The Bacta War (31 page)

“That’s custom work. It’ll be expensive.” Karrde looked at the fingernails on his right hand. “And it will get you another month of Melina’s life.”

Booster leaned forward, his fingertips digging into the plush cushioning of the chair’s back. “Take it out of the money you’ll make selling our bacta hauls.”

Karrde laughed as he shook his head. “You’re selling me bantha hides before you’ve killed the bantha, Booster.”

“I’d ask you to trust me on this one, Karrde, but I know
that
would take more credits than buying Carniss’s continued survival.” Booster frowned. “We have ops planned that will pull in bacta. Locate the items and wait for us to deliver before you order them. We’ll sell the bacta to you at seventy percent of the galactic average price.”

“Fifty percent
and
you’ll leave the Coruscant market open to me.”

The chair’s nerfhide covering squeaked as Booster’s grip tightened. “The bacta we deliver there is being used to fight the Krytos virus. That’s pure charity
and
a stopgap that’s preventing the spread of the virus off Coruscant. It’s not a profit center.”

Karrde’s face hardened. “Every place is a profit center, Booster. You know that.” He raised a hand to stop Booster’s growl from growing into an argument. “I’ll donate freely seventy percent of the allocation you’d have delivered to the world, but the other thirty percent I’ll use to feed the black market demand. You have to know that you’re already losing nearly forty percent to the black market now, after delivery, so I’ll get more where you want it to go.”

“And that gives me a stay of execution on Melina Carniss?”

Karrde nodded. “Her life is in your hands.”

Booster glanced down at the deck, then slowly nodded. “You’re a bastard, Karrde.”

“Quite possibly, but you know you’d have let me keep thirty-five percent of the bacta to sell on Coruscant if I’d pressed you for it.”

Booster’s head came up. “Perceptive, too.”

“Thank you.”

Mirax, who slowly shook off the shock the frank bargaining had sparked in her, frowned. “Why didn’t you push for as much as you could get?” Karrde hesitated, and Mirax could see his decision to answer her question was a struggle for him.
He plays things so close to his vest that he’s reluctant to let someone else see how he works
.

Some of the amusement drained from Karrde’s face. “I’m going to turn the Coruscant black market work over to Billey. I don’t think he and Dravis could handle thirty-five percent of the supply you’ll bring me. No reason I should give them enough of a supply to allow the bottom to drop out of that market. Thirty percent is enough to suit me and them.”

Booster smiled and gave Karrde a nod. “Keep it up and I’ll take back the bastard remark.”

“What, and make me earn it some other way?”

“Good point. I want to still work with Carniss to set up our rendezvous, but we’re going to plan them in a way that will prevent Isard from ambushing us again. I’ll give her a circuit of worlds to travel on. When your ships come into a system they’ll be told to proceed with the journey, or they’ll
be met by our people and the exchange will take place. Isard can’t cover all those locations
and
her bacta convoys.”

Talon Karrde smiled. “A rendezvous circuit, I like it. You know where you’ll meet them; and if the system looks wrong, you know where they will go next, so you let them go. Very good.”

“I think it will work. It will keep Carniss busy
and
frustrate Isard.”

“So you have a use for Carniss in the future?”

“Perhaps.” Booster smiled. “How soon can you get me that gravity well projector?”

“A month. Maybe two.”

“Good.” Booster extended his hand toward Karrde. “I can’t say it was a pleasure doing business with you, but I’ve spent more time doing less with fewer results in the past.”

Karrde shook Booster’s hand. “It’s a good thing you’re retired, Booster. I wouldn’t like having to split the galaxy between us. Please, don’t leave quite yet. I’d offer you my hospitality.”

Booster smiled. “And you want to talk to Mirax about the lanvarok.”

“Indeed,” Karrde laughed, “it’s a very good thing you’re retired.”

28

Iella drew her knees up to her chest and settled her arms around them, then sighed.
Diric would have found this place fascinating
. Softly muted moonlight glowed green through the room’s skylight. It managed to make the spare room seem warmer and more inviting, despite the lack of amenities.

Human amenities
, she corrected herself.
To the Vratix this would be next to luxury
.

The Vratix who still lived in harvester tribes were scattered over the face of Thyferra, living in villages much akin to the one in which Iella and the Ashern rebels had sought refuge. The buildings themselves were created out of an air-dried mud and saliva mixture that the Vratix slathered on a twig and branch lattice. While not as strong or durable as ferrocrete, the towers and tunnel houses, if unmaintained, could still last as long as five years.

In the past, before the Vratix became civilized, the elemental dissolution of their dwellings would force a migration to a new area, carefully allowing their previous territory to recover from their habitation. Likewise, in the past, the Vratix themselves had provided the saliva and had done the mixing to prepare the mud. Now they used a domesticated
branch of a similar species, the knytix, to create the mud for Vratix masons. The knytix, which resembled the Vratix—though smaller, blockier, and less elegant in form—were kept as pets, as work animals, and Iella had heard, as food for special occasions. When she had said she could never eat a pet, a Vratix had explained that pets were offered as a gift to those the family wished to honor, it became apparent that the level of their sacrifice showed the depth of their respect for the individual to whom the offer was made. That certainly made the practice more understandable, but she still couldn’t imagine eating a creature a young Vratix once called Fluffy or its Vratix equivalent.

Though eating knytix could have easily been seen as a primitive practice by a barbaric society, the Vratix clearly were anything but. The Vratix village consisted of several towers that rose up into the middle reaches of the gloan trees. Concentric circular terraces with little walls at the lip gave each tower the look of a stepped pyramid, though the rounded foundation made it more elegant. Huge arching bridges connected one tower to another and were all but hidden by the thick forest foliage.

Vratix artistry was not limited to the architecture. The green skylight had been made by a Vratix artisan who chewed various rain forest leaves into paste, then fashioned it into a film thin enough to allow light to pass through. It appeared delicate in the extreme, yet was strong enough to ward off rain and survive other climatic conditions.

The stems and veins of the leaves formed a complex and chaotic network that looked visually attractive, but Iella knew that was not its primary purpose. Because both light and sound took time to travel to the eye and ear, respectively, the Vratix considered them secondary and deceptive senses. What one saw or heard was always something that had happened in the past, but what one could feel with the sense of touch, that was immediate and present in real time.

Reaching out she let her fingers play across the inside of the circular skylight. Her gentle touch conveyed a legion of different textures, some soft, some smooth, and others rough or sharp. She likened the progression to that of the music in a
symphony, except that in choosing which way to stroke the surface, she could determine what she felt and in what order.
If I were worried, soft and smooth would soothe me, whereas if I were manic, sharp might caution me
.

Similarly, a whole variety of textures had been worked by the mason who had created the room she had been given. The walls had gentle ridges that swelled like waves on an ocean. They swirled into spirals and opened on smooth voids that encouraged placid tranquillity. The raised platform on which she slept had been cupped like a crater to hold her in, yet the sides and walls nearby were sleek and almost slippery to the touch. Near the doorhole, raised bumps warned of potential harm and the need for caution.

“They’ve thought of everything.”

“Not quite.” A hand reached up and grabbed the sill at the bottom of the door, then the tendons and muscles tensed in the arm attached to it and Elscol pulled herself into view. “The Vratix were nice enough to give us some footholds for climbing up here, but I’d still prefer a rope ladder.”

Iella laughed and helped pull the smaller woman into the room. Because the Vratix’s hind legs were so powerful, leaping up to the doorholes of rooms set well above the ground was simple. The need for stairs never developed, so Vratix architecture never included them. Visiting humans were normally housed in public areas, but advertising the presence of Ashern agents was not a good idea, so they were secreted away in rooms that were difficult for humans to move into and out of.

“Sixtus isn’t with you?”

“No. He’s out wandering through the rain forest.” Elscol shrugged and adjusted the blaster on her right hip. “I’ve known him for years now, and there are just times he has to drift away. I suspect the Imps did some nasty stuff to him and his people when they trained him to be Special Ops and occasionally he has to fight it.”

“Never had anyone exactly like him in CorSec, but I understand the need to get away. What’s going on? Change of plans?”

Elscol shook her head. “Nope, we’ll leave here after
dark, as planned, and move to the next haven. Just seeing us here seems to be good for Vratix morale. I don’t really have any sense of how good the Vratix will be in combat, but they’re fighters at heart.”

“You mean at pulmonary arch.”

“Doesn’t have the same ring to it, does it?”

Iella shook her head. “No, not really.”

Elscol smiled and seated herself on the foot of Iella’s bed. “Well, doesn’t matter. Armed with vibroblades, force pikes, or blasters, we can get enough Vratix that we can overwhelm humans in Xucphra City. Some of the Ashern indicate their training cadres are swelling in our wake. We come through, they get more volunteers. Sixtus has specified benchmarks for training, and it looks like we’ll have our force in a couple of months.”

“I’d feel better about them if we ever got to see their warriors in action.”

Elscol nodded. “Agreed. From what Sixtus has said, though, because bacta and healing is so much a part of Vratix society, for a Vratix to become a warrior and cause harm is a very solemn decision. The Ashern, as you know, sharpen their forearm claws and paint themselves black. The former is for fighting, but they paint themselves black so they can remain in the shadows, hidden away to protect the other Vratix from what they can and will do to win freedom.”

“Well, their reluctance to be violent explains why they haven’t just risen up and slaughtered all the humans on the planet.” Iella sighed. “It’s too bad they have to resort to war to win the freedom they never should have lost in the first place. I hope we can remain free long enough for the Ashern to be ready to fight. How long do you figure we have until Isard storms us?”

“Good question. Me, I’d have done it in a heartbeat before we embarrassed General Dlarit, but she’s trying to keep the populace happy. If the Xucphra folks see white armor in bulk on their world, they’re going to figure she’s got no more use for them, and I suspect they can cause a fair amount of trouble for her.” Elscol sat back, leaning against the wall.
“Of course, Isard has more trouble than just us. That’s what I came to tell you. News from the front.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And good news, too.”

Iella dropped to the circular chamber’s floor and sat cross-legged. Twisting her blaster belt around so she was more comfortable, she smiled up at Elscol. “What did you hear?”

“The
Corrupter
is no more.”

Iella’s jaw dropped. “What? How?”

“Isard tried to ambush Wedge and the others. Apparently, Wedge had a surprise waiting for them. A steady diet of proton torpedoes put the
Corrupter
down. No word of squadron losses—at least none that are reliable. Data came from a tap on Xucphra corp news, so it all has an Imp spin.”

“Still, if they’re saying the
Corrupter
was destroyed, that means its loss was the least of the problems Isard has.” Iella clapped her hands. “Maybe this mission isn’t going to be suicidal.”

Elscol’s face closed down. “We’re a long way from getting out, Iella, but getting shot up isn’t going to get you and your husband reunited.”

“What?” Iella tried to cover her surprise at Elscol’s comment because when she heard the words she knew part of her had been considering the mission in exactly that light. “I never …”

Elscol leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees. “Hey, do I look like some Xucphra clerk who’s going to believe everything you say? No. I’ve been where you are. I lost my husband to the Imps back on Cilpar, and part of me wanted to die with him there. I took off after the Imps for revenge, but always in the back of my mind was the feeling that when I died we’d be together again. Wedge saw that in me and saw the urge for self-destruction grow in me. When he kicked me out of Rogue Squadron, well, that woke me up; and I began to see a lot of things.”

Iella’s head came up. “Are you saying there’s no life after death?”

“I’m saying it doesn’t matter.” Elscol held her two hands
out, palms toward the ceiling. “On one hand, if there isn’t an afterlife, you’ll be remembered for the things you did while you were alive. On the other, if there
is
an afterlife, you’ll be able to share all you did with those who died before you. Either way, living as long as possible and doing the most you can is the only way to go. I decided I didn’t want to be known here or in the afterlife for having quit. I don’t think you do, either.”

Iella frowned. “You’re right, but sometimes the pain …” She clutched her hands against her breastbone. “Sometimes it hurts too much to live.”