Night becomes day. Lights in Krev's room go brighter. Daylight lamps, they are called.
It's still dark behind the window. No days on Telos IV.
Krev doesn't remember when he last saw daylight.
Krev chain-smokes. Krev drinks cafstim.
Glitterstim's almost out of his system. The archive names pulse on the holoscreen as if Krev was still high.
Contingency orders.
My life.
Dangor Industries engineers.
Geon. project.
Krev smokes.
Contingency orders.
Krev smokes. Krev swears aloud.
Krev jumps from archive to archive. Again and again. They seem impenetrable. A monolith — you can't climb it. Somewhere — he's sure — there must be the beginning. In one of the fucking archives. He's sure of it.
Krev swears.
The intricacies of the Grand Republic Army's subordination make his head yammer like a forgotten comlink. Krev has gotten it clear that if the Jedi generals are compromised, the command goes to the Chancellor. If the Chancellor can no longer perform his duties, the vice chair gets it — until a new Chancellor is elected.
Krev can't understand one thing: who commands the fucking thing right now?
Must be a hundred of orders. Krev thinks he always knew damn test-tubers couldn't wipe their asses without instructions.
Krev smiles. He's not really amused.
The deserter didn't place the orders properly: number thirty-seven is put first.
Anything can happen in a war. Krev knows it. Krev's seen transports full of refugees shot down from the skies by friendly fire. Didn't really feel shit back then. Only later.
Now his fists clench. He tells himself it's because of the drug though he knows it's not.
No one told those boys from Atnakis to open fire. An error. A blunder. He's seen them afterwards, those fucking artillerists. Two lived to see the war end — out of the four. The other two had done themselves in.
Clones, they won't do themselves in. They'll execute the order no conscience involved. No matter what the order is. Mass arrests of civilians to make a wanted subject surrender? Will do. Execute one-tenth of the population until the subject complies every four standard hours? Aye aye, sir!
The main thing: who the fuck (thinks Krev while the two numbers, 3 and 7, pressure his brain like tumors) are they planning to force to surrender this way? CIS droids?
Answer: local militia leaders.
No other reason for the 37 to exist.
The struggle for powers and rights between Coruscant and planetary administrations is as old as the Republic itself. One side or the other gets the upper hand at times, but both know: any advantage has an expiry date. Both the metropole and the provinces catch the moment.
Or they used to.
With the GAR, the times are gonna change.
Krev glances at the entrance — against his will. How long until another Krev Devin comes in to put three blasts in his chest?
Alright, he tells himself, calm down. No one knows you have the drive. If anyone even knows it exists.
Sumar? No, he hasn't seen anything. And even if he has, he won't tell. Or-
Krev reaches for the holo-terminal control panel. Delete all the fucking files, disintegrate the hard drive... maybe spend the payment for yesterday to get a new terminal.
He stops. And then he keeps on reading.
Engineers. The clone put them in a separate file for whatever reason. They didn't work on the Geon. project, maybe? It doesn't help in any case: there's jackshit inside the Geon. project archive — just two notes.
The first one: "About the project... these maniacs are actually going with it."
The second one: "I don't get it. Can somebody... can somebody explain it to me?"
Krev opens the Dangor Industries engineers archive for what must be the fiftieth time during the night-day. Just a butt of his cigarette is left — he lights another one from it.
The damn clone must have used a speech-to-text program — probably also a trial version. All the notes are hectic as hell. Krev's eyes hurt, but he doesn't run text-to-speech.
Walls here aren't as thin as on Kessel, but Krev doesn't take the risk. Risked yesterday.
The deserter, he finally realizes, was an engineer himself. A sentient could make a good life with such a profession — on Kessel or elsewhere. But what can you ask of a clone? A dummy, a homunculus. Did he even understand what he was doing or were his skills instinctive?
He probably did. Wouldn't have been a deserter otherwise.
Krev reads on. The clone he killed had served on Geonosis. Geon. project starts making a lick more sense. Got there after the first battle. Installed utility systems in the conquered hives. Point of interest: installed them for those Dangor Industries engineers.
Here's where the kerfuffle begins. The engineers were sort of from Dangor Industries and sort of not. Krev rereads the paragraph — at least the artificial bastard had the decency to divide his ramblings into paragraphs.
"We were told they were from Forak or something. But they weren't from the Outer Rim. They told me, one of them, that they'd never been to the Outers before. Then they wore these uniforms. No insignia. But their briefcases... their toolboxes... they all had the Dangor Industries logo on them. And their droids. Their droids all had their brands restamped."
Pain drones behind his eyes. Krev winces. What of it? Who cares if they were from Forak, Dangor, or whatever else? He's hoped to see something as fucked up as the contingency orders.
He forces himself to finish the files. He doesn't realize at first what he just saw.
But then it clicks. Even the dull headache retreats, coils somewhere in the back of his head.
This is why the engineers are so important:
"They were already there when we arrived at Geonosis."
Krev rereads the sentence. And he rereads it once again.
The sense it makes goes nowhere. Doesn't dissipate like when you repeat something many times.
"They were already there when we arrived at Geonosis."
Krev rechecks it. My life: yep, the deserter was shipped to Geonosis after the first battle. Been through the second one in its entirety.
Geonosis remained under Separatist control when he arrived. That's okay.
But what the hell were the Republic engineers doing there?
Krev moans. Krev massages his temples.
The fucking clone didn't write shit. Understood everything as it was himself, Krev guesses.
Captives? Not a word on that. No: the engineers aren't being evacuated. They stay on the planet. Doesn't say why.
What if they weren't with the Republic? Just an Outer Rim company buying discarded equipment from Dangor Industries? That happens: the rules prescribe that some son of a bitch must destroy used tools, but said son of a bitch is too enterprising to let it go, so he sells them. Happens a thousand times a day.
Wait. Look. It says: "They told me, one of them, that they'd never been to the Outers before."
An Outer Rim company can afford hiring engineers from the better regions of the Galaxy. That's sure not gonna be cheap: these are educated people with high living standards. No matter if they're from the Mid Rim, the Inner Rim, or from the Core.
Such a company buying second-hand crap? From Dangor Industries, no less?
That doesn't compute. When companies save on equipment, the cut costs end up transfiguring into the CEO's space yacht, not into professionals to work with that equipment.
He queries the Holonet. Forak engineering. Forak construction.
There it is: Republic Tax Register. Forakk, a construction firm registered on Ryloth. Rigwork, network installation, habitable and inhabitable zone construction, etc. etc.
Special notes: last year, Forakk was exempted from taxes. Reason: funding from subsidies that fall within the heading of "The Outer Rim Development".
Two grants: one from Ulmis Systems and the other from the Ordulann Conglomerate. Both companies registered in the Expansion Regions.
Not a word about Dangor Industries.
Not a word about Forakk itself in the news or anywhere else save for the tax register. Why the interest of respectable corporations like Ulmis and Ordulann? Money laundering?
He can't ponder on that for long before his comlink starts buzzing. Sumar. Krev closes the archives as if Sumar can see them.
"What's with my money?"
"That depends on whether you can keep your mouth shut. The administration woman's calling, and she wants to speak with you as well."
"So what is it: keep my mouth shut or speak to her?"
"She wants to know that you're here on the line. So just hang on the line."
Another incoming call. Secure channel. The voice on the other end is angry and anxious.
"So what happened there?"
"You see," says Sumar, "the object had to be neutralized. As soon as we arrived, uh, the object resisted... resisted any of, uh, our attempts to, well, apprehend him. The thing is that, uh, the object actually used a weapon, and it was against us. Unfortunately, we had no other choice but to—"
"Do you have any idea what this means? Your sloppiness is bound to draw the attention of the public. In fact, it already is doing just that! I—"
Krev ad-libs. "My partner and I, we believe that the object had been notified of our arrival." He almost hears Sumar's inner swearing. "There's no other explanation. He couldn't have noticed us himself."
The administration woman is silent for a long time. When she speaks again, her voice is uncertain.
"Can you be sure of that?"
"With all due respect, mam, I've been doing shadowing jobs for fifteen years. If I say he couldn't have noticed us, he couldn't."
Sumar interjects him. "We do understand the gravity of the situation. But as my partner just said, there is a possibility of a third party being involved. In this light, I feel like I should remind you about what I wrote to you yesterday. I mean the meeting scheduled in three days between our, uh, object and his unspecified allies—"
"Don't worry about it," the administration woman says. "We are interested in keeping this as low-profile as possible. So you two lay low."
"And our payment?" Sumar asks.
"You'll be paid according to our agreement. Don't worry about that."
In Krev's experience, this phrase is exactly when you get worried. So he asks: "When is that going to happen?"
His migraine has subsided.
"Today."
She hangs up.
"So I should've kept my mouth shut?"
"Huh," Sumar says. "I don't really know. She got real worked up when you mentioned third parties."
"Let her get as worked up as she likes — as long as she pays us."
"If there's any trouble with her, we're in deep shit, Krev. Without Madam Junior Representative, the Reps aren't gonna hire us no more."
"Then let's hope all goes well for her. Not much else we can do."
"Eh, I suppose. Alright. I'll call you later."
Krev looks at the blank terminal screen.
His comlink goes off again. A message. A hidden number — but the same hidden number as the one the admin woman used.
"The meeting in 3 days come w/out Sumar."
Krev jumps up. Krev starts pacing his room.
I'm not stupid enough to go, he thinks.
He comes to the window. Lights up another cigarette.
He knows he will go — he already knows even though he hasn't admitted it yet.