Mercy Kill

by Aaron Allston

  The view of Chakham Base faded, replaced by a three-dimensional rendering of the HyperTech corporate logo, a black field with the company’s name made up of what looked like stars being stretched horizontally, an artistic interpretation of what bridge crews saw when jumping to lightspeed. “It wouldn’t make sense for every HyperTech hypercomm unit to have ended up on a hijacked cargo vessel.” Voort went on. “The ‘coincidence’ would have been noted a lot sooner. Which means that other units, plenty of them, have been manufactured, bought, and sent safely to buyers, including our armed forces. And when did this start?”

  “We know they won the military contract before the Lecersen Conspiracy was detected.” Sharr’s frown deepened. “Before there was any hint the conspiracy would ever be detected. So if HyperTech is connected with the conspiracy, it was set up to achieve the conspiracy’s goals, not Thaal’s personal goals.”

  “Correct.” Voort seemed to be in full professorial form now, pacing back and forth, making eye contact with one Wraith after another as if imparting a mathematics lesson. “We have to assume that they set the company up with one goal, which wouldn’t logically have involved hijacking cargo vessels, and that Thaal somehow subverted the company for his own goals—with hijacking cargo vessels definitely consistent with his black-market operations. But what was the original use of the company? Remember, it had to involve helping the conspirators fold the Alliance into the Empire as a subject state. Remember, too, they underbid other military contractors supplying hypercomm units of a certain size. They may be running the company at a loss to do so.”

  “Oh. Oh!” Excited, Myri began bouncing in her chair. “I know. The hypercomm units are sabotaged.”

  Voort reached into the bag and came up with another dessert, but he held on to it. “Sabotaged how?”

  Myri frowned. “Not to fail at a critical time. Not enough units are HyperTech, so a failure like that wouldn’t cripple Alliance communications …” Then she smiled. “They’re sampling all transmissions. Compacting, encrypting, transmitting them to a central location. Put enough analysts on all that traffic, and you get an ever-improving view of Alliance defenses, fleet movements, secret operations …”

  Voort threw her the dessert. “That’s it exactly. It would have to be very, very subtle sabotage. Probably not mechanical defects. Instead, we’d be talking about built-in coding that works with the specific architecture of HyperTech’s computer hardware. Put the same special coding in other hardware, nothing bad happens. Nothing to detect.”

  Sharr’s eyes widened. “This would have given the conspiracy a critical military weakness to exploit. And it still gives Thaal something very valuable he can sell. Maybe not to Imperial Head of State Reige, but there are a lot of Moffs who would pay for it. Other enemies of the Alliance might as well—crime cartels, for example.”

  “He’d make a fortune.” Trey sounded awed. “V—Math Boy, this is more important than just General Thaal’s corruption. We have to report it right now.”

  Voort shook his head. “We’ll report it later. We’re going to bag HyperTech and General Thaal.”

  “Not if we all get killed.” Trey didn’t keep the dismay out of his voice. “Not if we end up like … like One.”

  “Even if we do.” Voort turned to Myri. “Gamble Girl, I have a file with all the pertinent information and speculation we have on HyperTech. I want you to get it to your father by the same backchannel methods you used to call him to Vandor-Three. If we stop communicating, he’s to get the data into the right hands.”

  Myri nodded. “For that, I get an extra dessert.”

  “Done.”

  “Thank you, Dessert Boy. Now all we have to do is not die.”

  Voort finally sat, settling in on one of the older chairs near Jesmin. “What we’re here for is to find out if this is the place Thaal intends to disappear to. We’re under time pressure, though we don’t know quite what our deadline is. At any moment, because of triggers we can’t yet guess at, Thaal might decide to disappear, begin the identity transformation process, and head to his new home. If he does, if we don’t find him before he’s gone through the process, we’ll have a very hard time proving that his new identity is General Stavin Thaal. We still don’t have a good idea of why he hasn’t done it yet.”

  Wran caught his eye. “His wife. Their divorce proceedings. She’s a loose end.”

  Voort shook his head. “I think, to him, that loose end is tied up. He shut off her ability to get at those assets, so he can take whatever he wants and disappear. The divorce proceedings will conclude in his absence. No loose ends.” He frowned, staring off into nothingness. “Why hasn’t he begun the transformation? It will be hell to prove …” His voice trailed off. “Hell to prove …”

  The others stared at him.

  “Math Boy?” Myri tried to keep worry out of her voice.

  But Voort didn’t reply.

  “Math Boy? Leader? Voort?” Myri stood and moved up to Voort. “Are you all right?”

  He looked up at her, his motion so sudden, his expression so savage that she jumped back.

  He stood again, and it seemed that he’d gained centimeters in height during his brief mental lapse. “Why not yet. Of course. Hell to prove. Of course.”

  Sharr turned to stare accusingly at Drikall. “You didn’t dart him, did you?”

  The Devaronian shook his head. “I was hoping you’d say he did this sort of thing all the time.”

  “Never in the years I worked with him.”

  Voort spun in place, his gaze falling on each Wraith in turn. His movement was almost balletic. “Thaal has given us a superweapon.”

  “Good …” Myri tried not to sound dubious.

  Voort ended his spin looking at her. “It doesn’t matter if Kuratooine was his intended destination. We need to bring him here, right now. And here we’ll point his superweapon at him and pull the trigger. Boom!” He threw up his arms, enhancing his shout. Myri stepped away from him.

  Voort ignored her. “Orders. Scut.”

  Turman offered him a stage whisper: “Lab Boy.”

  “Lab Boy. I need a neoglith masquer simulating Thaal’s face. And something I suspect will be much harder. A full-body neoglith suit for Turman.”

  Scut frowned and his new human face lost its smile. “What species?”

  “A new species! Relate it genetically to an indigenous Kuratooine life-form if you can; otherwise something from a nearby system. I want examiners to poke him, prod him, scan him, and say This is new.”

  “Understood.” Scut didn’t sound like he understood a bit of it.

  “And … gems. Do you think your father would be willing to do us a favor, no questions asked?”

  Scut nodded. “I know he would.”

  “I’ll tell you later. Witnesses! We’ll need witnesses. And … an air skirmish, draw them in. Who’s the best pilot among you?”

  The other Wraiths looked at one another. Myri, Sharr, and Jesmin raised their hands. Jesmin saw Myri’s hand up; she lowered her own.

  Sharr looked Myri’s way. “I think this one is mine. I’ve been piloting since Gamble Girl was seven.”

  Her return smile was deceptively sweet. “I’ve been piloting since I was seven. I’m not as good as Daddy or my sister Syal … but I’ll vape you.”

  Sharr rolled his eyes. “We’ll let the simulators settle it.”

  “No.” Voort pointed at Myri. “Gambler will be my wingmate. Mind Boy, I need you to go back to Coruscant.”

  “I just got here!”

  “Pack light. You’ll be coming right back.” Voort looked around. “Comm Boy, find out if the mine under Black Crest Mountain is his black-market base. If it’s not, find out where that base is. And where its topside exit is. Drug Boy, they’ll send Pop-Dogs. I want something debilitating for them, like a tear gas. Some sort of precipitating dust would be better than gas—it’d be better if the wind didn’t immediately blow it all over our witnesses. Muscle Boy, fabricate us some explosive
s. We can always use explosives, we’re the Wraiths. Oh, and we need starfighters. Make it X-wings. Everybody, work together to figure out if he has a local mistress.” Voort looked among them and took a deep breath. “And smile. We have him. We have General Thaal.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  SAGEOVAL’S DECOM MISSION TRANSPORT YARDS, KURATOOINE

  Turman’s handsome-husband face wore an expression of mild curiosity. “What do you think? Buy them or steal them?”

  He, Voort, Myri, Trey, and Thaymes stood on one landing field of the broad, mostly outdoor business just north of Kuat City, not far from their quarry. This particular lot was thick with decommissioned military vehicles. Some were early-production-run vehicles that had failed to impress the soldiers testing them—proof-of-concept repulsortanks, armored personnel carriers with side armor panels that now looked like they’d been chewed to pieces by insects, airspeeders with slots in the beds for modular systems that never made the grade.

  And there were starfighters from the orbital base. Some were old and so worn that their lift wings drooped. Others, though, belonged to designs that were simply being phased out over time, such as the four classic Incom T-65 X-wings the Wraiths stood beside.

  Voort looked at Trey, who had his head in an open panel on the side of the fuselage. “Muscle Boy. You’re sure about these two?”

  “Huh?” Trey withdrew his head to look at Voort. “Oh. Yes.” He pulled the panel shut. “They need lots of work but are in good shape. Lasers and deflectors functional. Proton torpedo tubes removed, of course, since civilians can’t own proton torpedoes. Yes, I can get these two combat-ready in short order. The others, too … but I’d need six months and a beautiful Twi’lek assistant to fix them.”

  Voort thought it over. “I’d like to steal them …”

  Myri brightened.

  “But that would be one caper too many, I think. Our resources are stretched thin as it is. And this would be something the local authorities would look into. We can’t afford to drop too many flags.” Voort put additional meaning into those words. The others nodded.

  A few meters away, the salesman who had conducted them here brightened at the Wraiths’ suddenly affirmative body language. He was a rotund Besalisk dressed in an expensive suit and a ruffled silk bib, and his upper left arm and lower right arm old-fashioned mechanical prosthetics. Now he turned a smile that was both friendly and excessively confident on the Wraiths.

  Voort clapped Turman’s back. “Go get him.”

  “And what do I use for credits?”

  “The Concussor shuttle.”

  Myri offered an obviously fake pout. “Aww. My honeymoon shuttle?”

  Voort shrugged. “In exchange for two X-wings.”

  Myri clapped her ersatz husband on the back. “Go get him.”

  Turman walked off to begin the struggle with his new opponent.

  Voort turned his attention to Thaymes. “All right, you. You’ve been grinning like one of Lab Boy’s masquers since we left the ops center. Out with it.”

  Thaymes gave the others a conspiratorial look. “Admire me, praise me. I’ve just confirmed that Kuratooine is Thaal’s intended getaway home. And I know his new identity. Thadley Biolan.”

  Voort frowned; not that anyone but Myri could really interpret the expression. “Haven’t I heard that name since we’ve been here?”

  Thaymes nodded. “One of about a thousand entrepreneurs who show up in business reports and investor profiles. He leases cargo vessel berths on Ruby Habitat up in orbit. Like a lot of rich people who don’t want to get their children kidnapped, he avoids the press, and there aren’t many stills or recordings of him, but I found a few.” He opened his datapad, whose screen already showed a still image.

  It was a man, very solidly built in shape but with a frame that looked like fat would settle on him quickly if he took to idleness. His skin was yellow, his eyes black, his forehead unlined. Thick hair and a black beard and mustache made it hard to guess what his shaven features would look like, but Voort could easily picture Thaal’s face under all that hair.

  Voort rubbed his chin. “So his altered genetic profile will include genes for yellow skin. Which would be much less painless than getting a full-body tattoo job.”

  Myri shuddered, doubtless contemplating the pain induced by a tattooing effort like that. “Was this still taken on Kuratooine?”

  “No.” Thaymes sounded confident. “Unless it was three years ago when they broke ground for the new base, I don’t think he’s ever been here.”

  She stared at him. “Then why do you think here’s his destination? I bet he’s leased or bought properties all over the galaxy.”

  “It was Face’s report on the mistresses. I ran data on them and his wife Zehrinne through some heavy-duty comparison programs, and I got what they had in common.” Thaymes swept his finger across the screen, and the image changed to that of a woman’s face.

  From Trey’s intake of breath, Voort concluded that she was a stunner. A red-skinned Twi’lek woman, head tilted a little down as she faced the holocam, she seemed to stare right at Voort. There was the faintest curve of a smile to her lips, and her eyes promised passion and maybe danger. The top of a deeply V-necked white tunic could be glimpsed at the bottom of the still image.

  Trey shook his head. “Even her earlobes are beautiful. Who is she?”

  “Koy’tiffin. Twi’lek actress born about sixty years ago. Early in her career she did the usual range of beautiful-Twi’lek holodrama roles—slave dancers, hopeful young entertainers, fatal females. Later she concentrated more on stage work. Still acts. Now look. Here’s Zehrinne Thaal at age twenty.” He flipped to a new still.

  It showed the former model as a very young woman, her hair long and unstyled, her eyes guileless. Her facial resemblance to Koy’tiffin was startling. “And here again, Cadrin Awel and Keura Fallatte.” He flipped to two more stills, one of an outdoorsy blond human woman and one of a dark-skinned human girl wearing a mischievous grin. Both had cheekbones, lips, eye shape and spacing that resembled those of the Twi’lek star. “Thaal is one of those men who falls in love with an image and selects only women who match it … and only for as long as they match it.”

  Myri sniffed. “And throws them away when the resemblance is no longer as sharp.”

  “So I ran an image search for women, apparent age eighteen to twenty-five, whose facial structure was like Koy’tiffin’s. I prioritized by places Thaal had personally visited in recent years and by the planets we suspected of being his destination. And here was my number one hit.” He flipped past Keura Fallatte.

  The new image was motion, not still, and showed a lovely longhaired brunette woman, human and apparently in her late teens, garbed in a sparkly sleeveless party gown, incongruously holding a stringed acoustic instrument and concentrating as she played what looked like an intricate instrumental piece. Her surroundings suggested she was onstage under nighttime skies. No sound emerged from the datapad to tell Voort what the musical piece was.

  “Her name is Ledina Chott. From here on Kuratooine, a local celebrity. Age eighteen. She’s a singer of popular music. Gossip reporters on Kuratooine’s news feeds say that in the last few months she’s been receiving a lot of presents and communications from a wealthy shipping tycoon, a mystery man she’s never met in person. That’s when I began concentrating on shipping tycoons with local interests, and the facial profiler partially matched Thaal with Thadley Biolan.”

  “Good work.” Voort studied the image of Ledina Chott. The clip started over. “We need to be sure. Muscle Boy, you and Ranger Girl need to break into her quarters, find and copy any transmissions ‘Thadley’ has sent her. We’ll study them. Get to know this new identity a little better.”

  Trey grinned, the expression broad.

  “But you can’t leave behind any holocams to spy on her.”

  “Oh.” Trey sobered.

  Turman rejoined them. “He wants to see the shuttle.”

 
Late that evening, after the sun had gone down and the moons were in ascension, shining down on Kuratooine’s surface, after most of the Wraiths had retired for the evening to individual pursuits, Voort rapped on the door to Scut’s lab.

  “Come.” Scut’s voice was as neutral as usual.

  Voort entered, the top step of the small set of duraplast-and-wood stairs creaking under his feet. Beyond the door was a small, deceptively innocent social room, and the door beyond that led into the laboratory. Voort walked through.

  The lab occupied most of the building. Side shelves held transparisteel containers, large and small, holding tissue samples, and bins on two of the three large tables bubbled and slurped with chunks of what looked like skin or meat floating in fast-growth liquid environments. The place smelled as appetizing as the Hutt space station Voort had recently visited.

  Scut, not wearing his human disguise, stood beside the third table. On it lay a body that looked like a corpse that had been hollowed out and allowed to deflate. The skin was reddish brown with short, spiky extrusions that did not look particularly sharp but did seem to have a defensive function. The elbows, the kneecaps, and the knuckles on hands and feet had sharper spurs projecting from them. The forehead featured hornlike extrusions that looked dangerous.

  The face—Voort had never seen its like. Two eye sockets were set deep under a massive supraorbital ridge. There was no nose; directly beneath the eyes was the lower jaw, broad and massive, with lips that were segmented plates. Toothlike ridges of blood red were visible behind them. The head looked just large enough to contain a human-sized skull.

  Voort looked the body up and down. “This is the final form of the suit?”

  Scut tugged at the thing’s chest. It split open along a vertical seam that had been impossible to see before. It ran from the creature’s neck to where the navel would be on a human. The seam opened with a moist noise.

  Not looking at Voort, Scut leaned down, his head entering the empty chest cavity. He looked back and forth. His voice was hollow inside the cavity as he answered. “Not quite the final version. It conforms to Turman’s dimensions, but I’m having trouble stabilizing its life cycle. This one will live only two days or so. If you must have a week, I must make more modifications.” He withdrew and finally looked at Voort. “It shares thirty-eight percent of its genes with one of Kuratooine’s ocean crustaceans. Genes I haven’t worked with before. It’s tricky.”