down to Karrde's level. Mirax knew the posture wellher father lowered his head
like a thirst-mad bantha pr eparing to sprint to a watering seep. She'd seen
other creatures begin to cringe as Booster did that, but Karrde did not.
"Karrde, I've been over the details again and again. I've checked my people."
Booster tapped Mirax's shoulder with
his thumb. "I've even had her CorSec suitor look some material over to check
this out."
Mirax covered her reaction to her father's statement. Booster had asked her for
advice about making a final check on his security records, and she had brought
Corran in on it. Booster had not been pleased when he found out that
"Cor-ranSec" had gone over things, but he accepted Corran's conclusions. Now he
makes it sound like he solicited Corran's advice. We're going to talk about
this.
Karrde held a hand up. "I know what you're going to say."
"Yeah?"
"I think so." Karrde's eyes actually twinkled. "You'll tell me that the leak to
the Imps came from my organization."
Booster's head came up. "You knew?"
"Not before the fact, no. I had no idea. Afterward, though, it was rather
obvious." Karrde shrugged. "Melina Carniss sold you out."
Booster straightened up to his full height. "Have you killed her, yet?"
"No. I didn't want to precipitate action that could not be reversed."
Booster chuckled deeply. "You are studying her to find her connection to Isard."
"Actually I wanted to see how far she had spread Isard's influence in my
organization; but, yes, I have been watching her." Karrde folded his arms across
his chest. "Now that you're here, I thought I would allow you to determine how
you want to deal with this situation. Shoving her out into space would probably
be the most expedient method of killing her. I heard about a renegade band of
Twi'leks who used to run electricity through a vat of bacta, torturing their
victims to the point of death, then turning off the electricity and allowing
the bacta to heal them up."
Mirax swallowed against the bile rising in her throat. "Easier just to let the
word get out that Melina was a binary-agent She sold the Imp ambush to us just
the same way she sold us to Isard. Let the bacta witch deal with her."
Karrde nodded. "I also have a Wookiee in my employ who could . . ."
Booster shook his head. "No, no Wookiees. Armpits are convenient for lifting
corpses and moving them to dump sites."
"I'll loan you any weapon you want to deal with her. I have things from all
over, including a recently acquired Sith lanvarok that promises to be truly
elegant, if I've figured out correctly how it's supposed to work." Karrde
frowned. "But you're not left-handed, so that will complicate things."
Mirax raised an eyebrow. "You really have a lanvarok?"
"Yes, do you have a buyer?"
"A collector."
"Good."
"And he's left-handed."
"Even better."
"If you will give me details on the lanvarok and authenticate its Sith origins
..."
Booster cleared his voice. "We have current business to discuss before you get
going on this deal."
"Of course, Booster, of course." Karrde smiled. "We can holograph the lanvarok
in use and that should help spike the price . . ."
Booster shook his head. "No."
"You prefer another method for dealing with traitors?"
"I do." Booster smiled broadly. "I want you to keep her alive and working."
Karrde frowned. "Why?"
"I have my reasons."
"Not good enough, Booster. You'll have to do better if you want her to stay
alive. She betrayed one of my customers to an enemy, causing harm to my
customer, my people, and my reputation. She has to die."
Booster's protestations confused Mirax. She looked up at her father. "Why do you
want her to live?"
Karrde's eyes narrowed. "I believe, for one thing, your father will suggest that
with Carniss still in place, Isard won't try to infiltrate a new spy into my
organization."
Booster nodded. "Better the Hutt you have tagged than one you don't."
"Agreed, Booster, but I'm still afraid I can't accommodate you in this."
"What?"
"Oh, please, don't act so incredulous." Karrde shook his head gravely. "I can't
have her threatening my customers. It's bad for my reputation and bad for morale
and puts me at a serious disadvantage in my business dealings. She's going to
die."
"You gave me a choice of how she dies."
"Old age is not one of the options I had in mind." Karrde waved away Booster's
comment. "No, she has to die. There is no retreating from this point."
"No?" Booster arched an eyebrow over his artificial eye. "I have more things to
buy. I can always take my business elsewhere."
"If I had a credit for every time I heard that sort of empty threat, I could buy
and sell Thyferra and Isard a dozen times over." Karrde snorted. "I believe our
old business is concluded. Now about that lanvarok . . ."
"Don't be so anxious here, Karrde." Booster slowly smiled. "You've got our
munitions business alreadythough that could change. This is something more."
"It would have to be special if you expect to buy Melina's life with it."
"I think it is. I was going to give it to Billeypitch some work his way for old
times' sake."
Karrde nodded. "Dravis, the new guy working for him, is good."
"So I've heard, but you're better."
Karrde smiled. "So I've heard."
"Anyway," Booster growled, "I want a gravity well projector."
Mirax covered a smile as Karrde coughed and regarded her father with disbelief.
So you can be surprised, Karrde, Not easily, but possibly.
"A gravity well projector?" Karrde shook his head. "Billey can't get it for
you."
Booster nodded. "It's impossible to get one, I know, but I could use it, and so
I thought I'd start asking. If you can't do it . . ."
"Reverse thrust there, Booster. I just said Billey couldn't get it."
"You can?"
Karrde lifted his chin. "Easily."
"Sure. That's the deepest bucket of sithspit I've ever heard being sloshed
about."
"I can, and I will, and it will cost you." Karrde's eyes narrowed. "But giving
me that purchase order doesn't get you Melina Carniss's life."
Booster smiled. "Does it give me six months of her life?"
Karrde closed his eyes for a moment. "Two months, but she'll be isolated from
most of my operations."
"I see. I also need parts for a squadron of TIE fighters. I want some Y-wing ion
cannons and circuitry refit kits that will allow me to put the cannons in the
starfighters."
"That's custom work. It'll be expensive." Karrde looked at the fingernails on
his right hand. "And it will get you another month of Melina's life."
Booster leaned forward, his fingertips digging into the plush cushioning of the
chair's back. "Take it out of the money you'll make selling our bacta hauls."
Karrde laughed as he shook his head. "You're selling me bantha hides before
you've killed the bantha, Booster."
"I'd ask you to trust me on this one, Karrde, but I know that would take more
>
credits than buying Carniss's continued survival." Booster frowned. "We have ops
planned that will pull in bacta. Locate the items and wait for us to deliver
before you order them. We'll sell the bacta to you at seventy percent of the
galactic average price."
"Fifty percent and you'll leave the Coruscant market open to me."
The chair's nerfhide covering squeaked as Booster's grip tightened. "The bacta
we deliver there is being used to fight the Krytos virus. That's pure charity
and a stopgap that's preventing the spread of the virus off Coruscant. It's not
a profit center."
Karrde's face hardened. "Every place is a profit center, Booster. You know
that." He raised a hand to stop Booster's growl from growing into an argument.
"I'll donate freely seventy percent of the allocation you'd have delivered to
the world, but the other thirty percent I'll use to feed the black market
demand. You have to know that you're already losing nearly forty percent to the
black market now, after delivery, so I'll get more where you want it to go."
"And that gives me a stay of execution on Melina Carniss?"
Karrde nodded. "Her life is in your hands."
Booster glanced down at the deck, then slowly nodded. "You're a bastard,
Karrde."
"Quite possibly, but you know you'd have let me keep thirty-five percent of the
bacta to sell on Coruscant if I'd pressed you for it."
Booster's head came up. "Perceptive, too."
"Thank you."
Mirax, who slowly shook off the shock the frank bargaining had sparked in her,
frowned. "Why didn't you push for as much as you could get?" Karrde hesitated,
and Mirax could see his decision to answer her question was a struggle for him.
He plays things so close to his vest that he's reluctant to let someone else see
how he works.
Some of the amusement drained from Karrde's face. "I'm going to turn the
Coruscant black market work over to Billey. I don't think he and Dravis could
handle thirty-five percent of the supply you'll bring me. No reason I should
give them enough of a supply to allow the bottom to drop out of that market.
Thirty percent is enough to suit me and them."
Booster smiled and gave Karrde a nod. "Keep it up and I'll take back the bastard
remark."
"What, and make me earn it some other way?"
"Good point. I want to still work with Carniss to set up our rendezvous, but
we're going 'to plan them in a way that will prevent Isard from ambushing us
again. I'll give her a circuit of worlds to travel on. When your ships come into
a system they'll be told to proceed with the journey, or they'll
be met by our people and the exchange will take place. Isard can't cover all
those locations and her bacta convoys."
Talon Karrde smiled. "A rendezvous circuit, I like it. You know where you'll
meet them; and if the system looks wrong, you know where they will go next, so
you let them go. Very good." ,
"I think it will work. It will keep Carniss busy and frustrate Isard."
"So you have a use for Carniss in the future?"
"Perhaps." Booster smiled. "How soon can you get me that gravity well
projector?"
"A month. Maybe two."
"Good." Booster extended his hand toward Karrde. "I can't say it was a pleasure
doing business with you, but I've spent more time doing less with fewer results
in the past."
Karrde shook Booster's hand. "It's a good thing you're retired, Booster. I
wouldn't like having to split the galaxy between us. Please, don't leave quite
yet. I'd offer you my hospitality."
Booster smiled. "And you want to talk to Mirax about the lanvarok."
"Indeed," Karrde laughed, "it's a very good thing you're retired."
28
Iella drew her knees up to her chest and settled her arms around them, then
sighed. Diric would have found this place fascinating. Softly muted moonlight
glowed green through the room's skylight. It managed to make the spare room seem
warmer and more inviting, despite the lack of amenities.
Human amenities, she corrected herself. To the Vratix this would be next to
luxury.
The Vratix who still lived in harvester tribes were scattered over the face of
Thyferra, living in villages much akin to the one in which Iella and the Ashern
rebels had sought refuge. The buildings themselves were created out of an
air-dried, mud and saliva mixture that the Vratix slathered on a twig and branch
lattice. While not as strong or durable as ferrocrete, the towers and tunnel
houses, if unmaintained, could still last as long as five years.
In the past, before the Vratix became civilized, the elemental dissolution of
their dwellings would force a migration to a new area, carefully allowing their
previous territory to recover from their habitation. Likewise, in the past, the
Vratix themselves had provided the saliva and had done the mixing to prepare
the mud. Now they used a domesticated
branch of a similar species, the knytix, to create the mud for Vratix masons.
The knytix, which resembled the Vratix though smaller, blockier, and less
elegant in formwere kept as pets, as work animals, and Iella had heard, as food
for special occasions. When she had said she could never eat a pet, a Vratix had
explained that pets were offered as a gift to those the family wished to honor,
it became apparent that the level of their sacrifice showed the depth of their
respect for the individual to whom the offer was made. That certainly made the
practice more understandable, but she still couldn't imagine eating a creature a
young Vratix once called Fluffy or its Vratix equivalent.
Though eating knytix could have easily been seen as a primitive practice by a
barbaric society, the Vratix clearly were anything but. The Vratix village
consisted of several towers that rose up into the middle reaches of the gloan
trees. Concentric circular terraces with little walls at the lip gave each tower
the look of a stepped pyramid, though the rounded foundation made it more
elegant. Huge arching bridges connected one tower to another and were all but
hidden by the thick forest foliage.
Vratix artistry was not limited to the architecture. The green skylight had been
made by a Vratix artisan who chewed various rain forest leaves into paste, then
fashioned it into a film thin enough to allow light to pass through. It appeared
delicate in the extreme, yet was strong enough to ward off rain and survive
other climatic conditions.
The stems and veins of the leaves formed a complex and chaotic network that
looked visually attractive, but Iella knew that was not its primary purpose.
Because both light and sound took time to travel to the eye and ear,
respectively, the Vratix considered them secondary and deceptive senses. What
one saw or heard was always something that had happened in the past, but what
one could feel with the sense of touch, that was immediate and present in real
time.
Reaching out she let her fingers play across the inside of the circular
skylight. Her gentle touch conveyed a legion of different textures, some soft,
some smooth, and others rough or sharp. She likened the progression to
that of
the music in a
symphony, except that in choosing which way to stroke the surface, she could
determine what she felt and in what order. If I were worried, soft and smooth
would soothe me, whereas if I were manic, sharp might caution me.
Similarly, a whole variety of textures had been worked by the mason who had
created the room she had been given. The walls had gentle ridges that swelled
like waves on an ocean. They swirled into spirals and opened on smooth voids
that encouraged placid tranquillity. The raised platform on which she slept had
been cupped like a crater to hold her in, yet the sides and walls nearby were
sleek and almost slippery to the touch. Near the doorhole, raised bumps warned
of potential harm and the need for caution.
"They've thought of everything."
"Not quite." A hand reached up and grabbed the sill at the bottom of the door,
then the tendons and muscles tensed in the arm attached to it and Elscol pulled
herself into view. "The Vratix were nice enough to give us some footholds for
climbing up here, but I'd still prefer a rope ladder."
Iella laughed and helped pull the smaller woman into the room. Because the
Vratix's hind legs were so powerful, leaping up to the doorholes of rooms set
well above the ground was simple. The need for stairs never developed, so Vratix
architecture never included them. Visiting humans were normally housed in
public areas, but advertising the presence of Ashern agents was not a good idea,
so they were secreted away in rooms that were difficult for humans to move into
and out of.
"Sixtus isn't with you?"
"No. He's out wandering through the rain forest." Elscol shrugged and adjusted
the blaster on her right hip. "I've known him for years now, and there are just
times he has to drift away. I suspect the Imps did some nasty stuff to him and
his people when they trained him to be Special Ops and occasionally he has to
fight it."
"Never had anyone exactly like him in CorSec, but I understand the need to get
away. What's going on? Change of plans?"
Elscol shook her head. "Nope, we'll leave here after
dark, as planned, and move to the next haven. Just seeing us here seems to be
good for Vratix morale. I don't really have any sense of how good the Vratix
will be in combat, but they're fighters at heart."
"You mean at pulmonary arch."