Lilmit misinterpreted her question. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten you. Your name is Anja Gallandro, and I found out that you work for Czethros, too. You were with Han Solo, and you helped him destroy my entire cargo on its way to Anobis. Czethros really didn’t seem surprised when I told him. Oh, he was displeased to hear that you cost him most of his business on Anobis, but he was most displeased with me. He said your assignment was your business, and my assignment was my responsibility. I had to pay Czethros back for that loss out of my personal accounts. I barely kept my family from being sold into slavery. Now that I’m almost back on my feet, I won’t let you destroy my work again. I can’t afford it.”
“Czethros … you’re sure you work for him?” Anja said, thinking of how Czethros had pretended to be her friend, taken her under his wing, trained her on Ord Mantell. How could he be involved in such terrible things? Of course, he had ordered his henchmen to kill the young Jedi Knights….
“Yes!” Lilmit insisted. “Just as you do! But after that disaster of losing all the weapons, Czethros assigned somebody else to those duties and transferred me to the spice run instead. Please—don’t ruin this for me.” His voice carried a whining tone.
“I wouldn’t do that to you,” she said masking her confusion with a smooth reply. “We’re colleagues, right?” She fell silent, hoping he would blunder through more of an explanation. But already Lilmit’s words echoed like thunder through her head. Czethros himself had been involved in the gun-running to Anobis!
She couldn’t believe it. He had lied to her! And not just about the addictive properties of spice. He’d known all along how much she despised the endless conflict on her war-torn world. He had pretended to understand what Anja had been through. Czethros had consoled her, offered her a new chance at life, given her a job working for him. And all the while he had secretly been selling weapons so that the people on her world could destroy themselves!
He was a liar and a traitor.
Czethros had played her for a fool. He’d kept his true activities secret. He’d used her. In fact, Anja suddenly found it easy to accept that, in all likelihood, the man had purposely addicted her to spice just to keep her under his thumb.
It made complete sense now. Czethros was not a generous or benevolent man. He had managed to trap Anja in a prison of her own anger and need, and now that she needed the andris more than anything else … he had run. He’d disappeared, gone into hiding to protect his own skin. He didn’t care about her at all.
Her face hardened into a grim scowl. “And just where were you intending to go, Lilmit? You have a shipment of spice, you say?”
“I’m picking one up today. Just a small shipment,” the smuggler said. “Taking it to Mon Calamari. Czethros probably told you all about the Black Sun activities there. We’ve been building up quite a spice stash close to Crystal Reef, their largest resort city, near the Arctic. We hide the andris in the water beneath the polar ice caps to keep it potent. From there, we plan to sell it to select clientele in the floating casinos. The profits from this operation alone could make Czethros a wealthy man for the rest of his life. There’s a thriving black market. Only the wealthiest people from all over the New Republic can afford to stay on one of those oceangoing resorts. Especially Crystal Reef.”
Anja nodded slowly. A stash of andris on the ocean world…. Black Sun agents making illicit drug sales to customers in the floating casinos. It all made sense now. Czethros was indeed part of Black Sun, perhaps one of its leaders. He already had his claws into the gambling and entertainment on Cloud City. He stockpiled drugs on Mon Calamari … and had been running weapons to the civil war on Anobis, all the while pretending to be her friend and protector. Many of Anja’s people had died because of him. She began to wonder how many pots Czethros was stirring that she didn’t know about yet.
“Tell me the coordinates of your stash, Lilmit,” she said. “How do I find it? I’ll be taking over this run from you.”
Lilmit blanched. “No, please!”
“It’s all right. I’ve been testing” you,” she said. “For Czethros. He wanted to be sure you were up to the new assignment.” She paused, thinking fast. “You’ll make the delivery to Coruscant. I’ll take care of Mon Calamari, because—because it falls into my new territory. I’m surprised Czethros didn’t warn you.”
Lilmit said, “But what you ask is impossible. I couldn’t possibly make it past security to Coruscant with a load of spice.”
She sighed and shook her head in a disgusted fashion. “I told him he wouldn’t be able to entrust this mission to you, but he assured me you wouldn’t disappoint him again….”
“Wait! No. I can do this. If Czethros is trusting me to pull this mission off, then I will.”
“Good. Now tell me how to find the stash of andris on Mon Calamari. Czethros has ordered me to move it.”
In a stuttering voice, Lilmit told her. He gave her maps and the transponder frequency of the stash so that she could locate the supply in the extremely cold waters of the ocean world’s polar seas.
“I need to hurry,” Lilmit said, his voice quavering. “I don’t have much cargo, but …” He looked around furtively, anxiously. The other people in the domed space dock didn’t seem to feel his nervousness. “You know something’s about to happen here—and it’s got to be very soon now. Czethros has plans for Kessel.” He lowered his voice. “Between you and me, I don’t want to be here when his troops come in for the big takeover.”
“When?” Anja said.
“I don’t know. If he didn’t tell you, he certainly wouldn’t have told me.” Lilmit shrugged. “But these people don’t suspect at all, and I don’t want to be here during all the blaster fire. I need to get off this planet.”
“You will,” Anja said. “But I’m leaving first.”
“Wait. Why didn’t Czethros tell me about this change of plans?” Lilmit wanted to know.
“You said yourself there are many things Czethros tells me that he wouldn’t tell you,” Anja said.
“All right.” Lilmit glanced furtively around. “Just don’t let Czethros touch my family.”
Remembering that Lilmit had a family—one that he had barely kept out of slavery—Anja felt a pang of conscience. Although this man had smuggled who knows how many weapons to Anobis to fuel the war there, Anja found it harder to judge him now. She herself could no longer justify all of the work that she had done in Czethros’s service. She couldn’t even be certain that she knew the consequences of all of the tasks she had performed for him.
“If all goes according to plan, I assure you Czethros will never touch or threaten your family again,” she said.
Lilmit’s eyes lit with enthusiasm and wonder. “Then this assignment is important.”
Anja cocked her head to one side and gave him a wordless look that said, Of course. What did I tell you?
“Now, I’m going to need two doses of spice before I head out,” Anja said briskly, folding her arms across her chest and fixing him with a no-nonsense stare. She cast about in her mind for a good reason. “Uh, Czethros has asked me to do a bit of … spying for him while I’m on Mon Calamari.” She gave a meaningful lift to her eyebrows.
“Oh, I see. Certainly,” Lilmit said, hurrying into his ship and returning moments later with two insulated cryovials and a miniature carbon-freeze unit. “He told me I might need to be flexible on this assignment. Now I understand.” He handed her the vials. “Czethros warned me I wouldn’t be able to contact him until everything was ‘in place.’ So when you speak to him next time, tell him that I got the message. I won’t let anything get in my way this time, not even Han Solo himself.”