Tales from the New Republic (26 page)

If she’d known of all the Hall’s hidden passages last night, Selby reflected as she followed Quarle down a narrow corridor, getting up to the Governor’s office undetected would’ve been as easy as shooting mynocks off a power coupling.

The Hall had proven a virtual warren of hidden passages. Quarle’s grandfather had been a careful, one might even say paranoid, businessman—which was fortuitous, given the present circumstances. It meant they could move within the Hall with astonishing freedom, only needing to leave cover to call the fleet. Selby smiled to think that when the Imperials, no doubt monitoring outgoing subspace transmissions, came running to investigate the call, all they’d find were unconscious guards in an empty room. She and Quarle would slip back into hiding to await the fleet’s arrival before confronting Ein.

“We’re almost there,” Quarle said quietly, pausing at an intersection. “Before we go any further, I want to check the situation outside, see what we’re up against.”

“Sounds good,” she murmured back. “Lead on.”

He hesitated, then turned to look at her. “I’d rather do it alone,” he said. “I know the passage system. You don’t. And this way, if I get caught there’ll still be one of us left to finish the job.”

Selby frowned. It made sense, but she did not particularly want to split up. Quarle didn’t have a blaster and would be unable to protect himself if he ran into trouble. She felt another twinge, remembering Vartos. Team members were supposed to watch each other’s backs. She briefly considered giving him her own blaster for the reconnoiter, but decided not to. Intelligence had taught her to watch her own back first.

Quarle’s eyes dropped to the blaster, too, but when she didn’t offer it, he didn’t ask. “You wait here,” he told her. “I shouldn’t be gone too long.”

Selby nodded. He looked at her a long moment more, as if wanting to say something else, but then merely nodded, too. Turning, he started around the corner—

“Watch your back,” she said softly.

He glanced back, raised that eyebrow. “Always,” he assured her, and strode away.

Once he was gone, Selby leaned back against the narrow passage’s wall and sighed. Alone with her thoughts for the first time since the shoot-out in the generator room, she could not get Vartos’s face out of her mind. Had it simply been incredibly bad luck, his being discovered by the stormtroopers? Or had Claris already been “persuaded” to talk about her fellow operatives?

Which reminded her—

She reached up, slipping off the now-useless earsculpt. Holding it in her palm, she stared at it thoughtfully.

Claris must have talked, she decided. For the eavesdropper to have cut out so quickly and unexpectedly after her arrest, the Imperials must have known exactly what to look for. She fingered the smooth curve of the metal, feeling it gently flex, then brought it up close to study the intricate scrollwork doubling as a tiny speaker.

When Quarle’s voice sounded from it, she froze.

With hands that suddenly felt like ice, Selby held the device against her ear. Silence; only her pulse pounding in her head. She frowned, carefully flexed the earsculpt again, and this time whatever weak connection inside the receiver that had apparently caused it to cut out now held. She listened, growing colder with each word.

“—Tafno has promised backup within six hours,” Ein was saying. “Two Dreadnaughts at least, maybe more. Convince her to delay making the call until then. When the Rebels arrive, they’ll find a fleet with a little firepower of our own waiting for them—not the easy pickings they expect.”

“Yes, of course, Your Excellency,” Quarle said. “But how do you propose I convince her? We are nearly in position to make the call now. She’ll want to know why we should wait.”

A long pause. Selby could barely breathe for the tight feeling in her throat. “Tell her that we’ve imposed satellite silence,” the Governor finally said. “Due to this terrorist threat, I’ve ordered a temporary ban on outgoing subspace comm traffic. Tell her the satellite relays have been shut down—but that a very old, unofficial relay placed in orbit by your grandfather will be within transmissible range in, oh, about six hours. And that you—
only you
—know how to access it.”

Ein chuckled dryly. “You know, Daven, you may have hated the old man, but you must admit being Corlin Quarle Deld’s grandson has put you in a unique position to realize his visions for Verkuyl.”

“It’s the only thing it ever
has
done for me,” Quarle said. “The rest of the time, I’d as soon forget the tyrant ever existed.”

“I shouldn’t worry about it,” Ein said. “No one holds it against you. You’ve already done more to make Verkuyl the success it is today than your grandfather ever could have. Your service to the Empire will long be remembered.”

When Quarle rounded the corner, he found Selby waiting for him.

He stopped short at the sight of the blaster she held pointed at his chest. His eyes took in the steadiness of her aim, then brushed past to settle on her face. “Trouble?” he asked.

“How is it,” she began conversationally, “that Corlin Quarle Deld’s grandson ends up on the same side of the Empire that stole his home and destroyed his family’s company?”

Quarle moved a few steps closer. Her aim did not waver. He stopped.

“BactaCo has hardly been destroyed,” he said. “In fact, we currently have more business than we can handle. And the new refinery will increase both production and profits.”

“I see,” Selby said. Although determined to remain as cool about this as he, she felt her eyes narrow. “Then you don’t care what the Empire does to Verkuyl, so long as the company gets its share of the credits.”

He raised that eyebrow, and she had to fight back a sudden, violent urge to wipe that calm look off his face. “Those credits are what feed and clothe the workers, Selby. That’s what a company is all about—providing goods or services for a price. To whom, it doesn’t matter. Don’t kid yourself that it was any different in my grandfather’s day, and don’t think your New Republic’s motives are any more pure. When it comes to running a company, the accumulation of credits is the bottom line.”

“At least your grandfather came by the company honestly,” she bit out. “He bought the planet, built the refineries, brought in the workers. He didn’t steal it from its rightful owners in the name of the Empire and enslave its workers. He—”

“Don’t preach that Rebel propaganda to
me
,” Quarle broke in sharply. “He
did
do that—and worse, he did it in the name of free trade. At least when the Empire took over, Verkuyl began giving something back to the workers, not just producing credits to satisfy my grandfather’s greed.”

He stopped, took a breath to compose himself. “Do you know how he got workers to come to Verkuyl?” he continued, a little more quietly. “Remember, this was before the Empire. People needed jobs, and they were willing to do almost anything to get them. To sell themselves into slavery, even. And so they did.

“In exchange for their passage here and the privilege of working in my grandfather’s refineries, they signed on for ten-year terms, at the end of which they were promised a share of stock of the company they’d labored to help build. My grandfather called it indenture,” he added bitterly, “but it was slavery.”

Selby said nothing. Indentured servitude wasn’t like being your own boss, free and clear, but it wasn’t slavery, either. Both parties willingly entered into an agreement, and at the end of the contract—

“When the contract expired, most of the workers were so deeply in debt that even with their share of the stock, they couldn’t get out,” Quarle said. “Once they cashed out and paid off what they owed, there wasn’t enough left over to leave. So they stayed.”

She frowned. “How’d they get so far in debt?”

“The Company Store, of course,” he said. “Most of the workers brought families with them, or married and started families once they arrived. My grandfather provided basic food and housing—soup kitchens and barracks—but anything else cost extra. A lot extra. It added up. By the time the Empire arrived to nationalize BactaCo, ninety out of every one hundred workers were so deep in debt they didn’t even get credit vouchers on payday. The wages were simply transferred straight to their delinquent accounts.”

He gave Selby a bitter smile. “If the Republic really wanted to
liberate
the workers, it should have been here twenty-five years ago.”

Silence followed. “What happened when the Empire took over?” she finally asked.

Quarle’s mouth twisted. “Well, I’ll say one thing for old Corlin. If he couldn’t have the credits, he didn’t want anyone else to, either. When he realized the Empire wasn’t just going to come in and oversee the operation—that they intended to boot him out and run it themselves—he started erasing company records. Client lists, production reports, shipping contracts—”

“And employee records.” She nodded, beginning to understand. “The Empire didn’t know about his arrangement with the employees.”

“That’s right,” he said. “So when the Empire took over, Verkuyl stopped being a miserable little company planet run by a tight-fisted tyrant, and became what it was supposed to be: a place for these people to work and live. In the past twenty years, we’ve tripled our worker population and quadrupled our bacta production—and increased our profits by a thousand percent. Verkuylians are better off under the Empire than they ever were under my grandfather, so don’t imagine you’re doing us any great favors by
liberating
us.”

It was true the Verkuylians had not clamored to be free of the Empire.

Indeed, it had only been in the last two years or so, when the New Republic chased the Empire out of the Core and triumphantly claimed Coruscant, that the resistance movement on Verkuyl had even begun. During her mission briefings, Selby had formed the impression the workers might have been cowed—or
content
, a small voice now whispered—to labor for the Empire forever if not for two things. One, that as Imperial strength ebbed, it provided less and less in the way of support to its smaller possessions such as Verkuyl; and two, the loss of a major medical supplier at Chennis last year had sent New Republic rabble-rousers to various Imperial-held suppliers to see what kind of rebellion they could stir up.

Verkuyl had stirred nicely.

But that doesn’t mean the workers aren’t sincere in their desire to be free
, Selby told herself.
Just that it took our encouragement to give them the courage to revolt
.

She looked at Quarle. “If the Empire is forced to leave Verkuyl, you probably stand to inherit the bulk of the holdings. How can you possibly object to that?”

He shook his head. “You just don’t get it, do you? I want what’s best for Verkuyl—not what’s best for myself, but best for the company and the planet. And I believe what’s best for it right now is the Empire.”

“The workers don’t agree.”

“The
workers
don’t see the big picture,” Quarle retorted. “They’re laborers, not administrators. At the moment, they can’t see past the promises the New Republic’s dangling in front of them like nerfs being led to the milking shed.

“Independence—” He made it sound like a dirty word. “You tell me where, anywhere, workers don’t dream of being their own boss. But they haven’t got the faintest idea how to actually do it. Without the Empire’s guidance, they’ll run this company—their livelihood—right into the ground, or make juicy pickings for the bacta cartel. Then how much will their
independence
mean?”

“They’ll be free,” Selby said.

“Free to starve, maybe,” he shot back bitterly.

She raised the blaster.

“Selby,
think
about it,” he said warningly. “The Governor knows what’s going on here. You can’t win, but if you surrender now, I give you my word you won’t be harmed.”

He took a step forward, eyes earnestly searching her face. “Please, Selby. You won’t get out of here any other way. It doesn’t have to be like this.”

In her mind’s eye, Selby saw Vartos held at blaster-point by the Hall stormtrooper. She thought of Claris, and the horror stories every Intelligence agent had heard of the fate that awaited them at the hands of Imperial inquisitors. She thought of Quarle, and that in doing what he truly felt best for his people, he had to betray their confidence, knowing full well that for many of them it meant certain death.

Black or white, friend or foe
, she reminded herself. In this job, there was no room for anything else.

“Yes, it does,” she said, and fired.

Thirty-four hours later, leaning against the stone railing of the Hall’s roof and staring down at the dancing flames of a celebratory bonfire in the street below her, Selby reflected that, for having salvaged success from such certain failure, she should be in a much brighter frame of mind.

Listening to the revelry going on below, she wondered at the absence of her usual satisfaction at the successful completion of a mission. She didn’t doubt the New Republic had done the right thing, bringing about the liberation of Verkuyl and restoring BactaCo to its native workers. A populace held in thrall, either to an Empire or a business dictator, needed to be set free.

But for the first time in her years of being involved in such liberations, it occurred to her to question whether the New Republic had done it because it was the best thing for the planet and its people, or because a direct pipeline to BactaCo was the best thing for the New Republic.

She could not forget Quarle’s prediction: that the Verkuylians, faced for the first time with self-government and the running of a business, would be crushed under the weight of their new responsibilities. To help ease their transition, Selby had been told the New Republic planned to provide advisors to help the fledgling business-folk find their economic feet in the galactic community. She frowned, bothered by this train of thought. New Republic “advisors” to Verkuyl somehow sounded too similar to the same sort of “advice” the Empire had dispensed.

She half wished Quarle, who had the experience to run the company and, by birth, the right, had chosen to stay and help. But released from the hidden passage where she’d left him bound, only a certain darkness in those green eyes betraying the feelings he kept from showing on his face, Quarle had elected to leave Verkuyl with the rest of the Imperial interlopers. Once the workers learned what he’d done, it was painfully clear that they would never trust him again.

“Sel?” A voice cut into her brooding. “It’s almost time to go.”

She turned. Vartos’s dark skin blended into the shadows around the turbolift, but she could see the faint gleam where his eyes reflected the starlight overhead. Both he and Claris had survived their captivity, although Vartos had required a few hours in a bacta tank to fully recover. Selby found that somehow ironic. “Yes, sir,” she replied. “I’ll be right down.”

Vartos nodded and stepped back into the turbolift, leaving her alone. Selby turned back to the railing, eyes again drawn to the bonfire below. Verkuyl celebrated its freedom tonight—but how long would its jubilation last under the pressures of its new responsibilities?

She sighed. She would not be around to find out. She had done her job—done it well—and now it was time to forget the things Quarle had said and move on to the next assignment.

Black or white, friend or foe
, she reminded herself. Under the Empire, Verkuyl had been black. Under the New Republic, it would be white. It might be true that Verkuyl’s future most likely held shades of gray—but in her line of work, it was best not to look at those shadowed colors too closely.

Turning away, Selby took a deep breath. She grimaced at the stink—the awful smell of the alazhi simmering in the refineries. It permeated everything, and after just four days on Verkuyl, she felt as if its stench had somehow soaked right through her skin and taken up permanent residence in her heart.

She feared it would stay with her forever.