Jude Watson: Jedi Quest 9: The False Peace

"One of the criminals is Jenna Zan Arbor."

Dex whistled. "A nasty piece of work. Wouldn't know her to see her, though. And I haven't heard she's back on Coruscant."

"How about Senator Bog Divinian?"

"Astri Oddo's husband? Sure, he's been here. Likes my sliders. You know, some people find them addictive! Picks up his dinner many a time and brings it back to his lodgings."

Obi-Wan briefly described the Slams. "Have you seen them?"

Dex stroked his chin. "Don't think so, and haven't heard of them, either. Hard to say. Here's the problem — we've been too busy here lately to notice much of anything except dirty dishes. And things are set to get even busier tomorrow, because the All Planets Relief Fund Ceremony will be held right across the way." With one fat finger, Dex pointed out the window to the plaza. "This is the kind of area the Fund will be trying to improve.

Anyway, I'll keep my eye out. Many will be coming to see the big shots like the Chancellor. But most will come, I'd wager, to see a fortune being transferred. Everyone likes to be close to vertex, even if they don't have any themselves. They feel richer for looking at it — at least until they go home and look around at what they've got!" Dex laughed heartily.

Anakin looked at Obi-Wan. Fortune? Vertex? "What do you mean, Dex?" he asked.

"Don't you know the drill? Every planet in the Senate is donating vertex to the new fund. They present it to Palpatine, and then his personal guard brings it to the vault." Dex pointed across the plaza. "The Bank of the Core. Now don't be thinking there will be hanky-panky," he said, waggling his finger. "There will be security like you've never seen.

Coruscant security and the Chancellor's Red Guards. Tomorrow they'll be cordoning off walkways and placing officers around the plaza. A journalist for the HoloNet news even paid me to keep her airspeeder out back so she'd be able to take off quick tomorrow to get to her vidcam studio hookup. I said yes because she was a looker — or maybe it was the credits she put in my hand, ha! Then she goes and parks it so it blocks my food-delivery doors. Left it locked tight as a drum. Now you know I don't stand for that.

" Dex chuckled. "So I got my pal Acey to break in and I moved it myself behind a dumpster."

Dex's words washed over Obi-Wan. There was something here. Item after item clicked in, but he couldn't add them up.

"Can we see that airspeeder, Dex?"

Dex gave him a puzzled look. "Don't see why, but what I have is yours, Obi-Wan. This way."

Anakin and Obi-Wan followed Dex through the steamy kitchen noisy with clattering pans and spattering grease, through the rear exit doors into the alley. A long airspeeder was parked in an angle, wedged between a dumpster and durasteel trash bins.

"It'll smell like old fish tomorrow, but I can't help it. They can't block my kitchen," Dexter said.

"It's a Ralion B-14." Anakin said.

"Can you show me how it was parked before you moved it, Dex?" Obi-Wan asked.

Dexter stamped his enormous foot. "Right here. In the way."

Obi-Wan bent over and studied a round cover sunk into the duracrete street. He knocked on it with his knuckles. "Utility tunnel."

"For my water delivery," Dexter said. "I know because my water froze last winter, and that's where they crawled down to fix it."

Anakin and Obi-Wan exchanged a glance. It was all adding up.

"Got to check on my stew. You two come in when you have more time. You know I like to feed you." Dexter waddled back into the diner.

"Must have been Valadon in disguise," Obi-Wan said. "The airspeeder is for their getaway. And here," he said, stamping his foot on the cover, "is one of the entrance points for the Zone, most likely."

Anakin prowled around the airspeeder. "Doesn't seem to be juiced up, at least on the outside. No extra exhaust valves. Seats four, five in a crunch." He opened the door and slid inside.

Obi-Wan entered the speeder from the other end. "Looks clean."

"Fully fueled," Anakin noted.

Obi-Wan reached over toward the door on his side. Something had drifted down to the floor when he'd opened the door, the tiniest wisp of a thing. Attuned to notice every scrap, he bent over to pick it up. It was a thread. He held it up. Blue.

"Anything?" Anakin asked.

"I'll send it to the Temple lab for analysis, but it looks like standard cloth," Obi-Wan said, carefully placing it in his utility belt.

"Certainly not the septsilk and veda cloth that both Zan Arbor and the Slams like to wear."

Anakin murmured a reply, busy studying the engine specs. "This doesn't make sense," he said. "The transport body style doesn't fit the engine. In speeders, you maximize every particle of space. I'd guess there is about three centimeters unaccounted for."

"That's not very much."

"Oh, yes it is." Anakin looked over at his Master. "It's just like the Slams' ship. They knew how to hide secret compartments in tiny spaces."

Anakin was already reaching under the dash. Obi-Wan felt along the floor and the edges of his seat. He had found a few compartments on the Slams' ship, but Anakin had found all of them.

"Got it." A drawer popped out toward Anakin. He reached inside, then tossed an item to Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan examined the palm-sized datapad. He switched it on. "It's a map of the plaza," Obi-Wan said as he accessed the file. "With notations on street closings and space lanes." Obi-Wan pressed a few more indicators.

"And the water transport tunnels are marked."

"Omega, Zan Arbor, and the Slams are planning to heist the new Relief Fund treasury," Anakin said.

"That's what they're after. Not only will it give them a fortune to operate with, it will embarrass Palpatine."

"It will be a political victory as well as a personal one. That's most likely why Bog and Sauro got involved — they are looking at a way to strike a blow against Palpatine. And if they profit from it as well, why not?"

"With the help of the Zone, a small band like the Slams can get around the entire Coruscant security force," Anakin said, shaking his head.

Obi-Wan nodded. "And in his arrogance, Omega expects to defeat the Jedi, too. If the Jedi Order allows the heist to happen, they will be disgraced. That will help Bog and Sauro pass their petition — or win a no- confidence vote against the Chancellor."

His eyes gleamed at Anakin, and Anakin caught the spark. He felt a spurt of excitement. The pieces were falling into place.

"At last we are one step ahead of Omega," Obi-Wan said. "Now all we have to do is set the trap."

Anakin expected his Master to explode into movement. Obi-Wan never wasted time. Instead, Obi-Wan just looked at him.

"So?"

"So?" Anakin asked cautiously.

"What next?"

"You want me to decide?"

Obi-Wan nodded. "When you become a Jedi Knight, you'll have to strategize as well as act."

There were a number of things to be done, and at first, they crowded Anakin's brain so that he wasn't sure which to do first. But then a moment later everything was clear and he knew what to do.

"First, we should contact Siri and Ferus and tell them what we know, so that they can concentrate their study of the water system on the area around the plaza," Anakin said. "Then, we should contact-Master Windu. The Jedi Council needs to come up with its own plans to protect the vertex during the ceremony."

"Good."

"And we should request a meeting with Chancellor Palpatine," Anakin went on. "It's the only way we can get across the seriousness of what we think is going to happen. After all, it's just guesswork, and it could be easily dismissed. But we should be able to convince him to increase security and put monitors on the water systems. Though…" Anakin tapped his fingers on the dashboard"… if we do nothing and simply allow them to sabotage the system with the Zone, we have an advantage."