"Citadel Station," Krev tells Sorval.
Sorval nods. "Do we just take a lift-trip or-"
"We'll need some cargo capacity on the way back."
"I know someone who will most likely borrow me an in-system."
"Most likely?"
"Like, one broken knee in."
Sorval smiles. Krev can tell he's not crazy about the op, though.
"What kind of in-system?"
"Er, it's a WWR - either 17 or 17-10 or something like that."
Krev's never flown a 17 - or a 17-10, for that matter - but the WWR-15q was a working horse on Kessel. Probably still is - Ubrikkian Industries doesn't believe in planned obsolescence. Kessel, even less.
More importantly, the 15q had a large, nice hold. Perfect for hiding a crate of hard-stolen spice among the pieces of ore. Can't be too bad for storing a body or two, either.
"So you think they won't come for you when you're done doing whatever you wanna do, man?"
"I sure hope they won't."
"It doesn't sound like the strongest of your plans, man."
"That's 'cause you don't know the whole of it."
"That's kinda what I'm getting at."
Krev says with a grin, "Relax. All you gotta do is sit tight and wait for me. Well, and get some more fuel for the furnace."
"I mean, will do. And then it's Coruscant, eh?"
"How's your visa doing?"
"I wish I knew. I'll be calling the embassy. You know, after we're done with whatever you're gonna do."
"Prod them now. Don't wait."
Sorval tsks. "Nah, I'll wait. What's the point bothering them if I don't come back to the surface?"
Sorval gets the ship the day after the next one. It's a 17-10. Its four wings look slightly off in their angles and curves - Krev's memories of the 15q disorient him. The hold is just as big as it should be. Krev's happy until he gets inside.
"What the fuck is all this crap?"
Sorval puts his horned head through the door. "Ah, that? That's Trog's stuff. His band's."
Indeed: Krev sees a drum kit stacked on top of itself, an old, beaten-down amp with a peeling-off sticker saying BEAT NICE, some other stuff.
"Fuck's it doing here?"
"Man, Trog's got nowhere else to put it. He has to hide it from his girlfriend. He wasted a ton of cash on this - and then did the same thing once more to ransom it from a pawnshop."
"You're gotta be kidding me."
"Stop it with the rambling, old man." Sorval gets on board, lowering his head. "I mean, Trog works delivery with this bird."
"Oh yeah? Does he deliver dead bodies often?"
"You never know with Telosi senders. Oh, come on. There's still plenty of room."
Krev can see the Devaronian is nervous. Good thing he'll be sitting this one out.
They fuel the 17-10 and leave the hangar behind. Sorval is piloting, but Krev recognizes all the switches and buttons on the dashboard. He recognizes all the ship's bumps and shakes. With in-systems, you need them: to align the vessel properly, to know how the landing's going on, to feel the machine as if it was your own body. Ships that have a hyperdrive usually come with all kinds of stabilizers and cruise control. In-systems don't have that luxury.
The WWR goes up almost unnoticeably if you look out of the windows, for one. Landscapes of Telos IV run past it, but Krev wouldn't notice any altitude changes if not for the growing pressure on his shoulders and head.
"So," Sorval says, "you're sure I shouldn't go see Alnam?"
"I still am."
"We could use some more money, you know. On Coruscant."
"Or - alternatively - we could use you. If you stay alive, that is."
"But he's not... he's not gonna suspect a thing. I'm telling you. I can say I didn't come earlier because I got scared with your, uh, the thing that happened. But now I'm, like, back to business."
"Oh yeah? And what will you tell him happened to me?"
"I don't know. Wait, what, are you scared I'm gonna sell you out? No fucking way, man. I thought we were cool."
"Couldn't you use more money? Wasn't that what you said?"
"Very funny, very funny. I'm gonna go take money from the old cocksucker who tried to murder you. Yeah, sure. I'll hit Count Dooku up while I'm at it."
With Telosi skies, it's easy to tell when the mesosphere turns thermo: you can see stars now. Stars, satellites - and Citadel Station.
Citadel Station. The monument to the Telos Restoration Project - and its impossibility. Half-taken apart in the past millennia, it remains impossibly big - but even this impossibility was not enough to overcome the impossibility of the TRP.
Sunlight reflects in it like in a broken mirror: it is morning above this part of Telos. Below, there's only night. The station is the favorite child, and the planet a fosterling.
The spaceship traffic is insane: ask any pilot in the Outer Rim where it's best to land on Telos, and they'll tell you: nowhere. Land on Citadel, if you can help it. No weird weather patterns, no acidic rains - there haven't been any on the planet proper in the past forty years, which the environmentalists still hail as a great achievement, but pilots' memory works in strange ways. The bribe market on Citadel Station is still going strong, from what Krev heard. Can't oil the right cogs in the machine? Land on the planet, sucker.
The WWR flies under the station. The notion is absurd when you're hanging up there: the station is cosmically, comically huge. There are no unders or aboves here. Telos IV is no reference: it's darker than space. If you were to choose a spot on the surface and stay right above it, you'd see the billowing of the colossal clouds that the planet seems made of. Somewhere beyond them, the heart of Telos is beating. BEAT NICE, that's what Sorval's friend's sticker says, isn't it? Well, that heart isn't beating nice. It skips beats and hurries on. If Krev was feeling poetic, he'd say lightnings defibrillate it, but nah. Lightnings have nothing to do with how it beats.
And it don't beat nice, remember?
"Alright, man," Sorval says, "this is about the closest I can get you."
Works for Krev. He watches the docking bay's gullet approach the ship. A terminator cuts the wall on their left diagonally, the shadows sharp and the light crisp as they only ever are in space.
The docking bay they are at is about eighty kilometers away from the central transport cluster - that's where the Ixtlaris are staying or supposed to be.
No checking IDs in in-system bays: Citadel Station is part of Telos IV. Krev gets out of the WWR. His (Sorval's) repulsor bag follows.
It's crowdless inside. Just a company of orbiters enjoying their morning cup of caf while their ship's being loaded. Krev hears their Duros captain saying, "Such a fucking whore, that one. But what can I do, man, what can I do? It just puts a hook through you, and that's it, you're done. You can't do anything."
Krev gets on a train going to the central cluster. At first, it stops once every hundred meters to pick some more workers up. Then it exits the inner part of the station and gains momentum.
Here at the top, there's no Telos IV for the Galaxy to hide behind. Krev squints at the life's nuclear splendor. The unplanetarily three-dimensional sun hovers on the right. Citadel's modules gnaw into its underbelly with their towers and antennae. The windows' UV-shields may have pulled its teeth out, but the sun looks no less regal: like a giant sea predator in an oceanarium, its humility is only determined by how much you believe in the glass that separates you two. Ships take off. Their clear shadows grow wider like the grief of a seer-off.
Three minutes later, Krev gets off the train. The cylinder of the central cluster, crowned with a dome, goes down through the entire station. Rails twist over the abyss in eight-shaped patterns. Elevator platforms carry building-sized loads of boxes.
Krev looks at a map stand. G'Be's Super Gym-Resort is stuck in the very corner of the map, and it glitches out when Krev attempts to focus on the marker. It's like G'Be chose the most inconvenient spot for his gym-resort he could find within a two-kilometer radius of the cluster.
He takes a walk. Easier said than done on Citadel Station: pedestrian traffic was designated, but not much more than that. Krev finds it good. Always nice to take a proper long walk before an important job.
Two escalators take him up, up, and away from the station's heart. He walks through an alley - a real fancy one, with actual trees and flowers in the planters - and into a bystreet. Three turns later, his memory starts getting fuzzy: he's only seen the layout of this place for about a minute. He'd ask the way, but he doesn't want someone to remember him. He knows it won't matter, but doesn't do it regardless. Spends about an hour walking in circles.
Super Gym-Resort turns out to be a tall narrow tube Krev's walked by at least once. Got only one sign - on the door - and that one is small and dull. G'Be would get competed out of Coruscant City in no time. Here, apparently, his advertisement model works. Krev makes the connection when he walks down the stairs going next to the tube's side: sees some sports equipment through a half-opened window. A rowing machine, some barbells with handles made for a very specific non-Human hand, a dusty box of jumping ropes. Krev gallops down the rest of the stairs and climbs the porch. Stops there for a moment: things are going to start happening now. He relishes the uneventfulness of the moment. Then he lights up a cigarette and goes in.
A meathead at the reception desk sizes him up from under his lazy eyelids. "We don't smoke here, pal."
Krev turns his head to follow the meathead's monumental nod. An ashtray mounted on a long leg stands next to the door. It's overfilled with fag-ends - but none lie on the floor. He takes one last drag and snubs the cigarette out on the lower part of the tray and puts it atop the mountain of other cigarette corpses.
"You'd be G'Be, by any chance?" he asks as he rests his elbows on the desk.
"That's, fuh, right I am. This is my, fuh, place. You stay here and you do some, fuh, good for your body," G'Be puffs like military men forced to talk to civilians do. "From what I'm seeing, your body really, fuh, needs some good."
"See a lot of customers? The location isn't what I'd call great for business."
"People, fuh, know where to find me. They recommend me to their friends. This is a revolutionary, fuh, concept: a resort and gym combined, okay? Nothing like that on Citadel."
"The location isn't great anyway. I barely found you."
"It used to be a, fuh, funeral house. Administration didn't, fuh, want to put it in front of everyone."
That's an interesting part right here. Krev starts having a plan, as stupid as it might be.
"A funeral house, really?"
"That's fucking right, really." G'Be frowns at his slip. "Hit hard times. I bought it."
"So, did they dump bodies in space or what?"
"Uh-huh. But it's all cleaned now. You're gonna stay or, fuh, what?"
"Sure. Do you still have those airlocks they used?"
G'Be frowns again. "What? For funerals?"
"Yeah."
"I, fuh, do. You have to okay it with the Construction Integrity Committee if you want to remove them. I don't have, fuh, time for that." He flexes his muscles a bit: two additional heads grow on his arms. "But don't worry: it's all, fuh, safe. They won't be opening."
"Yeah, you sure? What if some idiot falls off an exercycle and hits the panel and we all end up spaceborne?"
"Space, fuh, dead," G'Be chuckles. "That won't happen, pal. You need a code to open the, fuh, locks. I don't tell them to anybody."
"Alright. Yeah, I guess I'll be staying for a day or two."
Krev sees he's made a mistake before he even finishes the phrase: G'Be's eyelids crawl up.
"A day or two?" G'Be asks.
"Well, help me out. I'm not sure yet," Krev says too loudly - as if it can bury the sound of his previous sentence. "Yeah, you see, I'm not in my best shape now. I don't really want anyone to, you know, stare at me while I work out. Are there many other guests right now?"
Like armored blinds, the meathead's eyelids drop back down. "What are you, a, fuh, woman? Relax, nobody's gonna, fuh, stare."
"Look here, buddy, this is what decides if I pay you money or not. I don't want to lift when somebody's watching, alright? So I'll ask you again: are there rooms where I can work out in peace or not? Are there many other guests?"
Heads protrude from G'Be's bis again. "No, there, fuh, aren't. Happy? You'll find a spot to do your routine no problem."
"Okay," Krev says, "glad we cleared that up. Now let's clear up the details. Can you show me on the plan what rooms are taken?"
"Are you, fuh, serious?"
"Just show me the plan so I can decide which room I want."
That's what you should've started with, Krev tells himself looking at the hologram of Super Gym-Resort. You'd see what fucking rooms are taken anyways. And now you made even G'Be suspicious.
G'Be doesn't look this suspicious - more annoyed. While Krev is memorizing the red spots on the plan, G'Be demonstratively types something on his terminal. Krev wonders if he is discussing ConCare. Probably not: there's nothing there about clones being fed steroids.
He pays for a week - the price is an admittance not many friends got Super Gym-Resort recommended to them. His room is at least one floor removed from all the rented twin ones. The boys from Ixtlar can be staying each in a separate suite, of course, but the closest one to Krev's is on the other side of the floor.
His suite: a wall-mounted bed, a holoscreen showing some green landscape, a bathroom. Tons of dumbbells littering the floor - no rack for them. A window overlooking the street in front of Resort. A station dome can be seen behind some other buildings: you can get some sunlight if you time it right.
Krev sits down on his bag, and it sinks a little before the repulsors rev up. His blaster is inside. Useful only for intimidation, though: no ammo. Sorval wanted to go buy some, but Krev decided it was a bad idea. Knowing how the police work down there, they're probably putting all their effort into monitoring weapon transactions after the shootout.
He thinks about the floor plan. There are two rented twin rooms next to each other three levels below him. Makes sense for them to be the boys'. There were four of them first, after all - you don't expect them to change rooms after their pal gets offed. They have a pool nearby - probably hanging out there.
He thinks about Vad Alnam. He knows he released him just to protect his father, but he can see Alnam Junior isn't a bad man. His heart's in the right place, at least - were it not, he'd push Krev out of the aircar while Krev was unconscious and call it a day. Or: negotiate before treating Krev's wound. That's what Krev would've probably done in his place.
Right place or wrong, though, he was quick to order the hit on the Ixtlaris. And quick to refuse Krev any help with the leaks.
That's understandable. He's a government official.
Are government officials required to murder mobsters quietly?
This is a war. They nearly killed him - as well as you. They have to go. If they don't, they're going to do you in - one way or another.
The thought is right. Krev eases up - even though he knows killing these three won't solve anything in the long run. Not for him.
But maybe it will for Vad Alnam. That's reason enough to do it.
You saved him once already, Krev makes it a point to say to himself. Doesn't that make you two square?
No, he answers himself - and takes a great pleasure in being right about it. When you save somebody, you take responsibility for them. Atnakis taught him how correct it is. How fundamentally correct.
Will Alnam take responsibility for you?
Maybe he won't, Krev replies to the part of him that stands against everything that is correct. Maybe he won't, but that's his business. He's not a soldier. But what he already did makes him a good man.
Krev smokes by the window, hoping there are no smoke sensors. He saw cams in the corridors. None in his room. Probably none at the pool, either. It doesn't matter: this won't be a clandestine job.
Is he willing to kill them? To take three more lives? To turn them into three more lines on the list of things he's done - into three lines of blurred, like in a dream, text: first names and last names?
He didn't manage to see where the airlocks are on the plan. Somewhere at the tube's bottom, must be: that's where Gym-Resort protrudes into space.
You're gonna dump them into space now, huh? That's real classy. Maybe you can depressurize the entire building while you're at it. What good is a Krev Devin operation without some collateral damage?
They're enemies, Krev tells himself. They're enemies, and this is a war.
Not convinced. No sir.
He's killed Ixtlaris, that's true. But then, he had no choice. The one on Taris: got a jump on him. Krev's neck still remembers the touch of the cord - cold, but turning red-hot. The fucking thing snapped a second later. Krev felt the fucker's nose and lips hitting the back of his head: wet and warm. He turned. He reached for his blaster - a shoddy thing with the heating element repurposed from a laser cutter, sold to him by a young Trandoshan at a bar. He saw the guy reaching for his blaster, too. Was sure the guy would beat him to it - and was surprised to see the ugly hand-crafted machine pointing at the guy while the guy's hand was still rummaging under the guy's jacket.
"You killed Mr. Kirda," the guy said, and then Krev killed him too and walked away, the dead man's saliva still moist on his nape and cold in the wind.
The one on Er'Kit: two guys in the market square. Seemingly just walking by. Krev pinned one's gaze with his and did not let it go. Had a feeling - maybe. Was bored and looking for a conflict - equally possible. But the guy shat himself. Started sweating bullets. Eyes got all shifty - while never leaving Krev's grasp - somehow. Krev got up and shot him. Call it a premonition. The second guy raised his hand, a blaster already in it. Krev couldn't get a good shot: people in the square were running amok at this point. Had to retreat.
He's killed Ixtlaris before, that's true. But maybe he doesn't have to - now?
Killing them won't change anything. Krev hoped he could do it quiet. Maybe smuggle one of the bodies out of the station and feed it to the furnace - so the boys who come here later get all sorts of assumptions. Even brought the fucking bag. That won't be happening: any detective - from Telos, Ixtlar, or Coruscant - will see what's happened: just look at the CCTV feed and ask G'Be.
It feels strangely good. Krev didn't realize how much the notion of cremating a mobster in the same furnace as Brate was bothering him until now.
The Ixtlaris won't forgive the killing of their own. Killing off more of them won't solve this problem - unless you kill all of them.
It's Krev Devin who needs to die to stop the hunt.
And he's ready to: ready to die and to be reborn as Jezideg Kossar. His passport is almost done - unless Atruba got cold feet.
Vad's on point about one thing, though: the three boys can start talking. That would bite Vad in the ass - for something right he did.
And that would be wrong.
Krev tries to convince himself there won't be anyone for the boys to talk to. They have a comrade to bury - and they won't be using the Gym-Resort airlock. They're gonna leave soon, he tries to convince himself.
But why haven't they already? If you assume they're still here, they may just not leave in time. And if they aren't, you can't do anything about them and you're worrying in vain.
But if they're still here... Something has to be done about it.
No: you have to do something about it.
He does. He sallies out to the pool floor in two hours. Carries a towel from his room in his hand, covering the blaster. Stupid idea - to carry a gun that ain't gonna shoot. He hopes the boys understand that, too.
He finds nobody at the pool. There are water trails leading from the pool to two of the chairs. Krev wanders what's up with the presumed third one and returns to his room.
Next day, he visits the poolside about the same time. Same accessories, too: the towel and the blaster. Doesn't get to use either: the pool is occupied by an Aleena family. He checks the Human-sized chairs, though. Three are covered with wet towels.
Next day, he drops by an hour earlier. Hears splashing from outside: the door's open. No wonder - G'Be saves a good credit on AC.
Krev freezes two meters away from the door. Gulps. Listens.
Splashing sounds come from the pool room. Krev makes himself stand still. You wouldn't want to drop on the Aleenas with a blaster in hand, would you?
But the pool room speaks in a Human voice. "What I'm saying is we'd be outta here if you didn't drop out."
And it's a familiar voice.
"It's all that fucking professor cocksucker, man. He had a bone to pick with me, I'm telling ya."
"But you fucking studied there for a year," a third voice says. Krev grips his blaster tighter. "What, don't you remember nothing?"
"The only thing he did was chasing tail and boozing up, hehe."
"Oh, fuck you, Thedul!"
Krev drops the towel.
"Yeah, that's why they expelled him."
"They didn't teach me what to fucking do in this fucking situation!" says the second voice. "It was a Corellian joint, for fuck's sake. They don't tell you what to do if asshats in some fucking asshole in the Outer Rim get uppity."
A sound of a loogie hitting the water.
"Oh, for fuck's sake, man!"
"Fucking Outer Rim cocksuckers," the third boy says. "Not giving Bermy's body to us like this-"
"It's fucking offensive is what it is."
"We should've gotten him out of there."
"No shit, man."
"Fucking pieces of shit."
"Some mad fucking irony, if you think about it."
"What is?"
"Bermy. He came here to avenge his little brother, and now he's dead, too."
"There's nothing fucking funny about it."
"When did I say it was funny? Of course it's not fucking funny! I'm saying it's ironic-"
Krev walks in.
The boys are all sitting in their chairs: two facing the door and one with his back to it. This third one half-turns to the door and stays in this pose.
"Into the pool," Krev says. "Chop-chop."
The boys remain still for a moment: nobody wants to be first. Then they get up and climb down into the pool, motherfucking like motherfuckers as they go.
Now, nobody wants to be last.
"Keep your hands above the water," Krev tells them, closing the door behind his back.
They stand before him: two scrawny but with paunches, one muscular but not to G'Be's extent. All three bodies are blue with ink: slogans and promises and skulls.
"You're making a huge mistake, buddy," the one with the familiar voice says.
"Negative. Just trying to help you guys out. On the account we have some bad blood between us. Which's more than no blood."
Krev moves his blaster gently. Three pairs of eyes follow it like snakes watching a charmer's flute.
"You see," Krev says, "I'm... you got good fucking timing. Down on Telos. Missed your chance by what, five minutes?"
The boys got nothing to say.
"You see," Krev continues, "my days as somebody you could whack are over. I work for the ISB now. Remember the dude on the planet? An Internal Security agent."
"He said RDS," Thedul says. His voice is full of hurt - as if his favorite team just lost.
Krev rolls his eyes. "He's undercover. Digging into the DS. And guess what, while you guys were chilling for the past five standards, I've been working for the Reps here. RDS included. Which makes me an enormous fucking asset for the ISB." He lets every boy look into the muzzle. "Listen here. There's an RDS agent coming to investigate. The shootout, you know. But there's one more thing. Since there's an RDS agent coming - who can meet you, right? - there's also an ISB cleanup team heading here. The purpose being so there's no one for the RDS dude to meet.
"I shouldn't be here. But I am. And I'm saying: get the fuck out of here."
He watches how the boys react. They aren't at their most expressive when naked and at gunpoint.
"What's it to you?" the oldest boy finally asks. "If they kill us?"
Krev purses his lips. "I never wanted to kill any of you."
"But you did," the muscular boy says.
"I did. The only Ixtlari I wanted to kill was that pharma cocksucker. I killed more. That doesn't make me happy. I don't want your lives on my conscience. So get the fuck back to Ixtlar and bless the day and everything."
"You better not let me out of this pool," the muscular one says, "because I'm gonna kill you for what you fucking did to Bermy."
Thedul slaps him on the shoulder. "My nephew's tongue is too fucking long. Don't listen to him."
"I thought so," says Krev.
"I... we appreciate the gesture," Thedul casts a quick look at his nephew. "But I have to tell you: the big people back home won't let you out so easy. This," he waves his hand at the pool and the situation, "won't change it. Just so you know."
Krev nods. "I know."
And that is right.