SEVEN
The Republic base was a smudge on the horizon in the lightening sky. Carth drained the last of his caffa from the thermomug and prepared to land the speeder. He'd left well before dawn and made good time across the darkened plains.
A message flashed across his screen: Separatist Threat Level Increased. Yellow Alert Status. Unaccompanied Aircraft May Be Targets. Carth smiled. If his instincts were right, he'd run into the separatists again before returning to Marne. He was starting to put things together—Wann's odd behavior when he arrived at the base, the equally odd handling of the separatist who killed herself on his way to Marne, and now news of a new virus and disappearances. All things that would make a man think about relocating his family to a safer planet.
A young man in Republic colors waved him into a spot in the speeder bay. Carth jumped down and was immediately accosted by the young officer. "Captain Onasi?" he asked eagerly.
"Er. . .yes," he ventured. "That's me." He hoped Wann didn't have advance notice of his visit.
The young man saluted. "Ensign Nolander Restoog, sir! How can I assist you?"
"At ease, Ensign. Are you on duty this shift?"
Restoog relaxed a millimeter. "Yes, sir, the night shift, sir. It's a pleasure, sir."
Carth had to grin at that. "The night shift at a middle-of-nowhere base on a middle-of-nowhere planet? You don't have to pretend with me, Ensign. I used to live here, I know what it's like."
"Yes, sir, I'm also Telosian, sir. I requested this assignment specifically, sir."
"What settlement?" Maybe the kid knew more about the virus and disappearings.
"I'm from Tar Menak, sir." Restoog's expression darkened. "Or was."
"What do you mean, was?" Carth asked in surprise. Tar Menak was the biggest settlement on the planet. It was as much of a capital city as Telos had.
"Didn't they tell you when you arrived? All of the settlements except Marne have been abandoned."
Carth felt like the kid had kicked him in the gut. If that was true, then the Fleet's intelligence on the planetary poltics was woefully out of date--he'd thought Telos was recovering from the attack. He crossed his arms hard across his chest. "Why?" he growled.
Restoog swallowed hard. "Uh, well, the virus, sir. Last year. And then the attacks from the separatists. They burned all of the hifa at the last harvest and we didn't have enough to export. The Republic Diplomacy Corps visited us and offered everyone 50 square klicks on Tavin VI. I think just about everyone took it. It was just getting too hard to earn a living. Marne is the only settlement that turned down the offer."
"What do you know about the vaccine that they gave everyone?"
"I don't really know anything, sir. It was very high tech—they shipped it in from Coruscant. I heard they could track each dose to the person it was given to." Restoog remembered his job and straightened back to attention. "May I escort you somewhere, sir?"
Carth wasn't ready to talk to Wann yet. He needed more information about the vaccine. "Just tell me how to get to the central base terminal. Fleet business."
"Certainly, sir." Restoog pointed toward the hanger exit. "Take two lefts and the terminal room will be on your right. If you need anything, sir, just buzz me on the comm."
"Thanks." Carth started toward the exit.
"Sir?" He stopped midstep turned back toward the Ensign. "When Tar Menak pulled out, I decided to join the Fleet. You probably don't remember, sir, but my sister and I were staying with my grandmother in Marne when the Sith attacked. My family hid in a bunker but it was buried in rubble and we couldn't get out. We thought we were going to die. You were the one who opened the hatch and got us out. That's why I joined the Fleet--to help people like you helped us."
Carth didn't remember. Those days were just a blur of stim-induced activity. He'd saved more people than he could count, but he'd lost the important ones. He saluted the young man. "Safe flying, Ensign." Restoog returned the salute. Carth continued on his way.
Restoog's directions were accurate, and Carth was soon in a room dominated by a computer terminal. He frowned at the big piece of equipment, then took a breath and logged on with his Fleet username. He used to be better at slicing, but he'd stopped having time to learn all the codes once he was promoted to Captain. He'd have to hope that his security clearance was high enough to find something without triggering intruder alarms.
Carth dug through menus and bypassed several opportunities to gas the place and send the security droids on murderous rampages. He finally reached the bottom of the operations menu and found only a single option:
RESTORATION PROJECT
He clicked on it and the next menu appeared:
POPULATION CENSUS
TERMS
ACTIVATE PROJECT
Carth clicked on the POPULATION CENSUS option and the screen was replaced by a string of names that went for several hundred pages.
AAROWARI, DENTON, TAR MENAK, DECEASED
AAROWARI, HALLA, TAR MENAK, EMIGRATED
ABAGAN, POLYANAN, COLTE, EMIGRATED
ABB, TOMAS, MARNE, 420-99471
ABBIVAN, BRAVIGAN, DOL KEVAL, DECEASED
ACTO, MELL, MARNE, DECEASED
ACTO, TERNAS, MARNE, 420-98973
Carth remembered the cheerful blonde in Wann's office. "Okay, the 420 strain, then." He scrolled down in the menu.
ONARK, STEPHAT, DOL KEVAL, EMIGRATED
ONASI, CARTH, MARNE, 420-99722
ONASI, DUSTIL, MARNE, STATUS UNKNOWN
ONASI, MORGANA, MARNE, DECEASED
Suddenly suspicious of what was going on, he scrolled near the bottom of the menu.
VALENTA, JAN, MARNE, 420-98804
VALENTA, JIRIN, MARNE, STATUS UNKNOWN
VALENTA, SULAN, MARNE, 420-98805
VALENTA, TALLEN, MARNE, DECEASED
VAO, MISSION, TEMP. VISITOR, 450 (PLACEBO)
Carth glanced behind him, looking from the corners of his eyes for the vid cameras that he knew had to be there. He didn't have much time. It was clear that the vaccine he'd been given was also given to everyone who stayed on the planet, most of whom were from Marne. And it appeared that the vaccine was specifically targeted to each person. So-called "temporary visitors" like Mission hadn't received vaccines. Why? Because they weren't going to stay on the planet. Carth backed out to the root menu and tried TERMS:
ITHORIAN AGREEMENT
REPUBLIC AGREEMENT
TAVIN VI AGREEMENT
Carth quickly called up the ITHORIAN AGREEMENT, but it was written in dense legalese and he didn't really understand what was being bargained for. It seemed to be saying that the Ithorians were to take guardianship of the planet, but he couldn't tell when or for how long. He backed out to the root menu again and tried the final option, ACTIVATE PROJECT:
PASSCODE REQUIRED
If Mission had been with him, she might have been able to crack the passcode, but Carth knew he didn't stand a chance. He tried to abort without success. After the third try, the screen went blue and white text appeared:
ACCESS DENIED. CONTACT SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR.
"Is there something with which I can help, Captain?" a voice behind him asked.
Carth was surprised to see not Wann, but an Ithorian standing in the doorway of the terminal room. "That was fast," he remarked mildly.
The big alien nodded its head widely. "You must have known that you would be watched here. We have watched you and your Twi'lek herdling since you arrived."
"Tell me what's going on," Carth asked. Ithorians rarely left their homeworld, and when they did, it was usually for large-scale projects with ecosystems. Telos would qualify.
The Ithorian hummed. "We are not the enemy of your planet, Captain. We mourned the loss of your biosphere."
"Why has everyone left? What's causing the virus?"
"The planet is ill, Captain. Marne is not representative of the planet."
"But what are you doing now?" He waved a hand at the computer. "What is this project?"
"I am not at liberty to say. Your Diplomacy Corps is still the Herd Leader."
Carth shook his head roughly. "I don't like getting jerked around by Wann, or you. You can tell Wann that the Fleet will hear about this. I'm not going to lose Telos again." He shoved past the alien and started toward the speeder bay. It was clear he needed more information, and he wasn't going to get that here.
"It is not our home, but we care for Telos as well, Captain. I cannot give you information, but I will try to help you and the herdling when I can." Carth stopped and looked back toward the terminal room, but the alien was already loping away.
The morning was already well gone by the time Carth got his speeder out of the base and back on the plains. He mulled over what he had learned. It was hard to believe that Marne was the only settlement left, but the kid had no reason to lie. If Marne had refused to leave even after the virus and the kidnappings by the separatists, what else would make them leave? If the Ithorian was right and Diplomacy was in charge, they wouldn't just take back the land from the settlers—the media coverage would be terrible. No, it was far better for Diplomacy if everyone voluntarily left the planet. What he didn't know is what the Ithorians were going to do and why they needed an empty planet to do it. Whatever it was, he had a bad feeling about it.
The proximity klaxon sounded. Carth jerked himself out of his thoughts to see a wedge of speeders approaching him from the low rise ahead. The separatists were right on time. The difficult part was going to be finding out what they knew without ending up on the wrong end of a restaining collar. He pulled his blasters and checked his surroundings warily. Three more speeders came up behind him and one shadowed him from overhead. He was surrounded.
His comm crackled to life. "We don't want to hurt you. Set the speeder down."
Carth reached for the comm to send a message back to the base but his attackers spoke first.
"We're watching the Twi'lek girl. You don't want to send a message to anyone."
Carth clenched his fist hard but pulled back from the comm. He jerked the speeder to a halt and set it down roughly on the ground. Before anyone could approach him, he leapt out of the seat and stood on the tail section, blasters out and ready. He was outnumbered, but he wasn't going down without a fight.
To his surprise, only one of the separatists exited the speeder, a young Zabrak with a mechanical arm. He held his hands up in a show of peace. He was weaponless but appeared to be holding a datapad. "Captain, we're not going to hurt you," the Zabrak called.
Carth didn't lower his blasters. "Could've fooled me," he said with a hard grin.
The Zabrak approached slowly. He held the datapad in front of him. "You need to see this, Captain. We need the Fleet to get us off this planet."
"You needed ten speeders to give me a datapad?" Carth asked incredulously.
The Zabrak placed it on the nose of Carth's speeder and backed away slowly. "Only half a message, I'm afraid. The other half will be waiting for you when you arrive at Marne."
"Wait!" Carth called. "What do you know about the vaccine? And the disappearances?"
"There's no time. Read the datapad, then get the message back at Marne. We need your help."
As soon as the Zabrak got back to his speeder, the others rose and took off in all directions. Carth let out a breath and slowly reholstered his blasters. He retrieved the datapad and dropped back into the cockpit of the speeder. He called up the message.
CONNECTING TO MAIN TERMINAL. . .
CONNECTED
The datapad displayed a screen that looked like what he had seen on the terminal at the Republic base. Before he could select an option, it automatically selected ACTIVATE PROJECT
The screen changed to the familiar ENTER PASSCODE. The program automatically entered a string of characters and the program displayed the next screen.
ENTER STRAIN NUMBER
The cursor blinked for several long moments, then entered 420 into the box.
ENTER DOSE NUMBER
After another long pause, 99722 appeared in the field.
DEACTIVATED
Carth rubbed the back of his neck uneasily. That was the number attached to his vaccine.
He looked back at the datapad, which now displayed a new message.
DISCONNECTING FROM MAIN TERMINAL. . .
DISCONNECTED
THIS WAS A LIVE RECORDING FROM THE BASE COMPUTER, CAPTAIN.
ONLY WANN CAN ACCESS THE ACTIVATION SCREENS. IF YOUR VACCINE
CAN BE DEACTIVATED, THEY ALL CAN BE.
WHO SOLD TELOS?
END OF PART ONE
TRANSMISSION TERMINATING. . .
TERMINATED
The screen went black. Carth tapped the entry keys, but they had no effect. The datapad had obviously been programmed for the one message and nothing else. Carth started up his speeder and pushed the throttle as far as it could go. He needed to see what was waiting for him at Marne.
It was only an hour after daybreak when Mission got up, but Jan was already sitting at the kitchen table, drinking caffa. Mission had snuck a couple of ales at the party, and she badly wanted a cup herself. Before she could even get it, though, he pointed at a datapad on the table. "Captain Onasi left that for you. He said he'd be back after sunset."
"For me?" She picked it up and flipped it on.
Happy Life Day, Mission! she read. This will make you a local in no time. –Carth
"Well?" Jan asked urgently. "I've been waiting an hour for you to get up and open it! What is it?"
She grinned and got herself a cup of caffa. She didn't know how Carth even knew it was her life day. He must have looked it up in a database somewhere. "It's a weather calculator! It'll let me figure out the patterns all over the planet. Isn't that cool?"
Jan nodded. "Useful, I guess. We have pretty strong weather on Telos. Everybody's obsessed with the weather around here. But why'd he give it to you now?"
"It's my life day."
"Oh, yeah? How old are you today?"
"Fifteen," she replied, self-satisfied. She was halfway to twenty, now. Pretty soon nobody would mistake her for a kid.
"Well, I'm still older than you, and that means I get to tell you what to do. So finish your caffa and let's get out to the field before it gets too hot."
Mission suppressed a retort and stuck the calculator in her pocket. "Fine, let's go."
They took scooters out to the edge of the field, which looked to Mission like the ocean she'd seen on Manaan. The pink, feathery stalks waved back and forth in the breeze and made a quiet swishing noise. "It's beautiful!" she exclaimed.
Jan shrugged. "Yeah, it's okay, I guess. Wait til you've spent three hours hulling and you might change your mind. Now, here's what you do." He took a stalk of hifa and showed her the feathery end. "See here, where this papery part starts? You've got to scrape that off so the seed can germinate."
"Okay, that doesn't look too hard. Gimme that knife."
Three hours later, Mission hadn't changed her mind about the beauty of the field as a whole, but she was mightily tired of the plants as individuals. Her thumb was blistered where the knife rubbed against it, and she had chaff all over her, down her shirt and in her boots, too. And she'd hardly managed to get through five plants! How were they ever going to get through one row, not to mention the whole field?
"You're a pretty good worker for a city girl," Jan remarked as he hefted a barrel of hifa chaff over Mission's head.
Mission rolled her eyes. "Yeah? Well, you're a pretty good thinker for a dewback. You must be their leader." She yanked the thin outer shell of the hifa leaf off the pinkish plant. Jan couldn't go two seconds without showing how superior he was to her. Do it this way, Mission. You're doing it wrong, Mission. No, try this, Mission. If there had been anyone else in the field with them, she'd have ditched hours ago. But, true to his pessimistic prediction, they were the only two working.
To her surprise, Jan laughed at her rude comment. "That's a good one, Mission. You're quick with comebacks, huh?"
She glanced at him warily, not sure whether he was still making fun of her. "Yeah, well, it helps when you're always the youngest."
Jan nodded and started in on the row next to her. The waist-high plants waved gently in the breeze between them. "I was usually the youngest in my group, too. Well, me and Jirin, that is. But most of the kids my age either died in the attack or were taken by the Sith, so now I'm one of the oldest. You'd be surprised what they let a sixteen-year-old do when there's no one else around to do it." He pulled his blade down the stalk expertly and stripped off the shell in one pass.
"Why didn't they get you?" Mission asked.
Jan didn't look up. She could see red creeping up his neck. "I hid. Jirin, too. We ran inside the school when the attack started, and our mom found an entrance to the storm shelter. We all went down there and stayed for two days. A couple other people found it, too. We came out when we ran out of water, and everything was—well, you know. Like this." He gestured to the barren landscape beyond the fields. "The Sith were still picking up a few people, but they were mostly gone. My dad's dead, and my mom wasn't anybody important, so they didn't care about us. Then the Fleet showed up and the Sith left quick."
"I guess you're lucky, then."
He shrugged. "I guess so. I was gonna join the Fleet after I finish school, but now I guess I can't."
"Why?" Mission stopped tending the hifa, surprised at the resignation in Jan's voice.
"Because," he glared at her. "You think I'm going to just leave now? Everyone here is an old man or a baby! Who's gonna tend the fields and catch the fish and put up new buildings if everyone leaves? Maybe you can just walk away after your planet is destroyed, but I can't!"
Mission pointed a finger at him. "Hey! You don't know nothin' about me! At least you have a home—there's nothing left to rebuild on Taris!" To her horror, tears filled her eyes. She swiped at them with her shoulder.
Jan held out his hand but she jerked away. "Mission," he started, "Mission, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I know you couldn't go back there—I saw the pictures on the newsvid. I shouldn't have said that. It's just—it's just hard to be the responsible one all the time. It was better, before, but now that Jirin's missing—" he trailed off.
"I thought he was, well, you know—" she said. She sniffed hard a couple of times and went back to stripping the hifa and let the rhythm of the work distract her.
"Dead?" Jan shook his head. "No, he's not dead. I would have felt him die. Everyone gave up too quickly, my mother included. I know he's out there somewhere."
Mission wasn't sure how to react. "But how could you—are you Force sensitive?"
"No, it's just because we're twins, I guess. I just turned around one day and knew that he was gone. But I can still feel him, a little. He's not gone completely, and that's how I know he's not dead." He looked up at her, eyes red-rimmed but dry. "I still miss him a lot. I don't know if he's coming back."
"Yeah, I miss a lot of people from Taris. It wasn't the best place to live, but it was the only place I knew, until Carth and Case showed up and I went with them."
Jan brightened a little. "That must have pretty exciting, huh? Going to all those planets and fighting the Sith? I saw the newsvid commentators talking about it after you got back."
Mission shrugged. "It was cool, but I didn't get to do much, honestly. Like on Korriban, they didn't even let me get off the ship." She grinned. "I snuck out a couple times, of course, but I didn't get to do any fighting there."
"Is it true that Dustil Onasi is a Sith?"
Mission hesitated. After that episode at the Enclave, she wasn't so sure. But she couldn't tell his friends that. "No, he was at the Academy, but Case and Carth convinced him to leave. The Sith tricked him."
Jan moved on to the next plant, and Mission hastened to catch up. "I can't believe he'd even join the Academy," Jan said. "I mean, his dad is a big hero and everything. He was the one who came and told us that my dad had been killed in the Mandalorian War. Captain Onasi said that my dad had saved his life a bunch of times and he was real sorry that he couldn't return the favor this time. I mean, if my dad was alive, I sure wouldn't betray him like that." Jan rushed on before Mission could say anything. "I guess they must have brainwashed him or something when they took him, right?" He looked at her, the question in his eyes.
"Yeah, that must have been it," she said finally. She wasn't going to burst Jan's bubble. He was still kind of a stuck-up jerk, but he hadn't gotten to have all the adventures that she did. She guessed he wasn't so bad once you got to know him. She finally finished her plant and moved on to the next one. The leaves gave off a nice peppery smell when they were stripped.
They had been working silently beside each other for another hour when a low rumble caught her attention. "What's that noise?" she asked, craning her neck to look around.
"Oh, that's just, er—"
On the other side of the field, she saw a group of people setting up a droid for each row. The droids activated and rumbled along the aisles, appendages stripping the hifa as they went. It took the droids two minutes what had taken them half a day to do.
"What the heck?" she exclaimed. "Why didn't we get droids?"
Jan was beet red from his ears to his collar "Well, I, er, I kind of just wanted to talk to you for a while."
"What?" Mission flung her primitive scraping tool to the ground. "I've been out here working my tail off for five hours so you could get a little action?"
"No, no, I just—I come out here and tend the hifa sometimes, when I need to think. I just thought you might like it—"
"You jerk!" Mission dove across the row and tackled him. She pummeled him in the chest until he started shaking. She stopped, afraid she'd hurt him, but she saw that he was only laughing. He was practically convulsing as tears ran down the sides of his head.
He pointed a shaking finger at her. "You—you thought we tended the crops by hand?" He could hardly get his words out. "Wait—wait—maybe we can find two sticks and rub them together to make fire!" He collapsed into laughter again.
Mission looked at him for a minute and started laughing, too. It was pretty funny. Mission rolled off him. "Come on, you idiot. Let's get out of here before the droids run us over."
Jan hauled himself to his feet, dust and chaff covering his clothes. He grinned at her. "If we go back to town now, we'll have to listen to Director Ando's weekly lecture on responsibility and hard work. It's very uplifting and seriously boring."
"You got a better idea?"
"I know a good place to go where they won't look for us for a while. I used to camp out there a lot when I was a kid. It's about half a klick from here." He pointed west toward a small outcropping of rocks. "You up for a walk?"
"Last one there's a dewback!" she shouted and took off for the rocks.
"Hey! No fair!" Jan yelled behind her.
She heard him approaching and turned up her speed. She leapt through the hifa and narrowly missed a harvest droid. She beat him by two steps to the rock formation and threw herself to the ground, breathless. "Ha! You're a dewback! You're a dewback!"
Jan bent over at the waist, puffing. "Cheater. Can't we just play Pazaak next time?"
She smirked. She'd clean this colonial boy out in no time. She put all the innocence she could into her voice. "Ooh! Pazaak! I just bought a beginner's deck yesterday! Can you teach me to play?"
"Oh, sure, I can do that."
Two hours later, he was staring at a side deck stripped of all its good cards. "I thought you said you couldn't play!" he said, bewildered.
"Beginner's luck, I guess," she replied. Maybe now he wouldn't be such a know-it-all.
"I guess." He sounded doubtful. "I have another deck at home. We could try again—what's that noise?"
A buzzing sound was coming from her pocket. "Oh, hey, it's me." She pulled out her new weather calculator and flipped it on. The display was flashing a warning for severe weather. She handed it up to Jan. "You ever been in a tornado?"
"A what?" He yanked the calculator away and fiddled with the display. He turned around and back toward town, where an ominous pile of black clouds were gathering. Lightning crept between the clouds and gave them an eerie green glow. "The storm is about five klicks away and moving fast! We should have paid more attention to the weather."
"Can't we just get next to these rocks? What's a little rain and wind?" Mission asked.
He stared at her like she'd turned into a gizka. "Are you crazy? A tornado isn't just a little storm—we'd be killed! We've got to get back to town right now!"
Mission took her calculator back from him. "Well, how are we going to do that?" she asked reasonably. "The storm is coming from that direction, and our scooters are still out in the field. We'll never make it back in time." She looked around. "Is there somewhere we can hide here?" The rock formation behind her made a semicircle around a small lake. The largest rock overlapped a smaller one. She pointed to it. "What about that? Is that a cave?"
Jan looked where she was pointing. "It's more like a big hole. It drops down three meters and then extends back a ways. We used to play space pirates there when we were kids." He looked back toward the clouds moving rapidly their way. The wind had started to kick up, swirling the brush around the lake. He put down his hand and hauled Mission to her feet. "It's pretty tight, but it'll work."
They ran over to the cave. Mission ducked her head in. "Ew, there's crawlers in there." She heard the wind howling behind her and could practically feel the tension coming off of Jan. She'd never seen a tornado, but she guessed it wasn't anything to sneeze at. "Okay, okay." She sat down on the edge of the hole and dropped down. She tried not to think about the things that crunched under her feet. She opened her datapad and the display gave off a little light. The cave extended back about two meters, and she could see evidence of old campfires, spice packets, and ale bottles. She backed up a bit to allow Jan room to come down.
He landed next to her with a thud. "Go back against that wall, away from the opening."
The end of the cave was hardly big enough for the two of them, and the gray light from the hole didn't begin to illuminate it. Mission found herself practically on Jan's lap. "Don't even think about it, buddy," she warned.
She could hear the grin in his voice. "Me? Take advantage of the situation? What kind of a—" He stopped speaking abruptly.
"What is—" Jan clamped his hand over Mission's mouth.
"Shh!" He whispered. "Someone's coming."
Mission could hear voices approaching over the high pitched wail of the wind. "Here! We can take cover in this hole," a male voice said.
A male figure dropped down and put up his hands to lift a female figure down. Mission leaned forward, ready to announce their presence. She didn't want them to get the wrong idea about she and Jan here in this hole.
"Well, you picked a fine time for this meeting, Wann," the female said acerbically.
Mission froze. What was Roland Wann from the Republic base doing here?
"Look, it's not my fault that your planet has worse weather than Hoth. We could have met in your office, Doctor. And I thought you'd appreciate knowing that Onasi was poking around the base this morning, trying to find out about your missing colonists."
Mission felt Jan stiffen in surprise behind her. He whispered in her ear, "That's Doctor Coran!" The wind was so loud now near the opening that Mission could hardly hear Wann and the doctor. She activated her stealth generator and pushed back hard against Jan, hoping that her stealth field would cover them both. As long as they didn't come back all the way—
"Did he find anything out?"
"I don't think so. None of the people he was spoke to knew anything. He asked a Fleet kid a few tough questions about the vaccine and got to the population census, but I'm sure he couldn't tell that the vaccines can be deactivated at our discretion."
Mission felt a slow creeping horror. Why would someone deactivate a vaccine? Everyone in the town had gotten it, and so had she.
Coran spoke again. "I think the storm is passing by. I'm needed back at the town in case there were any injuries. The hifa crew was out this morning, and I think that Twi'lek girl and the Valenta twin were out with them. How are we going to keep Onasi from finding out things that are none of Fleet's business?"
"Don't worry about that. I've taken care of it."
Mission couldn't quite stifle her gasp.
"You didn't do anything overt, did you?" Coran sounded alarmed. "We'll have the Admiralty on top of us if anything suspicious happens to him. It's bad enough that those separatists attacked on his way to Marne—"
"It's none of your concern, Doctor," Wann snapped. "If you'd done your job and convinced Mitch Ando to go along with the rest of the planet and take the Tavin VI deal, we wouldn't be in this situation. But Fleet was suspicious enough to send its favorite officer, and now I've had to deal with it. I've. . . accelerated our plans. Onasi was first, but the others will follow within a week. Can you get everything prepared here?"
"That should be enough time. Our mission is too important to let Fleet ruin things for us." She looked up at the hole. "Has the storm gone?"
Wann looked at a datapad. "It's gone by and broken up. Here, I'll give you a boost, then you drop down a cord for me." Coran stepped on his cupped hands and pulled herself out. Mission was a little surprised at how spry the woman was for her age. A few moments later, long enough for Mission to worry that they'd be stuck in the hole with Wann, a thin cord ladder dropped in and Wann climbed up with effort.
Mission didn't move until she heard both speeders start up and move away. She ran up to the hole and looked out, ignoring the cold rain falling on her face. "We've got to get back and warn everyone, Jan!" she cried.
Jan came forward, looking confused. "Where are you?"
"Oh." She turned her stealth generator off. "Here."
"How did you do that?" he asked. "That's cool!"
"That's not important now! We've got to get back to town! We've got to stop them!"
"Stop them how, Mission? Stop them from what? We don't know anything!"
"Stop them from, well, they're obviously up to something!" Mission realized that Jan was right—what were they going to do, tell the Director that the doctor and the Republic liaison were plotting together vaguely in a hole outside of town? No one would believe them, and then Coran would know that they knew. "But we can't just do nothing!"
Jan nodded slowly. "No, obviously not. I think we should tell Captain Onasi what we heard. He obviously suspects something, or Wann wouldn't have been worried. Maybe he can get the Fleet to investigate."
Mission agreed. Carth would know what to do. Jan boosted her out of the cave and then she reached down to help him out. They raced back to their scooters, which were fortunately undamaged by the storm.
They arrived in Marne just as the sky was turning pink with the sunset. She saw Carth walking away from the square toward the speeder bays. Mission dropped her scooter to the ground and ran to him, Jan just behind. "Carth!" she called.
He turned to her and blinked a few times, like he didn't recognize her. "Mission," he asked finally, "what have you been up to?"
She looked down at herself and flushed. She was still soaked through from the storm and covered, head to toe, in gray dust. Jan looked even worse, with the only clean part of him where his goggles had been. "Oh, um, well, we were out by the lake when the storm hit, and we had to go in this cave, and well, we—" she trailed off.
Mission expected him to tease her, but Carth just coughed and kept looking at her in that funny vague way. He looked paler than usual.
"Captain, are you all right?" Jan asked.
"Fine, I'm fine," he said. He started walking toward the bays without seeing if they were accompanying him. Mission exchanged a glance with Jan, then jogged forward and grabbed Carth's arm.
He stopped and looked down at her. "What do you need, Mission?" He sounded a little irritated.
She wasn't used to him being so short with her. She shuffled nervously, their story sounding farfetched now even to her. Maybe he wouldn't believe them. "Um, well, while we were in the cave, we heard Dr. Coran and Roland Wann talking about—" She stopped when she saw that Carth wasn't even looking at her. "Carth? Are you listening?"
He rubbed his forehead. She was struck by how tired he looked. "Mission, I'm sorry. I learned some things this afternoon and I need to get back to the base to talk to Roland Wann. I'm just in a hurry, that's all."
"But that's just what we need to talk to you about! We heard Roland Wann telling Dr. Coran that you were snooping around the base."
She seemed to finally catch his interest. "Really? So Coran's involved too. It makes sense that he would need local help."
Jan had been hovering behind Mission but now spoke up. "Captain, they were discussing the vaccine we all got last year. Is there something wrong with it?"
"No, I think they're working as they were designed. I had a message waiting for me back here that made me think Wann knows a lot more than he said." He started back toward the speeders. "I should be back tomorrow morning. Mission, we may need to go back to Coruscant sooner than I thought, so make sure your things are packed when I get back. In the meantime, don't go anywhere by yourself. Either of you."
Jan stepped in front of the older man, arms folded resolutely. "I'm coming with you to the base."
Carth looked at him like he'd lost his mind. "Jan, what—"
"You know more than you're saying, too," Jan said accusingly. "You don't even live here anymore, but I do, and my brother is one of the missing people. I want Wann to tell me to my face that he's not behind it."
Mission wasn't about to get left behind on this trip. "If Jan's in, I am, too." she declared.
"Neither one of you is going!" Carth exclaimed. "This isn't some kind of game, you know. It could be dangerous, and I'm not going to tell your mother that she's lost another member of her family, Jan!"
Jan sobered at that. Carth apparently thought he'd ended the discussion and started to turn away, but Jan held his arm. "Please, Captain," he asked quietly. "I—I couldn't do anything in the attack to—to save people. And I couldn't do anything to protect Jirin. I just want to—you know, do something."
Carth looked at him for a long minute. "Can you use a blaster?" he asked.
Mission stifled a victory cry. Jan nodded seriously. "I'm a good shot, Captain, but mine is still at the house."
Carth unholstered one of his and handed it Jan. "It's probably a little heavier than what you're used to, but you shouldn't need it, anyway. Mission, are your blades still in the speeder?"
"Yup."
"All right, let's go, before we attract too much attention. Jan, you can send your mother a message from the speeder that we went to check out the Republic school at the base."
"Aw, Carth, that's such a lame excuse," Mission groused. "Tell her we went camping or something for my life day."
Carth sighed and looked like he wished he could change his mind. "Just get in the speeder, kids, would you, please?"
Mission elbowed Jan. "He's talking to you, you know. Kid."
"Last one to the speeder's a dewback!" he called over his shoulder as he raced for the bay.
"Hey! No fair!" Mission took off after him.