Krev paces his room — a habit that annoyed every last woman he's had. He's glad he doesn't have one now.
The back of his head is still itchy. Still can't believe no blaster bolt scratched it.
It seems it'll have to wait.
Krev hates waiting.
Being honest, he hates the whole situation.
Alnam's got his balls in the vises. He knows: Manaan. Who Krev is. Where Krev is. Guys from Ixtlar who want to know that last one.
Shit.
The old man said there are coppers here on Telos IV who know all that as well. Krev would really, really, really like to know their names. That wouldn't do jack, though. Kill a copper — and you're a dead man. Cops are the tightest outfit there is — on any planet.
However: Krev's got something on Alnam too. Alnam's got a hard-on for the clone's diary. Krev's got said diary. He actually destroyed the hard drive after getting home that night. The contents: copied to Holonet storage. Free plan: no need for a lot of space. No need to make a transaction that would bleep on Alnam's radar.
What's Alnam's endgame? Krev's not sure he believes what Alnam told him about that. To hold all the higher-ups accountable for their crimes — nice tale. Vygo Alnam isn't some downtrodden freedom fighter. Been a part of the establishment for most of his life. Now he's himself in a fight with the establishment. Doesn't take a genius to see what's what.
There's probably some obscure party now in the Senate financed by Alnam RoboTech. Sleeper agents. Ready to go for a kill when the time comes. Kill — and become the new establishment.
That's all nice and good. Krev's got no objections. But: what the fuck does Alnam want from him?
If you choose to believe the man himself — and Krev chooses not to — then Vygo Alnam wants to use Krev to check his own conclusions. A real man of science, that one.
Then what if Krev's conclusions don't match his? Does the entire kill-the-establishment thing get dropped? Or does Krev?
Yeah, Krev hates the situation.
Telos IV is unsafe. Never was, it turns out. And here Krev's been thinking the coppers he's dealt with on Telos were just nice enough not to run any checks on him.
Sometimes, he manages to surprise even himself with his stupidity.
Alright. It's time to change his dislocation. But if he does it now, Alnam's gonna notice. He's gonna notice and he's gonna take measures — perhaps, even drastic ones. Krev remembers those transport ships on Atnakis burning on their way to the surface.
This time, it won't be a mistake.
He can feel the cold, reeking breath of the nice boys from Ixtlar on his neck. Couldn't for the past five years — or convinced himself he couldn't.
They won't be so nice to him — not after he killed two of their buddies. Add the exec, too — he wasn't with the outfit, but shared the home planet with them. They probably are gonna cut him into pieces — reeeeeal slow. Maybe they've even got some exotic beast to feed him to.
No, it's time he parted with Telos IV.
Krev always feels a bit better when he has a goal. It may be a shit goal, but it's better than none at all.
His goal: get off Telos without Alnam noticing.
It gets him going. He starts plotting. He feels alive.
Sparsely-populated worlds — fuhgeddaboudit. They'll find him there. He doesn't know how to survive the jungles or the desert. Can hold his own for a while in the wild in a moderate climate, but try to find a planet with one that's not all bought up for resorts and such.
No. A big place. Unrestricted. Like Corellia. Like Carratos.
Like Coruscant.
Oh yes.
This thought electrifies him. Makes his blood sparkle like Glovan white. Makes him feel twenty again.
Krev fucking loves Coruscant.
He lived there for a year or so after he'd made his first big score on Kessel. Got himself a fancy speeder — back when DC0040 was still considered fancy. Got himself a job at a small bank. Got himself a girl in the Moso District, in the shadow of the RJCDC tower. Things didn't work out with her — maybe because Krev loved Coruscant more than he did her — but back then, it seemed as though something may yet work out in his life.
He remembers the first time he saw the Galactic City. He walked out of West Championne. The morning sun blew him tender kisses. And the impossible, cyclopean city was all around him, rearing its skyscrapers so high up Krev could see them a hundred miles away. It swallowed him — made him a blood cell in its monstrous capillaries. Krev loved nothing more than to let the flow take care of him no matter where it was taking him: to the gang-ridden lower levels or to the middle-class condos or to the heart of the planet itself.
Now the heart has called to him again through trillions of cubic kilometers of deadness, and he knew he could not resist this call.
Now that Krev has a goal, obstacles stop being insurmountable.
Alright. What he needs: some money. To rock Alnam to sleep. A new name.
Money: he's got some twelve key. He doesn't really follow the cost of living on Coruscant, but he can't imagine his twelve key sustaining him for long. Some of it he'll have to spend on a ticket anyway.
Alnam: Krev knows the old bastard's watching him. Even went to a couple Holonet cafes yesterday to reinforce his story. Let the voyeur do his thing, if he must. Play for him. But that's not gonna put Alnam to sleep. He's going to get results. He's going to trust Krev. When he trusts Krev, he's going to allow him some more autonomy. When he does, he's going to pay Krev.
Name: enough of this senseless bravado. There are files on you, Krev Devin, at every police station in the Republic. You're a murderer, and they know it. They won't hold back.
All doable. Better yet, all line up in a system.
Work for Alnam. Get him to trust you. Get some credits from him. Get a new identicard. Get on a ship and get off this piece of rock.
Can he really escape the police, the mobsters, and now Alnam as well? Shit, why not — not even someone as rich as Vygo Alnam can find you if you hide yourself well enough. The Galaxy is a big place. Even on Coruscant alone there is what, a trillion people? And that's just the official numbers. You'd need a million lifetimes to check every single one of them.
And not even Vygo Alnam's got that many.
Sure, it might take a while. It will. Alnam's gotta require real results to trust him. Fine: Krev will get him some.
Krev looks at his holo-terminal. What if Alnam is for real? What if wants to turn the Republic into something better? Into something viable? Into something that doesn't have contingency orders involving mass executions?
Well, let him, thinks Krev. Let him take what I find out and use it as he sees fit.
But I'd rather face the consequences of his passionarity on Coruscant.
Having a goal really boosts Krev. He can't remember when he was this productive last when not on the Big G.
He looks up ConCare in the clone's files. Two hits: both in the Dangor Industries Engineers archive.
Hit one, buried among the descriptions of communications on Geonosis: "They [two of the engineers the deserter was kind of close to] said they could never talk to those who went through ConCare." Not much to go by.
Hit two, talking about the resolution of the second battle: "The Geos then started to mass up at Hill 1411. Our task was to protect the engineers and their equipment. It got really tense. There were like thousands of them. And we, we had just the basic combat training, essentially. We were trained to build first and foremost. That's our purpose. That was our purpose. Our battalion was always the first or the second at the shooting range among the Engineer Corps. But when... when we beat like the first wave, we were joking. Saying the bugs must be running out of bugs. But then there was another wave. And another. And another. And I lost count. We lost a few boys. It's always hard. But that time, the Geos, they used some gas bombs. If you get hit... we couldn't remove the helmets of some of our lads. The body just bloats. We started breaking. It's one thing to do well at a range, right? But then the HQ sent us some reinforcements. I later heard that the droid foundry had been blown up by then. That's why they we got some more troops. They were able to reposition some more our way. There were two LAATs. One got hit midair and had to get away. The other one, though, they could land it. You can fit like forty people in a LAAT. The specs say it should be thirty, but you always try to optimize. So there were maybe thirty-five or forty troopers there. And that was enough. They didn't care when one of them got blown to pieces or caught the gas. They were there to shoot, and they just shot. That was all they did. Then, just after the battle was over, I saw they were ConCare boys. We tried to thank them, but we knew there would be no use. They just don't respond when you talk to them. I'm not even sure they have names."
Krev thinks. Who were those ConCare boys? Private military? That would be a laugh — if the Republic subcontracts its war. Nah. Probably not that. A weird name for a PMC. Also: the clone writes his buddies and he didn't notice whom their reinforcements consisted of until after the battle. Conclusion: the ConCare boys wore standard armor — or something close enough to standard not to be immediately noticeable in the heat of battle.
The first hit. The engineers from Dangor Industries, or Forakk, or Ulmis and Ordulann could never talk to those who had gone through ConCare. What's that mean?
Can ConCare be some bootcamp for doubly artificial tubers? Who knows what fancy names they've got for such facilities. Maybe they brainwash the poor fuckers there. But why? They already know only what they're told in their test tubes. Maybe it's like a reeducation camp for those who start wavering in their faith? Maybe the deserter deserted because of it?
An okay version. Krev will return to it.
Another version: ConCare is a name of an operation. This one sounds more plausible. Those who went through it have changed. Maybe it was something so horrible it broke the entire unit. A contingency order comes to mind.
Can be that. Makes sense. This is something that would get Alnam all amped up: a huge atrocity ordered by the Chancellor. Something like that can sway public opinion — unlike another clone bootcamp. Sentient engineers wouldn't talk to them — also makes sense. They were probably in on what had happened.
Krev likes this version a lot. It sounds right.
He types the name into the Holonet search. It should return a blank result if he's right.
But it doesn't. There are millions of results.
ConCare is a medical firm. ConCare is a BioTech Industries daughter company. ConCare is a big thing in the Outer Rim.
ConCare is the shit.
Krev is unwilling to let go of his theory. He looks up GAR operations tied to ConCare. Looks up cloning technologies tied to it.
Nothing.
This doesn't prove anything. There can be a spec op related even to a known company that's still classified.
But it's a medical company, not a planet or anything. Little room for atrocities — at least, if they're performed by clones, not the company's personnel.
Look at the search results. A ton of them, but almost all are about ConCare's stocks. Press-releases: same.
Krev keeps looking into ConCare for half an hour. Even then, he can't tell what it makes or does.
It's probably just a money-laundering thing. But what makes it so important?
Krev feels a snap inside of his head, and it's not a blood clot blocking a vessel.
ConCare is based in the Outer Rim. BioTech Industries isn't.
He's seen that before. Forakk, Ulmis, and Ordulann.
He looks ConCare up in the tax register.
"Would you believe that," he says aloud.
The fucking thing is funded as a part of the Outer Rim Development Program. Doesn't have to pay taxes for fifteen years. Sweet.
He looks up Forakk. There's jackshit on Forakk — he can't even find the year it was founded, let alone by what entity.
Things start looking like a system.
So: Inner Rim and Expansion Territories companies are putting up dummies in the Outers. Thanks to some asinine bill (Krev finds it — it's written so poorly he can't make it past the second sentence), these dummies are freed from taxation.
You can do anything you want in the Outer Rim — without paying a credit to the Republic.
Cracking this mystery feels good, but Krev's not satisfied. There must be more to it — he can sense it.
Maybe it's the scale? Maybe there are thousands of such dummy firms in the Outer Territories. Maybe some big companies have transferred most of their business there just to avoid paying up.
But that's just plain old boring tax evasion. Krev isn't impressed and he doubts Vygo Alnam would be, either.
He follows the scent of lies.
Who owns ConCare? BioTech has the majority stake. That's to be expected. Who owns BioTech?
That's where the things get interesting: its parent conglomerates, TaggeCo and the Neuro-Saav Corp, only hold forty percent of stocks together.
Dragoon Merchandise holds forty-two.
Krev's heard of TaggeCo, of course. Half the things he's had in his life were made by it or its subsidiaries. He's even heard of Neuro-Saav, although their holo-equipment was always too expensive for him.
But he sure as hell hasn't heard of Dragoon Merchandise.
Krev is no business expert. He hasn't heard of many thousands of companies. But his nose smells something weird.
BioTech is a legit enterprise. It actually makes shit: prosthetics, drugs, medical equipment. It's on a contract with the Republic to provide medical care to the citizens of the war-torn worlds in the Mid Rim.
It's a huge corporation controlled by some no-name thing.
Dragoon Merchandise: a familiar picture. Doesn't produce anything, not even merchandise. Provides no services.
CEO: Felvath Dangor.
"No fucking way," says Krev.
He's a very uncertain hound: he looks who Felvath Dangor is on the Holonet. Doesn't believe his smell has led him anywhere.
Felvath's got no personal page on The Republic Encyclopedia. He's deserved a mention, though: "Dangor has an older sister, Daila, and two younger brothers, Isbath and Felvath."
Page: Ars Dangor. As in, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine's aide on Senate commissions Ars Dangor.
Dangor Industries, a quick search tells Krev, was founded in the year 19 BRS by Bouris Dangor, whose daughter Daila is the current CEO of it.
Bouris's kids are doing pretty great in life. Only Isbath seems to not have an interstellar company or position to his name.
Krev searches for him in conjunction with ConCare: nothing.
Well, it's not much. Shit, it's a huge mess the Republic's got going on — probably hundreds of billions of credits left untaxed and who knows what else — but corruption is nothing new. This is probably not even enough to depose Dangor, let alone Palpatine. In theory, everything is legal — unless the tax exemption law for the Outer Rim companies is made illegal all of a sudden. Krev doubts that'll happen.
No, there must be more. This is nothing in the grand scheme of things. Not worth the time he's poured into it.
Not even worth the life of the poor clone bastard.
Krev keeps digging.
After a few hours of nothing new, he shakes things up. Changes his angle.
Ulmis Systems.
Surprisingly, this one isn't a subsidiary of anything. Based on Artesia. Almost fifteen standard years old. Apart from its dealings with Forakk, doesn't seem to have much going for it.
The Ordulann Conglomerate.
Aha, this birdie is more interesting. It's composed of a dozen firms from the Expansion Region and the Colonies. However, the page header shows more than a dozen logos. Much more. Krev runs a few through the search engine. Here you go: Ertze Banking still exists, just not as a part of Ordulann. Reason: it's a CIS company. Same goes for B'dan and Lenma.
Alright. Don't get ahead of yourself. They could've had a falling out with these companies because of the war. There's nothing to say they're still in cahoots. The header? Just a lazy designer. Krev knew a designer guy on Manaan — before the Manaan happened to him — who was fond of talking about the shortcuts you can make in his line of work. And besides, you found everything at free access.
It has to mean it's nothing, right?
The thing is, Krev ain't sure. People usually don't waste their lives searching for company owners and stakeholders. Maybe that's not a convincing argument for those in charge of said companies — but it just can be for their underpaid hirelings who do Holonet page design.
Okay, he tells himself, there's nothing concrete. Keep thinking.
He thinks. What if you suppose there is a connection between the CIS and Ordulann today?
Could the engineers on Geonosis be with the CIS? They already were there when the deserter and his battalion arrived. Maybe the big thing Alnam's after is some cover-up for Republic and CIS businesses ending up in bed with one another?
Sounds plausible. Alnam has a vested interest in it?
It still proves shit. Keep thinking.
ConCare, revisited: no real information on its Holonet page. Buzzwords upon buzzwords — no value, just taking up space because space is meant to be taken. Because people who don't want to waste their lives diving into the fine-prints expect it to be taken. If there's nothing on the front page, they might get suspicious.
Keep diving.
And Krev dives. In about four hours, he goes through every last page of the ConCare site. Even technical data specifying the visitor counter integration.
But in the end, he doesn't need to go that deep. What he's looking for is stranded on the page bearing the address /News_2. Unlike just /News, it doesn't have links to it from the main page. Krev finds one on /Unindexed_pages. There he gets from /Our_achievements — it appears in the footer of that page and no other one. Never underestimate the designer's laziness.
There, at the bottom of /News_2, sits an article from 12-10-19. Title: New Heights Reached in Lobotomy Field.
"Fuck's a lobotomy?" Krev asks.
Then he looks it up, and the pieces fall into place.