Dark Disciple Read online

  Ventress touched her mouth and moved her jaw cautiously. It wasn’t broken, but it hurt like mad. “It’s the fourth arm that always gets you,” she muttered. She eyed the Idiot, waiting for the inevitable flippant comment.

  Instead, he pressed his lips together and shook his head. “We would have caught him if you’d let me help you.”

  She scowled. It hurt her mouth. “I told you, I don’t need your help!”

  “Well,” he said, reaching behind him. “It didn’t look that way just now.” He was holding her bow. Ventress eyed it, then him. She snatched the bow from his grasp.

  “Am I supposed to be grateful that you stepped in? Meanwhile, you let the bounty get away!”

  “Hey, I’m not the one who let him get away.”

  Ventress stepped forward with cool deliberation. “You should stop talking. Now,” she said. The Idiot backed up as she approached. “Or I swear I will blast you back to whatever hole you crawled out of.” She put a hand on his chest, let it linger there just long enough, then shoved him out of the way.

  She felt him watching her as she strode off. She didn’t care. Let him get an eyeful. The back of her was all he was ever going to see.

  Her bounty had escaped, she was tired, her jaw was on fire, and she’d had to deal with someone who was the single most annoying man she had ever met.

  A drink was definitely in order.

  Vos was used to being told he didn’t know when to quit. But those who said so were wrong. He did know when. Now, for instance, was an excellent time to quit. For a little while, anyway. Ventress’s aquiline nose was far too out of joint for any progress to be made. He’d give her some time to cool off, then try again.

  Vos was more than a little confused. He liked the persona he’d created for this mission. He was dashing, and witty, and strong, and flirty—okay, the “persona” was really pretty much his usual self. Except for the flirty part.

  But what else was he supposed to do? Ventress—although more than a little scary, even Vos had to admit—was an attractive woman, slender but deceptively strong, with unusual ice-blue eyes and, well, a lot of other things that people might reasonably notice. Of course she’d get a lot of attention—unwanted, obviously, but she had doubtless come to expect it. And even Kenobi had pointed out that Vos couldn’t afford to stand out too much. He was already pushing it by simply attempting to ally with her, he could see that now.

  Vos followed Ventress easily, making sure she didn’t spot him. It was a practice he had mastered long ago. That part of going undercover, at least, was familiar to him. She had no speeder, but went on foot, so he was spared the necessity of using the Force to convince someone to part with their vehicle—or of just stealing another.

  His stomach rumbled. Chasing after the agile Moregi had worked up an appetite. He purchased a sandwich of roasted local vegetables and ate as he trailed his assignment. Once or twice, he thought she’d made him, and he’d ducked into a doorway or stepped behind a conveniently large pedestrian. By the time he finished his snack, wishing he had bought something to wash it down with, Ventress was approaching a bar.

  “Perfect timing,” he murmured, and smiled. Her half-hour walk ought to have allowed her space enough to cool her anger and maybe let her guard down a bit.

  He slid into the seat beside her and tossed a credit onto the bar. Ventress turned to him, and her dismay would have been comical had it not been so obviously sincere.

  “Can’t I get a moment of peace?” she exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air and then resting her face in them.

  “Why do you want a moment of peace? I thought you were all on fire to go get that Volpai.” He pointed to a pitcher of…something at the bartender’s elbow.

  “I had the Volpai, until you felt compelled to tackle him,” she reminded him. “Your idiocy cost me twenty-five thousand credits.”

  Vos accepted the drink with a nod of thanks. “If we had worked together, we would be splitting those credits right now,” he said.

  “I have this memory,” she said, her husky voice dropping even deeper with dislike. “This memory of telling you that the bounty was mine, that I didn’t need your help, and to stay out of my way.”

  “Funny, I have a memory where you told me I could be useful.”

  “And,” she continued, as if he hadn’t spoken, “I also told you that I wasn’t your partner and that I work alone.”

  Vos imagined that just the venom in her words would have cowed an ordinary man. Fortunately, he wasn’t one. “Doesn’t have to be that way.”

  She opened her mouth. At that precise instant a small light on his right bracer began to blink. Terrible timing, Kenobi, he thought, then, Actually, probably excellent timing. He lifted a finger and said, “Hold that thought. I’m sure it’ll be blistering. I’ll be right back.”

  She looked disappointed—not, he knew, at the fact that he was leaving, but at the fact that she couldn’t fire another volley of insults in his direction. Sighing, Ventress contented herself with saying, “I don’t care.”

  If she truly didn’t care, she wouldn’t try to leave, and if she did attempt to sneak out, he’d follow her. Vos nodded and stepped out into the bustle of the street. A safe distance away, he activated the holoprojector.

  A small, blue Obi-Wan Kenobi regarded him with a slight smile. “I must say, I’m relieved to see you’re still alive,” he said. “How are things progressing?”

  How to answer that one? “She’s everything you described…and more,” Vos said.

  Kenobi looked pleased. “Ah, so you’ve gained her trust? She’s willing to work with you?”

  Vos considered, recalling the incidents of the last hour. “I wouldn’t say work with me so much as…allow me to be in the general vicinity of her.”

  “I can’t say I’m surprised. No one expected this to be an easy mission. Something is better than nothing at all.”

  “Your lack of faith wounds me. I’ll have her eating out of my hand in no time.”

  “With the Force, all things are possible,” Kenobi said, adding, “except that.”

  “Okay, maybe I exaggerated a little.”

  Kenobi had that familiar, slightly pained expression, like he often did when Anakin piped up with something outrageous but exciting. “Only a trifle, I’m sure. Keep the Council and me apprised of the situation.”

  “Will do.”

  “May the Force be with you. No doubt you’ll need it.” Even though the hologram was only a few centimeters high, Vos could see the twinkle in Kenobi’s eye. Despite the direness of the mission, the other Jedi was enjoying this.

  “Ha, ha.” Vos deactivated the holoemitter and stuck it back in his pocket. Obi-Wan hadn’t said it, but Vos knew it was implied: He needed to seal the deal with Ventress, and quickly.

  She was still there when he sauntered back into the bar, sparing him a brief glance before returning her attention to a green piece of metal plating.

  “You know, funny thing,” he mused, as if it had just occurred to him, “I don’t even know the name of the woman who’s been such a pain in my neck all day.”

  A ghost of a smile touched her full lips. “Just the neck?”

  He shrugged, and for the first time that day the smile he gave her was genuine. “Well, for now.”

  She held his gaze, her ice-chip eyes regarding him not with anger and annoyance this time, but with evaluation. Vos had been raised in the Jedi Temple. He had been constantly tested, judged, and critiqued during his youth, and he knew that every time he stood before the Jedi Council they were considering his appropriateness for whatever mission they tasked him with. Being scrutinized was not a new experience for him. But this was different.

  Kenobi had told him Ventress didn’t suffer fools. And yet Vos knew he had been behaving like one around her since they had met. This was the moment, he realized, when his mission would either succeed—or fail spectacularly. Kenobi had also cautioned him against trying to use the Force to manipulate Ventress in
any way. “She’s extraordinarily strong-willed, and she’s more experienced in the Force than many Jedi Knights,” he had said.

  Vos relaxed into the appraisal. He was coming to respect Asajj Ventress—she had demonstrated that she was good at what she did. And he’d already told her he thought she was a pain in the neck. These were real, true feelings, and he was comfortable with them both. He’d rolled the dice—now was the time to watch them land. He met her gaze evenly, and waited.

  “Ventress,” she said, finally.

  “Vos.” He extended a hand. She eyed it, and then they shook. It was the first time she’d touched him without anger or, at the very least, annoyance.

  He gestured to the metal plating she had been examining. “What’s that?”

  She made a sour face and took a swig of her drink. “Oh, I pulled it off the Volpai.”

  Jackpot. “Can I see it?”

  Ventress looked at him with mild curiosity, then shrugged. “Here. It’s of no use, anyway.”

  Keeping an expression of mild curiosity on his face, Vos extended himself into the Force, closing his fingers around the object “of no use” and opening to what it had to tell him. He wasn’t concerned about revealing himself to Ventress. His psychometry shell was so smoothly integrated in the Force that no one, not even fellow Jedi masters, had been able to detect it. The bar, with its music and conversations and clinking of glasses, retreated, growing faint and distant. Vos felt as if he were falling forward into a hole, but the sensation was a familiar and comfortable one. Images rushed up: A female Rodian, with gray-green skin, holding a blue youngling. It—he—bounced up and down in his mother’s lap excitedly, clutching a small stuffed toy. He warbled as a hand reached out to caress his small cheek, and a face came into Vos’s view.

  Moregi’s face. Only a glimpse, but it was enough; the Volpai’s movements were gentle and slow, and his expression was kind. Occasionally Vos was able to sense emotions as well as see and hear, and his own heart was suddenly warm with Moregi’s love for both mother and child.

  Vos mentally disconnected from the Volpai’s feelings and manipulated the image in his mind’s eye, drawing back to take in the rest of the room. He focused on the details, memorizing them quickly: A narrow, bell-shaped window with a potted flowering plant and curtains of blue and yellow. The view out the window showed the angry zigs and zags of graffiti in green and purple paint, in a language he didn’t know.

  The image faded, and the sights and sounds of the bar returned. Only a few seconds had passed. He handed the of-great-use-after-all object back to Ventress with a noncommittal gesture.

  “I don’t think Moregi has left the planet. I might know where he is.”

  She eyed him skeptically. “Really,” she said. “And how would you know that?”

  “I got a tip.”

  “You might have said so earlier.”

  “Well,” Vos said, “I only share that information with partners.”

  “I see.”

  He rose. “You coming?”

  Again, the thorough scrutiny. Then Asajj Ventress tossed a couple of credits on the bar, rose, and followed.

  —

  “This tip must not have been very good,” Ventress said about half an hour later as they stood, once again, on a rooftop. “You seem to just be wandering around.”

  Vos frowned. His gift was useful, but far from perfect. He didn’t get to select what it revealed to him, though he could direct it somewhat. It would have been nice if he could have picked up a street address, but he had only a brief glimpse of run-down buildings to go on. Of course, he couldn’t tell that to Ventress.

  “I’m just…zeroing in on the right place,” he said with as much confidence as he could muster. He recalled the details, and concentrated on looking for—

  —graffiti in colors of purple and green.

  “I think this is it.” He pointed to a window several floors up in a tall, narrow building. The blue-and-yellow curtains were closed.

  “Let’s find out, shall we?” Ventress lifted her bow. Both string and bolt glowed pink. As she fired, Vos realized that they were made of plasma energy—as was the cable that snaked across the distance between the two buildings.

  “Oh, hey, that’s handy,” said Vos.

  “Yes,” Ventress agreed, “it is.” She positioned the bow atop the plasma cable, grasped each end of the weapon, and slid down the cable to the ground without another word. Vos eyed her, sighed in minor annoyance. He had to go down the old-fashioned way, climbing like someone who couldn’t use the Force so as not to tip her off. Ventress awaited him impatiently.

  The door of the main entrance slid aside at a touch and they took a rickety lift up to the fourth floor. As they approached the apartment door, Vos, acting like the take-charge, assertive bounty hunter he was supposed to be, stepped in front of Ventress and banged on the door.

  “Open up!” he demanded. Silence. He could sense life-forms on the other side of the door; no doubt Ventress was also picking up on them. “I said, open up!”

  There was no response. The seconds ticked by. Slightly nonplussed, Vos gestured to Ventress. “Um…Open it.”

  The former Sith acolyte rolled her eyes, nocked an arrow, and fired it into the control panel. The panel sparked and sizzled as the door slid open.

  Vos knew whom he would see and was poised to charge when Ventress, grunting, sprang forward and kicked Moregi squarely in the midsection. Caught utterly off guard, the Volpai stumbled backward, but didn’t run. Instead, he leapt in front of the pair of Rodians Vos had seen in his vision—a mother and child—and spread his four arms as wide as possible in an age-old gesture of defense.

  “Don’t hurt them!”

  The baby shrieked, terrified, and the mother clutched him close. Her eyes, always large and expressive in Rodians, seemed huge to Vos as she stared at him and Ventress. He felt a twinge of remorse.

  “I didn’t do anything wrong!” Moregi cried.

  From what Vos remembered, embezzlement was generally considered pretty “wrong” in most circles. But everyone always said they didn’t do anything wrong. That’s what usually comes first: protestations of innocence.

  “I don’t care,” Ventress replied. She had drawn her bow and was pointing an arrow at Moregi’s broad chest. Vos had his blaster trained on the Volpai. “The Rang Clan put a price on your head so big, I’m lucky I found you first,” Ventress continued.

  “We found you,” Vos reminded her. “We.” He paused, then added, “Together.”

  Ventress closed her eyes briefly. Fortunately, Moregi was too distraught to try to take advantage of it.

  “If it’s money you want, I have plenty!”

  Bribery: That comes second.

  “I know,” said Ventress. “But we’re being paid well enough to get that money back to its rightful owner.”

  She hadn’t put any particular emphasis on the word we’re, but Vos brightened. “Thank you.”

  “I’m not the villain here,” Moregi barreled on. “Can’t you see? I was just trying to do what’s best for my family. For my child!”

  Vos winced inwardly at the words. The youngling was not Moregi’s biological child; the infant appeared to be pure Rodian, yet that didn’t matter. My family. My child. Like any good mate and parent, Moregi simply wanted what was best for those he loved. They weren’t living in a palace; the family was obviously barely making enough to get by. Moregi had been desperate to change that, and Vos couldn’t blame him. Not everyone had been raised with care and affection in a Temple, with plenty to eat and a roof over their heads.

  Vos was passingly familiar with the Rang Clan, and he knew that Moregi had been right. Even though the Volpai had taken money that wasn’t his, he wasn’t the villain.

  “How touching.” Ventress’s bored voice sounded even colder to Vos than usual. “But I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  Quickly, before things could escalate to violence in the close quarters, Vos lowered his blaster slightly and
reached out toward Moregi with his other hand. “You’re coming with us.”

  Moregi lashed out. Two arms came up. One knocked the blaster out of Vos’s hand. A second landed a nasty punch to the Jedi’s jaw. The other two arms shoved. Hard.

  “Whoa!” Vos stumbled backward, almost knocking Ventress down. She dodged artfully.

  Moregi glanced back at his wife, his four eyes filled with anguish. She wrapped her arms around their son.

  “Run,” she pleaded. “Just run.” I love you. The words didn’t need to be spoken to fill the room.

  Moregi did run, leaping without a second’s hesitation through the bell-shaped window, shattering the glass. Vos raced to the broken window just in time to see Moregi get to his feet, shake himself, and scamper off.

  “You sure were right about that fourth arm,” Vos muttered, rubbing his chin.

  “You idiot!” Ventress’s fists were clenched, and Vos braced himself for another one of her memorable punches. But she wasn’t wasting time on him. She jumped down to the pavement and set off after their quarry.

  Moregi had commandeered a bright-red, shiny speeder sled. The only problem was, it was facing the wrong direction. He glanced up to see Ventress racing after him on foot. Frantically jabbing at the controls and peering over his shoulder, he backed the speeder down the street. Ventress closed the gap between them.

  Vos emulated his hopefully soon-to-be partner, jumping down from the apartment and using the Force to help him land softly. Glancing around, he spied a conveniently ownerless speeder bike with long handlebars and a low seat flanked by outrigger repulsor pods that he borrowed. He caught up to the running Ventress just as Moregi swung the speeder around and took off. Ventress slowed and stopped, wreathed in a gray cloud of fumes. She clenched her fist and snarled in frustration.

  “Need a lift, partner?” Vos offered with a grin, pulling up beside her.

  She glared at him, sighed heavily, and hopped on.