The establishment: The Lonely Herder bar. The fifteenth floor of Aul Sebbata's Tower in Coruscant City. Round-the-clock live music. Sabacc tables. Don't be so lonely, herder.

Back of Krev's head itches as he walks in.

The Iktotchi bouncer eyes him something vile. Young. Wants to fight. Krev looks at him as if in a mirror that shows him a ten-years-younger Krev.

A shit bar. Local Republic functionaries dine here. The sterile white lights everywhere — no shadows — must remind them of home. Krev doesn't remember ever seeing such a shit bar on proper Coruscant.

It's dark behind the window encircling the tower. Windows on Telos IV are a mockery.

The back of his head itches so badly he almost scratches it.

That's where they're gonna shoot you.

Not many people. On the stage, a skinny Twi'lek warms himself up at the drum set. A middle-aged Human screams at the Sabacc dealer.

The suit he's wearing gives away a non-native: too expensive. Krev remembers the clone in his shitty jacket.

Great speeder, though.

He takes a table as far from the elevator as possible. With his back to the window, he feels a little calmer. A little.

He waits.

He thinks he's got it all figured out. Keyword: thinks. There is the burning star-chaos of things like contingency orders under the thin pretense of normalcy.

But he thinks he's got it all figured out.

The woman appears maybe half an hour after him. Alone — like a herder. Krev has seen her on the news — she's the junior representative of the Republic.

She must know what he looks like: she goes straight towards him. That's some bad mojo. Krev doesn't like it.

The leather chair rustles and hisses under her weight. Krev tries to watch her — and the rest of the room. If they're going to whack you, sure as hell it's not gonna be her.

"Mr. Devin," she says putting a cigarette in her mouth.

Krev chuckles: he didn't expect a Republic representative to smoke.

A click of the lighter. Krev watches the fire reflect in her eyes.

"That'd be me," he says. He doesn't like how his voice sounds: weak. Scared.

For a minute or two, the rep smokes, avoiding Krev's eyes.

Krev waits.

"Does your partner know you are here?"

"Sumar? He doesn't."

"Good."

"And he won't, provided that I return home safely tonight and cancel the message scheduled to be sent to him. To a few news agencies, too."

Something flashes in the woman's eyes. Worry? Or just the light of her cigarette?

"Such precautions are unnecessary, I assure you."

"Better safe than sorry."

Now she looks at him alright. Studies him.

Krev returns the favor.

On Kessel, women like her were all low-rank officials. Dorm heads. Safety supervisors. That kind of thing. All looked the same whatever species they belonged to. Had the same constantly anxious look on their same faces.

Okay. Krev knows how to deal with them.

"So," he says, "why did you want to meet me here?"

"Because this is where I was supposed to meet with Brate."

"That thing's got a name? How charming."

"He was a sentient just as you and me, Mr. Devin."

"Well, I'll keep my reservations about that."

The rep doesn't pussyfoot, though. Krev can't help but like it.

"We both know," she says, "that there was no third party."

"You told your... friend about us, didn't you?"

"I never thought it would turn out like it did."

"Things tend to turn out this way with me."

She inhales — half smoke, half unsaid words. "You are both men of violence. Yes... I should have known that. But I knew. I knew it, Mr. Devin. But that was the only way to get you two together. So I thought. And look where it got me..."

Krev thinks. She's harder to read than he anticipated. But she sympathizes with the tuber — he can tell that. Were they fucking? They could have been. Bad if so: never underestimate the power of love or whatever people take for it.

"So why did you tell him?" he presses on. "To give him a chance? Your higher-ups wanted him..." Wait. Not killed — had the rep not told him, the clone could've lived. "Captured? And you didn't?"

She drives her cigarette into the ashtray. Krev watches little bits of tobacco fall all over.

Finally, the woman says, "I told you why already." She looks him in the eye. Krev genuinely doesn't understand. She deigns to explain. "To get you two together. That was the plan."

"Well, didn't it work wonders," Krev mutters. His brain tries to get it. Tries to reverse-engineer it. It fails. Too much drugs lately, old Krev. Too much drugs and too many contingency orders.

"I messed up," Madam Junior Representative says quickly. Then she repeats herself. It doesn't sound like she's making an excuse. It doesn't sound like she is trying to convince him.

Krev doesn't know what to think.

Seems to become a trend.

"You were supposed to talk. I thought Brate would trust me. I told him you were there to talk. But he didn't... didn't believe me. I cannot blame him, you know." She lights up another cigarette. "After what he's been through... Not surprising he had trust issues. Tell me, Mr. Devin, did he really try to shoot you?"

Krev's face doesn't betray anything. Seldom does. "It was either him or me, ma'am."

She purses her lips — as if to say something or to spit in Krev's face. Does neither.

All the while, Krev thinks. It is a straight road to a stroke, he knows; he can feel the blood vessels in his head creak from exhaustion, his brain isn't suited for this anymore, but he thinks.

"Your bosses didn't okay your call to the... Brate?"

She raises her eyes. "My bosses, Mr. Devin, didn't know about him at all."

Now that's a big reveal. Krev can name one or thirty-seven bigger ones, but this one's still huge.

"It's hard to lose a clone deserter, I imagine."

"The Republic is vast. It can change, but for now, it remains vast. They didn't know about him."

"And the body?"

"I took care of it. I had to pull a few strings, but I took care of it."

Think. What is this woman about? Is she a Sep agent? Krev's forehead perspires. He hasn't done glitter for two days. He could use a tad now.

She's said some Sep things, to be sure. But a Separatist herself?

What could they have needed? To extract the clone. Engineer. Makes sense: he knows about the communication lines on Geonosis. They planning a third battle now?

Nah. Krev doesn't buy it. The Republic is fubar enough to let a Sep slip in their ranks. But the Seps wouldn't have fucked it up so badly. Must've been the junior rep's personal initiative.

Back to the fucking theory.

"So let me guess," he says, "you two little lovebirds wanted to elope together. The best way you could think of was hiring me. That was dumb: I'm not a smuggler. Sumar ain't one, either."

The woman is silent. Krev's eyes tingle when he tries to read hers.

"I don't know what you want from me now. To kill me? Go ahead."

Pity he's not carrying a blaster: none allowed in The Lonely Herder. Even got a detector frame and everything. If he had a pistol, he'd put in on the table right in front of her: shoot if you dare. Tougher nuts than this little bleeding heart have shitted themselves when Krev offered them a gun to kill him.

"Do I look like a killer to you? Or do you see yourself in everybody else?" Her voice is shaking. She looks out the window. "No, you can still be useful to us."

Us?

"You'd better comply, Mr. Devin." On the stage, the drummer gets on gigging, and the junior representative has to say that again. "If you don't, they'll bury both of us. They know where the body is and they will use it."

Well, shit. Should've killed yourself, Devin. Should've spared yourself from all this.

"Who's they?"

"My employer has people everywhere. In the administration. In the casinos. In the spaceports. Everywhere."

Krev really, really doesn't like the sound of it. So she's a Sep after all?

At this point, he'd prefer getting one in the back of his head.

"Whom do you work for and what does he need me for?"

The woman blinks. "He will tell you himself."

She drives a Koro-2. A sleek choice for a junior rep. When they leave the parking lot behind and the lights of Coruscant City brighten the cockpit, Krev notices a small hologram on the dashboard. Madam JR and a girl of five or six. Krev glances at the Madam JR.

"I don't know what you got yourself into," he says, "but it ain't good for you. What is the junior junior representative here gonna say when her mommy ends up buried together with Krev Devin?"

The woman turns the hologram off angrily.

Krev snickers.

"Be more considerate about your words when you're talking to my employer."

Who the hell is that employer?

"He's got a temper, huh?"

But she doesn't answer.

Coruscant City flows back. Krev tries to make out what district they're in. They go past the Dadarru spaceport — unused for two years. Krev's feeling well for some reason. He's feeling adventurous. If there's an oncoming speeder in the next fifteen seconds, he thinks, then I'm gonna make it out alive. He counts. Poses: makes pauses shorter. A cargo van changes lanes and roars past the Koro-2. Eight seconds. Krev starts smiling. Krev feels as though he's already out. Make it three speeders in twenty seconds. If there are three speeders, he's certainly going to make it. The first one: four seconds. The second: fourteen. The third one doesn't show up. Krev's still smiling.

They fly through a long tube in the side of some ancient factory building. Krev sees rubble and speeder frames littering the floor. The tube leads them into a large circular room with loading cranes rearing their necks like skeletons of some extinct beasts. Past it. The next room is force-fielded away.

Krev looks around. This must have been a maintenance room back when the factory was still up. He sees docking nests for repair droids — all long marauded.

The woman leads him to a stairwell. It is lit up, and Krev can hear the hum of a generator somewhere behind the walls.

They go down. Careful: noise above them. Somebody trying to fall into step with them. Somebody failing. Somebody large.

"Come out," Krev stops to say. "I know you're there."

The rep doesn't look perturbed.

A figure appears one stair flight above them. Devaronian. Bulkier than Krev. Blaster in hand.

"This one's a better hearer than thinker, Fadi," he grins.

"Care to say that to me without a pistol?"

"Can you please not—" the woman starts, but the Devaronian holsters his blaster.

"Why, I do. That and a few other things."

Krev thinks. Now that's the thinking his brain's used to. The fucker is large. Horns reinforced with metal rings. Has the high ground. But: wears a long, heavy duster. Can't reach for his pistol easily. Got twitchy fingers: his fists snap closed and shoot open again every second. Not a fighter. Relies on his looks.

Krev steps one stair down. Left foot, so the right one's ready to kick off the upper stair.

The Devaronian takes a step forward. A step down. Leaves his left knee exposed. Shit. Too damn high: two stairs lower, and Krev could break the fucker's leg in one kick.

"Gonna run any farther?" the fucker asks.

Krev thinks. The staircase is too narrow to get behind him. Think: the duster. Good leverage. Secure the fucker's right hand so that there's no grabbing the blaster.

He leaps when the fucker makes another step. They collide. It's like hitting a duracrete wall: Krev has to latch on the fucker's duster not to get thrown back. Then a punch in the chest throws him back all the same.

Gasping, he struggles to regain control of his limbs. Thinks he hears the woman yelling. Left arm is a go. Left leg is a go. Right leg, too. It's the right arm that's not a go by a fucking parsec.

Air escapes him — again — when the fucker presses on his back.

"I think I'm gonna break this little fucking arm of yours," he hears. "Just to teach you a lesson. Besides, it's not like you need two hands for anything anyway."

Krev hears the bones crunching. Worse: he feels the crunching, too. He grinds his teeth not to scream. His left hand tries to find a fold of the duster — anything.

"Sorval," the woman says, "that's enough! Let him go."

An eternity passes before the fucker obeys.

Krev drags his right arm from behind his back. It feels numb and on fire at the same time. He rolls over to his back. Sends impulses to his right hand. The ghosts of fingers move in the dim light of the stairwell.

"It's this attitude that got us into the current mess," Madam Junior Rep says. "What's wrong with both of you?! The boss isn't going to be happy."

"He's not happy as it is," the fucker says.

"Look," the Republic lady stares in Krev's face as he leans against the wall, "it's going to look as if we kidnapped him off the street!"

"That was a better solution that letting everybody see you two together. I should've done it myself."

"Oh, you've done a lot of things already. None of them beneficial to the cause."

"Stop it, Fadrina. You know I am loyal to it."

"I do. But stop acting so foolishly if you don't want to flush it down the toilet!"

The fucker grumbles. Now Krev sees how surefooted he is. His fists don't twitch anymore. He is a fighter after all, and he managed to fool Krev.

Not bad, demonman, he thinks. Until next time.

"Can you talk?" the woman asks him.

Krev spits. Almost no blood — a good sign. "Sure."

"Okay then. It's time for you to meet our employer."

They lead him down two more flights and then into a storage room. It's crammed with lidless empty containers and crates. There seems to be a system to how they are located. Maybe the demonman makes his lair here, Krev thinks.

He doesn't notice a holo-transmitter until Fadrina the junior representative starts it up. It takes a minute or two for a hologram of a tall man to appear.

"Leave us," the man says. He is well past his prime. His long face sits in a cloud of a rather shaggy white beard.

"But—" the fucker starts.

"Did I not make myself clear? Leave us."

Fadrina and the fucker exit the warehouse.

Krev eyes the man in the hologram.

"Do you know who I am?" the man asks.

"I do." He has to bite his tongue not to add: sir.

"Good." Vygo Alnam runs his hand through his hair. "I know who you are as well, Mr. Devin. And I know what you did to my ally."

"Do you also know how your ally greeted me?"

Krev can't think straight. That's one reveal too many for today.

"You were hired to get in contact with Brate, not to murder him."

"You should really address this to your Republic woman." Krev looks back but sees only the door. "It was her plan to keep me in the dark. I was told to apprehend that... that ally. I was acting as best I could in the then-current situation."

Now his heart's galloping inside his ribcage. He tries to tell himself they would've killed him long ago if that was Alnam's intention. It doesn't work.

"The idea was to introduce you to the information he had in an unsuspicious way. Now we have a dead body on our hands."

"And if I didn't shoot, you'd still have one. Mine."

Alnam takes his stare off Krev. Think! The old man's thinking, so think as well.

"I know that you do not like the Republic, Mr. Devin."

"I don't. Only nobody listens to me when I say that."

"What I... what we are trying to achieve is to dismantle the deeply corrupt system. To grant people their rights."

"Are you with the Separatists?"

Vygo Alnam furrows his brow. "They are no better. Violent thugs who have overrun the initially benign movement. They are not going to change anything to the better. No, my cause is different. I want to end the war and to have the people responsible for it convicted. I, Mr. Devin, hold the entire establishment guilty. Guilty as sin! The Senate, the Separatist Council, the Jedi — all of them."

"Alright," says Krev. "But with all due respect, I don't see your army anywhere. How do you plan to beat both sides without one?"

"One doesn't need an army to contend in this war. It will be won by intelligence, not by brute force. The one clone I had was more valuable and powerful than the entire Grand Army."

Krev says nothing. He's very afraid. Didn't think he'd be when the time comes.

Yet, he looks Alnam in the eye. Owes himself that, at least.

"That clone, Brate, was my key to victory. My key to winning the public opinion. You killed him, but it is impossible to kill information. Tell me, Mr. Devin: have you found a hard drive on him?"

This is it, Krev's lizard brain tells him. This is the big choice. Not of this evening — of your life.

"I have," he says. "And naturally, I have destroyed it."

Vygo Alnam's eyes start bulging as if he got thrown out of an airlock.

"You—"

"After I copied its contents to a terminal in one of the Holonet cafes here on Telos. Or was it a hotel? I can't remember. All encrypted, of course. And not with a trial version." Alnam doesn't seem to understand this one, so Krev moves on. "You need this information? Fine. Let's work together. Like you said, I'm no Republic lover. If what you have in mind is going to make life better for planets like Kessel, I'm in. Hell, if it's going to put a burning stick up the Republic's ass, I'm in."

Krev thanks the nature and his parents for how little emotion his face shows. Hard drive destruction: he's done no such thing. The damn drive lies in a little secret compartment in his flat. But Krev really, really wants to walk out of this fucking factory.

"What I wanted to hire you for," says Alnam, "was to provide security and access to some underground data-spreading channels. I picked you because I needed a man of convictions. You seemed to be the best option. And now you seem to be the only option I have."

"And you sent your engineer to Telos to make him meet me?"

"It's an easy planet to get lost on. Everything looked like a perfect starting position."

"Why not use your own connections to spread information?"

Alnam pinches his nose bridge. "It cannot be seen coming from me. All the Republic news sources have been working hard for the past two years to discredit me. I needed somebody unaffiliated to run this campaign. Had all gone well, you wouldn't have learned about my involvement at all. I wanted everything to transpire in a natural manner. Ah, my old mistake. Things never do transpire naturally unless you meddle in them. This is a lesson I should have learned forty years ago, but some lessons we are particularly unperceptive towards." He pauses before saying, "What did you learn from Brate's recordings?"

Krev wonders how much Alnam knows about them. Decides to spice his tale up with some truth: "There is this construction company, Forakk. It's apparently being financed by two Expansion firms—"

"Leave that trail. It's irrelevant. Focus on important things. The public must learn those."

"Like contingency orders?"

"Who cares about contingency orders? They're an open secret anyway. No, focus on ConCare."

"What's that?"

"You haven't seen it in the files?"

"No, but you apparently have, so why don't you just tell me what that is?"

"I have not seen anything in the files because I haven't seen the files themselves. However, I have spoken to Brate and heard this name from him. This is also a name that has appeared more than once in my own investigation."

"Alright. So what you got on this ConCare?"

Alnam sighs. "I'd rather you form your own opinion and come to your own conclusion. Then, we can compare our findings."

"You kept me in the dark once, and look where it got us. Maybe let's dispense with all this need-to-know nonsense?"

"No information should come from me — no facts, at least. You see, I don't believe in such a thing as trust. Do not trust me, Mr. Devin, and do not trust anyone else. Do your own research and once — or if — you arrive at the same conclusion as I have, we will join our databases to get the full picture."

That's why you're telling me what to look into and what not.

"Okay, ConCare. Got it. Anything else?"

"Yes," Alnam nods, "there is something. Based on what I know about you, I don't think you will betray me. However, I should mention that my involvement in this affair being disclosed would lead not only to the public distrusting everything you say, but also to my political capital — or what's left of it — dwindling at a more rapid rate than usual. And my political capital, Mr. Devin, holds many things together in this Galaxy. For example, it holds together the jaws of several law officers from Telos IV who know who you are and what you did on Manaan."