The communicator rattled against the edge of the table.
Darren sat up on the folding bed and caught it before it fell, pulling at the bruise across his abdomen.
Pell was calling from the office below him.
“Come downstairs,” she said.
“Milo’s awake.”
He had not slept.
On the table, the empty food carton sat beside the twenty credits he had been counting when Sira left.
He pocketed the money and went downstairs.
Voran stood over a terminal with his coat still on.
Sira had taken the chair nearest the door.
Between them, a small screen showed Milo lying in the clinic, his face washed gray by the light above his bed.
“The doctor gave us ten minutes,” Pell said.
“Then ask him something,” Voran snapped.
“I was waiting for you to stop.”
Darren pulled up a chair.
Milo watched him through the screen, avoiding Voran.
Sira worked a finger under the wrap around her bruised hand, loosened it and left it alone.
“Start with a shipment you remember,” Darren said.
“One.”
Milo swallowed.
“The filtration units. SABLE-9. I had to correct the weight.”
Pell began typing.
When Milo tried to give her a departure time, she stopped him and asked for the client.
Voran supplied the name.
An entry appeared on the wall display, followed by a second when Milo remembered another consignment billed to the same account.
Then the doctor came back into view and ended the call.
Voran reached for the communicator.
Darren put his hand over it.
“You want the rest, let him sleep.”
“And how many leave while he sleeps?”
Pell opened the two records they had recovered.
“Neither of these. Give me your current dispatch accounts.”
Voran hesitated before passing her his authorization cylinder.
By morning, with two more calls and the records Pell had pulled between them, they had thirty-seven entries.
Several were no more than a client code and an approximate date.
Seventeen transports were due to leave within forty-eight hours; eleven carried enough value to interest anyone buying stolen manifests.
Voran marked five of those in amber.
“Sensitive,” he said.
“Sensitive to whom?” Darren asked.
“To the people who pay me.”
Darren had been awake long enough to feel cold despite the office heat.
He pushed his untouched caf away.
“Kess has the pad because I threw it out a window. I’m here to help with what happens next. Tell me what we’re looking at.”
Voran touched the first line.
Weapons for a security cooperative.
Then bacta for three clinics, hyperdrive components, a bonded consignment whose owner he refused to name.
“And SABLE-9?”
“Seven workers. Debt contracts.”
On the public manifest they were industrial filtration units.
“Can they leave?” Darren asked.
“When the debt’s paid.”
“Who decides what they owe?”
Voran took his hand off the display.
“You intend to fix labor law this morning?”
“No. I intend to find out whether we’re delivering seven people to somebody who owns them.”
Sira leaned forward.
“Who’s driving?”
Voran checked.
“Tessa Marr. Independent.”
“I know her. Let me call.”
Pell touched the weapons shipment.
“A security cooperative. They have armed escorts already. We leave their departure alone.”
“Can we reach the other drivers without going through their clients?” Darren asked.
“For some of these I only have a broker’s address.” Pell opened one of the incomplete entries.
“Send him the warning, he asks where it came from. By midday, Kess knows we rebuilt the list.”
“And starts moving before we can.” Darren looked at Voran.
“Which drivers can you reach yourself?”
Pell brought up the bacta booking.
Three clinics had pooled the purchase.
The carrier could change the transfer platform before loading; a delay of a few hours would not spoil the shipment.
The components could travel inside another scheduled load, if Voran persuaded its owner to accept them.
“That customer keeps my doors open,” he said.
“I lose those components, none of us gets another job here.”
Darren looked at the three clinic names beneath the bacta booking, then at Sira.
She was still waiting for an answer to her call.
“The components and the medicine can move through your people,” he said.
“We don’t have to send the same warning to every office. Give each driver the change they need.”
Pell nodded toward Voran.
“You make those calls yourself. No general dispatch notice.”
He reached for his communicator.
Darren pointed to SABLE-9.
“We take that one.”
Voran looked at Sira.
“For what? The truck gets attacked, the contract holders lose their property. Isn’t that what you want?”
Sira lowered the communicator from her ear.
“Ask that again when they’re sitting here.”
For a moment nobody moved.
Then Voran turned away to make his call.
Darren copied the remaining route numbers onto a spare sheet beside the terminal.
He could not put a team on any of them.
He had twenty credits, a bruised torso and a blaster he had bought from the woman making the next call.
He copied them anyway, including the one Voran would not explain.
Pell closed the clinic connection after Milo drifted to sleep midway through a question.
His last correction remained below the list: SABLE-9, secondary refinery, departure early afternoon.
Sira stood.
“Tessa will see us. She won’t discuss it over a channel.” Pell handed Darren a spare datapad with the reconstructed SABLE-9 entry on it.
He checked that the client and departure details were there before putting it inside his jacket.
The refinery towers disappeared into a ceiling of dirty vapor.
Darren tasted metal through the light respirator Sira had borrowed for him.
Beneath the loading platform, runoff hissed into a drain that had eaten holes through its own cover.
A woman slid from under a transport and set a wrench on its step.
Her dark hair was shaved on one side; an old burn scar crossed the forearm she wiped against her trousers.
She looked first at Sira, then at Darren’s borrowed reflective jacket.
“You bring me another driver?”
“Another problem,” Sira said.
“Tessa Marr.” She did not offer her grease-blackened hand.
“What happened to my route?”
Darren showed her the copied manifest.
She stopped wiping her arm.
“Who else has this?”
“Kess has it. Anyone paying him may have it too.”
She looked toward the office above the loading doors.
Behind its window, a supervisor was arguing with a worker whose respirator hung loose around his neck.
“Can you cancel?” Darren asked.
“They leave today or they don’t leave.”
“What happens if they miss the transfer?”
Tessa studied him.
Sira gave a small nod.
“The ship leaves without them. Forty-Four-C. There are papers waiting for all seven.” She kept her voice low.
“The people in that office think I’m taking them to another contract holder.”
Darren glanced from the loading doors to the manifest.
The destination on it was another factory.
Tessa had a ship waiting instead, and he could ruin that departure by making the wrong call.
“Does Voran know?”
“He sells freight space. He doesn’t get to know everything that travels in it.”
The office door opened.
Tessa took the pad from Darren and tucked it beneath a maintenance sheet as the supervisor came down the stairs.
“Still here?” the man demanded.
“Still trying to keep your people from spending the afternoon beside a seized engine.”
“You cleared it yesterday.”
“And your driver ran it hot this morning.” She held out the sheet.
“Sign that you’ve been advised, or let me finish.”
The supervisor ignored the paper.
He inspected Darren and Sira without interest, then shouted through the loading doors.
Seven people emerged in gray work clothes.
A girl in an oversized coat carried a cloth bag against her stomach.
She kept her eyes on the ground while the supervisor counted them.
Tessa unlocked the passenger compartment.
They climbed inside, one helping a limping human up the step.
The supervisor gave her a packet of documents and waited until she shut the door.
“Straight to transfer.”
“Once the engine’s ready.”
He went back upstairs.
Tessa watched his door close before she spoke again.
“The girl’s paying her father’s debt. Before you ask whether I can leave them another week.”
Darren had no intention of asking.
He walked around the truck, looking at its distinctive cab and the identification lights over the rear doors. New chapters come out on g.com first.
If someone had bought the route, this was the truck they would be waiting for.
Changing the departure might alert the refinery before the seven reached their ship.
“Let this truck keep its appointment,” he said.
“Put them in another one.”
Tessa looked at the traffic lanes.
“There’s a service yard two turns from here. I have a coolant sensor that needs replacing, and nobody ever argues when I stop there.”
“I know a driver,” Sira said.
“But he gets paid.”
Darren took out his communicator and called Voran.
“Move the departure,” Voran said.
“The refinery notices. The passengers never reach their transfer.”
A pause.
“What transfer?”
Darren looked at Tessa.
She waited without helping him.
“The one they want to reach.”
“You’re changing the job.”
Darren kept his eyes on the supervisor’s window.
“The job was keeping Kess from taking this load. This does that.”
“And who answers the client afterward?”
Tessa had turned away to check the passenger door.
Darren waited until she was out of earshot.
“You can bill the cost of a second vehicle, or explain why you knew the route was compromised and sent it anyway.”
Voran’s voice dropped.
“Don’t threaten me with my own customers.”
“Then give me something I can do with twenty credits.”
Darren heard another call sounding at Voran’s end.
For several seconds the man let it ring.
“I pay the driver and the maintenance invoice,” he said finally.
“Nothing else. And when this comes back, you’re in the room.”
“I’ll be there.”
Voran cut the connection.
Tessa drew the datapad from beneath the maintenance sheet and handed it back to Darren.
“Tell your driver to wait behind the service canopy,” she told Sira.
“I’ll bring them to him.”
Sira moved away to arrange the pickup.
Tessa opened a small locker behind the cab and handed Darren a clean work vest.
“Yours says refinery. You don’t want to wear it where we’re going.”
He exchanged the jackets.
“You do this often?”
“Borrow clothes?”
“All right.”
She took the wrench off the step.
“If anybody asks, you came for engine trouble.”
“That isn’t much of a story.”
“It’s the one I’m paying for with my reputation.” She checked that the supervisor was still in his office and motioned Darren into the cab.
At 13:22, Tessa drove into the service yard and stopped beneath an open maintenance canopy.
Sira arrived beside the replacement vehicle two minutes later.
Its driver remained in the cab, watching the mirror while a loader rolled between them and the road.
Tessa raised the engine cowling.
Darren opened the passenger door.
Seven faces turned toward him.
Four humans, a Rodian, a blue-skinned Twi’lek, and a broad-faced man whose species he did not recognize.
The girl drew her bag closer.
“Someone else has your route,” he said.
“We need to move you.”
A human woman near the door looked past him toward Tessa.
“Is that true?”
Tessa left the engine long enough for them to see her.
“Same destination. Different driver. Sira goes with you.”
“Are we being arrested?” the woman asked.
“No,” Darren said.
“The new vehicle gets you to the ship. If you don’t want to go, tell us now.”
The woman rose first.
She helped the limping man to his feet, and Darren steadied him as he came down.
The movement pressed a sharp ache through Darren’s side.
He shifted his weight and kept his hand beneath the man’s elbow until Sira took over, using her uninjured hand to guide him toward the other door.
The Rodian stumbled on the bottom step.
The girl caught his sleeve before Darren reached him.
As he steadied himself, she peered past the loader toward the road.
“Is the man from the office coming?”
“No,” Darren said.
She waited for the Rodian to move, then followed with her bag under one arm.
The broad-faced man came after them, keeping his head below the edge of the open door.
An older human stayed in his seat.
A pale scar ran through the web of his right hand.
“My daughter’s at the destination.”
“The ship?” Darren asked.
“The factory. Where we’re supposed to go.”
Tessa looked up from the engine.
A vehicle had slowed at the entrance, waiting for the loader to clear the road.
“She’s not contracted,” the man said.
“She works there. When I don’t arrive, they’ll ask her where I’ve gone.”
Sira held the replacement door open.
The woman inside beckoned him impatiently.
“We can try to get a message to her once you’re clear,” Darren said.
“You promise?”
Darren could hear the waiting driver’s horn.
“I’ll pass the request to the people meeting you. I can’t promise they’ll reach her.”
The man stared at him.
“You don’t know anything about her.”
“No. Tell Sira what she needs.”
He moved at last, stepping down without Darren’s hand.
When he reached Sira he began giving her a name, repeating the spelling while she helped him into the vehicle.
The Twi’lek went last.
Tessa shut the replacement door and struck it twice with her palm.
The driver pulled out behind the loader, carrying all seven into the traffic stream.
Darren climbed into the original truck’s passenger seat.
Tessa was already reaching for the ignition.
“Sira’s supposed to take you back.”
“She has enough passengers.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“If somebody stops us, you’ll want a second pair of eyes.”
She looked at the way he had lowered himself into the seat.
“Can you use a gun without opening whatever you’ve torn?”
“I can shoot. Running is where you’ll be disappointed.”
“Then stay inside when this gets unpleasant.”
He pulled the door shut.
She waited for him to fasten the belt, then pulled out of the service yard and rejoined the scheduled route.
For the first half of the route, the only thing following them was an overloaded refuse hauler.
Tessa drove with one hand low on the wheel, testing the coolant reading whenever the engine changed pitch.
Darren watched the mirrors and tried to find a position that did not hurt.
Two black speeders joined the lane behind the hauler.
At the next junction, one crossed to their left and began gaining.
“Company,” he said.
“I see them.” Tessa let the truck drift toward the right of its lane.
The speeder’s side window lowered, and Darren saw a weapon come level with the cab.
“Down.”
Tessa braked and cut right.
The shot struck the rear of the transport hard enough to shake the seat.
Darren drew his blaster, bracing against the door as the refuse hauler sounded its horn behind them.
“Don’t,” Tessa said.
“They’re coming alongside.”
“Look ahead.”
Two inspection arches stood over the entrance to a commercial district.
Vehicles queued between barriers while private guards checked permits.
Tessa drove toward the shortest line, forcing a small delivery van to stop.
Darren lowered the blaster beneath the dashboard.
The speeder came close enough for him to see its driver’s profile, then veered into the through lane.
The second followed.
Neither stopped.
A guard walked toward them with his rifle ready.
He had seen the swerve.
“Engine trouble?”
“People shooting at me,” Tessa said.
His eyes moved to the scorched rear panel.
“Then report it outside the gate.”
“And let them finish?”
She passed him her permit.
He kept them waiting while another guard opened the empty compartment.
Darren sat still, his weapon hidden against his thigh, and watched the traffic for a returning speeder.
“This says filtration equipment,” the guard said.
“Where’s the delivery receipt?”
“We stopped for a fault. Now we’re empty.” Tessa indicated the maintenance entry, but he kept his hand out.
Darren watched her glance toward the mirror.
Neither of them had a receipt to give him.
“That doesn’t clear you for entry,” the guard said.
The second guard shut the compartment and shook his head: nothing inside.
A driver farther down the queue sounded his horn.
The first guard looked from the blocked lane to the scorched panel, then pointed toward a lay-by between the inspection barriers and the district’s inner gate.
“There. Stay in the cab. You don’t go past the second barrier, and in fifteen minutes you leave.”
Tessa nodded before he could change his mind.
He scanned her permit and kept the rifle low while she eased past him.
Tessa parked behind a row of delivery vehicles.
With the engine stopped, she had to ease her fingers off the wheel one at a time.
Darren worked the belt away from his abdomen and breathed through the pain where it had caught him during the turn.
Beyond the barrier, the delivery van they had cut off rolled past, its driver glaring into their cab.
“You knew they’d have to pass us?” he asked.
“I knew they’d have to decide whether we were worth shooting a guard.”
“Good choice.”
“Apparently.” She looked at his blaster.
“Put that away before our new friends charge us for it.”
He holstered it.
He had not fired a shot.
Sira called while they were still in the lay-by.
The seven had reached Forty-Four-C.
The receiving crew had taken the older man’s daughter’s name, and the passengers were boarding.
Sira stayed until the hatch closed.
Tessa leaned her head against the seat and shut her eyes for a moment.
Then she opened them and inspected the coolant gauge.
“Now I really do have to fix that.”
Pell’s message arrived before they left the district.
The components were safe.
The bacta transport had been intercepted at its revised transfer platform.
There was an image attached.
A cargo hull burned beside an open row of crates; two medics carried the pilot away from the wreck.
Darren enlarged it, searching the background for another stretcher.
“Alive,” Pell said when he called.
“The pilot. That’s all I’ve confirmed.”
“Did they hit before the change?”
“After. The new platform.”
Darren looked at the time on the image.
By then he and Tessa had been sitting behind the inspection barrier, waiting for the speeders to go away.
“Who had the new platform?”
“The carrier and the client’s dispatch chain. I’m checking.”
Tessa waited while he looked at the picture again.
“Where do you need to go?”
“Voran’s office.”
She restarted the engine.
Voran was already leaving when they arrived.
He sent Tessa to his mechanic with instructions to bill the repair, then told Darren to come with him.
Sira joined them at the lift.
“Where?” she asked.
“One of the clinics,” Voran said.
“They want somebody to explain.”
The waiting room was full.
A father sat with a child asleep across his knees while an older man argued at the reception desk, keeping his voice low enough that the argument seemed more painful than a shout.
“You moved it last time,” he said.
“She’s already stopped working.”
The receptionist asked him to sit down while she found somebody who could discuss the treatment.
He remained beside the desk.
An administrator led Voran into a side office.
She left the door open.
Darren could still hear the man repeating his wife’s name.
“We can pay a surcharge for an immediate replacement,” she told Voran.
“We cannot pay for the original order twice.”
“I don’t sell bacta.”
“You arranged the carrier.”
“And I’m finding out what happened.”
She put a pad in front of him.
Three clinic names headed the purchase order.
Beneath them were quantities, dates, and payments already cleared.
“We have reserves for emergencies. Every dose we take from that supply means another decision tomorrow. I need a delivery date.”
Voran said nothing.
Darren asked whether another supplier could cover part of the order.
The administrator turned to him with such immediate attention that he regretted speaking before he had anything to offer.
“Do you have one?”
Pell might find a seller, given time.
He had no stock to offer and twenty credits to put toward a new order.
“No.”
She turned the pad back toward Voran.
“I have people calling suppliers now. What I don’t have is credit for another order.”
He nodded and let her finish with Voran.
Outside, Voran stopped under a ventilation outlet and lit a smoke stick.
He held the packet toward Darren, who shook his head.
“Still glad you chose the seven?”
“Yes.”
Voran took a long drag.
“Must be nice to know.”
Darren looked through the clinic doors.
The older man had finally sat down.
“Did you bring me here to help with the carrier, or to make me wish we’d left them?”
“I brought you because I can’t be the only one people ask.”
That stopped him.
Voran crushed the smoke stick beneath his heel before it was half finished and went back inside to call the carrier from the administrator’s terminal.
Sira stayed beside Darren.
“Pell found the revised platform in a dispatch message sent outside the client’s chain. Before the attack.”
“Who received it?”
“An address she hasn’t identified. She’s checking.”
He put his communicator away.
His thumb had been opening the image of the burning transport again.
“Come on,” she said.
“Staring at it won’t give you another team.”
Tessa was waiting at the freight office with a repair invoice held flat on the counter.
Her opening demand reached them before they were through the door: no deduction for the work she had already done at the refinery.
Voran took the invoice without comment.
That seemed to disconcert her more than a refusal would have.
Darren found her outside afterward, fastening her tool bag.
The buckle would not catch.
When he offered to hold the bag, she moved it away from his hand.
“You were limping when you got out of my truck.”
“I can hold a bag.”
“Then you can hold this.” She passed him the loose strap, turned the buckle over and worked the bent pin with a small pair of pliers.
He kept the strap steady.
Neither spoke until the pin slid home.
Tessa tested the repair, took the strap back and gave him her communication code.
“If you need passage.”
“Where do you fly?”
“Where they pay.”
“Coruscant?”
“If somebody pays enough.”
He saved the code.
Twenty credits would not take him there, but he now knew somebody he could ask when he had more.
“Why help them?” he asked.
Tessa glanced toward the office.
“Voran’s paying for a sensor and a scorched panel. You think that covers seven passengers?”
“No.”
“I’ve worked for people who called a man equipment while he was standing there. I got tired of helping them do it.”
She lifted the bag.
He moved aside to give her room.
“If I call—”
“Have money.”
“There goes the emotional moment.”
“Good.”
She walked toward the repair yard.
Darren watched her disappear between two parked carriers, then went upstairs.
The route list was still on the wall.
Pell had marked the components delivered and the bacta lost.
Beside SABLE-9, Darren entered seven departed.
He asked Sira to send him the older man’s request and added it beneath the result.
She sent the daughter’s name with the factory address; the receiving crew still had no confirmation that a message had reached her.
Pell had the leaked dispatch message open beside the bacta entry.
Darren set her borrowed pad on the desk.
“If we change another route,” he said, “can you keep it out of that chain?”
“Not if that client has to receive it.”
He left his hand on the pad for a moment, then moved it aside to make room for Milo’s call.
Milo’s next call was due in ten minutes.
Darren drew up a chair.
Eight routes remained on the list without a new report.
He kept them on the screen.
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Thanks for reading — and for supporting Darren’s increasingly questionable life choices.