Belkor’s mind immediately turned to Cham and possibilities. “Why is he returning, I wonder? It’s been many months since he was here last.”
“Who knows the minds of politicians, Belkor? But I think probably the Emperor has ordered him back to publicize the terrorists’ failed hijacking, offer support for the occupation, that kind of thing.”
“Reassure the nonmilitants,” Belkor said. “Show them that the terrorists are doomed to failure.”
“No doubt,” said Mors. “In any event, now you know as much as me.”
And Belkor would put it to good use. “Will you be arranging his welcome personally, ma’am? Or should I?”
“Oh, I trust you to handle it, Colonel. In my name, of course. Now, where’s my wine girl?”
“I’ll see to the preparations immediately,” Belkor said. “Is that all?”
“That’ll be all.”
As Belkor walked away, Mors called after him. “Belkor!”
“Yes?”
“Lighten up some, Colonel! You must learn to enjoy yourself! Oh, and if you see my wine girl, please send her to me.”
“Of course,” Belkor said, and took his leave, his mind spinning with possibilities. By the time he reached the shuttle, he’d narrowed them down and already had a plan in mind. His opportunity had come. The assassination of Orn Free Taa on Mors’s watch would be a fatal blow to the Moff. Taa was a powerless figurehead, of course, but he was a figurehead and mouthpiece the Emperor used as a tool when it came to quieting Ryloth. Belkor would simply need to take care to ensure that he himself wasn’t caught in the backblast of Mors’s fall.
Moff Belkor Dray sounded to him for the first time not merely aspirational but plausible, and soon.
The moment he reached his quarters planetside, he used a portable, personal comm to send an encrypted message to Cham.
We need to meet immediately.
Cham’s answer came back within the hour, naming the time and place. The speed of Cham’s reply surprised Belkor. It was almost as if the Twi’lek had been expecting the message.
—
Five hours after night fell, Belkor stripped out of his uniform, donned civilian clothes and a hooded jacket, and logged his location in the computer as “off-base, recreation,” a euphemism officers used when visiting with their Twi’lek mistresses or frequenting cantinas. When a duty officer saw that entry in the log, out of consideration he asked no more questions.
“Safe travels, sir,” said the duty officer over Belkor’s comm. “It’s breezy out there.”
Belkor signed out an aircar from the vehicle bay, entered the code that lowered the bay’s force field, and exited the Imperial compound.
Ryloth’s capital city, Lessu, was built into and spiraled around a wind-carved stone spire as large as a mountain. The walls, villas, and more modest homesteads and businesses of the city clung like so much lichen to the face of the spire. Thousands of reinforced tunnels and natural caves also pockmarked the stone, and seen by day they reminded Belkor of the aftermath of an artillery barrage. The city had seen a lot of strife, as had the planet, and it showed.
Dozens of aircars, a few brave souls bent against the wind on speeder bikes, and the native Ryloth kinetic gliders, wings wide to harness the gusts, coasted over and around the spire, their nighttime lights blinking or flashing in the darkness. He spotted a couple of Imperial patrol craft hovering low over the city. Belkor used Imperial craft judiciously when enforcing Imperial rule. The sight of Imperial ships sometimes upset the natives. So he left the day-to-day policing of the city to a Twi’lek security force, made up of Twi’leks co-opted by better living conditions and pay to enforce Imperial rule against their own people.
He set his onboard comp to broadcast a high-level security code so he would be unbothered as he left the city’s airspace.
Cooking fires burned here and there in the streets and courtyards and caves below him. Even at the late hour, people and pack animals and vehicles thronged the streets, the heat and boredom bringing them outdoors.
Summer brought nighttime riots to Ryloth as surely as it brought high temperatures. The heat brought crowds into the streets and cantinas, and crowds brought anger, and anger brought riots. Belkor’s policy, administered in Mors’s name, was to contain the riots and, as best they could manage, prevent fatalities and extensive property damage, but never to squelch them. He considered them a useful venting mechanism. Most Twi’leks fell into the middle between the satisfied collaborators and the zealots of the resistance, but almost all were occasionally resentful of the Imperial occupation. They needed an outlet for their simmering anger.
“Give them their riots, or push them all into the Free Ryloth movement,” Belkor had told Mors. “In time, we’ll tame them and they’ll welcome their bondage. Many already do.”
Mors had seen the wisdom in it. As Belkor saw it, Cham Syndulla already had enough fighters and spies in his movement.
Belkor pulled back on the controls and took his aircar up to cruising altitude. The surrounding landscape came into view, pale in the light of Ryloth’s largest moon, where Mors dwelled.
Scattered villages and towns, either walled or built mostly underground against the unrelenting winds and the planet’s dangerous predators, dotted the broken, rocky ground within a few kilometers of Lessu. Tough, wind-resistant scrub and the thin-trunked, flexible whiptrees so common on Ryloth blanketed the jagged ground in dark patches.
Movement below caught his eye. He fixed the onboard cam on the activity and magnified: a trio of huge lyleks were dismembering another, smaller of their kind. The spiked pincers and powerful mandibles of the large insectoid predators moved up and down in a herky-jerky fashion, killing and cutting with a vicious efficiency that Belkor admired. No wasted effort in their slaughter. All business; very Imperial-like, he thought.
He turned westward into the face of Ryloth’s winds, and the gusts fought him for control of the vehicle. Dirt and debris hit the windshield like shrapnel. He was not a good pilot, so he just white-knuckled the controls, sweating, and relied on the compensators while he flew toward the rendezvous point.
Once he was well clear of Lessu’s airspace, he deactivated the transmission of his security code. Out of concern for leaving traces that could be tracked after the fact, he didn’t enter the coordinates for the rendezvous into the nav computer. Instead, he simply put a live readout of coordinates on the comp screen and watched them scroll by as the aircar chewed up the klicks.
CHAPTER FOUR
Belkor flew over jagged canyons, salt plateaus, and rocky valleys dotted with vast towers of stone. Huge expanses of Ryloth were uninhabited, except for the occasional isolated village or settlement that had little contact with the outside world. Herds of predators and prey filled the wild country outside the cities. The planet would have been completely irrelevant except as a source of forced labor but for the presence of ryll, a miracle ore with military, recreational, and scientific applications.
In the distance to his right he saw the lights of a ryll-mining operation, but the scroll of coordinates told him to keep heading west. He slowed as he flew closer to his destination, watching the coordinates count down to the designated location.
He saw it ahead and below, a valley wooded in whiptrees and scrub, with boulders strewn about as though cast there by giants. Caves dotted the valley walls. Cham would be in one of them. Belkor circled the valley twice, looking for Cham’s ship, but saw nothing. On his second pass, an infrared beacon pinged his aircar from one of the caves.
“Evening, Syndulla,” he said, and headed down.
As he stepped out of his aircar, he was accosted by the omnipresent wind and the Twi’lek woman who always seemed to be at Cham’s side—Isval, he thought her name was. She stepped out of the brush, turned him roughly around, and patted him down for weapons. The look on her face was more intimidating than the twin blasters and vibroblade she wore.
“Wait a minute,” he said, but she didn’t, and the st
rength in her hands left him no doubt that resistance would be useless. She removed his belt blaster, which was more ceremonial than anything: Belkor had fired a blaster only to qualify on the range, never in combat.
“Follow,” she ordered him. “And don’t speak to me.”
“And who are you to—”
She whirled on him, lips twisted into a snarl, revealing teeth she’d sharpened to points, something typically done only by male Twi’leks. Her fists were bunched. “Was I unclear, Imperial? Do not speak to me.”
She spun around and led him toward the cave where, presumably, Cham awaited. Having no desire to see those teeth again, he held his silence.
Cham stood at the mouth of a cave, holding the infrared light, his face grim and ghostly in the night air. The wind tore at Belkor’s hair. Nervousness rooted in his stomach. He’d never trusted Cham, but he’d always figured Cham was not stupid. Cham knew Belkor was a traitor, to Mors if not to the Empire, but Cham also knew that Belkor had substantial information on Cham’s operations. Names, places. Belkor could hamstring the resistance if he had to. And Cham wouldn’t risk that. But…this meeting had a different feel to it than their previous encounters.
“Let’s do this right here,” Belkor said. “What I have to say won’t take long.”
“What I have to say will,” Cham said, switching off the infrared. He turned and started heading into the cave. “Follow.”
Layered between Isval and Cham, Belkor had little choice. He put a hand on the empty blaster holster he wore. Isval snickered.
“Eyes open,” Cham said over his shoulder to her, and she stationed herself at the cave mouth.
Belkor scurried after Cham, and they headed deeper into the cave.
“I can’t see, Syndulla,” Belkor said, holding his hands out in front of him. Twi’leks, who spent much of their lives underground, saw quite well in the darkness. Belkor felt as vulnerable as he ever had. He was breathing too fast, sweating.
The infrared light came back on, revealing Cham directly before him, staring into his face.
“Blast!” Belkor said.
“These caves are old,” Cham said. “The mountains are porous with them. My people retreated to them to form resistance bands. It’s gone on cycle after cycle. The oppressor changes, but the caves remain the same.”
He held the light up to the walls, which Belkor saw were covered in anti-occupation graffiti, some of it going back to the Clone Wars and earlier.
“Twi’leks disliked the Jedi and Separatists as much as the Empire,” Belkor said.
“We dislike yokes of any kind,” Cham said.
Behind them, a gust of wind howled across the mouth of the cave.
Belkor tried to recapture some of the conversational ground he knew he’d lost. “I’m not here for a history lesson, Syndulla.”
“No,” Cham said, his tone different from any of their previous dealings, more self-assured. “You’re here to learn a different kind of lesson.”
“And how’s that?” Belkor asked, hoping he sounded unconcerned. He glanced back over his shoulder, thinking that the female Twi’lek was back there in the darkness somewhere, watching him. He imagined her eyes locked onto him the way predators locked eyes on prey, and his mind flashed on the lyleks he’d seen on his flight there, dismembering the smaller, weaker one.
He cleared his throat and pushed the image out of his mind.
The tunnel snaked left. An orange glow lit an open space ahead.
Within the sand-floored chamber was a simple wooden table, with two chairs set beside it. Nothing else. Just the table.
“Are we playing holochess, Syndulla?”
“We’ve been playing holochess for years, Belkor. And you lost. You just didn’t realize it. But you’re about to. Sit. We’re going to be honest with each other now. Completely honest.”
“That sounds ill advised,” Belkor said, an attempt to joke away his growing concern. The dry air pulled the moisture from his mouth. He slipped into the seat opposite Cham. The Twi’lek’s orange skin was flushed, his lekku swaying slightly, his eyes on Belkor’s.
Belkor had to work to answer Cham’s gaze. “Are you on the spice, Syndulla? I think maybe you misunderstand our relationship, as does your girl out there. I’m not the one working for you. You’re working for me. I can forgive a slip-up once, but—”
Cham held up a hand, his brow furrowed with anger, and Belkor stuttered into silence.
“Honesty, I said,” Cham said. “I’ll start. You’re here to tell me that Orn Free Taa is returning to Ryloth on a state visit in ten days.”
“I…” Belkor stopped himself and regathered his words. “You have excellent spies.”
“More than you know. He’ll be aboard a Star Destroyer, the Perilous.”
Belkor sat back in his chair, sweating, studying Cham, affecting indifference but, he feared, doing a poor job of it. “And?”
Cham leaned forward in his chair, his hands gripping the edge of the table. He stared into Belkor’s face. “And I see you, Belkor. Do you see me?”
“What? I don’t…What?” Belkor felt off balance, and sure he must look ridiculous.
“I’ve always seen you,” Cham said. “You thought I was dancing to your song this whole time, yes? You thought you were playing me? You’re a child, Belkor.”
Belkor blinked in the face of Cham’s assuredness. He tried to summon words, found none, tried to summon his dignity, found it wanting. He stood on shaky legs. “Our relationship is over. I’m leaving.”
“No, you’re not. Sit down, Belkor Dray. Sit.”
Belkor swallowed, felt his face color with anger and fear. “What are you going to do? Kill me? I’ve taken steps. If anything happens to me—”
“You have agents who’ll kill me? A lie, Belkor. You’d trust no one enough to let them know about our relationship. Oh, I know you’ve got men loyal to you and not Mors all over the planet, but you wouldn’t tell them about us or they wouldn’t be loyal anymore, now would they? The fact that you have those forces is what makes you interesting to me. I have forces, too, Belkor. The two of us, we make quite a pair.”
“A data disk,” Belkor said, his tone high-pitched, his speech rapid. “In the event of my death. It identifies you, the location of many of your bases, your people. It’ll go out to everyone who needs to know.”
Cham smirked. “Now, that I believe, but it changes nothing. You don’t know half of what there is to know about my network, Belkor. That disk would be a blow, but not a mortal one.”
The Twi’lek said nothing for a moment, seemingly to allow Belkor to process his claims. Belkor didn’t know what to make of them. Lies, truth. He couldn’t say.
Cham’s tone changed to somber. “Besides, I’ve been prepared to die for my principles for a very long time. Threats don’t move me. But what about you? Do you have any principles, Belkor? Are you prepared to die for them? Are you prepared to die for the Empire? Here. Now.”
He stood, drew his blaster, and pointed it at Belkor’s head.
Belkor blinked, swallowed. “No.”
Cham holstered his weapon and sat.
“I thought not. Why would you want to die? You’re a creature of ambition, Belkor. That makes you easy to read and easy to play. And it means that between the two of us, you’re the only one with anything to lose. Let me show you something.”
Cham removed a portable holocrystal and palm-sized player from one of the pouches on his belt. He placed it on the table and activated it. Belkor watched images of his previous meetings with Cham played back at him, dozens of them. He heard his own voice telling Cham or one of Cham’s agents about a shipment coming at this or that date, intelligence about the number of Imperial soldiers on guard at this or that spice-production plant, patrol schedules and how to avoid them, countless moments of incrimination, innumerable incidences of treason.
Belkor could feel himself deflating, feel the air going out of him. He looked around the cave for the imager, certain this meeti
ng, too, was being recorded.
“You’re recording this meeting, too,” he said, his voice small.
“Of course,” Cham said. “You’re mine. You’ve always been mine. And now you know it. That’s the honesty I promised you. Do we understand each other now?”
Belkor nodded, reeling. He felt dizzy. “We understand each other.”
“Good. Now, I can be a kinder master to you than the Empire has been to Ryloth. No one has to lose here, Belkor. That’s honesty, too. But I need more from you now than I’ve ever required before. I need more than information. I need commitment. I need collaboration.”
Belkor was shaking his head. “I can’t. I won’t.”
“You can, and you will. You must.”
And despite his protests, Belkor knew he would. He had to. His thoughts were swirling and he saw no other out.
“Tell me what you want,” he said softly.
“First, tell me everything about the Perilous. Is Taa bringing his full staff? Any other dignitaries aboard?”
“I only know about Taa,” Belkor said. “I’m sure his staff will be there, but no one else of note.”
Cham studied his face, as if searching his eyes for a lie. “Honesty, I said.”
“That’s the truth,” Belkor said. “Just Taa.”
Cham pursed his lips. “I believe you, Belkor. So, here is what I need from you…”
Cham leaned back in his chair and for the next half hour outlined what he required. Belkor listened to it in growing disbelief. He’d had no idea Cham had so many men and so much matériel at his disposal. He’d underestimated the Twi’lek, and it had cost him.
At last Cham finished and asked, “Do you understand?”
Belkor nodded. It felt like surrender.
“Good,” Cham said. “Now for more honesty. If this fails, I’ll expose you.”
“What? I said I’ll give you the assistance you want! But I can’t give you a guarantee of success!”