8: The Kingdom
CORUSCANT
SECOND LEVEL OF THE 1,201ST MEGABLOCK
FIVE MONTHS PRIOR…
The sign outside the 300-story office building read Greater Associates of Naspeschi’a, which said nothing about what went on inside. The innocuous sign fit the generic structure itself. Any commuters passing by in their airspeeders might think it was nothing more than another outlet for the InterGalactic Banking Clan or a commerce guild or some sort of legal firm. The building’s exterior would not make civilians guess that within its walls were piezoelectric oscillators that saturated it in sensor-scrambling white noise, nor would its dull classical design make it any more or less interesting than the dozens of others on this megablock.
Anyone who thought to look into Greater Associates of Naspeschi’a would find that it was a legitimate investment firm that occasionally made good bets on the stock market. If they dug deep enough, they might also find that the firm was owned by Moff Gavidian of Cademimu Sector. Outside, there was next to no physical security, just a few basic cameras and sensors, nothing to cause suspicion.
This was where the Kingdom lived.
Ageless Void looked up at the building’s massive, cathedral-like windows, reflecting the morning sun. It was rare that he was summoned back into the Kingdom’s headquarters. It usually meant there was some extremely sensitive piece of intel that could only be discussed in person. Today, it would be him handing over such intel.
Stepping into the front lobby, Ageless had to prepare himself, and keep his sabacc face on. Ida was just inside. She would be behind the front desk as always, and she would lock eyes on him and try not to smile her knowing smile, and he would try to do the same. They hadn’t been on a date yet, it was not allowed within the Service to date colleagues, too many complications might arise, but Ageless hoped to make it happen someday, somehow.
Ida was there, all right. Her golden hair was no longer in the rolled-up double-bun style that had started on Alderaan and spread throughout much of the Core. That phase, like the planet it originated on, was gone. It was astonishing what all this war had taken from the face of the galaxy, the sacrifices they were all having to make—Alderaan’s memory was a cold, bracing reminder. But Ida was a breath of fresh air, and she smiled at him and made him feel a way he had not felt in a long time.
“Ida,” he said.
“Good evening, sir,” she said. Ida could not even use his codename aloud. But her green eyes were glued on him. It had been a long time since he felt this way. How long had they been flirting? How long had they been keeping it in check? Both of them had given their lives to the Service, and to the Kingdom, and neither wanted to mess it up.
But, of course, that wasn’t the only reason they weren’t dating. There was a taboo, unspoken but abundantly clear to anyone with half a brain, which kept them apart. The Empire, for all its vaunted glory and promise of inclusion, had a very clear prejudicial slant against non-Humans. And though no one had said it, and the Emperor had passed no decree concerning it, it was somehow understood that it was inappropriate for Humans and other species to come together or marry.
Ageless did not even know when it had started—Maybe twenty years ago? That’s when he started noticing it, anyway. First there was the imprisonment of the Wookiees that had rebelled on Kashyyyk, and then forced labor camps, and then outright enslavement, though it wasn’t called that—“indentured servants” paying for their crimes of rebelling against the Empire. Then the rulers of the planet Ryloth had been caught throwing help to the Rebellion and that world had been hit hard by sanctions, then a thousand Twi’leks had been arrested on suspicion of aiding the Rebels over a couple of years. And before you knew it, Twi’leks were a mistrusted species, too.
It happened like that. Every year, two or three other species became suspicious. Human clones had already been the preferred soldier for the Empire for decades. Humans continued to rise in preference for stormtrooper and TIE pilot duties, and before long the Empire was a quietly yet openly Human-dominated regime, with a Human at the head. It just sort of happened that way. One day some brilliant historian would break it all down, and determine the steps that had brought the movement on. Until then, it was too complicated for Ageless to unfurl himself.
As a Zabrak, Ageless had seen some of that discrimination, though not nearly as much as others. Sometimes he was looked down upon by his own people, for he had been one of the few non-Human stormtroopers ever, and many Zabraks were wary of the Empire. But the reverse had happened in the Service—the IIS had helped push him through the ranks because he was a Zabrak, because they knew it could help them penetrate the Rebel Alliance. He became invaluable. That did not stop others within the Imperial Intelligence Service sneer and whisper behind his back.
Hated by Humans because he wasn’t one of them, hated by Zabraks because he had betrayed them, and hated by fellow Service members because his Zabraki background had actually helped propel him forward. Ageless Void had gotten used to being hated. A small price to pay, he figured. Someone has to open the gates, someone has to be the first Zabrak to rise so high, so that my people can be seen as trustworthy. The Empire has the right idea as far as order goes, it only has a few wrinkles of bigotry to work out.
No system is perfect.
Sitting behind the desk in the lobby was one of the few people within the Service that never looked at him askance, never treated him with derision or even dismissal. She saw him. Ida saw him.
“I’m here to see the director,” he told her.
Ida nodded curtly. “He’s in a meeting. I’ll walk with you, I’m going that way anyway.”
“Delighted,” he said.
They walked past familiar doors. There was Room One, where he had been indoctrinated and told that he would utter his real name for the last time. There was Room Three, where they had drowned him and brought him back to life three times, to get him used to the feeling of death creeping in, to acquaint him with the helplessness and face it, so that he never feared it again. There was Room Seven, where they hit him with electric shocks and wracked his brain with hypnoscans and tortured him for days and promised him it would stop, if only he said his real name.
He never said it.
“It’s been a while since you’ve graced our halls, sir,” Ida said.
Ageless noticed she pushed a golden lock behind her ears. He noticed everything about her. He smelled her jasmine perfume—she had switched over from her usual tash-chi flower fragrance. He noted her gait and her shoulders and her neck. She had no rings or promise bracelets or anything to denote she had accepted any suitor. “I would visit more often if I could,” he said conversationally. “There are many things here I like to look at.”
“Oh?”
“Yes.”
“Such as?”
Ageless smiled. “The art.” He gestured at a painting of a decorated admiral on the wall.
Ida chuckled. “Ah. Right. The art.”
They passed Rooms Eight and Nine, where they had started giving him injections that would accelerate muscle response. Then there was Room Ten, where he had recovered for weeks while the nanite soup in his bloodstream caused him sickness before his body acclimated to it.
He remembered his days in those rooms, feeling his old self slowly slipping away. His humor had fled him. Inside jokes between him and old friends had slowly started to evaporate into the ether. All joy had been pulled from him, and at times he could not even remember the faces of his mother and father. Hypnosis sessions and brain augmentation surgeries had commenced there, in Room Eleven. That’s where he killed—
“Seen any good holovids lately?” Ida said, leading him up a set of stairs. On either side of them, holographic portraits of Emperor Palpatine dominated the walls.
Ageless looked at those portraits. He imagined for some they must inspire fierce patriotism and loyalty to the Empire as a whole. Not for him. Ageless had not joined the Kingdom for Palpatine. He had greater reasons, greater ideals.
“I haven’t,” he answered. “Have you?”
“A few comedies. I need something to unwind. I can’t watch any more dramas, the galaxy is just too bleak already, you know?”
“I completely agree.”
“How long are you staying on Coruscant this time?”
“I don’t have a lot of downtime,” he said. There was Room Twelve, where they had tested the new imtech on him, and found that his body flatly rejected all implant technology. “But I suppose I could make an exception, if there was sufficient reason.”
“And what reason would be sufficient?”
She wants to get us both terminated. Ageless snorted out a laugh. But some things might be worth it. It was not the first time he had considered leaving the Kingdom, and the Service altogether. He had been at this a while. Almost a decade now. Forty-three kills, all of them successful decapitation strikes against the Rebel Alliance. He knew his missions had saved the lives of countless Imperial citizens, and he enjoyed competition immensely, that fire would probably always be inside of him.
But the work was sometimes draining. Sometimes, for no reason at all, he caught himself staring out at the night sky of whatever planet or moon he was on. He used to do that because he was looking for anyone that might be following him. The augmentations he had been given made it so that he did not need much sleep for that very reason. But more and more, he was looking at the night sky and wondering what it would be like to be any of those galactic citizens that never left their homeworld, never left their farmstead or simple job.
For no reason he could discern, the call of such a life had become more sonorous with each passing year. And yet he knew he would miss the competition. If he retired, he would eventually come to miss the work, of being in on the ground floor of an operation that was reshaping the face of the galaxy. He could not leave the Kingdom behind any more than it could leave him behind.
“Well?” Ida said, as they approached the door to the director’s office. “Any reason you can think of that would be sufficient to get you to stay longer?”
Ageless stopped in front of the door. He looked at her. Gazed into those deep green eyes. “If I think of a reason, you’ll be the first to know.” He tapped the button on the keypad and the door hissed open. He stepped through. The last he saw of her, she was smirking knowingly.
“Ah, there you are, my boy,” said Abaca, standing up from behind his desk and waving Ageless to a seat in front of him.
Ageless took his seat. Abaca retook his and started reading over something on his datapad. For a while they said nothing. Ageless stared across at the man that had given him his codename—Ageless because the augmentations and injections had had the surprising effect of making him look a little younger than he had before the procedures, and Void because his instructors at the Nest had said he was the emptiest vessel they could hope for. “A clean slate ready to be programmed,” was how one of them put it.
He sat there respectfully until Director Abaca looked up from his pad and sighed an exasperated sigh. “Obroa-skai,” he said, as though just speaking the planet’s name explained all his worldly problems. He gestured at the datapad. “Will that place ever stop giving us trouble? How have you been, young man?”
“Good, sir.” He smiled briefly at the elderly Human, whose bald pate and wrinkly skin belied the youthful vigor the man still possessed for the hunt. Director Abaca once told him, There is nothing like hunting another being. If you do it long enough, you get a taste for it. If you feed that taste, you only get a greater hunger. Then you never care for anything else. Ageless had to admit it was true.
“So, you know why you’re here.” It wasn’t a question.
“You want to hear it straight from my mouth?”
“I do.”
“Very well, I’ll just say it, then,” Ageless said. “We have a mole. Not within the Kingdom—at least, I don’t think so. But definitely someone inside IIS.”
Abaca’s brow furrowed. He sighed. “Level of certainty?”
Ageless did not have to think about it. “One hundred percent.”
“You’re telling me that you have one hundred percent certainty that there is a mole operating somewhere within the Service? Because if that’s what you’re telling me, you know what I have to do next.”
“I do,” Ageless said. “And I’m sorry, sir. But for all our safety, and for the sake of op-sec, we need to be thorough.” Op-sec was a term they used around the office to mean operational security. It entailed doing whatever it took to maintain operations and keep them hallowed and sacred and secret. Op-sec was imperative to keeping all of the Kingdom safe, as well as its mother agency, the IIS.
“The mole hunt will have to be extensive,” the director said. He shook his head morosely, like he had just learned a friend had died. “Very extensive. This could take months, maybe even years before we’re certain.”
“I know, Director. And I’m sorry to be the one to bring this to you.”
“Better you have the grave duty than this goes unnoticed,” Abaca sighed. “Show me the evidence. Before I move forward and inform the rest of the Service’s operations directors, I’d like to know what gives you this level of certainty.”
Ageless nodded and took his own encrypted reach-pad out of his inside jacket pocket. The reach-pads were advanced versions of datapads, made specifically for each individual agent and with heavy encryption and both voice- and fingerprint-verification needed from the owner. If either were not provided within five seconds of picking up a reach-pad, it simply self-destructed.
He pulled up a series of encrypted files, gave permission to decrypt them, and then slid the reach-pad over to the Kingdom’s director of operations. “The findings of a data analyst downstairs,” he said, gesturing to the reach-pad. “You’ll recall the sensitive-site exploitation I pulled on that dead base on Dantooine a couple of years ago.”
“Yes, I recall. An abandoned base. The one that Princess Leia Organa falsely claimed was still operational while she was a prisoner on the Death Star.”
Ageless nodded. “The mainframes we found were all busted, but there were a few hard drives we could reassemble. There were things I found suspicious on them. For instance, the financial software, it was a KZ-1313-Battic. Far too sophisticated for a bunch of Rebels.” He ran a hand over his horns, pausing briefly on the synthetic replacement horn atop his head, briefly recalling the accident that broke off the real one. “We finally managed to track the wire transfers.”
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Abaca’s eyebrows raised. “You had a lead? And you followed it?”
“It was mostly just some records of Rebel payments to some smugglers out of Nar Shaddaa. The transfers came from the Kil-bin Commercial Bank on Muunilinst, and at first they looked like they would make for a solid lead on the Rebel Alliance’s credit flow. But I ordered a trace, and it turns out the owner of the account was an upstanding Imperial citizen, a noble of Serenno—an old ally of Count Dooku’s family, as it happened. The owner of the account was a man named Uiggo, and he was able to prove he had nothing to do with it, the money had been illegally transferred—that is, electronically stolen via remote slicing of the HoloNet grid on the planet. Taken right out of his company’s payroll.”
“I see. A dead end, then. That’s not much to implicate one of our own, unless that Serenno noble happened to be in the Service.”
“There was one clue, sir,” Ageless went on. “Having seen the sophistication of the hack, I knew it meant that, whoever did this, must have been a skilled slicer. So, on a hunch, I began running a search of my own.”
Director Abaca put a finger to his chin, intrigued. “Oh?”
“Yes, sir. I started unpacking the code. What I found was an attack tool kit—a bundle of code and malware that is sold on the black market, mostly on the UnderNet.” The UnderNet was the term that IIS had started using to describe the increasingly growing “dark side” of the HoloNet. Mercenary slicers willing to break into computers for a price lived on the UnderNet. It had always been there, used for everything from trafficking spice to trafficking people, but its power and scope was growing with each passing year. “So, this person that used the mal-code, he probably wasn’t a good slicer himself, but bought someone else’s tool kit.”
“So, a script child,” Abaca said, using the term for someone who couldn’t write malicious code themselves, and had to buy ready-made packages of clever code someone else had written, usually with specific written instructions on how to use it.
“I was able to pressure some of our contacts on the UnderNet,” Ageless went on. “I’ve managed to snatch up some decent contacts recently. They helped me find data on anyone known to sell this specific tool kit. Apparently, this code is very expensive, a choice piece of malware only the truly wealthy can afford.”
This time, Abaca leaned forward, fully engaged. The idea of catching another wealthy benefactor to the Rebel Alliance was probably enticing to him. “And what did you find?”
“My contact gave me fifteen names, all of them slicers who are known to sell this particular malware. Two of them are dead. Three were in prison at the time this particular tool kit was sold on the UnderNet, so it’s unlikely it was them who sold it to our unknown Rebel benefactor,” Ageless said. “Nine others work for us now, and had no UnderNet profiles during the time of the sale. But there was one that concerned me.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. A slicer with the online handle ‘Mokuva.’ His face is known to our intelligence community, he’s been on the run for some time, so I had to track him.”
“That must’ve been hard.”
Ageless shrugged. “He has a single relative he stays in contact with, his mother on Malastare. I sliced into her HoloNet call records, then cross-referenced numbers from all other family. Whenever I found convergence, I back-checked those numbers and ran a search merger on any other data we had on him—aliases, friends, customers. That led me to two places—a hideout he had on Geonosis, and another one on Ryloth. I went to Geonosis first, found nothing. Two weeks later I caught up to him on Ryloth.”
Abaca appeared excited. “You caught him?”
“I did. I handed him over to Imperial troopers on Ryloth. He’s being held in one of our black sites. I did get a chance to perform a preliminary interrogation, though.” Ageless could still hear the slicer’s pleas for mercy. Sometimes it bothered him. Sometimes it followed him into his dreams. One more reason he felt the occasional urge to retire from this life. But the work…
I enjoy it too much. On the heels of that thought, Or do I? How much of it is me, and how much of it is the indoctrination?
Director Abaca cut into his thoughts. “What did he tell you?”
“Read the file on the reach-pad.”
Abaca did so. It took him less than a minute, and the further he read the more his mood darkened. At last, he looked up at Ageless, and said, “So. It’s true. One of our own has betrayed us.”
“That’s what Mokuva says. That an officer deeply embedded in the Service has been helping the Rebel Alliance move funds around the galaxy. They’ve used this same slicer before. Mokuva says this person, this traitor, uses a complex spoofing system to bounce his connection from one proxy server to another around the galaxy, and that he offers this service to the Rebels. He helps them move their money, their data, and even helps them schedule times to move their troops. Times when he knows Imperial patrols will be lessened in certain sectors.”
Abaca stood slowly, then clasped his hands behind his back and started pacing. His countenance was dour. Indeed, Ageless had never seen the director like this. It was as though a father had just been told one of his children had sold the family property and given away their fortune. It was the look of complete betrayal. “Have you told anyone else about this?”
“No sir, I came directly to you with this.”
“Good. For the moment let’s keep it that way.”
“How do you want to proceed? Want me to start the mole hunt on my own?”
Abaca stroked his chin. “No. Let me handle it for now. If I need your help, I’ll pull you in. But right now I need you on something else. We have a lead on a new Rebel cell on Malastare. I want you to go there and verify it before I send in a strike team.”
“I’ll get right on it.” Ageless stood. He started for the door but paused and turned back. “Sorry again, sir. I wish I had better news.”
“We’re fighting a war, Ageless. There are always traitors in war. The rewards from the other side are sometimes just too enticing, and even their rebellious message can, at times, be a sonorous song to youthful hearts.” Abaca shook his head morosely, then dismissed him.
Ageless stepped out of the director’s office and headed down the hallway. At the lobby, he looked around for Ida. She wasn’t behind her desk. On his way out, he finally spotted her stepping out of a turbolift. He caught her eye. She smiled briefly. But her eyes…they were strange. Almost cold.
Perhaps at that moment was when Ageless Void first noticed something was wrong. Ida had never been good at hiding her emotions, not from him. In that moment he felt something. A shift between them. She turned away and went right to her desk. She flashed him one more quick smile, but it did not feel genuine. He could not say why. It just didn’t feel right.
He stepped out into the cold. It was almost time for a winter on Coruscant. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked the street, a faint buzzing at the back of his mind.
* * *
MALASTARE
THREE WEEKS LATER…
Ageless accepted his mission on Malastare, where the gravity was a bit heavier than he was used to, but then he was trained to survive anywhere. He spent several weeks chasing down leads in Injimall City and in skeevy cantinas cluttered with criminals from all corners of the galaxy. But the whole time he was on Malastare his mind never left the problem of a mole inside the Service. He spent time in a tapcaf called The Overlook, aptly named since a huge portion of it was dominated by a gigantic window that overlooked the longest podrace track in the sector.
Many days and nights were spent talking to the local patrons, betting on the races, getting a feel for their vibe, trying to pick up on any Rebel sympathizer talk. That was usually a good place to start. That, or use any contacts the Service had already developed in the cities.
Cantinas and taverns were often known to have an angry patron or two drink too much and leap on top of a table and start espousing their feelings about the injustices of their lives. These days lots of patrons did it with an angle to sympathize with the Rebellion. Ageless heard more than a dozen such rants in those first few weeks, and each time he took vids with his datapad and then followed the drunkard to their homes and chronicled their names and addresses. Some of them he started following to work, and sent a couple of innocent-looking protocol droids to follow the others, all the while making notes of who they talked to and who their friends were.
He also could not help but continue his research on the mole inside IIS. Despite Director Abaca’s order to leave it alone for now, Ageless felt dutybound to at least try and find more data to hand over to the director.
And all the while he could not shake the last cold farewell that Ida had given him. It buzzed at the back of his mind, an insect that would not stop burrowing into his ear.
* * *
He spent many nights sitting up and staring at his reach-pad, going over the malicious code that the Rebels had been using to steal money from Imperial nobility and reroute it to support their own cause. He worked on the code himself, testing and retesting every one of the hundreds of executable files from the hard drive he had found on Dantooine. When this work yielded nothing useful, he attacked the source code, the text-based instructions of countless programs, combing through the UnderNet for tips from other expert slicers, running the data through search mergers.
Then he began digging into the machine code, the base sequence of binary, a bunch of ones and zeroes that actually controlled the processor itself.
Further investigation into the money led him to a shadow account in the Bespin system, held at a bank called Cloud City Coin. The account was a strange one, for it contained one million credits and could not be obtained by anyone, including the mysterious account-holder, unless they showed up in person and closed out the account and got the request notarized—that was a lot of hoops to jump through just to get your money, but it would be worth it for whomever was moving these illegal funds around. For Cloud City banks held a supranational status and could keep an account full of ill-gotten money locked, forever beyond any law enforcement agency’s reach, so long as they had no solid proof that the money had been ill-gained.
This is what he did at night. During the day, he pounded the pavement, searching for leads, pretending to be a tourist on Malastare and asking nonchalant questions that he hoped gave him a lead on where the Rebel cell was hiding. And all the while he pondered the “Cloud City Mystery,” as he came to think of it.
Ageless did not require much sleep—his training and his surgeries had altered him in a way that he could often go without—but when he did sleep, his dreams started to become a tortured landscape of ghosts and dark clouds and jagged rock. He often woke up feeling cold for no reason, and panting, like he had been chased over mountains.
Also in his dreams were eyes. Many sets of eyes watching him. He got the feeling he was being watched all the time, and it followed him when he woke up.
* * *
Two months went by. Ageless was pretty sure he had found the Rebel cell’s hideout on Malastare. He was going to go out on an excursion tonight. Amid slapping winds and needle-like rain, he headed out in a slashcoat and walked the streets of Otro City with his hands in his pockets and his collar up. He splashed down alleys that served as home to the destitute, people with dreams they had orphaned as quickly as their dignity.
As he made his way to the suspected Rebel hideout, his mind lingered on the problem of the mole inside the Service. It had nagged at him all this time, something his mind kept playing with, like a tongue returning to an empty tooth socket. He was unable to let it go. Just like he was unable to let go of the last look Ida had given him before he left Coruscant.
For some reason, all of this swirled together in his mind, forming a cocktail of doubt and worry. He began looking over his shoulder. At least, more than usual. He began performing surveillance-detection runs, walking for miles out of the way, walking circuitous routes that would shake anyone that might be following him.
In his dreams, he saw jagged lands of ice and snow. White mist concealed eyes watching him. He ran towards them, but they always remained just out of sight. Ida’s face appeared there. He ran from her. He ran deeper into the mists, and those mists welcomed him.
* * *
Hand in hand with op-sec, or operational security, there was per-sec, or personal security. This entailed keeping one’s personal information absolutely private, dating as little as possible, making no new friends or connections outside of informants to be used for the Service, doing everything you could to keep your own personal information and your personal feelings in check. Because all of that stuff could be used against you.
Ageless wondered if the tiny amount of affection he had allowed himself to feel for Ida had somehow clouded his judgment, for his mind would not let the image of their cold departure slip away. It began to intrude on many thoughts, interrupting him when he was thinking about approaching someone he suspected was associated with the local Rebel cell, causing him to glance over his shoulder more than usual, and perform multiple unnecessary surveillance-detection runs in a day.
He would rent an airspeeder, fly it halfway across the city, abandon it on a random rooftop and then walk six blocks before ducking under a bridge. Ensconced within the shadows, he would look at the path whence he came, looking for anyone following in his wake. He never saw anyone.
What is this new paranoia? he thought. A little paranoia was good for per-sec, he knew, but this was too much.
And still his dreams sent him on excursions into a cold, desolate land, where he was tracked by unknown persons. He heard footsteps in the ice around him and would wake up freezing, as though he had just stepped out of an icy pool. He would go into the fresher and splash water on his face. Then he would check under his bed, in his closet, behind every curtain in his room.
When he tried going back to sleep, Ida’s cold stare was always there.
The buzzing in his mind grew louder. The insect would never leave him, not until he figured this out.
After a month, he confirmed the location of the Rebel cell’s headquarters and infiltrated it at night and executed each of the eight Rebels in their sleep. That night, after sending an encrypted message back to the Kingdom, he fell asleep sitting in his chair, exhausted from the constant mental strain of both tracking the Rebels and poring over the computer code from the Dantooine hard drive.
There is a state for all beings between wakefulness and sleep. In that in-between state, just as you are slipping off into slumber, the mind experiences something called hypnogogia. In the hypnagogic state, the brain often comes upon several epiphanies. Some are mundane, others are monumental. It is believed that the brain is both at its most relaxed and most creative during this time. Scientists working on complex problems have made huge discoveries during this moment, sitting straight up in bed in astonishment at their sudden brilliant realization. Others will come to some resolution about what to do about a family problem, or a personal choice about their career.
It was during this hypnagogic state, drifting into a well-earned sleep, that Ageless Void’s mind hit upon something. He saw Ida stepping out of the turbolift, her eyes cold, when just moments before she had been so affectionate. She was coming from the turbolift…The turbolift that led to the floor of the director’s office.
In his half-dream, the cold mist swarmed around him a moment, then dissipated.
An epiphany struck him. When he woke up, it was almost there. Slippery as a Kamino eel, it fell away. He tried desperately to grab hold of it again, but couldn’t.
Then, four months later, while kneeling in the ice beside a Rebel insertion pod and listening to evidence that he had been purposefully marked for death by his own Service, Ageless Void caught the eel.
He knew exactly why he had been marked for death. And it had started from the moment he entered Director Abaca’s office.
* * *
HOTH
PRESENTLY…
They were all in on it, he thought. The wind had picked up and the numbness was spreading from his hands to his arms. But he barely noticed. From the very start, they were in on it. Abaca, Ida, and Zumter. Abaca called Ida into the office after I left and told her something would need to be done about me. That’s why he didn’t want me looking into it on my own. And that’s why he gave the order to Zumter to shoot me on Hoth and leave me for dead.
Aquiver with rage more than cold, Ageless turned all focus inward.
And that’s why Ida gave me that look. That’s why her smile felt off. She knew what it meant. She knew I had to go.
But wait…no…no, that didn’t make sense. If the Rebels had somehow infiltrated the Service all the way up to the Kingdom, its most top-secret section, and if Director Abaca was truly a Rebel sympathizer, then why would he allow Ageless to go around assassinating multiple Rebel leaders?
His Cloud City Mystery deepened. He thought about that final shadow account he had traced to Cloud City Coin, and why someone would stash the last of their money there, where they had to appear in person to withdraw all of it.
Ageless thought back to his last night on Malastare. His Cloud City Mystery had deepened even more when he discovered that Cloud City Coin was co-owned by Carjukk the Hutt, a member of the Besadii kajidic.
There’s something else I’m missing. They were in on it, they were, and I was sent to Hoth along with Zumter to create an opportunity to sweep me clean…but there’s something else to it. Something I’m not seeing.
He was suddenly sure of it, even though he could not say why. Ageless’s grandmother had said she thought he was gifted, that he was “touched” by the Force, and that was why his instincts led him to conclusions others never saw.
Slowly, he stood up. He faced east towards Echo Base, and started walking. His legs and feet were almost completely numb, but he would not stop. Through sheer tyranny of will, Ageless stomped through the snow for the better part of an hour before he finally came to the small hangar bay where the Rebels had been housing smaller freighters, and where the Millennium Falcon had made its escape, right as Ageless, Zumter, and the stormtroopers had made their breach.
I wonder if they ever found Solo or his ship.
The stray thought kept him occupied, even distracted. Enough so that he did not notice the footsteps behind him at first. But then the hackles went up on his neck. He paused. Leaned against a plasteel crate filled with empty canteens. The sound of booted feet crunching on ice caused his pulse to quicken, and then settle down.
His whole body tensed for a second before immediately relaxing. Moving into his operational training was a lot like sliding into an old comfortable chair. He knew this situation well. It fit him.
“Mordenta?” he said.
“Don’t move,” a female voice said from behind.
Sounded like she was four, maybe five steps away. He looked at the ground. The sunlight was coming in through the wide hangar bay doorway behind him. It was casting her long shadow right up beside his. That gave him an approximate location.
“Hands up,” she said.
He did as she said.
“Down on your knees.”
Ageless dropped down to one knee. Then, as he was about to drop to his second, he noticed her shadow shifting slightly to his left.
Her last mistake.
He spun around and sprang at her, snatching the barrel of her pistol to one side and making her shot go wide while twisting her wrist, forcing her hand to drop the blaster. He pulled the harangi knife from his duffel bag and lunged at her, and for a moment he saw the sudden horror leap from her soul to her eyes as she realized her error. Ageless had seen that look on countless sets of eyes. It never got old.