The Krytos Trap by Michael A. Stackpole Page B

disposed of safely.
    Gavin let Asyr help him to his feet. “You’re right, of course. I hope we can accomplish our mission. If we don’t, I’m afraid we’ll have to take Coruscant down to bedrock, and I don’t think even that will erase the scourge of the Empire from the galaxy.”
    I think even stormtroopers would find my men terrifyingly efficient . From the dark security of the grav-car’s interior, Kirtan Loor watched as four Special Intelligence operatives clad in civilian garb approached the building’s door. As huge and imposing as they were, they moved with a lethal fluidity their armor normally hid. Almost casually, one of them placed a thermite boring charge on the door lock and set it, then accepted a blaster carbine from a compatriot and flattened himself against the building’s wall.
    A red light blinked three times on the thermite charge, then a smoke-shrouded gout of white fire burst to hissing life. The harsh light transformed the shadowed Imperial Center street into a chiaroscuro landscape burned clean of imperfections but still full of menace. One of the operatives punched a hooked prybar through the center of the fire and yanked the door open, then his three compatriots dashed through.
    The blue backlight of stun-fire strobed momentarily through the doorway and gaps in the window shading. Loor waited for a moment, then saw two more flashes. A human figure appeared in the doorway and nodded in his direction, then retreated into the shadows of the building’s interior.
    Loor opened the grav-car’s door and emerged. He gathered a cloak about himself and pulled the hood up to conceal his face from incidental observation. He strode forward purposefully, but he imagined himself a pale imitation of Darth Vader. Tall and skeletally slender, with dark hair, he had been told he resembled a young Grand Moff Tarkin. While that comparison had been one he had used to his advantage, he would have preferred to inspire Vaderian terror in those with whom he dealt.
    He squeezed past the two operatives at the doorway and stepped over the drooling Ithorian lying in the center of the antechamber. Beyond it, through a short corridor and past a third operative, he arrived in a room that resembled a rodent nest more than it did a human dwelling. It stank of mildew and old, musty sweat, though the occupant’s new terror added piquant elements to the room’s stale bouquet.
    Loor looked down at the small, balding man pinned to the stained mattress by the muzzle of a blaster. “Your surroundings are so miserable, I am almost moved to pity you, Nartlo, but then, pity is wasted on the dead, isn’t it?”
    “What are you talking about?” The man’s brown eyes bulged with terror. “I don’t know you. What did I do?”
    “True, you do not know me, but you have brokered some cure for friends of mine. It has been selling at a high price, but they tell me that you have told them the market has crashed. At the same time they noted that the supply ofcure you returned to them had gone from 95 percent purity to 75 percent purity.” Loor shook his head slowly, mournfully. “My friends feel you have lied to and cheated them.”
    “No, no, I didn’t do that.” Nartlo tried to claw his way into a sitting position, but the operative beside the makeshift bed kept him rooted in one spot. “I drew off some of the bacta as a sample, but a deal went bad and I lost it. I didn’t figure they’d believe I lost it, so I tried to cover up what I’d done. I’m sorry.”
    “And stupid if you expect me to believe a story that was ancient when the Old Republic was born.” Loor let anger into his voice and won a groan from his victim. Because of the surveillance he had on Nartlo, Loor did know that the story was not wholly false. Some of the bacta had been lost when a deal went sour, but only some . The rest of the missing cure had been donated to an alien pleasure house for the employees’ own use. Nartlo had spent a week basking in