Gently, I extricated my elbow from Rhode's, to float away in the throng of merrymakers. Drawing upon the Emperor's teachings, I dulled down my mental acuity to a subdued electrical crackle hovering just above the water-level of the crowd's collectively moronic IQ, instead of its typical beam of light.
There weren't any Force-sensitives left, but you just never knew.
A middle-aged woman sidled up to me. "Excuse me, but do you happen to happen to know where the hosts are? That Noss always gets away from me."
"Oh," I replied, "I haven't seen him. Maybe he's over by the bar?"
"Funny thing about him, though," a young man with meticulously curled chestnut hair linked on to the conversation. "They say he's rising quickly, too quickly. You're certainly right to try to find him here, Rele. I don't know what kind of hold he has, but he's sure got a suspicious past. Have you heard, he might have been a—"
"I know, a smuggler," a broad, authoritative man shouldered his way into the conversation. "Look at him sometimes. He's capable of it. I just bet he's killed a man…"
"Well, I'd hardly say she's going to find him here," a woman with austerely plucked eyebrows and a sweetly loose tongue interrupted the pocket of hushed silence. "No one's ever seen him. Even at his own parties, have you ever seen…"
With the new addition, I detached, and chatted my way through the crowd. Idiots, indulging in idiotic gossip. The mass of people fit into every nook and cranny of the sub-ballroom of the house of a petty officer. Inherited money, I guessed, went into those golden gargoyles on the walls.
As well as something else, something a bit more tangible?
I grabbed a drink from the nearest server and strode over to the wall, positioning myself right under the gargoyle. I allowed a glazed look to enter my eyes and threw back my head as I ostensibly savored the drink, staring straight into the bottom of the neo-Gothic monstrosity.
Ah. Just as I had thought. Pinhole cameras. From the angle, they were bound to be watching a spot further down the wall to the right. I stretched out with the Force. Yes, there was definitely something that way. Something Noss didn't want anyone to find.
I wandered over to the right, somewhat disconcerted. It shouldn't be so easy. Not the job, obviously—the job was still ahead of me—but this aspect of simply slipping away. I fell into the currents of the half-dancing, half-chatting bureaucrats and with a little wishful thinking in the Force, found myself propelled towards my destination by a crowd that, despite all the women's dramatic, newly applied makeup, seemed remarkably faceless.
I hovered on the edge like a shy outcast wanting desperately to join a conversation. Really, though, I was more interested in the wall that fairly buzzed and leapt with danger behind my back than the incongruous cliques before my eyes. Insinuating talkatively. Plotting uselessly. Uselessly, because the Emperor knew the subtleties of their desire, and how to contain their sloshing of their emotions within the limits of reason. Channeling them to create order. Direction.
And I was his tool with which to direct them. I refracted just a hair of the crowd's pent-up frustrations back at themselves. Making them face the mirrors of their souls, so to speak.
Sometimes irony is so kriffing fun.
Misinterpreting the anger as mine, the gathering collectively spat out the standoffish visitor. Deliberately reeling, I backed up against the wall again, shaking my head mock-sadly and staring at the dregs of my drink.
There was a slight notch in the wall behind me—a hidden door, but one meant to be opened only in absolute solitude, not in the middle of a party. Blast! All my simulations had required that I make a deliberate lie to sneak away and access some safe or other from a back room.
Was there any back entrance? I slipped away, with no one noticing my absence from the faceless crowd. That would change, someday, and the crowd would grow faces and backgrounds and notice my absence, and my lies and plans would come in handy. But for now, I kept the stale but remarkably useful stories of sickness rolled up tight inside me, like the spray stick strapped to one leg and the lightsaber strapped to the other.
I crept through a back hallway leading out of the room and down two small, straight flights of stairs. But the farther I walked, the more distant the feeling of otherness and danger seemed. I thought back to the architectural plans I had studied of Noss' residence. The ballroom I had departed was a central room, with several passageways—including the one I was now in—radiating out from it like spokes to reach the diameter of the roughly cylindrical building. Logically, if there was a hidden room right behind the walls of the ballroom, walking this way would only take me farther away. And—I scanned the walls—there were no alternate entrances. Theoretically, I could cut my own secret tunnel.
For at least 20 feet through a metal wall.
Estimated time: About half an hour. Estimated noise level: Loud. Estimated chances that someone wouldn't notice me: about nil.
Plus, a lightsaber is not a power tool.
Passing through the hallway again, I went back into the ballroom. Well, I hadn't planned on having to break into a secret room in plain sight. This Noss was clearly clever, using public opinion, and its embodiment in the hordes of the elite, as a most lethal bodyguard.
I rejoined Rhode. "And where have you been, my dear madam? You simply…slipped away." His mustache crumpled—whether with bemusement or amusement, it was hard to say.
I guess my stories would come in useful after all. "I was simply trying out the local cuisine. The bartender here is…delightful." I wiggled my elegant glass, devoid of any remaining alcohol.
Rhode smiled. "Isn't he."
"So," he clasped my hand, seguing into the center of the floor, "how do you find Imperial Center?"
I was disappointed. An intelligent man, an admiral holding great command, and still, the usual platitudes. But I wouldn't be doing my job if it wasn't so. "It's lovely. They used to call it Coruscant, you know. They weren't wrong. The sheen…" I waved my hand vaguely, "on the buildings..."
He looked down, brushing off the cuffs on his uniform, which had acquired quite a gleam itself. "Indeed. Well, if you had lived here all of your life, you might not find it so…shiny. It's quite a gritty place, you know. We keep order as best we can."
Yes, I thought. We do. And you do too, don't you? Thus the platitudes, thus the old courtesies. It's all a ritual, all a formula for order.
You fight the Empire's fight as well.
I barely even minded his obvious condescension as I eagerly, half-sincerely gazed at him. I expected him to curl his eyes around the tendrils of hair I was twisting in interest. I expected him to begin talking about his duties, or his work.
What I did not expect was for him to slowly, subtly start chuckling, as if he was urging me to join in the wait for something hilarious, and put one solid finger up to his lip. The fingers of the other hand, meanwhile, crept spiderlike towards his pocket and withdrew a small computer chip.
Immediately, I identified it—and knew Rhode must certainly have identified me. From the way my face twisted with recognition upon seeing the canister of top-secret issue Imperial nerve gas, I gave myself away as no mere bauble. With the residue of a smile upon his face, he wound his way onto the fringe of the crowd and lifted a rebreather out of his left pocket with two fingers, offering it to me like he had offered his arm before. I (graciously?) accepted it and watched as he took one himself.
This occurred over the space of a few seconds, but it seemed to take hours for me to slowly move the rebreather toward my mouth and watch him do the same. My mind was a blur of confusion. A thought—command?—shot through. An Imperial agent is ready for treason from any direction, Emperor's Hand. Rebreather half in my mouth, I spun, swiftly kicking Rhode—or whoever—in the torso. With a grunt of agony, his grip on the container spasmed. It dropped and broke on the marble floor. "No!" I screamed, choking on a concentrated breath of the gas. I shoved the rebreather back in my mouth and bent over, coughing. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the faintly yellow cloud of gas spreading through the hall, leaving the urbane guests twitching on the floor.
