SKELLY SAT UP, alarmed. “How did you find me?”
Hera patted her own shoulder. “If you’ll look in the utility pocket on your left shoulder, you’ll find a tracking device that I slipped in when I was cutting you loose.” She smiled. “I did tell you I would find you.”
Skelly reached for his pocket and discovered a small chip. He stared at her angrily. “I don’t like people spying on me.”
“You’re in the wrong system, then.” Hera simply opened her gloved hand. “I’ll take that. Thanks.”
“You said my name,” he said, suspicious. “How do you know me?”
“You’ve gotten a lot of people’s attention today. I heard about what you did on Cynda. You know—the blast, while the Emperor’s envoy was there.” She paused, stopping to take in the many notes about the Empire on the wall to her left. “I’m interested to hear your reasons for doing what you did.”
Frowning, Skelly stood up. “And why do you care?”
“I’m just…interested,” Hera said.
Seeing her reading his notes, the redheaded human interposed himself between her and the wall. “Look, don’t read my stuff. I don’t know you, lady. I don’t know that telling you will help anything!”
Hera looked to her right—and saw the other wall and its writings about Cynda. A glint appeared in her dark eyes. “Would you tell me…if I was a reporter for the Environmental Action Gazette?”
Skelly goggled. “I thought that had shut down!”
“Just retooling,” Hera said. “You can be part of the big relaunch.”
Skelly studied her. He’d never been in that HoloNet publication’s audience, but it had come up several times in his research. It had put a stop to a number of bad business practices in the past.
“Come on,” she said, pulling a datapad from her cloak. “I did let you go.”
Skelly took a deep breath—and made a decision. “Okay.”
He rushed to his wall and pointed to one diagram after another, laying out his theories. Severing a few crystalline stalactites and stalagmites was fine; those were the mere outgrowths of the physical structures that held Cynda together. It was like giving the moon a haircut. But using explosives to break into new chambers was more akin to breaking bone.
“Every chamber they discover has more thorilide than the one before,” Skelly said. “And that makes them use more juice to get into the next one.”
“And that causes collapses that harm workers.” Hera nodded, making notes on her datapad. “While ruining a beautiful natural setting.”
“Now you’ve got it!” Triumphant, Skelly jabbed his fist to the low ceiling.
“Okay,” Hera said mildly.
Skelly’s face froze. “Okay?”
She smiled gently at him. “This is not big and shocking news, Skelly,” she said kindly, returning the datapad to its place. “The Empire hurts workers and ruins things. It does that all the time, everywhere.”
“So?”
“You have a problem, like a billion other people in the galaxy. One day, we’ll all do something about it. This is good to know, and I feel for everyone involved. But I’m not sure the time is right to do much about it.”
Skelly was alarmed. “You’re not going to publish—after all this? What kind of deal is this? I thought you were a journalist!”
The woman took a step back—clearly not fearing him, but simply giving him space to rave. “I’m really more gathering information right now, Skelly. Preparing for…” She trailed off, then nodded toward the wall with his notes about Cynda. “What you’ve described is bad, but it’s not exactly world-shattering.”
“Oh, yes, it is!” Skelly whipped the holodisk out of his vest pocket and held it between his left thumb and forefinger. “Because I believe that if the Empire keeps up, they could blow the whole moon to bits!”
Hera held up a hand. “Look, forget the hyperbole. How much damage are you talking about?”
“I’m not exaggerating!” Skelly said. Pocketing the holodisk, he turned back to the wall and began riffling through attached notes with his good hand. “The moon’s already brittle. The elliptical orbit means Gorse and the sun are yanking at it all the time. Gorse releases the stress through groundquakes. But all the energy stays pent up on Cynda, because the crystal lattices go so deep—”
“The bottom line, please.”
“Use enough explosives in the right spots, and Cynda could crumble like a senator’s promise.”
Hera stared at him for a moment. Skelly stared back.
“That’s just…beyond belief,” she said, finally. “The power to destroy a body that size? It’s hard to believe something like that exists.”
“It exists. It’s possible. And I’m beginning to think they don’t care.”
Hera walked to the wall and started reading. “These notes are all over the place,” she said. “I can’t make sense of some of it.”
“Trust me,” Skelly said. “I’m an expert.”
“You’re a planetary geologist.”
“No, I build bombs.”
Hera’s lips pursed. “Oh.” She drew the syllable out.
“I know how it sounds,” he said, pulling down notes and wedging them into his frozen right hand. “But it’s true. The mining companies know, because I’ve told them. But they cover it up, because they’re all part of the conspiracy.”
“The conspiracy?”
“The thorilide triangle,” Skelly said, astonished that she hadn’t heard about it. He moved across the room to the other side, with his wall of corporate shame. “The mining firms are corrupt. They’re tied up—ownership, boards of directors—with the shipwrights that have sold the Empire on one construction project after another. Oh, it’s all being done in secret, but you can’t keep everything secret. A billion Star Destroyers isn’t enough. They’re building Super Star Destroyers, and Super Super Star Destroyers, and who knows what else!”
“I see,” Hera said, gingerly taking a step backward. “And how do you know all this?”
“The HoloNet!”
“Oh,” Hera said. “The HoloNet.”
“It’s all one big web, and it goes on forever,” Skelly said, eyes fixing on the far wall. He stepped over to it and began fumbling with notes. “Did you know it was the moneyed interests that started the Clone Wars? There was a battle droid manufacturer that had too much inventory—”
Skelly felt Hera’s eyes upon him, and the air went out of his lungs. He stopped talking. The notes, the clippings, all swam before him, not making sense.
He’d done it again.
“I’m sorry to have troubled you,” he half heard her say. “Good luck.”
Skelly kept facing the wall. “Look, I know what I sound like. I’ve been through…well, I’ve been through a lot of bad things. I get worked up. I don’t always say things right. But what I know—it’s still real.” He took a breath. “I’m not crazy.”
When he turned, she was gone. He could hear light footsteps heading up the ladder. He followed—but saw nothing but the trash bin and the darkened quad all around.
Deflated, Skelly climbed back inside and shut the grate after him.
He sat in silence at the bottom of the pit. His head buzzed—and hurt, as it had been hurting for a long time. Skelly’s sleep cycles had been wrong ever since moving to Gorse, and time in Cynda’s always bright caves confused them further. The confusion in the notes still clutched in his malfunctioning hand were one product. But he could still focus to do some things. The data on the holodisk—that, he knew was right. It was his testament, his last chance.
Skelly remembered Vidian’s call to Lal Grallik. The count was coming, yes. And Vidian could still listen, and do the right thing. But he would be bringing the rest of the Empire with him, and they could still do the wrong thing.
Skelly sprang to his feet and reentered his sanctum. Opening the curtain to the closet, he exposed his secret workbench there—and, beneath, in sealed packages, the massive stores of explosive baradium he’d smuggled out over the years. Because of his fears about blasting on Cynda, every time they’d asked him to plant charges to open up a wall, he’d used a little less. He just hadn’t given them back what he didn’t use.
But if they didn’t listen to him now, he’d give it all back. All at once, and so they’d notice.
Yes, he would.
Hera shook her head as she stepped back onto the street.
It had been a calculated risk, freeing Skelly. Her assumption in the detour was that anyone rising up against the Empire, in any way, was worth a look. Some could be helpful. Maybe not yet, but in the movement to come. It was important to know their capabilities.
But Skelly would never be of any use, and so she mentally filed him away with dozens of others she’d met just like him. Political activism drew more than its share of crackpots. Some had been legitimately driven to madness by the forces they were fighting against; some had been damaged by war, as she suspected was the case with Skelly. Some had no excuse. But while such people were always the first to revolt, they almost never led successful revolutions. Action against the Empire would have to be carefully measured—now, especially.
Thus far, Gorse had been a bust. Sunless in more ways than one: Its people wandered robotically between the drudgery of work and the dangers of the streets, sensing neither. Even the human who’d helped her against the street gang—whom she now remembered as the man helping the old-timer on Cynda—might easily fit a ready template: the gadabout, looking for a brawl. That would be disappointing, if so, but not surprising: Like everyone else on Gorse, he was trapped in a role the Empire wanted for him. He’d never be a threat. It was too bad: He seemed to know what he was doing in a fight.
But Hera put him out of her mind. Skelly was the side trip; the real goods lay ahead. And she would find them at the establishment whose unsubtle advertisement appeared on her datapad:
The Asteroid Belt
The Pits, Gorse City • Okadiah Garson, prop.
Open all nite
Come in and get belted