A Credit For Your Thoughts - Gamer #2

by Tish Eggleston Pahl

  "How big?" Dogder asked blandly.

  "Smallish now, but with room for expansion." Thinking about Karrde's specs, Fen added. "Lots of expansion."

  "If Jabba's Palace is a one, and a Bothan safehouse a ten, what would your ideal vacation home be?"

  It was an insightful way to describe the parameters of secrecy and security. Dogder understood exactly what Fen was seeking on behalf of Karrde.

  "A twelve," Fen told her.

  Dogder took a miniscule sip of her drink. "So far, you've described a dozen places which might serve. Can you give me anything more specific?"

  Fen wanted Dogder to do the work here. "Like what?"

  One of Dogder's jingling bracelets clanged on the game table as she returned to her nail file. Fen had figured out that the woman wasn't actually drinking and wasn't doing anything to her fingernails either.

  "Those of us in Jabba's line of work should take a lesson from his death if we don't want to end up the same way." Dogder spoke so dryly Talon Karrde could have taught her the tone. "In my opinion, a smart smuggler should be looking for a vacation home far away from the Jedi."

  Now, it was Fen's turn to bluff. It took some effort. How Dogder had found out, she couldn't imagine, but the con was deserving of even more consideration than Fen had been giving her. "Who said anything about the Jedi?"

  Ghitsa Dogder pursed her lips. Turning in her seat, she dropped the nail file back into her pocket. "I've already had this conversation with beings who possess a similar lack of vision. Thanks for the drink." Her voice was clipped. "I'll see myself out."

  Fen watched her go, not quite believing that the information she needed could really just drop out of the firmament like this. In Fen's experience the only things that fell out of the sky were things you didn't want hitting you. Asteroids and guano sprang to mind immediately. Still, if there was even a chance...

  Fen scrambled to her feet and ran to the hatch before she could reconsider. By the time she caught up to her outside the ship, Dogder had one foot on the ramp and one on the landing pad. "Wait!" Fen called from the top of the ramp.

  The con turned slowly around.

  "I might be interested in a such a place," Fen said. "Do you have any suggestions?"

  "I might, or know someone who does," Dogder allowed, stepping back on to the ramp.

  "Do I know this person?" Fen knew her eager tone canceled out the way she nonchalantly leaned against the side of the hatch.

  Dogder made a sound that might have been a snort of disdain.

  "I'm hardly going to tell you that, Fen."

  "Maybe you'll tell me."

  At the first word, Fen went for her blaster but knew it was already too late. Gecee emerged from behind a landing strut, aiming a heavy blaster at her gut. What the Gran lacked in brains, he made up for in straight shooting.

  Keeping one eye on Dogder, and two eyes and his blaster on Fen, Gecee slowly eased to the bottom of the ramp. "Take the BlasTech out, Nabon," he ordered.

  Fen mentally ticked off the alternatives. Gecee was too far away to jump. She was standing on the ramp, under a running light, and was elevated, giving Gecee a nice, bright target. In other words, she was more than a card short of sabacc. Fen gently set her blaster down on the ramp.

  "Kick it over the side," Gecee spit out.

  Kick her blaster? Was he crazy? No, Fen amended. The Gran was, as Karrde would say, negotiating from a position of strength.

  Gecee warily began climbing up the ramp. Sidling up on Dogder's right, he seized the con's elbow in his left hand. The blaster in his right never wavered. Fen cringed, knowing how that kind of grip would hurt, but Dogder didn't even seem to notice.

  Dogder merely glared at the fingers clutching her arm. "You are wrinkling my suit."

  He huffed scornfully and yanked her forward. Gecee seemed as surprised as Fen when Dogder's high heels caught in the ramp. The con slumped over and Gecee grappled with her to keep them both from going down. Before he could pull them upright, Dogder lashed out with one hand and yanked on Gecee's ear. With a strangled whimper, the Gran went down as hard as an ionized astromech.

  Fen jumped forward, swallowing her momentary panic. "You didn't kill him, did you?" she exclaimed, kneeling by the Gran.

  "On Socorro?" Dogder scoffed. She bent down next to Fen. "I have neither a death wish nor a desire to put a bounty on my own head by killing a smuggler, stupid though he is."

  Gecee was out like a dead star, but still breathing. "What did you do?" Fen asked.

  "The Gran equivalent of a Gotal headcone twist," Dogder explained.

  It was nifty trick to remember. "If that hadn't worked, he would have shot me," Fen felt it important to mention.

  Dogder shrugged and together they rolled Gecee to the ramp's edge. "It worked, and if it hadn't, you would have jumped off the ramp before he started shooting."

  "Next time, I decide anything involving shooting." The thud of the Gran hitting the ground punctuated Fen's remark.

  "Gecee, you there?" The disembodied voice crackled through the night air. Fen met Dogder's eyes and saw the same feeling reflected there.

  Fen leapt to the ground, but before she could deactivate Gecee's comlink, she heard the dreaded racket of incoming swoops. Snatching her blaster, Fen dove under the ramp. One breath later, the swoops roared in, kicking sand all over the landing pad.

  Fen could feel the rumble of the swoops' repulsors reverberate through her boots. S he hazarded a peek from behind the ramp. Blue blaster fire lancing past her head confirmed that the gang hadn't dropped by for caf and biscuits.

  Fen spotted three swoops - two single seaters, both riders armed, and one double seater, with the rear man carrying a big repeating blaster.

  Fen knew the riders were yelling at one another but couldn't hear their plan over the scream of the swoops. The high-pitched shriek of a Mobquet turbothruster was Fen's only warning. The two-seater zipped within a few meters of her protective ramp. The gunner fired wildly, and grit exploded around her. More bolts buried into the ramp.

  She didn't want to kill thugs over a bar fight, but that repeating blaster was almost enough to make Fen regret her good manners. Still, Fen didn't want a Socorran death mark any more than Dogder did.

  Dogder.

  Where had she gone? Fen mentally clicked backward. The con had darted into the ship the moment they'd heard the swoops. Dogder wasn't going to use the Lady's guns to take out the swoops, but why didn't she put down enough cover fire for Fen to run back into the ship? Why was Dogder leaving Fen to take out a swoop gang with nothing but her sunny personality and a BlasTech set on stun?

  The roar of the Lady's converters firing up answered these questions. Blast! There's no way that con is stealing my ship!

  All she needed were a few seconds in the clear. Glancing around, Fen looked for a distraction. Her eyes landed on the tow cable nodule embedded in the side of the ship, just to the side of the ramp. Freighters used the powerful magnet and cable attachment to haul cargo barges.

  Fen grabbed a handful of sand and tossed it out beyond the ramp. Laser blasts singed the ground and slammed into the vibrating ship. Seizing a rock, Fen smashed the nodule's casing and punched the power pack.

  The explosive bang split through the roar of the swoops. The tow cable shot out from the ship at a killing speed. Fen whipped around to look but wasn't fast enough to see the cable's magnetic hook smash into the nearest durasteel object-the two-seater swoop. She heard a metallic shriek and another crash as a second swoop snarled in the tow cable strung between the Lady and the two-seater.

  That moment of chaos was all Fen needed. She rolled out from beneath the ramp, dashed into the ship, and slapped her hand across the control panel. The hatch snapped shut.

  Fen bolted down the passageway and headed fore. She'd evict Dogder from the cockpit and flush her out the airlock later. Now, it was time to get out of there. She burst into the cockpit and choked on the angry yell. The pilot's chair was empty.

 
; "Are you going to stand there all day?" a crisp voice called from the co-pilot's seat.

  Fen turned to her, open-mouthed. The grifter was strapped safely into her seat, filing a nail. Before Fen could reply, the ship shook slightly. The Lady could handle simple blaster fire, but Fen wasn't going to wait around for the bigger guns to show up. She vaulted into her own seat and engaged the thrusters. "Why didn't you cover me with the guns?" Fen demanded, sparing a sour glance toward Dogder.

  Dodger shrugged, not even looking up from her nails. "You told me you were to make all decisions involving shooting."

  Before Fen could sputter an indignant reply, the ship rocked again. "Persistent little pests," she swore under her breath as she eased in the repulsorlifts.

  The gang scattered and Fen released the tow cable. Unencumbered by dangling swoops, the Lady climbed gracefully upward.

  Fen thumbed the comm switch just in time to hear flight control ask, "What in the galaxy are you doing, Fen?"

  Fen smiled. She and Shind went way back and the Socorran controller would be sure to give her a hand now. "I annoyed Gecee and his pals, so I decided to clear out before they put a few nicks in the

  Lady's new paint job."

  Laughter echoed through the speaker. "You're a real diplomat, Fen."

  "Yeah, Shind, I'm a regular Organa," Fen snorted.

  "Sit tight up there. Let me see if I can juggle a few ships and get you outta here before that crazy Gran lifts his own ship."

  "I'd appreciate it." Fen switched the comm to standby and settled back to wait. Dodger continued to file her nails calmly, seeming content to wait for Fen to speak.

  "Aves was never your mark was he?" Fen finally asked.

  "No, he wasn't," Dogder replied, frowning at her handiwork.

  Fen ran a hand across her mouth, not liking the answer or the implication of who Dogder's target had been, but it made sense. Dogder had been trailing her at least since Sullust looking for an opening to make her offer. "Why did you approach me about this property?"

  "To show my gratitude and make amends," Dogder suggested.

  Fen laughed loud. "Yeah, right. And Rebellion will win the..." She choked on the words, the enormity of it hitting her again.

  "My usual client doesn't have the vision to see that new precautions are in order considering recent events," Dogder eventually said, returning her file to her pocket.

  Odd that a small time operator like Dogder and an ambitious smuggler like Karrde were both worried about the same thing. Maybe she was still just trying to convince herself, but Fen repeated what she had told Karrde, "Skywalker is just one Jedi."

  "One Jedi who took out the Emperor, Darth Vader, Boba Fett, and a criminal organization that was centuries old. Imagine what more of them might do." Dogder sighed and stared out at the Socorran stars. "Jedi protect the galaxy from people like us. I knew I couldn't be the only who is concerned."

  "So, you came to me thinking I might have customers who have more vision than yours do?" Fen asked.

  "I did my homework," Dogder responded, with a hint of pride. "I know you do."

  Someone like Dogder wouldn't put out this kind of effort if she didn't think there was a big score behind it. A really big score. Fen glanced at the coordinates Dogder had already programmed into the navicomputer. "So what's on Corellia?"

  Dogder's eyes narrowed. "Information costs money, Fen."

  "You're still in the hole, and a card short, Dogder," Fen countered. "Before we go anywhere, I want to know what we're going for."

  "An old smuggler," Dogder finally conceded.

  "Every lead begins there," Fen scoffed. "Tell me something I don't already know."

  "An old smuggler," Dogder hesitated, then finished, "and his pet."

  "Pet?" Fen echoed, suddenly rethinking the airlock option, but Dogder was nodding very seriously.

  "The spacer told me about a small rodent called an ysalamiri."

  "Ys-a-Ia what?"

  "Ysalamiri. They are stupid and smelly, and the only thing they are good for is repelling Jedi."

  Fen snorted again in disgusted disbelief. "I'm having hard time believing that a rodent could stop what Boba Fett and Darth Vader couldn't."

  Oddly, Dogder didn't rise to it. She just nodded. "As do I. But my contact really believed it. And he was old enough to have remembered the days when we needed to be able to repel Jedi." She spread her perfect manicure out over the console. "I have a few other leads, but if you have a client looking for a possible Jedi-proof base, we need to find where ysalamiri come from before someone else does."

  The comm came to life again. "Okay, Fen," the port controller announced. "You're clear after the Hornet Interceptor. And Gecee will be facing a customs inspection."

  Fen smiled and flipped the switch back on. "I owe you."

  "You know my favorite compensation," Shind replied fondly.

  "Next time there'll be a case of Chadian rum in my hold just for you," Fen promised. "Thanks again, Shind."

  "Clear skies, Fen."

  The channel closed, stranding the cockpit in an uneasy silence. Fen mentally counted her cards again and made her offer. "After flight costs, if your information pans out, we split the commission seventy, thirty."

  Dogder smiled thinly. "How very generous of you."

  "I get the seventy," Fen corrected, pointing at her own chest with her thumb to emphasize the point.

  Dogder frowned. "That hardly seems fair. It is, after all, my lead."

  "If you don't like it, the escape pod's in the back," Fen smirked. "And this is a one time deal. As soon as we're done, I drop you at the nearest space port."

  Dogder furrowed her brow and pursed her lips. The con made a show of consideration, but she didn't have many other options. They both knew it.

  Fen watched the Hornet blink into the void. It was now or never. "Sixty, forty," Fen said. "That's my final offer."

  "Deal," Dogder finally conceded, extending a hand, palm up. Fen slapped hers across it. Their bargain sealed, Fen pulled back the lever and the Star Lady rocketed them into hyperspace.