by Troy Denning
Juun looked surprised. “How did you know?”
“Because I sent for them and you showed up,” Han replied. “It doesn’t take a genius to know you’re in deep with them.”
Juun nodded proudly. “They gave us a ten-standard-year freighting contract.” In a softer voice, he added, “We’re exclusive.”
“No kidding,” Han said. “Let me guess, expenses included?”
Tarfang twitched his nose, then leaned toward Han and gibbered something suspicious.
“Tarfang requests—”
The Ewok whirled on C-3PO and barked a single word.
“—er, he warns you against discussing this with them,” the droid corrected. “It’s the Squibs’ own bad fortune if they agree to such a poor bargain.”
Han raised his palms to the Ewok. “Hey, that’s between you guys—and I don’t see why I should clue them in to anything, if they’re not interested in my deal.”
“Hold on!” Juun’s voice was alarmed. “What makes you think they’re not interested?”
Han made a show of looking around his quarters. “I don’t see them here.”
“Only because they are important business beings,” Juun explained, “and this is a detention center.”
Tarfang chittered an addendum.
“And they mustn’t let themselves be seen with a pair of . . . oh, my . . .” C-3PO paused, searching for a diplomatic interpretation, until the Ewok growled. “With a pair of dustcrusts like you and Master Skywalker.”
“That’s okay,” Han said. “I understand.”
“You do?” Juun’s cheek folds rose in relief. “In that case, they’ve authorized me to make you a very generous offer—they’ll pay you a millicredit for each replica you sign.”
“A whole millicredit?” Han repeated. “That much?”
Juun nodded eagerly. “That’s ten thousand credits in all,” he said. “And they’re even willing to pay a third in advance. Emala said to tell you they haven’t forgotten what you did for them on Pavo Prime.”
Han pretended to consider the offer. “I’m willing to talk about it—have a seat.” He motioned them to his bunk, then retrieved the Falcon replica and sat across from them on the stool. “But first, I want to make sure I’ve got this straight. You guys are running replicas like this one back into the Galactic Alliance?”
“We’ve already made our first run,” Juun said proudly, “a promotional delivery to the Fifth Fleet.”
“To the Fifth Fleet?” Han’s heart rose into his throat. What was the Dark Nest doing—going after the entire Galactic Alliance? “No kidding?”
Tarfang growled a few words.
“Tarfang warns you that their deal with Second Mistake is vac-sealed,” C-3PO translated. “He advises you that even thinking about moving in on them is a waste of time.”
Han turned to the Ewok. “Us moving in on you is the one thing you don’t have to worry about right now.”
Tarfang chortled a spiteful reply.
“That’s right!” C-3PO translated. “You’re stuck here in a rehab house getting—”
C-3PO broke off to shoot a question at Tarfang in Ewokese, then seemed to stiffen at the response.
“Oh, my—Tarfang says this is an acceleration facility! Saras brings criminals here to rehabilitate them quickly—by making them Joiners!”
The Ewok jumped up, standing on Han’s bed and chuckling so hard he had to hold his belly.
“Keep it up, fuzzball,” Han said. “This place is a vacation moon compared to where the Defense Force is going to lock you two.”
Tarfang stopped laughing, and Juun asked, “Why would they lock us up?”
Before he answered, Han hesitated and started to glance back toward Luke’s quarters.
“Go ahead, Han,” Luke said from the door. “Show them.”
Without saying anything more, Han raised the replica of the Falcon over his head and hurled it to the floor. The spinglass did not shatter so much as explode into a droning cloud of blue-black bugs about the size of Han’s thumb.
Juun and Tarfang yelled in surprise and pressed themselves against the wall. Even Han cried out and tumbled off the stool backward as the swarm boiled into the air before him—he had been expecting to find a single hand-sized Killik inside the replica, not dozens of smaller ones.
The cloud began to arc toward Han, tiny droplets of venom glistening on the proboscises between their curved mandibles. He grabbed the stool and started to swing it up to bat them away—then felt Luke’s hand on his shoulder.
“Stay down.”
Luke stretched his arm out, and the swarm went tumbling across the room and splattered against the wall, leaving the ivory spinglass flecked with palm-sized stars of gore. The room fell abruptly silent, and the air immediately grew sickening with the smell of insect methane.
Luke pointed to Han’s bag, sitting under his bunk. “Get some undershirts and wipe the wall down. I can only hold the illusion for a few minutes.”
“Why my shirts?” Han demanded.
“Because mine are in the other room,” Luke said. “And the illusion is only in here.”
“Yeah—I’ll bet you planned it that way.” Han pulled the bag out from under the bunk, then pulled out two undershirts—all he had—and passed them to Juun and Tarfang. “Get busy.”
Juun immediately went over to the wall, but Tarfang simply looked at the cloth and sneered.
Before the Ewok could ask the question that was almost certainly coming, Han pointed at him and said, “Because if you don’t, I’m not going to tell you two how to fix the mess you’ve made for yourselves.”
Tarfang chittered a long reply, which C-3PO translated as, “What mess?”
“Like the one we’re cleaning up here—only a whole lot worse.” Han pulled a spare tunic from his bag and went over to the wall. “I don’t think the Defense Force is going to be very happy with you two when they figure out you were the ones who delivered a whole Ronto-ful of Gorog assassin bugs to the Fifth Fleet.”
Juun’s eyes grew even larger. “Tarfang, get over here!” Once the Ewok had jumped off the bunk, he turned to Han. “You can tell us how to fix that?”
“Sure,” Han said. “Easiest thing in the galaxy—all you have to do is help us find the Dark Nest.”
TWELVE
Leia and Saba stood shoulder-to-shoulder at the top of the boarding ramp, listening to a muffled string of beeps and chirps as the boarding party’s slicer droid tried to outsmart the Falcon’s espionage-grade security system. The external monitors showed that the ship was surrounded by a full company of soldiers in full blast armor. Something did not feel quite right in the Force, as though the troops were nervous or hesitant about their orders, and Leia wondered if the commander could really believe that Jedi would attack Galactic Alliance troops.
“They feel frightened.” There was a note of disdain in Saba’s voice, for Barabels tended to regard fear as something felt only by quarry. “You are sure we should not draw our lightsaberz? Frightened prey is unpredictable.”
Leia shook her head. “You’re the Master, but I really think we need to defuse things. Somebody’s going to get hurt if we keep pushing.”
Saba glared down at Leia out of one eye. “We are not the onez pushing thingz, Jedi Solo.”
Finally, the slicer droid stopped beeping and chirping. The monitor showed him releasing his interface clips from the wires dangling from the Falcon’s exterior security pad; then he turned to an officer and gave a dejected whistle.
“What do you mean you can’t open it?” The security system speaker made the officer’s voice sound a little tinny. “That’s what you were designed for—to open ship hatches.”
The droid beeped a short reply, which Leia knew would include an explanation of how the access code kept changing. The security system’s first line of defense was an automatic reset anytime two incorrect codes were entered into the keypad. Its second line of defense was to never grant access from the outside when the ke
ypad cover was removed.
“Well, try again,” the officer ordered. “I’m not going to use a flash torch on the Millennium Falcon!”
The droid gave a weary whistle, then started to sort through the security wires again.
Leia turned to Saba. “I think we’ve made our point.”
Saba nodded. “If you are sure about the lightsaberz.”
“I am,” Leia said. “They may be scared, but they wouldn’t dare blast us.”
Leia instructed Cakhmaim and Meewalh to stay out of sight, then released the safety-hold and palmed the toggle button on the wall. The seal broke with a hiss, and the ramp began to descend.
A surprised murmur arose out in the hangar. The captain barked an order, and when there was enough space to see, Leia and Saba found themselves surrounded by a semicircle of blaster barrels.
Once the ramp clanged into position against the durasteel floor, the officer stepped to the foot and looked up at them. He was young—no doubt straight from the academy—and so nervous he could barely bring himself to meet the gazes of Leia and Saba.
“You will p-place your hands on your heads.” Despite his cracking voice, he was clearly being deliberately rude, ordering them about as though they were common pirates and neglecting to address them by any sort of title. “Descend the ramp slowly.”
Leia heard Saba’s scales rustle, then suddenly the Barabel’s hand rose. “We are Jedi Knightz.” The barrels of the blaster rifles began to swing away. “Point those somewhere else!”
Deciding it was better to follow her Master’s lead than stand there looking confused, Leia raised her hand and used the Force to turn aside a trio of blaster rifles.
The officer paled and stepped away from the ramp. Behind him knelt two soldiers armed with bell-barreled Czerka HeadBangers—ultrapowerful riot guns designed to stun any target into submission.
“Oh, kr—”
That was as far as Leia made it before a blinding spark of silver lit the barrels of both weapons. Something like the head of a charging bantha hit her in the chest, then she felt herself go limp and start to fall, and the floor disappeared beneath her, sending her tumbling down into darkness.
The fall must have been a long one, judging by how Leia felt when she woke. The world was spinning. Her stomach was churning and her temples were pounding, and her body felt as if she’d run headlong into a dewback stampede. Her ears hurt . . . she could not even describe how her ears hurt, and some inconsiderate rodder was hammering words against her head.
“Princess Leia?”
The voice was familiar, but it was hard to place with all that lightning cracking through her head.
“Princess Leia?”
Hoping the Voice would give up and go away, she kept her eyes closed tight.
Instead, something popped in front of her face, and a smell like burning hyperdrive coolant blistered her nostrils. She reacted with a blind Force shove and heard a body thud off the far wall. The Voice groaned and thumped to the floor.
Then a second voice gasped, “Commodore Darklighter?”
“Don’t!” Darklighter gasped. “I’m okay . . . I think.”
“Gavin?”
Leia opened her eyes to the stabbing light of a silver sun, then let out an involuntary groan of her own. She tried to push herself up and discovered her hands were cuffed behind her.
“Just how angry are you trying to make me?”
“Please settle down, Princess,” Darklighter said. “Wurf’al isn’t under my command, and he’s just looking for an excuse to activate those stun cuffs.”
“Avke Saz’ula is my mother’s uncle’s third wife’s cousin,” a gravelly voice said. “I owe you.”
Leia glanced toward the gravelly voice and, as her vision began to clear, saw the long-snouted silhouette of a young Bothan naval officer standing in the doorway of what was obviously a detention cell.
“Who’s Avke Saz’ula?” she asked.
The fur rose on the Bothan’s cheeks. “You Jedi are lower than skalworms!”
Leia looked to Darklighter, who was standing just inside the door. The first streaks of gray were beginning to show in his brown hair and goatee, but otherwise his rugged face looked much the same as it had through the thirty years Leia had known him.
“Do I care who Saz’ula is?”
“Jedi rabble!” Wurf’al raised his arm, pointing a stun-cuff remote at Leia.
Darklighter’s hand immediately pushed the arm down. “How would Admiral Bwua’tu feel about using unnecessary force on a cooperative prisoner?”
“I doubt it would upset him—he is my mother’s uncle.” Nevertheless, Wurf’al pocketed the remote. “But he would be upset about the delay. He has been waiting long enough for these prisoners to awaken.”
Leia breathed a silent sigh of relief. The remote was for a pair of LSS 401 Stun Cuffs—not as sophisticated as the LSS 1000 Automatics she and Han carried aboard the Falcon, but just as powerful and painful.
Wurf’al stepped out of the doorway, then Darklighter extended a hand toward Leia. She ignored it and rose on her own, trading a little unsteadiness on her feet for the opportunity to put Darklighter on the defensive. Saba was waiting in the corridor outside, guarded by a squad of detention personnel and also restrained in stun cuffs.
She lifted her pebbly lips, showing her fangs in something more than a scowl. “ ‘We don’t need our lightsaberz,’ you said,” she quoted. “ ‘They wouldn’t dare blast us.’ ”
They had not exactly been blasted, but Leia wasn’t about to argue a fine point like that with a Barabel. Instead she shot a frown at Darklighter. “I didn’t think they would.”
Darklighter shrugged. “Wasn’t my decision. Admiral Bwua’tu didn’t even ask me to come over to the Ackbar until Saba was already starting to come around.”
“You have only yourselves to blame for how you feel,” Wurf’al said. “Admiral Bwua’tu anticipated that you would try to impress us with your Jedi sorcery and took appropriate measures.”
The Bothan turned and started toward the front of the detention block.
Leia fell in beside Darklighter and quietly asked, “So who is Avke Saz’ula?”
“Gunnery officer aboard the Avengeance,” he whispered.
“Wonderful.” Leia grimaced. The crew of Avengeance was currently occupying its own wing of Maxsec Eight, after the Jedi caught them attempting to locate the sentient world Zonama Sekot. During the war, the Bothans had declared an ar’krai—a death crusade—against the Yuuzhan Vong, and many of them remained determined to follow the invaders into the Unknown Regions and finish what they started. “A Bothan with a grudge.”
“I gave you a chance to turn around,” Darklighter whispered. “Don’t blame me.”
They reached the front of the detention block and were admitted into the central processing area, where the bust of another Bothan in an admiral’s tunic sat in a display niche across from the watch desk. It was made from a pale, iridescent material that resembled Saras spinglass.
“I see Admiral Bwua’tu likes to remind his prisoners who’s holding them,” Leia said.
“That is my doing,” Wurf’al said proudly.
“But he hasn’t made you take it down,” Saba observed.
“Of course not,” Wurf’al said. “Admiral Bwua’tu knows what an inspiration he is for the crew of the Admiral Ackbar. They feel privileged to serve under an admiral who has risen from the obscurity of a birth on Ruweln to become the finest fleet commander the Galactic Alliance has ever seen.”
“The finest?” Leia echoed, taking offense on behalf of her dead friend Admiral Ackbar. “Really? I wasn’t aware that Admiral Bwua’tu has actually seen fleet action as a commander.”
“He hasn’t,” Wurf’al said, apparently not noticing the irony in his answer. “But he defeats the Thrawn simulator every time.”
“I’m relieved to know the Fifth Fleet is in such capable hands,” Leia said, struggling to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “By th
e way, where did you come by the bust? The material is very distinctive.”
“It was a gift, from a shipping line grateful for our protection along the Hydian Way,” Wurf’al said. “Now, if you don’t mind, my mother’s uncle the admiral is waiting for us.”
Wurf’al nodded to the watch sergeant, who keyed a code into his console. A security cam dropped down from the ceiling and scanned the face of each person in the group—Wurf’al and guards included. After it had finished, a green light came on above the outer doors, and they slid aside.
Wurf’al led the group out into the corridor and down to a lift station, where they were confronted by another bust of Admiral Bwua’tu—this one sitting on a small plasteel pedestal. Leia and Saba exchanged glances, and even Gavin quietly rolled his eyes. They ascended the lift with Leia and Saba encircled by guards, then Wurf’al led them through a maze of corridors on the operations deck. As they walked, Leia began to feel a faint tickle between her shoulder blades, the same uneasy feeling she had experienced in the capture bay just before she and Saba were stunned into unconsciousness. She reached out and could tell that the Barabel felt it, too, but even Saba did not seem able to identify its source.
Finally, they came to another lift, this one guarded by a pair of human sentries wearing the uniform of bridge security.
Wurf’al stopped and reached for his comlink, but one of the sentries waved him off. “Go on up. He’s waiting for you.”
The fur on Wurf’al’s cheeks flattened noticeably. “He’s waiting?”
“Five minutes now.” The second sentry reached behind him and hit a slap-pad, and the lift doors opened to reveal a squad from bridge security already waiting inside. “Better hurry. He sounded like he was in a mood.”
Wurf’al waved Saba and Leia into the lift. “Go on. He’s waiting!”
Leaving the detention guards behind, they joined the security squad in the lift and ascended into the bridge. The squad escorted them into a small briefing room containing a large conference table, a service kitchen with its own droid, and, in one corner, another bust of the great admiral. The large chair at the far end of the table was turned away from the entrance, toward a full-wall viewing panel currently displaying a thin crescent of jewel-colored sun along each edge, with the crimson web of the Utegetu Nebula stretched between.
