5.04

Less than forty-eight hours after the assassination attempt, we jumped out of Kuati space on the Sprinkle. The lack of evidence of our involvement in House Kuat's recent misfortune helped. The Great Ten Houses of Kuat taking their little spat off public view and into the usual cloak-and-dagger entanglements they resorted to when things got serious helped some more; I had no wish to be abducted and a programmed clone or shape-shifting impersonator to take my place. No sooner had the stars stretched into strings of light across infinity than Aurra stopped hovering over my shoulder with both quad-pistols drawn and made a beeline for the bathroom. The absence of any obstacles, enemies, or obvious threats during our hasty retreat had both her and Ratty far more stressed than they'd been willing to admit. With our hilariously up-gunned little freighter finally safe in hyper from Kuati battleships that could flatten it with a glancing shot, I stretched in the co-pilot's seat and braced for impact.

"It was Sullustan miners, wasn't it?" Jestra exclaimed as soon as her hands left the controls to the navicomputer's direction. "There was a whole group of them from Fondor chatting up our prospectors about asteroid claims. But they were really working for you, digging up a tunnel under the waterfall." She nodded decisively with the air of someone convincing themselves of an unlikely truth. "That's how you got a fusion charge close enough to the casino undetected; you used the rats."

"Not as fun as your guess about the circuit worms, or the one about the meteor with the cloaking device but a solid seven on of ten all the same." I waited for her to open her mouth then continued. "Still wrong though. Keep guessing."

"Oh come on!" She threw her arms in the air in exasperation then pouted. "Half the spooks on Kuat are on the betting pool about this op. Do you know how much I stand to make if I give them an answer?"

"Do you know how scary are the people involved in Kuat's business nowadays?" I countered. "I'm doing you a favor keeping you in the dark." Though the incessant guesses over the past couple of days and the accompanying migraine were making me reconsider that position.

"Meh. I've been dealing with the plots of the Great Ten since I was younger than you, I can handle it," Jestra insisted mulishly. "Besides, in spy school, they teach us all about patience. Which means I can keep nagging you until you spill, cuz."

"Fine." I retrieved my personal datapad and unlocked one of the hidden files. "But don't come whining to me if some ancient evil worms into your mind for the info." Come to think of it, a bit of existential horror might help Jestra grow up, assuming she survived. Honestly, she was supposed to be the older, more mature cousin! As glowing blue lines were projected into mid-air, forming a somewhat simple, egg-shaped diagram, the older girl scooted close and looked at it with a gleam in her eyes.

"Childish attempts to scare me aside, what am I looking at?" She ran her fingers through the holographic blueprint's lines and the nonsensical Aurebesh inscriptions. "This looks like gibberish to me."

"You didn't think I'd have written down anything important in a way anyone could read, right?" Not without more knowledge of Latin, Aramaic, and Quenya, especially with the jumbled mix, I'd used them in. "The blueprint should be enough for the basics anyway. The projection is to scale, sixteen centimeters by forty-seven. The case is made of tungsten; a common insulator that won't raise flags if scanned. The wedges above and below are octanitrocubane, which you probably won't recognize if Professor Magrody didn't. It's a chemical explosive."

"There's no way that explosion was just a chemical explosive; it was too big," she argued. "There's a reason ion discharge and inertial confinement devices have replaced them in everything except improvised frag grenades. Sure, if you used some obscure substance scanners might ignore it but it'll also barely scratch people in solid armor, let alone a fortified room."

"Yes, but chemical explosives do not require a high tech to function. In fact, these rely on a purely mechanical timer and a detonator." I pointed at the relevant portions of the blueprint. "No power source, no electronics, no exotic matter. As far as most advanced scanners are concerned, this device is no more threatening than a rock - which is far from the truth. Plus chemical explosives can be shaped and directed without the need for force-fields, which is important in the last part of the device." At the heart of the blueprint, an innocuous ovoid a mere seven centimeters wide and eleven long sat. "Another bit of really ancient technology. Since the galaxy at large discovered fusion, it was considered obsolete, let alone since the advent of hypermatter."

"Sticks and stones will break my bones, is it? Fusion has existed since forever." Jestra quipped. "Come to think of it, it looks like a rock. A rather blunt one; where's the tech if it has no internal components?"

"In making it; it's an artificial substance. Five and a half kilos of it, ninety-eight protons, a hundred and fifty-three neutrons per nucleus." I smirked. "Good stuff. It took months to set up a synthesizer for it, even for Arkanian mad scientists."

"Well, it's still too small for a good warhead. A thermal detonator of that size would barely take out a tank..." She shook her head. "I'm not really a weapons expert; you and Lissa went for the shipbuilding. I went for the exciting stuff." She glared at me. "Which makes hearing of all the craziness you get involved in really annoying. Now, what am I looking at?"

"Implosion-type nuclear bomb." Jestra gaped at me. It was very satisfying. "See, most modern scanners are going to make all kinds of noise if they see a fusion device, let alone a baradium charge. But ancient technology nobody has used for twenty millennia? That's another matter. Making the materials and components themselves as obscure as possible as well as unpowered just ensured they'd be overlooked. Plus the tiny size helps."

"How... when..." it took visible effort for her to calm down before continuing. "Why were you carrying around a nuclear weapon?"

"Deterrent against certain individuals, mostly Jedi," I lied. Mutually assured destruction was far more likely to work against the Sith than self-sacrificing idealists. "Besides, why do you think we only had the one?"

I ran out of the cockpit before a suddenly incensed Jestra could catch up.