Star Wars - Credit Denied - Unpublished

by George R. Strayton

  Rendra sat in the cockpit of the Zoda, cycling up the ship’s systems so she could take off as soon as Nopul and the others arrived—if they arrived. She didn’t have much of a window left, but she wasn’t going to leave them behind.

  A hollow pounding came at the airlock. She grabbed her blaster, which she has placed in front of her on the nav computer, and headed for the airlock.

  “It’s me…-on” said a voice over the comm system among the fuzz of static. “Hurry, I’m…-lowed.”

  Rendra punched the release mechanism, and the airlock hissed open. Nopul jumped before it had come to Its full aperture. “Close it!” were the first words out of his mouth.

  “What about the others?”

  Nopul looked at her, his gaze penetrating further than she liked, and then he shrugged.

  She slammed her fist against the airlock controls, and the servomotors issued their hydraulic hush as the hatch closed. Rendra headed back to the cockpit.

  Her hands were dancing across the console before she even hit the seat. After she made several adjustments, she fit the comm headgear over her ears.

  “Well, you got us into a real mess, but I have to admit,” Nopul said as he took the co-pilot’s seat. “You made the right decision.”

  She continued readying for takeoff for a moment before she turned toward him. “Don’t be too proud. I never had the chance to make the decision either way.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t fire—but not because I had a moral wake-up call. The whole thing was a setup. I didn’t fire because I realized we were being used.”

  Nopul said nothing and his expression failed to betray his thoughts. Rendra didn’t have time to deal with his thoughts on the subject anyway, so she turned back to her initiation routines.

  “You’re not going to leave them here, are you?” he said finally.

  “What do you want me to do? Walk up to security and say, ‘These are my mercenaries. Please let them go. They were only acting on my orders.’ That’ll get us all thrown into the detention center.”

  Nopul stared at her as if examining her for the first time. She felt his gaze upon her like charged Tibanna gas, eating through to her soul. She’d never seen him give such an accusatory look—to anyone.

  And the first was directed at her, of all people. How dare he…

  Something in his expression stopped her line of silent defiance. It wasn’t accusation etched into his face. It was surprise. Complete shock.

  The same look her father had given her when she’d announce she was leaving their home, and more importantly, him. She’d realized only later that her words had devastated him, left him speechless. What she had taken for silent acceptance was actually complete shock.

  Her hands slid from the console into her lap. When she was leaving the Coliseum she wanted nothing more than to rescue her companions and to make Svale pay for his betrayal. But once she had reached the Zoda, the more logical part of her mind had taken over. Only now did she realize that she was acting exactly as Svale had, betraying those who had trusted in her.

  She slowly turned to Nopul, who was now staring through the forward viewport. She had a lot to say, her thoughts jumbling together so that she couldn’t utter a syllable. She felt her emotions swimming in her chest, threatening to explode upward through her throat and into her head. Only through her strength of will was she able to keep them down. Without looking, she keyed the computer, shutting the engines down.

  Nopul glanced over at her, a hint of hope showing through the pain and anger.

  She locked gazes with him. “We’re not leaving here without Vakir and Oro.”

  Nopul’s face broke into a full smile, from forehead to chin. If Rendra hadn’t seen it, she wouldn’t have believed it was possible. “How?” was all he could say.

  “I haven’t gotten that far yet.”

  At that moment, a short whir preceded the espionage droid’s appearance at the entrance to the cockpit.

  “But I’m starting to get an idea…”

  Oro gently touched the bars of their cell, eliciting a spatter of electrical discharges from the durasteel that burned his fingers. “Aah!”

  Vakir shook his head. “What are you doing, nerf-head?”

  “Try to get free. What you do to help?”

  “Well, I’m not wasting time checking to see if the bars are still charged every five minutes.”

  “Could turn off.”

  Vakir snorted. “If it makes you feel better, you can continue to think that. But it’s just about as likely as Maex showing up to rescue us.”

  A clatter from down the corridor drew their attention. But the source of the noise was beyond their range of sight. After a moment they heard the soft patter of footsteps coming toward them.

  And suddenly Rendra stepped into view, startling them both.

  She put a gloved finger to her lips, and then pulled a lockpicking tool from her pocket. As she inserted the thin wand into the cell door’s narrow lock, another figure floated past her.

  Vakir recognized it as the espionage droid that had stowed away aboard the Zoda—except that now it was outfitted with brushes of all shapes and sizes. The droid floated to the end of the cell bay, finally resting quietly in a darkened corner. “What the—”

  Rendra silenced him and then went back to work. To Vakir the whole process seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time, but then again, he decided, it could just be his frayed nerves. He glanced over to see Oro grinning like an idiot, and it was all he could do to stop from slapping it off his face.

  And then they all stopped what they were doing. Voices. Down the hall.

  Rendra jiggled her lockpick—the it refused to come out of the lock. She looked down the corridor, past the point where Vakir could see, and then yanked at the lockpick with all her might, pulling it free with a loud scraping sound.

  “Maex,” said a voice, the owner of which remained out of Vakir’s sight. By Rendra’s shifting gaze, he could tell that whoever it was was coming toward her.

  Minister Pon Svale came into view. “Thank you for giving yourself up. I thought you might try something this stupid. But then again, you fell completely for my little game.”

  Rendra assumed a casual stance. “I have to admit, Svale. You got me. Played on my fears and my ethics, knowing the whole time that I would be too preoccupied with both to realize what you were doing.”

  Svale issued a satisfied chuckle. “I’m not brilliant, but I am thorough.”

  “I just don’t understand why you went to all that trouble.”

  “Please, Maex, I’ve studied you long enough to know you’re not that incompetent.”

  “Well, frankly, I’m beginning to think you’re insane.”

  The remark did not sit well with Svale. His thin smile changed quickly to a sneer. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull, but if you think it can get you out of this, you’re the one who is insane. You are a dozen meters below the surface, surrounded on all sides by thousands of troops loyal to me. I don’t know how you got in here, but I do know how you’re going out.”

  Rendra said nothing. Neither did Vakir or Oro. But Svale continued.

  “Now that you have completed your assignment. I have been appointed First Minister of Defense, second only to Uli himself. It was I who urged him to wear a personal shield, even though he thought it a politically incorrect thing to do. But thanks to the attack on his life—courtesy of me—I was able to prove him wrong.”

  He pulled a slim device from his front pocket and clicked one of its protrusions. The cell opposite Vakir’s and Oro’s opened, and Svale motioned for her to enter.

  Rendra stood her ground.

  “Please, let’s not make this any messier than it already it is.” And with that he drew a blaster from his hip.

  She acquiesced finally, moving into the cell with a look of defeat on her face.

  “Make peace with your makers. You will be executed tomorrow after your trial.” Svale ga
ve the aliens one last look and then returned down the corridor.

  The espionage droid floated into view.

  “It worked,” Rendra whispered. “Now get back to the ship. Nopul has to take it from here.”

  Vakir and Oro looked to one another, but neither seemed to have any understanding of what had just taken place right in front of them.

  “Don’t worry,” Rendra said from across the way as the droid hovered out of sight. “I’ll fill you In later. If Nopul’s slicing skills are as good as he says, we should have at least a slight chance of getting out of this.”

  Vakir didn’t know how Oro was taking the news, but to him. that didn’t sound as promising as he would have liked.

  Nopul swiveled the cockpit chair one more time. That made six hundred and twenty-eight revolutions, and he’d still not heard a word from Rendra.

  He’d set the ship’s comm system to the METOSP channel after she’d left. According to the updates, all of Sriluur had erupted into chaos. No vessels were being allowed to lift off until flight control could determine whether the threat had passed.

  Threat? Nopul thought. Trust me, there’s no longer a threat.

  He glanced over at the exterior ocular sensor display for a quick look—and then stopped to stare at the squad of armed security guards marching straight for the Zoda.

  This was it. The end. All his hopes and aspirations dashed over the course of a few hours. Well, for what it was worth, he wasn’t going to let it end so neatly.

  With his last embers of vigor, he sprang from the chair and pulled a blaster rifle out of the cockpit weapons locker. He checked the charge and found it three-quarters full. He gave a nervous chuckle: the weapon would probably last longer than he would.

  With a stride infused with the power of imminent death, he headed for the airlock. Before he hit the release, he took a deep breath, guesstimating the time it would take for the patrol to reach the ship but before they were in a readied position.

  He exhaled quickly and—before he let his common sense inform him of his insanity—jammed the airlock control with his elbow. As the door hissed open, he hefted the blaster rifle and took up an offensive stance. He began to ease the blaster’s trigger, just enough so that he knew he’d get off the first shot.

  When the airlock had fully opened to reveal the open-air bay to the starboard of the Zoda, he was alarmed at what he saw.

  Nothing. Where had they gone? Around to the other side of the ship? Were they laying in wait for him to poke out his head so they could blast him into a million pieces without exposing themselves?

  When no one appeared to answer his questions, he eased forward down the ramp, careful not to break the plane of the hull. To test the waters, he shoved the muzzle of the rifle outside.

  No response.

  Which didn’t do much to settle his nerves. Maybe they were smarter than he was. No, he didn’t like this one bit.

  Realizing he had no other option—the ocular sensor unit was fixed on an aft view—he poked his head out and glanced in both directions, fully expecting not to live long enough to perceive the information his eyes absorbed.

  So he was completely surprised to find himself unharmed in the next moment, the squad of security guards getting smaller as they headed for another ship a few dozen meters away.

  Nopul took in a sweet breath. The adrenaline, though now unneeded, still coursed though him, making his hands—and in turn, the blaster rifle—shake. The movement woke him out of his respite and he scuttled back up the ramp and hit the locking mechanism. He left the airlock to shut by itself as he headed to the cockpit.

  When he got there he saw the incoming message light blinking. That was the signal. He grabbed his slicer tools, thought twice about leaving the blaster rifle behind, and finally headed off without it. He had a lot to do. Rendra, Oro, and Vakir were counting on him. He couldn’t take the risk of carrying a lethal weapon. If he were arrested or even detained for a few moments, all of them, including himself, would lose their lives. And that would definitely not make his day.

  Sriluur’s yellow sun blazed down on Rendra from its position just to the morning side of the sky’s zenith. She’d been too busy to notice how bright it was yesterday, but now, chained to a makeshift pillar on the dais in the center of the Coliseum floor, she didn’t have the option of missing out on that bit of information.

  Next to her, Oro, Vakir and some other alien she didn’t recognize—apparently caught up in the same political machinations—looked on as First Minister Pon Svale continued to congratulate himself on capturing the would-be assassins and to deride her and her companions for their evil intentions. She wished she could show him some evil. Luckily for him there were two meters of durasteel chain holding her back.

  She’d already suffered through half an hour of being pelted with everything from stones to sour vegetables—she was pretty sure one of the gourd-like fruits had broken a couple of ribs—and now the ceremony seemed to be coming to an end.

  Where in the stars was Nopul? Time—at least hers and her companions’—was quickly becoming a rare commodity.

  “Traitors like these,” Svale went on, “must be purged from both our systems if this new alliance is to flourish.” The crowd responded with a raucous cheer.

  Vakir, who was closest to her, glanced toward her. “You sure Nopul can handle this?”

  “Would I lay all of our lives on the line if I thought he couldn’t?” She hoped her forceful tone would cover up the fact that she had no idea what Nopul was capable of. She knew nothing about computer slicing—she’d left that all to him—and so she hadn’t ever been able to gauge his level of ability.

  But Vakir seemed to buy into it. “I cannot wait to see this man,” he threw a disgusted look in Svale’s direction, “fall from his high promontory and be trampled upon by his own people.”

  Rendra, even in the midst of her current situation—and then again, perhaps precisely because of it—found herself grinning. “You and me both.”

  The roar of the masses seated and standing throughout the Coliseum—there seemed to be more here today than yesterday, a sad comment on sentient nature, she supposed—died down, and Svale regarded them all in silence, building up dramatic tension to elicit the greatest response from what he was about to say, which Rendra, unfortunately, could guess word for word.

  Come on, Nopul. I have faith in you. More than I have in myself at this point. But you’re just about out of time.

  “Send these… insidious demons,” Svale said, his voice booming over the amplifiers placed throughout the arena, “to their makers!”

  The throngs cheered, whistled, clapped, and stomped, making enough noise to drown out the last syllable of Svale’s decree. Four soldiers detached from their unit and walked across the dais, each taking up a position next to one of the guilty, placing blasters against the temples of their victims.

  Rendra looked to the vidscreens around the Coliseum. They switched from a focus on Svale to the quartet of soldiers with their blasters held ready for the killing blow. Come on. Nopul. Come on.

  And then every vidscreen in the arena erupted in static. Rendra’s heart leaped. Almost. You almost have it.

  She glanced at Svale, who was basking in the vengeance of the crowd. He nodded to the soldiers, who then turned their attention to Rendra and her fellow captives.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement high above, and she looked up to see the image of Pon Svale on the vidscreen—but this time he was standing in an underground corridor, not on the dais in full sunlight. Nopul had done it.

  But as she turned to the soldier about to end her life, she realized it might be too late. No one was paying any attention to the vidscreens. They were all focused on the execution about to take place in front of them.

  “Hey!” she found herself yelling at the Weequay soldier. “Look! Look at the vidscreen!” He responded only with a confused expression.

  “You can kill me in two seconds. Just please look a
t the vidscreens.”

  He thought for a beat, and then threw a side-long glance across his shoulder. And didn’t look back.

  His fellow executioners—apparently his subordinates—hesitated as well, unsure why their leader had failed to carry out his task. They, too, looked to the vidscreens.

  The audience booed and hissed—and then, amazingly, fell silent as they noticed the scene playing on the massive screens.

  “But thanks to the attack on his life—courtesy of me,” Svale’s recorded image was saying, “I was able to prove him wrong.”

  Minister Aaregil raced to the podium. “Stop the execution. We cannot send these people to their deaths until we have investigated this new evidence.”

  Svale was too far from the microphone to be picked up, but Rendra could see by his angry expression and exaggerated gestures that he was not taking Aaregil’s announcement well.

  Aaregil said nothing in response, but after a few moments under Svale’s barrage, he motioned for security to take the First Minister into custody.

  A half-dozen security guards cut off her view of him, and she turned her attention to the soldier who had been about to end her life.

  “Thank you,” she said, but he ignored the comment.

  Aaregil walked up to her. “Even if this datatape can be verified, you’re still in a lot of trouble.” She wanted to tell him that she didn’t care, but before she could utter a word, he headed off.

  She looked over to see Vakir hyperventilating—but alive—and she rested her head against the pillar. Step one accomplished. We might go to jail for fifty years, but at least we’re not going to die today.

  As the adrenaline faded from her body, she started to wonder whether that was a good or a bad thing.

  Two long months later, Rendra, Nopul, Vakir, Oro, and even Scrud (Oro had named the espionage droid in his native tongue, though none of them could decipher from his explanations what exactly the word translated to in Basic), stood before the Zoda in its open-air docking bay on Sriluur.