Part 24 (1/2)

”Yes. I have evidence enough to satisfy you.” Loor smiled slowly. ”And evidence about spies throughout the New Republic that will satisfy even General Cracken.”

What! This is too good to be true. This can't be happen-ing. Nawara's jaw shot open. ”You're lying. You can't be who you say you are.”

”I can and I am. I will testify on your client's behalf provided the New Republic is willing to offer me immunity from prosecution for any activity I have undertaken on be-half of the Empire. They will pay me a million credits, create a new ident.i.ty for me, and get me off Coruscant.

I will tell them everything they want to know, and then some. Every Imperial agent on Coruscant will be exposed. It is that sim-ple.”

”But . . .” Nawara's mind was reeling. The implica-tions of what Loor had said were staggering. ”How can we be sure . . . ?”

Loor grabbed Nawara's hand and impaled his own palm on one of Nawara's talons. A bead of blood bubbled up. Nawara heard the sound of cloth tearing, then saw Loor blot the blood with a strip torn out of his tunic.

He tossed the bloodied cloth to Nawara, then tore another strip from his s.h.i.+rt and bound his hand.

”Take the cloth to Commander Ettyk. Have her dupli-cate my Imperial file, then run a DNA comparison between the duplicate and the sample. She must run it against a dupli-cate of the file--if she runs it against the file itself, others might discover you're checking me out. Once you're certain I am who I say I am, you will broker the deal for me. It is a take-it-or-leave-it deal, no negotiation. Once you have the deal made, you will hold a press conference. At one point during tile conference, whenever you wish, you will say 'I am very confident, supremely confident, that we will win.' I don't think I've heard you say that so far in the proceedings, so that will be the signal.”

”No, I don't think I've said that. I know I haven't felt it.”

”When you give the signal, I will send you another mes-sage to arrange pickup. At that time you and Iella Wessiri will get me. I don't want to see anyone else, just you and her. You I have to trust, her I know well enough to trust. You can't betray me and she won't. Anyone else, anything fancy, and no one will benefit from my information. Got it?”

Nawara nodded slowly. ”I understand.”

”Good. You have five hours.”

”Five hours! That's not much time, especially starting at midnight.”

Nawara frowned. He almost added that he couldn't call a press conference at two or three in the morn-ing, but the media operated in a frenzied enough atmosphere that he could tell them to meet him on Kessel at noon and they'd find a way to be there. ”I need more time.”

”You don't have it.” Loor nodded once and the hood slid forward to again hide his face. ”I don't have it. This all happens on my timetable. If it doesn't, if there is trouble, a lot of people will be sorry. I can give freedom to your client and Coruscant to the New Republic, for which I am asking so little. See that it gets done.”

33.

Corran squeezed himself back in the corner of the library's cabinet and waited. He decided it was just as well that he didn't have a chronometer, because he would have con-stantly been looking at it. It seemed as if he'd been hidden away for years, though he knew it had hardly been more than fifteen minutes. I can only hope that some of the crimi-nals I hunted felt like I do now while stormtroopers are hunting me.

Corran had been able to make a basic scouting run on the facility where he found himself and had concluded two things. First, the utter lack of windows suggested that this facility was underground. Given the general taste for grand vistas and high towers he'd seen in Imperial architecture on Coruscant, this led him to believe that whatever the planet's surface looked like was not worth seeing. This, in turn, made him think the surface was inhospitable and, therefore, not a place he wanted to travel without proper equipment.

Second, he concluded there had to be a secret exit from the facility.

Aside from the tunnel back to the prison, the only visible means of leaving was a lift that had a keypad and clearly required a code for operation. While he a.s.sumed the Moff who owned the place would have had the code for the lift, he couldn't imagine the Moff did not also have a private bolt-hole. Unfortunately his hurried survey of the area hadn't given him any obvious candidates for its location.

One thing he had found was a garbage disposal chute. He dragged Derricote's body to it and dumped it in. He distinctly heard a splash; then a disgusting odor wafted back up, so he closed the hatch. It was only when he realized that he didn't smell much better himself that he decided, if things got tight, he'd go through the chute and take his chances getting out that way.

The Imperial facility had a layout that was a lot like a TIE starfighter's cross-section. The lift, garbage chute, and utility area formed a central core through which ran a long corridor. It intersected two corridors at right angles, one at each end. All of the corridors had high ceilings and doors running off them every seven meters or so.

His first impression of opulence had not been diminished in his survey of the facility. The entire place had been deco-rated with golden-brown wooden panels and hand-carved trim. Not being often treated to the lifestyle of the rich, Cor-ran couldn't identify the wood, but he was fairly certain the faint rose scent filling the air came from it. He made a mental note to ask Erisi what kind of wood it was, since he a.s.sumed she would know.

More impressive than the wooden furnis.h.i.+ngs were the huge xenoscapes that took up whole walls in some of the rooms. Some were filled with water and had brightly colored fish swimming through them. Others contained dense, foggy atmospheres or boggy environments in which things flapped and slithered. Each room had its own private xenoscape and while most of the creatures looked harmless, a couple looked positively lethal.

Despite getting frightened by the sudden appearances of several luminous beasts along the wall of a darkened room, Corran was glad for the xenoscapes' presence. Some speci-mens were large enough that lifeform scanning equipment might have trouble differentiating him from them, frustrat-ing a search. In his experience that sort of equipment was most valuable in determining where lifeforms were not, so that searches could be confined to the places where they were found. He a.s.sumed that if searchers were forced to go over the level carefully, he could elude them in a deadly game of hide-and-seek.

But then, he'd not been counting on the methodical na-ture of stormtroopers and how they did their work. During his scouting run a squad of eight came up through the tur-bolift and immediately posted two men in the facility core. The remaining six broke up into two teams of three and proceeded to go through each wing room by room. Once they finished in a room they closed the doors and used a datapad to set the locks and seal the room.

He'd fled from them as carefully as he could, but they pushed on. Finally he'd found himself herded into what, in the golden glow of the large aquatic xenoscape along one wall, appeared to be a very nice library. The shelves on three walls were lined with box after box of datacards. Both desks in the room had tabletop datapads with holoplates that could provide a fully tri-dimensional data-scanning experi-ence. The chairs all seemed comfortable, and had the room not been built on an immense Imperial scale, Corran could have considered it cozy.

It had its quirks, though. In stumbling about he stepped into a circular design on the floor. He would have thought it a continuation of the inlaid wooden pattern, but it felt cold and synthetic to his bare feet.

He had barely stepped into it when a holographic image was projected down from the ceil-ing and filled the circle. Corran leaped back and raised his hands to protect himself.

Ten feet tall, an image of the Emperor stared down at him. The figure looked strong and almost majestic--not at all the image of the twisted, malignant man who had over-thrown the Old Republic and created the Empire. The hooded and cloaked figure stood there, then slowly raised his hands toward the ceiling. They returned to his side, vanish-ing as the cloak slid closed, then the figure shrank to more human proportions and melted away through the circle.

That display so unnerved Corran that he immediately sought cover. He noticed a long low row of cabinets beneath the xenoscape. He opened one of the cabinet doors but found he couldn't see much inside. The s.p.a.ce smelled cramped and close; it reeked of mildew and reminded him of the location Tycho had found for the Rogues to hide while they prepared to liberate Coruscant. Had there been another choice he would have taken it, but the crisp click of boots on the floor outside the door told him his time had run out.

He crawled over some small boxes and into the narrow s.p.a.ce, then pulled the door closed. The cabinet had been compartmentalized--he found himself in a cubicle barely a meter high and wide, though it did extend back nearly two meters from the door. A thick metal crossbeam framework supported the weight of the transparisteel xenoscape above him and the water it contained. Fiberplast panels lined the compartment on all sides and felt as solid as rock as far as his b.u.t.tocks and spine were concerned. He pulled himself through the crossbeams and into the compartment's back half. He arranged the boxes and canisters in the front of the cabinet to s.h.i.+eld him, but he knew even a cursory look would reveal his presence.

I hope they have a nice place in the shrine down there for my head.

Stomach acid burbled up into his throat, but he choked it back down and endured the burning. Probably doesn't hurt as much as blaster-bolts will.

He tried to recall the pain from the times he'd gotten shot--at Talasea, and in the minesrebut sensation seemed distant, and unrelated to what he knew he would be feeling in short order.

He heard m.u.f.fled voices from the other side of the cabi-net door. Clicks and hisses accompanied them. What can they be discussing? Despite the ache in his spine and the burning in his throat, Corran smiled. Maybe one of them decided searching these cabinets is stupid because there's no way Derricote could be hiding in here.

Then, through the soles of his feet, he felt a slight vibra-tion shake the cabinet framing. If searching the cabinets was what they were arguing about, my team lost, which means I've lost. Another cabinet door closed, this one closer if judged by the strength of the vibration. Then he felt the quiver of a cabinet being opened, followed by a strong tremor when it was shut.

That's it. He's getting frustrated. No one is in the cabi-nets. No one can be in the cabinets. They're too small to hide anyone, much too small.

Corran pulled his legs up to his chest and wrapped his hands around his knees. He actually heard the cabinet next to his open. A comlink clicked.

He thought he heard the word, ”Clear.”

Then he definitely felt the cabinet slam shut.

Corran pressed himself back into the corner. There's no one in here.

There's nothing to see here. No one is hiding in here. It's all clear.

The door opened.

There's no one here. This cabinet is empty.

A light flashed in. It started at the far end.

Empty, empty, empty. All clear.

The light swept across toward him.

What a waste of time searching this cabinet. It's empty. There's no one here.