Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [66]
The moon’s continued habitation owed to a pink-fleshed delicacy fished from the ice-covered rivers that plunged turbulent and roaring from a surround of nearly sheer mountains. Known as the Naos sharptooth, the fish spawned only in the coldest months, was shipped offworld, flash-frozen, and sold at exorbitant prices in eateries from Mon Calamari to Corellia. Still, few locals banked enough credits to buy passage off Naos III, preferring instead to return their meager earnings to Naos III Mercantile, which oversaw the sharptooth industry and owned nearly every store, hotel, gambling parlor, and cantina.
The dispirited humanoids who had colonized the moon had never bothered to award a name to their principal population center, so it, too, was known as Naos III. Visitors expecting to find a typical spaceport found instead a cluster of fortified hilltops, interconnected by bridges that spanned a delta of waterways. As befitted a place with such a dearth of creativity, the moon had attracted nomads and spacers of dubious character, eager either to lose or reinvent themselves. While Rodians and Lethan Twi’leks comprised the majority, humans and other humanoids were well represented. A few wealthy sportfishers arrived each year, but Naos III was simply too remote and too lacking in infrastructure to support a tourist trade.
Despite the fact that the moon seemed a perfect place for a red-complected Twi’lek to hide, Obi-Wan doubted that Fa’ale Leh would be found here. To begin with, she would have certainly changed her name by now, possibly even the color of her complexion. More important, Naos III didn’t offer much in the way of job opportunities for a former spicerunner—unless Leh was one of the death-defying few who piloted loads of flash-frozen sharptooths to the Tion or Coreward on the Perlemian.
According to K’sar, Leh had been in the business of transporting shipments of spice from Ryloth to worlds in Hutt space when Sienar had hired her to deliver the experimental spacecraft for which K’sar had constructed a transceiver identical to the one he had affixed to Gunray’s mechno-chair.
To Obi-Wan’s mind the ship in question could only be the modified star courier that had belonged to the Sith he had killed on Naboo, and had been confiscated by the Republic after the battle there. Flight, weapons, and communications systems had self-destructed when Republic Intelligence agents had bungled an attempt to enter the courier, but, unknown to many, its burned-out carcass still sat in a clandestine docking bay in Theed. It had long been assumed that the tattooed Zabrak Sith had performed the modifications, but information supplied by K’sar suggested that Raith Sienar’s Advanced Projects Laboratory had been responsible not only for building the ship, but also for implementing Darth Sidious’s designs.
Obi-Wan and Anakin might have gone directly to the source—to Raith Sienar—had Supreme Chancellor Palpatine not vetoed the idea.
The Republic’s other major supplier of weapons, Kuat Drive Yards, was known to have contributed to both sides during the war. Under its subsidiary, Rothana Heavy Engineering—the builders of the Acclamator-class assault ships, as well as the AT-TE walkers—KDY had also supplied the Confederacy with the Storm Fleet, which had been “the Terror of the Perlemian” until retired from service with the help of Obi-Wan and Anakin.
With snow falling harder in Naos III, the two stopped to get their bearings. Obi-Wan gestured to a nearby cantina. “This has to be the fifteenth we’ve passed.”
“On this street,” Anakin said. “If we stop for a drink in each one, we’ll be drunk before we reach the bridge.”
“With any luck. Still, they’re likely to be our best source of information.”
“As opposed to just looking up her name in the local comm directory.”
“And a lot more fun.”
Anakin grinned. “Fine with me. Where do you want to start?”
Completing a circle, Obi-Wan pointed to