by Kevin Hearne
“Did not.”
“Your noodles are getting cold.”
“Guess you’re right about that.”
Despite the loss of a few degrees of heat, those were the best noodles I’ve ever had. To know that telekinesis was possible—not just for Jedi, but for me—gave me better hope for the future than I had enjoyed for a long time.
SAKHET PROVED TO BE the Kupohan in the red bandanna. She was still wearing it when we returned to the noodle hut in the morning. I noticed some additional details that hadn’t been so clear in the low light of her stall before. She had six neck torcs circling her throat, indicating her sixth decade of life, and her basal ears practically drooped from the weight of her silver status earrings. The Kupohans wore jewelry with a purpose, never for decoration, and Sakhet’s earrings indicated she had earned far more prestige among her people than a food vendor normally would. She pointed to a delivery speeder parked nearby and said, “Get in.” It was emblazoned with the name SAKHET’S NOODLES and smelled like cooking oil. There were several bags inside full of cartons that obviously contained fresh food. There was no room there for Artoo and I was glad we had convinced him to stay behind once again. I had a feeling he’d be vital during the extraction, but at the moment he would be an awkward addition to the party.
“What’s all this for?” I asked, sitting down next to the cartons.
“That’s our cover,” Sakhet replied. “We’re making a catering delivery. People eat at all hours of the day on Denon.” She drove us a short distance to an urban greenbelt that served as a recreational area for the district. We gathered a few bags each, and Sakhet led us to a high walkway that looked down on the park. Similar walkways opposite our position reflected the sun, and our aerial view of the park showed us paths winding through the trees and sculpted hedges, fields of open grass for all-purpose frolicking, and plenty of benches to lounge upon. A few people milled around, tossing balls or ropes for their pets to fetch.
Behaving as if this were a standard delivery and the scenery a bore, Sakhet said, “Every morning the target goes for a walk, and the destination rotates depending on the day of the week. Today she will be in the park below between ten and eleven hundred. Tomorrow she will be at a botanical garden, and the day after that, a café that features live music by some local unwashed aliens. And so on. I’ll give you the schedule and a set of maps when we get back in the speeder. Leave your bags here.” She set the noodles down on the doorstep of an anonymous address and we deposited ours next to hers. She buzzed the bell once and began walking back to the speeder, not waiting for an answer. I wondered if someone at that address had actually ordered noodles, or if Sakhet was surprising them.
“The upside is that the target has established a routine and makes herself vulnerable in public—on purpose, of course. She’s waiting for you to act. The downside is that her security team has also established a routine.”
“Who are they? Stormtroopers?”
“No. ISB agents. They know what they’re doing, too. They’ll have eyes on this walkway and the one across from us. They can get stormtroopers here and air support, as well, with a simple comm call, and that’s the case at every location. You can’t afford any sort of extended engagement—if you’re not successful at the start, you should abort unless you have a death wish. I’d suggest you come back here later to see her because the security team will recognize me. You should not be spotted with me after this.”
“What about where she’s working? Can we get to her there?”
“Forget it. It’s an Imperial death trap even worse than trying to snatch her away from the agents. Don’t linger now, you’re supposed to be employees helping old Sakhet drop off noodles.”
We piled back into the delivery vehicle, and Sakhet steered us back to the noodle hut. On the way, she sent the sum of her scouting on Drusil Bephorin to Nakari’s datapad. Local maps and photos, noted security arrangements, placements of Imperial forces within easy reach of each location, and their estimated time of arrival after a request for aid.
“You’ll also find an encrypted file in there, which you can unlock with the code phrase Rancor Sauce, two words. Don’t unlock it unless you need it, and get rid of it once the mission’s complete.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a list of Kupohan contacts on various worlds should you find yourself on the run and in need of help.”
“I didn’t know the Kupohans had a network like that.”
“Officially we don’t. We’re not organized like the Bothan spynet. But that was you who shot down those TIE fighters in Llanic, am I right?”
“Yeah, that was me.”
“My son was on that ship. He was cooking your nerf nuggets last night and he wouldn’t be if you hadn’t decided to act. So I’m giving you a place to run if you need it. Contact anyone on that list and tell them you’re a friend of Sakhet’s on Denon, and that I make the best nerf nuggets you’ve ever had. They’ll give you what help they can.”
“Thank you. Hopefully we won’t need it. Do we owe you anything?”
“Your admiral has already paid me for these services. Good luck,” she said as she exited the speeder, leaving us to our own devices now that her responsibilities were fulfilled.
We returned to our hotel and picked up Artoo before taking a rented speeder back to the park. Besides getting a positive ID on Drusil Bephorin, we needed to see how the security team conducted itself and whether they matched the report Sakhet had provided us. Artoo had plenty of scanning to do, accessing local comm networks, searching for encrypted tight beams and following them to their nodes; he didn’t need to know Imperial codes to recognize that beings sending and receiving encrypted transmissions in a public park marked themselves as security personnel every bit as clearly as stormtrooper armor would.
Nakari and I dressed in matching uniforms that suggested we were crewmates of a passenger cruiser enjoying some time together on leave. We both wore caps pulled low over our eyes and had applied lumps of synthflesh putty to our faces to alter the shapes of our cheeks, noses, and chins, and had changes of clothing for later stashed in small duffels. We entered the park on the south side, with Artoo trailing behind. We picked a bench that afforded us a good view of the rest of the park and waited.
A flying security droid, a black spherical number bristling with blasters and sensors, arrived first and swept the area, no doubt capturing our images and checking them against Imperial databases. My altered appearance wouldn’t match any files they had on Luke Skywalker. We were also weaponless—I’d been careful to leave my lightsaber behind this once—and otherwise nonthreatening, so it hurtled away from us after a cursory scan to investigate other people.
Nakari caught my attention and with flicks of her eyes directed me to check out the elevated walkways above the park. Two men in loose yet bulky clothing, one on either side, had taken up positions to give them an excellent view of the greenbelt. They might have simply been citizens enjoying the view, except that they had military-style haircuts, alert expressions out of keeping with mere sightseeing, and probably armor hidden underneath their casual wear.
Once I knew what to look for, I spotted a few more walking around the park—four, to be precise: isolated individuals who ignored the charms of the park and instead eyed everyone in it suspiciously. One of them passed near us and squinted in our direction, his mouth a thin slash of annoyance underneath his nose. I guessed we didn’t fit his profile of Denon leisure seekers. If his expression was that sour as a rule, I wondered how it would look after we engineered the escape of his charge.
Nakari and I were careful to speak of nothing relating to the operation; we knew we might have long-range audio trained on us. We would talk everything over afterward. In the meantime, we spoke of the crew and passengers of our fictional cruise ship and their behavioral peccadilloes, pretending to let off steam while letting our eyes drink in the habits of the security detail.
Eventually our target appeared, flanked by
two obvious bodyguards in black, in contrast with the others scattered about the park attempting to blend in. The security drone we had seen earlier returned to hover above and behind her, though it hung back far enough that she would not be disturbed by its operational hum.
Drusil Bephorin dressed herself in a long, flowing green tunic that dropped below the knees, belted at the waist in brown. I couldn’t tell if she was in good health or not.
To human eyes the Givin looked somewhat like sad skeletons, their heads resembling bare skulls with brows sloped up to meet together in the middle, lending them the appearance of perpetual mourning or perhaps dismay at discovering something hairy crawling on their food. The environment of their homeworld was so harsh that their organs were sealed away from the atmosphere and they could survive for a short while in vacuum. That left me without any blush to evaluate; they had no visible eyes and a rather inflexible mouth that betrayed little in the way of expression. I wouldn’t know how she was feeling until she told me, and for all I knew, she might express that in calculus.
The bodyguards in black walked behind Drusil a couple of paces, and I noticed that they took care to remain behind her and therefore out of her sight. Perhaps she wanted to pretend that she wasn’t being guarded, and the Empire was willing to indulge that illusion. She was a prisoner with privileges, but still a prisoner.
Drusil walked past the benches and deliberately chose a spot in the grass to sit down, legs folded underneath her and long-fingered hands resting on her knees, her back stiff and straight as though it were her mission to model correct posture. She had chosen a view of a family picnic, some adults nursing beverages around a metal table and children playing in the field nearby, tossing a ball around and laughing. It was impossible to tell if this gave her any pleasure.
The two bodyguards kept their position and faced outward, watching for any approaching trouble. The security droid hovered in place and rotated in sentinel mode, colored lights winking as it scanned for threats and bathed the area with radar pings, doubtless securing passive target locks on anything in sight. The plainclothes security maintained a perimeter and rotated clockwise, while the two men occupying the elevated walkways remained stationary.
After a few minutes of this, with Drusil Bephorin keeping perfectly still, it occurred to me that she might not be watching the children at all, but rather meditating. Her eyes might be closed and I would never know.
The eyes of the security droid were vigilant, however, and it was programmed to use lethal force, which was demonstrated when the ball got away from the children and arced through the air on a parabola that might have brought it within the blast radius of a grenade to Drusil’s position. The droid whirled, shot forward, and blasted the ball into component atoms before it could touch the ground. The kids screamed, and their parents, roused from their drinking, threw out a few belated screams, as well. Playtime was over.
Drusil jerked at the noise and stood, turning to berate the bodyguards as if they had been the ones to shoot the ball.
“Not so relaxing here in this park,” Nakari said, rising from the bench. “I think it best we leave.”
“Yeah.” As almost everyone else was leaving, too, we would stand out if we lingered. We had all the information we needed anyway: two obvious guards, four in plainclothes, two more up high, and an aggressively programmed security droid. Plus anything else we missed that Artoo managed to pick up; we’d ask him soon.
Returning to the hotel took some time because we employed measures to ensure that we weren’t followed. After ditching our rental speeder, we removed our putty faces in the restroom of a public restaurant, destroyed our uniforms and duffels in the incinerator, changed into nondescript clothing, and hid our faces from any security cams as we exited by wearing cowls over our heads. Artoo’s identity was rather more difficult to conceal, so we didn’t try. We had to take the risk of having him return to the hotel on his own and hope that no one accosted him in the short distance involved. Nakari argued that people would assume he was on an errand rather than wandering around on his own without direction. Luckily he encountered no trouble and waited outside by the door, and we arrived soon afterward. He followed us to yet another establishment since we didn’t go inside the hotel; we wanted to be sure we had shaken any tails first, and besides, we had plenty to do.
We ensconced ourselves in a secluded booth of an upscale diner and ordered hot drinks served by a droid. There we pored over the information Sakhet had downloaded to Nakari’s datapad and also compared Artoo’s observations about security with our own through an interface.
Artoo had identified the same security personnel we had through local comm signals. He’d be able to identify locations again at another site in case we were unable to see them; it looked as if we would not enjoy such an unrestricted view again as we had that morning.
“I don’t think we could do the botanical garden tomorrow even if we wanted to.”
“No, it’s too soon,” Nakari agreed. “And there would be flowers and canopies and tree trunks ruining my line of sight.”
“But this café the day after tomorrow looks promising,” I said.
Nakari leaned in close and peered over my shoulder, a few wild curls of her hair brushing against my ear. She smelled of citrus and mint. “Depends on where she sits. Can’t do it inside.”
“Sakhet’s notes say she sits outside at one of the tables and watches the world pass by.”
“So we try to snatch her on a crowded public street?”
“Well, I doubt it would be very crowded at midmorning. The rush hour will be over, and all we’ll see are the people who overslept or who tend to do their business in cafés. Besides, any innocents will work against the Imperials as much as us. And look at this,” I said, pointing at a detail of the site holo Sakhet had provided.
“Oh. Oh! That might just work.”
“Glad you agree.” I turned to my droid. “Hey, Artoo. How would you feel about getting an upgrade?”
AS I UNDERSTAND IT, the human sense of smell is somewhat underdeveloped in comparison with most other species. Sometimes I think that’s a shame; there are attractive scents that might be even more alluring when given depth. But when the fragrance slithering into my nostrils is the obnoxious sort, I’m glad we can only smell so much. My trips to Rodia, for example, gave me cause to be thankful for humanity’s stunted olfactory nerves. Another time for such gratitude was two days after meeting Sakhet, when I was hunched in a Denon sewer populated not only by waste but also by things feeding on waste and thereby creating their own.
We’d spent the previous day preparing madly for the liberation of Drusil Bephorin, beginning by leaving a message at an Alliance dead drop that Major Derlin’s team needed to move the Givin’s family to Omereth immediately. We then scouted the location and shopped for necessities, especially for Artoo’s upgrade but also some additional layers of clothing for quick changes. After not enough sleep and a quick breakfast, the early morning was spent on new contingencies we had thought of in the night, abort scenarios, and finally getting into position ahead of Drusil’s arrival.
Mentally reviewing the Givin “greeting maths” that Leia taught me distracted me somewhat from the fact that I was crouched in slime up to my ankles and could almost feel spores of mold and mildew latching onto all available surface area inside my lungs. It was dark except for the wan light streaming in through drainage grates around the corner, and I could hear creatures splashing in the water or scrabbling among the refuse in search of a meal—or maybe a way out. Something small screamed, cut off abruptly, and then something large belched. I stared at my new comm unit, willing it to squawk to life and tell me to move. Waiting around with nothing to do is terrible, but waiting around with nothing to do in the sewer is worse.
I worried that the signal wouldn’t get through the cement above me and I’d miss my cue, bungling everything, despite testing the link yesterday. Technology is always perfectly dependable until it isn’t.
> But soon I got a chirp that indicated Artoo and Nakari were in their chosen positions, and a second chirp that told me that our target had been sighted approaching the café. These signals were no more than meaningless pings, free of any content that the Imperial security droid could reasonably interpret as a threat. They carried a wealth of information to me, however. The third chirp from Artoo was a ready signal; in less than a minute he would act. I pulled out my blaster and checked for perhaps the fifth time that it was dialed up to its maximum power, and rose from my squatting position, pressing my back against the wall of the tunnel. If the security droid detected my movement below now, that was fine; it would be a distraction from what Artoo was doing, which was opening a tiny hatch on his dome to reveal a small ion blaster we had installed the day before. He would fire at the security droid and disable it, which was really key to the operation’s success. Without its recorded memory and transmissions of the kidnapping in progress, the ISB security forces would have to rely on information given to them in real time by human resources, and Nakari was supposed to take care of that.
The final chirp came and I moved, turning the corner to my left and closing on a wide drainage grate located just off the curb of the café sidewalk and outdoor dining area. Artoo must have fired and hit his target, for a sizzle and hiss of electric screams floated down, followed by a loud crash, percussive thumps, and then screams from the throats of various panicked beings. I added to the noise by firing repeatedly at the edges of the drainage grate until it fell away, leaving a hole down which one could fall—or intentionally jump. By the time I was finished some of the voices had faded—the people shouting had moved away from the exploding drainage grate and from droids falling out of the sky. It gave me the opportunity to be heard up above.
“Drusil Bephorin!” I yelled as loud as I could. “I’m from the Alliance and we have your family! Please hurry! Down here!”
The Givin moved with surprising swiftness; I heard her chair clatter to the sidewalk in her haste to join me. Her pale head appeared in the rectangular frame of the hole and her cavernous eye sockets looked down, the slope of the brow suggesting that she was upset with me. I supposed I would never feel comfortable with her expression if it was fixed like that.