He stood and found Kajin’s gaze on him.
“Stay here,” Jax instructed. “We don’t want to advertise your presence, okay?”
The boy nodded and returned to his contemplations, bobbing slightly higher above the mat.
Jax shook his head as he went to the living room—Kaj made it look so easy. It had never been that easy for him.
Den had answered the door by the time he reached the outer room, admitting Pol Haus. The Zabrak police prefect looked positively grim. The emotion behind the expression on his face was so intense that Jax realized it was what had pulled him from his meditations. Haus was wrapped in dark Force threads that, though as insubstantial as smoke, were troublingly sinister and seemed to be in constant motion. They went nowhere; they simply wound themselves around the prefect in a visible analog for the tension that showed in his face as pale gray lines bracketing his mouth.
The prefect stepped through the conapt doorway and let the door glide shut behind him before he spoke.
“We’ve got a situation,” he said without preamble.
Jax exchanged glances with Den. “A situation?” he prompted.
The Zabrak fixed him with a steady gaze. His eyes, usually distracted and unfocused, were as sharp as the pointy end of a vibrosword. This, Jax realized, was the real Pol Haus—the man who lived beneath the carefully cultivated air of shambling disorganization.
“One of your lot has murdered an Inquisitor.”
“One of my lot?”
Haus tipped his horned head to one side. “C’mon, kid. Do I have to spell it out? A Jedi—if not officially, then a pretty powerful Force-sensitive. Seems he or she fried this Inquisitor with the energy siphoned from a couple of badly aligned repulsor fields. Is that in your repertoire?”
“Oh frip,” muttered Den.
Jax very nearly took a step backward but, sensing no hostility from the Zabrak, stood his ground. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. “Of course that’s not in my repertoire. I’m not—”
“Save it, Pavan. I don’t have time to let you blow smoke at me, and you don’t want to make me mad at you. Look, I’m not going to give you up to the Inquisitorius, if that’s what you’re wondering, so let’s just see if we can’t work past this momentary awkwardness and get to the heart of the matter.”
That had, in fact, been what Jax had been wondering—if he was looking a threat in the face. Now, reaching out toward Haus with tendrils of Force, he wasn’t so sure.
“Jax …” Den shifted nervously from foot to foot, glancing up at the Jedi’s face. Apparently not liking what he saw there, he swore again, this time more volubly.
“No,” Jax said, in answer to Haus. “No, it’s not in my repertoire. I don’t have that kind of ability.”
Pol Haus nodded. “That’s sort of what I figured. The perp was described to me as a rogue Force-sensitive, dangerous and out of control. It was suggested to me that I do everything in my power, move every resource at my disposal, to run this rampaging adept to ground.”
“Suggested by …?” Den asked.
Haus kept his gaze on Jax as he answered Den’s question. “Darth Vader.”
Den made an incoherent sound somewhere between a groan and a growl. Jax blinked and gave Haus’s mantle of Force threads a more careful look. Yes, they made more sense now. The prefect had been touched by the emissary of the dark side. The touch still stained his personal aura—and obviously disturbed him a great deal.
“So that’s why I’m here,” the prefect continued. “If a Jedi or some rogue Force-user offed this Inquisitor, you’re the best person to help me find them before they assassinate another one.”
Jax gestured at the room behind him. “Why don’t you come in and have a seat and we’ll discuss it?”
Out of the corner of his eye he could see the expression on the Sullustan’s face. Dumbfounded didn’t even begin to cover it. Jax nudged Den into motion as he turned to follow the prefect into the living room.
What are you doing? Den mouthed at him.
Jax waved the journalist back, mouthing in return, Get I-Five and Dejah, and nodding toward the workstation alcove. Den scurried away while Jax led the prefect into the living room.
Jax knew that Den had no idea what he was doing. Truth be told, Jax himself wasn’t sure what he was doing, but he was painfully aware that the object of Pol Haus’s search was sitting not six meters away, separated from them by a meager plasticrete wall—a wall that would prove to be no barrier at all should Kaj panic and invoke his connection to the Force.
Prefect Haus would learn then mighty fast where the rogue Force-sensitive was hiding. Assuming that he survived the discovery …
eight
“How did you know I was a Jedi?” Jax stood where the kinetic light from Ves Volette’s sculpture played across his face, obscuring his expression from the police prefect, who paced up and down the center of the living room, his dingy topcoat swirling about his legs. “Who—or what—gave me away?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“No big proof. More like a body of evidence. A lot of little things. The way your companions and associates react to you. The way you carry yourself. The way you observe what’s going on around you. The way you react to it. The way you seem to disappear from my radar sometimes when I know you’re there. The way your hand hovers over your left hip when you sense danger. The speed of your reactions …” Haus shrugged. “Someone sent a bounty hunter after you—a Sith-trained bounty hunter. You came back alive; she didn’t.”
Jax knew Haus was talking about Aurra Sing. He had wondered if the Sith lightsaber he now carried hadn’t belonged to her—the fact that he’d gotten it from an anonymous source just prior to his confrontation with Sing surely couldn’t have been a coincidence. He didn’t ask how Haus had known about the connection. He was the police prefect; it was his business to know that sort of thing. Jax just hadn’t expected that he would know it. Apparently he had underestimated Pol Haus.
Haus continued, “When someone like that shows up on your turf you find out why as quickly and quietly as you can. I knew she was trailing a Jedi—a young Jedi who matched your description. I called in a few favors, got a list of Jedi who still haven’t been run down. Guess whose name was on there.” He looked at Jax with a cocked eyebrow. “Did you want to be found? ’Cause I’m thinking you sure didn’t go to a whole lot of trouble to make yourself scarce.”
Now that he’d laid it out, it did seem to Jax that he’d done a remarkably poor job of covering his tracks. He wondered what Haus had divined from how his companions reacted to him. He glanced from Den to Rhinann to Dejah to I-Five. He wasn’t going to ask that just now.
Instead he asked, “Vader came to you directly?”
Haus snorted. “Get serious. He sent one of his goons—oh, excuse me—one of his Inquisitors to fetch me. He made sure the meeting took place on his turf and that I was suitably impressed with his security measures and clout.”
Jax stiffened. “You were at Vader’s headquarters?” Images flashed through his head of tracking devices and furtive tails. Judging from the expression on Rhinann’s and Den’s faces, their thoughts had taken the same path. Dejah, bless her, seemed not to have caught the sinister implications of the prefect’s words. Her lips were parted, her eyes bright, as if he’d just told her she’d been awarded a prize.
I-Five, correctly interpreting Jax’s concern, said, “He’s clean. Any tracking devices would have pinged the sensor net at the entrance to the mews.”
Haus, his gaze never leaving Jax’s face, said, “Don’t worry. I’m a professional. I went back to my own headquarters and had myself carefully and completely debugged—and yes, there were some stowaways on my person. They’re gone now and, no, I don’t really give an armored rat’s behind what Vader thinks of me removing them. What I do care about,” he added, “is that a rogue Force-user—a truly rogue Force-user—might be a little overexcited by his
ability to take out Inquisitors. He might develop a taste for it. He might strike again. Which would be very bad for all of us.”
Jax felt Kaj’s presence on the other side of the door to his room, felt the chill spikes of his sudden fear. He split his attention, sending the youth calming thoughts.
“So,” Haus continued, “I’m sure it comes as no surprise, Pavan, that I need someone of your unique ability to help me find the assassin.”
Haus’s words fell into the room like a gigantic boulder into a placid stream. Kaj’s reaction hit Jax in a cold wave of terror. Apparently Dejah sensed it, too, for she rose from her seat, her crimson eyes wide.
“Jax …,” she murmured, but anything else she might have said was interrupted by a loud thud from the next room and the unmistakable sound of a Sontaran song ball being abused.
Pol Haus frowned, turning to look in the direction of the open doorway. “You have more houseguests?”
“Oh no,” said Dejah looking apologetic. “It’s my whisperkit droid. I’ve forgotten to deactivate it—again,” she added with charming self-deprecation. “I do that so often, you really should remind me, Jax, not to leave it playing with its toys. I’ll just go turn it off.”
She swept across the room to Jax’s door and disappeared inside. Her voice came back to them lightly—only Jax caught the undertone of agitation. “Oh, there you are, you poor thing. Come down from there now. Everything’s just fine. Did that nasty song ball scare you?”
They heard the soft chime of the Sontaran meditation device, then Dejah said, “Good droid. Come to Dejah.”
Both Den and Rhinann had turned a pale shade of blue-gray and looked about to leap out of their respective skins. I-Five was as impenetrable as a droid was supposed to be.
Jax felt laughter born of relief bubbling up from his throat. He pushed it back down. Without doubt, Dejah was the only one among them who could have walked into that room just then with the least chance of being felled by the frightened boy’s power. Dejah was, at that moment, the only one Kajin trusted. Jax almost shook his head in bemusement: a Zeltron empath accomplishing what even a Jedi Knight most likely could not.
He turned back to Pol Haus. “You were saying you wanted our help finding the assassin. What do you intend to do with him if we catch him?”
It was not Jax’s imagination that everyone in the room held his breath.
After a moment of close scrutiny, the prefect said slowly, deliberately, “Turning him over to Vader is out of the question. He killed an Inquisitor, so he’s clearly not a Sith or a Sith sympathizer. That means his abilities could be used by the Jedi.”
“Prefect,” Jax said quietly, “I don’t know that there are any other Jedi on Coruscant—or anywhere else for that matter.”
Haus lowered his horned head and gave Jax an almost sly look out of the corners of his eyes. “I have it on good authority that there are other Jedi about. Can’t tell you where or who, but I’m convinced they’re there. And this powerful an adept shouldn’t be lost to them, I’m thinking.”
Den leaned forward in his window casement. “So you’d—what—help smuggle him offworld? Go underground? What? I mean, Vader would expect you to turn the killer in, right?”
“Yes, he would. Which is why when I tell him that the killer died while we were in pursuit of him—fell into the materials hopper of a fabber at the spaceport, say—he would most likely believe me.”
Jax blinked and met the prefect’s golden eyes. He swept him again with his Force sense—which he was convinced the Zabrak knew he was doing—and again saw the swirling ribbons of smoky darkness encircling him. They were dimmer now, less active, but they were still there.
Darth Vader’s residual touch, or something else? Something dark that emanated from Pol Haus himself?
Jax knew the prefect was asking for trust, for cooperation, but he also knew the consequences if those were mistakenly given. He couldn’t take that chance, even though Haus seemed to have disinterred a great deal of information about their activities—at least insofar as they concerned Aurra Sing.
Did he know these things, or was he merely guessing, hoping Jax would reveal more?
“You’ll understand if I’m reluctant to jump into this,” Jax said. “You’re talking about a potential Jedi, and I’ve only your word that you mean this person no harm.”
The Zabrak nodded. “Yes, though I might be able to get someone else’s word. Someone you trust. And besides, I’ve shown that I mean you no harm, Jedi. I’ve suspected that you were more than you made yourself out to be for some time. I could have run to Vader and said, Hey, check out this bunch. They’ve got connections on their connections, and their leader seems to always land on his feet no matter who’s trying to stomp on his toes. I haven’t done that.”
“Maybe because we’re too valuable to you,” suggested Den. “Up till now, anyway. Now you’ve got a chance to maybe look like a big hero to His Dark Lordliness. And maybe if we help you find this … this person, you’ll just hand him over to Vader, figuring there’s nothing we can do without putting our own lives in jeopardy. And if we don’t help you find him, maybe you just hand over Jax instead.”
That thought had also occurred to Jax and filled him with a sinking dread. To have to leave Coruscant, to run away from all he wanted to accomplish, away from the chance at finding out the truth about his father’s death …
“Oh, I don’t believe Pol Haus would do anything so dastardly.”
All eyes turned to where Dejah Duare stood in the doorway of Jax’s room, gleaming like a red sunset. She crossed back to the seating area, wafting so close to the prefect that her translucent gowns brushed his disreputable duster.
“As he noted himself,” she continued, “he’s had reason to suspect our situation here for some time and he’s done nothing. The plan he suggests might even satisfy Darth Vader and make it even less likely that we’ll be discovered. I feel we should consider his job offer.”
“Dejah Duare is absolutely right,” Haus said, smiling crookedly. “I have no reason to want to disband this group or sever my ties with it. You get results that my forces can’t. Besides, if I were to betray the Inquisitor killer to Darth Vader, you’d just try to rescue him. With all due respect, you put your lives in danger every day of the year. Your lives are in danger at this very moment. Things move out there in the dark,” he added, sweeping a broad gesture toward the city outside Den’s window casement. “You know that as well as I do. And some of them are looking for you.”
“How kind of you to remind us,” said I-Five, speaking for the first time. The sound of his voice made Den start visibly and nearly topple from his window ledge.
The Zabrak prefect laughed. “I’ve had opportunities to help them find you. I haven’t. I won’t. Your choice on whether you believe that or not.”
Jax glanced at Dejah. She could sense the emotional subtext of Haus’s message; what did she think? She gave the slightest nod, the merest glimmer of a smile.
“All right,” Jax said. “We’ll help you find your Force-user. But if he’s as powerful as Vader says he is, then he may be impossible to find … unless he wants to be found.”
The unseen listener in Jax’s quarters coiled and uncoiled, still teetering on the edge of terror.
“Understood.” The prefect turned on his heel and started for the front door, the job interview apparently at an end.
Jax moved with him, side by side, to the door and saw him out into the hall. “Tell me, Prefect,” he said, “what about my companions’ reactions hinted to you that I was a Jedi?”
Pol Haus turned to look at him, a wry almost-smile on his lips. “You’re the youngest of them, but they all look to you for direction. Even the Gray Paladin did when she was here. A question is asked, they all watch your face as if the answer is there. And though you are also the most soft-spoken, the least verbose—” A glance back through the door. “—you’re the one who makes and speaks the decisions. I can think of no one of your age wh
o would be accorded that respect if he or she were not a Jedi.”
“Oh,” Jax said, showing some of the eloquence for which he was not famed. “I see.”
“So do I. But relax. Most people don’t notice things like that. Just avid students of sentient nature like me.” He gave a sloppy half salute with one hand and turned to go.
“Whose word?”
“What?” The prefect arrested his shambling gait and turned to look at Jax over his shoulder.
“Whose word would you give that we’d trust?”
“Now, that would be promising what I might not be able to deliver. Or it might be revealing an important source of information. Or it might be betraying a friend. Or all or none of the above. Have your droid patch into the ‘Net in about an hour. I’ll be sending you what I’ve got on the murder from the Imperial Security drones.”
Jax nodded, then watched the police prefect make his way down the corridor, looking nothing like what he was. There had been a time when Jax Pavan had regarded Pol Haus as a disorganized, easily befuddled Imperial functionary. Now he wasn’t sure what to make of him.
nine
“He’s gone,” Jax said as he reentered the living room. “It’s all right, Kaj, you can come out.”
A moment later the boy appeared, looking highly spooked.
Jax smiled at him reassuringly. “It looks as if we may have another ally.”
“I’d withhold judgment on that,” advised Rhinann. “You can never be too careful.”
“Actually, you can,” I-Five said. “And you can miss opportunities that way.”
Still keeping tabs on Kaj through the Force, Jax turned his objective attention to the droid. “And is this an opportunity or a risk?”
“Aren’t they two sides of the same coin? Opportunity rarely comes without risk.”
“Oh, stop it, Five,” said Den. “You sound like a carnival oracle droid. Opportunity, my aunt Freema’s dewlaps. All this is, is one more person—one more person with a link to His Evilness—who knows Jax is a Jedi. I see no particular upside to that. I think we should relocate immediately.”
Star Wars: Coruscant Nights III: Patterns of Force Page 10
