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Almost without his volition, the Force reached out and wrapped about her to sample her aura. What he felt was a sensation of rust, a dolorous mental shade very much at odds with her vibrant appearance. She peered into the room, and her tone was cautiously hopeful as she spoke.

“Please tell me one of you is Jax Pavan.”

The Carrack light cruiser made a reasonably steady landing on the pad at Westport. Captain Typho was among the first to disembark. It would have been a pleasant enough voyage, with his rank in the Naboo military giving him preferential status in terms of accommodations and food, had he not been consumed with his mission. But despite the pleasures available to one of his rank on board ship, all he could think of was reaching Coruscant and pursuing the course that obsessed him. It had taken several months to clear up various obligations on Naboo so that he could proceed at his task totally unencumbered. Now he was finally here.

He had watched from the main viewport as the ship had descended. It had been hard, very hard, not to feel completely overwhelmed by the sight of the endless cityscape that stretched in all directions below him. As far as he could see, the snarl of streets, towers, plazas, stadiums, and countless other buildings and thoroughfares covered the surface, all of it stippled with flickering shadows thrown by the fast-moving repulsor-driven traffic above. Cosseted remnants of the original planetary biota, occasional patches of green and blue, peeped through the immense cityscape. But they were few and very far between.

It was nothing he hadn’t seen before, of course. In his capacity as Padmé’s bodyguard he had visited the city-planet several times previously. But on those occasions he hadn’t been faced with the daunting task of tracking down a killer among the teeming trillions that populated the global labyrinth. It seemed utterly impossible, and Typho felt despair fill him. Where, in all this enormous endless urban sprawl, would he even begin to look for a surviving Jedi when so many believed all the Jedi were dead?

He squared his shoulders and set his jaw. No task was ever accomplished by cowering before it. If he continued to feel this way, he would be defeated before he had even begun. And Padmé Amidala would forever rest uneasily in her grave.

That could not be permitted.

A modest distance to the northeast of Westport lay the ruins of the Jedi Temple. Any investigation or exploration of them was forbidden by Imperial fiat. But such interdictions held little meaning for a soldier. Typho would begin his investigation with Anakin Skywalker, presumably the last Jedi to see Padmé alive. If he had survived Mustafar, some hint of his whereabouts might be found in the shattered remnants of his former sanctuary. And if such a clue existed, Typho would find it.

The captain set out upon his quest.

“I’m Jax Pavan.”

The crimson woman looked relieved. It took Den a moment to identify her as a Zeltron. A small pang of worry rippled through him at this realization. Zeltrons, if he was remembering correctly, were exceptional representations of humanoid beauty, at least as far as other humans were concerned. In addition they, like the Falleen and some other mammalian species, shed pheromones that made them even more irresistible.

In short, not a species that made it easy to be objective.

The Sullustan cast a quick glance at Jax. Hard to tell what he was thinking. Den had become fairly adept at reading humans over the years—but not that good. Jax didn’t look particularly smitten, however, even though the Zeltron seemed to be a prime example of human pulchritude. It was all academic to Den, of course. He took note of her beauty the same way he would recognize a thoroughbred of any sort.

“My name is Dejah Duare,” the Zeltron said. “I’ve come to you for help.”

Den watched his friends. Jax and Laranth glanced at each other, and the Sullustan guessed that they had both checked this visitor out through the Force. Whether she had passed or not remained to be seen. As for I-Five,