Star Wars: Shadow Games

by Michael Reaves

  Dash rose, too, meeting Han nose-to-nose. “This isn’t about the girl. Can’t you wrap your fat head around that?”

  “Oh, really?” Han sat back down. “Then tell me what it is about?”

  That stopped Dash in his tracks. What was it about? He realized he hadn’t articulated that fully, even to himself. He clawed ideas out of the air and tried to clothe them in words.

  “It’s about … having your life run by forces outside your control.”

  “What?”

  “Look at me, at Eaden, at Javul—look at you.”

  “What’s wrong with me?”

  “Not you exactly, but what your life is. You’re pushed around by forces you can’t control—Jabba, the Empire—”

  “Hey, nobody pushes Han Solo around—”

  “Oh, shut up! Why were you in a position to take my cargo to Nar Shaddaa?”

  Han blinked. “Well, I …”

  “You were scrounging for work because Jabba’s soured on you. He’s caught up in stuff that’s bigger than he is, too. Clan politics, Imperial politics, whatever. I’m where I am—living on the fringes—because a Black Sun Vigo effectively wiped out my family. And he did that, in part, because the Empire wiped out his family. Javul’s where she is because the Empire is running all our lives, whether we like it or not. We have to watch who we associate with, where we go, what we say, and who we say it to. And now I just found out that Eaden’s had his life jerked around by the same forces. So maybe I am, y’know, a little impressed with the woman, but mostly I think I just want to feel like I’m not playing dead. Like I’m not just keeping my head down and whistling in the dark and pretending that everything’s stellar when it’s not. Javul has found a way to push—no, to fight back. I think that’s worth my time and effort.”

  Han was nodding, almost as if he’d been listening. “Yeah, but is it worth your life? ’Cause, with all due respect, that’s exactly what your Rebel girlfriend is asking you to put on the line.”

  Dash considered that. “Yeah. I think maybe it is.”

  Han snorted. “C’mon … whatever this thing is that Javul might be transporting—how can it possibly make a difference? So they get information or something. Big deal. So what’s new?”

  “Cascade effect,” said Dash. “Someone does something. And that proves to someone else that something can be done. So they do something and that proves to a few more people that something can be done, and they do something. Up until now, the Empire has had the cascade effect on their side: they take out the Jedi, and Eaden’s order gets cascaded out of existence; they take out Xizor’s family and that cascades into my family. Maybe if we help Javul, we can turn the cascade the other way.”

  Han’s face was suddenly shuttered. “Yeah? I know more about the cascade effect than I care to. But I also know that the Rebel Alliance is poison. It’s not something I want to get involved with.”

  “Okay, fine. Don’t get involved.”

  Both men turned at the sound of Javul Charn’s voice. She stood in the hatchway.

  “Just get us to Bannistar and take us from there to Alderaan. We were originally supposed to perform on Alderaan and leave the container behind where our liaison could impound it as missing property. All very proper. We can’t afford to do that now, obviously. Our itinerary is too well known.”

  “You could send Deep Core instead,” suggested Dash. “I mean, you may have already thought of that …”

  “I hadn’t. Thanks. It’s a good suggestion. Make things look as normal as possible.”

  “That’s all just great as far as it goes,” said Han, “but like you said—they know your itinerary. Who’s to say you won’t get to Bannistar and find a welcoming committee waiting for you?”

  “There may be some trouble on Bannistar,” Javul granted him, “but I have to believe the fuel on that station is going to make anyone think twice about blowing things up or getting trigger-happy. I’m a courier. I’m not that important in the cosmic scheme of things.”

  Dash wasn’t ready to accept that at face value. He suspected she might be a good deal more important than she was letting on.

  Han leaned back in his command chair. “Too risky,” he said curtly.

  Dash glared at him, opened his mouth to retort. Javul put a hand on his shoulder and shook her head. “How much do you want?” she asked Han.

  “You don’t have enough money, lady. I’ll help you get your package and I’ll get you away from Bannistar Station, but I’m not going to risk my ship or my life to take you to the Core Worlds. That would be suicide—and while I might not be very bright, I’m not suicidal. You’ll have to find some other space jockey to complete your operation.”

  “I’ll double—”

  Han was shaking his head. “Let me be real specific: a diamond the size of a neutron star’s core wouldn’t be big enough.”

  “All right. Fine. Let me know when we’re in the Bannistar neighborhood. I have a message I need to send. I’ll have to set up a rendezvous with the Nova’s Heart.” She paused as she turned to go and looked down at Dash, frustration glittering in her eyes. “What about you, Dash? Are you going to pull out before we get to Alderaan?”

  “I’m in,” he said, his gaze on Han. “All the way in.”

  Han just shook his head.

  TWENTY-TWO

  HUNDREDS OF METERS ABOVE THE SURFACE OF A PLANETOID too insignificant to merit a name of its own, huge clusters of fuel tanks floated, tethered to a refinery complex often hidden beneath a roil of clouds. The refinery was serviced mostly by droids. Any sentients in their right minds lived in the habitat rings and towers embedded in the hearts of the tank clusters like seeds in highly volatile fruit. The largest of the clusters—the Command and Control facility—was where the Millennium Falcon was headed.

  Javul Charn had called in a request for a docking portal herself, explaining that an accident had befallen her ship and she had resorted to hiring this Corellian freighter. The duty officer in the C&C was surprised almost to stammering to find himself face-to-digitized-face with the beautiful holostar. Dash could relate.

  “Mistress Charn, this is—this is—this is such a pleasant surprise. I mean, it’s not a surprise that you’re here but we weren’t expecting—I mean, we were expecting the Nova’s Heart and we’d set aside a docking port … that is …”

  Javul laughed pleasantly. “Yes, well, the Millennium Falcon is a somewhat different configuration, isn’t she? I hope you have a dock we can use. Something as close to the hub facility as possible …”

  “Oh—oh, of course! Um, do you need to be near your other vessel—the Deep Core? If so—”

  “No. Not necessary. I only need personnel from the Deep Core, not equipment.”

  “Oh, okay. Well, let me check for a free dock. You’re a YT-1300 … I mean”—he laughed nervously—“your ship is a—” He cleared his throat and repeated, “I’ll check for a free dock.”

  The man—a human male—was gone for only a moment before returning to give their navigational array the coordinates for the dock. Han read them over then disengaged the auto-dock feature, clearly intending to pilot the ship in himself.

  “What are you doing?” Javul asked. “Doesn’t this thing have an auto-dock?”

  Dash grinned. “Han has a bit of a phobia about allowing a computer to steer the Falcon to dock.”

  “Yeah,” said Han. “Especially in a situation where we may have to make a hasty departure. If I’ve steered her in myself, I know how to steer her out again without hitting one of these giant space mines or fouling a tether.”

  “And if you’ve got your auto-dock engaged, the port AI can lock you down,” added Dash. “Which means you may find yourself unable to beat a hasty retreat.”

  “Makes sense. I’m going to go assemble the troops.” She swung out of the cockpit.

  Dash turned to Han. “You need me to do something?”

  “This ain’t brain surgery, Dash.”

  It wasn’t brain surgery
, but it was a more complex procedure than Dash or Han had expected. They entered the tanker field and made their way along a series of marker buoys to a docking port at the largest cluster of tanks. There were six of them, in fact, arranged in a ring and linked together by catwalks. A number of small freighters and a single Imperial corvette were docked at various posts around the circumference of the tanks.

  Han shook his head as he nudged the Falcon into position. “I don’t like this. Did you see that corvette on the other side of the command module? If we go back out the way we came in, we’ll have to go right past it. Plus the flight path was a maze. If we have to get out of here in a hurry—”

  “Well, then I guess we’d better hope we don’t have to,” Dash said, eyeing the nearest fuel tank. Its huge, oblate body loomed over the freighter, dwarfing her.

  “I am not looking forward to this,” Han grumbled.

  Dash rose and clapped him on the shoulder. “Look at it this way—you’ll get to see a free Javul Charn concert.”

  Scaled down—that’s how Javul had described her performance on Bannistar Station. To Dash it was even more complicated and grandiose in its own way than her outdoor concert on Christophsis. The larger framework elements and piece scenery that were in Deep Core’s capacious hold would remain unused; Javul’s plan was to give her performance in the free space between several clusters of tanks, making good use of the low gravity to fly the piece scenery and augment her antigrav harness. The tanks and their network of walkways would become her staging area.

  Great, Dash thought, more complicated stuff to go wrong.

  “That doesn’t seem very practical.” This opinion came from an unlikely source—Javul’s devoted road manager, who also turned out to be a Rebel operative. “I mean, look,” Spike said, as their party traversed the catwalk from their docking port on the far side of the tanks to the central tower where Command and Control was located. “These sets of tanks are connected to the refineries down there, not to one another. Which means they’re bobbing around like Dantooine swamp bunnies. They’d need to be moored to one another somehow, wouldn’t they?”

  “Yeah, but they’re made for that. See?” Javul gestured upward toward the bulging flanks of the tank closest to them.

  Looking up, Dash found himself peering at the bottom of another catwalk. It ran along the tank’s broad beam and extended past it to an encircling perimeter walkway. Even from here he could see the scaffolding and hydraulic systems that would allow the catwalk overhead to be extended out past the perimeter. He realized the walkway beneath their feet had the same means of extension.

  “They’re made to be reconfigurable,” Javul said. “They’d have to be. So, I’ll just propose that maybe we can reconfigure them for the performance. Link some of the habitable areas together and to the main tower.”

  Dash glanced at her sharply. This was not about a performance. “Okay. Why do you really want them moved?”

  “So that there’s a path to that storage facility over there.”

  Over there was a cluster of four fuel tanks with a cargo storage ring that floated serenely about two klicks away. The designation 4B was painted on each of the tanks in characters three times the height of a man.

  “Ah. The mysterious container,” said Han.

  “Wouldn’t it be better to ask for a docking port at that cluster?” asked Dash.

  “And what reason would we give for that?” Javul returned. “Everything else we need is over here in the control center. Food, lodging, staging areas—all of it. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to raise as little suspicion as possible. A request that can be chalked up to the inflated ego of a celebrity might be annoying, but it’s not likely to raise suspicion.”

  “Yeah, well how do you propose to sweet-talk the station commander into reconfiguring his tanks?”

  She threw him a brilliant smile over one shoulder. “Approximately the same way I sweet-talked you.”

  Behind him, Han let out a bark of laughter. “Boy, does she have your number.”

  “You should talk. You’re right here with the rest of us.”

  “Yeah, because I’m being well paid, not because I let myself be sweet-talked into this craziness.”

  “Well, since we ended up in the same place, I guess it doesn’t matter why, does it?”

  They made their way among the huge tanks into the center of the cluster where a tower many hundreds of stories tall anchored the grouping. The air was quiet this high up, but they could hear the ghost voice of the wind eddying around the fuel line and its laminanium tether. Dash realized that the catwalk on which they stood was vibrating in those same winds.

  “I’ve always wondered how they kept these things in the air,” murmured Han as they approached the entrance to the tower.

  Dash moved to the front of the group, slipping in front of Javul to activate the door controls. They opened before he could touch the panel, revealing a tall, broad-shouldered man with close-cut graying black hair and ice-blue eyes. He was dressed in an Imperial uniform … sort of. At least the jacket was from an Imperial uniform and it carried the code cylinders of a command-level officer, but it hung open to reveal a decidedly nonregulation shirt of some silvery material. He wore a blaster strapped to his belt and a smug smile on his lips.

  He looked right past Dash to Javul, and the look in his steely eyes made every male instinct in Dash’s back-brain go on full alert.

  “Javul Charn, I presume. Welcome aboard Bannistar Station. I’m Commander D’Vox.”

  Javul stepped around Dash and held her hand out to the station commander. “Commander D’Vox, what a pleasant surprise. I hardly expected this high-level a welcome.”

  He smiled—an expression that was at once pleasant and creepy—and took Javul’s hand. Which he actually kissed.

  Dash heard a snort of derision from Han and echoed it mentally. He comforted himself that Javul would probably have little trouble wrapping the commander around her every whim.

  D’Vox seemed smitten already. “I could hardly let anyone of your celebrity status arrive without my personal welcome, Mistress Charn.”

  “Please, Commander, call me Javul.”

  “And you should call me Arno,” he said, bowing over her hand again. “Let me show you to your quarters—then, I think, a tour of the facility is in order.”

  Dash glanced at Javul’s face, wondering if she was praying to the Cosmic Balance that the commander didn’t put his lips on her hand again. He didn’t. Instead, he tucked it through his arm and led her into the lift. The rest of the party followed, exchanging wry and uneasy glances. Dash resolved to stay as close to Javul as humanly possible.

  Javul insisted that her security chief accompany her on the tour of the ship. Dash, in turn, insisted that his partner accompany them on the tour. Leebo was also gainfully employed—surreptitiously “chatting” with the station’s AI systems about such things as the number of Imperial ships docked here, when they’d arrived, and when they were expected to depart. Ostensibly, he was gauging the size of their audience. In reality, he was looking for anomalies—ships rushed to the station or that had no itinerary registered with the C&C, unusual troop deployments, anything else that suggested they’d been found out.

  Dash was hoping that the Empire’s love of layers and layers of secrecy—which bred paranoia, lousy communication, and hidden agendas—would have kept D’Vox out of the loop. He was obviously not a stickler for protocol and regulations, if his personal dress was any indication. That, in and of itself, might make his superiors wary of trusting him with sensitive information.

  Spike, Mel, and Nik were getting their own tour of the part of the facilities that directly impacted the show, while Oto scrambled the cargo droids to begin unloading the Millennium Falcon. Han had disappeared, and Dash was fairly certain he had gone off to locate the station’s nearest entertainment sector.

  D’Vox wasn’t pleased that his guest required the services of her security team, but his only comment
as he walked off with Javul on his arm was: “You’re perfectly safe with me, Javul. You really don’t need the extra brawn. I think I’ve got plenty.” He actually flexed his biceps as he spoke.

  As if she heard Dash’s eyes rolling, Javul shot him a backward glance over her shoulder. She made a face at him. He laughed out loud, which drew him a not-so-pleasant look from D’Vox.

  “Uh, sorry. Eaden just told me a joke.”

  “Really?” D’Vox said. “When did he do that? I didn’t hear him say anything.”

  “Yesterday.” He shrugged. “I just now got it.”

  The tour was instructive. Dash got a good sense of the overall layout of the control module, which he knew was reprised on a smaller scale in the other clusters of tanks. The immense vertical tower held crew and guest quarters, amenities and command centers. The tanks were linked to it by a framework of platforms, catwalks, and scaffolding that encircled the tower and radiated out from it in all directions. And, as Javul had theorized, the catwalks and scaffolding could be extended to link the tanks and hab modules together in different configurations. The question now was: Did Javul Charn possess the charms to convince Arno D’Vox to reconfigure it for her?

  After a brief look at the C&C—and a chance to admire the view from the bridge at the very top of the structure—they moved to the communal habitat areas, strolling along a relatively broad promenade lined with shops, restaurants, entertainment venues, and drinking establishments. Javul and D’Vox were in front chatting; Dash and Eaden, watchful, brought up the rear. D’Vox had just said something that caused Javul to laugh with feigned delight when a man wearing a uniform in even more disreputable condition than D’Vox’s strode up to the commander and blocked his path.

  “We need to talk,” the man said to D’Vox, then gave Javul a scalding once-over through glittering dark eyes.

  Dash and Eaden hurried their steps by mutual and silent agreement. The newcomer was almost as tall as D’Vox, but not nearly as well honed physically. He was big-boned, but not particularly muscular. He had a wild thatch of reddish brown hair, an unkempt beard, and a crazy gleam in his brown eyes. The way he looked at Javul made Dash’s hands twitch toward his blaster.