What narrow, winding passageways once connected the plaza with the rest of the underground had long ago been mortared up or otherwise sealed off. The only means of ingress or egress was a serpentine lane with the picturesque, not to mention evocative, name of Snowblind Mews. Den had wondered more than Michael Reaves 79
once how it had come to be named that, since snow had not fallen anywhere on Coruscant save in recreational areas specified by WeatherNet for many thousands of years.
Due to the combination of cheap rent, spacious living areas, and a spurious sense of safety, Poloda Place had acquired something of a reputation as an artists' colony. It was here, over twenty years earlier, that the novelist Kai Konnik had written his award-winning tale Beach of Stars. The Fondorian composer Metrisse had crafted his famous Etudes of Time and Space while sojourning there, and the notoriously decadent Twi'lek Dreamdancer Nar Chan had held her infamous, weeklong bacchanals in the court.
Those were indeed the days, Den reflected, hurrying to keep up with Laranth as she crossed the flag-stones and made her way through the exit.
"Slow down!" he complained. "Not every species has grotesquely long legs, y'know."
The Twi'lek glanced back over her shoulder without slowing her pace. "Then stretch yours."
Swearing under his breath, Den broke into a trot.
"I gotta tell you," he muttered as he caught up to her,
"this whole fatal fern thing is getting old. You know you're hard, I know you're hard. Anyone around you for more than five minutes who doesn't know that you're hard isn't operating in the same sensory frame-work. So as a personal favor, why don't you lighten up?"
80 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows Laranth halted sharply and looked down at him.
"What makes you think I have a choice?"
This was not the response Den had expected. Not that he'd had any particular rejoinder in mind. He came to a stop as well, thankful for the respite. Gazing up at the unsmiling Twi'lek Paladin, he observed how the various krypton, argon, and neon spectra from a nearby floating advert-sphere shone off the glossy scar tissue of her face. He noticed as well something he hadn't seen before in her eyes. Instead of the usual bleak mixture of determination and resignation, Den was surprised to see a flash of hurt—hurt, and an infinite weariness. It vanished quickly; so quickly that anyone else might have wondered if there had really been anything there at all. But Den was, above all, a reporter, and he trusted his perception. Not every insight came through utilization of the Force. He knew he had just gotten a glimpse of some very real and very old scars.
"Sorry," he mumbled, abashed. "Didn't mean to—"
She interrupted him with a shrug as she turned away. "Forget it." She was in motion again, strong legs striding. After a moment, he followed.
As he hurried to keep up with her he found himself turning over in his mind what he knew about Laranth Tarak. There wasn't much. He knew that she had been a Gray Paladin, a member of the renegade group that had splintered from the Jedi mainstream. He didn't know much about them, save that they were dedicated to the Jedi Code but considerably more militaristic Michael Reaves 81
than the Order itself. Since the Jedi Knights weren't exactly mantra-chanting pacifists to begin with, this suggested that the Gray Paladins were capable of some serious butt kicking. Den knew this to be true from experience and not just anecdote, as he'd had the privilege of seeing Laranth in action.
The Twi'lek's weapons of choice were the twin DL-44
blasters he had rarely seen her without, and her skill and accuracy with them were uncanny. Aided by the Force, she was good enough to block enemy fire with her own blasts. It was not quite the same as parrying shots with a lightsaber, but it was still impressive.
That was pretty much all he knew about the Gray Paladins. Little as it was, it was more than he knew about Laranth herself. This despite the occasional research he had carried out employing his reportorial skills. Laranth Tarak had dropped off the grid of the knowable a long time ago. He knew that she and Jax had first encountered each other during the slaughter of innocents known as Flame Night, a nocturnal mas-sacre of Force-sensitives designed to rid the Empire of potential future threats as well as to draw any remaining Jedi out of hiding. It had been one of the first actions taken by the newly formed Inquisitorius. By the standards of that formidable and menacing body, the operation had been a great success, winning high praise from the Emperor himself.
By combining forces, Jax and Laranth had managed to barely escape from the ambush, although Laranth had not emerged unscathed. Den didn't 82 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows know if the Paladin's grim nature had always been a part of her personality, or if it had been annealed that night by the blasterfire that had truncated a lekku and seared one side of her face. It didn't really matter.
Whoever Laranth Tarak had been before had been thoroughly purged by the horrors of Flame Night.
Inquisitors, those "truth officers" steeped in the dark side, still prowled the multifarious sectors of Imperial Center, albeit in fewer numbers. The majority of them had been dispatched to the Outer Rim Terri-tories and similar galactic backplanets to sniff out illegal Force activity. But the ones who remained were still to be feared. Den had heard that some were capable of isolating a lone Force-sensitive, nascent or otherwise, out of a population of millions. The chances of discovery were still astronomically slim—nevertheless, the Sullustan sweated every time Jax or Laranth made use of the Force.
Laranth had never been deliberately unkind to him.
But even though she had saved his life on more than one occasion, Den still at times felt a small knot of uneasiness in his gut whenever he had to deal with her. She was so unremittingly gloomy. Not once could he recall seeing her smile.
Probably a good thing, he thought. Might crack that scar tissue wide open.
In any event, now was not the time to be wondering about Laranth's past. Jax had given them an assignment, which was to check the availability of possible UML routes and determine the quickest and Michael Reaves 83
safest way to get the Caamasi and his girlfriend offworld. For unavoidable security reasons this had to be done in person and not via electronic means of communication that could be intercepted or traced.
There were a number of Whiplash outpost agents in this sector. Each of these operatives was assigned to a certain section of a route. None knew any of the others. All operated on a strict need-to-know basis, and the order in which they were approached was chosen at random.
"So who's up in rotation this time?" he asked Laranth.
She hesitated a moment, then said, "The Cephalon."
Den smacked a hand to his forehead. "Sweet Sookie's maiden aunt," he groaned. "Do we have to deal with that thing again? He—it—they—I don't even know what pronoun to use, but it gives me the creeps."
"I sympathize," Laranth replied, "but that's who we're seeing. Come on—let's get it over with." She increased her pace, striding swiftly down the litter-strewn street that was becoming more crowded as the day progressed.
Den groaned again and hurried after. "I don't suppose it would do any good to say that I've got a bad feeling about this."
"Consider it indigestion," she replied curtly, "and deal with it."
84 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows eight
There were in the galaxy two main types of intelligence: chordate and ganglionic. Evolution, by pansper-mic and convergent means, had mandated that the vast majority of sentient beings be of the former design: creatures with a rod of cartilage or bone running the length of their bodies from which a skeleton could be hung and atop which a lump of cortical tissue could, in some cases, eventually grow into a self-aware brain. There were exceptions, of course. The Hutts, for example, were essentially giant invertebrate molluscs, their decentralized brains composed of billions of concatenated subneural chains integrated into their flesh. For the most part, however, intelligence had evolved through building n
otochords and parking gray matter atop them. This generally resulted in one consciousness per body, which seemed to Den a sensible way to arrange things.
Ganglionic intelligence was quite different. Most thought the term referred to a collective sentience, or hive-mind: the sum of many individual brains working in concert toward a common end, such as the baf-forr trees of Iffor or the bivalves of Mon Calamari's Michael Reaves 85
Knowledge Bank. Den had thought so as well, until I-Five had set him straight:
"What you're thinking of is symbiotic intelligence.
Aggregated consciousness. Ganglionic intelligence is another thing entirely. Almost the opposite, in fact.
It's compartmentalized consciousness. Try to envision your arms and legs having minds of their own, as the saying goes."
Den tried to imagine such a thing, and failed utterly. "It makes no sense," he argued. "Actually, it's even worse than that. It makes anti-sense."
I-Five sighed. He was capable of giving the sound a remarkably human resonance, given that he didn't breathe and had to synthesize it mechanically. "Take my word for it, then."
"I guess I'll have to. So you're saying that this—this—what do they call themselves again?"
"They don't. Humans and other species usually refer to them as Cephalons, which just means 'head'
in Oldspeak Basic. They see no need for names, as their consciousness apparently exists in and perceives four dimensions."
"That sounds like a cosmic non sequitur to me,"
Den said. "But setting that aside ..."
The droid anticipated his next question. "They
'see' time the way we see space."
"Uhh ..."
I-Five projected the near-infinite patience of a parent trying to explain a difficult concept to a child.
"The theory is that they're not limited to a linear one-
86 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows way perception of time as most sentients are. They perceive temporal events the same way you're cognizant of items in spatial relation to where you are.
See that landspeeder parked behind you?"
Den looked behind him. "Yes."
"Call it the past."
The Sullustan frowned. "Why?"
"Because it's behind you. See that trash bin ahead of you? That's the future."
"For you, maybe. I try to be more optimistic."
"How fortunate for me my chassis is made of sealed metal. Otherwise I might split my sides from laughter." I-Five took Den by the shoulders and turned him around. "Work with me on this." He pointed at the landspeeder. "Now that's the future, and the trash bin is the past. See? They conceptualize space and time as a four-dimensional hypermanifold. Simple, really."
"Why do you hate me?"
The Sullustan had tried to wrap his head around it, he really had, but it was just too bizarre. The Cephalon was easily the most alien of alien beings he had ever encountered, and for someone who had spent as much time as he had in a front-line Rimsoo, seeing in a week more xenomorphs, both inside and out, than most people did in a year, that was saying something.
But there did seem to be one small plot of common ground, and that was the Cephalon's willingness to aid other beings in escaping repression. Which meant that, every now and then, it had to be dealt with.
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But that didn't mean Den had to like it.
Such a pathetic state of affairs, Haninum Tyk Rhinann told himself. How sad that he had come to this lowly state. It was undignified enough to be dependent on a human benefactor such as Jax Pavan, but it was much, much worse to actually be envious of him.
His bauth—an Elomin concept largely untranslatable in Basic, indicating a combination of unshakable poise, brazen effrontery, and a touch of aloof amusement—which had once encased his soul in impenetrable armor, now hung in tatters. He had no individual future, no course, no star by which to steer. He had been cast down.
No, it was worse than that: he had cast himself down.
It hadn't always been thus. Once, not long ago, Rhinann had been puissant indeed. His word had been powerful enough to open doors and to close them as well, locking away behind them the enemies of his master. Perhaps it was true enough what his critics had said: that he had held no real power of his own, but instead had been merely a pale reflection of his master's glory, like a planet throwing back the light of its star. Perhaps. But there were worlds that reflected the dim ruddiness of red dwarves, and there were worlds that reflected the blinding azure of giant blue-white stellar furnaces. And save for Palpatine himself, no star burned more brightly in the firmament of the Empire than that of Lord Darth Vader.
88 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows It had been a heady draft of power, at first. Rhinann had been Vader's aide-de-camp, his personal adjutant and factotum, and as such the flail the Elomin had swung had been heavy. Given such a position one could ask, with perfect justification, why he had sought exile voluntarily.
On the surface of it he had had a most excellent motivation: survival. His master had at last run the rogue Jedi Pavan to ground, it was true. Unfortunately, that location had also been ground zero for an imminent overload, initiated by Pavan in an underground reactor in the Factory Works, that grim an-tipodean no-being's-land populated solely by feral droids. The Imperial Lambda-class shuttle's stabilizer vanes had been disabled by Pavan's lightwhip, whereupon the Elomin had acted out of sheer instinct for perhaps the only time in his otherwise wholly rational life: he had abandoned the un-airworthy ship and, in so doing, abandoned his lord and master as well. As a consequence, he had been left with little choice but to throw in his lot with Pavan and his group of motley companions.
Such disloyalty to the Empire could not be for-given, even if his only alternative had been being reduced to a wisp of radioactive gas drifting forlornly across the devastated landscape.
His plight might not have been so bad, his eventual fate not as certain, had Vader been transformed into free-floating ions like the rest of the Lambda's crew.
But Rhinann had seen the telltale footage captured by Michael Reaves 89
the Far Ranger's rear cameras, the instant in which a life pod had jettisoned from the shuttle at maximum speed. He hadn't needed the calculations quickly performed by I-Five, which had given the occupant of that life pod a one-in-eight chance of escaping the immediate area and finding adequate shelter among the deserted protective husks of buildings farther from the blast site. The odds, the droid had hypothesized, would be improved to an unknown degree should the pod's passenger happen to be a master of the Force.
Rhinann had believed then what he knew now to be true—that this was precisely what had happened.
After all, this was Darth Vader. The monster was all but indestructible. Of that Rhinann was convinced, and knew he was far from alone in his judgment.
Because, in addition to his augmented strength and reflexes, Vader seemed to be more powerful than anyone in that most mysterious and wonderful of intan-gibles: the Force.
The Force captivated Rhinann. He had devoured every scrap of information on it he could find—no easy feat, given Emperor Palpatine's galactic ban on any and all hard data concerning the Force. After years of cautious study, the fascinated Elomin still had little idea of what it truly was. Most savants dismissed it out of hand, calling it a legend, a myth, a throwback to the sort of primitive religions that thankfully had all but died out in this modem, more enlightened era. Of course, none of them had felt an invisible noose tighten around their necks in concert 90 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows with Vader's slowly contracting fist. But Rhinann had, and he knew that, whatever else it might be, the Force was no myth.
According to the lore, both ancient and modern, that he had assimilated, the Force was a form of energy that could be controlled and manipulated by conscious will. There were two theories as to how this was possible, which Rhinann felt were not neces-sarily mutually exclusive. One was that the abi
lity to access the Force was based on a kind of apperception precipitated and augmented by endosymbiotic cellu-lar organelles called midi-chlorians. The other theory held that the Force itself somehow brought into being those same midi-chlorians in order to facilitate its connection and thus manifest itself to varying degrees of potency in various species and individuals. There was also evidence that it was hereditary, although a wide gene pool seemed to be required for it to flourish. Nick Rostu, a native of Haruun Kal, was supposedly descended, along with all the other Korunnai, from a seed population of Jedi shipwrecked there centuries ago. Yet that soldier's connection with the Force had been weak. It would seem that midi-chlorians, and their resulting Force manifestation, did not increase their potency through inbreeding.
With great caution and stealth Rhinann had recently arranged to have his own midi-chlorian count tested. The results, carefully shunted and sliced through a plethora of servers and screens around the galactic information hyperlane, had at last come into his pos-
Michael Reaves 91
session. As he had suspected, the number was pitifully low: a mere two thousand per cell on average.
No one with such a low reading would ever feel the Force flowing through them. Although this merely confirmed his suspicions, he still found it disappointing.
Rhinann sighed, his nose tusks vibrating in high C.
He'd reluctantly come to the conclusion that he had spent enough time on this quixotic quest for his own mastery of the Force. Better to concentrate on the far more mundane but realizable task at hand. He was supposed to be searching for lightsaber components.
Trying to be something he was not was utter foolishness, and unworthy of whatever meager pride he had left.
He gestured at the holoproj, intending to change sources, when he noticed a blinking node signifying a datum of possible interest that fell within his search parameters. It was dated nearly twenty standard years ago, and appeared to be a transmission from one of the outlying planetary fronts during the waning years of the Clone Wars. An odd sort of communication to stumble across.
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