by Jude Watson
Trever’s father had known Amie Antin, a doctor who treated the members of The Eleven. Trever had been one of the few allowed into their original hideout. He knew his father and brother would have joined The Eleven if they hadn’t been killed by the Imperials during a peaceful protest.
The Eleven had chosen their hideout carefully, but it wasn’t remote. The block was like all the others, neither too busy nor too deserted. Their house looked like the other family houses on the block.
“That’s it?” Solace murmured as they approached. “We’re in the middle of an ordinary neighborhood.”
“That’s the point,” Trever said. “The Ussans have incredible loyalty to each other. The Eleven depend on that. Even if a neighbor suspected something they would die before they betrayed them.”
“How do we get inside?” Oryon asked.
“We go in the back way.”
Trever led them through a gate that was, surprisingly, unlocked. The path led them to a paved back area with a table and chairs. Beyond the sitting area was a wall with no door. Trever stood in front of it for a long minute.
“What are you doing?” Solace asked.
“Allowing them to see me. Amie Antin knows me. Wil, too. They’ll let me in, even with two strangers.”
“The trust of the Ussans,” Oryon said.
“Exactly.”
Part of the wall slid back, and they saw a ramp going down. The opening was big enough to hold a speeder. They followed Trever as he descended, and found themselves in a small holding area for vehicles. A door at the far end opened and a lovely woman of middle years with close-cropped white hair and dark eyes walked forward, smiling.
“Trever. You disappeared. Must I always worry about you?”
“Sorry, Dr. Antin. I decided to ship out and see the galaxy.”
Amie shook her head. “Well, maybe that’s not such a bad idea, considering how things are here. I’m glad to see you’re well.”
“My friends and I are here to help Roan and Dona.”
“I guessed as much. We can use help. Come in.”
Amie led them inside to a small interior room. Wil was sitting at a data screen. Trever saw that he’d been monitoring the backyard and the street, most likely to ensure that they weren’t followed.
“Where are the others?” Trever asked, looking around.
“We’ve disbanded for the moment,” Wil said. “They’ve spread out in the city. The Imperials haven’t managed to completely subdue Ussa, but the crackdown gets worse every day. They’re determined to control the planet. So we have our work cut out for us.” He gazed at Solace and Oryon with polite curiosity. “What brings you to Ussa?” he asked.
Trever introduced Solace and Oryon. “We heard that Roan and Dona were arrested,” he said. “Ferus sent us. He’s well, but he can’t come.”
“Do you have any news of where they might have taken Roan and Dona?” Solace asked.
“Not much, and what we know isn’t good,” Wil reported. “We know they were taken aboard a ship. We’ve heard rumors through our spy network that the ship serves as a detention center and also a courtroom—so that political prisoners aren’t tried on their homeworlds or indeed anywhere they can garner support. They are tried and sentenced in space, then taken directly to a prison world. The Empire can claim a fair trial but keep it all under wraps.”
“The plan is for the ship to travel constantly through the galaxy, picking up political prisoners,” Amie explained. “We have all our sources working on it, but we have no idea of its present location.”
Trever felt his face fall. If Roan had been on Bellassa, they would have figured out a way to get to him. But the galaxy was a big place.
“Do you know where the ship left from?” Solace asked.
Wil nodded. “The main Imperial landing platform. They retrofitted a Corellian YT transport. It’s called the True Justice.”
“There’s only one way to find it,” Solace said. “We have to infiltrate the landing platform and gain access to their tracking system.”
Suddenly Wil’s screen began to beep. Everyone looked at it in alarm.
A squad of stormtroopers marched down the middle of the street, peeling off in groups of five to investigate each house.
“House-to-house search,” Wil explained. “New policy. They pick random quadrants of the city. Just bad luck.” He turned to Amie. “We’ll have to execute the abandonment plan.”
Amie nodded.
Wil turned to the others. “We’ll get you out, but we have a few procedures to follow.”
“Can we help?” Solace asked.
“Thanks for the offer, but we’ll be done in exactly fifty seconds. We’ve timed it out.”
Trever watched as Wil quickly touched the datascreen, turning off all heat and light in the house. Amie hurried to throw large dustcovers over the furniture.
“We hope to fool them,” she told Trever. “They’ll think the owners are away.”
Wil shut down the house in just a few seconds. He hesitated for a moment. “I have to clear the computer files,” he said. “We have to leave everything out in the open, so it appears we have nothing to hide.” With a sigh, he pressed the key that wiped the information off the house computer. “The only thing that remains will be normal transactions.”
The stormtroopers were at the next house. They would be here in less than a minute.
They hurried back down the ramp to the hangar. Instead of taking one of the speeders, however, Wil accessed a hidden panel in the wall. It slid back, and he waited as the others passed through. They were in a small tunnel. The floor sloped downward and then made a sharp turn.
“We’ll come out on the street behind the house,” Wil murmured. “When they break into our house, they’ll find nothing.”
“Won’t the fake back wall make them suspicious?” Solace asked.
“Only if they find it. We just have to hope they won’t get suspicious enough to check out the back.”
They reached another blank wall. Wil waved his hand over a hidden sensor. The wall slid back and they quickly slipped out into the cold gray afternoon. They were in an alley that ran behind a small landing platform that was shared by the neighborhood. Wil gestured to them, and they followed him into the deserted hangar.
“We keep a vehicle here, just in case,” he said. “I think it’s a good idea to get out of this quadrant.”
They were heading toward the vehicle when five stormtroopers suddenly entered. The leader’s head turned. “ID docs,” he ordered in his metallic voice.
“What should we do?” Amie murmured. “Bluff our way through?”
“If they find you with outsiders, it could compromise you,” Oryon said.
“No talking allowed,” rapped out the stormtrooper. The rest of the stormtroopers headed toward them.
“I can take care of this,” Solace said.
“There’s an entire squad,” Amie said.
“Don’t worry, she’s not kidding,” Trever said.
The stormtroopers raised their blasters.
Solace moved. She held out a hand and the Force slammed into the first two stormtroopers, knocking them backward. The remaining stormtroopers ran toward the group, but Solace was already moving, swinging her lightsaber in a clean arc that decapitated three with one blow. She kicked out with a foot, ducked, and turned in a complete circle and took out the leader and the remaining trooper.
Wil grinned. “You didn’t tell us you were a Jedi.”
Solace clipped her lightsaber back onto her utility belt. “You didn’t ask.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Amie said. “Another squad will show up before long.”
They all squeezed into the speeder. “You should lay low for a while,” Wil said, shooting out of the hangar and steering away from the house-to-house search. “When they find the stormtroopers, they’ll put a lockdown on the city.”
“Good advice, but we don’t have time to lay low,” Solace said. “Take us to the Im
perial landing platform.”
Ferus had been in the city systems computer center for hours now. The room hummed with the intricate panels and datascreens, all controlled by a giant droid known as Platform-7. It was a variant of a BRT droid computer, big as a room, especially built to run Sath. Here, everything having to do with the city functions was tracked—space lanes, glowlamps, public fountains and parks, the power grid, the credit systems of all businesses. When the center had functioned smoothly, it had made living and working in Sath easy. Now that it was malfunctioning, it was almost impossible to trace where and how it had gone wrong.
Bog had stayed for only a short time, eager for Ferus to solve the problem. He’d become bored quickly and had left, with a hearty command to contact him as soon as he’d found the problem.
Ferus was no closer now to finding where the worm had originated than he had been when he arrived. He stared at the datascreens with their streaming code, his eyes burning. He had expected cleverness, but this was diabolical.
Usually, computer thieves couldn’t help but leave fingerprints, little eccentricities of code that you could follow if you knew what to look for. Some led to dead ends, but eventually he was able to follow the code back to the source. Not this time.
Ferus pushed away from the console and closed his eyes. This was a matter the Force couldn’t help him with. He had a feeling he was going about this the wrong way. He couldn’t use any of his old methods. He had to think in a new way.
Motive. Why would somebody foul up an entire city?
The first thing he thought was that they would attempt to steal a large amount of credits from the City Bank, where all transactions were recorded and all wealth was deposited. But that area checked out. No attempts had been made. He wondered if a citizen had been trying to get out of paying the heavy taxes most Sathans paid in order to live in such a smoothly functioning society, where all of their needs were met. But if that were the case, there was no way to track it. Along with birth and death records, the tax rolls were a mess.
Maybe the culprits were trying to cover something up. Maybe it was revenge. Ferus spun around in his chair, trying to think. Without detailed knowledge of Sathan society, he couldn’t begin to puzzle out emotional motives. He was reluctant to go that route until he had to. He’d rather attack the problem at its source.
Suddenly an idea made him bolt upright.
Ferus thought a moment, then typed in a span of dates, requesting city records for vehicle purchases.
Checking, the computer replied.
It didn’t matter what the motive was. Whoever did this had to get off the planet. Ferus had a hunch. The Empire had shut down the spaceport in record time. What if the saboteur had intended to leave but was trapped on Sath?
If his luck was with him, the registration names would pop up. The random nature of the bug meant that some systems still worked, as long as no one checked them. He’d have a few seconds, that’s all.
In minutes, a long list of names flashed up on the datascreen.
Ferus hit the buttons to print it out, but in reply his screen read, Sorry, unable.
It was the same answer he’d been getting all morning. By this time, he was imagining he heard regret in the computer’s bland, agreeable tone.
He’d have to memorize the names, and fast.
Bog stuck his head in the door. “Any progress?”
“No,” Ferus replied shortly. He moved through the names, trying to memorize them. It was similar to a Temple exercise when he was a Padawan. But he feared his mind had been sharper when he was a boy. Distracted, he moved through the list again.
Bog walked in and read over his shoulder. “Vehicle Purchase Registration Request Records? What does this have to do with anything?”
The names began to slither and slide offscreen, a sure sign that even though he’d been able to access them, another part of the system was now breaking down. “Nothing, and everything,” Ferus told Bog. “I have to check each component of the city records to see if I can find the hidden bug.” The names suddenly disappeared and the screen went blank. Ferus hit a few keystrokes.
Citywide waste delivery system now malfunctioning, the screen advised.
Bog’s face went bright red. “You’re supposed to be fixing the system, not making it worse!”
Ferus shrugged. Bog stamped out. Ferus turned away from the coding chaos on his screen. He had the names in his head. Now all he had to do was cross-check them. But he couldn’t do it here.
He jumped out of his seat and headed for the door, waving his hand over the sensor as he moved so that he jumped through the hissing doors as they opened, surprising a stormtrooper just outside.
The stormtrooper snapped to attention. “I will contact Bog Divinian for you, sir. He just left. I can—”
“No need,” Ferus said. “I’ll be back.”
He left the huge Sath Managing Complex and swung onto one of the main boulevards. Although Sath was a teeming city, he was now familiar with its layout. The main landing platform was less than a quarter kilometer away. He could sense a seeker droid behind him, no doubt tracking him, but he didn’t care. There would be a time when he would ditch his surveillance, but it hadn’t come yet.
He jumped onto the turbolift and hit the sensor for the landing platform. He strode out and found the same Sathan official in the Dockmaster Office. He was copying out names from the durasheets stacked on his desk.
“Leaving already? Don’t blame you.”
“I need some information. The day the saboteur struck,” Ferus said. “When the Imperials closed the spaceport. How many were scheduled to depart?”
“Three hundred and twenty-seven,” he said, without looking up.
“How many filed for a refund on the departure tax? Have you tabulated?”
“Almost all.”
“May I see?”
The official hunted through the papers and handed a sheaf to Ferus. He quickly flipped through them. He immediately discovered the names of those who didn’t file for a refund of the hefty departure tax.
The refund was a considerable amount of credits. Not many would turn down the chance to receive it.
He memorized the five names. One more stop and he’d be sure.
Thanking the official, he hurried back onto the turbolift. He took it down to the main level. There he hopped aboard a moving ramp that shot him forward. He could feel the presence of the seeker droid behind him.
Ferus took the ramp to the very center of the city. He exited and turned to the right, where a gleaming white structure loomed, long and low. This was the place where the Sathans mourned their dead. He walked inside.
The glowlamps were red and softly powered down, the air scented with herbs. The mausoleum wasn’t staffed, but relied on huge datascreens for those who entered to find the name of their loved ones on the intricately carved, curving walls. By pressing the name, information about the loved one would appear and messages could be left.
The datascreens weren’t working. But the names were arranged alphabetically, so Ferus was able to run down the curving walls, looking for a match to any of the five names he’d memorized. He found it in the Fs. There it was, Quintus Farel, just as he’d thought.
Quintus Farel had turned up in two places—on the list of those who had applied for a Vehicle Purchase Registration Request and on a list of those who never applied for a refund on the departure tax. If Quintus had bought a star cruiser and planned to leave, his plans had been foiled. But he hadn’t bothered to get a refund.
All of this wasn’t very interesting, except that Quintus Farel was dead.
He’d died twenty-five years ago at age two. A terrible speeder accident. His parents had died, too. Their names were beside him, here in the mausoleum.
Someone had stolen his name and ID information.
It was a common way to get an alias. Find a name that had already been recorded and it was easier to forge ID docs. A security number would have already been issued.<
br />
The saboteur had hit the personal records first—the birth and death records. They’d thought their tracks would be covered by the chaos that ensued. But by cross-referencing the landing platform records—which an overly zealous bureaucrat had painstakingly kept on durasheets, unbeknownst to the saboteur—with the mausoleum records that were kept engraved on synthstone, Ferus had found his first clue.
“Gotcha,” he murmured.
Before he left, he paused. The longer he let the seeker droid track him, the more information he’d be giving to Bog and the Empire. He wanted to find the saboteur himself, then decide what to do. He needed to make sure that he wasn’t handing over the planet to Imperial control. He had to hope that Solace and Oryon would be able to find Roan and Dona and free them before he had to make a choice.
He stepped out into the street again. He felt the seeker lurking underneath the curved roof of the building.
Suddenly a skyhopper zoomed down in front of him. “Air taxi, sir?”
It was Clive. Ferus stepped inside the vehicle. “I’ve got a seeker droid to lose,” he said.
“I’m way ahead of you, mate. You’ve been under droid surveillance since you left that crazy palace. Let’s lose the creep.”
Clive hit the engines hard. Ferus felt his stomach lurch as he moved up into space-lane traffic.
“Have to get past these canal bridges, then we can go up,” Clive said, swerving to avoid an airspeeder dodging an air taxi.
The space lane was clogged with traffic. Without signals, it was a free-for-all. Unfortunately, the citizens of Sath didn’t believe in slowing down.
Ferus was plastered against the seat. “This is insane.”
Clive cackled. “Isn’t it great?”
The seeker was keeping up. Clive suddenly swerved to the left, nearly colliding with a large airspeeder. “Oops, I keep forgetting about my lack of starboard visibility.” He tapped on the nav screen. “This keeps blitzing in and out.”
“Great.”
“Keep an eye out on starboard, will you?”
