Star Wars: Coruscant Nights III: Patterns of Force (29 page)

To Rhinann’s surprise, the Jedi merely shrugged. “I’m not surprised, but Tuden Sal might be. Let him know.”

Rhinann swung around to stare at the daft human. “So you’re still going through with it? What can you be thinking?”

“That the ISB will be looking for a Jedi with a sentient droid and what they’ll get is an Inquisitor with a garden-variety threepio.”

They left him to his ministrations then, descending into the empty art gallery—most likely, the Elomin thought, to continue the process of planning their own funerals.

Still, Rhinann reflected, it might not be an unmitigated disaster. I-Five would surely make certain that, under these conditions, Jax was the one carrying the bota. The more Rhinann thought about it, the more sense it made as a contingency plan. The bota would provide backup. If I-Five were discovered or the plan went awry in some other way, Jax would take the bota and complete the mission.

Elegant. It also clarified what Rhinann had to do. He must grease the gears for the assassins’ entry into the Imperial headquarters.

And he must make sure that he was one of the assassins.

Kaj liked being with the greenskined Twi’lek. She was his idea of a Jedi—stealthy as the wind, lithe, smart, brave, mysterious.

“You’re different,” he told her as they made their way together from the safe house he’d spent the night in through the maze of alleys that led, eventually, to the gallery/theater above which Thi Xon Yimmon’s sanctum was located.

“From what?”

“From Jax.”

“Jax is human. I’m Twi’lek.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Jax is male. I’m female.”

“Well, yeah. I kinda noticed that.”

“I’m green. Jax is a sickly shade of beige.”

“Now you’re teasing me.”

“I never tease.”

“You keep saying that, but you tease me. And sometimes you tease Jax.”

Laranth turned her head to look at him. “Don’t tell him that.”

Her eyes were a stellar shade of green—like the twin stars that rose in the winter evenings just after midnight in the southwestern sky over his parents’ farm.

He grinned at her. “I won’t. What I meant was you’re
not what I expected a Jedi to be. Well, neither is Jax, really.”

“I’m not a Jedi. I’m a Gray Paladin.” The green eyes darkened. “So what did you expect Jedi to be like?”

“All serious. Well, you’re serious, but I mean like … like the monks in the healing orders.”

“The Silent?”

“Yeah. I mean, Jax is all into teaching me how to be still and calm and all, but he’s … 
Jax.
” He paused a moment then asked, “How do
you
do it? How do you keep from letting the anger get you?”

“You’re feeling angry right now?” She swept him with her emerald gaze, and he knew she was reading him—as much as she could, considering the fact that he was wearing the Inquisitor’s taozin necklace. Rhinann had told him the Inquisitor’s name: Tesla. He’d remember that.

“No, I’m not angry now. It’s … it’s partly what they did to my parents.”

“The farm?”

He’d told her about that. Now he just nodded. “And partly it’s just …”

“Maybe it would be better if you didn’t think about it.”

“Is that how you deal with it? By not thinking about it?”

She gave him a long, disconcerting look. “I seem angry to you, do I?”

“Yeah. Especially when—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. Stepping out into the intersection of four narrow corridors, he found himself knee-deep in some sort of weird fog. It lapped languorously around his legs like subliming CO
₂
.

“Hey, what is this stuff?”

Laranth stared down at the rising mist, then swore.
Spinning back the way they’d come, she drew her blasters and took one step, then stopped.

“Inquisitors,” she snarled and turned again.

Kaj’s blood pumped harder. “It’s okay. I can take care of them.”

“No, you can’t.” She took the right branch of the intersection. It was blocked not a meter and a half from the junction by what looked like a block of solid ferrocrete.

Kaj stood in the center of the intersection watching the fog rise, catching the scent of it. He knew it was a drug even as the first wave of vertigo hit him. He saw Laranth tear by him in a curling wake of the stuff, futilely checking the center and left-hand corridors.

She staggered as she came back into the junction, swore again, and bolted back the way they’d come. The logic of that hit Kaj as his knees buckled. Their captors had all the time in the world to completely plug the corridors ahead of them with objects they’d be unable to manipulate, but their back trail would have to be guarded. His first impulse had been right, he thought as the fog seeped into his mind. He should’ve turned around and blasted them.

He tried to summon the will and focus to do that now, but his mind would not cooperate. He felt as if his body had been disconnected from his brain and the different parts of his brain blocked from communicating with one another.

He fell into the swirl of mist, watching Laranth’s silhouette move away from him through it. He heard the hum of lightsabers and saw red flashes.

How would Jax find them? How would he even know what had happened to them?

Pebbles
.

The answer came from a simple childhood tale about a young sister and brother whose evil father took them
out into the fens to lose them, lest they grow to adulthood and fulfill a prophecy that foresaw his demise. They had dropped pebbles along their trail to find their way back.

Kaj had no pebbles, but he did have a taozin chain. With his last shred of focused thought he wrenched the thing from his neck and tossed it behind him.

Jax couldn’t have said where the dream twisted and became a nightmare. It wasn’t a Force dream, just a reeling off of recent events seen in strobe-like splashes of color and movement. Then, with a suddenness that thrust him into a half-waking state, the entire atmosphere of the dream altered, becoming viscous, fluid, and terrifying.

He plunged through layers of oily cloud in a cold, narrow place that was as dark as an Inquisitor’s heart. He was dropped into a maze to run blindly here and there, seeking escape. But escape was barred at every turn and someone or something was seeking him, drawing ever nearer in the dark.

He dragged himself to wakefulness, a chemical taste in his mouth. After a moment, he recognized it.

Spice gas.

He sat up, the oppressive foreboding he’d felt since yesterday now a crushing weight that sat in the middle of his chest. He rose and pulled on his tunic. Any more sleep was out of the question. He’d go see Thi Xon Yimmon. He checked the wall chrono. If he went now, he could help Laranth align the light sculptures.

He hung his lightsaber at his belt, arranged his vest over it, and went out onto the upstairs gallery. I-Five looked up from his inspection of the cloth Rhinann was holding out for him. The Inquisitor’s cloak, Jax realized.

“Where are you off to?” I-Five asked.

“I’m going to check on Kaj.”

“We are scheduled to meet with Sal again shortly to finalize—”

“I know. I’ll be late for that, I guess.”

The droid blinked. “Jax, may I remind you that we’re plotting to assassinate the Emperor, not planning a family picnic.”

Jax hesitated. I-Five was right, but the nightmare still sat on him
—in
him—making his thoughts slow and disjointed. He took a deep breath. “I think I felt a disturbance in the Force. I was asleep, so it’s all muddled up with a dream I was having.”

Rhinann turned to I-Five. “Can you translate that into Basic for me, please?”

I-Five sounded annoyed. “It’s Jedi for something bad has happened.” He thrust the cloak back into Rhinann’s arms and came to stand below the balcony, looking up at Jax. “Kaj?”

“I’m not sure. I want to go check.”

“We have a HoloNet node,” said Rhinann, gesturing at it.

As if on cue, the HoloNet pinged to signal an incoming message. Rhinann moved to the floating station in the corner of the gallery and checked the source.

“It’s Thi Xon Yimmon.” He looked up at Jax.

“Open the link.”

By the time Thi Xon Yimmon appeared, Jax was standing on the projection pad, facing him. One glance at the Whiplash leader’s gaunt face made every atom of his body chill.

“What’s happened?”

“The worst, I’m afraid. Kaj and Laranth have been captured.”

Jax realized he was using the Force to hold himself upright, his legs suddenly feeling unequal to the task of bearing his body’s weight.

“How?”

Yimmon glanced to one side. “As near as we can tell an ambush was set up along one of our approach corridors beneath the spaceport. A little-used one we selected especially for the purpose of moving Kaj. I can’t tell you how it was done. Somehow they must have incapacitated Laranth and the boy or … or worse.”

Jax closed his eyes and reached out, uncaring just now if some nearby Inquisitor should feel the brush of his mind as it touched the fabric of the Force.

“No,” he murmured. “No, they’re alive. I would have known it if she … if they were killed. There would be an echo of their life forces. I felt
something
, but didn’t know what it was. I think they were drugged. Spice gas. I woke up just now tasting it.”

“That, at least, is good news. They were late getting here so we sent out search teams. We’d never have even realized what had happened to them or where if one of our teams hadn’t found this.” He reached to one side, and a hand laid something in his. It was the taozin ward Kaj had been wearing. The woven chain was broken.

Jax felt as if a metal band were being ratcheted tightly around his chest. He forced his mind to prioritize its thoughts, not according to his personal dictates, but according to the greater good. “Do you think you’re in danger of being discovered?”

“The ambush point was some distance from here—in fact, Laranth and Kaj had barely entered the tunnels and might have taken any number of different routes once they got past this particular juncture. I think the ambush was set up by someone with only a cursory knowledge of our routes of access.”

I-Five made a strange sound. “Set up by whom? Only a handful of people knew who Kaj was and that he was being moved today. Only Whiplash operatives, as you point out, know your routes.”

“Yes. Which leads to the unhappy conclusion that the
person or persons who arranged this are in Whiplash confidence, but only up to a point.”

The thought sent Jax’s mind reeling. “Someone like Pol Haus?”

“I would not believe it of him,” Yimmon said. “Or perhaps I would merely not want to believe it of him. He is an old and trusted friend.”

“May I remind you,” I-Five said, “that Pol Haus knows about the art gallery. If he had wanted, he could have given up the entire organization.”

Another possibility occurred to Jax that was chillingly reasonable. “Unless all he wanted or needed to do was pacify Vader, which was pretty high on his priority list if you’ll recall. He may not be allied with the Empire, but just trying to keep the peace. In fact, he might have reasoned that giving up the ‘rogue adept’ was the best way to protect the Whiplash from discovery. He may very well have seen Kaj’s presence there as a threat to
his
old and trusted friend.”

As Yimmon digested that, Dejah stepped onto the holoprojector pad at his end of the transmission. “Jax, Yimmon has told me that some Jedi possess the power of psychometry. Do you?”

“I have some ability. I’ve rarely used it.”

The Zeltron lifted the taozin ward from Yimmon’s hands and held it out. “Would you be willing to try? Even I can sense
something
about this necklace. Some … emotional resonance from it. Maybe you could divine more.”

Jax nodded. “We’ll come at once.”

Yimmon agreed immediately. “We’ll send runners to all the access points on the outer perimeter. You choose which one you use. Right now that’s the only way to make sure there won’t be another ambush.”

With those chilling words, Thi Xon Yimmon ended his transmission.

Rhinann lifted his arms in a gesture of dismay. “We’ll come at once? May I remind you—”

Jax was already on his way to the lift. “I-Five and I will go. You contact Sal. Let him know what’s happened. Tell him … tell him things have changed. Our assassination plot just became a rescue operation.”

Kaj woke from a nightmare to find himself lying in an elegant yet spartan room. His head hurt, his vision was blurred, and he had no memory of coming here.

Cold panic shot through him then, from top to bottom. He had no memory of
anything
, beyond his name. He was Kajin Savaros. Beyond that, his past was a void.

He looked around the room. The walls were soft, deep blue-gray, the sparse furniture black.

He listened to the room. It was not completely silent, but breathed gently with the slow, regular influx and outflow of filtered air. There was a pleasant scent in it that reminded him of …

He racked his brain. Water. It reminded him of water, flowers, and the green scent of home. But where was home?

Was
this
home?

He sat up, his head throbbing, and swung his legs off the couch. The fabric of it was soft beneath his fingers. He dug his fingertips into it, trying to concentrate.

Nothing came.

Maybe that was the wrong thing to do. Someone had told him once that when you wanted to remember something, you should take your mind off remembering.

He couldn’t even remember who’d told him that.

Panic clotted in his throat, making it hurt, making his eyes sting with tears.

Stop it
, he told himself.
This is silly. You’re in this nice place. Someone put you here. You’re not hungry, so you’ve been well fed. Someone is taking care of you. You’re okay
.

He had a sudden, blinding recollection of cadging food from kiosks in a dingy marketplace. It was gone as swiftly as it had come.

He got to his feet with care, wobbling a little as he moved toward the door. It did not open at his approach. Was he a prisoner?