For once, Face looked concerned. “Could it actually work?”
Cheems shook his head. “Not in a practical way. Against exposed crystals, yes. But lightsaber hilts insulate the crystals too effectively. I couldn’t tell the admiral that, though. To tell him This can’t work would basically be to say, Kill me now, please, I’m of no more use to you.” Belatedly Cheems realized that he’d said too much. If this miracle rescue was itself a scam, if he was currently surrounded by Imperial Intelligence operatives, he’d just signed his own execution order. He gulped.
Runt turned to Face. “I have it.” He repositioned the main monitor at his table so others could see.
The monitor showed an overhead map view of the planet’s capital city, its Imperial Navy base, the huge bay that bordered both to the east. A blinking yellow light was stationary deep within the base. Then, as they watched, the light faded to nothingness.
Cheems glanced at Face. “Did your device just fail?”
Face shook his head. “No. It was taken into a secure area where comm signals can’t penetrate. Its internal circuitry, some of which is a planetary positioning system, knows where it is—the research-and-development labs. Atmospheric pressure meters are telling it how deep in the ground it is. At the depth of Teradoc’s personal vault, well ...”
There was a distant rumble from the west, not even a boom. Everyone looked in that direction. There was nothing to see other than the city lights for a moment; then spotlights sprang to life all across the naval base, sweeping across the nighttime sky.
Faraway alarms began to howl.
Face settled back into the couch, comfortable. “Right now, the lower portions of the labs have been vaporized. Pathogen vaults and viral reactors have been breached. Sensors are detecting dangerous pathogens escaping into the air. Vents are slamming shut and sealing, automated decontamination measures are activating. Before the decontamination safety measures are done, everything in that site will be burned to ash and chemically sterilized. Sadly, I suspect Teradoc isn’t experiencing any of that, as he was doubtless admiring his new prize when it went off. But we owe him a debt of gratitude. He saved us months’ worth of work by smuggling our bomb past his own base security all by himself.”
Cheems looked at Piggy. “I could use something very tall and very potent to drink.”
Piggy flashed his tusks in a Gamorrean smile. “Coming up.”
Face turned to Piggy. “I’ll have a salty gaffer. In Teradoc’s honor. Candy bug, please.” He returned his attention to Cheems. “We’d like you to do one more thing before we get you offworld and into New Republic space. I’d appreciate it if you’d go below and appraise any gemstone items you find. We’ll be turning this yacht and everything on it over to a resistance cell; I’d like to be able to point them at the more valuable items.”
Cheems frowned. “This isn’t your yacht?”
“Oh, no. It’s Teradoc’s. We stole it.”
CHAPTER TWO
AYCEEZEE, KANZ SECTOR
44 ABY (Today)
It was only two kilometers from his office to his home, but on nights like this, when he was weary, Professor Voort saBinring chose not to make the walk. This affluent university town was blessed with rolling walkways, locally known as rumblers, and tonight Voort chose just to stand and let the campus buildings, houses, and apartment blocks roll serenely past. Many of these homes were dark at this hour, but he could see through the windows of others, into lit interiors where families dined, talked, watched holodramas.
He wasn’t physically tired, not really. And it wasn’t that he was old. He was middle-aged, yes, but he exercised and saw the medics at regular intervals. Yes, by human standards, he was overweight, but he was actually a touch lean for a Gamorrean.
No, the weariness came from within him. Internal and eternal. There was nothing at either end of his two-kilometer daily commute to beckon him, to invigorate him. His students seemed to be blocks of permacrete, immobile and emotionless, enduring his courses as though to do so were a condition of parole. His home was a place where he could sleep, nothing more.
The rolling walkway was elevated, situated above and beside the stationary walkway he usually took. Glow rods on the rumbler’s underside illuminated pedestrians on the stationary walk. As he reached the halfway point on his trip home, Voort saw a pedestrian standing at ground level on the other side of the street, beneath the rumbler headed back toward campus. The figure, a shadow in a wide-brimmed hat and a traveler’s overcoat, looked up as Voort passed and stepped forward to cross the street. The shadow moved to the near walk, stepped on an open-air lift plate, and rose to the level of Voort’s rumbler. He stepped off onto the moving walkway and turned in Voort’s direction. Hands in his coat pockets, he began walking toward Voort.
Voort felt a mixture of curiosity and alarm. It had been five standard years since he’d experienced that mixture of emotions: the day a high-strung immigrant from nearby Lorrd had come flying across his office desk at him in a genuine effort to murder him. Alarm had faded once Voort had knocked the wind from the boy and returned him to his chair, and curiosity had faded once Voort learned the boy felt that perfect scores were his birthright.
Perhaps this stalker would assault him for the doggedness with which Voort taught Lulagg’s Third Theorem. Or perhaps a coalition of students had pooled their allowances and food servers’ wages to buy a hit on their professor. If so, the assault would be an interesting side item in tomorrow’s news briefs.
Voort tallied his resources: one gray suit, dull both in cut and color; one datapad; identicard, credcards, credcoins; fists and tusks. He waited.
The shadowy man drew to a stop a couple of meters from him and spoke, his voice rich and deep. “Hello, Piggy.” He tilted his head up so that his hat brim no longer cast his face into shadow.
His dark, trim beard and mustache, his features, timeless and handsome—Voort had learned long ago what types of appearance humans found pleasing in one another—were instantly familiar. Voort brightened “Face! I feel let down. I was looking forward to being assaulted.”
Face shook it. “Well, if you like, I can try to wrestle you off this walkway. That’s a good three-meter drop.”
“Perhaps later.” Voort let a number of possibilities run like columns of numbers through his head. “No.”
Face’s eyebrows shot up. “No, what?”
“In the last fifteen years, we’ve only encountered each other by appointment. Such as your wedding. This is an ambush. So you’re up to something. No, I will not work for you. And, by the way, you know it’s not Piggy anymore. Call me Voort.”
“Voort, then. I want you to come work for me.”
Voort slumped. “What did I just tell you?”
“I’ve been working myself up just to say those words for thousands of light-years. You can’t deny me the right to say them. So, how about it?”
“I just said no.”
“Refusals offered before the offer is made don’t count.”
Voort sighed. “We’re only a few hundred meters from my quarters. Let’s talk there.” He stepped off the walk onto the next lift plate.
Face stepped off with him. “There’s less buzz to your voice these days. Is that a new implant?”
“Upgraded, yes. The dean of the School of Mathematics insisted. Less buzz means less menacing, or something.”
At ground level they stepped off. Face looked around, taking in the gently aging neighborhood, the cheerful-looking monitor droid, round and immobile as a bronze snow figure, on the street corner. “You enjoying the work?”
Voort took a moment to answer. “Sometimes.”
“Ah.”
“What about you? You enjoying retirement?”
Face smiled. The expression was more sinister than happy. “When Jacen Solo’s war ended, pretty much every officer who’d failed to denounce him starting when he was a teenager was booted. I really don’t call that retirement.”
“Well, what’s the w
ord for being purged but not killed or arrested, then?”
“Retirement.”
“Ah. What about your family?”
“Dia’s doing great. She’s now chief trainer and a full partner in the transport company she bought into. She was on HoloNet News a lot a while back, offering perspectives on the slave uprisings popping off all over the galaxy. I did adopt Adra; she’s my daughter now, too. She’s sixteen and dating, and if I had any hair left, it would all be white. But she’s a good kid.”
Voort grunted an acknowledgment of Face’s words. He hadn’t really been interested in all those details. But the social contract that existed between old friends, however distant they might now be, insisted that one ask such things.
They walked in silence until Voort gestured to indicate the building where he lived, a square, four-story greenstone. Entering, he took the stairs rather than the turbolift to the second story, then led Face into his quarters. Face shed his overcoat and hat, revealing his head to be as shiny-bald as Voort remembered. His clothes were his favorite sort, black and expensive but of an unobtrusive cut.
Voort gave Face the brief tour of sleeping quarters, office, kitchen, and social room. Face made dutifully appreciative noises at the home’s utilitarian, undecorated simplicity, then spent a few minutes doing a sweep for listening devices and micro-holocams. When he was done, the two of them returned to the social room.
Face sat on the couch and arrayed himself as if posing to advertise the clothes he wore. “I’m getting the band back together.”
Voort lowered himself into his easy chair more quickly and awkwardly than he had intended to. “The Wraiths?” He gave Face an incredulous look. “When Bhindi Drayson told me they’d been decommissioned, she made it sound like it had been a personal mission of Chief of State Daala to scrub them out of existence.”
Face nodded. “It was. Not only was it part of the same purge that got me, Daala took a special delight in getting rid of rogue operatives who play by their own rules. Not that we actually ever had rules.”
“So how, in just three years, have you and the Wraiths been redeemed so that you can put the unit back together?”
Face turned a conspiratorial smile on his old friend. “We haven’t. I’m putting the Wraiths back together again ... and the government doesn’t know a thing about it.”
Voort narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “I’m having a hard time decrypting that. You’re putting the Wraiths back together without government permission or oversight? Are you going pirate?”
Face grinned. “Not ... exactly. What do you know about Borath Maddeus?”
“The head of Galactic Alliance Security, including Intelligence, for the last three years. He replaced Belindi Kalenda when she was swept off by the same purge.”
“I barely know him. A very competent organizer, that’s his reputation. And a team player, perfect for the new regime. Got along very well with Daala during her tenure, gets along great with Chief of State Dorvan now.” Face put his hands together and looked at Voort over the steeple formed by his fingers. “He arranged to see me—away from his offices, away from his handlers and subordinates—a while back.”
“To ask you to put the Wraiths back together.”
“Yes. But not as an official Intelligence unit. You’re aware of the Lecersen Conspiracy?”
Voort snorted. “Who isn’t?” In the most recent set of crises facing the Galactic Alliance government, a combination of slave uprisings and government coups, it had been revealed that one of the major influences unbalancing the government was a conspiracy among Moff Drikl Lecersen of the Imperial Remnant, Senator Fost Bramsin, Senator Haydnat Treen, Admiral Sallinor Parova, General Merratt Jaxton, and others, who were maneuvering to assume control of the Alliance and then merge it into the Imperial Remnant, subordinating all the Alliance’s objectives to the Empire’s.
“General Maddeus has heard some disquieting rumors that General Stavin Thaal, head of the Alliance Army, might have been part of that same conspiracy.” Face shrugged. “Nothing more than rumors, though.”
“Still, Thaal’s one of the most powerful individuals in the Alliance.” Feeling unsettled, Voort stood. He moved to the undecorated wall and pressed a code sequence on the keypad there. The large window beside it slid open, revealing a view of the nighttime street outside. The rumble of the distant rolling walkways was audible again. Cool air washed over him, which was the effect he wanted.
He turned back to Face. “Maddeus doesn’t trust his own people to determine whether there’s any truth to the rumors?”
“No, he doesn’t. He didn’t select most of them, remember. Some he inherited from his predecessor, and the majority of the rest were appointed by the same committees and political factions that appointed him.”
“Huh. Well, good luck.”
“Come on, Piggy—Voort. Don’t be that way.”
“Face, I’m a professor of mathematics. All that Wraith Squadron craziness ended for me fifteen years ago.”
Face nodded, his expression sympathetic. “The Yuuzhan Vong War ended a lot of things for a lot of people. But people have bounced back from what they’ve lost. They’ve started over.”
“As I have.”
“No, you haven’t.” Face gestured, a sweeping, circular move that took in Voort’s quarters plus the community outside the window. “You’ve gone to ground; you’ve hidden. You’ve licked your wounds, and I know how deep they were. But Voort, you either need to rejoin the ranks of the living ... or acknowledge to yourself that you’re actually dead.”
Voort broke out in the grunting, wheezing noises that were Gamorrean laughter. “Master motivator. When did you write that little speech? On the shuttle trip in to Ayceezee?”
“No shuttle. Maddeus provided me with a hyperdrive-equipped space yacht, Quarren Eye, just about the only resource he could give me. But yes, I wrote that line on the trip here. What do you think of it?”
“It would play well on a holodrama. But in real life, no.”
Face sighed. “Speech or not, it’s the truth, Voort.”
“I’m a math instructor now. I take mathematical concepts, I shape them into spikes, and I spend months hammering them into the heads of students who’d much rather be involved in amorous pursuits or playing games, and all because they need it, even if their heads are as hard as durasteel.”
“And that little speech might have impressed me ... except that when I asked you if you were enjoying your work, your answer sounded like, It’s slightly better than being tortured by pirates.”
Voort was quiet for a moment, then answered. “Toward the end, being a Wraith was considerably worse than being tortured by pirates.”
“That was then. Look, Voort, I’m going to stop wasting both our time and jump straight to my final argument.”
“Also pre-scripted?”
“In part. I’d like to be able to convince you with the fact that you’re wasting your time here, but you already know that. You’re a mathematical genius, capable of doing hyperspace navigation calculations in your head, a strategist capable of factoring in more variables than anyone I’ve met, a capable starfighter pilot, and an organizer second to none, and here you are convincing undergraduates that dabbling with calculus won’t cause them to lose the will to live. But again, you know that. What you don’t apparently understand is that they actually don’t need you. A teacher droid can do everything you’re doing for your students, except maybe burp.”
“A droid can’t instill into them a love of mathematics.”
“Neither can you, not anymore. Those students don’t need you ... and I do.” Face shrugged. “I’m not even asking as an old friend. We could be strangers, and I’d still need you.
“And Voort, now you’re thinking that it could be Chashima all over again, that no matter how much you’re needed, you can fail. But you didn’t fail on Chashima. What you did was lose everything that was important to you.” His gesture again took in Voort’s quarters. “This is t
he result. It’s time to come where you’re needed. So, what’s it going to be?”
CHAPTER THREE
CORUSCANT
They moved along the corridor that connected the spaceport’s arrivals-and-inspections facilities to the spaceport exits. In front walked a redheaded businessman wearing a tired, droopy suit. Beside and a step behind walked a jumpsuited Gamorrean porter pushing his hover-rack of luggage.
Voort sighed. “Years of laying down the law on human and other students has caused me to forget that the Gamorrean in disguise is always going to be a menial laborer.” He didn’t bother to activate his voice implant; Face knew enough Gamorrean to understand.
Face nodded, scratching at an itchy spot on his forehead where his red wig met his scalp. “We could dress you up as a master chef or a fleet admiral ... but then people would remember you.”
“They should. Have you ever tasted my bantha cutlet with spicefruit reduction? And speaking of my skills—are we being compensated for any of this?”
Face grinned. “You know it’s not about the money. The new Wraiths all signed on to prove themselves. Or because they had a grudge.”
“It’s not about the money for me, either. It’s about not being exploited. About a free economy. About being able to negotiate your own worth—”
“We’ll find some compensation when the assignment’s all done. If the general’s crooked, we’ll steal his favorite vessel and sell it. If he isn’t ... we’ll find a crooked general, steal his favorite vessel, and sell that.”
Voort nodded. “Just so long as we’re clear on that.”
They came to the spaceport’s main exit lobby, a cavernous space with a lofty ceiling. The chamber was decorated with monitors and midair holograms showing ever-changing views of distant vacation worlds and spectacular starfields. Opposite were the banks of doors leading out into daylight. The brilliance beyond the doors threatened to dazzle Voort’s eyes.
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