Vision of the future

'Sorry,' Moranda said, shaking her head. 'I only got here a couple of days ago and haven't had a chance to link up with the local fringe.'

'But you could link up with them if you wanted to?' Wedge asked, still trying to get a feel for this woman. Karrde he more or less trusted; but Karrde had a huge organization, and he couldn't possibly know everyone in it personally. Moranda Savich could easily be playing both ends against the middle, or bleeding Karrde's organization for her own purposes, or even just using him for free room and board whenever she was between more unsavory jobs. If someone from Vengeance, say, were to offer her a big enough pot of money to betray him and Corran, would she do it?

Moranda sighed. 'Look, Wedge,' she said quietly. 'I used to do a fair amount of con work, and in con work you learn how to read people's faces. I can tell you don't trust me. And I really don't blame you—we have just met, after all. But I've got that letter from Karrde, and I did get your wallets back. Offhand, I don't know what else I can do to persuade you.'

'But you do want to persuade us,' Corran said.

She smiled, a tight, brittle thing. 'I was given an assignment,' she said simply. Wedge suppressed a grimace. He still felt odd about this, but her arguments did seem to make sense. If anything turned up later, Corran's Jedi senses would hopefully pick it up. 'All right,' he said.

'For the moment, at least, let's pool resources. Any suggestions?'

'Well, obviously, the first thing we need to do is find out if anyone suspicious has arrived since that orbiting research station was destroyed a week ago,' Moranda said, her tone all business now.

'That's what started this whole military buildup, after all. If Vengeance decided to take advantage of that, they may have needed to move more of their people here.'

'Vengeance or anyone else,' Corran murmured. 'The Empire, for example.'

'Seems reasonable,' Wedge agreed. 'There's only one problem. That information is locked up over in the Bothawui Customs computers, and we haven't got access to it.'

'Oh, that's no problem,' Moranda assured him with an airy wave of her hand. 'Come on, finish up, and we'll go to your place and talk about it.'

'Sure,' Wedge said, taking a long sip from his as yet untouched drink and getting to his feet. Whatever happened here, he decided, this was going to be most interesting. Not that that was necessarily a good thing.

* * *

'Really?' Navett said into his comlink, looking up as Klif came into the Exoticalia Pet Emporium and closed the door behind him. 'Hey, that's great. When can I come by and pick 'em up?'

'Anytime you wish,' the Bothan Customs official's voice came from the comlink. From the background came the faint sound of a sneeze. 'Preferably soon,' he added.

'You bet we will,' Navett said cheerfully. 'Got customers coming in already wantin' to see what we got, and we have to tell 'em we haven't got anything yet. We can come over now, right?'

'I believe I've already answered that question,' the Bothan replied as another sneeze sounded in the background.

'Oh—right,' Navett said as Klif came over. 'Great. Thanks a lot.'

'A day of peace and profit to you.'

'Yeah, same to you.'

He shut the comlink off. 'We're in,' he told Klif, putting the instrument away. 'And from the sneezing, I'd say at least some of the Bothans are allergic to our little polpians.'

'Should make them eager to get rid of them,' Klif said.

'I think it already did,' Navett agreed. 'You see Horvic?' Klif nodded. 'He and Pensin are in as maintenance staff for that Ho'Din dive two blocks back from the shield generator. Post-closing shift.'

'Perfect,' Navett said. If their schematics were right, that tapcafe was directly over one of the underground conduits carrying power cables into the place.

'Yeah.' Klif's face soured. 'Now for the bad news. The two Bothan lifters we hired muffed the job.'