Crucible: Star Wars

by Troy Denning

  Han wasn’t fast enough. Gev already had him by the collar and was spinning him around, putting him between her and Omad. She started to yell an order in Mando’a, but by then Han was driving backward into the sabacc table, pushing Gev onto its black velvet surface and sending thousand-credit tokens in every direction.

  They both landed on their backs, Han atop Gev, and he found himself looking into the eyes of a much-stunned Dena Yus. She still sat in her chair, clutching her mysterious white purse to her chest.

  From beneath Han, Gev’s angry voice called, “Chief Yus! What are you doing? Open your purse!”

  Yus glanced down at the bag but seemed too shocked to obey. She shook her head and clutched the purse more tightly.

  “Chief Yus, open the—”

  Han slammed the back of his head into Gev’s face, and the order ended in a loud crackle. Gev’s small hand shot under Han’s arm and came up behind his neck, then her other hand snaked across his throat and grabbed his collar. Her arm began to pull, cutting off the blood supply to Han’s head, and his vision narrowed.

  Han tried to slam his head into Gev’s face again, but the hand behind his neck held it motionless. He tried to drive his elbows back into her ribs and only banged them against the table instead. The darkness began to creep in from the edges of his vision. He kicked his legs against the edge of the table, hoping to draw the attention of Lando or Omad or someone … and knew he had succeeded when he felt the Force lifting both him and his attacker into the air.

  Gev was so astonished that she relaxed her choke hold. They continued to rise, twenty centimeters, fifty, maybe a full meter above the table. Han’s vision returned, and he saw Lando come up holding a blaster. He was positioned behind Dena and firing at the guards, who continued to pour bolts at Omad. There were maybe seven or eight of them left, all staggering around as if they had spent too much time in the bar before coming on duty.

  Luke or Leia, of course, using the Force to shove them off balance.

  Han suddenly dropped, landing hard atop Gev. The breath left her in a sharp groan, and her arm fell away from his throat. He immediately slammed his head back into her nose again, and as it crackled, he felt her other hand slip from behind his neck.

  Han launched himself away. As his feet met the floor, he caught a glimpse of Dena, still clutching the purse and crawling beneath the table to hide. Luke and Leia remained at their own table, crouching on the floor with the other patrons, maintaining their cover as they surreptitiously used the Force against Gev’s team. Han smiled. That was the thing about experience. Even when a plan went totally astray, veterans knew how to get it back on track.

  Han dropped and rolled, taking cover behind an overturned chair. Dena was now fully under the table, continuing to clutch the mysterious handbag. Half a dozen Mandalorians lay dead or wounded on the floor, and the rest were caught in a vicious crossfire between Lando and Omad. All Han needed was a little extra firepower, and then he could send Gev scurrying back to the Qrephs.

  Seeing no blasters within safe reach, Han turned to snatch the handbag from Dena’s grasp.

  She jerked it away. “What are you doing?”

  “Cut the innocent act, sister.” Han could not be sure what Dena had inside that handbag, but since she’d received it after she passed through the weapon detectors, he was betting it was something useful. A blaster, maybe, or even a grenade. “Whatever they brought you in that purse, I want it.”

  Dena shook her head. “No, Captain Solo.” She continued to pull it away. “Trust me, you—”

  Han stretched and caught the purse, then yanked it out of her grasp. Something clinked inside. It didn’t sound like a grenade or a blaster, but when Dena lunged and got hold of the bottom, he knew it had to be something important.

  Han ripped the purse flap open, then thrust his hand inside and felt what seemed to be two or three tubes about as large as his hand. He grabbed a couple, and that was when Dena planted a spiked heel on his still-tender sternum.

  “No!”

  She wrenched the bag away, and the tubes went flying.

  Dena’s gaze dropped to a tube that had ricocheted off the table bottom and landed about a meter away from Han. Her eyes grew wide, and she dropped her hands to the floor and began to crab-walk backward into the firefight. Han turned toward the tube and saw something white and bristly inside. It seemed to be pushing the ventilated stopper out of the end.

  What the blazes?

  Han reached for the tube, but the stopper was already popping free. The bristly white thing scrambled out, unfurling itself as it moved, and Han was astonished to see a white, fist-sized arachnid stepping onto his wrist.

  He whipped his hand and sent the thing flying. It landed beneath the adjacent table, where it paused and began to wave its long antennae in the air. After a moment, it spun around and raced toward Luke and Leia’s end of the table.

  The arachnid made it almost halfway before it passed in front of a crouching three-eyed Gran, who screeched and slammed an empty cocktail glass on it.

  The Gran vanished in a blast of white flame, and the table was hurled onto its side. Han didn’t see what happened to Luke and Leia, but suddenly the cries of the panicked and injured were drowning out the scream of blaster fire.

  Han’s plan was history.

  When he glanced around, he found two more tubes lying on the floor. Both were open and empty. He spotted one of the bristly white things scampering toward the toppled table where he had last seen Luke and Leia.

  The other one was headed toward Lando.

  Han lurched toward Lando and grabbed him by the shoulder. “White spiders!” he yelled. “Big white spiders! Blast them!”

  Lando spun around and saw the spider heading for him. He pointed his blaster and pulled the trigger, and a ball of white flame erupted beneath the table. Han felt himself tumbling across the floor, chest aching and face stinging, until he finally slammed into a dead security guard.

  A second blast sounded from farther away. By then Han’s ears were ringing and his vision was blurry. But he still knew where he was—and that the fight wasn’t over. He spun around and began to search for the dead guard’s blaster.

  His fingers were just closing around the handle when a black high-heeled pump with a peep toe came down on his wrist. He looked up to find Mirta Gev staring down at him, dripping blood from a broken nose, pointing the emitter nozzle of a blaster at his head.

  “Oh, no, Captain Solo,” she said, motioning for him to rise. “Like I said, you’re coming with me.”

  Ten

  One thing casinos usually had in abundance was surveillance, and Marvid loved surveillance. He could measure the intelligence of his subjects by how long it took them to start acting as though the vidcams were not recording. He could predict how reliable they were by comparing their behavior when they knew they were being watched to their behavior otherwise. He could even tell whether someone was a good liar by monitoring the number of times he or she placed a finger somewhere impolite.

  What Marvid could not do, however, was change plainly visible facts.

  He and Craitheus were meeting on the owners’ deck of their mobile headquarters in the Rift, the asteroid crusher Ormni. Their powerbodies were resting side by side in the conference cabin, with Mirta Gev standing left of Craitheus and Savara Raine to Marvid’s right. A pair of Nargon bodyguards flanked each of the two doorways, their raised skull crests reflecting the tension in the room. A surveillance vid from the Qrephs’ most recent acquisition, the Blue Star casino on Valnoos, was playing on the wall screen.

  And, despite Savara’s claim that she deserved the million-credit bounty for capturing Han Solo, the vid suggested otherwise. So far, it showed a bloody-nosed, formally dressed Mirta Gev dragging a wildly kicking Solo across the floor of a casino hangar. Behind her followed a squad of ten Mandalorians in full armor and a handful of firefight survivors, wounded and still dressed in Blue Star security tabards. One of the wounded men had his arm aro
und a blaster-burned Dena Yus, half dragging and half carrying her as he limped after the others.

  An inset in the bottom corner of the screen showed the Mandalorians’ destination, a boxy, Mandalorian Tra’kad space-transport with the boarding ramp extended. A second inset showed a current-time image of Han Solo, lying battered and unconscious on a bare durasteel bunk in the Ormni’s brig. Marvid liked that image the best.

  He looked toward Savara. “I see nothing to support your contention.”

  “Not yet,” Savara replied. “Keep watching.”

  Craitheus sent a powerbody transmission: THIS IS A WASTE OF OUR TIME. YOUR PET IS JUST ANGRY THAT WE PUT GEV IN CHARGE OF THE BLUE STAR OPERATION.

  THE AMBUSH WAS SAVARA’S IDEA, Marvid said. I SUGGEST WE GIVE HER TWO MILLION CREDITS FOR ELIMINATING WUUL. WE HAVE NO ONE ELSE WHO COULD HAVE DEFEATED THE SECURITY OF A GALACTIC ALLIANCE SENATOR, AND THE BONUS SHOULD MAKE HER FEEL BETTER ABOUT MISSING THE ATTACK ON THE JEDI.

  WHAT DO I CARE HOW SHE FEELS? Craitheus demanded. SHE FEARS THE JEDI AS MUCH AS SHE HATES THEM. IF SHE IS UNHAPPY WITH HER ASSIGNMENTS, IT WILL BE A SMALL MATTER TO ARRANGE A SURPRISE MEETING.

  PERHAPS, BUT AN UNHAPPY OPERATIVE IS A SUSPICIOUS ONE. SHE WOULD NO DOUBT BE WATCHING FOR SUCH A BETRAYAL.

  ALL THE BETTER, Craitheus replied, AS LONG AS SHE ALSO FEARS IT. IF WE KNOW WHAT SHE FEARS, WE KNOW HOW TO CONTROL HER. As they conversed, two points of light appeared in the vid, about head height on the hangar door behind Gev and the Mandalorians. At first, Marvid did not recognize what he was seeing. Then the two points separated and began to glide in opposite directions, creating the glowing orange outline of a doorway.

  A pair of lightsaber tips, cutting their way into the hangar.

  In the vid, Gev waved her armored Mandalorians back toward the glowing outline, then Solo suddenly let his legs go limp and dropped, dragging her down with him. By then the two lightsabers were nearly at the floor, cutting through the thin interior door as though it were plastoid instead of durasteel.

  The door blew off its hinges, and a pair of Jedi—one Devaronian, one Twi’lek—came whirling into the hangar, their lightsabers weaving baskets of color as they deflected blaster bolts back toward their attackers. A trio of Mandalorians dropped in an instant, and Savara’s claim to the bounty suddenly began to look more plausible.

  Deciding that now might be a good time to undermine his brother’s excessive faith in Mandalorian solutions, Marvid stopped the vid and turned to Mirta Gev.

  “You were in charge of the ambush, Commander,” he said. “Tell me, how did two Jedi manage to smuggle lightsabers into the Blue Star?”

  “They were in disguise,” Gev said. “The lightsabers were hidden inside the Twi’lek’s lekku.”

  “Ah, that explains it.” Marvid smiled. Gev was blundering straight into his trap, of course. “And didn’t they go through the weapon detectors at the main entrance?”

  Before Gev could do more damage to her cause, Craitheus said, “The point is noted and conceded, Marvid. Savara would have seen through the Jedi disguises before taking Solo prisoner. But we still have Solo.”

  “Which is hardly the issue,” Savara said. “If I had been in command, Dena would have released the arachnokillers first. The ambush would have started with the deaths of Calrissian and the Jedi, and taking Solo captive wouldn’t have left you paying the death benefits on a dozen contracts.”

  “Assuming your plan worked,” Craitheus countered. “But there was never any guarantee. As you are so fond of reminding us, Jedi are difficult to kill.”

  “And now Mirta has made it impossible.” Savara pointed at the vid. The frozen image showed the Devaronian Jedi in midair, hurling himself into a somersault with three blaster bolts simultaneously ricocheting off his blade. “That’s Luke Skywalker you’re looking at. You only get one chance at him—if you’re lucky.”

  Savara glared across the table at Gev, then continued, “And Mirta just wasted that one chance capturing an old man who can’t even use the Force. The only thing she’s done is bring the Qreph empire one step closer to ruin—and bring both of you five steps closer to death.”

  Marvid’s powerbody registered a blast of transmission static that could only be his brother’s rage. But when Craitheus spoke, it was in a carefully measured tone.

  “Nevertheless, Commander Gev has delivered Han Solo to us alive, which is all that is required to collect the bounty.” Craitheus turned to Marvid. “We’re done here.”

  “Not yet, you aren’t,” Savara said. She looked to Marvid. “Keep playing. You’ll be glad you did.”

  Marvid restarted the vid, then watched in grudging admiration as Jedi Skywalker downed two more armored Mandalorians. The phony Twi’lek—Leia Solo, no doubt—sent a third flying across the hangar. The last three men began to fall back. They were clearly overmatched and destined to fail.

  That changed when Savara Raine appeared in the doorway behind the two Jedi and sent a separate grenade flying at each one. Skywalker and his sister sensed the danger and sprang away in opposite directions, then the vid flared orange and stayed that way for nearly three seconds. When it cleared, it had resolved into a split screen, one half showing the Mandalorian vessel shuddering on its struts, the other half showing a trio of Nargons charging into the hangar, firing their blaster rifles toward an unseen enemy.

  Savara was not visible on either half of the screen, but Gev was on the first screen, dragging a badly beaten and now-unconscious Solo up the Tra’kad’s boarding ramp. They were almost inside when they suddenly stopped and seemed to teeter on the verge of tumbling back to the hangar floor—caught, Marvid assumed, in an invisible Force grasp.

  Then more Nargons appeared and began to pour fire at the unseen Jedi, and Gev disappeared into the transport with Solo. The vessel started to rise off its struts even before the boarding ramp had retracted, and Craitheus stopped the vid.

  “Savara has made her case,” he said, turning to Marvid. “She deserves a share of the bounty.”

  “Agreed,” Marvid said. “I suggest a fifty percent split.”

  “Fifty percent?” So strident was Gev’s voice that the Qrephs’ Nargon bodyguards stepped forward, ready to protect Marvid and his brother. She merely glared at them, then continued, “I lost a dozen good men in that operation. If you think we’ll settle for a single credit less than the full million—”

  “You don’t deserve a million,” Savara interrupted. “You don’t deserve a single credit.” She turned to Marvid. “Didn’t I tell you to keep playing?”

  Marvid knew he shouldn’t smile—it would betray his bias to Craitheus—but he couldn’t help himself. She was so arrogant.

  “If you insist,” he said. “But I really don’t see you receiving more than half the bounty.”

  “That’s not the point.” Savara waved at the wall screen. “Just play.”

  Marvid restarted the vid and watched in growing concern as Skywalker went after the Nargons, while his sister began to Force-hurl armored Mandalorians into the hangar walls. By the time the transport was departing through the barrier field, the Nargons had been reduced to piles of scale-covered flesh and metal. Gev’s Mandos lay strewn across the hangar floor, missing limbs and armor. Most were clearly dead, but several appeared to be merely wounded or unconscious. A moment later, Lando Calrissian and Omad Kaeg entered the hangar and began to interrogate the survivors.

  Marvid and Craitheus had the same thought simultaneously.

  “Were any pilots captured?” Craitheus asked, spinning his powerbody toward Gev. “Did you risk anyone who knows how to find Base Prime?”

  Gev’s eyes grew resentful. “Of course not,” she said. “We do know how to follow a directive.”

  Marvid ran a replay of her facial expressions and determined that she was not entirely confident. After a quick, silent consultation with his brother, he spun his powerbody toward Savara.

  “You’ll go to Sarnus immediately,” he said. “Commander Gev will want her person
nel rescued—if possible. If not, the Jedi are not to have time for a lengthy interrogation.”

  Gev’s eyes flared in anger. “Those are my—”

  “A rescue won’t be necessary,” Savara interrupted. “The Jedi didn’t take any prisoners.”

  Gev whirled on her. “What did you do?” she demanded. “If you harmed my people—”

  “If I did, it was your mess I was cleaning up,” Savara replied, just as hotly. “Besides, loose tongues are the least of the problems you caused. Do you really think Calrissian was on Valnoos to strike a dirty deal?”

  The word deal hit Marvid like a gamma blast to a cerebellum. He hadn’t heard anything about a deal—or any other offer from Calrissian—and that could mean only one thing. He directed his powerbody to arm its weapon systems, then designated Craitheus and Gev as first and second targets.

  “Deal?” Though the question was directed at Savara, his attention was locked on his brother. “What deal?”

  Savara’s eyes went wide with shock, and her attention remained fixed on Gev. “You didn’t tell them together?”

  “How did you—” Gev stopped herself, glaring at Savara. “The message was to Craitheus, and I’m not paid to involve myself in their business.”

  “You fool.” Savara shook her head. “The message was nothing but a ploy—and now you have it working on two levels.”

  “What message?” Marvid demanded. To encourage an answer, he aimed a blaster cannon at Gev’s face and uncovered the emitter nozzle. “What levels?”

  “There’s no need to arm your systems,” Craitheus said. “The only reason you haven’t heard about it is that it wasn’t worth mentioning.”

  Marvid kept his weapon systems live. “It might be worth mentioning now.”

  “Calrissian is trying to drive a wedge between us.” Craitheus switched to their private comm channel. I DIDN’T WANT TO LET THAT HAPPEN.

  SO HE OFFERED TO STRIKE A DEAL WITH YOU AND SUPPLANT ME, Marvid replied. He continued to keep his weapon systems live. This was a new experience for him. His brother had never kept a secret from him before, and it had his thoughts reeling. PREDICTABLE.