Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [107]
“I didn’t examine them closely, no.” Threepio turned his head to look at the pieces of wreckage that Ugmush had taken on board the Zicreex before the QEC had put in its appearance. They were stacked in a corner of the enormous waiting room, labeled and under a very tired- and crabby-looking Sullustan guard.
Yarbolk lowered his voice still further. “They’re modified Seifax shielded transport shells,” he whispered. “Thousands of them were shipped to Seifax’s new plant on Antemeridias a few months ago—and Seifax is a dummy corporation for Loronar.”
“You can’t really be serious.” Threepio modulated his voice down, shocked. Though he was not physically uncomfortable in the all-enfolding black robe and leather mask with its breathing tubes and filters, Threepio found the disguise massively inconvenient because the fabric bunched in his joints, interfered with the delicate operation of his hydraulic retractors, and—since like many droids his balance was less acute than humans’—threatened to trip him at every other step.
“Loronar Corporation is a subscriber to the Republic Registry of Corporations. Their board of directors is made up of individuals of the highest probity and credentials. They were responsible for a good deal of the armament that made the Rebellion possible!”
“And they turned a five hundred percent profit in the ten years of active Rebellion that preceded the fall of the New Order. Now the Rebellion had its own financial sources, but not that kind of money. Loronar was selling to both sides, probably through dummy corporations like Seifax. And the Seifax plant on Antemeridias has been buying miniaturized hyperspace drives from the Bith. I have a connection in the processing office. Hey,” he added, snatching back another of the datacubes from Artoo, who, apparently still under the impression that look at these was an order, had been systematically picking up the cubes on the table with his gripper and taking them into his data-retrieval port. “You give those back.”
The droid promptly spat them out in a line onto the table. Yarbolk snatched them up, counted them, and glanced quickly over his shoulder again at the other occupants of the quarantine hold. They were a motley bunch: a scrofulous-looking gray Wookiee and a couple of Aqualish who held together and kept looking from the guards to the doors, the crew of a Squib prospector vessel who protested vehemently and often that they hadn’t heard about any plague, and a rather extravagantly hued Ergesh who occupied three seats and smelled like the garbage pressers of a candy factory.
“There have been three attempts on my life, since I started on this story,” whispered the Chadra-Fan, and his four wide nostrils quivered in the velvet of his snout. “Loronar Corporation can’t afford for this to be made public. Half their contracts come from the Republic.”
“Surely Loronar Corporation wouldn’t frank an assassin!”
Yarbolk sniffed and jabbed one short finger at the protocol droid for emphasis. “Loronar might not do it themselves, but they’d get Getelles to do it. Who do you think put those Gopso’o on me, back on Drovis? My sources at Getelles’s court tell me Loronar is pretty much backing Getelles’s whole household. The local CEO, Dymurra, lives there like a king: sex droids, vibrobaths, plug-ins, glitterstim, four different chefs, self-conforming slippers, independently controlled environments in every room of his mansion, you name it. Some stuff that isn’t legal anywhere. He couldn’t get it without Getelles’s okay. That all adds up to …”
“Igpek Droon?” called a voice from the inner doorway.
“That’s you!” hissed Yarbolk, when Threepio didn’t respond.
“Oh—oh, yes.” Threepio rose quickly, stepping on the hem of his robe as he did so; Yarbolk