"Looks like they used a thermal detonator," Aach said, half leading, half
pulling Bel Iblis down the alleyway away from the wrecked landspeeder. "Shaped
to bring down the Treitamma without demolishing the whole neighborhood. Most
likely planted somewhere near your preparation room."
And Arrianya and the children had been in the private refreshment center
chatting with the chief director. Only two rooms away...
They had reached the end of the alleyway by now. Around the corner of the
demolished building, over by the sides and front, Bel Iblis could see a crowd
had already gathered, their features unreadable through the smoke and heat-
shimmered air. Their screams and shouts, barely audible over the roar of the
flames, were like a stab of pain in his heart.
"Over here," Aach said, pulling him toward a landspeeder parked at the
side of the street, its front end crumpled and blistered by the explosion.
"You can take my ship-I'll get back to Alderaan some other way." He pulled
open the door and guided Bel Iblis into the passenger seat.
Another layer of the mental haze suddenly cleared from Bel Iblis's mind.
"Wait a minute," he protested, half in and half out of the vehicle.
"Arrianya and the children-I can't just leave them."
"You have to," Aach said, his voice bitter but firm. "Didn't you hear me?
You were the target, Senator. You still are. We've got to get you to safety
before they realize they missed and try again."
He closed the door on Bel Iblis and hurried around to the other side.
"But what if they're alive?" Bel Iblis demanded, fumbling for the door release
as Aach dropped into the driver's seat. "I can't just leave them."
"They're dead, Senator," Aach said quietly, his face in shadow as he
hunched forward and reached up under the control board. "Everyone who was
inside is gone, either from the blast itself or from the building's collapse.
Whoever Palpatine sent to do the job was very thorough."
With a jolt, the landspeeder started up.
"Yes," Bel Iblis murmured, taking one final look at the burning building
as Aach spun the vehicle around and headed in the other direction, down the
street. "He was indeed."
"And he's not going to give up now," Aach added, pulling hard to the side
to get out of the way of a fleet of Extinguisher speeder trucks as they raced
past toward the conflagration. A waste of effort, Bel Iblis thought numbly as
they passed. There was nothing anyone could do now. "You're going to have to
go underground until Bail and Mon Mothma can backtrack this and identify
whoever was responsible."
"I suppose so," Bel Iblis said. His left shoulder felt cold, and he
looked down to see that the top of his coat there had been torn completely
away by some bit of flying debris that the bulk of Aach's landspeeder hadn't
protected him from. Odd-he wondered why he hadn't noticed that before.
He was suddenly aware of a watchful silence, and looked over to find Aach
eyeing him warily. "Are you all right. Senator?" the other asked. "Did you
hear what I said? You have to go away somewhere and hide."
"Yes, I heard you," Bel Iblis said, the pain inside him beginning to give
way to a black and simmering anger. In that single instant, a moment frozen
forever in time, Palpatine had taken away from him everything he held dear.
His wife, his children, his career. His life.
Everything, that is, but one. "And I'll be all right," he went on, "When
Palpatine is dead, and what was once the Republic has been restored."
"I understand," Aach murmured. "You're one of us now. Senator."
Bel Iblis frowned at him. "What are you talking about? I've been part of
the Rebel Alliance since it was first formed."
"But you were with us for other reasons," Aach said. "Political reasons
like Palpatine's abuse of power, or idealistic reasons like erosion of
personal freedom or the anti-alien biases drifting into the legal system."
The muscles in his jaw tightened briefly. "Now Palpatine has hurt you.
Not someone else, but you. Now it's personal."
Bel Iblis took a deep breath. "Maybe it is," he conceded. "On the other
hand, maybe that's exactly what he wants: to trick us into thinking we're
fighting him for purely personal reasons."
"What's wrong with that?"
"What's wrong is that that kind of battle is driven by emotion," Bel
Iblis said. "Eventually, the emotion burns away, and then your reason for
continuing the fight is gone."
He fingered the edges of the hole in his coat. "But we're not going to
fall into t trap. He can do anything he wants to me-can take anything away
from me that he will. I'll still fight him because it's the right thing to do.
Period."
For a few minutes they drove on in silence. On the rear display the
burning shell gradually receded behind the other buildings of the city,
leaving only an angry black-orange pillar of smoke to mark his family's
funeral pyre. It seemed terribly wrong somehow to be running away like this,
as if he were casually and cavalierly brushing aside their lives and
dishonoring their memory.
But no. They were dead, and the dishonor of their blood was solely on
Palpatine's hands. All that was left for him now was to do whatever he could
to prevent others from dying in the same violent and useless way.
And if the whispered rumors he'd heard about this Death Star project of
Tarkin's were even close to the actual truth... "You said I could take your
ship?" he asked Aach.
"Yes, if you feel up to flying it yourself," the other said. "I was
thinking I might stay around here a day or two anyway."
"Why? To see if you can find a direct link back to Pal patine?" Bel Iblis
shook his head. "I can tell you right now you'll be wasting your time."
"It's my time to waste. Is there a place where you can hide out for a
while?"
"There are a couple of possibilities," Bel Iblis said. "But first I have
an appointment to keep on Darkknell."
"Darkknell?" Aach threw Bel Iblis a startled look. "You?"
"Why not?" Bel Iblis countered. "Who better to make the pickup than
someone who's supposed to be dead anyway? My schedule is now meaningless, you
know. And I have no one to miss me if I'm out of sight for a few days. Not
anymore."
"But-was Aach floundered a moment. "Sir, this could be dangerous-any
contact with informants has that potential. You're not trained for this sort
offieldwork."
"I did my stint in the military," Bel Iblis reminded him. "I know how to
handle a blaster. And I know a bit about disguise, too. I won't be recognized.
"
"But... was..."
"Besides," Bel Iblis cut him off quietly, "I need to do something useful
right now. Something to help take my mind off... whatjust happened back there.
"
Aach exhaled softly in resignation. "All right, sir. Before you go,
though, I'll give you a letter of introduction to someone I know in Xakrea you
can contact if you get in trouble. He doesn't have any particular sympathy for
the Rebellion, but he doesn't much care for Palpatine's Empire, either. He's
got a lot of con
tacts among smugglers and other fringe types on Darkknell,
which may come in handy if you have to get off the planet in a hurry."
"It may," Bel Iblis agreed, noting with a somewhat grim amusement that
Aach had carefully refrained from mentioning his friend's own status within
the fringe society. A smuggler himself, or perhaps a dealer of stolen goods?
Or something even more unsavory?
Still, if it came to that, the Rebel Alliance certainly had its own share
of unsavory characters. Some had probably been pulled in by the hope of quick
profits- - though those who had had most likely been disillusioned in record
time on that one-but others were among the Alliance's most tenacious and
effective fighters. "Do you trust him?"
Aach shrugged, a bit uncomfortably. "I think so, provided as you don't
push him too hard or ask too much. Or tell him who you are or who you're
working for. Anyway, he owes me a couple of favors."
"I see," Bel Iblis murmured. "It's always comforting to have allies."
"I could still go with you," Aach offered, a clear note of reluctance
lurking beneath the words. "I was supposed to head back to Alderaan. Under the
circumstances I know Bail would understand."
"No," Bel Iblis said firmly. "Bail undoubtedly needs you elsewhere, and I
can do this myself. You just help me get off Anchoron, and then you're on your
own."
Aach hesitated, then nodded. "All right, Senator. If you insist."
Bel Iblis looked back at the rear display, his eyes drawn unwillingly to
the roiling tower of black smoke behind them. The shock was starting to wear
off now, and a myriad of small injuries and throbbing pains were beginning to
make themselves felt across his body.
But none of it could come even close to the bitter ache in his heart.
Arrianya and the children... "Yes," he said quietly. "I insist."
The man sitting alone at the table across the crowded tapcafe was blond
and fairly short, with the darting eyes and twitching mouth of someone who was
somewhere he didn't want to be. Not much more than a kid, really, which could
explain his discomfort at being in such a villainous lair of vile laxity as
the Continuum Void.
On the other hand, his stiff back had an air of the Imperial military
about it, and if there was one safe bet in this galaxy, it was that military
types and tapcafes rarely needed to be formally introduced.
Moranda Savich sipped at her pale blue drink, wincing at the unfamiliar
tang, continuing to study the kid even as she chided herself for letting her
thoughts wander off target that way. The only reason she was on Dark knell in
the first place, after all, was that it wasn't Kreeling or Dorsis or
Mantarran. Inspector Hal Horn of Corellian Security had already tracked her to
and chased her off all those worlds, and most likely he'd continue his winning
streak by tracking her here, too. The sooner she figured out a quiet way off
this rock, the better her chances of staying ahead of him until he gave up and
went home.
She snorted gently. Fat chance. Horn wasn't going to give up, at least
not in her lifetime. The man was one of that supremely irritating class of law
enforcers who combined the menace of incorruptibility with the annoyance of
not knowing when to quit.
Across the tapcafe, the kid slipped a hand beneath the left side of his
jacket as he glanced around. The second time he'd done that, Moranda noted, in
the past ten minutes. Must be something he was having to reassure himself was
still there...
Stop it! she ordered herself sternly. She was on the run, and on the run
was no time to be swinging for a scratch. Stirring up the locals with a score
would be completely counterproductive, especially if she stirred them up
enough to catch her with spice or dealies or whatever the kid was carrying
that was making him so nervous.
He lifted his cup to his lips, half turning to throw a look toward the
tapcafe door, his ninth such check since Moranda had been watching. As he did
so, his jacket stretched momentarily against the object in his pocket,giving
her a brief glimpse of its shape. It was square, slightly larger than a
datacard, but considerably thicker.
A datapack? Could be. Probably with six to ten datacards, judging from
the thickness, snugged together in a protective case.
Moranda swirled the blue liqueur thoughtfully in her glass. Well, now. A
datapack put a very different perspective on things. Every police and security
operative knew spice and other contraband items on sight or smell or taste;
but a simple, innocent-looking datapack was another matter entirely. It was
something anyone might be carrying, something that even the most suspicious
mouth-breather would have to go to great lengths to prove wasn't her property
in the first place.
More to the point, it was something that was likely worth hard, cold
money. And money was what she needed if she was going to get out of here ahead
of Inspector Horn and his fistful of Corellian warrants.
Which left only one question: how to get the datapack away from its
nervous owner without getting caught doing it.
The glowing sign marking the 'fresher stations was against the wall on
the far side of the kid's table. Refilling her drink from the carafe, she got
up and ambled in that direction, putting a slightly tipsy hesitation into her
movements. His jacket was cut Preter style, she noted with a single casual
glance as she strolled past him, the sort with a deep inside pocket positioned
beneath the armhole on either side. Possibly fastened at the top, but probably
not seriously sealed. Still, with the youth hunched over the table the way he
was, the only way to get at the datapack would be for her to get him to take
the jacket at least partially off.
But that was okay. She enjoyed a challenge.
The 'fresher stations were like the rest of the Continuum Void: old and
more than slightly dilapidated. Sealing herself into one, she set her drink
down on the crumble-edged shelf and got to work.
The small tiles lining the station were the first target.
Pulling out her knife, she pried two of them off the wall, then carefully
trimmed them down to datacard size. Beneath the dies was a layer of the low-
quality honeycomb that served as a passive air filter in low-tier places like
this one; a double layer of that sandwiched between her two dies added die
required thickness. One of her diaphanous black scarves wrapped lightly around
the pack to hold it together and it was finished. The object didn't look
anything like a datapack, but it was the right size and shape and weight. With
the proper distraction and the right moves, and maybe a little bit of luck
tossed in, it should work.
After digging into her hip pack for a stray cigarra she kept around for
just such occasions, she lit it and stuck it between two fingers of her right
hand, picking up her glass of liqueur with the fingertips of the same hand.
Then, with the decoy datapack concealed as best she could in her left hand,
she unsealed the door and headed back into the main tapcafe room.
; The kid hadn't moved in the few minutes she'd been gone, nor had the
contact he was obviously expecting made an appearance. Holding her decoy
datapack unobtrusively at her side, putting a noticeable stagger into her walk
now, she started through the crowd toward her table, this time heading for the
narrow gap behind the kid. She dodged a drunk Barrckli, sent a warning glare
at an unshaven nerf herder type who looked as if he might be starting to get
ideas about her, and passed behind the kid-
Andwitha sudden lurch as if she'd been tripped, she fell heavily against
the back of his chair and splashed the contents of her glass across the
burning tip of her cigarra onto the back of his jacket.
The liqueur ignited with a muffled whoosh into a small but very
satisfying fireball.
"Look out!" Moranda gasped, dropping both glass and cigarra onto the
floor and grabbing over his right shoulder for the edge of the tablecloth. She
yanked it toward her, scattering glasses and tableware in all directions as
she hauled it past the side of his head toward the flames dancing across the
back of his jacket. Simultaneously, she tugged at the left lapel with the
fingertips of her left hand. Reflexively, he swung his left arm back in
response, giving her the necessary slack for pulling the blazing garment away
from the back of his neck.
And as she slapped vigorously at the already dying flames with the
tablecloth, her left hand dipped down into the inside jacket pocket, lifting
Tales From the New Republic Page 2
