Star Wars: The Old Republic: Fatal Alliance (12 page)

"When
is this other party due?"

"Today,
I believe. "

"From
the Republic?"

"I
cannot reveal their identity. "

"Can
you tell me how many other interested parties there are?"

Yeama
smiled with his lips only. "This way, please. "

Envoy
Nirvin's expression was sour, but he did as he was told. The Twi'lek
led him and his retinue from the throne room. They formed a gaudy
procession, with Yeama and Nirvin at the lead, accompanied by one
Bareesh soldier for every Imperial bodyguard. Ax brought up the rear,
glad to be moving again. She tolerated diplomacy rather than enjoying
it.

Balancing
Ax was the biggest Houk she had ever seen. He matched her stride pace
for pace, his expression impassive.

As
she left the room, Ax glimpsed an unassuming figure at the back. A
human of average height, he wore practical clothes that had seen
better days. His salt-and-pepper hair looked as though he had been
hauled from bed just moments before. On a street anywhere else in the
galaxy, Ax would have ignored him as a matter of course, but in
Bareesh's palace he was the only being not dripping with finery.
Standing directly behind him was a boxy old combat droid that looked
even more battered than he was.

He
saw Ax looking at him and glanced away, as though bored.

She
turned her eyes forward and followed the envoy.

*
* *

Yeama
led them through a maze of corridors, each more opulent than the
last. Had Ax any interest in paintings, sculptures, and tapestries-or
even just the value of such things-she was sure she would have been
impressed. Instead, while carefully memorizing the route, she kept
her eyes open for tactical information: how many guards stood at each
intersection, which areas were covered by security cams, where blast
doors were located, concealed or not.

Unsurprisingly,
she quickly concluded that the palace was a fortress wrapped up in
tinfoil. The Hutts loved their luxury, but they loved their lives
more. Tassaa Bareesh hadn't elevated herself to head of a Hutt cartel
simply by throwing the biggest parties. She knew how to watch her
back, too.

There
were weaknesses to every security detail, though. Ax was sure she
could get to the matriarch if she needed to. Luckily for Tassaa
Bareesh, her mission was simply to steal.

Yeama
brought the commingled retinues to a halt in a large circular room
under a domed roof distinguished by a chandelier made from thousands
of pieces of baroquely curved glass. There were only two entrances to
this room: the one they had just come through, with thick armored
doors currently standing open under a massive stone statue of Tassaa
Bareesh herself, and the other ahead of them, with a pair of doors to
match, thus forming a security air lock. Yeama clapped his hands, and
the doors behind them slammed shut. Ax kept her hand on the pommel of
her lightsaber, even though she knew Tassaa Bareesh couldn't possibly
be stupid enough to plan an ambush, and she noted with approval that
the envoy's bodyguards had moved in closer around him.

A
thud and a clunk came from the doorways on the opposite side of the
room. They swung open, revealing an antechamber that was pleasingly
devoid of decoration. Walls, floor, and ceiling were a uniform,
spotless white. There was easily enough room for everyone as they
filed in after Yeama. The antechamber could have held more than fifty
humans.

Four
circular vault doors opened onto the antechamber, each more than four
meters across. Small but very thick transparisteel portals in the
center allowed visual access to the contents. Only one of those
portals appeared to be unshuttered. It was to that vault door that
Yeama led them.

"Here
at last, Envoy Nirvin, is the prize you have been promised. But allow
me first to describe how it came to be in our hands. "

Nirvin
glanced through the portal, frowned, and turned back to Yeama. "Do
so, " he barked.

Ax
was too far away to see. She itched to push past them and look for
herself, but for the moment she would have to be satisfied with words
alone.

"Some
of what I am about to tell is known outside this room, " Yeama
said. "The rest is not. Two weeks ago, one of our affiliates
stopped a ship in the depths of Wild Space. "

Affiliates,
Ax assumed, was a diplomatic term for "pirate. " And
stopped surely meant "interdicted and boarded under arms. "

"It
was a routine encounter, but it soon took a surprising turn. "

"Surprising
how?" asked Nirvin.

"Here
is the conversation that took place between our affiliate and the
vessel. "

An
audio recording filled the antechamber, rich with breathing, static,
and comm crackle. A couple of clicks suggested that it had been
edited, but the ambience sounded authentic.

"Stand
by for boarding. "

That
was the affiliate, Ax guessed: experienced, pragmatic, with an edge
of tension that belied the Twi'lek's description of the encounter as
"routine. "

"Negative.
We do not recognize your authority"

That
was the Cinzia, Ax assumed-and here a strange feeling ran down her
spine. The speaker was male and sounded impossibly distant. Had he
known her mother? Was he related to her?

She
forced herself to concentrate on the rest of the conversation.

"You're
a privateer. You work for the Republic. "

"Now,
that simply isn't true. "

"We're
on a diplomatic mission. "

"To
whom? From where?"

There
was a long, static-filled pause.

"All
right, then. What will it cost for you to let us go?"

"You're
clear out of luck, mate. Best vent those air locks, smartish. We're
coming in. "

The
recording ended with a blast of white noise that made the envoy jump.

"What
was that?" he asked.

"An
explosion, " said Yeama. "The ship our affiliate approached
possessed an ion drive of unfamiliar design. It was this that blew,
taking the ship and all hands with it. "

As
though the Twi'lek were reading Ax's thoughts, he added, "We
believe that the drive's power cells were deliberately ignited. "

"They
blew themselves up?"

"Yes,
Envoy Nirvin. Rather than be boarded, they chose to destroy their
ship and all its contents. Unfortunately for them, the destruction
was not complete. Significant fragments survived. What you see before
you are two items retrieved from the detritus. The first is the
Cinzia's navicomp, which contains the coordinates of its origin. The
second is more mysterious. What do you make of it?"

The
envoy peered through the thick transparisteel portal a second time.
He frowned once more.

"I've
never seen anything like it. "

"Our
sentiments exactly, " Yeama said.

Again,
Ax resisted the impulse to push past and see for herself.

"This
much we can tell you. " Yeama folded his hands across his
midriff. "We have detected signs of machining on the outer
shell, which is made from an alloy of two extremely rare metals,
lutetium and promethium. So it is a construct of some kind, and one
of considerable material value alone. On the other hand, there is
also a biological component, the nature of which we have been unable
to fathom. It is undoubtedly present, we know it's in there, but we
cannot examine the source of the reading more closely without
physically penetrating the casing. Doing so would, of course, reduce
the object's value, so we will leave that up to the ultimate
purchaser. "

"Can
we get any closer?"

"The
combination to the vault is what you will be bidding for, Envoy
Nirvin. Until you have purchased it, the door remains shut. "

The
envoy nodded his understanding, but his frown remained intact.
Stepping away from the window, he finally waved Ax forward.

"Take
a look, " he said. "See what you make of it. "

Although
it rankled to take the administrative puppet's orders, Ax did as she
was told, peering with intense curiosity at what lay inside the
vault. Finally, she could see what all the fuss was about.

The
navicomp was easily identifiable, although it had been twisted and
partially melted by the blast that had destroyed the ship around it.
It was a handheld model, unexpectedly small, more resembling a chunky
satellite comlink than the heart of a starship's navigation system.
Presumably it was voiceprinted, but such security provisions could
easily be circumvented by a talented slicer. Ax could only take
Yeama's word for whether it still worked or not. It rested in a
transparisteel box on a glass plinth to the left of the room's
center, and was closely observed by numerous sensors mounted in the
vault's durasteel walls, floor, and ceiling.

Sitting
on the floor to its right was the second object. Nirvin was correct:
it didn't match any design aesthetic she'd ever encountered. It was
squat, like a T3 utility droid, but without any legs or visible
environmental interfaces. Its body was tubular and rested flush to
the floor of the vault. There were no markings apart from a series of
almost gill- like ripples around its middle. Its head was slightly
convex, as though it had been pushed down from above, and part of it
was scorched black. The natural color of its casing appeared to be
silver. No writing, no symbols, no identifying markers at all.

Ax
didn't know what it was, either, but she didn't say so immediately.
Taking the opportunity to inspect the interior of the vault in more
detail, she memorized sensor emplacements, estimated the strength of
the walls, and measured the distance of each object from the door,
just in case she had to perform in the dark. It would be much better,
of course, to take the prize once it was out of the vault and away
from all these impediments, but she would be prepared for anything.

"It
could be a bioreactor, " she said to the envoy, returning
control of the window to him.

"Plague
agents, perhaps?"

"Hard
to say without opening it. "

"Indeed.
" Nirvin turned back to Yeama. "Is that all you have to
show us?"

"All?"
The Twi'lek showed his teeth. They were as pointed as the tips of his
lekku. "I will escort you to a waiting room, where you may
examine data relating to our find in perfect comfort. "

"Very
well. " Nirvin indicated that Yeama should lead the way.

Ax
fell in behind them, with her huge Houk shadow at her side. The
objects in the vault didn't speak to her either as a Sith apprentice
or as the biological offspring of Lema Xandret. The plague
bioreactor, if such it was, provoked no memories at all.

The
sparse information they had been given told her only a little more.
That the object was made from an alloy of extremely rare metals boded
well for her Master's dreams of giving the Emperor a rich new world,
but it meant nothing in itself. With the crew of the Cinzia dead,
there were no leads to follow there, either, unless she could uncover
something that had been hidden by the Hutts-like a survivor, perhaps,
or another clue as to the ship's origins. She didn't put it past
Tassaa Bareesh to auction only half of what they'd found while
keeping something extra in reserve, to sell to the auction's losing
party.

Yeama
took them out of the antechamber and back into the circular security
air lock, where the heavy doors cycled again. From there, Yeama led
them along a new set of luscious corridors in the direction of the no
doubt equally luscious waiting room.

Ax
made it her business to be elsewhere. Confusing her Houk escort with
a well-placed mind trick, she slipped away from the group and
vanished into the shadows.

CHAPTER
9

Ula
endured Tassaa Bareesh's welcoming spiel with ill-disguised contempt.
Cordiality and profitability made untrustworthy bed partners,
particularly when honesty and ethics weren't invited, too. When his
host promised him an array of amenities including chemical
enhancements and even more dubious forms of entertainment, it was all
he could do not to spit to get the bad taste out of his mouth.