Part 24 (2/2)
Mereel put a restraining hand on Skirata's shoulder as he overtook him. The terrible thing about Vau and his family was that it was perfectly possible. Instead, Skirata tried to concentrate on the inexplicably generous Vau, the man who'd just given him millions for the frankly sentimental and unselfish purpose of rescuing clones, rather than the s.a.d.i.s.tic martinet who'd nearly killed Atin to toughen him up.
”Udesii,” Mereel muttered. ”Take it easy, Kal'buir”
Skirata did his best. He took a deep breath as he walked into the lobby of the resort's huge hotel complex and focused on being a glitterstim baron on a short break. He was a non-descript, short, gray-haired, middle-aged man who could pa.s.s unnoticed as a vagrant in the right clothes, or bring a room to a halt simply by walking with the right degree of swagger.
Today he could play a prince. He had a fortune in the safe on board Aay'han, so thinking like the idle and disreputable rich was easy. He was both.
A tall female Rek looked down at him. Skirata had seen them working as bounty hunters-their ultrathin whip-like bodies came in handy for accessing awkward locations-but it was a surprise to come across one in the hospitality business.
This one didn't appear to have a sense of humor. He decided to skip the diet jokes.
”Do we need a permit for angling here, ma'am?” Skirata asked innocently. ”We've come for the rifi fis.h.i.+ng.”
”Yes,” she said, not exactly personifying hospitable. She fixed him with a disturbing purple eye. ”Are you guests?”
”No, we have a marine vessel moored here.”
”Well, there'll be a fee for berthing. Do you wish to hire tackle, too?”
”Oh, we've come very well prepared, thanks ...”
”And you'll have to sign a waiver, because Tropix Resorts cannot be held responsible for any death, injury, damage, or other untoward incident caused by, or relating to, hunting, fis.h.i.+ng, or exploration in any area more than ten meters off-sh.o.r.e, or beyond a depth of fifty meters...”
Skirata smiled indulgently, waste of time though it was, and took out a stylus. ”We're used to taking risks, ma'am. Where do I sign?”
”How long will this permit need to cover?”
How long to find the hiding hole that Ko Sai had created for herself? Maybe hours. Maybe days. If they were unlucky, weeks, and when they found it there was always a chance that the aiwha-bait would have moved on again.
”Give me a week's pa.s.s,” Skirata said, slapping his credit chip on the desk. ”If we find we have . . . more time to kill, I'll extend it.”
The Rek checked the chip in her scanner. ”Thank you, Master Nessin.” Skirata flinched at the bogus ID. ”I must ad-vise caution if you fish beyond the five-hundred-meter limits. We do have people go missing from time to time when they ignore the warnings. But that's part of the appeal for many anglers and divers who come here.”
Vau did his icy I-know-something-you-don't smile. ”Sport-fis.h.i.+ng isn't sport unless you run the risk of being caught yourself, is it?”
”There's always relaxing on the beach,” said the Rek. ”Or a pleasant walk around the harbor.”
She seemed to have cla.s.sed them as two old guys trying to rediscover their youth through destructive machismo, maybe with Mereel as the fit young minder who could haul them out of trouble. It was perfect: whoever Ko Sai had as a contact here-and she'd need one, if only to get hold of supplies- wouldn't be tipped off to the fact that Mandalorian bounty hunters were in town.
Aay'han didn't look too conspicuous on one of the pontoons that stretched out into the azure water. Most of the vessels alongside showed no signs of ever having slipped their moorings, but there were a few more rugged craft that were clearly from offworld. Skirata took out his datapad and aimed the scanner discreetly in their direction to check the pa.s.sive transponders, just in case. He found no registrations that worried him.
”You have to hand it to the investment group here,” he said as they tried to look casual. ”They take a disaster and turn it into a USP.”
”You're so cra.s.s,” Vau muttered.
”What's a USP?” Mereel asked.
”Unique selling point, son. As in, they made a complete shu'shuk when they terraformed the place, not knowing just what kind of wildlife was in the ice when they thawed the planet. There are some real nasties lurking underwater, but instead of saying, Ooh, that's too dangerous, let s scrub the resort idea, the tourist board touts it as an opportunity for wild adventure. I have to respect that kind of resilience in business.''
Mereel smiled to himself. ”Until the lawsuits come rolling in.”
”Just operating costs,” Skirata said. ”Overheads.”
The three men climbed onto Aay'han and sat on a flat section of her casing, backs resting against the curve of the port cargo bay, looking out to sea. Mird sat with its nose pointing into the wind, sniffing happily. Skirata didn't know a lot about sport angling, although he could manage to catch fish if he ever had to, and he hoped there wasn't some giveaway sign of a real angler that was conspicuously missing. If push came to shove, he could always play the stim baron on his first fis.h.i.+ng trip.
”The aiwha-bait has to have a resupply route,” he said. ”She can't just go to ground here and have no contact with anyone. How does she get her food? She's not the kind that lives off the land. She's used to having minions.”
”Sea,” said Mereel.
”What?”
”Live off the sea, not the land.”
”Well, Kaminoan discipline or not, she has to eat some-thing.”
”Let's do a little exploring,” said Vau. ”We have the chart. Oya, Mird!”
Mird stood up, paws slipping on the smooth hull, and looked around frantically at the command to hunt. The strill couldn't sense any prey. Vau leaned over and ruffled its loose folds of gold fur, pointing at the water. Strills could fly and glide, but swimming wasn't their forte. Mird rumbled with disappointed frustration.
” 'S'okay, Mird, I'll let you hunt kaminiise soon,” Skirata said. He wondered if he was getting soft: he'd always dis-liked the animal, even if he couldn't blame it for its savagery given a master like Vau. Now he saw its talents, if not its charm. ”Soon. Okay?”
Mird's eyes had that focus and intensity that suggested it understood Skirata perfectly, and it settled down again with its huge head in Vau's lap. Mereel slid his sun visor into place and leaned back against the curve of the hull, fingers meshed behind his head.
”Let's narrow down the search range first,” he said, pointing. ”Look. Check out the speed.”
Moving across the harbor, well within the safe turquoise shallows, was a powered barge with aquata divers getting ready to explore the underwater world, wearing a bizarre array of brightly colored swimwear that said they didn't dive for a living. The hull looked like the barges tied up on nearby pontoons in Tropix resort livery: this was what the staff here used to get around the perfectly planned, ideally s.p.a.ced is-land chain, and this was what the Twi'lek must have used to move Ko Sai's equipment and droids out to sea.
If they worked out the speed the barges could cruise, and factored in the weight of the cargo the Twi'lek had delivered, they'd get a radius within which to search.
Skirata aimed his datapad, laying it flat on his knee and letting it track the barge. ”I was never very good at this ...” It was just a matter of timing it across a set distance, using the datapad like one of those gizmos that CSF sometimes used to track speeders. ”Well, I make that fifteen klicks an hour.”
Mereel slid along the hull and checked over his shoulder. ”So that means if the barge went out to some RV point and returned in half an hour, we're looking at a maximum range of maybe ten klicks, if it was moving faster, and that's being optimistic.”
”Let's take the search out to the fifteen-klick radius, then, just to be sure.”
Vau keyed in the data and projected the holochart onto the hull. ”This is three-dimensional, remember.” A concave relief chart formed like a mesh basket in blue light that was hard to see in the sunlight. ”That's the underwater topography in a fifteen-klick radius from the coordinates the Twi'lek gave us.”
Even in these lighting conditions, Skirata could see the indentations of cave mouths under the waterline. The charts only went down as far as fifty meters.
It was as good a place as any to start looking.
”Who did the hydrography for the developers?” Mereel asked. ”They put that fifty-meter limit in for a reason, be-cause they must have known what was below it. They didn't just stop looking because it was time for a caf break.”
”I don't think there's the equivalent of city hall here,” Skirata said. ”We can't just stroll in and ask the local planning chief if we can look through his database. That's the problem with commercially owned planets.”
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