by Jude Watson
The decision weighed in his eyes.
“If we promise to never ask you for information again,” Astri added.
Clive wanted to lean on the guy, but he knew it would be a mistake. Finally Bloomi pushed himself off the couch with his balled fists. “I, uh, need to check on something.”
He pressed a button and the transparent wall slid back. Clearing his throat nervously, he slid out. The wall slid back.
Astri quickly revolved the datapad so she could see it. She clicked on the keys. “He left the coded files open to his security code. Good man. Here’s the transaction list…if I just jump to the numbered file contact info…yes,” Astri murmured, satisfied. “Memorize these coordinates.” Softly she read out the numbers.
Clive nodded. “Got it.”
Astri looked out. The room was empty. “Well, as long as I’m here….” She clicked a few more keys, searching.
“What are you looking for?”
“I don’t know. Anything out of the ordinary. I—”
Suddenly Clive saw Bloomi enter the room with several Imperial officers. “Close it,” he said softly, even though he knew they couldn’t hear.
Astri quickly shut the datapad as the wall rose.
There was now a sheen of perspiration on Bloomi’s high forehead. “Mr. and Mrs. Telstarr, we have a security check. Strictly routine.”
Clive admired Astri’s coolness. Posing as a rich woman, she put on an irritated look. “Do they know who we are?” she hissed at the banker.
“Strictly routine, madam,” Bloomi answered. Clive noted that his hands were shaking. “It will take only a moment.”
“Now, angel hair, let’s not hold up these gentlemen,” Clive said. “This is the price we pay for a secure galaxy. Here you go, sirs.” He handed over his ID doc and motioned for Astri to do the same.
With a slight pursing of her lips, she did so.
Clive waited while the lead officer scanned their docs through his datapad. He wished he could dump a bucket of ice water on Bloomi’s head. The bloke was now sweating profusely, his collar damp and the few strands of hair he possessed now plastered to his scalp.
Astri waited with the air of a woman who did not like to wait. Her training as a Senator’s wife obviously came in handy.
The check went on for too long. Clive saw the moment the Imperial officer registered that something was amiss.
“If you’ll wait here for just another moment,” he said.
“Our business is concluded,” Astri said. “We were just leaving.”
“I’m sorry, I’ll have to insist.” The officer’s tone was still polite. He couldn’t afford to alienate them if they really were the fabulously wealthy Telstarrs.
Which they weren’t. Maybe the real Telstarrs had noticed that someone was using their ID docs. Even though Curran had used his best contact for the docs, you could never trust the black market completely.
They were in trouble.
The officers moved off to confer. Probably waiting for a superior to tell them what to do.
“Do you think they know?” Bloomi wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Do you think so?”
“Do you have a cruiser with a hyperdrive?” Clive asked him in a low tone.
“Of course. In my business you need the best…wait a moment. You’re not suggesting….”
“Give me the security code. We’ll try to get it back to you if we can. Sometime.”
“You can’t just…leave!”
“I’m afraid we have to. In another minute, that officer is going to get an order to arrest us.” Clive kept a pleasant smile on his face and leaned back on the couch as though he didn’t have a care in the world.
“If that happens, they might arrest you, too,” Astri said. “But if you give us your cruiser, we’ll make it look like we stole it from you. You can claim innocence.”
“Just don’t tell them who we were investigating, no matter what,” Clive warned.
Bloomi wrung his hands. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Look natural,” Astri said through her smile. “Tell me the code.”
He told them the code they’d need and where to find the speeder. “But how are you going to get to the turbolift?”
“Leave that to us.”
“You’re not going to use blasters, are you?”
Clive rose smoothly. “My advice? Duck.”
“Let me go first,” Astri told him, and before he could protest she walked toward the officers.
“This is absurd,” she said. “Our liner is about to depart. I demand to see your superior officer!”
“We really must be going,” Clive said, taking Astri by the elbow.
The officer stepped forward. “Sir, you can’t go—”
They kept moving toward the turbolift. The officer was nervous now. There was still a chance that the ID doc confusion was just a snag in communications. He was reluctant to take responsibility for attacking them.
“We’ll be available at the spaceport,” Clive said. “We’re on the luxury liner Iridescence.”
“We can clear up any confusion before departure,” Astri said. “Send your superior to our stateroom.”
Clive closed the remaining distance to the turbolift and hit the sensor.
The officer finally realized he had to do something or risk a long term as a security officer on a mining planet. He drew his blaster. “Stop right there.”
“Don’t be silly,” Clive said, taking a step back toward them. “I’m sure we can work this out….”
The turbolift opened.
Clive and Astri drew their blasters. They fired at the lights overhead and the sensor suite that controlled the transparent partitions. The partitions descended all at the same time. The officer’s blasterfire went awry. It pinged off the transparent walls and ricocheted around the room.
Astri and Clive jumped into the turbolift. It descended swiftly.
“We have maybe a minute before they figure this out,” Clive said. “Be prepared to run.”
They burst off the turbolift as it opened onto the private landing platform. They found Bloomi’s cruiser parked near the lip of the platform. Clive jumped in. Astri blasted the security console next to the cruiser.
“They won’t be able to tell we had the code,” she said. “Bloomi might escape detection that way.”
Stormtroopers suddenly pounded through the entrance. Clive powered up the engines as Astri somersaulted away past the worst of the fire, jumped up on the back of the cruiser, and scrambled for the open cockpit. “Go!” she screamed above the sound of blasterfire.
She leaped in the cockpit, still firing, as he pushed the engines. They screamed out into the sky. Clive hit the upper atmosphere and then space. He could see Imperial fighters heading after them. Cannonfire streaked toward them.
“Hyperspace coming up,” he said. “Hang on.”
In a rush of stars, they evaded the fighters.
“That was close,” Clive said.
“Can we trust Bloomi not to talk?” Astri asked, tucking her blaster back in her belt. “If he does, we’ll find an Imperial attack ship as we come out of hyperspace at Revery.”
“Do I trust Herk?” Clive shook his head. “No. All they have to do is show him a picture of a torture droid and he’ll cave. But maybe they won’t ask him the right questions. Maybe they’ll just assume we were your ordinary bank robbers.”
“We could always go back to Coruscant,” Astri said.
They exchanged a look.
Astri leaned forward. “Onward to Revery,” she said.
Ferus closed his comlink. Obi-Wan wasn’t responding on the emergency channel. What could he be doing? Herding banthas?
He continued on his way. He had donned the Inquisitor robe again, hating it, but knowing it could help him. He was heading for the spaceport. He could only hope that the letters and numbers scrawled in the dust had something to do with what the spy had seen through the electrobinoculars.
He had
a feeling that Obi-Wan had known very well that the Force-adept he was chasing was Bail’s daughter. It explained why he was here. But what else did Obi-Wan know that he wasn’t telling?
Ferus hadn’t seen Darth Vader since that morning at the palace, but he could feel him. Not through the Force, but through an instinct that his enemy was occupying space near him. Ferus touched the hidden pocket where the Sith Holocron nestled. His lungs burned. He took a ragged breath. He felt as though he were falling into a black hole, slowly, while familiar faces, people he loved, homes he’d lived in, places he’d enjoyed were all around him as he spun past them, unable to touch them, unable to connect.
His salvation could be this small object in his pocket. Grief had not only sapped his power, but his purpose; the Force could restore it, but not the Force he knew.
He took his hand away. He no longer knew which thoughts were coming from him and which were under the influence of the Holocron. That scared him, but it thrilled him deeply, too. He knew he should throw the Holocron away, toss it in the deepest point of the great lake of Alderaan….
You cannot throw it away. It is yours now. By accepting it, you own it. You have already begun the journey. Soon you will recognize it.
Whose voice was that?
Ferus rubbed his forehead. He had felt the voice as part of himself, deeper than his own voice. Did it speak truth or lies? What was happening to him?
His comlink buzzed, and he snatched it from his belt. It was Hydra.
“Checking in.”
“Nothing to report on this end,” Ferus said. “How’s the document search going?”
“I’m getting full cooperation now. Lord Vader’s presence on the planet has helped us. They’re worried about an Imperial takeover. We have fear working for us now.” Hydra’s flat monotone held the tinge of satisfaction.
“Well, keep going. Contact me if you learn anything.” Ferus ended the communication.
He was racing the clock now. He didn’t think Hydra would learn anything about Leia at the documents office, but she would soon give that up and look a different way. He had to discount the rumor before Hydra found the girl.
And, in the meantime, he had to find the Imperial spy.
He took the turbolift up to the busy spaceport. Vehicles lined up for takeoff and refueling. The command center was in a round building off to the side. Ferus approached, throwing back his hood slightly.
When he entered, the busy workers looked up, then quickly looked down. They wouldn’t want to give him any information, but they’d have to. He wished he could tell them he was on their side.
He went up to the woman who looked as though she was in charge. “I have an information request,” he said.
“We’re busy here.” Her voice was curt, but her eyes were scared.
“I just need to identify this vehicle. The spaceport code is LCS79244-12u712.”
“That’s not a vehicle code.”
“Then what is it?” he asked.
She pressed her lips together. For a moment he thought she’d refuse.
“Would you rather Lord Vader came here to enquire?” he asked. He hated to push that way, but he had to know.
She looked down. “It’s a product entry code,” she said. “LCS means Load Coded and Shipped. That means that a delivery came into the spaceport and we shipped it out again.”
“Then you must have the address where it was shipped.”
She turned toward the console. “I’ll plug it in. But I can tell you right now, the destination code is wrong. First of all, there aren’t enough numbers.”
Ferus remembered the smudge. Some of the numbers must have been wiped out.
“Second, there are no letters in the destination code. I know it was shipped to Aldera—the code is twelve. But the rest of it doesn’t make sense.”
“See what you can do.”
She called up the list of shipments. “I can’t find it.” She looked at him defensively. “See for yourself.” She tilted the screen toward him. “We get hundreds of shipments. Your numbers don’t make sense in terms of the system.”
Ferus studied the screen. She wasn’t lying. It would be impossible to trace without the correct sequence of numbers.
He turned away, frustrated. At least he knew it was a shipment the spy had been looking at. Or maybe heard about…there was no way to know.
He couldn’t leave the planet until he had answers. He couldn’t leave the Organas at the mercy of the Empire. Something was going on here. The knowledge of it was deep in his bones. He had to keep looking.
He spent the night at the temporary quarters that had been arranged for him, and woke before dawn. He decided that if he searched the warehouse again, he might come across something he’d overlooked.
It was still dark as he made his way across the deserted park. The warehouses loomed ahead, dark sentinels overlooking the square of green.
He was crossing toward the warehouse when he saw it.
“If you want to get lucky, open your eyes.”
Thank you, Siri!
Crouched between the taller warehouses and hangars, Ferus saw an old, decrepit building he hadn’t noticed before. It was built of old stone, bleached and pockmarked from hundreds of years of duty. It was only about ten stories, and appeared abandoned.
Above the doorway there were numbers chiseled into the stone in the old style. Crumbling, darkened with age, hard to read, but there.
8712
He thought back to the “u” he thought he had seen. Maybe it had been the lower part of the number 8. Part of it had been wiped away.
Could it be this easy? Could the shipment have been sent across the street from the spy’s overlook?
Why not? If you wanted to keep tabs on a shipment, what better place could there be?
Ferus crossed back and carefully examined the building as he walked past. He did it without seeming to look, keeping his head forward and striding purposefully. Even though the area was deserted he knew that there could be night workers about in the surrounding buildings. Even the spy could be at his post this early, though spaceport traffic was light.
In the short time it took to walk by, he was able to spot the security panel and identify it as one he recognized. Very high-tech, considering the building.
He turned at the corner and went down the block, past the backs of the warehouses. Many of them had landing platforms, but the smaller warehouse did not. A high security fence surrounded it, most likely with some sort of electroshock capacity.
The street was deserted. Ferus gathered the Force and leaped. He sailed over the fence easily and landed in the backyard of the warehouse, a small area of crumbling permacrete.
There was one small durasteel door. The same security panel. Ferus had no problem bypassing the code. He heard the lock click.
He pushed open the door and walked inside to a small hallway. There was no turbolift, just a curving ramp leading upward. The lighting was dim. He approached slowly, listening for sounds. He heard a soft whirr and quickly pressed himself into the shadows. A surveillance droid flew by slowly, rotating as it went. It had a visual field, not infrared, so if he stayed out of sight he’d be all right.
Ferus walked up the ramp to the first floor. He could see that he was in a large open space. Rusted speeder parts were dumped in piles along the walls. An old system of automated pulleys hung from the ceiling, parts dangling, rusty and coated with dirt. He walked back and forth, looking carefully, but didn’t find anything but more old parts and tools.
Not too promising, so far. Evading the droids, he searched the next level, and the next. Finally he reached the top floor. He looked overhead. He could see the mechanism for a retractable roof. That would be how shipments could be moved in and out. There was plenty of room here to land a small barge. If the operation was done at night, the offloading could be quick and close to private in the middle of a city.
At first this floor looked like the others. But as he walked closer, Ferus sa
w the duratsteel bins stacked up against the walls.
New durasteel.
Ferus got down on his haunches. He saw the airport code stenciled on one side.
LCS226579244 12 8712
SPEEDER PARTS was stamped on the side.
He ran his hand along the top. It was unsealed. Cautiously, he pulled open the top.
The bin was empty.
Ferus went from bin to bin. They were all empty. He crouched down and began to examine the floor underneath the roof. He took out his tiny glowlight and ran it over the floor.
Yes. A craft had landed here recently. He saw the scorch marks, the scratches.
He stayed in that position for long minutes, thinking.
He was so deep in thought he didn’t hear the soft footsteps until they were coming up the last turn of the ramp. Someone trying very, very hard to be quiet.
Ferus dashed for cover as the room suddenly lit up with blasterfire. He dived to the floor and rolled, cursing his inattention. He rolled to safety behind a partially dismantled airspeeder. The blasterfire pinged. He smelled hot metal.
He ran behind a pile of dismantled parts. The blasterfire followed him. Ferus had run in order to assess. Now he knew that his pursuer was a good shot. Good information to have when you’re trapped.
Ferus considered what to do. He would have to escape without using his lightsaber. If he were being attacked by the Imperial spy—and chances were pretty much one hundred percent that he was—the information would get back to the Emperor. Ferus didn’t relish having to explain why, as a supposed Imperial Inquisitor, he was investigating a mystery shipment being tracked by an Imperial spy. But worse than that, any Force activity on this planet would only throw the spotlight more clearly on it. Ferus needed to divert the Emperor’s attention from Alderaan, not attract it.
What he needed was a push-back. Something that would send his assailant running so that he could trail him.
Ferus leaped above to the rack and pulley system that still held old parts and engines. He crawled forward and found the mechanism that moved the parts forward on an automatic track. He activated it.
Now the rack moved forward, jerking slightly as it went. The noise brought the attention of the shooter, and blasterfire streaked through the air, hitting behind Ferus now as the rack moved forward. Ferus released an airspeeder engine. It smashed to the floor. Then a windscreen. Engine parts. A halfway dismantled pit droid. Sparks flew upward as the metal screeched against the permacrete floor.
