ONE YEAR AFTER THE BATTLE OF GEONOSIS

"Master Doriana?" Emil Kerseage's deep voice called. "We're here."

Kinman Doriana awoke with a start, blinking his eyes against the sunlight streaming in through the shuttle's viewports. For a moment he gazed at the landscape rolling beneath him, trying to remember where exactly he was. There had been so many systems...

The disorientation cleared. He was on Cartao, major trading center for Prackla Sector, carefully nonaligned in the war between the Republic and the Separatists. And home to...

'There it is," Kerseage said. He turned the control stick delicately, rolling the shuttle slightly to the left to give Doriana a better look.

"Spaarti Creations."

Doriana gazed out the side viewport, impressed in spite of himself.

Situated among a group of forested hills just north of the compact town of Foulahn City, perhaps three kilometers northwest of the equally compact Triv Spaceport, was the unique manufacturing plant known as Spaarti Creations. Over a kilometer across at its widest, it had the patchwork look of something that had repeatedly been added onto over the decades. The roofline echoed the frozen chaos, with towers, heat exchangers, antennas, and skylights poking out at apparently random spots along the building's overall three-story height.

There were no windows he could see, ventilation apparently being handled by a line of small, louvered air vents dotting the outer walls about midway up the sides. "Impressive," he commented.

"You think so?" Kerseage shrugged. "Personally, I've always considered it an architectural version of a weed patch. No order or organization anywhere."

"Ever been inside?"

"No one but employees get to go in," the other said, his lip twisting with disgust and resentment. 'Them, and the high and mighty."

"Like me?" Doriana asked.