Star Wars_ Coruscant Nights 01_ Jedi Twilight - Michael Reaves [81]
Rhinann stood before a huge transparisteel wall that looked out over the endless city. He could see the Opera House, the Skydome Botanical Gardens, and, in the distance, the Westport aerodrome and landing fields. As he watched, a Lancer-class frigate rose slowly into the sky. A moment later, from another part of the huge spaceport, a civilian passenger transport lifted off. The Elomin watched it disappear into the clear blue. How could he arrange to be on a ship like that one?
He didn’t know. But however he managed it, he was certain that he had to figure out a way, and soon.
Jax Pavan sat in the air skimmer that moved through the narrow gloomy streets of the Blackpit Slums, and looked at his life.
It was not, he had to admit, a very pretty sight.
He had been a Jedi Knight. A member of an ancient Order dedicated to keeping the peace, to ensuring that civilization’s standards were maintained. To righting wrongs, battling injustice.
To living within the Force.
The last was the hardest part. Always had been, always would be. He had tried, but he had to admit that living the life of a Jedi had not given him the inner peace and quietude he had sought since he had been old enough to understand that for which he was questing.
The flaw had to be within him, he felt. The tenets of the Order had worked for millennia, had shaped uncounted living beings from infancy into Jedi Knights and Masters willing and ready to uphold the Order’s high standards of truth and justice—to use the power of the Force to extinguish evil wherever it might be found. If that beacon did not burn as bright in him as it had in his comrades, it was not the teachings of the Order that were lacking. It was him.
“You’re distressed. Why?” The droid’s voice, mad-deningly calm as usual, broke in on his memories. For once Jax was almost grateful.
“Why? My people and my entire way of life have been destroyed, I’m a fugitive of the new regime, and the most dangerous being in the galaxy has for some reason made me the object of his own personal vendetta—other than that, no reason.”
I-Five looked at him; its metal face was expressionless, and yet somehow expressive. “I see the sarcasm gene has been passed intact from father to son.”
“If I gave you a direct order to jump out of this skimmer,” Jax asked, “what would happen?”
I-Five seemed to ponder this. “I don’t know,” the droid said at last.
“It’s tempting to find out.”
“I doubt it would work. My programming, as I’ve said before, is capable of nuance. I have no creativity dampers or inhibition software.”
“And whose bright idea was that?”
“Your father’s.” There was a subtly humorous tone in the droid’s voice that made Jax’s teeth grate. “He removed the dampers and some of the software,” I-Five continued. “With the increased access to free will that resulted, I was able to do the rest. Of late, with Den’s help, I’ve made further modifications.”
Jax shifted slightly so he could better look at I-Five. “Are you saying you’re self-aware?”
Again I-Five was pensive. “It’s a question I’ve asked myself often. I must admit that, at times, I was reluctant to follow it to its logical conclusion. But eventually, with the help of friends—including Jedi Offee, I might add—I came to realize that the ability to ponder the subject indicates a positive response in and of itself. In other words: I am because I think.”
“Let me see if I’m getting this,” Nick, who had evidently overheard the conversation, said. “You’re saying you’re not subject to the operating constraints