“COUNT VIDIAN, THIS IS AN HONOR,” gushed the tall cape-clad Neimoidian waiting at the bottom of the Imperial shuttle’s landing ramp. Despite the short notice, every firm working the moon had sent someone to the party meeting Cudgel, and the director’s big red eyes practically beamed with pride. “The Cyndan Mining Guild welcomes you,” he said, a wide, thick-lipped smile on his noseless green face. “I’m Director Palfa. We’ve all heard so much about—”
“Spare me,” Vidian snapped, and half the listeners on the cavern floor took a step back, unnerved. “I have a schedule—and so do you. When you bother to keep it!”
The director’s throat went dry. “O-of course.” The others averted their eyes, afraid to stare at the cyborg.
Good, Vidian thought.
In the waning days of the Republic, Vidian’s management texts had become pop-culture hits despite—no, because of—his reluctance to appear on the business HoloNets. He wasn’t shy or ashamed of his appearance; he just didn’t like wasting his time. But while the mystique added to his public reputation, in person his physical presence was a large part of his managerial success.
The turnaround expert, he had written, is a germ invading the body corporate. It will be opposed. Whenever someone sought to make over an organization, entrenched bureaucrats always tried to intimidate him. But two could play that game, and Vidian had been winning for fifteen years.
The legend of Denetrius Vidian had started five years before that, on what doctors expected would be his deathbed. But he’d survived, spending his bedridden time turning his meager bank balance into a fortune through electronic trading. In time, he purchased expensive, high-tech prosthetics, crafted to his own specifications. He did not look like other humans, but then humanity had abandoned him first, leaving him to rot in that hospice.
So Vidian had optimized his physical features in keeping with his now-famous trinity of management philosophies: “Keep moving! Destroy barriers! See everything!” Simple rules, which he diligently applied at every opportunity.
Including now, as the coterie made for the elevators. “The tour you ordered will cover some distance,” the director said. “Would your lordship like to rest first?”
“No,” Vidian said, marching so quickly the others had trouble keeping up. He moved faster now than he ever had in his youth; physical age no longer mattered. Some joked that Vidian was half droid, but he knew the comparison was inapt. Droids shut down. Vidian had spent too many years lying around already. So he had compounded his successes by working 90 percent of every day. “Keep moving: With an able body, the mind can achieve anything!”
Leading Vidian from the elevator onto a lower floor, the director paused in his blather about Cynda’s wonders. “I’m sorry,” he said, presenting his comlink. “Would you like to call your vessel to report your arrival?”
“I just did, while you were prattling in the elevator,” Vidian said.
Palfa seemed puzzled. He hadn’t seen or heard Vidian do anything. The count had installed a variety of comlink receivers into his earpieces; by routing his artificial voice through them, he regularly placed calls without ever appearing to open his mouth. Vidian hated getting information from intermediaries, who often distorted things for their own reasons; his communication capabilities were just one more way of cutting out the middle. “Destroy barriers: Get information directly, whenever possible!”
“This chamber leads to one of our mining levels,” the director said, gesturing to the workers hurrying around. “What you’re seeing is a typical day here—”
“A lie,” Vidian said, continuing to walk. “I’m reading the live feed from your reports as I speak. You’ve doubled your pace, but will return to mediocrity when the Empire turns its eyes away. Be assured: I will see it does not.”
A rumble came from the group of mining company representatives around them. But there was no point in their arguing. With a vocal command that made no external sound, Vidian cleared the daily production reports from his visual receptors.
Years earlier, he’d realized how leaders, from floor managers to chief executives, were often blind to the basic circumstances around them. Vidian didn’t want to miss a detail. His optical implants not only gave him exceptional eyesight, but also eliminated the need for vid monitors by projecting external data feeds onto his own retinas. See everything: He who has the data has the upper hand!
Vidian looked back at the group of worried mining officials. Many were out of breath from trying to keep up with him, including a Besalisk woman. There were several of the multi-armed humanoids working at Calcoraan Depot, his administrative hub: members of a reasonably industrious but otherwise unremarkable species. Before he gave her a second thought, freight elevators opened on either side of the chamber. Stormtroopers rushed from the cars.
Right on time. Vidian pivoted and pointed to five different corridors leading from the chamber. Without a word in response, the squads split up and headed into the tunnels.
Director Palfa was startled. “What’s going on?”
“No more than I said.” Vidian’s tone was as casual as his meaning was ominous. “You are managers. We’re helping you manage.”
Hera wasn’t about to bring her ship into the Cyndan mining complex for an unauthorized landing. Joining the convoy, however, had gotten her close, and once out of sight of the Star Destroyer, she’d parked in orbit. Her ship’s small excursion vessel had taken her the rest of the way to a little maintenance outbuilding on the surface.
She’d studied just enough about the mining trade to know what to pretend to be: a maintenance tech for bulk-loader droids. The rest she’d thought up on the spot.
“This is the wrong entrance,” the guy inside the airlock had said.
“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. It’s my first day, and I’m late!”
“And where’s your badge?”
“I forgot. Can you believe it? My first day!”
The man had believed it, letting her pass with a smile that said he hoped she’d keep making wrong turns in the future. People of several different species found Hera appealing to look at, and she was happy to put that to use for a good cause.
But as she walked carefully through the mining complex, she increasingly realized how difficult that cause had become. Gorse and Cynda produced a strategic material for the Empire, yes, but they were well away from the galactic center. And yet Hera spied one surveillance cam after another—including several that the workers clearly weren’t intended to see. If Coruscant-level security had made it out to the Rim worlds, that would make any action against the Empire all the more difficult.
Another good reason to visit my friend on Gorse after this, she thought, darting lithely beneath the viewing arc of another secret cam. A rendezvous with any mystery informant was dangerous; she’d learned that quickly enough in her short career as an activist. But her contact had proven knowledge of Imperial surveillance capabilities, and she’d need that to get to the important stuff, later on.
Finding out more about Count Vidian’s methods, though, she’d have to do through old-fashioned skulking. He was on Cynda now, she knew: She’d seen him once already from afar, passing through the caverns with a tour group. It was tough to get closer. The transparent crystal columns were pretty to look at but lousy cover.
Darting through an isolated side passage, she thought she’d found a shortcut to get ahead of him. Instead, she found something else.
“Halt!” A stormtrooper appeared at the end of the corridor, his blaster raised.
Hera stopped in her tracks. “I’m sorry,” she said, putting her hand to her chest and exhaling. “You scared me!”
“Who are you?”
“I work here,” she said, approaching as if nothing was wrong. “I may be in the wrong place. It’s my first day.” She smiled.
“Where’s your badge?”
“I forgot.” Dark eyes looked down demurely, then back up. “Can you believe it? My first day!”
The stormtrooper studied her for a moment—and then saw the blaster she was wearing. She moved before he did, delivering a high kick that knocked the blaster from the startled stormtrooper’s hands. Seeing his weapon clatter away, he lunged for it. She easily sidestepped him—and pivoted, leaping onto the armored man’s back. Losing purchase on the crystalline floor, he stumbled, her full weight driving his head into the side wall. His helmet cracked loudly against the surface, and he slumped motionless to the ground.
“Sorry,” Hera whispered over the fallen trooper’s shoulder. “Charm doesn’t work on everyone.”