They rode the 'lift back down to ground level in silence, and waved away the militia speeder, saying they wanted to grab a take-out lunch. As they hurried back down the street, Tahiri gave a look of wide-eyed disbelief. "General Syndulla really doesn't realise Governor Azadi's sold out to the Peace Brigade?"
Anakin knew better than to try and answer her with words. Yuuzhan Vong convert she might be, but their Peace Brigade allies - a self-proclaimed network of pirates, informants and career criminals who often simply used collaboration as a pretext for brutality and profiteering - were probably her least favourite people.
"Wait, what?" Jaina looked baffled.
"Azadi's a snake," Tahiri said, scuff-kicking at a litter-cleaning droid. "Sorry, I thought you knew - he's been using his position as cover for all kind of dirty double-dealing with the Peace Brigade. Nothing too direct, admittedly, just blaster gas for their pirates, sani-steaming the shiny Hutt wupiupi from their flesh-trade into nice clean electronic credits, and providing a holonet node for Viqi Shesh and a secure hub for infiltrators moving in and out of Mon Cal and Kashyyyk. Okay, he'd say it was to keep Lothal safe, and he may have been passing information to those idiots in NRI, for all the good use they'd make of it, but cut down all the trees, and he's been making a tidy personal profit out of betraying the New Republic."
Just like he did with the Empire, Anakin thought, grimly. The liberation of Lothal had been a sham - the local Rebels had made the system ungovernable and assassinated the local Moff, destroying about half of Capital City in the process, but at that point Governor Azadi had cut a secret agreement with the Empire, persuading them to allow him to retain control of the system in the name of the Rebellion, as the best way to obtain what they really wanted - the pacification of a disruptive insurgency, and an uninterrupted supply of the rare, high-purity ores from the mines on Lothal to make the reactor shielding of the Empire's battle stations and super star destroyers.
While the discovery that all of the shiny modern prosperity of the city they were walking through had been built on a back-door agreement with the Emperor himself, the brightness and the symbolism seemed a little tarnished.
The place was looking a little rougher-around-the-edges than Anakin remembered from his childhood visits, too. Perhaps they're finding that all that shiny modern architecture doesn't look so easy-clean without Palpatine to pay the bills from a thousand sectors' worth of Empire-level taxes…
Tahiri seemed to have spent her energy, if not her underlying anger. She could actually be surprisingly tolerant of some individual Peace Brigaders in the right circumstances - Anakin thought of Remis Vehn, the pilot who'd helped them escape from more than one tricky situation - but she'd never regard the mercenaries and slave-traders who formed their hard core with anything better than contempt. She paused, and slipped under Anakin's arm to claim a quick embrace. "I can't really imagine what General Syndulla would do if she knew."
"From what I've heard, she started out working for him as a smuggler pilot when he was still the corrupt Imperial Governor," he heard himself say, giving Tahiri a tight hug around her shoulders. "I guess she's just got used to looking the other way while he plays both sides, she doesn't even think about it any more."
Jaina was still trying to get her head around what she'd been just told.
"What?! How does she not know?"
"Like this idiot here says, it's easier to doublethink than you think. You should know, since you're currently on leave from Rogue Squadron and Chimaera simultaneously."
"Okay, fine. How long have you known for?!"
"You don't want to know," Anakin sighed. "I noticed a lot of references to Lothal when I was slicing the archives of the Empire's superweapon projects for Aunt Mara, I mean, when I was trying to stop other Jedi slicing them..."
Tahiri chuckled. "I always wondered how Booster got that—hey! Stop!"
Anakin wondered if they should be tickling each other like that while they were discussing something so serious, but he focused on what mattered, spinning around with her and grinning at her. "We don't mention that," he reminded her.
Jaina tried not to roll her eyes at him, and mimed a baffled look, wide-eyed, palms-out. "I'm completely lost."
"Good."
"The important part is, you can consider anyone who works directly for Azadi as a Peace Brigade agent."
Anakin watched as his sister ran the vectors through her own tactical computer, newly upgraded with TIE Defender components and art-criticism subroutines.
"You know what that means, don't you?" Jaina asked, looking at him in open alarm.
"Yeah," Anakin agreed. "That voxyn pack was sent here as a trap."
"So, what do we do now?"
"Spring the trap."