by Timothy Zahn
“I was thinking more about pirate gangs that pack almost as big a punch as the Imperials,” Han growled. “I’ve run into some of them, and if that stuff is theirs, they’re definitely going to have some issues.”
“Don’t worry, Rieekan will be sending a full escort with the team,” Leia assured him. “A fighter wing at the very least. Possibly a couple of light cruisers along with them.”
Han grimaced. “That should make Ferrouz happy.”
“I’m sure he’ll be delighted,” Leia said. “Doesn’t sound like you are, though.”
“Not really, no,” Han said. “But since when does that matter to anyone?”
There was a short pause. “It matters,” Leia said, her voice carefully neutral. “Watch yourself, okay?”
“I always do, sweetheart,” Han assured her. “You want me to stick around here for a while?”
“Thanks, but I think we can manage,” Leia said, sounding suddenly frosty. Probably the sweetheart thing, Han guessed. “Go back to Poln Major. If something goes wrong, you’re Axlon’s only way out of there.”
“Sure,” Han said. “You need me, just call.”
There was a click, and the comm cut off.
For a moment Han gazed down at the control board. Then, shaking his head, he keyed for a full diagnostic of the Falcon’s systems.
Mustache and his pals might have just have been scouting for easy targets. Or they may have wanted to keep tabs on where the Falcon went by installing a tracking device or two.
Or they may have decided they didn’t want the Falcon going anywhere. Ever.
Chewie and Cracken’s men were already looking for trackers. Han had better get busy and look for sabotage.
THERE HAD BEEN SOME SORT OF MELTDOWN WITH THE POLN MAJOR space traffic system, and the Suwantek had been stuck in a holding pattern for two hours waiting for a landing slot.
But everything had now been sorted out, and Quiller was finally bringing the freighter down toward the Whitestone City spaceport. “Any particular approach you’d like me to use?” he asked Jade as they came in low over the city. “There’s enough slack in their lanes for me to wander a little to one side or the other if you want.”
“Just hold to the center,” she said, gazing out at the mosaic of buildings and streets below from LaRone’s usual position in the copilot’s seat. “We’re too far from the palace to see anything useful, and there’s no point in drawing attention to ourselves.”
“Hold it,” LaRone said, leaning over Jade’s shoulder as something caught his eye. “Is that a stormtrooper station over there?”
“Where?”
“There,” LaRone said. He pointed, his arm brushing Jade’s hair as he did so. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to notice. “That white octagon tucked in between bays thirty-five and thirty-six.”
“Does look like one, doesn’t it,” Jade agreed. “It’s not on the maps I was given. Interesting.”
“Must be a recent add-on,” Quiller said. “Maybe Ferrouz figured the spaceport wasn’t secure enough and wanted to put more firepower at the scene.”
“Or else it’s not the spaceport itself but the environs he’s concerned about,” Marcross suggested from beside LaRone. “If that’s not a slum down there, it’s working very hard to become one.”
“Either way, the station’s worth checking out,” LaRone said. “Watching how they handle shifts and patrol patterns should give us some idea of how they’re organized, which should give us a better chance of slipping ourselves into the rotation.”
“In case that’s what you decide you want us to do,” Marcross added.
“Sounds reasonable,” Jade agreed. “No armor—we want to keep this low-profile.”
“Understood,” LaRone said. “Will you be coming with us?”
Jade shook her head. “I’ll take one of the landspeeders and head over to the nicer part of town. See if Ferrouz has added any extra stormtrooper stations near the palace.”
Fifteen minutes later they were down. Customs procedures consisted of a few questions, a perfunctory glance at each of their false IDs, and an equally perfunctory warning about not causing trouble. Plus a docking fee, of course, with enough extra padding around the usual rate that LaRone was pretty sure the inspector was using it to supplement his salary.
Under other circumstances, that kind of blatant graft would probably have caused him and the others to take a closer look at the customs system, with an eye toward seeing how far the corruption had spread. But with possible treason lurking in the governor’s palace, customs fraud was pretty low on the priority list.
Jade already had her bag packed, and as soon as the customs man left she headed off in the nicer of the Suwantek’s two landspeeders, weaving her way expertly through the crowds of pedestrians and the booths and ramshackle homes that lined most of the streets. LaRone and the others left the bay on foot and headed toward the stormtrooper station.
The streets were noisy, echoing with a dozen different languages as well as Basic, the latter ranging from almost cultured to badly mangled. There were many species represented, including at least two LaRone wasn’t familiar with. Sales booths of all sorts lined the streets, adding cooking aromas and the additional noise of hawkers to the scene.
“And all this guy can think about is making deals with traitors,” Grave muttered from LaRone’s side as they passed a particularly squalid-looking homestead that seemed to have been built entirely from packing crates.
“Can’t really blame the Rebellion for this,” Brightwater murmured back. “At least not all of it. I’ve seen slums this bad on Coruscant.”
“I wasn’t blaming anyone but Ferrouz,” Grave said. “If you accept the position of governor, part of your job is to make sure all your people have a decent shot at making something good out of their lives.”
Quiller cleared his throat. “Speaking of the Rebellion,” he said, “did anyone else notice the YT-1300 transport sitting in bay forty on our way in?”
LaRone eyed him, the back of his neck tingling. There were plenty of old YTs still kicking around the Empire. But the way Quiller had said that … “Solo’s ship?”
“Solo?” Brightwater echoed. “Here?”
“Not sure,” Quiller said. “We were too far away for a positive visual, and I didn’t want to key in a cone scan, not with Jade sitting right there watching.”
“Why not?” Marcross asked. “Solo’s a Rebel. If he’s here, that pretty well confirms that Ferrouz’s a traitor.”
“Hey, I don’t even know that it was Solo,” Quiller protested. “Even if it was, there could be all sorts of reasons why he’s here that have nothing to do with Ferrouz.”
“He’s right,” LaRone said firmly, jumping in before the argument could pick up any more momentum. They’d ended up working with Solo a few months back, along with his Wookiee copilot and the young would-be Jedi Luke Skywalker. Things had worked out well enough, but it wasn’t an experience that LaRone was eager to repeat. And it probably wouldn’t have been even if the three of them weren’t Rebels. “Besides, passing judgment—of any sort—isn’t our job. That’s Jade’s end of the deal.”
“What if we actually spot Solo here?” Marcross asked. “Do we tell her about it?”
“I think we have to,” Grave said. “Our job is support, and intel is part of that.”
“I agree,” LaRone said reluctantly. Just because he wouldn’t want to work with Solo again didn’t mean he wanted him handed over to the tender mercies of Imperial Security, either. “Though before we do, we should try to get his side of whatever’s going on.”
“Assuming he’ll even talk to us,” Brightwater pointed out. “Considering that we are Imperials again.”
“Very unofficially,” LaRone reminded him, frowning. Half a block ahead, the normal traffic flow had been interrupted by a knot of people standing and looking at something happening on the right-hand side of the street. Even as the five stormtroopers moved toward it, other passersby were stopping t
o join the onlookers.
Marcross had spotted it, too. “Some kind of street performance?” he suggested.
“Too quiet,” Grave said. “I’m guessing we’ll find a dead body or two over there.”
“Or someone about to get that way,” LaRone said, grimacing. Blasters weren’t exactly uncommon out here, but in keeping with her low-profile plan, Jade had ordered them to stick with hold-out blasters, which were much easier to conceal than their standard BlasTech DH-17 sidearms.
Unfortunately, hold-out blasters were also a lot less powerful than the DH-17s, both in rate of fire and in total number of shots per Tibanna charge. If there was trouble up there, they could quickly find themselves at a dangerous firepower disadvantage.
There was nothing to do but give it a try. “Line-spread penetration,” LaRone ordered, making sure his hold-out blaster was within easy reach. “Let’s see what’s going on.”
They reached the edge of the crowd. LaRone picked a likely spot and started easing his way through the press, the other stormtroopers continuing on to make their own insertions at other places down the line where they would all be within covering positions of one another. LaRone reached the last line of onlookers, pried open a small gap between a Rodian and a Devaronian, and stepped to the inside of the circle.
Three meters in front of him were four aliens, burgundy-feathered beings of a species LaRone didn’t recognize. Their faces, and the blasters gripped in their hands, were pointed toward three aliens sporting green scales and fur tufts, who were themselves standing behind three more of the feathered aliens, the whole crowd of them under the canopy of a rough, open-fronted store made of shipping crates and scrap metal.
LaRone’s first thought was that the Greenies were hiding behind the Feathers. But then he spotted the knife in one of the Greenies’ hands. Each of them had a knife, he saw now, wicked, hook-tipped weapons that they were holding firmly against the Feathers’ throats.
The Greenies weren’t hiding behind the Feathers. They were using them as living shields.
“I will pay back the price,” one of the Greenies was saying as LaRone arrived. “But not at the point of a weapon.”
“You will pay back, and double,” snarled one of the armed Feathers facing him. On the last word he took a quick step to his left, probably hoping to shift position far enough to get a clear shot over his compatriot’s shoulder. The Greenies turned in response, rotating their captive Feathers the necessary few degrees to keep them in the armed Feathers’ lines of fire. The other armed Feathers tried stretching their line, but quickly retreated into their original clump as two more knife-wielding Greenies at the edges of the crowd silently warned them back.
“You will pay triple,” the Feather spokesman bit out. “And a life each for any harmed by you.”
“I will pay the price only,” the Greenie said firmly. “And you will not harm our defenseless.”
LaRone grimaced as he belatedly spotted the small group of Greenies crouched together in a close huddle in the shadow of the store behind the knife holders. Several of them appeared to be adults, though of a slightly smaller build and with fewer patches of green fur among the green scales. The rest were much smaller versions, clearly children.
A motion to LaRone’s left caught his eye, and he looked over to see Marcross slip into view at the front of the far end of the crowd. The other three stormtroopers, he noted, were also standing by.
LaRone took a deep breath. “What seems to be the problem here?” he asked, taking a step toward the confrontation.
One of the armed Feathers turned to face him, his blaster swiveling to point at LaRone’s chest. “Be gone, human,” he ground out. “This concerns not you.”
“Justice concerns everyone,” LaRone said, keeping his hands motionless at his sides. There was a risk, he knew, that the alien would just shoot him and be done with it. But while the Feathers were clearly angry, they didn’t seem crazy enough to open fire on perfect strangers in front of a hundred witnesses. “Did these people rob you?”
“He sold me a knife,” the Feather spokesman growled over his shoulder, his eyes still on the Greenie spokesman. “The knife broke. I demand a proper return of the cost.”
“Sounds reasonable enough,” LaRone agreed, looking at the Greenies. “Do you refuse?”
“Our knives do not break under proper usage,” the Greenie spokesman insisted. “If I am to return his cost, I must have the broken knife in return so that I may examine it and discover its flaws.”
“Yet the knife did break,” the Feather insisted. “His statement insults my honor and my word.”
“He thus demands twice his cost,” the Greenie added. “Such a burden we cannot afford to pay.”
“I see.” LaRone gestured to the Greenies’ living-shield arrangement. “Tell me how this happened.”
“They came in with weapons and loud demands,” the Greenie said. “We feared for our defenseless.”
“They demanded we leave without return of the cost,” the Feather said.
“I asked that they sheathe their weapons while we spoke of the matter,” the Greenie countered.
“They attacked us with their cursed knives.”
“They threatened our defenseless.”
“Yes, all right,” LaRone said, raising his voice to be heard. He’d had to deal with this sort of thing any number of times back in his official days as a stormtrooper. With aliens, especially unknown aliens, it really could be as simple and straightforward as competing, horn-locked honors. “Enough. Show me the broken knife.”
There was just the slightest pause. “I do not have it,” the Feather said stiffly.
LaRone grimaced. Or, it could be that one of the two sides was trying to cheat the other. “Why not?” he asked. “Where is it?”
“It is not here,” the Feather said, his anger level starting to ratchet up again. “When I have received twice the cost, I will return it. But not until the money is in my hand.”
“Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way,” LaRone told him. “You give me the broken knife, and I’ll have the merchant return the money you paid for it.”
“Double the cost!”
LaRone shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way, either.”
The Feather snarled something in a clickety-sounding language. The one holding the blaster on LaRone took a step toward him, raising the weapon to point at LaRone’s face. There was the short, sharp crack of a blaster—
With a warbling screech, the Feather lurched forward, his right leg collapsing beneath him as Grave’s shot expertly grazed the outside of his knee joint. LaRone was ready, taking another quick step forward and twisting the blaster from the alien’s suddenly slack grip. Turning it around into firing position, he leveled it at the other three armed Feathers. “Weapons down,” he ordered.
The three Feathers started to turn, stopping abruptly as Grave sent a warning shot into the ground between them and LaRone. For a moment they froze, their blasters hanging halfway between LaRone and their original Greenie targets. Then the Feather spokesman clicked again, and all three slowly returned their blasters to their cross-chest holsters.
“Thank you,” LaRone said. He turned his borrowed blaster onto the Greenies and their living shields. “Your turn. Weapons down.”
The spokesman murmured something, and the Greenies released their grips on the Feathers. As the former hostages stepped hastily away, the knives similarly vanished into sheaths.
“Thank you,” LaRone said, turning back to the Feathers. “Now. The broken knife, if you please.”
“It is not here,” the Feather growled. “I said that already.”
“Yes, I forgot,” LaRone said. “Fine. We can all go back to your place and get it.” He lifted the blaster slightly. “You’ll go under guard, of course, with your hands in binders. Just as a precaution.”
Even without knowing the species and their facial expressions, LaRone had no doubt the glare the Feather sent him was one of pure hatred
. But LaRone also had no doubt that someone who’d played the honor card as proudly as this one had would do anything to avoid being marched through crowded streets looking like a criminal. “It is here,” he growled reluctantly, reaching into a side pocket in his tunic and pulling out a duplicate of the knives the Greenies had just sheathed.
Or rather, pulling it halfway out of the pocket. There he stopped, with only the hilt and half the blade showing.
Mentally, LaRone shook his head. Just as he’d suspected. “Thank you,” he said, stepping forward past the Feather still squirming on the ground. He got a grip on the knife hilt, and as the Feather released it he pulled it the rest of the way out of the other’s pocket.
As he did so, he took a casual step to his left, interposing his sleeve between the knife and the watching crowd. “Yes—I see,” he said, nodding sagely at the perfectly intact blade as he lowered his arm to his side, concealing the knife between his sleeve and his thigh.
He turned to the Greenies. “I have the knife,” he confirmed. “You will now return to him the cost.”
For a moment the Greenie spokesman eyed him in silence. Then, also in silence, he stepped forward. Drawing some coins from a pouch at his waist, he handed them to the Feather.
“And now honor and justice are both satisfied,” LaRone said. “All may go about their business.”
He turned to look at the ring of onlookers. “All may go,” he said firmly.
Slowly, as if disappointed that the show was over, the crowd began to break up. LaRone glanced over at the Feather whom Grave had shot, who had been helped to his feet and was leaning on one of his compatriots, then turned to the head Feather. “Don’t come back,” he warned quietly. “The Empire takes a very dim view of cheats and would-be thieves.”
The Feather glared at him, his cheek feathers ruffling. “What is the Empire?” he spat.
“The Empire is the ground on which you’re standing,” LaRone told him. “More important, if you come back, the knife merchants will probably tell everyone else that you tried to cheat them.”
The Feather’s glare slipped, just a bit. “They may say so regardless.”