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“I am pleased to see, Agent Loor, that the past week and a half here on Borleias have not appeared to have taken their toll on you.” The man pressed stubby-fingered hands against the dark wood of his desktop. “You found everything you needed for your survey of our defenses?”

Kirtan nodded once, then froze and stared down at the Imperial officer for a second without saying anything. He waited, silent and unmoving, until the corners of the man’s smile began to quiver. “My security review proved satisfactory. Everything is as it should be here at the installation. Your shield generators are in good repair, your two squadrons of TIE fighters are being maintained at a high level of readiness, and your training schedule has your pilots logging enough time for twice their number.”

“Preparation is the price for constant vigilance, Agent Loor.” Derricote’s voice remained blasé, but his bovine, brown eyes began blinking a bit more rapidly than they should have normally. “We are here to stop the Rebellion, so we must be prepared.”

Kirtan smiled easily, then leaned forward on the man’s desk. “And you are prepared. You have done very well to keep this base secure, and in fact, your computer security is tighter than anything I have seen outside Imperial Center itself. You also work harder than any other officer I have seen since the Emperor’s death.”

“I am all for the Empire.”

“You are all for yourself.” Kirtan tapped the datapad built into the man’s desk. “I took the liberty of visiting your office when you were not here and I pulled the secret files from your datapad. You truly are an artist. You duplicate requisitions, append intricate routing tags to them, and send them off to multiple commands, each of which believes you are under its care. You have successfully drawn enough fuel and ordinance to maintain four squadrons of TIE fighters. Since only two are here, I have to assume the others are at the Alderaan Biotics site.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I sincerely doubt that, General. I have read your file. You studied at the Imperial Naval Academy, but concentrated on biological and botanical subjects. While you are fully qualified to oversee a military installation such as this, you are uniquely suited to making the Biotics site operational again.” Kirtan smiled. “And profitable?”

Derricote’s face became ashen, but his smile did not fully erode. “This has not been unanticipated, Agent Loor. I do have resources.”

Kirtan raised himself to his full height, then looked back down at Derricote. “This does not surprise me, General. The Alderaan Biotics hydroponic facility was barely more than a tax loss for the parent corporation before the tax laws changed. It was abandoned to the care of maintenance droids and forgotten. Then Alderaan was disciplined and the market for goods from Alderaan blossomed. My conservative estimate, based on data about twelve months old, is that if you’ve been operational for two years you should have cleared two million credits.”

“We have been at our fullest production capacity for only fifteen months, but our overhead is low, so we have actually made 2.75 million credits—though much of this is tied up in inventory maintained off-world.”

“Your overhead is low because the Empire is subsidizing your operation.”

The General steepled his fingers. “Think of it as our operation.”

“I could think of it as my operation, General.” Kirtan folded his arms across his chest. “I do not think I could hold it for long, however. In going back over your security system I noticed evidence of what could have been Alliance tampering with holonet messages.”

Derricote’s eyes grew hard and he sat up straighter at his desk. “Bothans. They make runs at all holonet communications. I feed them data and it keeps them happy.”

The edge in the man’s voice surprised Kirtan, as did the physical transformation. Just by sitting up and raising his chin, Derricote had shifted from being a noodle-spined sycophantic failure to the sort of man