Book 1 - Jedi Twilight by Michael Reaves

Author:Michael Reaves [Reaves, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Star Wars, Science Fiction, Fiction
ISBN: 9780099492092
Publisher: Del Rey
Published: 2008-01-05T08:00:00+00:00

twenty-three

Jax wasn’t sure what the droid was trying to tell him at first. He wondered if perhaps he’d merely misunderstood it, or if some glitch in its processor had substituted the word father for host. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Laranth’s surprised face. He hadn’t misunderstood it, then.

“What?” he asked.

The droid—what was its designation, I-Five?—seemed agitated. Jax had no idea how he was getting this impression, since the droid’s chassis was as immobile as its face. “I have been searching for you for quite some time,” it said in that same low tone. “Your father, Lorn Pavan, was my friend. He—”

Friend? This was getting far too surreal for Jax to handle, at least right now. “Whatever,” he said, pushing past I-Five and leaving the chamber. “I don’t have time for this.” He heard the droid give an upset gasp, then an exasperated sigh, behind him as he continued down the—

Wait a minute.

Droids didn’t gasp. Droids didn’t sigh, because droids didn’t breathe.

Jax turned and looked at the droid, which had turned to follow him. Again, he could not escape a sense of urgency and concern somehow projected by it.

He took a step closer. “You don’t belong to Rokko,” he said.

The droid shook its head—another strangely human action. “No.”

“And you say my father sent you?”

“Yes. Lorn Pavan. He was—”

“My father’s dead,” Jax interrupted. “I never knew him. And now definitely isn’t the time to—”

“He died a hero’s death, Jax. He died avenging the killing of a Jedi. He died in an attempt to save the Republic from being overthrown. He died in battle with one of the most dangerous assassins in the galaxy. And,” I-Five said, its voice full of compassion and regret, “no one knows it but me.”

Jax stared at the droid, utterly at a loss for either thoughts or words. I-Five reached out, put a gentle hand on Jax’s shoulder. “It’s easy enough to test my veracity,” it said. “Use the Force. Reach out with your feelings. Listen to your heart, Jax. You’ll know it’s the truth.”

“But—you’re a droid. You have no—there’s nothing to—”

“Trust what the Force tells you, Jax. If it doesn’t confirm what I’m saying—what you know in your heart to be true—” The droid spread its hands in a gesture of defeat. “Then I belong to Rokko.”

Jax shook his head in confusion. The droid couldn’t possibly know what it was talking about. Still, it was but the work of a second to comply. And the intensity of its importuning was slightly intriguing.

He opened his mental vision to the Force.

The threads that always formed his most complete connection with the Force enveloped and infiltrated I-Five. At first there seemed to be nothing there beyond what he had expected: the pulse of lubricating fluids, the hum of capacitors and quantum couplers, the stolidity of superconductors. Beyond that, Jax could sense the restless interactions of subatomic particles that, pairing and parting and pairing again, gave I-Five a literally endless ability to process, refine, and utilize data.

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