by Timothy Zahn
None of it would have done them the slightest bit of good. The name on her identity tag was complete fiction, her ship was unregistered, and neither face, prints, nor DNA pattern was recorded in any file or computer or surveillance droid memory anywhere in the Empire. As far as an inquiry would determine, she simply didn’t exist.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw the tapcafe manager walking toward her through the sea of tables and stretched out with the Force for a quick assessment. He was as nervous as ever, but there was a determination that hadn’t been there earlier. Apparently they were finally ready to make their move. “Excuse me, miss?” the manager said tentatively.
Mara looked up at him. “Yes?”
“I’m sorry, but we need this table,” he said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.”
“Oh?” Mara said, looking around. In point of fact the place had gotten more crowded in the past half hour, with nearly all the tables now hosting at least one occupant. However, since most of them appeared to be hired thugs pressed from the same mold as the Birtraub Brothers’ door guards, it didn’t seem a particularly relevant argument.
“I’m afraid so,” the manager said, gesturing toward the bar. On cue, one of the waiters started toward them, balancing a drink on a tray. “One final drink—on the house, of course—and you’ll have to leave.”
The waiter arrived and set the drink in front of her. “I’ve got a better idea,” Mara said, lifting the glass and sniffing once. The odor was well hidden, but her sensory enhancement techniques were more than equal to the challenge. “Instead of trying to drug me,” she went on, giving the liquid a swirl and setting it back onto the table, “why don’t we just go across to the facility and have a chat with the brothers Birtraub?”
The manager blinked. Clearly, this sort of thing wasn’t in his usual job profile. “Ah … I don’t understand.”
“Never mind,” Mara said, looking around the room again. Her eyes settled on a man a couple of tables away, a few years older than the rest of the toughs, with a watchful look in his eyes as he pretended to ignore the conversation. “You,” Mara said, gesturing to him. “Shall we end this nonsense and go see your boss?”
The other smiled in a carefully tailored attempt to show amusement as he glanced over at her, noting her plain gray jumpsuit and lack of weapons. “What makes you think he’d be interested in anything you have to say?” he countered.
“Trust me,” Mara said, letting her expression and tone harden as she looked him straight in the eye.
He hesitated a moment, then gave a small shrug. “As you wish,” he said, rising from his chair and gesturing to the door. “This way.”
Mara stood up and reached for the satchel she’d placed on the seat beside her. The crew leader was quicker, his hand darting forward to grasp the handles. “Allow me,” he said, picking it up.
Mara inclined her head in acknowledgment, and together they crossed the room. As they reached the door two of the bigger thugs silently fell into step behind them.
A long landspeeder was waiting for them at the curb. Mara and the crew leader took the backseat while the two thugs unfolded jump seats across from them. “Master Birtraub’s office,” the crew leader instructed the driver, and they pulled out into the street.
“You have a name?” Mara asked.
His lip quirked. “Pirtonna,” he said. “You?”
“Call me Claria,” Mara said.
“Nice name.” Pirtonna gestured to her satchel, resting on his lap. “May I?”
Mara nodded. All her weapons and other gear were in there, but the more incriminating ones were hidden inside various pieces of electronic equipment, and she doubted Pirtonna would bother with more than a cursory examination until they reached their destination.
He didn’t. He spent probably a minute going through the spare clothing and electronics, then sealed the bag again and set it on the seat beside him. “Happy?” Mara asked.
“I was never anything but,” he replied, smiling back.
A few minutes later the driver pulled up beside a nondescript entrance tucked out of the way between a pair of empty docking bays. Pirtonna led Mara inside and down a brightly lit corridor, the two toughs again trailing behind. In contrast with all the activity Mara had observed earlier outside the facility, this particular area seemed completely deserted.
A couple of turns later they reached an unmarked door. “In here,” Pirtonna said, palming the release plate and gesturing Mara forward.
It was indeed an office, but it obviously didn’t belong to either of the Birtraub brothers, or to anyone else with a scrap of real authority. The desk was old and stained, the chairs plain and unpadded, the lighting simple and bright and functional. From the rows of file cabinets along the sidewalls, she tentatively tagged it as a record keeper’s office.
But it was just as obvious that the man standing glowering at her from beside the desk was no minor executive. “This is her?” he demanded, looking Mara up and down. “This—this—girl is the one that has you all worried?”
“This is her,” Pirtonna confirmed stiffly. “And a person who doesn’t show up on any records is well worth worrying about.”
“Really?” the man asked acidly.
“Really,” Mara confirmed. On the back of her neck she felt a whisper of air currents as the two thugs came in behind her and closed the door. “Which Birtraub brother are you?”
He smiled thinly. “The nastier one.”
“Fair enough,” Mara said. “To business, then. I want the name of the person who rented the space where six valuable artworks were being stored a year and a half ago.”
Birtraub’s eyes widened. “You want what?” he demanded, his air of hostility momentarily eclipsed by bewilderment. “Artworks?”
“Fine,” Mara said, hiding a grimace. To her Force-enhanced senses, it was clear that Birtraub wasn’t lying; he really didn’t know anything about the artworks or their sale. Too bad; that would have made things so much easier. “In that case I’ll settle for a list of everyone who had spaces here at that time.”
Birtraub’s bewilderment vanished, his face darkening. “You’re either insane or joking.”
“Then how about just telling me why strangers watching your facility make you so nervous?” Mara offered.
Birtraub’s face settled into hard lines, his eyes flicking to Pirtonna. The other nodded and stepped around behind Mara, and she felt the pressure as his blaster muzzle was pressed against her back between the shoulder blades.
Mentally, she shook her head. Amateurs. The first thing a professional learned was that touching an opponent with a weapon did nothing but show the opponent exactly where the weapon was. “That would be an extremely bad idea,” she warned Birtraub. “The penalties for assaulting an Imperial agent are fairly gruesome.”
Birtraub snorted, but Mara could sense a flicker of uncertainty. “You’re no Imperial agent. You?”
“I’m sure your men hope you’re right,” Mara said calmly.
The uncertainty winked out again. “Find out who she’s working for,” Birtraub ordered. “Then kill—”
And right in the middle of his order, Mara turned 180 degrees to her left in a dancer’s spin, swinging her left arm up to catch Pirtonna’s and knocking the blaster away from her back. He fired, a fraction of a second too late, sizzling the blue fire of a stun blast into one of the file cabinets. Mara slid her left hand to his wrist, grabbing it as she snapped her right hand around his arm at the elbow. Shoving against that pivot point, she twisted his forearm over his shoulder and lined up his blaster on the first of the two thugs.
Pirtonna’s finger was still filling the trigger guard, blocking access to the trigger itself. But that was all right. Stretching to the Force, Mara reached beneath his finger and flicked the trigger to send a blue sizzle into the thug, then shifted her aim and stunned the second man. A quick torque against Pirtonna’s wrist and the blaster came free into her left hand, and she fired a final burst dire
ctly into his torso.
She tossed the gun across to her right hand and had it lined up on Birtraub’s face before the first of the thugs even hit the floor.
“Stun settings,” she commented approvingly as the triple thud of falling bodies faded away. “So Pirtonna wasn’t nearly as ready to play all-or-nothing with me as you are. Smart man. Means he gets to live through the night.” She lifted the blaster slightly. “What do you think your odds are?”
Birtraub was staring at her, his body rigid, his face gone a pasty white. His mouth opened, but nothing came out. “So, now,” Mara continued. “You were going to explain why you were ready to kill me just for being in your neighborhood.”
Birtraub’s throat worked, and his face sagged subtly in defeat. “There’s a man,” he said, the words coming out with difficulty. “Name’s Caaldra. He works with a pirate gang—a big one. They store a lot of their loot here. They … don’t like people watching them.”
“I don’t blame them,” Mara said. So perhaps Glovstoak’s artworks hadn’t come from Rebels after all. “Where do I find him?”
Birtraub’s face went even whiter. “No,” be breathed. “Please. He’ll kill me if he finds out I told you about him.”
“He won’t ever know,” Mara assured him. “Where is he?”
“You don’t understand,” Birtraub said, his voice thickening with desperation. “A couple of hours after they grab you, they’ll know everything.”
“A couple of hours after they grab me, they’ll be dead,” Mara corrected. “Where is he?”
Birtraub took a deep breath and folded his arms across his chest. “No,” he said. The pleading was gone, replaced by the defiance of a man with nothing left to lose. “Whatever you’re going to do to me, it can’t possibly be as bad as what Caaldra would do.”
Mara felt her lip twist. The Emperor had often warned her that she was far too young for most people to take her threats seriously. “Fine, if that’s how you want it,” she said. “I’ll just have to find him myself.” She gestured toward the door with her blaster. “After you.”
The look of relief that had started to cross Birtraub’s face abruptly reversed itself. “What?” he asked.
“I’m certainly not going to go wandering around this place all by myself,” Mara said reasonably. “Besides, this way when we find Caaldra, I expect he’ll be polite enough to stop and say hello and ask who your new friend is. Then he and I can be properly introduced.”
Birtraub’s face had gone white again. “You are insane,” he hissed. “Forget it. I won’t go.”
“You don’t have a choice,” Mara said.
“I have armed people all over the facility.”
“You had armed people in here, too,” Mara pointed out as she started walking toward him. “But we’re wasting time. Come on.”
In his eyes and body language she saw the subtle clues that he was going to try something stupid. She kept going, preparing herself; and as she came within reach, he threw a punch at her throat with everything he had.
But speed, power, and desperation were no match for Force-driven awareness and reflexes. Mara merely leaned slightly to the side, allowing the fist to shoot harmlessly past. The clean miss threw Birtraub completely off balance, and as he half lunged, half fell toward her Mara swiveled on her right foot, moving out of his way.
Some people would have figured it out at that point. Birtraub wasn’t one of them. Even as he lurched past, cursing, he snapped a kick backward toward her. Mara sidestepped it and, almost as an afterthought, swept his other leg out from under him.
He hit the floor flat; and with that, the last bit of fight was finally out of him. “Whenever you’re ready,” Mara said calmly, nudging him in the ribs with her foot.
Grimacing with pain, Birtraub pushed himself up on one hand, half turning to look up at her. “Warehouse Fourteen,” he managed, wincing as if the words hurt to say. Considering how he’d landed, they probably did. “East side of the complex.” His gaze drifted to his unconscious men. “If they get you, tell them it was Pirtonna who told you.”
Mara smiled cynically. Typical. “Thank you,” she said, lifting her borrowed blaster. “If he’s not there, I’ll be back for another chat.”
She fired, and he collapsed beneath the blue stun blast. Retrieving her satchel, she headed back along the deserted corridors to the exit.
The driver was still waiting in the long landspeeder. Mara stunned him, dragged his unconscious form out of sight, and drove away.
Warehouse 14 was located conveniently next to Docking Bay 14, currently occupied by a nicely polished Hyrotii Crescent-class freighter, a model that mostly saw service as a rich-kid toy. But once again, appearances were deceiving. Mara studied the ship as she drove a leisurely circle along the complex’s outer drive, noting the hidden laser and torpedo ports, the forged markings, and the neatly dressed but rough-looking men walking guard duty around both the vessel and the wide cargo doors leading into the warehouse. Beside the doors, tucked out of the way, were three landspeeders with the Birtraub Brothers logo on their sides. Through the warehouse doors she could see a group of men loading crates onto repulsor carts and maneuvering them out to the ship’s ramp. The warehouse itself seemed well stocked, with multiple stacks of crates scattered throughout. She took special notice of the placement of the stacks along the back wall and continued her drive.
The back of Warehouse 14 butted up against another warehouse-sized building, this one subdivided into smaller storage units, with a narrow service corridor running between the two. Mara found the entrance to the corridor and headed to a spot where her memory told her a stack of crates would shield her from view from inside. Stretching out to the Force, confirming there was no one nearby who might walk in on her, she opened her satchel and got to work.
Her first task was to retrieve her lightsaber, hidden inside a long data analysis unit. The unit had three hidden catches, positioned far enough apart that a single person couldn’t hit all three. Mara squeezed two with her hands and used the Force to pop the third. Pulling out the lightsaber, she tucked it into her belt, then freed the sleeve gun and holster from one of her two datapads and strapped the weapon to her left forearm. Checking a final time for possible observers, she stepped back from the warehouse wall and ignited her lightsaber.
With a snap-hiss the magenta blade flashed into existence. It was a unique color, the Emperor had told her when he’d given her the bit of starter she’d used to grow the crystal for the weapon, one that had been seen only once in the last hundred years. He hadn’t said where he’d gotten the crystal; probably it was from one of the collections of weapons and artwork and historical artifacts he had scattered around the Empire.
For a moment she held the lightsaber motionless, gazing at the blade and letting the feel of the weapon flow into her mind and back again into her hands. Then, setting her feet, she lowered the blade and eased its tip delicately into the wall in front of her.
The wall was thick and heavily armored, and it took three careful cuts to establish its actual thickness. But once she did that the rest of the task went quickly. Positioning the blade so that it would slice completely through the wall without letting through any of the telltale glow that might be noticed among the shadows, she carved out a narrow upside-down triangle just big enough for her to slip through. Closing down the lightsaber, she got a Force grip on the cut section and pushed.
It broke free with a muffled crunch. Straining with the effort—the section was even heavier than it looked—Mara floated it forward half a meter and cautiously looked in.
Once again, the Emperor’s memory training had served her well. Her new private entrance was behind the exact center of the stack of crates she’d been aiming for.
She retrieved her satchel as she pushed the triangular plug another half a meter forward. Making sure she was unobserved, she slipped through the opening, then used the Force to slide the plug back in place. She tucked her satchel out of sight between two o
f the crates, returned the lightsaber to her belt, and made her way to the edge of the stack.
Her first thought when she’d seen all the cartloads of crates being delivered to the ship was that the pirates had gotten wind of her investigation and were pulling out. But now she realized that wasn’t the case. The men and aliens with the carts weren’t simply loading at random, but were taking crates only from two specific stacks near the doors, stacks that were by now nearly depleted. Even more interestingly, there were two different styles and classes of clothing being worn: one set by those handling the carts, the other by half a dozen men and aliens who were mostly lounging around keeping a watchful eye on the first batch. Apparently some kind of goods redistribution was going on.
She stretched out to the Force, trying to get a feel for the two groups. The ones with the carts had the low-level rebelliousness and slight paranoia of career criminals, but none of the underlying viciousness she could usually sense in habitual killers. Smugglers, she tentatively identified them, or else receivers of stolen goods.
The loungers, in contrast, not only had the killer edge but were insolently proud of it. Each of them also had a long, prominent scar along his left cheek, or whatever passed for a cheek in the case of the nonhumans. That, combined with their shoulder patches and a warehouse full of loot, tagged them as the pirates Birtraub had mentioned.
But one figure was still missing from the mix. Mara continued her visual and mental sweep of the room; and there, standing alone by a stack of crates off to her left, she saw him.
He wasn’t much to look at, at least not on the surface. A human of medium height and build, he was dressed in a plain dark red tunic, with black trousers and boots. He carried no obvious weapon and had a bland, utterly forgettable face.
But Mara’s training and Force sensitivity told a different story. The eyes in that bland face were alert and probing, the tunic and boots concealed weaponry exotic and deadly, and even in a relaxed state his unremarkable build had the sense of a watchful predator. Unlike Pirtonna and his thugs, unlike even the brutal pirates around him, this man was a warrior.