Star Wars_ Coruscant Nights III_ Patterns of Force - Michael Reaves [19]
Rhinann backed out of the travel node and returned to his map. He considered the proximity of the Tesla hit closest to their bolt-hole. How long? he wondered. How long did he have before he completely ran out of time?
There was no way to know. He considered the sequence of his informants’ reports about the Inquisitor and the amount of time that had passed between each of them. Based on this, he gave himself twenty-four standard hours to come up with a plan—or to have circumstances present him with an opportunity to isolate, deactivate, and rob I-Five. If he hadn’t gotten the bota within the next day, he would simply leave. He was, after all, a practical being.
He returned to the travel node and purchased a one-way ticket for the next outbound freighter on the Perlemian Trade Route to Lianna, which was the closest planet to the Outer Rim in the sector nearest Elom. This time tomorrow, Rhinann promised himself as he transferred funds from the account Dejah had set up for them, he would be on that freighter, with or without the bota.
Jax made his way along the narrow, serpentine length of Snowblind Mews. It was a running joke among the members of the team that the namers of the narrow passage couldn’t have had even the vaguest idea of what the appellation meant; no one on Coruscant had seen snow for uncounted centuries. It was Den’s opinion that the name shining from street signs at the occasional corner was actually a ribald phrase in Shistavanen or some other planetary dialect that just sounded like Snowblind Mews, and that whenever Basic speakers uttered the phrase in the hearing of the aliens, they would howl with laughter.
Jax walked slowly, tentacles of Force-sense curling outward toward the walls of the densely packed resiblocks that rose to dizzying heights on either side. It was not the worst neighborhood in which to live. In fact, the ornate stacks of conapts that lined the mews and looked out on the cul-de-sac plaza known as Poloda Place still wore a shadow of their original elegance. Their once gleaming walls were age-dulled and grimed, but there was a certain shabby respectability about the place that Jax felt was to their advantage. Most people who hid out from the Imperial eye went to the lowest levels of the city and dived into its deepest, darkest haunts. So when Imperial forces went shopping for criminals, that was the first place they looked. They did not often think of poking their noses into the more affluent areas around Poloda Place—usually a haven for artists and other creative types.
Until now, Jax reminded himself. Rhinann had told him of the shadowy personage who had been nosing about recently only one or two levels below. A human named Tesla. A man well versed in the Force.
An Inquisitor.
Jax felt himself tighten up reflexively at the thought, and wondered at the vagaries of fate. If Tuden Sal had fulfilled his promise to Jax’s father, he and Tesla might have been peers, possibly even friends. Now he was set at odds with a man he didn’t even know.
He reached the street and began to walk aimlessly, trying to process Sal’s proposal and the reactions to it of his teammates. Den, Rhinann, and Dejah were obviously dead set against the idea. That was understandable. They were afraid. It was just as understandable that I-Five, who felt no fear, was willing to entertain the idea.
Dejah’s alarm, however, had been palpable. He could still feel it tugging at him, imploring him. He wondered if it stemmed from the fact that the Zeltron’s late partner, the light sculptor Ves Volette, had been killed by a domestic droid. The droid, which belonged to the house-hold of one of Volette’s most loyal patrons, had somehow come to reason that it must use deadly force to protect the interests of its mistress.
It made emotional sense in the abstract that Dejah should have a fear of droids, but somehow the theory felt wrong under her particular circumstances. The crimson-skinned