The Last Jedi

Twenty-Four


The core of Kantaros Station was buried in an asteroid. The asteroid itself was a halfhearted, lumpy attempt at a sphere that had failed due to lack of gravity. The station was visible as a chaotic jumble of structures that poked or peeked out of the native rock. Studying it, Den saw what he took to be a control bridge, docking rings above, at, and below the asteroid’s natural equator, and some docking tethers and space bridges that were used to debark and unload vessels too large to fit into the docking bays but not large enough to make a close approach suicidal.

Traffic around the station seemed strangely light. The only ship nearby was an Imperial frigate that floated serenely in the flow of stone, dwarfed by the ponderous asteroids. There were no surveillance buoys or small patrol craft.

“How are they doing that?” he asked, peering at the frigate. “You’d think they’d be crushed.”

I-Five answered him. “Passive repulsor fields, most likely, or possibly a tractor/pressor web. Either would provide an energy cushion around the vessel that would keep the asteroids from colliding with it and would keep it moving along with them. I’d bet on a web, though. More energy—greater stability.”

Den grimaced. He’d bet on a web, too.

I-Five swiveled his domed turret toward Jax. “The question is, is Vader there? I don’t see his shuttle. Of course, the landing bays could be internal.”

“He’s there. When I … brushed Tesla, he was with Vader.”

Den blinked his huge eyes, startled. “You don’t think Vader … you know … recognized your, um …”

Jax shook his head. “I was camouflaged—in a manner of speaking. Tesla didn’t seem to notice that I’d touched him. He was focused on something else.”

“Why isn’t there more of an Imperial presence?” Den asked. “Where are the perimeter patrols, and the surveillance outposts? Are they hidden in the other asteroids?” He squinted at a large specimen that tumbled past the smaller body they were using for cover.

I-Five uttered a series of rapid clicks as he read data from the sensors. “Not as far as our sensors can determine. Odd. So little protection.”

“Not so odd, considering whose lair this is,” Jax said. “The physical protection is all around us. Without the transponder codes, a non-Force-sensitive wouldn’t be able to find this place except by trial and error.”

That was a chilling thought. “Which sort of makes this place an ideal Jedi trap, don’t you think?” Den asked.

“There are no more Jedi,” Jax murmured.

Den bit back an angry retort, recognizing—in the instant it began to claw its way up from his gut—that it rested on a solid foundation of icy fear. “Then we’d better take good care of the one we’ve got,” he said.

“How do you propose we proceed?” I-Five had swiveled back to the view of the station.

Jax studied the heads-up display. “That asteroid, there—the one closest to the station—would get us within several hundred kilometers of it.”

“And then what?” Den asked. “We jump across like green fleas? It’s not as if you can land on that thing undetected. I mean, if you had a shielded ship and a big distraction, then maybe …”

“We have a shielded ship. If we could slide past the dark side of the asteroid …”

“The frigate is on the dark side of the asteroid,” I-Five noted. “Jax, I don’t think we can do this unaided. I think we should return to Toprawa and enlist the help of the Rangers.”

“There is another possibility,” Jax said thoughtfully. “The station crew is composed of Imperial regulars, mercenaries, and some civilians. According to Xizor’s intel, the civilian crew and the mercenaries get … extra supplies through the black market.”

“You mean through Black Sun,” Den said, not at all liking where this was going.

“Yes, and these black-market runners are allowed access to parts of the station.”

“Not the parts we need,” Den objected.

“Once we’re aboard, I’ll have to work that out. The real trick is getting aboard in the first place. We’re flying a ship with Mandalorian ident codes. We might be able to pass ourselves off as Black Sun.”

“Yes, we might. But we’d need to have a legitimate cargo … or rather an illicit one,” Den observed. “Which we don’t.”

“Not now, but we could pick one up on Concordia.”

I-Five emitted a high trill and rotated his turret back toward the sensor panel.

“What is it?” Jax asked.

“Activity in the Kantaros docking bays.”

Den drew in a sharp breath. “Maybe they’ve spotted us.”

“Unlikely,” said I-Five. “We’re shielded and our comm is silent.”

Jax’s hand hovered over the controls of the tractor beam that tethered the Laranth/Corsair to her hiding place. He watched as a portal opened in the lower hemisphere of Kantaros Station and a number of small, long-range fighters emerged, swarming around the station like gnats. They seemed to be in a holding pattern, awaiting command or perhaps a vessel they were intended to escort.

“Jax …” Den breathed the name out on a rising tide of unease.

Jax didn’t wait to find out what their agenda was. He deactivated the tractor beam, fired the ion engines, and flipped the little freighter end over end, then fled toward the inner orbit, weaving among the floating obstacles with a speed that pushed Den’s heart even farther into his throat.



As he sat in the cockpit of the Laranth/Corsair, watching the streaks of light beyond the transparisteel cowling, Jax did some hasty calculations. None of them was pleasant. Xizor had known when he’d handed Jax that data wafer and the Mandalorian ident codes that the chances of him being able to infiltrate Kantaros Station without assistance from Black Sun were nil. Coming here had been a waste of time and effort.

And yet, unavoidable. Jax had to own that if Xizor had told him this was what they would find, he’d never have believed him.

There were clearly only two ways to penetrate the station’s defenses: a direct assault with significant firepower; or infiltration, which would require further assistance from Black Sun. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that with Probus Tesla on the station, his chances of blending in without a significant number of others to conceal himself would be suicidal. The Inquisitor knew him too well and had more legitimate reasons to hate him than his dark Master did.

Jax exhaled in frustration. Every answer he needed seemed just out of reach. He was a Jedi, yes, but a Jedi whose education had been cut short by the Empire’s persecution and destruction of his Order. There were things his Master had not lived long enough to teach him, things he’d had to learn imperfectly on his own … many of them from Laranth.

He had discovered on his own the ability to wrap his Force signature in the energies and colors of disguise. Now he wished he understood how to take that principle further. Was it a form of psychometry, perhaps?

When he had touched the Inquisitor, Tesla, he had first imagined himself passing through the miisai tree, wrapping ribbons of its life force around him, clothing himself in them—or perhaps mimicking them. He honestly wasn’t sure which—if either—was the reality. He knew only that he had projected something “other” into the station—something that was not entirely Jax Pavan.

Now he had to wonder: Had his activity been sensed by either Vader or his apprentice? Is that what the sudden activity had been about?

It would be several hours before they’d emerge into normal space near Mandalore, where they were ostensibly going to re-provision and refuel before stopping off on Concordia in search of an illicit cargo.

Den and I-Five wouldn’t know until it was too late to talk him out of it that he had no intention of going to Concordia at all.