unfamiliar tang, continuing to study the kid even as she chided herself for letting her thoughts wander off target that way. The only reason she was on Darkknell in the first place, after all, was that it wasn’t Kreeling or Dorsis or Mantarran. Inspector Hal Horn of Corellian Security had already tracked her to and chased her off all those worlds, and most likely he’d continue his winning streak by tracking her here, too. The sooner she figured out a quiet way off this rock, the better her chances of staying ahead of him until he gave up and went home.
She snorted gently. Fat chance. Horn wasn’t going to give up, at least not in her lifetime. The man was one of that supremely irritating class of law enforcers who combined the menace of incorruptibility with the annoyance of not knowing when to quit.
Across the tapcafe, the kid slipped a hand beneath the left side of his jacket as he glanced around. The second time he’d done that, Moranda noted, in the past ten minutes. Must be something he was having to reassure himself was still there…
Stop it! she ordered herself sternly. She was on the run, and on the run was no time to be swinging for a scratch. Stirring up the locals with a score would be completely counterproductive, especially if she stirred them up enough to catch her with spice or dealies or whatever the kid was carrying that was making him so nervous.
He lifted his cup to his lips, half turning to throw a look toward the tapcafe door, his ninth such check since Moranda had been watching. As he did so, his jacket stretched momentarily against the object in his pocket, giving her a brief glimpse of its shape. It was square, slightly larger than a datacard, but considerably thicker.
A datapack? Could be. Probably with six to ten datacards, judging from the thickness, snugged together in a protective case.
Moranda swirled the blue liqueur thoughtfully in her glass. Well, now. A datapack put a very different perspective on things. Every police and security operative knew spice and other contraband items on sight or smell or taste; but a simple, innocent-looking datapack was another matter entirely. It was something anyone might be carrying, something that even the most suspicious mouth-breather would have to go to great lengths to prove wasn’t her property in the first place.
More to the point, it was something that was likely worth hard, cold money. And money was what she needed if she was going to get out of here ahead of Inspector Horn and his fistful of Corellian warrants.
Which left only one question: how to get the datapack away from its nervous owner without getting caught doing it.
The glowing sign marking the ’fresher stations was against the wall on the far side of the kid’s table. Refilling her drink from the carafe, she got up and ambled in that direction, putting a slightly tipsy hesitation into her movements. His jacket was cut Preter style, she noted with a single casual glance as she strolled past him, the sort with a deep inside pocket positioned beneath the armhole on either side. Possibly fastened at the top, but probably not seriously sealed. Still, with the youth hunched over the table the way he was, the only way to get at the datapack would be for her to get him to take the jacket at least partially off.
But that was okay. She enjoyed a challenge.
The ’fresher stations were like the rest of the Continuum Void: old and more than slightly dilapidated. Sealing herself into one, she set her drink down on the crumble-edged shelf and got to work.
The small tiles lining the station were the first target. Pulling out her knife, she pried two of them off the wall, then carefully trimmed them down to datacard size. Beneath the tiles was a layer of the low-quality honeycomb that served as a passive air filter in low-tier places like this one; a double layer of that sandwiched between her two tiles added the required thickness. One of her diaphanous black scarves wrapped tightly
She snorted gently. Fat chance. Horn wasn’t going to give up, at least not in her lifetime. The man was one of that supremely irritating class of law enforcers who combined the menace of incorruptibility with the annoyance of not knowing when to quit.
Across the tapcafe, the kid slipped a hand beneath the left side of his jacket as he glanced around. The second time he’d done that, Moranda noted, in the past ten minutes. Must be something he was having to reassure himself was still there…
Stop it! she ordered herself sternly. She was on the run, and on the run was no time to be swinging for a scratch. Stirring up the locals with a score would be completely counterproductive, especially if she stirred them up enough to catch her with spice or dealies or whatever the kid was carrying that was making him so nervous.
He lifted his cup to his lips, half turning to throw a look toward the tapcafe door, his ninth such check since Moranda had been watching. As he did so, his jacket stretched momentarily against the object in his pocket, giving her a brief glimpse of its shape. It was square, slightly larger than a datacard, but considerably thicker.
A datapack? Could be. Probably with six to ten datacards, judging from the thickness, snugged together in a protective case.
Moranda swirled the blue liqueur thoughtfully in her glass. Well, now. A datapack put a very different perspective on things. Every police and security operative knew spice and other contraband items on sight or smell or taste; but a simple, innocent-looking datapack was another matter entirely. It was something anyone might be carrying, something that even the most suspicious mouth-breather would have to go to great lengths to prove wasn’t her property in the first place.
More to the point, it was something that was likely worth hard, cold money. And money was what she needed if she was going to get out of here ahead of Inspector Horn and his fistful of Corellian warrants.
Which left only one question: how to get the datapack away from its nervous owner without getting caught doing it.
The glowing sign marking the ’fresher stations was against the wall on the far side of the kid’s table. Refilling her drink from the carafe, she got up and ambled in that direction, putting a slightly tipsy hesitation into her movements. His jacket was cut Preter style, she noted with a single casual glance as she strolled past him, the sort with a deep inside pocket positioned beneath the armhole on either side. Possibly fastened at the top, but probably not seriously sealed. Still, with the youth hunched over the table the way he was, the only way to get at the datapack would be for her to get him to take the jacket at least partially off.
But that was okay. She enjoyed a challenge.
The ’fresher stations were like the rest of the Continuum Void: old and more than slightly dilapidated. Sealing herself into one, she set her drink down on the crumble-edged shelf and got to work.
The small tiles lining the station were the first target. Pulling out her knife, she pried two of them off the wall, then carefully trimmed them down to datacard size. Beneath the tiles was a layer of the low-quality honeycomb that served as a passive air filter in low-tier places like this one; a double layer of that sandwiched between her two tiles added the required thickness. One of her diaphanous black scarves wrapped tightly
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