ARMAND ISARD CORRECTIONAL FACILITY,
CORUSCANT

IN THE CITRUS-GREEN CORRIDOR LEADING TO THE VISITORS MEETING hall, Daala overtook Tahiri Veila, who was also dressed in a prison-yellow jumpsuit, also on her way to the hall. But Tahiri moved far more slowly than Daala. The Jedi, unlike the deposed Chief of State, was shackled at wrist and ankle with stun cuffs, a concession to the greater theoretical danger a fully trained Force-wielder posed. In addition, while Daala was accompanied by a standard, blocky security droid, Tahiri was escorted by a YVH combat droid—often a match for an armed and unrestrained Jedi, and certainly too great an obstacle for an unarmed and restrained one.

Daala fell in beside Tahiri. “So. Death.”

Tahiri glanced sidelong at her. “You first. Comm me and let me know what it’s like.”

“I don’t think so. I’ll walk out of this wretched place. You’ll be leaving in an urn. You killed a hero.”

“How many have you killed? Including your enemies and your subordinates?”

Daala gave Tahiri a smile that she knew belonged on a toothed, cartilaginous fish. “At least I have friends and allies left. What was it like to receive the death sentence with no one left in the courtroom even pretending to care about you?”

“I expect I’ll have friends again by the time I’m your age.”

Daala resumed her earlier pace, leaving Tahiri behind. Being honest with herself, she considered that conversation no better than a draw, and she wasn’t entertained by it.

Daala and her escort reached the admissions chamber into the visitors hall. Like most transition zones in the prison, this chamber was built along the paradigm of an air lock—heavily reinforced, with only one door, the hall side or the corridor side, capable of being opened at a time. Once she and her guard droid were inside, the hall-side door, built as though for a treasure vault, slid closed, and a hemispherical module studded with glows and readouts extended itself from the ceiling, scanning her. It would, she knew, determine the extent and nature of all prosthetics on her body, sniff for chemical explosives, take a sample brain scan and compare its patterns with those on record for her … time consuming, tedious, absolutely necessary.

Necessary when dealing with dangerous criminals. She fumed, but did not let the chamber’s holocams see that.

Finally the opposite-side vault door opened, admitting her to another short green corridor. The corridor was wide, with ample seating on both sides, hard and uncomfortable-looking chairs in a darker industrial green; prison guards waited in a couple of those chairs. The security droid drew to the side and allowed Daala to proceed alone.

The door at the far end slid up to admit her into the visitors hall.

It was, depressingly, much like the ones she’d seen all her life in holodramas about prisons. This was a square chamber. One entire wall was made up of booths. Each booth had a chair and a table and was concealed from the booths right and left by partitions. Each faced a pane of reinforced transparisteel. On the other side of the transparisteel, out in the free world, was a corresponding chair and table for the use of visitors. About two-thirds of the booths were occupied.

The remainder of this room was open, dominated by three human guards and three security droids.

Daala announced herself to the droid stationed nearest the door. “Admiral Natasi Daala.” She refused to use her prisoner number, and the facility’s warden, perhaps as a gesture of respect, had not gone to any effort to discipline her when she failed to do so.

She’d have to remember that. The warden had visited her once and had shown her an acceptable, if minimal, level of respect. He was walking a tightrope between doing his duty and demonstrating sympathy, and Daala appreciated both his adroitness and his sentiments. When she returned to power, she’d have to look into the man and his record.

The droid gestured to one of the booths. “Number Six.”

She sat at Number Six. Her visitor was already there. It was her attorney, Otha Tevarkian.

Except it wasn’t. His resemblance to Tevarkian was striking. Like Tevarkian, he was about sixty, with fair hair just beginning to thin. His clothes were dark and expensive but unobtrusive, just like those of Daala’s attorney. The briefcase resting on the tabletop before him was Tevarkian’s, or identical to it—soft-sided, silver and blue, its latches currently undone. But the man’s face was just a little different, a little less lined, the texture of his skin a little smoother. His eyes were a darker shade of blue.

Daala looked him over. “I have no idea who you are.”

The man smiled. He withdrew a datapad from his briefcase and set it next to the transparisteel barrier. “Otha Tevarkian … sent a message to my employer, who contracted me to come visit you today. We are to discuss your escape.”

Something like a mild electric shock coursed through Daala’s body. Still, she had one of the galaxy’s best sabacc faces and chose to betray no emotion. “You have my attention.”

The false attorney smiled. “Good. Now, the problem with prisons, even maximum-security institutions, is that they have weak points that are concessions either to building and maintenance costs or to political and cultural expediency. For example, this chamber.” He gestured, taking in the guards behind Daala, the visitors to his right and left. “It’s very close to one of the exits from the facility, and this is because studies suggest that prisoners fare psychologically better if they receive ongoing support from their family and social circle, and that members of the family and social circle are more likely to visit if they are not much inconvenienced. Security concerns say that prisoners stay more secure if a visitors hall is deep within the secure boundaries of the prison; pragmatism says there are more visits if the visitors can walk in and walk out conveniently. Especially if the prison is on a mass-transit line.” The false attorney gave her a that’s-just-the-way-it-is shrug.

From his briefcase, he withdrew a stack of documents on flimsi. These looked thicker and stiffer than most flimsi.

The false Tevarkian saw her look and must have guessed her question. “Laminated. They last longer that way.”

“Ah.”

“That’s the story, anyway.” He turned the first of them so that the printing faced Daala. He pressed it up against the transparisteel, just below the level of her head, and smoothed it into place. It adhered on its own. “I’m going to take these down in a few moments, but when I do, they’ll leave the front facing of their laminate behind. Here we get into cost issues plaguing our prisons. The holocams watching this chamber are not of the highest quality. They and their operators will not see the laminate adhering to the transparisteel.” He set another document precisely beside the first.

Daala glanced at the documents. One was a reproduction of the charges laid against her at her arraignment. The other was the first page of the transcription of her arraignment hearing.

She could keep her face emotionless, she could keep her voice level, but she couldn’t keep her heart from racing. She was about to go into battle. “I take it the laminate is laced with some material—”

“I don’t want to use the exact word, as it’s a very potent one, and if a droid guard’s audioreceptor picks up that word …”

“I understand.”

“But the substance is a new, very exciting, crystalline boom-boom material.” He set out a third document.

“Surely in quantities like this isn’t it not more, um, potent than transparisteel is strong.”

“No, not at all. But again, cost-of-construction issues rear their ugly head. The force will be enough to kick the transparisteel out of its frame.” He gave her a candid look. “I do a number of domicile insertions every year. If you reinforce a domicile against intrusion, you strengthen the doors and viewports. But the walls remain vulnerable. You find the weak spot, you exploit the weak spot.”

“Just like in military tactics.”

“So … in a minute, there will be nothing of consequence between us. And this facility will immediately seal up.”

The false attorney had five pieces of flimsi on the transparisteel now. That was the entire stack. He began to take them down, carefully peeling them away from the barrier. Daala, though, could see the almost invisible rectangular patches of laminate that remained behind.

“Forgive me if I don’t understand, but I would think that sealing this place would make it harder for us to walk out.”

He gave her an admonishing look. “Yes, but there are times when a prison will not execute a shutdown under any circumstances.”

“No, there aren’t.”

“You’re thinking of military prisons, and with military prisons, you’d be correct. But this is a civilian prison. So. What circumstances?”

She shook her head.

He touched the rear edge of his datapad and then brought the same finger up to touch the first document. Daala saw, but no prison holocam was likely to be acute enough to see, the nearly transparent filament that stretched from the back of the datapad to the laminate clinging to the barrier.

The false attorney held his finger there for a moment, then withdrew it. The filament remained. “Think mercifully, Admiral. A shutdown involves sealing off all exits. Ventilation also shuts down.”

“Which is the way it should be.”

“Yes. But if there is a poison gas attack on the facility, shutting down the ventilation kills everyone inside.”

“Your employer isn’t going to use poison gas—”

“And if a disaster contaminates all the food and water, and the prison is cut off from all relief, sealing all exits dooms the prisoners as well as the staff. So, by decrees dating back to the reforms of the New Republic, a prison experiencing such an event cannot be sealed. It has to rely on the staff to maintain security.”

Daala gave him a suspicious look. “We’re in the heart of Coruscant. This prison can’t be cut off from all relief.”

“Nor can the Senate Building experience a Yuuzhan Vong attack without the military having some clue that one is coming. Yet that exact thing seemed to happen … for a few crucial minutes … the day you were so seriously inconvenienced.” The false attorney had now attached filaments to all five sheets of laminate.

Daala buried her face in her hands for a brief moment. “Standardized operational procedures.”

“Correct! All prisons operated by the Galactic Alliance Department of Corrections, for consistency and to save costs, use the same basic computer system, which has to be able to handle a giant facility at the heart of Coruscant and a piddly little outpost on a remote moon near Dathomir. Same program, same emergency codes.”

He replaced his documents in the case and closed the latches. “In a moment, I’m going to press a button on this datapad. This will begin a five-second countdown and transmit an automated signal to someone still active in the Department of Corrections who believes very strongly that you should be in charge of the Alliance. This person has set up an automated code that will be transmitted from a secure and unimpeachable control computer at the seat of government power, which will tell this prison’s computer that it is now experiencing a poison gas attack and has been cut off from all relief or reinforcement by a Yuuzhan Vong assault.” He shrugged. “My employer thought it was only justice to trip the Jedi with their own cord.”

“And at the end of five seconds—boom-boom?”

“Boom-boom. And let me say, it’s a delight to hear the legitimate leader of the Galactic Alliance talking baby talk.”

She frowned at him, both because the remark was inappropriately personal and because there were still unresolved issues. “But this leaves me where you are, with guards and armor between me and freedom.”

“At that point, it’s all up to my employer. I can assure you, though, that immediately after boom-boom, I will no longer look as I do now, will no longer be carrying the identicard with which I entered this facility, will no longer have even the fingerprints or retinal patterns of Tevarkian. Oh, by the way, bear in mind that most of the boom-boom power is headed toward you.” The false attorney pressed a button on the datapad. “Five.”

Daala stared at him. He wasn’t moving.

“Four.”

Then she understood. He was playing Blink, a classic game of children, thrill-seekers, and military tacticians the galaxy over. Every species, every culture knew Blink. Sometimes called Swerve, sometimes named after particularly belligerent local animal species, it followed the same basic set of rules: two landspeeders, two military vehicles, two athletes would hurtle at each other, a move that, if it were to end in collision, would be at least very costly, at worst an example of mutually assured destruction. One, usually, would change direction an instant short of disaster. The other would win.

Daala could not help but grin.

“Three.”

On the tabletop, she drummed her fingers.

“Two.”

To his credit, the false attorney never looked nervous. But as the milliseconds counted down, as Daala’s internal sense of alarm rose, he sat there grinning at her, and then suddenly he was gone, ducking below the level of the table.

Using her free hand, the one not drumming fingers in a show of nonchalance, Daala yanked herself down and slammed into the floor.