Star Wars - Coruscant Nights 02 - Street of Shadows

by Michael Reaves

  He glanced again at Jax. The Jedi still seemed in complete control of himself, as did Laranth. Den wondered if the Force could somehow shield those who commanded it from the effect of both wafting chemicals and projected emotions. He wouldn't be Michael Reaves 53

  surprised. To hear Jedi such as Barriss Offee and Jax talk, the Force could do just about anything. And Den had witnessed more than enough miracles carried out by its invocation not to doubt them.

  Well, let's hope, he thought.

  Jax cleared his throat. "There's been a lot of investigation by the regime into the activities of the Whiplash lately. They're especially interested in how renegades, radicals, and other dissenters are managing to flee offworld. Getting someone out has become even more dangerous than usual."

  Den breathed a silent sigh of relief. He was glad to hear that, pheromone mist notwithstanding, his human friend was still thinking with his brain and not his glands.

  "So," Jax continued, "we'll have to be extra careful getting you and your companion Volette out. But one way or another, we'll do it. I feel that we all owe it to the memory of the Caamasi." He smiled reassuringly at Dejah Duare, and the Zeltron smiled back.

  Den clapped a hand to his forehead and groaned.

  I-Five glanced at him. "Something wrong?" the droid asked.

  "Headache," Den muttered. He left the room.

  Se'lahn.

  That was the word for it in the Sullust tongue. It meant disquietude, a sensation of unrest, a troubled heart. It was a word that described, with fair accuracy, Den Dhur's mental state these days.

  54 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows It was a state well justified, he felt. After all, he had lobbied for some time without success for all of them, even the Elomin, to hit the outer plenum and get off Coruscant immediately, if not sooner. Where they went wasn't as important as when. The whole idea was to put as much empty space as they could between them and Lord Vader, since it was entirely possible that the Emperor's sinister adjutant was still interested in the whereabouts of Jax Pavan.

  Den understood idealism and had even been known to get a little choked up himself on occasion.

  He had no difficulty with Jax devoting himself to Truth, Justice, and the Jedi Code. He did, however, have a big problem with doing so under the very nose of one of the most dangerous individuals in the galaxy.

  And yet something was keeping Den on Coruscant.

  I-Five.

  The protocol droid had accomplished a remarkable thing, Den reflected. The modified mechanical had become such a close friend that Den really couldn't imagine life without him.

  I-Five had told Den that if Den felt he had to leave Coruscant, the droid would go with him even if Jax elected to stay. But I-Five had also promised the elder Pavan that he would watch over his son if Lorn died.

  The droid had taken this commitment very seriously, even though he had not been able to fulfill his former partner's request until Jax had become a grown man.

  Still, better late than never, and the droid's devotion to the task Michael Reaves 55

  was intense, as if he intended to make up for those lost decades.

  So if put to the test, would I-Five stay with Jax or go with Den?

  The Sullustan wasn't sure he wanted to find out.

  And that was the crux of it. He, Den Dhur, crack reporter and professional cynic, had become as fond of I-Five as he might be of a sibling. Though they engaged in constant and sometimes acrimonious verbal sparring, Den had forged a bond with the droid that was stronger than any he had formed with any organic sentient.

  Strong enough to keep him on a world he hated—or, rather, in the part of that world he hated. The Coruscant underworld: the slums comprising the lower fifty or so levels, the narrow, twisted surface streets and ramps, and the caverns and warrens that honey-combed the subsurface in so many places. The prolif-eration of buildings over the centuries had reached such a congested state that the sun could hardly ever be seen. And when it was visible, its light was strained through a veil of low-lying hydrocarbon smog that turned it blood red; an overly blatant metaphor, in Den's opinion, but nonetheless effective.

  It might seem strange to someone with only a passing familiarity with Sullustans that Den should loathe the various underground neighborhoods so. After all, weren't his kind cave dwellers? Hadn't they adapted over the millennia to a life underground? So what was the problem?

  56 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows In a word: squalor.

  Coruscant—or Imperial Center, to use the approved nomenclature, not that he had ever heard any one other than stormtroopers, mediacasters, and governmental shills do so—for the most part did a good job of hiding its seamy underside. Tourists, visiting dignitaries, merchants, and other intermittent travelers had little opportunity, and even less inclination, to peer too long and deep into the dark abysses that occupied the spaces between the cloudcutters and skytowers. Visitors usually came to the planet to catch glimpses of holoproj glitterati, to spend more on one meal than the average Ugnaught laborer made in a standard year, to gamble away piles of credits the size of monads without a second thought. They certainly did not come to be reminded of the filth and desperation of the conveniently concealed teeming masses who dwelled beneath the inversion layers that made many of the elegant taller structures look like they were floating on clouds. They most emphatically did not want to know that immigrants in search of the shiny dream life that escaped them on their homeworlds had been coming to Coruscant in droves since before the Clone Wars. Even though one of the first fiats issued by Palpatine had severely curtailed the flow, the ecumenopolis still processed more visas in an hour than most worlds beyond the Core systems did in a month.

  All those questing, hopeful, desperate, frantic beings had to live somewhere.

  Michael Reaves 57

  Den was not speciesist. He had lived among too many different kinds of sentients to put any particular one above or below another. All he asked was to be left alone to go about his business. But it was hard, sometimes, not to feel alienated from the thousands of beings who endlessly roamed the congested streets.

  Alienated, and somewhat superior, given the lack of personal hygiene that frequently seemed to character-ize them.

  Cave dwellers his kind might be, but it was absurd to compare the noctilucent beauty of an underground city like Pirin to these fetid warrens overrun with the dregs of every conceivable outworld society. The worst examples of Kubaz, Rodians, Ugnaughts, and myriad other species crowded the streets, the open-air markets and bazaars, the seedy entertainment districts, day and night, leaving, it often seemed, hardly room enough to breathe. It was a sad thing indeed when a Sullustan found himself claustrophobic.

  And if all that weren't bad enough, there were the humans.

  Everywhere you looked, humans walked the narrow, twisting avenues or piloted ground and hover-craft as if they had the whole planet to themselves.

  Which they just might, and soon, if the worrying rumor that the reporter had recently heard carried the slightest bit of truth.

  It had come from a fairly reliable and reputable source, at least for this kind of thing: Rhinann. The dour Elomin had told Den that a plan would soon be 58 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows under way, if it had not already been implemented, to round up and quarantine as many nonhumans as possible, segregating them from the human population.

  Den had found this hard to believe. Even though humans by far outnumbered all other individual species on Coruscant, they were hardly dominant in the ag-gregate. From Anzati to Zeolosian, humanoid and nonhumanoid aliens made up the vast majority of the city-planet's population. Trying to segregate them all from humans seemed to Den to be just asking for an uprising that would make the final struggles between the Republic and the Separatists look tame.

  And if that wasn't cause for se'lahn, he didn't know if what was.

  Michael Reaves 59

  seven

  Jax could sense
the subtle but insistent tug of Dejah Duare's pheromones, the chemical call to come to her aid, the plea to do whatever was needed to help her and her comrade leave the city-planet. Before the urge could become strong enough to sway him he invoked the Force, warming the air molecules around him ever so slightly to create an adiabatic shield that deflected the biochemical entreaty.

  It worked, of course. He could feel his full objectivity returning. He did not have to glance in Laranth's direction to know that she had resorted to the same tactic. He noticed that Dejah seemed slightly discom-fited, as if she were aware that her aphrodisiacal scent was not having the desired effect. Jax thought none the less of her for trying it. It was natural for her to use everything in her physical and biochemical arsenal to persuade them to the greatest extent possible.

  Even though he had already agreed to help, she was just trying to finalize the deal.

  After the near-disastrous episode with Prince Xizor, he had made a point of learning which sentients in the 60 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows galaxy utilized pheromones to influence emotions and behavior. It had allowed him to anticipate the Zeltron's effort. Forewarned was definitely forearmed in a situation like this. By the same token, he was not sure if her telempathic abilities were strong enough to project emotions into others' minds without their consent. But if such were the case, the Force would warn him of any attempts by Dejah to influence him that way as well.

  "Well, then," he ventured, politely pretending not to notice her uncertainty, "let's get started." He turned to the Elomin, who huddled in a seat in a dark corner of the room. "Rhinann, you know who to contact at the ports. Start the process while I-Five and I go with Dejah to talk to her Caamasi friend. Laranth, you and Den—" He paused, looking around. "Hey, where is Den?"

  "Here," came the Sullustan's voice as he stepped back into the room from the hallway. "Just needed some air."

  There was something in his tone that didn't sound quite right to Jax. True, Den wasn't always the most enthusiastic of participants in their various undertakings, but if he had doubts about the advisability of taking on a client or a case he also wasn't reticent about letting his comrades know where he stood.

  Probing in the Sullustan's direction, Jax sensed dissatisfaction and annoyance. He couldn't tell what the source of the troubled emotions was, however, and didn't have time to probe deeper.

  Michael Reaves 61

  Well, he told himself, if he's got a real problem, he'll mention it sooner or later.

  "You and Laranth hit the streets," he told Den.

  "You know what to look for."

  "Right." Den sighed. Again he sounded uncharacteristicaily glum. Typically, Laranth said nothing, just

  nodded once and headed for the exit. Den trailed in her wake.

  Jax glanced at I-Five as he and the droid accompanied Dejah out to her skimmer. Hard to tell what the droid might be thinking about Den's moodiness. Although I-Five was extremely good at simulating emotions and thoughts by subtly manipulating the angle and intensity of his photoreceptors, as well as uncannily mimicking human body language, his ability to project nuance and subtext could extend only so far.

  According to the Jedi's chrono, it was just after sunset. For the most part the surface streets were already dark. Although the street sconces were designed to work for centuries, many had been in place for millennia and had either burned out, been broken, or been stolen. Most of what illumination there was came from glow rods carried by pedestrians or from fires in refuse barrels.

  So much for the spread of advanced technology, he thought.

  While the streets were dark, they certainly weren't quiet. The constant babble of thousands of beings speaking hundreds of languages, patois, pidgin, and 62 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows favored dialects blended together to create a rich basilect brew. Cheunh, Durese, Bocce, Hapan, and multiphonic other voices not only made it impossible for Jax to hear himself think, it sometimes made it impossible even to be certain in which tongue he was trying to think.

  Dejah Duare's skimmer had been parked three meters above the street, where it hovered, waiting for the return of its owner. Employing a secure remote, she brought it down within reach. The vehicle was an F-57

  Nucleon, with inertial stabilizers and a Class Three repulsorlift drive. Its design was charmingly retro, with sweeping tail fins, a forward cab, and a one-piece windscreen. It was a deep maroon in color, accented with sweeping lines of chrome. Dejah looked like she had been born to fly it. Jax was properly impressed. It wasn't often one encountered a vehicle that had been tinted to match its owner.

  Her nav comp found an insertion point in one of the traffic streams, and she took the vehicle up at the steepest angle allowed. They reentered the flow at Level 75, just below the cloud layer. Fifteen minutes later the skimmer was nestling neatly into a parking pod near the upper floors of an expensive resiplex.

  "Does he know we're coming?" I-Five's sensors were alert as they entered the building. The gleaming metallic walls of the lobby were lit with subtle chro-matics, providing an ambience of understated elegance.

  Jax was abruptly very much aware of the shabbiness of his apparel. The boots, trousers, bloused shirt, and Michael Reaves 63

  sleeveless fleekskin vest, which had been exactly right to blend in with the riffraff downlevel, here looked distinctly out of place. He shrugged. So much for keeping a low profile.

  He felt nervous, on edge. The Force was trying to tell him that something wasn't right. Something bad had happened in this building, not long ago. But just as the Force could be incredibly explicit with the visions and portents it sometimes granted, so, too, could it be maddeningly vague and inchoate, and this was one of the latter times.

  "No," Dejah said, answering the droid's question.

  "I tried to comm him but there was no answer."

  Jax looked at her. "You don't sound very worried about your partner."

  She smiled thinly back at him as they walked.

  "That's because Ves is frequently incommunicado.

  When he doesn't reply I assume he's working. He always works obsessively when he's upset. It's his way of dealing with it. And," she finished, "sometimes the result is his best art."

  They traversed a length of corridor, at the end of which was a portal to a resicube. As she put her palm on the identifier plate, Dejah continued, "He'll be in his studio. It's in the rear of the—"

  She didn't finish the sentence. Instead, as the door slid open and she looked inside, she screamed.

  The cube's interior was cream, pearl, and ivory, the furniture and finishings all in shades of white. Which 64 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows made the bloodstains on the carpet next to Ves Volette's body stand out in stark and brilliant scarlet.

  Prefect Pol Haus of the sector police was a Zabrak: a short and somewhat stocky humanoid whose stubby horns rose from his skull in an untidy arrangement with no discernible growth pattern. This undisciplined look was not confined to his head. Haus was a disreputable-looking specimen from head to toe.

  His rank was high enough that he no longer needed to wear a uniform, and his attire looked like it had been custom-tailored by a palsy-stricken Dug. Over his clothes he wore a duster afflicted with a profusion of pockets. These seemed able to produce just about anything necessary for investigating a crime scene. He sported no ritual tattoos—another rarity for a Zabrak—and his skin was an unhealthy hue that be-spoke a persistent lack of exposure to natural light.

  Watching the prefect as he went about his business, Jax didn't buy into the veneer of disorganization. One did not get to be an official in the planetary police by being lazy, slovenly, or both. The fact that Haus paid so little attention to his appearance suggested that he didn't have to. That was significant. The fact that Sector Command had sent somebody of his rank to investigate wasn't a good sign, either. Prefects didn't leave the station to personally check out routine homicides. Such unpleasantness was normally lef
t to underlings.

  Michael Reaves 65

  Jax and his companions were in the hall outside the cube. The murder scene itself was swarming with forensics droids large and small, which were recording and cataloging everything in sight. Jax had some knowledge of the procedure. Everything that a killer might have come into contact with would be scanned and recorded down to the molecular level. Any conceivable trace evidence would be picked up, ranging from the obvious, fingerprints, hair, skin cells, and the like, to the not-so-obvious such as thermal traces and any remnants of exhaled gases. You could tell a lot about a being if you knew the percentage of carbon dioxide he breathed out. It was a very careful killer who did not leave behind some trace of him-, or her-, or itself behind.

  Jax watched the forensics droids going about their business, admiring their efficiency. The smaller units hovered on repulsorlifts a few centimeters above the carpet, so as to avoid trampling its fibers with their shuffling gaits. He was impressed with their speed and thoroughness—impressed, and more than a bit apprehensive. They were the epitome of professionalism, and the last thing he wanted was to have that vaunted clarity, that merciless illuminating glare, turned upon himself and his cohorts.

  Having concluded his cursory inspection of the room, the police prefect emerged to study those waiting outside. Jax could feel the official's disapproval.

  The biolight source in the hallway's ceiling was on the verge of final decay, and the illumination had grown 66 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows unreasonably bright, like that of a star just before its death throes. The unit cast hard-edged shadows instead of bathing everything within its purview in a normal soft, diffuse glow. It gave the scene a stark, alien quality. Beneath it, even the beauteous if dis-traught Dejah looked cold.