Star Wars_ Coruscant Nights II Streets of Shadows - Michael Reaves [99]
And then there was Jax. The Jedi was, he had to admit, growing into his role of a hero rather well. If he continued to survive Vader’s intermittent attention, not to mention the thousand and one other dangers that loomed downlevel every day and night, he just might become a force—no pun intended—to reckon with. He had a good enough support group, although there did seem to be subtle changes in the overall group dynamic over the past couple of days between him and the others. Particularly as far as Laranth was concerned, though the Jedi was as blind as a space slug if he couldn’t see how the Twi’lek felt about him. But there was a certain amount of tension between him and I-Five that was new as well. What was up with that, Den wondered. Hard to tell if anything was different as far as Rhinann was concerned; the dour Elomin kept interactions between himself and others at a minimum. And of late he’d become even more immersed in the HoloNet than usual.
Den shrugged. Well, after all, what family didn’t have its bickerings and quarrels? It was important to remember that, because that was what they were—a family, albeit a pretty dysfunctional one at times. The important thing was that they all came together when needed to make a good team.
Jax watched their client approach the spaceport’s entrance, noting with relief that she’d changed into traveling wear that was far less riot inciting than last night’s attire. As she drew closer, he realized that she’d damped her pheromones and mental lures as well.
Good. Now let’s get her onboard and offplanet before anything else can go wrong.
He felt slightly ashamed of his attitude—but only slightly. Though he had grown fond of Dejah, he was more than happy that she was moving on. Frankly put, she was trouble, even without the chemical and psychic come-ons.
Spaceport Nine was a large mass of surging, pushing, irritated, hurrying, frantic beings representing every species that was used to traveling between the stars. Which was to say that it was no different in design from any of the other many large spaceports on the capital world. What made navigating Nine a little more confusing, a little more difficult, and considerably more frustrating than working one’s way through, say, Spaceport Eight or Ten, however, was the fact that Nine was undergoing a complete makeover under the supervision of the Imperial Spaceport Authority. Old structures were being demolished, new ones erected, traffic rerouted, and what was left still had to function, somehow, as a fully operational port.
In such circumstances, the needs of machines invariably took precedence over those of organics. Station, crew, and maintenance workers—not to mention travelers—all found themselves squeezed into smaller and smaller corridors and forced to take directions from programs or service droids that were themselves subject to minute-by-minute updating. It all made finding one’s destination an exercise akin to negotiating the lowermost underlevels of the city itself.
Surrounded and delayed by agitated panglossia in dozens of tongues, the unavoidable reek of too-close-packed bodies, and the overriding cacophony of nonstop construction, one determined small group continued to force its way toward one of the farther launch pods. I-Five used a directed hypersonic pulse to ensure that his words would be heard over the din of the crowd. “Turn down the corridor to the left,” the droid said. “It’s a temporary elevated accessway that will let us bypass much of the major construction.”
Jax noticed glowing letters floating above the entrance, along with a multilingual glyph for “danger.” “It says CONSTRUCTION PERSONNEL ONLY,” he said.
“That’s us,” responded the droid.