Star Wars.

Coruscant Nights.

Patterns of Force.

by Michael Reaves.

Prologue.

The voices rose and fell around him, but he paid them little attention now. He had tried to be attentive initially, but hearing the word smuggled had spun Haninum Tyk Khinann off into his own private mental debriefing, on a mystery he sought to unravel for reasons of his own. The case the others were discussing-the murder of an insignificant being involved in smuggling a particularly nasty variety of spice-was of importance only to the local prefect of police, Pol Haus. Which was another way of saying that, cosmically as well as locally, it was of no importance at all.

Rhinann was almost tempted to stick his fingers in his hairy ears to block out the grating sound of the prefect's voice. There had been a time, back when he'd been the personal aide-de-camp to Darth Vader himself, when even letting such a thought cross his mind, even allowing the existence of admission of such poor etiquette, would have made all four of his stomachs turn acidic. Now he honestly had to admit that he didn't care. He wished he had self-sealing earflaps like the Lesser Houd.o.g.g.i.n of Klatooine, so that he could shut our the sound of the prefect as easily as closing his eyes allowed him to blot away the offensive sight of him.

A poorer excuse for a Zabrak he could not imagine. In his considerable experience as an Imperial functionary he had never known a member of that species who was so impossibly slovenly. The police prefect's hair-what there was of it-was in wild disarray, as if he had run his fingers through it repeatedly; his clothing was disheveled; his posture was relaxed to the point of slouching; his heavy-lidded eyes made him look as if he were about to fall asleep.

He recalled hearing a rumor once to the effect that the Elomin-his people-were the descendants of a group of Zabrak who had colonized the surface of Elom ages ago. Being in the prefect's presence made him want to find whatever besc.u.mbered ninnyhammer had started that calumny and hurl him into the nearest sun.

Rhinann sat farther back in the formchair of his workstation, noting sourly that his mind, like a child lost in a carnival labyrinth, had wandered even farther from the meander it had originally taken. He suspected that he was edging ever closer to losing his sanity. Not surprising, considering the company he kept.

He eyed the other beings in the austere living area with disdain. They were a motley group, to be sure. Besides the Zabrak prefect, who stood in the center of the room, there was the human - a Jedi in hiding, no less. Seated on one end of a low couch, he occasionally turned his head to look at the being seated at the other end-a Zeltron female, the very definition of trouble looking for somewhere to roost. The "team" was completed by a Sull.u.s.tan "journalist" named Den Dhur - if one could call the sort of sensationalistic, headline-grubbing poodoo he wrote journalism; Rhinann had read some of his pieces in various online archives, and in his opinion comparing the little alien's writing to the Huttese term for excreta was being charitable, to say the least-and, lastly, the cause of the original detour Rhinanns mind had taken: the protocol droid I-5YQ, which everyone referred to simply as l-Five.

Rhinann's eyes narrowed as he contemplated the droid. I-Five had once belonged to Jax Pavan's father. Lorn. Or rather, according to I-Five, had been partner and friend to Lorn Pavan. The clever mech had smuggled itself, Den Dhur, and the rare bioric panacea called bota to Coruscant in search of its partner's son, Jax. The Force-sensitive boy had-depending on who was telling the story-either been surrendered to, or taken by the Jedi as a toddler. And although I-Five's memory had been almost completely wiped, it had somehow recovered and completed its mission. Of course, it had taken two decades to do it.. .

These things Rhinann knew mostly as the result of his own careful research. What he guessed-no, the very idea of guessing gave him hives; he preferred to think of it as imaginative extrapolation-was that I-Five somehow completed a circle that included Jax, his deceased father, a mysterious Sith a.s.sa.s.sin, and the new Dark Lord. Darth Vader, whom Rhinann had recently served. What he knew through simple day-to-day experience was that I-Five was somehow, impossibly, more than a machine.

Fascinating as that was, however, it still didn't address the pertinent question, which was: did the droid still have the bota, or had it already handed that over to Pavan?

The Elomin did not pretend anymore-even to himself-that his interest in the bota was commercial. He might have hidden behind that rationale if the newest member of their mismatched team-the Zeltron, Dejah Duare-hadn't brought with her a dowry of almost unlimited funds. No, his interest was purely personal, but no less intense for that.

The literature he had found on the HoloNet had told him of the near-miraculous medicinal effects bota had on the sick and injured. Though those effects varied from species to species-including Less-than-salutary outcomes for some-still, according to the twenty-year-old records he'd dredged up from the mobile med units that functioned during the Clone Wars, bota was as close to a panacea as could be imagined. With few exceptions, it was all things to all species. When administered it would simply find what was wrong in a patient's body and. ninety-nine times out of a hundred, cause it to be fixed.

Alas, this wonder was now no more than a wistful historical footnote; the bota plant evolved swiftly and, as it evolved, its propemes changed. What had once been a closely guarded, much-sought-after medicinal herb was now merely an inconsequential weed ... except to a select few.

Haninum Tyk Khmann was one of those few.

The thing that made bota of such intense interest to Rhinann had nothing to do with its healing properties. Nor had he initially learned of that aspect of it from the HoloNet. He had-and it galled him to admit it, even to himself-gained early knowledge by eavesdropping on conversations between I-Five and Jax Pavan. In such a way he had learned of something bota could provide that the HoloNet did nor catalog: a transcendent connection to the Force. Provided, of course, that the test subject had a sufficient level of midi-chlorians to make him Force-sensitive. Rhinanns own midi-chlorian count was not quite enough to access the Force unaided, but it was just possible that, with the bota extract providing the requisite boost, he might.

He'd long since come to accept, with the fatalism common to his kind, that he would die in poverty and misery, but he wanted to experience the Force just once before death. Just once, he wanted to be attuned to the power and pattern of the universe and not deaf as a dianoga; just once he wanted to have the power and presense of mind and spirit to take out those responsible for his fall from grace; just once he wanted...

"I said, 'Isn't that pretty much what you discovered, Rhinann?' "

The Elomin blinked and turned to look at Jax Pavan, who, he realized, must have repeated himself several limes to have raised his voice to that level. The young Jedi was usually soft-spoken and soft-edged-a manner calculated to make him seem unthreatening. Even now there was no anger in his voice, just bemus.e.m.e.nt.

Jedi did not get angry-or so they liked to tell everyone.

It was Rhinann's secret opinion that they got just as angry as the next being and simply hid it better. How could Pavan not be angry when the Dark Lord, allegedly responsible for his father's death, kept sending a.s.sa.s.sins after him? How did one possibly not rage against the universe when...

"Rhinann?" Jax repeated, his dark gaze seeking the Elomin's. His voice now held a touch of asperity.

"Pardon, I was contemplating a ... an abstruse angle of another case."

"If you could be bothered to contemplate the rather more immediate angles of this one," said Pol Haus, "I'm sure we would all appreciate it."

Rhinann blinked again, slowly and for effect, and let out a long, patient breath. "If you could repeat the question?"

Jax did. "I was telling Pol Haus that the data you uncovered indicated that the conduit through which Bal Rado was receiving spice had dried tip just prior to his murder."

"Ah. Yes. Precisely. We reasoned," said Rhinann, bringing his mind efficiently back to the matter at hand, "that his reluctance to inform his buyer..."

"A Hutt named Sol Proofrock, if you can believe it, - interjercted Den Dhur from his seat in a window embrasure.

"As I was saying," continued Rhinann tightly, "he was reluctant to inform his buyer-a Hutt with a variety of aliases-of this situation. Which caused him to try to cover it up while he sought a new source of spice..."

"Which, unfortunately for him, failed to materialize," added the Sull.u.s.tan.

Rhinann favored the short, stocky humanoid with his most disdainful glare. "Well of course it didn't. Otherwise the pathetic fellow would likely still be alive. What my research indicates," Rhinann told the prefect, wanting it to be perfectly clear that Den had had nothing to do with the solving of the case, "is that one of the smugglers Rado contacted about his little problem-one Droo Wabbin, a fellow Toydarian, as it happens-revealed his situation to the buyer."

"That's speculation, though," Den interrupted. "Because you were unable to recover the contents of the message, all we know for certain is that Wabbin was in contact with good old Sol."

I-Five, standing just behind the low couch Jax and Dejah were seated on, made a raspy mechanical chirp that was the protocol droid's version of clearing its throat.

Rhinann ignored the subtle warning. "I suppose you think it's pure coincidence that Rado ended up dead within a day of that message having been sent and coincidence as well that his loyal smuggler friend received a significant sum of credits to his private account in that same time frame?"

"I didn't say that," Den objected. "I merely noted that we don't have t.i.tanium-clad proof that Wabbin's windfall had anything to do with Rado's demise. Though it docs seem, you know, too much of a coincidence to be coincidental."

"Too much of a coincidence to be coincidental?" repeated Rhinann disparagingly. He snapped his long fingers several times by way of applause. "Brilliant a.s.sessment." He turned to address the prefect. "The fact is..."

"The fact is," growled Pol Haus straightening to his full height, "that I didn't come here to listen to internecine squabbling over who knew what how. I came here to find out what you knew about the How of spice in my jurisdiction. You said you had pertinent information."

"We do," said Jax Pavan quickly, including both squabblers in a quelling look.

"That's good," said Haus, "because what I have is a dead Toydarian "businessman"-and I use the term loosely-and a sudden glut of pure spice in the Zi-Kree Sector. A sector my research indicates is controlled by our multi-aliased buddy the Hutt. If you can't provide me with good intel..."

Rhinann opened his mouth to reply and was incensed to sec that Dhur's pendulous lips were also opening. Then I-Five made that grating sound again, which was really just too much-to be censured by a droid...

"We have provided you with only the most worth-while intelligence, Prefect, I a.s.sure you," insisted Rhinann, far more forcefully than he meant to.

"You've also provided me with a surfeit of complaints from local merchants about hara.s.sment, more 'unknowns' than should exist in any citizen's files, and a trail of dead bodies. Perhaps I should be investigating you, not Sol Proofrock-or whatever our Hutt spice trader is calling himself these days."

Before any of the open mouths in the room could utter a sound, Dejah Duare rose from the couch and raised a graceful, placating hand.

All eyes turned to her, all cars tingled in antic.i.p.ation of her voice, all senses stretched toward her, involuntarily desiring to lap up every effusion of her softly gleaming carmine skin-with the exception of Rhinann and Dhur, whose physiologies, though humanoid. were too alien to respond to Duare's endocrine advantage. A good thing, too, judging by the besotted looks that came over Pavan and Haus. Rhinann even imagined for a moment that the droid's photoreceptors brightened a bit, though he knew that was nonsense.

Like all Zeltrons, Dejah Duare exuded a rich potion of pheromones that she could guide willfully to affect the mood of her target audience. Right now she had brought all her resources to bear on Pol Haus.

"Prefect," she said in a voice like sun-washed synthsilk, "surely my citizen file is an open book. Can you imagine that I'd a.s.sociate myself with beings whose scruples I distrusted in the least?"

If Rhinann didn't know better, he'd swear the Zabrak was blushing to the roots of his unkempt, thinning fringe of hair.

"With all due respect," the prefect said, "this lot did ingratiate themselves with you during the investigation of your partner's death."

Dejah uttered a cascade of warm sultry laughter that, if visible, would have been the same dark crimson as her hair. "Ingratiated themselves! Now, Prefect, isn't that understating the case? Jax and his team," she added, turning a smiling gaze to the Jedi, "solved Ves Volette's murder. And that is why I've chosen to ally myself with them. Each one of them is highly skilled at what he does. If Haninum Tyk Rhinann provides you with information, you can be certain it is both accurate and worthwhile."

The prefect looked bemused and not a little befuddled. "Well, I suppose ... that is, of course the information is worthwhile. I've never doubted it. And I honestly don't care about the holes in your personal files as long as you continue to provide that information." This last was directed at Jax, who nodded his a.s.surance.

"We're happy to provide it, Prefect. In this case I think the intel points to Rado's Hutt friend. I suspect what happened was that Wabbin had his own spice source and simply cut Rado out, making a separate deal with his buyer."

As Jax continued, wrapping up the package neatly, Rhinann returned to his speculations about I-Five. Droids, he knew, were not supposed to have such capacities and capabilities as this one exemplified. Nor was it simply a matter of disabling a few limitations or reprogramming the synaptic grid processor with clever learning algorithms. Ves Volette, as it happened, had been slain by a "modified" 3PO unit that had retaliated against the Caamasi sculptor for causing distress to the Vindalian mistress he had served for decades. Plainly put, with some sophisticated modifications to its protective programming, the 3PO unit had developed an attachment to its owner.

I-Five had developed far more than that. And he-it, Rhinann reminded himself with irritation-had somehow developed it in the hands of a man who made his living as a black-market dealer in rare commodities. From everything Rhinann knew, the droid's erstwhile "partner," Lorn Pavan, had been many things, but a sophisticated programmer was not one of them.

Which begged the question: how had the protocol droid known as I-5YQ transcended its programming?

And why?

Haninum Tyk Rhinann, much as he hated to admit it, agreed with Den Dhur about one thing: some events were too much a coincidence to be coincidental, and just about every event to which he could now connect I-Five seemed to fall into that category.

The droid would bear watching. Very close watching.

Part I

Sins of the father

Chapter One.

The library was his favorite place in the entirety of the immense Jedi Temple complex. He went there to absorb data as much through the pores of his skin as through any study of the copious amount of information stored there. He frequently went there to think-but just as often he went there to not think.

He was (here now-not thinking-and almost as soon as he recognized the place. Jax Pavan also realized that this was a dream. The Temple, he knew, was no more than a chaotic pile of rubble, charred stone, and ashy dust. Order 66 had mandated it, and the horrifying bloodbath that the few remaining Jedi referred to as Flame Night had ensured it.

Yet here he was in one of the many reading rooms within the vast library wing, just as it had been the last time he had seen it-the softly lit shelves that contained books, scrolls, data cubes, and other vessels of knowledge from a thousand worlds; the tables-each in its own pool of illumination-at which Jedi and Padawans studied in silence; the tall, narrow windows that looked out into the central courtyard; the vaulted ceiling that seemed to fly away into eternity. Even as his dreaming gaze took in these things, he felt the pain of their loss ... and something else-puzzlement.

This was clearly a Force dream. It had that lucent, almost shimmering quality to it, the utter clarity of presence and sense, the equally clear knowledge that it was a dream. But it was about the past, not the future, for Jax Pavan knew he would never savor the atmosphere of the Jedi library again. His Force dreams had, without exception, been visions of future events... and they had never been this lucid.

He was sitting at one of the tables with a book and a data cube before him. The book was a compilation of philosophical essays by Masters of the Tython Jedi who had first proposed that the Force had a dual nature: Ashla, the creative element, and Bogan, the destructive-light and dark aspects of the same Essence. The data cube contained a treatise of Master Asli Krimsan on the Potentium Perspective, a "heresy" propagated by Jedi Leor Hal that contended-as many had before and since-that there was no dark side to the Force, that the darkness existed within the individual.

Yes, he had studied these two volumes-among others. He supposed that all Padawans studied them at some point in their training, because all entertained questions about the nature of the Force and desired to understand it. Some, he knew, hoped to understand it completely and ultimately; to settle once and for all the millennia-long debate over whether it had one face or two and where the potential for darkness lay-in the Force itself or in the wielder of the Force.

When had he studied these last? What moment had he been returned to in his dream?

Even as he wondered these things, a shadow fell across the objects on the table before him. Someone had come to stand beside him, blocking the light from the windows.

He glanced up.

It was his fellow Padawan and friend Anakin Skywalker. At least he had called Anakin "friend" readily enough, but the truth was that Anakin held himself aloof from the other Padawans. Even in moments of camaraderie he seemed a nun apart, as if he had a Force shield around him. Brooding. Jax had called him that once to his face and had drawn laughter that he, through his connection to the Force, had known to be false.

Now Anakin stood above him, his back to the windows, his face in shadow.

"Hey, you're blocking my light." The words popped out of Jax's mouth without his having intended to say them. But he had said them that day, and he knew what was coming next.

Anakin didn't answer. He simply held out his hand as if to drop something to the tabletop. Jax put out his own hand palm-up to receive it.

"It" was a pyronium nugget the size of the first joint of his thumb. Even in the half-light it pulsed with an opalescence that seemed to arise from deep within, cycling from white through the entire visible spectrum to black, then back again. Somewhere-Jax just couldn't remember where-he had heard that pyronium was a source of immense power, of almost unlimited power. He had thought that apocryphal and absurd. Power was a vague word and meant many things to many people.

"What's this for?" he asked now as he had then, looking up into his friend's face.

"For safekeeping while I'm on Tatooine," Anakin said. His mouth cursed wryly. "Or maybe it's a gift."

"Well, which is it?" Jax asked.

The answer then had been a shrug. Now it was a cryptic phrase uttered in a deep, rumbling voice nor at all like the Padawan s own: "With this, journey beyond the Force."

Jax laughed. "The Force is the beginning, middle, and end of all things. How does one go beyond the infinite?"

Instead of replying, the Anakin of his dream began to laugh. To Jax's horror. Anakin's flesh blackened, crisping and shriveling as if from intense heat; peeling away from the muscle and bone beneath. His grin twisted horribly, becoming a skull's rictus. Worst of all, laughter still tumbled from the seared lips.

Jax woke suddenly and completely, bathed in cold sweat.

With this, journey beyond the Force?

That was impossible. It made no sense-and what was with the burning? He shivered, his skin creeping beneath its clammy film of sweat as he recalled one of the rumors of where and how Anakin was supposed to have died on Mustafar-thrown into the magma stream by ... no one knew who.

"Is something wrong, Jax?"

Jax glanced over from his sweat-soaked bed mat to where I-Five stood sentry, his photoreceptors gleaming with muted light.

Jax hesitated for only a moment. It might seem a futile monologue to discuss a dream with a droid, but I-5 YQ was no ordinary droid, and even if he were, there was value to talking out the puzzling dream even with a supposedly nonsentient being. If nothing else, Jax reasoned that sorting through the images, actions, and words aloud would help him understand them.

He sat up, leaning against the wall of his small room in the Poloda Place conapr he shared with the rest of his motley team. "I dreamed."

"I've read that all living things do," I-Five observed blandly.