Star Wars_ Millennium Falcon - James Luceno [89]
So maybe his uneasiness about learning the full truth of the Falcon's ancestry had owed to apprehension regarding what he might discover about himself.
“WE'RE LOOKING FOR A HAIRSTYLIST.”
“Guess you've been looking for your entire life.”
Keeping a straight face, the Balosar planted his hands on his hips and rocked back and forth on his feet, as if awaiting Jadak's comeback.
“I think he wants to be helpful,” Poste said, appraising the humanoid. “Just try not to feed him another straight line.”
Jadak nodded dubiously. “This being's a specialist—”
“You don't need a specialist, you need an expert.”
Antenepalps quivering slightly, the Balosar took stock of Jadak's mood. Sensing frustration rather than anger, he grinned.
“Once more,” Poste said. “Skip to the gist.”
“Her name is Zenn Bien.”
The Balosar's grin blossomed into a smile. “You should have said so to begin with.” He gestured for them to turn left at the corner. “Four blocks down from there.”
Jadak watched the colorfully dressed humanoid saunter off. As un-governed as Holess was law abiding, New Balosar seemed to have attracted every joker in the galaxy. A holosign at the spaceport welcoming new arrivals read: NATASI DAALA IS CHIEF OF STATE, SO WHY GIVE A POODOO?
It was the last place Jadak would have expected to find a former owner of the Stellar Envoy—or the Second Chance—but Rej Taunt had assured him and Poste that Zenn Bien was here. Taunt's underlings had dropped them off on the way to wherever it was they were delivering their Colicoid cargo. Taunt had made a point of saying that while Zenn Bien had never actually owned the ship, she could probably tell them where it had ended up. Jadak took in stride the fact that the YT had had a female pilot, but he had been surprised to learn that Bien was Sullustan.
“Someone must've installed a smaller pilot's chair,” Poste had remarked.
Jadak had also been surprised to learn that his opponent in the race for whatever treasure the Republic Group had buried was a high-powered human attorney named Lestra Oxic. The HoloNet listed millions of references to Oxic, but Jadak had found as much as he needed in the first entry he'd called up. Oxic's face had been among the distinguished dozens of holoimages on display in Sompa's office at Aurora Medical. The lawyer had been celebrated even as far back as the Clone Wars, and had associated with some of the same members of the Republic Group whom Jadak had answered to. One of those members had to have told Oxic about the treasure and about Jadak as well, since it was likely that Oxic, hiding behind Core Health and Life, had been covering the costs of Jadak's prolonged reawakening. What Oxic didn't seem to realize was that the genuine key to finding the treasure was the YT-1300.
Regrettably, Jadak was no closer to solving the ship's place in the puzzle than he had been before recalling that the code phrase the Senators had given him was a mnemonic device. He had spent most of the jump from Holess with Poste's wand and notepad in hand in a futile effort to decipher the phrase. He had run the words restore Republic honor to the galaxy through the few simple decryption methods he knew, and dozens more he was able to access through the HoloNet. He dismissed that the phrase was an anagram, but he had toyed with possibilities nevertheless.
Senators Zar, Des'sein, and Largetto had said that the Antarian Ranger on Toprawa who was to accept delivery of the YT was expecting Jadak, and that the phrase had been designed as a memory aid for her. So she must have known in advance what was expected of her, if and when a time should arrive to retrieve the treasure.
The mnemonic phrase told her how to do it.
Then there was the modification the Jedi had made to the Stellar Envoy. Were the modification and the mnemonic phrase linked in some way, or did the modification assure that the Envoy would be able to execute her task? Was that what