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Why ask me? “Of course.”

“Very well.” The droid righted its head again. “The other death mark was issued after the brutal murder and vivisection of a half-dozen people.”

Corran’s blood ran cold. “Who did that?”

The droid’s eyes burned bright. “You did, sir. You’re wanted on Drall, in the Corellian Sector, for the murder of six smugglers.”

6

Laughing so hard he had to hold his stomach, Corran sat down abruptly. He only partially landed on the bench, and ended up on the floor at Emtrey’s feet. “That’s nothing.” He swiped his hands at the tears streaming down his face. “I’d forgotten all about it.”

The Gand looked down at him. “Ooryl was not aware murder was seen as mirthful.”

Nawara Ven folded his arms. “It isn’t.”

About the time Rhysati stepped back, imposing Emtrey between herself and him, Corran realized he’d quickly destroyed what his previous socializing had accomplished. He scrambled to his feet and composed himself. “I can explain this, I really can.”

The Twi’lek lawyer twitched a brain tail at him. “I’ve heard that before.”

“Yeah, well, this is the truth, unlike what your clients were probably saying.” Corran looked at the droid. “Can you tap into registry files from here?”

“I am fully capable of a whole host of functions in that regard …”

“Good. See if you can pull up the death files for the names in the reports about the murders, then match them up with birth bytes.” As the droid’s eye-lights started to flicker, Corran turned back to his squadron mates. “The short form is this—at CorSec, in my division, we had an Imperial Liaison officer who had enough ambition to dream about being a Grand Moff, and just enough talent for dealing with regs and bureaucracy to be a severe problem. He wanted us to bear down on all Rebel smuggling in the system, but we were more concerned about hunting down the kind of pirates who actually hurt folks—glit smugglers and the like. Loor—that was the Intelligence officer’s name—threatened to bring us up on charges of aiding the Rebellion. The Imperials fleeing to Corellia after the Emperor’s death gave the Diktat a lot of support, and that meant Imperial officers suddenly had the muscle to back up their threats.

“My boss, Gil Bastra, decided to make up new identities for himself, my partner Iella Wessiri, her husband Diric, and myself, but he knew Loor would be suspicious of time we all spent together outside the office. Gil and I made up the records for these smugglers, put hints out that they existed and were very bad, and then put out reports that they’d been murdered. Loor saw all the reports—and reading them was the closest he ever got to a field investigation. In a staged scene in the office, Gil accused me of having executed the smugglers and I said I hadn’t and that he couldn’t prove it anyway. We had a public falling out and Loor assumed we never met with each other after that. We did and set things up so we could head out and away from the Empire.”

Corran sighed. “Loor and I did not get along at all. He threatened me with a death mark for those deaths if I ever got out of line. When I took off—when he set me up and failed to kill me—he followed through. That’s where the death mark comes from.”

The Twi’lek opened his hands and looked at the droid. “Do you have the records, Emtrey?”

“I do. They have birth bytes.”

“Gil did good work. Convert the time of their births to military time. Reverse values for minutes and hours, then compare that to the birth date of the next person in alphabetical order—using Basic, of course.”

The droid tilted his head to the right. “There is a progression. The birth time of one is the month and day of the birth of the next, but the pattern does not loop all the way around.”

“It does if you add in my birthday and birth time.” Corran smiled. “On top of that, the hospital where they were born doesn’t exist—nor does the town where it’s supposed to be.”

Rhysati emerged from behind the droid and patted Corran on the shoulder. “I’m happy to know you’re innocent, but couldn’t you have