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“You should be thankful, Tesla, that neither you nor your cohorts killed him. I would have been most displeased. And you were correct in assuming that this information is invaluable to me.”

Vader turned and regarded the Inquisitor with gleaming, featureless eyes. “You have done well.”

Tesla dropped to one knee, relief flooding him. “Thank you, Lord Vader. I am gratified.”

Vader made a dismissive gesture. “Clearly their combined forces are considerable—and unexpected. The depths of this young adept’s powers are unknown, which is to say they are incalculable.” The helmeted head tilted slightly to one side. “You felt nothing when Mas Sirrah was taken?”

Tesla had never known his master to show any uncertainty. The thought that this adept’s abilities baffled his lord both intrigued and excited him.

“Nothing. It was as if he had been … erased.”

Vader nodded. “And you are certain this other phenomenon—this Force echo or reflection you spoke of—was the droid?” There was, to Tesla’s further surprise, a note of puzzlement in the deep, well-modulated voice.

“As certain as I can be.”

Darth Vader moved to stand directly before Tesla in a whisper of dark robes, looking down at him. Tesla saw his now-bald pate and scarred face reflected in the surface of his master’s lenses.

Vader extended a hand over the Inquisitor’s head. “Give me your thoughts, Tesla. Let me see what you saw, hear what you heard, feel what you sensed.”

In Tesla’s mind the rhythm of the words was a chant, an incantation. His lord meant to read him, to touch his mind directly. The very thought was intoxicating. He felt the touch within his mind and quivered with a strange elation.

He recalled the street, viewed from his perch in the buttress far above. The barrage of matter and energy that hit it. His fall into the wreckage. That strange tingle of his Force sense just before Mas Sirrah died. And then, what he beheld when at last he rose from the rubble—where he expected to see another Jedi, he saw instead the protocol droid.

Tesla knew a moment of doubt. Perhaps Pavan had created the echo?

“Don’t.” Vader’s voice was in his head now, reprimanding him. “Don’t edit what your senses told you. Don’t qualify it. Jax Pavan is a Jedi—a Force adept. Was this the signature of a Force adept?”

It wasn’t, and Tesla knew it. He remembered the rest of it then, up to the point when he escaped the blasted street. When Darth Vader withdrew his touch, Tesla nearly wept with bereavement.

Vader was silent for a long while. Silent and unmoving. Then he turned and strode back to his cloaked window. The sun was setting, turning the tops of the cloudscraping buildings copper, their windows glittering like gems atop the scepters of giants.

“What have we found here, Tesla? A Jedi who eludes every attempt at capture—no, two—there is also the Twi’lek woman. Add to them a rogue adept with unheard-of abilities and a droid that possesses a Force signature …” He swung back to look at the Inquisitor. “I am more determined than ever to capture them. All of them. Other intelligence I have received leads me to believe that the boy is the key. If we have him, we will have them all.”

Tesla, still kneeling, looked up at his master. “What would you have me do, my lord?”

Vader beckoned his acolyte to rise. “I would have you arrange for the boy’s capture.”

“But … Lord Vader, his abilities—”

“Must be circumvented. There are ways we can do that—with an ally in the right place.”

“Have we such an ally, my lord?”

“It seems we do.”

twenty-two

Laranth volunteered to remove Kaj to the Whiplash headquarters. Jax at first insisted on going with them, but Laranth argued that his discovery of I-Five’s presence in the Force made consulting with Tuden Sal of greater importance.

“Don’t you trust me to get Kaj to Yimmon safely?” Laranth had asked him, her face an emotionless mask.

“Trust isn’t the issue. You have to know that. I trust you with my life. Have trusted you with it,” he added, meeting her gaze. “I wouldn’t be standing