Coruscant Nights_ Patterns Of Force Part 25

No matter. Lightsaber flashing, Jax began to inch toward the Dark Lord.

The Inquisitor, Tesla, immobilized by shock, seemed to come to himself suddenly. He ignited his own weapon and met Jax blade for blade, intent on keeping the Jedi from his obvious purpose. With the place coming down around them, and with no way of reaching Vader, Jax found himself in a standoff with the Inquisitor.

He glanced at Kaj, huddled with Laranth in their corner, face white and terror-filled. What had Vader done to him, to keep him from even attempting to use the Force?

How had the Dark Lord turned him from an unpredictable and implacable enemy into a pet he dared let out of its cage? Jax knew he'd never get any answers to those questions if he couldn't end the stalemate.

Above the sizzle and clash of the two crimson blades, Jax heard a blessed sound behind him: the whine of I-Five's laser. The droid had freed himself and was working on the doors. Jax caught his breath when he saw the condition his friend was in-one arm all but severed, dangling by a few wires, and most of his upper torso crushed. He'd had to drag himself to the doors, and his single functioning laser was sputtering badly. Nevertheless, he persevered.

Marshaling all his energies, Jax bore down on the Inquisitor, pushing him back toward his dark master. He handled the Sith blade as if it were an extension of his body, as if his mind wielded it without the intermediary of his arms and hands. Thrust, parry, thrust; high to low, then high again.

Tesla, his face shiny with sweat and twisted into a rictus of pure rage, tried to hold, but was forced to give ground. His gaze bored into Jax's as if he might do him physical damage with that as well. Jax knew he wanted to.

Back and back, closer and closer to Vader the two fought, until a clever feint by Tesla pulled Jax slightly off-balance. The Inquisitor's grimace became a death's- head grin of elation. He shifted his blade to one hand and whirled it in an arc toward Jax's side.

A glancing blow of Vader's erratic power struck the Inquisitor and tumbled him, head over heels, into a tangle of wrecked machinery and optical fibers. His lightsaber extinguished and spun away, clattering to the floor.

Jax abruptly found himself facing Darth Vader with nothing but his lightsaber. Opportunity or disaster? he asked himself.

Vader's helmeted head turned toward him, half obscured by the frantic flow of Force static. Every nerve ending in Jax's body tingled with the regard. He raised the blade and saw the mirrored movement of Vader's hand.

Vader issued two words; Jax couldn't tell if he heard them with his cars or through the Force: You cannot.

A warning? A hope? A lie? Before Jax could answer with word or lightsaber, the doors behind him slid open.

Jax saw Vader's head tilt toward the doors, and swung his blade in an overhand arc. It struck the envelope of Force coc.o.o.ning Vader and ricocheted as if it were made of mere metal. The shock of the contact numbed Jax's arm and hurled him to the floor.

"Jax!" The voice was Laranth's, calling from behind him; he turned and scrambled to his feet. Through the open control room doorway he saw Thi Xon Yimmon, Tuden Sal, and a team of Whiplash operatives that in eluded, incredibly, Den Dhur. They were armed to the teeth, fangs, and mandibles.

Laranth stood just inside the door, one hand extended toward him. Next to her Tuden Sal struggled to remove Kaj without hurting him; the boy seemed intent on getting to Vader. He was screaming inarticulately; what it was Jax couldn't make out above the booming sounds of Vader's Force blasts. As Jax stumbled toward them, reaching for Laranth's outstretched hand, Kaj broke free of Sal and darted past him. Before Jax could react, the boy was slammed by Force energy and wrenched off his feet. Vader had effectively roped him with a lash of pure energy and was dragging him inexorably toward the blasted-out window.

Jax leapt after the boy, blade upraised-only to be la.s.soed by another energy lash from Vader.

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

No.

It could not end like this. His chance-his one chance of experiencing the Force, wasted.

Wasted.

Rhinann didn't understand what had happened or why the bota hadn't affected Vader the way the Dark Lord had obviously expected it to-the way any of them had expected it to. The Sith Lord had not become the exponentially augmented, G.o.d like being of supreme control that the rumors of the bota's properties had suggested. He had become instead an unstable locus of power, spitting out death and destruction.

And now, with Jax Pavan and Kaj Savaros tethered to him with chains of unbreakable energy, Vader backed toward the shattered control room window, showing every intention of destroying the Jedi and the boy.

Such a paltry use of that stupendous gift.

Rhinann could no longer bear it. "It should have been mine!" he shrieked, and hurled himself from his hiding place directly at the Dark Lord.

He had nothing but brute strength on his side, but he knew the weaknesses of his ex-master's person. Vader's energy was now totally focused on Jax and the boy. Rhinann shot toward him and battered at Vader's breathing apparatus with clenched fists, trying desperately to damage it.

The move, unantic.i.p.ated and unexpected as it was, distracted Vader. He lost his Force grip on both Jax and Kaj and took several steps away from the Elomin, teetering on the brink of the broken window.

It was a long fall, and Rhinann suspected that was where his life would end, but he no longer cared. He ripped at the chest plate with clawed hands, shrieking his anguish again and again. "It was mine! It was mine'."

He felt Vader's hands close around his neck and looked up to sec his own ravaged face reflected in the obsidian mask. "You stole my life," Rhinann gasped as the fingers tightened. "I shall have yours in payment."

He lunged; they toppled over the broken sill together, tumbling into the cavernous s.p.a.ce beyond. Rhinann never felt the impact. He attained his experience with the Force for one brief, shining moment, feeling an echo of it gust through him as it reduced him to dust.

The control room was silent but for the sound of labored breathing and Kaj's whimpers. There was movement behind him; Jax felt hands touching him, lifting him up. Laranth's hands and I-Five's good one. He clung to them and let them right him, then nodded at Kaj, who lay huddled on the floor nearby.

There was a babble of sound then as the rescuers flooded the room with bustling intent. I-Five turned to face Den, who was hovering behind him holding a blaster rifle that was almost as big as he was.

"Do you even know how to use that thing?" the droid asked.

Den looked down at it. "Well, I'm not sure. Shall I point it at your thick metal skull and find out?"

"It's good to see you, too," I-Five said softly.

"Likewise." The Sull.u.s.tan peered closely at the damaged droid. "Isn't that the same arm that Wookiee pulled off when you were drunk on Drongar?"

"Hold on," said Jax, feeling a sudden tension in the atmosphere of the place. He glanced about, seeking the fallen Inquisitor, Tesla. He had vanished.

Not good.

A cataclysmic burst of Force energy from the hangar floor threw the dimmest recesses of the control room into blinding brilliance. The entire building rocked.

"Out! Get out!" Jax dodged a piece of falling ceiling plate and glanced around for his lightsaber. It might be a Sith blade, but it was all he had right now. He saw it lying on the blasted floor. Next to it lay the pyronium crystal Vader had taken. Jax whipped out taut threads of Force energy and called both objects to his hands. Then he sprinted for the open doors as the chamber disintegrated about him.

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Den and I-Five, in the manner of old and comfortable friends, easily fell back into their accustomed, seemingly dysfunctional relationship. I-Five teased Den about returning. Den accused the droid of being f.e.c.kless and inept without him to offer wise counsel and practical advice.

The droid had availed himself of the talents of a number of mechanics and designers in the Whiplash during the course of his repair, and as a result was as good as new-better, in some ways. In addition to the twin lasers and the interfacing spike, he now possessed a veritable transforming a.r.s.enal in his hands, including a monofilament line capable of supporting over a metric ton, a small but efficient automatic slugthrower, and the ability to shoot streams of various nonlethal soporific gases.

Jax knew something of apology and confession had pa.s.sed between I-Five and Den, hut he refused to pry. Den did admit to all that he'd been sitting in the s.p.a.ceport fuming and vacillating when he realized that, as fond as he was of Eyar Marath, and as cozy as was the thought of a comfy cave on Sull.u.s.t, this wretched planet with its artificial tunnels and its dangerous inhabitants was where his heart was.

"While I was with you guys-arguing, frustrated, ready to strangle the droid and the Zeltron-I thought about Eyar in moments of angst. While I was on my way to her, I thought about you guys nonstop. I finally realized that meant something. It meant this was home, because this was where I was the most alive. The most me. I don't know who that old codger is that wants to do nothing but lie around Eyar's family cave being sage, but he's not Den Dhur."

Jax and Laranth spent over a week working with Kaj, trying to restore his memory and banish the falsehoods Vader and Tesla had implanted in his mind. He was torn, one moment hovering on the verge of knowing Jax and Laranth as friends, the next cowering from them inabject fear and begging for Tesla.

It was Thi Xon Yimmon who suggested that they send the boy to the Togrutan healers and The Silents on Shili, adding that between the planet-grounded Force adepts and the strange, unspeaking monks with their soothing, therapeutic presence, he might more readily heal, as well as regain conscious control of the Force. In destroying the boy's memory, Vader seemed to have wiped from Kaj's mind the very meaning of what it was to be a Force-sensitive. The Force in him was like a skein of tangled threads, knotted, frayed, their connections obscured. As much as Jax hated to admit it, he knew Yimmon was right-there was nothing he could do for Kaj here. Here, Jedi were still marked for death. Here, they would still have to hide. That was no environment for the boy.

Jax had given momentary thought to leaving Coruscant and traveling to Shili with Kaj, but he knew he could not. He was committed now-he and his companions-to doing what he'd come to realize was his life's calling: helping the downtrodden and the helpless, and helping to build a larger and more far-reaching rebellion against the Emperor.

So it was that, with some sense of having failed, Jax sent Kajin Savaros through the UML to a waiting tramp freighter in the company of one of The Silent. Then he returned with Laranth to their new environs in a Whiplash safe house.

"You didn't fail, you know," Laranth told him as they walked the alleys on their way to their new home. "You weren't at fault. Dejah just wasn't capable of putting anything as abstract as loyalty ahead of her own gratification. You couldn't have antic.i.p.ated that."

"Yes, I could. I should have. But I was so sure of myself. So sure of my grasp of the Force, that I didn't realize what she was doing to me-to us. I was completely taken in by her, Laranth, to the point that I. .." He let his voice trail off.

"You gonna finish that thought?"

He glanced aside at her. "I let her wrap me in a veil. Pheromones and pride. Bad combination. I got so caught up in the cosmic idea of being someone's Jedi Master that I forgot what it meant to be a Jedi Knight. I forgot you. I don't ever want that to happen again." He hesitated. "When you were in the medcenter:"

"That was then. This is now."

He stopped walking and turned her to face him. "No. I'm not going to accept that. That was then and now." He struggled for words. "We ... I..."

"Eloquent, aren't we?"

"Laranth, stop it. Don't make this so hard. You know what I'm trying to say. You can sense what I'm trying to say."

And suddenly he knew she could because, in the s.p.a.ce of a breath, she had let him in. He was swept up in a strange, heady recursive emotional loop. A Force-enhanced empathy.

He looked at Laranth and saw himself as she saw him and was awed by the emotions that he evoked in her. He experienced the echoed revelation of that in her as she caught the tenor of his feelings and explored the texture of his innermost being.

He moved past the reserve and the hurt and the careful defenses she had erected and felt her breaching his barriers in return.

When they came fully back to themselves they were standing in a Stygian alley, foreheads touching, fingers entwined, quivering.

"What was that?" Laranth murmured. "What did we just do?"

"I was about to ask you the same question."

"I know. I don't know what to call it."

Jax exhaled. "Let's not call it anything for now. Okay?"

"Okay."

They separated, physically at any rate, and began walking again by mutual agreement.

"While we're on the subject of mysteries," said Laranth, and Jax smiled. "What made you take a chance that the bota would push Vader over the edge-literally as well as figuratively?"

Jax was quiet for a few strides, then he said, "It's a debate as old as the Force itself: Is it generated by and for living beings, and so subject to their desires and their demons, or is it transcendent-something ineffable that we can only hope to glimpse occasionally in its entirety? Something that's not meant to be experienced in its entirety. As long as there are living beings to wonder about it, the question will exist."

"Be careful what you ask for, you might get it? That's not an answer. It's just another question."

"There's also another factor-the fact that I-Five had been carrying the bota around for two decades. True, it had been processed, and was much more stable than in its raw state, but still-I was betting that such a complex molecule was starting to fray a bit around the edges." He shrugged. "Whether you opt for the mystical explanation or the practical one, Vader wasn't expecting a bad trip."

"You were betting our lives," Laranth said. She didn't smile, but there was amus.e.m.e.nt in her thoughts.

Jax marveled at their texture and nuance. "What choice did I have?" he asked. "He could have killed us all in a breath, using just the Force he has access to every day. I had to gamble that, at the very least, the bota would make him lose track of the ephemeral world and give us half a chance to escape."

He didn't mention the third factor: this was the first time he'd been this close to Vader. close enough to touch him. And though he hadn't dared to try to probe the man he'd noticed something about the patterns of Force that had swirled around the Dark Lord. Patterns that seemed strangely, unbelievably, familiar.

Master Piell had told him once that the moire swirling of the Force were as individual as a person's DNA, he could not be sure-and likely he'd never know the truth-but, if Master Piell was right and those patterns were not to be duplicated ... well, it had been enough to gamble on.

He had evidence through the Force that Anakin Skywalker was still alive. And the Anakin he knew, steeped though he had been in the Force, would not have had the self-knowledge to realize what the bota might mean to someone with his particular set of character flaws. Yes, it was a mad thought, bur it was a thought Jax dared to have because of something Darth Vader had said: And now. if you would return the pyroniunt.

"Do you think he's finally dead?" Laranth asked, breaking into his thoughts.

Jax shook his head. "He's harder to kill than that. But I think maybe the game has changed. And that could be good news ... or bad."

"But you'll still stay." It wasn't a question.

He didn't reply. What was there to say? Inquisitors or no, Vader or no, the Emperor or no, Jax couldn't conceive of anyplace he'd rather be, any job he'd rather be doing. For better or worse, this was home.

They'd reached their new domicile while he'd been thinking, and when they entered, they found someone waiting in the front room, talking to Den and I-Five.

Den introduced the newcomer, who seemed to be a Mirialan, judging by his facial markings. "This is Chan Dash. He's got a problem that we might be able to help with."

Jax nodded. But as he was about to speak, he suddenly felt the Force surge within him, higher and stronger than he had ever felt it before. It was as if those threads which some believed vibrated throughout all of time and s.p.a.ce, forming the fabric of reality itself, had suddenly seized him and lifted him, almost instantaneously, above-no, outside the world that he knew, and carried him to some metaphysical vantage point. For one timeless moment, Jax beheld the spectacular galactic whirlpool itself, which simultaneously being connected, somehow, to each and every being within it.

It lasted a millisecond; it lasted an eternity. Then, just as abruptly, he was back.

Was this what Barriss Offee had experienced when she had taken the bota? Had he been, for the length of a heartbeat, connected to the greater, unifying gestalt that the wisest of the Masters called the Cosmic Force? If so, how? Vader had used the last of the bota; there was nothing he could think of that could possibly have triggered this, except...

Except the Force itself.

Jax felt a sense of great contentment, of purpose. He didn't know why the Force had elected to grant him that vision, but he suspected a reason. He suspected that it had been to show him without a doubt where, in the immensity of the galaxy, that Jax Pavan belonged.

Tell me something I don't know, he thought.

He realized that Chan Dash, as well as his team, were beginning to regard him strangely. The silence was beginning to stretch.

Jax shook the Mirelian's hand and gestured to a chair. Sit down, please," he said. "Tell me how I can help you."