• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Nor did you show enough courage to try to kill me when you had the chance.”

At last, she smiled—a lopsided smile full of sarcastic cheer. “Please don’t insult me if you’re going to kill me, too. I’ll bet every credit I own, every one I’ve hidden away, that if I’d pointed that blaster at you and pulled the trigger, it would not have gone off.” She leaned forward and her smile evened out, became more genuine. “Well?”

He regarded her steadily. “Well, you’re correct in assuming that I didn’t ask you to kill yourself. Why would I? You’re blameless. Had you killed yourself, or allowed Doctor Bress to kill you, you would have proven yourself to be stupid and blameless, but fortunately that’s not the case. How would you like to do me a favor?”

“I’d like that.”

“Return to Saffalore. Dismantle the operation without letting anyone—and that means anyone at Binring—know you’ve done so. Send everything to Iron Fist; we’ll consolidate the two laboratories. Set up the Binring facilities to detect and then annihilate anyone breaking in. Because at some point Voort saBinring’s squadron mates are going to get permission to return to the land of his birth … and that will be a good time to eliminate them. Setting all this up guarantees your continued employment within my organization; each dead Wraith brings you a sizable bonus. Deal?”

“Deal.” With her characteristic insolence, she extended him her hand to shake.

When she, the guards, and the still-smoking body were gone, Melvar returned to stand before his warlord. He looked curious.

“What?” Zsinj asked.

“You’ve instructed her to kill all the Wraiths. One of the Wraiths is an unknown quantity. Gara Petothel.”

“I know. But since the mission to Aldivy went to pieces, she hasn’t communicated. Our agent dead, her ersatz brother dead, and no word from her since then … I’d be happy to arrange for her protection. She has to give me a reason first.”

“Understood.”

“And how goes Blunted Razor?”

“The operation continues moving. Every day, we retrieve more tonnage of the wreck of Razor’s Kiss.” Melvar didn’t add, “And only you know why we’re wasting all this energy gathering up the wreckage of a destroyed Super Star Destroyer.” He didn’t have to. Both men knew he wanted to say it. Both men knew he wouldn’t.

Zsinj smiled. “Dismissed.”

4

Flight Officer Lara Notsil leaned in close to hear every word of the briefing, to see everything that floated on the holoprojection.

She hadn’t always been Lara Notsil. She’d been born with the name Gara Petothel, and had worn many others since her adolescent years.

She hadn’t always had downy blond hair cut short, or a near-flawless complexion. Nature had provided her with dark hair and a beauty mark on her cheek. Makeup and trivial surgery performed when she’d created the Lara Notsil identity had rid her of them. The delicacy of her features and build remained from her true identity, but little else did.

She hadn’t always been a pilot with the New Republic’s Fleet Command. Since her earliest years, child of two of the Empire’s loyal Intelligence officers, she’d been groomed to be an officer of Imperial Intelligence. In that role, she’d infiltrated the lower ranks of New Republic Fleet Command, had transmitted vital data back to her Imperial controllers and then to Admiral Apwar Trigit. She’d provided Trigit with information he’d later used to destroy Talon Squadron, an X-wing unit led by Myn Donos.

And now she fought beside the Rebel pilots who’d once been her enemies. It had originally been a deception, another infiltration, but was so no longer; it was where she wanted to be, what she wanted to do. But she also fought against the growing certainty that someday her fellows would learn her true identity, learn what she had done before she’d come to accept their outlook on the way the galaxy’s sapient species should determine their destinies. When they learned who she was, they would reject her, and they would probably kill her.