by Timothy Zahn
“It’s a dilemma, really, that’s what it is,” Dr. Kellering said in that precise Imperial Prime University voice of his that went so well with his young, upper-class-pampered face. And so poorly with the decidedly low-class tapcafe he and the two women were sitting in. “On the one hand there’s the whole question of security,” Kellering continued. “Especially with all the Rebel activity in this sector. And I can assure you that Dr. Eloy and I aren’t the only persons within the project who are concerned about it.”
His forehead wrinkled in upper-class-pampered perplexity. “But on the other hand, Captain Drome is extremely hot-tempered in regard to what he considers his personal territory. If he knew I was even talking about this matter outside the compound, he’d be terribly angry. Especially with people like—well, like you.”
Seated across the table from Kellering, Shada D’ukal took a sip from her cup, the wine carrying with it a hint of remembered bitterness and shame. Like most girls growing up on their war-devastated world, the Mistryl shadow guards had been the focus of all her hopes. They had been the last heroes of her people, the enigmatic cult of warrior women still fighting to force justice for her world from uncaring, even hostile, officials of the Empire. She had begun her training as soon as they would take her, studying and working and sweating her way against the odds until, at last, she had been deemed worthy to be called a Mistryl. Assigned to a team, she had headed out on her first mission.
Only to learn that the Mistryl were no longer the valiant warriors of legend.
They were mercenaries. Nothing more than mercenaries. Hiring out to useless, insipid people like Kellering.
She sipped at her wine again, listening with half an ear as Kellering prattled on, letting the memories fade. Now, a year and seven missions later, the shame had faded to a dull ache in the back of her mind. Someday, she hoped, it would be gone altogether.
Beside Shada, Team Prime Manda D’ulin lifted a hand, finally putting an end to Kellering’s ramblings. “We understand your problem, Dr. Kellering,” she said. “May I suggest that you’ve already made your decision. Otherwise the three of us wouldn’t be sitting here.”
“Yes, of course.” Kellering sighed. “I suppose I’m still—but that’s foolish. The Mistryl may be somewhat—but still, you certainly come highly recommended. When my cousin was telling me about you, he said you had—”
“The mission, Doctor,” Manda interrupted again. “Tell us about the mission.”
“Yes. Of course.” Kellering took a deep breath, his eyes darting around the crowded tapcafe as if wondering which of the humans or aliens at the other tables out there might be Imperial spies. Or maybe he was just wondering what he was doing outside his pampered little academic world. Consorting with mercenaries. “I’m connected to a research project called Hammertong,” he said, his voice so low now that Shada could barely hear it over the background noise. “My superior, Dr. Eloy, is senior scientist of the group. A couple of weeks ago the Emperor’s representative to the project informed us that we were all going to be moved to some new location. We’re to leave in three days.”
“And you don’t think Captain Drome is handling security properly?” Manda asked.
Kellering shrugged uncomfortably. “Dr. Eloy doesn’t. The two of them have had several arguments about it.”
“So what exactly do you want from us?”
“I suppose—well, I really don’t know,” Kellering confessed, throwing hooded looks back and forth between the two women. “I suppose I thought we could talk to Captain Drome about you bringing in some people to help guard us en route …” He trailed off, apparently finally noticing the expression on Manda’s face.
“Let me explain something about the Mistryl, Dr. Kellering,” she said, her voice still polite but with an edge of chromed mullinine to it. “Your cousin probably told you we were just your standard group of fringe mercenaries. We’re not. He probably told you we sell our services to the highest bidder, no questions or ethics involved. We don’t. The Mistryl are the warriors of a forgotten cause; and if we hire ourselves out as temporary security to people like you, it’s because our world and our people require money to survive. We will not work with Imperial forces. Ever.”
Strong words. But that was all they were. There was a great deal of simmering hatred toward the Empire among the Mistryl, anger for their suspected complicity during the war and for their complete indifference since then. But with the remnant of their people living on the edge of survival, the simple cold truth was that the Mistryl couldn’t afford to turn down anything but the most odious of offers from the most odious of people. Manda could sound as high-minded as she wanted to, but in the end she and the team would accept Kellering’s job.
And as she had seven times before, Shada would do her best to help them fulfill the contract. Because the other simple cold truth was that she had nowhere else to go.
But of course, Kellering didn’t know that; and from the look on his face, Manda might have just dropped a large building on him. “Oh, no,” he breathed. “Please. We need you. Look, we’re not really with the Empire—we’re funded by them, but we’re actually a completely independent research group.”
“I see,” Manda murmured, frowning thoughtfully. Making a show of the decision-making process, probably in hopes of stifling any protest on Kellering’s part when she finally named her price. With an Imperial-funded project, that price was likely to be high.
It was. “All right,” Manda said at last. “We can bypass your Captain Drome entirely and run you a forward screen net that should flash out the sort of ambushes the Rebel Alliance likes to stage these days. You said three days till departure; that’ll give us time to bring a few other teams in. We should be able to field a minimum of ten ships in the screen, plus a two-ship aft guard in case the Rebels try something cute.” She lifted her eyebrows slightly. “The fee will be thirty thousand.”
Kellering’s eyes bulged. “Thirty thousand?” He gulped.
“You got it,” Manda said. “Take it or don’t.”
Shada watched Kellering’s face as it went through the run of shock, nervousness, and discomfiture. But as Manda had pointed out, if he hadn’t already made his decision they wouldn’t be here. “All right,” he sighed. “All right. Dr. Eloy can cut you a credit when we meet with him this afternoon.”
Manda shot Shada a quick glance. “You want us to meet with Dr. Eloy?”
“Of course.” Kellering seemed surprised by the question. “He’s the one most worried about security.”
“Yes, but … where would we meet him? Here?”
“No, at the compound,” Kellering said. “He almost never leaves there. Don’t worry, I can get you in.”
“What about Drome?” Manda asked. “You said yourself he was pretty touchy on the subject of outsiders.”
“Captain Drome isn’t in charge of the project,” Kellering said with precise firmness. “Dr. Eloy is.”
“Such details seldom bother Imperial military officers,” Manda countered. “If he catches us there—”
“He won’t,” Kellering assured her. “He won’t even know you’re there. Besides, you need to see how the Hammertong’s been loaded aboard the ship if you’re going to know how to properly protect it.”
Manda didn’t look happy, but she nodded nevertheless. “All right,” she said, her hand curling into a subtle signal as she did so. “I have a couple of matters to attend to here first, but after that I’ll be happy to come with you. Shada can go offplanet in my place and get the rest of the team assembled.”
“Understood.” Shada nodded. The team didn’t need any assembling, of course—all six of them were right here in this tapcafe, with their two disguised fighters, the Skyclaw and Mirage, parked in separate docking bays across town. But it was as good an excuse as any for Shada to disappear from sight. Backups, after all, weren’t supposed to be seen.
“Good,” Manda said briskly. “Have the others here in Gorno by nightfall. In the meantime—” She gestured Kellering toward the door. “We’ll go deal with a couple of details, and then go meet your Dr. Eloy.”
“They’re approaching the gate,” Pav D’armon’s voice murmured from one of the two comlinks fastened to Shada’s collar. “Two guards visible, but I see movement in the gatehouse behind the fence. Could be as many as six or seven more in there.”
“Copy,” Shada acknowledged, stroking a finger restlessly across the side of her sniper’s blaster rifle and wishing Pav wouldn’t get so chatty on the air. Mistryl comlinks were heavily encrypted, but that wouldn’t stop the Imperials from pinpointing the transmissions if they took it into their heads to do so. And this close to a major base, that was a distinct possibility.
The base. Lifting her eyes from the section of road winding through the hills below—the road Manda and Kellering would be traversing in a few minutes if they made it through the gate—Shada studied the waves of rolling hills that stretched into the distance beyond the innocuous security fence cutting across her view. It certainly looked like the agricultural test ground the signs on the fence claimed it to be, not at all like the weapons-bristling popular image of an Imperial military research base. But its strategic location, within fifty kilometers of the Gorno spaceport and four major technical supply and transport centers, made its true identity obvious.
Perhaps too obvious. Perhaps that was why they were moving everyone out. She wondered how they would handle it: subtly with freighters, or blatantly with Imperial Star Destroyers. Kellering had implied this Hammertong thing had already been loaded for transport; a look at the ship they were using should give Manda a clue as to how they were going to go about it. That would affect how their screen net would be put together—
“They’re through,” Pav reported. “Gate’s closing. They’re headed your way.”
“Copy,” Shada said, frowning. There was something in Pav’s voice … “Trouble?”
“I don’t know,” Pav said slowly. “It all looks okay. But there’s something here that feels wrong, somehow.”
Shada tightened her grip on her blaster rifle. Pav might be a chattercase on the com, but she hadn’t survived long enough to become Manda’s team second without good combat instincts. “What do you mean?”
“I’m not sure,” Pav said. “They got through just a little bit too quick—”
And abruptly, Pav’s voice dissolved into an earsplitting shriek of jamming static.
With a curse, Shada ripped the comlink from her collar with her left hand, throwing it as far away from her as she could. So much for Kellering’s naïve assurances of safety. In the split of a hair the thing had suddenly gone sour … and Manda and Pav were right in the middle of it.
With Shada herself about to come in a close third. Beyond the fence, from over the next line of hills, the gleaming white figures of a dozen stormtroopers on speeder bikes had suddenly appeared. Headed her way.
Shada cursed again, lining up her blaster rifle with her right hand as she groped for the switch on her backup comlink with her left. If they were lucky, they’d have a minute before the Imperials found that frequency and locked it down, too. She located the switch, flicked it on—
“—trap—repeat, a trap,” Pav was saying, her voice tight. “They’ve got Manda—she’s down. Probably. And they’re coming for me.”
“Pav, it’s Shada,” Shada cut in, squinting through the sight and squeezing off a shot. The lead stormtrooper’s speeder bike exploded into a shower of sparks, pitching him to the ground and nearly doing the same to the two on either side of him. “I can be there to back you up in two minutes.”
“Negative,” Pav said. The tension in her voice was gone, leaving a sad sort of resignation that sent a cold chill up Shada’s neck. “They’re already too close. I’ll do what I can to keep them busy—you and Karoly had better get back to the ships and get out of here. Good luck, and good—”
There was a brief crinkle of sound, and then silence.
Ahead, the speeder bikes had shifted into evasive maneuvers. Shada fired four rapid shots, catching another of the stormtroopers with the third of them. “Karoly?” she called toward her comlink. “Karoly? Are you there?”
“They’re gone, Shada,” Karoly D’ulin said, her voice almost unrecognizable. “They’re gone. The stormtroopers—”
“Snap out of it,” Shada snarled, keying the Viper grenade launcher attached to her blaster rifle barrel. The recoil kicked the gun hard into her shoulder as the slender cylinder blasted out toward the approaching stormtroopers. “Can you get to your speeder?”
There was a short pause, and Shada could imagine Karoly’s earnest face as she pulled herself together. “Yes,” she said. “Are we retreating?”
“Not a chance,” Shada said through gritted teeth, getting halfway to her feet and heading at a crouch toward the bushes where her speeder bike was hidden. “We’re heading in. Get moving.” The approaching stormtroopers, finally presented with a target, opened fire—
Just as the grenade hit the ground ten meters in front of them, exploding into a billowing cloud of green smoke.
“We’re going in?” Karoly echoed in disbelief. “Shada—”
“I’m clear.” Shada cut her off, slinging the rifle over her shoulder and kicking the speeder bike to life. Over the roar of the engine she could hear the thuds of her erstwhile attackers falling out of the sky as the specially formulated smoke burned into the speeder bikes’ power connectors. “Call Cai and Sileen—tell them to bring the ships in for backup.”
Shada swung the speeder bike around. Manda and Pav were gone, and she knew that eventually the pain of that loss would catch up with her. But for right now, she had only enough room for a single emotion.
Rage.
“We’re going to teach the Imperials a lesson,” she told Karoly. Kicking the throttle to full power, she jumped the fence, curved around the edge of the green cloud, and headed in.
It was a little over ten kilometers from the outer fence to the main base area, and for the first eight of them Shada flew low over the rolling hills and wondered where in blazes the vaunted Imperial defenses were. Either they hadn’t thrown this ambush together until Kellering’s ground car pulled up at the gate, or else they’d assumed their quarry would run for it and had concentrated their forces out beyond the fence.
Or else they were concentrating on Karoly. Blinking against the wind pounding against her face, trying not to think about what she might have gotten her teammate into, Shada kept going.
She was two kilometers out when the Imperials seemed to finally wake up to the fact they had an intruder in their midst … and those two kilometers more than made up for the preceding eight. Three Mekuun hoverscouts rose from nowhere to meet her, bolstered by two more squads of speeder-bike stormtroopers. Off to the side, sections of two hills opened up, revealing a pair of what looked like Comar antiatmospheric guns. The air around her was suddenly thick with blaster and laser bolts, some missing, the rest deflected by shields that hadn’t really been designed with this kind of all-out attack in mind. Clenching her teeth hard enough to hurt, Shada kept going, maneuvering and returning fire on pure reflex. Off to her left, she could see another whirlwind of Imperial activity near where Karoly should be coming in—
And then, suddenly, the hoverscouts and speeder bikes seemed to scramble out of her path. The Comar guns shifted their aim away from her—
And with a screaming roar the Skyclaw shot past overhead, spitting a withering fire of laser blasts at the Imperials.
“Kan si manis per tam, Sha,” Sileen’s voice blared from the Skyclaw’s belly loudspeaker. “Mi nazh ko.”
“Sha kae,” Shada shouted back, shifting fifteen degrees to her left as per Sileen’s instructions and permitting herself a flash of cold satisfaction. The Imperials might be able to jam comlinks and slice sophisticated encrypts, but she would bet starships to groundworms they wouldn’t have the faintest idea what to do with Mistryl battle language. To her left, she could see Cai and the Mirage now, running cover for Karoly, and she made a quick estimate of their intersect point. Just over the next row of hills, she decided. Dropping a little lower to the ground, she braced herself for whatever Sileen had sent her toward.
She topped the hills; and there, nestled in a wide valley, was a complex of perhaps twenty buildings, ranging in size from flat office blocks to a single windowless structure the size of a capital ship maintenance hangar. The Hammertong base, without a doubt.
And lying in the middle of it all, dominating the scene by the sheer unexpectedness of its presence there, was the long sleek shape of a Loronar Strike Cruiser.
“Sha re rei som kava na talae,” Sileen’s voice boomed again from above her. Without waiting for an answer, both fighters veered off to the right.
A motion to her left caught Shada’s eye, and she turned as Karoly’s speeder bike slid into formation beside her. “You all right?” Shada called.
“Yes,” Karoly shouted back. She still looked nervous, but at least she didn’t look as if she were going to freeze up again. “What did Sileen say? I didn’t catch it.”
“More Imperials coming,” Shada said. “She and Cai are going to intercept.”
Shada nodded toward the Strike Cruiser. “We’re going to make the Imperials hurt a little. Bow hatchway’s open—let’s try to get there before they get it sealed.”
They found out immediately what two of the smaller buildings on the periphery of the complex were for, as sections of wall fell away and four more Comar guns opened fire. But it was too little too late. Between the harassment from the two fighters and the small size and maneuverability of the speeder bikes themselves, Shada and Karoly made it past the hot drive nozzles at the Strike Cruiser’s stern and into the relative shelter of its flank with no damage apart from burned-out shields.
“Pretty rotten security they’ve got here,” Karoly huffed as they headed toward the bow hatchway. An instant later she nearly had to swallow those words as, from the ground beside the landing ramp, a dozen Imperials opened fire with blaster rifles. But the two speeder bikes had the edge in both firepower and targeting accuracy, and they’d covered no more than half the Strike Cruiser’s four-hundred-fifty-meter length before that nest of opposition had been silenced.
“Now what?” Karoly asked as they braked to a halt at the foot of the ramp.
“We do some damage,” Shada said, half standing up on her speeder bike and taking a quick look around. There was still some resistance, mostly from the Comars and the handful of speeder-bike stormtroopers that hadn’t yet been blown out of the sky. She and Karoly should have enough time to make their way to the Strike Cruiser’s bridge, drop a canister or two of their corrosive green smoke where it would do the most good, and get the blazes out again.
And then, over the distant hills ahead, a new group of Imperial forces appeared, burning through the air toward them like scorched mynocks. “Uh-oh,” Karoly muttered. “I take it back about their security. Maybe we’d better get out while we still can.”
Shada took a deep breath, her last views of Manda’s and Pav’s faces floating up from her memory. “Not until we’ve hurt them,” she said, swiveling around and pointing her speeder bike at the ramp. “Stay here long enough to give me a two-minute warning, then you can take off.”
Karoly hissed between her teeth. “Get moving,” she gritted out as she dropped her speeder bike into the limited protection of the ramp and unslung her blaster rifle. “I’ll cover you. Make it fast.”
“Bet on it,” Shada agreed tightly, trying to visualize the standard Strike Cruiser layout as she headed up the ramp. She would have to go forward about ten meters along the exit corridor, then starboard to the central corridor, then forward another twenty meters to get to the bridge. Standard Strike Cruiser complement was something over two thousand crewers; if there was even a fraction of that number aboard who felt like getting in her way … but she would just have to do what she could. She reached the top of the ramp, swerving to the side as she passed under the hatchway arch to avoid the exit corridor bulkhead—
And lurched to an abrupt halt. “Mother of—”
“What?” Karoly’s voice snapped from the comlink on her collar. “Shada? What is it?”
For a moment Shada was too stunned even to speak. Stretched out in front of her, where the command rooms, crew quarters, and combat stations should have been, was a vast cavern of open space, three hundred meters long and nearly fifty in diameter, running all the way from the bow to the main drive section. A heavily reinforced deck had been built across the bottom of the huge room, connected to the outer hull by an intricate spider webbing of support lines and bracing struts.
And extending down the center of the chamber for at least three-quarters of its length was a three-meter-diameter cylinder studded with thousands of pipe connections and multicolored power and control cable linkages. Carefully wrap-protected, just as carefully static-fastened to the deck, all ready for travel.
“Shada?” Karoly called again.
Shada swallowed, glancing around. The chamber seemed to be deserted, its crew or workers probably those who’d been shooting at them from the foot of the ramp. To her left, at the far forward end of the chamber, the standard Strike Cruiser bridge had been replaced by a simplified freighter-style cockpit, also unmanned. And from the looks of the status displays—and the way those drive nozzles had been humming when she and Karoly had passed them—it looked as if they’d been running an active status check on the flight systems when the Mistryl attack had interrupted them.
Which meant the ship should be pretty much ready to fly …
“Change of plans,” she told Karoly, swiveling around and gunning the speeder bike forward toward the cockpit setup. “Get in here. And seal the door behind you.”
She was running the start-up procedure at the Strike Cruiser’s helm by the time Karoly joined her. “Mother of space and time,” Karoly breathed, backing up to the copilot’s seat, her eyes goggling at the room behind them. “Is that the Hammertong thing Kellering was talking about?”
“I don’t know what else it could be,” Shada said, mentally crossing her fingers as she eased in the repulsorlifts. A ship this size wasn’t really designed to come this deep into a gravity well … but it seemed to be lifting okay. The Imperials must have added more repulsorlifts while they were gutting the interior. “Get the comm adjusted to our frequency, will you?”
“Sure.” Still keeping half an eye behind them, Karoly sat down and busied herself with the comm. “What’s the plan?”
“The Imperials went to a lot of work to build that thing and modify a ship to transport it,” Shada said, giving the displays a careful scan. For all their arrogance, the Imperials weren’t stupid, especially when it came to hardware as impressive as the Hammertong. If their ground defenses had been low-profile, they were bound to have some heavy space-based weaponry nearby to back it up.
But if it was there, it wasn’t showing up on the displays. Hiding around the horizon? Or could the Mistryl counterattack have caught the whole bunch of them by surprise?
Either way, there was no percentage in waiting around for them to get their seats under their rears. “You got Cai and Sileen yet?” she asked Karoly.
“Almost,” Karoly said, her hands busy on the board. “I’m running a split-freq mix … there we go.”
“Shada? Karoly?” Sileen’s voice came over the speaker. “What in blazes are you doing?”
“We’re giving the Empire a bloody nose,” Shada said. The Strike Cruiser had cleared the boundary of the base now and was starting to pick up speed, leaving what was left of the speeder-bike force behind them.
“Shada—look, we’re all upset about Manda and Pav,” Sileen said carefully. “But this is just crazy. You’re going to bring the whole Imperial fleet down on top of us.”
“They need to know they can’t just go around killing Mistryl,” Shada retorted. “Not without paying dearly for it. Karoly and I can handle it ourselves if you want to leave.”
There was a hissing sigh from the speaker. “No, we’d better stick together,” Sileen said. “Anyway, what can the Empire do to us that hasn’t already been done?”
“I’m in, too,” Cai said. “One small question: Now that we’ve got the Hammertong, what are we going to do with it?”
Shada glanced back at the long silent cylinder behind her, the enormity of what she’d gotten them into belatedly starting to sink in. What were they going to do with the Hammertong? She and Karoly could nurse the Strike Cruiser along for a short flight by themselves, but that was it. Anything beyond that—fancy maneuvering, combat, even basic running maintenance—was out of the question. “We’ll have to ditch the ship,” she told the others. “Someplace close by. Find a way to hide it, then see if we can disassemble the Hammertong into pieces we can put aboard one of our own freighters.”
“Sounds tricky,” Karoly said. “You got someplace in mind?”
“We’ve got company,” Sileen cut in before Shada could answer. “Imperial Star Destroyer, coming out of hyperspace aft.”
“Got it,” Karoly said, swiveling around to the sensor section of the board. “Confirm one Imperial Star Destroyer. Launching TIE fighters.”
“The base probably called for help,” Shada said, keying the navcomputer. This was it: no second thoughts, no chance of grounding the Strike Cruiser and escaping aboard the fighters. They were committed now. “Cai, Sileen, here comes your course feed-code Bitterness. Make the jump to lightspeed as soon as you can; we’ll be right behind you.”
There was a brief pause. “You sure this is where you want to go?” Sileen asked.
“I don’t see us having a lot of choices,” Shada said. “It’s close, it hasn’t got much of an Imperial presence, and the locals don’t ask a lot of questions.” She could imagine Sileen gazing out at the Strike Cruiser and wondering just how far the locals’ indifference was going to stretch. But—
“All right,” was all Sileen said. “You want both of us to come with you, or should I head out and try to scare up a freighter?”
“That’s a good idea,” Shada agreed. “Go ahead. Cai and Karoly and I can handle this end.”
“Okay. Good luck.”
The Skyclaw flickered with pseudomotion and vanished into hyperspace. “Here we go,” Shada muttered, keying in their course and hoping fervently that the Imperials hadn’t torn the hyperdrive apart as part of the ship’s preflight check. Those TIE fighters back there were getting uncomfortably close, and there wasn’t much margin for error here. “Everything set there, Karoly?”
“Looks like it,” Karoly said, checking over her own board. “You going to let me in on the big secret of where we’re going?”
“No secret,” Shada said, reaching for the hyperdrive levers. “Just a useless little hole in space. Called Tatooine.”
It was not so much a landing as it was a marginally controlled crash; and by the time the Strike Cruiser had skidded to a halt against one of the rippling sand dunes, it was clear to Shada that the ship would never leave there again. Not without a great deal of assistance.
“Terrific landing,” Karoly commented, her breath coming a little heavily as she shut down the drive. “I presume it’s occurred to you that we stick out here like a Wookiee wearing landing lights.”
“Not for long we won’t,” Shada said, checking the displays. “That cloud to the west is the leading edge of a sandstorm. Another hour and no one’s going to find us. Come on, let’s go take a look at our new toy.”
They had the wrap-protection off the first couple of meters of the Hammertong by the time Cai joined them. “Any trouble?” Shada asked.
“Not really,” Cai said, stepping up to the Hammertong and peering closely at it. “I’m not sure they even picked me up coming in. They sure didn’t hail me.”
“Usually no one bothers with ships that aren’t coming into the spaceport at Mos Eisley,” Shada said. “A lot of contraband comes through Tatooine, and everyone pretty much looks the other way.”
“I’m glad one of us keeps up with these things,” Cai said dryly. “So this is the Hammertong, huh? Any idea what it is?”
“Not yet,” Shada said. “How’s your astromech droid doing these days?”
“Deefour? Erratic but functional. You want me to go get him?”
Shada nodded. “We’ll want to get a technical readout at the very least. Is the Mirage ready for that sandstorm?”
“As ready as it’s going to be,” Cai said, heading back toward the hatchway. “I tried to position it to keep a passage clear to both ships, and we can put the hatchway deflector shields up just to make sure. I’ll be right back.”
The full force of the sandstorm hit about ten minutes after Cai and the droid returned; and it took less than ten minutes more for Shada to wonder if this whole idea might not have been a big mistake. Even through the thick hull they could hear the drumming of the sand against the ship, a drumming that was growing louder with each passing minute. The plan had been to hide the Strike Cruiser from probing Imperial eyes; it would be a rather costly victory if they all wound up entombed inside it.
Cai was apparently thinking along the same lines. “That’s all the bolts down there,” she said, climbing out from under the Hammertong and handing her hydrospanner to Karoly. “I’m going to go check on the storm. Make sure we’re not getting buried too deep.”
“Good idea,” Shada said, returning her attention to her own line of bolts. She finished them, waited as Karoly finished hers, and then together they eased the massive access panel off.
The Hammertong’s inner workings weren’t nearly as complex as the number of pipe and power connections poking through the surface would have suggested. Most of the power and control cables seemed to run to a series of multihelix prismatic crystals and a group of unlabeled but identical black boxes; the piping seemed mostly connected to coolant lines and sleeves. “Maybe it’s some new kind of power core,” Shada suggested. “It’s a modular design—see how the pattern of connectors repeats every five meters down the side? We ought to be able to take it apart at those spots.”
“Maybe,” Karoly said, prodding thoughtfully at one of the black boxes with the end of her hydrospanner. “Deefour, see if you can find a place to tie in. Might as well start pulling a technical readout—we’re going to want everything we can get on this thing.”
“Hey!” Cai called from the cockpit area. “Shada, Karoly—you’d better come see this.”
She was hunched over the main display, fiddling with the fine-tuning, when the other two reached her. “What is it?” Shada demanded.
“I’m not sure,” Cai said. “Hard to tell through all the sand, but I think there’s a battle going on up there. An Imperial Star Destroyer against something about the size of a bulk freighter.”
Shada leaned over the display, heart pounding. If Sileen had been unexpectedly fast at bringing in transport for them … “Can you scrub the image any more?” she asked.
“I’m at the limit already,” Cai said. “It’s the sandstorm—wait a minute, there’s a break. It’s a Corellian Corvette.”
Shada let out a quiet sigh. Not one of the Mistryl’s ships, then. “I wonder what’s going on.”
“I don’t know,” Cai said slowly. “Wait a minute. Two more Star Destroyers coming in from hyperspace.”
“That’s a lot of firepower for a planet like Tatooine,” Karoly said. “They only had one Star Destroyer guarding the Hammertong.”
“Unless one or more of these were supposed to have been there, too,” Shada suggested. “Could be they got pulled away to help chase that Corellian.”
“Either way, the Corellian must be pretty important to them,” Cai said. “We could be in the middle of something really big here.”
Shada looked back at the Hammertong and the diminutive droid working alongside it. Cai was right … and suddenly she was feeling very short on time. “Cai, do you think we could get one of those modules off the Hammertong”
“We could try. Probably take a couple of days with just the three of us and Deefour. Why?”
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to wait for Sileen to bring back a ship,” Shada said. “If she hasn’t made it in by the time we get one of those modules off, we’d better take what we’ve got and get out of here.”
“You’ll never get one of those modules into the Mirage,” Karoly objected. “It’s way too big.”
“I know,” Shada said. “That’s why, if it comes to that, you and I will go to Mos Eisley and hire ourselves a freighter. Come on, let’s get started.”
“Over there,” Shada said, pointing toward a dilapidated building across the sandy Mos Eisley street and double-checking her datapad. “That’s the cantina.”
“Doesn’t look like much,” Karoly said, swinging the Mirage’s antique speeder over toward it. “You really think we’re going to find a good pilot in there?”
“Someone in the Mistryl thought so.” Shada shrugged. “It was the top name on the contingency list for Tatooine.”
“I doubt that’s a really telling recommendation,” Karoly grumbled, letting the speeder coast to a stop. “I don’t like this, Shada. I really don’t.”
“Brea, not Shada,” Shada corrected her. “And you’re Senni. Don’t forget that inside or this whole thing could fall apart.”
“It’s got a good chance of doing that all by itself,” Karoly shot back. “Look, just because a couple of stormtroopers on traffic duty bought this charade”—she gestured sharply at the slinky jumpsuit and hived-hairdo wig she was wearing—“doesn’t mean anyone who actually knows the Tonnika sisters is going to fall for it. They’re not.”
“Well, we certainly can’t use our own names and IDs,” Shada pointed out, trying to hide her own nervousness about this masquerade. “This place is crawling with stormtroopers already, and if they haven’t got listings on us yet, they will soon. The Mistryl have been running this camouflage prematch system for a long time now, and I’ve never yet heard of it failing. If it says the two of us can pass as Brea and Senni Tonnika, then we can.”
“Looking like them and acting like them are two very different things,” Karoly countered. “Besides which, pretending to be a couple of criminals is not my idea of keeping low.”
She had a point, Shada had to admit. Brea and Senni Tonnika were professional con artists—good ones, too—who were said to have separated an impressive amount of wealth from an equally impressive list of the galaxy’s rich and powerful. Under normal circumstances, borrowing their identities would indeed not be a smart way to stay inconspicuous.
But the circumstances here were far from normal. “We don’t have any choice,” she said firmly. “Complete strangers automatically draw attention, and a place like Mos Eisley is always crawling with informants. Especially now. Our only chance of keeping the Imperials off us is to look as if we belong here. To everyone.” She looked out at the cantina. Karoly was right; the place didn’t look very inviting. “If you’d rather, you can stay out here and watch the door. I can find a pilot by myself.”
Karoly sighed. “We’re going to have to talk someday about these sudden surges of recklessness. Come on, we’re wasting time.”
Shada had held out the hope that, like certain other criminal dens she’d heard of, the cantina’s interior would be a marked improvement over its exterior. But it wasn’t. From the dark, smoke-filled lobby and flickering droid detector to the curved bar and secluded booths along the walls, the cantina was as shabby as some of the less choice tapcafes on their own world. Karoly had been right: Being number one on Tatooine wasn’t saying much.
“Watch the steps,” Karoly murmured beside her.
“Thanks,” Shada said, catching herself in time not to trip over the steps leading down from the lobby to the main part of the cantina. She hadn’t realized until then just how much her eyes were having to adjust from the bright sunlight outside to the dimness of the interior. Probably deliberately designed to give those already inside a chance to check out any newcomers.
But if any of the patrons were overly curious about her and Karoly, they weren’t showing it. Around the room, humans and aliens of all sorts were sitting or squatting at the tables and booths or leaning against the bar, drinking a dozen different liquids and chatting in a dozen different languages and not paying the least bit of attention to the new arrivals. Apparently, the Tonnika sisters were familiar enough to the clientele to be known on sight.
Or else minding one’s own business was the general rule here. Either way, it suited Shada just fine.
“What now?” Karoly asked.
“Let’s go over to the bar,” Shada said, nodding to an empty spot against one side. “We can see the room better from there than from a table or booth. We’ll get a drink and see if we can find anyone from our listings.”
They made their way through the general flow of bodies to the bar. Across the room, a Bith band was belting out some bouncy but otherwise nondescript tune, the music not quite able to drown out the mix of conversations. Partway around the bar a tall not-quite-human was smoking from an oddly shaped loop pipe and gazing off broodingly into space; beyond him, an Aqualish and a badly scarred man were drinking and glaring around at other customers; beyond them, another tall human was holding a quiet conversation with an even taller Wookiee.
“What’ll you have?” a surly voice asked.
Shada focused on the bartender standing there in front of them. The expression on his face matched his voice; but there seemed to be some recognition behind the indifference in his eyes.
Enough to risk an experiment. “We’ll have the usual,” she told him.
He grunted and busied himself at the bar. Shada glanced at Karoly’s suddenly aghast expression, winked reassuringly, and turned back as the bartender put two slender glasses in front of them. He grunted again and walked away.
Shada picked up her glass, willing the tension to flow out of her. “Cheers,” she said, lifting the glass to Karoly.
“Are you crazy?” Karoly hissed back.
“Would you rather I had ordered something way out of character for us?” Shada asked, taking a careful sip. Some kind of Sullustan wine, she decided. “Let’s get started.”
Still glowering, Karoly pulled the slender cylinder of their spies’ scanner/datapad from her jumpsuit and flicked it on. “All right,” she muttered, glancing back and forth between it and the cantina’s patrons. “The fellow with the loop pipe … never mind, he’s an assassin. Those two Duros over there … no listing here for them.”
“Their flight suits look too neat for smugglers, anyway,” Shada said. Across the bar, an old man with white hair and beard and dressed in a brown robe stepped up to the Wookiee and his tall companion. There was a short conversation between the two humans, and then the tall human gestured to the Wookiee and wandered away. “What about that Aqualish over there?”
“I was just checking him,” Karoly said, peering down at the end of the scanner. “Name’s Ponda Baba, and he’s definitely a smuggler. That scarface beside him—”
“Hey!” the bartender barked.
Shada stiffened, her hand reaching reflexively for her hidden knife.
But the bartender wasn’t looking at her. “We don’t serve their kind here,” he snapped, gesturing sharply.
“What?” came a voice from behind her.
Shada turned around. At the top of the steps stood a boy about her own age, dressed in loose white clothing and frowning in puzzlement at the bartender. Beside him were two droids, a protocol droid and an astromech unit similar to Cai’s Deefour model. “Your droids,” the bartender growled. “They’ll have to wait outside—we don’t want them here.”
The kid spoke briefly to the droids, who turned and scurried back out. Continuing down the steps alone, he moved over to the bar and gingerly wedged himself in between the Aqualish and the old man in the brown robe.
“The scarface is named Dr. Evazan,” Karoly said. “I’ve got ten death sentences listed here for him.”
“For smuggling?” Shada asked, frowning at the brown-robed old man. There was something about him; some sense of quiet alertness and self-control and power that set the hairs tingling on the back of her neck.
“No,” Karoly said slowly. “Botched surgical experiments. Yecch.”
“We’ll keep him in mind as a last resort,” Shada said, her eyes and thoughts still on the brown-robed man. Whoever he was, he definitely didn’t fit in with the rest of the clientele. An Imperial spy, perhaps? “That old man over there—do a check on him,” she told Karoly. The kid was still standing on his other side, gawking around like a tourist. Were they together? Grandfather and grandson, maybe, in from the countryside to see the big city?
And then, abruptly, the Aqualish gave the kid a shove and snarled something at him. The kid looked at him blankly, then turned back to the bar. Stepping away from the bar, smiling rather like a predator preparing himself for lunch, Dr. Evazan tapped the kid on the shoulder. “He doesn’t like you,” he said.
“Sorry,” the kid breathed, starting to turn away again.
Evazan grabbed a handful of the kid’s clothing and yanked him back around. “I don’t like you, either,” he snarled, shoving his mangled face close to the kid’s. Around them, conversations came to a halt as heads turned to look. “You just watch yourself,” Evazan continued. “We’re wanted men.”
“Uh-oh,” Karoly said quietly.
Shada nodded silently. The kid was in for it now—she’d seen enough tapcafe fights to know a setup when she saw one. “We’re staying out of it,” she reminded Karoly.
“But if they get arrested—”
Shada cut her off with a sharp gesture. Smoothly, gracefully, as if he’d been fully aware of the situation from the start, the old man had turned away from his conversation with the Wookiee. “This little one’s not worth the effort,” he said soothingly to Evazan. “Come, let me get you something.”
It was, Shada realized, as neat a face-saving gesture as she’d ever seen. Evazan and the Aqualish could now accept a drink, maybe snarl and posture a little more, and then move on with whatever passed for personal honor intact.
But unfortunately for the old man, Evazan wasn’t interested in a peaceful settlement. For a split second he glared at the old man, his predator look hardening into something ugly and vicious. Conversation at the bar had all but ceased now, every eye turned toward the violence about to break. From their alcove the band played on, oblivious to what was happening.
And then, with a roar, Evazan shoved the kid violently to the side to crash into one of the tables. His hand swung up, a blaster gripped in it. Beside him, the Aqualish also had his blaster out, an urgent “No blasters—no blasters!” from the bartender going completely unnoticed. The weapons swung up, targeting the old man.
They never got there. Abruptly, the old man’s hand exploded into brilliant blue-white light, a flickering hard-edged fire that slashed with surgical precision across his two attackers. There was a blaster shot that ricocheted into the ceiling, a scream and gurgling roar—
And then, as abruptly as it had begun, it was over. Evazan and the Aqualish collapsed out of sight beyond the bar, their moans showing they were at least temporarily still alive. From where she stood, Shada could see the Aqualish’s blaster lying on the floor, still clutched in a hand no longer attached to its owner.
For another moment the old man remained as he was, his glowing weapon humming, his eyes flicking around the cantina as if assessing the possibility of more trouble. He could have saved himself the effort. From the casual way the other patrons were turning back to their drinks, it was obvious that no one here had any particular affection for the downed smugglers. At least not enough to take on the old man over it.
And it was in that second’s worth of pause that Shada was finally able to identify the weapon the old man had used against his attackers.
A lightsaber.
“You still want to know who he is?” Karoly asked dryly from beside her.
Shada licked at her lips, a fresh tingle running through her as the old man closed down his weapon and helped the kid back to his feet. A Jedi Knight. A real, living Jedi Knight. No wonder she’d sensed something odd about him. “I doubt he’s for hire,” she told Karoly, taking a deep breath and forcing her mind back to the business at hand. If the Jedi Knights of the Old Republic had still been in power when their world was destroyed … “Well, that eliminates Evazan and the Aqualish,” she said to Karoly. “Keep looking.”
They spent the next few minutes sipping their drinks and surreptitiously scanning the room, then spent a few minutes more talking to three of the most likely prospects. But to no avail. Two of the smugglers were already under contract, though one of them offered with a leer to take them along as passengers if they were nice to him. The third smuggler, an independent, was willing to talk, but made it clear that he wasn’t planning to move his ship until this sudden Imperial focus on Tatooine had calmed down.
“Great,” Karoly grumbled as they returned to their previous spots at the bar. “Now what?”
Shada looked around. A few new faces had come into the cantina since they’d begun their search, but most of them had the look about them of men who didn’t want to be disturbed. She looked in turn at each of the booths lining the walls, wondering if they might have missed someone.
And paused. There, right behind them, were the Jedi Knight and the kid. Talking to the Wookiee and a man she hadn’t seen come in. “Check him out,” she said, nodding toward the latter.
Karoly peered at the scanner readout. “Name’s Han Solo,” she said. “Smuggler. Does a lot of business with Jabba the Hutt—”
“Put it away,” Shada interrupted her, looking toward the cantina lobby. “Quick.”
Karoly followed her gaze, and Shada felt her stiffen. Striding down the steps toward the bar, heavy weapons held at the ready, were a pair of stormtroopers. Who clearly weren’t here for a drink.
“I wonder if there’s a back door out of here,” Karoly murmured.
“I don’t know,” Shada said, running a finger along her slender wineglass as the Imperials summoned the bartender over. Thrown against the face of a stormtrooper helmet, it ought to slow him down long enough for her to slide her knife blade into a critical junction …
The bartender pointed somewhere behind them. Shada frowned, then understood. “They must be asking about the Jedi Knight,” she said, turning to look at the booth. A knot of aliens brushed past, momentarily blocking her view. They continued on—
The old Jedi was gone. So was the kid. The stormtroopers stepped up to the booth, eyed Solo and the Wookiee a moment, then moved on. For a moment, as they looked around, their armored masks seemed to pause on Shada and Karoly. But they said nothing, and continued on their way toward the rear of the cantina.
Karoly nudged her. “Now’s our chance,” she said. “Let’s go talk to him.”
Shada turned back. Solo and the Wookiee had left the booth now, Solo heading for the lobby while the Wookiee went in the direction the stormtroopers had gone. Probably where the back door was, which would explain how the Jedi and the kid had disappeared. “Right,” Shada agreed, taking one last sip from her glass and putting it back on the bar. She turned again—
To find that Solo was no longer walking toward the lobby. He was, instead, backing into a booth at the wrong end of a blaster held by a dirty-looking Rodian. “Uh-oh,” Shada said. “Friend of his?”
“Doubt it,” Karoly said, palming the scanner. “Hang on … his name’s Greedo. He’s a bounty hunter.”
For a long moment Shada stared at the quietly tense discussion in the booth, trying to decide what to do. Taking action would jeopardize her cover as Brea Tonnika, and certainly there was no shortage of smugglers in the cantina. But there was something about the way Solo carried himself that she liked. Or maybe the fact that he’d been talking with the Jedi Knight …
“I’m going to take him,” she told Karoly. “Get ready to back me up.”
She reached for her knife; but before she could draw it, Solo solved the problem on his own. From the booth came a flash of muffled blaster fire, and the Rodian slumped over onto the table. Warily, Solo slid out of the booth, holstered his blaster, and continued on toward the lobby, flipping a coin to the bartender as he passed.
Karoly let out a breath. “Good thing we weren’t interested in Greedo. This isn’t a very healthy place to hang around.”
“No kidding,” Shada said. “Let’s go catch Solo before he gets away.”
And then, from behind her, a sweaty hand closed on her wrist. “Well, well, well,” a voice said. “What have we here?”
Shada turned. The sweaty hand belonged to a sweaty Imperial colonel, his uniform streaked with sandy dust, a maliciously pleased look on his face. Behind him were the two stormtroopers who’d come through earlier. “Brea and Senni Tonnika, I do believe,” the colonel went on. “How nice of you to drop back into sight again. You can’t imagine how brokenhearted Grand Moff Argon has been since your departure. I’m sure he’ll be pleased to see you again.” He lifted an eyebrow. “As well as the twenty-five thousand you stole from him.”
Smiling sardonically, he gestured to the stormtroopers. “Take them away.”
The police station cell was cooler than the cantina had been, but that was about all it had going for it. Small, sparsely furnished, streaked with Tatooine’s ubiquitous sand, it had all the charm of a used transport crate.
“Did you catch when they’d be moving us out?” Karoly asked, leaning against a wall and gazing dolefully at the door.
“Didn’t sound as if it would be anytime soon,” Shada said. “The colonel said something about finishing up the search before getting us transferred to his ship.”
Karoly’s lip twitched. Clearly, she was also appreciating the irony here: The Imperials’ search had already ended, only they didn’t know it.
Or maybe they did know it. Maybe the colonel was just playing along with the masquerade while he sent out for the proper interrogation equipment.
Shada looked around the room. A single bunk, a reading lamp fastened to the wall over one end, primitive refresher facilities, a barred door, and a one-way observation window opposite it. Limited resources, and no privacy to use them.
Which left only their combat training. And the possibility that the Imperials still didn’t know they were dealing with Mistryl. “I just hope they feed us before then,” she commented to Karoly. “I’m starving.”
Karoly’s eyebrow twitched. “So am I,” she said, looking around. “Maybe I should beat on the bars and see if I can get someone’s attention.”
“Go ahead,” Shada said, stretching out on the bunk and letting her hand rest idly on the reading lamp above her head, examining it with her fingertips. It was fastened to the wall over the bunk, but a little work with her belt buckle ought to get it off. Behind it would be power cables … “On second thought, you might want to try that mirror instead,” she said to Karoly, nodding back at the spy window. “Someone’s probably watching it.”
“Okay,” Karoly said. She stepped over to the window and pressed her face against it, blocking the view into the cell. “Hey! Anyone there?”
Quickly, Shada pulled off her buckle and got to work as Karoly kept up the noise. She got one of the three fasteners loosened; did the second; started on the third—
“Shut up the noise!” someone snapped.
Shada paused, palming the buckle, as a man in a faded uniform appeared at the door. “We’re hungry,” she complained.
“Too bad,” he growled. “The meals come in two hours. Now shut up or I’ll have you strapped down and muzzled.”
“Two hours?” Shada repeated. “We’ll never make it that long. Can’t you get us something to tide us over?”
“Please?” Karoly added, smiling encouragingly.
The guard’s lip twisted; and he was just opening his mouth for what would probably have been a memorable comeback when a young man in civilian clothing stepped into view. “Problems, Happer?”
“Always,” the other growled. “I thought you were off till tonight.”
“I am,” the younger man said, peering thoughtfully at Shada and Karoly. “Heard you were drowning in prisoners; figured I’d come in and take a look. Who do we have here?”
“Brea and Senni Tonnika.” Happer threw a glower at the two women. “Very special prisoners of Colonel Parq. And none of our business, if you ask me. If the Imperials want to lock up half of Mos Eisley, the least they could do is provide their own holding tanks.”
“And do their own ID checks?”
“Don’t remind me.” Happer grunted. “I’ve got fifteen of them running right now, with about thirty more in the hopper.” He glared again at the prisoners. “Look, Riij, do me a favor, will you? Go down to Stores and pull a couple of ration bars for these two, I’ve got to go down to the check room—the sifter’s been needing a lot of babysitting today, and those stormtroopers are starting to get snotty.”
“I’ll handle it,” Riij assured him. “Have fun.”
Happer grunted again and disappeared down the corridor. “So,” Riij said, gazing at them again. “Brea and Senni. Which is which?”
“I’m Brea,” Shada said carefully. There was something about the way he was looking at her that she didn’t at all care for.
“Ah,” he said. “I’m Riij—Riij Winward. You know, I could have sworn I heard you two had gotten on a transport heading out toward Jabba the Hutt’s three hours ago.”
Shada’s heart seemed to seize up inside her. The Tonnika sisters were here? On Tatooine? “We came back,” she said through suddenly dry lips. “I guess we shouldn’t have.”
“I guess not.” Riij paused. “I heard something else interesting too, just after this big Imperial droid search came down all over Mos Eisley a couple of days ago. It seems the Empire’s also put out an urgent search-and-detain order for a stolen Strike Cruiser.”
“A Strike Cruiser?” Shada repeated, putting as much scorn as she could into her voice. “Oh, I’m sure. People steal Strike Cruisers all the time.”
“Yeah, I thought that sounded pretty strange myself,” Riij agreed. “So I went over and talked to a pal of mine at the control tower to see if that was even possible. You know what he told me?”
“I’m dying to hear.”
“He said he’d picked up something sneaking in toward the Dune Sea an hour or so before that Star Destroyer showed up and all these Imperials dropped in on us. Something just about the size of a Strike Cruiser.” Riij lifted his eyebrows. “Interesting, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Tremendously,” Shada said, fighting to keep her sudden dread out of her voice. So they had spotted the Strike Cruiser, after all. And Cai was in big trouble. “Were the Imperials pleased to hear this?”
“Actually, he hasn’t told them yet,” Riij said, eyeing her closely. “He was going off duty at the time and didn’t feel like holding a question session with a bunch of stormtroopers. ’Course, once they came down in force and took over the tower, he was even less inclined to remember stuff like that. That happens on Tatooine.”
“I see,” Shada murmured. They were still in trouble, but at least they still had a little breathing space. “You’ll forgive me if lost Imperial property isn’t high on my list at the moment. We have more pressing problems of our own.”
“I’m sure you do,” Riij said solemnly. “Number one being how to get out of here before Happer finds out you aren’t Brea and Senni Tonnika.”
Shada felt herself tense up again. She’d suspected he knew, but had been hoping fervently that she was wrong. “That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s all right,” Riij said. “The microphones in this cell haven’t worked in three months. I popped out the circuit fuse a few minutes ago too, just to make sure.”
Shada glanced at Karoly. She looked as puzzled as Shada felt. “All right,” she said, looking back at Riij. “Fine. Let’s cut through the smoke here and tell us what you want.”
Riij seemed to brace himself. “I’ll let you out,” he said. “In exchange for some of whatever’s in that Strike Cruiser.”
Shada frowned at him. “What are you doing, running a smuggling service on the side?”
“Not smuggling.” He shook his head. “Information. To certain interested parties.”
“What parties?”
“It’s not important.” Riij smiled faintly. “On Tatooine, one normally doesn’t ask that question.”
“Yes, well, we’re new here,” Shada countered, thinking hard. This could be an Imperial trick, she knew: a way to get her and Karoly to tell them where they’d hidden the Hammertong. But somehow that seemed a little too subtle for people who owned interrogator droids and normally had no compunction about using them. “All right,” she said. “But only if you can find us a freighter that can handle something three by five meters.”
Riij frowned. “Three by—?”
“Hey, Riij!” Happer’s voice called from down the corridor. “Gotta go—something big brewing over at Docking Bay 97. The Imperials have called the whole duty force in to run backup. Can you watch things here a while?”
“Sure, no problem,” Riij assured him.
“Thanks.”
Happer ran off, his footsteps cut off by the boom of a closing security door. “Well?” Shada prompted.
“I can get a freighter,” Riij said, forehead wrinkled in thought. “The problem’s going to be getting it fast enough. There’s a sandstorm sweeping in across that part of the Dune Sea—a big one. It’ll hit in a couple of hours, and there’s a good chance it’ll bury your ship for good.”
“Then we haven’t got much time, have we?” Shada said. “Get us out of here, and let’s go.”
The wind was already picking up across the sand dunes as Riij set the transport ship awkwardly down at the edge of the makeshift tunnel leading to the Strike Cruiser. “How long have we got?” Shada asked, shouting to be heard over the wind as the three of them half walked, half slid their way down the sand to the hatchway.
“Not long,” Riij called back. “Half an hour. Maybe less.”
Shada nodded back, keying the panel open and stepping inside. On the deck just inside the hatchway lay the segment of the Hammertong they’d removed, its loadlifters still attached. Across the huge empty room Deefour was warbling to himself as he poked around the rest of the huge cylinder, searching for any last-minute bits of data he could add to his extensive technical readout of the device. There was no sign of Cai. “Cai?” Shada called. “Da mala ci tri sor kehai.”
“Sha ma ti,” Cai replied, emerging from hiding behind one of the support struts and holstering her blaster. “I was starting to think you weren’t going to make it back in time.”
“We may not have,” Shada said grimly. “We’ve got another sandstorm breathing down our necks. There’s a transport outside—you and Karoly get that Hammertong segment aboard.”
“Right,” Cai said. “Karoly? Grab the lifts on that end.”
Together they got the Hammertong segment off the floor and out the hatchway as Shada went forward to the Strike Cruiser’s cockpit. As it had before, the flying sand was interfering with the sensors, and she had to adjust the fine-tuning several times before she was able to get a good view. As far as she could tell, there were no longer any Star Destroyers over Tatooine. They must have assumed their escaped prisoners had already made it offplanet. Keying off, she headed back to where Riij was crouched beside the end of the Hammertong cylinder, his face pressed close to one of the openings. “So there it is,” she said. “What do you think?”
He looked up at her, his face pasty-white. “Do you know what you have here?” he whispered. “Do you have any idea?”
“Not really,” she said warily. “Do you?”
“Look here,” he said, pointing to a plate. “See? ‘D.S. Mark Two. Module Seven, Prototype B. Eloy/Lemelisk.’ ”
“I see it,” Shada said. “What does it mean?”
Riij straightened up. “It means this is part of the prototype superlaser for the Death Star.”
Shada stared at him, a shiver running up her back. “What’s a Death Star?”
“The Emperor’s latest grab for power. Like nothing you’ve ever seen.” Riij looked back along the Hammertong’s length. “And we’ve got a piece here of its main weapon.”
“A piece?” Shada frowned, following his gaze. A solid two hundred meters of laser—“You mean this isn’t all of it?”
“I don’t think so,” Riij said. “Module Seven, remember?” He looked at Shada sharply. “I’ve got to have that piece you cut off. It’s absolutely vital.”
“Forget it,” Shada said. “If this really is a weapon, my people can find a better use for it than you can.”
“We’ll pay you anything you want.”
“I said forget it,” Shada said again, brushing past him. Cai was going to need help—
And abruptly, she was spun back around by a hand on her arm. Reflexively, she reached up to break his grip——
She froze, staring at the blaster that had appeared from nowhere in Riij’s hand. “Is this how you keep your bargains?” she demanded.
“You have to let us have it,” he said, his voice low. “Please. We need to know everything we can about the Death Star.”
“Why?”
He swallowed hard. “Because we’re likely to be its first target.”
Shada stared at him. Tatooine was going to be the first target? Ridiculous.
And then, suddenly, it fell into place. “You’re with the Rebel Alliance, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
Shada focused on the blaster in his hand. “And this thing is important enough to you to kill me in cold blood?”
He took a deep breath, let it out in a hissing sigh. “No,” he conceded. “Not really.”
“I didn’t think so,” Shada said. “Mish kom.”
And in the blink of an eye, it was all over. Cai, coming in from behind the Hammertong, had Riij’s blaster. And Riij. “What do you want me to do with him?” she asked, handing the blaster to Shada.
Shada looked at Riij, half bent over in Cai’s grip. “Let him go,” she said. “He can’t stop us now. Anyway, he’s sort of on our side.”
“If you say so,” Cai said, releasing her hold on his arm. “We’re ready to go as soon as you are.”
“All right.” Shada pursed her lips. “Riij, can you beat the storm in that airspeeder you had aboard the transport?”
He nodded. “If I can get going in the next few minutes.”
“Fine. Cai, get it unloaded. And then you or Karoly get Deefour aboard and get the ships ready to fly.”
“Got it.” With one last look at Riij, Cai headed for the hatchway.
Riij was still standing there, looking at Shada. “I’m sorry the deal’s fallen through,” she told him, trying to ignore the pang of guilt twisting through her stomach. He’d risked a lot for them, and it looked as if he were going to wind up with nothing. “Look, if you can get back in here after the storm, you’re more than welcome to what’s left of the Hammertong.”
“Let me make you a counteroffer,” Riij said. “Join us. You’ve already said we’re on the same side.”
Shada shook her head. “We’re barely making it ourselves. We don’t have the time or the resources to take on the galaxy’s problems. Not now.”
“If you wait too long, there may not be anyone left to fight with you,” he warned.
“I understand,” she said. “I guess it’s a chance we’ll have to take. Good-bye. And good luck.”
The sand was shaking the transport’s hull by the time Shada finished double-checking the Hammertong’s restraints and made it back up to the bridge. “We all set?” she asked Karoly as she strapped herself in.
“Yes. Riij get off all right?”
Shada nodded. “Looks as if just in time, too.”
Karoly threw her a sideways look. “I’m not sure it was such a good idea to let him go.”
“If we start killing anyone who gets in our way, we’re no better than any other mercenaries,” Shada said. “Besides, he doesn’t like the Empire any more than we do.”
The comm pinged. “I’m ready,” Cai’s voice came.
“Same here,” Shada told her. “Is Deefour all settled in?”
“Deefour?” Cai echoed. “Didn’t Karoly take him?”
“I thought you had him,” Karoly said.
For a long moment she and Shada just stared at each other. Then, with a muttered curse, Shada jabbed at the comm panel. “Riij? Riij, come in.”
There was a hiss of sand-driven static; and then the other’s voice came faintly over the speaker. “This is Riij,” he said. “Thanks for the loan of your droid. I’ll leave him with the Bothan shipping company on Piroket; you can have him back when you return the freighter.”
Another crackle of static and he was gone. “You want me to go after him?” Cai asked.
Deefour, with a complete technical readout on the Hammertong … “No,” Shada told her, smiling in spite of herself at Riij’s ingenuity. “No, it’s all right. We owe him that much. And if he’s right, he and his friends are going to need all the help and information they can get.”
Her smile faded. “D.S. Mark 2” the plate on the Hammertong had said. Death Star, Mark 2, perhaps? A second generation of this thing Riij was so afraid of?
It could be. And if so, the Mistryl might have to seriously consider that offer to join up with the Rebel Alliance.
And if not all of the Mistryl, perhaps Shada would do so on her own. Maybe there she would find something she could truly believe in.
But in the meantime, she had a package to deliver. “Fire up the repulsorlifts,” she told the others. “Let’s go home.”