Star Wars_ Shatterpoint - Matthew Woodring Stover [17]
The Intel station boss was a bulky, red-cheeked woman about Mace's age. She ran the Highland Green Washeteria, a thriving laundry and public refresher station on the capital's north side. She never stopped talking. Mace hadn't started listening.
The Force nudged him with threat in all directions: from the rumble of wheeled groundcars that careened at random through crowded streets to the fan of death sticks in a teenager's fist. Uniformed militia swaggered or strutted or sometimes just posed, puffed up with the fake-dangerous attitude of armed amateurs. Holster flaps open. Blaster rifles propped against hipbones. He saw plenty of weapons waved, saw people shoved, saw lots of intimidation and threatening looks and crude street-gang horseplay; he didn't see much actual keeping of the peace. When a burst of blasterfire sang out a few blocks away, no one even looked around.
But nearly everyone looked at Mace.
Militia faces: human, or too close to call. Looking at Mace, seeing only a Korun in offworld clothes, their eyes went dead cold. Blank. Measuring.
After a while, hostile eyes all look alike.
Mace kept alert, and concentrated on projecting a powerful aura of Don't Mess With Me.
He would have felt safer in the jungle.
Street faces: drink-bloated moons of bust-outs mooching spare change. A Wookiee gone gray from nose to chest, exhaustedly straining against his harness as he pulled a two-wheeled taxicart, fending off street kids with one hand while the other held on to his money belt. Jungle prospector faces: fungus scars on their cheeks, weapons at their sides. Young faces: children, younger than Depa had been on the day she became his Padawan, offering trinkets to Mace at "special discounts" because they "liked his face."
Many of them were Korunnai.
FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU
Sure. Come to the city. Life's easy in the city. No vine cats. No driUmites. No brassvines or death hollows. No shoveling grasser ma nure, no hauling water, no tending akk pups. Plenty of money in the city. All you have to do is sell this, or endure that. What you're really selling: your youth. Your hope. Your future.
Anyone with sympathy for the Separatist cause should spend a few days in Pelek Baw. Find out what the Confederacy is really fighting for.
It's good that Jedi do not indulge in hate.
The station boss's chatter somehow wandered onto the subject of the Intel front she managed. Her name was Phloremirlla Tenk, "but call me Flor, sweetie. Everybody does." Mace picked up the thread of her ramble.
"Hey, everybody needs a shower once in a while. Why not get your clothes spiffed at the same time? So everybody comes here. I get jups, kornos, you name it. I get militia and seppie brass-well, used to, till the pullback. I get everybody. I got a pool. I got six different saunas. I got private showers-you can get water, alcohol, probi, son-ics, you name it-maybe a recorder or two to really get the dirt we need. Some of these militia officers, you'd be amazed what they fall to talking about, alone in a steam room. Know what I mean?"
She was the chattiest spy he'd ever met. When she eventually stopped for breath, Mace told her so.
"Yeah, funny, huh? How do you think I've survived this game for twenty-three years? Talk as much as I do, it takes people longer to notice you never really say anything."
Maybe she was nervous. Maybe she could smell the threat that smoked in those streets. Some people thought they could hold danger at bay by pretending to be safe.
"I got thirty-seven employees. Only five are Intel. Everybody else just works there. Hah: I make twice the money off the Washeteria as I draw after twenty-three years in the service. Not that it's all that hard to do, if you know what I mean. You know what an RS-Seventeen makes?
Pathetic. Pathetic. What's a Jedi make these days? Do they even pay you?
Not enough, I'll bet. They love