Star Wars_ X-Wing 03_ The Krytos Trap - Michael A. Stackpole [115]
“But …” Nawara’s mind was reeling. The implications of what Loor had said were staggering. “How can we be sure …?”
Loor grabbed Nawara’s hand and impaled his own palm on one of Nawara’s talons. A bead of blood bubbled up. Nawara heard the sound of cloth tearing, then saw Loor blot the blood with a strip torn out of his tunic. He tossed the bloodied cloth to Nawara, then tore another strip from his shirt and bound his hand.
“Take the cloth to Commander Ettyk. Have her duplicate my Imperial file, then run a DNA comparison between the duplicate and the sample. She must run it against a duplicate of the file—if she runs it against the file itself, others might discover you’re checking me out. Once you’re certain I am who I say I am, you will broker the deal for me. It is a take-it-or-leave-it deal, no negotiation. Once you have the deal made, you will hold a press conference. At one point during the conference, whenever you wish, you will say ‘I am very confident, supremely confident, that we will win.’ I don’t think I’ve heard you say that so far in the proceedings, so that will be the signal.”
“No, I don’t think I’ve said that. I know I haven’t felt it.”
“When you give the signal, I will send you another message to arrange pickup. At that time you and Iella Wessiri will get me. I don’t want to see anyone else, just you and her. You I have to trust, her I know well enough to trust. You can’t betray me and she won’t. Anyone else, anything fancy, and no one will benefit from my information. Got it?”
Nawara nodded slowly. “I understand.”
“Good. You have five hours.”
“Five hours! That’s not much time, especially starting at midnight.” Nawara frowned. He almost added that he couldn’t call a press conference at two or three in the morning, but the media operated in a frenzied enough atmosphere that he could tell them to meet him on Kessel at noon and they’d find a way to be there. “I need more time.”
“You don’t have it.” Loor nodded once and the hood slid forward to again hide his face. “I don’t have it. This all happens on my timetable. If it doesn’t, if there is trouble, a lot of people will be sorry. I can give freedom to your client and Coruscant to the New Republic, for which I am asking so little. See that it gets done.”
33
Corran squeezed himself back in the corner of the library’s cabinet and waited. He decided it was just as well that he didn’t have a chronometer, because he would have constantly been looking at it. It seemed as if he’d been hidden away for years, though he knew it had hardly been more than fifteen minutes. I can only hope that some of the criminals I hunted felt like I do now while stormtroopers are hunting me.
Corran had been able to make a basic scouting run on the facility where he found himself and had concluded two things. First, the utter lack of windows suggested that this facility was underground. Given the general taste for grand vistas and high towers he’d seen in Imperial architecture on Coruscant, this led him to believe that whatever the planet’s surface looked like was not worth seeing. This, in turn, made him think the surface was inhospitable and, therefore, not a place he wanted to travel without proper equipment.
Second, he concluded there had to be a secret exit from the facility. Aside from the tunnel back to the prison, the only visible means of leaving was a lift that had a keypad and clearly required a code for operation. While he assumed the Moff who owned the place would have had the code for the lift, he couldn’t imagine the Moff did not also have a private bolt-hole. Unfortunately his hurried survey of the area hadn’t given him any obvious candidates for its location.
One thing he had found was a garbage disposal chute. He dragged Derricote’s body to it and dumped it in. He distinctly heard a splash; then a disgusting