Star Wars_ Coruscant Nights III_ Patterns of Force - Michael Reaves [62]
As easy as navigating an asteroid field …
thirteen
Den felt as if an army of Inquisitors were stationed in the courtyard, just waiting to pounce on them. He kept his gaze on Kajin as they neared the external door and nearly jumped out of his skin when I-Five poked him in the back of the head.
“Showtime. Start your spiel.”
“Uh, yeah.” Den wiped his palms on the legs of his pants, cleared his unnaturally dry throat, and launched. “I’m pleased we were able to find a property that fit your exacting needs. My office will have the legal work drawn up by the time we get there.”
The faux Koorivar nodded eagerly and patted his hands together. “Excellent!” he said. “And how soon can I move my family in?”
The voice was I-Five’s, thrown expertly from the droid’s voice generator via tightband hypersonic beam, so that it seemed to be coming from the disguised Kaj, who had awakened by now and been pressed into service as part of their scheme.
“Oh, ah … well, pending a check of your funding, we should be able to have you in sometime tomorrow.”
“Very good. I’m pleased to do business with you.”
They had reached the airspeeder by then, and I-Five opened the doors for his passengers to embark—Kaj first, then Den. He had closed the doors and gotten into the driver’s seat when Den saw the Inquisitor. He was standing in the shadows of the building across the way, approximately where they’d seen him before.
Kaj stiffened, and Den knew he’d seen it, too.
“Kick it, Five,” he murmured. Then to Kaj, “It’s okay, kid. We’ll be out of here in a flash. Just sit tight.”
But Kaj wasn’t sitting tight. He had reached up and was trying to undo the seals on the back of his skinsuit’s headpiece. Den put his own hands up to keep him from succeeding.
“Kaj! Just calm down. If you’re calm, he won’t—”
“I can’t fight like this!” Kaj panted. “I have to get—this—off!”
The speeder lifted. Simultaneously, the Inquisitor came out of the shadows, his step halting, uncertain. Den suspected he was sensing something but wasn’t sure what it was.
The Inquisitor raised his hand, hesitated, reached again toward the rising airspeeder, and froze, his head swiveling away from them.
As the vehicle turned and soared upward toward the skylanes, Den watched the Inquisitor dash across the courtyard in the opposite direction, hurling himself into a Force leap that carried him up toward the resiblock’s communal docking stations.
He was in hot pursuit of something, Den realized. Or someone …
Jax knew the ruse was in jeopardy when he felt Kaj’s psychic gasp of terror. He didn’t have to wonder what had caused it, but he knew that he had to act before Kaj did.
He bolted from the conapt, frightening Dejah and sending Rhinann into conniptions of gloom. He went up; the turbolifts were too slow, so he literally flew up the emergency stairs, touching down on the landings only enough to change direction for the next leap.
On the fifth level, he reached out and called to the Inquisitor in the courtyard below, exuding a thin, sharp whiplash of the Force calculated to get the dark adept’s attention. He got it all right. Jax felt the other’s interest as a sharp tug on his tether.
He cut the thread and leapt away, heading up to the next level … in the opposite direction from that which the airspeeder had taken. He let off two more short, sharp bursts of Force energy, then shut down and went literally to ground, taking a lift from the upper levels all the way down to the midlevels of Ploughtekal.
He waited there for some time, listening for other Force-users. When none materialized, he set off for Ves Volette’s studio.
Kaj, sans disguise, sat cross-legged in the center of the studio regarding the light sculptures with hopeful eyes. I-Five moved the last of them into place—the last currently functional one at any rate—while Den cataloged how many dormant ones and component