Scoundrels

by Timothy Zahn

  A roving guard would probably be instantly suspicious of a stranger wandering the mansion’s hallways. He shouldn’t be nearly so suspicious of a simple worker who had come to restock the snack selection.

  With luck he’d remain unsuspicious long enough for Han to get in the first shot.

  Eyeing the snacks, wondering if it would look suspicious if a guard caught one of the food-service workers eating on the job, Han settled in to wait.

  Dayja was still circling the grounds, looking in vain for the rest of Eanjer’s team, when he finally spotted one of them.

  Not that the discovery was anything to be especially proud of. The Wookiee towered over all the humans and most of the other aliens mixed into the crowd—tall enough, in fact, that he and the others of his species were probably in danger of being singed by some of the lower flowing-fire exhibits. He was heading northwest, Dayja saw, striding through the crowd with a determination that confirmed he wasn’t just aimlessly enjoying the show.

  Smiling tightly, Dayja plotted himself an intercept/tracking course and headed off to see what the Wookiee was up to.

  He’d gotten four steps when a hard object abruptly jabbed into his ribs, bringing him to an equally sudden stop. “Well, well,” a voice murmured in his ear. “About time you showed your face.”

  Dayja swallowed a curse. In all that had happened over the past few days, he’d nearly forgotten that voice. “Hello, Crovendif,” he said casually. “Enjoying the show?”

  “Enjoying it a lot more now,” Crovendif growled. “Master Villachor’s been all up on my back, wanting more of that glitterstim you foisted off on me. Only you never showed. Anywhere.”

  “I’ve been busy,” Dayja said, looking casually over his shoulder. If he could twist himself out of Crovendif’s line of fire, he should to be able to take him down quietly enough that the crowd flowing around them wouldn’t even notice.

  Unfortunately, that lack of awareness probably wouldn’t extend to the two Marblewood security men watching him from a few meters away.

  He’d tagged Crovendif as too stupid or too careless to secure backup before confronting a potentially dangerous suspect. Clearly he’d underestimated the man. “I trust Master Villachor found the sample intriguing?”

  “I don’t know,” Crovendif said. “What say we go ask him?” He pressed the blaster harder into Dayja’s side. “Right now.”

  Villachor had been glowering across the children’s pavilion for nearly two minutes, planning in exquisite detail exactly what he would do to his prisoner if Kwerve was lying, when confirmation finally came. “They’ve got it,” Manning announced quietly, leaning a little closer to his comlink clip. “Same case he brought in before.”

  The same case. Did that also mean the same booby trap? “Did they open it?”

  “No, sir,” Manning said. “They’re taking it to the guardroom.”

  Where Dempsey and his bomb-scanning equipment were already set up. “Good.” Villachor glanced around, half expecting to see Kwerve watching him from the fringe of the crowd. But the man was nowhere to be seen. “Back inside,” he ordered. “Alert His Excellency that we should have the cryodex in the southwest foyer within a few minutes.”

  “He’s already there,” Manning said uncomfortably. “Bromley says he looks impatient.”

  Villachor swallowed a curse. Of course Qazadi was impatient. He wanted someone dead.

  But at least that someone wouldn’t be Villachor. Not once he proved that Kwerve really had shown him a cryodex.

  Though why Kwerve had given it up so easily still bothered him. Was their prisoner worth that much to his boss? Or was there something else still going on beneath the surface?

  “Do you want us to go after him, sir?” Tawb asked. “Or shall we send out a full alert? We have Kwerve’s description.”

  “But not his face,” Villachor growled.

  Tawb winced. “No, sir.”

  Villachor shifted his glare to the sky above him. Cursed useless cam droids, and the techs still hadn’t figured out why they couldn’t take decent pictures. “Forget it,” he decided. His two bodyguards and Sheqoa were the only ones who’d actually seen the man, and right now he needed all three of them to stay exactly where they were. “There’s no serious damage he can do out here. Not now.”

  He gestured to the other security men. “The rest of you, return to your patrol areas,” he said, raising his voice over the noise of the crowd. “And keep your eyes open.”

  Someone else, even another crime lord, might have expressed his impatience by pacing back and forth across the foyer. But vigos didn’t pace. At least this one didn’t. Qazadi was standing perfectly still as Villachor and his two bodyguards walked in through the doorway, his eyes cold as he stared at and through Villachor.

  “The cryodex is in our hands, Your Excellency,” Villachor announced. “It’s being checked for traps as we speak.”

  “And this Master Kwerve?” Qazadi asked.

  “He skipped the meeting and left the case in a different spot,” Villachor said. “He’s probably already left the grounds.”

  “Without his companion?” A hint of an icy smile touched Qazadi’s lips. “I think not. Alert your guards to watch the doors carefully. Sooner or later he’ll attempt to enter the mansion.”

  “The guards are already on alert,” Villachor said, trying not to scowl. He didn’t need a vigo to tell him how to run his own territory. “The doors are quite secure.”

  “Good,” Qazadi said. “I wish to see this alleged cryodex. How soon until the check is complete?”

  Across the foyer, the guardroom door opened and Dempsey emerged, his gait an ominous mixture of urgency and reluctance. He was holding the cryodex in front of him in both hands as if it were a priceless work of art.

  “I would say it’s complete right now,” Villachor said, beckoning to Dempsey. “Bring it here,” he called. “I gather there were no explosives?”

  Dempsey’s eyes flicked to Qazadi. But instead of answering, he merely picked up his pace.

  Villachor felt a stirring of fresh anger. He wasn’t accustomed to having his questions ignored. “I asked if there were any explosives,” he repeated harshly.

  “No explosives, Master Villachor,” Dempsey said as he came to a jerky halt a few meters away from the group. He seemed now to be trying very hard not to look at Qazadi. “But there was a trap: a pressurized gas canister set to explode in a cloud-spray pattern when the case was opened.”

  So Kwerve had had one last lethal trick up his sleeve. He and his people would pay dearly for that. “What kind of gas?”

  “I’ll need to take the canister back to my lab to run a proper chemical analysis,” Dempsey said. “But the label—” His tongue swiped across his upper lip. “The label identified it as white fieljine.”

  A violent hiss exploded from somewhere in Qazadi’s group, a sound unlike anything Villachor had ever heard before. He jerked in reaction, twisting around to look.

  He’d thought he’d seen Qazadi angry before. He’d been wrong. This was what an angry Falleen looked like. “Your Excellency?” he asked cautiously.

  “You will find this human Kwerve and bring him to me,” Qazadi said in a voice that sent a shiver through Villachor’s body. “Then you will find everyone in his organization and bring them to me, as well.”

  “I understand, Your Excellency,” Villachor said, wishing like hell that he did. He spun back to Dempsey. “What in the galaxy is white fieljine?”

  “It’s a poison,” Dempsey said, visibly shaking now. “That only kills Falleen.”

  Villachor stared at him, feeling the blood draining from his face. In a single heartbeat this had gone from business rivalry to something bitterly personal.

  Kwerve was dead, all right. So was everyone in his organization, and probably everyone his organization had ever dealt with.

  And unless Villachor nailed the son of a Sith, and fast, he very likely would join them. “I see,” he managed. “Well—”r />
  He broke off again as the door behind him suddenly opened. He spun around, half expecting to see Kwerve and a heavily armed assault team charging in to rescue their comrade.

  But it was only two of his security team, Becker and Tarrish, standing in the doorway, an unknown man wearing field binders pressed between them. “What?” he snarled.

  “Someone outside named Crovendif told us to bring him to you, sir,” Becker said, his professional demeanor cracking as he picked up on the tension shimmering across the foyer. “He said it’s the man who gave him the glitterstim sample a few days ago.”

  Villachor felt a trickle of relief. Finally, some good news, and the timing couldn’t have been better. “You asked for Kwerve’s organization, Your Excellency,” he said, motioning them in. “Here’s the first of them.”

  “Really,” Qazadi said, eyeing the newcomer. His brief burst of rage had apparently ended, Villachor noted uneasily. With Falleen, he knew, that could be a bad sign, or a very bad sign. “Bring him to me.” Qazadi beckoned to Dempsey. “And the cryodex.”

  Villachor nodded confirmation of the order. Becker and Tarrish walked their prisoner over to Qazadi, stopping a few meters away as two of the Falleen’s bodyguards intercepted them and silently but firmly took the man into their own custody. At the same time, Dempsey walked gingerly over to the group and likewise handed the cryodex to one of Qazadi’s Falleen, who in turn handed it to Qazadi.

  “As you can see, Your Excellency, it’s indeed a cryodex,” Villachor said, watching as Qazadi studied the instrument. “And as I also told you, my sole intent was to draw out him and his organization—”

  “What is this?” Qazadi snarled, his rage suddenly back again. “Where did you get this?” He sent the prisoner a laser-edged glare. “Where did you get this?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know,” the prisoner protested, wincing back from the Falleen’s fury. “Whoever these people are, I’m not with them—”

  Abruptly, Qazadi took a long step forward and slapped the man hard across his face. He staggered back, only the guards’ grips preventing him from toppling onto the stone floor.

  “Your Excellency, what is it?” Villachor asked carefully.

  Qazadi turned vicious eyes on him. “This is not some random cryodex,” he bit out. “This is Aziel’s. Aziel’s!”

  “Aziel’s?” Villachor echoed, thoroughly confused now. “He has his own—?”

  And in a sudden, horrible rush he understood. Aziel didn’t have the key codes to a cryodex that Qazadi kept in his suite, the way Qazadi had told him. He never had. Instead, Aziel was the keeper of the cryodex itself.

  But if this was Aziel’s cryodex, then Kwerve’s offer to copy the blackmail files …

  He caught his breath. It was impossible. For an aide to a Black Sun vigo to even think about betrayal was utterly impossible.

  And yet there it was, handed to them by Kwerve himself. Aziel’s cryodex.

  Or something that looked like Aziel’s cryodex. “It has to be a copy,” he said into the taut silence. “A forgery.”

  “How?” Qazadi demanded. “There are marks on the back that only his cryodex has. Marks that no one else would ever see. Certainly that no one else would ever notice. Why would they have been included?”

  “I don’t know,” Villachor said. “But it has to be a trick. Because if it’s really Lord Aziel’s cryodex—” He broke off, realizing he didn’t dare say it.

  Qazadi had no such compunctions. “Then Aziel is a traitor,” he said quietly. “And so, perhaps, are you.”

  “No,” Villachor said quickly. Possibly too quickly. “If I were planning something with Lord Aziel, he and I would hardly need to go through all this complication. I could have given him the files long ago.”

  “Perhaps you did,” Qazadi said. “Perhaps this was merely your preferred method of drawing my interest to this matter and then arranging my death.” He lifted the cryodex slightly. “Certainly once I was dead it would be unlikely that the true ownership of this device could ever be proven.”

  Villachor felt his stomach tighten. The whole thing was utterly insane.

  But a Black Sun vigo didn’t need courtroom-level proof to make decisions and pass judgments. He could do it purely on his own suspicions.

  “But I don’t think poison suits your style,” Qazadi continued. “If not you, perhaps one of your men has been acting in collusion with the traitor.”

  Villachor’s first impulse was to deny it. His men were loyal, hand-screened by Sheqoa himself.

  His second impulse was to keep his mouth firmly shut. If Qazadi’s threat of death was pointed at someone else, it wouldn’t be pointed at him.

  Qazadi knew that, too. “I see you don’t deny the possibility,” he commented.

  “Unfortunately, anything is possible, Your Excellency,” Villachor said, choosing his words carefully. “Before today, I would have said all of my men were unquestionably loyal to Black Sun. Now—” He shook his head.

  “Yes,” Qazadi said, the word coming out as a snake’s hiss. “You’ve removed all human guards from the vault, as I ordered?”

  “Yes, Your Excellency,” Villachor confirmed. At the time, he’d thought the order dangerously stupid. Now he was very glad he’d obeyed it. “And I checked the vault after they left. The data cards were still in place.” He nodded at the prisoner, who’d pulled himself mostly back to his feet and was sagging between his guards. “What do you want me to do with him?”

  “I will deal with him,” Qazadi said, eyeing the man coolly. “You say you aren’t with these people, human?”

  “I’ve never even heard of this Kwerve person,” the man said, his voice strained, his breathing shallow and rapid. “Or this Aziel, or a cryodex, or any of the rest of it. I just have a good source of glitterstim, and I’m looking for someone to distribute it for me. I even brought another sample—he’s got it right there.” He started to lift one hand to point to Becker.

  And gave a strangled gasp as Qazadi’s guard bent his arm against the elbow joint. “I’m not with them,” the prisoner moaned. “I swear.”

  For another moment Qazadi stared at him. The man squirmed under the Falleen’s gaze, avoiding his eyes, looking like he was on the verge of tears. A far cry from the arrogant, overconfident drug dealer Crovendif had described, Villachor thought contemptuously.

  “Take him to my quarters,” Qazadi said at last. “What was he carrying?”

  “A comlink, a holocamera, and a small vial,” Becker said. “Maybe the glitterstim. No weapons.”

  “Bring them here.”

  Again Becker glanced at Villachor for confirmation, then stepped forward and handed the items to one of the men holding the prisoner. “Take those to my quarters as well,” Qazadi ordered. “Wait for me there.”

  “We obey, Your Excellency,” one of the guards said. He nudged the prisoner, and the three of them headed toward the service turbolift at the rear of the foyer.

  Qazadi watched them go, then turned to one of his four remaining human guards. “Take two others and my airspeeders and position yourselves in observation sites around the Lulina Crown Hotel,” he ordered. “I’ll order Lord Aziel to bring his cryodex here. If Master Villachor is right and this is merely some clever copy, he’ll answer the summons without hesitation or fear.”

  He looked at Villachor. “If Master Villachor is wrong and this is indeed Aziel’s cryodex, he will attempt to run. By his own actions he will be condemned.”

  The guard bowed. “I obey, Your Excellency,” he said. Pulling out his comlink, he strode briskly from the foyer, heading in the direction of the garage.

  “May I offer the assistance of my own security forces?” Villachor asked hesitantly.

  “Are there any you can trust with your life?” Qazadi countered.

  Under the circumstances, Villachor knew what the correct answer had to be. “No,” he conceded.

  “Then your men may not help,” Qazadi said. “I’ll let you know the resul
ts of my interrogations in due time.”

  He turned and headed toward the stairs, the two Falleen and three humans forming a moving box around him.

  Villachor watched him go, a hollow sensation in the pit of his stomach. In the nearly three weeks since Qazadi and his entourage had arrived, he’d seen the Falleen’s guards take up such an obviously defensive formation only on the rare occasions when they moved from the safety of the mansion out onto the grounds. Clearly, Qazadi no longer felt safe inside Villachor’s home.

  Villachor could hardly blame him. If the cryodex was a fake, how had it been done? If it was real, what could possibly have possessed Aziel to make this insane bid for power?

  Unless Kwerve’s people hadn’t been targeting only Villachor. Maybe they’d been working both sides: Aziel for his cryodex, Villachor for the files themselves.

  Or perhaps there was no treason at all. After all, he had only Qazadi’s word that Kwerve’s cryodex was identical to Aziel’s. Could this be Qazadi’s way of painting Villachor with the suspicion of treason?

  If so, there was likely nothing he could do about it. He was a sector chief; Qazadi was a vigo. Whether Aziel was genuinely a traitor or whether Qazadi was manipulating nonexistent evidence to implicate Villachor, it was one side’s word against the other’s.

  And there was no doubt at all which of them Prince Xizor would believe.

  Suddenly, a deal with the Imperials was looking better and better.

  “Sir?” Tawb said.

  Villachor snapped out of his dark thoughts, fresh determination flooding through him. He wasn’t going to go running off to Lord d’Ashewl, Darth Vader, or even the Emperor himself. He was going to stand his ground and fight for the power and territory that he’d worked so hard to build. The power and territory that were rightfully his. How could he even have thought about giving in?

  And then he realized how he could have thought about it, and he bared his teeth in a vicious snarl.

  Curse Qazadi and his Falleen pheromones, anyway.

  “Sir?” Tawb repeated, more urgently.