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CHARBI SPACEPORT, VULPTER, DEEP CORE

Ben pressed as close to the viewport as he could to peer at the permacrete below. It was hazy daylight outside, but his body said it was still last night and he needed more sleep.

As far as the rest of the spaceport was concerned, the well-maintained but very old Incom tourer was not a Galactic Alliance Guard ship carefully contaminated with Corellian dust, Corellian food waste, Corellian fabric, and any number of other touches designed to show a forensics team that the vessel definitely came from Corellia. And the battered intersystem delivery cutter tailing Cal Omas's shuttle wasn't a spy vessel with top-of- the-line comms, spoofing devices, and an overpowered hyperdrive.

Jori Lekauf wasn't a GAG assassin, either. He was just a nice ordinary young Corellian on an adventure with his younger cousin in an elderly ship he'd saved every spare credit for a couple of years to buy.

The trouble was that Ben could believe that all too easily, even though he'd seen the range of weapons Lekauf carried under his jacket.

"If I'd kept my hair red, the family resemblance would have looked more convincing," Ben said. He wanted another caf to keep him alert, but he had a vision of being desperate to visit the refreshers at a critical point in the operation if he drank any more. "Your hair's reddish, really."

"More sandy blond," Lekauf said. "One redheaded human is noticeable, but two is asking to be remembered by witnesses. If we have any, that is."

"Could have dressed as Ubese . . . with masks."

"I think that's been done before."

"I'm just worrying."

"I know."

It was a long wait. Shevu would make contact with them when he landed. His last transmission said he was a few minutes behind Omas's shuttle, which wouldn't attract suspicion; Charbi was a busy port freighting cheap and shoddy goods, and ships landed almost too close together for safety and comfort. Nobody cared who you were as long as port fees and taxes were paid.

They said Vulpter had once been a lovely planet. It didn't look lovely now: the skies had that polluted smoky haze that meant there were wonderful red sunsets here, and not much else to be grateful for. And this was after they'd tried to clean up the environment. The vast landing strip—landing field, more like—was scattered with dozens upon dozens of craft in varying stages of disrepair, some taking on board supplies and fuel, some berthing next to freight warehouses where conveyor belts disgorged crates into their holds. Their outlines shimmered in the heat haze from idling drives. And there were all kinds of species wandering around on foot between the vessels, stretching their legs—anywhere between one pair and four of them, it seemed. The only concession to landing field safety was a tracery of red and white painted lines across the permacrete bearing the warnings pedestrians DO NOT CROSS

THIS LINE and BEWARE GROUND TRAFFIC.

But everyone was crossing the lines as they pleased, and battered speeders with Charbi Port Authority livery swerved around them, honking in annoyance.

Ben decided it was the last place anyone would expect two heads of state to conduct a top-level meeting.

"Stand by," Lekauf said quietly, pressing his fingertip to his ear.

"It's the captain . . . yes, sir . . . copy that." He looked up. "About twelve minutes before Omas lands. Shevu's right behind him in the landing queue."

Ben perked up. The Karpaki was folded in two inside his jacket, right on the limit of what he could hide, and the vibroblade was tucked in his hip pocket. He'd rehearsed it all in his mind on a continuous loop of what-ifs and if- onlys: rifle to drop Gejjen, preferably at very long range, and vibroblade to escape if seized.

It would have been better to get Gejjen as the man disembarked, while he was exposed on the landing field for a few moments without bystanders milling around. But Jacen wanted the meeting recorded. It was a case of following Gejjen—or Omas—to the room they'd hired by the hour, then slipping a strip-cam through a gap under the doors. The building blueprints showed plenty of places to insert the flimsi-thin device. Each room's doors were set in a recess, so—for once—it was a simple matter of squatting down as if picking up a piece of litter and shoving the strip-cam into the gap.

"Should have put a hidden bug in Omas's coat or folio or something," Lekauf muttered. "Then we sit here, pinpoint Gejjen's ship, and slot him on the ramp as he leaves."

Ben fidgeted with the vibroblade, wondering how his mother would have tackled a job like this. "You can't stick bugs on people without them finding out sooner or later."

"Yeah, with our luck he'd have changed his jacket. They used to have this stuff called tracking dust, you know. Just like powder. If the target inhaled it, you could pick up signals from it for ages afterward."

"Makes you wonder how much all this stuff costs," said Ben. "I mean, we're dirt-cheap, but we have to abandon this ship."

"It's an old crate. Saves the Defense Department the cost of disposal."

And leaving it behind would add weight to the setup that Corellian dissidents had killed their own Prime Minister for giving in to the GA.

That was the plan, anyway.

Ben switched seats in the cramped interior to look out from the starboard side. Gejjen's ship should have landed by now, according to its flight plan: one pilot, three passengers, maximum five-hour stopover.

That was what it said on the CPA information database that his datapad —scrubbed of all identity, in case of capture—showed him.

Ben avoided looking at the chrono on the bulkhead. He just waited for the word from Lekauf.

"So how do you feel being an officer now?" Ben asked.

"Weird. But my granddad would have been so proud. I wish he'd been alive to see it."

Lekauf never mentioned his parents. It was always his grandfather.

It struck Ben that almost everyone he'd grown up with or worked with either had no family or had key members missing or totally absent. It wasn't normal. He thought about how routine killing was for his whole family, and knew that most of the beings in the galaxy got through their entire lives without ever killing anyone, deliberately or accidentally.

It was strange that families like his got to make the really big decisions for worlds of normal, ordinary, nonlethal people.

Ben concentrated on centering himself, edging a little toward that state where he vanished from the Force. He pulled himself back just as he felt a drifting sensation that could have been disappearance, or nodding off.

"Plug yourself in," Lekauf whispered. "It's a go."

Ben activated his comlink and earpiece, and shut down the environmental controls to leave the tourer.

When Lekauf opened the hatch, the air and noise hit Ben like a solid wall.

It smelled of factories and sulfur. They ambled down the ramp, working hard at looking ordinary, and made their way toward the terminal buildings as if they were killing time, not politicians.

Lekauf scratched his ear, repositioning the earpiece. "Got you, sir. Position?"

Ben picked up Shevu's voice clearly. "He'll pass thirty meters to the left of you unless he deviates. Heading for Building G. You pick him up and I'll follow you in."

"No visual on the target yet."

"He must be inside already."

Oh, this is real. This is happening.

It was a throwback of a thought, back to the time when Ben first started taking crazy risks, but this mission had an extra dose of risk: Omas knew him by sight, and had even met Shevu, too. They couldn't afford to be spotted. Ben slouched and meandered as fourteen-year-old boys were prone to do, turning around from time to time to chat to Lekauf about safe and meaningless trivia—baka rock, speeders, anything—while he took a cautious look across the permacrete in Omas's direction. And there he was: flanked by two men in working clothes, a carefully scruffy figure himself. His confident bearing gave him away as a man used to being obeyed, but only to someone who knew what he was looking for. And Ben did.