Close now, she told herself. She could practically taste her quarry, could visualize the shock that would freeze his expression as she tickled his navel with the tip of her lightsaber. Not that she needed anything to encourage her stalking, but her claustrophobic surroundings, underground and filled with shoving, jostling representatives of numerous species, reminded her of nothing so much as the zenium mines on Oovo 4.
Very close, now... An occasional celebrant caught a glimpse of her face, the look in her eyes, and made haste to get as far out of the way of the fast-moving white humanoid as possible. And then, abruptly, she found herself before the entrance to one of the fair's main amusements: a Holo House.
Whoever the Force-sensitive she'd been tracking was—and she was virtually positive it was her quarry; the Force told her that its association with the entity Jax Pavan was very strong indeed—he was somewhere inside the building. She could simply storm in by the simple expedient of removing the head of the humanoid checking entrants. But that would draw unwanted attention, and, this proximate to her prey, that was the last thing Sing wanted. Despite her rising level of excitement, she forced herself to lower her heart rate and respiration. Look normal, she told herself. Relaxed, calm ... just a single working woman out for an evening's entertainment.
Which wasn't that far off the mark. She paid the entry fee, was assured the building was not crowded, and entered.
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The attraction was like a house of mirrors, only without the mirrors. In their place, illuminated laser lines crisscrossed multiple levels. At the intersection of any two, a holoimage of one or another visitant from anywhere else in the place might appear. Being a holoproj, the image wasn't mirror-reversed; there was no way to distinguish it from reality. Reach out and your hand would pass through the image, be it one of yourself or someone else. You could step through it and onto another pathway or level—unless, of course, it was not an image but an actual being. The result was confusion, bemusement, mistaken identity, and—ideally—widespread hilarity. Any vestige of the last emotion, however, was absent from the bounty hunter as she moved purposefully through the maze.
Laughter and conversation from other, distant visitors echoed through the passageways. Sing had her lightsaber out, but had not yet activated it. No need to alarm the paying customers—or to alert her target.
Clenched in her gloved right fist, much of the gleaming metal was hidden from view. If necessary, she could bring it to full activation in less than a second.
She passed a handsome young couple amusing themselves by kissing their respective images, and felt her lip curl. Foolish, wasted lives, there for a few brief seconds and then gone in an instant, vanishing without ever having impacted the fabric of civilization.
Not like her, Sing told herself. She had an effect. She made a difference. Perhaps not one that those who encountered her took pleasure from, but certainly one that they and those around them would long remember—assuming they survived.
246 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows Finding someone in the place was next to impossi-
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ble without the Force's aid. The multiplicity of levels, routes, and images offered too many choices for most people- Aurra Sing, however, would have been able to track her quarry through the lambent maze even had she been blind and deaf. The Force was her guide. A touch of the dark side was all that was needed to lead her through the multiple images, levels, and corridors, until…
There! Right in front of her, no more than five meters away, stood the target, clad in a cloak and cowl and looking in the opposite direction. Sing's fingers tightened around the haft of her lightsaber. Moving silently, she drew near. As she did so, several replicated images of herself appeared to her left, right, and overhead. Each was equally determined, each equally grim.
It was too easy. Sing hesitated. She could feel the Force emanating from her target, but could sense no suspicion, no wariness. Why didn't he sense her approach? Insufficient training, perhaps. Not properly attuned. Vader had told her that Pavan was hardly a master of the discipline. No matter; the Force was clearly present here. If this was in fact her quarry, she would bring him back alive to the Dark Lord; if not, then he was just another rogue Jedi or a Force-sensitive, and either way she would be allowed the pleasure of the kill. But she would not strike without first seeing the face of her victim. For the bounty hunter this was not a matter of ethics; it was all about personal satisfaction.
Clutching the lightsaber in her right hand, her thumb's pressure just short of activating it, she reached out with the Force across the few meters sep-
248 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows arating them and gently "touched" the individual standing before her. Light as Sing's mental goad was, the figure whirled at the sensation. The hood of the overcape fell back, and Sing's gaze met the other's.
Sing had just time enough to register that it was a female Twi'lek who stood before her. Then, before she realized it, her lightsaber was activated and parrying blasts from the twin DL-44s in the other's hands.
Sing threw herself sideways. Half a dozen replications of herself duplicated the move with unnatural precision. Lightsaber whirling, she not only deflected incoming fire but struck back as well, knocking the bolts back toward her foe.
Using the Force, the Twi'lek leapt upward to the next level of the structure. The multiple images of herself that accompanied the jump offered no protection from a killer whose eyes could be deceived but to whom the Force spoke clearly.
Sing was right behind her. Spinning, whirling, jumping, she deflected every shot fired in her direction. A glimpse of one of her doppelgangers showed her lightsaber moving so fast, she appeared to be en-gulfed in a sphere of green fire.
But the Twi'lek's aim was better than it had any right to be; it was on the same skill level as that of someone taught in the Temple. A bolt from one of the blasters slipped past Sing's whirling lightsaber and singed her left shoulder. The bounty hunter gritted her teeth and slashed an opening in one of the plasti-form walls. Several surprised customers, seeing the fearsome form and a number of attendant images of her appear through the wall, fled screaming.
This wasn't going well. The combination of the Michael Reaves 249
kaleidoscopic images and the panic-stricken civilians caused her grasp on the Force to briefly lessen. It was only for the fraction of a second, but that was enough time to allow the real Twi'lek to land a punch on her jaw that caused the world to momentarily dim.
Enough of this, Sing decided. She had a mission to perform, and, although her opponent wasn't the Jedi she'd been sent after, the Twi'lek was still somehow connected to her prey. She would have to be taken alive and questioned.
Easier said than done, however. Eluding a complex swing of her lightsaber, the Twi'lek managed for just an instant to get under Sing's guard. She fired. Sing felt the heat of the bolt and barely succeeded, aided by the Force, in arching backward enough for it to miss her face. Her high left cheek instantly acquired a four-by-one-centimeter sunburn. The dangerously close miss was enough to compel her to do something she had not done in some time.
She pulled her own blaster.
Handling the lightsaber with her right hand, she snapped off several bolts with the blaster gripped in her left. One burst caught the Twi'lek unprepared, blowing a hole in the floor beneath her feet. When the dust cleared, the Twi'lek was nowhere to be seen.
Reluctantly, Sing decided that it was time to break off the confrontation. In the distance she could hear the warning squeal of approaching police skimmers.
Although her Imperial ident would extricate her from any confrontation with minor officials, she did not want anything that might be perceived as a failure getting back to Lord Vader.
While she didn't doubt her ability to take the 250 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows Twi'lek alive, she had now realized that her antago-nist was most likely a member of the Gray Paladins.
The blasters were the clue. That meant she was a Jedi, and not likely to be very forthcoming about a fellow Jedi's whereabouts, even under torture. Add to that the very likely possibility that, if Sing was circumspect enough, she might be able to follow the Paladin back to Pavan without arousing suspicion, and she was left with only one sensible choice.
Gathering herself, Aurra Sing thrust her lightsaber over her head and leapt straight upward, smashing through two floors. She landed on the roof, then leapt again, and again, using the Force to augment the power of her muscles, until she was beyond the fair's boundaries.
Then she stopped and waited. She could sense the Twi'lek's Force connection, could tell if it was coming toward her instead of going away. For several minutes the blip on her mental radar stayed mostly in the same area—no doubt because the Paladin was searching the Holo House for her. But then it began to move slowly away from her.
A grim Sing began to follow. This time she would be more circumspect; would bide her time until the situation was less crowded, with more chance of success.
The hunt was rapidly coming to a close.
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twenty-three
Jax got the comm call from Laranth just as he, I-Five, and Den were leaving to rendezvous with Dejah Duare. The Twi'lek was typically laconic:
"Someone wants you dead."
"How?"
"Badly."
"No, I meant how do you know this?" And whoever it is, Jax added silently, tell 'em to get in line.
"Because I just finished dancing with the assassin who's looking for you. I could feel her more than a klick away, which is why I went to investigate. Not the best idea I've had lately."
Jax nodded. "I take it that she's still ambulatory."
"And lethal. You're being hunted by the best, Jax, if that's any consolation. Where are you now?"
"Sari Street, near Caspak Boulevard."
"Wait for me there," Laranth said.
As he listened to the Twi'lek elaborate on her ad-venture, Den realized once again that he was not a happy life-form.
"Aurra Sing?" he asked. "The Aurra Sing?"
A grim-faced Laranth nodded slowly. "Unless you 252 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows know of another who matches the description." Her voice was as dry as a year on Tatooine.
"Flattering, in a sense," I-Five said. "I read up on her while I was uplinked to the police grid. She's infamous, and she doesn't come cheaply."
Jax nodded. He knew that there was no need to wonder who would set a bounty hunter with Sing's reputation on him. Only one person could have afforded the credits to hire her.
Nice to know I warrant the best, he thought wryly.
Den grabbed his ears in a Sullustan gesture of exasperation. "I think," he said, "that it's long past time for us to grab the next freighter to clear its cradle and leave, Jax. I mean, Sweet Sookie's aunt!" He shook his head. "If Sing's after you she won't rest until most, if not all, of us are dead—and don't ask me to place odds. We have to get off this overpopulated pit of perversion. Not that I have anything in particular against perversion, mind you. It's just that I take um-brage when part of the perversity is trying to kill me."
"We gave our word to Dejah Duare."
"You gave our word, Jax. Sure, her credit is generous and useful, but we can't spend it if we're dead.
We need to relocate to a new neighborhood. On a new planet. In a new galaxy."
"Quiet," Laranth admonished them both. "We have company." At the same time that she spoke, Jax heard the rising whine of repulsorlifts. A moment later the first of three police skimmers settled down in the street beside them. Other pedestrians gave the cools a wide berth, and any civilian vehicles that had been in the vicinity suddenly found other venues more attractive.
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The police contingent was led by the sector prefect himself. Jax could see that he didn't look happy to see them, but then he doubted that Pol Haus ever looked happy to see anyone in his line of work.
"So we meet again." He paused, singling out Jax and I-Five. "Just what are you two up to now?"
"We're just out for an evening's entertainment,"
Jax said, and smiled.
"Right," the prefect responded. "And why does the kind of entertainment you favor always seem to involve breaking the law? I see the Zeltron's not with you," he continued, without waiting for a reply. "Interestingly, however, we just received a complaint from a local arcade, describing two female humanoids who did a considerable amount of destruction there in the last hour." He looked appraisingly at Laranth, who met his gaze squarely. "One of them, it seems, was a Twi'lek."
"I apologize for my species," she said. "We can be rambunctious at times."
"There's also," Haus continued, "a complaint on file from a well-respected art dealer named Shulf'aa, asserting that a certain Sullustan ..."
Den did his best to shrink behind Jax's legs.
"... claimed to be a police officer in an effort to extract information from said art dealer, under pain of shutting down his business."
"A misunderstanding," a small voice said from the vicinity of the Jedi's thighs. "Easily explained, I'm sure.
"No doubt," Haus murmured. "Not so easy is the allegation from another broker, a Lonjair who calls himself Spa Fon, that you two"— he looked at Jax 254 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows and Den—"entered his business premises under false pretenses, whereupon you intentionally and with malice threatened his person while delivering a merciless beating to one of his helpless and entirely innocent former employees, who—"
"Hold on," Jax interrupted. "First of all, that Lonjair 'broker' is a professional thief. Second, the 'help-less and entirely innocent former employee' was a subspecies of Cathar who probably massed a quarter metric ton of pure meanness and who threw the first punch, and third—"
"Never mind." The prefect sighed as he waved off Jax's indignation. "I'm not really interested. But when your locator rings showed up near this latest disturbance, I figured it would be appropriate to check in, just for old times' sake." His tone grew stern. "I don't know exactly what's going on here, Pavan, beyond your amateur attempts to aid Fem Duare in her hope of identifying her partner's killer, but I do know that you're becoming an irritation. I have enough daily irritations in my position without having a semi-permanent one latch on to me. I say serai-permanent because it's not going to persist. It's not going to persist because if anything like this comes to my attention again, you"—he pointed to Jax—"and the rest of you as well, are going to find yourselves exploring the many and varied cultural delights of the sector jail. Do I make myself clear, at every end of the spectrum?"
"Perfectly," Jax assured him.
The prefect scowled again and, accompanied by his squad, moved off into the crowd.
Den stepped tentatively out from behind Jax. "Spa Michael Reaves 255
Fon, Pol Haus, and now the infamous Aurra Sing.
Whose list will we make next, Jax? Darth Vader's?"
The Sullustan snapped his fingers in mock realization.
"Oh, wait, I forgot—we're already there."
Silently, Jax regarded his friends. He was proud of them all, proud of how they had come together as a team. Proud of how they had handled every danger and problem that had been thrown at them since they'd been with him. Did he have the right to ask them to endure more, to chance possibly greater risks? What would Master Piell have done?
Laranth would stay dirtside no matter what, he knew—the resistance movement was all she had to give her life meaning. But did he have the right to ask Den and I-Five, as well as Rhinann, to put their lives on the line every day for him?
He took a deep breath. "All right. I'll have one more meeting with our client, and on the basis of that we'll decide how to proceed. Maybe it is time to seek our fortunes elsewhere."
"Good call." Den was visibly relieved. Behind him, however, Laranth's continued silence bothered Jax sligh
tly. But then, he reminded himself, she had been moodier than usual lately. He didn't need the Force to tell him that.
Mindful of his friends' concern as well as his own interests, Jax was determined to be as firm and straightforward as possible in the course of what well might be his final meeting with Dejah. It was a determination he set his mind to before he left for the meeting the following afternoon, that he maintained in the course of the journey to her residence, and that 256 Star Wars: Coruscant Nights II: Street of Shadows he continued to hold right up until the time he was admitted to the domicile she had shared with the late Ves Volette.
At which point, determination vanished like a solar sail in a sun flare.
Zeltrons were noted for the flamboyance of their attire, but what Dejah was wearing when she greeted him seemed to be shocking even for her kind. A shimmering silver drapery, as much cloud as cloth, it clung to her body while remaining in constant and revealing motion. It was if she had slipped into a pearles-cent mist that coated the shore of a moonlit beach. It flowed in all directions, maintaining the shape of her body while giving fleeting, suggestive glimpses of it. A necklace and bracelet of matching Alderaanian se-quat shells completed the ensemble. Definitely not a knockoff she'd picked up at the local discount house.
It had probably cost more than most folk made in a year. Or ten.
"Come in, please, Jax. Follow me."
He did so, forcing himself into a detailed examination of the walls and ceiling until they had arrived at the conversation chamber. It was a sunken circular seating area with a riverstone-surrounded fountain in the center that could spout water, fire, or any of a dozen
other entertaining visual enhancements, according to the whim of the dwelling's occupants. At the moment, it was spraying a deep orange liquid. Off at the far end of the chamber were three now nearly priceless Volettes, each dancing and contorting to its own individual encoding. They supplied all the illumination the chamber needed.
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