“No, no, no,” Juahir chided. “You never tell the crowd how the trick is done. So can you sneak out a little early?”
“Sure.” Arihnda checked her chrono. “As boss of this office, I’m giving myself the rest of the day off.”
“I wish I had friends in high places.”
“You do. Sestra Towers.”
“And don’t you forget it,” Juahir said. “How long will it take you to pack a bag?”
“Five minutes,” Arihnda promised, shutting down her computer and keying for messages to forward to her comm. “Come on—I’ll drive us over, you can get your bag while I pack, and we’ll meet back at my airspeeder.”
“I said I’d provide transportation,” Juahir reminded her.
“I know,” Arihnda said. “I’ve also seen your airspeeder. We’re taking mine.”
—
The Federal District, known informally as the Core of Coruscant—or, even more informally, Core Square—was the undisputed center of the galaxy, both politically and socially. The Senate was there, as were the Imperial Palace, all the major ministries, and the combined headquarters of the army and the Imperial Navy.
The elite of the Empire lived and worked here. So did those who had ambitions of joining that noble society, as well as those who carried out the elite’s will.
“So what’s your excuse?” Arihnda asked Driller MarDapp as they rode the crowded airbus toward the Alisandre Hotel.
“She means how did you score an apartment here,” Juahir translated. “As in, whose pet tooka did you have to feed, walk, and polish?”
“Oh, is that what she meant?” Driller asked, grinning. He grinned a lot, Arihnda had noticed in the brief time she’d known him. Fortunately, he had the teeth and dimples for it. “Sorry to disappoint you, but no tooka was involved. I happen to have an uncle who’s a senior staff officer at Royal Imperial and who happens to be offplanet for three months. Being as I’m his favorite nephew—”
“Translation: He’s the nephew who got in his bid before any of the other relatives did,” Juahir interjected.
“—favorite nephew of all those who asked him,” Driller amended drily, “I got to move in.”
“So what are you doing?” Arihnda asked. “Workwise, I mean?”
“Nothing fancy, I’m afraid. I’m with an advocacy group that petitions senators and ministers on behalf of ordinary citizens.”
“Ah,” Arihnda said, mentally crossing him off her checklist. Advocacy groups sometimes had access to the powerful, but they had no power of their own. Nothing there for her to cultivate.
“Sounds a lot like what Arihnda does in Bash Four,” Juahir said.
“Pretty similar, yes,” Driller said. “Except that you’re handling local people and problems, while we speak on behalf of people from other planets. Sometimes on behalf of the whole planet, in fact.”
“I thought that was what senators were supposed to do,” Arihnda said.
“Emphasis on the supposed to part,” Driller said. “I’m sorry—that sounded nastier than I meant it to. You know better than anyone how easy it is for someone to fall through the cracks. That’s our job: filling in cracks.”
“Sounds so exciting when you put it that way,” Juahir said. “So any idea which of these parties the Emperor is supposed to be hosting?”
“I’m not sure he’s going to host any of them,” Arihnda said. “That rumor goes around every year.” She squinted toward the hotel they were rapidly approaching. “I don’t see any Imperial Guards anywhere, so if it’s happening it’s not happening here.”
“That’s okay,” Juahir said. “We’re going to hit a lot more parties before the week’s up, right?”
“As many as you can handle,” Arihnda promised. “Or at least until we get thrown out.”
“Hey, that can be fun, too.”
The Alisandre’s grand ballroom was supposed to be one of the biggest in Core Square, with a cluster of smaller rooms surrounding it. The arrangement made it ideal for both large gatherings and the smaller, more intimate get-togethers that inevitably spun off from big crowds. The security men at the door gave Arihnda’s ID a good, hard look—and gave Juahir and Driller even harder ones—but passed all three of them without comment.
“Wow,” Juahir breathed, looking around as Arihnda led the way through the meandering flow of people. “I feel very underdressed.”
“You’re the guests of a lowly senator’s aide,” Arihnda reminded her. “You’re not expected to have a thousand-credit gown.”
“I’m sure there are plenty of us around,” Driller added. “You just can’t see them for the glare of the gems from everyone else. So who exactly is here, Arihnda?”
“It’s a pretty fair mix,” Arihnda said, studying the little conversational knots that had formed amid the eddies and flows of partygoers. “Over there are the governors of a couple of the minor Core worlds. There’s a Mid Rim moff over there, and I see at least six or seven senators.”
“And you know all of them?” Driller asked. “Can you introduce me?”
“I don’t really know them, but I’ve met a lot of them,” Arihnda said. Though she’d certainly been trying to know most of them better. “Senator Renking sometimes sends me out to deliver confidential data cards when I’m here in Core Square.”
“So that’s where you disappear to all the time,” Juahir commented.
“It’s hardly all the time,” Arihnda corrected her severely. “Maybe four days a month if I’m lucky.”
“Yeah, but for every one of those days I get twenty calls wondering why you’re not in your office fixing someone’s problem.”
“What are they calling you for?” Arihnda asked, frowning. This was the first she’d heard about this. “You don’t work there.”
“No, but a surprising number of people in our building know we’re friends,” Juahir said drily. “They figure that I’m responsible for you, or some such.”
“Ridiculous,” Arihnda said. “You’re barely responsible for yourself.”
“If you two could stop bickering for just a minute,” Driller cut in, “would one of you care to explain that?”
Arihnda followed his pointing finger. Across the room was another conversation knot, this one consisting of just four people.
But they were definitely an eye-catching group. One of them was a white-haired man with a matching mustache wearing the white tunic and insignia plaque of an ISB colonel. The second man had his back toward Arihnda, but his formal outfit matched one owned by Senator Renking. The third man was young, and wore the uniform and plaque of a navy ensign. And the fourth man—
Wasn’t a man at all. He was human-shaped and had human features, but his skin was blue, his hair was blue-black, and his eyes were glowing red.
And his insignia plaque identified him as a senior lieutenant.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Driller continued. “What is he, some kind of Pantoran with an eye condition?”
“Now, that’s just rude,” Juahir chided him. But she was staring at the strange being just as hard as he was. “Arihnda? Any ideas?”
“Sure,” Arihnda said. “Let’s go over and ask.”
Juahir’s gasp was audible even over the hum of conversation filling the ballroom. “You’re kidding.”
“Not at all,” Arihnda said. “Actually, I think that’s Senator Renking, so I can just pretend I was checking in to see if he needed anything.”
“I thought you were off duty.”
“Senator’s aides are never off duty,” Arihnda said. “Come on.”
And if it wasn’t Renking, she decided, his outfit tagged him as someone of similar status. Easy enough to flip a humorous case of mistaken identity into a new contact among the elite.
The contingency plan proved unnecessary. The man was, in fact, Senator Renking.