Then again, if they were paid more, they’d just drink more—and that seemed to make them all the worse.
The encounter was just one more headache in a day filled with them. After Hetto’s arrest, the remaining surveillance staffers at Transcept had worked their overtime in silence, everyone afraid to say anything. Every operator’s background was potentially under review, if the Imperial lieutenant was to be believed. Zaluna had hoped that finding the suspect Skelly again would make up for the Mynocks’ not having flagged him for capture earlier—but her hopes fell when she learned that Skelly had escaped from Moonglow’s offices before the stormtroopers could arrive.
At least no one suspected the Mynocks of signaling him. The factory supervisor had spent an hour defending her security team from the stormtroopers’ insults. Still, Zaluna expected difficult days ahead for everyone at the Transcept office.
And even if nothing happened, a job she’d enjoyed working at would never be fun again.
It was a strange thing. So many people on Gorse lived in fear—especially Sullustans and others of smaller stature. Yet working with the Mynocks, she’d felt somewhat immune. There was safety in isolation, security in having information. Yes, her kind of work did have the potential to create problems for others. But she’d suppressed any consideration of that on the grounds that so many of the people she eavesdropped on were bad characters, likely to hassle a poor workingwoman on a darkened street.
But.
Increasingly, there had been fewer and fewer roughnecks being targeted for snooping, and more and more people like—well, like Hetto. And now Hetto himself, who faced an unknown fate. It hadn’t made sense to anyone on the work floor. Sure, Hetto had complained about working conditions and pay, but who didn’t? Yes, he’d thought what the Empire had done to the once magnificent caverns of Cynda was an abomination, but that was both old news and a common feeling on Gorse.
But the data cube was another thing—and Zaluna now knew it was the reason he’d been targeted. When the shift ended, she’d fled home to see what it was Hetto had given her. He hadn’t given her permission to read what was on the data cube, but it wouldn’t be her first time to pry—and she had no intention of passing something along to this “Hera” person without checking it out first.
She’d used a reader she’d first owned as a teenager, safely detached from the HoloNet—and studied the contents of the data cube in her closet for good measure. The contents were encrypted using a commercial program, but Zaluna had worked several years in electronic data collection and soon found her way past the protections.
She was amazed at what she discovered. Somehow, Hetto had managed to download the files Transcept kept on everyone it had ever watched on Gorse and its moon, from way back in the Republic era to the present.
She thought for a moment this “Hera” might be from a rival surveillance firm. Corporate espionage—spying on the spies for profit. Hetto, always broke, could have been hoping for a payoff. She didn’t want any part of a transaction like that. But thinking on it, she realized Transcept sold data to its competitors all the time, and sometimes on a massive scale. This act didn’t seem necessary.
Looking more closely at it, Zaluna realized that the bounty of personal information on the data cube wasn’t the important part. Its existence served as a guide to the state of the art in surveillance means. Every image, every voice recording, every bioscan, every electronic communication tied to names in the files was tagged with information describing how it had been obtained. With it, a reader knew the location of every surveillance point on Transcept’s local grid.
Who would need something like that?
Maybe it was another Skelly, some crank or mad bomber looking to know the Empire’s capabilities, in order to create more mischief. She wouldn’t want to be a part of that.
But Hetto wasn’t that kind of person. And that suggested someone else who might want it: someone who cared about what the Empire was doing to the people of Gorse.
Someone who cared as much as Zaluna did.
If there was a chance “Hera” was of that sort, it was worth a conversation, no matter what the danger to Zaluna. One conversation, no more; she had no desire to end up like him. But Hetto deserved that much.
It had to be done in secret, though—and that was why her destination bewildered her. “The Asteroid Belt?” She hadn’t set foot in a cantina in thirty years, but she’d seen enough video to wonder why anyone would ever consider one a place for a surreptitious meeting. So many eyes! So many ears! Not to mention the sensory organs of natures she’d never imagined, belonging to all the other species that frequented cantinas.
Running on adrenaline, she’d unpacked all her devices from the training programs she’d been through years earlier, when she’d learned best practices for placing hidden cams and mikes, and for locating existing ones for repair based on their subspace emissions. Detecting them before they detected her: That would be her edge, she thought.
She saw the sign up ahead. There was no sense waiting outside any longer. “Hetto, you poor reckless soul, this is for you.” She drew the cloak tightly around her and stepped toward the building.
The broken-toothed miner spotted Kanan as soon as the pilot stomped into The Asteroid Belt. “I’ve been lookin’ for you,” the burly man snarled. “We still got a fight from last night to finish!”
Bruised and dirtied from the Shaketown episode, Kanan started to walk right by. Then his gloved hands shot out, grabbing the miner by the scruff of his hairy neck. Kanan yanked hard, bringing the man’s face down with a smash onto an adjacent table, knocking cards and credits from the sabacc game there astray. The startled card players watched in amazement as Kanan pulled the dazed man off their table—and then climbed on top of it himself.
“Now hear this,” he yelled to the dozens of patrons crowding the big cantina. “I have had enough of today. Anyone who hassles me goes to the medcenter.”
“The Empire closed the medcenter!” someone yelled.
“Correction: Anyone who hassles me goes to the morgue. That is all.” In a single swift motion, he reached down for the mug of ale by his feet—the one that had belonged to the guy on the floor. He drank the contents in one swig and stepped down from the table.
From his regular station behind the bar, old Okadiah eyed him. “You astound, Kanan. You look as though you’ve been through a bar fight, and yet I could swear you just arrived a minute ago.”
“That’s because I was in a bar fight,” Kanan said, rubbing his jaw. “Philo’s Fueling Station, over in Shaketown.”
“But that’s not supposed to reopen for three months.”
“It’ll be a little longer,” Kanan said, reaching over the counter to grab a bottle.
“Hmm.” Okadiah shined a glass. “One can only surmise the involvement of a woman.”
“Add stupidity and mix well,” Kanan said. “But what a woman. She was wearing a hood when I first saw her. But her eyes are amazing. And she’s got moves. I’m telling you, Oke, if she were to walk in here right now—”
“I think you have your wish!” Okadiah said, pointing.
“Huh?” Kanan looked behind him, expectantly. Peering in through the partially opened door was a Sullustan woman in a rose-colored poncho. Clutching a little blue bag in her hands, she cautiously peeked this way and that.
“Hood, check. Eyes, check,” Okadiah said, smirking. “But I’m not sure I’ll ever understand your type.”
The woman slipped inside. The door slammed noisily behind her, startling her for just an instant. But she quickly made her way to a table in the corner—and then another, and then another, working her way across the room as if she were trying to avoid being seen by someone that only she saw.
Kanan watched, puzzled. “What do you make of that?”
“Perhaps the tax agent’s in town,” Okadiah said.
Finally arriving near the bar, the Sullustan woman looked in three different directions. Then she bolted across th
e space, arriving next to the seat at the far end of the counter, near Kanan.
Okadiah bowed. “Welcome to my establishment, young lady. My friend here is a great admirer.”
Kanan glared at Okadiah. “It’s not her, you imbecile!”
Okadiah smiled. “Can we help you with something?”
Her big eyes looked up at Kanan—and her intense expression softened a little, as if with recognition. “There is something. The bar. Would you mind if I went to the other side of it?”
Kanan goggled. “You want to sit on the barkeep’s side of the bar?”
“Kanan does it all the time,” Okadiah said. “He sleeps there, too.”
“Lady,” Kanan said, “there are no stools on that side.”
“That’s okay,” the woman replied, her eyes scanning the ceiling. “I don’t want a chair. I want to sit on the floor.”
Kanan and Okadiah looked across the bar at each other, puzzled. Then they both shrugged—and the woman darted around the opening and behind the bar. Kanan saw her disappear.
“I hate to miss anything,” Okadiah said, “but a host must entertain. Jarrus, lad, hold the fort.” He pitched his towel to Kanan and bowed to the huddled woman. “Let’s talk again sometime,” he said, exiting from behind the counter.
Kanan grabbed Okadiah’s shirt as he passed. “This is weird. What am I supposed to say to her?”
“You’ll be back there with all the booze. Offer her a drink. Or have one yourself.”
Kanan weighed the facts and realized his friend had made an excellent suggestion. Hoisting his body onto the bar, he deposited himself on the other side of the counter. There, he saw the Sullustan woman sitting on the floor, leaning back with her head and shoulders inside the cabinet beneath the sink.
“Hey! What are you doing in there?”
“It’ll be just a second,” she called out.
Kanan waited. Perhaps she had a lifelong ambition to be a plumber.
She peeked out. “Excuse me. Can you hand me the cutter in my bag?”
Stupefied, Kanan did as he was asked. The little bag was packed to overflowing with electronic gadgets.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the tool. A few seconds later, she emerged with a look of satisfaction. “There. Taken care of.”
Kanan offered his hand to help her up. “What did you do?”
“Neutralized the surveillance cams in here,” she said, getting to her feet. “Thanks for the help.”
“There are cams in here?”
“There are cams everywhere,” the woman said, brushing herself off. Seeming much more at ease, she removed her poncho, revealing a dark-colored outfit. “That’s what I was doing when I came in—moving between the blind spots. I figured Transcept hid the transmitter relay behind the bar. That’s a favorite spot for cantinas—no one ever wants to clean under the sink.” She put her tool back in her bag. “I cut the power to the whole system.”
Kanan looked around the room. He still couldn’t see where the cams were.
“Don’t worry—I made it look as if a rodent chewed into the works. Happens all the time. Someone pretending to be an ale distributor will be by next week to repair everything.”
“If you say so.” Kanan took a deep breath, wondering if he’d ever done anything other than get soused in the place. Knowing he hadn’t, he shook off the paranoia. “How do you know this, Zaluna?”
She stared at him, suddenly serious again. Big eyes got even wider. “How—how do you know my name?”
“It’s on your name badge, there,” Kanan said, pointing.
The woman looked at him—and then down at the official badge clipped to her work clothes. “Oh,” she said, disgusted, ripping the tag off and putting it in her bag. “I guess I’m not very good at this.”
“At what?”
Regaining her composure, Zaluna glanced at Kanan and smiled primly. “I am just another customer visiting a cantina. You should pay me no mind.”
“Okay,” Kanan said, turning away to the bottles.
“But I could use a little more help.”
Kanan looked over his shoulder. “Look, ma’am, I’ve had a long day. I’m really not in the mood to help anyone.”
“But you will.” Zaluna leaned against the bar and smiled gently. “I know you. I’ve seen you working—on Cynda.”
“How? I haven’t seen you there.”
Zaluna didn’t explain. “You help people. I’ve seen you do it before. And I saw you saving your friend from Count Vidian today.”
“You saw me?”
Zaluna didn’t elaborate. But she smiled, a little ashamed of what she’d revealed. “That’s one of the rare pleasures of my world. You spend all your time watching for bad people, and you want to forget what you see. But the good ones, those you remember.”
Kanan stared. None of what Zaluna was saying made sense. The woman, he now realized, reminded him of Jocasta Nu, the Jedi librarian. They didn’t look anything alike, of course. But Jocasta always seemed to know everything, and acted like knowing everything was nothing. That was definitely in this woman’s manner.
“What do you want help with?”
Zaluna looked into the teeming crowd. “I’m supposed to meet someone, but I don’t know what they look like.”
“You don’t know what everyone looks like?”
“Not this time. And I need to keep a low profile. Can you look for me?”
Kanan looked down and put his hands before him. “Zaluna, I don’t know who you are or who you think I am—but you do not know me. I do not go around randomly helping people!”
“That’s not what I’ve heard about you,” came a voice from the far end of the bar. The voice.
Kanan decided to play it cool, as he turned. They always seek you out, brother. “Hey there, Hera,” he said, smiling confidently. “What can I get you?”
The Jedi Order was more than an unpaid police force, more than just an exercise club that was into metaphysics. It was a way of life, based on the Jedi Code—and a lot of rules for living that weren’t in the Code, that had been tacked on later. One was that Jedi avoided becoming involved in romantic relationships. Once on the run, Kanan Jarrus had found that rule pretty easy to forget about.
Hera’s visit here, now, wasn’t any kind of date—but she was a lovely woman wanting a private conversation, and from his earlier experiences he knew just the spot. The Asteroid Belt had a nice, secluded table in the back where the light was just right and where you were out of the stumbling line of the drunks and the brawlers.
But never in his past visits to the table had he brought along a short, gray chaperone—and Zaluna was talking more with Hera than he was. After being sent to the bar for something for the third time by Hera, Kanan had started to suspect that the Twi’lek really had come here looking for Zaluna after all, and not him.
The two were chatting closely when Kanan returned to the table with the coasters Hera had requested. It was time to step things up. “You can stop talking about how much you miss me, ladies—I’m back!”
“Great,” Hera said, in a tone that, for the first time, wasn’t music to Kanan’s ears. She seemed annoyed at having been interrupted, but he wasn’t going to let that deter him.
Looking down, he saw that the chair he’d been sitting in was pushed well away from the table, out into the aisle. Hera’s foot had pushed it there, he realized. So much for gratitude over being saved. “Standing room only tonight,” he said, grabbing the chair and chuckling. “Good thing nobody else grabbed this.”
“Good thing,” Hera repeated.
Kanan spun the chair around backward and straddled it as he sat down, putting his chest against the back of the chair and crossing his arms over the top of it—a move intended to bring him fully into the conversation. “So what’d I miss?”
Hera looked at him with impatience—until Zaluna reached out and touched her hand. “I think you can trust him. I’ve watched him longer than you have. He helps people—though he makes a s
how of doing otherwise. He stood up to Vidian just today.”
“I saw,” Hera said.
“You did?” Kanan asked, slack-jawed.
Hera seemed to fret. “It’s still not smart. You protect secrets by keeping the circle small.”
“And you protect yourself by having a witness,” Zaluna said. “I’ve been a professional witness my whole life. If we’re really going to discuss this, I’d like one now.” She regarded Kanan. “He’ll do.”
Kanan slumped in his chair and shrugged. “I’ll do.” What’s going on here?
Hera seemed to reach a decision. She leaned across the table, her hands clasped together. “All right. I’d come here to meet this guy I met on the HoloNet—”
“Oh, well, there’s your first mistake,” Kanan proclaimed. “I could have told you—”
But before he could finish his sentence, Hera flashed Kanan a smile that was only slightly patronizing. “Can it wait?”
Mildly chastened, Kanan shut his mouth.
“I was looking for a man named Hetto. He and Zaluna both work for a company with a surveillance contract for the Empire. Hetto had grown worried about what he saw as abuses of authority—and he had already been in contact with other … concerned parties.”
Kanan could tell from the way Hera pronounced the words that she didn’t want to elaborate too much about that. But she did say that it was Hetto she was supposed to have met until his arrest changed that.
“He was arrested for trying to meet you,” Zaluna said, shaking her head.
“It wasn’t just that,” Hera said, sounding soothing. “You know that. Hetto was aware, Zaluna. Awake to all the things the Empire is doing. This meeting? It was him reaching out, trying to do something. You were brave to take it on yourself, to finish what he started.”
“I’m not brave,” Zaluna said, her voice a little shaky. “I’m an old fool. I remember too much. I remember how it was—and how it got worse, even before the Empire. I remember when people didn’t kill guildmasters on a whim and walk away without a thought.” Her black eyes glistened. “And I remember when my people were safe. Those employees of mine are my children, and now one of them’s in deep trouble.” She focused on Hera. “Will they kill Hetto?”
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