Free Star Wars: The Last of the Jedi, Volume 9 by Jude Watson

have
fear
working for us
now.” Hydra’s flat monotone held the tinge of satisfaction.
    “Well, keep going. Contact me if you learn anything.” Ferus ended the communication.
    He was racing the clock now. He didn’t think Hydra would learn anything about Leia at the documents office, but she would soon give that up and look a different way. He had to discount the
rumor before Hydra found the girl.
    And, in the meantime, he had to find the Imperial spy.
    He took the turbolift up to the busy spaceport. Vehicles lined up for takeoff and refueling. The command center was in a round building off to the side. Ferus approached, throwing back his hood
slightly.
    When he entered, the busy workers looked up, then quickly looked down. They wouldn’t want to give him any information, but they’d have to. He wished he could tell them he was on
their side.
    He went up to the woman who looked as though she was in charge. “I have an information request,” he said.
    “We’re busy here.” Her voice was curt, but her eyes were scared.
    “I just need to identify this vehicle. The spaceport code is LCS79244-12u712.”
    “That’s not a vehicle code.”
    “Then what is it?” he asked.
    She pressed her lips together. For a moment he thought she’d refuse.
    “Would you rather Lord Vader came here to enquire?” he asked. He hated to push that way, but he had to know.
    She looked down. “It’s a product entry code,” she said. “LCS means Load Coded and Shipped. That means that a delivery came into the spaceport and we shipped it out
again.”
    “Then you must have the address where it was shipped.”
    She turned toward the console. “I’ll plug it in. But I can tell you right now, the destination code is wrong. First of all, there aren’t enough numbers.”
    Ferus remembered the smudge. Some of the numbers must have been wiped out.
    “Second, there are no letters in the destination code. I know it was shipped to Aldera—the code is twelve. But the rest of it doesn’t make sense.”
    “See what you can do.”
    She called up the list of shipments. “I can’t find it.” She looked at him defensively. “See for yourself.” She tilted the screen toward him. “We get hundreds
of shipments. Your numbers don’t make sense in terms of the system.”
    Ferus studied the screen. She wasn’t lying. It would be impossible to trace without the correct sequence of numbers.
    He turned away, frustrated. At least he knew it was a shipment the spy had been looking at. Or maybe heard about…there was no way to know.
    He couldn’t leave the planet until he had answers. He couldn’t leave the Organas at the mercy of the Empire. Something was going on here. The knowledge of it was deep in his bones.
He had to keep looking.
    He spent the night at the temporary quarters that had been arranged for him, and woke before dawn. He decided that if he searched the warehouse again, he might come across
something he’d overlooked.
    It was still dark as he made his way across the deserted park. The warehouses loomed ahead, dark sentinels overlooking the square of green.
    He was crossing toward the warehouse when he saw it.
    “If you want to get lucky, open your eyes.”
    Thank you, Siri!
    Crouched between the taller warehouses and hangars, Ferus saw an old, decrepit building he hadn’t noticed before. It was built of old stone, bleached and pockmarked from hundreds of years
of duty. It was only about ten stories, and appeared abandoned.
    Above the doorway there were numbers chiseled into the stone in the old style. Crumbling, darkened with age, hard to read, but there.
    8712
    He thought back to the “u” he thought he had seen. Maybe it had been the lower part of the number 8. Part of it had been wiped away.
    Could it be this easy? Could the shipment have been sent across the street from the spy’s overlook?
    Why not? If you wanted to keep tabs on a shipment, what better place could there be?
    Ferus crossed back and carefully