So far in their investigation Chance had taken Arlen to a high-level cocktail lounge and a private feast. Before this meeting Chance had warned him it was going to be very different, but as they walked through the entryway of a mid-rise tower owned by a company called Gemstone Transit Limited, he couldn't see much difference.
As they rode the lift up the highest levels he asked, "Are you sure this guy's a criminal mastermind? Because his place looks pretty legitimate to me."
"'Mastermind' is a little overdoing it, but Gemstone Limited is legitimate. That's the whole point of having a front. He launders money through Gemstone that he makes on his illegal activities. Most of this company's clients don't even know how dirty his hands are."
"How do you know?"
He got a warning glare for an answer, so Arlen tried another question. "Does this guy know you know?"
"He thinks I know."
"Do you know that, or do you think he thinks you know?"
Chance rolled his eyes. "Stop it. You're confusing me."
"Seriously, this is important."
"No it's not. It won't even matter, because in ten minutes he's going to know I know for sure. Which is going to change my relationship with Gemstone Transit Limited a lot, by the way."
Arlen wasn't going to apologize. "It's important, Chance."
"Yeah, yeah, don't remind me." As the lift slowed to a halt, he straightened his suit jacket and breathed, "Showtime."
When Tomar Greshk came out to meet them he gave Chance a big back-slapping hug. To Arlen, introduced only be first name, he gave a firm handshake. After that all three of them retreated to a lounge with soft sofas and chairs angled to face a broad skyline view. Greshk poured three glasses of Johrian brandy and offered it as a toast. So far it really did seem like the rest, but that wouldn't last long.
"It's good to see you again, Chance, it really is," said Greshk after a few minutes of pleasantries. He was well-dressed, well-groomed and well-spoken, but in a way subtly different from old money like Retor of Kuhlvult or Volgma. "I certainly don't mind you stopping by, but I was wondering if you had a reason."
"I do, actually." Chance hunched forward, closer to Greshk. "You might have heard about a group of pirates that got caught in Bilbringi last months."
"I did hear about that." Greshk's eyes darted briefly to Arlen, but the Jedi couldn't get a read on whether this guy knew who he was.
"Did you also hear they stole three of my ships? Vessel, cargo, everything, gone."
"I'm sorry to hear that, Chance. Can you get them back now?"
"Nope. Nobody's been able to figure out who these pirates fenced them too. Seems like everything was a real top-secret thing. Only their captain knew for sure and he's dead."
"Can Tendandro handle a hit like that?"
"We might be in the red for a few months but we'll be okay, especially since the Imperials agreed to redistribute some of the funds from the pirates' accounts back into mine. It's as close to compensation as I'll ever get."
"So all of these pirates were captured?"
"Except the captain. But the point is, the Imperials were able to gain access to these guys' financial records. It seems that these guys have been getting their payments routed through a bunch of shell corporations I'd never heard of."
"Covering their tracks well, then."
"Impressively so. If someone's trying that hard to hide it makes me curious, so I did some digging on my own." He took out a slim datapad and set it on the table in front of Greshk. "A friend of mine with even more resources than me was able to pull registration records on a lot of those companies."
Greshk picked it up and looked over the data Retor of Kuhlvult had retrieved. "Not much to see," he said.
"Yes and no," Chance went on. "A lot in those records is confidential, but if you go through enough to see a pattern. Out of almost thirty companies, twenty-five are officially consolidated on one of four different Outer Rim worlds. More importantly, those twenty-five were all created between twelve and eighteen months ago."
"Very interesting, but I'm not sure what it has to do with me." Greshk gave the datapad back. From what Arlen could tell, he meant what he said. He really didn't know.
"Well, it got me thinking," said Chance. "If someone created all these fake companies a year and a half ago, and started buying a ton of stolen ships starting six month ago, then somebody's been planning this for a little while."
Greshk shrugged. "Less than two years isn't long in business-terms."
"Not necessarily. Sometimes a lot happens in a short time. So I got to thinking what started happening a year and a half ago. And you know what I came up with?"
"Do I have to guess?" Greshk looked guarded now.
"The one thing that jumped out at me is that the glitterstim market exploded again. I mean, bam, that stuff started selling all across the galaxy overnight in huge amounts."
"I didn't know you follow the traffic of illegal substances," Greshk said, very cold now.
"I normally don't, but you see, I have a certain interest in glitterstim. A personal one, actually. For a time my parents owned the spice mines of Kessel, did you know that? Tendrando Enterprises had a monopoly on all the glitterstim pulled out of there. And being upstanding corporate citizens, my parents made sure all of was sold to legitimate buyers for legal use."
"That's news to me," Greshk said. Arlen was sure he was lying. "But you don't own Kessel now."
"My parents sold it about twenty years ago. The planetoid's literally falling apart because it's so close to the Maw. It wasn't worth the investment to keep it running. I think it's passed through seven other owners since then. For a while glitterstim production spiked, but then it dropped back down again, I guess because nobody wanted to climb into the insider of a disintegrating planetoid and scoop up webbing from energy spiders."
"Who could blame them?"
"Exactly. But then glitterstim production exploded a year and a half ago. Kessel didn't change owners and the owners didn't invest in more mining equipment, so only one thing could have been behind the glitterstim explosion."
"Someone found a way to move energy spiders off of Kessel," Greshk said evenly.
"Exactly. My parents tried that but it never worked. Energy spiders need these plasma emissions to stay alive but nobody's been able to reproduce them outside of Kessel. I heard there was some success on Ryloth once, but that was a long time ago. The point is, somebody smuggled energy spiders off Kessel and somewhere they've got 'em thriving and spinning out webs of glitterstim in record volume. And whoever that guy is, you can bet your life he's become a very rich man very quickly."
"And you're telling me this… why?"
"I was just wondering what you've heard. Gemstone Limited ships all kinds of things all across the galaxy. If anyone would have an ear to the ground on who's making good and who's moving them, it would be you."
It was, Arlen thought, a fairly subtle way to accuse someone of being a drug-trafficker. Not subtle enough, from Greshk's hard expression. "Calrissian, I really don't know why you thought I could help you with this. You may have misjudged something in our relationship."
"I don't mean offense, I really don't." Chance held up a hand. "But seriously, Tomar, any scrap you can give me will help. And I swear I will never ask it again."
"You're damned right you won't." Greshk looked down at his near-empty tumbler. "What's in it for me?"
"I'll pay you twenty percent more on everything you ship for me up the Hydian and the Rimma."
"Thirty."
"Twenty-five."
"Good enough." Greshk leaned forward. "You want to know who's putting out all that new glitterstim? Fine. It's Mordran Krux." When Arlen and Chance exchanged questioning looks Greshk sighed and added, "Broken Moon. You've heard of that one?"
"We have," Arlen said.
"Ah, he speaks," Greshk said sarcastically. "What have you heard, friend?"
"I know it's a big up-and-coming crime syndicate. Based on a broken moon somewhere, apparently. Is this Mordran Krux the man in charge?"
"He is. Theelin. Used to work for one of the Hutt syndicates but broke off on his own. You're right, the glitterstim boom's made him a rich man really fast."
"I don't suppose anyone knows where he's farming spice now."
"You can bet your butt he's guarding that secret close."
"What about his base? Where's this broken moon?"
Greshk thought for a moment, then looked back to Chance. "Thirty percent."
"Fine," Chance sighed. "Where is he?"
"Word has it he's based on some moon spinning around a gas giant in the Tolomen system."
"Never heard of it," said Arlen.
"No reason you should have. It's way out on the Rimma, past Eriadu and Sluis Van. There's no habitable planets, just a moon that got smashed by an asteroid couple billion years ago. It's still in steady orbit somehow so Krux carved it up and made a base out of it. Or so they say."
"Sounds like something we'll look into." Chance rose to his feet and Arlen followed. He extended a hand. "Pleasure doing business with you."
"Pleasure's all mine, Calrissian," Greshk grabbed his hand and squeezed so hard Chance winced.
On their way back down the list Arlen asked, "How much did that cost you?"
"Thirty percent on the Rimma and Hydian, which means I'm going to have to look for new shipping clients on that route." He glanced at Arlen, eyes narrowed "Are you sure this is going to be worth the trouble?"
"You're the one who dragged me into this, Chance."
"I know. But somehow I feel like I'm the one getting dragged along now."
-{}-
The planet Varadan baked under the long light of twin suns. Harsh wind scraped layers off the desert and coated plain and mountain with hard fine sands the color of amber. Even the sunlight was colored by all the particles flying through the air and anyone who went outside without goggles and a breath-mask was asking to be blinded or choked.
Just stepping foot on the hellish world was enough to educate Jade Skywalker in the hell Moran Gnoll and the other Senex-Juvex laborers had been born into. They'd set down the shuttle they'd taken from Bastion in the of one of the deeper valleys they could find near the mining complex that sat amidst the mountains of the planet's northwest hemisphere. The most up-to-date intelligence reports they'd received when arriving in-system was that all outside communications with the facility had been lost after what seemed to be a mass worker uprising. That mining complex dug miles deep into the planet's crust and supposedly contained nearly one million workers and staff. Since travel on the planet's surface was avoided at all costs it was effectively its own subterranean city.
Because the situation was so precarious, it was agreed that the Jedi would land outside the mining complex, scout it out, then return to the ship and report back to Jade's aunt, who was coordinating Jedi efforts in Senex-Juvex from a ship on the edge of the Sectors.
Scouting the mine required them to actually reach it first, and Jade found herself doubting they could do even that. They'd supposedly landed only two valleys over from the main shaft entrance, but each of those chasms in the landscape took three or four hours to climb out of and another three or four to drop into. Jade and Jodram had spent a lot of time clambering around Ossus' rocky terrain but the cliffs and ridges on Varadan were twice as steep. Wharn, having been raised in a cold climate, moved sluggishly in the heat and kept on stopping to remove his breath mask and hastily gulp down mouthfuls of mater.
As for Master Mjalu, the diminutive Bimm had the most reason to be battered by the hostile landscape, but she fared better than any of them. Even as amber particles caught in tangles of her fur and the suns beat down on her head she moved with a strange grace, calling on the Force like it was a steady stream of energy, using it to pull herself over one ledge and outcropping after another. Jade could feel her concentration in the Force, that meditate state where she was at one with the world around her and moved over its surface as gracefully as a breeze. Jade could only watch her Master with awe and envy.
Varadan's twin suns gave it a day-period as long as a Coruscant-standard week, so when they reached the entrance to the mining complex the light was as bright and scorching as ever. They settled themselves on the downslope, inconspicuous amongst all the jagged brown rock. Jodram and Jade took out macrobinoculars and began to scan the mine entrance. From the surface, it didn't look like much. She spotted a few stout buildings and a pair of landing pads, one long and rectangular, the other square. Two medium-sized shuttlecraft sat on the square one and while the bulk of some freighter stretched across the big one. On second glance Jade noticed that that pieces of the freighter seemed to have been strewn across the desk. She saw the scorching on the hull next, and finally she realized that some of the debris on that field wasn't debris. It was bodies.
"There is death down there," Master Mjalu said simply.
"May I see?" Wharn spoke up, and Jodram passed him the binoculars.
Jade kept on scanning the surface. She spotted the communications dish atop a tower and angled toward the sky above. It didn't look damaged but it was hard to be sure of anything right now.
"Do you see that?" Wharn said. "The entrance is open?"
Jade swept her binoculars back down to the bottom of the canyon. She looked again at the landing pads and the one- and two-storey buildings, then spotted the black mark of an open door at the base of the one furthers from the landing pads.
"That's how you get in?" Jade asked. "I was thinking there's be something… bigger."
"Anything bigger and all the dust particles in the atmosphere would get into the mine," Wharn said. "To do proper mining you need rock-borers to chew into the planet's crust, you need droids, you need staff, and you need a way to transport all those things underground. I think that's what we're looking at."
"It's not very big," Jade commented. "You'd barely fit a speeder-bus through that portal."
"Most rock-boring machines are just that big. They wouldn't need to bring in larger equipment.
"You know a lot about tunnels," Jodram commented.
"Cities on the Chiss homeworld are essentially subterranean. So are many of its colonies." He handed the binoculars back to Jodram. "Tunnels are our specialty."
"I bet they are," Jodram muttered and looked at the complex again. "I don't see anybody moving down there. I can't say I like that."
"They can't all be dead," Jade said.
"They are not," Mjalu told them. "Calm yourselves, my apprentices. Reach out with the Force. Can you sense them, far below?"
Jade tried to push everything else out of her mind- the anxiety, the questions, the hot sun and howling wind and constantly sandstorm. She let herself sink into the Force and attune to its currents. Mjalu was right, but of course she'd be. There was a mass of people in the shaft below, thousands, maybe even a million. Their collective confusion, pain, and grief surged upward to the planet surface. It was so strong, so overwhelming, so reminiscent of another surge of singular grief and pain from twelve ears ago, that Jade had to break her own concentration.
Her eyes popped open. Mjalu said, "Let us descend carefully. There are many beings down there. I dare say they need our help."
"You're right," said Jodram. He sounded as shaken as Jade felt. "Let's get going."
-{}-
The descent into the valley was slow and careful. Whatever automated defenses or security systems were set up around the perimeter didn't seem to be operating any more, or if they did, nobody seemed to be watching them, because the four Jedi skid and clambered their way to the valley bottom without anyone trying to stop them. In fact, no living beings stepped outside the entire time.
That hardly made Wharn feel better. He still felt the collective anxiety of a million beings beneath them as they stepped through the open portal into the mining complex's vehicle hangar. At the far end was one boring machine much like the ones used on Csilla. A couple of speeder bikes sat unused closer to the door. The hangar had room for a few more mid-sized vehicles but that space was empty. Wharn wasn't sure what to make of any of it. None of the vehicles here looked damage, but they'd clearly been a fight about the freighter outside. Whether it had been attacked while landing or taking off, it had been too hard to tell.
There were three elevator shafts leading deep into the complex: one industrial-size platform for vehicles and two smaller ones per personnel. Of the two smaller lifts, one seemed to be operable and the other not. It was another small mystery Wharn didn't think he wanted to know the answer to.
Because the only way to go was down, they took the operable small lift and descended into the mine complex. The lift tube rattled the whole way down. None of the Jedi spoke. All of them were sinking into the Force, into themselves, trying to attain some mediative state so they could better read the collective mood of the underground city they were approaching.
What Wharn could feel he didn't like. It reminded him of one time he'd joined a convoy of Chiss vessels returning from a border conflict with the Vagaari. The battle had been a success but a bloody one. In ship after ship, the crews had emanated a grim sense of relief and satisfaction, mixed in with grief for lost friends and the jarring echo of violence.
There had been violence down in that mine. There was no doubt of that.
The interminable downward plunge ended with only the sudden shudder of the lift for warning. As the doors started to open Jade, Wharn, and Jodram placed their hands on their lightsabers, pretending they were ready for anything even if they weren't. Even though she had no weapon, Master Mjalu stood at in front of the doors, hands clasped calmly in front of her.
The door opened and no one was there. A broad platform stretched out in front of them. At first glance it was empty; then Wharn stepped out onto it for a better look and saw twisted metal of exploded machinery and many blaster-scorched marring what was roughly one acre of flat duracrete.
Beyond the platform, the rest of the mine complex spread out. A high dome of carved red stone sprawled two, maybe three kilometers into the distance. A compact grid-patteren city of miner's barracks, administrative buildings, warehouses, and more was laid out below them and illuminated by sun-bright glow-globes suspended midway between the cavern roof and the buildings.
In that light, they could see all the scars of a self-contained underground war. Broken walls slumped around black blast-craters. Crashing airspeeders had cut smoldering knife-streaks through the order street-grid. Fires still burned and smoke continued to rise and fan out against the darkened ceiling.
"Hide your sabers, children," Mjalu said.
"Why?" Jodram asked as he gripped his tighter.
"We don't know who is friend and who is foe here. Until we do it's best not to advertise ourselves. Do as I say. Now."
Once the three apprentices did so, Master Mjalu led the descent down the stairs from the elevator platform to the city. They spotted people moving through the streets; no one seemed to be fighting anymore but everyone hurried like they were still being chased by laser-blasts. Wharn was immediately stuck that the beings in the streets were all kinds: young and old, male and female, human and non-human. No one looked at them twice, both because everyone seemed to be hurrying about and because they did not stand out, motley mix though they were. He understood that all these beings must have been living here from the start. This had never been a mere mining complex: this was a city with all the complexity of life as city warranted. He wondered bleakly how many of its natives had ever seen an ocean or a blue sky. Some might have never even seen Varadan's bitter surface.
As they walked he spotted Ugnauts, Tynnans, Rodians, Falleen, Ryn, Nosaurians, and other species he couldn't place. The Senex-Juvex Houses were supposed to be human supremacists but humans seemed to make up less than a third of the beings they were seeing in the streets. That, combined with the sense of weary shell-shocked satisfaction coming them from all, pretty much confirmed what Wharn had suspected from the start. There had been a violent insurrection against the ruling powers of House Petro, and the insurrectionists had won.
Wharn didn't know how to feel about that. He knew many Jedi sympathized with the rebels and not without cause; the mistreatment they'd endured at the hands of the ossified Senex-Juvex ruling caste was deplorable. Yet he was a Chiss, and the Ascendancy itself was an aristocracy, albeit one with more room for individual advancement and personal agency. There was a value in order. The best society was one where every being knew the rules and had a place to stand. To tear the rules down tore down the people and invited anarchy. That had been drilled into him since he was a child. Even after three years among the Jedi, who often viewed things so differently, that core belief was hard to shake.
Even if a rising like this spread across the rest of Senex-Juvex, there was no guarantee that what came after the Houses would be an improvement.
As they moved through the streets they realized that most of the beings were moving, however furtively, in the same direction. Jade was the one to finally give in to her curiosity and call out to a trio of passing Nosaurians.
"Hey!" she called, "Hey, where is everyone going?"
The trio swung their beaked faces to look at her. They blinked small reptilians eyes and the lead one said, "The main plaza, of course. Savyar's going to be there. It's almost time."
"Savyar?" Wharn said. "Here?"
All three of them looked at him without reply. Even in as mixed a city as this, a Chiss still warranted stares.
"We've been hiding since the fighting began," Master Mjalu said. Her voice, usually soft but firm, now creaked with feigned helplessness. "The children wanted to help but I told them to stay where it was safe. I'm sorry, I wish we could have helped, but, well, I'm not as strong as I used to be." She added a pathetic cough and the Nosaurians' suspicious looks finally wilted.
"We didn't know she was coming until she was already here," one of them said. "She must have sneaked into the facility somehow, under the noses of the security forces."
"What happened to them?" asked Jodram. "Where are all House Petro's soldiers?"
"Come and find out," the lead Nosaurian said with a hungry gleam in his eye. Then they turned and scampered ahead.
More slowly, with a shared and wordless trepidation, the four Jedi followed. They reached what was clearly a pre-planned plaza at the center of the otherwise cramped and utilitarian city and found it packed with people. The Jedi jostled around the edges of the crowd, trying to get a better look at what seemed to be a platform in the center. A chaotic roar erupted on the far side; Wharn felt a surge of anger and hunger from the crowd but saw no violence. He still didn't know what was happened but the feeling in his gut got worse.
When a pair of Trandoshans nearly trampled Master Mjalu, Jodram bent low and let the little Bimm climb onto him. When they moved through the crowd again, Mjalu sat with legs swung around each of Jodram's shoulders and dangling over his chest. In another situation it might have been an amusing sight, but nothing could alleviate the mounting dread.
There was another cry, and all eyes swung to the platform in the center. Even from a distance he could spot Savyar from her green head and black ponytail. She seemed to be dressed in a sleeveless scarlet robe. Climbing onto the platform with her were a dozen figures in armor, all of different colors but all sharing the same T-visor helmet.
"Mandalorians," Jade said as she stood on her toes and peered through shoulders and heads. "Kriffing Mandalorians."
"I bet that's how they got the edge on the security forces," Jodram said.
"Hush, children," Mjalu whispered, voice tense.
The crowd roared again as something else came onstage. People threw up their arms in excitement, blocking Wharn's view. He shifted to see through the forest up upraised arms, jostling shoulders with Jade as she tried to do the same.
He got a clear view just in time to see a herd of humans paraded before Savyar, all in the same set of dirty gray armor. He couldn't hear what Savyar was saying, not from this far away, but he had a good idea that these were captured House Petro security officers.
Then Savyar swung her arm, a straight horizontal swipe. Wharn spotted the flash of a vibro-knife and a jet of arterial blood from a soldier's neck, blood that splashed on Savyar's scarlet gown and disappeared. The body toppled like a tree into the arms of the ravenous crowd.
"Get back, children," Mjalu said, voice urgent. "Fall back! Now!"
Jodram obeyed first. He swung his shoulders back and forth, pushing against the crowd as they surged hungrily toward the stage. Wharn risked one looked back to see two more bodies falling into the pit. Even as they broke away from the square, away from the rush of angry desperate people, they couldn't ignore all the rage blazing up behind them. It was like a bonfire in their minds, hot and hungry and all-destructive, and there was nothing they could do to drown it out. It just kept on burning.