“What in the name of …” From behind her desk, Sadiki Blirr was watching the holoscreens that showed the events down in the cargo hold, the CLL load-lifter pivoting on its gyros and thundering into the wall. “Status report. What’s going on down there?”
Next to her, ThreeDee didn’t respond. The droid had been trying in vain to communicate with the CLL unit for the last five minutes, and its silence was not reassuring.
“My apologies, Warden.” ThreeDee withdrew its adapter from the wall console. “I’m afraid the load-lifter’s motivator has been manually compromised somehow. I cannot access it from here.”
“What do you mean, manually compromised?”
“Someone rewired it onsite.”
“That’s absurd.” Cursing aloud, Sadiki looked at the screen. The crushed remains of the decapitated and trampled Vesto Slipher were sprawled across the floor, almost unrecognizable. She had no idea what the Muun had been doing down there, nor did she particularly care. The sight of his corpse elicited nothing more profound in her than a headache. But it was one more headache that she was going to have to deal with, at the worst possible time. She glanced at the chrono display.
“What’s the ETA on that incoming prison barge?”
“The Purge is due to arrive within thirty minutes,” ThreeDee told her.
“You’ve confirmed that?”
“Captain Styrene made contact when the vessel first came out of hyperspace. I haven’t heard from them since then.”
Thirty minutes. Sadiki stood with her hands gripping either side of the desk and remained there, perfectly motionless for the moment, allowing herself to take stock of the situation. By themselves, a malfunctioning droid and the untimely death of an IBC representative weren’t catastrophic, but given what was at stake, she sensed the hand of something far more dangerous behind it.
And why had Dakarai disappeared? Where was her brother when she needed his counsel the most?
“Warden,” ThreeDee said, “I have Gaming Commissioner Chlorus on the line. Shall I have him leave a message?”
“Yes.” She stopped and reconsidered. “No. Wait. Put him through.”
Chlorus’s face appeared on the screen directly in front of her. He didn’t wait for her salutation. “Sadiki, what is going on over there?”
“Commissioner.” She smiled, finding it surprisingly easy to do. “You’re looking well.”
Chlorus held up his hand to stop her. “You’re operating in direct violation of the commission’s orders to shut down your gambling operation. Now I’m getting reports of ongoing hostility between inmates and guards.”
“I wasn’t aware that penal reform fell under the aegis of the Gaming Commission,” she said.
“Don’t do this, Sadiki. Don’t put me in this position.”
“On the contrary, Commissioner.” Sadiki’s voice changed, darkening ever so slightly, her eyes never leaving his image on the screen. “It’s you who put me into this position. Long ago.”
“I fail to see—”
“I didn’t want to bring this up, but you’ve left me no choice.” She tapped a series of commands into the holo console, and a new series of images superimposed themselves over the display on the monitor. “Do you recognize this place?”
For a moment Chlorus didn’t answer. “Of course. It’s the Outlander Casino and Resort on Coruscant.”
“Where we first met,” Sadiki said as the next series of images came up. “Remember this?”
Now Chlorus’s entire face went blank with shock as he stared at the surveillance photos. “Where did you get these—”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is what the board members would have to say about a respected commissioner finding himself with a young, highly impressionable casino manager in what you’ll have to admit is a very compromising position.” She leaned forward slightly. “Can you see the images clearly? I can increase the bandwidth if you prefer. There are some very good shots of—”
“Those photos prove nothing!”
“You’re right,” Sadiki said. “Perhaps I should just forward them to the commission and let them draw their own conclusions.” She waited for a moment. “Unless you have another suggestion?”
“Enough.” Chlorus’s shoulders sagged. “What is it that you want?”
“Ah.” Sadiki nodded. “Now we’re making progress. Here’s how it’s going to work. As soon as we finish this conversation, you’re going to reverse your ruling against my operation, reinstating Cog Hive Seven’s rights and privileges as a gaming facility under the commission’s regulations, making it fully operational, effective immediately.”
“I couldn’t possibly—”
“And,” she cut in, “I want you to contact your friend Lars Winnick at the IBC and come up with a plausible explanation for the unexpected disappearance of one of their field agents.”
“What?”
“His name is Vesto Slipher. I’ll send the specifics along directly. How you manage it does not concern me, as long as I’m not subjected to any more of these degrading spot audits.”
“Sadiki …” Chlorus reached up to clutch at the collar of his tunic, struggling to loosen it. “You grossly overestimate my scope of influence in these matters.”
“And you, Dragomir, grossly underestimate the amount of damage that these surveillance photos could inflict on your career,” she said. “You’ve done great things for the commission and the relationship between gambling communities. You’ve driven galactic revenue to new heights. A man like you might be senator one day … and after that, who knows?” She let the words sink in, knowing they would saturate his colossal ego. “Do you really want to throw all that away over some cheap tryst with a casino manager?”
Chlorus gazed at her. A faintly gleaming mustache of sweat had broken out across his upper lip, and his eyes looked raw, rimmed with red. Finally he shook his head. “I forgot how obstinate you become when you want something.”
“Don’t forget again,” Sadiki told him, and before he could answer, she pressed the button to break off the transmission. She heard ThreeDee approaching her with a refill for her coffee.
“Well done,” the droid observed. “If I may say so.”
“Child’s play.” She held out the cup, allowing him to fill it. “Where’s Inmate 11240?”
ThreeDee turned to her, not understanding. “Excuse me?”
“Clear the monitors. Show me all the tunnels and lifts leading away from the cargo bay. Roll the feed back five minutes. Do it now.”
The holoscreens flickered and changed, displaying a dozen different walkways, every possible exit from the cargo bay.
Sadiki took her time, examining each screen individually, using the time to consider what had just happened. She hadn’t wanted to confront Chlorus with the surveillance photos, not because she didn’t want to humiliate him—the man’s reputation, like his towering vanity and none-too-secret political ambitions, could not have mattered to her less—but because the photos represented the last and most potent form of leverage that she had over the Gaming Commission. Every predatory instinct within her had wanted to hold on to the images until they could be exploited for maximum value. Now they were out there, and—
She froze, her thoughts breaking off as she caught sight of something on one of the screens, an odd bluish blur in the corner of one of the turbolifts. From here it looked like nothing more than a visual aberration, like a ripple of slightly discolored heat from an exhaust vent. Except that there were no such vents in the lift, and—