ELDON AX LICKED her wounds all the way to Dromund Kaas.
The damage to her body was most easily treated. Many of the cuts and gashes she left to scar naturally, believing as her Master had taught her that a lesson quickly forgotten is a lesson poorly learned. The rest she treated with the help of the medkit built into her interceptor’s cockpit, avoiding painkillers and anesthetics completely. It wasn’t pain that worried her. That was good for her, too.
The damage done to her confidence would take much longer to heal—not to mention her prospects of advancement. Darth Chratis would see to that. It didn’t matter that her record on solo missions had been perfect up to this one. It didn’t matter how highly she had been awarded by the Sith Academy. All that mattered was success.
The interceptor burst back into realspace and the Empire’s grim-faced capital, Kaas City, hove into view.
“I will kill you, Dao Stryver,” Eldon Ax swore, “or die trying”
THE DEBRIEF WENT as badly as she feared.
“Tell me about your mission,” her Master instructed in clipped tones from his meditation chamber. Ax had been admitted into his presence before his morning rituals were complete, and she knew well how that annoyed him.
She bowed and did as she was instructed. Her Master doled out orders with an unbendable desire to test her willingness to obey. She knew better than to outright defy him, even when she was doing her best to keep her failure from him.
It was during her mission that the Mandalorian had found her. And it was this encounter she did her best to conceal from her Master, inasmuch as that was possible.
“Tell me more,” said Darth Chratis, rising slowly out of his sarcophagus. In order to focus most effectively, he occupied at least one hour a day in a coffin-like shell that allowed no light or air, forcing him to rely solely on his own energies to survive. “You have not sufficiently explained the reasons for your failure.”
She couldn’t read his mood. His face was a mess of deep wrinkles and fissures from which two blood-red eyes peered out at the world. His knife-thin lips were twisted in a perpetual sneer. Occasionally, a tongue so pale it was almost transparent appeared to taste the air.
“I will not lie to you, Master,” she said, kneeling before him. “While infiltrating an enemy cell, my identity was revealed and I was forced to defend myself.”
“Revealed?” The bloodless lips twitched. “I do not sense the foul stink of the Jedi about you.”
“No, Master. I was exposed by another—one whose people were once allies in our war against the Republic.”
That was the gambit she had settled upon, to turn the blame for the incident back on the person who had caused it.
“So.” Darth Chratis stepped free from the confines of his sarcophagus. The soles of his feet made a sound like dry leaves being crushed. “A Mandalorian.”
“Yes, Master.”
“You fought him?”
“Yes, Master.”
“And he defeated you.”
This wasn’t a question, but it demanded a response. “That is true, Master.”
“Yet you are still here. Why is this?”
Darth Chratis stood directly before her now. One withered claw reached down to touch her chin. His fingernails were like ancient crystals, cold and sharp against her skin. He smelled of death.
She looked up into his forbidding visage and saw nothing there but the implacable demand for the truth. “He did not come to fight me,” she said. “This I believe, although it makes no sense. He asked for me by name. He knew what I am. He asked me questions to which I knew no answer.”
“He interrogated you?” That prompted a frown. “The Emperor will be displeased if you revealed any of his secrets.”
“I would rather die a lingering death at your hands, Master.” Her reply was utterly sincere. She had been a Sith in training all her life. The Empire was as much a part of her as her lightsaber. She would not betray it to a pack of prideful mercenaries who worked with the Empire when it suited them.
But how to convey the truth of this to her Master when it was here, on this critical point, that her story fell apart?
“He asked me nothing about the Empire,” Ax told her Master, remembering the scene with grueling clarity. Her assailant had disarmed her and pinned her with a net resistant to all her efforts to escape. A dart had paralyzed her, leaving only the ability to speak. “He did not torture me. I was wounded solely in self-defense.”
She held out her arms to show Darth Chratis the injuries she had sustained.
He regarded them with no sign of approval.
“You are lying,” he said with ready contempt. “You expect me to believe that a Mandalorian hunted down a Sith apprentice, interrogated her, asked her nothing about the Empire, and then left her alive afterward?”
“Were I lying, Master, I would be sure to do so more plausibly.”
“Then you have become unhinged. How else can I explain it?”
Ax lowered her head. There was nothing more she could say.
Darth Chratis paced across the angular narthex in which he conducted his audiences. Displayed on the walls around him were relics of his many victories, including bisected lightsaber hilts and shattered Jedi relics. Absent were the tributes to his many Sith enemies. Although Darth Chratis hadn’t earned the fear and respect of his peers simply by outperforming them, he didn’t boast about those he had forcibly removed from his path. His reputation was enough.
Only one in three apprentices serving under him survived their training. Eldon Ax wondered breathlessly whether the time had come for her to join those who had failed. Her life had been too short—just seventeen years!—but she wouldn’t raise a hand to defend herself, if her Master chose to end it now. There would be no point. He could strike her down as easily as swatting a fly.
Darth Chratis stopped, turned to face her again.
“If this Mandalorian of yours didn’t ask about the Emperor’s plans, what did he ask you?”
At the time, the questions had puzzled her. They still puzzled her now.
“He was looking for a woman,” she said. “He mentioned a ship. The names meant nothing to me.”
“What names, exactly?”
“Lema Xandret. The Cinzia.”
Suddenly her Master was standing over her again. She gasped. He had made no sound at all. The cold, strong grip of the Force was back at her throat, pulling her irresistibly upright until she was standing on tiptoes.
“Say those names again,” he hissed.
She couldn’t wrench her gaze away from his. “L-Lema Xandret. The Cinzia. Do you know what they mean, Master?”
He let her go and turned away. With two swift gestures, the ruin of his body was wrapped from head to feet in a long, winding cape, as black as his soul, and his right hand gripped a long, sharp-pointed staff.
“No more questions,” he said. “Come.”
With long strides, he left the room.
Eldon Ax took a long, shuddering breath, and hurried in the wake of her Master.
THE SORTING AND STORING of Imperial data was a growth industry on Dromund Kaas, albeit one kept carefully hidden from view. Vast inverted skytowers drilled deep into the jungle’s fertile soil, entombing centuries of multiply redundant records tended by tens of thousands of slaves. Extensive compounds spread out around the entrances, maintaining the highest possible security. To one of these compounds Darth Chratis led Eldon Ax.
He offered not a word of explanation throughout the long shuttle flight from Kaas City, and she endured his silence with something like relief. At least he wasn’t berating her. Her mission had become a complete failure. She’d had to practically hack her way to the spaceport and off the planet—but not before running a search through landing records in recent days. There she found a reference to the Mandalorian. He had the temerity to travel under what appeared to be his real name: Dao Stryver.
Once again she renewed the vow to see him humbled as she had been, no matter how long it took. Perhaps death was too good for him. A quick one, anyway.
Darth Chratis commandeered a private data access chamber seventy floors beneath the surface of the world, one equipped with a giant holoprojector, and ordered that the two of them not be interrupted. Ax trailed obediently behind him, increasingly mystified. Not once in her years of training had he shown any interest in this aspect of Imperial rule. Interstellar bookkeepers was his derogatory term for those who preferred service in the data mines to a more direct pursuit of power. She went to sit in the data requisitioner’s place, but he waved her aside.
“Stand there,” he said, pointing at a position directly in front of the screen and taking the seat himself.
With brisk, angular movements, he began inputting the requests. This as much as anything convinced her that events were taking a very strange turn indeed.
Menus and diagrams came and went in the giant screen. Ax found it difficult to follow, but she sensed that her Master was leading her through the vast and convoluted structure that was Imperial records to one location in particular.
“This,” he said, tapping the keyboard with finality, “is the recruitment database.”
A long list of names appeared in the screen, scrolling by too fast to read.
“Every person to enter the Sith Academy is listed here,” he went on. “Their names, origins, bloodlines—and their fates, too, where applicable. The Dark Council uses this data to arrange matches and to anticipate the potential of offspring. The fortunes of numerous families rest on the nature of this data. It is therefore protected, Ax. It is very secure.”
She indicated her understanding, thus far. “I’m in there,” she said.
“Indeed you are, and so am I. Watch what happens when I input Lema Xandret.”
A new window appeared, showing a woman’s face. Round-featured, blond, keen eyes. It meant nothing to Ax. The space below the picture was filled with words highlighted in urgent red. At the bottom of a long list of entries were two bold lines:
Termination ordered.
File incomplete: target absconded.
Ax frowned. “So … she was a traitor? A Republic spy?”
“Worse than that. We keep fewer records on the Jedi than we do on people like this.” Darth Chratis swiveled in the seat to face her. “Tell me, my apprentice, what happens when a Sith is recruited.”
“The child is removed from its family and placed in the Academy. There its life begins anew, in the service of the Emperor and the Dark Council—as mine did.”
“Exactly. It is a great honor for a family when a child is selected, particularly if their bloodline has not been so honored before. Most parents are pleased, as they should be.”
“And those who are not are executed,” she said. “Was Lema Xandret one of them?”
A cadaverous smile briefly enlivened the withered landscape of Darth Chratis’s face. “Exactly. She was something unremarkable—a droid maker, I think. Yes, exactly that. From a long line of unremarkable droid makers, with no trace of Force sensitivity. She produced a child with the potential to be Sith, and so the child had to go.”
Ax’s Master didn’t show amusement often. It disturbed her more than his rage.
“The file says ‘target absconded,’ ” she said.
“First she tried to hide the child—a late bloomer, who she feared would not survive training on Korriban. When that failed and the child was taken anyway, she ran with the rest of the child’s family—uncles, aunts, cousins, anyone at risk from reprisals—and has never been heard of since.”
“Until now.”
“From the mouth of a Mandalorian,” Darth Chratis said, “to your ears.”
“Why me?” she said, sensing that her Master was studying her closely. “Because my family attempted to hide me, too?”
“Perhaps.”
“What I was before I met you is unimportant,” she assured him. “I am untroubled regarding my family’s fate.”
“Indeed. I trained you well.” Again that desiccated smile. “Perhaps too well.” He leaned closer.
“Look here, Ax. Into my eyes.”
She did so, and the red horror of his gaze filled her.
“The block is strong,” he said, and it was as though the words came from inside her head. “It’s standing between you and the truth. I release it. I release you, Ax. You are free to know the truth about your past.”
She staggered back as though struck, but no physical force had touched her. A silent detonation had gone off in her mind, a depth charge deep below her conscious self. Something stirred there. Something strange and unsuspected.
Ax looked up at the picture in the holoprojector.
Lema Xandret stared back at her with empty eyes.
“She was your mother, Ax,” her Master said. “Does that answer your question?”
Numbly, Ax supposed it did. But at the same time it posed many more.
DARTH CHRATIS USED the chamber’s holoprojector to conduct a secure audience with the Minister of Intelligence. Ax had never met the minister before, nor seen him in any kind of communication, but the immense trust her Master showed by allowing her to remain in the room was utterly lost on her. Her head still rang from the liberation from her Master’s conditioning. Not because of what it revealed, but because of what little difference it made to her.
Her family’s lack of Force sensitivity had been the one thing of which she was certain about her life before becoming a Sith. She had assumed that her family had been killed, but that had never bothered her. She had certainly never worried about it, and it wouldn’t have bothered her now but for one thing.
The block was removed. Memories should have come flooding back about Lema Xandret and her early life.
But there was nothing. Block or no block, there was nothing left. Lema Xandret remained a complete stranger.
With half a mind, she attended to the conversation her Master was having with the minister.
“That’s why the Mandalorian sought to interrogate the girl. She’s a potential lead.”
“A lead to Xandret?”
“What other conclusion can we come to? She must be alive—in the same bolt-hole she fled down in order to evade execution, I presume.”
“What would the Mandalorians want with her?”
“I don’t know, and the fact that we don’t know makes it vital that we find her first.”
“As a matter of principle, Darth Chratis, or Imperial security?”
“The two are often inseparable, Minister, I think you’ll find.”
The man on the screen looked uncomfortable. His was the highest rank any mundane person could attain in the Empire’s intelligence arm, yet to a Sith Lord he was considered fundamentally inferior. Disinclined he might be to acknowledge that a single missing droid maker warranted his attention, even one who tried to hide a Force-sensitive child from the Sith, but to disobey was inconceivable.
Then a thought struck him, and the conflicted look on his face eased.
“I wonder,” he mused, tapping his chin with one long digit. “Just yesterday, a report arrived from our informer in the Republic Senate. The Hutts claim to have gotten their hands on something valuable, and they think the Senate would like to bid for it. Against us. I searched diplomatic dispatches and learned that we’ve received exactly the same offer, but couched in the opposite terms, of course. Ordinarily I would dismiss such an approach as unworthy of attention, but the fact that it came from two widely different sources does lend it some credence. And now this.”
“I fail to see how the Hutts are connected. They are compulsive liars.”
“Undoubtedly. But you see, Darth Chratis, this is where it gets interesting. The ship from which the Hutts claim to have retrieved this mysterious, ah, artifact, data, what have you—that ship is called the Cinzia. And I note in the file you accessed that this is the girl’s birth name.”
Darth Chratis nodded. “There must be a connection.”
“That the ship was named after Lema Xandret’s daughter and a Mandalorian is asking after both of them? I think so.”
“But it helps us very little without knowing what the Hutts are auctioning.”
That took some of the triumph out of the minister’s expression. “I will pursue that information immediately, Darth Chratis.”
“I trust you will, Minister, as a matter of principle.”
The long-distance audience ended with a shower of static.
It took Eldon Ax almost a minute to realize. Disconnected phrases filled her head like birds, looking for somewhere to roost.
… a potential lead …
… named after Lema Xandret’s daughter …
… the girl’s birth name …
It occurred to her only then that the name she thought of as hers was nothing but a version of her mother’s initials.
What have you been doing these last fifteen years, Mother?
“Tell me what you remember, Ax.”
“I don’t want to remember, Master.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s nothing to do with who I am now. So what if Lema Xandret was my mother? If I met her tomorrow, I probably wouldn’t recognize her. I’ve never known her, never needed her.”
“Well, you need her now, Ax—or at least, you need her memories.” Her Master came so close, she could feel the deathly cold of his breath. “It appears that knowledge of Lema Xandret and her missing droid makers is important to the Mandalorians. That means it’s important to the Empire, too, for what strengthens another weakens us. Anything you can remember about your mother’s whereabouts might be crucial. I therefore suggest you try harder. To reward you, I will put the block back in place afterward, so the memories will disappear again, like they never existed.”
“All right, Master,” she said, although her head hurt at the thought. What if nothing came? What if something did? “I’ll try.”
“You’ll do better than try,” Darth Chratis told her with chilling finality. “In ten standard hours I expect to be standing before the Dark Council with you beside me. If you let me down, both of us will suffer.”
ON A GOOD DAY, Ula Vii didn’t talk to anyone. He just listened. That was what he was good at. In his time off, he would sit in his quarters and replay the week’s recordings, scanning whole conversations for anything important. Important things were happening all the time on Coruscant, of course, but isolating items of greatest significance was a critical part of his job, and he liked to think that he was very good at it. Ula was an Imperial informer in the Republic Senate. He bore that responsibility with pride.
On a bad day, he was thrust out of the shadows and into the light: the trouble with playing a part was that sometimes Ula had to actually play it. As a senior assistant to Supreme Commander Stantorrs, Ula was often called upon to take notes, conduct research, and offer advice. All of this placed him in a unique position to assist the Empire in its mission to retake the galaxy, but at the same time he was forced to perform two demanding jobs at once. On bad days, his head ached so much that it felt like it would crack open, spilling all his secrets out onto the floor.
The day he heard about the Cinzia was a very bad day indeed.
The Supreme Commander had had a busy morning: countless visitors, endless supplicants, the eternal buzzing of his comlink. Ula didn’t know how he stood it. Then came the request from Grand Master Satele Shan for an audience, throwing the Supreme Commander’s schedule completely out of whack.
“Can’t you put her off?” Stantorrs asked his secretary, with a look that signaled annoyance. The longer Ula occupied his role, the better he was getting at understanding the expressions of aliens, even noseless, moon-faced Duros like this one. “She was here only an hour ago.”
“She says it’s important.”
“All right, all right. Send her in.”
Ula had never formally met the Jedi Grand Master before. He regarded the Jedi with suspicion and dislike, and not just because they were the Emperor’s enemy.
She strode into the palatial office and offered the Supreme Commander a bow of respect. With a finely boned face and gray-streaked hair, she was not a tall woman, but the position she occupied in the Republic hierarchy was considerable.
Stantorrs stood and offered a nod that seemed much slighter in comparison with hers. Like Ula, he didn’t approve of Jedi, but his reasons had nothing to do with philosophy. Many in the Republic placed the blame for the Empire’s ascendance firmly on the Jedi Council’s collective shoulders. The Treaty of Coruscant had wrenched the galactic capital out of the Emperor’s control once more, but only at great cost to the Republic and its allies, and at terrible loss of face. The Council’s retreat to Tython hadn’t helped.
“How can I help you, Master Shan?” he asked in gruff Basic.
“I’ve received a report from my Padawan of a possible bounty hunter loose in the old district,” she said in measured tones. “Running riot among the criminal classes, apparently.”
“That’s a minor issue. Why bring it to me?”
“Your brief is restoring security on Coruscant. Furthermore, the bounty hunter is a Mandalorian.”
Ula didn’t need to read minds to know what Stantorrs was thinking now. A Mandalorian blockade of the Hydian Way trade route in the last decades of the Great War had crippled the Republic and very nearly led to its ruin. Since his defeat, Mandalore had lost many of his raiders to the gladiatorial pit fights on Geonosis, but Ula wasn’t the only person on Coruscant who knew that Imperial operatives had been behind the anti-Republic action, and that he was still looking for a fight. If he was considering making a move on Coruscant itself, it had to be addressed immediately.
“What can you tell me about him?”
“His name is Dao Stryver. He’s looking for information regarding a woman, Lema Xandret, and something called Cinzia.”
Ula’s ears pricked up at the latter name. He had heard that recently. Where, exactly?
The Supreme Commander was performing the same mental search. “A report,” he mused, drumming his long fingers on the desk. “Something from SIS, I’m sure. Perhaps you should ask them about it.”
A hint of Grand Master Satele Shan’s true authority appeared in her voice. “I am to contact Tython immediately regarding our earlier discussions. General Garza impressed upon me the urgency and secrecy of the matter. I cannot afford to be delayed any further.”
Stantorrs’s waxy skin turned a deep purple. He didn’t like the Republic’s own policies being used against him. Ula hoped for a momentary loss of control, that something might slip about the nature of those earlier meetings. Try as he might, he could learn nothing about them, although he was certain they were of grave importance to his Masters on Dromund Kaas.
Unfortunately Stantorrs’s self-control was a match for his temper.
“I haven’t got time to investigate every minor disruption,” the Supreme Commander fumed. “Ula! Look into it, will you?”
Ula jumped at the mention of his name. “Sir?”
“Follow up this incident for Master Shan. Report to both of us when you find something. If you find something.”
The last was directed at the Grand Master with a generous amount of ill feeling.
“Of course, sir,” said Ula, hoping that the concession was simply a ruse to get the Grand Master off Stantorrs’s back.
“Thank you, Ula, Supreme Commander. I’m most grateful.”
With that, Satele Shan swept from the room, watched resentfully by Stantorrs and his staff. Every department in the Republic was overstretched and understaffed. The last thing anyone wanted was the Jedi sticking their noses in, finding fault, and handing over more work.
Ula’s job wasn’t to sow dissent, but sometimes he wished it was. Dissent practically sowed itself on cursed Coruscant, where the sky was the same heavy gray as its pedwalks and the pockmarks of war still scarred its artificial face.
The Supreme Commander resumed his seat with a heavy sigh. “All right, Ula. You’d better get started.”
“But sir,” Ula said, “surely you don’t—I mean, I thought—”
“No, we’d better do exactly as I said, just in case it does turn out to be important. No sweeping anything aside when Mandalorians are involved. If that rabble of troublemakers is helping the Empire make another move on Coruscant, we need to know about it. But don’t spend too much time on it, eh? The rest of the galaxy won’t wait.”
Ula inclined his head in frustrated obedience. He was dismayed that the Grand Master’s minor request was removing him from the Supreme Commander’s presence. How was he going to gather the intelligence he needed now? This pointless quest could cost him valuable data.
There was no use arguing, and perhaps some benefit to complying, too. Mandalorians weren’t any kind of rabble: their vast numbers of individual clans, each available for hire to the highest bidder, added up to a potent fighting force capable of shifting the balance of power in a major battle, as the Republic had already learned to its cost. The Empire had given the Mandalorians the means of returning to the galaxy and gaining revenge on their enemies, but there was no loyalty lingering between the two sides. With the signing of the Treaty of Coruscant, Emperor and Mandalore had gone their separate ways.
It was worth pursuing this lead, he told himself, even if an hour or two’s research proved that someone had been chasing at shadows and business returned to usual afterward.
It would be out of character, too, to do otherwise. Ula Vii, the amenable functionary, always did as he was told. That was how he had gained such intimate access to the Supreme Commander’s affairs. With a brisk bow, he smoothed the already impeccable front of his uniform as he left the office and headed for the headquarters of his opposite number in the Republic.
STRATEGIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS didn’t advertise its offices in the Heorem Complex, but anyone with any seniority in the administration knew where they were. Ula had had reason to visit only once before, while covering for a Cipher Agent, and he’d made a point of avoiding it ever since. The company of other intelligence operatives bothered him, no matter whose side they were on. They were all of the same breed, more or less: observant, quick thinking, used to seeing—or imagining—deception all around them. Creatures of few words, they gave little away, and their eyes were as pointed as the needles of an interrogator droid.
Ula masked his nervousness behind a façade of calm as he entered the spacious, cultured atrium. The secretary smiled warmly at him.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Ula Vii, adviser to Supreme Commander Stantorrs.”
His voiceprint was checked, naturally, but unobtrusively. The secretary waved him through. He was met in a conference room by an unreadable Ithorian, possibly female, dressed in simple, black robes bearing no name tags or insignia.
“You’re an Epicanthix,” she said bluntly, from both of her mouths.
As conversation starters, it was a disconcerting one. Most people failed to notice that he wasn’t fully human. He refused to give her the advantage.
“Supreme Commander Stantorrs requests information,” he said.
“Why doesn’t he follow the usual channels?”
“We need an answer quickly,” he said, thinking: So I can get back to my real job. Both of them.
“Ask,” she said.
He gave her the Mandalorian’s name, and the other names associated with the case.
The Ithorian produced a datapad from beneath her robes and tapped at it with one long, slender finger. Apart from that digit, no part of her body moved. Ula waited with no outward sign of impatience, wondering how the creature breathed.
“A ship registered to a Dao Stryver landed on Coruscant two standard days ago,” she finally said. “It left an hour ago.”
“What was the name and class of the ship?”
“First Blood, a modified Kuat D-Seven.”
“Destination?”
“Unknown.”
“Tell me about Lema Xandret.”
“We have no record of that name.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Once,” she said, “information flowed freely across the galaxy, ebbing and flowing as readily as light itself. We prided ourselves on the ease with which we knew all things. Then the Empire came, casting a shadow across the Republic, and the constant shine of knowledge was shattered. Much we would know now comes sluggishly, and in incomplete forms. Our task is as much to reconstruct as to gather.”
“That’s a no, then,” said Ula testily. He was very aware of the state of information in the galaxy, and he didn’t like the Empire being blamed for it. From his point of view, the Republic had never gotten it right, and only the establishment of Imperial rule would enable the right and correct flow of data to everyone.
He wasn’t getting very far with the alien, but he had one question left.
“What about the third name: Cinzia?”
“We have three appearances: two from the Senate and one from an allied spy network. Both point to the same source.”
More spies, Ula thought with distaste. He hated that word. “Who are the Senators?”
“Bimmisaari in the Halla sector and Sneeve in the Kastolar sector.”
“Can you tell me their source?”
“Readily. There are no security warnings attached to this subject.” The Ithorian tapped again. “Both Senators and the spy network report on an unusual auction in Hutt space. Tenders have been called for.”
“Where does the name Cinzia fit in?”
“It appears to be a vessel of some kind.”
“Anything else?”
“Speculation varies among the three parties. I can offer you no hard facts.”
Ula thought quickly to himself. So Dao Stryver was real, and the Cinzia, too. But what was one doing on Coruscant while the other was in Hutt space? How did the greed of a species of malignant criminals connect them?
“Thank you,” he said. “You’ve been some help to us.”
The Ithorian walked him back to the atrium and left him there. The secretary waved cheerfully as he left. A film of sweat covered Ula from head to foot. It could have gone much worse, he told himself, if they had only known what he really was …
Ula had a contact in the office of the Senator from Bimmisaarian. He made an appointment by comlink as he walked. With luck, he hoped, this whole thing could be wrapped up before day’s end and life would return to normal.
“OH, I KNOW exactly what you’re talking about,” breezed Hun et L’Beck over a pot of traditional ale. He had insisted on meeting for lunch, and Ula had found it impossible to talk him out of it. Ula didn’t like eating in public. It was one of the things he preferred to keep to himself, without worrying about what other people thought.
“Go on, then,” he said, moving scraps of yot bean fry-up around his plate. “Tell me everything.”
L’Beck had finished eating long ago and was on to his second pot. That made him even more loquacious than normal, which wasn’t a bad thing. Ula needed him to talk.
“The Senator’s offices on Bimmisaari received a communiqué from Tassaa Bareesh seven days ago. Do you know who she is?”
“A member of the Bareesh Cartel, I presume.”
“Only the head, the matriarch. She has close ties to the Empire, so we keep an eye on her as best we can. There’s nothing we can do about the smuggling, but open slavery is something we try to crack down on.”
Ula nodded. Bimmisaari’s home sector butted directly on Hutt space, so the behavior of the cartels could have a hugely destabilizing effect on the local economy. “Go on.”
“The communiqué was a pitch, really, and a fairly unsubtle one at that. Bareesh was attempting to interest us in something one of her pirates had found in the Outer Rim. Information, apparently, and an unspecified artifact. She didn’t say where they had come from, exactly; way out past Rinn was the only hint she dropped. We didn’t pay it much heed at first, naturally.”
“Why ‘naturally’?”
“Well, we receive dozens of offers from the Hutts every day. Most are scams. Some are traps. All are full of lies. Not so different from what we receive from the Resource Management Council, but at least that’s supposed to be on our side.” L’Beck toasted his own cynical witticism and ordered another drink.
“So you ignored the communiqué,” Ula prompted.
“And that normally would have been the end of it. Except another one arrived, and then another, each adding a little to the story until eventually we had to pay attention. It was quite a clever campaign, actually. We wouldn’t have accepted it if it had arrived all at once, but doled out bit by bit, letting each piece of the puzzle fall into place before offering us the next one, eventually it was enough to get even the Senator himself interested.”
“In what, exactly?”
“The Hutts found a ship. The Cinzia. There was something inside it, apparently, an artifact they’re trying to sell, but that’s not the most important thing. What really makes this interesting is where the ship came from.”
Ula was getting tired of playing games. “Just tell me, will you?”
“I can’t. That information is what the Hutts are selling.” L’Beck leaned forward. “We’ve been trying to generate interest in the Senate. Support is spreading for an official response, but not fast enough. The auction is in a few days’ time, and I’m afraid we’ll miss out.” L’Beck’s voice lowered until it was barely audible over the background noise. “How would you like to be the one to hand the Republic a previously unknown, resource-rich world, ripe for the picking?”
Ula kept his expression neutral. So that was what the fuss was about. New worlds weren’t especially hard to come by, but anything steeped in minerals or biosphere was fiercely contested between the Empire and the Republic. If the Hutts had stumbled across the location of one such world, there was indeed a real chance to profit from the knowledge.
“Are you sure it’s real, not another scam?” he asked L’Beck.
“As sure as we can be,” L’Beck said lightly, taking his third pot from the waiter and knocking back a hefty swallow. “Supreme Chancellor Janarus would authorize a bidding party from Bimmisaari, I’m sure, if we could only get word to him. Do you think you can help?”
And there it was, the appeal for assistance in shoring up local politics. Halla sector wanted not only to be the ones who brought a new world to the Republic’s attention, but access to the Chancellor’s coffers as well. A small percentage would be skimmed off the top to cover administration expenses, no doubt—providing more ale for the likes of Hunet L’Beck and his ilk. Thus the Republic doomed itself, and all it purported to represent.
Ula suppressed his ideological revulsion. “I’ll bring it to Supreme Commander Stantorrs’s attention,” he said. And that was the truth. He had no choice now. If he returned with nothing, and two days later the information did reach the Supreme Chancellor’s ears from another source—well, it wouldn’t pay to be diminished in Stantorrs’s eyes. Maintaining that contact was paramount.
But that wouldn’t stop him from spreading the information elsewhere first.
“I owe you,” said L’Beck as Ula paid the bill and took his leave. That was the best way to leave an informant: in one’s debt. Ula’s coffers, like the Republic’s, weren’t limitless, but they contained enough credits to grease the path to Imperial domination, just a little.
MANY MEANS EXISTED of getting secret transmissions off Coruscant. One could stash an antenna on a little-used building and broadcast when official satellites were out of range. One could pay a lowlife to take a recording to orbit, there to send the message farther by more ordinary means. One could employ a code of such baroque complexity that the transmission resembled layers of noise upon noise, with no significant features.
Ula believed that the best way to arouse suspicion was to go too far out of his way to avoid it. So his preferred method of contacting his superiors was to place a call to Panatha, the planet of his birth, leave a message for his mother, and wait for the reply to come to him. That way, the burden of guilt was shifted elsewhere. It was much easier to brush off receiving an illicit communication, one possibly misplaced, than the accusation of making one.
After notifying the Supreme Commander that he was hot on the case, he went immediately to his austere quarters and sent two signals. Ula lived in Manarai Heights, near his work in the Senate District while at the same time close enough to the Eastport Docking Facility to make a quick getaway if he needed to. He had stashes of documents, credits, and weapons in several locations between home and the spaceport. He also had a secondary apartment, little more than a closet, really, in case he needed somewhere to hide for a while. He wasn’t one for taking chances. The illusion of innocence he had wrapped around himself could be all too easily dispelled. He had seen it happen before. One mistake was all it took …
The bleep of his comlink broke him out of the nervous reverie in which he had spent the last hour. The call was on its way, in response to the first of his signals. He readied himself by straightening his uniform for the dozenth time and taking position in front of his holoprojector. This was the part of his job he liked the least.
A ghostly image appeared before him, flickering blue with static. There was little more than a hint of a face, and the voice was both genderless and species-less. Ula had no idea whom he spoke to on distant Dromund Kaas.
“Report,” said Watcher Three.
Ula summed up everything he had learned in as few words as possible: A ship from an unaffiliated resource-rich world in the Outer Rim had been captured by the Hutts, who were offering information about it to the highest bidder. That same ship was the object of a search by a Mandalorian, Dao Stryver. Another name, Lema Xandret, was implicated. The origins of the ship were unknown, as was its cargo, the mysterious object L’Beck had alluded to. Both were up for auction.
When he finished, the noisy line crackled and fizzed for almost half a minute before Watcher Three responded.
“Very good. This is a matter of concern to the minister. Maintain a close watch and report all developments.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed.”
The transmission ended, and Ula sagged with relief. For all he knew, Watcher Three was a perfectly ordinary person, just another functionary like him, but there was something about that hollow voice that made him feel utterly unworthy. Bad enough that he wasn’t fully human, but worse even than that. He felt dirty, unclean, vile, for no reason at all.
Watcher Three made him feel like he did when he talked to a Sith.
His comlink buzzed again. He prepared himself again, with very different reasons to feel nervous. Whereas the last call had come through perfectly official channels from the Ministry of Intelligence, this one had a very different purpose, and bore risks of its own.
This time, when the holoprojector stirred, it revealed a perfectly clear image of a woman who still struck Ula as looking entirely too young for the role she played in Imperial administration.
“Hello, Ula. How nice to hear from you again. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Ula swallowed. Shullis Khamarr’s smile seemed perfectly sincere, and Ula had no reason to believe it otherwise. The current Minister of Logistics was the same age as he and shared his passionate belief that the Empire was a civilizing force to be reckoned with. They had discussed this subject at length during a shuttle flight from Dromund Kaas, the one time he had visited the Imperial capital world. He had been attending a briefing for members who hadn’t qualified to be Cipher Agents but were still considered useful to the intelligence arm; she was on her way to be promoted to lieutenant. Since then, her rise had been meteoric, while he remained essentially nowhere.
“I have something for you,” he told her. “A world ripe for annexation, discovered by the Hutts.”
“I’ve heard something about this already,” she said. “No one knows where it is, and we won’t until we pay up. Do you have anything to add, Ula?”
He deflated slightly. So he wasn’t the first to make a report. “Not yet, Minister. But I’m well placed to follow it up and hope to learn more soon.”
“That would be to the benefit of us all, Ula,” she said with another smile. “Why did you call me about it?”
“Because it’s the opportunity we’ve been waiting for,” he said, feeling his pulse thudding in his neck. This was as dangerous a territory now as it had ever been. “We don’t need fanatics to rule a galaxy. We just need proper governance and administration. Rules, laws, discipline. When you see those lunatics wreaking havoc on the worlds out here—Jedi and Sith alike—I have to ask what benefit they bring.” He used her own word deliberately. “There wouldn’t be a war at all without them stirring things up.”
“I remember this, Ula,” she said with patience that cut through him like a lightsaber. “I understand your views, but there’s nothing I can do—”
“All we need is just one world, a strong world capable of defending itself, on which the Imperial citizens could thrive without fear or oppression.”
“The world you’ve heard of belongs rightfully to the Emperor. I cannot claim it for myself.”
“But you’re the Minister of Logistics now! The entire Imperial bureaucracy is yours.”
She rebuffed him gently, as she always did. “It is the Emperor’s, as it should be. I am his instrument, and I would not betray his trust.”
“I would never ask you to do that.”
“I know, Ula. You are as loyal as I am, and you mean well, but I fear that what you ask is impossible.”
He took pains never to push their friendship too far, but he was unable to hide his disappointment. “What will it take to change your mind, Minister?”
“When you have the location of the world, talk to me again.”
He knew all too well that betraying the Republic while at the same time trying to convince a senior minister to increase the influence of ordinary people in their relations with the Sith ruling class could bring his entire world to ruin.
“Thank you, Minister,” he said. “You are kind to indulge me.”
“It’s neither kindness, Ula, nor an indulgence. You may call me anytime.”
She ended the transmission, and this time Ula didn’t sag. He already felt fully deflated, insignificant—even if Watcher Three did describe his mission of being one of significance to the Emperor himself. He felt like a grain of sand buffeted by powerful ocean currents. No matter which shore he landed upon, the waves pounded him harder than ever.
Maintain a close watch and report all developments.
That he could do. Exhausted from his day of talking, he filed a written report for Supreme Commander Stantorrs. Then he undressed and lay on his hard bed and waited for dawn.