Twilight Company by Alexander Freed

Author:Alexander Freed [Freed, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Worlds
Published: 2015-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

PLANET ANKHURAL

Seven Days Before Operation Ringbreaker

Three Years Later

The last time Brand had been on Ankhural, its capital—if a planet with only one city and a handful of unmarked settlements could be said to have a capital—had been enclosed by a ray shield that filtered out the billowing dust of the surrounding silica plains. The streets had never been clean, but they’d had a seedy charm.

Brand no longer found Ankhural charming. She wore her mask as she walked through alleyways tagged by vivisector gangs, but her eyes had felt gritty since she’d woken. White-skinned, six-fingered men holding scalpels peered at her as she moved, fading into the shadows when they saw the rifle on her back and the knife displayed prominently on her hip.

She had already sold her disruptor. She missed it, but nothing on Ankhural fetched a higher price than a lovingly maintained, excruciatingly deadly, and widely banned weapon.

The alleys took her beneath a broad awning and into near-darkness. Her mask enhanced the silhouettes of dozens of veiled men and women who whispered and haggled and grappled and kissed. Free traders from Wild Space met with representatives of the Crymorah syndicate, swapping favors for arms and spice. Umbaran spies bartered their services to survivors of the Death Watch. Any one of the market’s denizens might have fetched a decent bounty; like a stray speck of sand, the thought of abandoning her cause and returning to a simpler life drifted through Brand’s mind.

She shook the thought away and walked on. She reached the side of a shriveled, hobbling Weequay with a face like a desiccated corpse and matched his pace.

“No trouble?” she asked. Her Huttese was clumsy; she could have hired a protocol droid or bought a translation program for her mask, but she hoped the effort would win her some respect.

“No trouble,” the alien said. “No inquiries. The gangs become curious soon, I think.”

Brand reached into her jacket and withdrew a stack of high-value credit chips. She pressed them into the old Weequay’s palm. “Tell the Grandfather of Vice I’m grateful for his help.”

With that, she walked on. She felt a presence at her back until she exited the market, at which point her stalker, whatever it was, abandoned its hunt.

Could have gone worse, she thought.

By the time she arrived at the podracing track at the city’s edge, the lenses on her mask were clouded with grime. She lowered the mask altogether as she neared the metal doors to the great arena—large enough to admit a hovertank but guarded only by a spidery droid. The droid inserted an appendage into a wall socket to acknowledge her arrival, and the doors slid open less than half a meter; she had to turn her body to squeeze through.

In the vast space beyond the doors, enclosed by the amphitheater but open to the swirling sky, the Thunderstrike rested in a bed of dust. Dozens of Twilight soldiers moved about, dwarfed by the ship’s hull: They carted tools and machine parts in from

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