Star Wars_ Coruscant Nights 01_ Jedi Twilight - Michael Reaves [39]
“Ah,” Laranth said. “Rokko the Hutt.”
fourteen
Rhinann constructed his search for the Jedi Jax Pavan with the same meticulous care that an Elomin brought to any and all projects. He commissioned netdroids to jack into the datasphere and scour the nearly limitless virtual memory banks of the HoloNet for any byte of information on his quarry. He authorized slicers to search the planetary security grid for records of a human corresponding to Pavan’s physical description as gleaned from the Temple records. He added multiple factors to the search parameters: lack of previous employment, credit records, transactions both legal and illegal, and as many others as he could think of. Lastly, he dispatched operatives, both covert and overt, as well as miniature search droids—basically tiny flying cams capable of scanning dozens of square kilometers in a matter of hours—to that area of the ecumenopolis in which Lord Vader had said the Jedi could be found: Sector 1Y4F.
Exhaustive as these efforts were, he was well aware that he was barely scratching the surface. The number of places where Pavan could have gone to ground on Coruscant, even if restricted to one sector, were practically limitless—assuming he was still on the planet at all. There was only Vader’s assurance as a reason to believe that he was, and every reason to think he wasn’t.
It was obvious, however, that the Sith Lord’s confidence came through the Force. Rhinann had heard that it was possible for Jedi to sense other Force-users. If one so adept in the Force said that a Jedi could be found in a certain place, then it was pretty much a certainty that he or she would be found there. Rhinann flared his neck wattles in astonishment at this. If he himself had had the slightest intimation that Darth Vader was interested in his whereabouts, he would have fled the Core systems fast enough to leave ion burns. His hope was that Pavan’s sense of self-preservation wasn’t quite as highly developed as that of most sentients. This was a trait he had noticed in many humans: an almost suicidal fool-hardiness that often impelled them to remain in situations from which most rational beings would have long since run screaming.
The initial results from the datasphere queries weren’t encouraging. There were many, many humans on record with the name Jax Pavan, both male and female. The females could be ruled out, obviously—unless Pavan had elected to undergo transgenderative surgery. After some reflection, Rhinann decided to ignore this possibility for the time being. But there was no connection that he could find between the rest of the list and the Jedi he sought.
Rhinann exhaled with enough force to vibrate his nose tusks, producing a keening trill of frustration. In all probability Pavan had used a splicer to expunge any connection between himself and the Order. He stared at the data holoproj. There were approximately 582,797,754 human males named Jax Pavan on Coruscant at this moment. The numbers flickered through a small range of adjustment even as he watched, reflecting deaths, births, arrivals, departures, and other statistical variables.
Blasted humans, he thought. That was the problem. If he’d been looking for a Falleen or a Neimoidian, or even for one of his own kind, the data wouldn’t be nearly as overwhelming. But practically everywhere you went, it seemed, humans outnumbered every other species by a ridiculous margin.
Even when he excluded the rest of the population and focused solely on the Yaam Sector, the results weren’t encouraging: 8,674 Jax Pavans. It was a fairly common name among Corellians.
He trilled again. All right, so the task was not an easy one. He’d known it wouldn’t be. He commanded himself to be calm. Salvation lay in methodology. There had to