Star Wars: Shadow Games

by Michael Reaves

  Dash shrugged. “You know that old saying: What you don’t know can’t hurt you?”

  Han nodded.

  “Well, it’s total poodoo. What you don’t know can hurt you, but knowing about it won’t hurt you any less. And it’s a lot more …”

  “Complicated,” finished Javul.

  “Complicated?” echoed Han. “How complicated?”

  As they moved toward the cockpit, Javul explained how complicated—sort of.

  “I didn’t just dump Hitch. I … inconvenienced his boss.”

  Han paled. “His boss … Xizor?” He paused at the cockpit hatch to shake his head at Dash. “How did you get us into this sort of banthaflop?”

  “Me? I didn’t get us into anything.”

  “Well, it’s sure not my fault.”

  Han disappeared into the cockpit. Dash considered following him to continue the argument, but decided he’d be better off concentrating on convincing Javul to cancel her performance on Falleen. With that in mind, he turned—only to find that she had disappeared. Cursing under his breath, he went looking for her.

  NINETEEN

  JAVUL WAS NOT IN ANY OF THE FIRST THREE PLACES Dash looked for her and, by the time he found her staring into space through the portal of the starboard docking ring, he was convinced she was avoiding him.

  “You got any more secrets you want to let me in on?”

  She didn’t even turn her head to look at him. “No.”

  He paused a beat, then made his way down the short corridor to where she leaned against the air lock’s inner hatch. “I’m supposed to take that for an answer?”

  “Sorry. It’s the only answer I’ve got at the moment.”

  “Your boyfriend seems to think you’ve got a death wish.”

  She shrugged. “Ex-boyfriend. And do you care what he thinks?”

  “Why are you hellbent on going to Falleen?”

  “I told you. We have a contract. We’re legally obligated to go to Falleen.”

  “Big deal. That’s what lawyers are for. I’m sure you’ve got lawyers.”

  “I do. But I also have scruples. And—just as important—I have fans. Fans I have no intention of disappointing. Besides, I’m not about to let Hitch Kris or anyone else keep me from doing what I love.”

  “Uh-huh. Tell me, just what does Hitch think you plan to do once you get there?”

  “What?” She turned to look at him.

  “When I walked in on your conversation, he was saying something about what you were doing. Then he strongly hinted that you were about to do something monumentally stupid.”

  “Yeah. Go to Falleen. He thought it was a direct affront to Prince Xizor. I think it’s business. Which the prince understands better than anyone.”

  “The prince whose dealings in the Corellian Trade Spine you crippled?”

  Her gaze flickered to his face. “You heard that, did you?”

  “Yeah. And a lot of other stuff I didn’t like, but that sort of stood out.”

  She shrugged again. Abruptly, Dash was angrier than he could remember being in quite a while. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her, as much to his astonishment as to hers.

  “Javul, stop lying to me! You’ve done nothing but lie to me since the beginning! First it’s an overzealous fan, then it’s a case of mistaken identity, then it’s a jealous boyfriend, then it’s an insulted Vigo, then it’s a pissed-off Underlord, and now it’s a crippled trade run—Prince Xizor’s crippled trade run, no less! What’s next? Who else have you insulted, jilted, or otherwise bollixed up?”

  Those eyes. Those pale, luminous eyes were laughing at him again. “You’re so cute when you go into a fit of high dudgeon—”

  “Don’t. Stop trivializing this situation.” Dash realized he’d reached his limit with her evasions. He did the only thing he could do, considering that quitting was out of the question. He kissed her.

  She did not fight him off or scratch his eyes out or slap him silly. She kissed him back. Not passionately, but deeply. When he raised his head at last, she was watching him, but no longer laughing.

  “Poor Dash,” she said, her voice soft and annoyingly sweet. “Have I bollixed you up?”

  “No, but you’re pissing me off. What did Kris mean about you crippling Xizor’s operation?”

  She lowered her lashes, and he could see the thoughts organizing themselves behind the screen. “Is kissing how you express anger?” she asked. “Wow. I’d hate to find out what happens to women you really like.”

  He glared at her. “Answer the question. What did you do to Xizor that makes your appearance in Falleen Throne tantamount to the acting-out of a death wish?”

  “I turned over a very important cargo. I got several lieutenants and a couple of Vigos in the Corellian Spine captured and imprisoned. And I turned over as much information as I had to the Imperials—which was significant. It included the names of ships and captains, timetables, potential cargoes, methods of operation … and Black Sun recognition codes. I told the Imperials how they could recognize a Black Sun operation and how they could interfere with it.”

  Dash let go of her and sagged against the bulkhead. “So … Xizor not only had to replace his people …”

  “He had to redesign his entire operation along the Spine and come up with a new code cipher.”

  “Whoa.” It was all he could think of to say.

  Javul looked at him wryly. “What—you gonna kiss me again?”

  “I may worship at your feet. I’d give my weight in glitterstim to have caused Xizor that much trouble.”

  She nodded slowly, her eyes on his face. “That’s right. You need some payback, too, don’t you?”

  “I need …” He trailed off. What did he need? Justice? Redress? What he really needed was his family back. That wasn’t going to happen. The only slender thread of hope he’d ever had was that they hadn’t found Stanton’s body in the wreckage of the Doriella’s Mystress. Which probably meant nothing except that he hadn’t yet squeezed the last bit of childish naïveté out of his soul. “I don’t need anything from Xizor. As Eaden pointed out to me, the universe hasn’t exactly been kind to him, either.”

  “The universe didn’t kill your brother and ruin your family, Dash. A being did. A Falleen. Xizor.”

  “Uh-huh. A being who has every reason to want you and me both permanently out of his way. A being whose people are experts at the kind of sabotage that brought down Doriella’s Mystress and crippled Nova’s Heart.”

  “Are you afraid of him?”

  He knew she wasn’t appealing to his male vanity. She was asking the question in all honesty. “I’d be a fool not to be. He’s a very powerful being. Even Vader thinks twice before crossing him, I’ve heard.”

  She smiled crookedly. “Ah, there’s a but at the end of that sentence.”

  Dash sighed. “Okay. But, if I had an opportunity to pay him back for the grief he’s caused my family, I suppose I’d do it. Is that what you’re offering me?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve no intention of tweaking Xizor while we’re on Falleen, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “While we’re on Falleen. What are you not telling me?”

  “Nothing that’s going to make a bit of difference to you in the long run.”

  He looked down at the floor. Where’s your sense of self-preservation, Rendar? You should cut your losses and run like space slugs were nipping at your tail.

  Too late for that, he reckoned. For better or for worse, they were on their way to Falleen.

  Funny, he thought, how when people use that phrase, it nearly always turns out to be for worse …

  Dash could have predicted just about anything to happen, except what did, which was—

  Nothing.

  Hitch Kris did not pursue them. Xizor was not lying in wait at the spaceport when they hit the permacrete. They unloaded the ships onto huge cargo transports and followed them to the venue where the road crew set up. There was no sabotage, no Bla
ck Sun minions, no Mandalorian goons. It was enough to set Dash’s teeth on edge. He found himself almost wanting Xizor to do something.

  The equipment was thoroughly checked under Dash’s careful oversight as it left the ship. There had been some very minor damage to the contents of the big cylindrical crate that had almost erased him from the space–time continuum, and a backup bit of set framework had to be subbed in from Deep Core’s load. Dash checked that over, too. The Falcon was buttoned up tight as a snare-box and put under the watchful care of Oto and two R2 units that Javul purchased from a small-time dealer she’d picked at random.

  The first performance went so smoothly it was kind of scary, and if Xizor had snuck home from Imperial Center to catch the show, there was no sign of him—unless he was one of the thousands of anonymous Falleen fans sitting raptly in the audience, changing color with every bit of pathos or comedy.

  That was something Dash had never seen before—the collective manipulation of an entire auditorium filled with Falleen. The flow of emotions—manifested in the Falleen as effusions of pheromones and changes in skin color—seemed to wash across the audience in waves, eddying, feeding on itself, and washing back again. Dash watched them the way he recalled watching tide pools at Gold Beach on Corellia: gray-green to aqua to sun-washed golds and sunset reds. It was mesmerizing.

  He stood backstage and watched the audience watching the holostar as she glittered and gleamed—now life-sized, now many times larger than life; first mortal, then a sprite, then a goddess. He wondered what it would be like to be a non-Falleen caught up in that heady stew of pheromones. Judging from the facial expressions of the handful of humans he could see when the lights changed, it was a lot like getting swacked on spiced ale with an eyeblaster chaser.

  The show ended, to thunderous applause. Javul did two encores. The crowds departed while Dash kept their darling safely locked away in her dressing room, under guard. They retired to the Millennium Falcon after that, where they were greeted with news from Tatooine. Captain Marrak advised them that Nova’s Heart was nearing the end of her forced sabbatical. He expected to lift off in the next several days and hopefully would reconnoiter with them two stops down the line at Bacrana.

  Dash breathed no easier. They had two more performances on Falleen before they lifted for a single concert at Bannistar Station. That was good. It meant a fast turnaround.

  Dash prayed that they’d actually make it to Bannistar and decided that if Falleen was not destined to be their graveyard, he would hit the first cantina on Bannistar Station and get royally drunk.

  For now, he watched everything and everyone until his head hurt.

  By the end of the third performance, however, with no problems that he could see, Dash was finally feeling almost easy. Until the thought came to him, unbidden, that the best way to get rid of a pesky presence like Javul Charn would be to arrange for her ship to quietly explode after leaving Falleen space. Whoever was after her had already shown himself prepared to send attack ships out to back up any onboard sabotage.

  “Tonight,” he told Oto and Leebo on the last night of the Falleen engagement, “we’re going to crawl over every centimeter of that ship and every circuit in her system to make sure no one’s planted anything nasty in our absence. Agreed?”

  “As you wish,” said Oto.

  Leebo feigned boredom of his chats with Han Solo’s vessel. “She’s a vain little thing, you know. Thinks she’s the galaxy’s gift to the Maw cluster. Solo’s filled her CPU with complete codswallop.”

  “Cods-what?” said Dash.

  Leebo’s optics blinked. “Huh. Funny. I don’t have a definition for that in my data bank. It’s just sort of there without explanation. Something Kood Gareeda popped in. I think it means she’s full of poodoo.”

  “What a surprise.”

  Two hours after midnight, local time, Deep Core lifted off. The Millennium Falcon lingered while Dash, Eaden, Han, and Leebo split up and spread out to secure the ship. Han and Leebo went over the ship’s vital systems, while Dash and Eaden worked with Mel, Nik, and Oto on the cargo bays.

  Dash had finished with the last of Han’s secret compartments and was pulling the floor grating in the main corridor back into place when he caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Someone had just flitted across the corridor near the crew’s quarters.

  He rose and followed.

  He reached the short corridor that led to the docking ring air lock just in time to see the inner hatch slide shut and the usage indicator for the external doors come on. Someone was leaving the ship!

  Dash moved swiftly down through the access corridor to the inner hatch, opened it, and slipped through into the unpressurized air lock. Peering from the outer hatch, he saw her: Javul. At least he thought it was Javul. She was wearing a long black wig and was dressed in a flowing golden robe that billowed around her legs, seeming to shed stardust as she moved.

  Cursing, Dash opened a comlink to Eaden. “Javul’s run off again. You and Han get ready to cast off. I’m going after her.”

  He barely heard Eaden’s quiet acknowledgment. He was already in motion, following the golden figure along the catwalk that led from Bay 6, then down the long, multilevel terminal to the spaceport’s main concourse.

  Javul was in a hurry. She fled down the corridor to a turbolift at the confluence of their docking terminal and the main concourse. Dash paused long enough to watch the lift display her descent—twenty-two levels to street level.

  Dash followed, choosing a lift on the opposite side of the terminal’s broad corridor. He stepped out in the lee of a huge supporting pillar and peeked around it into the concourse. This early in the morning, it was hardly a hub of activity, though there were a few sentients about. Most of the traffic in the cavernous, state-of-the-art building at this hour was made up of maintenance and cargo droids. Dash ignored them all, keeping his eyes trained on the fleeting figure making her way toward the front of the building.

  She glanced around as if suspecting she might be followed, then exited to the street. Dash hung back until she was through the doors, fearing she might see his reflection in the transparisteel windows. The doors opened onto a broad avenue that looked as if it were made of gleaming black rock. Javul did not hail a taxi. Instead she darted across the avenue and into a plaza surrounded by softly lit buildings and bordered by well-manicured shrubs and trees.

  Dash waited a beat, then hurried after her. She ducked into the shadows of the nearest building, moving from one pool of soft light to another as she navigated the façade. Dash strove to stay a constant distance behind her and was taken aback when, suddenly, the golden billow of fabric entered a shadow between two buildings and stopped.

  He had taken four or five long steps before he realized this and pulled up short, his heart hammering in his chest, his eyes on the golden robe. Five seconds passed without movement. Puzzled, he crept forward, keeping to the shadows cast by the ornate shrubs in a planter to his left. The patch of gold still did not move. In fact, it was too still.

  He emerged from the shadows and slipped up behind the figure, putting out his hand. It met empty fabric. The robe was hanging on the branch of a tall conifer that marked the boundary between two buildings. Even as he clutched at it, it dropped from the tree branch to the glittering permacrete beneath his feet.

  He swept the robe up and glanced feverishly around. Where had she gone?

  Deep breath, Rendar. Focus.

  The plaza was empty. She might be hiding behind one of the cut stone planters, but he doubted it. She wouldn’t have used the robe to buy time for hiding. She was clearly headed somewhere with intent. He moved forward again, along the front of the building to his right. The elaborately carved heads of fantastic animals jutted at intervals from the wall, each with a lamp in its maw. The light was dim but warm—golden. Between the animals were strange symbols and occasionally a niche that housed a figurine … or rather, an icon.

  It was a Wayfarer’s Temple complex, he rea
lized. A series of shrines and chapels from a variety of worlds and religious and philosophical traditions set up so that travelers of a meditative or pious bent could offer devotions at the shrine of their choice. Why had Javul come here? They’d never discussed religious beliefs, so he had no idea if she might have gone to a particular shrine. He wasn’t even entirely sure what planet she called home, so if she worshiped planetary deities, he was out of luck.

  He reached the door of the building. It was made of wood and heavily carved. Though it was closed, light peeped from beneath it. Dash turned the quaint door handle and leaned against the door. It glided open on well-lubed hinges—no squeaks to upset the meditations of the faithful. The place was empty, but a huge piece of statuary dominated the front of the long room. Dash blinked. The deity—if that’s what the hideous thing was—looked like what might happen if you took Eaden Vrill, enlarged him, and gave him a beard of prehensile tresses in addition to the ones on his head.

  Dash looked away from the figure and listened. The room was silent. He withdrew and moved on, past one of the austere shrines devoted to The Silent—an enigmatic order that operated under a perpetual vow of silence and somehow radiated meditative waves of healing as well. She could only have entered there if she’d taken vows of silence. He didn’t bother to peek inside the shuttered entrance. His imagination balked at the thought of Javul Charn taking a vow of silence.

  Three empty sanctuaries later, he reached the rear of the plaza and turned left to move along the row of chapels there. The first one to his right was a study in simplicity and clean lines. Not austere, but balanced, with curvilinear ornamentation. It was small, too, almost lost amid the larger, more opulent shrines. The scent of incense wafted from it. It struck Dash’s senses like an all-encompassing memory: wood fires, rainy nights, spices, the warmth of a sun, the comfort of a soft word, sleep, waking in the arms of …

  He shook himself and moved to the door of the little chapel. The entry was covered only by strands of silver beads that seemed to glow softly in the light from the plaza and from within the chapel. At the far end of the dimly lit room was a simple dais above which a holographic representation of the galaxy turned slowly. Behind and above that on the rear wall was a large oval that seemed to mirror the shape of the galaxy. It contained a geometric pattern of black and white.