Haus started for the front door, then paused and turned back. “Sheel, maybe you shouldn’t attend any more Whiplash Council meetings.”
She blinked. “He’s called a meeting tomorrow morning. If I don’t go …”
Forgetting that he was in disguise, Haus reached up to scratch his shock of badly trimmed hair. His fingers met a fake Togruta montral. “You’re right. Stick with it, but keep your comlink handy.”
She nodded, her lips drawn into a grim, ashen line.
At the soft chime of the HoloNet terminal in his personal quarters aboard the Whiplash hovertrain, Tuden Sal looked up to see who would be calling him at this time of night. He was honestly surprised to see Pol Haus’s ident icon floating above the console.
He was even more surprised at himself: he actually answered the summons.
“To what do I owe the dubious pleasure, Prefect Haus?” he asked the holographic image of Pol Haus’s head and shoulders that appeared once he had answered the call.
“To a report I got early this morning from a couple of my speeder patrols. Specifically, the ones routed around the eastern shore of the Western Sea in the Golden Crescent area.”
“Oh, wait. Let me guess: they saw Darth Vader out walking his pet rancor beast. Or perhaps he was trolling the waters for Jedi.”
Haus sighed audibly. “Will you shut up for a minute and hear me out?”
“Why? Nothing you have to say is of interest to me.”
“If you’ve still got designs on Palpatine, it should be. There are Imperial security forces and possibly Inquisitors in and around the seashore near the Emperor’s villa.”
Sal was immediately wary. “Why should I care what happens near the Emperor’s villa?”
“Don’t play games, Sal. There isn’t time. I know you’re going after Palpatine, and chances are good that someone else suspects you are, as well.”
Sal’s pulse jacked up several notches. “How do you know? Who told you?”
“I have people all over the sector. They see things. They hear things. And what they see and hear they report to me—or to another prefect who then files his own activity report. The difference between those prefects and me is that I know who the Whiplash operatives are. And I know you. I didn’t buy for a moment that you weren’t going to act on that intel. Striking Palpatine while he’s in residence at the villa is the best chance you’re going to get.”
Haus was right. His logic was impeccable. Sal sometimes forgot that Pol Haus wasn’t the dense, lazy career detective he pretended to be.
“So you’ve called to warn me off. What are you thinking, Haus? That I’m an idiot?”
“I think you’re a zealot, Sal. I think you’re so focused on taking out Palpatine—so focused on revenge—that you’re not thinking straight.”
Anger, swift and hot, flared in Tuden Sal’s breast. He knotted his hands against it, striving to keep a smile on his face and his tone level.
“Revenge? Is that what you think this is about? My own personal agenda? Palpatine didn’t just ruin me, Pol. He ruined a lot of people. And murdered more. He’s directly responsible for us losing Yimmon and Laranth and indirectly responsible for us losing Jax, I-Five, and Den. This is the man, Prefect, who took down the entire Jedi Order, leaving the way open for his unchecked, iron-fisted control of all our lives. This isn’t just my battle. It’s everyone’s battle.”
“Yes. It is. Which is why you need to listen to me. If the Emperor’s been tipped off to your plans, everyone suffers.”
“You know what your problem is, Pol? You can’t commit to anything. You glide around in the background, slither through the dark, pretending to be something you’re not. Playing the foolish, clumsy police detective so that your enemies will fail to recognize you as a threat. I’m sure you think you do it to be clever and because it allows you to know things you wouldn’t otherwise know. But that’s not it, is it? You don’t do it for any of those reasons. You do it because it keeps you safe. Other people die. You’re already a ghost. The man no one sees. Fine, then. Be a ghost—be a coward. But don’t expect the rest of us to run scared, too. The Emperor is going to die.”
Haus was shaking his head. “Sal, listen to me. I want to be free of Palpatine as much as the next man—”
“Do you really?” An ugly suspicion struck Sal. “Or are you on his payroll?”
“If I was, would I warn you?”
Of course. That impeccable logic again. “No. You’re right. You’re no traitor. Just a coward.”
“If you think you can get under my skin by calling me names—”
“I don’t care about your skin. Frag your skin. I care about this mission.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing, Sal—”
“Wrong. I know exactly what I’m doing. How about you? Are you planning on getting in my way?”
The Zabrak ran long fingers through his frowzy mane, and for once, Tuden Sal read resignation in his sharp features.
“No,” he said. “No. I won’t get in your way. Good luck with this. I mean it. I hope you succeed. I’m just afraid you won’t.”
Sal cut him off.
In a spacer tavern near the Westport, Acer Ash shook wrists with Captain Donari Caron and felt a pleasurable flush of attraction as he touched the Zeltron’s ruby skin. He held her wrist a moment longer than formality required, basking in her glow, while her large dark eyes glinted in acknowledgment of his silent admiration.
He was hopeful that their business might also involve a significant amount of pleasure; he was also on his guard. A Zeltron smuggler had a tactical advantage—she could pheromonically manipulate the emotions of her contacts, thus negotiating better conditions than someone without that capacity might arrange.
Ash determined he would not fall prey to that sort of emotional byplay. He knew Zeltrons craved physical affection as much as he craved profits. That was a bit of leverage he could and would use. He gestured the captain to a private cubicle in the dimly lit back room of the tavern that, owing to a deal with the tavern owner—a Whiplash informant—amounted to a private office. Meanwhile, in the large main room, a live band thumped out loud music to the cheers and jeers of their audience. The white noise generated by the audio confounders in the back room melted neatly into the chaotic drift from the tavern.
Their negotiations were cordial, notwithstanding the Zeltron tried several times to employ her pheromones to sway him toward purchasing or bartering for items he did not, in fact, want. He caught her at it, called her on it, and the two of them had a good laugh.
He made good deals all in all, for the mundane imports, but there were a few items for which Captain Caron had rather specific demands—such as several extraordinary pieces of art ripped from archaeological sites on other worlds and for which Acer Ash had eager buyers. What he did not have in abundance were the cutting-edge tech gadgets that Captain Caron’s Black Sun contacts wanted for the artworks.
“How many units can you get me?” she asked, referring to an experimental palm-sized energy shield with a range of two meters that not only deflected energy weapons and projectiles, but turned them back on the attackers.
Ash returned the sample device to its little packing case. “I’ve got five of them, but I need to keep two back for another buyer.”
The other buyer was Tuden Sal. He had requisitioned two of the devices for field operatives involved in the Mission. Profits were profits, but Whiplash came first even for someone of Acer Ash’s mercenary bent.
“Only three?” She shook her head, sending a cascade of rippling saffron-colored hair over one shoulder. “My clients need them in the hundreds.”
He shrugged, fighting his hormonal responses to her, and leaned away from her against the back of his chair, pulling his hands back to his side of the table. “They can disassemble the prototypes. See what makes ’em work. Make their own.”
Donari Caron rolled her lustrous eyes; sweat broke out on Ash’s upper lip. She was certainly an exemplary example of he
r species; a regular pheromone factory. He desperately wanted to lean into her—to draw closer—but he kept his relaxed pose, slouched in his chair, one hand toying with his half-empty glass of cinnamon liqueur.
“Without the specs? Please, Acer, my clients have high expectations of me. I’d need twenty or thirty of the things at least if they’re going to have to reverse-engineer them. Or all five of the ones you’ve got and the specifications. I’m sure you understand the imperative.”
She put her hand over his on the table.
He withdrew his hand. “You’re kidding, right? I can’t get the specs. They’re a closely guarded secret.”
Her frustration was palpable. “What can you get? Can you at least get me ten of the devices?”
Ash laughed. “You seem to be under the impression that I could get you more of the bloody things if you offer the right incentives, but that I’m just trying to drive a hard bargain. I swear that’s not the case. I can get them, but not quickly and not in great numbers. What with Palpatine, Darth Vader, the inquisitive Inquisitors, and the fraggin’ Security Bureau, my supply lines are—shall we say—squeezed.”
Her eyes lost their gleam and she sat back, withdrawing herself—and her considerable hormonal presence—completely. “That’s bad news. I guess I oversold your ability to get things done. My clients will be disappointed … to say the least.”
He shifted toward her, hungry for the warm flush he’d felt moments before, then realized she was using his own tactics against him. The knowledge didn’t help much, though he was able to regain a bit of his poise.
“Donari, I can get things done, trust me. It’s just that things are a little tight on Coruscant right now, security-wise. But that’s going to change real soon.”
“Really? And why is that?”
“Let’s just say that Palpatine isn’t going to be a factor for much longer, and once he’s out of the picture, Vader and his spooks and his little black-shirted goon squad will be running around trying to figure out what happened. And while they’re busy doing that, I’ll take the opportunity to get all sorts of stuff out under their noses.”
She blinked at him, then gave him a cockeyed smile that lit him up like a homing beacon. “You seem awfully sure of your intel. What do you know?” She leaned toward him again, elbows on the table, her eyes bright and speculative.
Ash shook his head, chuckling. “Sorry, Captain, but I can’t tell you a thing about a thing. It’s just a feeling I got. You know how it is with … feelings.”
Her smile deepened. “I do, indeed. Now, what kind of deal can you give me for my temple art?”
They ended up striking a deal for three of the personal shields he had against one of the temple paintings she had with a promissory handshake for another set of ten shields. If he could produce the specs or another set of ten personal shields, a second artifact would be his.
They sealed their deal in the captain’s quarters aboard her ship, the Touch of Gold.
Three days.
In three days, the last of the selected Senators would collect at Emperor Palpatine’s villa on the shore of the Western Sea and enter into secret meetings. That was the day they would strike. To most men planning an operation of this type, the heightened security required for such a meeting might have argued against carrying out an assassination attempt. But Tuden Sal had observed many times over that the chaos caused by such events could afford the perfect cover for such a mission.
He was counting on it being so this time, as well.
There were multiple security organizations involved—Imperial forces, the Senators’ personal bodyguards and security detachments, their administrative personnel—all of which created overlap and gaps, and distracted rote-trained forces from their daily routines and habits. In such times as these, competing security protocols and agendas often came into conflict, and when they did it forced those involved to focus much more tightly on one another than on what was going on outside and beyond them.
It also put a whole group of operatives into play who were unfamiliar with what was “normal” in this neighborhood or in the waters that lapped at the Emperor’s private jetty and swirled beneath his private dock.
Tuden Sal had taken seriously Pol Haus’s claim that additional Imperial forces had moved into the area under cover of darkness, but none of his operatives in the coastal neighborhoods had reported any such activity, which led to the obvious conclusion that Haus was lying.
The Emperor probably suspected people were plotting to assassinate him all the time. He was right; very likely they were. But Palpatine was an arrogant man, so sure of his own powers and those of his dark-hearted protégé, Darth Vader, that he would never hide, even if he knew the hour and day of his planned demise. But he didn’t know. Hence, Vader was offworld and the Emperor was having a private conclave with his favorite sycophants.
Thi Xon Yimmon, Sal thought, would have balked at killing the Emperor at the risk of so much collateral damage—the explosives Acer Ash had brought in would reduce the villa and its nearest neighbors to rubble—but Sal had no such qualms. The Emperor deserved the death he was going to get, and so did the Senators who willingly supported him.
So, the explosives were in place on their cleaning droids; the “cleanup” team of Nautolans and Mon Calamari had infiltrated the maintenance crews of the seaside resorts and had every reason to be in or near the water; the aerial assault teams were ready to pick off anyone who escaped the conflagration; the ground forces were armed and ready to take down anyone who might get out of the villa’s grounds into the streets. Nor would there be any escape by water; the operatives who had planted the charges and reprogrammed the droids would be there to “help” any would-be escapees to a far quieter place.
Tuden Sal reached a hand out to the illuminated 3-D image of the Emperor’s villa. Soon all those years of loss would be over. He would reunite with his family. He would have a life again. His fingertip passed through the holographic image, erasing it in a split second.
Three days.
Twenty-Eight
Tyno Fabris was smiling.
Prince Xizor recognized the smile the moment he entered his lieutenant’s tasteful, if somewhat cluttered, office suite. The smile was of the I know something you don’t variety, and the newly minted Vigo found it annoying. That annoyance made his skin prickle, though he managed to control his flushing reflex.
“You seem pleased with yourself,” he commented.
“Well, not with myself, but with my intelligence network. Yes, I’m quite …” Xizor’s attempt to control his reflexes was not entirely successful; the Arkanian’s smile faltered as the shift in his boss’s pheromone levels struck him. “…pleased,” he ended lamely.
“Do tell,” Xizor said, and meant it as a command.
To his credit, Fabris took it as one. “Things are happening on Imperial Center, Vigo. Interesting things. Our rumor mill has not only drawn Darth Vader away from Kantaros Station, but has caused Imperial forces to be moved to the affected area.”
Xizor shrugged. “That’s to be expected.”
“Ah, but that’s not all—at least according to one Captain Donari Caron. When asked why she was able to produce only three of the prototype P-shields she was asked to procure, she reported that her contact told her that security on Imperial Center was tight at the moment, but that the situation would soon change when Palpatine was—how did she put it—out of the picture.”
Xizor was momentarily speechless. Once he’d processed the information, he said, “What you’re implying is that someone actually is plotting to kill Palpatine.”
The Arkanian’s smile was back, no less annoying. “It certainly looks that way.”
On the bridge of the Black Sun vessel Raptor, everything was going according to plan. Jax watched from a jump seat at the rear of the bridge as the small crew went through their pre-launch protocols. The Raptor was one of three Black Sun vessels—well-armed black-market runners all. In exactly two hours, th
ey would lift from Mandalore and make way to Kantaros Station.
He raised his eyes to the viewport, which gave a view of the other nearby vessels. Past the two Black Sun ships, he could see the Laranth sitting, her engines powered down and cold.
He was not unhappy that Den and I-Five would not be with him, he told himself. It was better that they stay behind, for a growing list of reasons. One was their own safety. What Jax was proposing to do was risky to anyone involved—including Xizor’s operatives. A related imperative was that the resistance not lose more good people. If he went in alone and failed, Den and I-Five would be left to carry on. If they were with him and he failed …
No. It didn’t bear thinking about.
There was a third reason for his decision to part from his closest friends—their distrust. It was palpable and it distracted him. Both distraction and distrust could foster indecision and, as he already knew, indecision resulted in loss … in death.
There is no death …
Jax shook himself, shoving doubt aside. Perhaps there was no death from the point of view of the dead. Perhaps death only existed in the minds of the living—the ones left behind.
Jax felt the thrum of the Raptor’s ion engines as they ramped up. He frowned and checked his chrono. Where was Xizor? The thrill-seeking Vigo had made his own presence on the mission a part of the deal, but he had yet to come aboard, though their departure was only minutes away.
There was a sudden shift in the atmosphere of the bridge. All of Jax’s senses focused on the source of that change—the captain, a human named Breck, had straightened and raised a hand to the earpiece of his comlink, then tilted his head, sat back in his seat, and glanced back over his shoulder at Jax.
The hair rose up on the back of Jax’s neck. Something was wrong.
The captain faced front again, uttered a word or two, then turned to his navigator. “Secure the ship. We’re standing down.”
The Last Jedi Page 24
