Darren recognized Dexter Jettster through the restaurant window and nearly reached for the door.
Inside, a massive Besalisk worked behind the counter with four arms and the practiced economy of someone who knew which customers would complain about waiting.
He was laughing as he pushed a plate toward a man who had not yet finished sitting down.
Dex.
Memory supplied a poisoned dart, Obi-Wan Kenobi and a planet missing from an archive.
Darren could hear the name he would need to ask about.
One word, over breakfast, and perhaps someone would finally give him a direction he could use.
He let the pedestrian flow carry him past the entrance.
Halden caught up beneath the next transit lane.
“He’s on my list.”
“I saw.”
“You almost went in.”
“Let’s try Pree first.”
Halden stopped beside a shuttered stall, out of the foot traffic.
Darren joined him.
Across the lane, steam from the diner kitchen blurred the upper windows.
“Why?”
“He’s one of the people I remember.”
“Then he might help.”
“Yes.”
Halden waited.
Darren would have preferred an accusation; it would have given him somewhere easier to begin.
“I remember him helping a Jedi find a place nobody else could locate. I don’t know him. I don’t know what he would do with a stranger asking about it.”
“You told me last night you wanted to find people. This morning somebody who might know where they are is a reason to walk away?”
Darren looked back.
Dex was taking an order now, leaning over the counter to hear a customer beneath the kitchen noise.
“We have a freight header. Pree sells that kind of answer. I can pay him to examine it without telling him the name in my head.”
“You could show Jettster the same paper.”
“And if he asks why I brought it to him? I don’t have an answer that wouldn’t interest him more than the paper.”
Halden glanced down at the list.
His thumb rested beside the diner’s entry.
“If Pree gets us nowhere?”
“We reconsider.”
“Don’t ask me to cross out a lead because you’re frightened of what you remember.”
Darren almost said he was not frightened.
The name in his pocket made that a difficult lie to deliver beside a man who had watched him hide it.
“Keep him on the list.”
Halden did.
They walked on, passing a delivery trolley whose driver had stopped to argue with a loading meter.
“And the Jedi?” Halden asked once the noise covered their voices.
Darren kept his voice low.
“I still have no evidence for the part they would need to hear. A story about a future war is not improved by telling it inside a larger building.”
“If we bring evidence?”
“Then we decide who needs it.”
Halden folded the list along its existing crease.
Darren could still see the diner’s name above his thumb.
Salen Pree sold roads to people who preferred governments not know where the roads went.
He was an older Duros with blue-green skin, large red eyes and a thin mechanical ring fitted around one iris.
His office contained physical star charts, obsolete navigation cores and enough offline storage to suggest that professional paranoia had become an interior-design philosophy.
Pree accepted the Packet Forty-Four metadata, examined it in silence and extended one hand.
“Forty credits.”
“For what?”
“For telling you whether you possess anything worth paying me more to examine.”
Darren looked at Halden.
“I miss Pell.”
“Who?”
“Another professional extortionist.”
Darren counted out forty credits onto the desk.
Pree spread the handwritten header beside an offline terminal and asked where the original was.
“Released to an estate representative,” Halden said.
“Then I can compare the labels. I can’t authenticate a signature you haven’t brought me.”
He waited until Halden nodded before taking the money off the desk.
For the next seven minutes, he worked between a key library, archived service documentation and a physical chart pinned beneath a transparent plate.
Darren watched him reject two entries that looked identical from across the desk.
Eventually his mechanical iris tightened in a way Darren was beginning to associate with billable relevance.
“You have something.”
“Excellent. Refund the suspense fee.”
“No.”
Pree enlarged a matching entry from his archive.
“External freight package. Private route family. Old validation architecture.”
“Destination?”
“No.”
“Region?”
“You already know Rishi outbound and southern approach.”
“Then what did forty credits buy?”
Pree looked offended enough to make the answer personal.
“Precision.”
Halden disguised a laugh as a cough.
“Who could give us the destination?” Darren asked.
“The provider. Possibly the captain. The crew can carry a sealed package without seeing where it takes them.” Pree tapped the old entry.
“This wording belonged to a legacy service family. I keep the documentation because people continue bringing me things they no longer know how to read.”
“Your retirement plan.”
“It has paid for that chair.”
Darren shifted on the hard seat.
Halden leaned forward before he could comment on its value.
“Recurring?” Halden asked.
Pree returned to the archived service specification.
“Yes.”
Darren turned the copied header toward the screen.
“The service called for base-key renewal roughly every ninety days. A maintained family, not a package designed for one trip. Whether your particular wafer was ever used, I can’t tell you.”
Halden wrote the renewal interval beside the header, then put a question mark after it.
Darren left him room to finish.
Pree searched his offline records until one old provider surfaced.
“Vondis Astrogation Services. Closed four years ago.”
“Assets?”
“Sixty credits.”
Darren stared at Pree’s open hand with increasing resentment.
“You have developed an admirable understanding of my pain threshold.”
“Do you want the answer?”
Darren paid.
The two fees cut Darren from two hundred thirty-six credits to one hundred thirty-six.
Information was becoming expensive enough to count before it became useful.
Pree traced Vondis maintenance rights through three acquisitions and one bankruptcy until the final customer-key administration appeared under an Asteron-controlled services portfolio.
Halden swore softly.
“We keep finding them.”
“Acquisition records are included,” Pree said.
“Explanations cost more.”
“Do you have one?”
“No. I’d hate to disappoint a paying customer.”
Pree wrote down the legacy family designation and moved to a separate terminal.
“Online?” Darren asked.
“Published service certificates. You want a current ship, I need current records.”
Halden watched the query form.
Pree entered the family designation from his archive, not their transcription, and searched the indexed certification notices.
Three vessels carried compatible validation records.
He checked their berth listings; two were elsewhere.
One was on Coruscant now.
LONG MEASURE.
Operator: Talaris Industrial Transport.
Freight Ring Six.
Scheduled departure: 04:40 the following morning.
The berth listing led to a public cargo declaration: atmospheric processing media, nutritional compounds and medical substrates.
Halden stopped copying for a moment.
Beside it, Pree had grouped four compatible validation notices for the Long Measure across eleven months.
Darren’s hand settled beside the cargo declaration.
He read the departure time again.
“Can we confirm the route from the ship?”
Pree shook his head.
“A service-yard log might tell you what was validated. For the destination, you would need access to the protected package or someone willing to tell you.”
“Most of my career depends on the last option.”
“Then you have had a lucky career.”
Pree included the archived family diagram with the certification notices.
Darren lingered over the live berth listing until Pree turned the terminal back toward himself.
“One hundred credits,” Darren said.
“And I still don’t know where it goes.”
“You know where it is.”
Darren copied the berth number onto his own sheet.
The Long Measure was here, and they could go and look at it.
Ralo called while Darren and Halden were leaving Pree’s office.
Lena was safe and angry, which Darren considered an encouraging combination.
“Varion Asset Recovery,” Ralo continued.
“The estate representative’s authorization was valid.”
“That sounds bad.”
“The company was formed the day the estate claim was filed. Registered office is empty.”
Halden glanced toward Darren.
Darren asked Ralo to repeat the date.
Halden wrote it beside the date of the estate claim; the two entries matched.
“Lorne?”
“Still tracing.”
“Will you approach him?”
Ralo’s projection gave him the expression reserved for civilians who had discovered police work yesterday.
“When I decide I have a reason. You don’t wait outside his office.”
“You said it was empty.”
“Vale.”
“I heard you.”
The call ended with Halden smiling at Darren’s talent for leaving professionals irritated.
“You make friends everywhere.”
“Natural gift.”
By late afternoon they were watching the Long Measure from a public concourse overlooking Freight Ring Six.
The rail was warm beneath Darren’s hands, and a cargo tractor below had been reversing toward the same coupling for several minutes.
The vessel was a heavy commercial freighter, ugly in the way machinery became ugly when nobody had ever needed to sell it to tourists.
Automated gantries moved cargo modules into place while ground crews worked around them.
A loader disappeared inside an open cargo module.
From this height Darren could see the handling labels, but nothing that confirmed what was in the sealed drums.
Halden found the current navigation certification.
RING SIX ASTROGATION SERVICES.
Completed that morning.
Darren read the certifier’s name twice.
“We go there first.”
“Not the ship?”
“A technician is less likely to shoot us.”
“You do not know that.”
“Then it will be educational.”
The departure board still showed 04:40 the next morning.
Halden found the service office on the freight map and began working out how to reach it from the concourse.
“We stop until evening,” Darren said.
Halden kept the map open.
“It’s less than ten minutes away.”
“Voss led us to storage. Storage led us to Pree. Pree led us here. Lorne has our names. If someone is following the inquiries, we’re drawing the line for them.”
“Have you seen anyone?”
“No.”
Halden turned the pad so Darren could see the short walk to the service office.
Below them, the tractor finally coupled to its load.
“We could ask now,” Halden said.
“Before anybody has time to hear we’re coming.”
Darren watched the module roll toward the freighter.
He wanted to follow it past the barriers and ask its crew what a sealed road looked like from the other end.
“And give them our next stop before we know what we can ask safely.”
“Waiting doesn’t erase a record.”
“No. It gives us time to choose the question.”
“And if the ship leaves early?”
“Then we lose the ship.”
Halden closed the map.
“I’ll watch the departure notices. If anything changes, you answer.”
Darren touched the communicator inside his coat.
“I answer.”
They left the concourse separately and took different transit lines.
At dusk Halden called.
The ship’s slot had not changed.
Routine visitors to the service office would next be admitted at four; the overnight technicians were taking ship work only.
“Could call it urgent,” Darren said.
“Whose emergency? We don’t own the ship.”
Darren stood beside a food stall, watching oil run off a rack of empty skewers.
They could still go back to Ring Six and wait near the crew entrance.
He had spent the afternoon deciding not to do that.
“Tomorrow morning, then. The service office first.”
“Before the ship leaves.”
“That is the attraction.”
They agreed to meet for dinner.
Darren checked the departure time once more before closing the display.
Dinner happened because Darren decided to eat somewhere with chairs.
Kala was not part of the plan.
She was a human woman in her thirties, with short dark-blond hair and a courier jacket worn open over a dark shirt.
She occupied the next table, watched Darren argue with the menu for perhaps twenty seconds, then leaned toward him.
“The translation is wrong.”
Darren looked at her with the relief of a man whose argument with the menu had acquired an interpreter.
“I was beginning to suspect the noodles had declared independence.”
“That is not what that word means.”
“Disappointing.”
Kala tapped the menu and ordered something for him without asking.
Darren looked toward Halden for support he did not receive.
“I have been replaced.”
“Rapidly.”
Kala glanced at Halden.
“Is he always like this?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Good.”
Darren raised an eyebrow at the endorsement.
“Good?”
“Boring men usually become more boring after food.”
“A demanding standard.”
Kala brought her bowl to their table after Darren moved his coat off the spare chair.
She had lost most of the afternoon waiting for a client who insisted a parcel was ready when it was still somewhere on another level.
“Did you charge for the wait?” Halden asked.
“Every minute.”
“He paid?”
“He’s arguing. His parcel is enjoying another night in the depot.”
Halden raised his cup.
Kala touched hers to it, then reached past Darren to steal the sauce he had been using.
When he objected, she offered him a taste from her bowl instead.
When Halden eventually stood, he looked once from Kala to Darren.
“I have an early morning.”
“Coward.”
“Professional survival. Keep that thing where you’ll hear it.”
Darren tapped his communicator.
“I will.”
Halden settled their bill as a work expense; Kala waved him away from her own bill.
He left before Darren could accuse him of anything else.
Kala watched Halden disappear into the crowd before turning back with obvious amusement.
“Your husband?”
Darren nearly inhaled his drink.
She smiled.
“There. That is the first honest expression you have made all night.”
“Cruel woman.”
“You like cruel women?”
The question was playful but not empty.
Darren let the easy joke go.
“Sometimes. Depends what they mean by cruel.”
Kala studied him for a moment, then changed the subject without demanding the answer become more important.
They kept talking, and none of it concerned futures, wars or dead accountants.
Kala touched his wrist first.
Darren leaned closer; she closed the remaining distance, kissed him, and smiled when he paused instead of assuming the second kiss.
She kissed him again, then caught him with a hand against his chest when he followed.
“Let me finish dinner.” This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
He sat back.
“A devastating review.”
“Ask again after dessert.”
She kept hold of his wrist while she reached for her spoon.
Darren waited, finding it difficult to resent the delay.
Kala asked about his accent.
“Brazil” earned him a puzzled look and a request to say it again.
He asked about courier work.
She had carried medical parcels, divorce papers, machine prototypes, a ceremonial sword and one cage containing an animal she still refused to identify.
“You are making that up.”
“I wish.”
“Dangerous?”
“It ate half a seat.”
Darren looked down at the chair beneath him.
“This evening has become operationally relevant.”
Kala laughed.
He asked what happened to the other half, and she told him she had billed for all of it.
When they left the restaurant, Kala did not ask whether he wanted to come with her.
She took his hand at the first crosswalk and released it at the next corner, leaving him several seconds to decide whether the gesture had been direction, invitation or both.
He followed her to a rented room that was small, clean and nearly anonymous, designed for people who would never learn the neighbor’s name.
Kala locked the door and turned toward him.
“Before you become clever, I am leaving tomorrow.”
“I had gathered you were a courier.”
“I mean I am leaving. This does not become a story where you discover my tragic past and decide I require rescuing.”
Darren leaned against the wall.
“You have clearly met men.”
“Enough.”
“I am not offering rescue.”
“Good.”
“I may also leave before morning.”
“Work?”
“Probably.”
She studied him, then nodded and placed her room key beside a half-packed travel bag.
Darren put his communicator beside the bag, with the vibration alert on.
Kala drew him away from the table and kissed him.
His hand reached the hem of her shirt and stopped.
“Yes?”
Kala answered by pulling him closer, then laughed when the holster at his waist struck the edge of the table.
“Romantic.”
“Professional equipment.”
“Put the professional equipment on the floor.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The blaster went beneath the chair, safely away from the bed but still close enough that Darren noticed the compromise; Kala noticed him noticing.
“You always sleep armed?”
“Usually.”
“Tonight you can reach it after you find your trousers.”
“That is an unacceptable response time.”
“Leave, then.”
She was smiling.
Darren looked at the weapon, then moved it farther away.
“Terrifying woman.”
“Learning.”
They undressed without hurry.
Darren’s shoulder caught when he pulled his shirt over his head, and Kala stopped him before his expression could become another joke.
“Old injury?”
“Mostly old.”
“Then stop fighting the shirt.”
He let her help.
Later, when he reached awkwardly across her, she moved closer instead of making him stretch.
They made love with pauses and quiet laughter, his discarded shirt still hanging from the table where neither of them had bothered to retrieve it.
The communicator remained on the table.
Darren checked its alert once, then turned back to Kala.
Afterward they lay tangled in sheets designed for one person and optimism.
Kala rested one leg across his and traced an old scar near his shoulder.
“Security?”
“Before.”
“Military?”
Darren looked at the ceiling.
“Before before.”
She did not ask why he had left.
Instead, she touched the scar once more.
“You look at every door.”
“Yes.”
“You looked at mine three times.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
He conceded the count, and Kala let the silence settle before speaking again.
“You can stop for a few hours.”
The sentence should have been easy, but it was not.
Darren listened to traffic beyond the window, plumbing inside the wall and somebody laughing farther down the corridor; none of those sounds required him.
“I am trying.”
This time Kala did not joke, which made the offer harder to dismiss.
Neither of them fell asleep immediately.
The room was too warm.
Kala pushed the blanket toward their feet and asked him to open the window a little.
Darren found the catch in the dark; a draft lifted the curtain, carrying traffic noise into the room.
Kala spoke into the dark.
“You said Brazil.”
“I did.”
“That a planet?”
The easiest lie would have been yes.
Darren was tired enough to resent both the truth he could not explain and the lie he did not need.
“A place very far from here.”
“That was not an answer.”
“No.”
Kala rolled onto her back.
“You know, mysterious works better before sex.”
Darren laughed quietly at the accuracy of the complaint.
“I will add that to professional development.”
“I am serious.”
He turned toward her.
She had stopped smiling.
“You’ve heard half my worst clients. I still don’t know where you’re from.”
“I don’t know how to explain it without telling you things I can’t take back.”
“About your work?”
“Some of it.”
“Dangerous?”
“Yes.”
“To me?”
Darren thought carefully before answering.
“I haven’t seen anyone following me.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
He looked toward the window.
“I don’t know of a threat to you. I can’t promise there isn’t one.”
Kala considered that for several seconds.
“If your work calls, you go. And if you learn something I need to know, you tell me.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t need your life story tonight.”
Darren waited for another question.
Kala pulled the blanket back over her legs and reached across to rest a hand on his chest.
“Then sleep before your mysterious work ruins another morning.”
For once, Darren did exactly that.
Kala slept on one side of the bed and somehow retained most of the blanket.
Darren woke again in the dark, with Kala’s hair against his cheek and the draft reaching his uncovered feet.
He lay still for a while before reaching for the folded paper inside his jacket.
Kala’s breathing had settled again.
He turned the sheet over and used the blank side.
Under MEMORY — NOT EVIDENCE, he wrote one word.
KAMINO.
Kala shifted in her sleep and caught his wrist without waking, as if his movement had disturbed something her body objected to losing.
He waited until her fingers loosened before folding the paper and putting it away.
The last departure notice still said 04:40.
Darren set the communicator on the floor beside his clothes, where he could reach it without climbing over Kala, and lay down again.