Scoundrels

by Timothy Zahn

  And some variety of Corellian light freighter, he didn’t add, frowning as he searched the sky. The freighter had made a single run at the place and done nothing except veer off at the last second, then had headed off and hadn’t been back. Either he was on some really wide return circle or he’d turned tail and made a run for it.

  The first didn’t make much sense. The second seemed way out of sync with what he’d seen of Eanjer’s group.

  And then he got it. The freighter pilot hadn’t gotten cold feet. He’d done whatever he was supposed to do for the operation—distraction, reconnaissance, whatever—and then had taken off because he was hurrying to get back to the spaceport before the police and port authorities reacted to all the noise and started paying attention to what was happening in the sky above them.

  Which meant the freighter was the one item Eanjer’s team had brought out here that they weren’t intending to abandon after the rescue.

  Interesting. He wished now that he’d gotten a better look at it.

  With a distant whoof a section of factory roof caved in, followed immediately by a partial collapse of the north wall. The attackers seemed to be deliberately bringing down the building, which begged the question of how they expected their kidnapped teammates to survive.

  Maybe they were already dead. Maybe that was what the freighter and the Z-95 had been sent in to confirm.

  Another section of the roof went, this piece apparently hitting some old tank on the way down and sending up a plume of gas that looked green and vaguely evil in the reflected light from the blasterfire. A second part of the northern wall collapsed.

  And with that, the kidnappers had apparently had enough. Even as the blasterfire continued to wreak havoc, Dayja saw the three airspeeders shoot out from the freshly gaping holes and claw for altitude.

  This time he was ready and got some good image captures with his electrobinoculars. Whoever they were, he should be able to track them down.

  “Dayja? What’s happening?”

  “Looks like it’s mostly over,” Dayja said as the E-Web fire came to a halt. The Z-95 had now emerged and was settling to the ground nearby, and he could see three figures hurrying toward the wrecked building from different directions. “But it wouldn’t hurt to keep the police away from the area for a few more minutes. Can you manage that without showing your hand?”

  “My hand, yes,” d’Ashewl rumbled. “But your team’s hand may already be dead. If the kidnappers were indeed corrupt police, I don’t know how they’re going to spin this incident without Villachor and Qazadi concluding that Eanjer is connected with someone official.”

  “I don’t know, either,” Dayja said. “But I’m looking forward to finding out.”

  Lando already had the hatch open and was working his way out of the escape pod when Han and the others reached them. “You okay?” Han asked, offering a hand.

  It seemed to him that Lando hesitated a fraction of a second longer than he needed to before taking the proffered hand. But his grip was solid enough. “Thanks,” he grunted as Han helped him out. “Nice move, by the way. I gather that was Chewie in the Falcon?”

  “Yeah,” Han said, looking around. The devastation looked even worse in here than it had from the outside. “Figured if you got winged by the pod, you wouldn’t be as mad at him as you would have been at me.”

  “Probably not.” Lando half turned. “Zerba?”

  “I’m here.” A thin hand popped into view through the hatch. “A little help, please?”

  “Hand me the case,” Dozer instructed, crouching down beside the pod.

  The hand disappeared and reemerged with the cryodex case. Dozer took it and handed it behind him to Winter, then helped Zerba out.

  “Thanks,” Zerba puffed. He turned a baleful eye on Han. “Don’t ever do that again.”

  “Which part?” Han asked. “Shooting the bad guys off your back, or saving your life?”

  Zerba considered. “Okay, good point,” he conceded, sounding marginally mollified. “Can we get out of here now?”

  “Sure,” Han said. “Dozer, take them to your airspeeder and get them back to the suite. Kell can go with you, too.”

  “We leave the gear?” Dozer asked.

  “All of it,” Han confirmed. “Winter and me’ll go to the spaceport and wait for Chewie.”

  Some orders, he reflected, only had to be given once. Dozer was already picking his way through the debris, Lando and Zerba right behind him.

  “Interesting tactic,” Winter commented.

  Han turned. She was staring at the dented escape pod, an odd expression on her face. “They’re designed to handle deep space, atmo penetration, and bumpy landings,” he reminded her. “I figured they could hold off anything the kidnappers had with them.” He waved a hand upward at the stars showing through the wrecked roof. “And that, too.”

  “It did seem to do the job,” Winter agreed. “I was thinking more of what would have happened if Chewbacca had missed.”

  “Lando would probably never want to see me again,” Han said. “Come on, let’s go see if Chewie’s made it back down yet.”

  “So you have no idea who they were?” Tavia asked as she handed Lando a drink.

  “Only that there was a Falleen in the group,” Lando said, taking a careful sip. Cognac was a notoriously unpredictable drink, the taste and quality varying widely between systems and often even across different regions of the same world. Thankfully, Tavia had picked a good, smooth one. “No idea whether it was Dozer’s friend Lord Aziel, or this Qazadi person Eanjer’s contact claims is hiding in Marblewood.”

  “Not sure it matters which it was,” Kell said. “They’re both on the same team, aren’t they?”

  “He wasn’t either of them,” Zerba said. He was gripping his own cognac glass with both hands, clearly still shaken by the evening’s events. “He was probably someone’s bodyguard.”

  “How do you know?” Lando asked, thinking back. He hadn’t noticed any weapons or body armor that might have led Zerba to that conclusion.

  “He was young,” Zerba said. “Way too young to be anyone with that kind of prominence.”

  “He ran back inside the airspeeder when the firing started,” Lando pointed out.

  “He got the bomb guy into the airspeeder when the firing started,” Zerba corrected. “Then he got in. But he left the door open.”

  “So that he could direct their return fire,” Winter murmured. “He did a decent job of it, too. Even firing blind, they were able to take out one of the E-Webs before Kell got inside.”

  “Well, whoever they were, they weren’t with Villachor,” Bink said positively. “Neither Sheqoa nor any of the other security guys I saw showed the slightest indication that they knew something big was going on.”

  “They must not have been monitoring the police comms, then,” Tavia pointed out. “The whole network was going crazy with all the reports. I’m kind of surprised that they didn’t drop the hammer on you before you got out of there.”

  “What, charge in on a Black Sun interrogation?” Lando countered. “Not likely.”

  “So what does all this mean for the mission?” Eanjer asked. He sounded calm, but the restless twitching of his fingers betrayed his tension.

  “Nothing, really,” Han said. “Whoever was behind it, all he knows is that Lando’s got an impressive organization behind him. That’s the story we were pitching in the first place.”

  “Except now that Lando’s been tagged he needs to lie low,” Bink said. “I guess Dozer’s up next. Or you, Han.”

  It seemed to Lando that Han’s lip twitched, just a bit. “Probably,” Han conceded. “We can talk about that later.” He turned to Rachele. “You ready?”

  “Yes,” Rachele said, her eyes looking troubled. “But I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

  “Ready with what?” Zerba asked.

  “The analysis of the sensor data from the card you planted,” Han told him, looking around. “Dozer?”
>
  “Right here,” Dozer said, emerging from the kitchen hallway with a sandwich in his hand. “Rescue work makes me hungry.” He dropped onto the couch beside Tavia, forcing her to scoot to the side to make room. “Ready.”

  Han gestured to Rachele. She tapped her datapad, and the image of a mostly rectangular room appeared in the air above the holoprojector. “Villachor’s vault,” she identified it. “As we’ve already noted, it was built into the junior ballroom—note the curved corners and conversation alcoves.”

  “Which are probably guard posts now,” Lando murmured.

  “Mostly,” Rachele confirmed. “Also note the high, undulating ceiling. That’s the ballroom’s original glitter coat up there, by the way, with the layer of armor plate we discussed earlier set into the between-floors gap above it.”

  “Glitter coat, huh?” Bink asked sourly. “Terrific.”

  “What’s glitter coat?” Kell asked.

  “The fancy man’s interior décor of choice,” Bink told him. “Nice, smooth, resilient, glitters in every type of lighting—you get the idea. Problem is, it’s impossible to cut through without scattering clouds of white sparkly flakes all over the place.”

  “Which means no popping in, grabbing the loot, and popping back out without anyone noticing,” Tavia added. “Once we start the operation, our footprints will be all over it.”

  “What kind of security has he got inside the vault?” Bink asked.

  “Oh, you’re going to love this,” Rachele said. She keyed her datapad again, and a dozen figures appeared around the edges of the vault. “Remember those Zed police droids Kell said Villachor’s got? Here’s where they hang out.”

  “Plus the ten on guard outside the door,” Lando said. “Armed with blasters and TholCorp OT-7 neuronic whips, just to make things interesting. Getting past that group is the first step in the entry procedure.”

  Chewbacca turned to Han and warbled a question.

  “I don’t know,” Han said. “Kell? You know any way to knock out a Zed?”

  “I’d have to look into it, but I’m sure it’s possible.” Kell waved a hand. “Of course, anything’s possible. It’s in the execution where you get hung up.”

  “A high-power jab in the motivator or memory core will do it for most droids,” Bink pointed out.

  “Hard to do through the kind of armor Zeds have, though,” Kell said.

  “And don’t forget the whips,” Lando added. “Those things pack a serious punch, and Villachor would hardly give them to his guards if they could be used against them. That implies extra electrical shielding.”

  “Actually, it’s worse than that,” Kell said. “Remember I told you the Zeds I saw had sheathings on their upper arms, thighs, and waists? Those limb parts are where the droids have thin parallel cylinders instead of a single wider limb part, and the waist is where the torso also gets extra narrow.”

  “So?” Bink asked.

  “So with those sheathings in place, you can’t tell whether they’ve got the original parallels and torso tube, or something wider,” Kell said. “In other words, you can’t tell whether or not that’s really a Zed.”

  “Whoa,” Dozer said, his sandwich momentarily forgotten. “Are you saying some of those Zeds might actually be armored human guards?”

  “Exactly,” Kell said. “It’s really pretty clever. You go in with a tight-spectrum motivator punch like Bink said, all set to knock out a droid. Only the human inside the armor isn’t bothered in the slightest and knocks you on your butt.”

  “While something designed to stun or paralyze a human won’t work on a droid,” Han said.

  “And only Villachor will know which are which,” Kell said.

  “Speaking of droids, is there any way to deal with those floating cam droids outside?” Dozer asked. “I don’t like the idea of someone in a monitor room watching everything we do in there.”

  “Not a problem,” Tavia assured him. “We’ve got a gadget designed to fog their view. Not enough to trigger any alarms or self-diagnostic sequences, but enough to wipe out facial recognition. With all the dust, extra body heat, and repulsor containment fields they’ll have out there, they should assume that’s all that’s bollixing their holocams.”

  “Is that going to be good enough?” Dozer asked, looking at Han.

  “It should be,” Han said. “We’ll just have to make sure we don’t stand out of the crowd.”

  “Until we need to,” Lando murmured.

  “Right,” Han nodded.

  “So how do we get it into the grounds?” Kell asked.

  “Already done,” Bink said calmly. “I planted it two days ago, on our first trip in.”

  “You could have told us,” Dozer growled.

  Bink shrugged. “I assumed it would be obvious.”

  “Let’s get back to the Zeds,” Zerba said. “Do we have any idea whether those were droids or humans outside the vault? More important, do we have any idea what kind of entry code they were running? There wasn’t anything obvious I could see.”

  “You’re right, it wasn’t obvious,” Rachele agreed. “Turns out there was a scent on Villachor’s fingers that the Zed was sniffing.”

  “A scent?” Lando echoed, feeling his mouth drop open. “You mean like perfume?”

  “Cologne, actually,” Rachele said. “Either Rezi Eight or Rezi Ten—the two formulas are very similar.”

  Kell looked at Tavia. “You’ve got to be kidding. You put in a scent sniffer?”

  Tavia shrugged. “Han said full-spectrum,” she reminded him. “We gave him full-spectrum.”

  “Though we were mostly looking for airborne material cues,” Winter added. “We didn’t expect to pick up Villachor’s preferences in vanity adornments.”

  “Just as well you did,” Rachele said. “Unfortunately, I’m guessing the scent cue changes every day, and unless we can get into his private ’fresher cabinet I don’t know how we’re going to figure out which one we need.”

  Kell shook his head. “This just gets better and better.”

  “We haven’t even started,” Rachele warned. She keyed her datapad, and a large sphere connected by a short pillar to a wide, flat platform appeared in the center of the room. “Here’s the safe itself,” she said. “It’s a six-meter-diameter sphere, the outer part made of duracrete poured over a hullmetal mesh.”

  “A sphere?” Winter asked. “Sounds a little crazy.”

  “Crazy like a Twi’lek,” Zerba said sourly. “A square or rectangle has corners you can cut off for quick entry. A sphere doesn’t. Even with a full-length lightsaber it’d take you forever to whittle off enough to get inside.”

  “And you’d probably run into honey traps along the way,” Tavia added. “Poured duracrete is perfect for tucking in hidden gas pockets and shaped detonite charges.”

  “You said the outer part was duracrete,” Han said. “What about the inner part?”

  “That’s even worse,” Rachele said. “At the center of the sphere is the actual safe: a rectangular, closet-sized cabinet made entirely of Hijarna stone.”

  Lando looked around. From the puzzled looks on the rest of the faces, the others weren’t any more familiar with the term than he was. “Which is?” Dozer prompted.

  “A hard, black stone that’s exceptionally hard to cut and absorbs blasterfire without even noticing it,” Rachele said. “The most prominent example is a partially ruined fortress on the planet Hijarna. The point is that even Zerba’s lightsaber isn’t going to get through that. Not in the amount of time we’ll have.”

  “Well, Villachor doesn’t cut his way in each time,” Bink pointed out. “Why should we?”

  “Exactly,” Tavia agreed. Her face held her usual quiet disapproval for these things, Lando noted. But at the same time, he could see some professional interest starting to peek through. This was a tactical challenge, and if there was one thing Tavia liked, it was a challenge. “Can you run us through his routine?”

  “Sure,” Rachele said.
“He comes into the vault after being vetted by the Zeds outside—”

  “Or by the human guards,” Lando murmured.

  “By whoever or whatever’s inside the armor,” Rachele agreed. “The vault’s magnetic seal goes off when he opens the door, of course. He crosses the floor to the hover platform, and—”

  Chewbacca gave a sharp rumble.

  “Oh—right,” Rachele said. “Sorry, I forgot to mention that part. The safe is set onto this ten-meter-diameter platform that hovers about a meter and a half off the floor on repulsorlifts and slowly moves around the room. I don’t know whether it follows a constant circuit or runs a random path.”

  “Okay, now it’s just getting ridiculous,” Dozer said.

  “Not really,” Tavia said. “Back when we first started this thing someone mentioned the possibility of tunneling in from underneath. The other obvious approach is to cut through the ceiling and try to drop onto the safe from above without the guards spotting you. With the safe constantly moving around the room, both of those tactics are now useless.”

  “Those must be really impressive repulsorlifts,” Bink commented. “A sphere of duracrete that size probably weighs upward of a hundred fifty tonnes.”

  “Easily,” Rachele said. “And yes, the repulsorlifts are extremely powerful, so much so that they have their own fusion generator built in, probably in and below that thirty-centimeter pillar attaching the sphere to the plate.”

  “The guy’s smart, all right,” Bink agreed. “So he walks to the hover platform?”

  “As he approaches the platform, the nearest set of stairs unfolds from beneath it,” Rachele said. “By my count, there are fifty of those. Because while the platform is moving around the room it’s also slowly rotating.”

  “Randomly, I assume?” Winter asked.

  Rachele nodded. “I caught two small shifts in rotational speed while he was moving across the room. It’s a slow rotation, but the speed isn’t really important. The bottom line is that because of the rotation, the average intruder won’t have any way of knowing where the safe’s actual entrance is.”

  “But we do, right?” Bink asked.