The Last Jedi

Thirty


The Laranth/Corsair made Toprawa three days after leaving Mandalore. In the dark of the local night, she disappeared into the back door of Mountain Home, her crew met on the landing platform by a welcoming committee that included Degan Cor, Sacha Swiftbird, and the little Rodian mech-tech, Geri.

Jax held his thoughts and emotions close and schooled his face to reveal nothing of the turmoil going on within. Regardless, Degan Cor took one look at him and apparently knew something was wrong.

“I take it things didn’t go very smoothly on Mandalore,” the resistance leader said as Jax stepped off the loading ramp.

“No. Not at all smoothly. We know where Yimmon is, but as far as how we get to him … we’re back to square one.”

“Back?” Sacha Swiftbird glanced from Jax to Den, who had come down the ramp behind him. “Then you tried to get to him?”

“We … I was poised to do that. Thought I had found a way of doing that. But the plans … went up in smoke.”

Den uttered a short bark of laughter, then coughed apologetically. “Sorry. That was inappropriate.”

I-Five reached the bottom of the ramp at that moment, still in his patchwork I-5YQ/Nemesis persona. Standing on mismatched legs—his single I-5YQ limb paired with a unit cobbled from a 3PO-series droid that had seen better days, he had his pit droid chassis tucked under one arm. Geri let out a squawk and squeezed through between the two human Rangers.

“Wow, Five! You look … really awful.”

“Thank you. Perhaps instead of criticizing, you might suggest further modifications?”

“Oh, uh, sure.” He glanced up at Degan Cor. “After you guys—y’know—have your war council, why don’t you come on up to the shop?”

“Perhaps we could go now. I would rather not carry this—” I-Five hefted the pit droid. “—around indefinitely.”

Geri nodded. “Sure. C’mon up.”

Den and I-Five both moved to follow the Rodian into the core of Mountain Home. Jax was glad to see them go. It took too much effort to be with them right now. His head was full of dark, woolly thoughts trying to claw their way toward some glint of light; he had neither the words to describe them nor the desire to explore them.

He moved automatically into step with the two resistance operatives, aware of their intense regard. Degan hurried to the communications center to summon Aren Folee, who was currently away in Big Woolly. That left Sacha to guide Jax to the council chambers.

“You look pretty rough,” the engineer commented as they moved through the corridors beneath the mountain. When he didn’t reply, she went on, “Look, just knowing where they’re holding Yimmon is a big deal. It’s a victory and you know it. We’ll put a team together. We’ll go back and we’ll get Yimmon out.”

Jax almost smiled. Here he was—a Jedi Knight—and a washed-up Podracer was trying to cheer him on. “It’s not quite that simple,” he said. “You’ll understand when we go over the data. Kantaros is … a closed system.”

“Yeah. But it’s a system. Any system can be cracked, sliced, and screwed up royally.”

He turned to look at her. She was in deadly earnest.

“Could you do it without anyone being the wiser?”

“For a while.” She shook back her hair, revealing the silvery scar that bisected her left eyelid.

Jax looked away.

“Want some caf or shig?” she asked as they entered the informal council chamber. “You look like you could use something bracing.”

“Thank you. Shig, please.”

Jax sat down in one of the formchairs, tilted his head back, and considered what Sacha had said.

Any system can be cracked.

That was true enough, and his flirtation with Black Sun hadn’t been entirely a loss. He now knew that Black Sun had regular dealings with the crew at Kantaros and that Xizor’s ships docked there without issue. That gave them an “in.” With I-Five’s talents and the selection of ships available here in Mountain Home, they might credibly pass as a Black Sun runner.

Jax smiled wryly at the thought that Xizor might end up being connected to Yimmon’s rescue whether he liked it or not.

“Here.”

He opened his eyes to find Sacha holding out a cup of steaming liquid to him. He took it, thanked her, then said, “Let’s assume we can arrange to dock at Kantaros Station and I can pinpoint where Yimmon is in the complex. It’s a big complex—built into a good-sized asteroid. If we get in the way I’m thinking, we’d be restricted to the docking bays pretty much—maybe allowed onto the crew’s levels. How would you propose we go places we’re not supposed to without drawing attention?”

She sat down next to him, a cup of shig in her hands. “Misdirection and selective slicing. You don’t defeat systems you don’t need to defeat. Take surveillance cams—you can cause those to develop hiccups with the right energy pulses. If you only mess with one or two cams at a time, it’s hard to pick up.” She shrugged. “Of course, you could also make the cam think it’s seeing something it’s not.”

“An empty corridor.”

“Yeah. Or a corridor with someone in it who’s actually supposed to be there.” She paused to sip her drink. “You could tell it that it saw intruders—but not where the intruders actually were. Of course, you’d need to plan something like that carefully. Takes time.”

“Which we don’t have a lot of.”

“Yeah. Your droid could probably pull off a simple looping effect … or I could.”

Jax ignored the woman’s obvious bid to be included, then looked up as the door of the chamber slid back to admit I-Five and Den. Degan Cor arrived practically on their heels with a look on his face that brought Jax to his feet.

“What?” Sacha asked. “Deg, what is it?”

He shook his head, made a gesture that was eloquent of impotence and frustration. “While I was in the communications bay, we got an urgent message from Coruscant. Whiplash … Whiplash has been shattered. There was a botched attempt on the Emperor’s life. Apparently, the Imperials were ready for it. They wiped out … dozens. Dozens of operatives and most of the leading council.”

Jax felt as if someone had set off a stun grenade in the room. His lips tried to form words, but failed.

I-Five had no such problem. “Who sent the message?”

“Guy who called himself ‘the Constable.’ He said he didn’t know how many dead there were, and that, as far as he knew, he and someone he called ‘the Poet’ were the only members of the Whiplash Council left alive. He said … Vader was there.”

Den Dhur sat down on the floor—hard.

“Pol Haus,” murmured Jax. “And Sheel Mafeen.”

Whiplash was effectively gone. Dead.

Why?

And who had started this chain of events? Who had tipped Darth Vader off to Yimmon’s move in the first place? Had it been Pol Haus?

“Lord Vader will turn his attention to other resistance hubs now that he’s crushed Whiplash,” said I-Five. “He’ll try even harder to squeeze intel out of Yimmon.”

“Yimmon knows about the cell here on Toprawa,” Jax said. “And the one on Dantooine. We have to get him off that station.”

Degan nodded. “I’ll have the communications crew try to get us more information about the situation on Coruscant. We need to know what Vader is doing, where he’s going …”

“I need sleep,” Jax said.

That drew silence. Then Degan Cor nodded. “Yeah. You’re probably right. Trying to plan something in the middle of the night is not a great idea. Let’s grab a couple of hours of rest and come at this fresh in the morning.”

They withdrew, then, to their quarters, but Jax had no intention of sleeping. He waited until the others had been bedded down for close to an hour before he retraced his steps to the great cavern and went aboard the Laranth long enough to pick up his kit and consign Kantaros Station’s last position to a data crystal. Then he found his way to the Jedi starfighter. It had been completely stripped of paint since he’d seen it last and was now a uniformly satiny silver, though he could still see the telltale signs of its last firefight on the port bow.

A nudge with the Force caused the ship to drop its landing ramp and turn on its interior lights.

Jax stepped up onto the ramp, then took a look back at the cavern. A pair of night-duty mech-techs watched him with uncertainty rippling between them. He waved at them, smiled, and went aboard the sleek, bladelike ship. He had no idea what they did once he’d fired up the engines and lifted away from the landing pad. His mind had already leapt ahead to where he would go once he had escaped Toprawa’s atmosphere.