Star Wars_ Coruscant Nights 01_ Jedi Twilight - Michael Reaves [43]
“Okay,” he said. I-Five stopped the projection, and the parade of holograms winked out. Den looked around. “Is there a dataport in this dump?”
The droid looked about in disdain. “If we’re lucky, there might be an old-style modem.”
To their surprise, however, there was a dataport. Even more astonishing was that it was live, although I-Five did a remarkably good job, given his immovable countenance, of conveying a wrinkled nose of disgust. “You want me to interface with that? Maker knows what’s been connected there recently—”
“Don’t be such a baby. Your antivirus software’s up to date, isn’t it?”
The droid sighed. “Have I mentioned lately how much I enjoy our association?” He raised his right hand, and one of the digits extended, transforming into a transceiver plug. This he inserted gingerly into the dataport. “And just why am I doing this?”
“You’re interfacing with the main security grid for this sector.”
“Which is highly illegal.”
“Your point?”
“Just a casual observation. And I’m looking for—?”
“You’re looking for images of human males taken in the last week that have a high correlation with your visual data on Lorn Pavan. In other words—”
“A family resemblance.” The droid was silent for a moment, then said, “I can’t believe I never thought of this.”
“I can’t either. I guess that chunk of circuitry in your head still has a few synapses to forge.” Den tried, though admittedly not very hard, to keep a smug note out of his voice. “Besides, we don’t know yet if this’ll work.”
I-Five did not reply. The droid seemed to be concentrating.
“Problems?” Den asked.
“A new pyrowall has been installed since I last jacked in.”
“I’m not surprised,” Den said. “It’s been, what? Almost two decades?”
“Quiet. This is tricky.”
Den waited, resisting the opportunity to dance nervously from foot to foot. If I-Five tripped a fail-safe, it could lead to all kinds of upsetting results, not the least of which would be the droid’s synaptic grid getting melted faster than a comet in a solar flare. If that happened, Den knew he’d never forgive himself for suggesting this. Not that he’d have that long to beat himself up over it, since there would also most likely be a squad of PCBUs circling the building long before he could get out.
“I’m in,” I-Five announced. “Specifying algorithm parameters … instigating search modality … downloading data.” The interface digit snapped out of the dataport and telescoped back, resuming its former shape.
“Well? What’ve you got?”
I-Five activated his holoprojector again. Five 3-D images flashed in succession of a young man in nondescript spacer’s garb. Even though the projections were slightly indistinct, the resemblance between him and the images of Lorn Pavan was unmistakable.
“Hello, Jax,” Den murmured.
I-Five was silent. His photoreceptors, however, were very bright.
One image was of Jax Pavan crossing a crowded street; another, him buying something at an outdoor vendor’s stall. The last three were somewhat blurred shots of him standing on a bridgeway, conferring or perhaps arguing with a Hutt, a Klatooinian, and a Nikto.
The very last image appeared to be a shot of the human, the Klatooinian, and the Nikto, with two blurred objects flying between the man and the other two. Den peered at it, frowning. “Can you rez up on that one?”
I-Five complied. The holoproj became sharper and larger.
Den blinked. “It looks like a couple of blasters being pulled from those two bullyboys to him, somehow—” Then he realized what it meant. “He’s using the Force to disarm them.”
I-Five said, “These images were taken by an automated security rovercam. The last one was flagged for investigation concerning possible illegal Jedi activity.”
“That’s not good. How long