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They hurried, quickly but cautiously, through the darkened building, down flights of stairs and through rubble-strewn rooms. The building’s tenants occasionally peered at them from behind curtained doorways and through cracks in walls, but none of them said anything or made any move.

It was just after dawn when they emerged; Jax knew this only by his chrono reading. Outside, save for intermittent city glow, it still seemed the middle of the night.

“He appears to have taken your skimmer,” I-Five informed Nick.

Fortunately there were a few older-model speeders parked nearby, and one of them didn’t require an activation code. Jax wasn’t particularly concerned about the moral ambiguities of stealing the vehicle; Jedi rules were flexible, and could be bent in the service of the greater good. Besides, it was a pretty good bet that they were doing the owner a favor. The craft was a SoroSuub G-17 landspeeder that had seen better days, and those days hadn’t been recent ones. At least one repulsor vane was out of alignment, causing the vehicle to yaw at the slightest irregularity in the pavement, which it hugged to within a dozen centimeters, and it was about as fast as a dyspeptic Ithorian.

“I could walk faster than this,” Den Dhur said as the G-17 lurched down the street. “Drunk,” he added.

I-Five kept them on the scent, quite literally—the droid’s artificial sensorium was extremely sensitive. The multifarious odors, stenches, and smells downlevel were so omnipresent that Jax had long since stopped noticing them on a conscious level, but thinking about I-Five’s tracking ability now brought them to his attention again. It was hard to believe that any individual species’ scent could be isolated out from the pungent reeks of half a galaxy’s variety of beings, even by a chemical lab as accurate as the one I-Five packed just behind the olfactory sensory grid on his chest. Nevertheless, the droid claimed that it was not only possible, but easy.

“There are very few Falleen this far downlevel,” he explained. “They tend to be a more cosmopolitan species. Interestingly, I’m also detecting the residue of brands of oils and soaps associated with the extremely rich on his skin.”

“Who is he, anyway?” Laranth asked. “He looks familiar.”

“He should,” the Sullustan said. “He’s Prince Xizor of House Sizhran. Rumors are that he’s an up-and-coming player in Black Sun. Falleen rarely leave their homeworld; he’s one of the few exceptions.”

Silence reigned for a few minutes. If Black Sun was involved, then things had indeed taken an unexpected—and potentially nasty—turn.

“He’s about half a kilometer ahead,” I-Five said. “And he’s signaling the local port to have his ship ready.”

“Impressive,” Nick said. “Your video and audio reception must be as good as your olfactory detector.”

“It’s much simpler, actually: radar and an all-band transmission receiver.”

“I believe the latter is illegal for a protocol droid to possess,” Jax remarked.

“I believe you’re right.”

“If he lifts, how are we going to follow him?” Dhur asked. “Even your nose can’t track a scent in vacuum.”

“Not to worry,” Nick said. “I’ve got a ship. We’ll be right behind him.”

Jax said nothing more. This entire affair seemed to be mushrooming out of control. He’d set out on a solo mission to redeem his Master’s honor and fulfill his last request, and now he had a most unlikely posse helping him. A posse that he didn’t seem to be even leading anymore; that position had somehow been usurped. By a droid.

He wasn’t sure what to do about it. Worse, he wasn’t even sure he should do anything about it. The mission was the important thing, after all.

But it was becoming harder and harder to remember that.

thirty-four

Kaird had been conscious during the events of the last few minutes; conscious, but unable to move. The stun blasts had zapped him quite thoroughly, and it wasn’t until they’d arrived at the staging platform that he started to feel the tingle of returning circulation.