The Last Jedi

Eleven


Eclipse.

Dark crosses light, blotting it out. Darkness reigns.

But only for a time, Jax argued as he made his way back toward Ploughtekal Market. Then the light returns.

But how long a time? Was that what the Cephalon was trying tell him? That Yimmon’s separation—his capture by Vader—could bring about the eclipse of the Resistance, of what little freedom and hope existed because of it?

Certainly, the Jedi Order had already been eclipsed; for all Jax knew he was the last living Jedi Knight. He had begun the training of only one Padawan, but Vader had seen to it that Kaj Savaros had been compromised—nearly destroyed, in fact.

There was a part of Jax that saw that as a mercy. Kajin Savaros had possessed a sensitive nature, too much raw talent, little training, and even less self-control. The result could well have been even more catastrophic. Jax hated to think what Kaj—with his wounded soul—would have made of the loss of both Laranth Tarak and Thi Xon Yimmon. The youth was at least safe where he was—spirited away to Shili and into the care of The Silent, those most mysterious, veiled healers.

Jax felt a slight flutter among the muted streamers of the Force that floated around him in the crowded marketplace. All sentient beings had some Force signature. In most, it was faded, almost transparent. To a trained Force-user like Jax, these muted signatures provided only a subtle background weave against which a more pronounced Force signature was like a bump or loop in the warp and woof of the ordinary.

He was experiencing such a bump now—a familiar one. He followed his sense and was not surprised when he found himself in front of Honest Yarg’s Droid Emporium (all sales guaranteed!). The heads-up banner floating above the tawdry shop also promised new and used / complete and parts / trade-ins welcome! The words were punctuated with the smiling effigy of Yarg himself. Yarg was a Gran. A happy Gran, if the holographic portrait of the waving sentient was any indication. Beneath his three half-open eyes, his bovine mouth affected as close to a human grin as possible for one of his species.

Trust me, it said.

Jax entered the emporium and glanced around. There were half a dozen patrons from a variety of worlds browsing through the inventory of complete and disassembled droids. The source of the Force signature was in the far right-hand corner of the warehouse. Even from this distance, Jax could tell that I-Five was bristling with very undroidlike umbrage while Den Dhur—hands gesturing for calm—tried to communicate with the third figure in the tableau: the proprietor, Yarg.

Jax approached the group, making sure his vocal filters had been switched back on. He picked up the gist of the animated conversation immediately.

“He does not wish to sell me,” I-Five was telling Yarg emphatically. “He has said this repeatedly. With as many sensory organs as you possess, how can you not have understood this point? Least of all,” the droid continued, ignoring Den’s attempts to butt in, “does he wish to sell me for scrap. The point of this visit is to purchase a complete—or even partial—protocol unit. Preferably an I-5YQ.”

“And I have told you,” the Gran replied mildly, gazing down at the little droid, “why it is that I have no I-5YQ models at this time. They have—as I have also told you—become quite rare, being antiques. Why, just last week, one of my buyers found one on Alderaan priced at—”

“Antiques?” bleated I-Five, on the verge of overtaxing his vocalizer. “They are not antiques. They are vintage devices of—”

“What is this?” The grating tones of Jax’s Ubese voice box cut across the droid’s objections.

Six eyes turned to look at him.

“I send you to find a protocol droid and you fall into dispute with this kind and patient proprietor? Please, finish your business without delay.”

Den’s eyes widened, and for a moment Jax wondered if he’d forgotten what disguise the Jedi had adopted that morning. Then he bowed—bobbing obsequiously several times—and apologized both to Jax and to Honest Yarg.

“Is something amiss, sir?” Den asked Jax, concern creeping into his expression. “Is there … some emergency?”

“No emergency. I merely wish to be gone from this pestiferous planet as soon as possible. Have you business you must make with this sentient?” He nodded his head toward Yarg.

“Actually, yes, I do. But our pit droid seems to have shorted a circuit or three. If you could take him outside …”

“I see no reason—” I-Five began.

Jax silenced him with a gesture. “Come, machine. We will let my associate haggle in peace.”

Outside, Jax moved to lean against the face of the building. After a moment of hesitation, I-Five moved to fold himself practically in half at the Jedi’s feet.

“What was that all about?” Jax asked quietly in his natural voice.

“The Gran,” I-Five said, “are a particularly frustrating species. They are careful to a fault, friendly—also to a fault—and they love to tell long-winded, multigenerational stories. In fact, I believe they make them up on the fly as a matter of strategy, figuring that you will buy the first thing that comes to hand just to get them to stop talking.”

“Are you all right?”

“Am I all right?” repeated the droid. He swiveled his single oculus to peer up into Jax’s face—as if he could read its expression behind the Ubese mask. “What makes you ask?”

“You’re usually so careful about staying inside your droid persona. Pretending to be … less than you are.”

I-Five looked away. “I’m … not used to the limitations of this chassis.”

Jax crouched next to him, bringing his goggled eyes on a level with the droid’s single optic. “You are not just a machine. If I needed anything else to remind me of that, I got it just now. I followed your Force signature here, Five. You’re not even supposed to have a Force signature.”

“Your point?”

“My point is that I haven’t thought about how you …” He hesitated, tried again. “It had not occurred to me to consider how what we’ve been through has affected you. Until this moment. I forget, sometimes, what you are.”

“And what is that?”

“My friend. My father’s friend. Laranth’s friend.”

The single oculus focused on Jax’s face. “I am all of those things. I am even Den’s friend … inexplicably.”

Jax smiled behind his face mask. “Do you … Does this …”

“Yes,” the droid said simply. “I do. It does. Perhaps I do not experience attachment or loss as you do, or as Den does, but I do experience it.… Are you perhaps suggesting that I am compromised by this?”

“I don’t know. I just know that, under normal circumstances, it would be unusual for me to find you arguing with a sentient about the virtues of your previous chassis. And it’s just occurred to me that you might be missing that, too.”

The metal helm tilted sideways. “Interesting. I hadn’t thought of that possibility. You may be right.”

“Happens once in a while.”

Den came out of the shop, trailing a small antigrav pallet piled with containers.

“You met with Haus, right?” he asked Jax. “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

“Vader’s here on Coruscant—that’s what’s wrong. We need to move.”



Jax was back. At least that’s what it looked like from where Den Dhur stood. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief to see the Jedi motivated and moving. Planning. He wasn’t thrilled about the prospect of snooping around the ISB and trying to track down Vader, but he recognized that it was their only way of finding Thi Xon Yimmon.

I-Five had been using his time to interface with any city subsystems that would allow him access. He’d had limited success—with the exception of something he stumbled across in the Empire’s financial systems: a large amount of credits had flowed recently from Imperial coffers to several accounts on Mandalore. The Emperor was buying up someone’s services, although with the identity of the account holders carefully hidden, it was hard to tell whose.

Bounty hunters—that’s what Den thought. Jax and I-Five agreed. But for what purpose? To hunt down Jedi? If so, that was one of those good news/bad news scenarios. Bad news—Vader was stalking Jedi. Good news—Vader believed there were still Jedi to stalk.

They were in the throes of packing up their practically brand-new belongings when Pol Haus turned up at one of the Whiplash’s rotating stops and boarded. He came directly back to Jax’s quarters and dropped a sealed packet onto his bunk.

“What’s that?” Jax asked him.

“A Coruscant police uniform and lieutenant’s pips. I brought them for you to use the next time you need to pay me a visit at HQ. I can’t have random characters cluttering up my office on a regular basis; it’s too amusing to my staff. I have the feeling you’re not going to get to use it, though.”

“Why not?” Jax asked him. “What’s going on?”

“Something I don’t understand. Vader is here. He’s been seen in ISB headquarters and he’s reportedly met with Palpatine. But, there’s none of the sort of activity I’d expect to see if he’d brought a high-level prisoner with him. No reassignment of guards, no concentration of Inquisitors. In fact—and this is the really peculiar thing—the Inquisitors have been dispatched offworld. Or at least the cream of their crop has been.”

Jax set his shiny new pack down by the door of his compartment and gave the prefect his entire attention.

“Tesla?” he asked.

Haus nodded. “Apparently he and a number of the senior members of the group were shipped out of here yesterday.”

“Shipped where?”

“That is not a matter of record, even in the ISB. Vader gave the word, and they took off directly from the bureau’s landing platform. Took an Imperial transport with an unregistered itinerary. Which brings me to my other piece of news: Vader’s long-range shuttle is sitting on the pad at the ISB right now, running preflight procedures.”

“Where’s it going?”

“No clue. No itinerary. And I’m not in a position to ask.”

“Any idea when it might lift off?”

The prefect shook his head.

“We need to get to the spaceport,” Jax said tersely. “Now.”



While Jax and Den moved their meager belongings to the Laranth/Corsair and picked up the droid parts they’d bought at Yarg’s Emporium, I-Five ran preflight procedures and tried to ferret information about Vader’s vessel out of the streams of data. With the cargo in the small hold, Jax went to the cockpit where I-Five was hunkered in front of the communications console.

“Anything?”

“Actually, I was just about to hail you. It seems Darth Vader’s ship is holding until fourteen hundred hours. Or so the captain told the flight controller at Eastport.”

Den came in out of the corridor to lean against the hatch frame. “Why would he announce that to the flight controller at Eastport?”

“Eastport is close enough to the Senate, Palace, and Security Bureau that any special traffic from those facilities changes the flight patterns for civilian craft. I thought perhaps monitoring Eastport’s communications—and any changes to their inbound and outbound traffic—would prove enlightening.”

“Good call, “Jax said. “Did the captain say why he’s holding?”

“No. Just that he’s holding.”

Jax checked his chrono. Five hours. He made a quick decision. “I’m going up to the Palace District to see if I can get close to Vader’s ship.”

I-Five went so still that Jax thought for a moment the droid’s joints had frozen. “Why?”

“If he’s brought Yimmon to Coruscant, he may be moving him to wherever he’s sent the Inquisitors.”

“Or he might have sent Yimmon on ahead with those other ships.”

“But if he’s here, Five, I might be able to get to him.”

Den stepped fully onto the bridge. “Yeah, and it might be a trap.”

“A trap? How? As far as he knows, I’m dead.”

“When it comes to Vader,” Den said, “all bets are off. The Force only knows what Vader thinks. We should lie low here and be ready to shadow him when he takes off.”

“I, too, would advise against closer inspection,” I-Five agreed.

Jax shook his head, frustration bubbling just under the surface of his calm. “I can’t pass up an opportunity like this. If we wait until he lifts off, our chances of being able to trace him aren’t all that good. We’d still be taking a shot in the dark.”

“And if you get too close to him on the ground, you’ll be taking a chance that he’ll sense you—if he hasn’t already,” argued I-Five. “Better a shot in the dark than a shot in the head.”

“If he’d sensed me he’d have come after me. This landing zone would be crawling with Inquisitors. But he’s sent his most effective Inquisitors offworld. I need to know where they’ve gone.” Jax eyed Den, who was still standing in front of the hatchway, blocking his path. “Are you going to let me out?”

“I shouldn’t,” growled the Sullustan. “I think this is a crazy idea.”

“I’ll be in disguise. No one’s going to suspect a policeman of being Jedi.”

“Nobody but Darth Vader, maybe,” Den said.

Jax laid a hand on his shoulder and met his worried gaze. “I’ll be careful. Trust me. Okay?”

“You, I trust. I’m not sure about anyone else. What if that uniform Haus gave you is a flag? What if it’s been wired or chipped?”

“I checked for chips.”

“What if Vader knew you’d do something like this and had Haus give you a uniform you thought would give you safe passage? What if—”

Jax squeezed the Sullustan’s shoulder and shook him gently. “Den, we can’t distrust everyone. If Haus were a double agent, he’d have brought Whiplash down by now. He’s had repeated opportunities to do so. I trust him. You should, too.”

Den exhaled, nodded, and stepped aside. “All right,” he said. “But I’d like to go on record as saying that I’ve got a bad—”

“Noted and logged.” Jax went to his quarters and changed into the uniform. A few minutes later, Lieutenant Pel Kwinn left the ship and headed for the Palace District, a large diplomatic pouch slung over one shoulder.