“Mmmm-mmmph!” Skelly replied.
“Oh,” Lal said, flustered. “Gord, get that out of his mouth!”
Gord grumbled. “All right,” he said, looming over the seated Skelly. “But I think it’s a bad idea.”
The rag finally removed, Skelly coughed before turning his ire on the Besalisks. “That was Vidian! Why didn’t you let me talk to him?”
Lal goggled at that. “I’m already terrified of him. I definitely wasn’t going to let you talk to him!” Almost in a daze, she plopped down in her office chair. “Twelve hours to get this place looking good enough for an Imperial inspection?”
Gord looked back at her. “It’s all right, Lal. You run a good place. I’ll get the cousins in with some mops and it’ll be fine.”
Skelly rolled his eyes. The security chief was moon-eyed over his wife, and their mushiness was the capper to a horrid day. “You’d better worry more about what Vidian will say after he talks to me. You and every firm that’s ever used Baby to break open a wall up there.”
“Forget this guy,” Gord said. He snapped his fingers. “Oh, Lal, I almost forgot. That Kanan fellow said he was quitting.”
Lal shook her head, disappointed. “I was afraid of that. It was the worst day ever. He nearly got killed. But I wanted to thank him—he wound up saving some of my people’s lives.”
“Maybe you can talk him out of it,” Gord said. A buzzer sounded. “There’s somebody at the repulsorlift gate.”
“That’d be the stormtroopers,” his wife replied. She looked at Skelly sadly. “I am sorry.”
“Yeah, sure,” Skelly said. “You guys’ll be the sorry ones.”
Gord whistled. Two of his Besalisk assistants entered and lifted Skelly, chair and all. They carried him into the moonlit stockyard at the side of the complex. Equipment lined the inner perimeter of the tall black fencing, with a path between large enough for a repulsortruck to arrive.
Skelly knew what to expect: He’d seen the Imperial troop transports hovering through Gorse City now and again. He hoped this time, they’d take him straight to Vidian. He watched as Gord, leaving Skelly with the other guards, stepped up to the gate and opened it.
No one entered.
Curious, Gord walked into the street. A second later, the burly Besalisk looked back and shouted to his assistants. “Guys—it’s Charko! The Sarlaccs are stealing our hovertruck!”
Moving almost as one, Gord’s fellow guards drew their blasters and ran out to join him. Alone, Skelly shook his head. In high-crime Shaketown, no supply delivery was safe—not even when Imperials were on the way. He heard blasterfire from the street. Maybe they’d all shoot one another.
Then it occurred to Skelly that the Sarlaccs must have activated the entry buzzer. Why would they have done that? Before he could consider it, he became aware of someone behind him—and something pulling at the strap on his left shoulder.
“Are you Skelly?”
“What?” He looked to his left to see a cloaked figure crouching behind his chair. “Yeah. But who are—”
“Hera,” the female voice said. A green hand inserted a vibroblade under one of his restraints. “And you’re leaving.”
“No, wait,” Skelly said. “I can’t go. I have a story to get out!”
For a moment, the woman stopped cutting, as if puzzled. But only for a moment. “I can help get your story out. But you have to go!”
“Wait!” Skelly had no idea who she was, or what she was talking about. “Listen—”
“I will listen. But you have to go,” she said, severing the last bond. She ripped the straps free. “I paid Charko for a distraction. But it won’t last.”
Skelly looked through the gate at the street. It was empty. But he could hear Gord and his companions running somewhere and firing their blasters, and beyond that, the low whine of a repulsorcraft.
He didn’t know what to do. The stormtroopers would take him to Vidian, who had the power to stop what was being done to Cynda. But then again, they might not. And the cloaked woman had said something he wasn’t accustomed to hearing.
“I’ll listen,” she repeated. “Go!”
Skelly looked back, only to see she was no longer at his side. Hearing footfalls heading for the gate, he forced his cramped muscles to stand. Walking painfully, he headed for the gate.
“Where can I find you?” he yelled.
The call came from over the fence, outside: “I’ll find you!”
She was already gone.
Kanan rushed around the corner of a building—only to be nearly run down by an Imperial troop transport. Seeing the boxy repulsorcraft careening straight at him, Kanan dived to the muddy roadway. The long vehicle passed right over him, its metallic underside mere centimeters from the back of his skull.
Now he lay in the mud at the corner of a Shaketown intersection, and there was still no sign of the woman with the alluring voice.
Picking himself up, Kanan wiped off his tunic and stood as more traffic came down the other street, this time on foot: two of Charko’s gang members, barreling in his direction with big metal pry bars in their hands. The sound of blaster shots followed behind them.
Kanan reached for his weapon, only to realize the Sarlaccs weren’t coming after him—and that the blaster shots were meant for them. The hoodlums ran past without stopping, rushing to stay ahead of their pursuers—who turned out to be Gord and his fellow guards, firing blasters.
“You’d better run, punks!” Gord yelled, firing blasters held in all four hands.
Kanan looked down the street after them and then up the route the Imperials had taken. He shook his head. I’m too sober, he thought. Nothing makes sense!
He walked around the block. At the far end of one street, he could see the Moonglow service entrance. There was no sign of any caped woman there; just the stormtroopers from before, piling out of their repulsorcraft. Kanan quickly turned away.
This was no place to stay on a fool’s errand, stormtroopers or not. This end of Shaketown, he recognized, had fared badly in a recent quake; half of it was under renovation and most of it was closed down. Resigned, Kanan decided to give up and head for Okadiah’s. I’m just being silly, he thought. Tomorrow’s moving day. Time to get packing.
Then he heard the voice again.
“Fifty up front, fifty afterward,” the woman said. “Like we agreed.”
Kanan looked down the alley to see the hooded figure facing off against Charko, flanked by several members of his gang. It was like the scene Kanan had witnessed outside the diner—only not. This place was more enclosed: Construction scaffolds rose against buildings on either side of the passage. There was a new menace to how Charko’s friends—a mix of tough-looking humans and other beings—stood. And Charko, clutching a bunch of credits in his hand, wasn’t happy at all.
“If you’ve got a hundred credits, maybe you’ve got a hundred more,” the one-horned gang leader said. He took a step forward. Towering over the short woman, he gestured to her black cloak. “You’ve got room for a lot more cash under there, I’ll bet.”
Kanan strode into view at the end of the street. “Hey, Charko! You were looking for me. Did you forget?”
Charko and his companions looked back at Kanan. “Never,” the Chagrian said. “There’s always time for you!”
Kanan saw blasters being raised. His was already drawn. Six—no, seven against one. That’s about right.
But before he could fire, Kanan saw the woman suddenly twirl in place. With one swift motion, her cloak came off—and became a weapon she cast into the air like a net. Charko turned back to get a faceful of fabric, dropping his credits in the process.
The gang leader stumbled backward, victim of a high kick from his assailant. His friends turned and gawped at what Kanan now saw: a beautiful, lithe, green-skinned Twi’lek, holding a pistol in one gloved hand.
The Twi’lek shot one human Sarlacc point-blank in a single motion, and then rushed forward in the next. As the burly man fell ba
ckward, the Twi’lek used his body as a makeshift staircase, giving her the altitude she needed to leap for a horizontal strut on one of the scaffolds. Catching the bar with her free hand, she used her momentum to help her gain a perch, clinging to one of the vertical supports. Turning, she fired her blaster down into the astonished crowd.
“Get her!” yelled a female gang member. But blasterfire was coming from a second direction as Kanan, done with watching, charged into the alley. The Sarlaccs scattered, uncertain who to target first.
With an angry bellow, Charko leapt from the mud, heedless of the cross fire. Turning toward the Twi’lek’s position, he slammed chest-first into one of the scaffold supports. The structure shook, and the Twi’lek woman dropped her blaster. Her weapon hand freed, she scrambled like a sand monkey higher up the scaffold—even as it began to fall.
Kanan knew he had to move. He rushed his nearest attacker and grabbed her blaster arm with his left hand. His motion directed her errant shot into the assailant approaching on his right; he followed with a head-butt beneath her chin that knocked her backward. Now he could see the raging Charko trying to upend the scaffold. He dived forward, even as the Twi’lek woman vaulted in the opposite direction high above, to the scaffold on the other side of the alley.
Seized from behind by Kanan, Charko lost hold of the scaffold support—and the whole thing started to come down, all five stories of it. Kanan saw only one place to go: the large picture window of the building the scaffold was attached to. He launched himself and the Chagrian through the window, creating a shower of shards even as an avalanche of scaffolding came down in the alleyway behind them.
Dazed, his blaster lost in the dive, Kanan struggled to regain his feet inside the vacant building, which he recognized as an abandoned cantina. The Chagrian had taken the brunt of the crash, and yet somehow the thug still stood, ready to fight it out.
“You’re on my turf now,” Kanan said, raising his fists. “I do all my training in bars!”
Kanan and Charko traded punches across the dark quake-damaged room. Kanan grabbed a chair; Charko did the same with half a broken table. The two carried on a parry-and-thrust battle with their makeshift weapons—it was a kind of fighting the Jedi never taught, and it suited Kanan just fine.
Blow by blow, he maneuvered Charko in front of the only remaining intact window. Winded from his exertions, the Chagrian staggered. Kanan saw his opening. A roundhouse kick sent his opponent smashing through the pane behind him.
“Are we done here?” Kanan asked, stepping up to the windowsill. Charko didn’t get back up this time. But the others were still out there, Kanan remembered. He readied himself and carefully climbed out the shattered window.
There wasn’t anything to do. All Charko’s companions were down. Some, Kanan had taken out earlier; others, the Twi’lek had. The rest had been crushed under the falling scaffold. And the Twi’lek herself was nowhere to be seen.
Rubbing his bruised cheek, Kanan searched the wreckage for his blaster. He was in pain: the kind that would pass, but enough to make it tough to go another round with the Sarlaccs. By the time he found his weapon, however, it was clear to him no danger remained.
But something was missing from the scene. The credits Charko had dropped had been plucked from the ground, and small footprints led away from the place where they had lain.
He saw the Twi’lek’s cloak nearby, pinned beneath a heavy girder. She did leave me a souvenir, after all. With great effort, he pulled the metal aside. He took the garment into his hands and held it up. It was a good find, he thought, as he turned to stagger out of the alley. Because he was beginning to believe she had never been there.
He stopped thinking that when he stepped out into the street—and found himself looking into her eyes.
“Ah,” she said, seeing her cloak.
“Ah,” he repeated. Kanan stood frozen, studying her under the bright light of the moon. She was shorter than he was, with deep green skin, full lips, and a chin that came to a pleasing point. She wore a gray pilot’s cap that allowed exit for two head-tails that hung at a little more than shoulder-length. She wore a brown vest, gold-colored slacks with utility pockets, and black gloves that matched the cloak in his hands.
“I knew I’d forgotten something,” she said, removing the garment from his hands so deftly he barely noticed she’d done it. Then she looked at him with concern. “You okay there?”
Kanan nodded.
“You speak Basic?”
“Words fail me.”
She smiled. “So they do.”
It wasn’t a dig—or if it was, it was delivered so gently that Kanan chose not to notice it. He looked back. “That was something back there.”
“Yes,” she said, still talking in that wonderful voice as she flicked mud from the cloak. “It’s a good thing I was here to save you.”
Kanan’s brow wrinkled, and he looked back. “Save me?” He pointed at the bodies. “You had a whole gang after you!”
The Twi’lek lifted the cloak to put it on. “I’d paid them to do a job for me. There was a minor pricing dispute. I could have handled it.” Seeing him look back at her, slack-jawed, she bumped a gloved fist underneath his bruised chin. “You did pretty good though. I’m impressed.” She studied him. “So, you just randomly go around sticking your neck out for people?”
“No!” Kanan said. “Er—almost never.” He blinked as she pulled her hand back. “Wait a minute,” he said, gesturing back to the bodies in the alley. “You needed them to do a job? For you?”
“Mm-hmm. And now it’s done.” She flipped the cloak back into place around her shoulders, turned, and started walking.
“I do jobs,” Kanan said, tromping after her. His whole body hurt from the fight, but he didn’t want the conversation to end so soon. “You need something done, I’m there.”
“No, thank you,” she said, continuing on. “I have stops to make.”
“Wait!”
Kanan tried to follow, but his body rebelled. Wincing, he grabbed at his knee. When he looked up, she was gone again—likely down one of the side alleys.
Disgusted with the universe, he yelled into Gorse’s endless night. “What’s your name?”
For a long moment, nothing.
And then that voice again, calling back to him.
“Hera.”
Starships were settlements in the sky. Some were villages; Ultimatum was a great metropolis. And yet even Star Destroyers functioned like small towns. A big sink full of gossip—and as with small towns, the contents all tended to flow toward one person, like water to a drain.
Sloane stood at the window as Nibiru Chamas, Ultimatum’s unofficial drain, sat casually in the chair in her office. The mining ships were continuing to shuttle back and forth between Gorse and Cynda—faster than before, of course—but her mind was on the list Chamas was reading.
“Count Vidian has designed and issued new traffic patterns for the cargo ships traveling between the two worlds,” Chamas said. “He has ordered several changes to the loader droids’ subroutines on Cynda that should make them more productive. He has changed the color of the plates used in the communal mess hall—”
“What?”
Chamas chuckled. “That last one is a joke.”
Sloane rolled her eyes. “Continue.”
“He also ordered a review of Transcept’s personnel—you know, the ones who found the madman on Cynda? There has already been at least one arrest for suspicious activity.”
“Thorough,” Sloane said.
She was thorough, too—or intended to be. She’d been caught flat-footed by Vidian’s actions on her bridge, issuing commands to her staff. Ultimatum had the authority to destroy the freighter Cynda Dreaming; Vidian had clearly known that. But, while she agreed with that decision, it behooved her to find out more about her visitor, and how he’d interacted with other crews. She wasn’t going to be just one more mechanical arm.
“What else has he done?”
�
��Laid groundwork for his tour of Gorse. He has a full schedule already. He doesn’t head down there for hours yet, and he’s already reorganized three guilds, ordered the consolidation of several equipment suppliers into a single firm, and even shut down a medcenter, moving the patients to an institution closer to the factories so they can get back to work more quickly.”
“That’s it?”
“Isn’t that enough? He has met several times with the aides he brought aboard and made several calls back to his main office on Calcoraan Depot. There’s only one thing he hasn’t done.”
“Slept,” Sloane said. “He doesn’t have the time.”
“He doesn’t have a bed,” Chamas corrected. “The attendants changing his room found the place wrecked. The furniture, smashed.”
“What? When was this?”
“After he came back from the moon—after we piped a second call to him from Baron Danthe. I think our count has a temper.”
Sloane chuckled. She’d heard Vidian had a short fuse—and word back from Cynda was that the Mining Guild chief had found out the hard way. “You got him another room, I hope?”
“We have an ample supply. Don’t worry, it’ll all be put right before our—er, regular captain arrives.”
Thanks for reminding me I’m just a temp, Sloane thought, walking around to her desk. But Chamas’s comment brought her back to what she wanted to know. This next, she wanted to ask cautiously.
“Interesting man, Vidian—and striking that he would choose government service. You said he bought the title. Do you know where he’s from?”
“His biography says Corellia. In the Republic days, he was an engineer for a small design firm that worked for shipbuilders. A cog in a small wheel. His suggested improvements were constantly rejected. Then he was struck with Shilmer’s syndrome—and spent the next five years while it was eating him alive conquering the stock exchanges from a bed.”
“And the firm?”
“As the legend goes”—Chamas said the term derisively—“Vidian’s first act on regaining mobility was buying the company and putting everyone on the street. But I don’t even know what firm it was. There were confidentiality provisions to the severance packages. He doesn’t want anyone he’s burned sniping at him, ruining sales of his next management holo.”
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