Allegiance

by Timothy Zahn

  “Any idea who the other three are?”

  “No, but they were already here when he arrived.”

  A prearranged meeting, then. “I’ll send Quiller back to the ship and have him run any known human–human–Wookiee teams,” he said, reaching for his comlink.

  “Not so fast,” Grave said, putting a hand on his arm. “First tell me what you think of the two humans and the Rodian by the door.”

  The kid and Corellian at the first table had carried the stamp of known types. The two humans and Rodian were just as recognizable. Violent criminals, all three of them. “Uh-oh,” LaRone murmured.

  “They were also here when our gentleman farmer showed up,” Grave said. “They have that settled look, like they’ve been here awhile, but they’re way too alert to have been drinking very much.”

  “Casing the place?” LaRone suggested. But even as he spoke he realized that wasn’t precisely it. The three had the look of criminals; but more than that, they had the look of criminals already in the middle of a scheme.

  And they weren’t watching the bar or the bartender or the cash box. Their attention was focused instead on the far side of the tapcafe. Tracking their eyes, LaRone found himself looking at a group of seven men seated around a pair of tables.

  Men with broad shoulders and short hair and alert eyes. Men very much like LaRone and Grave themselves, in fact. “Security?” he hazarded.

  “Or mercs or off-duty military,” Grave said. “Could be some business feud.”

  “No,” LaRone said as it suddenly clicked into place. “Someone’s about to hit the repository.”

  “Oh, shunfa,” Grave murmured. “With the three dirt-singers at the door here to watch for off-duty wild cards?”

  “That’s my guess,” LaRone said, surreptitiously lifting his comlink and keying it on. “Quiller, where are you?”

  “On my way back to the Suwantek,” Quiller’s voice came back. “I wasn’t able to—”

  “I know—Grave told me,” LaRone cut in. “Get back fast—we’re going to need some airpower.”

  “Wait a second,” Grave said, frowning suddenly. “LaRone—”

  “On my way,” Quiller said, his voice suddenly tight and professional. “Where and how much?”

  “The Consolidated repository on Newmark at the northern edge of the city,” LaRone told him. “Looks like someone’s planning a hit.”

  There was a short pause. “And we’re getting involved why?”

  “Because helping Consolidated nail the raiders may help lube the wheels to get us the HoloNet and autopsy data they’re still sitting on,” LaRone said. “Better comm Marcross and Brightwater and have them get back to the ship, too—we may want an official stormtrooper appearance before this is over. Grave and I will stay here on the scene where we can feed you intel and targeting data.”

  “Got it,” Quiller said. “Ship’ll be fired up in ten minutes. Let me know where you want me.”

  LaRone clicked off the comlink. “How soon?” Grave asked.

  “He said ten minutes,” LaRone told him.

  Grave grunted. “Let’s hope that’s soon enough.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it just occurred to me that those Consolidated Security guys look a lot like us,” Grave said. “Or to put it another way, we look a lot like them.”

  LaRone glanced casually over at the door. The two humans, he saw, were still watching the security men in the back.

  The Rodian, on the other hand, was now watching him and Grave. “Terrific,” he muttered.

  “So what now?” Grave asked.

  “We sit tight,” LaRone told him. “For the moment.”

  “And you think they were with the BloodScar pirates?” Han asked when Porter had finished his description of the swoop attack.

  “That’s my read from their shoulder patch design,” Porter said. “In fact, the shoulder patches themselves are a pointer that direction—the BloodScars fancy themselves a military sort of group.”

  “Have you had run-ins with them before?” Luke asked, sniffing carefully at the drink Porter had ordered for him. It smelled a lot like engine cleaning fluid, and he wasn’t at all sure he wanted to let it anywhere near his stomach.

  “Not really,” Porter said. “Most of our trouble’s been from smaller pirate groups, especially off Purnham and Chekria. The only time we ran into actual BloodScar ships was a couple of months back when Casement was with a convoy that was attacked off Ashkas-kov.”

  “So what makes you think they’re that big a group?” Han asked.

  “Because they had ten ships on that Ashkas-kov attack,” Porter retorted. “If they can afford that much juice to hit a single trade route, they must have one blazing number of ships.”

  Chewbacca warbled softly.

  “Good question,” Han agreed. “How many ships of that convoy did the pirates actually hit?”

  “I think just four of them,” Porter said, crinkling his nose in concentration. “But Casement said they fired on everyone—blew ’em pretty much to shreds. Only reason he survived was he had an armored inner hull and could play dead until they left. They blew the other four away after they’d stripped ’em, too.”

  “So maybe they already knew which ones had stuff they wanted?” Han suggested.

  “I suppose, maybe,” Porter conceded reluctantly. “But they’d have to have a blazing good intel service for that. A thousand guys in a thousand different dispatch offices.”

  “Or just two or three in the right ones,” Han said.

  “That’d be just as hard as building a really big fleet,” Porter argued. “Maybe even harder. Why are you arguing so hard on this?”

  “Hey, pal, don’t jump on me,” Han protested. “I just want to figure out what’s going on. You’ve either got a big fleet hitting everything, or you’ve got a small one with good intel. You want to fix the right problem, or the one you happen to like?”

  Porter took a deep breath, exhaled it between clenched teeth. “The right one,” he growled. “But if the BloodScars are eating up a lot of other gangs, then we’ve got ourselves an entirely different problem.” He scowled at Chewbacca. “Especially if what they’ve done up to now is because of good intel.”

  “Let’s get back to the swoopers,” Han said. “Any idea where they came from?”

  “Somewhere off Drunost, anyway—they came in on a Barloz freighter.” Porter lifted a finger. “But there were at least a few survivors. I saw a couple of landspeeders take off after the stormtroopers wrecked the ship.”

  Stormtroopers. Luke shivered. He’d grown up tangling with Sand People and had some idea how to deal with them. But Imperial stormtroopers were something else entirely. He and the others had survived a couple of brief encounters with them aboard the Death Star, but even at the time he’d had the feeling the Imperials had been taken by surprise and weren’t operating at full efficiency.

  Now, of course, he knew that Tarkin and Vader had deliberately allowed the Falcon and its crew to escape so they could track it to Yavin 4. Their next encounter with the Empire’s elite, Luke suspected, would be very different.

  “Survivors are a good thing,” Han said approvingly. “Means there’s someone you can talk to. Where did they go?”

  “Last anyone saw, they were burning dust for here,” Porter said, gesturing around them. “No surprise—this is the only population center anywhere around where you could go to ground.”

  “You sure they haven’t left?”

  Porter shrugged. “They sure didn’t leave in what was left of their ship,” he said. “Or anything else that they might have left inside. Consolidated would have gotten all of that when they impounded their ship.”

  “Consolidated has it?” Luke asked.

  “Who else?” Porter said, looking puzzled.

  “I thought the port authority would have it,” Luke said. “Or the local patrollers.”

  Porter shook his head. “Don’t have either here.”

&
nbsp; “I told you Drunost was all company towns,” Han reminded Luke. “That means the whole planet’s been carved into corporate territories.”

  “Like the Corporate Sector, only on a smaller scale,” Porter added. “Also not nearly as bad.”

  “Debatable,” Han muttered.

  “No, really, they’re okay,” Porter insisted. “They keep law and order pretty good. Beats dealing with the Empire, anyway.”

  Luke.

  Luke started, his eyes flicking around before he recognized the voice. It was Ben Kenobi, speaking in his mind as he had during the attack on the Death Star. There is danger, Luke. Stretch out to the Force.

  “What kind of danger?” Luke muttered under his breath.

  The voice didn’t answer. Luke hunched over his drink, his eyes darting around the tapcafe. Everything looked all right to him.

  But Ben hadn’t said to look. He’d said to use the Force. Setting his jaw, Luke stretched out with his mind.

  The images and voices around him seemed to fade into a distant background hum. He looked around again, trying to see through the faces to the emotions and basic overall impressions of the tapcafe’s patrons.

  But he didn’t sense anything. For that matter, he wasn’t even sure what exactly he was seeking.

  And then, abruptly, an image flashed into his mind: a picture of a hungry, shaggy-furred predator, coiled to spring onto its prey.

  He caught his breath as the image faded. What in the worlds—?

  He smiled tightly. Of course—it was a hint. He let his eyes and mind drift around the tapcafe again, this time holding the image of the predator in his mind and trying to match the sensation that image had evoked with the emotions of the people in the room.

  There it was: two men and a Rodian, seated at a table near the door, all three with the same coiled-spring anticipation he’d sensed in Ben’s predator image.

  And not just anticipation, but simmering evil.

  “Kid?”

  Luke snapped his attention back. “What?”

  “We’re not boring you with this strategy stuff, are we?” Han asked.

  “No,” Luke said distractedly, turning and searching across the tapcafe in the direction the two human predators were looking. There were seven men back there, seated around a pair of tables. “You know those men?” he asked, pointing at the latter group.

  Porter glanced over his shoulder. “Off-duty Consolidated Security,” he said. “They get their drinks half price here—encourages them to hang out in the neighborhood. Why?”

  “They’re being watched,” Luke said. “The two men and the Rodian by the door.”

  “Ridiculous,” Porter said with a snort. “No one makes trouble here.”

  “Those swoopers did,” Han reminded him, looking sideways at the table Luke had indicated.

  “That was way outside town,” Porter countered. “Not counting the hub, this is the main part of Consolidated’s local operation. It’s got their HoloNet center, their main administration offices—”

  “And a bank repository right across the street,” Han interrupted.

  “That’s it,” Luke said as the pieces suddenly fell into place. “They’re going to rob it.”

  “Terrific,” Han growled. “This place got a back door?”

  “Right through there,” Porter said, pointing at a curtained doorway at the side of the bar.

  “Good,” Han said, starting to get up. “Nice and easy.”

  “Wait a second,” Luke objected. “We’re going to run?”

  “From a bank robbery?” Han countered. “You bet.”

  “But we have to help.”

  “Which side?” Han retorted. “Robbers against a big corporation? Big choice.”

  “That’s not fair,” Luke objected.

  “He’s right, kid,” Porter put in nervously. “Besides, we’re trying to keep a low profile, remember?”

  Luke grimaced. His words to Ben on Tatooine whispered through his mind: I can’t get involved. Yet if he hadn’t, Tarkin and the Death Star would have won, and Leia and Rieekan and hundreds of others would now be dead. “Fine—you keep your low profile,” he said. “I’ll do it myself.”

  Across the table Chewbacca rumbled a protest, his massive paw batting at Han’s arm.

  “Oh, for—” Han broke off, glaring up at his partner. “Chewie—oh, all right. You two stay put—Chewie and me’ll handle it.”

  “Solo—” Porter began.

  “Or go ahead and run,” Han cut him off. “I don’t care which.”

  “But I want to help,” Luke objected.

  “Then find a way to distract them,” Han said, standing. “Come on, Chewie. Let’s get it over with.”

  “There they go,” Grave murmured as the Corellian and Wookiee stood and headed unconcernedly toward the door. “Think they’re with whoever’s outside?”

  “Could be,” LaRone said, watching the kid. He and the farmer were still sitting at the table, the boy fingering something inside his tunic. Getting ready to draw a blaster? The Corellian and Wookiee walked past the trio at the table, the Corellian’s hand dropping casually toward his holstered blaster.

  And then from the street outside came the sound of a muffled explosion. The murmur of conversation in the tapcafe abruptly cut off as everyone froze, listening.

  Everyone, that was, except the threesome at the table. Even as a second blast rumbled, all three abruptly stood, one of the humans pointing a large blaster at LaRone and Grave, the other targeting the two tables of security men at the back, the Rodian turning to cover the Corellian and Wookiee. “So much for taking them by surprise,” Grave muttered.

  “Right,” LaRone murmured back. The would-be ambushers had turned to face the Rodian now, the Corellian with feigned bewilderment on his face, the Wookiee just looking dangerous. Out of the corner of his eye LaRone saw the kid stand up beside his table and raise his arm over his head.

  And with a sizzling snap-hiss a blue-edged blade blazed into existence.

  The distinctive sound of a lightsaber probably hadn’t been heard on Drunost since the Clone Wars. But it wasn’t an easy sound to forget. Instantly, magically, every eye in the tapcafe turned to look at the lightsaber the kid was holding over his head like a war banner. Even the Rodian half turned before he remembered he was supposed to be on guard and spun back.

  But that half second of inattention was all it took. The Corellian took a long step forward and grabbed the end of the Rodian’s blaster, twisting it to point toward the ceiling as he yanked out his own weapon. The Wookiee’s approach was even more straightforward: grabbing the front of the Rodian’s shirt, he lifted the alien straight off his feet and hurled him over the table into his two companions. All three went down, crashing into both their own table and the one next to them and disappearing from LaRone’s view into a confused snarl of arms and legs.

  The Rodian was quick. Even as LaRone drew his hold-out blaster the alien rolled back up into view, chattering curses at everyone within range. Dragging his blaster out of the tangle, he lifted it toward his attackers.

  LaRone was lining up his blaster on the Rodian’s back when the Corellian fired a single shot. This time the Rodian went down for good.

  And then the security men from the back tables were there, three of them swarming over the two men on the floor with binders at the ready, the rest brushing past the Corellian and the Wookiee. The security man in front threw open the door, paused there a moment to assess the situation, then charged through with the others close behind. As the door swung closed again LaRone could hear the sounds of blasterfire beginning to fill the street.

  The Corellian and Wookiee didn’t follow. Their job apparently done, they turned and headed back to their table. The kid with the lightsaber closed it down and tucked it away as their farmer friend got to his feet, and all four of them made for a curtained door beside the bar. As the others passed through the curtain and a hidden door behind it, the kid with the lightsaber paused and turned aroun
d.

  And looked directly at LaRone and Grave.

  For a moment he held that pose. Then, turning back, he disappeared through the door with the others.

  “Well, that was different,” Grave commented, fingering his hold-out blaster as he stood up. “We joining the party?”

  “I don’t know,” LaRone said, getting out his comlink. There had been something in the kid’s look that had set his skin tingling. “Quiller?”

  “On our way,” the other’s voice came back. “ETA, about ninety seconds.”

  “Does Consolidated have anything in the air yet?”

  “Oh, they’ve got everything in the air,” Quiller said. “Patrol boats, high-cover skimmers, even a couple of small gunboats. Give them full points for preparedness.”

  LaRone looked back toward the curtained back door. “In that case, break off and swing up and over the line of buildings east of the repository. I want you to find and track a group of four people: three humans and a Wookiee.”

  “Hang on.”

  The comlink went silent. “You thinking maybe our farmer may be mixed up in something a little more complicated than dirt scratching?” Grave asked.

  “Dirt scratching is complicated enough,” LaRone told him. “But yes, I was wondering that. If he was a loot-sniffer on that swooper raid, it could be he and his three friends are associated with the BloodScars.”

  “Who wanted to prevent the bank robbery and why?” Grave asked.

  “Maybe the raiders are from a rival gang,” LaRone said. “I just think they’re worth keeping an eye on.”

  “Got ’em,” Quiller’s voice announced. “Two different landspeeders—one with one of the humans, the other with the other two and the Wookiee … the singleton’s splitting off.”

  LaRone made a fast decision. “Stay with the threesome.”

  “Acknowledged,” Quiller said. “Looks like they’re heading for one of the service yards.”

  Did that mean their mission was over? “We’ll pick up the trail behind them,” LaRone said, standing up and gesturing Grave toward the back door. “Let me know when they mark their ship. And set up a track—we’re going to want to follow them.”