"There's a Force battle going on down there," Jax said.

"Our rogue adept?"

"Yeah. And at least three others, maybe four. Hard to tell when some of them arc wearing taozin."

"And you need to get there without being noticed."

The caves and b.u.t.tresses of the buildings were his best chance of that. Maybe if he worked his way down a back alley toward the comer ...

"We'll take my speeder." Haus was already on his way toward the rear of the building, along a corridor that housed a warren of small studios and conapts.

Jax turned and sprinted after him, leaving I-Five to bring up the rear. "You can't be seen with me."

Haus let out a dry laugh. "No kidding. I've no intention of it. But I can lend a hand ... or an airspeeder."

With the three of them squeezed into a speeder built for two, Haus darkened the windows and darted the vehicle down a long, dank alley that roiled with greasyfog. He came out on Rainbow Parkway and turned a sharp right, then stopped his speeder at the corner, tucking it skillfully beneath the b.u.t.tressing of a tower that housed three restaurants and a purveyor of artist's supplies.

"This is as close as I dare get," he told Jax. "But if you like I can at least keep the Imperial goons out of it. Tell them the Inquisitors are on it and don't need their interference." He grinned, showing sharp white teeth. "I try to run interference between the Inquisitorius and the Imperial regulars whenever I can. It's good for department morale."

Jax popped the canopy and leapt out of the speeder. "Thanks. I-Five, why don't you stay-?"

"As if that would ever happen," the droid retorted, extricating himself from the small cargo area behind the pa.s.senger seat.

Jax threw him a grim smile and darted to the corner, drawing his lightsaber as he ran. The street was emptying quickly of its last few inhabitants, leaving as audience only the people trapped within the businesses on cither side. He took in the scene at a glance: Kaj was about twenty-five meters distant on the right side of the street. Jax realized with a jolt that Laranth was with him. The two stood in a strangely distorted bubble of air-a Force shield that Kaj was using to hold off the two Inquisitors prowling just beyond its perimeter while he stared up into the smudgy air, looking for something.

Jax's hesitation was minuscule-only long enough for him to a.s.sess the situation-then he ignited his lightsaber and hurled himself at the Inquisitors, hoping that with their attention on Kaj, they'd never see him coming.

In the same instant that he saw Jax's crimson lightsaber our of the comer of his eye, Kaj beheld the resurrected Inquisitor above him on a high, narrow ledge high up across the street. That he'd wounded him horribly in their previous meeting was obvious from the scars on the man's face and the nadulterated hatred in his eyes.

He glanced at laranth, then flicked his eyes upward to telegraph his intentions. She, too, had seen Jax round the corner, and stepped lightly toward the Inquisitor'to her right, leveling her blasters at him.

Kaj shut down his Force shield and leapt straight up into the twilight.

From where Rhinann cowered in the apothecary, peering out through the thick transparisteel, it looked as if the boy had taken flight or simply teleported. One second he was there, staring upward, the next he had rocketed out of sight, leaving laranth at the mercy of the two Inquisitors.

Even as Rhinann was reacting to that, Jax's lean form soared into the picture from the left, his blade a slash of gleaming red against the window. One of the Inquisitors spun to engage him. while the second was forced to somersault backward to flee a blast from Laranth Tarak's weapons. She charged after him, disappearing from view.

Rhinann twisted around to look at Dejah. "We've got to get out of here. Surely, there must be some way we can slip out..."

"Are you mad?" she asked. "That street is a war zone. The most intelligent thing we can do is stay here and hope that Jax wins."

Rhinann snorted his disagreement and, seeing that Jax was battling his adversary into the middle of the street, started toward the door. As it slid open before him, the facade of the building began to crumble.

Rhinann quickly changed his mind and dived for cover.

Jax didn't have time to think about where Kaj had gone. He met the Inquisitor blade-to-blade in a sizzle of brilliant energy. Within the obscuring cowl of his robe, the Inquisitor's face showed momentary astonishment that the lightsaber locked with his was the same shade of gleaming crimson. His astonishment lasted but an instant. Then he was all business.

He parried Jax's first stroke, but he had leaned away from the attack and put himself at a disadvantage. Jax pushed him back toward the middle of the street in the direction Laranth had dashed after the second Inquisitor.

This would be a test, he knew, of his raw talent and his training. The Inquisitors were said to have received advanced instruction from Darth Vader himself, and were rumored to be far more powerful than the Jedi by virtue of their not being limited by what they thought of as a pacifist philosophy.

Jax suspected this was little more than propaganda aimed at inspiring fear-the Emperor would hardly care about truth in advertising-but even so, he could feel the tentativeness of his own strokes, as if he were fighting a complete unknown.

He rejected his own trepidation. He'd fought Aurra Sing and Prince Xizor-he doubted this one could do anything more unexpected or accomplished than those two.

He feinted, his blade meeting the Inquisitor's blade at the hilt. Continuing the movement, he swept it down and around, catching the adept's robes and charring them. Simultaneously, he leapt, using the point where the two lightsabers crossed as a fulcrum. He somersaulted through the air, landing lightly on the far curb. The moment's respite gave him a chance to look for Kaj. He glanced upward just in rime to see the facade of the building housing the apothecary ripple like the surface of a stormy lake. Masonry began to rain down from above, narrowly missing the charging Inquisitor. Still there was no sign of his boy.

Kaj came to rest in the high support scaffolding of the apothecary building. He barely noted that he'd leapt many times higher than he'd ever managed before, but was pleased with the vantage point. He'd seen Scarface just there-across the street on that ledge, several stories down.

He was gone now, but to Kaj's eyes, he left an oily smudge in pa.s.sing, not unlike the phosphor-trailing spotted slugs back on his parents' farm. Mind going back to that day-the day the Inquisitor a.s.signed to his village had taken their farm-Kaj aimed his stored outrage at this Inquisitor.

His eyes followed the slug trail along the ledge. It stopped abruptly. So he'd leapt from there to . . . Kaj swept the front of the building, seeing no movement, catching no recommencement of the trail.

Where had he-?

The realization struck Kaj as suddenly as if someone had flung open a window in his mind. He leapt again, arcing across the street to a higher ledge even as a bolt of Force-lightning struck the spot where he'd stood, dancing across the durasteel frame of the scaffolding.

Kaj's heart hammered in his breast, frip, but that had been close. He'd forgotten the taozin's deadening effect. He leapt a third time, straight up, and lost himself in the shadows beneath a docking station. He did not lose track of the Inquisitor, though. Nor had the Inquisitor lost track of him. Scarface had dropped to the b.u.t.tress he'd just fried with his Force-lightning and was taking aim at the docking station.

Kaj shielded with one hand and held the other out, cupped to collect whatever there was that could be collected. He needed ammunition-the energy and matter in the air would provide it.

The salvo of Force-lightning from the Inquisitor enveloped the docking station and sundered it, exploiting every crack and crevice in its aging fabric. It blew apart dramatically, chunks of duracrete flying in all directions. Beneath it, in his Force coc.o.o.n, Kaj waited until he was sure the docking station had shed its last loose piece. Then he dropped his shield and thrust energy and matter away from him in a huge wave, sweeping everything in its path directly at the Inquisitor.

Masonry bombarded the scaffold, carried on a tide of Force energy. The solid surface beneath it heaved, then rippled like a banner in the wind. Bits of the facade broke loose and fell away, crumbling beneath the metal b.u.t.tressing until the huge bolts lost their grip on the masonry. With a groan of surrender, the scaffolding toppled toward the street, carrying a trail of debris with it.

At first Jax wasn't sure who had fired the volley; then he saw the flutter of scarlet robes among the falling debris. The Inquisitor who only seconds ago had been charging him had vanished. Taken out by the debris? Unlikely. He was too resourceful for that.

Jax dodged back under the overhanging eaves of the building behind him, scanning the sidewalk for Laranth. He saw her just up the street to his left, craning her own neck to sec where her opponent had gone. She didn't see him leap from the concealing debris, because she was spinning toward Jax, leaving her own flank exposed.

In an instant too brief to measure, he saw what Laranth saw-the cloaked figure atop the overhang, lightsaber drawn, preparing to plunge it downward through the duracrete into the top of his head. His reaction was instantaneous: he dodged sideways, shoving his own weapon up through the ledge and raking it sideways with a strength borne of desperation. It parted the duracrete as if it were a dense, heavy liquid. There was an answering shriek of agony from above him.

A split second later he heard Laranth's blasters fire. He turned and saw her adversary evade the shot, catching one bolt with the blade of his lightsaber and vaulting backward into the street. A large chunk of masonry rolled from atop a heap of rubble to obscure him from view.

Jax somersaulted out from beneath his protective overhang, angling toward Laranth, but ready to defend against attack from above as well. He rolled to his feet just as the wounded Inquisitor reared up for another attack. His left leg was gone from the knee down, leaving a charred stump, but he was not about to surrender. He loosed a charge of Force-lightning from his free hand and dived at Jax like a stooping raptor.

It was a shrewd move. Jax was forced to parry the lightning with his lightsaber and was out of position to defend against his enemy's blade. Time slowed to glacial speed. Jax knew that if he leapt out of the way, the second Inquisitor, hidden in the rubble on the street, stood a very good chance of striking him down.

He'd have to take his chances with the lightning.

He dropped to his knees, hoping the Inquisitor wouldn't be able to adjust his flight. There was a strange, sharp tingle in his Force sense and a split second later a thin line of blue-white energy cut through the thick air and made the wisdom of his maneuver academic. The beam severed the Inquisitor's sword arm at the shoulder. The Inquisitor was carried to the ground several feet past Jax on his own momentum. His arm and weapon took their own trajectory.

A second laser beam sliced through the Inquisitor's throat, stopping his howl of pain.

Jax looked to the source of the blasterfire. I-Five stood, gleaming, in the dust and debris, the index finger of his right hand still aimed at the crumpled enemy.

"Thanks," Jax murmured, then realized that his awareness of Laranth through the Force was gone. He pivoted, lightsaber still armed, and was flooded with relief to see her racing toward him.

The relief was short-lived. The second Inquisitor had moved since he'd gone to ground, covered by the fury at his cohort's death. He fell on Laranth from a ledge above the sidewalk, aiming one bolt of Force-lightning at her unprotected back and a second at Jax and I-Five.

Jax leapt, trying desperately to angle himself above the flow of searing energy. But he knew even as his feet left the ground that he would be too late to save Laranth.

Kaj had touched down gently amid the debris, senses thrumming, waves of Force issuing from him like ripples from a pebble in a still pool.

Oh yes, his enemy was still here somewhere, still present. And if his sense was true-and he knew it was-the taozin ward had been destroyed or stripped away.

He heard and felt the battle going on down the street as he searched the rubble, seeking the Enemy. All of the anger he'd felt over his parents' dispossession, all the loss of being sent away from them to Coruscant, all his hatred of the Imperial Order roiled beneath his breastbone and he invested it in this quest. If there was any life left in the scar-faced Inquisitor, Kajin Savaros would extinguish it.

He followed the dark ripples in the Force to a twisted mound of wreckage where the bulk of the scaffolding had fallen, letting the pure flow of energy seep in among the randomly toppled blocks and struts. He felt frustrated. The trail told him the Inquisitor was nearby, and the inconstant Force energies told him the man still lived, but something was obscuring his ability to sense it clearly and find it.

But wait-there was movement in that wreckage, a flutter of power like a flame fighting to take hold. Kaj moved closer, his eyes on the spot where the Force emanations were strongest, where Scarface struggled to rise.

A tug at his senses caused him to pause and glance across the street. Laranth Tarak had turned to run toward where Jax and I-Five stood near the body of another Inquisitor. Kaj allowed himself a moment of fierce celebration, then saw the danger Laranth was in.

In the duracrete barrow, not two meters away, the third Inquisitor used the Force to thrust rubble away from him.

Torn, Kaj swung back toward where his enemy rose, again, from what should have been his grave. He knew he had the means to send him back again-once and for all this time.

But the Inquisitor high above Laranth's head had leapt, Force-lightning sparking from his hands in two deadly, dancing streams.

Kaj turned and raised his hands, delivering a ma.s.sive Force-push from every angle against the Inquisitor. One moment the Inquisitor was falling toward Laranth, power streaming from his hands-the next he was simply gone. Where he had been there was only a fine swirl of ash. In seconds it, too, was gone, tugged apart by the air currents above the street.

Laranth had half fallen against a slab of tilted masonry and was staring up into the empty air; Jax and I-Five raced to her side, hurling aside obstacles as they ran. Jax using the Force, I-Five using his innate strength.

Kaj breathed out a sigh of relief; the Twi'lek would be fine.

He swung back to his own target now .. . and found it gone. He swept the area with the Force, uncaring at that moment if every Inquisitor in the sector felt him.

It did no good. The Inquisitor was gone.

He let out a roar of rage that embedded a meter-long twist of durasteel in the nearby building.

Far up the street, Probus Tesla, propped painfully in a deep window embrasure, watched as the Jedi and the droid he had sought gathered their companions and disappeared from sight.

His first impulse when he had emerged from the rubble-where he had lain twisted painfully despite his effort to coc.o.o.n himself-was to continue the fight, to let his sheer rage empower him. But then he had seen that boy-that untrained adept-use the Force to . . . atomize Mas Sirrah. Destroy him so thoroughly that not even an echo of his Force signature remained. It was as if he had never existed.

In his entire tenure as an Inquisitor, Tesla had never seen the Force used in such a way.

And there was something else he did not understand. For a moment, as he struggled to free himself from the rubble, he had felt an odd new presence in the Force, like an echo or a mirror image in an imperfect surface. When he had at last pulled free of the debris, he had seen only Jax Pavan, the droid, the Twi'lek, and the boy, all of whose signatures he had sensed before.

At first he'd taken it as Mas Sirrah's death echo, then realized he had felt that, too-after this odd phenomenon. There was but one conclusion he could come to: the strange Force echo was from the droid, I-5 YQ.

So Tesla had taken the moment of distraction caused by Sirrah's suicidal ploy not to attack, but to flee.

It was galling, and he thought of following the outlaw Jedi and the peculiar droid, hut that would only delay a complete report to Lord Vader. That was his duty, he told himself. As much as he thirsted for revenge, he understood that revenge must wait. He needed to report to his master. There was too much here he didn't understand. He trusted Lord Vader would.

He shifted slightly on the ledge and a scaring pain ripped down his side from ribs to hip. He realized only then that a piece of durasteel had pierced his side, and he was bleeding badly. Once again, he would need to be dragged to a healer.

He swallowed his shame at this second defeat, used the Force to slow the flow of blood, and sent out a call for help.

Chapter Twenty.

Jax decided they should make their way back to the studio through the rear of the apothecary, picking up Dejah and Rhinann on the way. The human proprietor of the business-large, impressive, and incensed by the damage to the front of her building-posed a minor problem, however.

"Are you one of them frippin' ghosts?" She placed herself firmly in Jax's path, hands on ample hips, and glared at him.

Jax frowned. "One of..."

"I believe she means the Inquisitors," said I-Five placidly.

"No. No, I'm not. You can see-no robes." He held his arms out from his body, emphasizing the ordinariness of his well-worn tunic, pants, and scuffed boots. What Inquisitor would be caught dead in such a mundane outfit?

"Well, they were sure fighting somebody," the apothecary said dubiously. "Are you sure it wasn't you?"

"We didn't see who they were fighting," Jax said, then added with a subtle change of tone, "and you didn't, either."

"I didn't see who they were fighting," the woman said.

Jax shrugged and smiled. He and his company hurriedly left out the rear of her shop and thence home by a winding route. They could hear PCBU sirens blaring down the block as they stepped through the rear doors. The doors slid shut, cutting the sound off.

Pol Haus stood waiting for them.

"I thought you were going to keep the sector police out of it," Jax said as they headed for the lift.

The Zabrak prefect raised his eyebrows. "I did. But when I intercepted a call from one Probus Tesla, an Inquisitor by trade, calling for a.s.sistance, I had to take a chance it was over and call my forces in. It'd be pretty suspicious if I hadn't, wouldn't it?"

Jax had to admit that it would.

Safely in the studio, there was only one question on Jax's mind-one he was sure everyone else shared. He turned to Kaj, who sat in the sanctuary, and asked, "What did you do to that Inquisitor-and how?"

The boy shrugged, smiling wanly. "I used to have to bag swamp rats at home. Keep them out of the granary. You pop the alpha female in a sack and take her out in the swamp somewhere and her whole warren will follow. So I popped him in a sack. A very tiny sack."

Dejah stared at the boy. "But how?"

Kaj's smile wavered. "I ... I don't know. I've never done that before. I just..." He swallowed convulsively. "I just imagined catching the swamp rat and ... look, it was an Inquisitor. What does it matter what happened to it?"

Jax drew in a breath. "He, Kaj. Not it. Inquisitors are people, just like us."

The boy reddened and shook his head. "No. Not just like us. They're evil. He was evil." He went to his couch then and lay down on it, turning his back on the others.

Jax gestured for the rest of them to take their discussion upstairs and out of Kaj's sight and hearing.

"What now?" laranth asked when they'd reached the living room above the studio.