Shadows of the Empire by Steve Perry Read Free Book Online

forbidding slavery. Until the Empire chooses to intercede, I am afraid revenues in this area will remain depressed.”
    Xizor nodded. Lonay would always be too much a coward to risk death by betraying his “uncle.” His whole species was that way.
    The Dark Prince said, “Vigo Sprax?”
    Sprax, a Nalroni whose dark fur had begun to gray, though he dyed it to try to appear younger, began to rattle off his statistics. Xizor watched him, listened with half his attention—he already knew all of what was being officially delivered.
    Sprax was too smart to try to cross Xizor.
    The Nalroni finished his report.
    “Vigo Vekker?”
    Vekker, a Quarren, flashed a nervous smile and started his recitation.
    The Squid Head had no ambition to rise any higher, was content with his job and the status quo.
    One by one Xizor called for the Vigos to speak, and one by one the rest of them did: Durga the Hutt, Kreet’ah the Kian’thar, Clezo the Rodian, Wumdi the Etti, Perit the Mon Calamari, Green the Human.
    It was hard to believe any of his Vigos would be so foolish; after all, one could not get to this elevated status without years of loyal effort. Some of them had come up through the ranks—smugglers, thieves, businessmen—and some of them had been trained from birth and had inherited their places from their fathers, or, in the case of Kreet’ah, his biological mother. Several of these nine had been Vigos before Xizor himself had attained that rank before moving to head Black Sun.
    And yet, there it was. Life was full of treachery.
    He let them all sit and worry for a few moments. Then he nodded at Guri. His most trusted bodyguard and employee began to walk behind the seated Vigos.
    They all had their own intelligence operations, and they all knew at least what Xizor had allowed them to find out about the traitor—not much save that there was one. And that he did not know who it was.
    A calculated bit of prevarication, this last. He
did
know who it was. And now the matter would be … corrected.
    “A final item on our agenda, my Vigos. One of your number has seen fit to use his office to betray us. Not content with the millions of credits he has made by my largesse, the awards, bonuses, dividends, and unreported skim that all of you indulge yourselves in, this … person has dishonored the title of Vigo.”
    Guri strolled behind the seated lieutenants slowly. Xizor watched them. Those who could, sweated or flushed or otherwise showed signs of fear they could not hide.
    She passed Durga, Kreet’ah, Clezo, reached the other end of the table and circled around it.
    Xizor continued speaking, slowly, evenly, betraying nothing in his tone. “There are sublieutenants among your ranks who would cheerfully wipe out entire planets to be given such an opportunity as you all have been given. To be a Vigo in Black Sun is to enjoy more power than all but a handful of beings in the entire galaxy.”
    Guri passed Lonay, passed Sprax, then Vekker. Paused a moment behind Durga the Hutt.
    Tension thickened in the room, became almost tangible.
    Xizor thought that was a nice touch. Durga was nobody’s fool and would never risk himself as a spy; no, the Hutt had ambition enough for ten;
he
would go for a coup. Having Guri pause behind him let him knowXizor was keeping an eye on him. A warning that he should think long and hard before trying to climb from his lofty plateau to the top of the mountain.
    Guri moved on, and the sense of relief that came from Durga was, like the tension, something you could very nearly collect from the air and use for a doorstop.
    The droid who could pass as a woman sauntered past Wumdi the Etti and Perit the Mon Calamari.
    She stopped behind Green the Human.
    Xizor smiled.
    Green tried to stand, but Guri was incredibly fast. She whipped her arm around the man’s throat and locked it with her other arm into a choke hold.
    Green struggled briefly, but he might as well have been wrestling with a durasteel clamp. The