Part 5 (1/2)

”I'd love to know.” Jax activated his lightsaber and moved cautiously toward the fray, keeping low and moving from cover to cover, laranth at his back.

They had reached a particularly large block of ferrocrete when the fault between the two fields erupted in a fitful blaze of blue-white light that seemed to grow exponentially.

”Now that is Force-lightning,” Jax murmured.

”From the Sith?”

”Must be. The other one just disappeared.”

The other one reappeared suddenly, shooting out through the narrow interstice at a height of at least two stories. Clear of the repulsor fields, he executed a perfect somersault in midair and landed on the slab of ferrocrete beside which Jax and Laranth sheltered. With a motion that suggested the closing of a curtain, the youth-for he couldn't have been more than about fifteen or sixteen-closed the lips of the flux zone, sealing the Sith within. A heartbeat or two later, the fields blazed brighter than the noonday sun on Coruscant's uppermost levels and gave a sound that made Jax think the sky was splitting. The concussion hurt his ear. and buffeted him even in the lee of the ferrocrete block, and it knocked the boy from his high perch to the ground.

He wasn't unconscious when Jax and Laranth got to him, but he was stunned. Aware of the other's obvious power, Jax projected feelings of calm as he knelt beside him.

”That was a pretty neat trick you did with that field Kick there,” Jax said mildly. ”Is that dead end going to last much longer?”

The boy blinked and shook his head.

”Then we'd better get you out of here. That Inquisior's going to be pretty mad when he comes to.”

”If he's still alive,” Laranth murmured.

”Who are you?” the boy asked, confusion and fear intertwining in his voice and invading his gray eyes.

Jax held his lightsaber up between them, then deactivated it. ”I'm a Jedi Knight,” he said. ”My name is Jax.”

Chapter Six.

Jax and laranth stopped to reconnoiter in the confluence of corridors where they'd met on their way to the Force eruption. The boy, who'd mumbled that his name was Kaj, seemed less dazed now. His eyes kept going to Jax's lightsaber.

”Which way from here?” Laranth asked, jerking her head toward the alcove terminus of the shaft she'd descended earlier. ”That comes out in Ploughtekal. Near the heart of it, in fact. If the Inquisitors are looking for our friend, the market might offer us the best cover.

How did you come down?”

Jax grimaced. ”I barely remember. Kaj here sort of swept me off my feet.”

”If you're a Jedi, where's your lightsaber?”

Laranth and Jax turned in unison to look at the boy. He actually blushed.

”Strictly speaking,” Laranth told him, ”I'm a Gray Paladin. We have a somewhat different approach to a few things, lightsabers being one of them. A Gray Paladin isn't married to a particular weapon. We simply use the Force through whatever tool we prefer. I like blasters.” She patted the pair bolstered at her thighs. ”Though I've been known to use a vibroblade from time to time.”

The boy turned his eyes to Jax. ”Your lightsaber is red. His was red.” He flicked his gaze back the way they'd come. ”How do I know you're really Jedi-either of you? How do I know you're not Inquisitors?”

Jax could feel the uncertainty and fear building up behind the pale eyes. Building toward panic. He'd already seen what this Force prodigy could do when panicked.

”I'm not,” he said. ”Touch me. Use the Force to reach out and read me. I won't stop you.” He saw Laranth's eyes widen just before he closed his own and opened himself to this strange boy. He felt her trepidation as a cascade of cold lines down his back, felt the boy's tentative touch as a cool tendril of uncertainty.

Blue. The Force manifested in Kaj as amorphous blobs, blue tending toward violet. Jax saw them in his mind's eye reaching out for him, encircling him, probing.

After a moment the touch was withdrawn and he opened his eyes to see the boy looking at him, perplexed.

”What did you sense?”

”There's no anger in you. No rage. I have so much and I have to fight it so hard sometimes. And he . . .” Again, the flicker of attention back toward the debris field with its possibly dead Inquisitor. ”... he was like a furnace. He burned with it. Why are you so different?”

”Because I'm a Jedi,” Jax answered him. ”Our Inquisitor friend is-something else.”

”A Sith?”

Jax glanced at Laranth. ”What do you know about the Sith?” he asked Kaj.

The boy shrugged. ”Legends. Myths.”

”Well, there are all kinds of Sith. As far as I know, an Inquisitor isn't actually a Sith. But they do use red lightsabers. It's a function of the crystal that's used. Different crystals produce different colors.”

”So ... it's a choice you make.”

Jax and Laranth traded glances. ”Yes,” Jax said. ”Usually. Only I didn't choose this lightsaber. The one I had, the one I built and trained with, was destroyed. This one”-he patted the hilt-”was given to me by ... someone who knew I needed one.”

Laranth moved restively. ”I hate to break this up, but we have a logistical problem-how to get Kaj onto friendly turf.”

”Yes, but which friendly turf?” Jax met her eyes, which made his stomach feel strange. ”I can take him back with me, or you can smuggle him to Thi Xon Yimmon.”

”Yimmon has a lot on his plate,” the Twi'lek said. ”I can't conscionably give him yet another consideration without asking.”

Kaj, who'd been sitting against a pile of rubble, scrambled to his feet. ”I'm not a consideration. I'm a Jedi. At least, I want to be a Jedi,” he amended when the weight of dual gazes fell on him. ”I want to be trained. I want to-to learn to use the Force. To control it instead of having it . . . burn through me like it does. It-it scares me sometimes. The way I feel. The way it feels.”

He ran down, his hands tugging at his cloak, his eyes pleading. He looked and sounded so very young and fragile ... which made what he'd done to the Inquisitor back there all the more astonis.h.i.+ng.

I-Five's words came back to Jax at that moment- what the droid had said about Jax being needed to train the next generation of Jedi. Perhaps that need was already presenting itself.

”We'll take him to the conapt,” he told Laranth. ”But be sure to give Yimmon a full report. Maybe it's best for him to train with you, learn the ways of the Paladins.”

”Maybe it's best he gets the high points of both philosophies,” said Laranth. ”Circ.u.mstances being what they arc, mutual exclusivitv is a luxury the Jedi can't afford.”

She was right, of course. They were stronger together than apart. Which brought Jax's mind forcibly around to the fact of her leaving their team. He opened his mouth to say something about it, to suggest that she come back, but she was already moving into the alcove, craning her long, graceful neck to scan the vertical shaft with its inset hand- and footholds.

She flicked her green gaze back to Kaj. ”Can you do a controlled leap when you're not under attack?” she asked, and Jax thought that her lips curled slightly at the corners.

The boy moved to peer up the ferrocrete tube. He nodded. ”I think so. At least I've leapt as high as that cross-shaft.” He pointed straight up.

Jax joined them in the small access, following the boy's gesture to a point roughly ten meters up, where a durasteel catwalk skirted the shaft, halving its diameter.

”Good,” Laranth said. She drew one of her blasters. ”I'll go first. Follow me up.”

She leapt, reaching the metal platform easily and lighting on it with a soft tap of her booted feet. Kaj glanced at Jax, who nodded encouragingly, then followed, overshooting the catwalk by almost a meter. Laranth snagged his cloak and reeled him in before leaping away to a higher perch.