Star Wars_ Coruscant Nights III_ Patterns of Force - Michael Reaves [57]
“From?” the Gungan asked, eyeing Den.
“A certain purveyor of lighting supplies. He tells me your proprietor has a dim corridor he wishes to make passable.”
“Oh yes.” The Gungan nodded zealously enough to flap his ears and cause his eyestalks to bob up and down. “Yes, me-sa boss is in much need of such. Passage long and very dark. You-sa got the bid?”
I-Five produced a data crystal seemingly from nowhere and handed it to the Gungan.
“When you-sa do the work?”
“Two days at oh seven hundred hours,” I-Five said, then uttered three clicks, each one pitched slightly lower than the one before.
The Gungan smiled pleasantly and cocked his head to one side. “You-sa oughta get that looked at, eh? Me-sa take this to the boss.”
“One more thing,” I-Five said before the cook could pocket the crystal and move away. “Tell the Sakiyan I will see him tomorrow at sunset. He knows the place.”
The Gungan nodded his head, causing his long earflaps to dance about his shoulders. “No problem. Me-sa tell him this.”
When the Gungan cook had gone to deliver the crystal and the message—which was that the “work” would really be done at 0400 hours, three hours earlier than stated—Den looked up at I-Five with dread tugging at his heart.
“You’ve decided what you’re going to do about the plan?”
“No. But I have given myself a deadline. I will decide by the time I see my contact tomorrow.”
“Don’t do it, Five. The risk—it’s just too big. This whole thing is too big.”
I-Five turned to look down at him, optical receptors bright in the dim interior of the charity’s back corridors. “With all due respect, Den—and I mean that—I think I’m in a better position to gauge the risks than you are. My processor, in fact, has already calculated all the possible scenarios and variables inherent in my agreeing. I only await the majority opinion of the team before making my decision.”
“And?”
“I promise you I will not take on this charge if Jax and the others feel that it’s wrong.”
Wrong. Not inadvisable. Not illogical. Not stupidly dangerous. Not lethal.
Wrong.
Den shook his head and followed I-Five back out into the street. When droids started philosophizing about morality and ethics, maybe it was time to investigate cyborg implants and a lobotomy.
twelve
It had wafted to him, borne on the winds of the Force, and he had known it immediately for what it was—a release of Force energy that possessed a peculiar edge. Neither of his fellows had noticed it—a fact that gave him a perverse tickle of pride. Not all Inquisitors were created equal, it seemed.
The intriguing sensation grew in strength as they pressed onward, rising several levels to a more affluent sector. As they drew nearer the source, it began to flash across his sight in lambent flurries of sparks. They had just entered a neighborhood in which quartets of resiblocks were built around deeply buried courtyards and plazas when he was brought up short by its intensity.
A shower of sparks all but blinded him, his skin flushed with heat, a strange roaring filled his ears, the tang of ozone was in his nostrils … and then it was gone. Completely and utterly gone—as if someone had thrown a thermo-blanket over a fire.
Tesla cast about helplessly and futilely, snarling in the rage of bereavement. “It was him! I know it was him!”
“Pavan?” asked his second, Yral Chael.
“No. Not Pavan. The other.”
He felt Chael trade glances with the third of their number, a Corellian named Mas Sirrah.
“The prodigy is a secondary target, Probus,” Chael said. “We were specifically ordered to step up our search for Pavan and the droid.”
We. The pronoun infuriated him. After his injury at the hands of that rogue—that boy—his lord had seen fit to bring more Inquisitors into the game. So Tesla had found himself paired with Chael and Sirrah. He was the nominal leader of the grouping and was, in fact, charged with the prosecution of the search in this sector, but the members of his team each