Haus glanced sidewise at him. “What do you need?”
Jax shut off the voice amplifier and spoke normally, his head tilted toward Haus’s so only the prefect would hear. “Information. I need to know if there’s any unusual activity going on inside the ISB.”
“What am I looking for?”
“An Inquisitor presence or a heightened security level in the detention areas, maybe.”
“As if they had a special prisoner?”
“Yes. And … if Vader’s back.”
“That, I can tell you right now, because I’ve always got feelers out for Vader. He’s on Coruscant—I got confirmation just before you showed up in my office. And according to my sources, most of his legion returned with him. Which kind of makes you wonder where the other ships went—and why.”
It did make Jax wonder, but he was momentarily consumed by the idea that he and Vader were sharing a planet. Warring impulses raced through him—to find Vader and confront him, or to get as far away from him as possible. Could the Dark Lord feel his presence here? Did he know he had not killed Jax Pavan? Was Jax endangering Whiplash by his mere presence?
Haus stopped walking and turned to face Jax. “Does Sal know you’re still thinking about going after Vader?”
“I’m not thinking about going after Vader. I’m thinking about going after Yimmon. And no, Sal doesn’t know. Are you going to tell him?”
“Do you intend to interfere with his plans for Whiplash?”
“Of course not.”
“Then I have no reason to tell him, do I? I want Yimmon back, too.” The prefect turned and started walking again.
“Why doesn’t Sal?”
The Zabrak made an impatient sound. “I think you’re reading him wrong. I think he wants Yimmon back. He just believes—for the reasons he cited—it’s dangerous to dedicate all of the organization’s resources to it.”
“But?”
A sidewise glance. “Who said there was a ‘but’?”
“Give me some credit, Haus. I haven’t lost my Force sense. I can read your ambivalence, and I’m aware that Sal’s reluctance is soul-deep.”
The prefect laughed, though Jax detected no humor in him. “But—I think he could afford to dedicate some resources to finding Yimmon. To give him his due, I think he probably doesn’t want you to be among them. At least, if I were in his position, I wouldn’t want to lose you to a quest.”
“But?” Jax prodded again.
“But I’d also understand that if you don’t give your all trying to get Yimmon back, you might as well be offworld. Sal needs you—Whiplash needs you. But it needs you with your head on straight, your heart in one piece, and your soul not stretched like a superstring between here and Wild Space. It needs you doing what you do best—furthering the resistance.”
Jax stopped and regarded the police prefect with wry appreciation, meeting his deceptively lazy amber eyes. “You don’t miss much, do you?”
“Give me some credit, Pavan. I don’t miss anything.”
Jax parted company from Haus in the heart of the marketplace. As he walked, he felt a strange combination of restlessness, impatience, and exhaustion. He chafed at having to wait for information; he wanted something to act upon—some certainty of direction. Was Yimmon here or somewhere else? If he wasn’t on Coruscant—then why was Vader here?
Deep in thought, Jax lost track of where he was until he looked up and recognized the neighborhood. The Cephalon who had summoned him before they’d left Coruscant on their failed mission lived only meters from the corner where he stood. He stopped and gazed down the plaza to the entry of the Cephalon’s building.
Why here? What did he imagine Aoloiloa might tell him if he showed up on its doorstep? What did he want it to tell him?
Here’s what you did wrong, you ridiculous human. Why didn’t you listen to me? Are you deaf? Blind? Insensate? All of the above?
He meant to turn around and retrace his steps to the market, but didn’t. Instead he let his feet carry him to the Cephalon’s tower. He signaled his desire to come up—to be granted an interview.
Maybe he’ll just tell me to go away.
But the Cephalon didn’t tell him to go away. And so, committed, Jax entered, arriving in the antechamber to find that Aoloiloa had acquired a couple of new sculptures since his last visit. It seemed, in fact, to be admiring them when Jax stepped up to the window and greeted it, removing his Ubese face mask and voice amplifier.
Aoloiloa turned slowly and bobbed over to the window.
—You have/will return(ed).
The words scrolled across the communications display in the anteroom.
“I return. And I regret to tell you that I … experienced the truth of your words: Choice is loss; indecision is all loss. I failed to make a choice and lost all.”
—You wish/wished/will wish?
“I …” He stalled. What did he wish? What did he expect the Cephalon would or could tell him? What he might have done differently or better? He already knew that, didn’t he?
“I wish to know … if there was anything I might have done to … to produce a different result.”
—To not lose all?
“Yes. To not lose all.”
—That is/was/will be a different path. Every choice makes/has made/will make its own path. Many trails lead/have led/will lead to crux.
“Crux—yes, you said that before. You said: Locus. Dark crosses light.”
Or dark will cross light, or dark has crossed light, or …
—Yes. Locus. Nexus. Crux. Dark and light cross/crossed/will cross.
“You mean that wasn’t it? It hasn’t happened yet? Or do you mean that it did cross and that I made the wrong choice; went down the wrong path; whatever.”
The Cephalon bobbed silently for a long moment, then said:—Listen.
Listen? Jax couldn’t recall a time when he had heard a Cephalon say anything that carried even that hint of urgency or command.
“I’m listening.”
—Yimmon’s separation destroys/has destroyed/will destroy us.
Jax’s hair stood on end. That was the most intensely personal message he’d ever received from one of these ethereal sentients. “Us? You mean the Cephalons? Or Whiplash? Or—”
—All of us.
The words on the display looked the same as every other trail of letters and syllables, yet Jax’s Force sense—completely focused on the Cephalon—told him that it was not the same. Aoloiloa was disturbed by the words—perhaps even afraid.
“You mean he … he’s going betray the Resistance?”
—Your truth: Choice is loss; indecision is all loss. Dark crosses/has crossed/will cross light.
“And makes gray?” Jax asked reflexively.
—Eclipse, said the Cephalon.
Eleven
Eclipse.
Dark crosses light, blotting it out. Darkness reigns.
But only for a time, Jax argued as he made his way back toward Ploughtekal Market. Then the light returns.
But how long a time? Was that what the Cephalon was trying tell him? That Yimmon’s separation—his capture by Vader—could bring about the eclipse of the Resistance, of what little freedom and hope existed because of it?
Certainly, the Jedi Order had already been eclipsed; for all Jax knew he was the last living Jedi Knight. He had begun the training of only one Padawan, but Vader had seen to it that Kaj Savaros had been compromised—nearly destroyed, in fact.
There was a part of Jax that saw that as a mercy. Kajin Savaros had possessed a sensitive nature, too much raw talent, little training, and even less self-control. The result could well have been even more catastrophic. Jax hated to think what Kaj—with his wounded soul—would have made of the loss of both Laranth Tarak and Thi Xon Yimmon. The youth was at least safe where he was—spirited away to Shili and into the care of The Silent, those most mysterious, veiled healers.
Jax felt a slight flutter among the muted streamers of the Force that floa
ted around him in the crowded marketplace. All sentient beings had some Force signature. In most, it was faded, almost transparent. To a trained Force-user like Jax, these muted signatures provided only a subtle background weave against which a more pronounced Force signature was like a bump or loop in the warp and woof of the ordinary.
He was experiencing such a bump now—a familiar one. He followed his sense and was not surprised when he found himself in front of Honest Yarg’s Droid Emporium (all sales guaranteed!). The heads-up banner floating above the tawdry shop also promised new and used / complete and parts / trade-ins welcome! The words were punctuated with the smiling effigy of Yarg himself. Yarg was a Gran. A happy Gran, if the holographic portrait of the waving sentient was any indication. Beneath his three half-open eyes, his bovine mouth affected as close to a human grin as possible for one of his species.
Trust me, it said.
Jax entered the emporium and glanced around. There were half a dozen patrons from a variety of worlds browsing through the inventory of complete and disassembled droids. The source of the Force signature was in the far right-hand corner of the warehouse. Even from this distance, Jax could tell that I-Five was bristling with very undroidlike umbrage while Den Dhur—hands gesturing for calm—tried to communicate with the third figure in the tableau: the proprietor, Yarg.
Jax approached the group, making sure his vocal filters had been switched back on. He picked up the gist of the animated conversation immediately.
“He does not wish to sell me,” I-Five was telling Yarg emphatically. “He has said this repeatedly. With as many sensory organs as you possess, how can you not have understood this point? Least of all,” the droid continued, ignoring Den’s attempts to butt in, “does he wish to sell me for scrap. The point of this visit is to purchase a complete—or even partial—protocol unit. Preferably an I-5YQ.”
“And I have told you,” the Gran replied mildly, gazing down at the little droid, “why it is that I have no I-5YQ models at this time. They have—as I have also told you—become quite rare, being antiques. Why, just last week, one of my buyers found one on Alderaan priced at—”
“Antiques?” bleated I-Five, on the verge of overtaxing his vocalizer. “They are not antiques. They are vintage devices of—”
“What is this?” The grating tones of Jax’s Ubese voice box cut across the droid’s objections.
Six eyes turned to look at him.
“I send you to find a protocol droid and you fall into dispute with this kind and patient proprietor? Please, finish your business without delay.”
Den’s eyes widened, and for a moment Jax wondered if he’d forgotten what disguise the Jedi had adopted that morning. Then he bowed—bobbing obsequiously several times—and apologized both to Jax and to Honest Yarg.
“Is something amiss, sir?” Den asked Jax, concern creeping into his expression. “Is there … some emergency?”
“No emergency. I merely wish to be gone from this pestiferous planet as soon as possible. Have you business you must make with this sentient?” He nodded his head toward Yarg.
“Actually, yes, I do. But our pit droid seems to have shorted a circuit or three. If you could take him outside …”
“I see no reason—” I-Five began.
Jax silenced him with a gesture. “Come, machine. We will let my associate haggle in peace.”
Outside, Jax moved to lean against the face of the building. After a moment of hesitation, I-Five moved to fold himself practically in half at the Jedi’s feet.
“What was that all about?” Jax asked quietly in his natural voice.
“The Gran,” I-Five said, “are a particularly frustrating species. They are careful to a fault, friendly—also to a fault—and they love to tell long-winded, multigenerational stories. In fact, I believe they make them up on the fly as a matter of strategy, figuring that you will buy the first thing that comes to hand just to get them to stop talking.”
“Are you all right?”
“Am I all right?” repeated the droid. He swiveled his single oculus to peer up into Jax’s face—as if he could read its expression behind the Ubese mask. “What makes you ask?”
“You’re usually so careful about staying inside your droid persona. Pretending to be … less than you are.”
I-Five looked away. “I’m … not used to the limitations of this chassis.”
Jax crouched next to him, bringing his goggled eyes on a level with the droid’s single optic. “You are not just a machine. If I needed anything else to remind me of that, I got it just now. I followed your Force signature here, Five. You’re not even supposed to have a Force signature.”
“Your point?”
“My point is that I haven’t thought about how you …” He hesitated, tried again. “It had not occurred to me to consider how what we’ve been through has affected you. Until this moment. I forget, sometimes, what you are.”
“And what is that?”
“My friend. My father’s friend. Laranth’s friend.”
The single oculus focused on Jax’s face. “I am all of those things. I am even Den’s friend … inexplicably.”
Jax smiled behind his face mask. “Do you … Does this …”
“Yes,” the droid said simply. “I do. It does. Perhaps I do not experience attachment or loss as you do, or as Den does, but I do experience it.… Are you perhaps suggesting that I am compromised by this?”
“I don’t know. I just know that, under normal circumstances, it would be unusual for me to find you arguing with a sentient about the virtues of your previous chassis. And it’s just occurred to me that you might be missing that, too.”
The metal helm tilted sideways. “Interesting. I hadn’t thought of that possibility. You may be right.”
“Happens once in a while.”
Den came out of the shop, trailing a small antigrav pallet piled with containers.
“You met with Haus, right?” he asked Jax. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”
“Vader’s here on Coruscant—that’s what’s wrong. We need to move.”
Jax was back. At least that’s what it looked like from where Den Dhur stood. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief to see the Jedi motivated and moving. Planning. He wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of snooping around the ISB and trying to track down Vader, but he recognized that it was their only way of finding Thi Xon Yimmon.
I-Five had been using his time to interface with any city subsystems that would allow him access. He’d had limited success—with the exception of something he stumbled across in the Empire’s financial systems: a large amount of credits had flowed recently from Imperial coffers to several accounts on Mandalore. The Emperor was buying up someone’s services, although with the identity of the account holders carefully hidden, it was hard to tell whose.
Bounty hunters—that’s what Den thought. Jax and I-Five agreed. But for what purpose? To hunt down Jedi? If so, that was one of those good news/bad news scenarios. Bad news—Vader was stalking Jedi. Good news—Vader believed there were still Jedi to stalk.
They were in the throes of packing up their practically brand-new belongings when Pol Haus turned up at one of the Whiplash’s rotating stops and boarded. He came directly back to Jax’s quarters and dropped a sealed packet onto his bunk.
“What’s that?” Jax asked him.
“A Coruscant police uniform and lieutenant’s pips. I brought them for you to use the next time you need to pay me a visit at HQ. I can’t have random characters cluttering up my office on a regular basis; it’s too amusing to my staff. I have the feeling you’re not going to get to use it, though.”
“Why not?” Jax asked him. “What’s going on?”
“Something I don’t understand. Vader is here. He’s been seen in ISB headquarters and he’s reportedly met with Palpatine. But, there’s none of the sort of activity I’d expect to see if he’d brought a high-level prisoner with him. No reassignment of guards, no concentration of Inquisitors. In
fact—and this is the really peculiar thing—the Inquisitors have been dispatched offworld. Or at least the cream of their crop has been.”
Jax set his shiny new pack down by the door of his compartment and gave the prefect his entire attention.
“Tesla?” he asked.
Haus nodded. “Apparently he and a number of the senior members of the group were shipped out of here yesterday.”
“Shipped where?”
“That is not a matter of record, even in the ISB. Vader gave the word, and they took off directly from the bureau’s landing platform. Took an Imperial transport with an unregistered itinerary. Which brings me to my other piece of news: Vader’s long-range shuttle is sitting on the pad at the ISB right now, running preflight procedures.”
“Where’s it going?”
“No clue. No itinerary. And I’m not in a position to ask.”
“Any idea when it might lift off?”
The prefect shook his head.
“We need to get to the spaceport,” Jax said tersely. “Now.”
While Jax and Den moved their meager belongings to the Laranth/Corsair and picked up the droid parts they’d bought at Yarg’s Emporium, I-Five ran preflight procedures and tried to ferret information about Vader’s vessel out of the streams of data. With the cargo in the small hold, Jax went to the cockpit where I-Five was hunkered in front of the communications console.
“Anything?”
“Actually, I was just about to hail you. It seems Darth Vader’s ship is holding until fourteen hundred hours. Or so the captain told the flight controller at Eastport.”
Den came in out of the corridor to lean against the hatch frame. “Why would he announce that to the flight controller at Eastport?”
“Eastport is close enough to the Senate, Palace, and Security Bureau that any special traffic from those facilities changes the flight patterns for civilian craft. I thought perhaps monitoring Eastport’s communications—and any changes to their inbound and outbound traffic—would prove enlightening.”
“Good call, “Jax said. “Did the captain say why he’s holding?”
“No. Just that he’s holding.”
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