Sloane knew Vidian didn’t need the money, but she didn’t have any problem with his rationale. A little revenge did wonders for the healing process. It was also a human thing—and there weren’t many human things about Vidian.
“If he’s from Corellia,” she said, “he’s probably connected in the shipbuilding sector—and the Admiralty.”
It was halfway between the question she’d intended, and the matter-of-fact observation she’d wanted it to sound like. But Chamas was too sly, catching her drift immediately. “In other words,” he said with a smile, “can he make your posting here permanent—perhaps by giving Captain Karlsen a cushy job at one of his subsidiaries? Please, ask him for one for me, while you’re at it.”
Caught, Sloane simply stared. “What’s tomorrow like?”
Chamas passed her his datapad showing the stops on Vidian’s planned tour of Gorse. It sounded like an exhausting day.
She was struck curious by the first name on the list. “Moonglow. Why start with this little one?”
“They apparently captured—and lost—the fugitive from Cynda a few hours ago.”
“That’ll go over well for them,” Sloane said, passing back the datapad. She swiveled her chair to look again out the window at the ships heading down to Gorse. Her brow furrowed as she tried to take it all in.
“So while he’s on his world tour, we play traffic officer,” Chamas said, standing. “Keeping the rabble back while Vidian adds to his folktale. We should demand part of the royalties on his next holo.”
Sloane smiled inwardly. She only wanted a supporting role. It was her job to help the Empire; helping to find Ultimatum’s rightful captain a different ship would be a nice bonus.
Stormtroopers had ransacked his apartment hours earlier. That, Skelly thought without the least amusement, officially represented the first attention the Empire had ever paid to the homes in Crispus Commons.
Crispus was a project for homeless Clone Wars veterans in the sector, an idea hatched in the final days of the Republic. The Empire had kept it going, shipping in new residents from time to time without ever adding to or improving on the complex. Skelly thought it spoke volumes about what the Republic and Empire really thought about those who’d fought against the Separatists. Let’s stick them where the sun doesn’t shine.
Skelly had stayed in the dilapidated apartment partly because it was sandwiched between Gorse City’s industrial districts. That way, no matter who fired him, his commute never got any longer. But the other reason he stayed was the rusted grating behind the complex’s trash bin at the far end of the rectangular exercise yard—and what lay beneath.
Certain no one outside had seen his approach, he slipped behind the bin and into the hole. He closed the grille above him. Passing through an improvised curtain, he fished for the power switch. A crackle or two later, the darkness around Skelly turned red, lit by computer monitors and a single weak overhead lamp.
It had been intended as a bomb shelter, built by the Republic as part of the Crispus project in the unlikely event Count Dooku or General Grievous took a sudden interest in destroying a retirement colony. Its permacrete walls had been a moldy mess when Skelly found the place. But he liked that it had its own generator, and the presence of a giant garbage bin in front of the grating meant he could enter and depart without anyone seeing.
All Skelly’s computers were built from kits, making them safe from slicing by the powers that be, corporate or government. Only one machine was attached to the HoloNet grid, and that through a connection hijacked from an Ithorian lunch wagon that parked daily on the other side of the quad. By selecting an intermediary that was mobile and garaged somewhere else, Skelly had cut down on prying eyes and ears.
Everywhere but at work. Skelly had known some of the corporations working on Cynda had installed surveillance equipment, but he’d assumed that was just to keep an eye on productivity—and to prevent the theft of explosive material, which had once been a problem. Evidently, they were now listening in on individual conversations there, too. It was insane. Deaf to his appeals about safety, but nosing in on everything else!
Skelly quickly ate a meager meal of tinned food paste before collapsing, exhausted, on a mat on the floor. This room had been his world, his real world, for years. Boards mounted on one wall were covered with hand-scrawled notes about the military industrial complex, and the intricate network of who owned what. A second wall was home to his studies into the history of galactic conflicts; the sides kept changing, but the stories were always the same. Whenever titans fought, the peons did the dying.
The biggest collection of notes, however, was on the wall facing him now. Apart from the curtained opening that led to a little closet, every square centimeter was festooned with notes about Cynda and its geologic structure. Seeing it all made his gut hurt. Skelly had long feared a day like this would be necessary: a day when he’d have to risk everything to get someone’s attention. But he’d been deciding things on the fly, and he worried he’d already blown it.
He’d run here from Moonglow’s grounds without thinking, after a spur-of-the-moment promise from someone he’d never met—and had in all likelihood ruined his chance to talk to Count Vidian. He still didn’t know why he’d fled. Yes, it was natural to fear being taken anywhere by stormtroopers; the Empire’s foot soldiers had a bad habit of damaging prisoners in transit. And everyone had misread his attempt to educate them as sabotage. But Vidian was still his best chance, the only one with the authority to effect change. Would Vidian leave Gorse without talking to him? Would Vidian see him at all, now that he’d run?
Staring at his collected writings from his spot on the floor, Skelly let out a low moan. “Nobody listens.”
“What do you want to say?”
Skelly looked up, startled, to see the cloaked figure that had rescued him. She removed her cowl. “You’re her!”
“Hera,” the Twi’lek corrected. “Let’s talk.”
Skelly sat up, alarmed. “How did you find me?”
Hera patted her own shoulder. “If you’ll look in the utility pocket on your left shoulder, you’ll find a tracking device that I slipped in when I was cutting you loose.” She smiled. “I did tell you I would find you.”
Skelly reached for his pocket and discovered a small chip. He stared at her angrily. “I don’t like people spying on me.”
“You’re in the wrong system, then.” Hera simply opened her gloved hand. “I’ll take that. Thanks.”
“You said my name,” he said, suspicious. “How do you know me?”
“You’ve gotten a lot of people’s attention today. I heard about what you did on Cynda. You know—the blast, while the Emperor’s envoy was there.” She paused, stopping to take in the many notes about the Empire on the wall to her left. “I’m interested to hear your reasons for doing what you did.”
Frowning, Skelly stood up. “And why do you care?”
“I’m just … interested,” Hera said.
Seeing her reading his notes, the redheaded human interposed himself between her and the wall. “Look, don’t read my stuff. I don’t know you, lady. I don’t know that telling you will help anything!”
Hera looked to her right—and saw the other wall and its writings about Cynda. A glint appeared in her dark eyes. “Would you tell me … if I was a reporter for the Environmental Action Gazette?”
Skelly goggled. “I thought that had shut down!”
“Just retooling,” Hera said. “You can be part of the big relaunch.”
Skelly studied her. He’d never been in that HoloNet publication’s audience, but it had come up several times in his research. It had put a stop to a number of bad business practices in the past.
“Come on,” she said, pulling a datapad from her cloak. “I did let you go.”
Skelly took a deep breath—and made a decision. “Okay.”
He rushed to his wall and pointed to one diagram after another, laying out his theories. Severing a few crystalline stal
actites and stalagmites was fine; those were the mere outgrowths of the physical structures that held Cynda together. It was like giving the moon a haircut. But using explosives to break into new chambers was more akin to breaking bone.
“Every chamber they discover has more thorilide than the one before,” Skelly said. “And that makes them use more juice to get into the next one.”
“And that causes collapses that harm workers.” Hera nodded, making notes on her datapad. “While ruining a beautiful natural setting.”
“Now you’ve got it!” Triumphant, Skelly jabbed his fist to the low ceiling.
“Okay,” Hera said mildly.
Skelly’s face froze. “Okay?”
She smiled gently at him. “This is not big and shocking news, Skelly,” she said kindly, returning the datapad to its place. “The Empire hurts workers and ruins things. It does that all the time, everywhere.”
“So?”
“You have a problem, like a billion other people in the galaxy. One day, we’ll all do something about it. This is good to know, and I feel for everyone involved. But I’m not sure the time is right to do much about it.”
Skelly was alarmed. “You’re not going to publish—after all this? What kind of deal is this? I thought you were a journalist!”
The woman took a step back—clearly not fearing him, but simply giving him space to rave. “I’m really more gathering information right now, Skelly. Preparing for …” She trailed off, then nodded toward the wall with his notes about Cynda. “What you’ve described is bad, but it’s not exactly world-shattering.”
“Oh, yes, it is!” Skelly whipped the holodisk out of his vest pocket and held it between his left thumb and forefinger. “Because I believe that if the Empire keeps up, they could blow the whole moon to bits!”
Hera held up a hand. “Look, forget the hyperbole. How much damage are you talking about?”
“I’m not exaggerating!” Skelly said. Pocketing the holodisk, he turned back to the wall and began riffling through attached notes with his good hand. “The moon’s already brittle. The elliptical orbit means Gorse and the sun are yanking at it all the time. Gorse releases the stress through groundquakes. But all the energy stays pent up on Cynda, because the crystal lattices go so deep—”
“The bottom line, please.”
“Use enough explosives in the right spots, and Cynda could crumble like a senator’s promise.”
Hera stared at him for a moment. Skelly stared back.
“That’s just … beyond belief,” she said, finally. “The power to destroy a body that size? It’s hard to believe something like that exists.”
“It exists. It’s possible. And I’m beginning to think they don’t care.”
Hera walked to the wall and started reading. “These notes are all over the place,” she said. “I can’t make sense of some of it.”
“Trust me,” Skelly said. “I’m an expert.”
“You’re a planetary geologist.”
“No, I build bombs.”
Hera’s lips pursed. “Oh.” She drew the syllable out.
“I know how it sounds,” he said, pulling down notes and wedging them into his frozen right hand. “But it’s true. The mining companies know, because I’ve told them. But they cover it up, because they’re all part of the conspiracy.”
“The conspiracy?”
“The thorilide triangle,” Skelly said, astonished that she hadn’t heard about it. He moved across the room to the other side, with his wall of corporate shame. “The mining firms are corrupt. They’re tied up—ownership, boards of directors—with the shipwrights that have sold the Empire on one construction project after another. Oh, it’s all being done in secret, but you can’t keep everything secret. A billion Star Destroyers isn’t enough. They’re building Super Star Destroyers, and Super Super Star Destroyers, and who knows what else!”
“I see,” Hera said, gingerly taking a step backward. “And how do you know all this?”
“The HoloNet!”
“Oh,” Hera said. “The HoloNet.”
“It’s all one big web, and it goes on forever,” Skelly said, eyes fixing on the far wall. He stepped over to it and began fumbling with notes. “Did you know it was the moneyed interests that started the Clone Wars? There was a battle droid manufacturer that had too much inventory—”
Skelly felt Hera’s eyes upon him, and the air went out of his lungs. He stopped talking. The notes, the clippings, all swam before him, not making sense.
He’d done it again.
“I’m sorry to have troubled you,” he half heard her say. “Good luck.”
Skelly kept facing the wall. “Look, I know what I sound like. I’ve been through … well, I’ve been through a lot of bad things. I get worked up. I don’t always say things right. But what I know—it’s still real.” He took a breath. “I’m not crazy.”
When he turned, she was gone. He could hear light footsteps heading up the ladder. He followed—but saw nothing but the trash bin and the darkened quad all around.
Deflated, Skelly climbed back inside and shut the grate after him.
He sat in silence at the bottom of the pit. His head buzzed—and hurt, as it had been hurting for a long time. Skelly’s sleep cycles had been wrong ever since moving to Gorse, and time in Cynda’s always bright caves confused them further. The confusion in the notes still clutched in his malfunctioning hand were one product. But he could still focus to do some things. The data on the holodisk—that, he knew was right. It was his testament, his last chance.
Skelly remembered Vidian’s call to Lal Grallik. The count was coming, yes. And Vidian could still listen, and do the right thing. But he would be bringing the rest of the Empire with him, and they could still do the wrong thing.
Skelly sprang to his feet and reentered his sanctum. Opening the curtain to the closet, he exposed his secret workbench there—and, beneath, in sealed packages, the massive stores of explosive baradium he’d smuggled out over the years. Because of his fears about blasting on Cynda, every time they’d asked him to plant charges to open up a wall, he’d used a little less. He just hadn’t given them back what he didn’t use.
But if they didn’t listen to him now, he’d give it all back. All at once, and so they’d notice.
Yes, he would.
Hera shook her head as she stepped back onto the street.
It had been a calculated risk, freeing Skelly. Her assumption in the detour was that anyone rising up against the Empire, in any way, was worth a look. Some could be helpful. Maybe not yet, but in the movement to come. It was important to know their capabilities.
But Skelly would never be of any use, and so she mentally filed him away with dozens of others she’d met just like him. Political activism drew more than its share of crackpots. Some had been legitimately driven to madness by the forces they were fighting against; some had been damaged by war, as she suspected was the case with Skelly. Some had no excuse. But while such people were always the first to revolt, they almost never led successful revolutions. Action against the Empire would have to be carefully measured—now, especially.
Thus far, Gorse had been a bust. Sunless in more ways than one: Its people wandered robotically between the drudgery of work and the dangers of the streets, sensing neither. Even the human who’d helped her against the street gang—whom she now remembered as the man helping the old-timer on Cynda—might easily fit a ready template: the gadabout, looking for a brawl. That would be disappointing, if so, but not surprising: Like everyone else on Gorse, he was trapped in a role the Empire wanted for him. He’d never be a threat. It was too bad: He seemed to know what he was doing in a fight.
But Hera put him out of her mind. Skelly was the side trip; the real goods lay ahead. And she would find them at the establishment whose unsubtle advertisement appeared on her datapad:
The Asteroid Belt
The Pits, Gorse City • Okadiah Garson, prop.
Open all nite
C
ome in and get belted
“Hey, lady! I’m talkin’ to you!”
The big bruiser was talking to Zaluna, for no one else was on the street. But she’d chosen to keep going—until he kept after her. Just steps behind her, he yelled again. “I said, I’m talking to you!”
“No, you aren’t,” she said, continuing to walk through the mud. “If you were talking to me, you’d use my real name.”
Picking up his pace, the drunk laughed. “How’m I supposed to know who you are?”
“Precisely!” Zaluna spun and looked keenly at him from beneath her light hood. “Then you have no reason to talk to me, Ketticus Brayl. Go home to your wife and children.”
Face lit by moonlight, the behemoth blanched. “Wait. How do you know who I am?”
“That’s not important,” she said, right hand disappearing in the long, loose sleeve of her poncho—the lightest garment she owned that would conceal her features. “What’s important is that you will leave me alone.”
Brayl guffawed. “And if I don’t?”
“Then you’ll have a talk with this.” Her right hand reappeared from within the sleeve, holding a slim blaster. “Are we through?”
The drunk goggled at the weapon’s sudden appearance. Then he turned away, staggering off into the steamy night. Resuming her journey, Zaluna put the blaster back in its hiding place, glad no one knew it hadn’t been fired in the thirty-three years since her mother had left it to her.
It wasn’t true that she knew everyone on Gorse and Cynda by sight, of course—but nearly a third of a century of surveillance had put a lot of troublemakers on her watchlists. And many of them seemed to wind up down here, in The Pits. Some miners acted as if the neighborhood, settled to be close to the old quarries, was a decent place to live now that the strip mining had long since ended. Perhaps for them, it was. But in her experience, roustabouts were trouble waiting to happen. She’d monitored too many bar fights in The Pits, watched dozens of people being shaken down on the streets for money or sport. Whatever the firms paid the miners, it wasn’t enough to keep some of them from hassling good folks for cash.
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