“Been there. Recce'd that place last night. Stuck a remote holocam opposite the house, in fact.”

“Maybe the Force is giving us a break.”

“That's got to be their hub.”

“Let's try that.” Jusik banked right to shoot up a vertical channel. Fi decided zero-g had its appeal. “At least we'll be able to see Kal if that's where they're heading. I bet that's reassuring.”

“It would be.”

“But?”

“But if they're using the speeder that was parked in their roof space last night, I clamped a remote thermal detonator in its air intake.”

“Just remote? Not timed?”

“Yeah.”

“That's okay then.”

If—when—they got Skirata back in one piece, Fi would tell him. He had a sense of humor.

“There's somebody following him,” Jusik said.

“Yeah. You, me, Vau.”

“No, not us.”

“Escort for the speeder?”

“No, nothing like that at all. Someone else. I don't get any sense of malice. But it's not the strike team.”

“What's that feel like?”

“Like someone standing behind me.” He took one hand off the steering and tapped the back of his head behind his ear. The speeder swerved. “Right there.”

“Both hands, Bard'ika …”

“Sorry. Whoever it is, they're focused on Kal.”

“Should we be worried?”

“No.”

Jusik twisted the handlebars and the speeder accelerated as if it had been fired from a Verpine. Fi bit his lip and couldn't stop his knees from pressing harder into the speeder bike's fuselage.

If he dropped the precious sniper rifle, Skirata would be heartbroken.

“That's all right, then,” Fi said. “I won't worry at all.”

Residential area, business zone 6, 0930 hours, 385 days after Geonosis

The airspeeder settled, hot alloy clicking as its drive cooled, and someone pulled the black hood off Skirata's head.

“This way,” said the shaven-headed man. “Mind the steps!”

Skirata walked down from a rooftop parking area through doors to a tastefully decorated room with a large, grainless pale wood table and thick deep gray carpet. They weren't short of credits, then. Some terrorism was the war of the dispossessed, and some was the handiwork of the rich who felt secondhand outrage. Either way, it was an expensive sport.

He was a mercenary. He knew the price of everything.

He sat down in the chair offered, elbows braced on the table, and tried to take in as much useful detail of his surroundings as he could. Two visible escape mutes: back out those doors, or down the turbolift. After ten minutes, a middle-aged human male entered with a woman of similar age: there was nothing remarkable about either of them. They simply nodded to Skirata and sat down facing him. Four more men followed, one of them about Jusik's age, and Skirata found himself surrounded at the table by six people.

Then Perrive walked in.

“You'll excuse us for not introducing ourselves, Kal,” he said. “I know you and you know me, and that's probably all you need to know?”

“Apart from the bank details, yes.”

Perrive stood by the chair opposite Skirata and glanced pointedly at the man sitting in it, who then moved to another chair. You're definitely the boss, then. And the others around the table—who were obviously assessing him as a supplier didn't look like junior minions. This was either the terror cabinet or a rare gathering of cell leaders. It had to be. Perrive handed the man next to him the small sample pack that Skirata had supplied the day before, and he examined it carefully before passing it around the table.

Yes, they’ll be the ones distributing this. I should blow this place now. But that's not sensible. Just satisfying.

“We'd like all hundred kilos of your goods and four thousand detonators?”

Skirata did a quick calculation. About twenty-five grams of five-hundred-grade thermal per device, then: a Bravo Eight Depot incident took the equivalent of two of those. Enough bomb-making kit for that level of carnage every day for five years, or a lower body count and mutilation for more than ten. A very economical war.

“How much?”

“Two million credits?”

Skirata didn't even pause to think. “Five.”

“Two.”

“Five.”

“Three.”

“Five, or I need to go and talk to my other customers.”

“You don't have any others who want this kind of explosive.”

“If you think that, then you're new in this galaxy, son.”

“Three million credits. Take it or leave it.”

Skirata got up and really did intend to walk. He had to look as if he meant it. He skirted the table as far as Perrive and then the man turned and put his hand on Skirata's right arm. Skirata jerked it back, and he wasn't acting the jumpy mercenary. It was his knife arm. Perrive noticed, eyebrows raised for a fraction of a second.

“Four million,” Perrive said.

Skirata paused and chewed the inside of his cheek. “Four, credits to be deposited and confirmed as being in my account before I release the goods, and I want the deal done in the next forty-eight hours.”

“That requires trust.”

“If I don't have any other customers, then why would I want a hundred kilos of explosives hanging around my premises until Mustafar freezes over?”

Perrive paused and then almost smiled. “Agreed.”

Skirata reached in his pocket and handed him a datachip, stripped of all information except a numbered account that would exist only from noon for forty-eight hours. He had a constant stream of accounts like that. All the Nulls could slice like top pros, but Jaing was an artist among data deceivers. My clever lad. “Time and place, then.”

“All in one delivery.”

“Okay. But it stays wrapped in quarter-kilo packs bagged in tens, because I'm not going to unwrap every di'kutla bar and get covered in forensic evidence.” He paused, trying to look as if he was thinking of another reason. “And that's two and a half kilos a bag, which is going to be easier for you to move.”

“What makes you think we're going to move it?”

Smart, eh? “If you're keeping that all in one place, you're insane. I'm used to handling the stuff and even I don't like it around me. You do know what five-hundred-grade does, don't you?”

“Of course I do,” Perrive said. “It's my business. Let's say midnight tomorrow. Here.”

“If I knew where here was, I might agree.”

“We'll let you walk out and then you'll see.”

“I can land speeders on your roof, can I?”

“Up to Metrocab size.”

“I'll probably bring two small speeders. I'll call you half an hour before.”

“I haven't given you my number.”

“Better do that, then, or you won't get your goods. I don't want any further contact until then—and I don't want anyone following me when I leave here. Okay?”

Perrive nodded. “Agreed.”

And it was that simple. It never ceased to amaze Skirata how much simpler it was to buy and sell death than it was to pay taxes. “Show me to the front door, then.”

Shaven-Head took him down in the polished durasteel turbolift—it always reminded him of Kamino, that brutally clinical finish—and walked him through a ground floor that was just one square room with no rear exit and one door at the front.

Easier to defend—if you were confident you could escape via the roof.

The doors parted. Kal Skirata stepped out onto a secluded walkway and found himself in affluent Coruscanti suburbia. He checked the position of the sun and began walking in the direction of the main skylanes. If he kept walking east, he'd come to the office sector sooner or later. Besides, the holo-cam that Fi and Sev placed a few hours earlier was watching him right now from the building opposite.

There were a lot of pedestrians about.