The Reticent was the only ship to have been sequestered following the catastrophe at the edge of Obroa-skai space. The rest that had fallen victim to the faulty interdiction field had been checked out and allowed to go on their way, which for most of them meant directly to the system’s namesake planet for repairs, after collisions with escape pods and debris from the wrecked Mon Cal star cruiser. That ship and the Detainer had also been towed to Obroa-skai, with the death toll from the crash estimated at eleven hundred beings. The state-of-the-art Immobilizer whose fail-safes had malfunctioned had been returned to Corellian Engineering for reassessment. Legitimate holovids of the events had flooded the HoloNet, most of them cammed by passengers aboard the luxury liner, and by media teams who had received word from unidentified sources of an Imperial operation taking place at the periphery of the star system. As for Carrion Spike, she had yet to turn up in any system. By the time the task force’s fastest frigate had reached Thustra, Tarkin’s rogue ship had already jumped to unknown space.
Crest was reading from a datapad.
“The ship’s identification signature doesn’t appear to have been altered. It hasn’t even changed names in decades. The crew acquired it three years back from a dealer on Lantillies. The itinerary we sliced from the navicomputer corroborates the captain’s story. They jumped from Taris to Thustra to pick up replacement parts for a fleet of Sephi flyers that were sold in bulk at the end of the war to an Obroa-skai emergency medevac center.”
“How was the pickup and delivery arranged?” Tarkin asked.
“Through a broker on Lantillies — maybe the same dealer in pre-owned ships. He gets a line on what’s needed when and where and dispatches crews to make the transfers.”
“The Reticent’s crew are freelance operators?”
Crest nodded. “They describe themselves as itinerant merchants.”
“Where were they bound after Obroa-skai?” Vader wanted to know.
“Taanab,” Crest said, “to buy foodstuffs. Parties at Thustra, Obroa-skai, and Taanab have substantiated all this.”
“And the communications board?” Tarkin asked.
Crest turned to him. “It isn’t set up to record incoming or outgoing transmissions, but the log checks out, at least in terms of supporting the captain’s claims about who contacted them and where the freighter was at the time.”
Vader scanned the hold, as if in search of something unspecified. “How long did they spend at Thustra?”
“Three hours, Lord Vader.”
Vader glanced at Tarkin. “What, I wonder, was their rush?”
Tarkin considered it. “Apparently the goods — the flyer replacement parts — were already crated and waiting for them. The medcenter on Obroa-skai had requested that they expedite the delivery.” He fell briefly silent. “The Reticent’s hyperdrive is vastly inferior to that of the Carrion Spike. No better than a Class Five, I would imagine. That means that even though they arrived in the Obroa-skai system at almost precisely the moment we were expecting the Carrion Spike, the Reticent had to have gone to hyperspace much sooner than the Carrion Spike would have. The timing could owe to nothing more than coincidence, but one question to ask is just what the dissidents were doing in the Thustra system for so many hours.”
Vader had swung abruptly to Tarkin on the word coincidence, and now the Dark Lord was in motion, pushing crates aside as he stormed about — without actually touching any of them.
“This ship rendezvoused with the Carrion Spike. I’m certain of it.”
Tarkin threw Crest a questioning look.
“If so, Lord Vader,” the stormtrooper said, “there’s no evidence of the ships linking up. No evidence in the comm board showing intership communication, and no evidence in the docking ring’s air lock memory showing that the Reticent was umbilicaled to another ship.”
Vader took a moment to reply, and when he did it was to pose a question to Tarkin. “Why would the dissidents elect to send us a ship, in any case?”
Tarkin smiled faintly, aware that the question was rhetorical. “To throw us off the scent, if I recall your phrase correctly. To give us plenty to deal with while they’re busy making plans to strike elsewhere.”
Vader turned and proceeded to the cargo hold ramp. “Let us see what the captain of this scrap heap has to say for himself.”
“You are not an itinerant merchant, Captain,” Vader said, gesticulating with his right hand. “You are in league with a group of dissidents intent on destroying military installations as a means of undermining the sovereignty of the Empire.”
A Koorivar with a long cranial horn, the Reticent’s naked and shackled captain was suspended a meter overhead, captive of a containment field produced by a device whose prototype had been manufactured on Geonosis long before the war. As far as Tarkin knew, the Executrix was the only capital ship in the Imperial fleet to have such an appliance, which created and maintained the field by means of disk-like generators bolted to the deck and to the ceiling directly above. The detention center’s version of prisoner interdiction, the field required that the detainee wear magnetic cuffs that not only anchored him in place but also monitored life signs: Too powerful a field could stop a being’s heart or cause irreversible brain damage. As well — and as if the field itself weren’t enough — the cuffs could be used as torture devices, capable of unleashing powerful electrical charges. Vader, however, had no need to utilize the cuffs. His dark powers had the captain writhing in pain.
“Lord Vader,” Tarkin said, “we should at least give him an opportunity to respond.”
Reluctantly, Vader lowered his hand, and the Koorivar’s ridged facial features relaxed in cautious relief. “I’m a merchant and nothing more,” he managed to say. “Torture me as you must, but it won’t change the fact that we came to Obroa-skai on business.”
“The business of conspiracy,” Vader said. “The business of sabotage.”
The Koorivar shook his head weakly. “The business of buying and selling. That is what we do, and only what we do.” He paused. “Not all of us were Separatists.”
Tarkin smiled to himself. It was true: Not all Koorivar population centers and worlds had thrown in with Dooku. Nor had all Sy Myrthians, a pair of which made up the rest of the crew.
But why would the captain say that?
“Why do you make a point of stating that fact, Captain?” he asked.
The Koorivar’s bleary eyes found him. “The Empire demands retribution for the war, and so it lumps the innocent with the guilty and holds all of us responsible.”
“Responsible for what, Captain? Do you believe that the Separatists were wrong to secede from the Republic?”
“I move about to keep from having to decide who is right and who is wrong.”