At six twenty, the ceiling above the transit café began pretending to be dawn.
Darren had seen no sunlight on the way from his lodging.
The lamps changed color while workers carried breakfast to the platforms, and he took the seat opposite Halden beneath an artificial patch of gold.
His bag was in the lodging’s storage locker, included until evening with the room he had paid for.
His blaster rested against his hip.
He shifted the chair to keep its back from pressing against his sore shoulder.
The entry authorization on Halden’s screen would expire at nine.
“I’ve had relationships with longer futures,” Darren said.
“Were they all this expensive?”
“Some required fewer forms.”
Halden slid his business registration across the table: Vey Freight Audit Services.
He had prepared a temporary field-security agreement for forty-eight hours.
Registration, meals during the assignment and work travel would come through the business.
There was no advance in credits.
Darren read the duties.
“You need somebody who can tell you when to leave.”
“I need somebody who will tell me why.”
“And if I do?”
“I’ll listen.”
“That wasn’t yes.”
“It wasn’t yesterday either.” Halden waited until Darren looked up.
“You don’t become responsible for every decision I make because you sign that.”
Darren remembered the case against Halden’s knees, the weapon turning toward the service door.
He wanted a stronger promise and knew what he would say if someone asked it of him.
He signed.
Halden paid for breakfast with the registration documents already open beside his plate.
Darren ate before the food went cold.
Two hundred and thirty-nine credits remained his; he had not bought another two days out of them yet.
The clerk upstairs found the problem before Halden finished explaining why his application was urgent.
“You’ve classified the freight loss. I’m registering a person exposed to the risk.”
She turned the display toward him.
Halden began to point at the supporting report, then stopped when she put a finger on the field she needed changed.
“Can you correct it here?” Darren asked.
“Yes. If he confirms this one.”
“He can,” Halden said.
The clerk looked past him at Darren.
“He can answer for himself. Do you carry a weapon in the assignment?”
“Yes.”
“Any armed incidents with this client?”
“Before this contract. Corellia. The report is attached.”
She opened it, matched the names and corrected the entry.
Her metallic thumbnail made a small click against the edge of the terminal.
Darren kept quiet while she worked.
When she looked up again, the forty-eight-hour authorization had appeared beside his identity.
“You both confirm the duties and dates?”
They did.
She completed the registration with more time left before nine than Darren had expected.
“You’re good at knowing when we should stop talking,” he said as she returned his chip.
“Practice.”
“Do you offer lessons?”
“Neither of you could afford them.”
He smiled.
She had already called the next applicant before he could answer.
Outside, Halden checked the approval once more.
“You were flirting.”
“After she approved it. Professional boundaries.”
Halden put the registration away, and for a few steps they walked without arguing.
At the platform he paid their fares through the business account.
Darren watched the destination appear: Lower Levels, Precinct Forty-Seven.
A Nikto sat beneath the precinct’s damaged display with a cloth wrapped around his hand.
The woman beside him held two forms and looked as though she had been told to carry them between counters too many times.
A patrol officer came out of a side office, read the first form and took them both inside.
Darren moved his knee to let a maintenance droid pass.
The machine stopped beneath the display and opened its tools while a teenage girl slept against her mother’s shoulder two seats away.
Halden checked the acknowledgment of their meeting request, then put it away when the desk officer looked toward them.
“They know we’re here,” Darren said.
“I know.”
“You’ve checked three times.”
Halden looked at him.
“How many exits?”
Darren almost smiled.
“Three I can see.”
The office door opened before Halden could reply.
Ralo Venn wore a jacket repaired at one elbow.
His dark hair was going gray, and his nose had healed crooked after a break that had done it no favors.
He asked them to follow him without offering an opinion on their new credentials.
Inside his office, two surveillance droids lay disassembled on a bench.
Ralo moved a file off the spare chair and pointed Darren toward it.
“Celya gave you my name.”
“Yes,” Halden said.
“Then she told you Voss’s inquiry closed.”
“She told us it closed for insufficient evidence. We’ve brought something that wasn’t available six months ago.”
Ralo leaned back.
“People usually bring me that sentence before they bring me the something.”
Halden put the Corellian incident report on the desk.
Darren set his own statement beside it.
Ralo read the report before looking at the financial extracts.
He stopped at Nira’s name and asked which office she worked for.
Halden gave the official contact Celya had received.
“The disposal order was challenged before you entered?”
“Yes.”
“Approved hold?”
“Not then. The preservation order was approved afterward.”
Ralo turned a page.
“And the rail was shot before anyone attacked you.”
“Tessa Marr fired on Nira’s instruction,” Darren said.
“The case was moving into the thermal unit. The attackers came as we were leaving.”
“You understand why I separated those.”
“Yes.”
The detective marked the sequence on his notes.
Halden began to explain the rejected hold; Ralo lifted a hand until he had finished writing.
Darren waited.
He had wanted the attack to make the whole story urgent.
Ralo was making them account for what they had done before it.
“The two men. Did either name an employer?”
“No. They told us to leave the case.”
“And you judged them trained.”
“They covered different angles. Moved while the other fired. One tried to get a line on Halden at the service exit.”
“Then?”
“We got out. A speeder followed us and fired. I couldn’t see the occupants. Tessa lost it in traffic.”
“So you can’t identify the pursuit vehicle’s occupants as the same men.”
“No.”
Ralo amended a line instead of announcing whether Darren had passed a test.
The simple action made it easier to continue.
Halden supplied the certified copies, the record of their opening and resealing, and Asteron’s acknowledgment of delivery.
The originals were at Asteron; copies remained with the insurer and Risk Records.
Ralo checked the matching references and kept the statements separate from the commercial material.
“What do you want from me?” he asked.
“And a way to establish whether we’re looking at the same transactions.”
“Not a declaration that you’ve uncovered his murderer?”
“Did you think he was murdered?” Darren asked.
Ralo held his gaze.
“I couldn’t substantiate it.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“It’s the answer you can use.”
The room went quiet.
Ralo’s hand rested on the closed file beside his elbow.
Darren let the question go, though he disliked doing it.
The detective had already lost more to this inquiry than an afternoon, and Darren did not know what that had been.
At last Ralo opened the file.
The first photograph was an identification image: a thin-faced man with a receding hairline, irritated at having to look into the camera.
The next showed him beside colleagues at a retirement dinner, one hand raised toward whoever was taking the picture.
Tarin Voss had acquired a face.
Darren looked at it while Ralo found the first contact record.
“He approached Economic Crimes anonymously eight days before he died. Insurance fraud. Military-risk freight that didn’t match what he said the orders were for.”
“Rothana?” Halden asked.
“Named later. The first message was less specific.”
Ralo placed a list beside the photograph.
Nine entries; eight had corresponding recovery references.
“He copied nine packets. We reconstructed eight from his system and attachments he’d sent. The ninth was numbered Forty-Four.”
“His sequence?”
“As far as we know. Nine packets doesn’t mean he numbered them one to nine.”
Darren looked at the space beside the missing entry.
“Was it deleted?”
“We don’t know whether it was ever on the system we searched.”
“Did someone look elsewhere?”
“Yes. Don’t turn a missing packet into a hiding place before you know he hid it.”
Darren drew a line through the word location he had started writing.
Halden asked to compare the recovered summaries instead.
Medical consumables, nutritional support, atmospheric systems, long-duration habitation.
Darren knew the families from the extracts and validations.
The resemblance drew his attention; he made himself listen while Halden checked which references actually matched.
Several did.
Others could not be compared from the summaries alone.
“Can I have the underlying files?” Halden asked.
“You can request them through your inquiry. Today you get to show me exactly which references overlap.”
Halden pulled his chair closer.
For the next few minutes they worked over the list while Darren kept the photograph clear of their papers.
“Family?” he asked when they paused.
Ralo looked up.
“Why?”
“If we make his name interesting again, who might hear about it from somebody less polite?”
“Ex-wife. Adult daughter offworld. Neither was connected to the transactions as far as we established.”
“Any trouble since he died?”
“None reported.”
Darren nodded.
Ralo did not give him their names, and he did not ask.
The detective wrote something on a separate sheet before turning back to Halden.
“Voss said the quantities were wrong. Not just the value of the policies. He thought someone was paying for an operation the declared business couldn’t explain.”
Halden tapped one matching reference.
“This will support a comparison. It won’t tell us what the operation was.”
“It might get me permission to look again.”
Ralo’s voice had changed.
He gathered the new material into one pile and wrote the Corellian incident number on its cover.
For the first time since they arrived, he was preparing something to leave his desk.
“Voss wasn’t the only person who noticed,” he said.
“Lena Var. Republic procurement clerk. She confirmed part of the pattern, then withdrew her statement.”
Ralo checked the chronology before continuing.
“She resigned three weeks after withdrawing. She has a different job now.”
Darren watched the detective’s hand move over the next page, shielding the address without closing the file.
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know why she withdrew?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.”
Halden sat back.
“Would she reconsider if she knew there were new records?”
“That is her decision.”
“Can you ask?” Darren said.
Ralo studied him.
“You weren’t going to ask where she lives?”
“I was. I’d rather you tell her who we are before we arrive somewhere she can’t avoid us.”
The detective closed the file.
“Leave the material with me. I’ll contact her.”
“Copies,” Halden said.
“These copies. Your other records can stay where they are.”
Halden let go of the folder.
It had taken him a moment.
Darren was glad Ralo did not pretend he hadn’t noticed.
The detective turned toward Darren.
“You don’t ask questions like someone who only guards freight.”
“I’ve done other work.”
“Police?”
“No.”
“Military?”
“Yes.”
Ralo waited for the service and unit.
Darren gave him neither.
“Anyone here who can confirm it?”
“No.”
“Family?”
For an instant he smelled smoke in a wet transport bay.
Rivera beneath a NO SMOKING sign, lighting a cigarette and offering him the expression of a man who knew the regulation applied chiefly to other people.
Darren looked back at the desk.
“Not here.”
Ralo took his hand off the pen.
He left the answer where it was.
“Your new registration gives me a way to reach you. Keep it current.”
“I intend to.”
Then the terminal chimed.
Ralo read the notification, opened its details and stopped with one finger above the display.
Halden noticed first.
“Problem?”
“I requested the case access history when your meeting came through. The response just arrived.”
He turned the relevant entry toward them.
Four seventeen that morning.
A credentialed request routed through records administration, without an individual name visible in the return.
“Yours?” Darren asked.
“No.”
“Who else is working the file?”
“Nobody I’ve been told about.”
Halden looked at the time.
“We asked Asteron yesterday.”
“You also requested this meeting,” Ralo said.
“Both leave records. There are routine reasons for an access check.”
“Does that look routine?”
“It looks incomplete.”
He printed the entry and put it beside their statements. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Darren kept his hands still on his knees.
He wanted a name, an enemy who could be pointed at.
The page offered neither.
“What parts did they see?” he asked.
“This return doesn’t list every attachment.”
“Could they have seen Lena’s old statement?”
Ralo looked at the closed file.
“Possibly.”
“Then tell her that when you call. Even if she doesn’t want to speak to us.”
The detective reached for his communicator, then paused.
“You won’t visit her until I’ve spoken to her.”
“We don’t have her address.”
“Keep it that way for now.”
Halden rose.
Ralo remained seated, one hand on the new material.
“Are you reopening Voss?” he asked.
“I’m submitting this as new information and asking for it. I can’t promise what they’ll approve.”
“Will your request go through the same office?”
“Some of it will.”
They looked at one another across the desk.
Ralo had an authority Darren needed, and limits neither of them could dismiss by wanting the answer badly enough.
“Tell us if it puts someone at risk,” Darren said.
“Same applies to you.”
Outside the precinct, Halden turned toward the nearest platform.
Darren asked him to walk first.
“How far?”
“Far enough to find somewhere to talk without everyone from that waiting room standing beside us.”
Halden glanced toward the queue and agreed.
They took the pedestrian route down through two levels of repair shops and food stalls.
Darren watched the reflections in the windows without finding anyone he could honestly identify as following them.
A Duros delivery driver argued with his dispatcher near a parcel kiosk.
Darren caught the anger and almost none of the words.
The driver moved away while they waited at a crossing, still shouting into his communicator.
There were too many people with reasons to hurry for haste alone to mean anything.
They stopped at a public seating alcove overlooking a freight lane.
Halden chose a bench away from the other occupants.
Darren waited until a passing group had gone before sitting beside him.
“Yesterday you asked me to tell you when a name meant something,” he said.
Halden put his communicator down.
“Which name?”
“Palpatine.”
For a moment only the traffic below them spoke.
“What about him?”
“I believe he’s a Sith Lord.”
Halden stared at him, then looked toward the entrance to the alcove.
Nobody had turned.
Darren had kept his voice low; saying the words still felt like something dropped on a hard floor.
“The Chancellor.”
“Yes.”
“Is that what you think these records prove?”
“No. They don’t.”
“Then why are you telling me now?”
“Because I’m going to keep recognizing things you can’t check, and you asked to know what I’m bringing into the room.”
Halden picked up the communicator, considered it, then set it down again.
“Can you substantiate any part of that claim?”
“Not yet.”
“Are you asking me to pass it on?”
“No.”
“Good. I won’t put that in a professional report because a man I met on Corellia believes it.”
Darren nodded.
The refusal hurt less than pretending the subject would never arise.
Halden watched him for a while.
“Voss may have found fraud. Lena may have been frightened out of helping him. Neither requires your theory about the Chancellor.”
“They matter either way.”
“Do they?”
“Yes.” Darren looked directly at him.
“If this leads somewhere that has nothing to do with what I remember, we still find out who tried to destroy the records.”
“What you remember.”
He had heard the choice of word.
Darren did not replace it with a lie.
“I can’t explain that part in a way you’d believe.”
“You haven’t given me the opportunity.”
“No.”
The answer left more space between them than the width of the bench.
Halden looked out over the freight lane, where a tug was pulling a container around a slow bend.
“I’ll work on Voss,” he said at last.
“On the records we have. If you want to build something else around them, tell me before you put my name on it.”
“I will.”
“And don’t say that sentence in my hearing again unless you have something new to support it.”
It was a limit, not an agreement.
Darren could work inside it.
His communicator vibrated before either of them stood.
Ralo’s name appeared.
“I spoke to Lena. She knows about the access and the new material.”
Darren held the communicator where Halden could hear.
“Does she want to meet?”
“She hasn’t agreed to an interview. She says you can ask her in person before her shift ends. She may still refuse.”
“How long?”
“She’s there another hour. Cooperative Medical Supply Nine. I’ll send the public address.”
Darren watched it arrive.
No home address.
No family names.
A place where people were working, where even a quiet question might acquire an audience.
“Does she know our names?”
“Yes. Tell her I called. Don’t mention Voss in front of her coworkers. If she says leave, you leave.”
“We will.”
“I mean both of you.”
Halden leaned toward the communicator.
“Understood.”
Ralo disconnected.
Darren opened the route, then paused over the other one he had saved the previous evening.
The Temple was still there.
He had promised himself he would reconsider it after seeing Ralo, and now there was a living witness with an hour in which she might choose to speak.
Halden saw the hesitation.
“You have somewhere else to be?”
“Somewhere I need to go. This comes first.”
He closed the Temple route and kept Lena’s address.
It was a choice with a cost, not a lack of alternatives.
He would have to make the next one himself too.
They left the alcove and joined the pedestrians heading toward the lower medical district.
Halden lent him a spare datapad for the route while keeping the certified summaries on his own.
The map was already open.
Darren matched the first turn to the signs ahead, then slipped the pad into his jacket.
Somewhere inside the administration of the Republic, someone had looked at Voss’s case at four seventeen.
Ralo was asking who.
Lena knew she had a choice about speaking.
Darren had a temporary work authorization, a borrowed pad and the number of a packet nobody had found.
He looked back once at the crowded crossing, then caught up with Halden.