Chapter Text
My contact was a young woman with a pale, sharp-featured face, a wiry build, and legs that went all the way up. She was dressed like an upscale prostitute, which I didn’t find very encouraging –– so many of them were involved in the darker trades these days. But on the other hand, fomenting rebellion was also definitely illegal, so I was in no position to complain. I saluted her with the drink she’d had sent to my table and offered the password: “Always love a Tatooine sunrise.”
She blew smoke at me –– not a death stick, though the thing she was holding in her hand looked similar; it must be some local inhalant –– and didn’t quite smile. “Always better with alcohol.”
And that was the answer, so I nodded and took the seat across from her without asking. She had very bright green eyes, and they took in everything; I had the distinct feeling that she was weighing me for market, but I sat still for it. Her life as well as mine was on the line; she had the right. When she was done she nodded back. “Nice to meet you,” she said.
“Likewise,” I agreed. “I hear you have something for me?”
The way she cut her eyes at me said I’d dropped a notch in her estimation by being indiscreet. “Not here,” she said, and I could see her point. It was a nice enough bar for this part of Corellia, but it wasn’t exactly where I would have chosen to conduct illicit business, either.
I leaned across the table toward her, doing my best to look like a half-drunk smuggler trying to get laid. Since I’d never been drunk, smuggled, or tried to get laid (Roan had always taken the lead there), I wasn’t surprised when the effect made her eyebrows go up. “So let’s go back to your place.”
“I think we’d better,” she said drily, clearly unimpressed with my performance. “I’ll pay the tab. Come on.”
She overtipped the bartender, lightly, by rounding up to the next zero –– enough to earn some goodwill, not enough to stand out, and led the way out onto the pedway outside. “Call me Sonya,” she said, and I thought it was deliberate that she didn’t say it was her name. That was fair, since I wasn’t telling my name, either. “This way.”
She hadn’t brought transport, which on reflection I thought was smart; there was nothing for anybody to track, except our bodies in the crowd, and “Sonya” plainly knew how to lose a tail. We traveled slowly, with a lot of switchbacks –– but we didn’t pick up any followers, either, and when we got off the speeder bus three blocks from her hotel, the coast was clear. I hung back and let her lead the way up, but as I’d suspected nobody made any fuss over a young woman in a clinging red dress taking a man up to her room. It wasn’t that kind of neighborhood.
She input her code and waited just a second before she pushed on the door, and in that instant I realized something that had been nudging at me before, just out of reach: Sonya was Force-sensitive. Maybe not strong, but enough that she relied on instinct, had learned to wait and feel for what was beyond a door before she opened it. A Jedi wouldn’t have needed the extra half-second; but Sonya did, and she used it. It wasn’t the time or the place to say anything, and if I hadn’t entirely trusted the man who sent me to her then at least I trusted the source who had sent him, so I followed her inside.
“Just give me a moment,” she murmured, locking the door behind us, “so I can change into something more comfortable.”
I raised my eyebrows, and she winked at me to show that she knew exactly how bad that line was. It made me like her better, though I knew liking her or not liking her shouldn’t matter. But she made no move to change into anything, comfortable or otherwise: instead she unclipped a small tool from her utility belt and began moving about the room. After a couple of passes, I realized that what she was doing was scanning for listening devices, and I held still to let her do her job.
“Now!” she said, when she’d covered the whole room and given a swipe to the ‘fresher. “Let’s talk –– Ilee.”