> Economists are predicting a return to a normal business cycle as the government on Coruscant continues implementing economic stabilization measures in an effort to sway more neutral and former Imperial-aligned systems to join the central government. 'Imposing rational tax policies and consolidating the maze of regulations is key to improving commerce between systems, and expanding the economic base of thousands of worlds' said the senate's Committee on Trade and Taxation. A statement from the committee said that 'too many systems, even entire sectors, have languished for decades under an economic system made to support the most extreme, destructive war machine in history. Now is the time to unleash the galaxy's potential and open the floodgates of prosperity for everyone from the Core to the farthest fringe worlds.'

- Galactic HoloNet News Feed

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41:04:01 GrS

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Lyra walked down the long, dim hallway on the mansion's upper floor, passing beneath heavy timbers that lined the corridor like the ribs of some lumbering kuvhela out of antiquity, and past the majestic painted walls with their incredible wood-printed scenes. The corridor never failed to awe her when she was a girl. As a grown woman and a former Imperial officer, she recognized the luxury they testified to, the power and authority they were intended to convey. She also recognized the weapon scanners cleverly integrated into the thick beams. It made her mouth twitch. Lady Nimor's turned into a paranoid bitch.

She stopped before a broad door at the end of the hall. Panil and a security troop whose name she hadn't learned sat behind a console. Panil checked his datapad. "I do not believe Lady Nimor is expecting you this morning, Lady Lyra."

"I'm departing today, Panil. I would pay my respects to the new Lady Nimor before I leave. I won't take much of her time, I assure you."

Panil hesitated a moment. She hadn't missed the guard's surreptitious glance at his security console, probably checking the result of the weapon scan. She flashed a dry smile at him.

"Very well, Lady Lyra." The footman opened the door and made a minimal bow. As she passed, he took out his comlink to announce her.

Lady Nimor's office was expansive and many times more sumptuous than the hall. The broad parlor with its high-peaked timber-framed ceiling occupied nearly half of the mansion's upper floor. Silken embroidered tapestries hung everywhere, muffling voices and footfalls, sounds that would otherwise carom off the hard plaster and lacquered wood. Lithe statuary in alabaster and marble made the place seem like a grand assembly, frozen in time. A score of folding screens presented colorful, traditional landscapes, and disrupted sightlines throughout the length and breadth of the office.

In her youth Lyra's family had been obliged to abase themselves before the old Lady Nimor in this very room. Then they would wait, bent double while her great aunt regaled them with their many failures and shortcomings for ages on end. Lyra had grown to hate that room and the woman who occupied it. The last Lady Nimor had at least maintained a veneer of humility, screening off most of it; Senna had no such scruples. This was the first time she'd ever seen its full scale and Lyra couldn't help being impressed by the wealth of it.

Senna sat behind the massive desk Lyra knew from her childhood, the same one from Tetris's holorecord. Lady Nimor's secretary stood a few steps away, receiving dictation from the chieftess and transcribing it onto her datapad with sweeping strokes and precise taps of her stylus.

As Lyra approached, Senna looked up. Her sneer was plain even across the fifteen-meter space. Lyra hid her disdain behind a bland expression and waved off the shuffling secretary with a flick of her hand and a hard look. She was there to confront Lady Nimor and she wasn't about to let Senna's lackey impede her. She angled toward the corner of the desk so she could keep an eye on the entrance and activated the masker in her jacket pocket. Then Lyra bowed with her arms crossed and made the slightest obeisance that decorum required.

Senna's expression didn't waver. "What do you want, Cousin?"

"I've come to take my leave."

"Good. You and your traitorous Rebel friends have brought more than enough disrepute upon the clan."

Lyra's eyes flashed for an angry instant. "And you, Cousin, let a crime lord's operation fester under your nose for months. Your vassals were on their payroll! What chaos would have descended on this clan, on the whole world, if my friends and I hadn't uncovered it?"

"You know we had nothing to do with that!"

"Sure you didn't," Lyra challenged. "Just like your honored mother had nothing to do with my family's death, right?" She was past caring about the niceties expected of an audience with the clan's matron. She whipped open her jacket, exposing the rounded butt of a blaster pistol at her waist.

"How did you pass through the scanners?!" Senna shrieked. Her secretary's hand went toward her wrist link.

"Touch that and I'll burn you both before Panil takes three steps!" Lyra snarled while she ripped the device from the quailing secretary's wrist. She didn't reach for the blaster, but her palpable rage stilled the women. As much as she wanted to, she realized that murdering Clan Nimor's new chieftess would only get her a long prison sentence punctuated by a very unpleasant execution. It wouldn't bring back her family or change anything that had happened in the last dozen years.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"It's amazing what you can find out there in the galaxy," she snarled, "like blasters that don't show up on weapon scanners." She let her boiling anger simmer into a dark frown. "I'm not here to kill you, much as I might like to." Instead of drawing the PK12, she took a data chip from a pocket and tossed it onto the desk with a flick of her wrist.

"What's this?" Senna demanded through the quiver in her voice.

"Something for both of us," answered Lyra, her teeth clenched. "Play the first file."

Senna activated the player on the desk and watched the recording Tetris had made. Her dark face drained. "That droid —!"

"Uncle Shin didn't have any more faith in you than I do," she snapped. "That's not the only copy, by the way."

Lady Nimor remained defiant. "The shame Vela brought to Clan Nimor was unforgivable!"

"You can hide behind your mindless bigotry all you want, Cousin. It'll never excuse countenancing my family's murder." Fists clenched, she struggled to control her rage. Finally, she straightened up, drawing on the dispassion drilled into her at the Alui Academy, reinforced by eight years of service in the Imperial machine. She waved a hand. "It's over though. What's done can't be undone."

"Then what do you intend?"

Lyra aimed a stony stare at her. "I told you, I'm here to give you what you want." To Lady Nimor's confused look she responded, "Read the second file."

Senna manipulated the player's controls. Lyra could see the older woman's shoulders relax, though her dark eyes grew wider as they scanned line by line. "A Shoyaku Vykitana?"

Lyra answered with a stiff nod. "I'm relinquishing my rights within the clan and leaving the Sajoku, effective tomorrow. In return, you'll allow me to visit the graves of my family and the Ragas when I'm on Inusagi. If I'm ever denied, or if anything untoward befalls me or my friends, that recording goes to Clan Pindu and the news media."

"You spacers lead hazardous lives," protested Senna, sounding defensive and derisive all at once.

"Then you should pray for our good health, Cousin."

Senna's pale cheeks had regained some of their color. She aimed a sneer at Lyra. "Without a Tavit you dare not step foot here again!"

"Oh, I have a Tavit," Lyra fired back. "My father's happily welcomed me, as did his clan. Tomorrow I will be the proud daughter of Akaishi, of Clan Torimbu."

"Disgusting mudblood!" the Nimor matriarch scoffed while her face crinkled with unalloyed antipathy. A moment later, loathing turned to greed. "If you relinquish your clan and the Sajoku, your trusts are forfeit!"

"By custom perhaps, but by law they're still mine." Responding to Senna's dagger stare, she added, "Don't worry, Cousin, I intend to return the money after a fashion. Unlike you, I'm proud to earn my own living." She took out a credit chip and put it on the desk. "That's my trust, or what remains of it after the payment of dahejisan to the Torimbu clan."

"A pittance next to your sister's and mother's. What of those?"

"I have another use for that money, but you'll get much of it back in time. Read the last file."

Senna queued it up. "What is this?"

"A contract guaranteeing the right for Rixon Charter Service to purchase navawood from the clan at preferred wholesale rates. I'll pay using the other trusts."

"How will that return them?" huffed Lady Nimor. "You'd be buying the clan's goods with the clan's money."

Lyra aimed a biting look at her. "My honored father's Chokokoro friends provided me with introductions to their off-world colleagues. It turns out there's a bustling market in exotic wood for sculpture media, bespoke furniture, even architecture, provided you know the right people. Per the terms of the contract, I'll pay half of my annual profits to the clan until the value of the trusts is returned."

"That will take years!"

Lyra made a dismissive shrug. "Depends on how well the market does. Just remember, under law I don't owe you a single kindhra. From that perspective you're getting a good deal."

"It's our resources you're selling. All of the profits belong to the clan!"

"I don't think so. I'm the one finding markets, making the contacts, paying for transport. I deserve to make something on the deal— say, twenty percent."

"What of the rest?"

Lyra looked triumphant and vengeful. "I'm sending it to the Asantu-sar."

"You're what?!"

"Inusagi's grown stale, its rulers vain and weak." Lyra hurled the last word, making Senna jerk reflexively.

"They are malcontents, nothing but terrorists!" hissed the clan matron.

"My honored mother used to tell me they were the only ones trying to move our world forward," Lyra corrected her. "She was right. Inusagi has suffocated for millennia under a system where a few thousand people control the lives of billions. You're so hidebound, wrapped in so many layers of dogma that you can barely move. If something doesn't change this planet will sink into ruin and irrelevance, or be consumed by civil war."

"I won't approve the contract," objected Senna, her face red and taut with rage.

"Yes you will because if you don't, I'll buy my goods from the Asahli or the Temorishu and you'll never see a kindhra of those trusts."

Senna's fury faltered for an instant. "And if I decide that's an acceptable loss?"

Lyra's mouth curled into a bloodless smile. "If by some miracle you could overcome your avarice, remember there's still the first file. I'll ruin this clan."

"You wouldn't dare!"

"Why wouldn't I?" Lyra barked, enraged tears springing to her eyes. "What do I have to lose, Cousin? My clan? My family? What more do you think you can take from me, Senna Nimor?" She leaned murderously over the desk, clutching the dark wood instead of the older woman's throat.

"You wouldn't dare," Senna repeated, though with less certitude and a certain shrinking tone.

"Test me, Cousin," she seethed.

Their vicious contest of wills continued for a few more seconds. "What happened to you? You were nothing but a shiftless girl."

Lyra flashed a hard grimace. "I told you when I arrived. The Empire burned idleness out of me. It focused my grief into a disciplined spear." She spat the word, dripping bitterness. "If my family had lived I might have gone on to be the pliable, useless girl you thought I was. You have yourself to blame for the woman you see now." She aimed a stiff nod toward the data terminal and snapped a command. "Sign the contract, Senna."

Lady Nimor turned back to the screen wearing an ugly look. After a few moments of furious contemplation, she mashed the button to approve the arrangement.

Lyra jerked the data chip from the reader. "Farewell, Cousin. I expect to return twice a year to conduct business and to visit my honored family and the Ragas, but you'll never see me again."

She spun on her heel, not bothering to perform the expected courtesies. "Oh, and find a new pilot droid for that eyesore of a yacht," she quipped over her shoulder. "I'm taking Tetris."