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Lorn explained quickly as they walked. “So we’ve got an hour—actually, fifty-five minutes—to raise five hundred thousand credits.” He looked at the droid. “Any thoughts?”

“It is an excellent opportunity, to be sure. In fact, it might well be the chance of your lifetime, though I expect to have better opportunities myself, since I will probably outlive you by a factor of seven-point-four to seven-point-six, at a conservative estimate, disallowing major accidents, natural disasters, or acts of war—”

“We’re on the chrono and you’re discussing actuarial tables. The big question is, where are we going to get half a million credits in less than an hour?”

“That is indeed the question.”

“We could find a card game. I’m good at sabacc.”

“But not consistently—if you were, we wouldn’t be in this situation. And since we have no money of which to speak, who in all of the underground would give us enough of a marker to buy into a sufficiently high-stakes game?”

“Offhand, I’d say … nobody,” Lorn admitted.

“And how long would it take to win such an amount, assuming you could get into such a game? Even if you cheated and were not caught, could you do it in fifty-two minutes—not counting, of course, transit time to the Neimoidian’s domicile?”

“All right, sabacc is not a viable option. I assume you’ve got a better idea?”

I-Five cleared his speaking circuits in what sounded almost like a human cough. “There is only one viable option: bank fraud.”

Lorn stopped to stare at I-Five. A Givin blundered into him, muttered an apology, and kept going. Without taking his gaze from I-Five, Lorn grabbed the Givin’s exoskeleton, pulled him back, and retrieved his wallet. He then shoved the pickpocket away. “I’m listening,” he told the droid.

“I have been considering this idea for some time,” I-Five said. “Keeping it in reserve as a final contingency plan. If we effect it, we will be forced to flee Coruscant, and it would be unlikely that we could ever return, unless we wished to radically change our appearances and spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders.”

“If we had a million credits in our account, that would take us a long, long way from here,” Lorn said. “And I’d be happy to leave. We could set up shop on some outlier world where the Republic doesn’t have a presence, make a few smart investments, live like kings. Tell me about this plan.”

They continued to walk while I-Five elaborated. They wouldn’t really be able to steal the money, but the droid was confident he could jack into the data flow of one of Coruscant’s many banking firms and manage a phantom transfer of funds into their personal account. The auditor droids would catch it almost immediately, so timing would be critical. But if all went well, Lorn would be able to show Hath Monchar an unencumbered credit tab that was worth half a million. Much more than that, the droid explained, would kick in automatic inquiries, and if they tried to transfer the funds after the audit, the bank would catch that, too. The real trick would be to have the Neimoidian accept the credit tab as payment and make the transfer to his account before time ran out.

“The window will be narrow, and it will close quickly,” I-Five concluded. “But in theory it can be done.”

Lorn felt a warm rush of excitement. They might actually pull this off. And if they did, they could walk away with a holocron worth a million creds and leave the Neimoidian holding an empty bag. Which would be too bad for him, but that’s how life was in the real galaxy. Lorn wouldn’t stay awake nights worrying about it, that was for sure.

“Let’s do it,” he said. “If it doesn’t work, we won’t be any worse off than we are now.”

“Save for the distinct possibility of you occupying a cell in a Republic asteroid prison for thirty years, and me having a complete memory wipe.”

“You worry too much.”

“And you don’t worry enough.”

But Lorn knew I-Five would take the risk. Droids were supposed to be programmed with more integrity and honesty than humans or other natural-born species, but it didn’t always work quite like that.