Star Wars_ Coruscant Nights II Streets of Shadows - Michael Reaves [83]
Where are you, young Jedi? Where are you, Jax Pavan?
She ignored the tempting diversions through which she strode. Ignored food, and liquor, and proffered stimulations of other kinds. Ignored come-ons and thoughtless invective, swiping hands and assurances of instant wealth loudly promised. Nothing could divert her from her task.
Close now, she told herself. She could practically taste her quarry, could visualize the shock that would freeze his expression as she tickled his navel with the tip of her lightsaber. Not that she needed anything to encourage her stalking, but her claustrophobic surroundings, underground and filled with shoving, jostling representatives of numerous species, reminded her of nothing so much as the zenium mines on Oovo 4.
Very close, now … An occasional celebrant caught a glimpse of her face, the look in her eyes, and made haste to get as far out of the way of the fast-moving white humanoid as possible. And then, abruptly, she found herself before the entrance to one of the fair’s main amusements: a Holo House.
Whoever the Force-sensitive she’d been tracking was—and she was virtually positive it was her quarry; the Force told her that its association with the entity Jax Pavan was very strong indeed—he was somewhere inside the building. She could simply storm in by the simple expedient of removing the head of the humanoid checking entrants. But that would draw unwanted attention, and, this proximate to her prey, that was the last thing Sing wanted. Despite her rising level of excitement, she forced herself to lower her heart rate and respiration. Look normal, she told herself. Relaxed, calm … just a single working woman out for an evening’s entertainment. Which wasn’t that far off the mark. She paid the entry fee, was assured the building was not crowded, and entered.
The attraction was like a house of mirrors, only without the mirrors. In their place, illuminated laser lines crisscrossed multiple levels. At the intersection of any two, a holoimage of one or another visitant from anywhere else in the place might appear. Being a holoproj, the image wasn’t mirror-reversed; there was no way to distinguish it from reality. Reach out and your hand would pass through the image, be it one of yourself or someone else. You could step through it and onto another pathway or level—unless, of course, it was not an image but an actual being. The result was confusion, bemusement, mistaken identity, and—ideally—widespread hilarity. Any vestige of the last emotion, however, was absent from the bounty hunter as she moved purposefully through the maze.
Laughter and conversation from other, distant visitors echoed through the passageways. Sing had her lightsaber out, but had not yet activated it. No need to alarm the paying customers—or to alert her target. Clenched in her gloved right fist, much of the gleaming metal was hidden from view. If necessary, she could bring it to full activation in less than a second.
She passed a handsome young couple amusing themselves by kissing their respective images, and felt her lip curl. Foolish, wasted lives, there for a few brief seconds and then gone in an instant, vanishing without ever having impacted the fabric of civilization. Not like her, Sing told herself. She had an effect. She made a difference. Perhaps not one that those who encountered her took pleasure from, but certainly one that they and those around them would long remember—assuming they survived.
Finding someone in the place was next to impossible without the Force’s aid. The multiplicity of levels, routes, and images offered too many choices for most people. Aurra Sing, however, would have been able to track her quarry through the lambent maze even had she been blind and deaf. The Force was her guide. A touch of the dark side was all that