The Jedi Purge
Chapter Three
Hide and seek
Chainy felt the air's cold embrace against his skin.
It matched hers.
Karo-Than's blood was colder than his, but her actions didn't show it.
He touched the boneless, featureless arms that grew from the back of her skull - like hair. His hands flinched away, as though frightened by the difference between them.
Her alieness.
He was amazed she knew so much of human anatomy. Her hands ran over his back, finding places that sent shockwaves down his spine. The pleasure of her touch was like frozen bourbon. Intoxicating; refreshing.
Every moment she would do something new, surprising him. Yet when he was on the verge of surrendering he would strike upon some inhuman element in her being, and he would try to pull away.
His shirt lay on the floor, half way between the bed and the wall where she had first kissed him. He had no memory of removing it, but somehow that didn't surprise him.
He lay back on the bed, his head pounding. Than knelt over him, her legs folded to the left and right of his chest. His hands held her thighs, trembling from the wieght of his inhibition.
And then, abruptly, as though his world had been censored, he was alone on the bed. He still felt the cold touch of the air and the hot breath of desire; but the breath was his own and the air was empty of promise or delight.
He sat up.
Karo-Than was standing behind the bed, staring into the depth screen. He realised that she hadn't surrendered an iota of clothing. Where his body had divulged intimate secrets, hers was still a mystery.
"What are you doing over there?" he asked.
She looked over her shoulder at him. "There's been an alarm. It's more important."
"You've got people who can deal with it."
"Yes. But I have to make sure."
Chainy tried to remember if he'd ever treated a woman this way. Finally he remembered a blonde waitress he'd charmed on Vandisse. He'd been tipped off about a raid - seconds before joining her beneath the sheets. He'd dressed without apology; she'd thrown a pillow at him.
Perhaps he should follow her example.
"Police." Karo-Than told him. "They'll surround the place and demand to see everything."
"You've got a way out, right?"
"Yes. Your friends have left."
Chainy pulled on his clothes. He didn't fasten anything. He just got up and walked out. He was on the stairs when she caught him by the arm.
"Don't go."
He smiled. Before he could make a fool out of himself, or ask if her priorities had changed, she added: "They were at the door when I was warned. They'll be all over the ground floor by now."
Suddenly Chainy was afraid, and his face showed it. "Will they come up here?"
"Maybe. They need special permission for private addresses worth over a hundred thousand."
"But..."
"The ground level is a business and open to the public, but it's also registered as a seperate address. I even pay taxes on it.
"It adds up to a fair bit extra, but it's worth it to keep them out."
She watched him dress with a smile, like a connoisseur reading the label on a bottle of fine wine. "I ought to be there." she said. "Hang on and I'll be back."
The doorman flashed a predatory smile. He knew what he liked and he like what he saw; four of the most supple, youngest legs of the night. They were walking past him under pert, lean behinds.
"Forget it, Freddie. Tonight's a school night." The doorman looked over his shoulder, glaring at the girl behind the property counter.
"Been a long time since you had to worry about homework, Tilly." He observed.
"Know how many blasters I got back here, Freddie?" Freddie turned back to the street, smirking.
One of the blonds smiled at him; he felt a rush of pride and desire. Then the second girl whispered into the smiling girl's ear, and they both giggled.
Freddie felt a twinge of fear. Were they laughing at him? He couldn't allow such a thought; they were just easily embarrassed.
He was puffing out his chest when it happened.
Huge and dangerous, it fell out of the sky like the silver grey head of a sledgehammer. Blinding light stormed over the doorman, like a nuclear tidal wave.
Blind, stunned and deaf from a sound that left his skin tingling, Freddie lay on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. When his eyes started working, policemen were charging past.
Two of them broke off from the squad, as one dragged Freddie to his feet the other covered him with a blaster carbine. Together they marched him up the stairs, to the front of Karo-Than's club.
Two figures waited in front of the police transport, casting long black shadows. Shadows like fangs.
One of the figures, it's hair glowing from the searing light of the transport, stepped forward.
It's face was shadowed, swathed in darkness; but Freddie had a fealing that when it's expression was revealed, that too would be dark. Karo-Than stepped into the private corridor. Her movements were rapid, but no less graceful. To her left and right gaurds fell into place.
She entered the public bar only moments after the police troopers. With cool detachment, she noticed the way the closest man covered her. No one else showed a flicker of movement, or took their aim off their assigned line of fire.
"Who is in charge here?" she demanded.
"I am."
Karo-Than's glare snapped to the speaker. He was standing in the entrance to the bar. Behind him was a young woman and the doorman, Fredrick. For a second, she transferred her glare to him.
The man in charge raised a hand towards her, holding something for her inspection. Karo-Than looked at it. The man spoke.
"I am Lieutenant Tarin Liant, of the Civil Enforcement Agency, and this is Detective Shard." He gestured to the woman on his left.
"Why are you here?"
"As the result of a surveillance opperation we have reason to believe you are giving shelter to wanted felons."
Surveillance opperation.
Karo-Than grimaced internally. With those two words he covered the spy his information undoubtedly came from; and suggested she could overlook someone spying on her headquarters.
"I demand to see your authorization." She countered.
With a dour expression the Lieutenant produced a data card. Both sides were embossed with the holographic seal of the C.E.A. Detective Shard supplied a hand sized flatscreen.
Than knew Liant's authorization was the real thing the second she saw it. It had been issued by the Chief of police himself, which meant Liant had gone over the heads of both her "hired hands" in the department. Worse, it gave him the right to search the mansion; where she had just left Chainy.
To buy time she looked him in the eye, and said: "I see."
Her voice could have frozen the air itself.
"While my men keep the ground level secure, a second squad will enter your mansion to ensure our safety.
"Unless you'd like to make things easy for us?" Karo paused at the top of the stairs, as though she were on the edge of a shear drop. In the places usually occupied by her gaurds were Liant and Shard.
Behind them, one of the enforcers could hold his peace no longer. "Sir, I think we should go in front. Shouldn't the strike team be the first to enter the residence?"
"I know what I'm doing, son." Liant drawled.
The door slid open without a murmur.
Karo heard the whisper of fabric, and felt the officers follow her into the living room, like shadows.
"As you can see, Lieutenant, this intrusion on my privacy was quite unnecessary." Karo's voice was loud and hard, her anger not entirely forced. Yet the Lieutenant frowned, sensing something false.
With a suspicious glance to either side, Liant turned and gestured to his men. "If we don't find anything Lady Than, you'll receive a full writen apology."
The scanning crew arrived. Their equipement could pick up a stray neutron at twenty meters. Karo carefully put herself between them and the bedroom. With any luck her own unusual bio-profile would mask anyone behind her.
Standing there, as if she were in front of a firing squad, Karo realised she was closer to losing her freedom than she had ever been before. It was frightening thought for her.
She'd always depended on meticulous planning, pre-warning and contingency plans. Now there had been no warning. There was no time to formulate a plan. This was a contingency she had never foreseen.
*
His heart was full of dread, his world turning in ever decreasing circles. Eyes wide, he backed away from the depth screen. As if putting distance between him and a picture could help.
He'd been lucky. Some shocked, numb part of him mind said so. If he hadn't decided to play with the depth screen there would have been no head start.
Instead he only needed somewhere to run.
Chainy killed the view screen. The picture was distracting. He could easily keep watching until it showed him being arrested.
He turned his back on the screen and took in the room. Chainy knew he didn't have long, and he needed to know what there was to work with.
*
Liant was on edge; and when Liant was edge Shard kept the safty on her blaster off. She didn't ask any of the questions she was so good at thinking of. She'd learned that they just got in the way.
The alien woman moved to one side of the scanning crew. She shifted from one foot to the other, as though there was something special about where she was standing.
Shard took an inhal from her coat pocket. She put the tiny cylinder's mouthpiece between her lips and bit down on the trigger. Drawing the air though her
teeth, her mouth filled with the bitter fresh taste of stimulants.
Better.
Shard thought for a moment, caressing the butt of her Gaurdian Defender. Then she turned to Karo-Than and said: "So what's behind the door?"
She gestured at the door Than wasn't quite blocking. Than was far too willing to make eye contact with her. She broke off glaring at Liant, her new expression assaying the police woman.
Shard needed to see no more. "You and you." she said, "Come with me." Leading the scanning technicians past the proud Twi-Lek, Shard entered Than's sleeping chamber.
She'd seen the homes of enough gangsters to take the sights of the room in her stride. The scanning crew got to work in the corner, and the owner of the room joined them.
Whatever was most important to Karo-Than, it had to be in this room. She'd walked out on Liant to keep an eye on them.
Karo felt fear building, supercharging her muscles. They were closing in. The scanner crew were working their way round the walls of the room, towards the hidden closet. It was the only place Chainy could be hiding. Suddenly it stuck her: she hadn't even considered the embarrassment having Chainy found would cause.
A wanted lover found in her bedroom. What an absurd way to finally be brought down!
The scanning crew reached the point of the wall that concealed the closet.
Karo began to play with her hands; a nervous habit which usually surfaced just before the shooting.
Shard watched as long, nimble fingers begin to wrap around each other. Set against Than's confidence it was like seeing a bullet hole in a mirror.
She could see cracks reaching out from those hands, touching the edges of Than's soul. In response, Shard indulged in a nervous habit of her own.
She started to rock the gun back and forth in it's holster. Shard was so ready to draw, she could almost pull the gun by accident.
Cutting though the room's oppressive air like the breaking of someone's skull, there came the sound of a door opening. The sound went between Karo-Than and Juli Shard like a hurled battle axe.
"Found something?" Shard wouldn't turn her head. The gun was half free of it's prison.
"It's a hidden compartment." One of the tec's told her.
Than closed her eyes. She tried to collect herself. She could stay cool under fire, but this made her nerves vibrate like violin stings.
"Open it." Shard's eyes were on Karo-Than, her gun almost clear of the holster.
Liant filled the doorway behind Karo-Than. His dark eyes swept over the room, devouring the secrets of everyone therein.
Two enforcers took places either side of the secret door, like the pillers of an archway. Karo-Than knew; if they opened up with their Hammerhead carbines, that door would be no tougher than a firing range target.
A technician killed the lock in less than a minute. The door opened, but Karo-Than could here the closing of cell doors.
"It's empty, sir." the technician reported.
There was a moment of silence, as if no-one quite knew what to do next. Shard was on the edge of pulling her gun. She found she couldn't back away from the act, now that she was so close. Her body was too taut for her to even turn her head; so when she looked to Liant, it was with her eyes.
Liant's face was changeless. From his expression, he might have been told something he already knew.
Karo-Than witnessed the rest of the search. Relief numbed her; it shielded her from the sight of police enforcers playing with her jewellery, reading her appointment diary, handling her clothing.
They faced each other over the mansion's threshold. Liant had been the last one to leave. Karo-Than felt tired. She didn't glare at him, she wanted him to just go.
"I'll see to it you get that writen apology." Liant's tone was vailed by darkness.
"I'm sure you're very sorry you didn't find anything." Karo replied. It amazed her this man could think she cared.
The door closed.
Karo-Than desperately wanted to take a shower. She suddenly needed to be clean. She was a professional though. She thought about business.
Chainy had undoubtedly slipped down the stairs in her wake. The stairs were the only way down from the mansion. At least, they were the only one Chainy could have used. In order to make the trip undetected he must have followed her down the stairs, long before warning of the search.
He hadn't trusted her.
Somehow that hurt. She couldn't say why, perhaps because it was late. It had been a busy night and she was too tired to worry over trivialities. Her people would tidy up after the police.
Sighing, she opened the clasp on her dress. The leather evening gown folded over a handy chair like a pile of autumn leaves. She needed sleep to clear her mind. Three or four hours of it, with the bed massaging her body like an ocean shaping a beach.
The door to her bedroom opened. The room was occupied. Standing nonchalantly between her and the bed was the illusive fugitive.
Chainy drank the sight of her naked body like a survivor of a desert filling himself with water, until he was forced to breathe. Chainy wondered; could too much make him ill?
She felt her jaw drop with surprise - a measure of how tired she was. Karo saw him centered in the room like stage magician, appearing to take the applause, only he had taken so much more than just applause.
A grin spread over Chainy's face. This time it was her body that had surrendered it's secrets, while his remained off limits. After the way she had treated him, it seemed like fair payback.
"How...? Where were you?"
"Under the bed." Chainy replied. "The electronics from all those gadgets masked me."
He reached out and took her chin, lifting her face to his. Their lips met. Chainy leaned towards her until she was lying back on the bed.
