. Might even occasion him to undercut her obvious attempts to slip into a more intimate relationship with Jax.
Star Wars: Coruscant Nights III: Patterns of Force Page 8
