He cast a beseeching look over his shoulder toward one of the guards, and Wedge tensed, but the armor-plated trooper didn't move. He was, Wedge saw, shaking with laughter.

"You don't know her name? You live in the same village with her!"

The official finally got Face's hand free. "It's a city, not a village, and it's too large for me to know everybody." As quickly as he could, he cycled Wedge's and Donos's cards through the reader.

"That's not very neighborly." Face accepted the cards and pa.s.sed them out among his brothers. "Say, if you could direct us to where the beautiful women looking for husbands are, it'd be worth a credit to you."

The man looked at him, too drained to be stunned. "A whole credit."

"Oyah. Always pay for the best, that's what I say."

"Try the Howler. It's a bar. It's where you'll find locals with an itch to get offworld but not enough money to do so."

"Sir, you're gentleman." Face dropped a credit coin into the man's palm and walked into the inspection tube opening.

"A gentleman," Wedge repeated, and followed. He heard Donos grunt, "Gent, " and come stomping after him.

Kell ambled down the ramp. He saw the inspector's tired expression and gave the man a knowing smile. "Imagine being trapped aboard a shuttle with them for three days." He bobbed his head up and down in a fair simulation of Face's distinctive nod, then handed his identicard to the man.

"Do you think they'll be any trouble... Captain Do-ran?"

"Call me Kell. No, none of them is any trouble except the old senator.

Just stroke his ego... and don't shoot against him. I accepted a compet.i.tion challenge from him, and lost. That's why I had to carry his d.a.m.ned Gamorrean." Kell took a step to the side and looked up at the Narra's flank. The words "Doran s.p.a.ceways" and the name Doran Star on the shuttle's side still looked appropriately weathered, belying the fact that they'd been painted on three days ago and then partly sc.r.a.ped off again.

"Thanks. I'll make sure the appropriate parties know." The official handed back Kell's card. "Are you carrying them back again?"

Kell answered by shuddering.

"Ah. Well, your loss is our gain, provided it's soon. Please wait in the inspection area. Pending a scan of your shuttle, you're clear."

"Thanks."

As soon as they cleared inspection, the party of Senator-in-Exile Tyestin, known informally on this mission as the Joy-ride Group, checked into the lodging nearest the s.p.a.ceport. After they swept their suite against the possibility of listening devices and found none, Janson said, "No reason to go farther away to find TIE fighters. There are some here... and traffic of lots more strangers than on an Imp military base."

"Atril and I can switch in and out of disguise a lot more easily than you," Falynn said. It was true; for the two women, all it took was a change of clothing and addition of a wig to cover their severe black hair. "You and Piggy should stay here, in character, for the time being.

Let us do the groundwork."

"Because my disguise is inconvenient," he said.

"Yes."

"Not because I'm old and feeble like Commander Antilles."

She smiled and looked away. "I suppose I've had to revise my opinion about old, feeble pilots."

"Well, you children go and have a good time. I'm going to order expensive meals and expensive entertainments. This is on one of the New Republic's covert expense accounts, and for once I feel like running up a nice big bill."

Phanan's group, including Tyria and Kell, was charged with acquiring disease agents. They took the repulsorlift rail pa.s.sage from Revos to the capital city of Scohar, home of the planet's largest s.p.a.ceport and of a medical center designed to deal with diseases both domestic and alien.

The Revos-Scohar railway was a marvel of engineering and public relations. The conveyance itself was a series of lengthy repulsorlift cars coupled together, traveling for the most part along a featureless tunnel. But every so often the train would rise into the open air, long enough for the pa.s.sengers to enjoy one of the planet's most beautiful vistas-here a spectacular view of snowcapped mountain peaks, there a long look at valleys purpling under the setting sun-and then descend again.

Kell decided that it was a good compromise between giving the tourists the show they wanted and marring the carefully maintained landscape.

Scohar was much like Revos, only far larger, and dotted with recreational complexes that included thrill rides that simulated danger without ever harming a visitor. The Plague Group, as they called themselves, stayed away from the most tourist-heavy portions of the city and checked into lodgings near the Scohar Xenohealth Inst.i.tute-the innocuous name the government of Storinal had given to their center for disease control.

Wedge, Face, and Donos, informally the Yokel Group, found lodgings at the Revos Liberty, a hostel catering to large ships' crews on sh.o.r.e leave.

Because of its orientation, rooms were small but inexpensive; services and amenities would be rare. However, half the rooms, including the Wraiths', opened directly out onto an artificial riverside beach.

Face excused himself for a few minutes and returned with a pile of brightly colored cloth. He handed out individual portions to the others.

Wedge shook his out. A short-sleeved tunic in orange and yellow tropical fruit patterns and short pants in lavender. "I'm going to throw up."

Face smiled. "That would be the final bit of trim on the ensemble, wouldn't it? I recommend you keep the hat. That really completes the image of an Agamaran stereotype with no taste and no sense."

"I wish I didn't agree with you."

"Yub, yub, Commander."

Donos looked mournfully at his outfit: a shirt with thin red and green horizontal stripes and shorts with black and white vertical stripes.

"Sir, permission to kill Face?"

"Granted. But keep your hat, like Face says."

Face unfolded his own fashion disaster. A black silken shirt with a variety of insects picked out on it in glittery silver, shorts in a brighter, more painful orange than that of New Republic pilot's suits, and a red kerchief for his neck. "As you can see, I saved the best for myself. Time to find some brides, brothers."

22.

"Really," Wedge said. "I thought all you Imperial Navy boys were TIE fighter pilots. Every one."

They sat in the Sunfruit Promenade, actually an extensive roofed patio flanked by flower gardens. The lounge was thick with recliner chairs and interrupted occasionally by musicians' pits, most of which, at this late-afternoon hour, were occupied by musicians, male, female, and droid, playing a variety of stringed and percussion instruments.

The three yokel brothers were there, in the midst of a veritable sea of Hawkbat crewmen. Most of the crewmen were doing some light drinking in preparation for going out after dark and doing their heavy drinking. Some were accompanied by local women and men; the recliners were built to accommodate a cozy two. But Wedge, Face, and Donos, garish and loud, were by themselves.

The man opposite Wedge, a long-time Imperial Navy NCO, if Wedge was any judge, built like Kell but even bigger and deeper in the chest, smiled at Wedge's stupidity. "Now, think about that, Dod-"

"I'm Fod. This is Dod. That's Lod."

"Fod. Even an Imperial-cla.s.s Star Destroyer only carriessix squadrons of TIE fighters. That's seventy-two. Even with relief pilots, you're talking about ninety or a hundred pilots on one of the big ships. Do you think a Star Destroyer can manage with just a bridge crew and a hundred pilots?"

"Well, I didn't think about it, really."

The Hawkbat crewmen immediately around them laughed.

The big NCO, whose name was Rondle, looked sadly into his almost-empty gla.s.s.

Face, his motions those of a profoundly drunken man, jerked upright. "We can't have that. Hey, server! Another one all around." He collapsed back into his simulated drunken stupor.

The Hawkbat personnel were more than happy to have the n.o.brin brothers around. The boys from Agamar obligingly bought drinks for everyone in their vicinity and seemed oblivious to the barbs the s.p.a.cemen aimed at them. Wedge had noticed some of the s.p.a.cemen bringing dates to see the supposed men of fabled, idiotic Agamar. He felt like an animal in a cage viewing a procession of zoo-goers.

Wedge continued, "So when it's time to go home you don't all just hop in your TIE fighters and blast off for s.p.a.ce."

Rondle smirked. "No. I'm an unarmed combat instructor. Partus over there, she's the one with the red face, is a navigator. That's someone who tells the ship how to get where it's going. Dewback Kord over there, he's a ship's mechanic. No, when it's time to leave, we all hop in a shuttle and go up."

"A shuttle? A Lambda shuttle? I was in one of those once."

Rondle nodded distractedly and accepted a drink refill from the droid server.

"Is yours the Doran Star? That's the one we were in."

Rondle fixed him with an aggravated stare. "Now, you just arrived from Agamar in whatever bucket brought you here. If that was our shuttle, too, how would we have gotten groundside before you got here?"

"Well, I don't know."

"No, ours are the Hawkbat's Perch and the Hawkbat's Vigil."

"Oh. Hey, that's some kind of coincidence. Ending up with two shuttles with names kind of like your big ship's name."

Rondle covered his eyes with his hand.

"I wish Grinder were here," Phanan said. He tapped irritably away at the suite's terminal keyboard, cruising through layer after layer of helpful organizational screens.

Kell and Tyria were behind him, squeezed into an oversized stuffed chair that would have easily accommodated two ordinary-sized people. Tyria said, "What's wrong? You don't seem to be encountering any security."

"No, but I can't just issue a command for the system to give me information on all biological agents being stored over at the Inst.i.tute, not without raising some alerts, and I bet Grinder could. Plus, I have to deal with roommates making obnoxious snuggling noises while I'm hard at work." His tone was only half joking. He'd been annoyed ever since Tyria suddenly made her preference known.

Kell said, "We can go take a walk."

"You've already done your initial look at the Inst.i.tute's exterior-hold it. News retrieval. Disease outbreaks. Sort by mechanisms. This won't be as comprehensive, but it'll tell us what has actually gotten out into the Storinal population. And whatever's been out there is sure to be in the Inst.i.tute's vaults."

Tyria and Kell came up to lean over his shoulders.

"Bothan Redrash," Phanan said. "Too hit-or-miss. Plus, Grinder might catch it, and we'd never hear the end of it. Bandonian Plague, too severe. Blastonecrosis likewise, also disgusting. Big tourist planet like this has seen some odd ailments. Hey." He abruptly focused on one of the entries on the screen and brought it up to read more.

Kell leaned in closer. "What is it?"

"Bunkurd Sewer Disorder."

"Yecch," Tyria said. "Sounds disgusting."

"Not as bad as it sounds. A couple of centuries back, on Coruscant, the Bunkurd Corporation engineered a bacterium that does a better job of breaking down sewage for recycling. Something like a twenty percent improvement over previous bio-agents used for the same purpose. And believe me, Coruscant needs all the help it can get, that way. But if this bacteria gets in the human digestive system, it basically attacks what you eat as soon as you eat it, making it less nutritional... and giving you the equivalent of food poisoning. It takes a predictable amount of time to incubate and responds very well to standard medicines, so there's no danger of loss of life except in isolated areas."

"Sounds like our stuff," Kell said. "Now all we have to do is get some."

"I'm going to keep at the records for a while yet, in case there's something better. But, yes, this is encouraging."

The Howler turned out to be something less than a drinking establishment where local people vied for the affection of tourists who might have the interest and capital necessary to carry them offworld. It was, in fact, a dive. Its dim lights concealed the fact that the floors and tables were not cleaned as rigorously as they should be and that the locals offering themselves up for inspection weren't all as appealing as they hoped they were.

The place had flickering holoprojectors on all the walls, cycling between views of Storinal's gorgeous landscapes and cities, but the style of dress of the tourists in those views suggested they'd been recorded when most of the Wraiths were still unborn.

The Howler had one important advantage, however. On an Imperial-controlled world like Storinal, where nonhumans were second-cla.s.s citizens on the occasions they were allowed any freedom at all, the Howler made no distinction between human and nonhuman clientele. Its operators obviously wanted every cred they could earn.

Falynn and Piggy were already at a back table, shrouded in shadow and occasional gouts of smoke from the establish - ment's kitchen, when Wedge and Kell arrived. Falynn looked at Wedge's garish costume and burst out in laughter.

"Don't blame me," Wedge said, "it's Face's fault." He laid his hat on the table and sat. "Have you swept?"

Piggy nodded. "All clean." His volume control was turned so low the others could barely make out the mechanical Basic words underneath his grunts.

"This place needs more than a sweeping," Kell said. "Sand-scouring, perhaps. A good laser vaporization of the top five millimeters of every exposed surface."

"I meant, swept for listening devices."

"I know."

Wedge took a last look around, but after Falynn's laughter had ceased drawing eyes, no one seemed to be paying them attention. "All right.

Yokel Group has luck to report. First, we got some leads on the sources of the supplies Hawkbat carries around; we'll pa.s.s that information on to Intelligence. Second, we were thinking of hosting some sort of going-away feast for the Hawkbat crew and infecting them there, but we found out that the crew transits back and forth between the ship in two ship's shuttles. If we could put the disease agent on those shuttles, we'll probably infect a third of the crew. I think it would be easiest if it were some sort of airborne agent. We could put it in the air supply."

"Airborne." Kell frowned, concentrating, then pulled out his datapad. "I don't remember if Phanan said this Bee Ess Dee stuff is airborne... Ah.

Yes, it is."

Falynn grimaced. "Bunkurd Sewer Disorder?"

Wedge said, "You've seen it?"

"I've bad it. The few parts of Mos Eisley that actually have a sewer recycler use a Bunkurd Reclamation System. An old one. An old, broken-down, and occasionally leaky one. I was sick as a womp rat for a week."

She shuddered.

Wedge said, "All of which means Plague Group has a contender."

Kell nodded. "We really want Grinder for the intrusion, though. I was hoping to be able to take him back to Scohar with me."

"It shouldn't be a problem," Wedge said. "Your landing pad is officially cleared, correct? If you go there to do a little mechanical work today and leave in the company of a Bothan tourist..."

"a.s.suming we can both get back through" security."

"Grinder will find a way. It's a matter of professional pride with him.