Star Wars_ Shadows Of The Empire Part 21

"Why don't we test it on you?" Lando offered.

"I don't think that will be necessary," she said. "You were plenty."

Lando's comlink bleeped. He pulled it from his belt. Leia looked at him.

"I've got an eye at the port," he said. He lifted the comlink. "Go ahead."

"A s.h.i.+p has just arrived," the tinny voice said. "The Outrider, piloted by-"

"-Dash Rendar?" Leia finished. "What is he doing here? He's supposed to be watching Luke!"

"Thanks," Lando said into the comlink. He shut it off. To Leia he said, "Maybe we better go find out."

They met Dash halfway. He was in a pubtrans cab heading away from the port. Chewie swung their rental vehicle around, and they quickly caught up with the cab and waved it over.

When Dash got out, he looked terrible.

"Is Luke okay?" Leia said in a rush.

"Yeah, he's fine."

"Why are you here? You're supposed to be guarding him."

Dash stared at her. "He's fine. He doesn't need my help."

"You don't look so good," Lando offered. "Trouble?"

"Long story," Dash said.

"Get into the speeder," Leia said. "You can tell it to us on the way back to the casino."

He got into the speeder, and they started off.

When he was finished, Leia shook her head. Luke was okay, that was the important thing. And it appeared that Guri had told the truth, at least about the secret plans.

"Any idea what these plans are?" Lando asked.

"No. The Bothans have some kind of hot specialists on Kothlis who are going to pull them out of the computer." His voice was almost a dead monotone.

Lando said, "Hey, lighten up, Dash. Things get heavy in the middle of a battle. Anybody can miss-"

"Not me! I don't miss. I should have clipped that missile! Bothans died because I missed, you understand?"

Leia was silent. She didn't like Dash Rendar; he was a braggart and stuck on himself; but at least he had some feeling for others. Maybe it was more because his self-confidence had been shattered, but she could tell it had really rattled him. It must be terrible to think you are the sharpest thing in the skies and then to find out you have a dull spot on your edge.

n.o.body said anything for a while.

Well. As soon as this business with Black Sun was finished, they would go and find Luke. Somehow it would all get sorted out.

Luke left Artoo to watch the X-wing and made his way to the lounge where he was supposed to meet Koth Melan.

The Bothan was waiting.

"Any problems?" Melan asked.

"No. Now what?"

"We have a safe house here, a few kilometers away, on the outskirts of the city. The computer is already there and the team working on it. We'll go there and wait until they are done."

"How long will it take?"

Melan shrugged. "Who can say? Hours, perhaps, if we are fortunate; days if not. The team is very good and won't take any chances. After what we paid for it, it would be terrible to slip up and lose the informal tion."

"Yeah, it would."

"I have a speeder waiting outside."

"Lead on," Luke said.

Outside, the daytime air had a funny smell. It took Luke a moment to place it. The odor was of warm and moldy cheese. He smiled to himself. He knew he would get used to it pretty quick and tune it out. That was something they almost never mentioned in the travel ads, that every planet had its own smells and feel. The light was a little redder here than on Tatooine; it was a little cooler than Bothawui, and there was that smell. The thing about alien worlds-well, alien to somebody not born there-was that each one was unique.

Moldy cheese wasn't so bad. He'd smelled worse.

They walked to Melan's speeder and got in. Time to go find out what the Empire thought was so valuable.

21.

The safe house was a clever setup, Luke saw. What looked like a row of old storage units and run-down office s.p.a.ce in an industrial park turned out to be something else behind the facade. Past a security checkpoint with a trio of large armed guards was a modern complex of interconnected units, bright and gleaming with the latest computer and electronic gear, plus a bunch of technicians to operate it. Most of them were Bothans, but there were several other aliens at work.

It was a smart camouflage. From outside, you'd never expect to find all this.

"This way," Melan said.

Luke followed the Bothan spymaster down a gleaming corridor to a room with yet another armed guard posted at the door. Melan showed an ID, and they were admitted.

Inside the room were half a dozen Bothan techs. One of them tended leads plugged into jacks in the computer Melan had collected; others sat at consoles tapping keyboards or using voxax controls. Information danced in the air as holographic images formed and re-formed.

"There's not much to see, I'm afraid," Melan said. "Unless you're an expert in this, the information looks to be pretty much a jumble of numbers and letters."

Luke nodded. "What do they mean?" He waved at one of the screens.

"Got me," Melan said. "I'm a spymaster. What I know about programming you could inscribe on a microdiode lead with a dull sword."

Luke smiled. "Hey, hey, hey!" one of the Bothan techs said. "Look at this, boys! Scan sector Tarp-Hard-Xenon." Luke heard the tap of keys, the commands of voxaxes.

"Wow!" said one of the other techs.

"Oh, sister," said another. "I can't believe it!"

"What?" Luke said. "What is it?"

Before anybody could say, the door exploded inward and somebody came in shooting.

Leia smiled at Guri, who was once again seated across from where she herself sat at the desk in their suite. But the smile was to cover her puzzlement.

According to the computer screen inset into the desk and the scanner that fed it, Guri was not human.

What she was, the scanner program could not say.

"Care for some refreshment?" Leia asked.

"Tea would be fine."

"Threepio, fix two cups of the special tea blend, would you, please?"

Leia turned back from the droid and flashed her smile at Guri again. She caught the computer screen peripherally as she glanced at Black Sun's representative. According to the scanner, Guri's skin was around ten standard years old.

Wasn't that interesting?

"I trust your business went well?"

"It did."

It would be no trouble to keep her talking for a few minutes, until the "special blend" tea Threepio was preparing did its job. The sleeping potion he was instilling into Guri's cup would put her out harmlessly for a couple of hours, during which time Leia and the others could make a closer examination of Guri's person and effects. This was the plan they'd agreed upon if the scan didn't check out the way it should. After a couple of hours, Guri would awaken and-if the potion worked as it was supposed to work-not remember having fallen asleep. Maybe they could figure out who and what she was during that time. At least Leia's instincts had been right: There was something odd about Guri. Very odd.

Threepio brought the tea. Leia hoped the droid had gotten the stuff into the right cup. It would be embarra.s.sing if Lando or Chewie had to come in and take over while she took a nap.

Threepio had his back to Guri. Leia glanced at him. His left eye illuminator winked off, then back on.

Leia picked up her tea and smiled again.

When a man comes at you with a blaster spewing, you don't stand there asking stupid questions. Luke s.n.a.t.c.hed his lightsaber from his belt, lit it, and whipped it up in a right inward block as he slid to the side.

A blaster bolt splashed from the blade in a shower of red and orange sparks. The air stank suddenly of ozone.

The techs were unarmed, and Luke saw two of them take hits and go down.

The others scrambled for cover.

Koth Melan produced a small weapon and returned fire, hitting the lead attacker right between the eyes. The attacker fell backward.

There were more behind him, boiling through the shattered doorway.

Luke leaped forward, circled his lightsaber into a horizontal slash, and took down the next man through the door.

Melan fired. The bolt sizzled past Luke's left ear and hit the third man incoming. Beyond that, Luke saw, there were at least a dozen more shooters crowding toward the doorway. Maybe more. It wasn't as if he had time to do a precise count here-More energy beams cooked the air, scorching past Luke and spearing computer consoles and technicians alike.

"Too many of them!" Melan yelled. "This way!"

Luke wove a curtain of hard light with his blade, deflecting blaster bolts and driving the attackers back temporarily. He leaped to the side, and Melan fired repeatedly into the opening, momentarily clearing it.

"Come on!"

Luke turned and ran. Discretion here was definitely the better part of valor. Who were these guys? They wore black, but didn't have any insignia he could see. Some kind of new Imperial strike team? Mercenaries?

Never mind that now. Worry about who they are later. This party is over, Luke, it is time to leave.' Luke hurried after Melan.

After twenty minutes of small talk, Leia realized the sleeping potion wasn't going to work. It was supposed to take five minutes, eight minutes at the outside, if you had the const.i.tution of a rock.

Guri continued their diplomatic back-and-forth without any apparent effects from the powerful potion. Maybe Threepio had fouled up somehow?

Not put the stuff into Guri's cup? The computer was still processing information and displaying it for Leia. The... person sitting across from her breathed air and her heart pumped blood, but the lungs weren't normal, and neither was the heart. The muscles under the supposedly ten-year-old skin weren't made of any tissue the scanner could recognize. Her body temperature was ten percent cooler than normal. A human that cold would be dead.

On visual inspection, Guri looked like a perfectly normal and attractive young woman in her early twenties. According to the scanner and computer, she was not human; nor was she any one of the eighty-six thousand alien species it was designed to recognize; nor was she any kind of standard droid. And she was, it seemed, immune to a sleeping potion that should work on anybody human.

What was going on here?

No doubt about it, this was a problem, and not one that Leia had antic.i.p.ated.

Now what were they going to do?

Guri helped her resolve the problem. She said, "All right, Leia Organa, I think this has gone on long enough."

"Excuse me?"

Guri held her empty container up. As Leia watched, she squeezed the heavy ceramic mug in one hand. Her hand shook a little, but the cup shattered into tiny bits. Guri smiled. "I can do that to your head if I wish. You probably have a weapon hidden somewhere, but I warn you, I am much faster than you, and if you attempt to reach your weapon, I can get to you before you get to it."

Leia played it out. "Suppose I believe you. What do you want?"

"You are going to accompany me from this place. You will tell the Wookiee in the hall to stay here as we leave; convince him, otherwise he dies."

"Where are we going?"

"Do not concern yourself with that. Just do as you are told and you will survive to get there."

"I don't think so," Leia said. "Whoever-or whatever-you are, I bet you aren't faster than a blaster bolt. Lando? Dash?"

The door to the bedroom slid open. Lando and Dash stood there, blasters aimed at Guri. They stepped into the room.

"You might be wrong," Guri said. The door to the hall also slid open, and Chewie stood there with his bowcaster leveled at Guri's back. "Could be,"

Leia said. "But you'd have to be real fast to avoid being hit by three bolts."