Tales from the New Republic (7 page)

The small man Moranda had pointed out heaved his travel bag into the transport’s cargo area and then climbed into the passenger compartment, a vague sense of discomfort evident in the twitchiness of his movements. “He’s getting aboard,” Bel Iblis announced, lowering his macrobinoculars as a fresh twinge of guilt tugged at him. “Though what he’s going to think when he gets to Raykel—”

“Keep watching the transport,” Moranda interrupted him, her voice sounding distracted. “Make sure he’s still aboard when it leaves. Anyway, what’s the problem? He ought to be relieved when he finds out his father wasn’t actually in any accident.”

“I suppose so,” Bel Iblis said, throwing a scowl at her. Seated at the apartment’s battered dining table, frowning at a datapad, she was unfortunately oblivious to scowls at the moment. “On the other hand, this wild skipper hunt isn’t going to come cheap for him.”

“Life never has been fair,” she said. “If you’re worried about it, have your Rebel friends reimburse him.”

Bel Iblis snorted. “The Rebellion is hardly a bottomless money pit—”

“The transport, Garm,” she said, jabbing a finger toward the window without looking up. “Watch the transport.”

Swallowing back a curse, Bel Iblis turned to the window and raised the macrobinoculars again. Over the past few days he’d managed to force back the sharp agony of his family’s deaths into a duller ache, a quiet pain that colored every waking minute but which at least left him able to function reasonably well.

But “reasonably well” didn’t mean there wasn’t an edge of impatience and bitterness to his attitude, an edge this casually arrogant little thief forever seemed to be stepping on. It was a constant battle to keep from blowing up in her face over what under normal circumstances he would have shrugged off as minor personality conflicts.

But it was an effort he had to make. An effort he forced himself to make. He needed her help to retrieve that datapack, to get this vital information that could conceivably make or break the Rebellion. And besides, his black mood wasn’t her fault.

Three blocks away, the transport shuddered into motion and lumbered its way down the street. “There it goes,” he announced to Moranda, turning back to her again. “And he didn’t get off.”

“Good,” she said, setting aside her datapad with an air of satisfaction, taking a draw on her cigarra, and pulling out her comlink. “He wouldn’t have been much use to your friend Isard anyway, but this should give her people something to do while we stir the kettle a bit.”

“Which means what?”

“Which means it’s time to give the law a call,” she said. “I’ve pulled a likely name off your pal Arkos’s private list of incorruptible enforcement types. Let’s hope he’s also got the smarts to jump the direction we want him to.”

She keyed the comlink and held it up. There was a moment’s pause—“Nyroska,” a crisp voice came from the instrument.

“Hello, Colonel,” Moranda said. “You don’t know me, but I have a small problem here and I thought you might be able to help.”

Nyroska’s sigh was just barely audible. “If you’ll call your local Security office—”

“I have in my possession a very valuable and politically explosive item,” Moranda interrupted him. “An item the Imperial Intelligence officer currently nosing around town very badly wants.”

There was the briefest pause. “You’re misinformed,” Nyroska said. “There are no Imperial Intelligence agents on Darkknell.”

“Let’s not play games, Colonel,” Moranda said, putting some huffiness into her voice. “You and I both know she’s here. Frankly, she’s pretty hard
not
to spot, what with that blond muscle-type and his Luxan Penetrator running interference for her. She’s all over Xakrea, shaking the trees for a wayward Imperial datapack.”

“I see,” Nyroska said. His tone was studiously neutral, but Bel Iblis could hear the growing interest beneath it. “I take it the datapack is the valuable item you spoke of?”

“It is, indeed,” Moranda confirmed. “Under normal circumstances, I’d get in touch with her directly to work out an exchange. Two problems: I don’t have her comlink frequency, and I don’t like the idea of Blondie and his Luxan lurking around the background. So I’d prefer to work the exchange through you.”

“I don’t know anything about Imperial agents on Darkknell,” Nyroska said, his voice hardening. “But if you’re in possession of stolen or misappropriated goods, the smartest thing you can do is bring everything to Defense Agency headquarters and turn it in.”

“Okay by me,” Moranda said. “You’ll have the million ready?”

“The what?”

“The million,” Moranda repeated. “That’s in Imperial currency, by the way, not the local stuff.”

“You
must
be joking,” Nyroska said stiffly.

“Do you hear me laughing?” Moranda countered. “Trust me, Colonel, a million doesn’t even begin to mark what this is worth. The Imps will be willing to buy it from you for two million. The Rebellion, if you can find them, will probably pay three. But don’t take my word for it—talk to the Imp and see what she says. Of course, if you turn all this over to her she’ll probably cut you out of the profits; but hey, virtue is its own comfort, right?”

“And what makes you think an Imperial Intel agent won’t just laugh in my face? Assuming she’s not just a figment of your imagination.”

“Oh, she’s here,” Moranda assured him. “And she won’t be laughing. Believe me.”

Another pause. “All right, I’ll make some inquiries and see what I can find out. How do I get in touch with you?”

“I’ll call you,” Moranda told him. “Remember: one million even. Just pass on that message, and then if you want you can be out of it.”

She clicked off. “Now what?” Bel Iblis asked.

“Like I said, we hope he’s smart,” she said, getting up from the table and putting away both her comlink and datapad. “And on the assumption that he is, we vacate the premises. Now.”

For a moment Nyroska glared at the dead
comlink. Just pass on that message
, the words echoed in his ears,
and then you can be out of it
. “Not likely,” he murmured to himself. “Not flighty likely.”

He looked across the room at his aide. “Lieutenant?”

“Got it, Colonel,” Lieutenant Barclo reported briskly. “It came from one of the apartments in the Karflian Nestling block—fringe and lower-class mix, northern end of town. I’ve got an airspeeder squad on its way.”

“Send two more squads in as backup,” Nyroska ordered. “Then check and see if we’ve got Imperial Intel operating on Darkknell at the moment.”

“I’m sure we’d have heard if anyone declared him or herself, Colonel.”

“We certainly should have,” Nyroska agreed grimly. “As I said: check.”

“Yes, sir.”

Nyroska set down his comlink and swiveled his chair toward the large holo map of the city behind him. If there was a foreign operative running through his city behind his back, he wanted to know about it.

And if said agent was chasing down something worth a million or more in Imperial currency, he most
definitely
wanted to know about it.

Accessing the spaceport’s database, he pulled up the recent arrivals section and keyed for a search.

The manager’s profile chart was short. Amazingly short. Suspiciously short.

“Sad, isn’t it,” Isard said contemptuously as Hal finished scanning through it.

“And they always think they’re not blindingly obvious to us.”

“They do indeed,” Hal agreed, handing back the datapad. The “personal” section of the manager’s profile had exactly twelve names in it: parents, one brother, and nine friends. There were Corellian fungal colonies that had longer associates lists than that. “Still, just because he’s gimmicking his associates list doesn’t mean he has any particular involvement with Moranda.”

“He’s fringe,” Isard said flatly. “That list practically screams it. And fringe types always stick together when the crunch begins.” She considered. “Not when we start tightening down, mind you, when they start having sprint-races to see who can crumble on each other the fastest. But up until then they stick together.”

“Perhaps,” Hal murmured, his gaze drifting to the city’s northern skyline. The single red-and-white airspeeder he’d spotted a moment ago had now been joined by two others, all of them scooting like their tails were on fire. Markings were impossible to see at this distance, but he’d seen airspeeders with that color scheme parked outside Colonel Nyroska’s office. “I presume we start with the family?”

“Since his truly close friends—assuming he’s got any—are undoubtedly not on that list, I’d say so,” Isard said acidly. “Unless they’re phonies, too. What do you think they’re up to?”

“Who?”

Isard gestured with her datapad. “Those three Darkknell Defense airspeeders,” she said. “Don’t try to tell me you hadn’t noticed them.”

“I noticed them,” Hal confirmed calmly. “You think they’ve got a line on your Rebel?”

“Can’t think what else they’d be using Defense personnel for,” Isard murmured, her mismatched eyes gazing thoughtfully at the now descending airspeeders. “Well, if they have, we can pull it out of their computer records at the quiet-drop.”

“We heading there now?”

“Soon enough,” Isard said, holding up the datapad. “I see a name on this profile that was also on Arkos’s frequent-customer list. Let’s go see if perhaps he hasn’t had the sense to vanish like everyone else.”

“Thank you for getting back to me so quickly,” Nyroska said into his comlink, glancing over the device at Barclo and giving him a sharp nod. Barclo nodded back and busied himself with the trace board.

“Not a problem,” the woman’s voice came back. “You ready to believe me yet about the Imp agent?”

“Possibly,” Nyroska said. “We don’t have your agent, but we do have a large blond human male in a tank down at the morgue. The analysts tell me he was shot at close range with a Luxan Penetrator.”

There was a brief pause at the other end. “Interesting.”

“So you didn’t know he was dead?” Nyroska probed.

“Are you suggesting I had something to do with it?” she shot back.

“No, of course not,” Nyroska said soothingly. Which was, in point of fact, a true statement. He’d made a career of reading people’s faces and voices, and that brief pause had been all the reaction he needed to know the news had indeed taken her by surprise.

Which meant that while she might be a thief, she was not likely to be a murderer. A point in her favor. “I merely brought it up to let you know that that part of your story checks out.”

“I’m happy about it if you are,” she said, with just a trace of sarcasm. “But until and unless you get to the Imp agent herself, we’re no further along than when we started.”

“Not necessarily,” Nyroska said. “Now that I know that your story has some actual substance to it, I can hopefully persuade my superiors to take the matter seriously.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’d like to meet with you,” he said. “No obligations or promises, except of course that I won’t try to arrest you or take the merchandise. For now I just want to talk.”

“Yeah, right,” the woman sniffed. “All completely clear and aboveboard.”

“Exactly,” Nyroska said, turning up the calm trustworthiness in his voice to full power. “You have to realize you’re in a seriously untenable position, especially with a dead body in the morgue that the Intel agent might well believe is your doing. I may be the only one who can help you. And you can check with your fringe friends that I keep my word.”

There was another long pause. “I’ll think about it,” the woman said at last. “I’ll call you later.”

The connection clicked off. “Barclo?”

“She’s moved south to the edge of Little Duros,” the lieutenant reported. “I’ve got three airspeeders on the way.”

Nyroska nodded. “A waste of time, probably.”

“She does seem to be pretty good at slipping out of nets,” Barclo conceded. “So what now? Wait until she calls again?”

“More or less,” Nyroska said, peering at his computer display. The dead man’s ID was being backtracked, along with that of the woman who’d arrived at the spaceport with him, but so far both probes were coming up dry. Probably another waste of time. “Anything on the landspeeder they rented?”

“Hasn’t been spotted yet,” Barclo said. “Of course, an Imperial might have altered the reg tag just on general principles.”

“An unlikely term to use in the same breath with Imperial agents,” Nyroska growled, scowling at the display. “I think it’s about time we took back some of the initiative. I want you to check with the General as to how fast we could put together a sizable cash package.”

Barclo’s jaw dropped slightly. “You want to pay her off?”

“Not without knowing what exactly she’s got,” Nyroska said. “But if it
does
turn out to be as explosive as she claims, it would be nice to have some options available.”

“I suppose,” Barclo said, shaking his head. “I just hope you’re not getting in too deep, Colonel. This is Imperial Intelligence we’re dealing with, you know.”

“This is
my
world, Barclo,” Nyroska said coldly. “
Our
world, not Palpatine’s. He may someday be able to run the whole Empire from Coruscant, but until then we do have certain jurisdictional and governmental rights here on Darkknell. And I am flighty well going to exercise those rights.”

“Yes, sir,” Barclo said, sounding subdued as he reached for his comlink. “I’ll call the General right now.”

Moranda clicked off her comlink. “Come on,” she said.

They crossed the street and entered the sweets shop she had marked before making her call to Nyroska. Weaving through the mass of mostly Duros customers, she led the way back to the employees’ entrance in the rear and down a flight of steps to the street at the bottom of the hill. With gratifying promptness, the street-maintenance speeder truck she’d spotted from their earlier vantage point came lumbering by just as they reached the street, and a moment later she and Garm were safely nestled into the empty debris-storage bin in the back.

“You don’t think they’ll search this thing?” Garm asked, looking cautiously out through the rear access opening they’d just climbed in through.

“Not when they see the bin is already full of dirt,” Moranda told him, unfastening her outer skirt and pulling it off. Flipping it over so that its brown side was showing, she arranged it across their feet and knees where it would be all that could be seen through the opening without a close examination. “It’s all in perception.”

“I suppose.” He hesitated. “So he was shot with his own weapon?”

“Unless someone else in town is packing a Luxan,” Moranda agreed soberly. “What do you think? Horn, or Isard herself?”

“Hard to believe it of either of them,” Garm said, shaking his head. “Unless Isard found the datacards and assumed her assistant was in on it.”

“Could be,” Moranda said, studying Garm’s face out of the corner of her eye. They’d kept their introductions on a strict first-name-only basis; but even through the simplistic disguise he was wearing there was something vaguely familiar about this man.

His eyes in particular. Very strong and knowing eyes, they were, rich with knowledge and wisdom and some deep but very private pain. Recent pain, too, if she was any judge of such things. Or maybe it was his voice. Was he someone she might have heard speaking on the newsnets?

Decisively, she turned her eyes away. The situation piqued her curiosity, but at the moment she had more urgent things to worry about than another man on the run. “Any sign of the airspeeders yet?”

“Oh, they’re out there,” Garm assured her, leaning over Moranda’s knees to peer out past their makeshift camouflage. “Whatever else Colonel Nyroska might be, he’s also fast on his feet.”

“Yes,” Moranda agreed. “Well, one more call hopefully should do it.”

“Do what, get us caught?” Garm asked pointedly. “Aside from appealing to your playful side, I don’t know what these calls are supposed to accomplish.”

“We need to flush Isard out of hiding,” Moranda told him patiently. “That means drawing her to some known location. Assuming she’s smart enough to notice all this Defense airspeeder activity, I’m hoping it will intrigue her enough to head to one of the Security offices to find out what’s going on. The only trick will be guessing which one she’ll pick.”

“Probably none of them,” Garm said. “Odds are she’ll go to the local Intelligence drop site instead.”

Moranda blinked. “Intelligence drop site?”

“Sure,” Garm said. “It’ll have computer access capabilities, and maybe some extra personnel she can draw on. Probably not, though—this station should be too small to be continually staffed.”

Moranda stared at his profile. “How do you know about all this?”

He shrugged. “I have access to certain files.”

“Terrific,” she growled. “And it didn’t occur to you to mention this to me before now?”

He turned those piercing eyes on her. “Before now, I didn’t know what you were going for,” he reminded her mildly.

She ground her teeth. But he was right. “One of these days we really have to get our act together,” she said. “Fine. Where is this drop site?”

“It’s a small, apparently out-of-business boutique in the main west-side shopping district,” he told her. “I don’t remember the name, but I have the address.”

“Good enough,” she said. “As soon as we’re clear of Nyroska’s net, we’ll find a landspeeder and get over there.” She frowned as a sudden thought struck her. “I don’t suppose this place would have a cache of extra weapons Isard could load up with, would it?”

“Probably.”

Moranda nodded grimly. “Terrific.”