Star Wars_ Coruscant Nights 01_ Jedi Twilight - Michael Reaves [34]
Of course, no one except Kaird knew that this particular hypergem was the prized property of a Chagrian named Gogh Pleetik, one of the Corporate Sector bosses on the stinking industrial Core world of Metellos. Kaird had paid a considerable amount to have it stolen, and he knew that Pleetik would be upset. After all, living on Metellos, he probably used any way he could to escape reality.
“Are you interested?” Kaird asked Endrigorn.
The insectoid vibrated its chitinous segments, producing a buzzing that Kaird took to be excitement. “Izzz wannntinggg pozzzezzionnn,” it said. “Izzz kkknowinnng howww muchhh?”
Kaird named a price that was not too outrageously high. He couldn’t appear too eager to sell it, after all. The fence responded with more arcane movements, this time adding another set of legs. “Izzz nnottt zzaatizzzfaccctoryyy.”
The buzzing was giving Kaird a headache, but he gave no sign of it. Haggling was necessary or the Rakririan would suspect ulterior motives. Which Kaird, of course, had. “Tell me what you had in mind,” he urged the insectoid.
Endrigorn named a price so low that Kaird had trouble not laughing out loud. He tossed a counteroffer back, and so it went. After a few more exchanges, both felt that they were being equally robbed, and the deal was made.
Kaird caught the tether shuttle back up to Midnight Hall, feeling quite pleased about this particular deadfall he’d set. He knew that Endrigorn and Xizor had had recent dealings, so it made sense that the Rakririan would contact Kaird’s rival, knowing that Falleen considered hypergems precious beyond words. Xizor wouldn’t be able to resist buying it. It would then come to Boss Pleetik’s attention, via a carefully placed rumor, that one of the Black Sun elite was in possession of his property.
While any being smart enough to throw a rock knew enough not to throw it at Black Sun, the mucky-mucks of Metellos were possibly the only sentients tough enough and perpetually angry enough not to care. Plus, a great deal of black-market matériel found its way from Metellos to Black Sun, and vice versa. The new Underlord could ill afford a diplomatic crisis so soon after taking power. He would investigate, and he would learn who had the hypergem.
Kaird looked out the port at the shining curve of the planet below and smiled. All in all, a most satisfying day’s work.
Jax had heard the sentiment expressed often, as far back as he could remember. The phrasing might be slightly different, depending on who was making the statement, but the sentiment was always the same:
Without the Jedi, I am nothing.
He knew it was the truth. He’d had no other life but that within the Temple, and he had been content with that. Brought to the Order scarcely able to toddle, Jax Pavan remembered neither his mother nor his father, and had felt no lack in his life, because those within the Order had been both to him, and more. The vast halls and high-ceilinged chambers, the regimens of meditation, of calisthenics, of lightsaber practice … all this had been his life, and a rich one it had been. But it was gone now, all of it, never to return, or at least not in his lifetime. His Master, and most, if not all, of the Council members, were dead. The Temple was sacked and empty. And he was alone.
Alone among trillions of people. In peril every waking hour. More and more, he could not help but wonder: When did it make the most sense to simply stop? To give up, surrender, and seek oneness with the Force?
Long had it been a tenet of the Jedi belief that when a Jedi died, he or she or it surrendered the