Star Wars: Shadow Games

by Michael Reaves

  “And I say—” D’Vox began, but they never heard what he was going to say because at that moment the chamber doors hissed open.

  The two guards, who’d been focusing their entire attention on the argument, were taken completely unawares when Dara and Nik appeared, both armed with a blaster in each hand. To the kid’s credit, his hands didn’t even shake. He held his blasters steadily on the party in the room while Spike ran the show.

  “Everyone just drop your weapons, okay?”

  Rishyk’s blaster muzzle wavered slightly.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” said a voice from the other side of the room. “I just had the firing mechanism on this old piece of mine fixed and I’m not quite comfortable with the new trigger action yet.” Han Solo stood in the balcony doorway. His “old piece” was aimed at Rishyk’s midsection. “Pulls a bit easier than I’m used to.”

  The DL-44 “accidentally” went off, drilling a smoking hole in the bulkhead right beside Rishyk, who flinched. “Okay,” Han continued, “it pulls a lot easier. Sorry; I’ll try’n make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

  Mel was armed now as well, with a hold-out blaster that had appeared magically out of the collar of his jacket. Spike relieved the guards, D’Vox, and Rishyk of their weapons, then marched them into the refresher. She closed the doors, fused the controls with a blast from her pistol, then herded Javul and Dash toward the balcony.

  “We’ve got all kinds of chatter on Imperial bands,” she told Javul. “Something’s shaking and we can’t afford to get caught up in it.”

  As Dash limped across the threshold and stepped out into the night, he saw that Han had brought the Millennium Falcon right up the central core of the station’s rearranged modules. She hovered at balcony height, her hatch wide open and spilling welcoming light across the duracrete surface. They were aboard within thirty seconds. Han relieved Leebo of the pilot’s seat and dropped them down out of the station core. They hurtled into hyperspace the moment they were clear of the planet’s gravity well.

  “Can I have a word?” Dash stood in the hatchway of the Millennium Falcon’s “guest” quarters, his eyes watchfully on the two women who sat, cross-legged, on the bunks facing each other.

  If he’d come across them in another setting, under other circumstances, he’d have said they looked like a couple of girlfriends—one consoling the other after a tragic breakup. It was hard to believe that less than half an hour ago Javul had been literally a knife’s edge away from death.

  Spike made a crooked grimace and pointed at Javul. “A word with her, you mean?”

  He nodded.

  The obviously weary road manager rose from her bunk and moved past him out the door. “Don’t freak her out any more than she is already,” she warned him. “And don’t take too long. We both need to sleep.”

  He nodded, slipping into the room to sit next to Javul on her bunk. “Hey,” she said. He thought her eyes were wary, haunted.

  “You okay?” he asked. “I mean, really okay? That was … tough … out there.”

  “Me? Are you? I mean, you …” She put her hand over his where it rested on his thigh. “I’m so sorry. About Eaden. He was … he was …” A tear ran down her cheek. She tried to wipe it away and missed.

  Dash reached up reflexively and brushed it aside with his thumb. “I’m … I’ll be all right. In a while. I’ve lost friends before. It …” He laughed humorlessly and shook his head.

  “You were going to say it gets easier, weren’t you? But it doesn’t.”

  She sounded so sure of that, he turned his head to look at her. “Who did you lose?”

  “My mother and father. When I was fourteen. We were living on Nar Shaddaa at the time.”

  He frowned. “I thought you were born and raised on Coruscant.” Light dawned. “Cover story.”

  She nodded. “My younger brother, Ayx, and I went to Tatooine to live with Dara’s family. Our fathers were close friends. Served together in the Republic space corps.”

  “Let me guess—the Imperials had something to do with it.”

  She nodded again. “The Imperials always have something to do with it.”

  “Yeah. Seems like they’re at the bottom of everything dark and scary.” It struck him suddenly that even Prince Xizor thought the Empire was dark and scary. He wondered if the prince was reminded of his own loss every time he had a brush with Vader or Palpatine. “What happened?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “The Empire didn’t want to risk an uprising. All those well-trained ex-soldiers and ex-pilots were a threat. Even if they were just farmers and merchants and musicians now, maybe someday, under the right circumstances, they could be incited to fight again. So …” Again, the eloquent shrug. “They got rid of them. Mom and Dad were musicians. They toured the Mid and Outer Rim. Hutt space, sometimes. Trying to keep a low profile. Wasn’t low enough; Imperials staged a raid on the venue they were playing on Bothawui. When the shooting stopped, Mom and Dad and three members of their band were dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too. But they knew what they were doing was dangerous. Ayx and I both understood they were doing it for us.”

  He peered into her face. “You’re saying they were in the resistance.”

  “The rambling life of a musician makes a great cover for running information.” She grimaced. “Mel didn’t exactly recruit me. When I was old enough, I went looking for him.”

  “And your brother?”

  “He’s working with a cell on Alderaan. I was hoping I’d get to see him. If we’d been able to stick to our original plan, that might’ve worked out.” Javul stifled a yawn. “Is your family … I mean, I know you lost your brother, Stanton.”

  “My parents are still alive … after a fashion. I haven’t seen them for years. I’m not even sure where they are. Losing Stanton and the business at the same time … changed them. Changed all of us.”

  He felt Javul’s weight against his shoulder and shifted to put his arm around her. He looked down, expecting to find the large silver eyes trained on him, filled with compassion, maybe something more—

  And then her eyes slowly closed, her head became a deadweight against his arm. He sighed and lowered her gently to the bed. She didn’t wake. Dash kissed her forehead, hesitated a moment, then set a kiss on her lips for good measure.

  Out in the corridor, he headed immediately for the cockpit. He had to talk Han into getting them at least as far as Corellia. They’d be able to get another ship there, he was sure of it.

  He found Han in the pilot’s seat, hands on the steering yoke, staring moodily out into the void. He dropped into the copilot’s station and succumbed to inertia.

  “You can’t sleep there,” Han said.

  The edge in the other man’s voice made Dash sit up and study him. He looked grim. And who could blame him?

  “Look.” Dash sighed. “I know you’re itching to off-load us at the earliest opportunity. You’ll be rid of us as soon as we can rendezvous with the Nova’s Heart. I wish I could tell you when that will be exactly, but I’m not in Javul’s inner circle. Captain Marrak will call us when—”

  “You trying to be insulting, Rendar? Why would you want the Nova’s Heart when you’ve got the Millennium Falcon?”

  “What?”

  “I’m taking you to Alderaan.”

  Dash sat forward in the copilot’s seat and studied the side of Han’s face. “Why? Before, you couldn’t get rid of us fast enough. What changed?”

  Han was silent for a moment, then turned to look at him, his gaze impenetrable. “Y’know what I’ve been thinking about, sitting up here alone?”

  “No.”

  “That empty copilot’s chair.” He nodded toward the seat Dash now held. “I’ve been thinking about how I’d feel if it was permanently empty—if it’d been Chewie out there tonight.”

  Dash nodded, meeting Han’s eyes dead-on. No more needed to be said.

  Han turned back to the view thr
ough the forward viewport. “I picked up some subspace chatter from Bannistar. They haven’t retrieved the bodies yet. They think they fell into a loch on the outskirts of a refinery complex.”

  Dash took a deep breath. “I hope they never do find them. Edge doesn’t deserve a ritual burial and Eaden … Eaden’s at home in the water.”

  Several moments of silence elapsed before Han said: “That was the good news. The bad news is they’ve scrambled two Imperial corvettes and a Dreadnought from Bannistar to chase us down. The even worse news is there’s a Star Destroyer en route from Byblos.”

  “Squeeze play, huh?”

  Han’s grin was wicked. “Not if we’re not there to be squeezed. Besides, from what I can tell, they’re heading for Bacrana. Of course, they’ll realize we’re not with the Deep Core at some point, but by then I hope we’ll be off their star charts. After all, we could be going to any number of places.” He swept Dash with a wry gaze, then added, “You look like a rancor’s leftovers, Dash. Why don’t you go get some chow and some sleep? I’ll get us to Alderaan.”

  Dash was tired. Soul-weary, mind-numb, bone-tired. He nodded and dragged himself out of the seat.

  Leebo met him as he stepped into the corridor behind the cockpit. “Where you going, boss?”

  “To sleep, Leebo. I’m going to sleep. It’s this thing organics do.”

  “I need you to take a bit of a detour first.”

  Dash sagged against a bulkhead. “Can it wait?”

  “Not really.”

  “All right, but make it quick, okay? I’m about to fall asleep on my feet.”

  “Thanks, boss. I got something in the forward hold I think you should see.”

  Leebo led the way. There, amid the jumble of containers, stood Mel’s Otoga 222 unit, unmoving and seemingly dormant. After a moment of inspection, Dash realized he’d been fitted with a restraining bolt.

  “What’s wrong with Oto?”

  “That’s a matter of opinion, but offhand I’d say somebody seriously tinkered with his programming.”

  “What do you mean—tinkered with his programming?”

  “Well, boss, for one thing, while you and the lady were having your wild ride on the Helix, he was trying to shoot through your lifeline.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  DASH WAS FULLY AWAKE BY THE TIME MEL RESPONDED to his hail and came forward to the cargo hold. If it pumped up Dash’s adrenal gland, Leebo’s revelation was enough to knock the cargo master’s props out from under him. He sat down hard on his makeshift bunk, staring at his droid.

  “Oto? Oto was shooting at the Helix tether?”

  Leebo nodded, servos humming softly.

  “Why? Why would he do that?”

  “Maybe the same reason he picked my brain when he gave me the specs for the holo-emitters.”

  “Explain,” said Mel.

  “When we got back from getting your container, Dash had me help Oto set up the holo-emitters for the show. When Oto passed me the specs, he picked my brain—literally. He tapped my memory core to see what I’d been doing. Kind of rattled me. I mean, how rude.”

  Dash remembered the moment. “I thought it was kind of weird that you didn’t jump all over him for returning that tin pot insult.”

  “You caught that, huh? Yeah. On top of sucking my brain, he cracked a joke. Not a terribly funny one—and not that he meant to—but still … that’s my territory. Anyway, I thought it was kind of suspicious, so I kept one eye on him while I was keeping the other on the crowd. I was sure he was bad news when he let the assassin into the security walk.” He looked at Dash. “Frankly, I was surprised you didn’t blast him to metal shavings right then and there.” Dash felt blank. “I just thought he was going to try to …”

  “To what—shoot the guy? He couldn’t shoot the guy. For one thing, he wasn’t armed. For another, his programming isn’t that twisted. He was giving the assassin better access to his target.”

  Dash recalled the scene: him telling the droid Edge was right above him on the platform; the droid thanking him politely and turning to open the catwalk; his sudden reluctance to act. Dash had assumed he was merely out of his element. “Whoa, wait, hold up,” he said. “You’re saying that Oto is the saboteur?”

  Mel was shaking his head. “That’s not possible. Whoever did all of that put Javul—and everyone else—in harm’s way time and again. You said it yourself, he’s still programmed not to harm sentients.”

  “Not directly,” corrected Leebo. “And he didn’t. Not once.”

  “You’re right,” murmured Dash, mentally running back through the series of incidents—the rain of lilies, the enabling of the false hull breach, the sabotaging of the irising stage door on Rodia, the setup of the gravity failure in the cargo bay. “None of it was direct. He didn’t pull the trigger, he just supplied the ammunition.”

  “Yeah,” Leebo agreed. “Or left the door wide open.”

  Mel rose and moved to stare at the Otoga 222. “All right. Let’s say he did do all of it. How do you account for the seemingly dual agenda—one to discourage, one to harm?”

  “I’m clueless,” Leebo admitted. “Why don’t we ask him?”

  Mel, looking grimmer than Dash had ever seen him, checked the restraining bolt, reached for the master reactivation toggle—then stopped and checked the bolt again. Only then did he reactivate the droid.

  The large hemispherical optics lit up. Dash had the impression of someone caught napping. Oto’s servos whined, his digits clacked, he looked from one of his interrogators to the other. “May I be of assistance?”

  “You can,” said Mel. “You can tell us who you’re working for.”

  “I am working for you, Cargo Master Melikan. And, of course, for Javul Charn.”

  “No. I mean who programmed you to sabotage Javul’s tour?”

  “You would have to be more specific, sir. To which particular sabotage do you refer?”

  Mel’s eyes widened. He sent Dash an incredulous glance.

  Dash nodded. Suddenly everything made sense. Well, most of it. Or at least some of it … “Oto, if I understand you, you were programmed by different parties with different agendas.”

  “Yes, sir. That is correct.”

  “All right—who’s who? Start with this: somebody wanted you to frighten Javul to get her to behave in a particular way, right?”

  “Correct. Vigo Hityamun Kris wished Mistress Charn to cease working—as he first suspected—to unseat Prince Xizor. He felt she was placing herself in harm’s way. And he wanted her to return to his sphere of influence. I was required to perform such sabotage as would effect this result either by inducing fear or by throwing the tour off schedule such that she could not complete it.”

  “By, for example, sabotaging the gravity grid in the cargo hold?”

  “Yes, sir. That is a very good example.”

  “But someone else wanted her stopped permanently.”

  “You are again correct, sir. An Imperial agent programmed me to spy on Mistress Charn and to gather evidence that she was a Rebel operative. And since such evidence existed, they wished me to enable their efforts to stop her. To capture her, if possible, at a point that would cause the most widespread damage to the Rebellion.”

  Mel paled visibly. “Such as when we deliver the package.”

  “That would be most reasonable to assume.”

  Dash blew out a gust of air. “That must have been some programming job to get around your safety protocols. How did they—?”

  “I wasn’t finished, Security Chief Rendar. There is one more party involved.”

  “What? Who?”

  “Prince Xizor. He, too, had me programmed to enable his efforts to stop Mistress Charn. It is Prince Xizor who wishes her dead.”

  Dash’s jaw dropped. “You’re joking.”

  “No, sir. I am not programmed for humor.”

  “You can say that again,” muttered Leebo.

  “I am not programmed for humor,” repeated Oto obedientl
y.

  Dash raised his hands to stop Leebo from further comment. “How was all this accomplished, Oto?” he asked. “How could they get to you?”

  “Hityamun Kris originally had me reprogrammed during my scheduled maintenance prior to the second half of our last tour.”

  “But how did he get his programmer access to you?” Mel asked. “I’ve known our Otoga specialist for almost a decade. I would have sworn he was completely trustworthy.”

  “Yes, sir. But he was unaware that anyone else had been allowed to tamper with my subroutines.”

  “Who was aware, Oto?” Mel asked. “Who brought the Vigo’s programmer in?”

  “First Mate Finnick, sir.”

  Mel swore. Loudly. Violently. “Bran? Gods of Chaos! How the hell did they get to him?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  “Is he an active agent?” asked Mel. “Has he been aiding you in your sabotage?”

  “I don’t know if he’s an active agent, sir. He has not communicated with me or aided me in my programmed assignments. He merely facilitated my reprogramming.”

  “How did Xizor get into the act?” Dash asked the droid.

  “Into the act, sir? I was unaware of any theatrical aspect to—”

  “How did he gain access to you?”

  “The programmer was aware of Prince Xizor’s interest in Javul Charn. He made the underlord aware that he had compromised my programming. The prince then used the subroutines he installed to piggyback his own suggestions for my activity. Mostly this involved what he called upping the ante. I would do what Hityamun Kris required of me and a bit more. And I would give Xizor’s operatives access to our effects.”

  “And the Empire?”

  “The Imperial Security Bureau connected with me through the Nova’s Heart, sir. Via subspace messages. Of course, the previous programming alterations made their task easier.”

  Mel grew even more pale. “The signal from Rodian space control to the ship’s AI.”

  “Yes, sir. That was one of their avenues of access.”