Star Wars: Shadow Games

by Michael Reaves

  “Yeah, I’m still your security chief. Who’s coming along for the ride?”

  “Mel, Nik, Dara, you, Eaden, and Leebo. Mel will bring Oto and a few of the cargo droids, of course. Everyone else can go with Nova’s Heart.”

  He looked at her with growing admiration. She really had thought this through. She had the crew she needed and a decent chance of leaving the mole behind on her own ship. He wondered if there was any chance of figuring out who that mole was before the Heart was spaceworthy.

  “I’m going to go help Mel and Oto,” he said. “I’ll bring Leebo along.” He reactivated the droid.

  Leebo straightened up, optics brightening. “Had enough?” he asked.

  “Come on,” Dash said, and strode from the room.

  Leebo clambered to his feet, servos whining. “Humans,” he said to Javul, “fight dirty.” He followed Dash, the MSE unit scuttling along behind him.

  They lifted from Tatooine as soon as the gear was stowed safely. Mel grumbled about the unfamiliar dimensions and arrangement of the Falcon’s holds and, after checking every centimeter of each compartment with Dash and Nik at his side, he went off to talk to Javul, who was settling into her quarters on the lower deck.

  With Eaden up in the cockpit with Han, and Leebo at a computer terminal “getting acquainted” with the ship and her various modifications, Dash found himself alone with Oto. It was as good a time as any to probe, he figured.

  “So tell me, Oto, how long have you been touring with Charn?”

  “Three standard years, sir,” said the droid, ticking off items on the manifest Mel had put him in charge of.

  “And before that?”

  “I have been attached to Mistress Charn’s service since she purchased Nova’s Heart.”

  “Yeah? What about your boss, Melikan. He always been with the tour?”

  “No, sir. Yanus Melikan was previously with another vessel.”

  “Yeah? Merchant or Imperial?”

  “Merchant, sir.”

  He’d have to check that out. “What about Nik?”

  The droid made a faint clicking sound that in Leebo, Dash would have read as a sigh. “What about Nik, sir?”

  “Where’d you pick him up?”

  “He joined the crew about a year ago. Cargo Master Melikan took him on.”

  Dash thought about that. “He seems kind of young for an apprentice. Still in school—doesn’t he have any parents?”

  “I believe he is an orphan. I have no further knowledge of the young man.”

  “I—uh—found him doing his homework really late one night in Mel’s office. He do that often?”

  “Quite often.” Oto’s flat mechanical voice somehow conveyed disdain. “He is likely to procrastinate.”

  “Mel likes him, though.”

  The droid didn’t answer.

  “Mel seems like a good guy. Steady, reliable, predictable. Is he?”

  Oto made the clicking sound again. “I am unable to determine if he is a good guy. However, I would say that he is steady and reliable.”

  “Not predictable?” Dash jumped on the omission. “Does he do … unexpected things sometimes?”

  “He occasionally makes requests for which I do not see a rationale.”

  “Yeah? Such as …”

  The droid looked at him blankly.

  Blasted mechanicals. Sometimes you had to lead them by their tin noses. “Nik once told me that Melikan tells him not to notice things. Does he ever tell you not to notice things?”

  “He occasionally requests that I do not take note of certain comings and goings.”

  “Like when Javul leaves the ship in disguise?”

  The droid’s optics blinked. “I would not have noticed, sir.”

  No, he wouldn’t have, having received a direct order not to. “What else might you not have noticed?”

  Click. “If I have not noticed something, sir, how would I know what it was that I have not noticed?”

  With the beginnings of a headache, Dash wandered to the crew’s quarters, turning the conversation over in his head. Yanus Melikan was in the picture-perfect position to wreak all sorts of havoc on the ship. Could it possibly be coincidence that several of the episodes had involved the hold or its contents? Mel had an apprentice who was young and loyal and a droid who was—well, a droid—and he was close to Javul.

  Dash stopped on that thought, spinning it on various mental axes as he went to the galley and poured himself a cup of caf. He sipped it, wrinkling his nose. Wretched brew. No more than he’d expect of Solo’s bucket of bolts. He took the caf to the single table in the middle of the common area and sat down. Blowing steam off the top of the cup, he tried to work out the logistics of Mel’s guilt or innocence in the string of sabotage.

  The cargo master was in an almost unassailable position when it came to Javul. She trusted him and he protected her peculiar “comings and goings”—perhaps for his own purposes?

  And here, both logic and logistics broke down. Mel was close to Javul. So close that if he was working for someone who wanted her dead, she’d be dead. What did that mean? Did it mean that Mel was guilty only of being very protective of his employer, or did it mean that he was the mole but whoever was pulling his strings didn’t really want Javul dead? They just wanted it to look like they wanted her dead.

  “Why would they want it to look like they wanted her dead?” he murmured.

  “Herding the nerfs, I would imagine.”

  Dash shook hot caf from his hand and glared at Eaden, who leaned in the hatchway of the crew’s commons observing him. “Never sneak up on a guy like that. You could get yourself shot.”

  “How so? You didn’t even sense my presence.”

  “I was thinking.”

  “You were also talking to yourself. Neither bodes well for your sanity.”

  “Stow it. What do you mean by herding the nerfs?”

  Eaden shrugged and moved to the beverage server to pour himself a cup of some weird-smelling tea. “Just what has been suggested before: that it is not Javul Charn’s death that is desired, but the modification of her behavior.”

  “That’d be true if we were just talking about a jealous boyfriend, but we’re not. She admitted to me that it’s a lot more serious than that.” He leaned across the table toward his friend. “She’s in hot lava with all of Black Sun. Apparently her attempts to get shed of Kris caused her to go to the ISB and, in turn, brought down several of Xizor’s Vigos. You know how much Xizor hates the Imperials.”

  “With as good a reason as you have for hating Black Sun.”

  It was a quiet remark, delivered in a gentle voice, but it struck Dash all the way to the core. He would not feel this. He would not let his own entanglement with Black Sun make him crazy. He’d controlled the impulse to strike out at Hitch Kris just for breathing the same air; he’d intended to control the impulse to take on Prince Xizor, but …

  “It’s not the same thing. My family was no threat to anyone. We were just … in Xizor’s way.”

  “His family was no threat to the Empire. They just happened to be too close to Vader’s ill-fated bioweapons lab. You might say his family died of hubris and stupidity.”

  “Yeah? And what would you say mine died of? Greed?”

  Eaden was silent for a moment, then said: “You think Xizor is involved with our current situation?”

  “I can smell him on this, Eaden. Look, what if it’s like this—what if there are two parties involved here? Two motives?”

  “Involved in the sabotage?”

  “Yeah. Because it doesn’t make sense to me any other way. You’re right—it seems as if someone is trying to herd the nerf back into line. But some of these incidents could have caused real harm. What if there are two different agendas at work here? What if Kris wants Javul back, but someone else wants her dead? What if there are two saboteurs?”

  Eaden considered that, his prehensile tresses eerily still. “If that someone is Prince Xizor,” he said, “th
en you may find yourself in his way again.”

  “I wasn’t in his way before,” Dash growled. “I was collateral damage. He was after RenTrans. I just got taken down by shrapnel. He doesn’t give a womp rat’s ass about me personally.”

  Which, odd as it seemed to him at the moment, galled. It would have been somehow comforting to be able to say that he was a personal enemy of Prince Xizor—that the Black Sun Underlord hated him. In reality, the Falleen didn’t even know that he existed, much less care. The Rendars had served their purpose. His brother’s ship had been sabotaged and used to destroy Imperial property, which in turn had ruined the family and put their business on the auction block for Xizor to scoop up. Just a day in the life of a Vigo.

  “Perhaps we should walk away from this, Dash,” said Eaden. “If Javul Charn is going to come into direct conflict with Prince Xizor, it might be best if you were not in her immediate vicinity to become collateral damage yet again.”

  Walk away? The thought sat heavily in his gut for a moment until he rooted it out. “I don’t walk away, Eaden. Especially when someone else is counting on me to stay in the game.”

  “This is not a game.”

  Dash glanced up at the Nautolan sharply. “You pickin’ up something? Y’know …” He made a circular motion indicating the ether.

  Eaden frowned. Or at least his face did something as close to a frown as a Nautolan face could perform. “I am … uneasy,” he admitted.

  “Why?”

  “Uncertain. There is a pattern to events I have not yet recognized, but do not like.”

  “Uncertain,” repeated Dash. “I’m really beginning to hate that word. I’m uncertain myself—uncertain about who’s doing what to whom.” He filled Eaden in then, on his thoughts about Mel’s possible involvement. “I mean, think of it: He’s in a perfect position to plant explosives, sneak things into containers, allow access to the ship. But he clearly can’t be the one who wants Javul dead or she’d already be that way. In fact, he may be protecting her after a fashion—maybe even on Kris’s behalf. Who knows?”

  “A tangled scenario. And our most recent sabotage?”

  “I don’t know. It could have been catastrophic, I suppose. But then Mel’s the one who told me that.”

  “What would be his motive for such sabotage?”

  Dash leaned back in his chair and stared at the bulkhead above him. “Well, let’s catalog the effects it had on the tour. We had to either repair the ship or hire a new one; we’ve had to lose most of the crew, which may mean Javul is more vulnerable—or less, depending; we went to Tatooine.”

  The Nautolan cocked his head. “Why Tatooine?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  “You’re not entertaining the idea that Han Solo—”

  “No. Han can be a jerk at times, but he’s honorable. He wouldn’t deal with Black Sun. Not even if you tied him to the Falcon’s plasma vent and threatened to take off.”

  “Then …”

  “Isn’t it obvious? If we’d gone directly to Christophsis, we’d have stayed with the other ship and the entourage. This way, Javul gets cut out from the rest of the nerfs. This way, we’re on our own.”

  SIXTEEN

  DASH WAS NERVOUS. NO, NOT NERVOUS—HE NEVER GOT nervous, he told himself. He was on edge. Waiting.

  He hated waiting. He was really and truly bad at it, and right now it was all he could do. Mostly, his waiting took the form of wandering the ship, poking his nose everywhere, and staying close to Javul. The latter was no big hardship, but it did put him in the crossfire between Han Solo—who was trying to make time with the lovely holostar—and Spike, who was running interference against both of them. Thank the stars Han was usually engaged in the cockpit.

  Dash felt lucky to finally get Javul alone at roughly the midpoint of their voyage to Christophsis. Han had created a little guest lounge in a storage compartment between his quarters and the cabin Javul shared with Spike. Dash found Javul there, frowningly studying a datapad … or maybe just reading a book or watching a vid. She shut the little machine off when he entered the room and smiled up at him.

  “How’s my shadow?” she asked brightly.

  He stopped just short of sitting down at the small makeshift table Han had fashioned out of a cylindrical container and an emergency hatch cover and stared at her. “Your shadow?”

  “You haven’t talked to me much, but I know you’re there. Following, watching—”

  “You make it sound creepy.”

  “No, it’s nice. Makes me feel safe. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt safe.”

  You’re not safe, he wanted to tell her. You may have brought the mole with us. Should he tell her that? He used the act of pulling over a chair to sit in to cover his deliberations.

  I should tell her.

  No, I shouldn’t. It would just scare her needlessly.

  Yes, I should. I don’t want her to relax too much, become complacent.

  “Well, are you gonna tell me?” she asked when he’d gotten himself settled.

  He glanced at her sharply. Her eyes were mischievous. “What?”

  “That little argument you were just having with yourself. You gonna tell me what it was about?”

  Was he that transparent?

  “It was about how much to tell you.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “About …”

  “When we did this—split up the tour—I’m pretty sure you were thinking that maybe we’d left the spy behind. Am I right?”

  She made a wry face and bit her lip. “Yeah. The thought had crossed my mind.”

  “I’m not sure we’ve done that. And I’m not sure the attack on the Nova’s Heart wasn’t purposeful.”

  She looked at him oddly. “Of course it was purposeful. Someone wanted to damage the ship.”

  “Or someone wanted to drive you back to Tatooine and/or separate you from the rest of your entourage.”

  “Who?”

  He hesitated. This wasn’t going to be pleasant. “How well do you know Yanus Melikan?”

  She stared at him, her eyes wide. After a long moment of silence, she laughed. Normally, the happy trill would have mesmerized him. Now it grated.

  “Mel? You think I should distrust Mel? Why?”

  “Because he’s been the one person in a position to figure in just about every one of your little incidents—most especially this last one. He’s the master of that hold,” he added as she screwed up her face in denial. “He knows everything that goes in and everything that comes out. And he routinely tells Nik and Oto not to notice things.”

  “You mean my little field trips? He only does what I’ve asked him to do so that I have some privacy.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Before she could answer, Han Solo stepped through the hatch into the chamber, a crooked grin on his face.

  “Am I interrupting anything?” he asked, glancing between the two seated at the table.

  “Would you care if you were?” asked Dash in return.

  Han grinned unrepentantly. “Nope.”

  “Shouldn’t you be up in the cockpit steering this crate, Captain Solo?”

  “Shouldn’t you be checking shipping crates or something … Security Chief Rendar?”

  “I’ve checked them, thanks.”

  Han shook his head, moving farther into the room. “Oh, but you can never be sure about these things, Dash, old buddy. I mean, you can’t be watching all the holds all the time.”

  “I’ve got a maintenance droid posted at every entrance.”

  “Droids? Man, you’ll be up a wormhole without a hyperdrive if your saboteur knows how to fool a droid. Which doesn’t exactly take a degree in Neural-Net Psych One-Oh-One.”

  He had a point. A good point. One Dash hadn’t even considered.

  “It’s about time for my rounds anyway.” He rose and gestured at his chair. “All yours, Han, old buddy.”

  Han smiled and took the chair.

  “Dash?�
�

  He turned back at the sound of Javul’s voice.

  “I’m sure,” she said.

  He hesitated a moment, trying to remember where they’d left their conversation when Han had strolled in. He’d asked if she was sure she could trust Mel. In the moment their eyes had met, he thought he’d read doubt in hers.

  “I’m gonna go check the holds again anyway,” he said.

  He checked in with Leebo and Oto first—asked them to examine the droids he’d posted outside the various holds, dividing the duty between the two of them.

  “And what exactly is it I’m supposed to be checking for?” asked Leebo. “Oto’s got an uplink to all of them and they haven’t so much as peeped.”

  “Find out if they recorded any peculiar comings and goings.”

  “Peculiar comings and goings? Oh, now there’s a real clear description. What d’you think, Oto? You think the droids will understand what we mean by peculiar comings and goings?”

  “I am uncertain how to respond to that, LE-BO2D9. I have no internal description of what constitutes peculiar comings and goings.”

  Leebo swiveled his head toward Dash. “There, you see? Clear as mud. Care to try again?”

  Dash blinked at the droid. Tried to remember that it really wasn’t being a smart-mouth—it was the programmed personality. This was just a request for more information; Leebo’s way of saying Please specify. He took a deep breath.

  “Inquire as to whether the droids have observed anyone—and I do mean anyone—entering the holds or tampering with the containers, or with the droids themselves, in any way.”

  Leebo tilted his head sideways. “There, now. Was that so hard?” He started to turn away.

  “Wait.” Dash tapped him on one metal shoulder. “Ask if anyone even approached them. I mean, there’s a chance maybe someone messed with the droids’ memory. Did something to the containers then wiped their record of it.”

  Oto made a hostile-sounding clicking noise. “Such reprogramming would require that Cargo Master Melikan was the aforementioned someone. Likewise, if they were instructed not to notice something, the cargo master would have had to deliver the instruction.”