Ferus turned and walked out.
Vader had threatened him and gained his cooperation.
A small victory. But tasty enough to savor.
Ferus stood in the hallway outside the door. He couldn’t turn in Trever, of course. But he had no doubt that Vader would follow through on his threat. In the meantime, there were only a few hours before the no-confidence vote in the ministers’ hall. It was time for the resistance to mobilize and expose Bog.
At the very least, it would serve as a distraction.
As he stood, his heartbeat quickened. Something was different. He listened carefully. Usually the
sounds at headquarters were muffled and indistinct. But he could hear voices and footsteps. It wasn’t as though the place was coming alive … it was just more activity than usual.
He saw a nervous-looking junior officer heading down the hall. Ferus pretended to walk by him, then doubled back. The officer was speaking into a comlink.
Ferus kept well behind him, but accessed the Force. He screened out all the other noise and concentrated on that one voice.
“The troops are mobilized and ready for his order. Yes, sir. Garrison has been shifted to Order Thirty-Seven. Delegation is making plans to depart, but they are still quartered in the tower.”
Thirty-seven. Ferus knew that directive from his time on Bellassa. It meant that mass arrests were planned.
Ferus reversed direction again and headed for the exit, his heart pounding. Vader had lied to him. He had already given an order to his battalion. They were standing by. But who was he targeting?
Ferus had little doubt the Roshan delegation would be first.
He found Dinko, Nek, and Firefolk talking to Trever and Flame at the cantina. Ferus took a seat at the table. He nodded at Flame. If the resistance had included her, he would have to as well.
“I’ve heard a lot about you,” she told him.
“I’ve got news,” he said. “The Imperial battalion is on alert.”
“For what?” Dinko asked. “Invasion?”
“My guess is that they’re in reserve in case Bog isn’t elected. Anyone who protests will find themselves in an Imperial jail.”
“It’s happening,” Nek said. “What we feared for so long.”
“Is there anything we can do to stop this?” Flame asked.
Ferus frowned. “We’re missing something. What does the Empire have against Rosha? Why do they want to stop the trade agreement? They’re willing to invade a planet that isn’t even hostile to them.”
“We’ve had a rivalry with the Rosha, but lately we’ve realized that we can benefit each other,” Dinko said. “Before Bog started spreading lies about Rosha, diplomacy was working.”
Ferus took out the two Roshan droids and put them on the table. Firefolk leaned over with interest. “I’ve never actually seen these,” he said. “It’s illegal to import them.” Firefolk began to tinker with one of the droids, snapping off its control panel. “I’m a systems designer. This is a whole new technology to learn.”
Ferus leaned toward him. “Larker told me that the Roshans were experts in microtechnology.”
Firefolk nodded, still examining the droid. “Part of our rivalry, of course, was based on fear. Fear that their droids could invade our systems.” He let out a low whistle. “Would you look at this. A universal receiver microchip. And a remote sensory plug-in … with amazing range. I heard a rumor they’d developed this stuff, but …”
“What is it?”
“They can transfer information from any mainframe without a plug-in. This is an amazing delivery system. They can do it from distances, from the air.” Firefolk took out his datapad and began to run tests on the droid. “It’s got a direct system pathway to the photoreceptors and the movement sensors, so I’m guessing this is a way for the droid to read another droid’s programming … so it can avoid collision, say, or duplication. All in less than a second. On a world with heavy droid use like Rosha, it would be a necessity. Their droids fly, ours just hover. So in less than a second, they can single out what they need to know the other droid’s path, for example, so they can make a countermove. I’ve seen versions of this, but this is way beyond. Technically, it’s highly sophisticated.”
“Wait a second,” Ferus said. “You mean they read the other droid’s programming and analyze it?”
Firefolk looked at his datapad, which was now interfaced with the droid. “They don’t read it, they duplicate it, transfer it to their own system, analyze what they need, and then dump it.”
“Couldn’t they steal it, then?”