บท 43: 5.03

"And what of the current political situation, Lady Andrim?" the short, slim, dark-haired young man asked after taking a sip from a diamond glass filled with a golden liquor. Real, natural diamond, not cheap artificial imitations. I guess if one had wealth enough to build a good percentage of the galaxy's starships, they could afford to waste gems that size to make absurdly expensive drinking glasses. "I'm rather curious of your take of the current... unpleasantness."

"I am fourteen Master Khoss, politics just bore me," I responded as I took a sip from my own glass in turn. At least the wine was worth it. I'd never claim to be a connoisseur, but the sharpness of the alcohol without a hint of sourness or bitterness, the fruity aftertaste and heady aroma, the understated sweetness, and the velvet-like smoothness of the liquor without a hint of residue were things even a casual drinker could appreciate - and the combination was just better than anything I'd ever tasted both in my current life and the previous one.

"For me, this brief return to Kuat is a time to catch up with family, try the latest creations of renown sashimi masters, and enjoy an evening in the restaurant with the best view in a dozen systems." I point at the awesome vista of the roaring Tekshar Falls with an aurodium fork before using that very same utensil to deliver another little bite of bliss to my mouth. Among all the other ways Kuat was like the Japan of my old life, they had their own traditional raw fish dish. Some cosmic coincidence or act of George Lukas had the dishes even share a name. The available ingredients on the other hand were vastly different and included certain species of fish whose toxin-infused meat would -if correctly prepared- act like a powerful stimulant and mild opiate with negligible addictive properties. "Making some lucrative deals in the process is just a bonus."

"I see." The scion of House Knylenn took a slice of roasted avian meat that somewhat resembled a duck in taste and texture if not appearance, dipped it in sweet and sour sauce, wrapped it up in a mini-pancake and slowly consumed it with the dainty little bites tradition and his small frame demanded of him. "Well, far be it from me to keep a lady from her enjoyment." After that, we ate in quiet appreciation of the chef's creations for a time, though he preferred the duck and barely sipped at the wine either. Medicinal properties aside, I'd have preferred the duck as well, but allowances had to be made for the negotiations.

"Exquisite as this meal might have been... it's time... time to..." Khoss of Knylenn paused, searching for his lost train of thought. Worried I'd overdone it, I started casting what was to be a mild buzz into the Force once more. Without the transferred influence, the older scion's mind began to slowly unscramble. "Yeah, we are here to bargain, no?"

"Indeed. As we previously discussed, I am interested in your House's top wines." I smiled as I used the barest touch of the Force on him. Laying a compulsion such as a Mind Trick was a quick and dirty way to force someone to do what you wanted but it was like a hammer, all Force, and no subtlety. When the effects faded, victims would notice something had influenced their actions unless they were in no position to notice due to the compulsion's strength frying their brains. Creating an emotion on others was less invasive, but still obvious if the emotion wasn't appropriate for the situation. But offloading existing emotions, emotions that fit the events? "Say, ten tons total of your three top varieties and years for a hundred and fifty million credits?" Such manipulation was easier... and by tomorrow Khoss wouldn't remember well enough to tell the difference.

"This... seems OK to me," he said after about half an hour of negotiations, the deal finalized with a few clicks in our data pads.

"Excellent!" I sent a note to Ratty to pick up the shipment, before pushing the other half of the dish towards him. "Now come on, let's celebrate. This fish is to die for!" It took less time than the negotiation for him to get drunk enough to start making passes at me. Safe in the clarity of superhuman biology augmented by the Force, I dodged a few clumsy attempts at kissing and enjoyed dinner; the fish might be to die for, but the duck was truly divine.

BOOM!

The blast wave shook the restaurant to its foundations, a barely subsonic front of compressed air, water, and shattered rock knocking away every table overlooking the waterfall along with their occupants. We tumbled for a couple of dozen feet before landing, Khoss falling on me face-first. He was too out of it to appreciate his momentary good fortune, so he was forgiven. Bones had been broken, concussions had been doled out, and there were lots and lots of property damage, but nobody in the restaurant or the surrounding area had died from the explosion. Considering it had been powerful enough to partially collapse a fifteen-hundred-foot artificial waterfall and even then a mile-high mushroom of steam and dust hung ominously over the entire area, we were all very fortunate.

Security arrived before the emergency services, of course, dozens of police and port authority vehicles darting all over the place like headless chickens, sirens screaming. The information would not be released until later, but those of us with the Force did not need such announcements; we'd felt the moment Onara Kuat, her co-conspirators, and nearly a hundred of their confidants and trusted security personnel were wiped out as one.

xxxx xxxx

Back on Earth in mid-thirties Germany, Siemens & Halske developed an analog telephone of black plastic with a simple dial at the front and the handle on the top. Approved in '48 by the German telephone and postal administration under the auspicious name Wählfernsprecher 1948 (German for far-speaker dial), it went on to become known as the classic telephone due to its robustness, elegant industrial design, and ubiquity for over two decades. It was so successful that the design was copied around the world, appeared in classic films, was sold in over forty countries, and still continues to be produced in small numbers nearly a century after its design. Both my mother and grandmother still had one in my last memories of Earth, to be used during power outages when modern digital phones would not work. But regardless of its indelible mark in Earth's history, the so-called W48 was only tangentially related to my current situation.

"For the last time Miss Andrim, what do you know about the bombing of Tekshar Falls?"

"Nothing beyond what I already told you, officer. Same as any other witness!" Naturally, Kuati security had picked Jestra and me, minutes after their arrival. The Kuat Security Force was not stupid; everybody knew why this "terrorist" act happened, and who stood to gain. Unfortunately for the fat, broken-nosed, balding lieutenant trying to interrogate me, there was no proof and the futuristic lie detector I'd been hooked into gave them nothing. "Also, it's Lady Andrim, not Miss."

"Don't get flip with me, you brat," he hissed back, rage positively boiling as he tried to tower over me intimidatingly. Unfortunately for him, I was over a head taller than most Kuati thanks to Father's Arkanian genes. "We know you Andrims did it and you will tell us how!"

"No member of House Andrim has carried out a bombing of any sort in Kuati soil to my knowledge, lieutenant," I borrowed a page out of the Jedi's book and answered his anger with serenity. The beeping from the lie detector confirming my words as true just added to the insult. After all, Aurra Sing was definitely not a member of the House. "As for me personally, I was in a business meeting with a House Knylenn scion. There were at least thirty witnesses to that as well as security recordings, not to mention an officially confirmed a hundred and fifty million credit deal with both our signatures to it." I looked down at his too-tight uniform, receding hair, and beady black eyes. "That's, like, a hundred and fifty thousand times your annual salary, is it not?"

"We'll get to the bottom of this, Andrim," he growled. "And until we do, I get to throw you in the deepest, darkest cell I can find."

Despite his bluster, Jestra and I ended in minimum-security cells in the local police headquarters. They were just tiny rooms with a too-narrow, too-hard bed and not much else, with a security forcefield instead of bars. Despite the situation, the two of us were still heiresses of the Andrim family and due to both Kuat law and family influence, the KSF could only hold us for forty standard hours; two local days. Even then, the arresting officers would have to answer to the Ten ruling Houses if evidence of serious crimes was not found... and it wouldn't be. As I'd said to Khoss and repeated to the interrogator's ad nauseam, I'd come to Kuat to catch up with family and have fun and had every intention to avoid getting involved in the rapidly developing Charlie Foxtrot. I mean, that's what rich people have hired assassins for, and I happened to have the third-best in the Galaxy in my retinue. If Aurra Sing said she could get Project Telephone in position without being detected, who was I to doubt her? I just went to my prearranged alibi and had fun and profit.

In both the police headquarters and the planet beyond I felt the chaos spreading. Surprise, fear, anger, satisfaction, perverse happiness, all mingled in a heady cocktail that spilled across the surface and the orbitals both. The storm of emotions from three and a half billion sapients was far weaker and vastly tamer than the absolute chaos of Nar Shadda, but the far closer ties to the events made it loom so much bigger. No, not loom; resonate. I had direct familial and emotional ties to the key actors, I understood the underlying causes deeply, and was the ultimate instigator of the recent abrupt upheaval so I could tap directly into the maelstrom and both observe the course of events through their emotional impact as well as draw strength from them more efficiently.

Amid the bedlam however, were bits of emotion that did not fit. Sharp bouts of focus, wrapped in determination, and the calm pursuit of a goal. They approached slowly, almost cautiously, and it was that caution that helped them evade the heightened alertness of the harried policemen and port security officers. That their approach was through the sewers then somehow continued into the building's ventilation ducts helped. It was not long before they moved through the station, their passage accompanied by several hints of willful indifference from certain officers present. Ah, so that was how it'd go.

"Those are some seriously badass costumes," I commented when the five black-clad assassins dropped down from the ceiling. Armorweave and shimmersilk clung to their bodies like a second skin, not much different from futuristic ninja outfits seen in some G.I. Joe cosplays back on Earth. If their attire had any advantage other than sheer awesome, it was the absolute silence with which they could move and how they seemed to partially blend in the dark. "Who's your tailor? I'd really like to order a black, form-fitting catsuit for private use."

The assassins ignored my quip and prepared some almost certainly illegal dart-guns as the security forcefield in my cell flickered and died. That they planned to deal with one target at a time despite them being unarmed, apparently helpless girls spoke of their professionalism. I could stop them with the Force, but that would raise far too many questions given the number of cameras and sensors present... which indicated the KSF's level of corruption since I felt no response to the assassins' presence from the rest of the building. But hey, I'd come to Kuat to relax and stay away from trouble, not battle-hardened assassins with my bare hands and/or awesome space magic.

Out of a dark and apparently empty corner of the holding cells area, an even more illegal dart-gun than those the assassins had brought spoke, and a hypervelocity dart buried itself in each assassin's posterior. At the velocity they'd been fired, their diamondoid tips caused liquefaction on impact with most other materials, including the armor the assassins had been wearing. The electrical charge in each dart disrupted the nervous system of each victim, sending them toppling to the hard metal floor. By the time they could recover enough to take voluntary actions, the neurotoxin in each dart's payload would be already destroying the synapses in their brains. Of the shooter there was not even a hint, their corner a blind spot in the cameras' coverage ostensibly too small for anyone to hide in, and somehow their presence not registering even to the Mark I human eyeball. As alarm finally has begun spreading through the station, I sat back and relaxed.

As I said, if you have one of the best assassins in the Galaxy on retainer, use her. The extra paperwork she'd cause was for other people if you were rich enough.