Star Wars_ Coruscant Nights III_ Patterns of Force - Michael Reaves [18]
No doubt about it—since Vader had brought in the Inquisitorius, the net was tightening. He wondered why the Dark Lord had waited this long to introduce the heavy guns in his search for Pavan, and shrugged. Who alive could fathom the mental machinations of Palpatine’s second in command? No doubt Vader had his reasons for prolonging the search this long. Perhaps he had been waiting for other arrangements and affairs to be concluded, or perhaps he merely enjoyed the whisperkit-and-mouse aspects of the hunt. It didn’t matter; what did matter was that his former employer was obviously tired of fencing and was going in for the kill. Through Tesla, Vader had learned the names and occupations of all of Pavan’s team of misfits, save one: as far as Rhinann had been able to ascertain, the only one whose name had not figured in Tesla’s careful questioning was Dejah Duare. Which was a good thing, because if she was linked to the Jedi in some way by the Inquisitorius, her seemingly bottomless well of funds might be unexpectedly siphoned dry.
The Elomin’s pulse quickened and a choking tightness seized his throat, uncomfortably close in sensation to one time when he had felt Vader’s phantom grip close suggestively there. The connection between Dejah and the rest of them, he realized, could be made at any moment. If he was going to get out of this situation, he should act now, while the Zeltron’s wealth was still available to him.
Quaking, he selected one of his newer aliases randomly from a cache of carefully compiled profiles of deceased and nonexistent persons, then accessed a travel broker’s HoloNet node and prepared to buy himself a ticket offworld. Just shy of completing the transaction, however, he hesitated. If he left now, he might save his sorry hide, but he would forever forgo his chance of experiencing the Force … unless he found the bota and took it with him.
Rhinann sat back in his chair and stared, unseeing, through the travel brokerage’s colorful HoloNet “storefront” to the dingy gray wall of the conapt and contemplated the full implications of that.
He had no moral problem with lifting the substance and fleeing with it. His only problem was that he wasn’t certain who had it. He suspected I-Five still carried it, but he couldn’t be certain that the droid hadn’t already revealed its existence to Jax Pavan.
Even if he had, Rhinann realized, I-Five might still be the safest entity to guard it. There was no way that even a dark-side-sensitive such as Probus Tesla could disinter stray thoughts to any meaningful degree from a droid brain.
The simplest thing to do, then, would be to kidnap I-Five.
He gave a half laugh, half snort that rattled his nose tusks. When kidnapping a freakishly sentient machine became the easiest of your options, you were in more trouble than you knew. Especially when the droid in question was contemplating regicide. Still, I-5YQ was, when all was said and done, a mechanical device, and like most mechanical devices he had an OFF switch. That switch was hardwired to the droid’s consciousness template and couldn’t be removed without irreparable damage—in other words, killing him. Therefore, for all of Lorn Pavan’s clever manipulation of the droid’s programming and firmware, that master switch must have remained untouched. If Rhinann could contrive to get the droid alone long enough to somehow deactivate him, he could go through his pockets—so to speak—thoroughly and without fear of reprisal.
That, of course, was the trick: I-Five’s reflexes were preternaturally quick compared with even the dazzling reaction time of an Aleena. Next to Rhinann, who was a diplomat, not a warrior, he