Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (53 page)

Reen stared at the purplish crystals, then shook her head. She holstered her blaster,
and Mander returned his now-inert lightsaber to his belt.

“I think it is the poison that was used,” said Mander. “A Rodian administered it with
some wine he brought to your brother in the restaurant. That was why Toro was unable
to defend himself at his full abilities. Why he made such a mistake in combat and
plunged out the window.”

Another noise in the darkness around them. Mander’s head came up. It was not from
outside the warehouse this time. Inside. Someone familiar with the area, who knew
where to step. “Hold on,” he said. “Others are here.”

Reen began to say, “Don’t worry. That’s just—” But her words were cut off as Mander
grabbed her and pulled her down. Blaster bolts erupted from three sides, firing into
the pile of abandoned crates.

Reen had her own blaster out in a flash, and for a wild moment Mander was afraid she
was going to use it on him. But instead she returned fire against the assault, using
the discarded shipping containers as cover.

Mander rose to a crouch, his lightsaber ignited and at the ready. The shots were heavy
but not well placed, and he managed to bounce a few of them back. There was a shout
of pain, and a string of curses in Swoken. Mander thought he must have gotten one
of them.

“I’d say a dozen,” shouted Reen. “Some of them up on the racks. Swokes Swokes. Some
Rodians, too.”

“Must be the Rodians that use the warehouse,” responded Mander.

“I know the clan,” said Reen, bringing down a pair. “Bomu family. I recognize the
facial tattoos. We’re pinned down!”

“Hang on,” said Mander, “I’m going to level the playing field.”

Reen may have said something but Mander didn’t pay attention. Instead he leapt forward,
somersaulting toward one of the racks the Rodians were using as a perch. Blaster bolts
fell around him, but he didn’t use his blade to block. Rather, he pulled it effortlessly
through the rack’s iron supports, slicing the metal easily. The entire set of racks
shuddered, and then began to collapse in on itself, the shriek of the metal matched
by the surprised shouts of the ambushers.

Reen was at his side. “What did you do?”

“I made a new pile of trash to hide behind,” said Mander as one of the surviving Swokes
Swokes rose from the debris, a thick-barreled blaster in his hand. One swipe with
the blade cut the weapon in two, and then the Swokes Swokes fell backward as Reen
discharged a bolt squarely into the attacker’s face.

There was a short pause in the battle, and then the blasterfire started again, heavier
than before. Looking back, Mander saw that their previous hiding place was on fire,
and the flames were already spreading through the bolts of funeral cloth and to the
room’s supports. The Rodians had climbed down to the ground, trying to surround the
pair. They were now clear in the firelight.

“They’re trying to burn us out. Can you make it to the door?” asked Mander, but Reen
just shook her head and brought down a Rodian from across the room.

Mander looked across the open floor between him
and the entrance. Alone, on his best day, he might be able to make it. Carrying the
Pantoran, he doubted he could get halfway before the cross fire caught him. He was
about to chance it anyway when something extremely large shifted in the background.

It was one of the manual loadlifters, wading into a squad of Swokes Swokes. The huge
flat feet smashed one, while the others broke and ran as it spun and slammed into
another set of racks, toppling them against their neighbors in a chain of collapsing
shelves. The Rodians and Swokes Swokes started pulling back, firing behind them to
deter pursuit. Perched in the control pit of the lifter, limned by sparking control
screens, was a Bothan—long-faced and furry.

Reen put a hand on Mander’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. He’s with me.”

The Bothan was having trouble handling the loadlifter, and as he tried to get the
walker under control it grazed one of the already-burning roof supports. The support
groaned menacingly, and parts of the roof and skylight started to cascade down around
them.

“About time you showed up!” bellowed Reen at the pilot of the stumbling walker. “Now
get us out of here before this place comes down around us.”

The Bothan got the loadlifter under something like control, and brought one of the
large pallet-hands level to the floor. Reen grabbed on, and Mander leapt ahead of
her, turning to help her up. Then the pair gripped the sides of the lifter as the
Bothan maneuvered it toward the doors through a tunnel of the now-flaming warehouse.
The large door was still almost completely shut, but at the last moment the Bothan
spun the lifter around and slammed through it backward, smashing the door off its
hinges.

Then they were outside, tromping through the alleys. The loadlifter got clear of the
worst of the fire, and set
the pair down. The Bothan himself slid down from the side of the now-smoking control
pit. Whatever the Bothan had done to get it working had set its internal electronics
on fire.

“I thought you Jedi were never supposed to be surprised,” said Reen.

“I was distracted,” said Mander, trying to keep the irritation within himself out
of his voice. She was right. Despite her presence, he should have noticed their assailants
creeping into their positions.

In the distance there were shouts and klaxons. The local authorities were responding
to the fire, and the flames were clear along the roofline now.

“We need to be elsewhere,” said Reen. “A pity we didn’t get one of the Rodians alive.”

“We found the poison that they used on your brother,” said Mander. “And we know that
they’re willing to kill to cover their tracks. For the moment, that’s enough.”

Dejarro of the Bomu clan made his way through the Swokes Swokes bazaar, past the hucksters
selling memorial mementos and purified ointments and funeral wreaths. Past the stalls
of seers and spiritualists who, for a small fee, would contact the spirits of the
recently interred and, for a slightly larger fee, confirm that they were resting comfortably
and satisfied with their funeral arrangements. Dejarro squeezed his way among the
lumbering forms of the Makem Te inhabitants, his own Rodian frame unlikely to win
any shoving match. He kept one hand inside his jacket, tightly gripping his heavy
prize, fearful that something else would go wrong.

The word had come down that afternoon: Koax, the one-eyed Klatooinian, had arrived
on the planet, bearing with her both the goodwill of her master, the Spice Lord, and
the lordship’s demands that the assigned task had been completed.

Dejarro of the Bomu clan carried both good news and bad along with his package, and
it was a good question which of the three was the heaviest weight.

At the fourth street, at the alchemical shop, he turned right and made for a singularly
empty shop that displayed funeral wrappings but had never seemed to succeed in selling
any of them. The Swokes Swokes behind the counter, scarred from many regenerations,
just nodded to him as he passed through. Dejarro had been here before. The Rodian
climbed the iron spiral staircase to a windowless upper storage room.

The room was lit by a single bulb, hanging from a noose-like cord. Koax was waiting
for him, surrounded by racks of long-sleeved robes, used to dress the dead before
interment or cremation. To Dejarro, it felt like they were surrounded by silent witnesses
to hear his report. There was a low table between the two of them.

The Klatooinian herself was lean and muscular, thinner than most of her species. She
was dressed in dark red spacer’s slacks and a vest, and kept a set of ceremonial throwing
knives on her belt alongside her blaster. Dejarro knew the Klatooinians were mostly
traditionalists, favoring the old weapons and ways. Koax apparently kept the affectations
of the past alongside the more effective present.

The Klatooinian’s face was thin as well, but what took Dejarro aback was the crater
where one eye had once been. Some would have worn a patch, or had a plate bolted to
their skull to hide the deformity, but Koax set a glowing red gem deep into her empty
socket. The Rodian wondered if the gem allowed the Spice Lord’s agent to see into
alien frequencies or tell if someone was lying. The idea chilled Dejarro to the bone.

“Waajo koosoro?”
asked the Klatooinian in fluid Huttese. Have you brought it?

Dejarro nodded and pulled the prize from beneath his
jacket. It was a thin cylinder fitted with a worn, comfortable grip along one side.
It was heavier than Dejarro had thought it would be, particularly since he had seen
it used with fluid, almost effortless grace. Heavy enough to hold the soul of a man,
he had thought at the time.

He placed the lightsaber on the table between them.

Koax looked down at the device with her good eye, but did not reach out for it. The
red gem set deep into her skull kept a bead on Dejarro, who waited to be dismissed
or questioned.

“Were there any problems?” asked the Klatooinian.

“We found it on the street,” said Dejarro, his voice sounding a little strained in
the dusty dead air. “Not too far from the body.”

“Did anyone see you take it?” She was still examining the deactivated blade before
her.

“I don’t think …” And Koax looked up at him, her gemstone eye blazing for a moment.
“No! No. No one saw it. It went better than we had planned. I had the wine delivered,
and we were prepared to move in when he started a fight by himself. Once he went out
the window, we were afraid we had lost him. That he had used some sort of
Jeedai
trick to escape us. That he could fly away. But when we got to the bottom of the
building, there he was, dead, and the item was right beside him, just as you see it
now.”

Koax grunted an affirmation, then said, “We?”

“The other members in good standing of the Bomu clan,” said Dejarro. “Trusted family
all. We would have taken the body itself, but the local law was already coming down
on us. As it was, I grabbed the lightsaber and kept it, until I heard from you. Kept
it safe, like you ordered.”

“Did you turn it on?” asked Koax, almost casually.

“No, no,” Dejarro assured her. “I don’t know if it still
works or not. I just followed your orders. Drug the
Jeedai
. Take his lightsaber. Bring it to you. Nothing about figuring out if it worked.”

Koax gave a throaty chuckle and reached out to the lightsaber, grasping its short
hilt and activating the blade. It sprang like a genie from the bottle, a bolt of brilliant
blue-white, accompanied by a flash of radiant thunder. The empty robes that hung around
them threw back deep shadows, doubling their number.

Koax moved the blade back and forth, and it looked to Dejarro as if the blade fought
her, like it had its own inertia—its own spirit—resisting her control, fighting her
grip. Koax seemed to feel it as well, and frowned, then thumbed off the blade. At
once the upper storage room was plunged back into a dim light, which to the Rodian
seemed even darker than before.

“Good,” said Koax, and reached for her belt. Despite himself, Dejarro’s hand twitched
toward his own weapons belt, but the Klatooinian instead brought out a vial tucked
between her belt and her dun-colored flesh. Koax smiled, and it was not a pleasant
smile. She had made Dejarro flinch, and understood in an instant how much the Rodian
trusted her.

How much he feared her.

Koax set the vial on the table. Even in the dim light Dejarro could see that it was
tightly packed with purplish crystals, deeper in hue than any he had seen before.

“Pure,” said Koax. “None of that diluted garbage that reaches the street. Cut it,
share, use it, I don’t care. We’re done.”

Dejarro looked at the vial, then up at the Klatooinian, then nodded, reached out,
and snagged the vial. He tucked it into an inner pocket and said, “There’s something
else.”

Koax’s eyebrow, the one above the gem-set socket, jerked upward slightly. “Something
else?”

“It took you a while to contact us,” said Dejarro. “While we were waiting, there was
another.”

“Another?” Koax repeated, her voice careful, trying to draw the story out.

“Another
Jeedai
,” said the Rodian. “Came to the restaurant. Talked to the staff. Tracked us back
to the warehouse.”

Koax held her hands out, palms outward. “Didn’t you think to burn out the warehouse
and move your supplies, just to prevent that possibility?”

“We were in the process … that is, we intended to. But we didn’t think he would get
here before you,” managed Dejarro.

Koax frowned and looked at the empty table once more. “Tell me what happened.”

“We ambushed him,” said Dejarro quietly. “Ambushed the
Jeedai
.”

“Did you kill him?” said Koax, and her intent was clear in the tone of her question:
One dead Jedi on Makem Te was a casualty. Two would attract more attention than the
Spice Lord would want.

“We lost a lot of people. The
Jeedai …
he had backup, and he …” Dejarro froze when Koax transfixed him with the ruby eye.

“
Did
you
kill
him?” she repeated.

“No,” said Dejarro, looking away. “There was a firefight. The warehouse caught fire
in the battle.”

“Too little, too late,” said Koax. “You should have torched the place the night the
first
Jeedai
died.”

Dejarro nodded. “We didn’t want to lose the stock. We had a lot of funeral supplies
there.”

Then Koax did something that Dejarro did not expect. She laughed. It was a full-throated,
hearty, honest laugh, the laugh of someone confronted by the basic stupidity of the
galaxy. “You kill a
Jeedai
, then are surprised to find another one comes looking for him. You
let this new
Jeedai
uncover your operation, resulting in a firefight and setting the warehouse ablaze,
and you’re worried about the
stock
?”