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  His R5 unit, Dustbin, tweetled an affirmative.

  The main sensor screen fuzzed and went to static. Now all four starfighter pilots were flying blind—blind except for their own eyes.

  Numbers, fractions of a second, spun down in Voort’s head. “Two—now!”

  Ahead, the incoming E-wing crested the false horizon of the station ring, visible before Myri’s X-wing was in sight because of its greater relative altitude. Voort fired and yanked the control yoke to port.

  At the same moment, Myri, unseen beyond the curve of the ring but able to see Voort’s pursuer, fired and yanked her control yoke.

  The two X-wing laser blasts, angled upward, could not hit the station ring. But they did hit their intended targets. Voort glimpsed the bright flash of vehicle-grade metal composites being incinerated by quad-linked lasers. “Vape one.”

  “Vape two, Leader.”

  “Well done.” Voort banked toward Kuratooine’s surface and Myri slid into place off his wing.

  As they cleared the zone of Trey’s jamming, Voort’s sensors resolved back into crisp images. Skifter Station spun serenely, undamaged. Two small masses hurled away from it on straight-line courses, one of them expanding as a cloud of debris, the other in one piece but apparently out of control. That E-wing, Voort’s target, suddenly became two objects as the pilot ejected. There was no survivor from Myri’s target.

  “You all right, Two?”

  “Holding it together with space tape and spit, One.”

  The woman in the piloting compartment of the general’s speeder was probably a starfighter jockey with limited chauffeuring experience. Her quick, minute course adjustments kept jerking Thaal and the captain in the rear compartment back and forth. Thaal decided not to criticize her now. The woman would kill for him if he ordered her to.

  The captain, on the other hand, looked like he didn’t have the guts to kill a game fowl to feed his troops. Offering bad news had made him wince again and again.

  He offered more. “They began a search right away for the alien, what’s-his-name.”

  “Embassy-Who-Climbs. He’s from this planet and we’re not, so technically we’re the aliens. Have they found him?”

  “Yes, sir ... dead.”

  “Dead, how?” Thaal’s mind flashed on tremendous volumes of gems that might never see the sunlight.

  The captain’s voice fell to a whisper, the tone of a child telling ghost stories. “They say he’d been ripped open from inside. His internal organs, his brains, his eyes—all gone. And whatever did it to him is still on the loose. Maybe still on the base, waiting to attack.”

  Thaal stared hard at the captain. “You weren’t ever in a combat unit, were you, son?”

  “No, sir. Comms. Then public relations.”

  “I can tell. Well, find the parasite and kill it. Now, back to the X-wing assault. You’re sure they read Phanan.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What are our losses?”

  “Colonel Gidders’s shuttle. Six E-wings on the ground and two in space. One pilot dead, one suffering exposure from going extravehicular. And the base-side access shaft to the mine is destroyed. They targeted it specifically.”

  Thaal felt anger swelling up inside him. “Wraith Squadron.”

  “Sir?” The pilot glanced over her shoulder at the general. “We’re getting word that the civilian authorities are at the Kura City mine access. In force. Facts are sketchy.”

  “Head for that access, Lieutenant. I’ll put my foot on that situation personally, before it turns into a problem.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Voort and Myri reached groundside before the flight of starfighters from Rimsaw Station, now visible on their sensors, came within visual range. The X-wing pilots switched off their transponders and returned to terrain-following mode, joining ordinary airspeeder traffic en route to the courthouse plaza.

  Ahead, the distinctive three-story redstone courthouse building came into view. Lights blinked from in front of the nearby army-surplus business facing the plaza—city guard airspeeders, a dozen at least, plus medical speeders.

  The open-air market in the plaza itself was almost deserted. A large crowd of pedestrians had accumulated near those vehicles.

  Voort slapped the side of his helmet. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

  “What is it, One?”

  “I missed a variable! Of course word might leak out that it was Ledina Chott being rescued from the army-surplus place. And of course people would congregate there. All our witnesses. Stupid. Fire me, Two, and take over.”

  “I can’t. You fired me first.”

  They came in for a landing on the lawn of the courthouse, almost unnoticed. Voort reactivated his transponder, then issued Dustbin a command that would initiate a memory wipe in the R5 unit. In her starfighter, Myri was doing the same with her transponder and her R2. The memory wipes were an unfortunate but necessary precaution—now no investigator could obtain information about Voort or Myri from their astromechs.

  Their black airspeeder glided across the lawn to set down just ahead of them. Voort swung down from his cockpit, saw Myri was down already, and sprinted for the speeder. He and Myri boarded from either side into the back compartment.

  Trey accelerated away from the starfighters. He glanced back at Voort. “Where to, Leader?”

  “Very funny.” Voort was too tense to feel amused. “Give me the bad news first.”

  Trey shook his head. “I have no bad news.”

  “There’s always bad news.”

  Drikall turned to answer that. “Despite an emergency scrubbing and some potent industrial deodorants, Stage Boy smells really bad.”

  “If that’s the worst thing we’re facing, we’re doing great. For once.”

  They pulled up beside a tent at the very edge of the open market. The tent, decorated with broad green and white vertical stripes, had a sign out front reading: YOUR FUTURE REVEALED. A smaller sign, handwritten, tacked beneath it, read: CLOSED FOR MEAL. WE PREDICT YOU WILL RETURN IN ONE HOUR.

  Voort made sure his veil was still in place, then exited the speeder. He took a look around. He could see stalls and ground-vehicle trailers with hucksters in them, but no customers. He ducked as if to avoid the attention of the hucksters and followed Myri into the tent. “At least we have some witnesses to our arrival.”

  She sealed the flap behind them. “Of course the sellers wouldn’t leave their goods.”

  Inside the tent were tables with costume pieces atop them, chairs, two immobile droids—dressed in X-wing pilots’ uniforms and veiled helmets—and Mulus. He rose and beamed at them. “Welcome to the changing booth. Are we go on my decoys?”

  “We are go.” Voort dropped his helmet in one chair, sat in another, and unsealed his boots.

  Mulus held up a comlink and moved to the tent flap. He unsealed the flap and pressed a button on the comlink.

  The two droids jerked into awareness and walked toward the flap. The more slender one immediately began speaking in the distinctive tones of a protocol droid. “As I was saying, we can only imagine what things taste like, but—oh, thank you, sir—but I think that properly cleaned oceanside sand looks scrumptious. Golden, gleaming sand.” The two of them passed through the flap. “Don’t you? Oh, dear, we seem to be clothed. I wonder how that happened?”

  Mulus sealed the flap.

  Voort tossed his boots aside and stood. He began to shed his pilot accoutrements. “Where’s Lab Boy?”

  “Getting final preparations done on the new scapedroid. He’s obliged a mobile waste droid to be fitted with a comm-equipped projector, bought in this very market, atop it. I helped him subvert the droid. Poor boy’s helpless with electronics.” He picked up the generously cut porter’s jumpsuit from the table beside him. “Your disguise.”

  “Forget it. We’ve got to lure back all the witnesses. The only way a porter can do that is by exploding. Ledina Chott stole our witnesses. Ungrateful girl.” Voort unzipped his orange jumpsui
t and stepped out of it, leaving him clad only in a black nightsuit.

  “Well, we did kidnap her.” Mulus dropped the porter’s jumpsuit back on the table. “How are you going to get the witnesses back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Speaking of Lab Boy, I think I deserve a Boy name for this operation.”

  Myri, now also down to her nightsuit, paused by a large box full of droid parts. “Gem Boy.”

  “I like it.”

  “Help her get suited up, Gem Boy.” Instead of going out the front, Voort moved to the back tent wall, felt around until he found the rear exit Trey had prepared, and unsealed the slit. He stepped through into the market, and the slit sealed behind him.

  He saw Scut immediately. The Yuuzhan Vong, wearing his human face with the flat-top hairstyle, was at the center of the market, working on his improvised scapedroid. The droid, chest-high, looked as though it could accommodate quite a lot of waste. New brackets on the top held a good-sized holoprojector and an auxiliary pack.

  Voort trotted over. “Is it ready to go?” He looked around, fretful. In the skies to the east were numerous inbound dots—starfighters.

  Scut shook his head. “I bought the holoprojector new. Its internal power pack has never been charged before. It’s charging now. But it’ll be a couple of minutes before it’ll allow power through to the projector—”

  “Never mind the explanation.” Voort gestured to the distant crowd around the army-surplus business. “We have to lure them back here right now.” Something caught his eye, a long black airspeeder, Galactic Alliance and army flags rippling from atop its front panels. It glided at ground level toward the crowd. “Thaal’s here. We’re almost out of time. He didn’t even see the X-wings!”

  Scut straightened, glanced at Voort. “Father lost your porter costume?”

  “Father’s doing fine. Think.”

  “You think. I build meticulously. I’ve never improvised.”

  Voort growled. He took a look around, assessing resources.

  Stalls and trailers selling goods—meat rolls, jewelry, entertainment recordings, products with Ledina Chott’s face on them among the other recordings. A big stall selling souvenirs—from the spot the Wraiths had rented. Voort considered setting it on fire. A raised octagon of natural wood five meters across with three buskers, street musicians, all of them human and professionally pretty, playing for credcoins, now just talking among themselves because there was no one to listen. A new-model speeder bike in red with a salesman standing, helpful and hopeful, beside it. A gleaming gold protocol droid, a black courier’s bag hung on a strap over her shoulder, wandering aimlessly, apparently enjoying the weather.

  In a place like this, Face Loran had evidently killed two dangerous men, improvising the kills. Voort’s mind flailed around for the inspiration that clearly came so easily to Face. He withered inside.

  Then numbers clicked into place in his head. Decibel levels. Ticket sales reported for Ledina Chott’s upcoming concert. Voort turned to look at the musicians.

  He held out a hand to Scut. “Give me a credcard. One with a thousand on it at least.”

  Without looking up from his droid work, Scut passed him a credcard.

  Voort approached the musicians. They were human—two men, one woman, all dressed in a wild diversity of colorful garments like space vagabonds. All three were dark-haired and very pale-skinned; perhaps they were indeed travelers who seldom set foot planetside. Around the woman’s neck was a strap, holding before her a bank of small percussion heads. One man carried a stringed instrument; the other had a keyboard hung from a neck strap.

  Voort stopped before them. “Excuse me.”

  They left off their conversation to look at him, surprised. The keyboardist answered. “You’re a talking Gamorrean.”

  “I know that. All Gamorreans talk, actually. I’m the only one who speaks comprehensible Basic. I speak more languages than you three have arms and legs. But that’s not important right now. Can you get a lot of volume out of those instruments?”

  The one with the stringed instrument grinned. “We can blow you right out of your body stocking.”

  “That was on my mind, actually. Run this.” He held out the credcard.

  The keyboardist took it, plugged it into a slot on his keyboard, and eyed the number that popped up on the keyboard’s little screen. He opened his mouth to tell Voort the number.

  Voort cut him off. “I know what’s on it. Now you do, too. You can have it, the whole amount. If you’ll do everything I say for the next fifteen minutes.”

  The strings player shrugged, agreeable. “Do we call you Master?”

  “Sure. Clear the stage. Stand here.”

  They leapt to obey. Voort took the stage, standing at its center. “Crank your volume to max and keep it there. I doubt you’ll get a disturbing-the-peace citation, but if you do, that card will cover the fine without looking any smaller. I want music. Dance music. I want it to sound like a jungle full of passion. Woodwinds and drums.”

  “Yes, Master.” The keyboardist looked at the others and adjusted a slider bar to maximum output. “ ‘Torrid Yavin.’ One, two, three—”

  On ‘four’ they launched into a ragged but spirited rendition of the backbeat-driven dance mix that had been popular a dozen years before on Coruscant, an anthem for the rebuilding of the world. Voort, surprised by the sheer volume their portable instruments put out, took an involuntary step back.

  Then he started dancing.

  He began with humanoid-figure hieroglyphics from Ziost. He well remembered the images from the scientific journals. Every four beats, he assumed a pose simulating one of those eerie ideograms. He knew his black nightsuit would accentuate his poses, make him stand out more.

  All around the plaza, heads began turning toward him.

  Then starfighters began to land on the courthouse lawn.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The nervous captain reached Thaal’s viewport. Thaal opened it for the man. “Well?”

  The captain had to speak up in order to be heard over the musical din now erupting from the stage at the center of the plaza. “It’s not good. They found the access to the storage center. And—”

  “One more hesitation and I bust you to enlisted man.”

  “Sir, they found Ledina Chott in the lift. She’d been drugged and brought here.”

  Thaal felt his heart sink. “The Wraiths again.”

  “It’s time to run for it, sir.”

  Thaal thought it over. If he left now, he could be Thadley Biolan in his suite in minutes. Colonel Gidders could do damage control, blame everything on the missing General Thaal. But Gidders didn’t have the full resources of the army behind him. Thaal needed those resources to find the Wraiths, to stamp them out.

  “Captain, Lieutenant, it’s time to choose sides.” Thaal let a hard tone creep into his voice. The pilot turned in her seat to look back at him.

  “Gidders is a good soldier. Blame for the operation under Black Crest is going to fall on him. I’m going to make his time in prison short and pleasant, and when he gets out he’s going to be a rich man. To accomplish all this, we have to hang together. I need to know you’re on my team. Everyone on my team has a golden future in front of him, but sometimes it’s hard going. Are you with me?”

  The driver nodded at once. “Yes, sir.”

  The captain gulped but nodded. “I’m your man, General.”

  “Good. Captain, use your public relations skills and this credcard.” Thaal passed him the card. “Get back in there and start spreading funds around. And information. Information that my inspection here was to check into rumors about Colonel Gidders. He’s been under suspicion for some time for trafficking in the black market.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Sir?” The lieutenant pointed out the back viewport. Thaal twisted to look.

  A flight of starfighters was in the process of landing on the courthouse lawn. Thaal saw stubby A-wing interceptors, E-
wing escorts, a bulbous Aleph with its trailing thruster extensions, all in Starfighter Command gray.

  And they were coming to ground around two X-wings that waited, their canopies up, on the lawn.

  Thaal jammed his head out through the viewport. “Sorrel doesn’t have any X-wings up at her base. Does she?”

  “No, sir.” The driver leaned out her own viewport. “And those have add-on hardpoints on their S-foils. Not regulation. Those are the ones that strafed the base.”

  “The Wraiths are here! In the mine, or watching. And we’re going to find them and kill them.”

  There were more starfighters circling overhead, and Thaal now saw a shuttle descending—one with a Starfighter Command colonel’s insignia on the side. “Stang, Sorrel’s here. I’ve got to send her packing. Captain, put a layer of permacrete on the situation inside. Lieutenant, with me.” He exited his vehicle and hurried toward the courthouse lawn.

  He got there just as the shuttle was landing. He positioned himself near the starboard boarding door. The boarding ramp, unfolding from the side, narrowly missed his foot.

  Colonel Sorrel was the first to descend. Thaal offered her a neutral look. “Kadana. You don’t need to be here.”

  She flashed him a smile without any warmth. “Two mystery X-wings and two of Gidders’s roving flyboys, as usual overstepping their bounds, buzz the civilian station, and it’s somehow not my business? General, the secret to telling jokes is to make them funny first.” She reached ground level and looked around. “We followed the X-wings’ transponder signals here. This is now a Starfighter Command jurisdiction incident. I’ve already cleared that with the planetary government.”

  “Blast it, Kadana, they didn’t just buzz my base. They destroyed a training squadron. Killed one of my pilots.”

  Kadana nodded absently. Troopers—a naval boarding party from the look of them—were descending behind her and lining up on the grass. She gestured to get their officer’s attention. “Spread out through the plaza. Look for X-wing pilots and anyone suspicious.”