Star Wars The Old Republic Fatal Allianc - By Sean Williams Page 0,24

sing-along—in a dialect Shigar had never heard before—that had felt as though it might last forever.

Seeking to calm his nerves, he closed his eyes and concentrated on an oddly shaped shard of plastoid in his right hand that he had picked up in the streets of Coruscant as they had waited to board their shuttle. Nothing about it was familiar, so there was no way his conscious mind could guess its origins or purpose. Determining either or both of those was where his psychometric ability was supposed to come in.

About one in a hundred Kiffar were born with this particular Force talent, deciphering the origin and history of objects by touch alone. Shigar’s came and went despite his every effort, and it was this lack of control that had at least partly put off the Jedi Council when it came to allowing his trials. Plenty of Jedi Knights had no psychometric ability whatsoever, but all were supposed to intimately know their own strengths and weaknesses. A wild talent of any kind was not acceptable.

Shigar focused on his breathing and let the Force flow strongly through him. The shaking of the freighter and the chattering of its passengers receded. He felt only the complex shape of the object in his palm, and examined the way it sat in the universe without recourse to his usual senses. Was it old or new? Did it come from nearby or far away? Was it precious or disposable? Had it been dropped deliberately or without care? Was it manufactured or handmade? Were there thousands of such things in the galaxy, or was this the only one that had ever existed?

Half-felt impressions came and went. He saw a woman’s face—a human woman, with wide-set brown eyes and a distinctive scar across her chin. He pursued that mental scent as far as it went, but nothing more came to him. He let it go, and realized then that he had seen this woman in the old districts, while walking off his anger at the Council’s decision. She had been selling roasted spider-roaches to an Abyssin with one eye. His mind had thrown up her face in desperation. She had nothing at all to do with the scrap of plastoid.

A Jedi Knight is a Jedi Knight in all respects, Master Nobil had said. Until he controlled this talent, he could hardly be said to have control over himself. On that point he had no defense.

Frustrated, he opened his eyes and put the scrap back into his pocket. He had a few pockets now, mainly down his chest and the front of his thighs. They added several kilograms to his body mass and jingled when he walked. The unfamiliar textures and cut of his disguise came courtesy of a market on Klatooine, where he and Larin had boarded the Red Silk Chances for Hutta. He was still getting used to it.

Through the grimy viewport, the foul world’s fifth moon, Nar Shaddaa, was slinking by.

Almost there, Shigar told himself.

“You’re a little small for a bounty hunter, aren’t you?” a six-fingered smuggler asked Larin.

She turned her head the tiniest fraction. “So what? You’re a little too ugly to be human.” Her voice was artificially harshened by the vocoder added to enhance her disguise.

The smuggler only laughed. “You don’t intimidate me, girl. I lost my ship playing pazaak in a den owned by Fa’athra. I’m going to ask him for it back, out of the goodness of his heart. What do you think of that?”

The Hutt called Fa’athra was widely known as the cruelest, most sadistic of all.

“I think that makes you stupid as well as ugly.”

The smuggler laughed again, his face opening like a wound to expose a bewildering variety of snaggled teeth. Shigar was ready to intervene if the exchange became violent, but the smuggler seemed satisfied by Larin’s response.

“Tell your friend here,” the smuggler said, leaning close, “that if he really wants to pass himself off as a rancor racer, he’ll have to roughen his hide up some. Those guys have a life expectancy of less than five minutes. You don’t last longer than that without some kind of damage.”

He turned away to butt heads with someone else, leaving Shigar and Larin to exchange a quick glance.

“I’ll put on the mask when we land,” Shigar whispered to her. He hadn’t wanted to on Klatooine, disliking the grotesque appearance it lent him and the stench of poorly cured leather. “You can say I told you so then.”

She just nodded. He