Star Wars_ Coruscant Nights II Streets of Shadows - Michael Reaves [18]
Well, let’s hope, he thought.
Jax cleared his throat. “There’s been a lot of investigation by the regime into the activities of the Whiplash lately. They’re especially interested in how renegades, radicals, and other dissenters are managing to flee offworld. Getting someone out has become even more dangerous than usual.”
Den breathed a silent sigh of relief. He was glad to hear that, pheromone mist notwithstanding, his human friend was still thinking with his brain and not his glands.
“So,” Jax continued, “we’ll have to be extra careful getting you and your companion Volette out. But one way or another, we’ll do it. I feel that we all owe it to the memory of the Caamasi.” He smiled reassuringly at Dejah Duare, and the Zeltron smiled back.
Den clapped a hand to his forehead and groaned.
I-Five glanced at him. “Something wrong?” the droid asked.
“Headache,” Den muttered. He left the room.
Se’lahn.
That was the word for it in the Sullust tongue. It meant disquietude, a sensation of unrest, a troubled heart. It was a word that described, with fair accuracy, Den Dhur’s mental state these days.
It was a state well justified, he felt. After all, he had lobbied for some time without success for all of them, even the Elomin, to hit the outer plenum and get off Coruscant immediately, if not sooner. Where they went wasn’t as important as when. The whole idea was to put as much empty space as they could between them and Lord Vader, since it was entirely possible that the Emperor’s sinister adjutant was still interested in the whereabouts of Jax Pavan.
Den understood idealism and had even been known to get a little choked up himself on occasion. He had no difficulty with Jax devoting himself to Truth, Justice, and the Jedi Code. He did, however, have a big problem with doing so under the very nose of one of the most dangerous individuals in the galaxy.
And yet something was keeping Den on Coruscant.
I-Five.
The protocol droid had accomplished a remarkable thing, Den reflected. The modified mechanical had become such a close friend that Den really couldn’t imagine life without him.
I-Five had told Den that if Den felt he had to leave Coruscant, the droid would go with him even if Jax elected to stay. But I-Five had also promised the elder Pavan that he would watch over his son if Lorn died. The droid had taken this commitment very seriously, even though he had not been able to fulfill his former partner’s request until Jax had become a grown man. Still, better late than never, and the droid’s devotion to the task was intense, as if he intended to make up for those lost decades.
So if put to the test, would I-Five stay with Jax or go with Den?
The Sullustan wasn’t sure he wanted to find out. And that was the crux of it. He, Den Dhur, crack reporter and professional cynic, had become as fond of I-Five as he might be of a sibling. Though they engaged in constant and sometimes acrimonious verbal sparring, Den had forged a bond with the droid that was stronger than any he had formed with any organic sentient.
Strong enough to keep him on a world he hated—or, rather, in the part of that world he hated. The Coruscant underworld: the slums comprising the lower fifty or so levels, the narrow, twisted surface streets and ramps, and the caverns and warrens that honeycombed the subsurface in so many places. The proliferation of buildings over the centuries had reached such a congested state that the sun could hardly ever be seen. And when it was visible, its light was strained through a veil of low-lying hydrocarbon smog that turned it blood red; an overly blatant metaphor, in Den’s opinion, but nonetheless effective.
It might seem strange to someone with only a