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Street of Shadows: Star Wars Legends (Coruscant Nights, Book II) (Star Wars: Coruscant Nights - Legends, Band 2) - Softcover

Buch 2 von 4: Star Wars: Coruscant Nights - Legends

Reaves, Michael

 
9780345477545: Street of Shadows: Star Wars Legends (Coruscant Nights, Book II) (Star Wars: Coruscant Nights - Legends, Band 2)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0345477545 ISBN 13: 9780345477545
Verlag: Random House Worlds, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

With the Jedi all but wiped out in the grim aftermath of Order 66, the Empire’s power seems unchecked. But one lone Knight continues to fight the good fight–against all odds and when all else fails.

Deep in the bowels of Coruscant, Jedi Jax Pavan ekes out a living as a private investigator, a go-to, can-do guy for the downtrodden. Now a mysterious Zeltron knockout named Deejah approaches Jax with a case that needs to be cracked: to find out who killed her artist lover Volette, brutally murdered hours after his triumphant unveiling of a dazzling new light sculpture with obvious links to lightsaber pyrotechnics.

Finding Volette’s killer won’t be easy–too many secrets, too many suspects, and all kinds of motives. But with the droid I-5YQ’s help, and ex-reporter Den Dhur’s excellent snooping skills, the investigation is soon operating like a well-oiled machine.

Unfortunately, there’s a far more efficient machine hunting Jax. It’s a deadly game of cat-and-mouse as the clock starts ticking toward the final explosive showdown . . . to see who strikes first and who will die first.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Michael Reaves received an Emmy Award for his work on the Batman television animated series. He has worked for DreamWorks, among other studios, and has written fantasy novels and supernatural thrillers. Reaves is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Coruscant Nights I: Jedi Twilight and Star Wars: Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter, as well as the co-writer (with Steve Perry) of Star Wars: Death Star and two Star Wars: MedStar novels: Battle Surgeons and Jedi Healer. He lives in the Los Angeles area.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

For the infamous, power-hungry Sith,
beholden to the dark side,
the time has come to rise again . . .
After years of waiting in the shadows, Darth Sidious is taking the first step in his master plan to bring the Republic to its knees. Key to his scheme are the Neimoidians of the Trade Federation. Then one of his Neimoidian contacts disappears, and Sidious does not need his Force-honed instincts to suspect betrayal. He orders his apprentice, Darth Maul, to hunt the traitor down.
But he is too late. The secret has already passed into the hands of information broker Lorn Pavan, which places him right on the top of Darth Maul's hit list. Then, in the labyrinthine alleyways and sewers of Coruscant, capital city of the Republic, Lorn crosses paths with Darsha Assant, a Jedi Padawan on a mission to earn her Knighthood. Now the future of the Republic depends on Darsha and Lorn. But how can an untried Jedi and an ordinary man, stranger to the powerful ways of the Force, hope to triumph over one of the deadliest killers in the galaxy?
"SPECIAL BONUS INSIDE--the exclusive story, "Star Wars(R) Darth Maul: Saboteur" by James Luceno, previously available in e-book format only!

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

one

“I think it’s safe to assume,” the droid said, “that we’ve been set up.”

A fusillade of laser and particle beams erupted from across the room, aimed at the five of them, as if to punctuate the statement. Den looked at Jax. “Aren’t you glad your father gave him that neural upgrade?”

Another series of beams struck the huge hyper- condensor unit behind which they were hiding. They were protected for the moment, Jax knew, but eventually, if the stormtroopers’ lasers and charged- particle bursts kept hitting the unit, the duralumin housing would overheat, quite possibly upsetting the stability of the ultracold Tibanna condensate within. Should that happen, I-Five estimated the explosive factor as at least a 7.5, which would certainly vaporize the building they were in, as well as a sizable chunk of the surrounding urban landscape.

“That’s only a rough estimate,” the droid explained. “There are too many variables to factor for me to refine my—”

“Seven-point-five is more than enough for me,” Jax assured him. “Den?”

“I’m good,” Den agreed. The little Sullustan was crouched beside I-Five. “You definitely know how to motivate people,” he added to the droid.

“Less talk. More shooting,” Laranth said. The Twi’lek Paladin had a blaster in either hand and was crouched near the far end of the unit. “I say we go—now.”

Jax couldn’t argue with her logic. The longer they remained pinned down, the less chance of survival they and their client had, not to mention however many hundreds of thousands of beings would die if I-Five’s 7.5 scenario really was in the immediate future. Not that Jax had any doubt of it. The droid had an annoying habit of being right just about all the time.

“Okay,” he said. “Laranth, take the right; I-Five, the left. On my signal—”

“Hey, what about me?” Den asked.

“Stay here with the undersecretary.” Jax spared a glance at the corpulent, trembling form crouched beside Den. Before the Empire had superseded the Republic, Varesk Bura’lya had been a midlevel government official assigned to the Bothan embassy on Coruscant. Immediately after the Republic’s fall, he had become a fugitive, along with thousands of other representatives of various species on the city-planet. True, no particular effort was being made to hunt them down, and in a global metropolis that was home to literally trillions of sentient beings, one stood a very good chance of living a lifetime (thousands of lifetimes, in fact) without ever coming into contact with an enemy. But one overall characteristic of the Bothan species was paranoia, and Bura’lya had no shortage of that. So he had contacted the Coruscant resistance movement known as the Whiplash, and arranged for safe passage offworld through the Underground Mag-Lev, a dangerous and circuitous secret route that delivered enemies of the state to spaceports and sympathetic starships via safe houses, private conapts, and other clandestine means.

Jax Pavan, one of the last surviving Jedi and a partisan of the Whiplash resistance, had been assigned to help ferry the Bothan dignitary to freedom. All had gone well until they’d reached the final checkpoint, in the dimly lit interior of a carbonite-processing plant. Here they’d been greeted, not by the resistance members they’d expected, but instead by a brace of Imperial stormtroopers.

They were smart, he had to give them that. Knowing that a droid was part of the party, they’d staged the attack in the depths of the carbonite-cracking plant, taking advantage of the low-level background radiation that would confuse I-Five’s bio- and energy sensors for the moment needed. They hadn’ t known that there would also be two Jedi to contend with, however. The Force had warned Jax and Laranth of the trap, which is why four troopers now lay dead on the floor. If the Bothan hadn’t, in his panic, gotten in the way, Jax was certain that the rest of the troopers would also be dead by now, and Varesk Bura’lya would be about to board the spice freighter Big Score and become a fading unpleasant memory instead of hiding behind the hypercondensor unit, caterwauling about his imminent demise.

Now he looked up at Jax, the fleshy tendrils that protruded from his upper cheeks quivering in fear. “You were hired to protect me!” he squealed, his voice scraping unpleasantly along the Jedi’s nerves. “Your job was to help me escape from this overbuilt rock! Is this what you call escape?”

“Well,” Den observed, “that depends on how metaphysical a definition of escape you want to go with . . .”

Another volley of beams struck their shelter, scorching the air and leaving the unpleasant tang of ozone in Jax’s nostrils. There was no more time, he knew; they had to make their move. He opened himself to the Force, letting it expand his awareness, feeling its strands groping outward, beyond the bulk of the condensor unit, giving him an accurate “picture” of the chamber they were in and highlighting the locations of the eight concealed stormtroopers who had them pinned down.

“On my mark,” he said again. “. . . Go!”

Laranth hurled herself from behind the right side of the condensor’ s bulk, blasters in both hands firing, her eyes as cold and hard as chips of comet ice. I-Five burst from concealment on the left side, the lasers in his index fingers zapping beams of coherent light at their adversaries. Jax let the Force lift him, let it carry him up and over the huge, shielding slab, his vibro- sword parrying the blasts as he landed, batting them back toward the astonished troopers. This was much harder than it looked. The durasteel blade had been woven with cortosis, a mineral strong enough to resist energy blasts, but its similarity to a lightsaber ended there. A scarlet ray struck low on the blade, more by luck than by aim, and the vibrogenerator in the hilt shorted out. Even through the insulation the jolt was painful. Jax knew immediately what had happened, as did the troopers; they could see the blade’s edge lose its high-speed blur. Jax dropped the weapon and extended both hands, palms-out, in a Force strike that hurled three of the troopers back against a wall. Even as he did so, however, he could sense another trooper lining up on him—

Laranth stepped into the edge of his peripheral vision, firing her blaster. The beam struck the blast meant for Jax. The air sizzled with multicolored ionized energies, flickering corposant danced along his arms and momentarily wreathed his brow, and the sound was like a thousand fire wasp nests being broken open at once.

Jax’s vision was momentarily dazzled by the pyro- technics. I-Five’s photoreceptors, fortunately, were not. The droid fired rapidly, his laser blasts unerringly accurate. In a matter of moments it was finished. The eight stormtroopers lay sprawled in various ungainly positions, on the floor or across slurry pipes, con- trol consoles, and other large pieces of industrial apparatus. The three hesitated a moment, wary of another possible attack. Then Jax said, “It’s over. Stand down.”

Laranth nodded and holstered her blasters. The hard-bitten Gray Paladin’s connection to the Force had no doubt told her, just as his had told Jax, that the immediate danger was past. Simultaneously the droid lowered his arms. Jax knew that I-Five had swept the room for life signs...

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Verlag
Random House Worlds
Erscheinungsdatum
2008
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345477545
ISBN 13 
9780345477545
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
320
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Del Rey
https://www.penguin.co.uk/company/publishers/cornerstone/del-rey-uk

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