Star Wars - Coruscant Nights 02 - Street of Shadows

by Michael Reaves

  Haus coughed softly. "Did any of you touch anything, other than the doorplate?"

  Jax answered for the three of them. "No."

  The prefect looked skeptical. "Not even the corpse? To see if he was still alive?" He looked at Dejah, who was sitting in a small hoverchair with a blanket draped over her shoulders. "You. He was your partner, and you didn't bother to check his vitals?"

  Jax felt a small stab of irritation. While it was the prefect's job to ask questions, this one had been answered already. He was tempted to wonder aloud which part of no the Zabrak didn't understand, but he held his irritation in check. It was seldom a good idea to give in to easy emotion. Especially when being questioned in a homicide. Keeping his tone carefully neutral, he responded for Dejah.

  "There was no need, Prefect. It was apparent he was dead."

  Haus wore studied indifference like a mask. "You could tell that from across the room?"

  "I could tell," Dejah mumbled lifelessly. "He had the death reek on him."

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  Not even the prefect saw fit to question this. A Zeltron could easily detect the scent of epinephrine and fear pheromones in the room, as well as the lack of empathic vibes from her erstwhile comrade. And the Force had made it unequivocally clear to Jax the moment the door had opened that the sculptor Volette was dead, but it wouldn't be even a remotely good idea to let Haus know that.

  I-Five said, "Judging from the size of the bloodstain on the carpet, Prefect Haus, the proportions of the body, and the depth of the stab wound that killed him, the probability of him being anything other than dead was close to zero."

  Haus regarded I-Five. "So now a protocol droid is offering me advice on what questions to ask? Had a lot of experience with murder victims, have you?"

  I-Five was less than intimidated. "During the Clone Wars I was posted at a medical Rimsoo in a planetary war zone. I regret to say that my experience with organic exsanguination is rather more extensive than I would wish.

  "Given the extent of the bloodstain and the thickness and easily discernible absorptive capacity of the carpet, a simple mathematical computation can determine the quantity of liquid necessary to provide such dispersal. The average humanoid adult has a blood volume of approximately four-point-nine liters, of which two-point-seven liters is plasma. Humanoid survival with an untreated Class Four blood loss—that is, greater than forty percent of total volume—is 68 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows unlikely for more than a few minutes. The amount of blood soaked into this carpet is, I estimate, nearly three liters. Even if the deceased had recently spent some months at an altitude sufficient to have radically thickened his blood, his red cell count could not be sufficient to allow survival with such a volumetric loss. Quite easy to see from across the room." I-Five's tone was dry and matter-of-fact, but Jax caught the underlying sarcasm. He resisted the urge to smile.

  The prefect looked at the droid, then at Jax. "You program this smart-mouth machine?"

  Jax shook his head. "He came that way."

  Haus made a rude, decidedly unprofessional sound. "Might want to have his head popped and a more polite template installed. Not all police are as easygoing as me." He turned back to the inconsolable Dejah. "So let me see if I have this right. The deceased was the Caamasi light sculptor Ves Volette, your partner. You were worried about his safety, and your own, and thus engaged this guy"—he nodded at Jax—"for protection."

  This guy came out sounding quite a bit like this amateur to Jax. He silently counted to ten, first in Basic and again in Ugnaught pidgin. It was amazing the places and times where Jedi training could be put to use.

  It was not really a question, but Dejah nodded assent. Before the cools had arrived, Jax had warned her about mentioning anything to do with fleeing the planet.

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  The prefect turned to Jax. "And it's your business to routinely provide this kind of security service?"

  The hard-edged light illuminating the hall flickered; a quick, ghostly strobe, before shining even brighter than before. The scene became sharper, almost crystalline. The unit was definitely on the verge of critical failure, Jax decided.

  "That's right," he said to Haus. "We—I'm licensed to do so. It's a new classification: Confidential Fact-finder. Nonprofit."

  "So the records seem to say. I have your time of arrival, and my docbot says the victim has been dead for two hours and fifteen minutes, give or take a few.

  I'll need statements from you as to where each of you was at that time."

  Jax nodded, glad of the opportunity to agree. "Of course."

  The Zabrak looked at Dejah again. "If you were worried that somebody might make an attempt to kill you or your partner, why didn't you call the proper authorities?"

  She turned slightly and looked at the officer. The angle put half her face in deep shadow. "Ves's homeworld was recently destroyed by what rumor suggests was an action by the proper authorities. With all due respect to you personally, Prefect, my companion had reason not to trust anybody who represents the Empire in any form. Nor do I."

  Haus turned contemplative. "I've heard about what happened to Caamas, of course. Everyone has.

  70 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows But it was a military action." His tone sharpened.

  "The Imperial Sector Police is not political."

  "Really?" Her words emerged steeped in bitterness. "Somebody should tell that to the Vesarian students at Imperial City University."

  The prefect had the good grace to look embarrassed. "That incident was an aberration. As within any large organization there are, unfortunately, rogue elements. The centurion in charge of the unit in question was arrested and is awaiting trial."

  "I'm sure that makes the parents of the dead students feel much better."

  Haus made a dismissive gesture. "An officer will take your statements and will provide you two with locator rings." He gestured at I-Five. "And a locator plug will be flashed to your smart-mouth droid. Stay dirtside—we'll call you when we need to speak again."

  He turned away, dismissing them as thoroughly as he would have any inorganic piece of evidence.

  Which was fine with Jax—he was perfectly content to be treated as part of the scenery.

  A police droid rolled up. "This way, citizens."

  Jax sighed. Hardly a great way to start one's day: hired to save a pair of clients, only to have one die before they even got to him. Now they were, at best, witnesses to the scene, at worst possible suspects. Af-fixed with police locator rings that could not be easily removed, they weren't likely to be leaving the planet anytime soon. Jax didn't much like the idea of Michael Reaves 71

  the cools turning over the rocks under which he and his cohorts liked to operate, but that was going to happen now whether he wanted it to or not.

  The best option for him and his friends was to figure out who killed the sculptor and present Haus with that information before the police came across something embarrassing or illegal, and there was plenty of both for them to find. Jax knew that a truth-scan required more than just suspicion of irregularity, which was why Haus hadn't ordered one on the spot.

  Also, the cools were not supposed to ask questions during a scan that touched on activities outside the direct scope of the crime under investigation. But such rules were seldom strictly enforced, particularly downlevel, and it wouldn't be the first time the authorities dug a bit deeper than allowed just to see what was there. A truth-scan would prove that neither he nor Dejah had killed the sculptor, but there were plenty of other things Jax did not want brought to light.

  The Force could keep such things hidden, but if they pushed a scan too hard, he might suffer memory damage, or worse. A Jedi Master could resist a truth-scan in his sleep, but Jax knew his abilities did not begin to approach such a degree of control.

  In short, the sooner the cools wrapped this up and went on to other crimes, the better for Jax and company. If Haus and his men didn't find
the killer immediately, then Jax had better do so. Otherwise he and Laranth and the others would have the police in their hair until doomsday.

  72 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows Aurra Sing exited the spaceport, having made her passage through Customs and Immigration with no trouble. The passport chip issued her by Lord Vader guaranteed her Prime Civilian Immunity status, the highest protection accorded someone who was neither in the military nor a member of royalty. She took a drop-tube down three levels to the commuter pad, where a chauffeured skylimo awaited her. As soon as she had boarded, it angled directly up into the highest traffic stratum, a rarefied lane reserved for governmental traffic only.

  It had been some time since Sing had been on Coruscant—now Imperial Center—and she marveled at how quickly and thoroughly the destruction inflicted by the Separatists' carpet bombing had been either repaired or simply hidden from view. Rebuilding was still going on apace. From her privileged position above the general traffic flow she could see, near the horizon, one of the huge construction droids.

  As tall as a forty-story building, it was methodically masticating its way through a swath of condemned structures. She knew that the resulting rubble would be ground up and separated into component elements, to be reassembled by billions of nanodroids deep in the giant's metal-and-composite guts. The result would be excreted as pliable new material to be reshaped into whatever forms the architects and city planners decreed.

  It was an impressive example of the power and achievements of the Empire. She did not spend too Michael Reaves 73

  much time contemplating such things, however. Her focus was on learning one thing: whom she would have to hunt.

  After all, one did not secure the release from prison of one of the galaxy's most feared and formidable bounty hunters in order to have floral arrangements designed.

  For almost as long as Aurra Sing could remember it had been the thrill of the hunt that had kept her alive, that had given her a reason to progress from one day to the next. It was only when she relied solely on her own skills, her superb reflexes and unique training, that she felt anything even approaching a level of personal comfort. She had relied on nothing else for so long...

  One of her earliest memories, from before she had even been capable of walking, was of her spice-addicted mother carrying her down

  the narrow,

  twisted, garbage-strewn streets of Nar Shaddaa. Being held safely in her mother's arms, she remembered it as being one of the very few times she had felt anything approaching security. The moment even approached that emotional state others called happiness.

  For Aurra Sing, happiness remained as much theory and speculation as the origin of the universe.

  That special, long-ago moment had seemed as if it would go on forever. Until Aunuanna, desperate for spice, had dropped her child to the slimy wet pavement as she raced to meet her dealer.

  74 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows Left behind, forgotten, a lump of organic trash abandoned on the pavement, the child who would become Aurra Sing had cried alone for hours in terror and pain. Eventually, emotionally and physically exhausted, she had crept beneath some stinking rags at the side of the lane. There she had lain, whimpering.

  It had been nearly dawn before Aunuanna's dust-besotted brain had cleared enough for her to remember her abandoned child, and another hour before she managed to locate her.

  Sing shook her head slightly, the movement amounting to little more than a twitch of irritation.

  As a neglected child, she had felt terrified and alone on countless occasions. As an adult she had turned such memories into a perverse kind of gratitude.

  Without knowing it and certainly without intending to, the addict Aunuanna had taught her youngling the basic lesson of survival, and taught it well: Trust no one, and look to no one but yourself for survival.

  Sing studied the endless streams of aerial traffic flowing below her. Vehicles crisscrossed, sank, and rose in a complex three-dimensional dance that, thanks to omnipresent navigational and speed control nodes, hardly ever resulted in a crash or spatial gridlock. It really didn't matter who her designated target would be. A Sakiyan warrior bound on redeeming his clan's honor, a Weequay on a blood quest, a Januul in a scalp-taking fury: nothing could be more debilitating than feeling her lungs being Michael Reaves 75

  eaten away by zenium dust in the stone guts of a forgotten planetoid.

  Nothing.

  She leaned back into the soft luxury of the limo's seat, literal as well as metaphorical parsecs away from her former quarters, and smiled to herself.

  Expecting to be taken to Imperial City for her meeting with Vader, she was somewhat surprised when the skylimo suddenly dipped down and exited the VIP lane without a government building in sight.

  The powerful craft went into a steep descent that plunged into a narrow abyss between equatorial cloudcutters. Overhead, it was early afternoon, with the sun still halfway between zenith' and horizon.

  Down where she was being taken, it was night.

  Down here, she knew, it was always night.

  The unmarked limo came to a stop, hovering half a meter above a narrow, trash-strewn street. On either side, cyclopean towers rose from massive foundations sunk deep into the planet's crust, their flanks vanishing into the mist and gloom above. Her surroundings were eerily familiar; it was almost as if, after all these decades, she were back on Nar Shaddaa. She saw no entrances or windows and no signs of habitation. In fact, there was no indication of life at all—not even any vehicle or pedestrian traffic.

  She stepped from the limo, which rose to hover perhaps a dozen meters overhead. The fire-blackened, gutted husk of a landspeeder rested where it had no doubt crashed against a huge ferrocrete block that 76 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows formed part of a skytower's foundation. Save for the almost inaudible thrum of the limo's repulsors, the silence was complete.

  No, she realized—not complete. There was another sound, a sound she had never heard before, yet one that struck her as oddly familiar. A regular, measured susurration, growing gradually louder.

  Whipping her lightsaber from its hook and activating it in a single movement, she whirled. The red glow of the shaft illuminated an alcove in the base of the building closest to her, and illuminated as well the tall, black-clad figure that emerged from it.

  Before she could determine whether his intentions were malign or benign, he extended one black-gloved hand toward her. Her lightsaber leapt from her grasp, its fire extinguishing as it did so. It flew across the in-tervening space and slapped into Vader's hand.

  He had been quick enough and powerful enough to take her primary weapon from her before she had even realized she was in danger of losing it. A striking display of mastery over the Force, Sing had to admit to herself. But surely he didn't consider her helpless just because he had relieved her of one part of her arsenal.

  As she dropped into a low fighting crouch, both hands seized the twin r'ruker'at knives secured at her waist. Her blasters would be futile, she knew; he could easily deflect the bolts with the lightsaber. Her only chance was to do the unexpected, and that meant getting in close enough for blade work. Forged Michael Reaves 77

  by Alwari smiths in the jungles of Ansion, the knives were designed to be hidden in plain sight as part of the complex intaglio carved into her belt. Four rings allowed four fingers an unbreakable grip on each, and she had never let go before until the blades had finished their work.

  Instead of following up his first move with a direct assault, however, Vader did something completely unexpected. He just stood there, ignoring her as casually as if she didn't exist. As she stared, he inspected her lightsaber thoughtfully; then, holding it out at arm's length, he reactivated it. The crimson spire of destructive energy pointed straight up from his gloved fist. At first, nothing seemed to be happening. Then Sing realized that the shaft was getting brighter. Its brilliance intensified until she had to raise a hand to shield he
r eyes from the all-but-blinding scarlet radiance. The refulgence dazzled her eyes, overwhelming everything else; the street, the buildings, the wrecked landspeeder. Only Vader remained somehow visible; standing there, holding the weapon easily, seemingly unaffected by the blade's terrible radiance. The familiar deep hum that was the weapon's identifying sound rose in pitch, higher and higher, until it tore at her hearing. And then, in a final burst of screaming incandescence, the lightsaber's shaft vanished.

  Sing stared in sheer disbelief. Her eyes were capable of adapting much more rapidly to changes in ambient light than were a human's. A couple of blinks and the afterimages cleared, normal vision returning 78 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows almost immediately. Vader stood motionless, the weapon's hilt still gripped in his outstretched fist. She could see a tiny wisp of smoke curling from the emitter.

  He had overloaded the lightsaber's energy crystal through the Force. Sing prided herself on her knowledge of weaponry and their individual strengths and weaknesses. It was her profession, after all. But she had never seen or heard of such a thing before.

  The Dark Lord opened his hand. Reduced to a cylinder of useless metal, composites, and components, the now harmless weapon clattered onto the pavement.

  "As I told you back on Oovo Four," he said, "I have a job for you. Take up a weapon against me again, even reflexively, and I'll have you on the next prison barge offworld. Do I make myself clear?"

  Slowly Sing returned the knives to her belt, folded her arms, and regarded him levelly. "I'm listening,"

  she said.

  The cul-de-sac known as Poloda Place was one of the few locations downlevel that still retained a glim-mer of respectability. The buildings, rococo resi-blocks for the most part, were packed close together.