I pulled back, smacking my head on the headboard. “Ouch. Are you sure the New Republic would do that? They don’t seem to have the guts to do such a thing.”
“Carida is gone, isn’t it?” She patted me on the other knee. “They blame its destruction on a rogue, a child, yet you notice he is lauded as a Jedi now. Since when are promotions given to people who fail to carry out orders?”
I shivered. “I’d never have thought of that.”
Tavira placed hands on either side of my hips and kissed me gently on the nose. “Oh, you would have, my dear.”
“Thank you.”
Then she slapped me. Hard. Snapped my head around to the right and by the time I’d recovered, she stood again beside my bed and glared down at me. I pressed my left hand to my cheek. “What did I do?”
“It’s not what you did, it’s what you’ve failed to do!” She turned away from me, but fury poured off her. “You should have dealt with this Jedi situation.”
“What? Me? How?” I sat forward. “I had no way to reach you.”
“Immaterial. All I’ve heard since I’ve been here is that you’ve not drawn a sober breath since the Jedi arrived. The night Shala died, you were so drunk you destroyed a speeder bike and didn’t even know it.” She gestured vaguely toward the street in front of the hotel. “I’ve brought you another one, by the way. Don’t destroy this one.”
“I’m sorry.”
She spun back, with her hand raised to slap me again, but she hesitated. “You are sorry, and I expect a change. Your behavior must improve. You must lead by example. You must show them not to fear the Jedi.”
“Emperor’s black bones, he melted Shala’s headquarters. Two nights ago it was still warm.”
She lowered her hand. “You cannot let your fear show. These Jedi, they are like animals. They can smell fear. It’s so thick here, I can smell it, and I hate it.”
“Fighting the Jedi is not easy.”
“I don’t want you to fight it, I want you to lead the others in opposition to it. You do that, and I will take care of the Jedi.” Her fists returned to her hips. “As much as I would like to join you there for a proper reunion, I have preparations to make. I’ll be back within the week. I expect to see you sharp and in control.”
She started to walk out of the room, then paused and turned back. “Oh, kill Jacob Nive and take command. The man’s spirit is broken. If he can’t be fixed, he’s useless.”
“I’ll remember that.”
“Do that, darling.” She gave me a wink. “It’s an object lesson you would do best never to forget.”
I did exactly what Leonia Tavira wanted. I cleaned myself up and started making the rounds of the remaining groups on Courkrus. I visited them all in their strongholds, snapping orders, inventing security procedures, threatening, bribing, hinting darkly that any group that didn’t get tough would be melded in with other groups, losing their autonomy. And of those groups that ran, well, I simply asked if anyone truly believed the galaxy was big enough to let them hide from Leonia Tavira.
The Survivors took heart immediately, and even Jacob Nive seemed to recover some of his nerve. The Blackstar Pirates remained sullen but determined to stick things out. The Red Nova crew rallied and even started talking with the LazerLords about a merger that would keep the two of their groups functioning well. Riistar’s Raiders, whom I had largely left alone, started plotting to surpass the Survivors and began making overtures to me about shifting my allegiance to them.
What was truly great about this effort and the rebound in morale was that it rested very strongly on my representations of Tavira’s plans to deal with the Jedi. I quickly let things evolve such that I moved into Shala’s position of directly confronting the Jedi. I promised a trap that would destroy him and I knew, as the Invids put their trust in me—transferring much of it from their trust in Tavira—that if I went the way of Shala, morale would collapse flat and Tavira would lose the combat arm of the Invids.
How I would have the Jedi kill me was something I hadn’t had time to figure out yet, but I knew it would have to be really spectacular or really nasty. I didn’t know which I would settle for—Shala’s demise would be tough to top and a bit rougher on me than I wanted to attempt. Grisly would probably be the best and I wanted to leave clues to the Jedi living in the city’s sewers so lots of time would be spent hunting down there, while I could be living someplace a bit nicer.
To heighten the tension concerning the confrontation, I decided to return to the Crash cantina. I knew everyone there well enough to be able to blank their memories during my entrance and scramble my features to avoid recognition when I suddenly appeared in their midst. I projected a red mist condensing into my form to cover my appearance, and almost laughed aloud as previously brave men and women recoiled from me, moving away from the bar toward the furthest reaches of the room.
I ignited my lightsaber and pointed it at Jacob Nive. “Where is Idanian?”
All the blood drained from Jacob’s face. “I d-don’t know.”
“He has said he will end my actions. Where is he?” I swept the blade around in a grand arc, causing people to duck or cover their eyes with their hands. “Where is he?”
A chorus of denials came back weak and timid.
“Tell him, I will meet him. The same fate that took Shala the Hutt awaits him!” I kept my voice very low and as menacing as I could. “When we meet, his time will be at an end.”
I slashed the lightsaber down through the bar and across, whipping the blade through the area where the Savareen brandy and other expensive liquors were kept. The brandy immediately exploded in a gout of blue flame, which lit the area behind the bar and began to spill out onto the main floor. More bottles exploded and the bartender started screaming, allowing me to step back and make my escape. I slipped into the night amid the shouting and yelling of people trying to deal with a fire, and began taking a fairly quick route back to the hotel.
Across the street I saw a knot of five individuals turn and come in my direction. The fact that Jenos’ brave talk had spawned hunter gangs didn’t surprise me, and I’d dealt with that many individuals before. I ducked into an alley, moving halfway along toward where it turned right and led out to another street, then prepared to project an image of my actually walking further along a nonexistent part of the alley. Getting them to chase me and hit the wall had worked wonders before, and if I could take a couple of them out, it would make the rest of the task much more simple.
They came to the alley mouth but didn’t run in. When I hit them with the illusion, they didn’t shout, didn’t point, didn’t draw blasters. In fact, they seemed to look directly at me, which meant the illusion wasn’t taking. That struck me as odd because they looked human, but since they wore hooded cloaks I couldn’t be certain which humanoid species they were.
Since they spotted me, I moved away from the wall and further down the alley. I let the Force flow toward them as they walked forward, but I caught no sense of fear or anticipation from them. I could feel them in the Force, but I wasn’t getting nearly the sort of feedback I expected. Something very odd here. Time to provoke a reaction.
I threw back the right side of my cloak and brought my lightsaber out. I thumbed it to life and wove the humming blade back and forth before them. “You don’t want any part of this, trust me. Run now and I’ll let you live.”
One by one they likewise freed their gun arms. I set myself to pick off blaster fire, but none erupted, no angry whines filled the alley, no red bolts burned toward me. Instead, blue, yellow, red, orange and purple lightsaber blades sprang to life in their hands. Five of them, hissing in concert, like a krayt dragon hungry for the meal wrapped up in my clothes.
They advanced, and I realized there really wasn’t any way things could get much worse.
FORTY-SIX
Then a sixth silhouette appeared at the mouth of the alley and a green lightsaber sprouted in his hands.
Great, now we have the whole rai
nbow represented. I lifted my left hand from my blade’s hilt and waved him forward. “C’mon, pal, one more won’t make any difference.”
I wished I felt as brave as those words sounded.
The man at the alley mouth started forward. “No one need die here tonight.”
I knew that voice! Luke!
And I recognized in his warning to those I faced a directive to me. I slid to the right and blocked a red slash low right, directing the red blade away and into the brick wall. Pivoting on my left foot, I snapped a sidekick into my foe’s belly, driving her back. I discovered she wore an armored breastplate, which partially shielded her from the strength of my kick. The armor, however, didn’t stop her from catching her heels on debris and going down, temporarily taking her out of the fight.
Luke engaged Yellow and Purple as I ducked beneath a blue slash and twisted to bring my left hand up. I caught my foe on his chin with the heel of my hand. The blow shifted the mask he wore up a couple of centimeters, temporarily blinding him. A quick punch to the throat choked him, then I grabbed him by the clasp of his cloak and flung him into the alley wall. His armor clicked hard against the bricks, then he dropped back all boneless and the deadman switch on his lightsaber shut it off.
I parried Orange’s cut and caught his wrist in my left hand. I shifted my right hand up, then whipped it down and across. My lightsaber’s heavy pommel caught Orange right behind the right ear, or where the right ear would have been on a human. As Orange dropped senseless to the ground, his hood slid back and I saw he was a Rodian.
I reached down and flicked his lightsaber off, then straightened up as Luke rose above Red. From her I only got peace, a peace I found vaguely reminiscent of the peace I’d imagined surrounding Mirax when Exar Kun showed her to me. “New trick?”
Luke shut off his lightsaber and I did the same with mine, plunging the alley into darkness. “Old one, one of yours. I hit her and knocked her out. Just easing some of her pain now.”
“Nice sense of timing. If you hadn’t arrived, the five of them would have killed me, clean and quick.” I shivered. “How did you find me?”
In faint light from the street, I saw Luke’s expression sharpen. “I knew, if you had learned all you needed to learn, that I would meet you here, and that we would be allies.”
I felt a chill run down my spine. “I see.”
Luke’s voice lightened slightly. “As for the when, with that I needed some help.” He turned back up the alley. “Are we clear?”
A silhouette framed itself in the alley, prompting me to laugh. “I see no pursuit.”
“Ooryl?” I hopped over Orange’s body and ran forward. “Ooryl, what are you doing here?”
“I am a Findsman.” The Gand shrugged as if that should have explained everything. “The important thing of being a Findsman is not knowing where to look, for that is easy. It is knowing when to look. I knew the when was now, and went to Master Skywalker to tell him that. He pointed me here, and I brought him now.”
Luke waved us back into the alley. “We have to get our sleeping friends out of here. We have a ship, but I need somewhere else to keep them. They know where Mirax is.”
I nodded. “Can’t be far from here, because Tavira brought them within a day of hearing we had Jedi trouble here. Who are they?”
“I don’t know.” Luke shook his head. “We better find out and find out fast, because if we don’t, if someone learns they’ve failed in their mission, it may cost Mirax her life.”
I reached down and hefted Orange up by his belt, letting Ooryl grab Yellow and Purple. “I know where we can take them, but getting information out of them will be tough. They know how to use the Force, and I’m not sure we can break through to find out what we want to know.”
“I think I have something that can help us in that regard.” Luke gestured, allowing Red and Blue to float up into the air. “Lead on, Keiran. As Ooryl explained it to me, when is just an aperture in time, and we don’t want it to snap shut before we can get through to your wife.”
We took our five opponents back to the hotel. I called Elegos and had him meet us in the back, at the freight-lift. Ooryl left the two he’d carried to Elegos, then returned to the spaceport to fetch something for Luke. Awaiting his return we stripped our prisoners out of their armor, separated them and treated the cuts and bruises they’d earned in the fight.
When Ooryl returned he brought with him a cagelike device that had suspended inside of it a small, furred reptile. A nutrient mix flowed through a network of tubes, sustaining the creature which, if it were capable of movement, seemed singularly disinclined to show it. I did see it blink an eye, but even that movement was slower than I would have expected in a living creature.
“This is an ysalamiri, one of two I brought with me.” Luke rested a hand on the cage and looked a bit fatigued. “It is unique among living creatures—at least I don’t know of any others—in that it seems to project a field that negates the Force. On its homeworld some predators evolved with a Force sense that lets them hunt, so its negation sphere acts as camouflage.”
“Okay, that’s why I feel so weird. Thought I was just tired.” I tried to reach inside myself to tap the Force, but I got nothing. “It’s like I’m back where I started, back before the academy.”
Luke nodded. “You’re fortunate in that you spent most of your life only having a fringe sense of the Force. I’ve been involved much longer than you and in the presence of an ysalamiri, I feel lost, like a limb has been lopped off.” Luke flexed his mechanical hand. “Worse, actually.”
“How do you think this will affect our guests?”
Luke managed a smile, but that seemed to tax him. “I think they’ve been involved with the Force longer than I have. They seem to armor themselves well with it. I suspect they will feel very vulnerable.”
“Good.” I gave him a feral grin. “Just what we want if we’re going to get anything out of them. Just follow my lead.”
The Jedi Master caught hold of my shoulder. “I’ve not done anything like this before, interrogating prisoners.”
I winked at him. “ ’Sokay, I know enough for both of us. Just stay over there, by the door, and look as malevolent as you can. Keep your face straight and you really don’t need to say anything.”
“Malevolent?”
“Think Hutt, but with eyebrows.”
“Got it.”
We picked Red to be the first subject—actually, Elegos did, for reasons of his own—but I didn’t mind. Interrogating women is always tricky, mainly because they tend to be suspicious of any claims made by a man and often believe they can use their looks and wiles to fool a detective. Red, who really was a slender beauty with wavy brown hair and blue eyes, could have melted many a detective’s steel heart, but the surprise and fear twisting her face as she awakened robbed her of her beauty. The ysalamiri made me feel as if I was seeing in black and white, so for her it must have seemed as if she was blind.
When I saw her eyes flicker open, I looked back at Luke and nodded as if I’d received a telepathic message from him. “Yes, I will see what I can find out. Give her a moment to recover.”
Luke stared at me for a second, then impatiently flicked a hand in my direction.
I smiled. Quick study. Let’s hope she isn’t.
I squatted down next to the chair in which we had bound her. “Forgive me for having to restrain you like this. I wish I could make things more pleasant, but he’s rather insistent. I know you’re feeling odd right now because you have lost the use of certain senses you consider part of you. He has removed your access to them to make it easier for me to probe your mind, but I know how unpleasant that will be for you.”
She shook her head adamantly. “I will not betray my people.”
Her words came stiff and pronounced slightly oddly. Precise, that’s it. It almost seemed as if she were speaking with the same very proper diction my grandfather used. It was a datapoint—not much of one, but a point nonetheless.
“You can’t stop her.”
I glanced back at Luke, then turned to her. “He says that just because you could not stop her, does not mean we cannot. Sorry, he always makes things sound so dire, but the fact is, he’s right. I’ve been here for months, on many operations where you or another of your brethren were on the Invidious, and you never detected me. Why not? Because he was shielding me. You know you looked, you know you tried, but it wasn’t until this evening, when we wanted to trap you, that I revealed myself enough to let you find me. And you never even detected him.”
I stood and walked over to confer with Luke, letting her mull over what I’d said. I raised a finger to my lips to keep Luke silent, but frowned to get him to give me that expression. When he did look at me angrily, I recoiled. “But you can’t be so cruel. To remove her access to the Force forever isn’t going to do her or us any good. Sure, it might teach her a lesson, but so would having a bantha trample her. I don’t think she should be made an example of. It won’t make the others more tractable.”
Luke really got into his part, jabbing me hard in the chest with two fingers. I did an about face, rubbing my chest, and returned to Red’s side. “I really do think I can get him to unblock your access to the Force, I really do. You just need to tell us where Tavira keeps the Invidious. I mean, we already know you manage to keep it hidden—you’re very good at that stuff, hiding and all.”
Star Wars: I, Jedi Page 45
