Star Wars - Coruscant Nights 02 - Street of Shadows

by Michael Reaves

  Or so she thought. . .

  The attack, when it came, was thus doubly surprising—first that anyone would dare attack her at all, and second because the Force had not warned her of it. Fortunately, that enigmatic energy was not her only ally. Even though the misbegotten Jedi flooz Aayla Secura had cut the antenna of her biocomputer implant, it still was capable of sensing danger at close range. That was what warned her now, barely in time, of the Trandoshan with the shiv who was lunging at her from behind.

  Sing sidestepped, knowing from long practice just how much movement was necessary to allow the thrust to miss. The sonic blade slipped by less than a centimeter from her alabaster skin; she could feel the breeze it generated. As the big reptilian stumbled, thrown off-balance by missing his target, Sing caught him in an armlock and snapped his elbow.

  40 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows True to his heritage, the scaly creature did not lose more jagannath points by screaming. Internalizing the pain, he hissed in anger. But he could not keep from gasping as Sing swung the broken arm up, dis-locating his shoulder joint, and simultaneously used her leg to sweep her assailant off his feet. The Trandoshan hit the rocky floor of the shaft with a sickly thud. Snatching the shiv from his nerveless hand, Sing dropped to one knee beside him and prepared to drive the blade into his throat.

  "Enough."

  A life-sized three-dimensional image appeared before her. It was the projection of a human: a man sheathed in what appeared to be black armor, wearing a helmet of strange design and enfolded in a black cloak and tabard. At first sight Sing thought that everything about the image was unrelievedly black.

  Then she saw he wore a small chest panel with blinking red and green lights. Doubtless some form of biosystem monitor allowing for externalized connection to recharge critical life-support components.

  She recognized the figure, of course. One could hardly live in the developed portion of the galaxy, or even on its fringes, and not have heard of Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith. His origins were shrouded in mystery and rife with rumor: He was a centuries-old Sith Lord, reanimated by the sheer force of the Emperor's will; he was the last rogue Jedi; he was a genetically optimized clone, the ultimate war-

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  rior; he was a cyborg, some kind of specialized battle droid given human form.

  Sing had no idea which if any of the rumors might be true, although Vader's alleged unequaled proficiency with a lightsaber would seem to argue for the first or second possibility. Her gaze automatically went to where the traditional Jedi weapon was attached to his belt. A sensible sentient would have been immediately intimidated by the Dark Lord's appearance. Aurra Sing smiled; a lazy, feral smile.

  Vader's image regarded her in silence for a moment; then it spoke. The sound, like the image, was slightly distorted from its long journey through hy-perspace.

  "Your reflexes are quite impressive, bounty hunter.

  You have temporarily cost me the use of a trained assassin."

  Sing spared a glance at the Trandoshan, still lying on the floor and whimpering softly as he tried to snap his broken arm back into its shoulder socket. Her gaze returned to the ebon image. "You set this one on me? Why?"

  Vader nodded once. "Just so. I was curious to see if you were still at your peak after your time in the mines. I now—"

  "You're wise," she interrupted the projection, "to stay in a safe haven parsecs away. This one"—she nudged the reptiloid with her foot—"just served to keep me from falling asleep after a day's work. Were you here in the flesh I'd—"

  42 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows Vader raised a black-gloved hand, and Sing paused.

  "I have a job for you," the Dark Lord continued.

  "Do it well, and I'll personally commute your sentence. Do it poorly, and you'll be back here breathing zenium dust until it eats you alive from the inside out.

  Are you interested?"

  Sing was aware that the other prisoners nearby had halted their activities and were looking on in fascination. She also saw that three of her more brutish fellow miners were scowling in her direction. She could feel their resentment at this unexpected offer of clemency for her.

  "You offer me a choice a fool could make."

  "I didn't think you would require much convincing."

  Their agreement concluded, at that point she expected the image to implode and vanish. She was somewhat surprised when it did not. Instead, the sim-ulacrum stood silently, watching.

  She turned to face the three prisoners she had noticed a moment earlier. Two were human; the third was a Shistavanen. All three continued to glare enviously at her, each waiting for one of the others to make the first move. Sing smiled. It was plain now why Vader had not ended the transmission.

  The test wasn't over yet.

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  six

  "Anakin Skywalker? The Anakin Skywalker? The Jedi hero of the Clone Wars?"

  "You sound skeptical," Jax told Den.

  "I am skeptical. In fact," Den added, "I'd say skeptical isn't nearly strong enough. I think I'll have to go with incredulous."

  "I'm inclined to agree," Laranth put in from nearby. "All the Jedi—present company excepted—are dead."

  Jax met her gaze evenly. "As you said, present company excepted. We've managed to stay alive all these months. Why couldn't he have as well?"

  I-Five responded before the Twi'lek could. "Along with Obi-Wan Kenobi and Mace Windu, Anakin Skywalker was one of the most storied heroes of the Republic. Their battles and missions are the stuff of legend, or so my research would suggest. Ever since the end of the Clone Wars, there have been sightings of them reported from the Outer Rim all the way to the Tingel Arm. Not one has ever been confirmed."

  44 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows Jax didn't reply immediately. He could certainly understand the others' reservations. He would have been equally dubious — had he not experienced the absolute certainty that often came with revelations granted by the Force. In this case, there was simply no room for doubt.

  He told them as much. "There's no way I can convince you of it, I know. But knowledge gained through the Force can't be discounted. If I had to choose between the evidence of my senses and that which is revealed to me through my connection with the Force, I'd go with the Force every time."

  Den shrugged. "Since I make it a point never to argue with zealots, let's just say I believe in your belief in it. But even assuming it to be true—and I say this with all due respect—so what? I mean, it would make an interesting ribbon for the holos, but since the only way you can prove the truth of it is to reveal yourself as a Jedi, it all strikes me as a little counter-productive."

  "I'm not suggesting that. In fact, I'm not sure what I'm suggesting, if anything. It just hit me, just now.

  You couldn't say we were friends, since I don't think Anakin ever let anyone get close enough to justify the term. But he relied on me enough to trust me with something, once."

  "A nugget of pyronium," Rhinann recalled. "You showed it to us before."

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  "Oh yeah," Den mused. "The rainbow rock. Goes through all the colors. Very nice. Does it do anything besides shine?"

  "Indeed it does," I-Five said. "What makes refined pyronium so rare and valuable is that its ability to absorb energy of varying quanta is extraordinarily high.

  If left exposed to any frequency of electromagnetic radiation of sufficient intensity, its atomic structure stores it. It is theorized that when the quantum shells are filled, the additional energy is somehow shunted into a correlative hyperspatial lattice that..."

  Jax, grinning, reached behind the droid's neck as if to flip the master deactivation toggle at the base of the latter's metal skull. The droid glared at him and stepped away. "My mistake," he said. "For a brief moment I was laboring under the delusion that I was dealing with beings possessing a sense of curiosity.

  How could I have been so naive?"
>
  "Don't get your circuits in a twist," Den chided his friend. "I was actually faintly interested in what you were saying." He returned his attention to Jax. "I can't help but wonder if this latest Force flash of yours isn't somehow connected to the Caamasi holocaust. Of course, you're the one with your veins all crammed full of little Force critters, so you'd know better than me."

  Before Jax or I-Five could respond, Laranth, who had been standing by the door, turned suddenly toward it. One hand went to a pistol hilt as she said quietly, "We have a visitor."

  46 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows Conversation ceased as everyone turned toward the door. They were in the front room of the domicile, from which the smaller separate sleeping quarters branched off. Jax edged quietly a step closer to the doorway, reaching out with the Force as he did so, letting its threads pass through walls and floors as easily as neutrinos through cosmic dust. Laranth was right: he could sense someone on the stairs. Female, advancing with a light, confident step. He wasn't able to ascertain if she was human, but she was definitely humanoid, and young.

  He perceived no malice or hint of dangerous agenda in her purpose, but that was not conclusive proof of harmlessness. She might be very skilled at blocking her thoughts and feelings. He glanced at Laranth, received a slight nod that confirmed his assessment of the situation. Both relaxed slightly, and Jax activated the door panel. It slid open to reveal the figure of a young, humanoid female. She looked slightly startled as the portal hissed to one side without her having touched the external call pad. Jax stared. She was fully humanoid, all right.

  She was also the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

  Her skin was cardinal red. Her thick, wavy hair was darker, a shade closer to burgundy. The irises of her wide-open eyes were a shocking scarlet. Not much shorter than him, she wore a one-piece garment that at its densest seemed to be about two molecules Michael Reaves 47

  thick. Despite bordering on vapor, the material swirled and eddied with vivid colors.

  Almost without his volition, the Force reached out and wrapped about her to sample her aura. What he felt was a sensation of rust, a dolorous mental shade very much at odds with her vibrant appearance. She peered into the room, and her tone was cautiously hopeful as she spoke.

  "Please tell me one of you is Jax Pavan."

  The Carrack light cruiser made a reasonably steady landing on the pad at Westport. Captain Typho was among the first to disembark. It would have been a pleasant enough voyage, with his rank in the Naboo military giving him preferential status in terms of accommodations and food, had he not been consumed with his mission. But despite the pleasures available to one of his rank on board ship, all he could think of was reaching Coruscant and pursuing the course that obsessed him. It had taken several months to clear up various obligations on Naboo so that he could proceed at his task totally unencumbered. Now he was finally here.

  He had watched from the main viewport as the ship had descended. It had been hard, very hard, not to feel completely overwhelmed by the sight of the endless cityscape that stretched in all directions below him. As far as he could see, the snarl of streets, towers, plazas, stadiums, and countless other buildings and thoroughfares covered the surface, all of 48 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows it stippled with flickering shadows thrown by the fast-moving repulsor-driven traffic above. Cosseted remnants of the original planetary biota, occasional patches of green and blue, peeped through the immense cityscape. But they were few and very far between.

  It was nothing he hadn't seen before, of course. In his capacity as Padmé's bodyguard he had visited the city-planet several times previously. But on those occasions he hadn't been faced with the daunting task of tracking down a killer among the teeming trillions that populated the global labyrinth. It seemed utterly impossible, and Typho felt despair fill him. Where, in all this enormous endless urban sprawl, would he even begin to look for a surviving Jedi when so many believed all the Jedi were dead?

  He squared his shoulders and set his jaw. No task was ever accomplished by cowering before it. If he continued to feel this way, he would be defeated before he had even begun. And Padmé Amidala would forever rest uneasily in her grave.

  That could not be permitted.

  A modest distance to the northeast of Westport lay the ruins of the Jedi Temple. Any investigation or exploration of them was forbidden by Imperial fiat. But such interdictions held little meaning for a soldier.

  Typho would begin his investigation with Anakin Skywalker, presumably the last Jedi to see Padmé alive. If he had survived Mustafar, some hint of his whereabouts might be found in the shattered rem-

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  nants of his former sanctuary. And if such a clue existed, Typho would find it.

  The captain set out upon his quest.

  "I'm Jax Pavan."

  The crimson woman looked relieved. It took Den a moment to identify her as a Zeltron. A small pang of worry rippled through him at this realization. Zeltrons, if he was remembering correctly, were exceptional representations of humanoid beauty, at least as far as other humans were concerned. In addition they, like the Falleen and some other mammalian species, shed pheromones that made them even more irre-sistible.

  In short, not a species that made it easy to be objective.

  The Sullustan cast a quick glance at Jax. Hard to tell what he was thinking. Den had become fairly adept at reading humans over the years—but not that good. Jax didn't look particularly smitten, however, even though the Zeltron seemed to be a prime example of human pulchritude. It was all academic to Den, of course. He took note of her beauty the same way he would recognize a thoroughbred of any sort.

  "My name is Dejah Duare," the Zeltron said. "I've come to you for help."

  Den watched his friends. Jax and Laranth glanced at each other, and the Sullustan guessed that they had both checked this visitor out through the Force.

  Whether she had passed or not remained to be seen.

  50 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows As for I-Five, though the mechanical was capable of projecting a surprising range of "expressions," he was now in full droid mode, pretending to be nothing more than a simple protocol unit. Rhinann showed little interest in the encounter. This wasn't unusual.

  These days the Elomin was pretty much in a perpet-ual funk.

  Dejah was looking from Jax to Laranth as she spoke. "I've heard that you aid people who want to leave Coruscant. Is this true? I can pay you."

  Considering that those last four words made up one of Den's favorite sentences, he felt impelled to speak up, "You heard right," he proclaimed briskly.

  "For the right price we can get you off this overpopulated rock and into a new life offworld that'll—"

  Laranth silenced him with a look that stopped just short of singeing his eyebrows. Alternately mortified and irate, Den subsided.

  "Payment isn't necessary. Tell us what you have in mind," Jax said. "How many people would be going?"

  "Just two—my business partner, Ves Volette, and myself.

  I-Five spoke up. "Your pardon, but would that be the famous Caamasi light sculptor of the same name?"

  She looked startled. "Yes. He is—was—quite well known—on his homeworld." She was suddenly upset, so much so that she could hardly finish the sentence.

  It didn't take a brain the size of a planet to understand why. Even if Jax and Laranth had not just been Michael Reaves 51

  front and center, metaphysically speaking, for the event, Caamas's shocking destruction had lately been the talk of the general media.

  "You fear for his future," Laranth said, "and for your own, by association."

  This was, as far as Den was concerned, an entirely reasonable concern. If the Emperor had gone to the trouble of destroying the Caamasi homeworld, for whatever reason, then it followed that he would take care to keep tabs on any survivors who might keep the issue alive by asking awkward questions. Already the general media was se
eking them out. A small but vocal and active minority was an inconvenience someone like Palpatine would surely rather do without. Which no doubt meant anyone aiding such survivors would also come in for increased Imperial scrutiny. Den swallowed, running his finger around a suddenly too-tight collar. His initial enthusiasm for taking on this particular new client was fading fast.

  "Yes, I do," the Zeltron said in belated response to Laranth's query. She gave Jax an imploring look.

  "Please help us. Ves isn't a coward, but like many artists he has little sense of the way galactic society works. I'm afraid he might do something reckless and vengeful, like producing a work deliberately insulting to the Emperor. That could get us both killed."

  Her skin flushed an ever-so-slightly darker shade of red as she spoke. Den knew his eyes were probably the only ones in the room sharp enough to notice it, outside I-Five's photoreceptors. He had seen the Fall-

  52 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows een Prince Xizor's skin darken the same way, and he suspected it was for similar reasons. This Duare person was in all likelihood pumping out some industrial-strength pheromones in an attempt to chemically sway Jax, and probably Laranth, too, to her side.

  He was not sure if Twi'leks were immune to Zeltron pheromones. He recalled that the Paladin had been affected by Xizor's mesmerizing sweat, but that meant nothing here, of course. Duare was of a different species.

  He realized that Duare was speaking again, and he listened intently. "I help Ves with his work," she was telling her audience. "You probably know that my kind are telempathic. It's an ability that comes in handy helping Ves get in the mood to do his best work."

  I-Five must have seen Den's blank look. "Zeltrons can project and sense emotional states," the droid told him. "Think of it as telepathy with feelings instead of words." He addressed this explanation to his friend via a directional sonic pulse so that no one else could overhear it. Den was grateful for the information. He hadn't been aware of this last factoid. Makes the whole pheromone thing seem kinda superfluous, he mused.