“Point taken.”
ABOARD THE RINKIN IV, CORELLIAN RUN HYPERSPACE ROUTE
“You know you don’t sing well.” The pilot, an Ortolan, old enough that his trunk was graying, sounded resigned. He sat in the doublewide pilot’s seat, which was reinforced against his great weight, and leaned away from the navigator as though those extra centimeters might save him from a few sour notes.
The navigator, a young human ensign in the blue of the Alliance Navy, smiled and replied in song, his voice cracking and off key. “I know I don’t, but the more I sing—”
“The more I suffer.”
“—the better I get.”
“That remains to be proven.”
The navigator smiled and stretched. Things were looser in the support-and-supply division of the navy. Its personnel were almost irregulars, expected to observe all naval regulations when planetside in uniform or on regular navy ships, but more like civilians the rest of the time. The bridge of this cargo vessel was spacious, the captain was tolerant, the crew was loose, and the pilot was a good sport despite his grumbling.
And the view out the forward viewports was gorgeous. The ship was now in hyperspace, somehow sideways from realspace, and abstract lights that might be glimpses of stars in realspace twisted and flowed past in a dazzling stream.
The navigator sang again: “Comin’ out of the Deep Core, headin’ for home. Gettin’ leave in Corellia, gonna put on my dance shoes. Gonna find me a lady—”
“Gonna sing to her, at which point she will shoot you. You’re making my tusks crack.”
“Gonna—hey!” A light on the main control board blinked, then went out.
The streams of colors outside suddenly stopped their movement, contracting into single points of light.
There was no sensation of deceleration, not like in an atmospheric craft, but the navigator felt as though he should have been thrown out of his seat by the sudden departure from hyperspace. He turned to the pilot. “What the hell—”
“Our escorts are not on the sensor screen. What’s our position?”
The navigator checked his star map, did a quick calculation. “Two hours out of Corellia. Empty space.”
The comm board clicked and a woman’s voice sounded over it. “Bridge, Captain. What’s going on?”
“Captain,” the pilot reported, his voice beginning to climb in pitch. “We had a sudden unexpected departure from hyperspace. We’re showing no damage. Our escorts did not drop with us. Correction, there’s one—wait a second, that’s not ours. We’re being approached by a capital ship, unknown type. It’s not signaling.”
“Sound alert, all hands to battle stations. Send an emergency signal to the nearest naval base. I’ll be right up.” The comm board clicked again.
The navigator felt himself break out in a sweat. He looked at the pilot. “Should I—”
“Is the hyperdrive functional?”
“Negative.”
“Then handle the comm. Don’t need a navigator to point away from the enemy and hit all thrusters.”
As the navigator flipped through the unfamiliar maze of communications screens, he felt himself being pressed back in his seat, just a little, as the ship’s inertial compensators did not quite keep up with the pilot’s acceleration. Finally he found the screen to activate the ship’s hypercomm on an emergency naval frequency. “This is Galactic Alliance Ship Rinkin Four, inbound to Corellia. We have an emergency. Please reply. Over.”
The door into the bridge slid open. The captain, a middle-aged woman with posture as straight as a spear, strode in. “Situation?”
Something clattered on the deck behind her. Out of the corner of his eye, the navigator saw it—a silvery ovoid some seventy-five centimeters long, with a small dial and a tiny screen on one side.
Something in the navigator’s memory whispered, Grenade.
He acted without thinking, acted with the decisiveness and honor that others had once seen in him, that would have eventually force him to become a fine officer. He threw himself atop the grenade. “Get—”
Curiously, the detonation did not lift him off the deck plates, did not hurl his burning body to one side. It didn’t even really make a boom, just a pop noise. Then there was a hiss and the navigator saw opaque white smoke flow out from underneath him, flooding the bridge.
It numbed his skin where it touched him. He breathed it in before he could check himself and abruptly felt dizzy, listless.
There was an impact as the captain fell atop him. He could not turn his head to see if she was faceup or facedown.
There were footsteps on the deck plates in the corridor outside, and the navigator saw a pair of feet and lower legs. They were garbed in a civilian environment suit, something that would protect its wearer from toxic environments.
Like this one.
The navigator’s eyes closed and he knew only blackness.
CHAPTER EIGHT
GAGREW STATION, SI’KLAATA CLUSTER
“I’m going to throw up.” Trey sounded like he meant it, too. The walls of the passageway he and Voort walked along seemed clean enough, free of debris. The walkway was spacious, occasionally punctuated by transparisteel viewports showing the starfield outside.
But Voort knew what Trey was complaining about. The smell … It was partly loamy, partly sweet, slightly rotted, slightly chemical-sharp. It was the smell of too many passengers who’d been cooped up on small ships and then suddenly released into this space station environment. It was the smell of Hutts especially, and of the vendors scattered throughout the station, most of whom sold, as a primary or secondary product, food that appealed to Hutts. Exotic meats. Decayed fats. Live insects and rodents. Poisonous tubers.
And then, of course, there were the slime trails. Up ahead thirty meters, a Hutt, meters long, dark and sluglike, his spindly arms gesturing as he talked to the Rodian female walking beside him, left a new layer of slime as he moved. Even at this distance, Voort could occasionally hear noises emerge from beneath the Hutt, flatulent brapps and blerts as portions of the creature’s underside lost or regained adhesion with the metal floor. Pushing the rolling rack on which his and Trey’s luggage rested, Voort ably maneuvered the thing so that its wheels avoided the slime trail as much as possible.
Voort heaved a sigh. “We’re in public.” But he spoke in Gamorrean, and his throat implant was switched off, so his words emerged as a series of grunts and squeals most humans didn’t understand.
“I don’t get you—oh. Right.” Trey mimed a smack to the side of his own head. “Sorry. One-sided conversations from now on.” He glanced at the blinking sign situated at ceiling level where a cross-passageway intersected theirs at a right angle. Words flashed on the sign in a variety of languages, Basic among them. Trey read aloud. “Blueshift Passage. That’s ours.”
Their destination was only a hundred meters along Blueshift Passage, an innocuous double door. The sign above it blinked through a succession of languages, words reading SWEET SPOT LODGING—CORE WORLDS STYLING AT OUTER RIM RATES. Beyond the doors was a small hostel lobby, its floor being constantly trafficked by ankle-high, disk-shaped scrubbing droids.
Three minutes later, down a narrower hall lined with doors, Trey spoke his name to a door and it slid open for him.
Beyond was a tall, aristocratic-looking human man. His immaculately coiffed white hair seemed perfectly in sync with his gray Imperial Navy uniform. “You are under arrest.”
“Nice.” Trey grabbed his bags from the rolling rack and entered.
“No, really. Put up your hands.”
Voort took his own bags, leaving the rack in the corridor, and followed. The door slid shut behind him. He activated his throat implant. “Turman?”
The Imperial officer rolled his eyes. “Yessss.”
“Good disguise.” Voort dropped his bags on the floor beside Trey’s and took a look around. This was a suite’s main chamber, large by the standards of space station hostels but not commodious enough for a
good-sized party, and it was blessedly free of Hutt smell. The walls, off-white, were decorated with holos of mountain and jungle nature scenes, and the floor, tiled in a similar color, was slime-free and spotless.
“If it’s so good, why didn’t you pause even for an instant? You’re bad for my morale.” If anything, the disguised Turman’s posture improved even more with his indignation.
Trey moved up to him, peered close. “Are those your actual features when you take on human appearance?”
“No, I’m wearing a neoglith masquer.” Turman reached up to tug at his nose, which stretched a full three centimeters longer before he released it and it snapped back into place. “My human features are rather bland.”
Voort glanced around again. There were several piles of baggage in the chamber, but no additional people. “Where are the others?”
“Finalizing our passage. You made it just in time. We launch pretty soon.”
Voort sighed. “Tell me … and my life may depend on your answer … do I have time for a sanisteam? We were on that blasted shuttle for longer than I want to think about. I don’t dare sit down. I might stick.”
“You have time. Make it fast.”
By the time Voort emerged from his sanisteam, his green skin gleaming, the others had returned; Voort heard their voices from the refresher. He donned a fresh porter’s jumpsuit and moved out to join them.
Turman’s Imperial naval officer getup was gone, along with his aristocratic face and white hair. Now, though he still appeared to be human, he was younger and dark-haired, his features inoffensive and unmemorable. Bhindi, atypically, wore a sparkly silver party frock and black leggings. She was the very image of a vacuum-brained heiress out for a good time. Jesmin, her hair red and styled in a severe bun, wore a dark visor and a sober black jumpsuit that suggested she belonged to a security detail; Trey had changed into a matching outfit. Scut wore the same round-faced human disguise he’d had on when Voort first met him; his clothes were leathery black pants, matching boots and vest, and a frilly blue shirt, suggesting that he wanted to be a smuggler but had never quite seen the real thing.
Voort gave Bhindi a look and ignored her bubble-headed mannerisms. “Do Trey and I get any sort of briefing? Mission objectives, who not to kill, that sort of thing?”
Wide-eyed, she nodded. “Uh-huh.” She managed to turn that affirmative into a cute squeak.
“Stop that.”
“Oh, all right.” She dropped the party heiress mannerisms and bent to finish packing a last few items into her smallest bag. “Short form?”
“That’ll do.”
“In fifteen minutes we board the Bastion Princess, a cruise liner. It makes regular runs from Bastion, capital of the Imperial Remnant, to here and back, visiting several worlds along the way. Its passengers are mostly rich Imperial folk who want to experience some safe danger and noninfectious sleaze in Hutt space. We board, Trey does a little sabotage of ship’s sensors and hyperdrive, we board an escape pod and launch undetected at a spot where Imperial vessels are known to patrol—but a comparatively remote spot so we’re less likely to encounter a large vessel. Then we wait.”
Voort felt the bristles on the back of his neck rise. “To be rescued by the Imperial Navy.”
“Right.”
“What if they don’t show up?”
Bhindi straightened and slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder. “I’ve transmitted additional orders to Myri. If we don’t report in, she finds a way to come get us.”
“A way. Can’t she just borrow the Quarren Eye from Face and come for us?”
Bhindi’s expression went blank, and this time it was no act. “What’s the Quarren Eye?”
“It’s a long-range shuttle with a hypercomm. On loan to Face. It’s one of our resources.”
“Well, I haven’t heard of it. So Myri will just have to improvise.” Bhindi made an impatient gesture as if imploring the ceiling to support her argument. “And that’s only if we fail. If we don’t, an Imperial vessel picks us up, we thank everybody sweetly, and then we seize the thing.”
Voort tried to pat down his bristles. “Just like that.”
“Without ambition, a Wraith should take up, I don’t know, teaching math. Everyone ready to go?”
Scut hefted his bags, immediately handed them to Voort, and was first out the door.
Despite himself, Voort was impressed by Bastion Princess. Though not a Star Destroyer, the ship had styling reminiscent of those vast and destructive capital ships—diamond-shaped, it looked vaguely like two Star Destroyers attached to each other, stern to stern. Bastion Princess, nearly a kilometer long, was painted in deep blue, its surface decorated with thousands of exterior viewports and running lights shining in all the colors of the spectrum, making it look like its own self-contained starfield.
The Wraiths presented their false identicards to cruise line officers, boarded via a shuttle running from the station to the cruise liner’s belly bay, and were conducted by a spotless white protocol droid to their cabins, a row of compartments deep within the ship and well away from the outer hull.
The cabins, though small, were not claustrophobic. In place of viewports, each was equipped with four monitors—one on each wall—showing holocam views from the ship’s sensors. By default, they were tuned to exterior sensors, showing the forward starfield on the forward monitor, aft starfield on the aft monitor, a distant red sun on the port monitor, and the vast, skeletal Gagrew Station on the starboard. But each could be tuned to any of scores of sensor views, including casino areas, dining halls, the viewing deck, the swimming tank with its connecting tubes to the aquatic passenger deck, and a shipboard park with grass, flowers, and trees. Turman, sharing a cabin with Voort, used the bedside controls to flip through all the views.
Then they joined the others on the viewing deck, situated topside in the ship’s bow. A vast chamber fifteen meters high at its apex, it offered a view of the forward and overhead starfield through its bulkhead, an enormous curved sheet of transparisteel. Hundreds of passengers, mostly human or near-human, crowded there to watch as Gagrew Station drifted away to starboard. Then the Bastion Princess was under way, its acceleration so gentle that Voort could barely feel it.
“I hate to say it.” Trey’s voice had a grudging note to it. “It’s not spectacular, but it’s pretty luxurious. I could get used to this.”
“Try not to show any human emotions.” Jesmin herself was expressionless, but there was a note of amusement to her voice. “You’re supposed to be a security man, remember?”
“Right.” Trey schooled his features to absolute stillness.
Jesmin offered a brisk nod in response to his transformation. “And don’t praise this ship anytime you’re near Myri. She’ll give you half an hour of talk about how great the Errant Venture is.”
“Noted.”
Bhindi settled on a lounging chair and stared with blank delight at the starfield above, but her words and tone were not those of a flighty heiress. “All right, we’re on the chrono, and we don’t have much time. Four, find the accesses to Engineering and the communications center and scope out their security. Five, you’re with him—try not to kill anybody.”
Scut pointed a finger at Voort. “Old School there needs to hide in his cabin or find another kind of uniform. Note that he’s the only Gamorrean here, and the only porter. A butler’s outfit might work.”
“True.” Bhindi glanced at Turman. “Two, go with Seven. See if you can buy something appropriate for a butler or valet in one of the shops. If not, I’m relying on your costuming skills.”
“Done.” Turman glanced at Voort. He jerked his head for the Gamorrean to follow, and headed for the nearest turbolift.
Voort followed, feeling his temperature rise. Turman’s brusqueness was only playacting, of course. But Scut … the Yuuzhan Vong had taken less than five minutes to find a way to exile Voort, and had worked in Voort’s age and inappropriateness as he had done so.
Casually.
Even elegantly.
When the turbolift doors closed, sealing him and Turman away from the Wraiths and other passengers, Voort let out a rumbling growl. “I’m going to put him through a hand-cranked meat grinder.”
“You should have brought one from Vandor-Three. I don’t think they have any on board. Shopping deck, please.” The turbolift car plunged. “Seven, he was right. You were conspicuous.”
“It was the way he phrased it. He’s trying to irk me.”
“Clearly, he’s succeeding.”
“Clearly.” Now he wanted to shake Turman, to add a new argument. Don’t you understand? He’s Yuuzhan Vong. They came here to destroy everything we know, everything we are. Obviously some of them aren’t ready to give that up.
But the lift car stopped. Its door snapped up, revealing a broad, low chamber lined with shops. Voort tamped down his anger and switched off his throat implant, then gestured, in a polite and servile fashion, for Turman to precede him.
And he vowed to keep his eyes open for a meat grinder.
CHAPTER NINE
“It turns out to be four jobs.” Trey paused to stuff a pastry, slathered in blue butter, into his mouth. He chewed briskly while the others settled in around the meal table.
It was the morning—ship’s time—after the Wraiths boarded, and they were in Bhindi’s cabin. Jesmin, the cabin’s other occupant, had persuaded a member of the ship’s crew to remove the living area furniture and substitute a large circular card table, now capped by a sheet of transparent duraplast, and six upright chairs.
Voort didn’t trust the spindly-looking things. He remained standing and began to make inroads into the pastry and egg selections while the others sat.
Done chewing, Trey continued. “Job One: Selectively disengaging and reengaging passageway sensors, looping their sensor feeds so they get static images while we’re doing the things we shouldn’t be doing. And that means getting into the security center without being noticed, slicing into the computer there, and introducing some code that will receive a comlink-transmitted command and temporarily subvert the passageway sensors nearest the comlink’s transmission point. The code’s actually the hardest part. I’m only a slicer by necessity. You need to recruit us a top-notch computer slicer.”
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