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On the screen, Tarc’s low-point-of-view recording continued, catching both Tam and Wolam as they marched down one of the biotics building’s basement hallways.

Something on a wall over a doorway flashed with reflective light, just for a moment, then disappeared as the holocam view progressed.

Tam sat upright. “Hold it.” He paused the recording, then reversed it until that door frame came into view again.

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure.” He wasn’t sure, but if it was what he thought it was, it was bad news.

He scrolled the screen view back and forth across that one second of recording. One moment, the wall above the door frame was blank, then there was that reflection, then it was blank again.

“Are you sure now?”

“Let’s go look.”

It was a low-security hallway, though there were higher-security doors on it; they were protected by keypads and alarms, and around the corner from the portion of the hallway where they stood, doors providing access to the Twin Sun Squadron’s special turbolift were guarded by security personnel.

But here there were two doors immediately across from one another. The one on the left had a keypad access and was marked ENVIRONMENT. The one on the right led to a well-packed utility closet.

Tam reached up over that doorway and ran his finger along the wall. After a few centimeters of paint, his fingertip encountered a smoother substance, though no change in the wall texture was visible to him. The smoothness ran for perhaps ten centimeters, then turned to paint texture again.

“I saw that,” Wolam said. “What was it?”

“A Yuuzhan Vong toy. When they had control of me, I put one up on the wall outside Danni Quee’s laboratory. Watch this.” Tam stroked the thing along its left edge, a combination he’d been taught during his brief, painful, life-changing stay among the Yuuzhan Vong.

Vibrant colors suddenly appeared on the patch of material. They showed the keypad on the door opposite, showed hands moving across the keys, tapping in an access code.

Tam looked at Wolam. His expression was unhappy. He pulled a comlink out from a pocket. “Tam Elgrin to Comm Main Control, put me through to the Intelligence office.”

“This is Comm Main, say again your name and authority.”

“This is Tam Elgrin. I’m one of the civilians on base.”

“Oh. Right. You’re that civilian. Who did you want again?”

“The Intelligence office.”

“The Intelligence office isn’t staffed every hour of the day, and you aren’t authorized to demand the attention of the head of the department. I’m amazed you’re authorized to remain on Borleias.”

Tam covered over the microphone portion with his palm. He offered Wolam a cynical smile. “So my reputation is all in my imagination, huh?”

“Give me that.”

Tam handed the comlink over.

“Hello, this is Wolam Tser. I, too, want to speak to the director of Intelligence, or the director of Security, and I mean immediately.”

Tam moved to the keypad and tapped at several of its keys. There was an audible click from the lock and the door slid up and open. Beyond were floor-to-ceiling banks of mechanical and electronic equipment and a narrow, worker-sized gap between them.

“No, you’re just Tam Elgrin again, changing his voice, and if you continue to broadcast on this frequency, I’m going to have you dragged through the kill zone behind a landspeeder.”

“State your name and rank.”

“I’m Warrant Officer Urman Nakk, Security.”

“Warrant Officer Urman Nakk, Security, are you widely considered to be an idiot?”

“What?”

“Because in less than a day, I can guarantee that you will be. By your fellow security officers. By your superiors. By your family and your pets. By the officers who court-martial you. And the taint will stay with you throughout your life, because I am a brilliant historian and commentator and you are, at best, a mediocre desk pilot. This will happen despite your best efforts … unless you hand me over to one of the officers I asked for, right now!”

Tam gave Wolam a thumbs-up of approval. He took a step into the niche. Then he backed out again and bent over, studying the floor of the electronics-access