by James Luceno
“She's back online!”
Jadak's eyes were wide. “Now you wake up? Now?”
A whoosh issued from the sublight engine and the YT veered abruptly, as if to avoid a collision, sending Jadak and Reeze slamming into the pod's curved wall.
An instant later they were spiraling through space.
NAR SHADDAA
18 YEARS BEFORE THE BATTLE OF YAVIN
VISS AND HEET CAME THROUGH THE DOOR TO THE WAITING ROOM and walked directly over to where Bammy was sitting.
“All right, mechanic. He'll see you now.”
Bammy Decree knew Viss from school, before Viss had been expelled and taken a job as one of Rej Taunt's bodyguards. Bammy knew Heet, too. After his short stint at tech school, he'd worked on some of Heet's skimmers and sloops.
Bammy started for the door the two bodyguards had come through, but Viss stuck an arm out to hold him back and Heet threw him a bathrobe.
“He's taking a massage and a steam,” Viss explained while Bammy was staring blankly at the robe. He motioned with his chin to a small refresher off to one side of the waiting room. “You can change in there.”
Bammy was a head shorter than Viss and Heet and fifty kilos lighter, and because most of the beings who came to visit Rej Taunt were closer to the size of the bodyguards, the robe fell off Bammy's narrow shoulders and trailed on the floor when he emerged from the ‘fresher. He cinched it around his frame the best he could while two Klatooinians seated in the waiting room tried to keep from laughing.
Viss pointed to Bammy's balled-up clothing. “Leave those in the 'fresher and follow us.”
Beyond the door, Rej Taunt's villa was even tackier than the waiting room, crammed with bric-a-brac of the sort that filled Nar Shaddaa's junk emporiums. But while only ten years older than Bammy, Taunt was an up-and-coming crime boss with a taste for the finer things. Bammy didn't doubt that Taunt would one day be living as lavishly as a Hutt.
Bammy followed his bulky former school acquaintances through several enormous though empty rooms, across a courtyard adorned with foliage imported from Ithor and columns from Coruscant, and down several broad stone stairways to a gaming room piled high with decades-old ovide wheels, sabacc tables, and dance cages. Half a dozen humans and aliens were busy at cleaning tasks. Bammy hadn't seen a droid since he showed himself to the front gate scanner two hours earlier.
Viss rapped his huge hand against the jamb of an old wooden door and someone opened it from the far side, clouds of steam wafting from the room beyond. The supersaturated heat struck Bammy like a ton of permablocks. The steam was so thick he couldn't see his pointed nose in front of him, and in seconds sweat was streaming into his eyes and dripping from his small chin. He was moving his hand in front of his face as if to part the steam when a deep voice boomed from somewhere in the mist.
“Over here, mechanic.”
Bammy followed the sound to where Rej Taunt was lying supine on a table, rolls of water-storing fat avalanching off his naked torso, his thick arms being massaged by three comely human females. An Askajian, Taunt was the eldest son of a family of tomuon cloth traders. He had come to Nar Shaddaa as a child and never left.
Taunt gestured to the adjacent massage table. “You want a rub?”
Bammy started to decline but the crime boss cut him off. “Of course you do. Doff the robe and set your skinny human body on the table. I've already instructed my fems not to make fun of you.”
Bammy did as instructed. At twenty standard years old, he was already in poor shape, but he was certain the trio of masseuses had seen worse in their line of work. If nothing else, his body was absent the blaster scar tissue and elaborate tattoos common to most of Taunt's employees. Flat on his stomach, Bammy discreetly lowered the robe to the floor. The fem's slick hands felt good on his tense shoulders, he had to admit.
“The only reason I agreed to see you,” Taunt said, “is because Viss and Heet recommended you. They say you've got talent.”
“We were in school together,” Bammy said. “For a while, anyway.”
Taunt heaved himself over on his massive belly. “They mentioned something about a ship.”
“Word in the depths is that you're looking for one.”
“For once the rumor is correct. What have you found me?”
“An old YT-Thirteen-hundred.”
Taunt turned his head so he could look directly at Bammy. “Now what would I want with a freighter?”
“It's not just any freighter. It has a great pedigree.”
“What year?”
“A 'twenty-five.”
“Before Synch?”
Bammy nodded. “A classic.”
Taunt did the mental calculations. “Now I've got to ask: what would I want with a freighter forty standard years old?”
“You're looking for something low-profile but powerful, easy to maintain, and fuel-efficient.”
“For the moment let's say I am. When could I see it?”
“It, uh, needs some work first.”
Taunt's silence told him to continue.
“It was involved in a collision a month or so back.”
Taunt's eyes narrowed. “You're not trying to sell me on that YT that slammed into the Jendirian Valley Three?”
Bammy swallowed audibly. “I am.”
Taunt exhaled hard, steam swirling about. “What I heard, they had to scrape the pilots off the Valley's hull.”
“I heard the same. They ejected in a pod, but the YT spun at the last instant and the pod was flattened.”
“Ouch.”
“That's probably half what the pilots said.”
“And the YT?”
“It was hard hit. But the beauty of those ships is that they're pretty much made to come apart. Best of all, no other salvagers are interested in it. It's just drifting out there with all the other ships that haven't made it downside for one reason or another.”
“Maybe that's what's best for it—and for Nar Shaddaa. Our own little asteroid field.”
“It would have to be rebuilt bow-to-midships,” Bammy went on, “but most of the core is sound. The sublight can be repaired, and the hyperdrive can easily be rebuilt or upgraded.”
Taunt thought about it. “A freighter? I don't know. Can it be turned into more of a passenger ship?”
“Would you be piloting?”
Taunt laughed heartily. “Do I look like a pilot?”
“I was just thinking about seating and such.”
Taunt raised himself up on one elbow. “I'd want a couch and bunk suitable to my frame, and others for companions I might choose to bring along. I'd want to keep some areas for freight, but I want comfortable cabin spaces and secret compartments for whatever I may wish to conceal from the prying eyes of customs officials. I don't particularly care how the ship presents—it can look beat-up on the outside. In fact, the more dilapidated it looks, the better. But the interior has to be clean and tidy.”
Bammy was nodding and grinning. “Again, that's the beauty. It can be configured just about however you want. For instance, if you want weapons—”
Taunt cut him off with a sharp wave of his hand. “Nothing like weapons to draw the attention of pirates. Maybe a couple of small repeaters tucked into the bow for emergencies. But I'll bring support craft if I anticipate major trouble.” He thought for a moment. “The serial number, drive signature, and registry can be altered?”
“Can do. Of course I'd leave the name for you to choose. If you want, I can equip it with a transponder that will keep interested parties confused.”
“Even those new Imperial ships?”
“Even those. So far we're managing to stay one step ahead of the Emperor's techs.”
“How much is all of this going to cost me?”
“I don't have a final figure yet. I have to have it brought down the well. Then there's the parts … Assuming the power plant and sub-lights are reparable, the biggest cost will be the hyperdrive, if it needs one.”
Taunt
rolled over on his opposite side. “Get back to me when you have a firm price.”
A recording droid keeping pace with him, Bammy took stock of YT-1300 492727ZED, which at some point during her forty-odd years had acquired the name Stellar Envoy. His booted feet sloshing through lubricant puddled on the floor, he was practically yelling to be heard over the racket of servowelders and cutting torches, power hydrospanners, grinding wheels, and power washers. The more closely he inspected the wrecked ship, the more his distress mounted. The job that was supposed to be his first real break was instead in danger of becoming a catastrophe. How was he ever going to stick to the price he had quoted Rej Taunt? Where did he even begin?
Conveyed downside to his small garage in the Duros Sector, what remained of the Corellian-made ship hung in a cradle in the center of the bay. Bammy hoped that one day he'd be able to afford a repulsorlift, but until then he had to make do with cranes and gantries to support the vessels he repaired. He had hired a crew of salvagers to remove the twin mandibles, outrigger cockpit, and whatever else was loose or ruined. That left him with a crumpled saucer. The seven legs that formed the landing gear had fused to the carapace when the YT had skidded along the hull of the Jendirian Valley III before slamming into the underside of the bulk freighter's armored deck.
The ship was in much worse shape than he had been led to believe by the EVA team that performed the initial zero-g assessment. Bammy had already filled a dozen oversized trash containers with hazmat debris, and he was just getting started. A YT-1300p that had collided with an asteroid near Nal Hutta would supply replacement mandibles, along with a more spacious main hold, deflector shield generator, and a pair of six-being escape pods. But while the Stellar Envoy's hyper-drive, Quadex power core, and still-state-of-the-art Rubicon astrogation computer were sound, the pair of Giordyne sublight engines would have to be rebuilt from top to bottom.
Worst of all, the ship needed a new droid brain.
“Boss, where do you want this?”
Bammy cupped a hand to his ear and whirled to one of his subordinates. “Shut that kriffing torch off!” Swinging back to the Iktotchi who had called to him, he asked: “What have you got?”
“Fuel drive pressure stabilizer.”
“Serviceable?”
The horned alien rocked his head. “More or less.”
“Which is it: more or less?”
“More.”
Bammy indicated a pile of numbered and categorized parts near the stern of the suspended ship. “Stow it over there. And be sure to brand it.”
The pile was one of many, the garage resembling an ongoing archaeological restoration project more than a ship rebuild.
While the Iktotchi was hauling the stabilizer across the bay, the voice of one of Bammy's pair of human employees rang out. “This flux compensator is shot. Same with the alluvial dampers.”
“You can't fix them?”
“Not me.”
Bammy shoulders slumped. “Add them to the list.”
He hoped one day he could afford to hire a Givin or a Verpine.
The situation was going from bad to beyond belief. But at least his full complement of mechanics was back on the job after a month of joining the rest of Nar Shaddaa in celebrating the end of the war. Nar Shaddaa had no special fondness for now-Emperor Palpatine, but many felt that Palpatine would be so consumed with consolidating power in the Core that worlds in the Mid and Outer Rims would once more become lucrative markets for spice and other proscribed goods. More important, smugglers would be able to travel without fear of interception or attack by Separatist droid ships or Republic cruisers.
There'd been no club or cantina partying for Bammy. Rej Taunt was expecting a ship, and it was best to avoid disappointing a crime boss by failing to deliver on time or superseding an estimate.
Bammy looked up at the saucer's singed stern. The blackened areas were carbon scoring—the result of a turbolaser hit from a big Republic ship. He couldn't be sure, but he'd stake credits that the hit had been indirectly responsible for the collision. The bolt could have overwhelmed the shields and left the guidance systems stunned. Once he tore apart the power core, he'd know for certain—but it was clear the freighter had gotten herself mixed up in trouble. It was clear, too, that Bammy wouldn't be the first mechanic to rebuild her. In all his years of tinkering with ships and landspeeders, he had never come across a vehicle hosting as many aftermarket parts. It was as if every owner of the YT had patched, upgraded, or retrofit the ship one way or another. And aftermarket parts weren't going to fly with someone like Rej Taunt—at least not those parts that would be plainly visible. Bammy was confident he could get away with using parts fabricated in Nar Shaddaa's shops for the comm and illumination systems, but he couldn't chance Taunt running independent checks on the life-support and computer systems. That's why the droid brain was problematic. Repairing the existing one was out of the question, and buying a new one would eat up what little profit he still hoped to make on the job.
He had tasked his newest employee—a young kid named Shug Ninx—with searching out someone with a line on a replacement brain, and it was the human–Theelin who entered the garage just then and hurried over to him.
“I might have found us a brain,” Ninx said, flushed with excitement.
“Where?” Bammy started to say, but he stopped when he spotted a familiar figure saunter into the bay. Swinging back to Ninx, he shook his head in disappointment. “Kid, going to him was a bad idea.”
The blue in Ninx's mottled complexion intensified. “I didn't know—”
Bammy put a hand on Ninx's shoulder. “Don't worry about it. Maybe it'll work out in our favor.”
A Koorivar with a pronounced cranial horn, Masel was known on the Smugglers' Moon as a fence, an arms dealer, an opportunist who had worked for both sides during the war. A naturally sibilant tone complemented his deviousness.
“Your young half-breed tells me you're in need of a ship's brain.”
Bammy steered the Koorivar to a cluttered table in a corner of the bay and motioned him to a chair. “Since when are you in the business of ship parts? I thought you only dealt in weaponry?”
Masel's shoulders shrugged under his rich cloak. “Nothing's changed. Except in this instance, I may have something you can use.”
Bammy compressed his lips. “I'll listen, anyway.”
“I've contacts among the crews dismantling the Separatist fleet. I can get you a targeting and fire-control brain off a tri-fighter command ship.”
Bammy scoffed at the idea. “Converting that to serve a YT freighter would take an expert slicer and way more credits than I can afford.”
“I know that,” Masel said. “But I have someone who will do the conversion for you. All you need to do is supply schematics of the ship.”
Bammy thought about it. “I already have the schematics, direct from Corellian Engineering. But how much is this going to set me back?”
“Less than half of what a factory-warranteed Hanx-Wargel Super-flow would run you—even at wholesale.”
“You guarantee it?”
Masel smiled. “Of course I will. A full refund if there's any problem.”
“A refund?” Bammy laughed. “You're gonna have to resurrect me if my client has any problems with it.”
“Resurrection is the provenance of others. I'm only a simple profiteer.”
Bammy thought some more. “How soon could I have it—assuming I decide to trust you?”
“A week after you hand over the schematics and a down payment of half the cost.”
Bammy was still grappling with it when he returned to the YT. The Iktotchi was waiting for him under the starboard-side docking ring, a small module resting on his thick, grease-stained forearms.
Bammy's expression went from pensive to quizzical.
“I extracted it from the droid brain,” the Iktotchi said. “It's the freighter's flight recorder.”
Instead of returning to his apartment in Nar Shaddaa's Cor
ellian Sector, Bammy remained at the shop, downloading data from the Hanx-Wargel Superflow IV computer. Registry information, ownership, flight and service records. His interest piqued by what he discovered, he spent most of the night cross-referencing the data with HoloNet entries, and by morning had compiled what amounted to a brief history of the ship, which had been known by many names over the decades.
YT 492727ZED had come off Corellian Engineering's production lines at Orbital Facility 7, and for the first twelve years of her life had been one in a fleet of more than eight thousand ships owned by Corell Industries. CI Limited ferried goods to the so-called Five Brothers of the Corellian system, as well as to the enormous and enigmatic repulsor known as Centerpoint Station.
In numerous accounts by pilots who had flown the YT-1300, the freighter was alternately praised for her speed and maneuverability and condemned for her quirkiness and unreliability. Often the pilots employed terms more suited to describing the personality of a sentient being than to evaluating a ship's performance. As her several names suggested, the YT was obedient or willful, a joy to pilot or a demanding demon, a savior or a troublemaker. Where Corell's Pride had “heart,” Fickle Flyer had “issues.” Meetyl's Misery was a constant source of despair. Entry after entry detailed accounts of dazzling maneuvers, close calls, or unexpected and often baffling breakdowns. “Made the run to Tralus in record time …,” one pilot recorded. Another said: “Marooned five hundred k from Selonia with a load of defrosting plak fish …” “Beat the Fusion Flame hands down in a race around Drall …” “Unable to launch from Centerpoint …”
So went the litany of testimonials and denunciations, with each instance of malfunction ending in makeshift repairs and retrofits, almost as if everyone had agreed to make the ship the subject of an ongoing experiment in improvised engineering.
To satisfy his curiosity, Bammy searched out the shoddy pulse generator a pilot had been forced to install; the place where a navigator had taken out his frustration on the Fabritech transceiver relay with a hydrospanner. He found dozens of areas where the ship had been similarly bruised and battered. A few pilots had gone so far as to scratch or torch epithets on the bulkheads or in the maintenance access crawl spaces.