The Last Jedi

by Michael Reaves

  The Arkanian nodded thoughtfully. “Worth your while. And, naturally, if I could get you this information about Vader, you’d make it worth my while.”

  “Naturally.”

  Fabris nodded again, then pecked at a bit of fluff on one sleeve with a four-fingered hand. “I see. And what makes you think Imperials came through here recently?”

  “I intercepted a distress call from a resistance ship that Vader was after. It was apparently transporting some high-level resistance operative. From what I could strain out of the garbled messages, Vader captured the operative, destroyed his vessel and all aboard, and sent him in a convoy to Mandalore. But I also know they didn’t stay here long.”

  Fabris considered that for a moment, then said, “No. They didn’t.”

  Jax didn’t react to the admission.

  “They were here briefly. I suggested Concordia might better meet their … needs.”

  “Which were?”

  The Arkanian shrugged. “As you said: Mercs. Weapons. They had special needs, they said.”

  “Which were?” Jax repeated.

  A slow smile spread across Tyno Fabris’s face. “Now, I suspect that information might be worth something to me, Captain Vigil.”

  Jax returned the smile. “It might be. Can you help me out?”

  “Possibly. I’ll need to … check your story insofar as I can. This substance you mention. What is it, exactly?”

  “I couldn’t say. That’s above my pay grade. But the full information on it is contained on a Holocron I happen to have in my possession.”

  Jax could feel the other man’s heightened interest as a vague fizz of static. Saw it as threads of energy that strained toward him.

  Fabris leaned forward, his obsidian-lensed eyes reflecting the light of the flames. “A Holocron? A Jedi Holocron?”

  “A Sith Holocron, actually.”

  “And you’ve seen this data?”

  “The previous owner showed it to me.”

  “The previous owner …,” Fabris murmured.

  “You wouldn’t know him. And his name’s not important to our business. If we’re going to do business, that is. Do you know where Vader’s people went after they left Concordia … if they left Concordia?”

  “I’m sure I can find out.”

  “Then we can do business?”

  “I’ll consider it. I’ll strongly consider it.”

  Jax made an impatient sound and moved to leave. “If you’re not sure—”

  The Arkanian raised a pale hand. “Please. I’m a very careful man. In my line of work, I have to be careful. Otherwise, I might end up like our mutual friend. Homeless. Without people or identity … transporting things. I’ll let you know tomorrow. Will that be soon enough?”

  No, Jax thought, not nearly soon enough. But he smiled and inclined his head.

  “That will be fine.”

  Fabris made a subtle gesture and Jax found the Zabrak woman standing at his left shoulder, holding out his blaster and vibroblade. His cue to leave. He slid out of the hearth alcove and claimed his weapons.

  From the corner of his eye he caught Fabris’s movement as he pocketed the hold-out blaster he’d had aimed at Jax throughout their conversation. It had been hidden from sight by the leap of flames—but not from the Force.

  He sketched a salute at the four bodyguards and returned to the main room of the cantina.

  Tyno Fabris leaned back against the stone of the hearth, considering this development. Interesting. Garan had pronounced the newcomer clean of weapons, and yet …

  He looked up as Tlinetha rejoined him, an inscrutable expression on her face. He waved her to a seat across from him in the hearth.

  “You seem … puzzled,” he told her. “Are you uncertain of our new Corellian friend?”

  She nodded slowly. “I can’t quite put a sensor on it, but there’s something … different about him. The air around him … shivers. It’s as if it’s … charged in some way.”

  “A personal force shield perhaps?” That might account for what he, himself, had sensed—or seen, really.

  “No. Artificial fields resonate differently than natural ones. This was a natural one—for want of a better word. I’ve only felt it twice before in my entire life.”

  That piqued Tyno’s interest even more. “When?”

  “The last time—when Vader’s men were here. They had that … thing with them.” Tlinetha’s antennaepalps lay down almost flat to her head.

  Amusing. “You mean the Inquisitor?”

  She nodded.

  “Clearly he’s not an Inquisitor. You said you’d felt it twice before. What caused it the first time?”

  “A Jedi.”

  Now, that was interesting. Virtually impossible, but interesting. But it still didn’t explain what his infrared-sensitive eyes had picked up from Captain Vigil—that he carried on his person a very concentrated source of energy. Not a weapon—Garan’s sensor sweep would have detected that—but something.

  All in all, Corran Vigil was a most interesting person. At least Tyno found him so, and he’d be willing to bet his Vigo would find him so, as well.

  Den and I-Five had turned the smaller of the Laranth’s two cargo holds into a machine shop, which was where they were when Jax returned to the ship. Den was so buried in his brown study of an I-5YQ torso they’d procured that he was unaware of the Jedi’s return. In fact, he barely registered I-Five stopping his own work on an I-5YQ head and slipping out of the hold.

  There had not been a single, complete I-5YQ in the vendor’s stock. They’d had to content themselves with pieces from several droids that were, according to the proprietress, the victims of a particularly bad day in the court of the Desilijic clan on Nal Hutta. As a result, they still didn’t have enough for one entire I-5YQ.

  Oddly, Den’s mechanical friend didn’t seem to mind too much. He was rather taken with the portability the resistance mech-tech, Geri, had given his neural processor, and seemed to be contemplating a future in which he wore droid bodies the way people wore clothing. He had, in fact, found in the highly guarded regions of the armory they’d visited, some parts—specifically the repulsor generators and laser array—from a Trang Robotics N-101 Nemesis droid. I-Five’s original chassis had had a single laser incorporated into each index finger; the other fingers had been revised more recently to include other defensive mechanisms, as well. But the forearms he had just acquired had an actual laser cannon and a repulsor ray generator that mounted on the basic unit. What they lacked in stealth, he told Jax, they more than made up for in raw power.

  I-Five admired the Nemesis design, as well. Like his own current chassis, the Nemesis could collapse itself into a small unit, barely a meter in length. But the Trang droid’s elongated and jointed helm was fitted with the acme of ablative shielding. When the unit dropped into its protective/stealth posture, it looked like nothing so much as a Neimoidian harvester beetle—in camouflage. It was ostensibly the camouflage part that gave Nemesis droids their high success rate as assassins. They were outfitted with state-of-the-art confounder units calculated to muddle the senses of targets, guards, and surveillance equipment alike.

  Den looked up as Jax and I-Five entered the cargo hold. His first look at Jax left the Sullustan feeling disoriented and chilled. He’d forgotten that the Jedi had gone off in disguise, and for a moment—a mere breath, a heartbeat—he had thought the man who stepped into the hold at I-Five’s back was a stranger.

  “I-Five says you had a productive day,” said Jax.

  Den shook himself. “Yeah. For one thing, our helpful proprietor verified the Imperial presence on Mandalore in the recent past … and could you please take that kriffing lens out of your eye? It gives me the creeps.”

  Jax ignored the plea. “What did the arms dealer say?”

  “She said the Imperials came to her shop looking for some special items—sonic traps, sensor webbing, something called a photonic bender … and a blast cage. She didn’t have the blas
t cage, though. Sent them to Concordia for that.” He hesitated before asking, “We’re not going to have to go to Concordia, are we?”

  “We might, but I’m not sure yet. It depends.”

  “On what?” I-Five asked. “What did you find out today?”

  Jax blinked, and his prosthetic iris rotated around his pupil. It was like watching a blast door close. In that moment of hesitation, Den felt the planet tilt.

  “Pretty much the same thing you did. The Imperials were here. They were looking for mercenaries and ‘special’ items of some sort. They were sent to Concordia.”

  “Logically, then,” said the droid, “we should go to Concordia, too.”

  Jax shook his head. “I’m waiting on some information. I have a contact who may be able to tell us more.”

  “For example?” prompted I-Five. “We know what they purchased here and what they were looking for on Concordia. Unless my logic is faulty—which it’s not—that tells us the sort of situation we’re going to find Yimmon in … unless the blast cage and other items have nothing to do with his abduction.”

  “I suspect they have everything to do with his abduction. And you’re right—that does tell us the sort of situation we’ll be walking into. But right now, we’re missing the most critical piece of information—where we’ll be walking into it. And how we can do it without being killed.”

  “Wait,” said Den. “Am I missing something? What does their shopping list tell us, exactly?”

  “Do you want to tell him, or shall I?” I-Five asked.

  Jax gestured at the droid.

  “The ‘shopping list’—as you call it—tells us that we’d be walking into a trap.”

  “What?”

  “Sonic traps are a type of aural confounder,” explained I-Five. “Photonic benders do the same thing for sight. And the blast cage is a container intended to defeat sensors. One can assume that the blast cage would be used to contain the hidden item and the other devices arrayed around it to keep people from finding said item either through the normal senses or through sensor sweeps.”

  Den looked from I-Five to Jax, relief spreading through him in a warm, cozy tide. “But … that sort of trap won’t defeat a Jedi.”

  “No. I rather suspect that’s what the Inquisitors are for.”

  “The Inquisitors are for the interrogation,” Jax said quietly. He had moved to I-Five’s workbench and was looking down with an impenetrable expression at the head the droid had been working on.

  “I imagine they’d make good Jedi traps nonetheless,” said I-Five. “If Vader expects you to come …”

  “Vader thinks I’m dead.” Jax brushed his fingers over the dull metal of the I-Five unit’s face.

  “Can you be sure of that?”

  “He has no reason to think I’m alive. And I’m trying very hard to not to give him one.”

  Den bit back a crack about Jax’s foray into ISB headquarters and instead asked the question that was giving him indigestion. “So, who do you know that can answer that ‘where’ question, Jax? Who’s got this information we need?”

  “A man I met today at the Oyu’baat tapcaf. Local information merchant.”

  “A local information merchant,” Den repeated, meeting Jax’s gaze. “And where does he get his information?”

  “I didn’t ask.” Jax turned abruptly from the workbench and headed out into the corridor. “I need to get this lens out of my eye.”

  Den watched him go in utter disbelief. “Son of a … fripping … This isn’t right.”

  I-Five’s head tilted sidewise, and his oculus rotated to pull the Sullustan into focus. “What isn’t right?”

  Den told him.

  Seventeen

  Jax hated waiting. He wanted to act, to move, to do something. Not dangle upon Tyno Fabris’s whim. What if the Arkanian decided not to sell him the information he wanted? What then? What did he have that might tip the balance?

  He’d already mentioned the Holocron, but there was no way he could actually let that fall into someone else’s hands—least of all someone like Tyno Fabris.

  He got up from his mat and moved to the tree, opening the small compartment in its vessel and removing the Sith artifact. It tingled against his palm, glowing faintly the red of oxidized iron. To someone not endowed with a sense of the Force, it would look like a pretty little puzzle box—a geometrical container with sleek, rounded vertices and elaborately incised faces. Something one might keep jewelry in.

  Few knew what it really contained.

  Jax stared at the object vibrating in his hand and wondered—not for the first time—if it might hold information he could use in his present situation. It contained—ostensibly hidden in layers of memory below the more recent additions pertaining to Imperial strategic moves—the writings and lab notes of the Sith savant Darth Ramage. Some of the information was irrelevant now—the information on using pyronium to increase the yield of a dose of bota, for example—but Jax had heard rumors of the sort of experiments Darth Ramage had done, and some of them held terrifying implications.

  Ramage was alleged to have done experiments in the manipulation of time.

  Jax ran a finger down one beveled, etched face. Impossible. Cephalons could see through time, into it, past it, around it. Everyone else was destined to live in its stream and, eventually, to drown there. No one could swim against it, or strike out across it to stand with the Cephalons—and the few other species who shared their abilities—on the far shore.

  Jax had asked Aoloiloa once what his perception of the Force was. He had gotten an answer that was typically metaphorical and vague: “Force is sea. Force is drop. Force is all. Force is not all.”

  If time was a stream, then it flowed into that sea—drop by drop. Laranth’s drop. His drop. Perhaps what he should have asked the Cephalon was Could I swim to shore and, having reached the shore, walk upstream?

  It wasn’t possible, of course, but if it were, would he want to take that walk? Who hadn’t thought, If I only had this to do over. If only I could turn back time, I’d do this right next time.

  If h could manipulate time, could he rewrite his past?

  Even that was not the real question. The question that haunted Jax Pavan was: was there something he could have done—should have done—to save Laranth?

  He thrust all the questions aside. It was human nature to want to rewrite past mistakes, but that fantasy did not alter the fact that Darth Ramage’s Holocron was rumored to contain some information that could be of great use to a Jedi. He just had to figure out how to open it.

  Jax held the Holocron up before his eyes, feeling the warmth and weight of it; feeling the power that shivered in it. Every holocron was different. A simple data holocron could be opened verbally or manually or electronically by anyone with the proper password, combination, or key. A Jedi or Sith Holocron was a different sort of puzzle altogether, and the “key” could take any number of forms. Some required both a Force key and a physical one—often a crystal. The Force key opened the box; the crystal allowed the possessor to access its contents.

  Jax had no idea how Darth Ramage had secured his Holocron, but he suspected one would almost have to be a Sith to figure it out—or at least have some knowledge of the dark side of the Force.

  Yet the artifact spoke to him, quivered in his hand, sent frissons of power through his bones. Maybe …

  Holding the Holocron flat on his palm, he closed his eyes and focused his attention on the heat and pulse of it. His hand throbbed with the energies in it as his Force strands reached out to wrap themselves around it.

  A stab of alarm rippled through him. What are you doing? You don’t know what you’re doing. This isn’t right. Stop now.

  Thoughts disrupted, he opened his eyes and was startled to see the red glow of the Holocron enveloping his hand, creeping up his wrist. The heat of it went to the marrow of his bones. He swallowed, closed his eyes again.

  Stop. Stop!

  The hatch panel pinged, jar
ring Jax’s concentration. He tried to ignore it, but it pinged again. Frustrated, he swept his free hand at the hatch.

  “Come!”

  I-Five stood in the open hatchway, with Den beside him, the two so close in height and posture that it was almost comical. The warring urges to laugh and rage collided.

  “What?” Jax asked, the word half growl, half chuckle.

  I-Five didn’t beat around the bush. “This contact you’ve made here on Mandalore—who is he?”

  “I told you. He’s a businessman. An information broker.”

  “His name? His affiliation?”

  “Why is this important?”

  Den stepped into the little cabin. “Tyno Fabris. That’s his name.”

  Jax stared at the Sullustan. “How do you know that?”

  “I overheard it. In a conversation you were having with Tuden Sal.” He shook his head. “Why, Jax? Why didn’t you tell us you’ve been in contact with Black Sun?”

  “More to the point,” said I-Five, “why do we need to be in contact with Black Sun in the first place?”

  Now Jax almost did laugh. “Why not? What’s my alternative? Reach out with the Force and poke around until I poke Vader? Do I need to remind you that if I do that, he may find us?”

  Den muttered, “You’d get his attention, that’s for sure.”

  “I don’t want to get his attention. I want to catch him looking the other way.”

  “If you believe that can still happen, you’re in denial. You thought he sensed you at the bureau.”

  “He sensed the Force, yes. But he saw an Inquisitor. He didn’t strike at me or pursue me. He didn’t even attempt to touch me. He thought I was one of his. If he hadn’t, I’d have had to fight him then and there.” That was what he’d told himself, over and over again in the days since his ill-advised infiltration of the ISB. Vader would have come after him with tooth and claw if he’d recognized Jax.

  “I’m going to catch him by surprise. I just have to figure out how.”

  “And for that you need Black Sun?” I-Five asked wryly.

  “I need—we need—whatever resources will help us find Yimmon.”