Star Wars - X-Wing - The Bacta War

  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."