Allegiance Page 3

  It made one wonder where he was getting the credits to pay for it.

  “Ah—Countess Claria.”

  Mara turned. An older man in a general’s uniform was coming through the crowd toward her, a younger man in simple formal wear in tow. “Hello again, General Deerian,” Mara greeted him with a smile, her eyes flicking over his companion. Mink Bollis, she identified him, one of Glovstoak’s aides. Good—if the inner circle was starting to arrive, the moff himself should be close behind. “I thought you were on your way to inspect the buffet.”

  “I was, but then I ran into Master Bollis,” General Deerian said, indicating the younger man. “Remembering our earlier conversation about your world’s pirate problems, I thought he might be able to offer some help.”

  “Countess,” Bollis greeted her, scooping up her right hand and kissing it in Old Core fashion. His predator’s gaze took in her green eyes and red-gold hair, shifted to her shoulder sculpt with its interwoven mound of cascading flowers, then dropped still farther to her slender figure encased in its low-cut gown. Pirates and pirate problems, clearly, were the last thing on his mind. “I assure you that Moff Glovstoak and the entire sector government stand ready to assist you in your need. Why don’t we find a quiet corner where you can give me some details of your situation?”

  “That would be—” Mara broke off, letting an uncertain frown pass briefly across her face before smoothing it out. “That would be wonderful.”

  “Are you all right?” Deerian asked.

  “I just felt a little strange there for a moment,” Mara said. She let the odd look flicker across her face again, this time adding a slight unsteadiness to her poise.

  “Perhaps you should sit down for a while,” Deerian said, eyeing her closely. “Ambrostine can sneak up on you if you’re not used to it.”

  “I thought I was,” Mara said, adding a little throatiness to her voice. In actual fact, she was quite familiar with both ambrostine and the symptoms that came from drinking too much of it.

  And Bollis, at least, apparently also knew about the loss of inhibitions that was the next stage. “Let me take you someplace where you can lie down,” he offered, his eyes glittering a little brighter. He moved to her side, reaching for her arm to assist her.

  To Mara’s mild surprise, Deerian got there first. “Moff Glovstoak will be expecting you to assist with his guests,” the general reminded Bollis as he deftly moved Mara away from the younger man. “I know the palace—I’ll find her a place where she’ll be safe.”

  Before Bollis could find the right words for a polite protest, Deerian had eased Mara around a couple dressed completely in shimmersilk and headed for one of the side doors.

  Outside the ballroom, the hallways were deserted except for the pairs of liveried guards standing watch at each intersection. None of them stopped or challenged Deerian as he led her into a darkened office two corridors away. “My field offices get their furniture from the same supplier Moff Glovstoak uses for his underlings,” he told Mara as he turned the light on low and led her to the room’s conversation circle. “I can assure you from personal experience that these couches are just the thing for a quick nap.”

  “Right now, I think I could sleep in a gravel pit,” Mara murmured, slurring the words slightly as she let her eyelids droop. “Thank you.”

  “No problem, Countess,” Deerian said as he helped her stretch out on one of the couches. “As I said, ambrostine is a subtle enemy.”

  “I meant—you know.”

  He smiled down at her. “No problem there, either,” he assured her. “You’re, what? Eighteen? Nineteen?”

  “Eighteen.”

  Deerian’s smile turned a bit brittle. “I have a granddaughter that age,” he said. “I wouldn’t want her alone with Bollis, either. Sleep as long as you want, Countess. I’ll make sure you’re not disturbed.”

  He left, closing the door behind him. Rolling off the couch, Mara crossed the room and pressed her ear to the door, running through the audio enhancement techniques the Emperor had taught her.

  Even with that assistance she could hear only about every other word Deerian was saying to the nearest guard pair. But she could tell he was instructing them in no uncertain terms to make sure no one bothered the young lady. The conversation ended, and Deerian’s footsteps faded away in the direction of the ballroom. Readjusting her hearing to normal, Mara turned off the light and glided back across the room.

  Time to go to work.

  In her admittedly short career so far as the Emperor’s Hand, Mara had noted the odd mixture of caution and sloppiness displayed by many of the Empire’s top politicians. Glovstoak was no exception. Even here on the palace’s tenth floor, the windows were protected by an intruder warning grid; at the same time, there was a local release for that grid tucked away beneath the sill so that the office’s occupant could get fresh air without having to call to the main security office for clearance. A moment’s study gained her the key, and with the grid disabled she slid the window carefully open and leaned out.

  Aside from the guards walking their rounds far below and the distant aircars patrolling the outer perimeter of the palace grounds, no one was visible. Stretching out to the Force, she got a grip on the package she’d hidden earlier beneath one of the decorative bushes lining the outer wall and pulled.

  For a moment nothing happened. She focused harder, and this time the handle came free and floated swiftly upward, its connecting cord trailing behind it. A moment later it was in her hands, and at a touch of a button the motors inside began reeling in the cord and the much heavier black-wrapped package at the far end.

  A minute later the package was inside, its contents spread on the office floor. Two minutes after that, she had exchanged her flowing gown for a gray combat suit, her delicate flowery shoulder sculpt for a shoulder-slung Stokhli spray stick, and her embroidered waist sash for a belt and a lightsaber.

  The packet also included a tube of compressed air and an inflatable-mannequin duplicate of her, dressed in formal wear identical to that she had been wearing moments before. She set it up and arranged it on the couch as a decoy for any prying eyes; with her real gown out of sight beneath the desk, she headed back to the window and slipped outside.

  Mara had been introduced to the spray stick only a few months earlier, and in that time had worked hard to master it and add it to her already extensive repertoire of tools and weapons. This entire gambit, in fact, was one she’d practiced over and over again at her training center in the Imperial Palace. Straddling the windowsill, she pointed the device at an upward angle along the outer wall and squeezed the thumb trigger.

  There was a sharp hiss, and the spray stick snapped back against its shoulder sling as a jet of fine mist shot out the far end. As it hit the air, the mist turned into a roiling flow of liquid that quickly solidified against the stonework, forming a twist-surfaced bridge that could be climbed. Shutting off the spray, Mara rotated the stick out of her way on its strap and started up.

  She had to pause twice to spray additional length to her private pathway before she reached the twentieth floor and Glovstoak’s private quarters. His windows were protected by the same intruder grid she’d found in the office, with the same built-in weakness. Stretching with the Force through the transparisteel, she first shut off the grid and then tripped the catch. A minute later she was inside.

  The quarters were deserted, Glovstoak and all his people downstairs at the grand party. Still, Mara stayed alert as she moved silently between the rooms. The moff could easily have left a droid or two to watch over his private possessions.

  But droids could be scanned or reprogrammed, and Glovstoak apparently wasn’t willing to take that kind of chance. Instead he had chosen to rely on two highly sophisticated alarms on his concealed walk-in safe.

  Sophisticated from his point of view, anyway. The professional thieves the Emperor had brought in to instruct Mara in their craft would have laughed at both systems. Mara herself, not nearl
y so experienced, merely smiled and had both neutralized within ten minutes.

  After all the preliminaries, getting the safe itself open was almost an anticlimax. Two minutes later she pulled open the heavy door and stepped inside.

  One wall of the safe had been taken over entirely by data card file cabinets, containing the sector’s duplicate administration records. Interesting enough, certainly, but even if Glovstoak had been careless enough to leave a data trail that would show his alleged financial irregularities, it would take a small army of accountants to sniff it out. Instead Mara headed toward the back of the safe, looking for more personal items.

  And there she found the evidence she needed.

  For a long moment she gazed at the half dozen artworks sitting in the beam of her glow rod. At first glance the private collection seemed rather puny, especially considering the number of flats, sculptures, tressles, and volmans decorating the public areas of the palace.

  Mara wasn’t fooled. The pieces downstairs were grandiose but relatively cheap. More importantly, they were comfortably within the budget of an honest administrator of Glovstoak’s position.

  The six pieces in the safe were something else entirely. Any one of them would fetch upward of a hundred million credits from the galaxy’s wealthiest private collectors, no questions asked. Taken together, they were probably worth three times the value of Glovstoak’s palace and everything in it.

  Which meant that the Emperor’s suspicions were correct. Glovstoak was skimming the top off the tax revenues he was sending to Imperial Center.

  Picking up one of the flats, Mara turned it around. In the light from her glow rod the back surface appeared to be plain and unmarked. But there was a little thing art dealers did that Glovstoak might not be aware of. Tuning her glow rod to a specific frequency of ultraviolet light, she tried again.

  There it was: a complete listing of all the dealers and auction houses and brokers through whose hands the flat had traveled throughout its long history.

  Mara smiled. The dealers made these lists invisible to avoid introducing such crass commercialism into the carefully nurtured elegance of their world. Professional art thieves routinely obliterated the markings in order to make their new acquisitions harder to trace. Glovstoak hadn’t done that, which immediately told her he hadn’t obtained the art through a professional. Interesting.

  She made a note of the last listing—Peven Auction House, Crovna—and set the flat back where she’d found it. She made a similar check of two more of the artworks, then left the safe, closing the door and reactivating the alarms behind her.

  The trip down the wall was much easier and faster than the trip up had been. The solidified Stokhli spray would evaporate in another couple of hours, leaving no trace even if Glovstoak’s men thought to look.

  She was back in her gown, the rest of her gear hidden again behind its ground-level bush, when the office door eased open a cautious crack. “Countess?” Deerian’s voice called quietly.

  “Yes, General,” she called back, sitting up on the couch and stretching. “Please, come in.”

  “I trust you’re feeling better?” the other said, stepping into the doorway.

  “Much better,” she assured him, smiling as she crossed to him. “Thank you for your thoughtfulness.”

  “My pleasure,” he said, smiling back as he offered her his arm. “Shall we return to the reception?”

  “Yes, indeed,” she said, taking his arm.

  And let’s hope everyone enjoys it, she thought as they headed past the watchful sentries. It’s the last party Glovstoak will ever throw.

  Chapter Three

  MARCROSS’S INFORMATION, AS USUAL, TURNED OUT to be correct. Six days after the Teardrop massacre an ISB tactical unit arrived aboard the Reprisal.

  They arrived in force, too: ten full squads, including officers, troopers, droids, even their own intel analysis group. More disturbing to LaRone were the two squads of stormtroopers who came with them.

  “Which means that whatever they do—shoot up another town, or worse—they’ll be wearing our armor, which means the whole stormtrooper corps will get the blame for it,” he warned Quiller and Grave as the three of them gazed down from the observation walkway into Hangar Bay 5. The ISB people had brought a strange assortment of vehicles with them, from light freighters to old and outmoded military transports and even a dilapidated pleasure yacht.

  “Not that we’re not blamed for everything anyway,” Quiller added with an edge of bitterness. “Comes from our always catching the tough ones.”

  “Which comes from our being the Empire’s finest,” Grave countered with a touch of pride. “We certainly have better transports than these clowns.”

  “What, you mean those?” Quiller asked, pointing at the cluster of ships below them. “Don’t you believe it, buddy, not for a minute. That Suwantek TL-1800, for instance—see those crimp marks on the engine nozzles?”

  “Which one are we talking about?” LaRone asked, frowning at the unfamiliar designs.

  “That flat, angular job with the oversized sublight engines,” Quiller said, pointing. “Usually the 1800’s a piece of junk—holds together okay, but it’s slow, badly armed, and poorly shielded. The nav computer glitches a lot, too.”

  “Sounds perfect for the ISB,” Grave murmured. “Let’s turn ’em loose and let ’em get lost.”

  “Like I said, don’t believe it,” Quiller said. “Those engines have been upgraded probably six ways from Imperial Center, and odds are everything else beneath the plating has, too. Ditto for the rest of the ships.”

  “You suppose they run under false IDs?” LaRone asked.

  Quiller snorted. “They probably have whole racks full of them,” he said. “We may be the Empire’s finest, but you’d never know it when ISB gets up from the budget table.”

  “You have a problem with the ISB, soldier?” a dark voice demanded from behind them.

  LaRone felt his stomach knot up. It was Major Drelfin, the ISB man who’d ordered the massacre on Teardrop.

  “No, sir, not at all,” Quiller assured him quickly.

  “Glad to hear it,” Drelfin said as he stalked toward them, his hand resting on the grip of his holstered blaster. “Now, you have exactly five seconds to tell me what you’re doing in a restricted area.”

  “We’re Imperial stormtroopers, sir,” LaRone told him, fighting to keep the proper level of military respect in his voice. “We’re allowed access everywhere aboard ship.”

  “Really,” Drelfin said, his gaze flicking over LaRone’s fatigues. “Why aren’t you in armor?”

  “We’ve been permitted a bit of latitude in that area, sir,” LaRone said, choosing his words carefully. Regulations unequivocally stated that stormtroopers were always to be in armor whenever outside their barracks section. But Captain Ozzel resented their presence aboard his ship and didn’t like seeing armored men wandering around during their off hours. Since the stormtrooper commanders had, in turn, refused to confine their men to barracks when they were off duty, they’d come to a more unofficial arrangement.

  “Permitted by whom?” Drelfin demanded. “Your lieutenant? Your major?”

  “Is there a problem here, Major?” a new voice said from the far end of the observation gallery.

  LaRone turned to find Marcross and Brightwater walking toward them, the latter with a rag tucked into the pocket of his fatigues and grease stains on his hands.

  “What is this, the Kiddie Klub meeting room?” Drelfin growled. “Identify yourselves.”

  “Stormtrooper TKR 175,” Marcross said, an edge of both pride and challenge in his voice. “This is TBR 479.”

  “Also not in armor, I see,” Drelfin growled. “Also apparently ignorant of the regulations regarding off-limit areas.”

  He shifted his glare back to LaRone. “Or is it that you border-world recruits don’t know how to read the regulations in the first place?”

  “As I said, sir—” LaRone began.

  �
��—you didn’t think regulations applied to you,” Drelfin finished sarcastically. “I trust you know better now?”

  “Yes, sir,” Brightwater said. He touched LaRone’s arm. “Come on, LaRone. You were going to help me change the steering vanes on my speeder.”

  “LaRone?” Drelfin echoed, his voice suddenly strange. “Daric LaRone? TKR 330?”

  LaRone glanced at Marcross, noting the sudden crease in the other’s forehead. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Well, well,” Drelfin said softly. Without warning, he drew his blaster. “I’ve been going over the records of the Teardrop operation,” he continued, an unpleasant tightness at the corners of his eyes as the weapon came to a halt pointed at LaRone’s stomach. “Your squad was ordered to execute some Rebel sympathizers. You deliberately missed your shots. That’s dereliction of duty.”

  LaRone felt his throat tighten. So someone had noticed his lack of precision shooting that day. This was not good. “My duty is to protect and preserve the Empire and the New Order,” he said, forcing his voice to stay calm.

  “Your duty is to obey orders,” Drelfin countered.

  “They were unarmed and nonthreatening civilians,” LaRone said. “If there were charges or suspicions concerning them, they should have been arrested and brought to trial.”

  “They were Rebel sympathizers!”

  Quiller took a step forward. “Sir, if you have a complaint against this man—”

  “Stay out of this, stormtrooper,” Drelfin warned. “You’re in enough trouble as it is.”

  “What sort of trouble?” Marcross asked.

  “You’re out of uniform, you’re in a restricted area without authorization—” Drelfin nodded at LaRone. “—and you’re obviously friendly with a traitor to the Empire.”