• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He’d only spoken to the Sakiyan officer once, and that briefly, before he’d made the drop to Drongar. But from what he’d heard around the base, Admiral Bleyd was held in reasonably high regard. He ran a tight operation, and there seemed to be little question of his personal courage, pride, and honor. Den didn’t know that much about Sakiyan culture, but he did know that the society was structured around complex family-political units, and that honor, dignity, and re-spect played a big part-so much so that there were a multitude of subtle, yet distinct, permutations, each with its own name and rules.

He emerged from the tent, blinking and, as always, slightly astonished at the stifling, sodden heat, and saw the officers, enlistees, and medical personnel lined up for inspection. The clone cohort was separate, their gleaming black-and-white-armored forms, all exactly the same height and body type, standing at attention in rows that, if not perfect, couldn’t have been off by more than a millimeter at best.

Why you would bother to inspect clones was beyond him. Seen one, seen them all.

Admiral Bleyd stood before them. He was an impres-sive figure, surely enough-tall and lean, his dress grays showing nary a wrinkle, and somehow Den knew that he wasn’t using an antistatic field generator. No wrinkle that knew what was good for it would come anywhere close to the admiral’s uniform.

The bald, burnished head gleamed in the sun, its dark bronze shining like an insect’s carapace. Den couldn’t see any sign of the admiral sweating. Maybe Sakiyans didn’t sweat.

Or maybe it was just Admiral Bleyd who didn’t.

The reporter came to a stop not far from the officers’ line. He could see Filba-Not exactly hard to miss, he looks like something a space slug sneezed out. The Hutt’s yellowish skin was even more mottled than usual, and he looked particularly slimy today. You don’t know what suffering is yet, Den silently promised the gigantic mollusk.

At least this planet has an atmosphere, foul though it may be. Not like a prison on an asteroid, where all you’ll have to look at is rock...

The best time to drop his bombshell would be during the inspection tour-out of Filba’s earshot, obviously. Den tried to visualize the look of dismay on the Hutt’s face when security came to collect him.

Somewhat to his surprise, now that this elaborate re-venge scheme he had worked on for the past several weeks was about to pay off, he felt remarkably unen-thused about the whole thing. Blowing the whistle on the Hutt suddenly seemed like more of an obligation, a duty, than savory retribution. He didn’t feel the joy he thought he would.

It wasn’t just payback for the Hutt’s recent treatment of him. He’d nearly gotten Den killed on Jabiim, as well. No, Filba had had this coming for a long time. But now-and this struck him with something very close to real horror-Den realized might actually be feeling re-luctant to do it.

You’re getting soft, Den told himself. Losing your edge. Must be the heat. You gotta get off this planet.

Then he noticed the admiral pause slightly as he passed the Hutt. There was eye contact between the two-a very quick glance, something that, unless you’d been an investigative reporter with your sensors attuned by years in the field, was virtually unnoticeable.

But Den noticed it.

Most interesting.

Although he was aware that he might be reading a ter-abyte or two into that look that wasn’t necessarily there, still, the implications were... unsettling. He would bet his droptacs that there was something going on between the Hutt and the Sakiyan, and that it would be, at the very least, highly unorthodox. What would an admiral of the fleet and a supply sergeant have to talk about?

It was a lot to read into a single, almost subliminal glance. It might be nothing more than distaste for Hutts in general that had caused Bleyd’s look, but Den Dhur was adept at what he did, and he had learned to trust his reporter’s instincts-maker knew they had been hard enough to come by. And the more he thought about it, the more sense it