Last Chance: Myn and Lara - pt. 23


Kirney Slane liked Coronet City, especially Treasure Ship Row and the seedy little cantinas that circled the spaceport like a fungus ring. Everywhere in the Galaxy spacers found themselves flung, like seawrack upon a galactic tide, these little shops sprang up, catering to the simple, affordable needs of the beings who sailed the black, and scraping out a small existence along the fringes of acceptable society.

Her adopted home was so very different from anything she had ever known, with this name or any other, and she found herself smiling, until she caught the acrid odour of smoke, combined with something else, the evil smell tarnishing the clear morning. A small crowd was coalescing around one of the nearby shops, a men's clothing boutique, and there was a woman lying on the duracrete. There was someone in uniform kneeling next to her, but Kirney couldn't see around the gathering crowd to determine the cause of death.

With a deep shudder, she breathed the stench of death, and her stomach flipped, but an old iron reflex took over, something ingrained by harsh discipline at the Imperial Intelligence Academy. Suddenly, a buried part of her brain became active, and while she did not change her stride at all, she was absorbing more information from the street around her. Faces and expressions embedded themselves in her memory for later analysis. She scanned ahead for suspicious behaviour, and caught sight of a speeder slinking away down the street.

Never looking directly at the vehicle, she made a note of the driver and passenger's nondescript dark clothes, mussed short-trimmed hair and grim expressions. They were not familiar faces, but there was a certain official cast to them, and they wore guilt like a badly-fitted suit. She made an immediate note of their speeder's make and model, all the while continuing on her apparently oblivious way towards her favourite tapcaf. She was not at all surprised when the speeder turned the corner, and the ident markings ordered by law to be attached to every passenger vehicle in the city were conspicuously absent.

CorSec jackboots, ghosting away from the scene, she noted. She casually checked her belt pouch to see that she had her next 'insurance payment' on hand, just in case the death was a collection gone horribly awry. The situation didn't have that feel to it, and Kirney had learned one thing for absolutely certain in her previous lives lived undercover: there is no substitute for instincts honed by superb training. She trusted her gut.

It was somewhat disconcerting to come back to herself after the shakeup, aware that she'd become someone else for a while there, been again the slick Imperial agent she'd been born and raised to be. She paused at a corner and drew several deep mellowing breaths, fighting down her anger at herself, that it was so easy to slip back into the person she'd once been, and had sworn never to be again. She was only just learning who she really was, and these sorts of slip-ups scared her. Thankfully, as time passed, she'd had fewer and fewer of them, and after a while, she was able to see those old reflexes as being a good thing, keeping her unnoticed and out of trouble in the long run.

She considered continuing on her way to the Crater, but her appetite was quite gone. Instead, she made her way to a public kiosk to check her messages upon returning. This would have the added benefit of reminding her who she was, and what was important to her. Tonin, Kolot, she listed to herself as she scanned the initial screens, Stolen Future, and me, she finished. That's what really matters.

There were only three messages, the first from a young woman Kirney didn't know, but who claimed to be a reporter of some sort, and who wanted to talk to her about recent 'happenings' in the Spaceport Sector. Kirney had no idea what she was talking about, but a sudden twinge in her gut told her it was something to do with the scene she'd just witnessed. She filed the message to be answered later, once she'd had a chance to find out who this woman was.

The second one was from a customer. She commed him back immediately, aware as always that a hauler like her was made or broken based on return business. However, citing routine maintenance, she very politely turned him down for the run he'd wanted carried. "Why don't you try Reynolds?" she recommended, when the client asked for a hauler who might be willing to take his cargo on short notice. She'd remembered ducking past the bigger ship's starboard swiveling engine pod on her way out of the port that morning. "He's a good man, with a good crew. Might charge you premium, but they'll get the job done." Her customer thanked her for the advice, and closed the link.

The last logged message turned out to be a blurred cut-off call, of the sort that usually meant someone had gotten a wrong number, but hadn't closed the link fast enough to avoid a message being logged. She was about to erase it when something about the blurred figure, clad in a familiar combination of green and black caught her eye. CorSec colours, Kirney realised, and after the morning's observation, the hairs on the back of her neck prickled. The small public kiosk didn't have the more advanced slow and still functions of her holocomm back on the ship, so she saved the message to have a good look at later.

Her mind much more settled, Kirney turned down the street to the Crater and stepped into the small tapcaf to be greeted warmly by her old friend, who was obviously in the middle of a mid-week inventory.

"Hey, look who just fell through the roof!" Rij laughed, setting aside his datapad and coming over to stand in the puller's place behind the bar. "Good to see you, Kirney!"

"You never actually go home, do you, Rij?" she rejoined. "Fell through the roof, indeed. I'll have you know, I let my very capable co-pilot land the Future this morning, and he did a sterling job."

"Why do you insist Tonin's a he?" Rij asked with a broad smile, "Cuz I know you aren't still trying to persuade me that an Ewok flies your ship."

Kirney slid one slim leg over a stool and perched there, an eyebrow raised in challenge of her friend. "I'll do you a big favour and never repeat what you just said to Kolot," she stated.

"Oh, I'm terrified of your animated stuffie," Rij mocked gently. "What'll ya have?"

"What's the special today?" Kirney asked.

"Eggs, biscuits with butter, sausage and sliced maeto."

"Sounds perfect. Sunnyside up please," she added before he could ask.

Rij wandered into the grill area to prep her food, talking through the warming ledge opening as he cracked the eggs onto the hot grill. "So, how come you never mentioned CorSec?"

Hiding her sudden flare of apprehension, Kirney tilted her head to the side and assumed a curious expression. "Rij, anything I know about the Agency, I learned from you," she said. "Can you be a little more specific?"

"Your boyfriend, Officer Jidone?" Rij nudged, with a smile, "He of the upright bearing and crusading tendencies? Being from Centrepoint and all, he was uninformed about the local 'deal'," Rij continued as he tended to her breakfast, "So I gave him a heads up. He's looking into things, seeing what he can do."

"That's great!" she replied, covering her confusion with what seemed to be the expected enthusiasm, and a non-specific comment, "I haven't seen him in so long!"

"Orine targeted him straight off, you know her," Rij went on with the commentary as he buttered her biscuit. "But I guess Ardmin was serious about getting back together with you, like he said, because she came back here pretty down in the mouth, saying he'd turned her down." Rij came around from behind the counter and presented her with her breakfast. "He seemed to hit it off with Axel as well: a veteran's thing, I guess."

"Well what do you know. Ardmin Jidone, here to see little old me," she murmured, using the full name she assembled from the fragments of Rij's conversational information. Acknowledge, and distract, her spy mind ordered her, and she complied, complimenting Rij on the wonderful meal he'd prepared. "This looks terrific, Rij, Thanks!" He preened under the praise, and then headed behind the partition to finish his inventory.

As she ate with false appetite, Kirney's brain went into overdrive. A CorSec agent had been here, passing himself off as a friend of hers, had likely tried to contact her privately, and now a woman just down the street from one of Kirney's favourite haunts was dead. Obviously his credentials were good enough that Rij had believed him, had given him some information, and seemed to have some hope that he could effect a change. She wracked her brain, but knew she did not know anyone of that name, and she certainly was not fond of any CorSec personnel nosing around in her affairs.

If he is CorSec… she had a sudden terrifying suspicion. She took a sip of her caf and ran through every Imperial contact protocol she could recall, but as she'd never been placed on Corellia, she had no idea what the Intell protocols and codes might have included.

All the pieces suddenly fit together in a very scary way: Imperial Intelligence had found her again. I'll never be free of them.

~*~


To be continued...

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