He drew in a deep breath, then hit the door release and
crouched in the shadows as the door cracked open. The
doorway provided access to a fairly opulent hallway which
reminded him, rather faintly, of images he'd seen of the Im-
perial Palace. Great, I escape a prison to find myself in some
Imperial Moff's palace. It's certainly better than the hole I
just got out of, but getting out of here unnoticed is not going
to be that easy.
He shrugged. But easy isn't the object of this exercise--
escape is. Escape I will.
32
Nawara Ven traced a talon through the ring of moisture left
behind on the table by his mug of 1omin-ale. I shouldn't be
here. This is madness. He drank more of the bitter and spicy
ale. This is insane.
By rights he shouldn't have been anywhere near a tap-
caf, much less a dim, smoke-choked place like the Hutt
Haven. The prosecution had rested its case and had left
Nawara in a serious bind. While the evidence presented had
been, for a large part, circumstantial, it was a mountain of
circumstance. He had character witnesses, but nothing to
refute the basic facts upon which the prosecution was basing
its case, which meant he ultimately had nothing.
Which is why I'm here. Two hours earlier he had re-
ceived a message requesting the meeting. He would have ig-
nored it, but it had been signed "Hes Glillto," the name Lai
Nootka had assumed on his last trip to Coruscant. Whistler
had gotten the name from Iella, and that had prompted the
droid to flag the message when it came through to Nawara.
Whistler also reported there was no way to trace it back to
the sender--it had come through a public terminal.
It's not a good thing when a lawyer is given to meetings
with mystery witnesses to bolster his case. If the person he
was to meet was really Lai Nootka, the state's case against
Tycho would fall apart faster than a Jawa-fixed droid.
Nootka could prove he'd met with Tycho on the night Cor-
ran said he saw Tycho meeting with Kirtan Loor. Once that
fact was established it showed Tycho had nothing to fear
from Corran and, hence, had no reason to want him dead.
Of course, I've got no reason to suppose it will be
Nootka. Probably will just be some giltbiter 1ookbg to make
money in return for some rumor. Nawara raised his glass to
finish it, but before he could swallow the liquid, he saw a tall,
slender figure enter the tapcaf. The figure wore a hooded
cloak that hid him entirely. It's just the way Nootka ap-
peared in Corran's description of him. Nawara straightened
up as the figure cut through the crowd, then slipped into the
booth's other seat.
Nawara offered his hand. "Nawara Ven."
A pair of long-fingered human hands came out from
beneath the cloak and pressed flat against the table. "I know
who you are."
"And you're not Lai Nootka." Nawara's e yes narrowed.
"Are you going to take me to him?"
"No. I would apologize for the deception, but I am not
sorry. Lai Nootka will not be coming. He is dead."
"What? Can you prove that?"
"He's dead, and I cannot prove it." The man's voice
came low but strong from within the shadowed hollow of
the cloak's hood. "I can, however, prove your client was not
meeting with Kirtan Loor on the night Corran Horn saw
him."
Nawara's lekku writhed as disbelief flooded his voice.
"You deceive me and then expect me to believe you? How
can you prove that?"
The man tugged the hood back far enough to admit
some light, and Nawara felt his heart ache. He looks like the
ghost of Grand Moff Tarkin.
"I can prove it, Nawara Ven, because I am Kirtan Loor
and I was nowhere near Tycho Celchu that night. In fact, I
have never met him."
"And you can verify where you were?"
"Yes. I have evidence enough to satisfy you." Loor
smiled slowly. "And evidence about spies throughout the
New Republic that will satisfy even General Cracken."
What! This is too good to be true. This can't be happen-
ing. Nawara's jaw shot open. "You're lying. You can't be
who you say you are."
"I can and I am. I will testify on your client's behalf
provided the New Republic is willing to offer me immunity
from prosecution for any activity I have undertaken on be-
half of the Empire. They will pay me a million credits, create
a new identity for me, and get me off Coruscant. I will tell
them everything they want to know, and then some. Every
Imperial agent on Coruscant will be exposed. It is that sim-
ple."
"But . . ." Nawara's mind was reeling. The implica-
tions of what Loor had said were staggering. "How can we
be sure . . . ?"
Loor grabbed Nawara's hand and impaled his own palm
on one of Nawara's talons. A bead of blood bubbled up.
Nawara heard the sound of cloth tearing, then saw Loor blot
the blood with a strip torn out of his tunic. He tossed the
bloodied cloth to Nawara, then tore another strip from his
shirt and bound his hand.
"Take the cloth to Commander Ettyk. Have her dupli-
cate my Imperial file, then run a DNA comparison between
the duplicate and the sample. She must run it against a dupli-
cate of the file--if she runs it against the file itself, others
might discover you're checking me out. Once you're certain I
am who I say I am, you will broker the deal for me. It is a
take-it-or-leave-it deal, no negotiation. Once you have the
deal made, you will hold a press conference. At one point
during tile conference, whenever you wish, you will say 'I am
very confident, supremely confident, that we will win.' I
don't think I've heard you say that so far in the proceedings,
so that will be the signal."
"No, I don't think I've said that. I know I haven't felt
it."
"When you give the signal, I will send you another mes-
sage to arrange pickup. At that time you and Iella Wessiri
will get me. I don't want to see anyone else, just you and her.
You I have to trust, her I know well enough to trust. You
can't betray me and she won't. Anyone else, anything fancy,
and no one will benefit from my information. Got it?"
Nawara nodded slowly. "I understand."
"Good. You have five hours."
"Five hours! That's not much time, especially starting at
midnight." Nawara frowned. He almost added that he
couldn't call a press conference at two or three in the morn-
ing, but the media operated in a frenzied enough atmosphere
that he could tell them to meet him on Kessel at noon and
they'd find a way to be there. "I need more time."
"You don't have it." Loor nodded once and the hood
slid forward to again hide his face. "I don't have it. This all
happens on my timetable. If it doesn't, if there is trouble, a
lot of people will be sorry. I can give freedom to your client
and Coruscant to the New Republic, fo
r which I am asking
so little. See that it gets done."
33
Corran squeezed himself back in the corner of the library's
cabinet and waited. He decided it was just as well that he
didn't have a chronometer, because he would have con-
stantly been looking at it. It seemed as if he'd been hidden
away for years, though he knew it had hardly been more
than fifteen minutes. I can only hope that some of the crimi-
nals I hunted felt like I do now while stormtroopers are
hunting me.
Corran had been able to make a basic scouting run on
the facility where he found himself and had concluded two
things. First, the utter lack of windows suggested that this
facility was underground. Given the general taste for grand
vistas and high towers he'd seen in Imperial architecture on
Coruscant, this led him to believe that whatever the planet's
surface looked like was not worth seeing. This, in turn, made
him think the surface was inhospitable and, therefore, not a
Second, he concluded there had to be a secret exit from
the facility. Aside from the tunnel back to the prison, the
only visible means of leaving was a lift that had a keypad and
clearly required a code for operation. While he assumed the
Moff who owned the place would have had the code for the
lift, he couldn't imagine the Moff did not also have a private
bolt-hole. Unfortunately his hurried survey of the area hadn't
given him any obvious candidates for its location.
One thing he had found was a garbage disposal chute.
He dragged Derricote's body to it and dumped it in. He
distinctly heard a splash; then a disgusting odor wafted back
up, so he closed the hatch. It was only when he realized that
he didn't smell much better himself that he decided, if things
got tight, he'd go through the chute and take his chances
getting out that way.
The Imperial facility had a layout that was a lot like a
TIE starfighter's cross-section. The lift, garbage chute, and
utility area formed a central core through which ran a long
corridor. It intersected two corridors at right angles, one at
each end. All of the corridors had high ceilings and doors
running off them every seven meters or so.
His first impression of opulence had not been diminished
in his survey of the facility. The entire place had been deco-
rated with golden-brown wooden panels and hand-carved
trim. Not being often treated to the lifestyle of the rich, Cor-
ran couldn't identify the wood, but he was fairly certain the
faint rose scent filling the air came from it. He made a mental
note to ask Erisi what kind of wood it was, since he assumed
she would know.
More impressive than the wooden furnishings were the
huge xenoscapes that took up whole walls in some of the
rooms. Some were filled with water and had brightly colored
fish swimming through them. Others contained dense, foggy
atmospheres or boggy environments in which things flapped
and slithered. Each room had its own private xenoscape and
while most of the creatures looked harmless, a couple looked
positively lethal.
Despite getting frightened by the sudden appearances of
several luminous beasts along the wall of a darkened room,
Corran was glad for the xenoscapes' presence. Some speci-
mens were large enough that lifeform scanning equipment
might have trouble differentiating him from them, frustrat-
ing a search. In his experience that sort of equipment was
most valuable in determining where lifeforms were not, so
that searches could be confined to the places where they were
found. He assumed that if searchers were forced to go over
the level carefully, he could elude them in a deadly game of
hide-and-seek.
But then, he'd not been counting on the methodical na-
ture of stormtroopers and how they did their work. During
his scouting run a squad of eight came up through the tur-
bolift and immediately posted two men in the facility core.
The remaining six broke up into two teams of three and
proceeded to go through each wing room by room. Once
they finished in a room they closed the doors and used a
datapad to set the locks and seal the room.
He'd fled from them as carefully as he could, but they
pushed on. Finally he'd found himself herded into what, in
the golden glow of the large aquatic xenoscape along one
wall, appeared to be a very nice library. The shelves on three
walls were lined with box after box of datacards. Both desks
in the room had tabletop datapads with holoplates that
could provide a fully tri-dimensional data-scanning experi-
ence. The chairs all seemed comfortable, and had the room
not been built on an immense Imperial scale, Corran could
have considered it cozy.
It had its quirks, though. In stumbling about he stepped
into a circular design on the floor. He would have thought it
a continuation of the inlaid wooden pattern, but it felt cold
and synthetic to his bare feet. He had barely stepped into it
when a holographic image was projected down from the ceil-
ing and filled the circle. Corran leaped back and raised his
Ten feet tall, an image of the Emperor stared down at
him. The figure looked strong and almost majestic--not at
all the image of the twisted, malignant man who had over-
thrown the Old Republic and created the Empire. The
hooded and cloaked figure stood there, then slowly raised his
hands toward the ceiling. They returned to his side, vanish-
ing as the cloak slid closed, then the figure shrank to more
human proportions and melted away through the circle.
That display so unnerved Corran that he immediately
sought cover. He noticed a long low row of cabinets beneath
the xenoscape. He opened one of the cabinet doors but
found he couldn't see much inside. The space smelled
cramped and close; it reeked of mildew and reminded him of
the location Tycho had found for the Rogues to hide while
they prepared to liberat e Coruscant. Had there been another
choice he would have taken it, but the crisp click of boots on
the floor outside the door told him his time had run out.
He crawled over some small boxes and into the narrow
space, then pulled the door closed. The cabinet had been
compartmentalized--he found himself in a cubicle barely a
meter high and wide, though it did extend back nearly two
meters from the door. A thick metal crossbeam framework
supported the weight of the transparisteel xenoscape above
him and the water it contained. Fiberplast panels lined the
compartment on all sides and felt as solid as rock as far as his
buttocks and spine were concerned. He pulled himself
through the crossbeams and into the compartment's back
half. He arranged the boxes and canisters in the front of the
cabinet to shield him, but he knew ev
en a cursory look
would reveal his presence.
I hope they have a nice place in the shrine down there
for my head. Stomach acid burbled up into his throat, but he
choked it back down and endured the burning. Probably
doesn't hurt as much as blaster-bolts will. He tried to recall
the pain from the times he'd gotten shot--at Talasea, and in
the minesrebut sensation seemed distant, and unrelated to
what he knew he would be feeling in short order.
He heard muffled voices from the other side of the cabi-
net door. Clicks and hisses accompanied them. What can
they be discussing? Despite the ache in his spine and the
burning in his throat, Corran smiled. Maybe one of them
decided searching these cabinets is stupid because there's no
way Derricote could be hiding in here.
Then, through the soles of his feet, he felt a slight vibra-
tion shake the cabinet framing. If searching the cabinets was
what they were arguing about, my team lost, which means
I've lost. Another cabinet door closed, this one closer if
judged by the strength of the vibration. Then he felt the
quiver of a cabinet being opened, followed by a strong
tremor when it was shut.
That's it. He's getting frustrated. No one is in the cabi-
nets. No one can be in the cabinets. They're too small to hide
anyone, much too small. Corran pulled his legs up to his
chest and wrapped his hands around his knees. He actually
heard the cabinet next to his open. A comlink clicked. He
thought he heard the word, "Clear."
Then he definitely felt the cabinet slam shut.
Corran pressed himself back into the corner. There's no
one in here. There's nothing to see here. No one is hiding in
here. It's all clear.
The door opened.
There's no one here. This cabinet is empty.
A light flashed in. It started at the far end.
Empty, empty, empty. All clear.
The light swept across toward him.
What a waste of time searching this cabinet. It's empty.
There's no one here.
The light snapped off before it hit his face. The storm-
trooper helmet, which had taken on the proportions and
ugliness of a Hutt's ghost in Corran's sight, pulled back. "It's