STARSHIPS WERE SETTLEMENTS in the sky. Some were villages; Ultimatum was a great metropolis. And yet even Star Destroyers functioned like small towns. A big sink full of gossip—and as with small towns, the contents all tended to flow toward one person, like water to a drain.
Sloane stood at the window as Nibiru Chamas, Ultimatum’s unofficial drain, sat casually in the chair in her office. The mining ships were continuing to shuttle back and forth between Gorse and Cynda—faster than before, of course—but her mind was on the list Chamas was reading.
“Count Vidian has designed and issued new traffic patterns for the cargo ships traveling between the two worlds,” Chamas said. “He has ordered several changes to the loader droids’ subroutines on Cynda that should make them more productive. He has changed the color of the plates used in the communal mess hall—”
“What?”
Chamas chuckled. “That last one is a joke.”
Sloane rolled her eyes. “Continue.”
“He also ordered a review of Transcept’s personnel—you know, the ones who found the madman on Cynda? There has already been at least one arrest for suspicious activity.”
“Thorough,” Sloane said.
She was thorough, too—or intended to be. She’d been caught flat-footed by Vidian’s actions on her bridge, issuing commands to her staff. Ultimatum had the authority to destroy the freighter Cynda Dreaming; Vidian had clearly known that. But, while she agreed with that decision, it behooved her to find out more about her visitor, and how he’d interacted with other crews. She wasn’t going to be just one more mechanical arm.
“What else has he done?”
“Laid groundwork for his tour of Gorse. He has a full schedule already. He doesn’t head down there for hours yet, and he’s already reorganized three guilds, ordered the consolidation of several equipment suppliers into a single firm, and even shut down a medcenter, moving the patients to an institution closer to the factories so they can get back to work more quickly.”
“That’s it?”
“Isn’t that enough? He has met several times with the aides he brought aboard and made several calls back to his main office on Calcoraan Depot. There’s only one thing he hasn’t done.”
“Slept,” Sloane said. “He doesn’t have the time.”
“He doesn’t have a bed,” Chamas corrected. “The attendants changing his room found the place wrecked. The furniture, smashed.”
“What? When was this?”
“After he came back from the moon—after we piped a second call to him from Baron Danthe. I think our count has a temper.”
Sloane chuckled. She’d heard Vidian had a short fuse—and word back from Cynda was that the Mining Guild chief had found out the hard way. “You got him another room, I hope?”
“We have an ample supply. Don’t worry, it’ll all be put right before our—er, regular captain arrives.”
Thanks for reminding me I’m just a temp, Sloane thought, walking around to her desk. But Chamas’s comment brought her back to what she wanted to know. This next, she wanted to ask cautiously.
“Interesting man, Vidian—and striking that he would choose government service. You said he bought the title. Do you know where he’s from?”
“His biography says Corellia. In the Republic days, he was an engineer for a small design firm that worked for shipbuilders. A cog in a small wheel. His suggested improvements were constantly rejected. Then he was struck with Shilmer’s syndrome—and spent the next five years while it was eating him alive conquering the stock exchanges from a bed.”
“And the firm?”
“As the legend goes”—Chamas said the term derisively—“Vidian’s first act on regaining mobility was buying the company and putting everyone on the street. But I don’t even know what firm it was. There were confidentiality provisions to the severance packages. He doesn’t want anyone he’s burned sniping at him, ruining sales of his next management holo.”
Sloane knew Vidian didn’t need the money, but she didn’t have any problem with his rationale. A little revenge did wonders for the healing process. It was also a human thing—and there weren’t many human things about Vidian.
“If he’s from Corellia,” she said, “he’s probably connected in the shipbuilding sector—and the Admiralty.”
It was halfway between the question she’d intended, and the matter-of-fact observation she’d wanted it to sound like. But Chamas was too sly, catching her drift immediately. “In other words,” he said with a smile, “can he make your posting here permanent—perhaps by giving Captain Karlsen a cushy job at one of his subsidiaries? Please, ask him for one for me, while you’re at it.”
Caught, Sloane simply stared. “What’s tomorrow like?”
Chamas passed her his datapad showing the stops on Vidian’s planned tour of Gorse. It sounded like an exhausting day.
She was struck curious by the first name on the list. “Moonglow. Why start with this little one?”
“They apparently captured—and lost—the fugitive from Cynda a few hours ago.”
“That’ll go over well for them,” Sloane said, passing back the datapad. She swiveled her chair to look again out the window at the ships heading down to Gorse. Her brow furrowed as she tried to take it all in.
“So while he’s on his world tour, we play traffic officer,” Chamas said, standing. “Keeping the rabble back while Vidian adds to his folktale. We should demand part of the royalties on his next holo.”
Sloane smiled inwardly. She only wanted a supporting role. It was her job to help the Empire; helping to find Ultimatum’s rightful captain a different ship would be a nice bonus.
Stormtroopers had ransacked his apartment hours earlier. That, Skelly thought without the least amusement, officially represented the first attention the Empire had ever paid to the homes in Crispus Commons.
Crispus was a project for homeless Clone Wars veterans in the sector, an idea hatched in the final days of the Republic. The Empire had kept it going, shipping in new residents from time to time without ever adding to or improving on the complex. Skelly thought it spoke volumes about what the Republic and Empire really thought about those who’d fought against the Separatists. Let’s stick them where the sun doesn’t shine.
Skelly had stayed in the dilapidated apartment partly because it was sandwiched between Gorse City’s industrial districts. That way, no matter who fired him, his commute never got any longer. But the other reason he stayed was the rusted grating behind the complex’s trash bin at the far end of the rectangular exercise yard—and what lay beneath.
Certain no one outside had seen his approach, he slipped behind the bin and into the hole. He closed the grille above him. Passing through an improvised curtain, he fished for the power switch. A crackle or two later, the darkness around Skelly turned red, lit by computer monitors and a single weak overhead lamp.
It had been intended as a bomb shelter, built by the Republic as part of the Crispus project in the unlikely event Count Dooku or General Grievous took a sudden interest in destroying a retirement colony. Its permacrete walls had been a moldy mess when Skelly found the place. But he liked that it had its own generator, and the presence of a giant garbage bin in front of the grating meant he could enter and depart without anyone seeing.
All Skelly’s computers were built from kits, making them safe from slicing by the powers that be, corporate or government. Only one machine was attached to the HoloNet grid, and that through a connection hijacked from an Ithorian lunch wagon that parked daily on the other side of the quad. By selecting an intermediary that was mobile and garaged somewhere else, Skelly had cut down on prying eyes and ears.
Everywhere but at work. Skelly had known some of the corporations working on Cynda had installed surveillance equipment, but he’d assumed that was just to keep an eye on productivity—and to prevent the theft of explosive material, which had once been a problem. Evidently, they were now listening in on individual conversations there, too. It was insane. Deaf to his appeals about safety, but nosing in on everything else!
Skelly quickly ate a meager meal of tinned food paste before collapsing, exhausted, on a mat on the floor. This room had been his world, his real world, for years. Boards mounted on one wall were covered with hand-scrawled notes about the military industrial complex, and the intricate network of who owned what. A second wall was home to his studies into the history of galactic conflicts; the sides kept changing, but the stories were always the same. Whenever titans fought, the peons did the dying.
The biggest collection of notes, however, was on the wall facing him now. Apart from the curtained opening that led to a little closet, every square centimeter was festooned with notes about Cynda and its geologic structure. Seeing it all made his gut hurt. Skelly had long feared a day like this would be necessary: a day when he’d have to risk everything to get someone’s attention. But he’d been deciding things on the fly, and he worried he’d already blown it.
He’d run here from Moonglow’s grounds without thinking, after a spur-of-the-moment promise from someone he’d never met—and had in all likelihood ruined his chance to talk to Count Vidian. He still didn’t know why he’d fled. Yes, it was natural to fear being taken anywhere by stormtroopers; the Empire’s foot soldiers had a bad habit of damaging prisoners in transit. And everyone had misread his attempt to educate them as sabotage. But Vidian was still his best chance, the only one with the authority to effect change. Would Vidian leave Gorse without talking to him? Would Vidian see him at all, now that he’d run?
Staring at his collected writings from his spot on the floor, Skelly let out a low moan. “Nobody listens.”
“What do you want to say?”
Skelly looked up, startled, to see the cloaked figure that had rescued him. She removed her cowl. “You’re her!”
“Hera,” the Twi’lek corrected. “Let’s talk.”