by Timothy Zahn
Six bolts blazed through the air at him before he hit the ground amid a crunch and flurry of dead leaves. He bent his knees to absorb the impact, holding that crouching pose as his assailant continued to fire. Through the blaze of red blasterfire against blue lightsaber blade he had a clear view of the face beneath the hood.
Only it wasn’t a living face. It was a metal one.
A droid.
His battle-focused brain had only just registered that fact when the droid abruptly twisted and toppled over as its right leg disintegrated beneath it. The blaster fired one final bolt at Anakin’s torso—
And the droid spasmed as Anakin sent the shot straight back into one of its photoreceptor eyes. Two more twitches, the death gaspings of a fatally damaged electronic brain, and the droid lay still.
Slowly, Anakin straightened up, his eyes on the droid. He’d seen them fake shutdowns before. But no, this one was finished. He glanced around, noted that Thrawn had emerged from cover and was walking stiffly toward him. Lying next to one of the parked ships was another hooded figure, this one human, his arms locked behind him, making small movements of pain or frustration. One last 360-degree check for threats and Anakin closed down his lightsaber. “Is that him?” he asked, nodding toward the twitching man.
“It is,” Thrawn said, coming to a stop beside him. “Interesting flight maneuver.”
“There’s a lot of improvisation in warfare,” Anakin said. He nudged the droid with his foot. “What’s his story?”
“I succeeded in arriving before our quarry,” Thrawn said. “As you anticipated, he was returning to his ship to report. Once it was clear which ship was his goal, I intercepted and neutralized him.” He gently touched a fresh burn on his chest. “I didn’t expect such an adversary to be waiting inside.”
“Consider yourself lucky it was just a general-service droid instead of a full-blown assassin,” Anakin said grimly. “They’re a lot nastier.”
“If we find ourselves facing one of those in the future, I’ll permit you to take the lead,” Thrawn promised.
Anakin sent him a sideways look. Had that been actual humor? “It’s a deal,” he agreed. “Let’s go see what we’ve got.”
The ship wasn’t a style or model Anakin was familiar with. But it had a definite Techno Union feel about it. The hatch was locked, but a few seconds of lightsaber work solved that problem.
And once inside…
“It’s a Separatist ship, all right,” Anakin said, looking around. “The equipment, the markings, even the controls. There’s no doubt.” He hissed between his teeth. “The question is, what are they doing way out here?
“The layout appears to be that of a freighter,” Thrawn pointed out. “Perhaps the cargo will give us a clue to their purpose.”
“In a minute,” Anakin said, pulling out his comlink. “Artoo? You there?”
There was a disgusted-sounding grunt, followed by a long and unhappy account of his current situation. “I’m sure you did everything you could,” Anakin soothed him. “Do you need my help getting down?”
There was another emphatic grunt. “Okay, then,” Anakin said. “We need you at the landing field. We’re in the gray ship with—look, just go to the downed droid and turn left.”
He keyed off. “Is your droid all right?” Thrawn asked.
“He’s fine,” Anakin assured him. “But my fighter is sitting about five meters off the ground, wedged vertically between three trees. Not sure how I’m going to get it out without setting the forest on fire. Anyway, Artoo’s fine and he’s on his way. Once he’s here, we can check the computer and see if they still have the coordinates of their last stop.”
“We shall see,” Thrawn said. “While we wait, shall we look at the cargo?”
“Sure,” Anakin said, getting a fresh grip on his lightsaber. There might be more droids lurking back there. “Follow me.”
“I’m coming into Batuu now,” Padmé said into her ship’s recorder as the sunlit ground began to rise around her. “I’ll signal you once I’ve found Duja.”
She hesitated. Should she add I love you?
Probably not. Aside from the chance that someone else might be around when Anakin listened to the message, this was going through an untested public relay service instead of the usual HoloNet. No telling what they might do before sending it on.
Shutting down the recorder, she keyed for transmission. The display indicated that it had been received by the service and—hopefully—sent on its way.
Whether it was or not, there was nothing more she could do about it. Time to find Duja and see what her former handmaiden had learned that was so important.
Hopefully, the information wouldn’t already have been preempted by events. The trip here had taken longer than Padmé had expected, with her nav computer’s database proving sufficiently out of date to make its proposed courses unsafe. She’d had to plot new segments twice, and at both times she’d wished she’d taken Anakin up on his offer to use Jedi resources to work out her travel arrangements.
But at least he’d be here much faster once she knew what was going on. Keying her comm to Duja’s frequency, she leaned toward the cockpit microphone. “Duja, it’s Padmé,” she called. “I’m here.”
No answer. “Duja?” she called again. “Duja, come in please.”
Nothing. Not even a carrier or transponder echo.
She frowned, the first stirrings of concern starting to twist their way through her stomach. Duja was one of the best, both at intel and combat. If someone had managed to take her out…
She took a deep breath. Okay. Duja wasn’t answering, but that didn’t necessarily mean something terrible had happened. Odds were she was simply away from her ship, with her comm turned off for a perfectly good reason. The outpost Duja had specified—Black Spire—wasn’t all that big. It shouldn’t take more than an hour or two for Padmé to have a look around.
The landing field was small, not all that surprising given the size of the outpost itself. But there were only a pair of midsized freighters parked near the middle, leaving plenty of room for her to put down. She did so, picking a spot as far from the other ships as she reasonably could, and shut everything down to standby. Putting on a light-green jacket with a subtle brown brocade running from left shoulder to right waist—the outside sensors said it was a bit nippy out there—and tucking her blaster out of sight beneath it, she cycled the hatch and stepped out.
She had finished getting her BARC speeder bike out of the aft hull storage locker when she heard a voice call to her in an unknown language.
She turned. A lumpy nonhuman of a species she didn’t recognize was crouching at the bottom of the nearest freighter’s landing ramp. “Excuse me?” she called back.
“He was complimenting you on your magnificent ship,” a human called from the top of the ramp. “Excuse us, but your Basic is nor my language.”
“That’s all right,” Padmé called back, suppressing a knowing smile. Liar. He was trying hard—a little too hard, actually—to pretend he was struggling with a second language. But the Basic words and syntax were coming just a little too easily and smoothly.
“What are?” the man asked. “I mean, what species?”
“Species?” Padmé asked. “Oh—you mean the model. It’s an H-type Nubian yacht. Tell me, do you know someone named Kuseph Jovi?”
“I know nothing of that name,” the man said. “Are you here to meet her?”
A quiet warning bell went off in the back of Padmé’s mind. Why would he assume that the name she’d rattled off was that of a woman?
Unless there was already an unknown woman in Black Spire who’d caught their attention.
“To meet him,” she corrected. “I’m here to deliver his new ship.”
“Really,” the man said, eyeing the ship as he walked down the ramp. There was a lump at his si
de that probably indicated a hidden blaster. “Nice. What did he pay for it?”
“No idea,” Padmé said. “I’m just a courier. Any idea who might know where I can find him? The ship that’s picking me up could be here anytime, and I want to finish the transaction so I can go home.”
“There’s a cantina in the middle of town,” the man said, pointing down a ragged-edged corridor that had been cut through the trees and undergrowth toward the outpost itself. “If he’s here, someone there will know him.”
“Thank you,” Padmé said. Climbing onto her speeder bike, she turned toward the corridor and headed in.
She could feel the man’s eyes on her as she left the field.
She’d expected Black Spire to be like all the rest of the tiny frontier outposts she’d seen in her travels: carved out of the wilderness, with houses and shops laid out in a more or less orderly fashion along the major streets—though the term major was usually granting them more status than they deserved—and other buildings arranged haphazardly wherever their builders had felt like putting them.
But this town had a twist. There were ruins here, ancient ruins of some long-gone civilization, bordering the colonists’ town. A few of the buildings were completely or partially within shells of the older structures, while one or two others nestled against them as if for warmth or protection.
Even more intriguing, the black towers she’d seen on her way in, obviously the source of the outpost’s name, weren’t structures or towers, but the petrified remains of trees, scattered like sentinels throughout the town and the region around it. The whole place struck her as beautiful, mysterious, and a little bit sad.
But the populace, at least, conformed completely to Padmé’s expectations. Pedestrians and a few vehicles moved between the buildings, everyone pausing to give Padmé a quick or furtive once-over as she passed. Genuine strangers were apparently rare here.
Either that, or Duja had stirred up more attention than she’d probably wanted.
At the intersection of the two main streets was the cantina the man had mentioned. There was a strange wooden platform off to one side: waist-high, about two meters long, with some kind of yellowish strawlike decoration poking up around all the edges. Probably where the locals gathered for speeches, lectures, or just the general haranguing of their fellow citizens, she decided. There were two other vehicles parked at the other side of the entrance, and she guided her BARC to a spot beside them.
And as she walked toward the cantina door she got her first real look at the platform.
It wasn’t a platform at all, but a box about fifty centimeters deep. The strawlike decoration was in fact actual straw, forming a mat at the box’s bottom and lining the sides.
Lying on the straw was a body.
It wasn’t a political dais like Padmé had thought. It was, instead, an open-topped coffin, possibly being prepared for a funeral pyre.
Duja’s funeral pyre.
Padmé had trained long and hard to keep reactions and emotions out of her face and body when she needed to. But even all that practice nearly proved inadequate. She was barely able to maintain an expression of idle curiosity as she stepped over and peered into the coffin.
Duja had been through the crusher, all right. Her face was battered and bruised in several places, and there were small stains on her clothing where blood had seeped through. The amateurishly handmade brooch she always wore seemed undamaged, and her chrono and data card pack were undisturbed. Not a robbery, then, but a cold-blooded attack.
One thing was sure: If she’d fallen to violence, she hadn’t gone down without a fight.
That one quick glance was all she dared for the moment. But she would be back. Turning away, she pushed open the cantina door and went inside.
Given that it wasn’t yet local noon she wasn’t expecting much of a crowd. She was right. Apart from her and the bartender, there were only three others in the room: two humans and another of the lumpy aliens like the one at the landing field. “You here for a drink?” the bartender called. “Or to pick up your friend?”
“My friend?” Padmé echoed, putting puzzlement into her face and voice.
The bartender pointed through the wall toward the coffin. “The lady out there.”
“The—? Oh. No, not at all,” Padmé assured him. “I’m looking for a man named Kuseph Jovi. Do you know him?”
It was the bartender’s turn to look puzzled. “No one here by that name,” he said. “You sure you got the right place?”
“This is the spot where he said to bring his new ship,” Padmé said, walking over to the bar. “I suppose he could be coming from offplanet, though why he’d pick a spot like this for the transfer I couldn’t guess. No offense,” she added.
“None taken,” the bartender assured her sourly. “Not exactly New Codia, is it?”
“Not really,” Padmé agreed, wondering distantly whether New Codia was a system, a planet, or even just a city. There were so many small and forgotten places across the galaxy. “What do you have here?”
“What do you want?” the bartender countered. “We’ve got Batuu Brew, Black Spire Brew, Blurrgfire, Toniray White, Andoan White, Moogan Tea—with or without alco—” He rattled off another half a dozen drinks, none of which Padmé had ever heard of. Local favorites, probably. She picked the Andoan White and watched as he selected a bottle and poured a few centimeters into a small obsidian mug. “So what’s her story?” she asked as the bartender set the mug down on the bar and accepted a five-credit coin in exchange. “The lady in the box, I mean? What happened to her?”
The bartender shrugged. “Don’t really know. Some men from one of the trading ships brought her in a few days ago—said they saw her try to take a corner too fast out in the forest and flipped her speeder bike on top of her. She was already dead when they got to her, so they brought her here hoping someone in town knew who she was.” He shrugged again. “No one did, so we decided to give it a few days to see if anyone came looking for her. Not good to lose someone and never find out what happened.”
“No, it’s not,” Padmé said, taking a sip of her drink. The story was ridiculous—Duja was one of the best speeder riders she’d ever seen. More likely she’d been poking around a suspicious ship, had been caught and tried to escape, and had either been hunted to ground or else forced into the accident they claimed had killed her.
Which would have left them with a huge problem.
Duja was smart enough not to carry any kind of genuine identification with her. As a result, her killers had no idea who she was, where she’d come from, or whether she had backup waiting for her. And they desperately needed answers to those questions.
So after pawing through her data cards without finding anything useful they’d cleaned her up as best they could, brought her to Black Spire, and talked the residents into setting her outside the cantina in the hope of drawing out her contacts.
The big question for Padmé was whether they’d tracked down Duja’s ship and sifted it for its own set of data and secrets. If they had, her investigation was effectively over.
If they hadn’t found it—if Duja had hidden it somewhere out of their reach—there was still a chance of taking them down.
And the more Padmé thought about it, the more the latter scenario seemed the most likely. If the killers had already gotten everything they wanted they probably wouldn’t have bothered to dangle Duja as bait.
“How’s the Andoan?” the bartender asked, the mystery of the dead woman outside apparently already forgotten.
“Good,” Padmé told him. It actually wasn’t bad, certainly not for a local brand. “Do you think anyone would mind if I wrote a song for her?”
“Wrote a—what?” he asked, frowning.
“If I wrote a farewell song,” Padmé said. “It’s the custom of my people to sing the departed on their journey with s
ongs of encouragement and hope.”
“I thought you said you didn’t know her.”
“I don’t,” Padmé said. “But it sounds like no one else here does, either. And truly, it’s the lost strangers who lack encouragement and hope the most.”
The bartender waved a hand. “I suppose. Fine, go ahead. I can’t imagine it bothering anyone.”
Padmé took her time with the job, aware that she was running close numbers but also knowing that making it look rushed and anxious might attract the wrong kind of attention. Half an hour and a second Andoan White later, she was ready.
The bartender kept surreptitious watch on her the whole time, either because he’d been instructed to do so or just out of bored curiosity. As she finished her drink and picked up her datapad he came back to her end of the bar. “So what happens now?” he asked. “You want me to gather some folks to come watch?”
“You can come if you want to,” Padmé said. Not that she wanted an audience, but it would look suspicious if she refused the offer. “But it’s not necessary. I’ll be singing privately to her, so there won’t be anything for anyone to hear.”
The bartender grunted. “Yeah, okay. Gotta get ready for the lunch crowd anyway. Have fun.”
There were a few more people in the streets when she emerged from the bar, all of them going about their own business, most of them barely giving her a cursory glance before continuing on. She moved to the head of the casket, held her datapad over Duja’s body, and began to sing.
She’d had to write the song as if to a stranger. But beneath the vague words and simple tune she could feel her heart breaking at the loss of her friend and onetime bodyguard. Memories came flooding back of the interweaving of their lives, both the good times and the bad, the hopes and dreams and fears they’d shared that were now gone forever. There was the time when Duja helped her decipher an unintelligible communication from an angry ambassador, a potential diplomatic crisis that had been defused when Duja suddenly realized the ambassador simply hadn’t liked the way Padmé pronounced the name of a fellow envoy. There were the late-night conversations, after everyone else had gone to bed, when the two of them talked about the future, and all that they hoped those days would bring.