by Timothy Zahn
“We are?” Grave asked. “Why?”
“Because they’re connected to this,” LaRone said. “I don’t know exactly how, but they are. And at the moment, they’re our only solid connection.”
“Doesn’t sound all that solid to me,” Grave said doubtfully.
“It may be a little loose,” LaRone conceded. “But it won’t cost us anything to at least see where they’re going.”
Grave shrugged. “Nothing but time and fuel.”
“We’ve got the time, and ISB’s providing the fuel,” LaRone pointed out as they slipped into the tapcafe’s back room and headed for the exit. “Let’s go before they spot Quiller.”
“No, Purnham,” Han repeated. “The Purnham system. Where Porter said you got hit once by pirates?”
“Are you crazy?” Casement’s voice demanded over the Falcon’s comm. “We’re trying to avoid pirates, remember?”
“No, we’re trying to lock down this BloodScar thing,” Han said.
“But the Purnham attack wasn’t from the BloodScars,” Casement objected.
Han rolled his eyes as, beside him, Chewbacca warbled a softly contemptuous growl. Couldn’t these idiots see it? “Look,” Han said, pitching his voice as if he were talking to a small child or a midlevel bureaucrat. “We don’t know where the BloodScars are, but you and Porter think they’re trying to snap up other fringe groups. Maybe they’re also trying to recruit the Purnham gang; and we do know where that group hangs out. If we can catch a couple of them, maybe they can tell us where to find the BloodScars.”
“Well … maybe,” Casement conceded. “But getting them to talk won’t be easy.”
Han looked at the glowering Wookiee beside him. “Let me worry about that,” he said. “You just get a cargo ship there—let’s make it three days from now. Be sure you route the manifest the same way you did before, in case someone’s slicing the dispatch records for good targets.”
“Fine,” Casement said, a heavy layer of resignation in his voice. “Whatever you say. But I’ve got to tell you, I’ve got a bad fe—”
“Three days,” Han said, and cut off the comm. He turned a glare toward Luke, sitting quietly behind Chewbacca. “Or are there other objections?” he challenged.
“No, no, I like it,” Luke assured him hastily. “The last thing they’ll expect is an ambush.”
“Good,” Han said, turning back to the controls. “Then we’re all agreed. Wonderful.”
Keying on the repulsorlifts, he lifted the Falcon off the pad. Go and talk to the supply people, Rieekan had said. That’s all. Just go and talk to them.
Yeah. Right.
“My engineers say everything will be up and running in four more hours,” Captain Ozzel said, taking a hasty step backward as a long shielding plate on its way across the Happer’s Way engine room swung dangerously in their direction. Mara, her eyes and brain automatically making quick size and distance calculations, didn’t bother to move as the metal plate passed no closer than five centimeters from her face. “Is there any other way we can serve you?”
“I’ll need two of your crewers,” she told him. “Men who can both fight and handle a ship this size.”
“You mean close-in fighting?” Ozzel asked doubtfully. “That won’t be easy.”
“Maybe you can pull them from your stormtrooper contingent,” Mara suggested.
There was a flicker of something in Ozzel’s face and sense. “That may be possible,” he said carefully. “I’ll check with the group commander.”
“Don’t bother—I’ll meet with him myself,” Mara said. “Tell him to report to the bay duty office.”
“Right away,” Ozzel said, pulling out his comlink.
Maneuvering her way along the Happer’s Way’s narrow corridors, Mara stepped out through the hatch into the Reprisal’s hangar bay, where the freighter had been brought for repairs. As per her orders, the purely cosmetic damage Shakko’s men had inflicted on the outer hull hadn’t been touched. She glanced over it, satisfied herself that there was nothing to show that the repairs hadn’t been made in deep space by the Happer’s Way’s own crew, and headed for the duty office.
A smooth-faced man wearing colonel’s insignia was waiting when she arrived. “Emperor’s Hand,” he greeted her gravely. “I’m Colonel Vak Somoril. I understand you wished to see me?”
“You’re the stormtrooper group commander?” Mara asked.
“Not the overall commander, but I head a specialized contingent,” Somoril explained. “Captain Ozzel thought my unit would be more likely to have the sort of men you’re looking for.”
“I need two warriors who also know their way around a Rendili heavy freighter,” Mara told him. “Can you supply them?”
“I think so,” Somoril said. “When do you want them?”
“Immediately,” Mara said. “Have them collect civilian gear and report to the Happer’s Way. Captain Norello will meet them there for a quick orientation to the ship and its systems. We’ll be leaving the Reprisal in four hours.”
“As you wish,” Somoril said briskly. “They’ll be aboard in twenty minutes.”
“Good. Dismissed.”
Somoril left. For a few seconds Mara gazed at the closed door, allowing him time to get across the hangar bay. Then, stepping over to the duty office computer terminal, she punched in her special override password and keyed for a search of the Reprisal’s personnel roster.
There was no Colonel Vak Somoril listed.
Pursing her lips, Mara keyed for the bridge log and repeated her search. Again, nothing. Switching to the flight log, she searched for arrivals and departures.
There, finally, she found something. There were still no names, Somoril’s or anyone else’s, but a little over two standard weeks earlier eight nonmilitary vessels had arrived aboard the Reprisal and been given berths in Hangar Bay 5. One of the ships had left three days later, though under odd circumstances and with some apparent contradictions in the sequence of log reports. The other ships were still aboard.
Put together, the pattern was obvious. Colonel Somoril and his specialized stormtrooper contingent were Imperial Security Bureau.
Mara wrinkled her nose in disgust. ISB was a necessary evil, she knew, though to her mind there was too much evil and not enough necessity in the mix. Her own limited experience had found them to be generally arrogant, heavy-handed, and overly proud of their elite status.
And if there was prestige or political advantage to be had, they could be trusted to be first in line. Probably why Somoril had maneuvered himself ahead of the Reprisal’s official stormtrooper commander to offer a combat force to the Emperor’s Hand.
Odd, though, that he hadn’t then made a point of identifying himself as ISB. Perhaps he planned that revelation for just before Mara’s departure.
Shutting down the terminal, Mara left the office and crossed the bay to the pilots’ briefing room. Two troopers stood on guard, and at her gesture one of them unlocked the door and opened it.
Sitting at the conference table, securely shackled to one of the legs by two sets of binders, was the pirate Tannis. “About time,” he growled. “When do I get something to eat?”
“Shut up and listen,” Mara said, pulling out a data card and holding it up for his inspection. “I’ve prepared a list of charges against you. Added together, the total package reads out as anywhere from thirty standard years in a penal colony all the way up to the death penalty.”
Tannis’s mouth twisted. “This is your idea of a deal?”
“I’m not finished,” Mara told him. “So far you’ve had a pretty easy ride, you and the rest of your friends down in the brig. You’ve been nicely anonymous, given that the only people who could finger you for piracy were always dead before you left the scene with their cargoes. As long as you weren’t stupid enough to wear your BloodScar patches, you could stroll down any street in the Empire without anyone being the wiser as to who you really were.”
She tapped the card with one fi
ngertip. “But that’s all over now. Along with the charges, this card also details your face, your fingerprints, your biometrics, and your full DNA profile. Once this is in the Imperial data bank, any law enforcement officer curious enough to punch you in will have your entire criminal history in the time it takes to comm to Imperial Center and back.” She raised her eyebrows. “Which means you’re going to either spend the next thirty-plus years in prison or else spend it hiding in sewers and dark holes.”
Tannis’s face was under good control, but Mara could sense the fear starting to tug at him as he looked ahead to the bleak future she had sketched out. “Unless?” he asked carefully.
“The data’s already in the system,” Mara said. “But at the moment it’s in one of my private files, isolated from everything else, with a thirty-day release timer on it. That means that anytime in the next thirty days I can go in and erase it, and no one will ever even know it was there.”
“So what we’re talking about here is sort of like a blanket pardon?”
“Basically,” Mara said. “Interested?”
The tip of Tannis’s tongue slipped across the center of his upper lip. “What do I have to do?”
“We’re taking the Happer’s Way to your base,” Mara told him. “After suffering damage to his hyperdrive and comm system in the battle, your friend Captain Shakko decided to send you home with the prize while he and the rest of the crew stayed behind to make repairs.”
“And where did you come from?”
“My men and I were hijackers who’d sneaked aboard the Happer’s Way,” Mara said. “We were making our move when you showed up, which is why you were able to capture the ship without having to first blast it into a worthless hulk. We’d heard about the BloodScars and made a deal with Shakko for you to take us to the Commodore to discuss our joining up.”
“What if he asks what group you’re with?” Tannis asked. “He knows a lot about the people in this sector.”
“Trust me,” Mara said. “I’ll make it work.”
Tannis grimaced. “You’re asking me to betray my comrades.”
“You’re a pirate,” Mara countered. “Your comrades are acquaintances of convenience, any of whom would stab you in the back for an extra ten percent.”
She gave that a moment to sink in before continuing. “As it happens, though, you’re not really going to betray them. You’re a local problem, to be dealt with by the local authorities. The only person I’m interested in right now is whoever it is who’s currently pulling your strings.”
Tannis frowned. “You mean Caaldra?”
“I mean the one behind Caaldra,” Mara said. “Impressive though he might look, he’s only a high-priced errand boy. I want access to the Commodore’s records so I can find out who’s making the decisions, who’s giving the orders—” She paused, just briefly. “—and who’s handing out the money.”
Once again Tannis’s face gave nothing away, but the sudden emotional ripple showed Mara she’d hit the target directly on the crossmark. Tannis might be a few steps down the chain of command, but he knew how to follow a money trail.
So she’d been right. At least some of the money from Glovstoak’s artworks had apparently found its way to the BloodScars.
“What happens if the Commodore tumbles to you?” Tannis asked.
“You’ll try very hard not to let that happen.”
“And if you krong up and end up getting yourself killed?”
“You’ll try even harder not to let that happen. Are you in?”
Tannis snorted. “Do I have a choice?”
“Sure—you can start your sentence today,” Mara said.
“No thanks,” he said, and in his eyes and altered tone, Mara knew he’d suddenly realized that he had a third option: to betray her to the rest of the BloodScars and use his thirty-day grace period to find a place to hide. “I’m in.”
“Good,” Mara said, stepping over to stand in front of him. “And just so we’re clear what exactly it is you’re agreeing to—” Dropping her gaze to his binders, she reached out with the Force and unfastened them, letting them drop clattering to the deck.
For a handful of heartbeats Tannis stared down at them, the muscles in his neck suddenly taut. Then, slowly, he lifted his eyes to hers again.
And whatever thoughts he might have had about betrayal were suddenly gone. “Vader,” he whispered. “You’re like Vader.”
“Only better,” she said coolly, a part of her mind wondering what Vader would do if he ever heard her talk that way. But what the Sith Lord didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. “We have a deal?”
Tannis swallowed hard. “Yes,” he managed. “Absolutely.”
“Good,” she said, taking a step back and stretching out again, this time to call the binders to her hand. Tannis followed them with his eyes the entire way. “I’ll have a guard take you to your ship to pick out some clothing and anything else you want to take with you. Then you’ll report to the Happer’s Way for an equipment orientation. I’ll make sure there’s enough bacta in the medical capsule to get that leg of yours back in shape before we arrive at your base.”
“Right.” Slowly, Tannis stood up, his eyes still on the binders. He looked back up at Mara, and managed a taut smile. “Welcome to the BloodScars, Emperor’s Hand. You’re going to love it.”
“Thank you,” Mara said. “I’d better.”
Captain Ozzel leaned back in his chair, staring at his computer display with a bitter sense of defeat. All of it—all the work, all the sweat, all the struggling—gone.
The admiral’s bars. Gone.
Across the office, the door slid open and Colonel Somoril stepped in. “They’ve just made the jump to lightspeed,” he told Ozzel.
“It doesn’t matter,” Ozzel muttered, gesturing to the display. “We’re finished.”
“What in space are you talking about?” Somoril demanded, stepping to the desk and swiveling the display around to face him.
“Our clever little Emperor’s Hand found her way into the ship’s computer,” Ozzel said bitterly. “She accessed the personnel files, the bridge log, and the flight log.”
Somoril’s face had gone stiff, his eyes darting back and forth as he skimmed the file on the display. Ozzel watched; then, to the captain’s amazement, he saw some of the other’s tension drain away. “Fine,” Somoril said, sitting down. “So she knows the Gillia left a couple of weeks ago. So what? As far as she knows, that could have been a perfectly legitimate ISB operation.”
“Oh, really?” Ozzel snarled. “You really think she maneuvered herself aboard this ship and into the computer without already knowing what she was looking for?”
Somoril lifted his eyebrows. “She maneuvered herself aboard? Including setting up a pirate attack on an Imperial-chartered freighter?”
“Special Imperial agents don’t bother with anything as trivial as pirates,” Ozzel shot back. “And the Emperor’s Hand certainly doesn’t. If she happened to foil a pirate attack, it was purely incidental to her main mission.”
Somoril shook his head. “I’m not convinced.”
“Then be convinced,” Ozzel said acidly, keying for a new file. “I pulled up these items from planetary news services. We have two separate reports of Imperial stormtroopers in action.”
Somoril’s eyes narrowed. “What sort of action?”
“The first wasn’t too bad,” Ozzel said. “All they did was engage and destroy a swoop gang who were harassing a group of farmers. But the second action ended up tearing down a city’s entire patroller structure.”
“They took over a city?”
“No, apparently just reinstated the last group who’d been in charge,” Ozzel said. “I haven’t been able to get any more details. Not that it matters. The point is that our Emperor’s Hand now knows where those stormtroopers came from.”
“If she’s made the connection,” Somoril said. “She may not have. More to the point, even if she has, it won’t matter if she’s never able to
tell anyone else.”
Ozzel stared at him, something unpleasant starting to gnaw at his gut. “What exactly are you suggesting?”
“I’m saying that she sent no transmissions from the Reprisal, and that she won’t be sending any from the Happer’s Way,” Somoril said. “Brock and Gilling will make sure of that. That just leaves the transmitters at her destination point.” He paused. “Which, from our track of their departure vector, is almost certainly the mining operation on Gepparin.”
“You tracked them?”
“How else would we know where to find her?” Somoril replied reasonably. “So now, Captain, you have a decision to make.”
“You realize what you’re suggesting,” Ozzel said, his voice sounding strange in his ears. “You’re talking about killing an Imperial agent. A woman who gets her orders from Palpatine himself.”
“A girl who gets those orders,” Somoril corrected. “She’s barely had time to finish her training, let alone build up any real field experience.”
“She’s an Imperial agent.”
“Stop saying that,” Somoril growled. “This is a dangerous life she’s chosen for herself. Agents in the field die all the time.”
“So why didn’t you deal with her when she was here?” Ozzel demanded.
“What, in front of potentially hundreds of witnesses?” Somoril countered contemptuously. “Besides, at the time I didn’t know how close to the trail she was sniffing. Now we do.”
Ozzel exhaled noisily. But the colonel was right. Terribly, horribly right. “How do you propose we proceed?”
“As I said, an agent’s life is dangerous,” Somoril said. “You never know when you might get caught up at the wrong end of a military action.” He lifted his eyebrows. “The sort of action that might occur if a patrolling Star Destroyer happened on data pointing to a suspected pirate nest.”
For a long minute the two men gazed across the desk at each other. Then, slowly, Ozzel reached to his intercom. “This is the captain,” he announced grimly. “Set course for the Gepparin system. Get us under way as soon as the hyperdrive’s up to full power.”
