The lieutenant turned and barked an order, and three of the stormtroopers left the room. “Inform Ultimatum,” he said to one of his remaining aides as he brushed past and exited her platform.
The boss saves the day again, Zaluna thought. She exhaled, hoping against hope that the uncomfortable moments for the staff had passed. It wasn’t any easier on the watchers than the watched, and she’d never seen poor Hetto looking so rattled. She turned to face his workstation, hoping to find him relieved.
She didn’t find him at all.
Zaluna looked around for a few moments before realizing he was behind her, peering up at her through her shelves of plants. He’d gone around to the opposite side of the platform, out of earshot of the Imperials.
“You startled me,” she said with a relieved grin. “Thinking of taking up gardening?” Hetto was trying—and failing—to be nonchalant, she thought, pawing through the soil of her yellow stasias.
“They’re not leaving,” he said softly.
Zaluna cast a quick glance over her shoulder. The gaggle of agents was still off to the side, talking furtively about something. She looked back at Hetto reassuringly. “Don’t worry. We found Skelly again.”
“That’s not it.” He looked up at her. “Act like you dropped something.”
Hearing uncharacteristic seriousness in his voice, Zaluna lifted one of the pots from the upper surface and knelt, pretending to change the saucer beneath the plant. That brought her face-to-face with Hetto, who reached through the rails and took her hands. “Zaluna, I’ve … gotten involved with something. There’s someone I’ve been chatting with on the HoloNet about—never mind. I’m meeting—was going to meet her tonight.”
“Wait. What are you—”
He moved her hands onto the pot. “The address is on the note on the outside. Go alone. Please, Zal.”
Zaluna looked down at the pot. Something was half buried in the soil, she saw. It resembled a data cube, a high-density storage medium. Her eyes narrowed, and she shook her head. Some woman on the HoloNet? “Oh, Hetto, what have you gotten yourself into?”
“Nothing you didn’t know was coming.” He dipped his head and spoke somberly—more seriously than she’d ever heard him speak before. “If my help’s ever meant anything to you, you’ll deliver this. And … I’m sorry.” With that, he released her hands and departed from the railing.
Bewildered by the exchange, Zaluna picked up the pot and stood, looking to see which way Hetto had gone. He wasn’t hard to find. The big Imperial was back again, having stopped Hetto in his tracks—and there were stormtroopers with him.
“You’re Hetto?”
Hetto glared. “I am.”
“You are under arrest.”
“On what charge?”
“Sedition. We have a record of your comments—comments intended to disturb order.” The lieutenant yanked at Hetto’s shoulder. “All made while working here—here! You’ve abused the trust of the Galactic Empire!”
Hetto’s upper lip curled in defiance. “Galactic Empire? I think you’re confused. Didn’t you see the sign on the building? I work for Transcept Media Solutions!”
“Same difference! You work for us—and we won’t have traitors in our midst.” The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed beneath bushy red eyebrows, and he looked about suspiciously. “And what about the rest of you? Perhaps you people didn’t overlook the bomber on Cynda. Perhaps you all looked the other way!”
A shocked rumble came from the other members of the surveillance team. Zaluna moved forward to defend her people. “Now, wait a minute! This team has done everything the Empire has ever asked of it!”
“You’d better hope so.” The lieutenant sneered. “Everything that happened here today will be reviewed. If there’s anything to find, we’ll find it.” He gestured to Hetto. “We caught him, didn’t we?”
Hetto tried to move, but the stormtroopers grabbed his arms. His smirk disappeared. “Hear that, Mynocks?” he announced. “You’re all being watched, too.” He glared at the lieutenant. “Watching us, watching everyone! Well, go ahead and review all you want. Nobody here had anything to do with your stupid mine collapse—not like you care!”
“Perhaps,” the officer replied. “But you know the things you’ve said in the past about the Empire, Hetto. And so do we.”
Zaluna stepped down from her platform, almost ready to take on the stormtroopers herself if she had to. “Hetto, I swear. I didn’t know anything about this!”
Hetto looked at her and nodded. “I know, Zal. This isn’t the only floor in this building. These days, everyone is watched. Everyone. I’m just an idiot.”
With that, the lieutenant pointed toward the door, and the stormtroopers pushed Hetto ahead of them. Sounds of shock and dismay came from other employees.
Hetto looked back from the doorway—but not at Zaluna. His eyes were on the yellow plant on the top shelf. And then captors and prisoner were gone.
A hush fell over the work floor.
Eyes glistening, a young woman looked up at Zaluna. “Hetto’s been with us for ten years.”
“Twenty.”
“What’ll happen to him? You must know what … what goes on.”
Zaluna straightened, too uncomfortable to look at anyone directly. “I try not to ask. All of us here—we’re a tool that can stop bad things. Like we did—could have done—with that event on Cynda today.” She shook her head. “I don’t know about the rest.”
Imperial agents reentered the room. “Back to work, Mynocks,” Zaluna said, sounding resigned.
But she only sounded that way. Because after a moment’s thought, she marched back up to her platform—and pretended to water her plants.
It was a data cube, all right. And buried with it was a small note, quickly scrawled in Hetto’s hand. It bore the name of a local cantina. And one word:
HERA.
Hera would have to work fast.
It had taken her too long to find a place to park her starship. Gorse was a patchwork world, with one dead industry layered over another. The muddy ground wouldn’t permit the towering skytowers of the city-canyon worlds; that left a horizontal urban sprawl that seemed to go forever. She’d finally found a spot between some abandoned buildings. Her route here had taken her from one bad neighborhood to another.
She’d arrived at Moonglow’s headquarters only in time to see a Besalisk security guard and his helpers carrying someone bound to a starship acceleration seat out of the explosives hauler she’d tracked. They’d disappeared into the factory building after that; by then, Hera was sure the prisoner was Skelly.
Hera wanted to find out more about the man, but she still didn’t know whether it was worth any effort. Skelly had evidently driven the Imperials up the wall, and that was a good thing. He might know something useful. Or he might be a waste of time. Her cause required a disciplined approach—not impulsive acts. Or people prone to them.
A corporate shuttle landed, discharging a female Besalisk—the head of operations here, Hera figured. Time was running out. A choice had to be made, and soon. She could see shadowy figures beginning to gather outside the building behind her: criminals, likely, now watching her. They were talking and pointing. Whatever their idea for her was, it was certainly no good.
But she got an idea for them, first.
Never make a life-changing decision on an empty stomach. Good advice from Okadiah. But the food over at The Asteroid Belt was only edible in theory, and while Kanan Jarrus wasn’t going to change his mind about leaving Gorse, he wasn’t going to have his last meal come from pickedover snack bowls atop a bar. Especially not after the day he’d had.
That meant the diner by Moonglow. Just a few meters across Broken Boulevard—no one used the official name, Bogan—the establishment had survived years of hard times in the Shaketown neighborhood not just on the quality of its food but on the strength of its chef. Drakka’s volatile temper had made him notoriously unemployable at his cousin Lal’s mining firm, but it—and
his four almost comically muscular arms—had made him eminently capable of dispatching any troublemakers.
He also made a mean bowl of stew. “Thanks,” Kanan said, taking another steaming serving.
The cook didn’t respond, keeping his bony beige headcrest down over his work as four massive hands worked the pots and pans.
“I’ll miss these great conversations,” Kanan added.
Drakka looked up long enough to growl, a creepy sound made creepier by the way the fleshy sac beneath his mouth fluttered. Then he returned to his cooking.
That was fine with Kanan. He prided himself on making it alone. Certainly, he talked to people every day: the people he had to deal with in order to get his job done. Mostly, though, he talked to no more than he absolutely had to. It wasn’t because of the secrets of his past; it just suited him. People could be real pains.
Okadiah was the exception. The old man had been friendly from the start, offering a drifter a place to stay and, later, a job. Thorilide mining had left Gorse for Cynda, but the quarries on the south side of town remained, making for a lot of cheap real estate; Okadiah had opened his cantina there, in the neighborhood known as The Pits. He’d hired Kanan to drive his ancient hoverbus, running miners back and forth between the Moonglow facility and the bar. Later, he’d recommended Kanan for the job of flying explosives for Moonglow. No one on Gorse was as kindly to newcomers.
Even so, Kanan had kept the old man at arm’s length. There had been someone like Okadiah on all the planets he’d visited: the one person willing to help a stranger, no questions asked. And Kanan had left all those worlds without saying good-bye to those people.
It might have been ironic, if Kanan bothered to think much about such things. The Jedi had always preached against forming connections, to prevent their acolytes from putting too much value in any one relationship. In so doing, they had unwittingly trained their students to be the perfect fugitives, able to cut and run at any moment. As long as they didn’t stop to care, they could go on indefinitely.
Even so, Kanan thought as he ate, Okadiah was a little different. Kanan had never known his father; prospective Padawans tended to get plucked from their families very young. Kanan had only known mentors, like Master Billaba—and while he didn’t know from experience, he suspected parents were different. Parents taught, too, but without all the judging. Good parents, anyway. And on that score, Okadiah had probably been more fatherlike than any of the other patrons Kanan had found in his travels. Okadiah didn’t mind Kanan’s prickly attitude, his drinking, or the hours he kept; the old man was right there with him, some of the time. And with dozens of workers on his mining detail, Okadiah could always point to someone worse on all those scores.
But for some reason, Okadiah hadn’t treated him like just another member of the crew. The old man had seen something in him—what, Kanan didn’t know—and he’d done everything right. Okadiah had never tried to push his help on the drifter; he’d left it to Kanan to decide what assistance to take.
It had worked—mostly. For while Kanan had never shared any secrets about his origin with the foreman, he had stayed on Gorse longer than he’d intended. The explosives hauler, bad as it was; the home across from the bar; and Okadiah, his host: They’d all made Gorse more livable than some of the other places he’d tried.
But he’d seen all the world had to offer. And there were plenty of things he wouldn’t miss. One was in the doorway behind him.
“Suicide flier! You show your face here, after the last time?”
Kanan looked up at the mirror behind the grill, already knowing the speaker’s identity. “Hello, Charko,” he said. He felt for his shoulder holster but otherwise didn’t move.
Charko, two meters of horned Chagrian meanness, wouldn’t set foot in Drakka’s Diner—the cook kept not one but four big blasters behind the counter. Instead, Charko just yelled like an idiot from the open front door. “We’re waiting for you, pilot. Come out and play.”
The Besalisk cook swore and moved toward his blasters. Charko didn’t wait around. The door slammed shut. Unconcerned, Kanan finished his stew as Drakka rounded the counter, four weapons in four hands. A fully armed Besalisk defending his business was a great equalizer.
Charko never went anywhere without at least half a dozen members of his gang, the Sarlaccs. A sarlacc was a ravenous monster that was little more than a mouth; Kanan thought the name was properly descriptive. Charko’s Sarlaccs had an endless appetite for the credits of anyone fool enough to wander the streets of the industrial area. The gang activity had provided Okadiah with a business opportunity: opening his cantina across town and busing miners safely past the trouble spots.
Three times, Charko had tried—and failed—to separate Kanan from his hard-earned credits as he’d walked Broken Boulevard. The third time, Kanan had broken off one of the horns on Charko’s head; the Chagrian had sworn revenge.
“They still out there?” Kanan asked without looking up.
“They’ve moved up the way to talk to someone,” Drakka growled. “But yeah, they’re still there. Idiots.” He shut the door and returned to his cooking.
Well, no sense leaving unfinished business behind, Kanan thought as he wiped his face. He pushed back the bowl with one hand and drew his blaster with the other. Kanan walked cautiously to the entrance, blaster in hand. He nudged the door open with the tip of his boot.
“Hey, ugly!” he yelled. “Where’d you go?”
Outside, he spotted Charko’s unmistakable one-horned silhouette as part of a shadowy gathering up the street. There were eight or nine of them, all members of Charko’s band, but they were ignoring Kanan, talking to someone else.
Before Kanan could see more, the group quickly dispersed, breaking up into groups of three and heading off into the alleys, while whomever they’d been talking to remained, twenty meters up the street from Kanan.
Wearing a black cloak that gave no indication of the person beneath, the figure stood beneath the glare of the moon, watching not Kanan, but the Moonglow facility across the road. Clearly this wasn’t one of the Sarlaccs.
Something told Kanan to holster his weapon. As he did so, the watcher turned toward him—and called out.
“Excuse me!” He couldn’t see the speaker’s face, but the voice was female, almost melodic. “Where can I find the repulsorlift entrance to Moonglow?”
The restless ground beneath Kanan’s feet rumbled as she spoke, but he didn’t hear it. He was still trying to process the voice, so warm and polite it was totally out of place on a Shaketown street. It startled him so much that he could only manage: “Huh?”
“Never mind,” the figure said primly. “I’ll find it myself.”
With a whirl of her cloak, she headed off in the opposite direction.
Kanan, who had had no mission in life, now found himself with one: seeing who it was that could be attached to a voice like that. Gorse had one last surprise in store for him after all. It didn’t matter that she’d been chatting amiably with a street gang. His feet, developing a will of their own, started to move to follow.
They didn’t get far, and neither did the rest of him. Cousin Drakka appeared behind him, slapping two pairs of huge grease-matted hands on Kanan’s shoulders.
He’d forgotten to pay his bill.
“I understand you’ve captured the suspect from Cynda,” the shimmering holographic form of Count Vidian said. “You will be receiving a squad of stormtroopers to take custody of him shortly.”
Skelly glowered. Looking through the back of the image, he could see Vidian, but Vidian could not see him. Or maybe he could. Lal had barely informed the authorities that Skelly was there when the efficiency expert had called. It would make sense, Skelly thought, for the Empire to keep an eye on all the producers of a strategic compound like thorilide.
But he didn’t mind their spying. He minded the fat four-armed fools in the room with him, who had yet to release him from the chair—and who had decided to keep the gag on him whe
n Vidian called, despite his urgent muffled cries to be allowed to speak.
“Moonglow. Your firm is a newer one?” Vidian asked.
“Only under that name, my lord,” Lal replied. “I have worked in this facility for more than twenty years.”
Skelly wondered if a hologram could catch how nervous she was to be speaking to the Emperor’s man. She’d better be worried, Skelly thought. By the time the Empire learned what he knew, the whole Mining Guild might well be out of work.
Lal continued. “We’re a smaller firm, but we’ve made many advances in efficiency. I assure you we knew nothing about—”
“Never mind the saboteur,” Vidian interrupted. “I would see these efficiencies. I will begin my inspection there.”
“Here?” Skelly saw Lal’s eyes widening. She clasped both sets of hands together, prayerfully. “My lord—we’d like some time to prepare for your arrival. It’s the end of a very long workday. I know we don’t have mornings around here, but could it possibly—”
Vidian waved his metallic hand dismissively. “Diurnal cycles! So annoying. Fine. In twelve hours, then—regard it the reward for your service. But I’ll show no leniency in my review because of your help to me tonight. Is that understood?”
“I would expect none, my lord. Moonglow will be ready.”
“See that it is,” came the cold response. “An Imperial repulsorlift will arrive in five minutes. Have the prisoner ready.” Vidian vanished.
Lal sat, dumbfounded, looking at the space where the image had been. Off to the side, Skelly could see her security chief husband, Gord, scratching his head. “I thought you said you didn’t think the Empire would inspect here,” Gord said. “We’re too small.”
“I don’t understand, either.” Lal cast a glance over at Skelly. “I guess it’s because of you?”
A New Dawn: Star Wars Page 9
