The Vermillion banked hard toward Han and then blasted at him again, missing his portside wing by fractions of a centimeter.
Han gunned the thrusters again, putting some space between the two craft, and hit the comm. “Chewie? Taka? Anyone over there wanna tell me what the—” The Vermillion launched at him again and then started firing up its hyperdrive.
“Ohh no you don’t!” Han muttered, sending two blasts of ion fire directly into its external propulsors.
The Vermillion spun away from him, engines sputtering like some crusty, offended bureaucrat.
That’s when Han saw it: there on the rear hull—a dingy metallic shell about the size of a helmet with a smattering of wetness around it. “Whatever you are,” Han said, “you’re mine now.”
He closed with the Vermillion and was about to send a laser blast at the thing when the comm sputtered with static and then Taka’s voice: “Chevalier? Come in, Chevalier.”
“Taka!” Han yelled. “You’ve got a…a thing on your hull. Looks like a droid of some kind.”
“That’s what’s jacked up our whole system! We locked ourselves in my emergency security room when Fyzen got on board, and I was wreaking some havoc of my own from in here, but the whole op system’s been going haywire ever since he showed up.”
“Are you still trapped in there?”
“Not for long, I’d say.”
A roar sounded from the other end.
“Chewie!” Han yelled. “Is everyone okay over there?”
The Vermillion jerked sideways and the comm went staticky again. Han shook his head and swung the Chevalier around, trying to keep the nasty little thing in his sights.
“Taka!” he called into the comm. “Taka? Come in! Ah, for crying out—” There was no way to blast the thing without risking taking the whole ship out, not from the angle Han was at. And there wasn’t time. Gor could be at the Phylanx already, for all Han knew.
The Vermillion lurched toward the Chevalier again, and this time Han pulled slightly above it and then rammed forward, crunching against the wing and then, with the shriek of metal against metal, shoving sidewise so their air locks were lined up.
The ship’s sensors let out a satisfied burp indicating that they’d docked with the Vermillion.
Han hit the comm. “Taka? You there, buddy?”
No answer.
“It’s always something,” Han grumbled, throwing the Chevalier into autopilot as both ships shuddered and then screeched. That droid bug was trying to wrench the Vermillion free. Han bolted out of the cockpit and down the corridor toward the hull. If this was gonna happen it would have to happen fast. He slammed the air lock button and climbed through as it was still sliding open.
A hot blast of steam greeted him in the main room of the Vermillion. It stung his face and smelled like a swamp fart. “Chewie!” Han called, waving his hands to clear the air in front of him.
A hideous face emerged from the steam, a giant lumpy tongue dangling from its huge salivating mouth and both eyes clenched closed on their stalks. Taka’s masked face emerged behind it. “That thing caused a backup and ruptured one of our gas lines. Take Korrg!” they yelled, shoving the big slimy creature into Han’s arms. “I got the others!”
“Wait!” Han called, but Taka had already disappeared back into the gloom. Han damn near hurled the worrt across the room but then the two ships lurched again. Instead, he just ran for the air lock, put Korrg down on the other side, and turned back around to find Kaasha, Taka, and Chewie barreling toward him through the steam, Florx the Ugnaught tucked securely beneath the Wookiee’s armpit, apparently napping.
LANDO LEANED FORWARD, POINTED HIS rifle, and gunned the propulsion booster on his jetpack. The New Republic might’ve been skimping on military buildup, but they had thrown a lot of the freed-up credits toward various other forms of tech. And apparently this jetpack was just one such item. The icy Remnants spun on either side of Lando as he surged across the top of the diminishing junk highway.
He nudged his course slightly downward to avoid the shredded wing of some transport ship that hurtled toward him, then slowed and dodged in and out of the slow-rolling junk. Up ahead, flames marked the eight jetpacks of Gor and his mutant droids. They weren’t as fast as he was. And—he peered between a radiator duct and a power converter—they seemed to have paused to discuss something. Propulsors still on a low simmer, Lando skirted along under the cover of the scrap river and then peeled off and slid behind another ice asteroid.
They hadn’t seen him. The Phylanx must be somewhere up ahead. They were probably finalizing their plan to reach it, but why would they stop? Either something had gone wrong or they were setting a trap. He spun around, but the Remnants and the spinning star systems were the only things awaiting him.
Gor and the seven droids were still conferring when he edged around the corner of the asteroid. If he could just get a clear shot…he hoisted the blaster rifle, steadying himself against the sheer ice wall, and clicked the electroscope into place.
Fyzen Gor was upset, that much was clear through the telescopic lens. The Pau’an gesticulated wildly at his freakish droids, who were all shaking their heads. Gor pointed down at the march of junk beneath them. The droids shook their heads again. Circular lines and red digits cycled around Lando’s vision field as the scope sorted through each of its potential targets and then let out a chirp, flashing bright intersecting lines over Gor’s long head.
“Gotcha,” Lando whispered, narrowing his eyes and easing down on the trigger. One of the droids perked up, its metal head spinning all the way around on top of its furry shoulders and glaring directly at Lando as he let off the shot. The droid slid to the side ever so slightly, taking the blast full-on in the head and flying backward in a tangled mess. Now headless, the flailing half-Wookiee body spun through space for a few seconds as Gor and the others stared in shock; then it simply began to come apart, piece by piece.
“Dammit!” Lando yelled. The other droids all turned toward him. So did Gor, his face contorted with rage. Lando let off a few more shots that sent them scattering and then ducked back behind the asteroid when a flurry of laserfire raced his way.
He glanced out just in time to catch the tail end of Gor’s jetpack flare as the Pau’an raced off deeper into the Remnants.
“Oh no you don’t,” Lando growled, blasting out after him. He arched high over the tops of the Remnants and then adjusted his trajectory and hurtled down, back through the spinning asteroids and directly behind Gor and the five droids at his side.
Five? Lando thought with a sudden gasp of panic. That meant—something throttled him from behind and a heavy, furry arm wrapped around his neck, yanking him backward.
Lando almost let go of his blaster rifle in shock but managed to hold tight, then swung it around, battering the metal and fur body behind him. They’d pulled into a sharp climb now that Lando was pointed upward, and through his watering eyes he could just make out the forms of Gor and his droids speeding off.
“Help…me…” a mournful voice whispered into Lando’s earpiece.
What?
The voice sounded despondent and possibly mechanical, although it was hard to tell through the deep-space interference and comm system. Was it the same droid that was choking him? Because…
“Help…me…”
Lando reached for his hip blaster with one hand while trying to pull the Wookiee arm away from his throat with the other. Neither was working very well—the droid had him hemmed up tight.
A flash of movement up ahead caught his eye, and he looked up to see another tall figure blasting through the Remnants toward him. Lando could make out long furry appendages amid metal and mech layers. He groaned, still reaching for that hip blaster. This was about to get very ugly.
The incoming figure pulled a weapon—it looked like a sword made of spinning chains—and
pulled it back, racing closer and closer.
Lando squirmed, then squinted, recognition dawning on him as the Wookiee blasted past, swinging that chain sword in a wide and precise arc that missed Lando’s neck by centimeters. “Chewie!” Lando yelled as the droid’s grip on him suddenly went limp. He whirled around, saw the metallic head floating off in one direction and the body another. Chewie looped around for another run at the droid, barking a quick acknowledgment without so much as a glance at Lando. “Rrrrakkkshyk!” Chewie insisted, swinging the chain sword in a fierce upward cut that severed the droid’s stolen Wookiee arm clean off its body. I got this.
Lando nodded his thanks and blasted off after Gor just as that strange, disconsolate voice sounded again in his ear. “Help…me…please…”
Was the droid somehow begging for help even after being decapitated by Chewie? Lando shook his head, gunning his jetpack up a notch. With this madman on the loose, even remorseful homicidal droids were possible, Lando supposed, but still…
“Please…” The voice was louder now, and definitely a droid. But…Lando didn’t have time to figure it out. He hurled along the junk river, blitzed past a huge chunk of the shattered ice moon, and then swung around a curve in the asteroid field.
He was too late.
Up ahead, a huge mottled cube made out of scrap metal marked the source of the river of junk. It was fizzing along through the ice field at a crawl, propulsed by a series of giant, low-burning thrusters. Two armored gunships escorted it, one on each side. The Phylanx must be inside that junk hold. Gor and the droids bolted toward it, about ten klicks away and closing fast.
“Help…me…” the voice begged.
Lando narrowed his eyes and shot after them, pushing his jets to maximum speed. There was no way he’d catch them, and no way he could get a clean shot off while moving this fast, but…he raised the blaster rifle, leaning all the way forward, and squeezed off one shot, then another. Both went wide, but they came close enough to make Gor glance back.
“Please…please…” The voice in Lando’s ear shivered with urgency now. “Destroy me…”
“Destroy?” Lando said out loud. “I thought you wanted me to help you.”
He shook his head. This distraction was maddening when he was already too far behind Gor to stop him. He let off a few more shots and zoomed forward.
“Lando?” another voice said.
“Han!” Lando didn’t bother spinning around. If they were close enough to raise him in this pit of no reliable comm service, they’d be popping up at any moment, hopefully with their ion cannons blazing. And anyway, he still needed to keep his eye on Gor, who was about three klicks away from the giant scrap hold.
“Lando, everyone’s okay and we’re coming toward you as fast as we can, old buddy, but listen, we’re not the only ones…”
“What?” Lando glanced around. The distant stars twinkled and nebulae writhed; the Remnants glinted as they spun through the shadows; the debris slid past, vomited forth from the underside of that massive junk hold that Gor was about to disappear into. “Where?”
“A group of signals is coming from the other side of that big gloating trash heap. Can’t get a clear reading on them yet…”
“Help…me…” the droid voice moaned, cutting off Han. “Please, El…three.”
Lando blinked. “Elthree? I don’t understand. I’m not Elthree. Who—where?” He glanced around again.
“…Assault…Team,” the droid said with an air of finality.
Lando let off a few more shots, dinging one of the droids but not enough to stop it. He’d have to go into that thing after them, and that…that wouldn’t be pretty.
Something metallic flashed out from under the junk hold. Then something else. More droids? Lando cursed and raced forward. Gor and his team were slowing, now pulling up. Six, now seven droids had blasted around and now hovered in battle formation in front of the junk hold, facing Gor.
They all had squat, disk-shaped heads and a single eye, just like L3. But their bodies were all heavied-up armor and various killing tools, and ion cannons swung over each of their shoulders, clicking into place.
“Elthree Assault Team!” Lando yelled, blasting away as he pushed toward the two droid squads facing off in front of the junk hold.
Explosions rocked the Remnants as both sides opened fire.
CLI PASTAYRA GAZED LANGUIDLY THROUGH the tinted glass of the prep room. On the other side of the window, everybody who was anybody in the galactic underworld had assembled. Now they were mingling in time to the swinging clacks and moans of some Karvathian trusk septet. Adjusting their silky pastichan-fur-lined corsets and fitted Acachlan suits, they clinked glasses and murmured pleasantries to beings they would one day have murdered, chattered amiably about comings and goings in the illegal Kalooman pyrojet trade, the surge in bantha milk prices, the state of the galaxy amid a rising Imperial presence.
And they had all come there to see him. They thought they were there just to barter for a superpowerful device. Really, they would bear witness to the rise of Cli Pastayra and, with his rise, the dawn of a new era for the Wandering Star. No more quaint, backroad slumdoggery, no more dusty relics or useless protocols burdened by archaic lore. The world would behold a criminal syndicate that was about the future, and Cli would be the one to usher in that new dawn.
And it would all begin in just a few moments. And so many had already gathered to watch.
It was a beautiful thing. It was a terrifying thing.
“Fenbolt,” Cli called, letting the velvet curtain slip back down over that panorama of excess and indulgence. “Another snip of parflay spice, hm?”
“Of course, Master Cli.” The small droid nodded and sped smoothly across the room on the single wheel his torso balanced precariously on. “Would you like it lining a fresh caf, perhaps?”
Out in the sparkling new amphitheater, the Karvathians rounded out their tune to a ripple of polite applause and launched right into another. Its fresh, vivacious strains and wild pounding rhythms made their way through the tinted glass, could be felt rumbling along the floor and right up Cli’s leg and into his heart.
Cli sighed. “Did you know, Fenbolt, that the trusk is a style of music that was once performed exclusively in the dingiest of establishments and at pitches so high that only the Karvathians could hear it?”
Fenbolt curved his long mouth into an elegant frown. “I was not aware of that, Master Cli. Would you like your parflay spice lining a fresh caf, sir?”
“This was back during the Old Republic, of course. There are still recordings of some early trusk bands but many were destroyed because the archivist thought they were blank!” Cli chuckled. The whole thing was so absurd, and odd bits of information always helped him take his mind off stressful things. “Can you imagine, Fenbolt?”
“I cannot, sir. Sir, would—”
“Yes, line the caf, Fenbolt.”
“Very good, sir.”
The valens player ripped into a wailing solo while the other six Karvathians teetered along. Cli closed his eyes, willed away the uneasy feeling that too much was at stake for this many hands to be in the pot. Explosions were just about guaranteed when you put such a rabid assortment of deadly, fancy underlords in an enclosed space. He shook his head, sliding a finger along the narrow indented crevices that ran the length of his face.
“Ahem-hem,” the droid coughed. He was standing there with a hollowed-out bone full of caf on a tray when Cli opened his eyes. He held it up and Cli reached down and took it, let the tiny parflay particles tingle his lips as he sipped.
Exhaled.
“I’m about to make an excessive amount of money. Did you know that, Fenbolt?”
“It seems so, sir.”
“The money I’m about to make, it will be more than even the Grand Vygoth will be able to contend with. Do you understand?�
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“I—”
“What I’m saying is, after tonight, everything changes. The Grand Vygoth will be forced to either pay his respects to me or pay the price. I’ve been his crony for far too long. It would’ve gone on indefinitely, you know. As the old man just withered and crumbled and his syndicate, our syndicate, collapsed around his fetid, rotting corpse.”
“Mmm,” Fenbolt mused idly.
“Of course, much more than that will change, you know. The Wandering Star will take its place among the great syndicates of our time. A new world lies ahead of us.”
The parflay was doing its thing now, that ease of motion, like Cli could just extend his arm all the way across the room to refill his glass. Of course, he didn’t have to, did he? Fenbolt was a good servant.
“Odd name for a droid,” Cli mused passingly. “Fenbolt. Most of your kind are named with letters and numbers.”
“Indeed,” Fenbolt said emptily. “Master Gor bestowed it upon me.”
Master Gor, eh? A tiny, probably insignificant tremble of something-not-quite-right passed through Cli. The spice, most likely. It was known to sometimes cause little spates of paranoia and, in rare cases, mortal despair. Even more likely: nerves. For all those years blasting and slicing his way through the Utapaun and then galactic underworld, Cli had never really gotten the hang of talking in front of large groups of important people.
Anyway, what did it matter if some droid called his tech toady master? It didn’t matter. Once this sale went through, in fact, absolutely nothing would matter except what to do with all those mountains of cash and the outpouring of fear, respect, and potential usurpers that would accompany it.
No one could be trusted. But of course, no one could ever be trusted, so that would be nothing new. There would simply be many more resources to suddenly have to protect. And of course, moves would have to be made to shore up power.
The corridor portal slid open, startling Cli from his reverie. “Ah, young Pastayra,” the Vygoth chortled, easing his way into the room. Gor was with him, tall and silent and creepy as ever. A damn shadow, that one. But an obedient one, and that was what mattered.
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