Star Wars: Coruscant Nights III: Patterns of Force (6 page)

Rhinann blinked at the tone of the droid’s voice. Was that really wistfulness? The shadow of impending loss? He shook himself. “I think it’s all the more reason,” he said to I-Five, “for you to forgo this ‘mission’ and do what you’re best at: watching his back.” He tilted his horned head toward Jax.

Tuden Sal cleared his throat. “As I-Five so aptly pointed out, he is an independent being.”

“With an
OFF
switch,” muttered the Elomin.

“An independent being,” repeated Sal, “with the capacity to make his own decisions.”

I-Five turned to Jax. “I do have that capacity, but in this case I’d like to hear the opinions of all concerned parties. Especially yours, Jax. In making this decision, I’ll give your vote the most weight.”

“Vote?” Dejah let out a peal of false laughter. “If we’re to vote, I vote
no
!”

“As do I,” said Rhinann.

“Ditto,” said Den.

All eyes turned to Jax.

He met each gaze in turn—last of all, the droid’s—then shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “I just don’t know.” He glanced down at the Zeltron. “I think I need to go someplace where I can think this through.”

And I
, thought Rhinann,
need to go someplace where I’m not so likely to be killed
.

Probus Tesla knew the peace of the Force.

He had surrendered himself fully to its dark currents and, in moments such as this, he felt the power of those
currents moving about him and within him, buoying him up, tugging at him, washing through him.

Cleansing him.

The Force was contentment. It was purpose. It was all. To be an instrument of justice, to believe absolutely in the righteousness of that justice, conferred great power … and without the concomitant responsibility. He was a young man, barely into his twenties; young enough that power without accountability was a heady combination. Young enough that the speed of his rise through the Inquisitorius filled him with fierce, hot pride. To be picked out of a literal army of applicants and made the personal factotum of the Dark Lord himself—it was a dream come true. To hone his power under the tutelage of Darth Vader was to drink from water very pure, very close to the Source, indeed.

Now he stood in Vader’s presence and felt that purity of power flowing over him in thrilling waves. It was all he could do not to grin drunkenly with pleasure, but he kept his face composed and his spirit calm as he received his orders from his master.

In fact, he noted with bemusement, his mentor seemed less serene than he was. The Dark Lord had been pacing when Tesla had entered the room, and had not ceased doing so in the time the young Inquisitor had stood silently, awaiting his lord’s pleasure.

At last Vader spoke, his voice washing over his acolyte like a deep, cooling tide. “I have sought Jax Pavan for some time now. I have, indeed, made it a priority, for reasons I have not shared with you. I commend you on your sense of duty, Inquisitor. Ever since I brought you in on this, you have not questioned my orders, though I sense you are curious about them.

“Now I have a new quest for you.”

Tesla blinked. A new quest? He had yet to complete the old one. “My lord, I am close to finding Jax Pavan,”
he said in cool, even tones. “I am sure of it. I’ve been working one sector at a time, and—” A horrific thought occurred to him. “Do you believe me incapable?”

Vader paused in his pacing and raised a gloved hand. “Nonsense. I believe you quite capable. It is because of that that I am giving you this new mandate. When you find Pavan, you are neither to challenge him nor to harm him. Your mission will not be complete until you have found the protocol droid that has been his sometime companion—the I-Fivewhycue unit that reportedly was the property of Pavan’s father. Pavan is a means to an end: find Pavan and let him lead you to the droid. Of course, if you should be able to locate the droid in some other way, Pavan can wait.”

Had he heard right? Tesla shook himself mentally. It took every bit of discipline he possessed to remain stone-faced. He was somewhat taken aback when Vader sensed his dismay.

“Is there a problem, Inquisitor?”

“No, my lord.” No, no problem, save that he had just been assigned to the scut work of locating a droid.

A
droid
.

You sent a stormtrooper on a fetch-and-carry mission like that. A lackey, someone with no special skills. Droids had no affinity with the Force, so sending a Force-sensitive on an errand like this was … well, at best, it was a waste of resources. At worst, it was a slap in the face.

“I am aware,” Lord Vader said, the insectoid lenses of his mask trained on the Inquisitor, “that this presents more of a challenge. A droid is not Force-sensitive and thus will not reveal itself in that way to someone who is. But I have had it suggested to me that this is no ordinary droid.”

As if that made it any less an insult. More of a challenge,
indeed. Did Vader imagine he was speaking to a drooling Padawan?

But Probus Tesla was a professional. Despite his young age, he was a veteran of many such missions. He would perform whatever duty his lord deemed necessary, no matter how demeaning it was.

He raised his head to watch Darth Vader stride to the well-camouflaged window of his sanctum, where he looked out at the cityscape below and beyond. There was no reading the face hidden forever behind the obsidian mask, no body language to observe beneath the folds of the soot-dark robes. Nothing but that earlier pacing, which indicated a certain disquietude.

It occurred to Tesla that this was a test, not of his Force abilities, perhaps, but of his loyalty and his perseverance. He squared his shoulders and aligned his spine. One thing he was sure of—something about this particular quest agitated the Dark Lord. Perhaps if Tesla completed his mission, he would find out what it was.

With that in mind he bowed deeply from the waist, knowing that his lord could see his reflection in the window. “Regardless of what kind of droid it is, my lord, I will find it for you. And when I find it?”

“Bring it to me,” his master said shortly. “In one piece and operative. And if possible, bring Pavan as well—in the same condition.”

“As you wish, my lord,” Tesla said and bowed yet again. He did not let his emotions show—not his disappointment, not his curiosity, not his hope that this was merely a gateway to greater things.

The Force would be with him, as it always was. Perhaps it would help him find this droid, somehow. And just maybe, he’d get lucky and catch a Jedi as well.

Probus Tesla
.

There it was again—that name. That face.

Haninum Tyk Rhinann increased the magnification of his holodisplay and peered at the freeze-frame image of the Inquisitor he’d heard other members of the Whiplash refer to as “the Bloodfiend.”

This was a human designation, originally a variant breed of terentatek used for tracking down sentients with an affinity for the Force—in particular, humans. The idea that humans hunted their own kind did not surprise Rhinann overly much, but knowing the provenance of the sobriquet in relation to Probus Tesla chilled him to the bone. Tesla was called the Bloodfiend because of his ability to “sniff out” his prey—Force-sensitive humans. He was steeped in the dark side, and it was said his sense of the Force was so delicately and exquisitively balanced that he could pinpoint its usage by a single being in a crowd of a million.

Rhinann didn’t believe it, of course, but he was self-aware enough to know that this was largely envy on his part. He was certain that, were he human, he could stand right in front of the Inquisitor and raise not so much as a ripple in the Force—no more, say, than a droid or a doorpost. The knowledge galled him.

He reapplied himself to his surveillance. Here was Probus Tesla entering the Imperial Security Bureau yet
again. According to the scanner records Rhinann had accessed, each time Tesla passed through the various checkpoints in this hive of Imperial activity, he visited not the offices of the Inquisitorius, nor the administrative centers of the Emperor’s functionaries, but rather the palace quarters belonging to Darth Vader.

This was interesting to Rhinann because he had also recently discovered, via a combination of HoloNet research and scuttlebutt from the streets, that Tesla had been asking questions about one Jax Pavan, not to mention a droid who might be keeping company with him, as well as an erstwhile Sullustan journalist … and, last but unfortunately not least, an Elomin who might or might not be seen with one or more of these individuals.

Interesting
was not the operative term, of course. The information he was uncovering was, in a word, terrifying, because it indicated that Vader knew more about the company Pavan kept than was healthy for any of that company—most of all Rhinann. Not to mention indicating that Vader had narrowed his search for the Jedi to this very sector of Imperial City.

Rhinann made a minute gesture that flipped the display to a frame in which he had been compiling a map. This was a set of locations at which Tesla had been seen or had asked a series of seemingly random questions about a group of miscreants whom one would hardly expect to find in close proximity. The bright dots on the map formed a nearly circular pattern around the very neighborhood in which Rhinann sat at his HoloNet console.

No doubt about it—since Vader had brought in the Inquisitorius, the net was tightening. He wondered why the Dark Lord had waited this long to introduce the heavy guns in his search for Pavan, and shrugged. Who alive could fathom the mental machinations of Palpatine’s second in command? No doubt Vader had his reasons
for prolonging the search this long. Perhaps he had been waiting for other arrangements and affairs to be concluded, or perhaps he merely enjoyed the whisperkit-and-mouse aspects of the hunt. It didn’t matter; what did matter was that his former employer was obviously tired of fencing and was going in for the kill. Through Tesla, Vader had learned the names and occupations of all of Pavan’s team of misfits, save one: as far as Rhinann had been able to ascertain, the only one whose name had not figured in Tesla’s careful questioning was Dejah Duare. Which was a good thing, because if she was linked to the Jedi in some way by the Inquisitorius, her seemingly bottomless well of funds might be unexpectedly siphoned dry.

The Elomin’s pulse quickened and a choking tightness seized his throat, uncomfortably close in sensation to one time when he had felt Vader’s phantom grip close suggestively there. The connection between Dejah and the rest of them, he realized, could be made at any moment. If he was going to get out of this situation, he should act now, while the Zeltron’s wealth was still available to him.

Quaking, he selected one of his newer aliases randomly from a cache of carefully compiled profiles of deceased and nonexistent persons, then accessed a travel broker’s HoloNet node and prepared to buy himself a ticket offworld. Just shy of completing the transaction, however, he hesitated. If he left now, he might save his sorry hide, but he would forever forgo his chance of experiencing the Force … unless he found the bota and took it with him.

Rhinann sat back in his chair and stared, unseeing, through the travel brokerage’s colorful HoloNet “storefront” to the dingy gray wall of the conapt and contemplated the full implications of that.

He had no moral problem with lifting the substance
and fleeing with it. His only problem was that he wasn’t certain who had it. He suspected I-Five still carried it, but he couldn’t be certain that the droid hadn’t already revealed its existence to Jax Pavan.

Even if he had, Rhinann realized, I-Five might still be the safest entity to guard it. There was no way that even a dark-side-sensitive such as Probus Tesla could disinter stray thoughts to any meaningful degree from a droid brain.

The simplest thing to do, then, would be to kidnap I-Five.

He gave a half laugh, half snort that rattled his nose tusks. When kidnapping a freakishly sentient machine became the easiest of your options, you were in more trouble than you knew. Especially when the droid in question was contemplating regicide. Still, I-5YQ was, when all was said and done, a mechanical device, and like most mechanical devices he had an
OFF
switch. That switch was hardwired to the droid’s consciousness template and couldn’t be removed without irreparable damage—in other words, killing him. Therefore, for all of Lorn Pavan’s clever manipulation of the droid’s programming and firmware, that master switch must have remained untouched. If Rhinann could contrive to get the droid alone long enough to somehow deactivate him, he could go through his pockets—so to speak—thoroughly and without fear of reprisal.

That, of course, was the trick: I-Five’s reflexes were preternaturally quick compared with even the dazzling reaction time of an Aleena. Next to Rhinann, who was a diplomat, not a warrior, he was bottled lightning. And unlike the average droid, he wasn’t programmed against shooting first and interrogating the result at his leisure.

Rhinann backed out of the travel node and returned to his map. He considered the proximity of the Tesla hit
closest to their bolt-hole. How long? he wondered. How long did he have before he completely ran out of time?

There was no way to know. He considered the sequence of his informants’ reports about the Inquisitor and the amount of time that had passed between each of them. Based on this, he gave himself twenty-four standard hours to come up with a plan—or to have circumstances present him with an opportunity to isolate, deactivate, and rob I-Five. If he hadn’t gotten the bota within the next day, he would simply leave. He was, after all, a practical being.

He returned to the travel node and purchased a one-way ticket for the next outbound freighter on the Perlemian Trade Route to Lianna, which was the closest planet to the Outer Rim in the sector nearest Elom. This time tomorrow, Rhinann promised himself as he transferred funds from the account Dejah had set up for them, he would be on that freighter, with or without the bota.

Jax made his way along the narrow, serpentine length of Snowblind Mews. It was a running joke among the members of the team that the namers of the narrow passage couldn’t have had even the vaguest idea of what the appellation meant; no one on Coruscant had seen snow for uncounted centuries. It was Den’s opinion that the name shining from street signs at the occasional corner was actually a ribald phrase in Shistavanen or some other planetary dialect that just sounded like
Snowblind Mews
, and that whenever Basic speakers uttered the phrase in the hearing of the aliens, they would howl with laughter.