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Two minutes later, bundled against the cold, moving reluctantly out into the windy, debris-strewn streets of Hweg Shul, Kandra sighed. “The man is completely useless.”

Beurth offered her a series of porcine grunts.

She nodded. “I know. That’s the way his job is done. But he didn’t give us anything, the Newcomers and Latecomers don’t seem to know anything, the Oldtimers are being very tight-lipped, the ones who are known to be Theran Listeners don’t seem to be around, we haven’t seen Valin … there’s something going on, but it’s going to take a better journalist than me to dig it up.”

Beurth grunted again, at length, his tone cross.

Kandra offered him a sour face and mimicked his words. “Eyewitness accounts are unreliable anyway. Thanks, that really helps.” She sighed, watching her frosty breath rise. It was then torn apart by the daytime winds. “Still … let’s see if we can patch together something, anything, out of hard data and statistics.”

Beurth grunted again.

“Yes, we can eat first.”

After lunch, back in her hostel room, she found the one detail she needed.

It was in updated crime reports and statistics. Speeder theft was up, and among the incidents reported since Luke Skywalker’s arrival on Nam Chorios, there was only one vehicle that had been stolen and later found—in this case, destroyed—without an arrest being associated with the case. An expensive Incom T-47 had been stolen from Hweg Shul. Interestingly, the theft had taken place a day before Snaplaunce’s shuttle, damaged but jury-rigged for ground travel, had been found outside Hweg Shul. The T-47 had been reported destroyed early this morning at the small community of Kesla Vein. There was also the report that someone at Kesla Vein had anonymously reported to the town headwoman that all speeders in the area were in danger of being stolen, with the result that she had ordered them all housed in a secure barn, watched by Oldtimers armed with blaster rifles. So far none of the community’s other speeders had gone missing.

Those details tweaked Kandra’s memory. She cross-checked crime report time stamps and found that, at the exact moment Kesla Vein residents had been responding to the explosion of the T-47, one of those anomalous storms had been arising at various sites around Nam Chorios, Hweg Shul included. A couple of minutes’ research into Luke Skywalker’s career confirmed that he had extensive experience with the T-47s, especially during his service with the Rebel Alliance on Hoth.

Other planetary statistics turned up no enlightening details. But Kandra, following the advice of one of her old holojournalism teachers, inverted a couple of graphs of planetary statistical data and found something interesting. She turned her datapad around so Beurth could see its screen. “See it?”

Bleurth scanned the graphs and offered an interested set of squeals.

“That’s the one. It’s a graph of crime and unusual news reports per capita for all communities on Nam Chorios, sorted by community size. And the one you see, Crystal Valley, has the lowest incidence of reports per capita among all communities larger than five hundred residents … but only as of the last couple of days. It looks like a news blackout.”

Beurth grunted and stood.

“You do that. Make sure the fuel is topped off. I think we’ll do Kesla Vein first, Crystal Valley later. I’ll make sure we have all the heating packs and droch sprays we need.”

They had managed to secure rental of a high-speed landspeeder on arrival at Hweg Shul, so they made good time toward Kesla Vein. Of course, there were disadvantages to their vehicle. It had been available because it was open-topped, not the most comfortable choice in Nam Chorios’s bitterly cold winter. Kandra was content to let Beurth pilot the thing while she huddled, wrapped in her cloak and blankets, a disposable heat-pak in her lap and another at her feet. At the end of a couple of hours’ travel, she was so cold she suspected she could be used to chill mixed drinks, was nauseous from the constant battering the wind had