The Last Jedi

Sixteen


Jax was at the point of going in search of Tyno Fabris himself when the Balosar woman reappeared. She didn’t say a word to him; she only caught his eye and beckoned. He picked up his half-finished tankard of caf and followed her between the two service bars toward the back of the room. He was surprised when she went right past the staircase that led to the second-floor gallery.

She caught him peering up the steep flight of steps. “Looking for somebody?”

“Just noticing that I don’t see much of an Imperial presence here. That’s a bit odd. You can’t go anywhere these days without tripping over stormtroopers.”

“They leave us alone, pretty much.”

“When’s the last time you saw any of them?”

She gave him a look over her shoulder. “A while.”

“A while. Days? Weeks? Months?”

“Months. Years. Decades.”

“Don’t anger me, Balosar,” he said softly.

That earned him a smile. “Tlinetha. My name is Tlinetha. And I like your anger. It has a pleasant heat.”

He pulled the Force more tightly around his thoughts. “So you’re saying there haven’t been Imperials in Keldabe for a very long time.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

She was lying. Why was she lying? If Vader’s troops had come to Mandalore, they would almost certainly have come to Keldabe. This was where business began, where intel flowed like wine.

They were making their way toward the giant fireplace now. Jax saw, to his surprise, that the clutter of patrons who had been there earlier were gone. In their place was a quartet of people who were obviously security goons of some sort. They didn’t dress like security goons, but they felt like them.

There were three men—two humans and a Devaronian—and a female Zabrak. The Zabrak and one of the human men lounged in a seating group before the massive hearth, trying to look romantic; the Devaronian and second human were at separate tables. The four of them offered more than enough protection for the individual who sat in the hearth alcove, sipping caf.

He had pale, almost translucent skin, high cheekbones, and white hair that flowed like silk over his shoulders. Most Arkanians had pure white eyes; Tyno Fabris had either had his altered or wore lenses—his eyes were black.

“This is the man,” Tlinetha told Fabris. “The one who was looking for you—to do business, he says.”

“Corellian,” the Arkanian said without preamble. “Am I right?”

Jax nodded curtly.

“Business. What sort of business?”

“Mutually beneficial business …” Jax glanced around at the bodyguards, his gaze lingering pointedly on the Balosar server. “… which I’d rather discuss in private.”

“This is as private as you get for a first meeting,” said Fabris. “A man in my position can’t be too careful. Tlinetha says we have a mutual acquaintance. Who?”

“Tuden Sal.”

Jax caught the other’s surprise. And hesitation. Both were good.

Fabris nodded and flicked a glance at the Zabrak woman. She rose and moved to face Jax.

“Your weapons.” She held out her hands.

Jax hesitated, then gave them over to her. The hesitation was for show alone. There wasn’t a weapon the Jedi wore on his person that could equal the weapon he was.

She took his blaster and vibroblade, held up one hand. A small, round device nestled in her palm—a weapons sensor of some sort. She waved it up and down the length of his body, even passing it over his head.

“Can’t be too careful,” she told him, then glanced at her boss. “He’s clean.”

Fabris responded with the lifting of one pale brow, then indicated the seat across from him in the alcove.

Jax slid onto the padded stone bench, his gaze following the other man’s hand. Interesting. Four digits—an indication of ancient Arkanian stock—but something about the shape of the hand told Jax it had been surgically altered. The pinkie had been removed and the hand reshaped. There was a tiny amount of residual scarring. Tyno Fabris was a genetically modified Arkanian then, but clearly a man who took enough pride in his heritage that he wanted to minimize the appearance of that modification.

Looking up across the leaping flames, Jax noticed that Fabris wore his hair pushed back from his ears, which were elegantly curved and pointed, seemingly without artifice. The dark eyes, then, must be lenses, Jax suspected: filters against the harsh brilliance of sun and ambient light. The Arkanian homeworld was a dismal snowball, and its inhabitants’ eyes were calibrated to see infrared. In short—Tyno Fabris protected himself, but showed his ears to make clear there would be no doubt that he was Arkanian to the soul.

Interesting the subtle ways in which people revealed character.

“You’ve seen Tuden Sal, have you?” Fabris asked.

“I spoke to him only days ago.”

“On Klatooine?”

Jax smiled tightly. “Where I spoke to him is irrelevant.”

“And what is Sal doing these days?”

“Recovering from his reverses. And doing a decent job of it, too, to all appearances.”

“Really? In what pursuit?” Fabris knew, of course. He’d supplied arms to Whiplash—possibly without knowing or caring about that.

“He’s in … transportation, you might say. He tells me you’ve helped him … move things from time to time.”

Fabris turned to Tlinetha. “You can go.”

She nodded in a way that suggested her obedience was a form of mockery, and returned to the bar. The bodyguards had gone back to their watchful pretense that they were not watching at all.

“What do you seek?” asked the Arkanian.

“Information, perhaps more. It depends.”

“And on what does it depend?”

“On whether you can account for your serving woman’s lies.”

One snowy eyebrow rose over its pool of darkness. “Lies? About what?”

“About the presence of Imperials on Mandalore recently. I’m curious about what they did here and where they went after the fact.”

Fabris leaned back against the stone wall of the alcove. “Curious? Why would you be curious about that?”

“I was recently on Coruscant and heard that Darth Vader was enlisting mercs for a ‘special project.’ I heard he was also looking for—but failed to find—a very special substance intended to aid in the interrogation of particularly resistant minds.”

After a beat or two of silence, Fabris asked, “And?”

“And I just happen to know of such a substance. I’m certain Vader would make it worth my while if I were to get it for him. Problem is, he left Coruscant before I could make certain of my intel and I don’t know where he’s gone.”

The Arkanian nodded thoughtfully. “Worth your while. And, naturally, if I could get you this information about Vader, you’d make it worth my while.”

“Naturally.”

Fabris nodded again, then pecked at a bit of fluff on one sleeve with a four-fingered hand. “I see. And what makes you think Imperials came through here recently?”

“I intercepted a distress call from a resistance ship that Vader was after. It was apparently transporting some high-level resistance operative. From what I could strain out of the garbled messages, Vader captured the operative, destroyed his vessel and all aboard, and sent him in a convoy to Mandalore. But I also know they didn’t stay here long.”

Fabris considered that for a moment, then said, “No. They didn’t.”

Jax didn’t react to the admission.

“They were here briefly. I suggested Concordia might better meet their … needs.”

“Which were?”

The Arkanian shrugged. “As you said: Mercs. Weapons. They had special needs, they said.”

“Which were?” Jax repeated.

A slow smile spread across Tyno Fabris’s face. “Now, I suspect that information might be worth something to me, Captain Vigil.”

Jax returned the smile. “It might be. Can you help me out?”

“Possibly. I’ll need to … check your story insofar as I can. This substance you mention. What is it, exactly?”

“I couldn’t say. That’s above my pay grade. But the full information on it is contained on a Holocron I happen to have in my possession.”

Jax could feel the other man’s heightened interest as a vague fizz of static. Saw it as threads of energy that strained toward him.

Fabris leaned forward, his obsidian-lensed eyes reflecting the light of the flames. “A Holocron? A Jedi Holocron?”

“A Sith Holocron, actually.”

“And you’ve seen this data?”

“The previous owner showed it to me.”

“The previous owner …,” Fabris murmured.

“You wouldn’t know him. And his name’s not important to our business. If we’re going to do business, that is. Do you know where Vader’s people went after they left Concordia … if they left Concordia?”

“I’m sure I can find out.”

“Then we can do business?”

“I’ll consider it. I’ll strongly consider it.”

Jax made an impatient sound and moved to leave. “If you’re not sure—”

The Arkanian raised a pale hand. “Please. I’m a very careful man. In my line of work, I have to be careful. Otherwise, I might end up like our mutual friend. Homeless. Without people or identity … transporting things. I’ll let you know tomorrow. Will that be soon enough?”

No, Jax thought, not nearly soon enough. But he smiled and inclined his head.

“That will be fine.”

Fabris made a subtle gesture and Jax found the Zabrak woman standing at his left shoulder, holding out his blaster and vibroblade. His cue to leave. He slid out of the hearth alcove and claimed his weapons.

From the corner of his eye he caught Fabris’s movement as he pocketed the hold-out blaster he’d had aimed at Jax throughout their conversation. It had been hidden from sight by the leap of flames—but not from the Force.

He sketched a salute at the four bodyguards and returned to the main room of the cantina.



Tyno Fabris leaned back against the stone of the hearth, considering this development. Interesting. Garan had pronounced the newcomer clean of weapons, and yet …

He looked up as Tlinetha rejoined him, an inscrutable expression on her face. He waved her to a seat across from him in the hearth.

“You seem … puzzled,” he told her. “Are you uncertain of our new Corellian friend?”

She nodded slowly. “I can’t quite put a sensor on it, but there’s something … different about him. The air around him … shivers. It’s as if it’s … charged in some way.”

“A personal force shield perhaps?” That might account for what he, himself, had sensed—or seen, really.

“No. Artificial fields resonate differently than natural ones. This was a natural one—for want of a better word. I’ve only felt it twice before in my entire life.”

That piqued Tyno’s interest even more. “When?”

“The last time—when Vader’s men were here. They had that … thing with them.” Tlinetha’s antennaepalps lay down almost flat to her head.

Amusing. “You mean the Inquisitor?”

She nodded.

“Clearly he’s not an Inquisitor. You said you’d felt it twice before. What caused it the first time?”

“A Jedi.”

Now, that was interesting. Virtually impossible, but interesting. But it still didn’t explain what his infrared-sensitive eyes had picked up from Captain Vigil—that he carried on his person a very concentrated source of energy. Not a weapon—Garan’s sensor sweep would have detected that—but something.

All in all, Corran Vigil was a most interesting person. At least Tyno found him so, and he’d be willing to bet his Vigo would find him so, as well.



Den and I-Five had turned the smaller of the Laranth’s two cargo holds into a machine shop, which was where they were when Jax returned to the ship. Den was so buried in his brown study of an I-5YQ torso they’d procured that he was unaware of the Jedi’s return. In fact, he barely registered I-Five stopping his own work on an I-5YQ head and slipping out of the hold.

There had not been a single, complete I-5YQ in the vendor’s stock. They’d had to content themselves with pieces from several droids that were, according to the proprietress, the victims of a particularly bad day in the court of the Desilijic clan on Nal Hutta. As a result, they still didn’t have enough for one entire I-5YQ.

Oddly, Den’s mechanical friend didn’t seem to mind too much. He was rather taken with the portability the resistance mech-tech, Geri, had given his neural processor, and seemed to be contemplating a future in which he wore droid bodies the way people wore clothing. He had, in fact, found in the highly guarded regions of the armory they’d visited, some parts—specifically the repulsor generators and laser array—from a Trang Robotics N-101 Nemesis droid. I-Five’s original chassis had had a single laser incorporated into each index finger; the other fingers had been revised more recently to include other defensive mechanisms, as well. But the forearms he had just acquired had an actual laser cannon and a repulsor ray generator that mounted on the basic unit. What they lacked in stealth, he told Jax, they more than made up for in raw power.

I-Five admired the Nemesis design, as well. Like his own current chassis, the Nemesis could collapse itself into a small unit, barely a meter in length. But the Trang droid’s elongated and jointed helm was fitted with the acme of ablative shielding. When the unit dropped into its protective/stealth posture, it looked like nothing so much as a Neimoidian harvester beetle—in camouflage. It was ostensibly the camouflage part that gave Nemesis droids their high success rate as assassins. They were outfitted with state-of-the-art confounder units calculated to muddle the senses of targets, guards, and surveillance equipment alike.

Den looked up as Jax and I-Five entered the cargo hold. His first look at Jax left the Sullustan feeling disoriented and chilled. He’d forgotten that the Jedi had gone off in disguise, and for a moment—a mere breath, a heartbeat—he had thought the man who stepped into the hold at I-Five’s back was a stranger.

“I-Five says you had a productive day,” said Jax.

Den shook himself. “Yeah. For one thing, our helpful proprietor verified the Imperial presence on Mandalore in the recent past … and could you please take that kriffing lens out of your eye? It gives me the creeps.”

Jax ignored the plea. “What did the arms dealer say?”

“She said the Imperials came to her shop looking for some special items—sonic traps, sensor webbing, something called a photonic bender … and a blast cage. She didn’t have the blast cage, though. Sent them to Concordia for that.” He hesitated before asking, “We’re not going to have to go to Concordia, are we?”

“We might, but I’m not sure yet. It depends.”

“On what?” I-Five asked. “What did you find out today?”

Jax blinked, and his prosthetic iris rotated around his pupil. It was like watching a blast door close. In that moment of hesitation, Den felt the planet tilt.

“Pretty much the same thing you did. The Imperials were here. They were looking for mercenaries and ‘special’ items of some sort. They were sent to Concordia.”

“Logically, then,” said the droid, “we should go to Concordia, too.”

Jax shook his head. “I’m waiting on some information. I have a contact who may be able to tell us more.”

“For example?” prompted I-Five. “We know what they purchased here and what they were looking for on Concordia. Unless my logic is faulty—which it’s not—that tells us the sort of situation we’re going to find Yimmon in … unless the blast cage and other items have nothing to do with his abduction.”

“I suspect they have everything to do with his abduction. And you’re right—that does tell us the sort of situation we’ll be walking into. But right now, we’re missing the most critical piece of information—where we’ll be walking into it. And how we can do it without being killed.”

“Wait,” said Den. “Am I missing something? What does their shopping list tell us, exactly?”

“Do you want to tell him, or shall I?” I-Five asked.

Jax gestured at the droid.

“The ‘shopping list’—as you call it—tells us that we’d be walking into a trap.”

“What?”

“Sonic traps are a type of aural confounder,” explained I-Five. “Photonic benders do the same thing for sight. And the blast cage is a container intended to defeat sensors. One can assume that the blast cage would be used to contain the hidden item and the other devices arrayed around it to keep people from finding said item either through the normal senses or through sensor sweeps.”

Den looked from I-Five to Jax, relief spreading through him in a warm, cozy tide. “But … that sort of trap won’t defeat a Jedi.”

“No. I rather suspect that’s what the Inquisitors are for.”

“The Inquisitors are for the interrogation,” Jax said quietly. He had moved to I-Five’s workbench and was looking down with an impenetrable expression at the head the droid had been working on.

“I imagine they’d make good Jedi traps nonetheless,” said I-Five. “If Vader expects you to come …”

“Vader thinks I’m dead.” Jax brushed his fingers over the dull metal of the I-Five unit’s face.

“Can you be sure of that?”

“He has no reason to think I’m alive. And I’m trying very hard to not to give him one.”

Den bit back a crack about Jax’s foray into ISB headquarters and instead asked the question that was giving him indigestion. “So, who do you know that can answer that ‘where’ question, Jax? Who’s got this information we need?”

“A man I met today at the Oyu’baat tapcaf. Local information merchant.”

“A local information merchant,” Den repeated, meeting Jax’s gaze. “And where does he get his information?”

“I didn’t ask.” Jax turned abruptly from the workbench and headed out into the corridor. “I need to get this lens out of my eye.”

Den watched him go in utter disbelief. “Son of a … fripping … This isn’t right.”

I-Five’s head tilted sidewise, and his oculus rotated to pull the Sullustan into focus. “What isn’t right?”

Den told him.