by Star Wars
“What in the name of …” From behind her desk, Sadiki Blirr was watching the holoscreens that showed the events down in the cargo hold, the CLL load-lifter pivoting on its gyros and thundering into the wall. “Status report. What’s going on down there?”
Next to her, ThreeDee didn’t respond. The droid had been trying in vain to communicate with the CLL unit for the last five minutes, and its silence was not reassuring.
“My apologies, Warden.” ThreeDee withdrew its adapter from the wall console. “I’m afraid the load-lifter’s motivator has been manually compromised somehow. I cannot access it from here.”
“What do you mean, manually compromised?”
“Someone rewired it onsite.”
“That’s absurd.” Cursing aloud, Sadiki looked at the screen. The crushed remains of the decapitated and trampled Vesto Slipher were sprawled across the floor, almost unrecognizable. She had no idea what the Muun had been doing down there, nor did she particularly care. The sight of his corpse elicited nothing more profound in her than a headache. But it was one more headache that she was going to have to deal with, at the worst possible time. She glanced at the chrono display.
“What’s the ETA on that incoming prison barge?”
“The Purge is due to arrive within thirty minutes,” ThreeDee told her.
“You’ve confirmed that?”
“Captain Styrene made contact when the vessel first came out of hyperspace. I haven’t heard from them since then.”
Thirty minutes. Sadiki stood with her hands gripping either side of the desk and remained there, perfectly motionless for the moment, allowing herself to take stock of the situation. By themselves, a malfunctioning droid and the untimely death of an IBC representative weren’t catastrophic, but given what was at stake, she sensed the hand of something far more dangerous behind it.
And why had Dakarai disappeared? Where was her brother when she needed his counsel the most?
“Warden,” ThreeDee said, “I have Gaming Commissioner Chlorus on the line. Shall I have him leave a message?”
“Yes.” She stopped and reconsidered. “No. Wait. Put him through.”
Chlorus’s face appeared on the screen directly in front of her. He didn’t wait for her salutation. “Sadiki, what is going on over there?”
“Commissioner.” She smiled, finding it surprisingly easy to do. “You’re looking well.”
Chlorus held up his hand to stop her. “You’re operating in direct violation of the commission’s orders to shut down your gambling operation. Now I’m getting reports of ongoing hostility between inmates and guards.”
“I wasn’t aware that penal reform fell under the aegis of the Gaming Commission,” she said.
“Don’t do this, Sadiki. Don’t put me in this position.”
“On the contrary, Commissioner.” Sadiki’s voice changed, darkening ever so slightly, her eyes never leaving his image on the screen. “It’s you who put me into this position. Long ago.”
“I fail to see—”
“I didn’t want to bring this up, but you’ve left me no choice.” She tapped a series of commands into the holo console, and a new series of images superimposed themselves over the display on the monitor. “Do you recognize this place?”
For a moment Chlorus didn’t answer. “Of course. It’s the Outlander Casino and Resort on Coruscant.”
“Where we first met,” Sadiki said as the next series of images came up. “Remember this?”
Now Chlorus’s entire face went blank with shock as he stared at the surveillance photos. “Where did you get these—”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is what the board members would have to say about a respected commissioner finding himself with a young, highly impressionable casino manager in what you’ll have to admit is a very compromising position.” She leaned forward slightly. “Can you see the images clearly? I can increase the bandwidth if you prefer. There are some very good shots of—”
“Those photos prove nothing!”
“You’re right,” Sadiki said. “Perhaps I should just forward them to the commission and let them draw their own conclusions.” She waited for a moment. “Unless you have another suggestion?”
“Enough.” Chlorus’s shoulders sagged. “What is it that you want?”
“Ah.” Sadiki nodded. “Now we’re making progress. Here’s how it’s going to work. As soon as we finish this conversation, you’re going to reverse your ruling against my operation, reinstating Cog Hive Seven’s rights and privileges as a gaming facility under the commission’s regulations, making it fully operational, effective immediately.”
“I couldn’t possibly—”
“And,” she cut in, “I want you to contact your friend Lars Winnick at the IBC and come up with a plausible explanation for the unexpected disappearance of one of their field agents.”
“What?”
“His name is Vesto Slipher. I’ll send the specifics along directly. How you manage it does not concern me, as long as I’m not subjected to any more of these degrading spot audits.”
“Sadiki …” Chlorus reached up to clutch at the collar of his tunic, struggling to loosen it. “You grossly overestimate my scope of influence in these matters.”
“And you, Dragomir, grossly underestimate the amount of damage that these surveillance photos could inflict on your career,” she said. “You’ve done great things for the commission and the relationship between gambling communities. You’ve driven galactic revenue to new heights. A man like you might be senator one day … and after that, who knows?” She let the words sink in, knowing they would saturate his colossal ego. “Do you really want to throw all that away over some cheap tryst with a casino manager?”
Chlorus gazed at her. A faintly gleaming mustache of sweat had broken out across his upper lip, and his eyes looked raw, rimmed with red. Finally he shook his head. “I forgot how obstinate you become when you want something.”
“Don’t forget again,” Sadiki told him, and before he could answer, she pressed the button to break off the transmission. She heard ThreeDee approaching her with a refill for her coffee.
“Well done,” the droid observed. “If I may say so.”
“Child’s play.” She held out the cup, allowing him to fill it. “Where’s Inmate 11240?”
ThreeDee turned to her, not understanding. “Excuse me?”
“Clear the monitors. Show me all the tunnels and lifts leading away from the cargo bay. Roll the feed back five minutes. Do it now.”
The holoscreens flickered and changed, displaying a dozen different walkways, every possible exit from the cargo bay.
Sadiki took her time, examining each screen individually, using the time to consider what had just happened. She hadn’t wanted to confront Chlorus with the surveillance photos, not because she didn’t want to humiliate him—the man’s reputation, like his towering vanity and none-too-secret political ambitions, could not have mattered to her less—but because the photos represented the last and most potent form of leverage that she had over the Gaming Commission. Every predatory instinct within her had wanted to hold on to the images until they could be exploited for maximum value. Now they were out there, and—
She froze, her thoughts breaking off as she caught sight of something on one of the screens, an odd bluish blur in the corner of one of the turbolifts. From here it looked like nothing more than a visual aberration, like a ripple of slightly discolored heat from an exhaust vent. Except that there were no such vents in the lift, and—
The ripple shifted noticeably.
Sadiki leaned closer, staring at the image.
There was something inside the lift.
Something that didn’t want to be seen.
She hit the alarm.
54
HOT BOX
The lift stopped, and Maul knew he’d been caught.
He glanced down at the blue witch in his hand and then dropped it with disgust, letting it hit the floor with a clink
. It rolled to the corner and lay there spluttering feebly for a moment before finally dying out. It served him right for trusting the Muun’s gadget for an instant longer than he had to. He never should’ve taken the lift back up from the cargo bay. Now he was trapped in here. For an instant he imagined Slipher’s severed head lying in the corner, laughing at him.
No matter. Such thoughts were useless to him now. He glanced up at the ceiling, a meter above his head, and then the walls around him, instinctively taking stock of any possible way out. Suddenly the lift itself felt very small, more like a cage—or a coffin.
Bracing his hands on one smooth wall and his legs on the other, he lifted himself upward and began to climb his way to the ceiling. It was a slow process, but there was a maintenance hatch up there, in all likelihood bolted shut from the outside. He didn’t know if he’d be able to get it open without losing his grip on the walls, and even if he did—
“Very impressive,” a woman’s voice said from the speaker inside the lift, a voice that Maul recognized immediately as belonging to Sadiki Blirr. “Of course, at this point I should have expected nothing less from Cog Hive Seven’s most celebrated inmate.”
Ignoring her, Maul crawled another meter upward, keeping his arms, legs, and shoulders rigid to hold himself in position. At this angle, the only way to get the hatch open would be to slam his head against it.
“There’s no sense trying to get out that way,” the warden’s voice said. “The lift is industrial grade, durasteel-reinforced from the outside. We use it to transport our more imposing inmates, like that wampa you fought. It’s got some very interesting features, from my perspective at least.” Something clicked and began to hum inside the walls. “Even if you managed to escape, there’s nothing inside the shaft to hold on to. Which means you’ll die in there, either slowly or quickly, depending on how ambitious you are.”
Maul said nothing.
“Still determined to injure yourself?” she chuckled. “Here, let me help you.”
The lift jerked upward, then plunged. Maul slammed face-first into the ceiling as it dropped straight down. It halted and he hit the floor hard. Sprawled on his back with the walls spinning around him, he reflexively shot out his arms and legs again to stabilize himself for the next move. But the lift began to rise smoothly upward again, as if nothing had disturbed its passage.
“I’d like to make you a proposition,” Sadiki’s voice purred. “As you may have guessed, we don’t get many inmates like you here. In fact, you’re arguably one of a kind. So in the spirit of entrepreneurial enterprise, I’d like to do the only thing that makes any sense.”
Maul glared at the speaker. “Kill yourself and save the universe the trouble?”
“Not quite.” She laughed. “I’d like to offer you a job.”
“My answer is no.”
“You haven’t heard my terms.”
“It doesn’t matter.” His expression remained unchanged. “I prefer death.”
“At least do yourself the courtesy of admitting you’re curious,” she said. “You seem almost supernaturally adept at isolating and exploiting the weaknesses of your opponents under the most adverse of circumstances. So …” She paused long enough for Maul to wonder if he was supposed to be hanging on her every word. “This is what I propose. You come to work here in the executive level of Cog Hive Seven, where you will report directly to me. There are certain aspects of our operation here that you might find very illuminating.”
“What aspects?” Maul asked.
“Before I get into the details, I would expect an oath of absolute loyalty,” Sadiki told him. “Of course, you’ll enjoy complete autonomy, stay here in a luxury suite, and receive a generous salary that reflects exactly how valuable you truly are to this operation. Who knows?” Something eased into her voice, a note of bemusement that Maul could actually hear, though he couldn’t see her face. “You may even discover what you’ve been searching for all along. What do you say?”
“You’re forgetting one thing,” Maul said, bracing himself against the wall opposite the speaker.
“What’s that?”
“This place where you live …”
“Yes?”
“It’s still a prison.”
Pumping one leg straight out, he drove his heel into the speaker and smashed it to pieces, strangling the warden’s voice off into a fuzzy, digitized warble, and then silence. The speaker itself popped loose from its housing, dangling down on a tangle of multicolored wiring.
Seconds later, the lift stopped again.
He’d expected nothing less. Having not received the answer she wanted, the warden was going to make him hurt. Apparently she wasn’t ready to trigger the charges implanted in his hearts, but she wasn’t going to let him get away, either.
Working quickly, Maul yanked the dislodged speaker plating from its wires, paused just long enough to inspect the beveled edge and decided that it would have to suffice, and began the slow, creeping process back up toward the hatchway at the top of the lift.
Halfway up, he noticed it.
Around him, the durasteel walls were starting to get hot.
55
INBOUND FLIGHT
CO Dawson was onsite when the prison barge Purge docked outside the Hive’s loading bay, but he didn’t actually see the action—not all of it, anyway. Later on he would testify before a galactic board of inquiry that the only reason he’d survived was that he hadn’t stuck around to watch it all go down. That wasn’t quite the truth, but it was close enough—and by that time, there wasn’t anybody else left to contradict him.
He was on deck with a dozen other guards and the prison’s loading and landing crew as the Purge settled creakingly into its docking berth just outside the space station. Like most of the freighters and transport ships that arrived here, the barge was far too big to land inside the hangar, so that docking became a ritualized mating ceremony of pressurized coupling adaptors and a long extendable gangway whose port extended down into the cargo hold itself.
When the port finally opened, Dawson and the other guards straightened up, each of them gripping go-sticks and stun pikes, awaiting the signal from Doyle, the chief gantry officer on duty, that typically indicated the off-loading of new prisoners and supplies. Standard loading and unloading protocol was that the Purge’s own guards would step off first, with inmates to follow.
Dawson and the others stood staring expectantly at the open port.
But the port remained empty.
“Come on.” After a moment, Dawson glanced at the guard next to him in annoyance. “What’s this about?” he muttered. “I was supposed to be off-shift twenty minutes ago. Now we’ve got to stay here waiting for—”
He broke off midsentence. Two nervous-looking guards had just stepped out of the port, each of them struggling to hold up one end of an ungainly, heavy-looking shipping crate. They were followed by four more guards, escorting a group of nine prisoners—at least they were wearing prison uniforms, although CO Dawson thought these creatures were even more imposing than what he was used to. Trandoshans, Gamorreans, Gran—species that he’d tangled with before, certainly, but never all together like this. And then he realized why they looked so dangerous.
They were all smiling.
Grinning, actually.
“Scrummy-looking buggers, aren’t they?” Dawson growled, tightening his grip on his static pike, already thumbing the power button and wishing they’d been armed with blasters. He didn’t like the feel of things, and was already aware of an unpleasant tension gathering in his lungs, making him feel as though his uniform was buttoned too tightly across his chest and throat. Lately there had been a paranoid air of skullduggery inside the prison itself, rumors that the Hutts or other crime syndicates had been sending their own people in as inmates or even guards to undermine operations here. Dawson didn’t believe it, but the possibility still made him uneasy.
He glanced back at the other guard, Greer. “Let’s knock some of the snar
k off their faces, shall we?”
“The matches’ll do that soon enough,” Greer murmured back. “But I’m not sure I’m willing to wait that long.”
“Me either.”
They stepped forward, pikes at the ready. The guards carrying the shipping crate had stopped ten meters in front of them and put it down with a noticeable expression of relief. Eyeing the inmates, Dawson and the others came forward to receive them.
“Gentlemen, welcome,” Sadiki Blirr spoke up from behind them, and Dawson glanced back over his shoulder to see the warden standing there, along with her droid. Dawson took his hand off the butt of his static pike and forced himself to calm down. It was highly unorthodox for management to come down personally to supervise the offloading of new inmates, and he wondered if there was something special about this entire operation after all.
Warden Blirr eyed the inmates and the guards who’d escorted them. “Where’s your captain?”
“Still aboard the vessel.”
“Captain Styrene usually comes down to greet me himself,” she said, and turned to the new inmates. “How many are there?”
“Just these nine.”
“Only nine?” Sadiki glanced at the droid for verification. “We were supposed to receive thirty-two inmates.”
“Just nine,” the guard answered back stiffly, and Dawson noticed the man’s eyes flicking anxiously back toward the docking module, as if he couldn’t wait to get back aboard—or anywhere, for that matter, as long as it wasn’t here.
Frowning, Sadiki approached the shipping crate. “What about the freight? Is this all of it?”
“Everything on our manifest.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“See for yourself.”
“Thank you,” Sadiki said. “I will.”
As she walked over to inspect the crate, Dawson saw the whole thing shift slightly to the right. Whatever was in there was large enough to make the entire crate move. He was already opening his mouth to shout out a warning when the lid burst open.
“Warden—” Dawson started, but that was all he had time for.