[Republic Commando] - 03(117)
Skirata called it going gray. He had a gift for behaving and dressing in such a way that he could pass completely unnoticed, drawing no attention. He could also stop traffic, if he wanted to. Funny little man; Ordo worshipped him. He certainly had a ferocious charisma.
As she crossed the walkways that connected the catering district from one of the retail zones that all looked the same now wherever they were on the planet, she took care to keep an eye out for trouble.
The Chancellor’s office. Well, if the taint goes that high …
No, this was stupid. She’d never been intimidated before, and she refused to be now. One more taxi hop and a ten-minute walk brought her to Quadrant T-15. She thought she’d found the road, but then realized it couldn’t be the right one; it was a long run of textile manufacturing units, not offices. She walked on, but the sector numbers were getting higher, so she was heading the wrong way. She retraced her steps. It still didn’t look right.
Besany fed the address into her datapad to check the coordinates, but it was adamant-this was definitely the right place. She walked the entire length of it, both sides, and found herself staring at Unit 7860, which should have been an office tower, but was very obviously a textile mill. Some of the walkway-level doors were open; she could see the machinery and occasionally some workers passing the doors.
Nonexistent accountant. Nonexistent company. Real credits. What was going on here?
Whatever it was, it was now clearly illegal, although she still had no idea of how trivial or how serious it might be. Regulations said that she should have logged it right away, but she couldn’t, not now. She wasn’t even sure whether to tell Jilka, because knowledge like that could put her at risk, too.
Besany kept her hand on her blaster, deep in her pocket, all the way back to her apartment. When she slipped her identichip into the lock and her doors closed behind her, she felt able to breathe again.
She looked at the chrono: late, very late, too late to eat, or else she’d never get to sleep. Grumbling to herself, she poured a glass of juice and watched the holonews headlines, not really taking it in but noting that the coverage of the war was now a long way down the menu behind the love lives of waning celebrities and cantina brawls involving gravball players. One of the more sober news channels had a defense analyst from the Republic Institute of Peace Studies putting forward theories about the nature of the Separatist droid threat, but it seemed folks wanted to skim over the depressing news as fast as they could. It was also getting harder to find any front-line reporting-organic or droid-lately. For Coruscant, it was business as usual, so who cared about fighting on the Rim? Trooper Corr didn’t agree with her, and had told her he was happier without a holocam peering over his shoulder, but she cared. She wanted to know everything about the war. It was as if watching it would give her some protective power over the threats facing Ordo and his brothers. Not watching every scrap of news felt like sneaking off sentry duty, which she could only imagine.
“Moron,” she mumbled at the screen. The analyst was throwing out numbers, huge ones, and because her business was numbers she found herself reaching for a stylus and doodling a few figures on the nearest datapad. “I bet you don’t even know how many zeros there are in a quintillion.” She did, though, and numbers comforted her, so she considered his argument. Then she started wondering how much metal went into a battle droid-forty kilos, at the very least-and multiplied it by a quintillion just out of curiosity, and then started wondering where all that metal came from if 90 percent of the average rocky planet was silica, and not all the remaining 10 percent was the right kind of metal, or could be mined anyway, and mining and ore processing ate up a lot of resources …
No, quintillions of droids didn’t sound feasible. But it was a lovely big unprovable number to throw out to frighten people. She was settling in to scrutinize all the analyst’s numbers when she heard a scratching sound that made her start.
Her apartment was on the five-hundredth floor, and armored rats didn’t make it into her neighborhood, let alone know how to use the turbolift. She looked around, realizing she’d left the blaster on the table, and as her gaze swept past the sliding transparisteel doors to the balcony, she saw it: a salky, a domesticated version of the Kath hound, a popular pet among the trendy set in Galactic City because it didn’t shed fur and didn’t need much walking. The animal stared at her, head cocked appealingly on one side, and put one paw against the glass in a mute plea to be let in.
It must have jumped across from an adjacent balcony. Some people had no idea how to look after their pets. Besany tutted loudly and opened the doors just wide enough to talk to it without letting it in. It thrust its muzzle through the gap, whimpering and trying to lick her hand.