Author Topic: The Holoshill (9 yrs after ANH; OCs) COMPLETED 8/18
lazykbys 
Registered: Oct '04
Date Posted: 7/14/05 5:35am Subject: The Holoshill (9 yrs after ANH; OCs) COMPLETED 8/18 - Date Edited: 8/18/05 4:59am (6 edits total) Edited By: lazykbys
Title: The Holoshill
Author: lazykbys
Timeframe: 9 years after ANH (between CoPL and HttE)
Characters: OCs
Genre: well . . . let's call it a mystery
Keywords:
Summary: A holoshill (the GFFA equivalent of a tabloid reporter) investigates the past of an Alderaanian refugee.
Notes: Inspired by the (sadly incomplete) War Crimes: The Postwar Trial of an Imperial Admiral by Geoff Morton. You don't have to read my fic, but if you don't read his, you're missing out on a good story.

Additional Note: I'm planning on posting a chapter (there are only four of them, not including the prologue and epilogue) every Thursday. However, if there aren't any replies I might post the whole darn thing in one go just to get it over with.

- lazy

EDIT: I've never heard of a SW book called HtoE. Have you?



The Holoshill


My name is Zale Kallanby and I'm a freelance reporter for the Holonet news agency Core World Constellation. That's right, I'm a holoshill who makes a living by sticking my nose into the private lives of celebrities.

I know "real" journalists look at me like I'm one of those things that live in sewage recycling compartments, but I figure someone's got to do it and that someone might as well be me. I have to pay my bills somehow, you know. Besides, I'm not making the rich and famous do the things they do any more than I make people view my reports. It's not my fault that truth is more interesting than fiction. And unless you're one of those big name writers like Queen or Klantz, truth is more profitable, too. Especially if it's dirty.

There are exceptions, of course. Sometimes the public doesn't care because they're caught up in a bigger, juicier scandal. Sometimes it's better to keep things hushed, if only because you'll be surrounded by commando lawyers if you don't. And sometimes . . . well, sometimes you just can't. I'll leave it to you to figure out why this story was told the way it was.

It began in a small café in Coruscant -

 

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VaderLVR64 
Title: Fan Fic Manager in Combat Boots
Registered: Feb '04
42064_Darth Vader
Date Posted: 7/14/05 8:41am Subject: RE: The Holoshill (9 yrs after ANH; OCs) to be updated weekly on Thursdays
Consider this a reply! I am most intrigued! wink Looking forward to more!

 

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VadersMistress 
Registered: Apr '04
44294_Darth Vader Snort
Date Posted: 7/15/05 1:49am Subject: RE: The Holoshill (9 yrs after ANH; OCs) to be updated weekly on Thursdays
Erm, today was Thursday and I didn't get an update! cry

Nah, but could you update soon? I want to know what happens! grin

 

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Would I rather be feared or loved? Um... Easy, both. I want people to be afraid of how much they love me.
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Alethia 
Registered: Feb '05
Date Posted: 7/15/05 4:37am Subject: RE: The Holoshill (9 yrs after ANH; OCs) to be updated weekly on Thursdays
Intriguing, but short. Which means I'd like more...please?

Zale's definitely got an interesting vibe going. His voice is clear and interesting and I was drawn in immediately. So please post more?

 

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lazykbys_left 
Registered: Feb '05
Date Posted: 7/15/05 6:47am Subject: RE: The Holoshill (9 yrs after ANH; OCs) [replies to readers] - Date Edited: 8/21/05 2:14am (1 edits total) Edited By: lazykbys_left
VaderLVR64 posted:
Consider this a reply! I am most intrigued! wink Looking forward to more!
Thanks for reading! (And even more for replying! grin ) I hope I can meet your expectations.

VadersMistress posted:
Nah, but could you update soon? I want to know what happens! grin
Gaah, you don't know how much that makes me want to post. However, I decided to update at regular intervals and that means you'll have to wait until the 21st. Of course, I can be bribed. For example, if you could PM me a few of your mother's unfinished vigs . . . devil

Alethia posted:
Intriguing, but short. Which means I'd like more...please?

Zale's definitely got an interesting vibe going. His voice is clear and interesting and I was drawn in immediately. So please post more?
*sigh* I know it's short. I thought about fleshing it out, but I couldn't come up with anything. I also considered posting the prologue and chapter 1 at the same time, but something in me said "no". I'm sorry, but my twisted sense of humor agrees with that "no", meaning there's nothing I can do about it.


Sneak preview:
Chapter One : The Princess

When I first met her, she introduced herself as Princess Kalima Organa of Alderaan. She said that her mother was Bail Organa's half-sister and that she had the documents to prove it.

. . . and that's all you're going to get until Thursday. (Unless you ask to PM you the first chapter, that is.)

- lazy

 

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"You're like some kind of link machine." - rhonderoo
It didn't stop being magic just because you found out how it was done.
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amidalachick 
Registered: Aug '03
23592_Tusken Raider
Date Posted: 7/15/05 7:01am Subject: RE: The Holoshill (9 yrs after ANH; OCs) to be updated weekly on Thursdays
Intriguing start. You've got yourself another reader, lazy. grin

 

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"Love...always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres."
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lazykbys_left 
Registered: Feb '05
Date Posted: 7/15/05 8:27am Subject: RE: The Holoshill (9 yrs after ANH; OCs) [reply to a reader] - Date Edited: 8/21/05 2:00am (1 edits total) Edited By: lazykbys_left
Thanks for reading, amidalachick! I hope I don't disappoint you.


Oh yes, I almost forgot. To everyone who is reading/has read this story so far - whether you're a poster or a lurker - thank you for reading!

- lazy

 

-----signature-----
"You're like some kind of link machine." - rhonderoo
It didn't stop being magic just because you found out how it was done.
DARK SIDE FHTAGN
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Courtney_Solo 
Registered: May '05
42057_Padme
Date Posted: 7/15/05 8:31am Subject: RE: The Holoshill (9 yrs after ANH; OCs) to be updated weekly on Thursdays
hypnotized

 

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"Look for me by moonlight,
I'll come to thee by moonlight,
Though hell should bar the way." - Alfred Noyes
sad I'm not around anymore. Sorry, fellas. sad
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lazykbys_left 
Registered: Feb '05
Date Posted: 7/15/05 8:59am Subject: RE: The Holoshill (9 yrs after ANH; OCs) [reply to a reader] - Date Edited: 8/21/05 2:01am (1 edits total) Edited By: lazykbys_left
Ummm . . . sorry, I'm not sure how to interpret that smiley, but thank you for reading, Courtney_Solo! I hope you'll enjoy the rest of the story.

- lazy

 

-----signature-----
"You're like some kind of link machine." - rhonderoo
It didn't stop being magic just because you found out how it was done.
DARK SIDE FHTAGN
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lazykbys 
Registered: Oct '04
Date Posted: 7/19/05 7:28pm Subject: RE: The Holoshill - chapter one: The Princess - Date Edited: 7/20/05 7:26am (1 edits total) Edited By: lazykbys
I know I said I'd update on Thursday, but my computer is making weird noises and I'm not sure how much longer I can keep it running. Hopefully, whatever it is will be resolved by the next scheduled update - which will be on a Thursday, by the Maker!

- lazy



Chapter One : The Princess

When I first met her, she introduced herself as Princess Kalima Organa of Alderaan. She said that her mother was Bail Organa's half-sister and that she had the documents to prove it. One year later, she had demoted herself to Countess Nilvana, heiress to one of the richest Alderaanian families. After that she jumped regularly from branch to branch of the royal family tree like a ring-eyed lemur, each time with far-fetched evidence of noble bloodlines.

We get a few like her every year. Han Solo's illegitimate children, Leia Organa's biological mother, Emperor Palpatine's concubines - people claiming intimate links to famous people, willing to spill everything for a bag full of credits. Most of them had forged documents proving their connections. Some of them really believed they were who they said they were.

The main difference between Kalima and the others was that she didn't have any first-hand tales to tell. Instead, she spun stories about secret affairs and one-night stands that would put any romance writer to shame. Not to mention all the tangential evidence she collected to prove her lineage.

In reality, Kalima Rhombro was an Alderaanian orphan who'd found employment in a Coruscant-based insurance firm shortly before the Death Star destroyed Alderaan. Nobody knew who her parents had been, and after the Death Star she became obsessed with discovering her true roots. I always thought of her as a harmless nut with a need to belong. Being an Alderaanian myself, I could sympathize with her - to a certain extent.

But feeling sorry for her and believing her are two different things. And to be totally honest, the chances of her story appearing in the Constellation were even less than her actually being royalty. Her convoluted theories, while interesting, were never going to get me a byline. I never had the heart to tell her that, of course. I may be criminally insensitive at times, but not to a fellow Alderaanian. And especially not to Kalima.

When I entered to the café where we usually did "business", she gave me a cheery little wave and a bright smile. "Good morning, Zale. You've been treating yourself well, I trust?"

I returned the smile as I sat down at her table. "Not too bad, Mistress Kalima. You look pretty good yourself."

"Why, thank you!"

"You said you found some information about your background?"

Right on cue, she took out a loosely-bound sheaf of flimsiplasts and handed it to me. I could never understand why she printed out everything on flimsies when a standard data chip would be easier to use and much less cumbersome. Maybe it was just her idea of solid evidence.

"Do you know Dolf Hemwell?" she asked as I started skimming.

"Sure," I said without looking up. "Junior member of the Alderaanian Council. Married once with no kids. His wife was on planet when the Death Star struck, I think." And that was practically everything I knew about his private life. Like quite a few Alderaanians who had rarely left the planet before it ceased to exist, his past records had all been destroyed with the rest of Alderaan. Add to this his general unwillingness to talk about himself and his low public profile, and you got a big blank.

It wasn't even an interesting blank. As far as anyone knew, Hemwell spent most of his time organizing fund-raisers, hounding important people for donations, and doing research for places to invest the money. This was something he did extremely well - in fact, it was something of a joke that if it weren't for him, the Refugees would belong to the Hutts by now. But other than that he had no social life to speak of. He didn't have any known vices, either: he didn't chase after women, he didn't drink or do drugs, and he didn't gamble. To put it bluntly, the man was boring. He wasn't at all the sort Kalima usually got fixated on. By Alderaan's shards, he wasn't even nobility!

Which means, I remember thinking at the time, this time Kalima might actually have something.

"So how are you and Hemwell related?" I asked. I expected her to launch into a long-winded list of coincidences like she always did. However, this time she was uncharacteristically hesitant.

"Actually - I'm not sure if we are."

This surprised me. It was the first time Kalima had come to me without being one hundred percent certain about her lineage. In the past, she had always known who she was, even if she had to bend logic to the breaking point to prove it. This uncertainty might have been a new tactic on her part, but I doubted it.

"You know I had Arlan," she said.

I nodded. Arlan Syndrome is a rare genetic blood disorder that, if left untreated, can cause strokes and heart attacks at an early age. Fortunately, it can be detected and taken care of in utero. The only lasting effect I know of is that people with Arlan can only receive blood transfusions from others with the disease. In this age of bacta the need hardly ever arose, but all Alderaanians with Arlan are required by law to be registered - which, I realized, must be how Kalima found Hemwell.

"So you searched the medical databanks and he came up. Is that it?"

"Yes. Then I found that he used to have a medical policy with us," she said, meaning the insurance company she worked for. "It was in the archives. Only - well, look here." She flipped through the flimsies till she came to his medical examination sheet. "See? No Arlan."

I looked. Sure enough, there was nothing there. "Are you sure this isn't a mistake?"

She shook her head. "We go through a client's medical history very carefully, Zale. We wouldn't overlook something like this."

"I see. It's a mystery, all right." I could see it in her eyes: Kalima's romantic mind was probably running scenarios of secret childbirths and false identities. I was thinking more along the lines of clerical error. But even if the document had been falsified for some obscure purpose, it wasn't much of a story.

Not that I could say so to her face, of course.

"Okay, then," I said. "I'll have to do some checking on these, just in case. It might take a week, a month . . . well, you know how it is. But I'll make sure it gets the full attention it deserves." Which, in my honest opinion, wasn't much. Besides, I was pretty sure that by the time I got around to it, she would have found someone else to be related to.

As it turned out, I was right about the last part. The first part, though, was another story.

 

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Please feel free to PM me with your comments.
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Exeter 
Registered: Feb '05
14708_Lando Calrissian
Date Posted: 7/20/05 11:39am Subject: RE: The Holoshill (9 yrs after ANH; OCs) updated 7/19 Chapter One: The Princess
Great work, man. I love the name "holoshill", it really fits well and gives the right connotation. This whole idea is refreshingly original. Keep up the good work!

I'll have to check out Morton's War Crimes as well.

 

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lazykbys_left 
Registered: Feb '05
Date Posted: 7/21/05 5:55am Subject: RE: The Holoshill [reply to reader] - Date Edited: 8/11/05 7:35am (2 edits total) Edited By: lazykbys_left
Thank you Exeter, but I can't take credit for the word holoshill (unless you're talking about choosing it as a title, in which case my ego is going to be all bloated up). I got it from one of the X-Wing books - The Krytos Trap, I think it was. I wish I could come up with words like that. *sigh*

Thanks for reading!

- lazy


EDIT because the parentheses were bothering me.

 

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"You're like some kind of link machine." - rhonderoo
It didn't stop being magic just because you found out how it was done.
DARK SIDE FHTAGN
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VaderLVR64 
Title: Fan Fic Manager in Combat Boots
Registered: Feb '04
42064_Darth Vader
Date Posted: 7/21/05 6:33am Subject: RE: The Holoshill (9 yrs after ANH; OCs) updated 7/19 Chapter One: The Princess
Hooray! An update! Love the way this is going and I am looking forward EAGERLY to the next update. praying

 

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If you have to choose between tears and laughter, remember that laughter burns more calories.
Proud New Army Mom - off to bootcamp!
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lazykbys_left 
Registered: Feb '05
Date Posted: 7/22/05 5:28am Subject: RE: The Holoshill [reply to reader] - Date Edited: 8/11/05 7:32am (1 edits total) Edited By: lazykbys_left
Glad you liked it! I know I'm repeating myself, but I really, really hope the remaining chapters don't disappoint you.

Thanks for R&Ring!

- lazy

 

-----signature-----
"You're like some kind of link machine." - rhonderoo
It didn't stop being magic just because you found out how it was done.
DARK SIDE FHTAGN
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Alethia 
Registered: Feb '05
Date Posted: 7/27/05 3:40am Subject: RE: The Holoshill (9 yrs after ANH; OCs) updated 7/19 Chapter One: The Princess
Intriguing. I really like how the Arlan seems to be an important factor in all of this. And I like Kalima. She's an interesting character.

I'm sorry, but my twisted sense of humor agrees with that "no", meaning there's nothing I can do about it.


Oh, no problem *grins* I just have no patience and I'm horrible with waiting. So of course I want more...

 

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Now sacrificing Movie Garfield
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lazykbys 
Registered: Oct '04
Date Posted: 7/28/05 3:03am Subject: RE: The Holoshill - chapter two: The Archivist
Thank you Alethia, but - well, both Arlan and Kalima are going to take the back seat for a while. I'm glad you liked them, though. happy

- lazy



Chapter Two : The Archivist

A month later, I took a hyperspace flight to Obroa-skai, the Library World. There's a saying in this business: knowledge is power and you can't get it for free. They were probably thinking about Obroa-skai when they came up with that. The Obroans don't allow just anyone to look into their databanks and charge a stiff fee when they do. They do offer discounts to academics, but since I was just a lowly holoshill I had to use unofficial channels whenever I wanted to tap into the planet's resources.

My back door was a man named Domin Luxor, a student at the Obroan University until they found out about his gambling racket and kicked him out. They also blacklisted him so that the only job he could get on Obroa-skai was a low-level clerk. Still, if you know how a system works, you can always find a way of getting around it or making the system work for you. Domin had a talent for it, which was how he made more credits in a month than most Obroans did in a year.

Keeping the money was another matter. He had a weakness for high-stakes games and the worst playing skills of anyone I'd ever seen. He also didn't know when to cut his losses and quit. This was how he once wound up owing his first-, second-, and third-born sons to the C.E.O. of a certain holovid company, who was then persuaded to forget about Domin's debt in return for the destruction of a holo showing a certain actor doing certain things - which I'm not going to describe because I gave my word that I wouldn't.

You may be wondering how I became involved. It's quite simple: I was in the same room that night, waiting for Domin to lose. In fact, I was the one who brought the players together. I'd heard about Domin's gambling habits and his slice into the Obroan databanks, and figured it was a good investment.

And it was. Better than I expected, even. You see, it turned out he was called the Archivist in his circle of information brokers, and not just because of his library connection. Like many Obroan academics, both legitimate and otherwise, Domin accepted information as payment. This meant that, in his dealings with shady characters, he'd put together a private library that had more dirt on people than an Agamaran settlement.

Needless to say, the purpose of my visit was Domin's library. A week before leaving Coruscant I got a tip that Velm Raqtrey, "the hottest star in galactic entertainment" as she insists on being called, had once been an Imperial Governor's mistress. When a standard background check came up suspiciously clean, I sent a message to Domin asking him to see what he could find. I also included some questions on Kalima and Hemwell, just so I wouldn't feel guilty about not investigating her case.

Like every other time I came to this planet, I found Domin in a card game in the back room of a nightclub. And like every other time, he was losing heavily.

"Hey Domin," I said, laying a hand on his shoulder.

"What?" He looked up from his card chips, blinked, then the manic focus that drove him to wager more and more credits left his eyes momentarily. "Oh. It's you. Hi, Zale. Want to sit in?"

I looked at the unclaimed pile of credits in the middle of the table. It looked like they'd been playing for quite a while. The other sabacc players all gave me a look that said, This is our money. Don't even think about it.

"No thanks," I said. "The rates here are too steep for me."

Domin shrugged. "Suit yourself," he said, returning his full attention to the cards.

I watched them play a couple of rounds. Or rather, I watched Domin lose credits as he tried to outbluff people who could sense lies by listening to your heartbeat - and those were just the humans. The aliens probably had sensory organs to rival a probe droid. I was also pretty sure some of the players had surgically removed facial muscles for the perfect sabacc face.

An hour later, Fortune finally smiled on Domin and handed him a natural twenty-three: a winning hand. I would say everyone else at the table knew this, too. It was the way Domin clutched his cards. Most of them folded when it was their time to bet. A few of them raised, but not in a serious way. There are only three ways to beat pure sabacc: being dealt an Idiot's Array, having the randomizer change the cards' values, or putting pressure on the player until he folds. None of those things happened, and so for the first time in a long time, Domin left the sabacc table with more credits than he had going in.

Two hours and the Force knows how many drinks later, I finally got him to stop celebrating and go home. I immediately regretted doing so. Domin split his hours working, gambling, and sleeping like a dead bantha. He didn't care what his room looked like because he spent his time here unconscious. In short, it was a dump.

"Please don't tell me my data's in here." It would take a week just to throw everything out, let alone search through the mess.

"Don' worry," he said. "I know 'xactly where it is."

To my surprise, he did. A short while later I was at his computer terminal, going through a list of ladies who had disappeared from their governors' sides a while before Raqtrey appeared on the galactic scene. It was dull work, but at least Domin had cross-referenced it with relevant events. Eventually I narrowed it down to three names. The most promising one was Alixia Quadys who, as far as official records were concerned, had stopped existing after leaving Governor Harlo Gradact of Milinen four years ago. Getting a new face and a new name to go with it isn't hard if you have the money and know the right people. In Alixia's case, the answer to both problems must have been Gradact.

"Domin? Where's the file on governors?"

"Look in 'pendix B," Domin mumbled from his cot.

"Thanks."

You can learn a lot about a man from his credit account, especially the hidden one that he hopes will never see the light of day. From Gradact's I learned that he was the sort who would willingly sacrifice other people's children to fill his own pockets. He had no loyalty to the Empire, either; he'd fled the planet after hearing that Coruscant had fallen to the New Republic.

He wasn't completely tight-fisted, though. I found several large transfers that Domin - or rather, the slicers who provided the data - hadn't been able to trace. The largest was last year, shortly after the Isolder of Hapes fiasco. The second largest was almost nine years ago, a month after the Battle of Yavin. Neither had anything to do with Alixia, of course, so I shoved them out of my mind and focused on the one that, hopefully, did.

Just before she left, Gradact had transferred a hundred thousand credits from his secret account. There was no doubt in my mind it had wound up in Alixia's hands, but one thing bugged me: this wasn't the sort of going-away present Gradact would give anyone. There was too much of it, for one thing. It only made sense if he was paying her to keep quiet - but about what?

"Domin?" I called. "You mind coming over here?"

His answer was a snore that was enough to wake the dead. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to wake him up. And after various attempts to do so I found out that once Domin closed his eyes for the night, they stayed shut. It was frustrating, to say the least. My schedule only allowed me so many hours away from Coruscant and I'd been counting on Domin's slicing. If I knew this was going to happen, I would have just told him to send me the files via the Holonet.

Muttering some of the viler curses people have thrown at me over the years, I went back to the computer. Not that I thought I could get any further on Alixia; I was stuck and I knew it. So I decided to forget about the Imperial mistress for now and check out the other question I'd asked, namely Kalima and Hemwell's possible kinship.

There wasn't much in the files about Kalima that she hadn't told me already. And there wasn't much about Hemwell's past that I didn't know. Like I said, the man was about as interesting as a Xillani funeral. Less, even.

Dolf Hemwell was born thirty years before the Battle of Yavin. He was the second child of Wilem and Cate Hemwell, two middle-class nobodies. After graduating from Ziannan University with a degree in economics, he joined the family business of real estate. He was off-world when the Death Star struck, and after that he'd dedicated his life to making money for his fellow Alderaanians.

There was an apologetic memo from Domin saying he couldn't find anything about the medical records Kalima had pointed out to me. It was too long ago and, more to the point, too unimportant. A genetic analysis suggested the two of them were probably related, but that was all.

"Great," I muttered. "Another dead end."

I sat there gazing blankly at the computer screen for a while, wondering how Kalima would react to this news. Would she feel that her guesses had been confirmed? Or would she feel cheated that this was all I could dig up? Or - and I have to confess I was hoping this was going to be the case - would she have forgotten about Hemwell and found someone else to be fixated on?

Having nothing better to do, I looked through Hemwell's other files. Because of his duties, one of them was a report on the Alderaanian Refugees' financial state. Like the rest of Hemwell's life, it was boring. The most interesting thing I found was that, shortly after Prince Isolder's marriage proposal to Leia Organa, Hemwell had made several business deals on the assumption that they would soon have access to large amounts of money. When she chose Han Solo instead, all those deals were off. Apparently Hemwell rose to the challenge and somehow managed to gather enough credits to save the Refugees from serious debt.

Something about the numbers bothered me, though. Then my jaw dropped as I realized that the total sum of anonymous donations was, give or take a few thousand credits, the same as the huge mysterious transfer out of Gradact's secret account. And it wasn't just that. A quick check told me there had been others transfers in the past that coincided with anonymous donations. I then compared the two men's travel logs and found that the last stop in Hemwell's fund-raising trip, the one he'd taken to plug the hole he'd made, was the luxury liner Gradact called his retirement home.

The first thing that came to my mind was blackmail. Hemwell knew something that was so incriminating Gradact would pay literally millions of credits to keep silent. Given the things Imperial Governors got away with during Palpatine's rule, it had to be something terrible.

The only problem was, I couldn't figure out where Hemwell and Gradact connected. The travel records showed that the two of them had never been in the same system before the New Republic took over Coruscant. In fact, the only time they could have met in person was for the last donation/blackmail.

I needed more data and I wasn't going to get it here. At least, not unless Domin woke up. I was tempted to stay another day, but in the end I caught a ship to Coruscant, leaving behind instructions to dig deeper on Gradact and Hemwell - and almost as an afterthought, Alixia as well.

 

-----signature-----
I would greatly appreciate any constructive criticism you can give me.
Please feel free to PM me with your comments.
.
by the same author (click and scroll dowwwn):
http://boards.theforce.net/m/b1/17609715/r17736763
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