Star Wars: Heir to the Empire

by Timothy Zahn

  “That’s where we’re keeping that droid of his,” Mara reminded him.

  “The shed’s got two rooms; put him in the other one.” Karrde waved toward her waist. “And do remember to lose that before our guests arrive. I doubt they’d fail to recognize it.”

  Mara glanced down at Skywalker’s lightsaber hanging from her belt. “Don’t worry. If it’s all the same to you, I’d just as soon not have much to do with them.”

  “I wasn’t planning for you to,” Karrde assured her. “I’d like you here when I greet them, and possibly to join us for dinner, as well. Other than that, you’re excused from all social activities.”

  “So they’re staying the day?”

  “And possibly the night, as well.” He eyed her. “Requirements of a proper host aside, can you think of a better way for us to prove to the Republic, should the need arise, that Skywalker was never here?”

  It made sense. But that didn’t mean she had to like it. “Are you warning the rest of the Wild Karrde’s crew to keep quiet?”

  “I’m doing better than that,” Karrde said, nodding back toward the comm equipment. “I’ve sent everyone who knows about Skywalker off to get the Starry Ice prepped. Which reminds me—after you move Skywalker, I want you to run his X-wing farther back under the trees. No more than half a kilometer—I don’t want you to go through any more of the forest alone than you have to. Can you fly an X-wing?”

  “I can fly anything.”

  “Good,” he said, smiling slightly. “You’d better be off, then. The Millennium Falcon will be landing in less than twenty minutes.”

  Mara took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. Turning, she left the room.

  The compound was empty as she walked across it to the barracks building. By Karrde’s design, undoubtedly; he must have shifted people around to inside duties to give her a clear path for taking Skywalker to the storage shed. Reaching his room, she keyed off the lock and slid open the door.

  He was standing by the window, dressed in that same black tunic, pants, and high boots that he’d worn that day at Jabba’s palace.

  That day she’d stood silently by and watched . . . and let him destroy her life.

  “Get your case and let’s go,” she growled, gesturing with the blaster. “It’s moving day.”

  His eyes stayed on her as he stepped over to the bed. Not on the blaster in her hand, but on her face. “Karrde’s made a decision?” he asked calmly as he picked up the case.

  For a long moment she was tempted to tell him that, no, this was on her own initiative, just to see if the implications would crack that maddening Jedi serenity. But even a Jedi would probably fight if he thought he was going to his death, and they were on a tight enough schedule as it was. “You’re moving to one of the storage sheds,” she told him. “We’ve got company coming, and we don’t have any formal wear your size. Come on, move.”

  She walked him past the central building to the number four shed, a two-room structure tucked conveniently back out of the compound’s major traffic patterns. The room on the left, normally used for sensitive or dangerous equipment, was also the only one of the storage areas with a lock, undoubtedly the reason Karrde had chosen it to serve the role of impromptu prison. Keeping one eye on Skywalker, she keyed open the lock, wondering as she did so whether Karrde had had time to disable the inside mechanism. A quick look as the door slid open showed that he hadn’t.

  Well, that could easily be corrected. “In here,” she ordered, flicking on the inside light and gesturing for him to enter.

  He complied. “Looks cozy,” he said, glancing around the windowless room and the piled shipping boxes that took up perhaps half the floor space to the right. “Probably quiet, too.”

  “Ideal for Jedi meditation,” she countered, stepping over to an open box marked Blasting Disks and taking a look inside. No problem; it was being used for spare coveralls at the moment. She gave the rest of the box markings a quick check, confirmed that there was nothing here he could possibly use to escape. “We’ll get a cot or something in for you later,” she said, moving back to the door. “Food, too.”

  “I’m all right for now.”

  “Ask me if I care.” The inner lock mechanism was behind a thin metal plate. Two shots from her blaster unsealed one end of the plate and curled it back; a third vaporized a selected group of wires. “Enjoy the quiet,” she said, and left.

  The door closed behind her, and locked . . . and Luke was once again alone.

  He looked around him. Piled boxes, no windows, a single locked door. “I’ve been in worse places,” he muttered under his breath. “At least there’s no Rancor here.”

  For a moment he frowned at the odd thought, wondering why the Rancor pit at Jabba’s palace should suddenly have flashed to mind. But he only gave it a moment. The lack of proper preparation and facilities in his new prison strongly suggested that moving him here had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, possibly precipitated by the imminent arrival of whoever the visitors were Mara had mentioned.

  And if so, there was a good possibility that somewhere in the mad scramble they might finally have made a mistake.

  He went over to the door, easing the still-warm metal plate a little farther back and kneeling down to peer inside at the lock mechanism. Han had spent a few idle hours once trying to teach him the finer points of hot-wiring locks, and if Mara’s shot hadn’t damaged it too badly, there was a chance he might be able to persuade it to disengage.

  It didn’t look promising. Whether by design or accident, Mara’s shot had taken out the wires to the inside control’s power supply, vaporizing them all the way back into the wall conduit, where there was no chance at all of getting hold of them.

  But if he could find another power supply . . .

  He got to his feet again, brushed off his knees, and headed over to the neatly piled boxes. Mara had glanced at their labels, but she’d actually looked inside only one of them. Perhaps a more complete search would turn up something useful.

  The search, unfortunately, took even less time than his examination of the ruined lock. Most of the boxes were sealed beyond his capability to open without tools, and the handful that weren’t held such innocuous items as clothing or replacement equipment modules.

  All right, then, he told himself, sitting down on the edge of one of the boxes and looking around for inspiration. I can’t use the door. There aren’t any windows. But there was another room in this shed—he’d seen the other door while Mara was opening this one. Perhaps there was some kind of half-height doorway or crawl space between them, hidden out of sight behind the stacked boxes.

  It wasn’t likely, of course, that Mara would have missed anything that obvious. But he had time, and nothing else to occupy it. Getting up from his seat, he began unstacking the boxes and moving them away from the wall.

  He’d barely begun when he found it. Not a doorway, but something almost as good: a multisocket power outlet, set into the wall just above the baseboard.

  Karrde and Mara had made their mistake.

  The metal doorplate, already stressed by the blaster fire Mara had used to peel it back, was relatively easy to bend. Luke kept at it, bending it back and forth, until a roughly triangular piece broke off in his hand. It was too soft to be of any use against the sealed equipment boxes, but it would probably be adequate for unscrewing the cover of a common power outlet.

  He returned to the outlet and lay down in the narrow gap between wall and boxes. He was just trying to wedge his makeshift screwdriver against the first screw when he heard a quiet beep.

  He froze, listening. The beep came again, followed by a series of equally soft warbles. Warbles that sounded very familiar . . . “Artoo?” he called softly. “Is that you?”

  For a pair of heartbeats there was silence from the other room. Then, abruptly, the wall erupted with a minor explosion of electronic jabbering. Artoo, without a doubt. “Steady, Artoo,” Luke called back. “I’m going to try and get this power
outlet open. There’s probably one on your side, too—can you get it open?”

  There was a distinctly disgusted-sounding gurgle. “No, huh? Well, just hang on, then.”

  The broken metal triangle wasn’t the easiest thing to work with, particularly in the cramped space available. Still, it took Luke only a couple of minutes to get the cover plate off and pull the wires out of his way. Hunching forward, he could see through the hole to the back of the outlet in Artoo’s room. “I don’t think I can get your outlet open from here,” he called to the droid. “Is your room locked?”

  There was a negative beep, followed by an odd sort of whining, as if Artoo was spinning his wheels. “Restraining bolt?” Luke asked. The spinning/whine came again— “Or a restraint collar?”

  An affirmative beep, with frustrated overtones. It figured, in retrospect: a restraining bolt would leave a mark, whereas a collar snugged around Artoo’s lower half would do nothing but let him wear out his wheels a little. “Never mind,” Luke reassured him. “If there’s enough wire in here to reach to the door, I should be able to unlock it. Then we can both get out of here.”

  Carefully, mindful of the possibility of shock from the higher-current lines nearby, he found the low-voltage wire and started easing it gently toward him out of the conduit. There was more than he’d expected; he got nearly one and a half meters coiled on the floor by his head before it stopped coming.

  More than he’d expected, but far less than he needed. The door was a good four meters away in a straight line, and he would need some slack to get it spliced into the lock mechanism. “It’s going to be a few more minutes,” he called to Artoo, trying to think. The low-power line had a meter and a half of slack to it, which implied the other lines probably did, as well. If he could cut that much length off two of them, he should have more than enough to reach the lock.

  Which left only the problem of finding something to cut them with. And, of course, managing to not electrocute himself along the way.

  “What I wouldn’t give to have my lightsaber back for a minute,” he muttered, examining the edge of his makeshift screwdriver. It wasn’t very sharp; but then, the superconducting wires weren’t very thick, either.

  It was the work of a couple of minutes to pull the other wires as far out of the conduit as they would go. Standing up, he took off his tunic, wrapped one of the sleeves twice around the metal, and started sawing.

  He was halfway through the first of the wires when his hand slipped off the insulating sleeve and for a second touched the bare metal. Reflexively he jerked back, banging his hand against the wall.

  And then his brain caught up with him. “Uh-oh,” he murmured, staring at the half-cut wire.

  There was an interrogative whistle from the other room. “I just touched one of the wires,” he told the droid, “and I didn’t get a shock.”

  Artoo whistled. “Yeah,” Luke agreed. He tapped at the wire . . . touched it again . . . held his finger against it.

  So Karrde and Mara hadn’t made a mistake, after all. They’d already cut the power to the outlet.

  For a moment he knelt there, holding the wire, wondering what he was going to do now. He still had all this wire, but no power supply for it to connect with. Conversely, there were probably any number of small power sources in the room, attached to the stored replacement modules, but they were all packed away in boxes he couldn’t get into. Could he somehow use the wire to get into the boxes? Use it to slice through the outer sealant layer, perhaps?

  He got a firm grip on the wire and pulled on it, trying to judge its tensile strength. His fingers slipped along the insulation; shifting his grip, he wrapped it firmly around his right hand—

  And stopped, a sudden prickly feeling on the back of his neck. His right hand. His artificial right hand. His artificial, dual-power-supply right hand . . . “Artoo, you know anything about cybernetic limb replacements?” he called, levering the wrist access port open with his metal triangle.

  There was a short pause, then a cautious and ambiguous-sounding warble. “It shouldn’t take too much,” he reassured the droid, peering at the maze of wiring and servos inside his hand. He’d forgotten how incredibly complex the whole thing was. “All I need to do is get one of the power supplies out. Think you can walk me through the procedure?”

  The pause this time was shorter, and the reply more confident. “Good,” Luke said. “Let’s get to it.”

  CHAPTER

  22

  Han finished his presentation, sat back in his chair, and waited.

  “Interesting,” Karrde said, that faintly amused, totally noncommittal expression of his hiding whatever it was he was really thinking. “Interesting, indeed. I presume the Provisional Council would be willing to record legal guarantees of all this.”

  “We’ll guarantee what we can,” Han told him. “Your protection, legality of operation, and so forth. Naturally, we can’t guarantee particular profit margins or anything like that.”

  “Naturally,” Karrde agreed, his gaze shifting to Lando. “You’ve been rather quiet, General Calrissian. How exactly do you fit into all of this?”

  “Just as a friend,” Lando said. “Someone who knew how to get in touch with you. And someone who can vouch for Han’s integrity and honesty.”

  A slight smile touched Karrde’s lips. “Integrity and honesty,” he repeated. “Interesting words to use in regard to a man with Captain Solo’s somewhat checkered reputation.”

  Han grimaced, wondering which particular incident Karrde might be referring to. There were, he had to admit, a fair number to choose from. “Any checkering that existed is all in the past,” he said.

  “Of course,” Karrde agreed. “Your proposal is, as I said, very interesting. But not, I think, for my organization.”

  “May I ask why not?” Han asked.

  “Very simply, because it would look to certain parties as if we were taking sides,” Karrde explained, sipping from the cup at his side. “Given the extent of our operations, and the regions in which those operations take place, that might not be an especially politic thing to do.”

  “I understand,” Han nodded. “I’d like the chance to convince you that there are ways to keep your other clients from knowing about it.”

  Karrde smiled again. “I think you underestimate the Empire’s intelligence capabilities, Captain Solo,” he said. “They know far more about Republic movements than you might think.”

  “Tell me about it,” Han grimaced, glancing at Lando. “That reminds me of something else I wanted to ask you. Lando said you might know a slicer who was good enough to crack diplomatic codes.”

  Karrde cocked his head slightly to the side. “Interesting request,” he commented. “Particularly coming from someone who should already have access to such codes. Is intrigue beginning to form among the New Republic hierarchy, perhaps?”

  That last conversation with Winter, and her veiled warnings, flashed through Han’s mind. “This is purely personal,” he assured Karrde. “Mostly personal, anyway.”

  “Ah,” the other said. “As it happens, one of the best slicers in the trade will be at dinner this afternoon. You’ll join us, of course?”

  Han glanced at his watch in surprise. Between business and small talk, the fifteen-minute interview that Torve had promised him with Karrde had now stretched out into two hours. “We don’t want to impose on your time—”

  “It’s no imposition at all,” Karrde assured him, setting his cup down and standing. “With the press of business and all, we tend to miss the midday meal entirely and compensate by pushing the evening dinner up to late afternoon.”

  “I remember those wonderful smuggler schedules,” Han nodded wryly, memories flashing through his mind. “You’re lucky to get even two meals.”

  “Indeed,” Karrde agreed. “If you’ll follow me . . .?”

  The main building, Han had noted on the way in, seemed to be composed of three or four circular zones centering on the greatroom with the stra
nge tree growing through it. The room Karrde took them to now was in the layer just outside the greatroom, taking perhaps a quarter of that circle. A number of round tables were set up, with several of them already occupied. “We don’t stand on protocol regarding meals here,” Karrde said, leading the way to a table in the center of the room. Four people were already sitting there: three men and a woman.

  Karrde steered them to three vacant seats. “Good evening, all,” he nodded to the others at the table. “May I present Calrissian and Solo, who’ll be dining with us tonight.” He gestured to each of the men in turn. “Three of my associates: Wadewarn, Chin, and Ghent. Ghent is the slicer I mentioned; possibly the best in the business.” He waved to the woman. “And of course you’ve already met Mara Jade.”

  “Yes,” Han agreed, nodding to her and sitting down, a small shiver running up his back. Mara had been with Karrde when he’d first welcomed them into that makeshift throne room of his. She hadn’t stayed long; but for the whole of that brief time she’d glowered darkly at Lando and him with those incredible green eyes of hers.

  Almost exactly the same way she was glowering at them right now.

  “So you’re Han Solo,” the slicer, Ghent, said brightly. “I’ve heard a lot about you. Always wanted to meet you.”

  Han shifted his attention away from Mara to Ghent. He wasn’t much more than a kid, really, barely out of his teens. “It’s nice to be famous,” Han told him. “Just remember that whatever you’ve heard has been hearsay. And that hearsay stories grow an extra leg every time they’re told.”

  “You’re too modest,” Karrde said, signaling to the side. In response, a squat droid rolled toward them from around the room’s curve, a tray of what looked like rolled leaves perched on top of it. “It would be difficult to embellish that Zygerrian slaver incident, for example.”

  Lando looked up from the droid’s tray. “Zygerrian slavers?” he echoed. “You never told me that one.”