registration checks on incoming vessels. In fact, their only job seemed to be collecting the landing fee.
'Your friend,' Zannah asked as she and Quano walked into the unstaffed gate, 'what does he do here?'
'Cleaning crew,' the Rodian answered.
Zannah wasn't quite sure how a janitor was going to be able to help her track down a ship that had left nearly two days ago, but she held her tongue as he led her into the arrival/departure area then out to the landing pad at the back.
The pad was small, barely large enough to accommodate a dozen midsized passenger shuttles. The vast majority of Doan's interstellar traffic was made up of either the personal vessels of the wealthy nobles, who all docked at private landing pads on their estates, or cargo vessels affiliated with the mining operations, which were handled at a different location. Individuals landing here at the communal spaceport were few and far between.
The landing pad was poorly lit by a handful of floodlights set on tall lamp posts, but even so Zannah could clearly see there were only three ships on site, one of which was her own shuttle. Half hidden in the shadows near the edge of the landing pad was a young man slumped backward in a chair. He wore a crumpled custodian's uniform and an ID badge, his arms hung limp at his sides, and he was snoring loudly.
Quano walked over and kicked the leg of his chair, startling him out of his sleep.
'Pommat. Get up.'
Looking around with the bemused expression of one only half awake, the young man shifted his position and sat up straighter in his chair. When his gaze settled on Zannah, his eyebrows arched suggestively.
'Hey, Quano. Who's your pretty friend?'
'My name is not important,' Zannah said, speaking before the Rodian could reply. 'I was told you could help me track down a ship that passed through here two days ago.'
When the man looked at Quano, the Rodian said, 'Is okay. She nice. She friend.'
The young man turned back to Zannah, crossing his arms and giving a derisive snort. 'Yeah, right. A friend who won't tell you her name.' She could sense that his will was stronger than the bartender's, but still malleable. The fact that Pommat obviously found her attractive would help, too, if she was willing to flirt with him a little.
'I'm a friend who has credits,' she replied coyly. 'If you have what I need.'
The man bobbed his head back and forth a few times before uncrossing his arms and running his fingers through his shaggy, sleep-ruffled hair.
Zannah arched one eyebrow playfully and reached out with the Force. 'Come on, Pommat. I'm not looking for the strong, silent type.'
'Yeah, all right,' he relented. 'Maybe I can help. What do you need?'
'A few days ago a man with long white hair arrived on Doan. Did he come through this port?'
She already knew the answer: unless the man had some connection to one of the noble families, this was the only port for a thousand kilometers. But a basic tactic in negotiations was to get the other person to start giving you affirmative answers to simple questions. It made them more likely to agree with you on more important matters later on.
'Oh, yeah. I remember him. Nice ride. State-of-the-art shuttle. Custom interior. Top of the line. Even nicer than yours.'
'How would you know what the interior of my shuttle is like?' Zannah asked suspiciously.
There was a brief pause, then both Quano and Pommat burst out laughing.
'Him smuggler,' the Rodian explained when he caught his breath.
'Not exactly,' Pommat clarified. 'It's just a little side racket I've set up. Something to help pay the bills, you know?'
'No,' Zannah said darkly. 'I don't know. Why don't you tell me.'
'Whoa, you got a little fire in you, doll,' Pommat said appreciatively. 'Let me break it down for you. At night, I'm the only one working here. I can pretty much do anything I want. Including breaking into somebody's shuttle.'
'You're not worried about security systems?'
'Never ran across one I couldn't slice,' he said, puffing out his chest. 'It's one of my many talents. Maybe if you're lucky, I'll show some of the others later on.'
'So you break into people's shuttles and steal from them?' Zannah clarified, ignoring his clumsy come-on.
'Nah. That'd be stupid. People would notice if stuff was missing. They'd report it to my boss. Wouldn't take long to figure out who was behind it.'
'So what do you do, exactly?'
'You're going to love this,' Pommat said with a sly wink. 'Once I'm inside, I slice into their nav computer and download all the info onto a datapad. It gives me everything: the owner, any planets the ship is registered with, commonly plotted hyperspace routes. I know who owns it, where they've been, and which world they use as a home port.'
'Clever,' Zannah admitted. 'But what use is that?'
'This is where it gets good,' he promised, obviously pleased with himself. 'I've got an arrangement with a guy on Kessel. Every month he sends me a shipment of glitterstim.'
Glitterstim, or spice, was a powerfully addictive drug banned on most worlds. Doan, however, had no laws against importing it. And nobody at the spaceports to enforce the laws, even if they did exist, Zannah silently noted.
'I don't sell the spice here,' Pommat continued. 'Nobody has any money except the nobles. And they won't deal with the lower classes. But I've got contacts at the spaceports on a bunch of other worlds here on the Outer Rim.
'So let's say I slice into a ship's nav computer and I find out it's from Aralia. I reach out to my contact on that world, and I see if he wants me to send him a shipment. After we work out a price, I sneak onto the vessel while the owner's not around and I hide a stash of spice somewhere on board.
'I tell my contact where I hid it, give him the ship's registration, and he tells one of his buddies at the spaceport to let him know when it returns to Aralia. Then he waits until the coast is clear, sneaks on board, takes the stash, and transfers the credits into my account back here on Doan. The owner never has a clue!'
'Spice smuggling is a capital offense on Aralia,' Zannah remarked.
'That's the best part. If the customs officials ever decide to search one of these ships, the owner goes down for the crime, not us. It's foolproof!'
The whole operation seemed rather petty and ill thought out to Zannah. She wasn't bothered by the fact that Pommat was willing to have innocent people suffer horrible fates just so he could make a handful of credits from time to time. What bothered her were the technical details. The operation had obviously been thrown together out of simple opportunity, but it struck her as inefficient and unreliable. But she wasn't about to ruin the rapport she had established by saying so out loud. 'I didn't realize I was dealing with a criminal mastermind,' she teased, bringing a cocky grin to Pommat's face. 'So when the white-haired man left, you snuck onto his ship and copied everything from his nav computer?'
'Got it all right here on my datapad,' Pommat replied, patting his hip pocket.
'So you know his name? You know where he's from?'
'I do:but it's going to cost you.'
Zannah smiled, and tilted her head in acknowledgment. 'Of course. Name your price.'
'Go big,' the Rodian chimed in. 'Remember, Quano get half.'
Pommat shot his friend a disapproving look before stammering out his opening offer. 'Uh:four hundred credits?'
She was in no mood to negotiate. 'Deal.' From the crestfallen expression on the smuggler's face, she knew he was suddenly wishing he had asked for a lot more.
Reaching into her cloak, she produced four hundred-credit chips and handed them over to the young man. 'Start talking.'
'Ship's registered to someone named Zun Haake,' Pommat answered glumly as he flipped two of the chips to Quano and slipped the remaining pair into his pocket.
'Haake's a Neimoidian name,' Zannah pointed out. 'The man I'm looking for is human.'
Pommat shrugged. 'Maybe the shuttle's stolen.'
'I'm starting to think this information isn't worth what I paid for it.'
