CHAPTER THREE
Cham sat alone in his dimly lit quarters in one of the many underground staging camps from which he conducted his guerrilla war against the Empire. He had several such bases secreted around Ryloth. He’d spent years building his forces, cultivating his network, caching ships and weapons, laying the foundation for a major blow, and now, seemingly, an opportunity had come, more than he could have hoped for. Far more.
He was sweating.
He stared at the decoded message he held in his hand. Even after decryption the message was obscure.
OFT en route w/1 and 2. Transport 1SD. 10 dys.
He deciphered it again, ensuring he had the right of it.
Orn Free Taa was returning to Ryloth. He would be accompanied by Emperor Palpatine and Lord Vader. They were coming via Star Destroyer in ten days.
He was reading it right; it just didn’t make any sense. He smelled a trap.
He raised Isval on his comlink. He needed her take.
She came promptly, a question in her eyes, and he showed her the decrypted message. She licked her lips as she read, then looked up at the wall, thinking.
“Not possible, right?” he asked her.
“When did this come in?”
“An hour ago, via the usual channels.”
“Trustworthy?” she asked.
“The source? Yes, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t misled.”
“Right,” she said. A vein pulsed in her forehead. She’d had it ever since they’d heard Vader kill Pok in the hijack that had gone wrong. She handed the paper back to him. Her lekku swayed with irritation. “It’s wrong or it’s a trap. Has to be.”
Cham crumpled the paper, burned it in the flame of the candle on his desk. “I thought so, too. But what if it’s not? It’s an opportunity.”
She sniffed, paced the floor of his room, shaking her head, her hands on the twin blasters she wore at her belt. “The Star Destroyer makes sense if they were coming. The Perilous is Vader’s flagship but…why would they be coming? That’s where this falls apart. And Vader and the Emperor coming to the Outer Rim? The only time they’re ever in one place is on Coruscant. The ‘why’ is the trouble here. We need a why.”
Cham stared at the candle flame, thinking of Pok. “I don’t know. To make an example of Mors, maybe? A show of force? Our attacks have slowed spice production to a trickle.”
The Empire used spice—refined ryll, harvested from the countless mines that made Ryloth porous—and its derivatives for countless purposes, particularly in the Imperial science and medical corps.
“Maybe they’re coming to replace Mors?” Isval said. “With Dray, maybe?”
“That’d be useful, but…” Cham shook his head. “No. If Mors goes down, Belkor Dray will go with her. He doesn’t see that, but there’s no way he stands if Mors falls.”
Isval was warming to her theorizing. “Bring more stormtroopers? They’ve got a bunch of conscripts and enlistees here now. Nubs looking for adventure, but not true soldiers. Maybe bring more troops, elite troops, and lock down Ryloth and spice production?”
“Maybe, but one Star Destroyer? For the Emperor and Vader?”
“It’s a Star Destroyer, Cham! Think about what you’re saying.”
“Yes, but…”
“I’d wager the fleet is spread pretty thin across the galaxy,” Isval said. She’d stopped pacing and now stared at the wall, white knuckles clenched around her hope for an opportunity to strike a telling blow. “Or maybe the Emperor is worried that a big fleet presence would send the wrong message. Make it look like he was afraid of the piddling freedom fighters of Ryloth.”
“I need you to be the voice of reason here, Isval. I’m leaning too heavy in one direction.”
“Yeah, but maybe you’re right to do that,” Isval said. “Maybe you’re overthinking this, Cham. When has our intelligence been wrong? There could be a dozen reasons we can’t see, and if we spend all our time trying to find them an opportunity could slip past us.”
“And you’re underthinking it. These are clever men. If they’re luring us into an overreach…”
“Even clever men make mistakes,” she said, returning to her habitual pacing. “And they have no idea of the forces at our disposal, Cham. We’ve been acting like a tiny band of terrorists for years—”
“Freedom fighters,” Cham corrected her.
“Freedom fighters. But we have ships, hundreds of soldiers, heavy weapons. This is the Emperor and Vader and Taa. Vader, Cham. Think of what he did to Pok.”
Cham had recurring nightmares about Pok and always woke gasping, certain he was being choked. “I don’t need a reminder, Isval. But we’re fighting first for a free Ryloth, not to topple the Empire.”
Isval stopped pacing and stared at him. “How are they not the same thing?”
“What?”
“They’re the same thing, Cham. We want a free Ryloth, then we need a toppled Empire. Or at least a weakened one. We need fires blazing all over the galaxy. Then maybe, maybe, they’ll leave us alone.”
Cham didn’t agree, but it didn’t matter. Taking out Vader and the Emperor would send the message Cham was keen to send: Ryloth is too costly to occupy, spice or no spice.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s start planning and put the cells on alert. But don’t do anything yet, Isval. I mean that. No extra chatter. Let’s see if we hear from Belkor. If he tells me Vader and Palpatine are coming, then I’ll know they’re baiting us.”
“How’s that?”
“Belkor would never give us a shot at Vader and the Emperor unless he was told to. He’s ambitious, but he’s not suicidal.”
Isval nodded. “Makes sense.”
“Well, then go get started. I’ll let you know if I hear from Belkor.”
Isval nodded, gave him a half smile, and bolted out of the room as if running a race against the fear that Cham might change his mind.
Cham sat at his desk after she’d left, planning how he’d break things to Belkor. The Imperial officer was in for a rude surprise.
—
As was his custom, Belkor Dray used the shuttle flight from Ryloth to its largest moon to square away his thinking and don the mask he wore when facing Moff Mors. He sat alone in the expansive passenger compartment and tried on the various expressions he’d wear to conceal the contempt he felt for her.
“Approaching the moon now, Colonel,” the pilot said over the comm.
“Let the Moff know we’re on approach, Fruun,” Belkor responded.
“Aye, sir.”
Fruun was one of Belkor’s men, one of the hundreds whose loyalty he’d bought through favors or secured through blackmail. Moff Mors—lazy, sloppy Delion Mors—left the running of Ryloth’s occupation to Belkor, and Belkor had not been idle. He’d filled several Imperial units with commanders whose first loyalty was not to Mors, or even to the Empire, but to him, and the soldiers would do exactly as their commanders told them. The stormtroopers were a problem, of course, but there weren’t very many members of the corps on Ryloth. In essence, Belkor had a shadow force at his disposal, and he’d call on it when the time was right.
“Moff Belkor Dray,” he said, trying out the title the same way he’d tried on false expressions. Not colonel. Not general. Moff.
One day.
Mors would be easy to discredit, but Belkor needed to do it in a way that reflected well on himself. He had plans in the works to do just that.
“Setting down, sir,” Fruun said.
Belkor stood up straight and checked his uniform: clean and pressed, with creases that could cut meat. Shoes shined. Insignia of rank at exact regulation distance from the edge of his collar. He removed his hat, smoothed his hair into place, and put the hat back on.
Belkor took an interest in the small things, the details others missed. The practice kept him from getting sloppy. And he carried far too many secrets to allow himself any room for sloppiness.
The shuttle alit on the outdoor landing pad, a
nd Belkor pressed a button to open the door. He wrinkled his nose at the verdurous, humid air. Trees forty meters high stood sentinel around the pad. The arm-thick, ubiquitous vines so prevalent on the moon hung like a thousand nooses from the trees’ thick limbs. Screeches and howls from the native fauna punctuated the air. The towering jungle canopy blocked his view of Mors’s well-appointed command center, which had been built by Twi’lek forced labor.
A young junior officer—Belkor had forgotten his name—and three stormtroopers waited on the pad. They saluted, rather sloppily in the case of the officer, as Belkor descended the ramp. Belkor returned the gesture with crispness.
“The Moff was unable to greet you personally,” the junior officer said.
Because she is in a spice haze, Belkor thought but didn’t say. Or engaged with her Twi’lek slaves.
“I’ll walk you to her.”
Because she is too lazy to walk this far herself, Belkor thought, but he said only, “Very good, Lieutenant.”
A trio of V-wings on patrol cruised low overhead, the telltale in-atmosphere buzz of their engines temporarily quieting the cacophony of the native animals.
The moon’s humidity had exacted a toll of sweat by the time Belkor and his escort reached the climate-controlled confines of Mors’s luxurious command center—more akin to a noble’s villa on Naboo than an Imperial installation. Belkor’s sweat-stained uniform fouled his mood, and he barely returned the salutes of the stormtrooper sentries on guard outside the villa’s main doors.
Vast windows looked out on the rolling viridian waves of the jungle. Rounded edges, burnished wood tables, and overstuffed chairs, divans, and lounges seemed to be everywhere, the whole of it giving the impression of softness, which fit Mors’s personality precisely. The stone “sculptures” so favored by Twi’leks—chunks of rock naturally carved by Ryloth’s winds, as Belkor understood it—stood here and there on tables. Twi’lek servants moved like pale-green ghosts through the rooms. Mors chose only Twi’leks with pale-green skin for her household servants—the Moff refused to call them slaves, though none could leave.
“Their skin goes well with the surrounding trees,” she had once said to Belkor.
The stormtroopers in the escort peeled off and took station at their interior watch posts while the junior officer led Belkor toward the villa’s open-air central courtyard, where Mors seemed to spend all her time while Belkor did all the work planetside.
The courtyard was covered in a retractable clear dome to allow in ambient light. At the moment, the dome was fully retracted and hundreds of the brightly colored, hand-sized native insects common to the top of the jungle’s trees flitted about in the air.
A walking path meandered through colorful flowers, bushes, and dwarf versions of the native trees. Belkor found Mors, looking as overstuffed and soft as the villa’s furnishings, seated on a bench near a fountain in the center of the courtyard, leaning into a conversation with a Hutt. The Hutt’s three-meter-long sluglike body, covered in wrinkled, leathery skin, convulsed in something that might have been laughter. It took Belkor a great deal of effort to keep the disgust from his face. He filed the presence of the Hutt away in the cabinet of his mind, intending to look into travel records later. Implicating Mors in a conspiracy with the Hutts, who were engaged in any number of criminal enterprises, would give him another tool to discredit the Moff.
Mors held up a finger to forestall Belkor’s advance while she concluded her business with the Hutt. Watching the exchange, Belkor was struck by the similarities between the two. Both woman and alien looked like overfilled sausages, only Mors was wrapped in a wrinkled uniform rather than leathery skin. Her watery eyes and vaguely slack expression showed that she was in a spice haze. The Hutt’s watery eyes and slack expression showed that he was, in fact, a typical specimen of his kind.
“Who is that?” Belkor asked his escort softly.
“Nashi the Hutt, an envoy from Jabba.”
Neither of the names meant anything to Belkor, but he filed them away, too. “What does the Empire have to do with the Hutts?” he asked.
To that, the officer said nothing. Belkor did not press. Meanwhile, Hutt and human shared a belly laugh—the Hutt’s tone unexpectedly high-pitched—and Mors gestured for Belkor and his officer escort to approach.
“Come, Belkor!” Mors said, then, to the officer, “Lieutenant, please see that Nashi is returned to his ship. Oh, and see to it that he’s given three cases of Theenwine.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said the officer.
Nashi turned his serpentine body fully around to face Belkor. Before Belkor could speak, the creature belched a cloud of stink, the smell like rotting meat.
Belkor took one step back, out of the cloud, but otherwise held his silence.
Nashi said something over his shoulder in Huttese and chuckled. Mors shared in the chuckle, and then said something in Huttese in return.
“I’m afraid I don’t speak the language of this alien, ma’am,” Belkor said stiffly, addressing Mors.
Mors waved a hand as though it didn’t matter, as though nothing mattered. “Oh, he said you look as straight and rigid as the trees. I told him you were a young, ambitious officer, and that the Academy minted all of you that way these days. I told him he should hear you talk.”
“Ma’am?”
Mors smiled. “Have you never heard yourself speak, Belkor? You speak as if all your words had a serif.”
The Hutt said something in Huttese and the two shared another laugh.
Belkor did not relax his posture. “Of course, ma’am.”
“Oh, don’t be offended, Belkor.” Mors stood on wobbly legs and bowed to the Hutt. “Safe journey, Nashi. I’ll be in contact.”
The Hutt bowed as best a slug could manage, nodded at Belkor, then slithered off in the company of the lieutenant.
Mors lowered her weight back onto the bench. “You dislike all this, don’t you, Belkor?”
Belkor kept his face impassive. “Ma’am?”
“This,” Mors said, gesturing expansively. “This luxury. It offends you, doesn’t it? It’s all over your face.”
Lies always came easy to Belkor. “That was the…appearance of the Hutt, ma’am. Luxury does not offend me. With rank come privileges.”
Mors smiled and leaned back on the bench, nodding. “See? There’s a serif on those words. Did you hear it? Ha! Well, indeed rank does have its privileges. We’re both stationed at the ass end of the Empire, so I say we should make the most of it.”
“Of course, ma’am.”
“What about you, Belkor? You exercise few of those privileges. Will you have a wine with me?” She clapped her hands and a pale-green Twi’lek woman in a head wrap and tight-fitting tunic and trousers emerged from the nearby foliage with a ewer of wine and two goblets. Belkor had not noticed her before.
“I…need to stay clearheaded for my return trip, ma’am.”
“Your loss,” Mors said as the slave poured. “So, what brings you to my little moon, Belkor? Is all well on the planet?”
The woman truly was as stupid as she was indolent. “My quarterly report on Ryloth is due, ma’am.”
“Is it?” Mors looked genuinely shocked. She fiddled with the tight bun of her hair for a moment. “My, time passes quickly.”
“Particularly when one is as busy as you are,” Belkor said, and managed not to smirk.
“Quite right,” Mors said. She took a gulp of wine. “If we must, we must. Proceed, Colonel. What’s happening on that arid rock underneath us?”
Standing throughout, Belkor went through a curated list of items that he wanted Mors to know—staff levels, troop movements, spice shipments, and on it went. Mors asked no questions during Belkor’s recital, merely nodding absently from time to time.
“May I answer any questions?” Belkor asked, the words part of the exercise. Mors rarely asked anything, but Belkor needed to maintain the illusion of deference.
Mors drank the last of her wine and studied th
e empty goblet forlornly. “There is the one thing. How do matters fare with the terrorists?”
The question took Belkor aback, and he almost let his mask slip. “The Free Ryloth movement?”
“The terrorists,” Mors reiterated.
“I, uh, have our best assets on it, ma’am,” Belkor said. “Things have been quiet planetside. It’s been over a month since the last attack.”
Belkor had no intention of letting the quiet last another month. He’d need to feed some intel to Cham Syndulla to encourage an attack. Belkor needed violence from the movement to give him some of the ammunition he’d ultimately use to unseat Mors, but he didn’t want the violence to escalate too far while he was in charge of quelling it. Controlled violence was what he needed. Channeled violence. And he’d been using Cham to that end for months.
Mors’s eyes focused more than Belkor liked to see. The woman could hold her spice, apparently. “More than a month since an attack here, Belkor. But the movement attempted to hijack a shipment of weapons not long ago. They failed, of course, but…”
Belkor had heard nothing of it, from Cham or otherwise, and his ignorance alarmed him. “Where? When?”
Mors waved a delicate hand. “Doesn’t matter. As I said, the attempt failed. All of the terrorists were killed.” She chuckled as if she found that amusing.
Belkor tread carefully. He hoped he hadn’t lost Cham, or he’d have to start over with another resistance leader. “Any, uh, familiar names among the dead?”
“Not that I’ve heard. The usual riffraff, no doubt.”
“Well, I wish I’d known of this sooner. I would’ve doubled our efforts planetside, while we had the movement back on its heels.”
“Do we have it on its heels?” Mors asked, looking pointedly at Belkor.
Belkor shifted on his feet. “As you know, ma’am, an insurgency is hard to fight. The resistance blends in with the nonmilitant populace, and killing innocents indiscriminately would only increase the number of otherwise neutral Twi’leks sympathetic to the resistance. We’ve made progress, but this will be a lengthy affair.”
“Of course,” Mors said. “Of course. I know you’re doing all that can be done. And as for the failed hijacking, I only just learned of it. Oh, but as a result Senator Orn Free Taa will be returning to Ryloth in ten days. I only just learned that, too.”