Scut stood before Voort. “What’s our motto?”
“What do we blow up first?”
“The other one. Good news and bad news.”
“Stang.” Partway through sealing up his too-tight black boots, Voort slumped. “Bad news first.”
“I just heard from the commercial managers of the courthouse plaza. There was a mistake and the space for our tent was rented to someone else. A souvenir seller.”
“A mistake?”
“Clearly, the mistake was that the souvenir seller came to them with more money than what we paid. The plaza managers have refunded our money with insincere apologies. But the souvenir booth is already set up.”
Voort sighed. “Can we get any other spot in the plaza this late?”
“Yes. I secured us a spot at the edge. But the first bad news leads to more bad news.”
Irritated, Voort resumed sealing up his second boot. “Spill it.”
“Our scapedroid reported early to the location I gave it yesterday. It didn’t realize that the souvenir stand was not us. The stand operator told it that its services were not needed. So it returned to its dispatcher and was given another assignment.”
Voort growled and stood. “And how about securing us another scapedroid?”
“None available.”
“Blast it. I’m going to strafe that souvenir stand.” This was indeed bad news. A scapedroid, in this case a Model V37 Ambassador, was a humanoid droid whose entire torso and head area was replaced by a large monitor or holoprojector. Skittish negotiators would send scapedroids to a parley site and speak to one another through the safe telepresence functions offered by the droids. The Wraiths needed their scapedroid to foster an illusion and escape with their identities intact.
Voort got to work donning his other gear. “Well, we’re just going to have to improvise. Get us a new scapedroid.”
“I have tried. There is none closer than orbit, and all are engaged. This is a small world. There are only three onplanet.”
“Scut—I’m about to go get shot at. You have to fix this.”
Scut threw up his hands. “I am not complaining. I am not shirking duty. But I have to manage the changing booth. Timing there is very complicated.”
“I’ll take the changing booth.” Mulus Cheems, the only island of calm in the room, rose from his chair. “I know your equipment, son. I know your procedures.”
“No, Father. This is dangerous work.”
“Oh, yes. I should let my son run off to do dangerous work while I sit here watching holodramas.” Mulus moved up to stand beside Scut and Voort. “Viull, I think I would very much like to pay back the debt I owe the Wraiths.”
“That’s what I’m doing!”
Mulus smiled but shook his head. “You can help them all you want and it will never diminish my debt. Wait until you’ve incurred a debt of your own. Then you’ll know what I’m talking about.” He looked at Voort. “Sign me up, Professor.”
Voort considered, then nodded. “Scut will show you what goes with who. The first sign of trouble you see or hear, you lie down on the ground and stay there.”
“Father ...” Scut leaned forward, pleading.
Mulus leaned forward, too, and touched his forehead to his son’s. “At a certain point, Viull, you’ll learn that you just can’t keep protecting your parents from themselves. Parents are wild, hormone-addled, uncontrollable creatures. As you’ll understand someday when you’re a parent.”
Voort was struck by the two men’s identical poses. In age, height, mass, and skin color they were different, but their postures were identical.
Scut finally lowered his eyes and nodded.
Voort waved to get their attention. “Scut. The good news? There was some, correct?”
“Team Oversight is ready.”
“Then get going.” Voort watched as Scut, Mulus, Thaymes, and Wran—now in burgundy clothes and a new hip-cloak—left.
Drikall, wearing a Pop-Dog sergeant’s uniform, watched them go. “I hate last-minute changes.”
“Get used to them.” That was Trey, standing beside him, in a blue Galactic Alliance Army general’s uniform, a headset on his head instead of a hat. “How’s the package?”
Drikall looked baffled. “Your package on Skifter Station, Sharr’s package on Skifter Station, or our package here?”
“Here.”
“Fine. In the speeder. The repulsor cart’s loaded in back.”
Trey turned to Voort. “Leader, we have to come up with better ‘package’ designations.”
“Agreed. Next time.”
Trey took off his headset and put it in a pocket. He hefted his neoglith masquer. “Speaking of which, Mind Boy reports he and his package are boarding to leave the station.”
“I hear you.” Voort hefted his helmet.
Trey donned the neoglith masquer. Drikall helped him fit it and shove its trailing edges down under the uniform’s collar. When they were done, Trey was an identical image of General Stavin Thaal.
General Thaal picked up and donned his hat. “Team Enemy Mine ready.”
“Get going. Good luck.”
When the two of them were gone and the sound of their airspeeder had retreated in the distance, comparative silence descended over the operations center. Only Voort and Myri were left, both in X-wing pilots’ gear. Myri’s hair was now a virtual match in color for Mulus’s coral-cut sapphires.
Myri lifted her helmet. “Team Rage ready.”
“Let’s get ’em, Antilles.”
She grinned.
But once they were down in the quarry, standing beside their X-wings, Myri hesitated. “We don’t know that they’re inner-core Pop-Dogs.”
Voort finished with the portable frame and winch he’d used to lower his astromech into position behind the cockpit. Myri’s was already in place. “Meaning that we’re about to go up and shoot at people who might not know that they’re serving a traitor.”
Myri nodded, her eyes miserable.
Voort wheeled the frame away. “Well, now you’re at that point. A point your father doubtless hit when he was younger than you, just joining the Rebel Alliance. The point where you ask yourself, Can I kill someone I’m not sure is guilty?”
“You’ve been waiting for this, haven’t you?”
Voort nodded. “Ever since I realized how meticulous you were about making sure your blaster was always set on stun. And now you’re stuck with lasers and missiles, and they can’t be set on stun.”
She leaned heavily against the S-foil of her X-wing. “Maybe you could have warned me.”
“Maybe thinking about it for days would have made you neurotic.” Voort moved to the nose of his starfighter, patted it as if it were a riding animal. “Myri, I might be able to do this mission myself. Odds are kind of long, but I might be able to. Or we could summon Sharr back, rusty as he is behind the controls, and let Mulus tend his package. But I think you can do this, because you’re your father’s daughter, and because you’ve grown up knowing that a warrior like your dad sometimes has to face an honorable enemy. An enemy whose only fault is that he’s working at cross-purposes with you, and if you don’t fight him until he falls, very bad things will result. Which is the situation here.”
“I guess it is.”
“You have to keep this in mind: you have to win.”
She gave him a slow, miserable nod.
“So?”
She sighed and put on her helmet. She snapped the visor down over her eyes and added the helmet’s final, nonregulation element, a veil of black, clinging synthsilk over her lower face.
“Good.” Voort donned his own helmet and veil. Then, awkward, he climbed onto the strike foil and into his cockpit.
They lifted off, crested the quarry clifftop, and headed southward over the property at an altitude of two meters.
They observed local speed regulations. Other speeder pilots, less conscientious, passing them at higher speeds, pointed at the two beautifully restored antique
X-wings with hand-built missiles bolted onto their strike foils, and at the two veiled pilots.
Voort and Myri stayed in the main airspeeder lanes all the way into Kura City’s south side, creating no sensor blip that would cause a suspicious traffic warden to challenge them. But then they were at the city limits again and pointed toward Chakham Base.
Voort clicked his comm board over to the main Wraith channel. “Rage One to Team Enemy Mine, Team Shellfish. We are a go. I say again, we are a go.”
Trey was clearly in character when he answered. He spoke in General Thaal’s gravelly tones. “Enemy Mine, understood. Go get ’em, soldier.”
Jesmin replied in a whisper. “Shellfish here. Understood.”
Voort switched back to the subfrequency he and Myri shared. “Rage One to Rage Two. We’re going in.”
Lying prone on his cot in the room he had been given, Turman heard the distinctive triple click over his headset. Then it came again.
He sat upright and stood. The nurse, a male Chadra-Fan, looked over in concern. “Are you all right?”
“Sunlight. Embassy-Who-Climbs needs sunlight.” Turman’s throat was hoarse from performing the rough Embassy-Who-Climbs voice for days.
“No, no. You said sunlight would hurt you.” The nurse rose, tilting back to stare up at his much taller patient.
“Before, yes. Now, need sun. Life cycle demands.”
“I need to comm the front office for permission.”
Turman raised his hand as if pointing at Kuratooine’s star. “Sun!” Then he brought his fist down on the Chadra-Fan’s head. The durable exoskeleton of his hand cracked down on the small humanoid’s skull with a meaty thump. The man collapsed to the floor, his comlink clattering down beside him.
Turman grimaced. Getting on his feet, swinging that blow had been difficult. The neoglith suit was weaker, much weaker. The thing was dying.
He waited a second to see if Pop-Dogs would come bursting in through the door.
None did. That was great news. It meant that, as they had across the last couple of days, the soldiers believed in Embassy-Who-Climbs’s passiveness and cooperativeness. They didn’t always have a guard in front of his door, relying on the nurse to warn them of trouble.
That, and one other thing. The door didn’t open for Turman as he approached it. But he punched the keypad with one oversized, hard-shelled finger, using the nurse’s code, which he had spent considerable time and effort to observe while pretending to be asleep. The door slid aside.
In a back hall of a minor function building well away from the main base facilities, Embassy-Who-Climbs went tiptoeing toward the building’s rear door.
“I wish Muscle Boy were here.” Jesmin, aggrieved, bent over the building’s rear door handle, a bar meant to be depressed. There was clearly security on the door—multiple contact points of metal extended from the frame to touch others on the door. The security was more extensive than Jesmin was comfortable with.
Beside her, keeping watch all around, Huhunna rumbled a reply in Wookiee. “Let’s just blast it.”
“What?” Jesmin looked at her.
Huhunna gestured all around. To their right, southward, were empty drill yards. Leftward, more of the same. Ten meters behind them was the start of the closest thick stand of trees. There was no one to be seen. The voices of Pop-Dogs practicing close-order marching drills sounded far away.
Huhunna hefted her bowcaster and gave Jesmin a significant look.
“Oh, all right.” Jesmin pocketed her electronics bypass tool and took a couple of steps back. “Go ahead.”
Huhunna fired. The bowcaster bolt hit the door beside the lock and detonated, charring the door metal. The lock and the left portion of the opening bar disintegrated. Huhunna grabbed the door well away from the superheated portion and shoved it open.
Embassy-Who-Climbs stood there. He put his hands on his hips as if indignant. “Klutz.”
The building alarm sounded.
They sprinted—tottered very quickly, in Turman’s case—into the woods as other alarms on the base began wailing.
They got only deep enough into the trees that the building was no longer in sight. Then Turman stopped. He reached up and ripped open his alien mask so the others could see his real face, which was flushed red and sweating. He yanked at his chest, splitting it open, and tore himself free from the suit’s interior. As he emerged, so did a sweet, sickly odor of rotting sea life. Jesmin and Huhunna took several steps back.
Shaking himself free of the suit’s legs, Turman advanced on them. His body glistened from sweat and whatever the suit’s interior had secreted on him. His eyes were wild, and his words emerged in a scream: “Get me to a sanisteam!”
“Time to leave, Stage Boy. This way.” Jesmin pointed northward and led the way, trying to keep well ahead of the funk that surrounded Turman.
“A pool. A waterfall. An acid bath! Sandpaper! Get me clean!”
Drikall unloaded the folding hover cart from the back of the speeder, set it up, and activated it. Then he carried the unconscious Ledina Chott from the backseat and stretched her out atop the cart. He shook a blanket over her, covering her from head to foot.
Only then did Trey, imperious in his General Thaal garb, exit the vehicle. “Did you switch on her ring?”
“I remembered.”
The main doors into the building were several meters away, directly under the sign that read MAJOR SAVING’S ARMY SURPLUS. But Trey marched to an unmarked side door made of transparisteel. Through it he could see a small office, a hallway leading from it deeper into the building, a muscular young man with close-cut brown hair lounging in a desk chair.
Trey schooled his features—Thaal’s features—into an expression of disapproval. He hammered on the door. The man behind the desk looked over, then stood so fast it looked as though he came up off the floor.
He opened the door. “General!”
“It’s bad, son, very bad.” Trey waved Drikall forward. The Devaronian came forward, pushing the hover cart. “That body—do you know Private Zizbisterling?” Trey stood in the doorway, keeping it open, as Drikall pushed the cart through.
“No, sir.”
“Well, she’s dead now, so you’re never going to. You hear the alarms?”
The man cocked his head. Though not loud at this distance, the wailing alerts from the base were indeed audible. The man’s face went blank. “Sir, are we under attack?”
“Hell, yes. Take us down immediately.”
“Yes, sir!” The ostensible clerk half saluted, remembered that this was not the right protocol, and dashed into the hallway. Trey and Drikall followed.
As they moved along a back corridor flanked by storerooms, well behind the clerk, Drikall leaned forward to stage-whisper to Trey, “Nice improvisation on the alarm thing.”
“There weren’t supposed to be sirens yet. I didn’t know what else to say.”
“No, I meant it. Nice improv.”
The false clerk led them into a side room that was far too large and empty for its evident purpose—an unmanned comm center with one large computer-communications unit and a single chair. As soon as the door was closed, the clerk hammered on the undecorated back wall. It was a distinctive series of taps.
The wall slid aside, revealing a chamber of similar size. But this one had durasteel-mesh walls showing rock walls and steel support pillars beyond. It was a freight lift car.
They moved onto the car. Trey turned to the clerk. “I need you to come with us.”
Baffled, the clerk joined them. He hit a button on the front wall control panel, and the wall-door closed. He hit another and they began their descent. “General, if I may ask—”
The body on the hover cart moaned and stirred.
The clerk looked at her blanket-shrouded body, his eyes wide.
Trey opened his own eyes wide, as well. “A miracle! Sergeant, you know what to do.”
Drikall drew his blaster and shot the clerk at point-blank range. The s
tun bolt took the man in the chest. He slammed back into the metal-mesh wall and slumped.
Thaal turned to the controls. “Long way down. We have a few seconds.” He whipped the blanket off Ledina, revealing her to be wearing the same dress in which she’d been kidnapped. Her eyes were closed but she was fitful, her head now turning as she struggled to awaken. “How much time, Drug Boy?”
“A few minutes. I can give her a stimulant.”
“No, don’t worry about it.” Trey looked up and noted the location of the lift car’s roof access hatch.
Two seconds later the lift came to a stop. The shaft’s back wall and the car’s rear metal-mesh wall rose.
Just beyond them was a stony tunnel that ran off into dimness in the distance. Along its floor ran a metal rail. The stone ceiling had wires stretched along it, with glow rod coils every five meters. Standing right at the door was a dark-furred Bothan woman in a Pop-Dog corporal’s uniform. Her eyes widened and she saluted. “General!”
Drikall shot her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAKHAM BASE COMMAND CENTER
“Captain?”
The officer of the day, a human whose burly body and bald head suggested that he might be a missile in disguise, looked to the officer at the sensor board. “What is it?”
“We have two new transponder signals. A kilometer out and closing. The craft themselves are not on the sensors. I think they’re at ground level. They’re now sending standard starfighter transponder data. Their designations are Phanan One and Phanan Two.”
“Phanan—sound a general alert.”
“We’re already on general alert, sir.”
It was true—the alarms had begun when the building confining Embassy-Who-Climbs had been breached. The wails continued even now. The base was already in turmoil.
“Alert the wall towers—”
Two X-wing starfighters, painted in classic gray, roared past the command center’s south-facing viewport. The officer of the day caught a glimpse of white helmets with black veils concealing the pilots’ features.
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