He pushed open the door... and walked straight into the tusk of a Whiphid as it picked him up and threw him out the door.
Ferus landed hard. He felt his side gingerly. The Whiphid had barely nicked him with his tusk. Still, he could feel the burn. Thank the stars for small favors.
Trever strolled over to look down at him. "Oh," he said, "so that"s how it"s done."
The Whiphid crossed the distance in two gigantic strides. He towered over them. "This is a private club! Get your carca.s.s back to the hole it crawled out of!"
"Hey, Tooth-Face!" Trever shot back angrily. "Who do you think you"re talking to?"
"They don"t like it when you call them that," Ferus murmured. "So I wouldn"t - "
The Whiphid picked up Trever with his clawed hands and tossed him on top of Ferus. Ferus felt his breath puff out in a whoosh at the impact.
"Call the garbage compactors!" the Whiphid roared to someone inside. "We"ve got some trash!"
A slender human male in an ankle-length coat stood in the doorway. Ferus recognized the telltale signs of a slythmonger, a being who bought and sold narcotics and potions, sometimes without regard to whether they were deadly or not.
I can take them both, Ferus thought. The Whiphid just took me by surprise. I can handle this.
The slythmonger laughed. "Come on, sweetblossoms. We"ve got two live ones!"
A tall Bothan and nine - no, ten - other beings charged out the door.
Okay. Maybe not as easy as I thought.
Trever rolled off him. Ferus sprang to his feet, his hands held up, palms out. "Hey, I"m just looking for some information."
"And what makes you think we have any to give?" the slythmonger asked.
"Not give. Sell."
"He"s got credits!" a tall human man called gleefully. "Get him!"
As if in one ma.s.s, the homicidal crew headed toward them.
He didn"t want to use his lightsaber. News would get back quickly that a Jedi had been spotted. He didn"t want to tip off Malorum. He knew now that Malorum believed Fy-Tor was alive, and that would only endanger her.
Still, he didn"t particularly want to get himself and Trever killed.
Trever had the most finely honed sense of self-preservation he"d ever seen. Within seconds, he had scurried over and rolled under a burned-out speeder.
"W000," a woman with a crisscrossing holster packed with blasters yelled. "Look at the little womp rat run! Get him!"
Ferus leaped and landed on top of the speeder. He drew his blaster. "You"ll have to get through me."
With a slither and a clatter and a clang, everyone"s weapons came out. Pocket blasters. A blaster rifle. Vibroshivs. Vibroblades. And even what looked like an Imperial force pike.
"Gladly," the Bothan said.
Suddenly a deep laugh rolled out from the dark interior.
"Would you mind not killing the poor fellow, chums?" Dexter Jettster said. "I think I might know him."
CHAPTER NINE.
Dexter beckoned to them with three of his four hands. Ferus and Trever stepped uneasily into the dark bar. Only a few steps behind them, the disappointed crew followed, muttering darkly about what they"d missed out on.
They sat at a small table that was dwarfed by Dex"s bulk. Waving the others away, he fixed his friendly, beady eyes on Ferus.
"Ferus Olin, is it? I remember when Siri would bring you by. And here I thought you left Coruscant behind forever. That would have been a smart move. And who is this with you?"
"Trever Flume," Trever supplied.
"Well, Trever Flume and Ferus Olin, what brings you down to these parts?"
"Obi-Wan said you would help me," Ferus said. "I just left him a few days ago."
Dexter leaned backward. All four hands went to his chest as he let out a gusty breath. "You should prepare a fellow for news like that. He"s alive. That"s good to hear. Where is he?"
"I can"t tell you that," Ferus said. "But he sends his regards."
"Well, if you see him, tell him Dexter Jettster is still his friend."
"He"ll be glad to hear you"re well."
"Well?" Dexter chortled. "I wouldn"t go that far. Not that far, at all. But I"m surviving."
"You"re one of the Erased."
"Erased I am. No name, no background, nothing to declare except - I"m alive." He chuckled again, but this time ruefully. "Obi-Wan spoke too soon. I doubt. I have help to give you. But if you"ve come to be Erased, I can put you in touch with the right channels. I can find you a place to stay for a bit - not too long, because the Erased have to keep moving. Some of us keep track of one another, some of us disappear. There are no judgments down here. Whatever you do to survive, you do."
Ferus glanced over at the long metal bar. The group that had followed the Whiphid outside were pulled up against it, their backs to the bar, their eyes on him. The Whiphid stood behind the bar, moving a dirty rag back and forth and watching, too.
"Now, don"t worry about them. They"re just looking out for me. It"s best to intimidate any visitors.
Creatures come down here looking for thrills, and we send "em back to where they came from. A little worse for wear, but alive. Ha! Ha! If I say you"re all right, you"ll be welcome enough."
"Who are they?" Trever asked curiously.
"A mixed lot, I"d say," Dexter answered. "Anyone the Empire was hounding. Heroes and villains. Some journalists, some former Republic army officers. Maybe some criminals mixed in."
Ferus gave a sidelong glance at the slythmonger. "I noticed that."
Dexter slapped both knees with four hands. "Hah! You"re speaking of Keets."
"Yeah, the one who couldn"t wait to run us through with a vibroshiv," Trever said.
"Ah, his growl is worse than his chomp," Dex said. "And he wasn"t a criminal in the old days. He was a journalist, writing for the Coruscant Holo Net. One of the first to ask why Palpatine was grabbing all the power even while he was smiling at us, telling us he was protecting us."
"Not Keets Freely?" Ferus asked, astonished. He had read Freely"s commentaries during the Clone Wars.
"The very same. And the Bothan fellow with the tangled mane - that"s Oryon, one of the best spies the Republic ever had. The human female with the spiked hair-horns? Rhya Taloon, the Senator from Agridorn. Can"t go back to her homeworld - she"s got a death mark on her head. So she escaped. See that Svivreni? He was a Senate aide. And the tall humanoid? An officer in the Army of the Republic. Not a clone. Don"t ask about the brothers - the ones standing next to each other who look alike? They haven"t told us who they are."
Ferus looked around the room again, this time in surprise. "Here it is," he said, excitement underneath his words. "Right here, in this room. Seeds for the rebellion. Here is where it will begin, in places like this."
Dexter laughed. "We"re a long way from rebellion, young Olin. We"re just trying to survive. Coruscant used to be a decent place to live, if you didn"t mind a billion beings breathing your air. Things have changed. There are spies around, of course. But even ordinary Coruscanti just trying to get by are having a real hard time. Bribes and intimidation - that"s a way of life now."
"We were just at the Jedi Temple," Ferus said. "We"ve seen the damage there."
"They say there are Jedi imprisoned there."
"There aren"t."
"Didn"t think there would be. That"s why I warned the other one."
Ferus"s alertness sharpened. "What other one?"
"She didn"t give me her name."
"A Jedi - a human woman, with a small facial marking on her forehead - "
"That"s the one. She heard I"d been a friend to the Jedi and sought me out. That was before I Erased myself. I couldn"t give her much - I was surprised that any Jedi was alive at all. But I did tell her not to go to the Temple. She went down below instead, into the deepest sublevels."
"Do you know where, exactly?" Ferus asked.
"No idea, my friend. But recently I got a message. If I ever need her, she said, I should look for Solace."
"Solace?"
"A word I"ve been hearing more and more lately."
"But where is it?"
Dex shrugged. "Don"t know. I haven"t needed her yet."
Ferus looked around. "There"s something you should know. The Empire is planning a strike down here. They want to wipe out the Erased. You"re all becoming bothersome to the new regime. They want to control Coruscant all the way down to the crust."
Dex stroked his chin with his thick, gnarled fingers. "That won"t be easy, even for the Empire."
"Darth Vader has made it his personal mission."
"Darth Vader? That"s another story." Dex frowned in thought, the deep furrows in his face collapsing until his eyes disappeared. Then he looked up again at Ferus. "You"ll need a guide if you"re going below."
"Do you have someone in mind?"
"Maybe, maybe. But first, a small parley with the gang."
Dex signaled to the others and they retired to another room in the back of the cantina. It turned out that the building was an old relay power station, and it still held abandoned turbines. The Erased had hooked up their own power system here, and the air was filled with steam and a constant humming noise.
"Makes it hard for surveillance to get a fix on voices," Dex explained to Ferus and Trever. "You"ve got some here who are a little touchy about being overheard."
Seven of the Erased sat at the table along with Dex. The others had melted away, not even willing to sit and talk with outsiders. The Whiphid stayed at the bar.
The Erased all turned to Dexter to begin, and Ferus realized that he was a kind of unofficial leader here.
"My friend here is Ferus Olin, a former Jedi."
"Jedi apprentice," Ferus corrected.
"And this is his friend..."Trever chimed in with his name.
"Ferus tells me that the Empire is planning to try to eradicate us, and I trust his information," Dexter continued. "We all knew it would happen. Just sooner than we"d like."
"We"re not prepared for this," the Svivreni said. He was stocky, with a narrow, furred face. His hair reached the back of his knees and was held back with a thick metal band.
"This is Curran Caladian," Dexter told Ferus and Trever.
"I knew a Tyro Caladian," Ferus said. Tyro had been a friend of Obi-Wan"s, and a good source of information. Ferus had met him a number of times. He had been one of twenty-one beings killed in the great Senate ma.s.sacre, a few years before the Clone Wars began.
"My cousin," Curran said. "We started out as aides at the Senate together." He gave Ferus a look of recognition. "You were there that day - at the ma.s.sacre. You saved Palpatine"s life."
Ferus nodded. He had reasons to remember this. He knew now that he couldn"t have possibly saved Palpatine"s life that day. Palpatine, he felt sure, had been supremely in control at every moment, had perhaps even foreseen the attacks and turned them to his advantage. Certainly his courage under fire had netted him more supporters than ever.
"Is that so?" Dex slapped four hands on his ma.s.sive legs. "If only you"d moved a little to the left that day, Ferus, we all might be in better shape! Ha!"
Ferus acknowledged the joke with a slight smile. He felt that nothing he could have done that day would have made a difference.
"Back to the subject at hand," Dex said. "Or hands. Seems to me we have some decisions to make. First, we should warn the others. Everyone is on their own, of course. But if some of us can help, we should help."
"Help how?" The tall man who Dex had called a former officer spoke up.
"Offer the Erased a place to go if they need it. Leave the orange district."
The man nodded. "We"ve got to go deeper."
"I agree with Hume," Rhya Taloon said. Ferus could not connect the image of this woman, her silver hair twisted into horns, holsters crisscrossing her chest, with the image of a Senator.
"Our strength lies in our bond," the Bothan Oryon said. "We should find a place we"ll all be safe. Not just us, but any Erased who wish to join us."
The two young men who Dexter had referred to as brothers sat together. They followed the conversation carefully, looking from one speaker to another at the same moment. They nodded in agreement.
"Gilly and Spence are right," Dexter said, even though the two young men hadn"t spoken. "Now what about Solace?"