Star Wars: The Last of the Jedi, Volume 9 (9 page)

Ferus closed his comlink. Obi-Wan wasn’t responding on the emergency channel. What could he be doing? Herding banthas?

He continued on his way. He had donned the Inquisitor robe again, hating it, but knowing it could help him. He was heading for the spaceport. He could only hope that the letters and numbers
scrawled in the dust had something to do with what the spy had seen through the electrobinoculars.

He had a feeling that Obi-Wan had known very well that the Force-adept he was chasing was Bail’s daughter. It explained why he was here. But what else did Obi-Wan know that he wasn’t
telling?

Ferus hadn’t seen Darth Vader since that morning at the palace, but he could feel him. Not through the Force, but through an instinct that his enemy was occupying space near him. Ferus
touched the hidden pocket where the Sith Holocron nestled. His lungs burned. He took a ragged breath. He felt as though he were falling into a black hole, slowly, while familiar faces, people he
loved, homes he’d lived in, places he’d enjoyed were all around him as he spun past them, unable to touch them, unable to connect.

His salvation could be this small object in his pocket. Grief had not only sapped his power, but his purpose; the Force could restore it, but not the Force he knew.

He took his hand away. He no longer knew which thoughts were coming from him and which were under the influence of the Holocron. That scared him, but it thrilled him deeply, too. He knew he
should throw the Holocron away, toss it in the deepest point of the great lake of Alderaan….

You cannot throw it away. It is yours now. By accepting it, you own it. You have already begun the journey. Soon you will recognize it.

Whose voice was that?

Ferus rubbed his forehead. He had felt the voice as part of himself, deeper than his own voice. Did it speak truth or lies? What was happening to him?

His comlink buzzed, and he snatched it from his belt. It was Hydra.

“Checking in.”

“Nothing to report on this end,” Ferus said. “How’s the document search going?”

“I’m getting full cooperation now. Lord Vader’s presence on the planet has helped us. They’re worried about an Imperial takeover. We have
fear
working for us
now.” Hydra’s flat monotone held the tinge of satisfaction.

“Well, keep going. Contact me if you learn anything.” Ferus ended the communication.

He was racing the clock now. He didn’t think Hydra would learn anything about Leia at the documents office, but she would soon give that up and look a different way. He had to discount the
rumor before Hydra found the girl.

And, in the meantime, he had to find the Imperial spy.

He took the turbolift up to the busy spaceport. Vehicles lined up for takeoff and refueling. The command center was in a round building off to the side. Ferus approached, throwing back his hood
slightly.

When he entered, the busy workers looked up, then quickly looked down. They wouldn’t want to give him any information, but they’d have to. He wished he could tell them he was on
their side.

He went up to the woman who looked as though she was in charge. “I have an information request,” he said.

“We’re busy here.” Her voice was curt, but her eyes were scared.

“I just need to identify this vehicle. The spaceport code is LCS79244-12u712.”

“That’s not a vehicle code.”

“Then what is it?” he asked.

She pressed her lips together. For a moment he thought she’d refuse.

“Would you rather Lord Vader came here to enquire?” he asked. He hated to push that way, but he had to know.

She looked down. “It’s a product entry code,” she said. “LCS means Load Coded and Shipped. That means that a delivery came into the spaceport and we shipped it out
again.”

“Then you must have the address where it was shipped.”

She turned toward the console. “I’ll plug it in. But I can tell you right now, the destination code is wrong. First of all, there aren’t enough numbers.”

Ferus remembered the smudge. Some of the numbers must have been wiped out.

“Second, there are no letters in the destination code. I know it was shipped to Aldera—the code is twelve. But the rest of it doesn’t make sense.”

“See what you can do.”

She called up the list of shipments. “I can’t find it.” She looked at him defensively. “See for yourself.” She tilted the screen toward him. “We get hundreds
of shipments. Your numbers don’t make sense in terms of the system.”

Ferus studied the screen. She wasn’t lying. It would be impossible to trace without the correct sequence of numbers.

He turned away, frustrated. At least he knew it was a shipment the spy had been looking at. Or maybe heard about…there was no way to know.

He couldn’t leave the planet until he had answers. He couldn’t leave the Organas at the mercy of the Empire. Something was going on here. The knowledge of it was deep in his bones.
He had to keep looking.

He spent the night at the temporary quarters that had been arranged for him, and woke before dawn. He decided that if he searched the warehouse again, he might come across
something he’d overlooked.

It was still dark as he made his way across the deserted park. The warehouses loomed ahead, dark sentinels overlooking the square of green.

He was crossing toward the warehouse when he saw it.

“If you want to get lucky, open your eyes.”

Thank you, Siri!

Crouched between the taller warehouses and hangars, Ferus saw an old, decrepit building he hadn’t noticed before. It was built of old stone, bleached and pockmarked from hundreds of years
of duty. It was only about ten stories, and appeared abandoned.

Above the doorway there were numbers chiseled into the stone in the old style. Crumbling, darkened with age, hard to read, but there.

8712

He thought back to the “u” he thought he had seen. Maybe it had been the lower part of the number 8. Part of it had been wiped away.

Could it be this easy? Could the shipment have been sent across the street from the spy’s overlook?

Why not? If you wanted to keep tabs on a shipment, what better place could there be?

Ferus crossed back and carefully examined the building as he walked past. He did it without seeming to look, keeping his head forward and striding purposefully. Even though the area was deserted
he knew that there could be night workers about in the surrounding buildings. Even the spy could be at his post this early, though spaceport traffic was light.

In the short time it took to walk by, he was able to spot the security panel and identify it as one he recognized. Very high-tech, considering the building.

He turned at the corner and went down the block, past the backs of the warehouses. Many of them had landing platforms, but the smaller warehouse did not. A high security fence surrounded it,
most likely with some sort of electroshock capacity.

The street was deserted. Ferus gathered the Force and leaped. He sailed over the fence easily and landed in the backyard of the warehouse, a small area of crumbling permacrete.

There was one small durasteel door. The same security panel. Ferus had no problem bypassing the code. He heard the lock click.

He pushed open the door and walked inside to a small hallway. There was no turbolift, just a curving ramp leading upward. The lighting was dim. He approached slowly, listening for sounds. He
heard a soft
whirr
and quickly pressed himself into the shadows. A surveillance droid flew by slowly, rotating as it went. It had a visual field, not infrared, so if he stayed out of sight
he’d be all right.

Ferus walked up the ramp to the first floor. He could see that he was in a large open space. Rusted speeder parts were dumped in piles along the walls. An old system of automated pulleys hung
from the ceiling, parts dangling, rusty and coated with dirt. He walked back and forth, looking carefully, but didn’t find anything but more old parts and tools.

Not too promising, so far. Evading the droids, he searched the next level, and the next. Finally he reached the top floor. He looked overhead. He could see the mechanism for a retractable roof.
That would be how shipments could be moved in and out. There was plenty of room here to land a small barge. If the operation was done at night, the offloading could be quick and close to private in
the middle of a city.

At first this floor looked like the others. But as he walked closer, Ferus saw the duratsteel bins stacked up against the walls.

New durasteel.

Ferus got down on his haunches. He saw the airport code stenciled on one side.

LCS226579244 12 8712

SPEEDER PARTS
was stamped on the side.

He ran his hand along the top. It was unsealed. Cautiously, he pulled open the top.

The bin was empty.

Ferus went from bin to bin. They were all empty. He crouched down and began to examine the floor underneath the roof. He took out his tiny glowlight and ran it over the floor.

Yes. A craft had landed here recently. He saw the scorch marks, the scratches.

He stayed in that position for long minutes, thinking.

He was so deep in thought he didn’t hear the soft footsteps until they were coming up the last turn of the ramp. Someone trying very, very hard to be quiet.

Ferus dashed for cover as the room suddenly lit up with blasterfire. He dived to the floor and rolled, cursing his inattention. He rolled to safety behind a partially dismantled airspeeder. The
blasterfire pinged. He smelled hot metal.

He ran behind a pile of dismantled parts. The blasterfire followed him. Ferus had run in order to assess. Now he knew that his pursuer was a good shot. Good information to have when you’re
trapped.

Ferus considered what to do. He would have to escape without using his lightsaber. If he were being attacked by the Imperial spy—and chances were pretty much one hundred percent that he
was—the information would get back to the Emperor. Ferus didn’t relish having to explain why, as a supposed Imperial Inquisitor, he was investigating a mystery shipment being tracked by
an Imperial spy. But worse than that, any Force activity on this planet would only throw the spotlight more clearly on it. Ferus needed to divert the Emperor’s attention from Alderaan, not
attract it.

What he needed was a push-back. Something that would send his assailant running so that he could trail him.

Ferus leaped above to the rack and pulley system that still held old parts and engines. He crawled forward and found the mechanism that moved the parts forward on an automatic track. He
activated it.

Now the rack moved forward, jerking slightly as it went. The noise brought the attention of the shooter, and blasterfire streaked through the air, hitting behind Ferus now as the rack moved
forward. Ferus released an airspeeder engine. It smashed to the floor. Then a windscreen. Engine parts. A halfway dismantled pit droid. Sparks flew upward as the metal screeched against the
permacrete floor.

The rack kept moving, faster now, on the fastest speed that Ferus could locate, and he balanced on the pulley, moving forward and dropping parts and engines and heavy sheets of metal as it went.
It was tricky to keep his balance on the pulley as it jerked along, but he managed it.

The space was now full of the sound of crashing metal, and Ferus tracked the shadow as it moved, trying to get a fix on him. Ferus’s aim was to corner him, but he was moving so fluidly and
the pulley system just wasn’t fast enough.

If only he was strong enough in the Force to give the heavy objects a little
push.

Within his tunic he felt the Holocron glow.

You are forgetting what your rage can do.

His irritation at the spy surprising him was just a spark, something he had accepted and released. It had been so unimportant. It got in the way of Jedi battle-mind.

He revived it. Fanned it.

His anger grew.

How dare he interfere with me?

He, just a low-level spy. He thinks he’s going to win.

He is nothing.

The next airspeeder part didn’t just crash to the floor. It flew through the air with great velocity, smashing over the shadow’s head. Ferus fed his anger until it balled up into
rage and shot out into the space, taking the machinery and parts and flinging them toward the hiding places of the spy.

Satisfaction coursed through him. Thoughts of forcing the spy to flee and tailing him vanished.
I can smash him I can kill him I can destroy him….

He saw the shadow moving toward the door, a tall, thin figure that seemed familiar. How remarkable that even through the red haze of his anger his perceptions could be so sharp….

You see? You use the anger. It does not confuse. It sharpens.

The spy ran out toward the ramp.

Ferus jumped from the pulleys. He leaped over the piles of smoking metal.

His mind cooled. He saw even as he ran how thoroughly he had destroyed this space.

He didn’t feel satisfaction anymore. He felt unsettled. Guilty. He pushed away the feeling. He would deal with it all later. Now it was time to track the spy.

Ferus ran down the ramp, running fast but not fast enough to risk letting the spy know he was being followed. He would assume that it would take some time for Ferus to fight his way through the
machinery piled on the floor in the hangar above. He wouldn’t imagine that Ferus would be on his heels.

He followed the spy down the ramp, down below street level. Ferus wanted to kick himself. He hadn’t done such a good job of reconnoitering after all. The buildings were linked by an
underground passage.

The passage was dimly lit and wide enough for the biggest gravsled to operate. Ferus could hear the spy’s progress and tracked him through his footsteps. He had slowed down now, assuming
he hadn’t been followed. Ferus followed him in the passage for about a kilometer. Then he hopped aboard a turbolift. Ferus looked up at the indicator. He’d gotten off at street level.
He counted out a few seconds and then followed.