by James Luceno
“It’s hard to say, exactly,” Han had to admit as he slapped the release. The ramp dropped smoothly down to the dusty permcrete beneath them. “That ‘staying up late to read’ is the part I don’t understand. I suppose it could mean some of the intelligence work that Ackbar’s been doing along with the Supreme Commander position. Or worse—maybe Fey’lya’s going for the whole sabacc pot.”
“You and Winter should have worked out a better verbal code,” Lando said as they started down the ramp.
“We should have worked out a verbal code, period,” Han growled back. “I’ve been meaning for three years to sit down with her and Leia and set one up. Never got around to it.”1
“Well, if it helps, the analysis makes sense,” Lando offered, glancing around the docking pit. “It fits the rumors I’ve heard, anyway. I take it the neighbors you referred to are the Empire?”
“Right. Winter should have heard something about it if Ackbar had had any luck plugging the security leaks.”
“Won’t that make it dangerous to go back, then?” Lando asked as they started toward the exit.
“Yeah,” Han agreed, feeling his lip twist. “But we’re going to have to risk it. Without Leia there to play peacemaker, Fey’lya might just be able to beg or bully the rest of the Council into giving him whatever it is he wants.”
“Mmm.” Lando paused at the bottom of the ramp leading to the docking pit exit and looked up. “Let’s hope this is the last contact in the line.”
“Let’s hope first that the guy shows,” Han countered, heading up the ramp.
The Abregado-rae Spaceport had had a terrible reputation among the pilots Han had flown with in his smuggling days, ranking right down at the bottom with places like the Mos Eisley port on Tatooine. It was therefore something of a shock, though a pleasant one, to find a bright, clean cityscape waiting for them when they stepped through the landing pit door. “Well, well,” Lando murmured from beside him. “Has civilization finally come to Abregado?”
“Stranger things have happened,” Han agreed, looking around. Clean and almost painfully neat, yet with that same unmistakable air that every general freight port seemed to have. That air of the not-entirely tame …
“Uh-oh,” Lando said quietly, his eyes on something past Han’s shoulder. “Looks like someone’s just bought the heavy end of the hammer.”
Han turned. Fifty meters down the port perimeter street, a small group of uniformed men with light-armor vests and blaster rifles had gathered at one of the other landing pit entrances. Even as Han watched, half of them slipped inside, leaving the rest on guard in the street. “That’s the hammer, all right,” Han agreed, craning his neck to try to read the number above the door. Sixty-three. “Let’s hope that’s not our contact in there. Where are we meeting him, anyway?”
“Right over there,” Lando said, pointing to a small windowless building built in the gap between two much older ones. A carved wooden plank with the single word “LoBue”2 hung over the door. “We’re supposed to take one of the tables near the bar and the casino area and wait. He’ll contact us there.”
The LoBue was surprisingly large, given its modest street front, extending both back from the street and also into the older building to its left. Just inside the entrance were a group of conversation-oriented tables overlooking a small but elaborate dance floor, the latter deserted but with some annoying variety of taped music playing in the background.3 On the far side of the dance floor were a group of private booths, too dark for Han to see into. Off to the left, up a few steps and separated from the dance floor by a transparent etched plastic wall, was the casino area. “I think I see the bar up there,” Lando murmured. “Just back of the sabacc tables to the left. That’s probably where he wants us.”
“You ever been here before?” Han asked over his shoulder as they skirted the conversation tables and headed up the steps.
“Not this place, no. Last time I was at Abregado-rae was years ago. It was worse than Mos Eisley, and I didn’t stay long.” Lando shook his head. “Whatever problems you might have with the new government here, you have to admit they’ve done a good job of cleaning the planet up.”
“Yeah, well, whatever problems you have with the new government, let’s keep them quiet, okay?” Han warned. “Just for once, I’d like to keep a low profile.”
Lando chuckled. “Whatever you say.”
The lighting in the bar area was lower than that in the casino proper, but not so low that seeing was difficult. Choosing a table near the gaming tables, they sat down. A holo of an attractive girl rose from the center of the table as they did so. “Good day, gentles,” she said in pleasantly accented Basic. “How may I serve?”
“Do you have any Necr’ygor Omic4 wine?” Lando asked.
“We do, indeed: ’47, ’49, ’50, and ’52.”
“We’ll have a half carafe of the ’49,”5 Lando told her.
“Thank you, gentles,” she said, and the holo vanished.
“Was that part of the countersign?” Han asked, letting his gaze drift around the casino. It was only the middle of the afternoon, local time, but even so over half the tables were occupied. The bar area, in contrast, was nearly empty, with only a handful of humans and aliens scattered around. Drinking, apparently, ranked much lower than gambling on the list of popular Gado vices.
“Actually, he didn’t say anything about what we should order,” Lando said. “But since I happen to like a good Necr’ygor Omic wine—”
“And since Coruscant will be picking up the tab for it?”
“Something like that.”
The wine arrived on a tray delivered through a slide-hatch in the center of the table. “Will there be anything else, gentles?” the holo girl asked.
Lando shook his head, picking up the carafe and the two glasses that had come with it. “Not right now, thank you.”
“Thank you.” She and the tray disappeared.
“So,” Lando said, pouring the wine. “I guess we wait.”
“Well, while you’re busy waiting, do a casual one-eighty,” Han said. “Third sabacc table back—five men and a woman. Tell me if the guy second from the right is who I think it is.”
Lifting his wineglass, Lando held it up to the light, as if studying its color. In the process he turned halfway around—“Not Fynn Torve?”
“Sure looks like him to me,” Han agreed. “I figured you’d probably seen him more recently than I have.”
“Not since the last Kessel run you and I did together.” Lando cocked an eyebrow at Han. “Just before that other big sabacc table,” he added dryly.
Han gave him an injured look. “You’re not still sore about the Falcon, are you?”
“Now …” Lando considered. “No, probably not. No sorer than I was at losing the game to an amateur like you in the first place.”
“Amateur?”
“—but I’ll admit there were times right afterward when I lay awake at night plotting elaborate revenge. Good thing I never got around to doing any of it.”
Han looked back at the sabacc table. “If it makes you feel any better … if you hadn’t lost the Falcon to me, we probably wouldn’t be sitting here right now. The Empire’s first Death Star would have taken out Yavin and then picked the Alliance apart planet by planet. And that would have been the end of it.”
Lando shrugged. “Maybe; maybe not. With people like Ackbar and Leia running things—”
“Leia would have been dead,” Han cut him off. “She was already slated for execution when Luke, Chewie, and I pulled her out of the Death Star.” A shiver ran through him at the memory. He’d been that close to losing her forever. And would never even have known what he’d missed.
And now that he knew … he might still lose her.
“She’ll be okay, Han,” Lando said quietly. “Don’t worry.” He shook his head. “I just wish we knew what the Imperials wanted with her.”
“I know what they want,” Han growled. “They want the twins.”
>
Lando stared at him, a startled look on his face. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as I am of any of this,” Han said. “Why else didn’t they just use stun weapons on us in that Bpfassh ambush? Because the things have a better than fifty-fifty chance of sparking a miscarriage, that’s why.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Lando agreed grimly. “Does Leia know?”
“I don’t know. Probably.”
He looked at the sabacc tables, the cheerful decadence of the whole scene suddenly grating against his mood. If Torve really was Karrde’s contact man, he wished the other would quit this nonsense and get on with it. It wasn’t like there were a lot of possibilities hanging around here to choose from.
His eyes drifted away from the casino, into the bar area … and stopped. There, sitting at a shadowy table at the far end, were three men.
There was an unmistakable air about a general freight port, a combination of sounds and smells and vibrations that every pilot who’d been in the business long enough knew instantly. There was an equally unmistakable air about planetary security officers. “Uh-oh,” he muttered.
“What?” Lando asked, throwing a casual glance of his own around the room. The glance reached the far table—“Uh-oh, indeed,” he agreed soberly. “Offhand, I’d say that explains why Torve’s hiding at a sabacc table.”
“And doing his best to ignore us,” Han said, watching the security agents out of the corner of his eye and trying to gauge the focus of their attention. If they’d tumbled to this whole contact meeting there probably wasn’t much he could do about it, short of hauling out his New Republic ID and trying to pull rank on them. Which might or might not work; and he could just hear the polite screaming fit Fey’lya would have over it either way.
But if they were just after Torve, maybe as part of that landing pit raid he and Lando had seen on the way in …
It was worth the gamble. Reaching over, he tapped the center of the table. “Attendant?”
The holo reappeared. “Yes, gentles?”
“Give me twenty sabacc chips, will you?”
“Certainly,” she said, and vanished.
“Wait a minute,” Lando said cautiously as Han drained his glass. “You’re not going to go over there, are you?”
“You got a better idea?” Han countered, reaching down to resettle his blaster in its holster. “If he’s our contact, I sure don’t want to lose him now.”
Lando gave a sigh of resignation. “So much for keeping a low profile. What do you want me to do?”
“Be ready to run some interference.” The center of the table opened up and a neat stack of sabacc chips arrived. “So far it looks like they’re just watching him—maybe we can get him out of here before their pals arrive in force.”
“If not?”
Han collected the chips and got to his feet. “Then I’ll try to create a diversion, and meet you back at the Falcon.”
“Right. Good luck.”
There were two seats not quite halfway across the sabacc table from Torve. Han chose one and sat down, dropping his stack of chips onto the table with a metallic thud. “Deal me in,” he said.
The others looked up at him, their expressions varying from surprised to annoyed. Torve himself glanced up, came back for another look. Han cocked an eyebrow at him. “You the dealer, sonny? Come on, deal me in.”6
“Ah—no, it’s not my deal,” Torve said, his eyes flicking to the pudgy man on his right.
“And we’ve already started,” the pudgy man said, his voice surly. “Wait until the next game.”
“What, you haven’t all even bet yet,” Han countered, gesturing toward the handful of chips in the hand pot. The sabacc pot, in contrast, was pretty rich—the session must have been going for a couple of hours at least. Probably one reason the dealer didn’t want fresh blood in the game who might conceivably win it all. “Come on, give me my cards,” he told the other, tossing a chip into the hand pot.
Slowly, glaring the whole time, the dealer peeled the top two cards off the deck and slid them over. “That’s more like it,” Han said approvingly. “Brings back memories, this does. I used to drop the heavy end of the hammer on the guys back home all the time.”
Torve looked at him sharply, his expression freezing to stone. “Did you, now,” he said, his voice deliberately casual. “Well, you’re playing with the big boys here, not the little people. You may not find the sort of rewards you’re used to.”
“I’m not exactly an amateur myself,” Han said airily. The locals at the spaceport had been raiding landing pit sixty-three … “I’ve won—oh, probably sixty-three7 games in the last month alone.”
Another flicker of recognition crossed Torve’s face. So it was his landing pit. “Lot of rewards in numbers like that,” he murmured, letting one hand drop beneath the level of the table. Han tensed, but the hand came back up empty. Torve’s eyes flicked around the room once, lingering for a second on the table where Lando was sitting before turning back to Han. “You willing to put your money where your mouth is?”
Han met his gaze evenly. “I’ll meet anything you’ve got.”
Torve nodded slowly. “I may just take you up on it.”
“This is all very interesting, I’m sure,” one of the other players spoke up. “Some of us would like to play cards, though.”
Torve raised his eyebrows at Han. “The bet’s at four,” he invited.
Han glanced at his cards: the Mistress of Staves and the four of Coins. “Sure,” he said, lifting six chips from his stack and dropping them into the hand pot. “I’ll see the four, and raise you two.” There was a rustle of air behind him—
“Cheater!” a deep voice bellowed in his ear.
Han jumped and spun around, reaching reflexively toward his blaster, but even as he did so a large hand shot over his shoulder to snatch the two cards from his other hand. “You are a cheater, sir,” the voice bellowed again.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Han said, craning his neck up to get a look at his assailant.
He was almost sorry he had. Towering over him like a bushy-bearded thundercloud twice his own size, the man was glaring down at him with an expression that could only be described as enflamed with religious fervor. “You know full well what I’m talking about,” the man said, biting out each word. “This card”—he waved one of Han’s cards—“is a skifter.”8
Han blinked. “It is not,” he protested. A crowd was rapidly gathering around the table: casino security and other employees, curious onlookers, and probably a few who were hoping to see a little blood. “It’s the same card I was dealt.”
“Oh, is it?” The man cupped the card in one massive hand, held it in front of Han’s face, and touched the corner with a fingertip.
The Mistress of Staves abruptly became the six of Sabres. The man tapped the corner again and it became the Moderation face card. And then the eight of Flasks … and then the Idiot face card … and then the Commander of Coins …
“That’s the card I was dealt,” Han repeated, feeling sweat starting to collect under his collar. So much, indeed, for keeping a low profile. “If it’s a skifter, it’s not my fault.”
A short man with a hard-bitten face elbowed past the bearded man. “Keep your hands on the table,” he ordered Han in a voice that matched his face. “Move aside, Reverend—we’ll handle this.”
Reverend? Han looked up at the glowering thundercloud again, and this time he saw the black, crystal-embedded band nestled against the tufts of hair at the other’s throat. “Reverend, huh?” he said with a sinking feeling. There were extreme religious groups all over the galaxy, he’d found, whose main passion in life seemed to be the elimination of all forms of gambling. And all forms of gamblers.
“Hands on the table, I said,” the security man snapped, reaching over to pluck the suspect card from the Reverend’s hand. He glanced at it, tried it himself, and nodded. “Cute skifter, con,” he said, giving Han what was probably his best scow
l.
“He must have palmed the card he was dealt,” the Reverend put in. He hadn’t budged from his place at Han’s side. “Where is it, cheater?”
“The card I was dealt is right there in your friend’s hand,” Han snapped back. “I don’t need a skifter to win at sabacc. If I had one, it’s because it was dealt to me.”
“Oh, really?” Without warning, the Reverend abruptly turned to face the pudgy sabacc dealer, still sitting at the table but almost lost in the hovering crowd. “Your cards, sir, if you don’t mind,” he said, holding out his hand.
The other’s jaw dropped. “What are you talking about? Why would I give someone else a skifter? Anyway, it’s a house deck—see?”
“Well, there’s one way to be sure, isn’t there?” the Reverend said, reaching over to scoop up the deck. “And then you—and you”—he leveled fingers at the dealer and Han—“can be scanned to see who’s hiding an extra card. I dare say that would settle the issue, wouldn’t you, Kampl?” he added, looking down at the scowling security man.
“Don’t tell us our job, Reverend,” Kampl growled. “Cyru—get that scanner over here, will you?”
The scanner was a small palm-fitting job, obviously designed for surreptitious operation. “That one first,” Kampl ordered, pointing at Han.
“Right.” Expertly, the other circled Han with the instrument. “Nothing.”
The first touch of uncertainty cracked through Kampl’s scowl. “Try it again.”
The other did so. “Still nothing. He’s got a blaster, comlink, and ID, and that’s it.”
For a long moment Kampl continued staring at Han. Then, reluctantly, he turned to the sabacc dealer. “I protest!” the dealer sputtered, pushing himself to his feet. “I’m a Class Double-A citizen—you have no right to put me through this sort of totally unfounded accusation.”
“You do it here or down at the station,” Kampl snarled. “Your choice.”
The dealer threw a look at Han that was pure venom, but he stood in stiff silence while the security tech scanned him down. “He’s clean, too,” the other reported, a slight frown on his face.
“Scan around the floor,” Kampl ordered. “See if someone ditched it.”