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  “I’ll have you know that Imperial military males have a history of appreciating breathless women with the brains of a bantha.” Bhindi sighed. “Everyone, listen up. The captain will have already transmitted his preliminary report on us, his new rescues, and will be awaiting orders. If my experience with the New Republic Navy is any guide, those orders will be to keep us aboard and continue with his patrol until his course takes him near a place where he can drop us off with minimal loss of time or use of resources. Which gives us maybe a day. With luck, two.”

  Jesmin sat at the foot of Bhindi’s bunk. “We’ve been pretty lucky so far.”

  Bhindi nodded in agreement. “We’ve been terrifically lucky so far. Down to the craft that picked us up. We should be able to crew it long enough to limp somewhere we can pick up additional spacers.”

  “We should not have brought Piggy.” That was Scut, his tone flat, a curious contrast with his smiling expression. “All the reports of insurgency ... someone will notice that there’s always a ‘Gamorrean porter.’ His presence endangers us.”

  “Maybe.” Bhindi sounded bored. “But Seven is a seasoned enough veteran not to speak someone’s name when we’re behind enemy lines. Which you, Six, and even you, Five, are not. Not yet. Not to mention, Six, that you forgot and used a name he doesn’t wear anymore. And here’s another reason he’s along with us. Let’s say the next phase of this operation goes perfectly and leaves us in possession of the Concussor. What’s next?”

  Scut shook his head. The motion made the too-large ears of his neoglith masquer wobble. “You haven’t told us.”

  “Bad answer. Maybe a fatal answer.” Now Bhindi’s voice was harsh. “Let’s say that in the taking of the Concussor, I drop dead of a heart attack. I haven’t told you the rest of the plan, but you know our objectives. Six, what do we do?”

  “We ... set course for a safe port, I suppose.”

  Bhindi sighed. “Fail. Two?”

  Turman frowned. “We do set course for a port where we can get what we need. Say, Parabaw Station, a smugglers’ haven here in the Outer Rim.”

  “Fail. A slightly better fail. Four?” She reached up with her foot and prodded the bunk above with her toe.

  Trey shrugged. “I’m just here to flex, fix your comlinks when they break, and look pretty.”

  “You’re unhelpful, but correct. Five?”

  Jesmin grinned over at her. “I know where this is going, so I’ll pass.”

  “Five, you’re cowardly and wise at the same time. Seven?”

  “Immediate task is division of labor.” Voort was surprised at how easily the planning task came back to him. “We have a military mini corvette designed for a crew of thirty now in the hands of a crew of six, so we’re all going to be awake and alert around the chrono, working like Jawas high on caf, until we’re fully crewed again. Four, you’re Engineering, and you’re going to have a hell of a time of keeping everything functioning until we make port. One, you’re dead of a heart attack, so the task of crewing the bridge falls to me. Two, you’re communications officer, since if we have to communicate we can’t show a Gamorrean in the captain’s chair. Sensors, too. Five and Six, we don’t kill prisoners and we can’t afford to lose a resource like that shuttle by tamping the prisoners into it, disabling its hyperdrive, and sending it away, so you two are in charge of the prisoners until we can drop them. Since they’ll eventually be reporting on us, we maintain code names and false identity mannerisms until every one of them is gone. We find a drop point somewhere between here and Parabaw Station, a habitat or colony too poor to have a hypercomm and too obscure to get frequent ship visits, and drop the prisoners there. We make the shuttle dirtier and uglier because we’ll be using it for the initial approach to Parabaw Station—if we show up in a gleaming new Imperial warship, they’ll have abandoned the place before we can say, No, no, we’re crooks, too. We have little operating capital, so we’ll sell one of the interceptors for enough credits to hire a crew. During all this, Two will dress up as his fictitious Imperial Special Forces officer and make the recording intended to flush the general. We transmit it to Three for mysterious delivery to the general’s desk. Then—”

  “I think you proved my point.” Bhindi glanced back at Scut. “So, Six, do we drag him along, or what?”

  Scut’s answer was slow in coming. “Yes, we do ... One.”

  “Good boy.” She swung her legs off the bunk and heaved herself to her feet. “Time for me to talk a walk around, charm the crew, and learn the geography of this place.” She glanced at Jesmin. “I’ll need a guard. Come along, Fili.”

  Jesmin stood, too. “I’m Dili.”

  “Oops. Clearly, I’m out of practice.”

  Turman sniffed. “The line is, I’m getting too old for this.”

  When Bhindi and Jesmin were gone, Voort fixed Scut with a hard stare. “Six, why did you make a face that can’t stop smiling?”

  “I can stop.” Scut sat on the bunk where Bhindi had lain. The corners of his mouth drooped and his expression became serious. “But it requires an effort. Its natural expression is happy.” The smile returned. Yet his eyes remained neutral, emotionless.

  “Why make it that way?”

  “Because I am happy. Almost always happy.”

  “Even when you’re trying to poison my relationship with this unit?”

  “Especially then. Because I know I’m doing my best to save the lives of the others. From the danger you pose.”

  “I’m not a danger to them. You are.”

  “I will prove otherwise. And I hope I can prove it to you first. So you will do the honorable thing and resign.”

  “Yeah. Good luck with that.” Voort slammed his way out of Bhindi’s temporary cabin and returned to his own.

  Bhindi, dressed for bed in a fluttery, gauzy pink nightgown purchased in one of the Bastion Princess’s shops, stepped out from her cabin into the passageway. Yawning, she stretched as though there hadn’t been enough room in her borrowed cabin for such an action. Then she leaned against the far wall of the passageway and arched her back, stretching those muscles, as well.

  As she leaned against the wall, her left palm covered the small, almost invisible holocam lens embedded there at just above human head height.

  Jesmin, watching from inside the cabin, rolled out of the top bunk and dropped to the deck, making almost no noise as she landed in a crouch. She kept her hand on the lightsaber hilt dangling from her belt, ensuring that it did not clatter against the bunk or bulkhead. She was clad head to foot in black stretch fabric, only her eyes exposed. She knew she would be virtually invisible in darkness and no more than a black silhouette in the light. Even her lightsaber hilt was now wrapped in black space tape.

  She rapped on the aft bulkhead, then moved out into the passageway behind Bhindi. She turned right, toward the stern, and trotted the few steps to the next compartment door.

  Not all doors in this passageway were under the scrutiny of holocams, and this was one that wasn’t. Bhindi had spotted that little fact during her tours of the patrol vessel.

  Jesmin waited for only a moment before that door slid open. Another black silhouette emerged—obvious as Trey only because of his distinctive musculature. The door shut.

  Trey reached up to press a button on the spindly black headset fitted over his stretch hood. “Four up and running.”

  Jesmin did so with hers, as well. “Five here. Cam and comm check.”

  “Sight and sound good on both of you.” It was Voort’s voice.

  Jesmin led the way aft.

  It was the wee hours of the night, ship’s time. Lieutenant Phison, giving Bhindi her first tour of the vessel, had provided a lot of information, too much for his own well-being. Such as the fact that the quietest time of the daily cycle was about two hours after midnight, when a slightly higher percentage of the crew than at other hours was getting some fitful sleep. Such as the fact that the unmarked armored door near the Engineering compartment was “the auxiliary
bridge”—but the lack of a discernible Security station elsewhere on the craft marked the auxiliary bridge as probably handling that function, too.

  Jesmin dropped to the deck plates and crawled a few meters, keeping beneath the eye line of another wall holocam. Trey did likewise. He made a bit more noise than she, and Jesmin winced. Bhindi had insisted that she not go on this task alone, despite Jesmin’s protests.

  On the far side of the holocam view, both rose.

  At an intersection with a cross-passageway, Jesmin paused as she heard oncoming footsteps from around the corner to the left. She stopped, holding up a hand to warn Trey. Then she cocked that hand back to throw a blow, a breath-expelling, pain-inducing blow, if the Imperial spaceman should turn her way.

  It was a woman, enlisted personnel, and she didn’t spot Jesmin out of the corner of her eye. She continued along her original path, her mind clearly on other matters.

  Jesmin turned to glance at Trey. His gaze snapped upward to meet hers. His eyes, the only detail of his face to be seen in all the blackness, looked guilty.

  She frowned. “Were you just looking at my rear end?”

  “Um ... I’m not the actor Two is, so I’ll just say ... yes.”

  “Now’s not the time.” She turned forward again and glided across the intersection.

  She barely heard his whispered reply: “So, theoretically, there would be a time.”

  “Quiet.”

  Two intersections later, as she paused at the corner, she heard voices approaching—two, male. She alerted Trey.

  The voices belonged to two uniformed officers, and they both turned forward, directly toward Jesmin and Trey.

  They were abreast of Jesmin before the nearest one noticed her silhouette in the dim passageway. He turned toward her, instinctively opening his mouth to speak.

  Jesmin’s spear-hand strike took him in the solar plexus. Only a muffled “Uhhnn” emerged from his mouth.

  Trey was not quite so silent. He stepped forward and his fist cracked into the jaw of the second officer. The man’s head snapped toward Jesmin, and he swayed backward.

  Jesmin hit the first officer again, a palm strike to the temple. In the same moment, Trey lunged forward and caught his out-on-his-feet victim before the man crashed to the deck plates.

  Jesmin grabbed her own target, making his collapse as silent as possible. Then she glanced over at Trey.

  They couldn’t just leave these victims here. Even in the middle of a dull watch like this, a naval vessel’s passageways were frequently trafficked. Nor could they just look for a convenient hiding hole in their vicinity. Bhindi had plotted out some supply cabinets and ship’s system accesses, but they were few, and none was nearby.

  With a sigh, Trey stooped, pulled his victim over his shoulder, and straightened. He turned toward Jesmin, stooped again as she pulled her victim as far up as she could, and then Trey straightened with the second man over his other shoulder.

  They continued aft. Now they moved much more slowly and Trey made more noise than before, puffing a bit, the deck plates creaking more often under his feet. Still, Jesmin thought he was doing remarkably well for a man with nearly two hundred kilos of unconscious meat hanging from his body. They made it undetected to the first of Bhindi’s hiding holes, a laundry supplies storage compartment, and deposited their prisoners there. Trey bound both men with strips of cloth torn from soiled laundry while Jesmin waited with her eye at the slightly open compartment door. That task done, they continued.

  They reached the aft terminus of the passageway. Behind them, just a few meters, was the last of the cross-passageways on this level. Directly ahead was a blast door marked engineering. And to their left was another blast door, this one unmarked.

  Jesmin flattened herself against the wall beside the unmarked blast door. “I think this calls for a Force technique.”

  Trey’s eyes widened. “Are you going to cut your way in with your lightsaber?”

  “What are you, six years old? No, I’m not. Is there any way you can tell if there’s a refresher in there?”

  The stretch cloth of his hood crinkled at forehead level as he frowned. “You need to go? Now? Didn’t you think about that before—”

  “Can you or can’t you?”

  “I can put a mike to the wall and listen. I might hear a sink running or the refresher flushing.”

  “Do it.”

  Once Trey had the mike, a medical device, against the wall and its output leads plugged into his headset, Jesmin closed her eyes and began concentrating.

  After a minute, Trey whispered again. “No water noises so far. But now I’m starting to need to go.”

  Jesmin nodded, kept her eyes closed, kept concentrating.

  “Hey. Are you doing that? What are you doing?”

  “Thinking of waterfalls, wine bottles pouring, faucets gushing, fountains flowing ... and I’m putting that out through the Force.”

  “You monster. I’m ... I’m ...”

  “Keep it together, Four. Any noises?”

  “Conversation; I can’t make out the words, but it’s getting more urgent.” A moment later: “I understand that urgency.”

  “It’ll pass as soon as the door opens.”

  “Or as soon as I disgrace myself.”

  “First one out of the room is yours.”

  It was only a few seconds later that Jesmin heard the blast door whoosh open. She opened her eyes in time to see Trey, now standing just in front of the door, launch a terrific kick to the groin of the man in the officer’s uniform standing there.

  Foot met target and deformed it before the victim could even make a surprised face. The victim was in mid-convulsion and mid-moan when Trey grabbed him and yanked him out through the doorway.

  Jesmin spun, put on a burst of Force-boosted speed, and hurtled into the chamber. It was a long, narrow room, the forward wall a blur of monitors and projected holograms, the aft wall a series of racks holding dark blobs Jesmin couldn’t make out at this speed. Ahead was a semicircular desk with two chairs, one of them occupied. Jesmin hurtled to the second chair, where a fair-skinned woman in officer’s uniform was in the act of reaching for a desktop button. Jesmin collided with her, knocking her hand away from the desktop. The chair had glide-plates beneath it and the two rode it, propelled by Jesmin’s impact, to slam into the far wall, the undecorated starboard bulkhead.

  Fetched up against the wall, Jesmin twisted, put her elbow into the officer’s stomach. As the woman gagged, Jesmin caught her in a choke hold and held on.

  It didn’t take long. The woman flailed for a few moments, then slumped. Jesmin maintained her grip for a few moments longer, in case the woman was faking, then released her and laid her out on the floor. The woman drew in wheezing breaths but remained unconscious.

  Jesmin looked up. The outer door was already closed. Trey’s victim was stretched out on the deck plates and Trey stood over the desk, scanning the controls and sensors displayed there.

  The blobs Jesmin had glimpsed on the back wall were trooper gear—blaster rifles, belts with blaster pistols, body armor, helmets, at least four full sets. Jesmin smiled. “Good.”

  Trey glanced her way. “You were right. I no longer have to pee.”

  “I’ll notify HoloNet News.” Jesmin got to her feet. “Alert the others. Tell them I’m bringing them blaster pistols. Patch any of those holocam feeds Seven wants to him. He can act as controller for the others. You’ll be my controller.”

  “Oh, if only.”

  With holocam feeds piped to him by Trey, Voort monitored the movements of the now black-clad Scut, Turman, and Bhindi.

  He kept an especially close eye on Scut’s vicinity. If the Yuuzhan Vong was going to take an opportunity to betray or harm the other Wraiths, to get a message off to some Yuuzhan Vong ally, this would be a good time for it. But Scut, weird and angular in his black body stocking and hood, no longer padded out by his neoglith masquer and other disguise elements, did exactly as he was supposed t
o. He moved methodically up his assigned corridor, stood outside cabin doors until Voort opened them remotely, and stepped in. An instant after the door closed Scut fired off a few stun blasts with his reassembled blaster.

  As Jesmin began to intersect the paths of the other Wraiths, she distributed the blasters she had taken. The others no longer had to rely just on Trey’s reassembled blasters. Jesmin didn’t keep one herself; she resumed stalking the passageways, using her bare hands to deal with personnel as she met them.

  All the while, Trey kept up a running narrative audible over the headsets. “Ten crewmates down and counting. Zap zap, two more for Wraith Four, the galley is ours. Twelve and counting. Uh, I’m seeing here that there are thirty-eight sapients aboard, not thirty. Double uh, sorry, that’s the six of us and thirty-two, I say again thirty-two crew—the lieutenant evidently wasn’t counting the captain or ex oh. Thirteen down, Wraith Five delivers another headache.”

  Ten minutes later, Concussor was theirs.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CORUSCANT

  Face brought his airspeeder in for a landing on the hundredth-floor visitor parking level of the Cloud Paradise residential building.

  Actually, building was too modest a word, even by the gargantuan standards of many Coruscant constructions. Face had marveled at the Cloud Paradise edifice as soon as his closed-top black speeder had come within sight of it. Technically, it boasted only as many stories as other skytowers in this high-income residential district, but each of this building’s stories was a minimum of four meters in height, allowing the ziggurat-shaped structure to tower over everything around it. Built of black granite mined from Coruscant’s depths even after the world had been completely covered in city, its exterior was brightened by railings, window frames, piping, and other fixtures plated in simulated gold. No advertising marquees adorned the building’s exterior, only flowing plates reading CLOUD PARADISE every fifty stories on every facing.

  Even in the parking levels, the opulence continued. None of the unoccupied resident and visitor landing slots Face could see was stained with lubricants or hydraulic fluids—the building custodial staff had to be cleaning each airspeeder level regularly. The turbolifts from the parking level were enclosed in a secure area with a guard behind a desk keeping an eye on matters; the uniformed Devaronian male, all horns and teeth and bright eyes, waved a hand scanner over Face’s identicard and read every word of data that popped up on his monitor before he summoned the lift.