Voran wanted an address.
Pell had given him three: the brokerage, a rented office Canto no longer answered from, and a freight counter where a clerk had offered to take a message.
Each time, Voran had asked the same question: would Canto be there?
Darren stood beside the route display, holding the caf he had finally remembered to drink.
It was the morning after SABLE-9.
Across the office, Sira sat with her injured hand open on her knee, watching Voran try the unanswered number again.
“We could put somebody at the brokerage,” Darren said.
“Catch the next buyer coming out.”
“And the buyers who already left?” Pell asked.
“Still have what they paid for. I’m looking for someone we can reach.”
Voran ended the call and pointed at the bacta entry.
“Find whoever sold that correction.”
“I’m trying.” Pell turned her terminal toward him.
Two advertisements offered Kessar manifests through different intermediaries.
Neither named Canto.
“But this is still selling while you wait.”
Darren leaned closer.
The sellers promised current departures, verified loads, reliable access.
He thought of the empty truck under Tessa’s hands, the speeders passing them at the inspection gate.
Those men had been willing to shoot for seven passengers who were already somewhere else.
“Give them another load,” he said.
Voran looked at him.
“With what?”
“Something they can buy. Somewhere we choose. Let them find out the information’s bad after they’ve paid for it.”
Pell read the advertisements again.
“One bad shipment won’t make the rest disappear.”
“It might make them check before they move.”
“And ask for their money back,” she said.
Voran pulled up a chair.
“Kess first.”
Darren put his cup down.
“If he comes.”
“He will.”
Pell closed one advertisement and left the other open.
“Then we need something he’d believe.”
Milo was still in the clinic.
Pell put the proposed consignment on the screen beside his bed and waited while he read it.
Darren had suggested medical components: valuable enough to sell, with none of the clinics’ remaining medicine in the truck.
Voran supplied an old company account that could plausibly book the load.
Milo looked from the booking to the camera.
“This transfer doesn’t work.”
“Why?” Darren asked.
“The platform’s wrong. That carrier uses it for storage. They’d have to hire a lift crew.”
Voran started to speak.
Pell held up a hand without looking away from Milo.
“And the departure?” she asked.
“Forty minutes early for no reason. Move it eleven minutes. The drivers complain about that all the time.” He paused, shifting against the pillows.
“Less cargo, too. I wouldn’t trust this much value on that account.”
Darren crossed out the quantity.
“Show us.”
Milo described a platform used on maintenance days.
Voran knew it; one of his crews rented space there.
They could get access after the night shift, if they paid for the yard and brought their own loading crew.
For the first time that morning, Voran argued over a bill instead of a target.
While he called the yard manager, Milo corrected the booking.
Pell made the changes from her terminal; his own access remained closed.
“Where do you send it?” Darren asked.
Milo stopped talking.
“Through the same channel as before?”
“That buyer won’t answer me now.” He glanced toward the edge of the screen, where Voran had been standing.
“There’s another counter. People leave requests. I answered one once.”
Pell asked him to dictate the address.
She opened it on her own terminal, read the request and turned back to him.
“Can you offer a correction to an existing route?”
“Yes.”
“Then do that. Don’t sell them a whole new fortune.”
Milo’s hand lay over the dressing at his hip.
“If they find out it was me—”
“They may,” Darren said.
Sira looked at him.
He kept his attention on the screen.
“Kess already came after you. I can’t make helping us safe.”
“Can you keep Voran out of here?”
Darren looked across the office.
Voran had finished his call.
“While we work,” Darren said.
“I can do that.”
Milo breathed out and began composing the offer.
Twice he stopped to change a word Pell had suggested.
She let him finish before reading it back.
The reply came that afternoon.
A purchaser wanted confirmation of the carrier and a reduction in the price.
Pell handled the exchange through the counter Milo had identified.
The money went to the account used for the bait, under Voran’s control; none of it reached Darren.
They still did not know who had bought it.
Voran kept calling the purchaser Kess anyway.
By midnight, the loading crew had left the platform.
A cleaner was finishing beneath the catwalk, and Darren waited for her cart to pass before crossing to the third pillar.
The yard had two broad entrances.
Traffic from the transfer route would enter from the south.
Voran’s broken carrier narrowed the northern exit, leaving enough space for a vehicle to squeeze through but none to turn at speed.
Along the west side, three pillars stood between the loading berths and the open deck.
Sira walked the line the truck would take.
“I park here. Rear doors toward the south.”
“Then get behind that support.” Darren pointed.
“If they come alongside, I have the next pillar.”
She looked up.
Renn was on the catwalk, resting a long blaster against the rail.
He had taken too long getting up there, stopping halfway while pretending to inspect a light.
Darren climbed the stairs and found him trying to settle his weight without pulling at his injuries.
Below, Garr was checking a weapon case.
Voran had introduced him as one of his warehouse men and had not asked Darren to approve the choice.
“Give Garr the gun,” Darren said.
Renn kept his hands on it.
“I can shoot.”
“I need you watching the people we can’t see from down there.”
“You need someone useful.”
“Yes.” Darren leaned against the rail, leaving Renn room to turn.
“If you spend the fight trying to hold that steady, who tells me what’s coming through the other entrance?”
Renn looked down at the yard.
From that height he could see past the broken carrier and into the approach lane.
He tried the firing position once more, then lifted his hands from the weapon.
“Garr stays here.”
“Fine.”
“And if you stop listening, I shoot anyway.”
“Put it in the contract.”
Renn almost smiled.
When Darren turned toward the stairs, he caught his sleeve.
“If Kess runs?”
“We don’t follow him into traffic.”
“Voran will.”
“Then you tell me before he gets there.”
Darren went down carefully.
Sira waited at the bottom, watching the hand he had kept on the rail.
“What?”
“Taking the slow stairs and hoping nobody notices.”
He let go of the rail.
“Then let’s keep this on one level.”
She handed him a charged power cell from the supplies Voran had brought.
Darren fitted it to his blaster and kept his own partly used cells in his kit.
His Earth pistol would stay concealed; the nineteen cartridges were still there, and none belonged in a cargo-yard argument unless everything else failed.
They did not stay to rehearse it again.
Voran had the site until morning; they would return before the promised transfer.
On the way out, Darren watched the cleaner lock the service door behind her.
Sira checked the time and called the driver bringing their truck.
Three speeders followed them into the yard before dawn.
Sira drove the transport past the third pillar and stopped in the berth they had chosen.
Darren stepped down from the passenger side into cover.
The rear cargo doors were latched but unlocked; whoever opened them would find enough scrap to give the truck the weight Milo had promised.
The first speeder came through the southern entrance too fast.
Its driver saw the blocked northern exit and began to turn.
Sira had reached the support beside the cab.
She fired into the exposed repulsor housing, and the vehicle dropped sideways, grinding across the deck.
The second swerved around it and clipped the broken carrier.
The third stopped close to the entrance.
Two men got out, using its doors as cover.
“Kess, middle vehicle,” Renn said in Darren’s ear.
“Passenger side.”
A gunman from that speeder fired toward the truck.
Darren stayed behind the pillar as a bolt struck its edge, showering his sleeve with hot grit.
He leaned out and fired once.
His shot hit the door frame, making the man duck long enough for Sira to change position.
From above, Garr fired toward the southern entrance.
The men there drew back.
Behind them, Voran’s people had come out of a recessed loading bay, closing the approach without running into the open.
Kess stepped clear of the middle speeder with his weapon still holstered.
He looked up at the catwalk, then toward the truck.
One of his men had reached the rear doors and pulled them apart.
Rusted machinery filled the compartment.
“You son of a bitch.”
Darren nearly answered.
Kess’s hand moved toward his weapon, and Darren fired instead.
The bolt struck the broker’s forearm.
Kess fell against the speeder and went down, his blaster sliding beneath its open door.
Darren kept the pillar between himself and the men at the entrance.
“North,” Renn said.
“Voran, stay back.”
Voran had started after a man trying to squeeze past the broken carrier.
He stopped at the warning and shouted for the man to drop his weapon.
The fugitive looked toward the lane, found Garr’s muzzle above him, and put the blaster down.
At the southern entrance, one of the gunmen pushed his own weapon away with his boot.
The other followed.
Sira made the man at the cargo doors come out with empty hands before she crossed toward Kess.
Darren came off the pillar only when she had the nearer shooters covered.
He stopped beyond Kess’s reach and used his boot to drag the fallen weapon away from the speeder.
A scorched smell rose from the broker’s sleeve.
His jaw worked as he tried not to look at his arm.
Voran reached them with his blaster raised.
“Canto.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
Voran brought the muzzle closer.
Behind him, one of his men was binding the captured gunmen’s wrists.
Nobody came forward to stop him.
Darren moved into Voran’s field of view, keeping clear of the barrel.
“We need him talking after we let him go.”
“Let him go?”
“He came for this route. He can tell whoever sent him what he found.”
“We needed Del alive too.”
“Yes.”
Voran’s eyes stayed on Kess.
Darren could hear coolant dripping beneath the disabled speeder.
“Kill him and whoever sold this says we caught a thief,” Darren said.
“Let him take the bad purchase back. He’ll do more damage to them angry than dead.”
Kess pressed his good hand over his wounded arm.
“Canto will disappear.”
“Then your customers can look for him,” Darren said.
Voran lowered the weapon a little.
“Get his communicator.”
Voran called Pell once the weapons had been collected.
While they waited for her, Sira secured a dressing around Kess’s arm.
She had to pull with her good hand; he flinched anyway.
When Pell arrived, he was sitting against the speeder with his communicator on the ground beside him.
She crouched where he could see the screen and opened the purchase record he had been made to unlock.
The record matched the counter, the price and the route correction Pell had sent.
Kess refused to give her access to anything else until Voran showed him the blaster again.
Darren shook his head.
“We have what we need.”
Pell copied the receipt, keeping its time and the seller’s claim that the route was verified.
Voran had arranged access to the yard’s recordings with the rental; she matched the transaction to the camera views of the arrival, the opened cargo and Kess stepping out of the speeder.
The footage did not need the workers’ names, the bacta destinations or any of the other routes still at risk.
“You release that,” Kess said, “and nobody buys through me.”
“Then ask for a refund before I do.”
He stared at her.
Pell passed his communicator back to him.
His thumb hovered over the screen, then selected a contact.
Darren left him to the call and went to the truck.
His fingers had begun shaking now that he did not need them to aim.
He checked the cell, holstered the blaster and sat on the passenger step until the soreness in his abdomen settled.
Two shots.
He remembered both, including the one that had struck metal instead of the man behind it.
Renn came down with Garr beside him.
At the bottom he stopped and looked back toward the catwalk.
He seemed about to say something, then shook his head and accepted a seat in the cab.
Voran’s men had taken the attackers’ weapons and were helping an injured driver out of the disabled speeder.
Nobody in their own group had been killed.
Sira had a black mark on her jacket she insisted was from the truck, and Darren was too tired to argue over its origin.
Kess made three calls before Voran allowed his people to leave.
While they gathered beside the two speeders that could still move, Darren asked him, “Who else buys from Canto?”
“Whoever can pay.”
“Names.”
Kess looked at Voran’s gun, then back at Darren.
“You think one name gets you out of this? A clinic shipment has one buyer. Guns have another. Somebody wants fees off a route, somebody wants the truck. Canto sells to all of them.”
Darren waited.
Kess offered nothing more.
“Work for him again,” Voran said, “and you’re part of the target.”
Kess held his injured arm against his chest.
“Your friend already made my face expensive.”
“Then stay out of my business.”
They crowded into the undamaged speeder and the one that had clipped the carrier, whose driver had to force a bent door shut.
Garr kept his weapon on them until both vehicles were clear of the entrance.
Darren watched Kess’s speeder merge with the traffic until he could no longer distinguish it from anything else on the lane.
Back at the office, Pell sent the receipt and selected footage to the two intermediaries whose advertisements she had shown them that morning.
She included the seller’s guarantee, not the rest of the compromised manifests.
Darren watched the first message leave; then she opened the second address.
By afternoon, one intermediary had removed its Kessar listings.
Another offered the same records for half the previous price, with a disclaimer about independent confirmation.
A third demanded that Pell identify who had supplied the false correction.
She closed that message unanswered.
Voran stood behind her, listening to a client demand extra assurances before sending another truck.
“It’s hurting us too,” he said when he ended the call.
“For a while,” Pell replied.
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
Darren studied the withdrawn listings.
The old records still existed.
Somewhere a driver might still follow a route copied onto Milo’s pad.
But anyone buying them now had a wounded broker, an empty truck and a failed attack to explain to whoever was paying.
That evening, Pell could no longer reach Canto through any of the addresses she had been watching.
A contact she sent to the rented office found it empty.
By midnight, even Voran stopped trying the number.
Rumors reached the yard faster than facts.
Kess had been paid to betray his buyers; Voran had sold the false route himself; somebody was taking the Kessar business away from both of them.
A loader asked Darren which version was true.
“Ask whoever’s charging for it,” he said.
The man laughed and went back to work.
Darren stayed by the open office door, listening to Voran argue with another client.
He had wanted the crisis finished.
It was still making calls.
Tessa’s message arrived while he was there.
LEAVING IN TWO DAYS.
CORELLIA, THEN BRENTAAL.
SPACE FOR ONE PASSENGER.
700 CREDITS.
He read it twice.
Coruscant remained beyond anything he could arrange from this yard, but Corellia was a way off the moon.
He asked how long she could hold the berth.
UNTIL TOMORROW EVENING.
THEN I SELL IT.
Darren put the communicator away.
He still had twenty credits.
The next afternoon, Milo joined them by screen from the clinic.
He could sit up now, although he kept one hand against his side when he moved.
Voran had called Darren in to hear the terms, and Sira stood near the door.
A photograph occupied the corner of Voran’s terminal: a man with a shaved head and an uneven grin, holding a mug in front of a freighter.
“Del,” Voran said when he noticed Darren looking.
Darren had carried the name through several days without ever seeing the face.
He looked at the mug, the old ship behind it, the hand raised toward whoever had taken the picture.
“He had a wife,” Voran told Milo.
“And a son. Eight.”
Milo’s eyes went to the photograph.
His mouth opened, but no question came out.
“Six months,” Voran said.
“You work where I can see you. No manifests. No private lookups. Half your pay goes to them.”
Milo nodded too quickly.
Voran waited until he looked up again.
“After that I decide whether there’s a job for you here.”
“And until then?” Milo asked.
“You keep your head down and do what you’re told.”
Darren watched Milo’s fingers bunch the sheet.
The arrangement kept him alive, paid something to Del’s family and gave Voran a worker who had very little room to refuse.
None of that made it a pardon.
“Can I send more?” Milo asked.
Voran looked at him.
“If it’s yours.”
“It would be.”
“Then earn it.”
When the connection closed, Sira asked whether that was mercy.
Voran moved the photograph back to the corner of the screen.
“Cheap labor.”
Darren waited until they were outside before speaking.
“He wanted to send more.”
“He hasn’t done it yet,” Sira said.
“I heard him.”
“So did I.” She touched his sleeve briefly, then walked toward the lift.
He followed without asking her to improve the answer.
Marel found Darren in the workshop that afternoon and handed him a payment chip.
His arm was still in a sling, which did not prevent him from supervising a repair nobody had asked him to supervise.
“Components client,” he said.
“Five hundred.”
Darren checked the amount twice.
“Don’t look like that. Makes us look cheap.”
“You’d have to pay more to fix that.”
Marel grinned.
Voran followed him in, put another chip on the bench and pointed at Darren.
“Thirty-five. Documented expenses. Don’t get used to it.”
Dorr’s fee.
Darren remembered the man’s hand moving the cup while the other three kept working.
Twenty remaining, five hundred for the components, thirty-five returned: five hundred and fifty-five.
“And we’re settled?” he asked.
“The work is,” Voran said.
“If you come back, ask whether I have more.”
It was not forgiveness, but Darren took the chips.
Marel waited until Voran had left before leaning against the bench.
“Sira says you’re leaving.”
“Trying.”
“You always leave after fixing things?”
Darren glanced at the sling.
“You call this fixed?”
“Compared to last week.”
Darren opened Tessa’s message from the night before.
Seven hundred.
He could almost afford to leave, which had not seemed a particularly cruel problem when he could not afford it at all.
Marel watched his face.
“Bad news?”
“Expensive news.”
The berth would be offered to somebody else that evening.
Darren left the workshop to find Sira.
He told her the price and the deadline.
She listened, asked whether he could work in the morning and went to make a call.
Later, she found him upstairs with the message still open and placed a contract chip on the table.
“Job tomorrow. Two hundred.”
He looked from the chip to her.
“You found something that covers it.”
“I can count.”
“Kindness?”
“Don’t ruin it.”
He picked up the chip.
Security at a negotiation; the client’s name was Jorran Besk.
Two hundred would take him to seven hundred and fifty-five, enough for passage and fifty-five left on the other side.
He told Tessa he had work in the morning and asked to pay after it.
PAYMENT AT THE RAMP, she answered.
MISS DEPARTURE AND I KEEP FLYING.
He confirmed before he could think of a reason to stay.
She had given him until boarding, not a cheaper ticket.
“Dangerous?” he asked Sira.
“Probably no one shoots.”
“Can you say that without laughing?”
She tried.
He watched her mouth give her away, and for a moment neither of them mentioned the ship.
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