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  He caught up to her and stopped. “Ms. Pryce,” he repeated, breathing a little heavily. The man was in his mid-thirties, about Arihnda’s own age, but in far worse shape. “Glad I caught you.”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Uvis?” Arihnda asked, keeping her face and voice neutral.

  “I heard a rumor that your father’s just uncovered a heretofore unknown vein of doonium,” Uvis said. “Is that true?”

  “It is,” Arihnda said, wondering darkly who had let the news slip. Doonium was one of the hardest metals known, making it a key component in the manufacture of warship hulls, and under the Imperial Navy’s recently accelerated shipbuilding program the price of the metal had skyrocketed. Even a hint that a fresh line had been found would be enough to initiate a feeding frenzy among refiners and ore buyers alike. “May I ask how you heard of it?”

  “That’s not important,” Uvis said. “What’s important is that we guard the find so that we can take full advantage of it.”

  “I’m sure my mother’s already on it,” Arihnda assured him. “We have several contacts among brokers capable of handling something like this.”

  Uvis snorted. “I’m sure you do,” he said in a vaguely condescending tone. “Small, local people, no doubt, who work on a promise and a handshake?”

  “Not all of them are small,” Arihnda said, trying hard not to let her irritation show. Uvis was an outsider from the Core who’d been more or less forced on them by Governor Azadi’s office six standard months ago. She could probably count his trips outside the Capital City area during that time on one hand. Not only did he know virtually nothing about Lothal, but he clearly didn’t care to learn. “But so what if they are? If any one of them can’t handle the full contract, we’ll just make deals with two or three or four. Everything’s interconnected here.”

  “And I have no doubt that system works fine for the average backwoods Outer Rim world,” Uvis said with strained patience. “But some of us have higher ambitions for Lothal.”

  Arihnda snorted under her breath. Ambitions for a backwater dirtball like Lothal. Right. “Good luck with that one.”

  “I’m serious,” Uvis insisted. “Now that we have a doonium vein—”

  “We have a doonium vein,” Arihnda cut him off. “Pryce Mining. Not you, and not Lothal. We have it.”

  “Fine,” Uvis said. “Just remember the governor’s office and I are included in that we. We’re your partners, remember?”

  “Not for long,” Arihnda said. “As soon as the profits from the doonium start rolling in, we’re buying out of your loan. We can do that—the contract says so.”

  “The contract didn’t anticipate something like this.” Uvis took a deep breath. “Look, Arihnda. Here’s the reality. Yes, you’ve got wealth now, more than you ever dreamed of. That means it’s your big chance. Not just Pryce Mining’s, but yours—personally—as well.”

  “Really,” Arihnda said, trying to make the word sarcastic. But she couldn’t quite pull it off.

  Because he was right. This kind of sudden wealth might finally make it possible for her to get out of here. Not just out of the family business, but off Lothal completely.

  “But it’s also going to attract attention, and not necessarily the good kind,” Uvis continued. “You need—”

  He broke off as a hammerheaded Ithorian appeared around the corner and hurried past them, a stack of data cards in her hand. Someone’s niece, Arihnda vaguely remembered, working a two-week internship. The Ithorian grunted a Good morning, then disappeared around a different corner. “You need support,” Uvis said. “More than that, you need protection. Governor Azadi can give you that.”

  The nebulous thought of finally getting off Lothal vanished in a sudden cloud of suspicion. “Protection?” she countered. “Or do you mean takeover?”

  “No, of course not,” Uvis protested.

  “Really,” Arihnda said. “Because we’ve heard this before. Other people have come to Lothal, lots of them, looking for ways to lift us up out of the dust and coincidentally make themselves rich. Sooner or later, they all find out that the people here are stubborn, set in their ways, and not interested in having fancy-hats from the Core tell them what to do.”

  “I’m glad Lothal has come to terms with mediocrity,” Uvis ground out. “But that pattern is over. The fancy-hats will be coming back, this time to stay. And they’ll eat small fish like Pryce Mining for breakfast.”

  “Don’t threaten me, Uvis,” she warned.

  “I’m not threatening you,” he said. “I’m trying to tell you that everything’s about to change. There are a dozen ways a big mining corporation can move in on a small operation like yours and either take it over or bleed it dry. I don’t want that, you don’t want that, and Governor Azadi most definitely doesn’t want that.”

  With an effort, Arihnda got a fresh grip on her temper. So Uvis had already told Azadi about the doonium?

  Damn. In a tight-knit community like Capital City, that meant half the citizens knew by now. And if half the citizens knew, a good quarter of the outsiders in the area probably knew, too. “I assume you have a solution to offer?”

  “We do,” Uvis assured her. “We start with you selling the governor another twenty-one percent of Pryce Mining. That would—”

  “What?” Arihnda demanded, feeling her jaw drop. “Absolutely not. You’re not getting a controlling interest.”

  “It’s the only way to keep some predatory megacorporation off your back,” Uvis said. “With the power and office of the governor protecting you, we can make deals with real refineries, the kind with money and influence—”

  “No,” Arihnda said flatly.

  Uvis took a deep breath. “I know this is a big step,” he said, his tone soothing now. “But it’s the only way—”

  “I said no,” Arihnda repeated.

  “You need to at least tell your parents about the governor’s offer,” Uvis persisted. “At least your mother. As the general manager, she needs to know—”

  “Which part of no is confusing you?”

  Uvis’s face darkened. “If you don’t, I will.”

  “No, what you’ll do is get out of my sight,” Arihnda told him. “Actually, what you can do is get off our property.”

  He snorted. “Please. I own thirty percent of Pryce Mining. You can’t just throw me out.”

  “The Pryce family owns seventy percent,” Arihnda countered, “and the guard droids answer to us.”

  For a long moment they stared at each other. Then Uvis inclined his head. “Very well, Ms. Pryce,” he said. “But hear this. You can sit on your dirty little world, a big frog in a small dust puddle, and think you can stand alone against the galaxy. But you can’t. The sooner you realize that, the less it’ll cost you.” He raised his eyebrows. “And your parents.”

  “Goodbye, Mr. Uvis,” Arihnda said.

  “Goodbye, Ms. Pryce,” he said. “Call me when you’re ready to see reason.”

  —

  Uvis himself was gone. But the cloud he’d left over Arihnda persisted.

  A dozen times that day she thought about going to her mother and letting her know about Uvis’s warning and offer. But each time she decided not to. The mine had been in her family almost all the way back to the first planetary settlements, and she knew that both her parents would go down fighting rather than give it up.

  They had full legal rights to the mine, the land, and the business. Moreover, the Lothal legal system, where any challenges would be heard, was loaded with acquaintances, suppliers, clients, friends, and friends of friends. The one advantage of living on a sleepy frontier world. Whatever corporations or slicksters or sleazy grubbers from the governor’s office tried to throw at them, they would weather the storm.

  She worked late, finishing up the day’s data sorting and drafting a data release for whenever her parents decided to announce the news. Just because half of Lothal probably knew by now didn’t mean they wouldn’t eventually have to say something of
ficial.

  It was nearly sundown when she finally left the office. She headed for home, driving slower than usual, watching the colors in the western sky and the fading light as it bounced sparkles off the shrubs and intricate rock formations lining the roadway. On the horizon, the lights of Capital City’s buildings were coming on, a softer and whiter glow than the reds and pinks of the setting sun. From somewhere in the distance came the happy shrieking of children at play. Off on the horizon she could see a pair of airspeeders, probably with teenagers at the controls, showboating over the rolling, grass-covered hills as they chased the setting sun. It was the kind of primitive beauty that travel advisers raved about.

  Arihnda hated it.

  That hadn’t always been the case. For a while, back when she was a child, she’d loved the quiet life, the wide-open spaces, and the companionship of children of so many different species and backgrounds. But during her teen years she’d begun to see the quietness as dullness, the open spaces as lack of culture or excitement, the familiar acquaintances as stifling and boring. Often, lying awake in bed, she’d gazed out the window at the stars and wished with all her heart that she could escape to a real world somewhere, a place with excitement and bright lights and sophisticated people.

  But she never had. And with the passing of her teen years, and her transition to the responsibilities of adulthood, she knew she never would.

  The pain and frustration had subsided somewhat over the last decade. But they had never entirely disappeared. She still hated her life here, but it was a familiar, constant hatred, like a dull ache that had never quite healed.

  She slowed the landspeeder a little more, watching the interplay of city light and sunset glow. In worlds with excitement and bright lights, she suspected, many of the inhabitants never even saw the horizon, let alone a sunset.

  Of course, they probably didn’t care about such things. If she were there, she doubted she would care, either.

  Could Uvis have been right about the doonium deposits being her chance to finally escape?

  She snorted. Of course not. That whole pitch had been a mind game, designed to distract her from his attempt to talk his way into controlling the company.

  Let him try. She didn’t especially like her life here; but it was her life, and Pryce Mining was her company, and she would see Uvis in hell before she would let anyone steal it.

  The last wisps of color had faded away, and she was pulling her landspeeder into her garage, when her comm chimed. She glanced at the ID—it was her father—and keyed it on. “Hello, Father,” she greeted him. “What’s up?”

  “Arihnda, you need to get to the police station right away,” Talmoor Pryce said, his voice nearly unrecognizable. “Your mother’s been arrested.”

  Arihnda stared. “What? What in the world for? And who ordered it?”

  “The complaint came from the governor’s office,” Talmoor said, his breath coming in short spurts. “The charge is embezzlement.”

  —

  Talmoor Pryce had worked in the family mine all his life, and Arihnda had seen him act calmly and decisively in dozens of crisis situations. But this crisis wasn’t mine-based, and for once he clearly had no idea what to do.

  The police didn’t seem to know what to do, either. Talmoor and Arihnda were on a first-name basis with several of them, but this time those personal contacts weren’t enough to smooth things out or even cut through the bureaucratic clutter. All the police could say was that Elainye was in custody, her bail request had been denied, and they’d been ordered not to allow her visitors. The person behind the order hadn’t been named, but everything had come directly from the governor’s office.

  Not that Arihnda didn’t already know who was behind it.

  “Arik Uvis works with Azadi’s office,” Talmoor pointed out as he and Arihnda left the station. “Maybe he can help.”

  “Maybe,” Arihnda said, a twinge of guilt briefly warming the ice that had formed in her soul. In retrospect, she should have told her parents about her last conversation with Uvis. At least they wouldn’t have been so utterly blindsided by this cowardly attack. “I’ll go see him after I drop you off.”

  “Thanks, but I’m okay,” Talmoor said. “We can go see him together.”

  “I really think you should go home,” Arihnda persisted. A plan was slowly forming in the back of her mind, the kind that worked best without witnesses present. “Barkin was going to keep trying for bail. If he gets it, you don’t want to be all the way across Capital City when Mother’s ready for you to come get her.”

  “I suppose,” Talmoor conceded. “You’ll let me know what Uvis says, won’t you?”

  “Absolutely,” Arihnda promised. “But I’m not expecting anything right away. Try to get some sleep, okay?”

  “I’ll try.” He eyed her, his eyes narrowing slightly. “Be careful, Arihnda.”

  “Don’t worry,” Arihnda assured him grimly. “I will.”

  —

  It was pure good luck that Senator Domus Renking happened to be on Lothal, instead of on the distant world of Coruscant where he spent most of his time. According to the press releases, he’d come back to his homeworld for a short vacation and some meetings with Governor Azadi and other political and industrial leaders, and was slated to leave in two days.

  Arihnda arrived precisely at nine in the morning, when Renking’s office opened, and gave her name and reason for her visit to the smiling woman at the reception desk. Two hours later, she was finally ushered inside.

  “Ms. Pryce,” Renking greeted her, standing courteously as she came in. “Please sit down.”

  “Thank you, Senator,” Arihnda said, passing between the pair of silent guards flanking the doorway and continuing on to the chair in front of Renking’s desk. “Thank you for seeing me.”

  “It was probably inevitable,” Renking said with a smile, waiting until she had seated herself before resuming his own seat. “I understand your mother, Elainye, has been arrested for embezzlement.”

  “Yes, she has,” Arihnda said. “And she’s innocent.”

  Renking leaned back in his chair. “Tell me more.”

  “Yes, Senator.” Arihnda keyed her datapad and tapped for the first file. “First of all, my mother’s finances,” she said, setting the datapad on the desk and turning it around to face him. “You’ll see that there isn’t a boost in any of her accounts. If she embezzled, the money had to go somewhere.”

  “She could have set up a secret account,” Renking pointed out. “Possibly even offworld.”

  “Agreed,” Arihnda said. “But if she embezzled, the funds by definition had to come from Pryce Mining. I ran everything from the company’s side, digging through all the vectors she had access to. There are no indications of missing money, credit, or resources. No virtual transactions, either.”

  “That you could find.”

  “I know more about Pryce Mining’s computer operations than my mother does,” Arihnda said. “There’s no way she could pull off something that I couldn’t track.”

  “Mm,” Renking said. “I presume you realize how that makes you look.”

  “Yes, and I didn’t embezzle, either,” Arihnda said, reaching across the desk and keying for the next file. “This is the company’s profit data for the past two years. You can see there are regular dips and surges over that time period.”

  “Galactic market fluctuations,” Renking said, nodding. “Happens in every industry. Your point?”

  “You can see a pattern,” Arihnda said. “Dips here, here, and here. If there was embezzlement, it would probably have been timed to hit just the right spot to—maybe—not get noticed.”

  “You say if there was embezzlement,” Renking said. “I was under the impression that Governor Azadi’s office had confirmed there were funds missing.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Arihnda said, bracing herself as she again tapped the datapad. Now came the tricky part. “But it may not be as simple as missing funds. Here’s a securit
y video from a party at the company two weeks ago, right in the middle of the latest financial dip.” She pointed to a broad-faced being with fuzzy jowls and wide-set eyes dressed in a dark-brown tunic. “You see the Lutrillian here at the side?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s Pomi Harchmak,” Arihnda said. “She handles the heavy-equipment inventory operations. Her account is separate from the main operating fund account. Now…there. See how she slips out of the room right at the height of the party?”

  “Yes,” Renking said. “Where does that hallway lead?”

  “To the central office cluster,” Arihnda said. “Her desk is in there, from which she can access the entire inventory system. Oh, and a fresh order of digging heads had just come in, with the funds slated to go out the next morning. A perfect time for her to act.”

  “Also a perfect time for a drinking partygoer to go to the restroom,” Renking pointed out. “What makes you think that’s not what she’s doing?”

  “Because she leaves three more times in the next two hours and is gone at least ten minutes each time,” Arihnda said.

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Because that’s how financial transactions work here,” Arihnda said. “I don’t know how it is on Coruscant, but on Lothal secure fund-shifting usually requires two or three touchpoints, and the authorization codes sometimes bounce back and forth over an hour or more.”

  Renking grunted. “Pretty inefficient.”

  “Extremely inefficient,” Arihnda agreed sourly. It was yet another part of Lothal’s quaint approach to life that she found infuriating. “But we’re stuck with it. The banks and supply houses all have their own ways of doing things, and none of them like turning everything over to computers or droids. Everyone wants to have a personal touch in big transactions.”

  “Yes, that does sound like Lothal,” Renking conceded. He poised a finger over the datapad. “May I?”

  “Certainly.”

  He tapped the datapad to fast-forward the recording. As far as Arihnda could tell, he had no suspicions that what she’d told him was anything but the truth.