Star Wars_Thrawn Page 16

  “And are no doubt making a few more tonight,” Arihnda murmured.

  Yularen looked at her with fresh interest. “Very perceptive, Ms. Pryce,” he complimented her. “Yes, that’s exactly why I’m putting the lieutenant through the Coruscant social grinder. I think he did a remarkable job, and I want to make sure as much of the Senate knows about it as possible.”

  “Well, I personally will be sure to look into the details when I get a chance,” Renking said. “But right now, as I said, I need Ms. Pryce to run an errand for me. Arihnda, I need to leave, but I also need to get a data card to Moff Ghadi. You know who he is, right?”

  “Yes, sir, of course,” Arihnda said. Actually, she’d made quite a few private deliveries to Ghadi over the past two years. Ghadi was always too busy to talk to her during those visits, but she’d always made a point of engaging his reception and staff people in friendly conversation. This might finally be her chance to make contact with the moff himself.

  “Good,” Renking said. “He’ll need to load it into a secure datapad, download the files, then return the card to you.”

  “Understood,” Arihnda said. A slightly unusual procedure, but still one she’d occasionally done before. “Do you want me to take it to your office when he’s finished?”

  “Please,” Renking said. “Just put it in the drop slot.” He nodded to Yularen and the others. “And now, I really must take my leave. Colonel, good luck. Lieutenant, and Ensign, even better luck.” He turned and began weaving his way through the crowd toward the main entrance.

  “If you’ll excuse us, Ms. Pryce,” Yularen said with a courteous bow, “I have a few more people I want to introduce Senior Lieutenant Thrawn to before we head across Core Square to the next reception.”

  “Of course, Colonel,” Arihnda said, bowing in return. “Lieutenant; Ensign.”

  She turned and headed away, noting that Yularen and the other officers were heading toward a knot of other senators.

  “I thought you were going to introduce us,” Driller complained as he and Juahir came up beside her.

  “Sorry,” Arihnda apologized. “Wasn’t really an opportunity. Next group.”

  “So who is he?” Juahir asked. “And what is he?”

  “Mostly what he is is in trouble with the High Command,” Arihnda said. “We didn’t get any further than that.”

  “Interesting,” Driller said. “High Command doesn’t usually bother with junior officers. Wonder whose tooka he ran over.”

  “You can ask your uncle when he gets back,” Arihnda said. “All I know is that when someone like Colonel Yularen says additional datawork with a pause between the words, he’s talking about something serious.”

  “Or more precisely, not talking about it,” Driller said.

  “Exactly,” Arihnda said. “But that’s Thrawn’s problem. My problem is that I have to go to work.”

  “Yeah, we saw the handoff,” Juahir said. “Delivery, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And during an Ascension Week party, too.” Juahir shook her head. “Renking’s a slave driver. You want us to come with you?”

  “No, that’s okay,” Arihnda said, craning her neck. She couldn’t see Ghadi, but if he was here it shouldn’t take long to track him down. “I’ll be back as quick as I can. Have fun, enjoy yourselves, and don’t get drunk on the swirlydips.”

  “Swirlydips have alcohol in them?” Juahir asked, brightening.

  “They do here,” Arihnda said. “Stay out of trouble, okay?”

  —

  Renking had been right about seeing Ghadi earlier. With the moff’s distinctive appearance, Arihnda spotted him within three minutes of starting her search.

  “So Renking has you working tonight, does he?” Ghadi asked, fingering the data card. His eyes were bright and intense, Arihnda noted a little uneasily. Swirlydips, or something stronger. Hopefully, he was functional enough to get this over with quickly so she could get back to working the party.

  “Yes, Your Excellency,” she said. “But I’m sure he wouldn’t have interrupted you if it wasn’t important.”

  “And he even sent you,” Ghadi said, smiling crookedly. “Well, come on.” He turned, sending his patterned red-and-yellow cloak swirling through the air around him as he headed for the lifts. “My secure datapad’s in my suite,” he added as Arihnda hurried to catch up. “It’ll just take a minute, and then you can get back to enjoying yourself.”

  “Yes, Your Excellency,” Arihnda said, glancing around as they worked their way through the crowd. She’d never even seen pictures of what the Alisandre’s suites looked like. If the ballroom was anything to go by, Ghadi’s suite would be well worth a quick visit.

  It was.

  “Get yourself a drink if you’d like,” Ghadi said as he crossed the plush carpet of the main living area toward one of the side doors. “The droid can fix anything you can name.”

  “Thank you, Your Excellency,” Arihnda said, eyeing the extensive bar off to one side, and the exquisitely restored classic LeisureMech C5 bartender droid standing motionless beside it. She was tempted; but for the moment, at least, she was officially on duty. Instead, she contented herself with looking at the carvings, the artwork, and the decorative panel inlays. This room alone was twice the size of her apartment, and probably cost her entire year’s salary per night.

  “I’m glad it was you he sent,” Ghadi called from the other room. “I’ve seen you in my office several times over the past few months, usually playing courier. Renking obviously has a high opinion of you.”

  “Thank you, Your Excellency.”

  “As, of course, do I,” Ghadi added. “A very high opinion indeed. Tell me, have you enjoyed working for him?”

  “It’s been very interesting,” Arihnda said, frowning. That wasn’t the kind of question she was usually asked. Was Ghadi just making conversation? Or was something else going on?

  “Of course: interesting,” Ghadi said. “The most diplomatic word possible, as well as the most insipid.” He stepped back into the living area, Renking’s data card in hand, and walked back across the carpet to her. “Here you go,” he said, handing it to her. “You may take it back to him now.”

  “Thank you, Your Excellency,” she said, frowning down at it. It looked like the one Renking had given her…but at the same time, something about it seemed different. The color was right, and the senator’s logo on the upper corner seemed correct. Could it be the weight? She hefted it gently, trying to decide.

  No, she realized suddenly—it was the logo. Senator Renking’s logo was etched into the surface of all the office’s data cards. But the logo on this card was embossed rather than etched.

  This wasn’t the same card she’d just handed Ghadi.

  She looked up at the moff, to find him gazing back at her, a hard-edged half smile on his face. “Very good, Ms. Pryce,” Ghadi said quietly. “Too bad, really.”

  “Your Excellency?” she asked carefully.

  “You noticed there was something different about the data card,” Ghadi said. “A shame. If you’d just taken it back to him…as I say, too bad.”

  Without warning, his hand snapped out toward her. She had just enough time to see a small tube concealed in his palm as a spray of fine powder showered her face and chest. She flinched back, reflexively squeezing her eyes shut—

  “So now we have to do it the hard way,” Ghadi continued. “That, Ms. Pryce, is polstine spice. Highly prized, highly expensive. And highly illegal.

  “And you, my dear, have enough of it on you to guarantee that you spend the rest of your life in prison.”

  Military leadership is a journey, not a destination. It is continually challenged, and must continually prove itself anew against fresh obstacles. Sometimes those obstacles are external events. Other times they are the doubts of those being led. Still other times they are a result of the leader’s own failures and shortcomings.

  Political power and influence are different. Once certain lev
els have been reached, there is no need to prove leadership or competence. A person with such power is accustomed to having every word carefully considered, and every whim treated as an order. And all who recognize that power know to bow to it.

  A few have the courage or the foolishness to resist. Some succeed in standing firm against the storm. More often, they find their paths yet again turned from their hoped-for goal.

  But such a turn does not always mean that the victim has lost. Or that the victor has won.

  —

  Eli had no business being here. He knew it, Yularen surely knew it, and he was pretty sure everyone else in the ballroom knew it, too.

  It just made no sense. He was too backwater for these Core people. He was too junior in rank for the scattering of admirals and generals in attendance. And he was far too lower-class to be rubbing shoulders with the elite of the Empire.

  The same drawbacks also applied to Thrawn, of course, plus the added one of being a nonhuman in a society that, while tolerant for the most part, wasn’t exactly welcoming. But at least there was a reason why Yularen had dragged him here to show off to the men and women of power. If the High Command decided to get serious over their threatened court-martial, an interested civilian base could be useful as a counterweight against offended admirals.

  Thrawn needed to be here. Eli’s presence was completely unnecessary.

  Though even with Thrawn he couldn’t avoid the sense that the Chiss was being seen less as an unfairly charged officer and more as an unusual prize fish.

  “Interesting,” Yularen murmured.

  Eli turned back from the shimmering color-changing gown he’d been eyeing to find the colonel gazing at his datapad. “Sir?” he asked.

  “A note from HQ,” Yularen said. “Lieutenant Thrawn’s latest suggestion seems to have paid off.”

  Eli looked at Thrawn. “Is this the backtrack of Cygni you suggested a couple of days ago?”

  “No,” Thrawn said, eyeing Yularen closely. “As it turned out, Colonel Yularen was unable to establish enough data points with that inquiry to yield useful results. In this case, I noted that the planet Kril’dor, a known source of tibanna gas, is quite close to the Uba system. It occurred to me that if Cygni intended to simply sell the cylinders, he would have taken the Dromedar there, where extra tibanna could easily and invisibly be added into their own distribution channels.”

  “Which suggested that his intended recipients wanted the tibanna as is,” Yularen said. “Which immediately pointed to either arms dealers or people who already have blasters and wanted to be able to shoot them.”

  Eli winced. “Criminals or insurgents.”

  “Yes,” Thrawn confirmed. “We have been profiling many of them, looking for indicators and markers.”

  “Really,” Eli said, frowning. He hadn’t heard anything about criminal profiling work. “When have you been doing all this?”

  Thrawn inclined his head. “You sleep more than I do.”

  Eli felt his face warm. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize,” Yularen said with a grunt. “And don’t worry—a career with the navy will knock that out of you soon enough. The point is that if you throw Thrawn’s latest filter in with all the rest, here’s what pops up.”

  He handed the datapad to Thrawn. Eli leaned close to the Chiss and peered at the display. There was a full report there, but in the center Yularen had highlighted a single word.

  Nightswan.

  “We’ve been hearing rumors about someone calling himself Nightswan for the past year or so,” Yularen continued. “At first, he seemed to be some sort of consultant, planning jobs like this for various groups.”

  “And now?” Thrawn asked, handing back the datapad.

  “Now we’re not sure,” Yularen said, his eyes darting back and forth as he skimmed the report. “A couple of the analysts are suggesting he may have settled down with a single organization. I’m not sure I buy that, myself.” He pursed his lips. “Well, we’ll keep an eye out for him. At least now we know one of his aliases.”

  Which the man would probably never use again, Eli knew. No one had yet figured out how Cygni had slipped through the cordon that Admiral Wiskovis had thrown around Uba, but somehow he’d gotten away.

  Maybe the interrogations of the surviving pirates would give them some clues. Eli rather doubted it.

  “Anyway, this came through while you were talking with that last group of senators, and I thought you’d like to know,” Yularen said.

  “I appreciate that, Colonel,” Thrawn said. “Thank you.”

  “No thanks needed—it was your suggestion that got us there,” Yularen reminded him. He started to put the datapad away, paused as something caught his eye. “Wait a moment—something new coming through. The tibanna cylinders…”

  He trailed off. “Is there trouble, Colonel?” Thrawn asked.

  “You could say that, Lieutenant.” Yularen took a deep breath. “It seems that twelve of the twenty cylinders we recovered along with the Dromedar”—again, he offered Thrawn the datapad—“were empty.”

  Eli felt his mouth drop open. “Empty? But that’s impossible. They were still static-locked.”

  “Our friend Cygni apparently found a way to get the gas out anyway,” Yularen growled. “Looks like he went in through the cylinders’ backs.”

  Eli winced. The very technique that Thrawn had suggested. Terrific. “Through the hull?”

  “The hull was untouched,” Yularen said, shaking his head. “No, they’re going to have to pull everything apart to figure out how he did it.”

  For a long moment the three of them just looked at one another. “You still saved the ship,” Yularen said at last. “Along with almost half the tibanna and the Dromedar’s crew. And you caught most of the pirates.”

  “Considering the value the High Command places on tibanna,” Thrawn said, “they may not consider that a sufficient victory.” His voice was calm enough.

  But the expression on his face sent a shiver up Eli’s back.

  Some of the myths talked about what happened when Chiss were defeated or outsmarted. None of those stories ended well.

  “If they don’t, they should,” Yularen said flatly. “Never mind. There’s still a long way to go, and I, for one, have always considered half a loaf far superior to no loaf at all. We’ll make this work.” He gave Thrawn a twisted smile “And if the navy decides to toss you out, the ISB would be more than happy to take you.” He tapped his white tunic. “I daresay you’d look good in white.”

  “Thank you, Colonel,” Thrawn said. “But my skills and aptitudes are best suited for ships and open warfare.”

  “Then let’s make sure you stay there.” Yularen looked around. “I believe that’s the minister of war over there. No point aiming low when you can aim high. If we’re lucky—and if he’s been drinking—we might get him to drop the court-martial completely.”

  —

  “Your Excellency, please,” Arihnda said carefully, backing toward the door, her lungs alternately burning and icing with the bits of spice she’d accidentally inhaled. What the hell was going on?

  Whatever it was, there was precious little she could do about it. The door was presumably locked, the windows were unbreakable, and she was on the five thousandth floor anyway.

  “He’s very clever, your Senator Renking,” Ghadi said. His voice was cool, almost conversational. “Did he really think he could get away with this?”

  Arihnda shook her head. “I’m sorry, Your Excellency, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I’m talking about planting false data in a senior Imperial official’s computer,” Ghadi said, his voice going soft and menacing. “Apparently, Renking expected me to be so taken with you that I’d just load the data card without checking it first.”

  Arihnda felt her eyes widen. “Wait a minute. Planting false data? What kind of false data?”

  “So here’s what you’re going to do,” Ghadi continued, ignoring
her question. “You’re going to take that data card”—he pointed languidly toward the card in her hand—“and do whatever Renking told you to do with it. Leave it on his desk, file it, hide it under the carpet; whatever he said. And you will never, ever tell him about the switch or about this conversation.” Ghadi raised his eyebrows. “Follow my instructions, and that’ll be the end of it. Deviate from them, and I’ll see that you’re arrested for possession. Your choice.”

  Arihnda’s lungs were slowly starting to clear. But at the same time, the room was starting to take on a strange clarity, with colors and textures more and more sharply defined and light and shadow pulsing back and forth. “What is this stuff doing to me?” she asked. Her voice, she noticed, was throbbing in time with the light/shadow dance.

  “Nothing much,” Ghadi said. “It needs to be cooked to release its full potency. Of course, the fact that it’s raw means you’d be identified as a dealer or courier instead of simply a user. Much harsher sentence. I need your decision.”

  Arihnda squeezed her eyes shut. Even through closed lids she seemed able to see the room’s new vibrancy. “How do I know you’ll keep your word?” she asked, opening her eyes again.

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Ghadi countered with a shrug. “You’re a very small fish, not worth the time and effort of gutting.”

  “I see,” Arihnda said. “What was on the data card I gave you?”

  Ghadi frowned. “You ask a lot of questions, Ms. Pryce,” he said thoughtfully. “Are you trying to make me think you’re worth gutting?”

  “You’re asking me to do to Renking the same thing he tried to do to you,” Arihnda pointed out. “I don’t want to escape your bonfire just to get dropped into his.”

  “Do your job and he’ll never know it was you,” Ghadi said. “Besides, you don’t really have a choice, do you?”

  Arihnda looked at the powder Ghadi had thrown on her tunic. The bright white was fading as the dust was absorbed into the fabric, but she knew that with the right equipment it would be detectable for days. “I suppose not.”

  “And don’t forget it.” Ghadi smiled, a tight, bitter, evil smile. “Welcome to politics, Ms. Pryce.